Dark Crusade

by Vaughn Heppner

  Cuthred heaved. The chunk sailed, hit the ground, bounced once, twice, three times and with a grisly impact rolled into a horse. With a screech of metal and screaming animal, rider and mount crashed to the ground. Cuthred threw again. He bowled over two more mounts. Then a fourth chunk flew. But now the knights and men-at-arms lashed their mounts in the opposite direction as they fled.

  The clawmen, who had been on the point of bolting, snarled and gave a ragged cheer.

  “That should hold them awhile,” said Leng.

  “You play a close game, sorcerer.”

  “Closer than you know. Now shut up and let me think.”

  The tactic, however, proved sufficient. Morning climbed to noon and after a long wait afternoon faded to dusk. The knights and their retainers, if they were watching the grove, watched out of sight. The sun sank and the last shreds of red left the horizon. At the Master’s signal, the Death Drummer beat her drum. As the undead lurched from their tents, gnarly creatures with thick arms and bowed legs rose and attended their tuskers: radically altered farm pigs. They were snorting monsters with long, razor-sharp tusks, bristling backs and rutting shields: on both sides of the chest, growths of connective tissue had formed rugged plates, coated with tree resin, put there by the tuskers rubbing against trees. While not in rut, the shields had grown as part of the darkspawning. Cinching saddles onto these monsters, taking up slender lances and round shields, the tuskriders galloped from the grove to scout the surrounding territory. They were the horde’s dark cavalry, few in number but savage in battle.

  In time, the undead tramped to the Death Drummer’s beat. They were the heart of the horde. Around them scurried squadrons of clawmen, while behind marched the long-limbed gaunts, the horde’s jackals and carrion feasters. Big brutes in plate armor clanked beside Leng. Then followed the select troops, specialty darkspawn: giants, blood-drinkers and fravashi. They would only be used upon the Master’s express orders.

  Cuthred, as Leng’s personal guard, overheard much and understood little. Once or twice, he muttered to Vivian, who explained a concept that left him the moment she stopped talking.

  The apple orchards grew less prevalent as they progressed. Tilled wheat fields and sunflowers carpeted the approach to Glendover. Unsurprisingly, no humans were found in the hamlets or in the un-walled villages. At one point, however, bugles blared in the distance. Sometime later tuskriders galloped to the Master, visible because the amulet glowed with power.

  A detachment of clawmen jogged after the tuskriders. The bugles sounded a half-hour later. Once, Cuthred swore he heard pigs squeal.

  The Death Drummer pounded out a faster beat. In their grim cadence, the undead struck the paved road as one. Flesh, boots, protruding heel bones, by the clashing sound an army marched.

  The road went up a hill where slain knights and dead tuskriders lay. By the looks of it, it had been a small skirmish. The road then moved past groomed trees and onto a plain that sloped downward. At the end of the plain Glendover Port’s huge stone walls greeted them. Beyond that, the stars and the moon glittered off the Sea of Nuada.

  “Glendover,” Leng whispered, “at last.”

  “Home,” said Vivian sadly.

  “No longer,” said Leng.

  “No longer,” Vivian agreed.

  Cuthred felt sad for her. Plague had driven her from Glendover. Just as plague had touched…touched…somebody who was a knight, who had saved… Yes! Who had saved his hand. What troubled Cuthred was that the plague had not been natural. At least, Leng had boasted to Vivian that rats had been carefully kept in Forador Castle. Leng had brought the plague rats from Godomar, saving them for the special moment. That moment had been the first day of spring, the rats released into Glendover Port’s slums.

  Thus, Glendover had been weakened by the plague. Only now had the city been re-opened, the main port to Anor. Still, its soldiers would be less than before the plague, as would be its populace. Not all the city dwellers that had fled like Vivian had returned. Close Glendover Port and one closed most off-island passage. For some reason Leng seemed to consider that important.

  “Do you have enough darkspawn to take the city?” asked Vivian.

  “The Moon Lady rides high,” said Leng. “Yes. The city may be taken.”

  Cuthred wondered how. The stone walls rose higher than his head. Towers stood behind the city-walls, over fifty of them. A vast host of torches lined the walls, along with the glints of spears, swords and shields. The city had two gates, both made of brass and both stronger than anything else in Anor, or so the Duke had boasted last summer.

