The dead man’s mouth opened, and a voice issued forth, speaking in oddly accented Westerner. It sounded hollow, as if it was far away, and the man’s mouth and tongue did not move with the words. “I seek the ruler of Aquis,” it said.
“Aquis has no ruler, as you have slain its King,” Rederick replied.
“Oh, of course,” the voice agreed, and it chuckled softly. “I should not have expected that someone of strength would take charge. I understand that you Westerners do everything by committee.”
“I lead here. I am Lord Rederick of Martherus, Steward of Aquis.”
“Very good, perhaps there are men of strength in the Shining West. Be strong now, Rederick of Martherus. More importantly, be clever and kneel down before Sovereign Nadav, Emperor of all Losz. Surrender to me now, and I will accept you as a fellow Loszian. Your life, and the lives of those who serve you, will be spared, for I have much need of men such as you,” said the voice, and the corpse’s mouth hung open even after the words ceased.
It unnerved even Rederick slightly to see the maggots in the back of its throat, but he steeled himself as he spoke, “I make you a counterproposal, for there will be no surrender today to the Emperor of Shit. March your soldiers and sorcerers back the way you came, all the way back across the Spine to your shadowed hovels. Leave the dead here so that we may lay them to their proper rest under Garod. As you march home, debase yourself before any Westerner you see and beg for their forgiveness. Do this, and I will spare your life.”
“More Western stupidity,” the thing said after a pause, and it seemed to Rederick that its head should have been shaking back and forth. “My Steward of Aquis, you do not seem to understand that I am an unstoppable force. This city shall collapse, just as the pathetic Fort Haldon before it, and I shall sweep across the entire West. I give you this chance out of mercy.”
“This is no Fort Haldon. Take care Loszian, for here you face thousands upon thousands of Aquis’ soldiers, priests and the Paladins of Garod. Here you face His power, and He will not allow this to go any further.”
“Garod means no more to me than the dog shit upon my sandal!” shouted the voice angrily. “Very well, your decision has been made. Know this – soon the Dahken known as Cor will be here, the very same who so valiantly defended your Fort Haldon. When he arrives, I shall unleash something so horrible that you will kneel before me and beg for my mercy, just as King Aidan begged as I violated him over and over. I will hear none of it. Your fate is sealed.”
“As is yours!” Rederick cried, and he lunged forward with a mailed fist. As his blow came forward, he prayed to Garod for aid, so that he may make an example of this one undead thing. As his fist made contact with the corpse’s jaw, there seemed to be a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder in a cloudless sky, and the corpse flew backward well over a dozen feet to lie still against the wall.
“Close the gates!” Rederick cried. As the men rushed to the work, a laugh was heard throughout the city and its surrounding lands, a laugh from the same voice as issued from the now still corpse.
16.
Cor knew that Thyss would never outright admit to the discomfort or pain in which she had to be. In truth the saddle Paton provided helped her beyond measure, but after two solid weeks of riding, nothing provided her comfort. They found themselves stopping more often during the day, ending their day’s travel earlier and resting later into the day. It caused Cor greater and greater anxiety as their journey seemed to require more and more time, but the hardship on Thyss and the baby concerned him even more.
And then he had Marya to worry about. The girl hadn’t spoken one solitary word for the first three days of the ride, quietly fuming on her horse at the rear guard. She offered no words in the evenings or even at meals, and in fact the only interaction she had with them at all was in helping Thyss up and down from her saddle as necessary. Finally, the girl’s resentment toward Cor seemed to dissipate, though he thought that Keth would likely be the target of her ire whenever they made it back.
As they traveled, Cor continued to watch Thom as closely as he dared, for he didn’t want the former commander of Fort Haldon to be too aware of the surveillance. More than once he caught the newly made Loszian gazing lustfully at his two female companions, a leer on his long and pointed face. On the fifth night, Cor pulled Thom aside, walking some distance from the camp so as not to be heard.
“Thom,” he said, “I’d rather you keep your eyes from wandering to Marya and Thyss.”
