Death's Chosen (First Cohort Book 3)

by M. R. Anthony

  After we’d covered two miles. I drew us to a halt and ordered silence. The persistence of the cold should have given me the answer I wanted without having to stop. Sure enough, the sound of bellows was there, not too near, yet not too far. I swore under my breath and ordered a resumption of the run.

  I wasn’t quite sure what happened to the road. One moment it was there, the next we’d left it behind and found ourselves running across frost-rimed grass. It crunched underfoot and the crystals of ice bloomed into the air, joining with the glittering shower that fell from our skin and armour. At one point, I reached up to my face and discovered that my eyebrows had become thick with ice and my hair felt peculiarly brittle.

  “It’s coming!” shouted Eagle, a few ranks behind me. I looked over my shoulder, trying hard not to lose my footing on the uneven ground. I couldn’t see anything, nor hear anything over the noise of our headlong flight. Nonetheless, I knew Eagle had superb eyesight and I was willing to believe what he’d said.

  We covered another hundred yards before a different man called that he’d seen something. I looked again – many of the others were doing the same and we’d started to become ragged. I shouted a stern command and they looked to the front again, falling back into step with the others. This time I’d seen something too. There was shape in the fog – something massive – and it loomed above us, coming nearer, its features tantalisingly obscured in the gloom. We’d run as quickly as I dared take us and it wasn’t enough. Whatever came it was determined to catch us and showed no signs that it was going to break off the pursuit. When you’re given no choice about whether or not a confrontation will happen, you have to try your hardest to take the initiative.

  I shouted to Craddock what I intended and he acknowledged. We barked orders and the Cohort stopped running, and swung around in a wide line across the path of our enemy. Instead of a column six wide, we were now a line six ranks deep. We had our shields ready and our spears outwards. When I saw more details of our foe, I doubted that the spears would be any more use than a wooden sword against it. Even our swords would be puny.

  I heard muttered oaths and curses sweep through our lines and I ordered quiet. In the fog, our pursuer had also stopped and it studied us from a distance of fifteen yards. I wasn’t surprised by what I saw – after all, there seemed to be hardly anything left in the world that wasn’t rotten, corrupt or worse.

  It was almost as tall as the Hungerer and almost as broad. A twenty-five-feet tall corpse in patchwork armour. The hilt of a sword protruded over the shoulder, where it was held in a scabbard at its back. The bone-coloured hilt was six feet long and I guessed the blade itself might be another twelve – a monstrous weapon of destruction against which our shields would do nothing. Its face was ruined and almost gone. There were no eyes, just two deep sockets which I had no doubt could see us perfectly. It wore no helmet and lank grey hair hung down around its face, somehow free of the frost that clung to ours. The creature’s skull was almost human. It had a heavier, lower brow and the teeth that remained embedded in its jawbone were much larger in comparison and with sharp edges, as though it had been designed to eat meat. Whatever it was, I knew it had never been alive – this creature had been made. Constructed for a purpose that I had no knowledge of.

  As it stood there, its barrel chest heaved with laboured motion. Each rise and fall lifted the rusted metal breastplate it wore up and down with the rhythm. It wasn’t breathing, since it wasn’t alive to breathe. Cold fog poured off it, each of the rasping sounds sending out another wave of the freezing air. It looked almost as if it were smouldering with flame, only instead of smoke coming from its skin it was the fog that billowed away, rolling off in clouds. I didn’t want to think about how many men I’d lose in the fighting.

  “How did one of these bastards stay hidden in Nightingale?” asked Ploster in a whisper. I didn’t answer and I could feel him gathering himself up for an attack, for all the good it would likely do.

  The moments become seconds and the seconds stretched to nearly a full minute. Still it remained motionless. Then it reached up with one arm, slowly and deliberately. The skeletal hand at the end of the arm was far more bone than it was flesh, a mixture of putrefying colours – greys and greens with dull yellow bones. It slid out the sword without haste. The blade whispered free. It was notched and dull but it didn’t need a sharp edge. The creature took a single step towards us and swung the blade with effortless ease – a taunting practise swing that cut through the fog and left eddying patterns behind it.

