Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  “Wyth,” Vareks snarled, raising a sword to point at Syrah while the men about him pulled aside to leave their general within a small circle of space. “Ül-mys.”

  Witch. You are mine.

  Then he brought the swords into a readied stance, his muscled frame tensing in preparation for the charge.

  A sound reached Syrah’s ears then, a strange, thrumming note, like the snapping of a banner in high wind. Even as a part of her mind pulled away, wondering at what it could be, something like a shadow flickered overhead, and suddenly the noises of the battlefield changed. Battle cries and shrieks of pain still wound their way within the snap and fizzle of magic and the crack of blades and staffs, but from within these came other sounds. There were gasps of awe and shock from behind Syrah, then wails of horror and dread before her. She had only enough time to glimpse Vareks’ face as it went pale, his eyes flicking skyward, before something slammed down upon the stone in the few feet of space between the two of them, dark and massive and terrifying. It took a moment for Syrah to see more than dented steel armor, to see more than the bloody two-headed great ax held in one clawed gauntlet, or the ugly object that hung by its hair from the other.

  Then she saw the wings, flickering and folding themselves along the figure’s back, moving like they had a life of their own as he stood tall, thrusting his right hand and the thing dangling from it into the air.

  Syrah felt as though her legs would give beneath her, a thousand different shades of joy blooming in her breast at the sight of the man.

  “ENOUGH!” Raz i’Syul Arro rumbled in a pitching roar that drowned out the battle all around them, echoing a hundred times across the cliffs as Gûlraht Baoill’s severed head swung aloft.

  LIII

  AS THOUGH time itself had taken pause, the world froze. In the cliffs above their heads Syrah could still hear the continued shouts and bellowing cries as more men came down from the mountain in the hopes of joining the fight, but even those began to die away as the seconds ticked by, until they were only distant sounds to be soon drowned out by the storm.

  Syrah’s eye, though, was fixed on the scaled, lithe shoulders of Raz, her heart hammering so hard she thought it might leap from her chest.

  “YOUR KAYLE IS SLAIN!” Raz bellowed, so loud the words continued to carry over the wind. “IF YOU DESIRE PROOF—” he dropped Baoill’s head at the feet of Agor Vareks “—THEN TAKE IT!”

  Vareks gaped down as the thing settled in the slush a foot from his fur-lined boots, struck dumb by the unmistakable sight. Behind him, cries of denial began to rise up from the tribes, muddled by a resonant murmur as those learned in the Common Tongue translated Raz’s words for their less knowledgeable comrades.

  “ANY WHO WOULD CHALLENGE THIS CLAIM,” Raz continued, hefting the Kayle’s great ax above his head with one hand now, “ARE FREE TO STEP FORWARD!”

  Not a soul moved. The scene as a whole looked almost like it were holding its breath. For a long few seconds Syrah waited, still standing behind Raz, watching for the twitch from the dark crowd before her that would mean someone was stepping forward to take the atherian at his word.

  No one came, though. Only the wind, blowing in their faces, seemed willing to make itself known.

  And then Vareks knelt down, his eyes on the ground, falling to one knee before sheathing a sword and reaching for the former Kayle’s head with his free hand.

  For a long time the general studied it, turning it slowly this way and that, taking in the eyes and nose and ears and the beads in its brown hair with wide eyes. He had the look of a man searching for something—anything—that would show the lie for what it was, the look of a man for whom the truth weighed too much, was too painful to bear, and who needed another explanation for the facts laid out in all their bloody glory before him.

  Finally, reverently, he set the head aside and looked up to Raz. Without getting up from his knee, Vareks took his other sword and brought it up to hold lengthwise in both hands.

  As he set it gently down on the ground at Raz’s feet, Syrah understood what needed to be done.

  Forcing herself to look away from the scene—away from the inexplicable miracle that was the atherian—she turned and pushed her way through the Laorin behind her. Quickly people caught on to her same thought, because soon they were moving for her, murmuring a name as she sought the man out, praying to the Lifegiver he still lived.

