“Destroy them,” he snarled. “Kill them all. I don’t care if you have to arm the children. Make them pay.”
Amogg grunted and brushed him off. “That why we here.”
“Sit down,” Black Herran commanded. “Amogg – I will make it known among the women that you are willing to teach them to fight.”
“They will fight,” Amogg said. “Or else.”
Penny nodded. “I… I know a few who might be willing.”
“Just as well,” Black Herran muttered, meeting Penny’s gaze. “I refuse to lose, and if they won’t fight, I will use their blood to summon beings that will. You had best mention that too. Be a dear and go round them up in the market square. You have an hour.”
Penny shuddered and half-ran for the door, almost stumbling as she caught sight of Cox’s corpse again.
Black Herran turned her attention to Tiarnach and Amogg. “I leave the militia’s training to you. Do the best you can. Now, Jerak, do you have all that you need?”
The alchemist looked up from his scroll, fingers charcoal-black. “That I need? Yes. That I want? No. I have a list somewhere.” He began patting himself down and rummaging through pouches. “Bah. Those stupid assistants. I require a herd of pigs. And shovels. Yes, shovels too.”
“For my plan for the wall?” Black Herran asked, one eyebrow raised.
“That nonsense?” he sneered. “Goodness no, that is child’s play and already almost complete. I require pigs to stop the enemy from taking the wall too early. It will be ever so much fun. I never have had the chance to try out–”
“Fine!” Black Herran interrupted. “Whatever you require. I trust you to make their lives a nightmare. Now, elders, let us speak of the town’s fortifications.”
Healy cleared her throat. “We have done the best we can with what we have. With the help of Awildan carpenters and orc labour, in two weeks we may have a palisade in place all around the town, but we have little else. We have focused our efforts on the north side facing the valley, digging ditches and setting sharpened stakes. The south is still woefully open to attack.”
Black Herran leaned over the map and drew on lines of defences with a charcoal stick. “Verena, I expect the Falcon Prince and most of his inquisitors to arrive from the north in the second wave. I will need your fleet to intercept any force they send south by sea with the intention of landing additional troops to our rear.”
They discussed strategy and logistics for the better part of an hour, and the elders left with a large list of orders to hand down to their townsfolk. They dragged the corpse of Elder Cox with them as an example of the perils of disobedience.
Lorimer had been sitting quietly in the corner until the mortals had left. “Shall we now discuss the real battle? You did well not causing the peasants to flee in abject terror.”
Black Herran smiled and leaned back on her chair. “Let’s. The townsfolk must fight for the wall and retreat in an orderly fashion after holding until daylight fades. Then Jerak Hyden’s little gifts will devastate the Lucent vanguard. Maeven and I have discussed the best use for that mass slaughter. We will summon demons and raise undead to blunt the advance of their main force. Lorimer, you and I shall sow terror as they advance. We will teach them to fear the vampire lord of Fade’s Reach, and to vividly recall the legend of Black Herran. I need you to prowl the hills, to terrorise and slay all that you find. Be the death that comes with the darkness, but do leave some alive to spread tales of horrors yet to come.”
He grinned, teeth sharp and deadly. “I could walk into their camp and kill hundreds with ease. Why should I not go and wreak bloody havoc?”
“They will have inquisitors and an unknown number of acolytes,” she replied. “You are strong but still only one being. If their magic is able to weaken you even for a moment you may become trapped. Then all will be lost. They are too many, even for you.”
His grin faded. “As you wish. I have a few suitably grisly gifts in mind. None of them will sleep well ever again, should they be lucky enough to survive that long.”
“Excellent. I leave the valley beyond Tarnbrooke in your capable hands. If there is nothing else, then we will meet back here tomorrow morning. I must prepare my magic.”
The rest of the party filtered from the hall and stood outside, pondering the meeting, all thinking the same thing: that it had felt like the old days, and marvelled at how easily they had slipped back into their captain roles.
Maeven snarled her goodbye and stormed off in search of a place to begin preparation for her rituals.
“Where might a gentleman procure some new clothing?” Lorimer asked his manservant as they watched her leave.