“Perhaps you should not have brought them then,” he replied.
“Remember that you have a wife awaiting you.”
“Yes, a wife…” Thom agreed, seeming to muse a bit. “I have a wife whose body is not nearly so strong as your woman’s, and I doubt that my wife is not nearly so tight as our young Marya.”
Taken aback, Cor didn’t have a response. In fact, he was sure that the proper response was to bash in the Loszian’s face, and it took all his will to restrain the impulse. This is Thom, he thought. Did Nadav twist his mind as well as his body?
Thom laughed as he watched thoughts cross Cor’s face like flashes of lightning. “Fear not, Lord Dahken. I like my head attached to its shoulders, and I know that those two women have masters already. However, you cannot fault me an appraising glance.”
“Maybe not,” Cor said quietly, “but I think you can keep it to a minimum.”
“Yes, Lord Dahken,” Thom agreed, but Cor thought he heard much sarcasm in his words.
Two days later, Thom spurred his horse forward to ride alongside Cor, who always led the small group. The day was warm, though not as hot as usual, and a pleasant late summer breeze kept the heat of the sun off Cor’s black armor. He turned to look at the Loszian several times over the course of the day, and something clearly weighed upon him. Cor saw it plainly upon his face, but he chose not to address it. Thom eventually spoke of it on his own accord.
“Lord Dahken, we must speak,” he said, and he sounded more like himself than he had in days.
“I figured you weren’t riding beside me for company. What bothers you?” Cor asked.
“I’m changing, Lord Dahken, I feel it daily,” he replied softly. “Whatever he did to me... I’m ashamed at the way I have behaved recently, but I know I won’t feel that way for long. The darkness will return. It consumes more of me daily.”
“Thom, you can choose not to let it,” Cor reassured him, turning to face the Loszian. “Be strong in who you are. You have friends who trust and rely on you. You have a wife, two daughters who love you. The way you look means nothing to us, it’s who you are that we care about. Hold onto that and keep the darkness at bay.”
“I will try my friend, but I can’t make any promises. I’m afraid it’s more powerful than I am, so I must rely on you to make me a promise.”
“What is it?” Cor asked, turning his face ahead.
“If I can’t fight this, you must not let me go too far. You must not let me cause misery and pain to those around me. Promise me that you’ll do what must be done.”
It was three more weeks of riding before they reached Byrverus, made so long by the circuitous path and the pace that slowed to accommodate Thyss. The misery and annoyance belonged to Thyss more than the others, though anxiety had long set into Cor’s nerves. As they crossed the distance and neared the great city, the signs of a passing army were impossible to ignore. While the damage and destruction were minimal, one couldn’t mistake the fields and crops trampled by thousands of feet. Homes and villages were completely empty, devoid of any life at all, their doors left open to sway in the wind.
Byrverus could always been seen from miles away, its great white walls and buildings reflecting the light of the sun like a beacon, but as it came into view, it seemed to Cor that something dimmed the great city. From miles away, he couldn’t see the Loszian army that he knew to be outside its walls, but somehow he felt its presence. His intuition was rewarded as a small group of armored figures approached down th
e road ahead. He saw them coming easily a half mile away, and as they approached, he saw four men in black armor. They hailed him openly when only a few hundred feet away and continued their approach.
“Lord Dahken Cor I presume?” the lead soldier asked from within his basinet helm, once they had closed to a mere dozen paces or so. “Lord Dahken Geoff described your armor in excellent detail, so there can be no mistake. Sovereign Nadav welcomes you to Kythol and asks that you follow me.”
“To where?” Cor controlled his tone to avoid showing his confusion and ire over the soldier’s words.
“To a small hill a short distance from here,” the soldier said, motioning behind and to his right. “His Excellency invited you here in peace. Will you follow?”
“I came all this way. I suppose I should.”
