by David Keck
“Thank the Powers!” said Berchard.
“And the tide?” said Durand.
“It was out, Sir Durand; I do not know when. But the bay was empty.”
“‘Empty,’” echoed the Duke of Garelyn. “And likely still when we reach it.”
Ailric made no answer. He was as much a landsman as Durand, after all.
“Hells,” said Berchard.
“No need of boats then,” murmured Durand.
“Vadir and the rest are right behind,” Ailric said. Anyone could see that the youth had been riding hard.
Before Durand could thank him, an alarm rose up from the rear of the company, and something huge let out a whoop that froze their blood.
“The maragrim!” cried Durand. He spurred his mount flying through the crowds toward the rear of the column, where he met the sound of screaming men and horses. They were fighting off a giant of the maragrim host: the thing Durand saw was a skeleton—a gaping man made from the branches of a bleached tree, all full of nails. It stood in the midst of the rear guard, swatting men from their saddles and screeching back at them in weird mimicry of their cries.
Durand joined the battle, spurring his warhorse at the brute with Eodan and Leovere in tow. Together, they struck like a scythe, hacking its long legs. In a wheeling instant, the thrall smacked the earth and the men of Errest were upon it from every side, chopping its beating limbs and catching talons with every blade they could reach.
In the moments after, Durand stood in the twitching wreckage of the thing, and he heard further whoops and cries from the vague fields and forests to the south. The wind moved in the dark leaves like breathing.
“This is the first of them,” said Eodan. His hands were shaking so hard now that he must clutch his shoulders to stop it. “They will not come like a host of men, but like a pack of dogs, running us down. The Hornbearer has let them off the leash and set them upon us. They are coming, and the swiftest first.”
Another strange wail rang out from beyond the fields. Somewhere a farm dog began barking—and another.
“Double the rear guard,” said Durand. “The best men. The freshest. We must hurry.”
* * *
THEY RODE FOR Eldinor with the quickest fiends of the Hornbearer’s company flinging themselves upon the rear guard, striking again and again in ever-greater numbers. Durand steeled himself against the shrieks of men and monsters. There might come a moment when he must abandon Eldinor and turn the army upon their attackers, but that would mean the end. So although every new scream demanded that Durand turn and fight, he instead abandoned squadron after squadron of the rear guard to battle in the dark and win or lose alone in the faint hope that they were at last close to the city.
Finally, as the Host of Errest trailed Biedin onto a high bluff where sedges blew in the night breezes, Durand smelled mud and rotting weed. And he saw Eldinor, its windows glittering across the empty bay, with Biedin all alone like a single brushstroke upon the Vault of Heaven.
Part of Durand wondered if the man was mad, but he had little time to ponder, for then, with the city in sight, a clamor arose from the rear guard.
This was no solitary outrider hurling itself against a squadron; a great groan rose from the back ranks. Thousands of voices gabbled and shrieked and brayed from the road and woods behind them. Half in despair, Durand cast a glance at the wide bay, thinking that they would not now be able to reach it. But he saw something in the vast glistening expanse: half a league from the city and the cliff there were waves flashing along a shoal of clay. He remembered how the tide came in at Eldinor. He remembered walking on the flats with the Rooks taunting him and the tide roaring back to drown the false land in moments. From that high bank, he could see the brimming waters waiting to flood the Bay of Eldinor. But when?
Behind him, men were screaming.
They must get to the bay. If they could reach the walls somehow—if they could reach the city as the tide came in—they might hold out long enough to drown the Hornbearer and his fiends. Even if they could draw the Hornbearer into the bay and not save themselves, they would have done better than throwing their lives away on the bluff. It was maddening not to know how long the tide had been out or when it would come rushing back. Minutes could matter.
Durand was ready to howl the order and send them down the bank when he realized that Prince Biedin had already vanished from the promontory, still unrelenting and already leading them down.
Durand turned to the others. “We must hope for the tide! We will drown the devils! All is lost on this shore. We must reach the city and give Heaven its chance!”
