The Shadow of the High King

by Frank Dorrian

  His dreams were dark and unpleasant. Black forests and sulphured skies and winged beasts, their maws lined with long, cruel teeth like broken knives. They came for him as he foraged through the town outside, down from hazy clouds, and chased him through bleak forest and bleaker hill, over babbling, polluted stream, to rolling, barren plains littered with rock and scree, where the Sisters stood glowering atop their misted foothills. And as claws grasped him from above and tore at his flesh, shredding his body piece by piece, he jerked awake.

  The fire was out, a slither of greasy-looking smoke rising from it, wavering as his bleary eyes adjusted to the gloom. Something was not right. His breath caught and he sat still, hoping the shade still hid him.

  Sounds came from nearby. Muffled. Outside, he thought. Scraping, thudding, sharp sounding – like fingernails or claws dragging over wood and stone. Slowly, he reached for his sword. Another sound, like the snuffling and sniffing of hounds picking out their mark’s scent. Harlin’s breath came shallow, his body tense. He drew his sword quietly and rested his head against his knees as if asleep, the sword hidden along his leg, ready to strike, eyes fixed unblinkingly on the faint oblong of the empty doorway over the top of his forearm.

  Something appeared, stepping from dim light to shadow. A paw. Or claw. Or hand, even, Harlin’s mind could not properly fathom what it reminded him of most. Something caught between all three. Hairless and shrivelled, skin so tight across its flesh it resembled the wiry muscle that lay beneath it, striated and taught, edges picked out yellow in the island’s odd half-light. The rest of whatever it was soon followed the questing limb, a thing all of skin, ridged bone and drawn, scrawny muscles, skulking on all fours. A small head dipped at the end of a too-long neck, while tiny, round eyes glinted slyly in the dark from the depths of a face too shadowed to be seen. Its breathing made a hissing, rattling sound in its long throat, like air sucked and expelled between teeth.

  Harlin quivered slightly at the sight of the thing. It pawed towards the fire pit, stopping to snuffle at the ground, glinting eyes vanishing and reappearing like rounded chips of amber. An element of confusion seemed to lurk in its gaze, head swinging atop its long perch to search the ruined house. Harlin froze as it looked at him, its head cocking sideways, studying him through the gloom.

  A growl built in its throat, caught between beast, man and something long dead. Its form dropped slightly, hunching as it slinked closer to him, readying itself to strike. For a moment, as it passed under a rent in the thatch, Harlin saw its face – the withered mask of something that could have once been a man, but seemed meshed and corrupted with something else, its features desiccated and destroyed, thoroughly malformed. He saw teeth like a man’s, a lolling tongue, a broad, flat, snuffling nose and feral, staring eyes. And it stank. Its smell hit him even from a distance of some ten or more feet, like rotting flesh and fermented filth.

  The thing lunged for him, rasping as it sprang forwards with ferocious speed and intent, grasping limbs extended. Harlin slashed as it came within reach, the blow awkward from his sitting position, but powerful enough to shear off one of its limbs and bite deeply into its long neck, knocking it aside to the ground where it lay thrashing and screaming in the shadows, thick blood spewing from its wounds. It clawed at the cut in its neck with its remaining hand, the stump of the other arm flailing wildly and spraying blood across the floor and Harlin's boots. He stood over it, watching it, torn between fascination and disgust at the visage of the thing picked out by the sickly light above. It writhed and snapped at his legs vengefully, long neck twisting and teeth clacking together loudly.

  He cleaved its head from its neck with a quick stroke, grimacing at the stink of its blood.

  The stench drove Harlin outside, retching as he hefted his gear and lugged it out into the half-light of what he thought was the coming dawn. He fought back the urge to vomit and leaned back against the wall of his home.

  A ghailú, he thought, swallowing hard and breathing deep of cold air. There were stories of them he remembered from his father, the eaters of the dead – abominations of skin and bone that skulked like animals, fond of the flesh of dead men, and just as fond of that of the living. He had thought them myth, a tale to scare children. Clearly, he’d been wrong.