  When she found Carro, she almost sighed in relief to find him whole and well.

  The former Priest looked shaken, his scarred eyes wide when he met Syrah’s gaze. His grey robes were torn and singed, and he held a Priest’s staff in his good hand—something the Broken were forbidden from ever touching again—that looked as though it had seen some use. Ignoring this, Syrah reached out, thinking to pull him along with her, to coax him forward.

  Finding herself unable to touch the man, though, she paused, let the hand drop, and gave him an uncertain smile.

  “Come on,” she said quietly, turning to lead him through the crowd.

  The Laorin parted before them again as they walked, eyes wide and mouth agape. No one spoke a word now, all eyes on the pair, the gravity of the moment weighing too heavily for something as trivial as their victory to be of any importance. Together Syrah and Carro moved through the lines of men and women, heading for the outline of Raz’s head and shoulders standing tall above the rest.

  When they reached him, the sight took their breath away.

  In suit of Varek’s submission, others had followed. Even as they watched, men were kneeling by the hundreds, easing themselves down onto one knee in the snow and ice. It looked as though the Saragrias themselves were sinking and settling before them, the army falling one after the other in a wave across the mountainside, bowing their heads respectfully in Raz’s direction.

  No, not Raz anymore, Syrah thought, seeing dozens of blue eyes glimpse up in amazement as she and the former Priest came to stand beside the atherian.

  And so it was. Like a ripple across a field of black and grey and brown, heads lifted while voices rose to spread the news that Carro al’Dor had arrived. More eyes came up, seeking the man, drinking him in.

  Carro al’Dor, whose champion had slain their master, delivering onto them the head of the most fearsome warrior the men of the clans had ever known.

  Judging the moment right, Syrah stepped forward, gesturing back to Carro theatrically with one hand as she drew a rapid rune in the air with the other, touching her fingers to her neck.

  “GRA! GRA DUSTEN YS-KEHN!” she screamed, her voice magically amplified so that every word shrieked above the wind, making all nearby jump. “GRA DUSTEN YS-KAYLE!”

  Then she stepped back, out of the way, and willed herself not to cover her ears as the mountain tribes responded with fervor.

  The sound was like the building rumble of a rockslide, distant at first, but growing with frightening speed. It swelled, growing with every passing second, rising as new voices picked up the roar. Before long Syrah thought she could feel the ground beneath her feet shake, and soon after that she was sure of it.

  Twenty-five thousand men, before and above them along the face of the mountain, roared in tremendous unison, their combined voices merging together until the air itself vibrated.

  At that moment, Syrah felt a heavy hand settle on her shoulder. She had to battle the desire to look around, had to push down the flush of disbelief and joy that touch flared within her, firm and comforting in its weight. She refused to look away, refused to break her gaze from the bowing army that blotted out the land and cliffs before her.

  “What did you say to them?” Raz asked from behind her, just as Carro stepped forward, coming to stand tall before the kneeling form of Agor Vareks.

  For a moment, Syrah hesitated.

  Then, unable to help herself, she reached up and across herself, grasping the atherian’s clawed fingers in her own.

  “Bow,” she responded as Carro al’Dor began to address his people, her v
oice returning to its normal pitch. “Bow before your master. Bow before your Kayle.”

  LIV

  “It does not take a lifetime of seeking and research to imagine that the years following the Battle of the Pass were turbulent for the clans of the Saragrias and Vietalis Ranges. There were some, pockets of resistance within each tribe, which still clung to their old ways, to their iron devotion to the savage Stone Gods. The Peacekeeper did not press the mountain men to convert, of course. If anything, what can be gleaned from the entries in his journals point in another direction, to a personal struggle with a faith that took much from him, then forced him from their company. He did, however, pick up the work where Emreht Grahst left it, and this time there was no—or at least no successful—coup. What attempts were made to seize power by the remaining radical aspects were hammered down at once by the rest of the tribes, most holding to their new Kayle’s side as they came to understand the prosperity that peace could bring. It would be naïve to think, however, that all stood by the Peacekeeper out of love and respect. There were elements, it can certainly be assumed, that supported him purely out of a desperate desire to save themselves from the potential wrath of his monstrous champion…”

  —THE NORTH: ANCIENT TRADITION AND CULTURE, BY AGOR KEHN

  THE GIVING GROUNDS of the Cyurgi’ Di, Raz thought sadly, had never in the history of the faith borne witness to so much pain.