The vanguard had made a half-circle around Durand and the commanders. No one had quite called a halt, and the army was jostled now between the cliff and the sounds of the approaching enemy. Leovere’s horse had caught the terror in the air and was spinning under him as he spurred into the circle, saying, “Durand Col, already my men have seen the Hornbearer in the trees to the south. His thralls are upon us. It is too late to avoid him. But you must go to Eldinor. You must reach the wall with as many men as Heaven spares. Save the boy who must be king, and the men of Yrlac will hold the Hornbearer as long as the Host of Heaven allows.”
Leovere had, perhaps, two hundred men. Already, they were dismounting and hauling weapons and shields from their saddles. Grim Morcar of Downcastle was unfurling Leovere’s banner of the round horn.
With a glance to Almora and Prince Eodan, Durand bowed to Leovere and his man.
“Pass the word,” Durand said. “Duke Leovere will hold the Hornbearer at the cliff top. The rest of us, we race for Eldinor!”
The army fought their way down the bluff and, in a broad crescent, pelted over shoals of weed and out across acres of rippling sand in the moonlight. Somewhere in the midst of that scything mass, Durand spotted Almora and Deorwen, riding swiftly. For a moment, Durand felt that they all must reach the city before even one of the maragrim could touch them. He even wondered, for an instant, if he had squandered Leovere’s men on the bluff.
But then, the smooth sand gave out.
The fastest struck first. Then Durand’s mount was stumbling underneath him, and Durand hit the mud, splashing into the mire with a force that nearly buried him. The firm sand had given way to a great peninsula of slime. Durand’s poor horse lashed and flopped against the evil-smelling stuff and could not rise.
Behind them, the thralls had mounted the bluffs, clearly visible, thousands strong against Leovere’s force. For a moment, the thralls checked their advance. Rain began to fall. Durand saw the new-minted Duke of Yrlac take Uluric’s old horn from his shoulder. In the face of the maragrim host, he winded the ancient trumpet—and he was still blowing the long note when the maragrim exploded forward, flashing through the poor men of Yrlac like a broken dam.
In the muck below, every trapped soul remembered the terrible fleetness of the maragrim thralls. Durand saw Biedin, now leading his horse, picking his way toward Eldinor.
They could not stay. “The Powers will not aid us if we lie down!” roared Durand. He pulled men from the sucking mud, and the broad crescent of desperate men struggled on toward the city. Ten paces, twenty paces. Men lost boots. Their hearts were bursting. Crippled horses lolloped around them, and the fear was like a sickness. There were Berchard and Heremund. Durand got his hand in Deorwen’s, heaving her forward. She caught him when he stumbled.
“It is now we need Coensar!” said Deorwen.
“Aye,” was all he could manage.
“Have you thought of him and the Host of Hesperand?”
But it must be too late for Coensar now. The thralls would soon be among the stragglers. He wondered what had become of Coensar and the Lost Duke.
“Have you still got that rag from Hesperand?” Deorwen asked.
“What?” he began, but then he remembered the favor of the lady of that Lost land: the one he had snatched from the tree. Now, he groped at his belt and found the mud-clotted bit of veil; once again, he
had taken something from that place. Leovere’s men were tumbling from the bluff. Durand felt a queasy punch of shame at having led them all to this disaster. Leovere had bought them only the smallest fraction of an hour. Durand squeezed the Hesperand rag. Once it had stood for a favor he might call upon. Now, he did not know what was left of Hesperand—or its lady.
He shut his eyes upon the first, loping maragrim to reach the sand.
The rain pelted harder.
“If you’re coming, Coen, then it had best be now,” he said.
A hundred maragrim had boiled onto the sand. Durand saw Leovere’s standard still flying on the bluff, though the flagstaff jerked in the hands of its stricken defenders. Man after man fell as the surge of maragrim overwhelmed them, and soon the standard was carried off, spinning in the claws of the multitude. The fiends leapt over each other like tumblers as they climbed from the bluff. Durand turned to those around him. All the desperate faces. Deorwen, Almora, Ailric; the prince and the commanders. He knew himself to be a fool there in the mud, playing duke and knight and hero when Creation was so full of horrors. But he had resolved that he would, at least, stand to meet his killers with a bare blade, when a new trumpet called out over the Bay of Eldinor.
