The Shadow of the High King

by Frank Dorrian

  ‘So,’ he said, looking down at Aenwald’s weeping form, ‘there is part of you that is not iron, after all. It hurts, does it not, Aenwald, to have all you hold dear snatched away, snuffed out so quickly at a whim, another man’s notion. It hurts so very much. I am sure Prince Paega’s heart will bleed for his fallen kin when he takes the throne.’

  Aenwald’s hands clawed through the earth, his eyes bulging, at the mention of his dishonoured son’s name. His sobs slowly became roars, furious, deep-throated screams. He stood, snatching up his sword. ‘Paega,’ he seethed, face stricken with tears and flecked with blood. ‘You butcher my sons to see worthless filth installed in my place! Never. Not while I draw breath. Not while Caermark is mine!’

  Harlin backed out from the shadows into the light of the stone circle, drawing his sword slowly and shrugging his shield down onto his arm. Aenwald’s face quivered, sorrow wrestling with rage, as he took in his sons’ blood splattered over Harlin’s armour. Cold anger overcame the King’s features though, face sliding into expressionlessness. Aenwald moved slowly, falling into a fighting stance, sword levelled before him. He slammed his visor shut.

  The King lunged forwards, sword flashing. Harlin stepped aside, knocking away the blow and rounding on him with shield braced. ‘Today, Aenwald,’ he breathed as they circled one another, ‘will be an unmaking.’

  He shot in, leading with his shield, aiming for the King’s face, Aenwald pivoted away and answered with a downward chop that sparked brightly from the shield’s rim. The sparks seemed to hang, caught in the strange air, like bright embers amongst the falling snow. Harlin rounded on him again, shield raised, chin down and eyes focused on his target beyond it.

  ‘Today,’ he said again, ‘will be an ending.’

  ‘Only for you, savage,’ the King answered, stepping in, feinting high with his blade and striking low with frightening speed. Harlin barely caught it on his shield, so practiced was the blow. A clever move – it spoke of experience, as did the lack of opening it left for a counter. He circled off cautiously.

  ‘Did you think I won my lords’ fealty with word and gold alone?’ the King snorted from within his helm, his breath escaping the visor’s sculpted nostrils as steam, making the bull’s face look almost alive. ‘Did you think I would cringe at the thought of crossing swords with you?’ Laughter. ‘In my youth I took more heads on the field than any of my father’s champions. I was a slayer of knights, boy, a breaker of shields.’

  The tip of his sword scraped suddenly over the top of Harlin’s shield, screeching toward his face. He almost hadn’t seen it coming. He blocked another blow, a slash at his midriff, the force of it shuddering up his arm and cutting a scar across his shield. He lunged in, crashing into Aenwald and staggering him, sweeping the blade down at his neck, steel singing as it missed and glanced from a gilded pauldron.

  ‘And yet still you talk too much,’ Harlin spat, turning aside an answering stab as Aenwald regained his footing. ‘I did not travel half the world to listen to tales of your glory.’ He stepped off as Aenwald leapt forward, his blade bouncing from one of the circle’s standing stones, grit and dust exploding from it.

  Harlin shot in, aiming an upward stab at the exposed mail covering Aenwald’s armpit, a quick deathblow, a sure finish. The King spun and caught Harlin’s sword arm faster than he thought possible for someone covered in heavy plate, his blade turned away by his own momentum. Aenwald brought the pommel of his sword crashing down into Harlin’s helm as he tried to correct his stance.

  A white flash. Harlin reeled, his legs giving out beneath him as he fell backwards, sword and shield tumbling from his grasp. A steel-clad foot thudded into his stomach, knocking the wind from him and turning him onto his back.

  ‘You don’t fight a man in plate with a sword, savage,’ the King’s voice came, muffled and breathless. ‘I thought you barbarians of Luah Fáil had some skill at arms about you. I thought you were some kind of dark legend for your cruel swordcraft. But all you are is a savage –’ another kick landed in Harlin’s ribs ‘– a worthless, useless fucking slave! Maybe if you were the warriors they say you are I’d have a sense of satisfaction now, instead of just bitter vengeance for my sons.’

  Harlin’s vision cleared. He blinked snow from his eyes. Aenwald stood over him, sword clapsed point-down in both hands, aimed for his stomach. Aenwald slammed his blade down, letting loose a fearsome, triumphant roar.