They were led through one of the sprawling villages on the outskirts of Byrverus, and as they passed through it, Cor scented the reek of death and decay on the air. At first they stayed on course directly for the city, but after about a half of a mile, the soldiers led them off to the east. Cor saw their destination not far ahead – it was indeed a small hilltop. Past the hill to the east was a large wooded area, though not large enough to be considered a true forest. As the approached the hill, the horses began to neigh and grow anxious, as if something unnerved them greatly. When they crested, Cor saw why – a corpse stood atop it, completely unmoving.
“Lord Dahken Cor,” the lead soldier said as he bowed, “my men and I will now take leave of you. Please wait here, and My Sovereign promises you will not have to wait long.”
The horses watched the corpse warily, and they tried to slowly back away from the thing, even though it made no move or showed any awareness of their presence at all. Byrverus shown brightly in the early afternoon sun, and the light reflecting off of its great white walls revealed the army entrenched in the villages around it. It was hard to be sure at this distance, but Cor thought that the majority of it was made of the dead. The army stayed a fair distance away, just outside of bow range Cor thought, and there were no siege engines such as they brought to the assault on Fort Haldon.
“He has never assaulted the city, never moved from where his army stands now,” Cor said of Nadav. “I wonder how long he has been here waiting for me, how long we will have to wait for whatever he has to show me.”
“You’ve developed a high opinion of yourself Dahken,” said Thom’s voice from behind him.
“It was your emperor who called me here.”
“Quite right, Lord Dahken Cor. Thank you for making the journey from so far away,” said a voice.
It emanated from the corpse, whose mouth had opened to allow the voice to pass, and Cor recognized it as Nadav’s, although it sounded hollow or as if it came from some great distance. Not only the corpse on the hill spoke however. Two or three seconds after Cor first heard the words, thousands of voices chorused the same words from the Loszian army in the distance. The echo had a dizzying effect.
“With my forty thousand servants voicing my thoughts, surely every man, woman and child within the city now known as Byrverus can hear me. I am Nadav, Emperor of Losz and soon all of the West. Let it be known to all that surrender was offered to Lord Rederick so that his city and its people may know mercy, just as I offered mercy to those who died at Fort Haldon. None have yet stood before me, and in the end all will serve me, dead or alive.
“Westerners are so naïve in their existence. You worship gods and expect that they will protect you from evil, but in fact they have enslaved you in that worship. Your gods, your priests and your rulers have rewritten history, and you have all forgotten the way things have been. The city before me is now known as Byrverus, the largest city in what you call the Shining West. What none of you know is that your great city would not exist without the toil of the Loszian Empire. All your cities stand upon the corpses and ruined skeletons of once great, terribly beautiful Loszian cities. I’ll share one other interesting fact that I know, but you Westerners do not – underneath my people’s great cities are the ruins of other far greater, more beautiful and terrible cities.
“Byrverus, your great white city, was once known as Kythol, and it will be known as Kythol once more. The black purple towers of Kythol once stood over the lands of what is now called Aquis, dwarfing even that pathetic edifice you call a temple. The horrors it visited upon the land are the stuff of Loszian legend, and only my great city, Ghal, the throne of the Loszian emperors kept Kythol’s power in check. It is time for Byrverus to fall and Kythol to be reborn!”
Nadav’s voice echoed over the land, the mass of his voices reaching Cor’s ears a few seconds after the corpse on the hill stopped speaking. Cor turned in his saddle to look at his companions, to look at their faces. Marya looked bewildered and unsure, where Thyss simply shrugged in her usual apathy. Thom’s long Loszian face bothered Cor, for it held a simple and vicious smile. It was as if Thom knew what Nadav planned and relished it.
As Cor turned back to face the city, he could just barely make out a purplish column rise from somewhere near the army’s center. At first, he mistook it for some form of fire, for it had a blazing aspect about it, but it rose further into the air, turning into a large purple cloud. The appearance of flame seemed to vanish as it built up mass, becoming so large that it blocked out the sun like a great storm cloud. It filled the sky so that it was all that could be seen, and Cor thought he could hear the screams of fear from inside the city’s walls almost a mile away.