“Damnit, Coensar,” he murmured. “Please.”
Something moved upon the heights—not near the maragrim—the flash of banners. Heremund was calling out: “The cliff! The cliff! He has done it!”
With astonishment, Durand saw moonlight ripple upon ranks of antique banners, arms like silver, flesh like pearl.
The Host of Hesperand had crested the cliff top, and now their ancient squadrons stood row upon row, as neat as needlework. And at their head rode the Lost Duke—and Durand’s onetime captain. Over all of them was the glow of a moon from another age.
They were very far away.
“It is a chance,” said Durand, and he urged his people thrashing onward.
Already, the bulk of the Hornbearer’s crowd had made the scramble onto the sand. Such a writhing multitude, no man could count, but Durand knew that they must number in the thousands, and as the Host of Hesperand plunged onto the flat, anyone could see that even Duke Eorcan’s squadrons were hopelessly outnumbered. For a cold heartbeat then, Durand held the maragrim and the Lost in his eye. And he thought that if he turned the Host of Errest, the two forces might strike at once. But, even then, their numbers were few.
Across the mudflat somewhere, the tide was rising against that dark clay shoal. Soon the sea would overflow that bank and come thundering in, faster than horses over the bay.
At that moment, the Hornbearer itself strode onto the bluff, its army flowing around its ankles. The giant’s spider-like claws unslung the horn from around its neck, and the maragrim everywhere checked their rush to cringe toward their master. The Crowned Hog brought the great trumpet into its face, and the great horn groaned. Its shaking note filled Creation from the floor of Eldinor Bay to the vault of Heaven itself. Here was the long-delayed end of a thousand campaigns from the ancient south. Every twisted throat of the maragrim howled in answer, and as the Crowned Hog leapt in a high arc from the cliff top, its legions rushed forward. The thralls of Heshtar were in sight of sacred Eldinor.
With every eye drawn to the Hornbearer, the Host of Hesperand had left the heights.
Durand swept the bay, a thousand thoughts in his head. Had they fled? Had the dread horn worked some banishment?
But Duke Eorcan was upon the flats, and with the thralls so intent on Eldinor, none of the devils saw the fey lancers swinging down upon their flank. The knights of Hesperand rolled across the mire in perfect order until finally they brought their lances to bear on the half-blind enemy. The shock punched scores of hideous thralls into the air. Dozens more were torn down or mutilated in that first instant. And the perfect conrois of Hesperand shot through the ragged mob, tracing a long arc, as elegant as something sketched with a draftsman’s compass.
As the knights of Hesperand tore free, the maragrim forgot Eldinor, and many of the brutes gave chase, lurching pointlessly over the mud in the wake of the fleet, fey horses. All in all, the charge of the thralls collapsed in confusion, and they had not reformed when the squadrons of Hesperand cantered round, as elegant as a pendulum’s swing, and struck once more, their blades flashing in the dark as they tore through the maddened throng.
Durand saw Coensar among the streaming, ancient banners.
Men, despite themselves, had stopped to marvel.
“Hurry!” said Durand. “This is what Coensar has bought us! We must run for Eldinor!”
And the army of Errest ran and wallowed and staggered over the floor of the bay, hardly able to glance backward while the knights of Hesperand swung in great curving arcs, swooping like sparrows on a crow’s back.
The striding Hornbearer seemed undeceived. The giant had set its ancient eyes upon Eldinor and the goading charges of a few score horsemen could not turn it aside. The Hornbearer raged over its host, driving them with sweeping mortal blows as the knights of Hesperand sleeted through their numbers. The knights rode over mud or sand with equal speed. Always the hooves flashed and water flew. No part of Creation seemed to check their stride, but Durand saw what happened when one of their number fell: in an instant, the touch of Creation sent every year of the Lost eternities rushing back upon the man and he was less than dust. Flesh and bone splattered like ash on the mud.