  Harlin shook himself, and waited for the sun to rise, hiding amongst the sedge around his home. His search began the moment the sky paled. He saw no sense in waiting any longer, he needed to find his answers, his evidence. He still remembered the path he and his family had taken when they fled the town – southeast, inland bound over the hills near their home, and it was not long before he came to where his father had killed that knight and his mount.

  Marcher knights sometimes carried their lord’s colours on their person, even if it were just a small emblem over their breast, atop their own personal swaddling of obnoxious decoration and plumage. He had hoped to find a surcoat, a tabard, pennant, banner, anything at all that might give him some clue, but the knight’s corpse was gone. Probably taken back to Caermark for funeral and mourning, his expensive armour given to a family member. All that remained here were the bones of a long dead horse, overgrown with drab vegetation, the arching ribs home to skittering, clicking insects, its head half-severed from his father’s sword.

  Harlin returned to the town itself, disappointment running cold beneath his skin. He kept his blade drawn as he searched, weary of other ghailú come sniffing for their dead friend. There was nothing to find, save more unwelcome memories that drifted through the fringes of his mind, having uncovered the piled bones of fallen clanfolk, buried by time and corrupted nature.

  Come the afternoon he gave up miserably, fruitlessly, and found himself laying atop a hill south of the town in a bed of long grass, staring up at a hazed ceiling of clouds as his motivation ebbed. Sleep took him at some point as he fought to keep his eyes open.

  He dreamed dark and horrid things again, of a frenzied flight over hill and through field and fen, claws and teeth snapping and grasping at his back. Above him, the faces of the Sisters, Moírdhan and Morbha watched his plight with empty eyes, nestled in a den of mist and rock. They scowled down at him, tumbling and panting over stone, root and fallen bough, plunging into putrid, stinking waters that smelled of blood and rotted flesh.

  Harlin woke as he thrashed and choked in his dream, eyes blinking as they opened to a light drizzle that hung in the air like mist. The sky was beginning to yellow again as the land’s half-night approached rapidly – and probably more creatures with it. He raised himself up on his elbows and thought over his dreams for a time, blinking sleep from his eyes.

  Ceatha had mentioned the Sisters and the Tiar Valley to him more than once. She’d spoken of a great battle there against the Marchers and the land becoming sick in its wake. Harlin paid no mind to prophecy or any similar nonsense, but he had dreamed of those mountains twice now since he had been here. It played upon his mind. Perhaps there was something there, some remnant, an old banner that had survived or been prised from a Marcher’s hands. Something, anything, would be a start, even if it wasn’t what he was looking for. Maybe it could lead him to someone who knew something.

  Rising, Harlin could see where the two mountains lurked to the southwest, a jagged black palisade against the horizon. It would take a few days to reach them from here, at least, longer maybe, if the land to the south had become as wild as that around Bráodhaír. And riddled with creatures and beasts, no doubt, he thought, taking in the smothering blanket of vegetation that stretched between him and the Sisters. Not an enticing sight.

  He paused, considered, looked to the sky. The ghailú’s body would soon be attracting others of its kind, and the flying things would return with the night, and perhaps make landfall for the corpse, he suspected.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said loudly to himself, and set off southwest.

  Harlin spent days traversing a land whose roads were long erased. The wilder places of Luah Fáil had grown wilder still, and every step taken wa
s a war against shrub, brush, thorn and branch. He shuffled through shadowed undergrowth, struggled from tree to tree, often to find he had come full circle upon himself. He stopped many times and had to fight back a frustrated roar. He was forced to climb up trees in more wooded areas to scout out the way ahead and to gauge how far he had come – most often much less than he wanted.

  It was perhaps five or six days into his ramble that he first noticed them, he was not sure – the island seemed to suck any sense of time from his mind. He had grown accustomed, almost, to the strange creatures here, the noises they made in the half-night – howls, shrieks, sounds like the screams of enraged or tormented men. Yet as he sheltered half-asleep in the hollow trunk of an old tree, he heard something so mundane it was completely alien in this place.

  Birdsong. The sound jerked him awake in an instant.

  A nightingale, he had thought as he listened to the whistles and chirrups. Somewhere not far off. Another answered the call as it finished, chirruping merrily.