  I opened my mouth to give the command to attack. Against this creature I had no idea how we’d fare. Before the words left my lips, the air was lit up with an unexpected detonation of flame. A fire so hot that it was the purest of whites encircled our foe. I shielded my eyes and almost at once a wall of heat roared amongst us. There was a furious hissing sound as water was turned into blistering hot steam and the men in the front ranks had to huddle behind their shields to escape as best they could. The flames faded to an orange and amongst them I saw the huge silhouette of the creature, with its hands raised in pointless defence as the magic stripped away the few shreds of flesh which remained on its bones.

  There was other movement – a man on a horse with a wide-brimmed hat had come from somewhere. He waited between us and the giant, calm and ready. Smoke – the real smoke of fire – snaked lazily into the air, mixing with the fog.

  “Captain Charing, I suggest you run,” said Rak Ashor. I heard the longing again, as if he yearned to unleash something that even he dared not. The flames around the Northman winked out and the giant skull looked directly at the man on the horse.

  I took the advice. There was no time to form a column, so each man did an about-face. In our line, we raced away from the Pyromancer and the foe that he’d made his own. We’d not even covered twenty yards when there was another discharge. The light of the fire cut through the fog, casting peculiar other-worldly shadows upon our surroundings. After two hundred yards, I looked back. Orange contrasted sharply against the grey and there was a huge, dark shape moving within the light. I saw the vast sword lift into the air and then it was as if the world itself became flame. Something ignited and fire bloomed into violent light for a hundred yards to the left and right of its source. It roiled towards us, the outer edges reaching us, but not hot enough to burn. Steam followed, sizzling and crackling as if the water droplets had been forced to expand too quickly. Hot air tore at our flesh again, melting new ice and heating the metal of our armour until it was warm to the touch.

  “Shit,” I heard Ploster mutter next to me in admiration.

  The Pyromancer’s conflagration faded away. I imagined the reluctance of the fires to disperse and indeed they seemed to maintain their grasp on existence for longer than it should have been possible. The fog returned, sweeping in to fill the space from which it had been expelled.

  We rearranged into a column, which was a formation much better suited to speed. Away we went, across the grass and frozen mud. After a mile, I held us up for a moment while I listened to see if we were pursued. There was no sound bar the ones we made. The fog was still cold, but had lost the sharp bite that would make it fatal to the living. I was wary about slowing down, so kept us going in case there were any more of those creatures concealed from our sight. I was also sure there were plenty more of the other Northmen here and it seemed like they could detect us without needing to see or hear where we were. Or perhaps I was worrying over nothing and the two encounters we’d had so far were down to bad luck.

  We travelled a difficult ten miles to the north. Deprived of sight, it was impossible to choose the most suitable route and for the last five miles, we walked over barren soil littered with loose stones that made it treacherous to run. Then, without warning we broke free of the fog. One moment it was all around, as thick as it had ever been. Next, it was gone, left entirely behind us like a solid wall of grey. The sky was thick with cloud and the sun was already setting, but the light and
the scant warmth were a great welcome to us.

  “I never thought I’d be so happy to see a cloudy day,” said Beamer.

  “Yeah. I hope we never see that fog again,” said Weevil. A man is free to express his hopes even when he knows they will not come to fruition.

  We had emerged onto a rock-strewn hillside, covered in scrubby grass and with a few stunted, gnarly trees. The landscape would only get harsher as we went north and I doubted we’d see anything lusher over the coming months. There was a narrow road at the bottom of the hill – we might have been within three hundred yards of it for the last ten miles. We made our way to it, cutting diagonally down the slope towards the north. I allowed a pause for a minute while we checked our gear. Most of the men spent the time looking to the south at the bank of fog behind us. It was vast and reached several hundred yards into the air, and spread to the east and west as far as the eye could see. From here, it seemed unmoving and solid. The longer you stared, the more your eyes discerned the slight shifting of the greyness.