All the while, the living men of the Atthias ran and tripped and sprawled. Many had kept their horses and caught people up to ride double. Five hundred paces became five dozen. The walls came nearer as Coensar lashed the maragrim with his splintering squadrons. Durand saw Eldinor on its plinth of rock with its walls looming fathoms high. And, as the ground rose, he hauled scores of stragglers onto the higher ground, shouting “Up! Up!” as the Hornbearer roared, only a bowshot away.
In the frenzy, he gave his hand to the next Atthian, only to see that he had got hold of gleaming limb of a living corpse. A blue-pale face gabbled at him.
Eodan struck the thing down. “Now, Durand!” he roared. “They are upon us.”
“Aye!” said Durand. The maragrim were bounding through the ranks. It was turn now or be destroyed. “Lines! Lines now. Shields! We must have a wall of our own!” He found Berchard. The man had his old sword drawn. And Durand ran from man to man, heaving banner knights and common soldiers into order. They would stand where the ground rose. A few squadrons would turn that the rest might reach the walls. Almora led the rest. “Close as you can!” shouted Durand. “Spears if you have them.”
The Host, hideous in their innumerable deformities, bore down upon Durand’s rear guard. They could hear shouts from some few guardsmen in the high parapets behind them. They might be close enough.
Eodan’s hand caught Durand’s shoulder. “Quick!” he said, and a shadow flickered between Durand and the moon, for the Hornbearer—a hundred paces through the dark—had torn a broken ship from the muck. The thing crashed down upon the Atthian phalanx, men and timbers exploding.
The braying maragrim surged forward and crashed into the slope below the Atthians. Durand and the rest lifted their shields. And the things climbed from the mud, their hands and claws and God-knows slapped and scrabbled. And the Atthian blades flashed down, lopping limbs and heads and kicking the thralls back onto the necks of their comrades.
Every horror imaginable slavered in that mob. The maragrim were nightmares or things from the Hells; they were not a people. In a heartbeat, Durand faced a grotesquely laughing thing whose straining hands wrenched its own face bone-breakingly wide. Beside it, a gibbering thing clutched huge flat sacks that shed pennies; it swatted with these with flinching gestures as sudden as the wing-beats of a fly. There were crockery men. Men caught in machinery. Bloated men in peasants’ garb, monks and priests. A woman on all fours like a crab. The most common expression on any face in the mob was terror. They were in hell.
Durand and his comrades flailed down on a sea of snatchi
ng limbs. Every thrall was driven by the strength of madness, and some were far larger than a man.
The press was fantastic. The thralls flew against them, and every man swung his sword or axe, mace or maul. The rear guard gave ground, falling back step by step. Soon they were all below the wall with a bank behind them. The crush trapped Durand’s shield. It threatened to bowl him over. But, always, he kept his feet and worked his sword arm. Every man could feel his doom upon him.
Now, it was the king they defended. Now, though they were lost, they might still hold the maragrim on the flat. The tide might yet strike. Their kingdom might yet endure.
In the midst of this mortal chaos, a black shape darted past Durand’s face. There was a scattering lice and feathers. Durand did not even have a hand to clear his eyes.
The Rooks were spinning overhead.
“Col! Durand Col! So glamorous a final stand. Yrlac. Lost Hesperand. That skald of yours will tell it! Should he live of course— Oh!”
The bird darted as a naked maragrim like a hairless bull tore past. Durand’s shield nearly broke, along with the forearm behind it, but a Mornaway man put a blade in his brute’s eyes, and they leapt on, chopping madly.
“So near,” said a Rook. “So tragic!”
Durand managed a wincing glance at the birds circling his head.
“So near, and the battle is without purpose.”
In the thick of the fight, Durand had no time for thought. The Rooks could say what they would.
“Biedin will end it all, and there will be nothing.”
“Days for a new king. Days, at least—and the wards breaking and the priests past praying, and our Fellwood friend camped in the Mount of Eagles.”
“There he goes!”
At this, Durand risked a glance toward the city, and there he saw Prince Biedin. The man had climbed the rocky bank to the city wall and found a small door—a sally port—in the ancient stones. He had a bare sword in his hand.
In the next instant, Durand’s eyes were back on his work as another thrall surged forward; it tried to clamber over Durand before he and his comrades could pitchfork the thing to the mud.