“The finest clothier in town is located two streets east of the temple,” Estevan said. “I do of course mean ‘fine’ in a local, situational sense.”
“You’ll just rip them tae shreds again when you change shape,” Tiarnach added. “Wear a sack.”
The vampire turned and looked down his nose at the grubby warrior. “I am a lord, you buffoon. Go and train your screeching monkeys to wave their sticks.”
Estevan doffed his hat to Tiarnach. “Once you are done with them, ask your militia to have their fellow archers meet me north of town for training.” With that Estevan led his lord off in search of a brocaded tunic, coat and hose. Some of the town women stopped and stared at Lorimer’s muscular naked chest as he swept past, their faces reddening.
“I’ll do just that,” Tiarnach said, pouting at the vampire’s back. “Ooh, look at the big lord, all lah-de-dah and fancy pantaloons. What a prick. I’d cut his cock off but thon big vampire bastard would just grow it right back. At least Estevan is a decent sort. Come, Amogg. Let’s see what goods we have to play with.”
In the market square Penny waited with twenty other women of varying ages by the side of a cart filled with new spears wheeled down from the smithy. Off to the side the fifty bruised and bloodied “best” men of the militia waited with dread as the huge orc and their feral tormentor approached.
Ragash was sitting on the ground at the back, gnawing on a leg of roast pork while watching the humans with amused contempt. Wundak was deep in awkward conversation with the far slighter form of Penny.
“Fuck me,” Tiarnach said to his men. “You’re all here? I’d have bet Amogg’s left nut some o’ you lot would’ve run off with your tails between your legs. Fine, I admit you’re all harder men than I thought. You’ve seen what I can do, so now I’ll teach you to be a howling mad warrior like me. Those little Lucent laddies will piss themselves in terror when I’m done with you magnificent bastards.” Their chests swelled with pride even while their eyes glowered hatred at him. He could work with that.
Amogg looked down on the women, who stared back with stubborn pride, their dresses already slit for better movement. She tossed each of them a spear. “You not female or male like silly human customs. You now just warrior who fight and kill like orc.”
She grabbed Ragash, Wundak and the unfortunate Penny and used them to demonstrate the basics of spear use, the thrusts and guards, and beating with the butt. Amogg was far more proficient with her axe but the two other elder orcs still spat blood and nursed bruised flesh afterwards. She was only a little gentler with Penny.
Then it was the other humans’ turn. Tiarnach’s men howled in pain and anger as he taught them dirty tricks and techniques, but the women were pitted against the mighty war chief of the Hadakk. She went easy on them, like they were newborn grubbs. Only a few were knocked unconscious.
The number of women watching from the side of the square began to swell as her warriors caught on to the basics, their thrusts becoming quicker and more precise. By day’s end, her force of twenty had grown to a hundred determined warriors in the making.
CHAPTER 22
The gloomy thatched hovel was barely suitable for Maeven’s needs. Fragrant herbs and bags of grain hung by twine from hooks on the ceiling, and pots and pans from the rough stone walls to utilise every possibl
e inch of the meagre space. How a family of six lived in this tiny, cramped room with its single table, central fire pit and bed of straw, the necromancer had no idea. Nor did she care where they had gone, after she sent them fleeing with a miniscule display of her magic.
She blocked off the entrances with barriers of churning death magic to stop anybody or anything from eavesdropping, then set down her pack and extracted the small box within. She set it down on the woven reed floor mats, dusted off the lid, opened it and removed her grandfather’s finger bones from their velvet cushion. She carefully placed them on the hovel’s table and took a seat as she called forth his ghost.
Then, safely hidden away from prying eyes and ears, she burst into great heaving sobs. Hot tears rolled down scarred, tattooed cheeks.
Cease your crocodile tears, the ghost whispered in her mind with a voice like dry parchment and old bone. You have not cried truly for forty years and I believe it not. You will have no sympathy from me.
Her sobs changed into mocking laughter. “One day I will fool you. Nevertheless, I am not a dusty old dead relic like you. I still hurt and I still feel – how you hate that you cannot…”
Save it for when you have the time, girl. We have work to do. Are you positive that this is the only option left? Even if he kidnapped your sister and tried to kill you, he is still your blood.