  The dead were laid to rest alongside each other, every body lovingly set one beside the other in a curved line that filled much of the innermost circle of the Grounds. Had he been in better spirits, Raz might have found himself taken by the morbid beauty of the place, a massive, perfectly flat circle at the highest point of the mountain within which the High Citadel had been carved. All about them, in dozens of wide, meticulous rings, the corpses of the dead were set out in the old fashion of burial, for the elements to claim. The loops closest to where he stood—Carro and Syrah on either side of him among hundreds of others of the faith—were occupied by the most recent of the lost, their desiccated corpses already marked by the Sun and winds and storms. The outermost rings, though, held little evidence of the men and women they had once held claim to, marked if anything by nothing more than bits of bone or old, tattered cloth that shifted in the cool breeze.

  Despite this, however, no soul would ever be forgotten within the boundaries of the Grounds. In the top corner of each space where a body had been carefully laid, the silver of a Priest’s or Priestess’ staff stood erect to the heavens, magically hammered into the stone, shining like a thousand steel trunks in a forest of memories.

  And fifty-three new trees had been planted, on this day…

  All about him, Raz could hear the moaning cries of denial, the shuddering, choking sobs of those left behind. Now, even as the ceremonies came to an end and the faithful began their slow return back to the Citadel, the loved ones of the departed lingered, unwilling to let go of the hope and dreams they had had with those that would no longer exist as a tangible part of their lives.

  Raz knew that wretchedness well, and he shared in their grief.

  Tilting his head back, allowing himself a reprieve from the sad scene before him, he looked to the sky. The Sun shone, bright and clear against a heaven of clear blue. It was an exquisite day, a day worthy of the men and women who had fought and died in brave defense of their home, and Raz sent up a brief prayer to his family somewhere above, hidden among Her Stars behind the curtain of the day, asking that they look after the lost.

  Then he looked earthward again, watching the Laorin take their leave in groups of twos and threes and fours.

  He could feel Syrah shaking beside him, her hand in its now-familiar place in the crook of his bandaged arm. She did not cling to him as she had a four-day ago, but rather stood firmer and taller at his side, taking in the scene. Her chin-length hair fluttered in the gentle wind, and for a few moments he sought her gaze, but for once she was too preoccupied to look up at him. Her eye was on the families of the dead, and he knew what she was thinking. He had told her a thousand times in the last two days that it wasn’t her fault, that her stand had been the Laorin’s last desperate chance, but Syrah wouldn’t believe him. She blamed herself for the blood that had been spilled.

  Raz had decided she would find her own truth, eventually.

  On his other side, Carro al’Dor stood a changed man. His now-marked face still held that calm, sage quality that Raz had come to know well over the last weeks, but aside from that he was practically unrecognizable. His robes had been exchanged for leathers and fur, hammered iron and studded plates. His steel staff was gone, taken from him at his Breaking, and instead he carried a carved stave that had been gifted to him by the chieftains of the Amreht as he had released them from their forced indenturement to the Kayle’s army. It was a queer object, and yet beautiful, sculpted from white ash so that the detailed faces of the Stone Gods that had been meticulously whittled into the top quarter of the wood looked wise and somber in the light of the day. It was a new take of the fierce deities Raz rather thought he liked. He’d heard whispers that Carro had already begun to earn himself a name amongst the tribes. “Peacekeeper” they called him, which Raz found terribly amusing. In addition to Gûlraht Baoill, the Dragon—as Raz himself was known among the mountain men, now—had had to overcome his injuries to slay six others over the last four-days who had had a change of heart, thinking themselves worthy enough of the Kayle’s crown to challenge Carro for the seat.