  “You have no siege towers,” Vivian said. “No battering rams.”

  “Haven’t I?” asked Leng.

  “Glendover Port has never been taken by siege,” she said. “The Duke’s knights are the island’s bravest.”

  “And they are sapped by plague.”

  “Count the torches, Leng. There must be over a thousand fighters on the wall. Surely there are another thousand behind.”

  “No,” he said. “Not so many as that.”

  “There are enough,” said Vivian.

  “We will divide them,” said Leng.

  “And thus divide yourself. No. I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

  “And you’re a strategist?” sneered Leng.

  “Enough to count numbers,” she shot back.

  Leng smiled strangely, but said no more.

  Orders came down from the Master. The tuskriders marshaled, ready to ride against any knights that dared sortie out the South Gate. Like a wall before the gate waited ranks upon ranks of undead, with clawmen detachments flanking them.

  “Strength against strength?” asked Vivian.

  “Cuthred! Hoveden! To me,” said Leng. The two giants followed him. A handful of tuskriders galloped along as well. They brought three horses. Leng and Vivian mounted up. The third horse carried Leng’s supplies. With the tuskriders as escort, Leng circled the city of stone, with torches on the walls following their progress.

  “Will you send your two giants against the West Gate?” asked Vivian.

  “They might well break into the city,” said Leng.

  “To die by the men massed men there.”

  They rode away from the besieged city and to the shores of the Sea of Nuada. Across its dark waters to the east lay Elban, while southeast was the continent.

  “Why here?” asked Vivian. “Won’t the Master be upset that his sorcerer ran out on him?”

  Leng dismounted and took from the third horse’s pack a glass jar that swirled with tomb moths. A sinister luminescence from their wings reflected the moon’s glow. Leng unscrewed the jar and one by one plucked them forth with tweezers. He inserted the frantic moths into wooden models of ships, hollow toys picked up at Castle Forador. The moth-filled ships he launched onto the Sea of Nuada.

  Throwing back his head, lifting his bony hands, he cried, “Hear me, Moon Lady! Heed my plea! I have worshipped you for centuries. Never have I forgotten you. Never have I failed to sacrifice on your feast days. Your temples are my holy places. Your beauty is my salvation. Moon Lady, grant me this request and let your power shine forth.” Leng took a dagger, a wavy blade, and he cut himself on the chest as he screamed foul words.

  Cuthred cowered, for it seemed to him as if the moon shone with a wicked light. A chill wind swept through the air, driving the toy ships to sea.

  “Moon Lady!” howled Leng.

  The moon blazed brighter as Leng wailed, and it seemed as if the face of the moon became that of a beautiful woman with hot lips and liquid eyes.

  Vivian moaned. Cuthred hid his face. The tuskriders squealed. Leng shouted with evil joy, and in that moment, he seemed more like a pit-fiend than a man.

  “Look!” cried Leng. “See the Moon Lady’s ships.”

  Cuthred gasped. Mighty ships sailed upon the sea. They shone with a ghostly white color, with white sails and eerily green hulls. They were monsters of the deep, warships. Upo
n the decks moved witch-green helmets and spears, swords and green armor. Distant bugles sounded. Sails stirred. With majestic grace, the Moon Ships moved toward the Glendover docks.

  “They’re beautiful,” whispered Vivian.

  “Yes,” said Leng, his forehead plastered with sweaty hair. “Now we ride back to the Master.”

  “We won’t join the moon warriors?”

  Leng laughed.

  The Moon Ships sailed while Leng and his escort hurried to the South Gate. Even to Cuthred’s eyes, it was obvious that not as many torches lined the walls. Surely, city soldiers went to repel the sea-borne invaders.

  “Call down more moon-warriors,” said Vivian. “Then you can save your darkspawn.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Leng asked. “The ships are illusions.”

  Cuthred clanked to the Master’s summons. He, with the two other giants Hoveden and Faul, picked up a massive tree-trunk with leather handles attached. They crouched and shuffled behind the brutes. Clawmen with ladders charged the stone wall to the left and right of the gate. Enemy arrows twanged. Hissing oil spilled down. Clawmen howled, but some ladders clattered against stone. A shout caused Cuthred to rise. The giants rushed the gate, the heavy tree trunk in their grasp. Arrows rained like hail, plinking off Cuthred’s helmet and breastplate. Hoveden groaned, but didn’t go down.