“My brother needs to die. My sister lives and I will step over his butchered corpse to free her from his grasp. Black Herran has promised me that he will appear on the field of battle. She thinks herself so very clever, when in truth I am the one manipulating her. When the time is right, Black Herran too, will die by my hand.”
Have you readied the artefact?
She pulled the glossy black obsidian blade from her pack. It was set in a pure silver hilt, the grip bound in soft human leather skinned from a living wizard’s left hand and forearm. He hadn’t lived for long, of course, but long enough for her to complete the ritual of creation, bury the blade in his heart and seal his soul into it. The more lives it took, and the more souls sucked into it, the more power over death she could wield through it. At the current time it could kill any mortal with a single wound, though it could only empower her to raise and maintain a few dozen corpses. She needed more, much more to achieve her goals.
“The rituals of empowerment are complete and have been tested,” she said. “It has absorbed a few souls already, including one from a hiver.”
She felt the ghost of her grandfather reach out to it with interest, then hesitate and withdraw back into his bones. He had been a renowned enchanter in life, and a dabbler in the forbidden art of necromancy. This artefact was of his devising, though he had feared it too much to see it completed. Maeven had no such qualms, and saw to it that even in death his knowledge did not go to waste.
The arcane matrix is far from full, he said. It must be filled with souls of uncommon strength.
She thought of the inquisitors, and of Black Herran and the others. “The raw materials are converging here as we speak.”
Excellent, my dear. Then you will have soon the power to cut away the life of anything this world or any other has to offer. You will be a one-woman army, capable of wielding the void itself as a weapon. His voice cracked like broken bone and broken promises. Will you finally allow me to die? Please…
“Soon,” she promised. The nobles of Essoran had killed her mother and father, and would have tossed Maeven and her siblings into an unmarked grave as well if her mortally wounded grandfather had not taken them in hand and fled into the cursed forest. It had not been personal for those nobles, just another political game in the incessant inter-house squabbling of their kind. That time her family had paid the price.
“My encounter with the inquisitors of the Lucent Empire did not go as well as I had hoped. The power of their goddess seems to be antithetical to my own. Death magic could find no purchase on them.”
Her grandfather sighed, morose, but pondered that for a while. He didn’t have any choice. Necromancy is commonly thought to deal with corpses by the rabble, but our true magic deals with life and the human soul. What if the power of gods is simply enormously powerful and processed soul essence? If so, you should be able to devise ways to bypass a measure of that protection.
She sat back and absently rubbed her cheek. “Hmm. Tiarnach proved all but immune to my magic as well, which is interesting considering he is a god in name only, one without a single living worshipper. Perhaps some experimentation is in order.”
The ghost agreed. Yes. Poke and prod that drunken fool and learn what you may, then devour him. The strength of a god’s soul, even a one such as him, would greatly empower our weapon. Assuming he has such a thing as a soul.
The next two weeks passed in a blur of activity as the stubborn residents of Tarnbrooke prepared to face the vanguard of the Lucent Empire army. Under Black Herran’s leadership, and with Estevan’s and the orcs’ assistance, the defences grew higher, the ditches deeper and fully lined with sharpened wooden stakes. Food, bandages and supplies were stockpiled, and water barrels filled to face the threat of fire.
Jerak Hyden toiled away day and night in his workshop, the forges, kilns and crucibles belching oddly coloured stinking smoke at the cost of only two poisoned and quickly replaced assistants. He prowled the wall across the neck of the valley, muttering to himself as he took measurements and prepared his devious surprise for the invaders.
Dark magic rituals were wrought and readied for use by Maeven and Black Herran. Carved bone talismans were seeded in the ground all around the wall, ready to capture the power released by mass slaughter and safely channel it back to them.
With Estevan taking charge of training the archers among the town militia, it left the rest of the volunteers in the brutal but experienced hands of Amogg and Tiarnach, steadily growing more vicious in melee combat. Their initial fifty chosen men, and Penny, had swiftly become competent enough to help drill the rest in the basics. Of their five hundred total, perhaps half would make decent warriors. The rest would stand and fight, for a time, and would hopefully steady the armed civilians mucking in. During the training Tiarnach swatted and cursed at the constant fly bites, convinced nature had it in for him.