  Not once had Harlin heard birdsong since he had arrived in Luah Fáil. It was odd, he had thought its absence meant they had fled the land like most other creatures had, replaced by things from nightmares more fitting for this place. He listened closely to its pattern, suspicious. Call, answer, call, answer. A question asked, a response given. Something seemed off about it. The pitch wasn’t right at times, faltering or failing, almost seeming forced. Mimicry.

  Sword loose in its scabbard, he crept outside, keeping to the shadows.

  Harlin saw nothing at first other than empty, gnarled woodland. The chirrups fell silent as he emerged. His eyes adjusted in time for him to spot movement.

  A dark shape moved slowly, and gracefully, away from him through the trees. The faint light caught upon its outline for a fleeting moment. It was tall, though obscure, its broad shoulders draped in some cloak or shroud.

  Sounds came from his left through the trees and rustling undergrowth. A flurry of chirrups, panicked, warning, quickly falling to utter silence.

  Harlin almost laughed to himself. ‘I am being stalked,’ he murmured incredulously, slinking back to his shelter, and to an uneasy sleep.

  The calls hounded him constantly after that night, though they changed now and then. Sometimes it was birdsong, sometimes other things, but always it was creatures he had seen nothing of on the island, the sounds made haunting by their absence, severe against the island’s unnatural ambience, stark as nails down slate.

  He was being chased, corralled, it felt like, through shrub, thorn and brush, over hill and through field. They came a little closer to Harlin each day, seemingly wary of him, but their confidence growing as the hunt drew on.

  Bodah Duhn. Dark men.

  Harlin saw them almost clearly at times, as they peered at him through shadow and knotted vines of thorn. Tall figures, hooded, their faces hidden. They watched him, followed him from afar. He was surrounded by them, their shrouded forms moving on all sides as he looked for a path of escape. They herded him forward in the daylight hours, animal calls trailing and echoing around him, throwing off his sense of direction and cutting off his intended route. At night he could see them move about him from where he chose to collapse exhausted, sword in hand, mail and helm in place, wondering why they hadn’t come to finish him. His eyes would close and flicker beneath the faceguard of his helm, fighting sleep, and they would edge closer from their hiding places to stare at him, sometimes as close as some twenty paces away, and call to one another like animals before slinking away.

  They drove him through deep woods, up tattered, tree-capped hills, urgently, ever onward, until he was running almost flat out, leaping fallen boughs and thrashing through branch and grasping thorns. Exhaustion ground painfully in every movement and ate at his mind, until he was no longer sure if he was not simply hallucinating. The glimpses he caught of shifting cloaks in the daylight, though, kept him running.

  Harlin couldn’t tell if it was his legs or resolve that crumbled first, as he found himself sprawled face down on a muddy slope he had tried to scale. Unable to recall how many days he had been running for as he lay fighting for breath, he listened to the Bodah Duhn circling him in the trees. Harlin had no idea where he was. He had been trying to reach the Sisters against the dark men’s herding, but as survival had taken over and they had forced his path, he had found himself lost in the depths of a land grown hostile, running directionlessly.

  It was the sudden silence which shook Harlin from his exhausted musings to peer around him. Light broke through the murky canopy in places like dull, liquid silver, and at the foot of the slope three figures stood watching him quietly. He grunted, gasped, struggled to turn and face them, trying to scrabble his way backwards up the slope.

  The Bodah Duhn stood clutching spears shafted with dark wood, faces hidden under ragged cloaks of some drab material, faded and dull as the land itself. Shadows passed over the surfaces of those cloaks almost as if alive, or displaced, like light in water, a swirling, ethereal camouflage of ever-moving blotches of ink. The one in the middle took a step toward him, cocking its head. The hood shifted, revealing a mask beneath that covered its face, carved of bone and shaped like the blank features of death. The face of Ancu. Violet eyes glowed softly, staring at him measuredly.

  It whistled at him like a nightingale.