  “Old Father Night!” roared Cuthred, the bloodlust singing in his ears. They rushed the gate and swung the tree trunk. The gate groaned, and the vibrating trunk almost numbed Cuthred’s hands. “AGAIN!” thundered Cuthred. A stone dazed him, clanging upon his helmet. He swung back with his comrades and then forward, smashing the end of the tree trunk against the gate. Huge metal hinges screamed in complaint. Wooden bars behind the gate splintered. “HEAVE!” The three giants rammed the tree-trunk once more. Gate hinges burst. One of the doors, like a felled pine, toppled backward and crushed the waiting humans. Then a huge boulder fell upon Hoveden’s shoulder. A bone cracked. Hoveden sank with a groan. Cuthred didn’t care. He picked up his shield and club which brutes had been carrying for him and charged through the gate. Behind him followed the yelling brutes, while behind them marched the somber horde of undead.

  A ragged line of trembling, white-eyed militia awaited them. They had formed behind the gate, a precaution against this very occurrence.

  Cuthred gripped his club. He raised the edge of his shield to his chin. And then a strange thing happened. He didn’t see the city warriors as they were. Instead, he saw the faces of the Forador Castle bullies who had misused and abused him for years. He saw them as the squires who had taunted him, the knights who had whipped him for minor misdeeds. The humiliation and shame of years boiled in him until he roared with rage.

  “FOLLOW ME!”

  Men thrust spears at him. He reached over his huge shield and smashed their heads. One, two, three men crumbled dead at his feet. “Old Father Night!” he howled, sweeping his club the way a boy would a broom as he pretended to be a warrior. Five men died, bones broken and flesh pulped. “Now you see!” roared Cuthred. “Now it’s my turn!”

  The militiamen wavered. A few, at the rear, ran away.

  A trumpet blared. Arrows arched over the thin line and rained upon the brutes at Cuthred’s side. Like hail, the steel tips rattled upon heavy armor. A few found their mark, and here and there, a brute went down groaning. Yet the trumpet signaled more than just the archers. With lances leveled, knights charged the undead. Behind the knights marched men-at-arms, lusty fellows who seemed to know how to hold their swords.

  “They’re cutting us off,” growled a brute.

  Cuthred stared at him stupidly.

  “Don’t you see?” said the brute. “They’re trying to re-seal the gate. If they do, they’ll slaughter us.”

  Cuthred frowned harder.

  “Come,” said the brute. “Kill the knights.”

  “But…”

  Faul, the other giant, screamed as a lance tore out his throat. Faul toppled upon undead, crushing many.

  “To the gate,” ordered the brute.

  “Knights!” shouted Cuthred. “I hate knights!”

  He rushed the armored warriors who waded through the undead like hogs through slime.

  “Knights!” bellowed Cuthred. “Knights, die!”

  He swept his club. A knight raised his shield. It didn’t matter. The spike punctured the shield and impaled the knight even as the club swept him off the saddle. Cuthred shook the club. The dead knight slid off the spike, curling at Cuthred’s feet.

  “Knights die!” roared Cuthred.

  He shield-bashed another knight, slew a third and elbowed a fourth with his elbow-plate. Cuthred single-handedly checked the knights. They milled about him, hewing, thrusting and shouting their defiance. Cuthred heard them as the taunting voices of his past. He saw them as the clawmen who had clubbed and beaten him in the dungeon. He went berserk, dropping his shield and clutching his mighty club two-handedly. Stomp forward, swing, twist around, club down. Stomp forward. Bash with titanic fury.

  All around him, brutes howled with glee. Solemn undead marched uncaring, their weapons moving mechanically. Then there were no more knights. There hadn’t been many to begin with. The men-at-arms, the archers, the hastily armed militia, their line stretched back, back and broke, darkspawn howling as they flooded into the city.