  Erek Rathst, one of Baoill’s old generals, had been the last of these unfortunate fools, putting an end to the needless butchery.

  He suspected Jofrey and the council were already at their wits’ end, having seen true war for the first time, and more blood spilt over the steps of their home would only drive them further from the lessons of the last week.

  Out of nowhere, Carro sighed.

  “It wasn’t going to end any other way, was it?” he asked darkly, his eyes on the backs of the last of the departed’s families as they clung to the limp hands of wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers.

  “No,” Raz said, following his gaze. “And if it had, it wouldn’t have been for the better.”

  He felt Syrah’s fingers tighten around his arm at his words.

  “Why was he so bent on bloodlust?” she asked quietly. “What did Baoill have to gain for it, in the end?”

  “Freedom for his people,” Carro answered with a shrug, watching a woman and her two children pass them to make for the Grounds’ steps, all three faces tear-streaked and stricken. “Or freedom as he understood it, at least.”

  “I don’t understand it,” Syrah said. “I don’t understand what could have driven him to this, what could have driven all of them. What sort of men speak only in bloodshed? What sort of men need a dragon to fall from the heavens on their heads in order to convince them to take a knee?”

  Raz smirked at that. It had been an amusing moment, in the hours after the battle, explaining to Syrah, Carro, Jofrey, and the surviving council what had happened after he’d fallen from the cliffs with Baoill. He’d intended for the mountain men to believe he could fly, of course, intended to strike terror into their hearts as he plummeted from the sky amongst their midst, but he hadn’t considered the Laorin would think the same.

  They had fought even as they fell, like birds of prey clawing at each other during an earthward dive. As gravity ripped at them, pulling them through the grey gloom of the falling snow, neither had known or cared when the rocks of the mountain would rush up to meet them. They’d been consumed, conscious only of the other, battling with fists and claws and the great ax as they held on to one another, refusing to let go. It had felt like an hour—though it must really have been only seconds—before Raz found a way to gain the advantage. He’d had one clawed hand in Baoill’s hair as he tried to wrench back the man’s neck and bite at his throat, the other wrapped about the haft of the axe. The Kayle’s free braids whipped about his face, the
loose edges of his cloth shirt flapping in the wind.

  That was what had given Raz the idea.

  An instant later his wings had exploded outward, extending to their limit, pushing against his fall. As Raz’s own speed was cut short Baoill had continued downward, howling in rage as the ax had been torn from his hand, Raz lifting away unexpectedly and taking the weapon with him. The howl turned to a roar of pain as the fistful of hair Raz still had in hand snapped the Kayle’s head back, dangling him for half-a-second over the emptiness of the abyss below.

  Then, using every ounce of strength left to him, Raz had brought the great ax back to its extent, screaming his victory to the storm around them before the iron blades whipped around with terrifying force.

  Gûlraht Baoill, Kayle of the mountain tribes, had died mid-fall, his decapitated body dropping away to vanish into the twists of snow as Raz’s descent continued to slow.

  In comparison to this, landing had been almost easy.

  Raz—whether by luck or skill—had just managed to guide himself precariously towards the cliffs moving by him now at a much more manageable rate. His back strained and spasmed as unused muscles tried to control his flight, but it had been all he could do to get close enough to swing the great ax out again, slamming its double head snuggly between two outcroppings that came so close they’d almost taken his arm off. From there Raz had hung for a moment, catching his breath and centering himself.

  Then he’d begun to climb.

  It had taken him nearly ten minutes to manage what couldn’t have been more than fifteen seconds of falling, and he had done so in a desperate rush. The great ax looped securely in his curled tail, the braids of Baoill’s head foul between his teeth, he had ascended the snow cliffs with all haste, summoning every ounce of speed he could muster, drawing on old skills honed on the roofs of Karth and Miropa and every fringe city the Arros had ever set foot in. The wind had howled around him, doing its best to rip him from the stone. The icy edges were slick beneath his fingers and feet, and not for the first time Raz wondered how, by the Sun, man survived without claws.