Finally, the column feeding the cloud vanished, and it began to move and disperse. The majority of the cloud moved toward the city, while the rest spread around the nearby lands. The cloud thinned as it expanded, stretching its volume across a larger and larger area, eventually moving to fully envelope the great white city. It no longer blocked out the sun, casting a violet hue across everything for at least a mile in all directions. The great haze began to settle onto the city and the ground around it, seeming to sink down into the soil, and Cor suddenly knew he had seen this magick once before.
“By the gods,” Cor whispered.
“What is it?” Thyss asked, walking her unwilling horse forward to stand next to Cor’s.
Cor had no words with which to answer, for the sheer terror of what Nadav conjured made him freeze. There was a sound seemingly far off in the distance, and it built into a constant low rumble. Cor looked to the sky, finding it cloudless, and instead realized that it came from the very ground beneath their feet. They fought to control their mounts, and while he felt the rumble upon the hilltop, it seemed he could hear it more, emanating from the city itself. A brief movement below in a small village cemetery caught his eye, validating Cor’s fears.
“It cannot be,” Thyss hissed. “No one could wield such power.”
They watched as the earth atop a freshly dug grave trembled, pushed aside from below. As the upturned soil continued to part, hands emerged from the ground and a form pulled itself from the grave. The figure stood unmoving next to its own defiled grave, waiting, as more corpses pushed their way out of their resting places. Looking across the villages surrounding Byrverus, Cor saw more such corpses, and all of them waited for some command.
“Rise!” shouted Nadav’s hollow voice from the corpses’ gaping maws. “Rise and slay everyone within the city walls!”
Those that had risen from outside the city began to move toward it. Cor could not see clearly, but he thought he saw motion for off into the distance on both the eastern and southern sides of Byrverus. The ground continued to rumble and shake, joined by another horrific sound – the massed screams of thousands upon thousands within the city walls. The wind carried their screams for miles. After what seemed like hours, though the sun hardly moved in the afternoon sky, a cracking and grinding of massive stones drowned out the cries of Westerners. Parts of walls and buildings within those walls began to sink, even fall.
“What is happening?” Marya asked as she too came forward. “Surely he can’t rebuild his
city with magic.”
“I think not,” said Thom, still behind the three of them. “Think about it, young Dahken. Sovereign Nadav says that Byrverus is built upon an ancient and terrible city, which in turn was also built upon an even more ancient city. There must be thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dead beneath that city! If you were to dig a hole in the ground and then try to put a layer of topsoil over the hole without filling it in, what would happen? What do you think would happen if a hundred thousand dead left their ancient graves, leaving empty space where they once lay?”
“The city would begin to collapse,” Marya answered.
“Exactly!” reveled Thom, and Cor cared not for his tone.
“Lord Rederick and Lord Dahken Cor, listen to me now,” echoed Nadav’s voice once more. “You know now that no one can defeat what I bring to this world. My gods have granted me power unseen since their arrival. Rederick, it is too late for your people, but I shall spare you if you kneel before me now. Cor, do not repeat Rederick’s mistake. Save your people now by pledging yourself to Lord Dahken Geoff. Submit or not, Martherus and all the cities of the Shining West shall share the same fate.”
Cor leapt from his saddle with a deftness even he hadn’t totally expected, especially given that he was clad head to toe in black armor. The corpse did not move in any way, not even a flinch as Soulmourn whistled through the air, decapitating it cleanly. The head fell to the ground, rolling cheerfully down the slope, though the body only tumbled a few feet before slowing to a stop.
Nadav’s laugh echoed against the city walls in thousands of voices.
Cor sheathed his sword and removed his gauntlets one at a time, dropping them on the ground at his feet. He lowered himself slowly to sit on his backside, his knees in the air, and slid his bug like helm off of his head to place it on the ground at his side. Sighing, he rubbed his eyes deeply with his bare fingers, and they stank of steel and sweat.
Darkness and Steel Page 14