Those flies were not natural – Maeven was studying him from afar, examining the nature of gods and how to hurt them. From the knowledge she gleaned from his semi-divine flesh, her next encounter with a Lucent inquisitor would go very differently.
Verena coordinated logistics and oversaw goods and weapons shipped in from the Awildan Isles to bolster the town’s defence and construction, while her pirate ships gathered from their hunting grounds across all the waters and isles of Essoran to form a mighty war fleet. Nobody knew how many sea-going vessels the Lucent Empire had managed to build, but it was better to attack their transports with too many ships than too few. With any luck she could seize any decent ships she found and add them to her own fleet.
Lorimer haunted the craggy hills and icy valleys, amusing himself by devouring choice cuts of hillfolk scouts and arranging the mangled remains in interesting ways for the next bunch to find. He was blinding the enemy while leaving some alive to carry back word of his handiwork. Every few days he returned to converse with Estevan, and spared little time for any other. He preferred his own company to that of the uncultured peasantry of Tarnbrooke.
On the thirteenth day the weather had taken a turn for the better. A southern wind brought warmer air into the Mhorran Valley, melting away the last frigid gasps of winter and heralding an early summer. A few days of warm and dry weather reopened the trackways to foot traffic. On the dawn of the fifteenth day, columns of black smoke rose from distant hilltops as Tarnbrooke’s watchers lit their signal fires.
The Lucent army was on the march.
The townsfolk and militia raced to and fro to complete as much as they could before the enemy arrived. Verena gathered her sailors and readied to depart and take command of the Awildan fleet. Black Herran and Amogg wer
e there to see her off, and the demonologist handed Verena a lacquered wooden box. “A tiny demon waits inside to carry your words to me if needed. Don’t open it in direct sunlight – their little eyes are sensitive.”
Verena scowled like she’d been handed a box of diseased rats and swiftly handed it off to one of her sailors. “I wish you luck,” she said. “You will need it.”
“May sea and sail be in your favour, Queen Verena Awildan,” Black Herran said. “And thank you all for your efforts. You are all here for your own selfish reasons, but we will save thousands of innocents if we successfully crush the Lucent Empire. You are doing good, and that is to be celebrated.”
A moment of sceptical silence passed. Then Amogg bellowed with laughter. “Yes, we have good fight. Much killing and much glory.”
Other than Black Herran, none of them cared a whit about the lives of Tarnbrooke’s people. “Ah well, fuck being polite then,” she said. “Time to slaughter an army. Now is the time to unleash Lorimer and make an example of the enemy. When they reach that wall, I want their hands shaking and their boots filled with piss.”
The war had begun.
CHAPTER 23
Robart of Allstane prayed to the Bright One to stop the rain, but, if anything, it came down all the harder. A spring deluge hissed through the night air, heavy drops tinging off his kettle helm with a relentless drumbeat. He propped his spear up against the tree trunk and huddled under the bare branches of one of the few trees that remained standing in this goddess-forsaken valley. The rest were now ragged stumps, hastily felled, offering neither shelter nor firewood. Goddess, how he missed his own bed back home in the civilised north.
He peered into the darkness and envied the bright fires in the distance, flickering along the rough and ready defences the doomed townsfolk had thrown up. At least those damned farmers would be warm and dry tonight, unlike him and his friend Tynolt stuck out in this shitty weather on picket duty.
Robart couldn’t figure out what the point of them being out here was. Nobody would be out in this foul weather, especially not terrified peasants. They would be cowering behind their flimsy heap of wood and stone. Come the morrow three thousand proud Lucent soldiers would march right over it, and their hovels too. Their town… Carnbroke was it? Tarnbeck? Not that it mattered, it would soon have a new name and a new purpose as a fortified staging post for the Lucent Empire’s expansion south. He thought the townsfolk’s fate unfortunate, but on the positive side he could enjoy better weather and soft women with loose legs when they marched south. There would be plenty of widows to choose from. There would also be plunder to seize when they conquered the richer towns.
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