  “It’s moving to the south,” said Ploster. He was right – it was drifting away at something like a walking pace.

  “I wonder why so slowly,” I replied. I’d heard many reports of the fog coming upon towns so quickly that the people couldn’t run. It had happened at Angax just that morning.

  “They advance quickly, bringing it before them. The fog they leave behind follows slowly.” He shrugged as if it wasn’t of any great importance.

  Before we could resume our journey, I noticed something in the receding greyness of the murk. It started as the outline of an odd shape and when it emerged I saw it was the Pyromancer, sat atop his horse as if he were out riding for pleasure. I held us in place until he caught up with us. Neither his demeanour, nor the expression on his rotting face betrayed any sign of emotion.

  “What was that creature?” I asked him.

  “A construct. Pieces fastened together with magic for a specific purpose. The Northmen have greater tools at their disposal than that one.”

  “Did you destroy it?” I asked him.

  “If you are asking whether it will resume its pursuit, then the answer is no,” he said. “Shall we proceed? The Emperor is impatient for our return.”

  I gave the order and we set off at a fast march. The border was several days north of Angax and I was anxious to cover the distance as soon as possible. The road was rough and its destination unknown. Even so, it was a welcome alternative to the terrain on either side. It meandered only slightly and took us almost directly north. I wasn’t finished speaking to the Pyromancer, so dropped into step with his horse as soon as we’d got up to speed.

  “What is it that the Emperor wants to find?” I asked.

  He looked at me and I felt like he was sizing me up. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I have never been to the north of the mountains. Not even the Emperor has been there. Nevertheless, he is certain that we will find something of use, otherwise he wouldn’t have risked us on this expedition.”

  While I was certain that he’d have risked the First Cohort, I was willing to accept that Malleus wouldn’t want to lose a powerful ally like Rak Ashor if there were no chance of a worthwhile outcome.

  “What are the Northmen?” I asked him. “Why have they come now?”

  “I have spent most of the last fifty years to the south, Captain Charing,” he said. “The lands of the north are a mystery to me.”

  “I hear there is trouble in the south,” I offered.

  “There is always something. Men always want what they haven’t got. It drives them to risk their lives in the foolhardiest of causes. The Emperor does not permit his subject to behave with treachery.”

  “Jarod Terrax has sensed a weakness. I can’t imagine he would chance his arm if he thought there was no hope for Callian’s rebellion to succeed.”

  “Duchess Callian and Baron Vaks. Perhaps the Farseer as well, though he continues to pay lip service to the Emperor.”

  I felt a moment’s appreciation that Ashor didn’t speak in hints and riddles. If three of his nobles were against him, the Emperor’s time might truly have come. It made me wonder about the item he’d sent us to look for. Was it something to be used against the Northmen, or was there a wider purpose? Was it the Northmen or his own servants that Malleus thought of as the greater threat? I kept the questions to myself for now. I had no fear about asking the Pyromancer, but I wanted to speak to Ploster about it first, or at least have an opportunity to think about the situation for myself. We marched on.

  28

  Soon, the fog was nothing more than a memory. The sky remained heavy with cloud and the promise of spring had been replaced with a biting edge to the air. If the Northlands stretched away for many thousands of miles, I could only imagine how harsh and inhospitable it must be. I knew that life had a way of gaining a foothold in the most unlikely of places, yet there was surely no way that there could be any meaningful existence north of Cranmar’s lands. I recalled the many hundreds of subsistence farms and settlements I’d seen within Warmont’s duchy and how I’d hated the idea of living amongst the people who allowed themselves a life no better. There was always an alternative, I kept telling myself.

  On the first night out of Angax, we set a camp without fires. We huddled amongst a copse of trees which had defied logic by growing straight and tall from a dry soil which seemed far too shallow to sustain them. We lacked sufficient tents and provisions. I found that I missed the comfort they provided. The men evidently felt the same and the usual ebullient chatter was replaced with a hushed murmuring.