  Images of Farrifax sent Harlin fleeing up the slope in blind panic, a chorus of cruel laughter following him. He cleared the peak and charged down the other side, weaving through trees, fear lending new strength to his legs. Too many to fight, he told himself, hand straying to his sword, too many, too tired. He could hear the crunch and snap of twig and branch as they sprinted after him, their animal calls, their hoarse laughs every time he stumbled. Some kept pace with him on his flanks, darting through the trees, spears in hand, hemming him in and keeping his path constant. Something snatched at his shoulder, fumbling its grasp, snickering as he gasped and pushed himself on faster.

  Harlin’s foot hit something protruding from the ground full-pelt. The world spun as he flipped and fell, tumbling over a sharp shelf of land he had been driven towards. He crashed down a steep slope the other side of it, buffeted and battered by root, branch and rock, landing painfully in a briar patch with a crunch.

  He lay there, head spinning, trying to listen. Nothing, blessed silence. His left arm ached woefully, more so than the rest of his body, every inch of him in agony. Thick vines formed a razor-edged latticework canopy against the sky above. He had been consumed entirely by the bush, hidden in its mass, its long thorns pressing deeply into his armour, managing to find the skin beneath. Harlin bit back against the pain of them, trying not to move – the shifting of his weight drove the thorns deeper through the links of his mail.

  A strong smell of something foul hung in the air, he noticed. Something between old blood and rotting flesh.

  Some time passed before Harlin fought his way clear of the thorns and back to his feet, pierced by their barbs in countless places, uncomfortably certain some had come loose in his flesh. He fetched his shield from where it lay, having come free of his shoulder, and turned his face upward. The ridge above him was devoid of any movement, though his fall had cut a clear, traceable path of destruction through the sparse flora clinging to the stony bluff down to the briar patch. A veritable map for the Bodah Duhn to follow. He turned away quickly, clutching at his throbbing arm, and froze.

  Before him waited the Sisters, towering blackly into the grey sky. Harlin was stood at the very mouth of the Tiar Valley. And it reeked. It was a bog, one that stretched on for miles before him in bleak, unyielding putrescence. A disgusting marshland, a fetid mire whose taste landed palatably upon Harlin’s tongue and made him retch and spit. It stank of putrefying blood, decaying flesh, as though thousands of bodies lay here liquefying atop one another. Its waters glistened thick and black, foul plants emerging from them like barbed reeds, nourished by whatever had formed such a grotesquery. A halo of some sickly mist hung over
it all, green-tinged and revolting, the buzzing of flying insects a constant drone.

  A nightingale called from somewhere behind. He pressed on.

  Harlin stumbled forward into the mire, pain shooting through his arm and his left ankle. He tried not to breathe, but the chase had left him gasping and he sucked down the rancid, rotten air by the lungful, dry heaving as it hit his stomach.

  The footing was treacherous, the marsh’s thickets of wiry grass protruded from hidden waters as much as from land, and Harlin found himself slipping into stinking slime with almost every other step. He was deep into the mire when a misjudged step left him sunk up to his chest in a pool of thick sludge. He vomited, flailed, and fought his way back to solid ground. Laughter came from somewhere behind him.

  Harlin vomited again as he dragged himself free, dripping filth, and his eyes were suddenly drawn to the waters across from him. They stirred, bulged, and then burst upwards, showering him with blackened grime.

  A figure rose from the depths and stumbled towards him. It screamed like a man as it came, the noise gurgling in a ragged throat. ‘There is no end to the evil here,’ Harlin groaned, pushing himself to his feet. He managed to awkwardly shuffle his shield onto his arm, its weight seeming to double as pain shot through the limb. A rattling, grating sound came from the thing, like rusted metal grinding against itself. It was wearing plate armour, or what was left of it – the light that cut through the mire’s haze showed it was completely corroded and crumbling away.

  ‘Savage!’ the thing shrieked at him, a lipless mouth dribbling black ooze beneath its pitted, ruptured helm. It reached to its waist, drawing a battered sword, rusted orange, with the sound of wet, grinding metal. ‘Savage! Barbarian! Scum!’ It lisped and hissed every word, lips long decayed, and shuffled onto land, closing on Harlin with alarming speed. More figures rose from the waters behind it, awakening with screams of their own, as though reborn in agony. They were echoed by shuddering wails that came from behind him.