  The slaughter began. Glendover Port had fallen.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The crusaders thundered out of Banfrey, following the King’s Highway and the Fangohr upstream. They traveled fast because of Swan’s urgent premonitions. In his saddlebags, Sir Ullrick the Bear held a writ from the King demanding aid from the baron of Wyvis Keep: the closest baronial neighbor to Baron Barthek.

  Sir Hunneric and his small company from Elban rode with them. Gavin had convinced the rich knight that he could win more glory killing darkspawn than he could on the jousting field. None of the other gentlemen adventurers had been convinced likewise. Hugo had also roused a few men-at-arms in a tavern. Otherwise the troop was composed of Sir Ullrick’s retainers and mercenaries paid by the High Priest. Those were hard-bitten warriors, killers for hire, with well-worn harnesses and a handy way with weapons.

  “They remind me of the blackhearts,” Hugo said one evening while on night watch.

  “No,” Gavin said. “They are men the High Priest knows will obey him no matter what sort of ugly orders he gives.”

  The next day Hugo said, “I think the High Priest means to secretly put us down in the swamps, to do the deed far from prying eyes.”

  Knight and squire rode in the vanguard. They cantered past tall beech trees and their saddles creaked as the river gurgled beside them. The Fangohr had become much narrower and flowed faster here and the land had turned hilly. Fewer cultivated fields were spotted, although more deer, wolves and rabbits ran wild.

  Hugo pointed out a lean knight with dark hair, bright mail and weapons of wonderfully crafted workmanship. No one rode near this knight, and his long, lean face seemed strangely blank. Gavin had watched him once or twice during their nightly stops as the man practiced his swordsmanship. That one had terrible quickness and intensity. At those times, the blankness left the thin face and man’s eyes gleamed with something akin to murder-lust. The knight seldom spoke, and if he did, his lips remained motionless. The other mercenaries feared him, growing silent if he happened by.

  Hugo said, “Do you know how Sir Josserand gained his knighthood?”

  “I’ve not heard,” Gavin said.

  “He was a clerk from Neetivia, come to Banfrey to see the Shrine of Tulun.”

  “A clerk?” asked Gavin. “How did he become a knight?”

  “Several years ago, according to one of his men, Josserand came to Banfrey and rented a room in the outer town and at the shoddiest inn. By day, he went to the Shrine of Tulun, using charcoal and parchment. The Wisdom from his city wanted to build a similar shrine. At night, Josserand sipped wine, studying his drawings by the in
n’s fireplace and making cryptic notes along the margins. Then one day before dusk, three of the provost’s thegns who frequented the area, supposedly as guardians of the King’s peace but actually as robbers, stealing from drunks and the unlucky, came upon Josserand with his parchments tucked under his arm. According to the man who told me, Josserand wandered home with a distracted air. He only noticed the provost’s thegns when their swords pricked his chest. The three robbers took his drawings and stripped him of his clothes, laughing as they let him go. Speaking not a word in reproach, Josserand went back to his lodging while dressed only in his shirt. He snatched up a crossbow and ordered a child to carry his sword. He longer had a belt or breeches to hold the scabbard. He soon caught sight of the thieves and shouted that he planned to kill them. As they ran, he aimed the crossbow, shooting one through the heart. Then he took the sword from the child and gave chase. One thegn tried to crawl through a hedge in a garden. Josserand severed the man’s legs at the knees and then skewered him. The other hammered at a door to a house of strangers. Josserand slew him as the man of the house opened the door.

  “The next day the provost of Banfrey captured Josserand and threw him into the White Tower’s dungeon. He was to be hanged. But the High Priest heard of the case, and he sent his men and took Josserand from the provost and to his palace. There, the High Priest offered to have Josserand knighted if he agreed to serve him. Soon thereafter Josserand won his spurs, and it is said that now he will do anything that the High Priest bids.”

  Gavin grew thoughtful.

  “What I wonder,” Hugo said, “is why the High Priest would send such a one crusading? The likeliest answer is to murder us in the swamps. Or more to the point: to kill Swan and have done with the visionary.”

  Gavin grinned.

  “I find nothing humorous about that,” Hugo said.

  “No?”

  “They wish harm to our Seer.”

  “Of course,” Gavin said. “So we must stay alive long enough to meet the darkspawn. Then we’ll be glad to have one such as Sir Josserand.”