  “You’d better get used to it,” I told Weevil. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

  “We’ve seen worse and lived through it, Captain,” he said. “I’m sure there’ll be people out here somewhere that we can treat with for supplies. There were sheep just an hour back.”

  “Really?” I asked. I hadn’t seen them.

  “Grey, they were. Like they’d been specially bred to hide amongst the rocks.”

  “If we see some tomorrow, I’ll see what I can do,” I promised. I supposed there must be villages between here and the border. I couldn’t imagine that Angax was the most northern of Cranmar’s settlements.

  We rested as best we could. The Pyromancer left his horse a few yards outside our camp and it stood there obediently without needing a tether. It didn’t attempt to feed and nor had I seen it drink. It surely wasn’t a normal horse, though the idea came as no surprise.

  In the morning, we were ready to go before first light. I was certain that my own impatience had rubbed off onto the other men. I knew no fatigue and my brain was filled with an urge to move things on as soon as I could. We packed our belongings and emerged from the trees, less than half a mile from the road. There was no sign of fog, no indication that there was anything hostile and, to Weevil’s annoyance, no further sheep. He cursed and complained, until the other men began to raise false alarms and soon, every distant rock or imperfection in the terrain was brought to Weevil’s attention and referred to as a sheep. He tired of the game quickly and stopped his grumbling.

  We covered a lot of ground over the course of the morning. The road kept more or less to a series of valleys between hills which themselves were little more than high undulations across the land. Early afternoon came and we discovered what had happened to Cranmar and his men. The hills ended, or at least became lower and lower until they weren’t anything you could call a hill. The land flowed on before us and to the east and west there were seemingly hundreds of miles of unrelenting, rocky desolation. A few miles ahead, there was a moving cloud of blackness, which hung low in the skies.

  “Crows,” said Craddock. “I wonder what they’ve found to bring so many of them here.”

  There was only ever one thing that brought so many crows and we came upon the slaughter after another two miles. At first, we saw it as piles of dull metal, with the occasional flash of bright cloth. Then, it became clear that we’d found the scene
of a massacre.

  “Cranmar’s men, by their colours,” said the Pyromancer. “I feared they were gone and here is the proof.” It was odd to hear this expression of regret from one of the death sorcerers – perhaps Ashor had once been a man like these and remembered what it was to have hopes and dreams.

  The dead were scattered in heaps, as if they’d been scooped up by a giant shovel and tidied into this one place. The crows took reluctant flight when we approached, their caws threatening us for disturbing their meal. The bodies were paler white than was natural and the dead faces stared outwards, mouths open in screams that would never be heard. There was little sign of blood, even where the crows had been feasting, but the odour of putrefaction swamped us. We couldn’t give in to the smell and the faces of my men were impassive, though I knew they weren’t happy at the scene.

  I had Corporal Grief come up to examine the bodies while I accompanied him, along with Lieutenant Craddock.

  “Thirty thousand, or more,” I said.

  “Thirty-five thousand,” said Craddock firmly.

  “You said Cranmar had seventy thousand.”

  “That’s if he took them all,” he said. “There weren’t many left in the city.”

  “Half his men, killed in this one place.”

  We didn’t have to ask where the other half had got to – we’d seen them raised from the dead. They’d rushed the city of Angax, thinning out the numbers before the Northmen themselves could arrive.

  “Killed by the cold, Captain,” said Corporal Grief. “Many had their swords drawn, so at least they knew something was coming.” I thanked him and sent him back to his position.

  “What a waste,” said Craddock. “What a fucking waste.”

  The two of us picked our way through the mounds. They’d all died close to each other, as if they’d clung together for warmth. I looked at their clothing – beneath their armour they wore the thick clothes that were common to these lands. They were proof against the vagaries of a cold spring, but nothing against what the Northmen could bring. I cursed, without knowing precisely what I railed against. At that moment, I lacked the words and the coherent thought.