  The blade sank into the earth at Harlin’s back as he turned onto his side, its edge scoring a gash through his cloak and leather armour. He smashed his shin into the back of Aenwald’s knee, the King grunting as he stumbled, sword taking his weight. Harlin seized the moment, took Aenwald by his neck and shoulder and launched him head first to the ground with a metallic crash, churning earth and snow, spinning up to his feet and snatching up Aenwald’s sword by its blade.

  Aenwald raised himself to his feet awkwardly, weighed down by his armour, snarling within his helm as he faced Harlin empty handed.

  ‘Like all kings,’ Harlin panted, ignoring the agony in his ribs and skull, ‘you talk too much, Aenwald, and know too little.’ He hefted his stolen sword, gripping it two-handed along its blade, hilt forward. Even encased in steel Harlin could see the hesitation in Aenwald, unarmed and facing an opponent wielding his sword as an armour-splitting mace.

  The King snarled and lunged, swinging a sloppy punch at Harlin. He caught it with the sword’s cross-guard, and slammed the pommel into Aenwald’s visored face, knocking him back with a grunt. Harlin stepped in, swinging the sword in an overhand arc that crushed through Aenwald’s unarmed block and rang loudly as it hammered into his helm.

  Aenwald spun and fell to his side with a growl. He managed to get onto all fours before Harlin brought the sword down again, the cross-guard leaving a deep dent between armoured shoulders, the metal almost pierced. Aenwald sprawled in the snow, cursing, breathing heavy, ragged, hands fumbling, seeking purchase.

  ‘That is how you fight a man in plate with a sword,’ Harlin gasped, the cold air burning his lungs, ‘or did you forget where I earned my own name? They call that the mordenschlagg in Gausselandt – the deathblow – and I used it to split your enemies’ skulls open in Easthold after my Shield Brothers taught it to me. I thank you for the sword, by the way – the technique always works best with a hand-and-a-halfer or two-hander.’ He hefted the sword for another, final blow.

  Aenwald turned and threw a handful of earth and snow in his face. Harlin staggered back with a snarl. His faceguard stopped most of it getting in his eyes, but it obscured his vision still, clogging his helm’s eyeholes.

  Wiping and blinking it away, Aenwald was suddenly leaping toward him, arms raised over his head to strike. Harlin turned aside to his right to slip the blow, too late to block, too late to parry, and a blade bit down through leather and mail into the flesh between his neck and left shoulder.

  Harlin cried out with the pain, felt something give, something snap – his collarbone, he thought. Blood blossomed, coursing down him, splattering over snow and standing stone. He sagged under the weight of the blow, and caught Aenwald’s arm as the King tried to cut straight through him, taking the weight on his legs. It was Harlin’s sword – the one he had carried since the Marrwood.

  Aenwald laughed as Harlin fought down a scream. ‘It hurts, does it not, Harlin?’ He wrenched the blade, twisting cleaved bones. Harlin choked back a cry, choked back the urge to vomit. ‘I told you this was an end only for you,’ Aenwald snarled, ‘I only hope you suffer before you die, you festering cu–’

  He released Aenwald’s arm. The weight on the blade made the King fall forwards, its edge biting deeper, and Harlin slammed his helmed forehead into Aenwald’s visored face.

  The King of Caermark landed with a crash, sprawled limply on his back, his helm’s sculpted visor bent and dented inwards, blood seeping from within.

  Harlin stood over him, fighting the pain, fighting the cold creeping down his left side, and reac
hed down, ripping the helm from Aenwald’s head and flinging it away into the falling snow.

  The fallen King looked up at him with unfocused, rolling eyes, his broken nose trailing blood into his beard. He blinked, squinting at Harlin, eyes dimly following blood dripping from a grievous wound.

  ‘I crossed half the world for this, Aenwald,’ Harlin said, voice broken with pain, ‘half the world and more.’ A faint line appeared between Aenwald’s brows as he tried to comprehend. ‘I sought out the secrets of my homeland,’ Harlin growled, ‘I drank deep of the earth’s blood and travelled the worlds it showed me, bled dry by a dying sun.’

  Pat, pat, pat.

  Harlin’s blood dripped and pinged onto Aenwald’s breastplate, the sound lingering in the circle’s unnatural pall, as Harlin stood astride his fallen form. The King grimaced with bloodstained teeth, brow knotting in fury, a trembling, gauntleted hand reaching up vainly towards Harlin.

  Darkly, it shook within him. Ravenous. Clutching. Screaming at him from within. Shrieking. Demanding its due.

  ‘And so here I am,’ Harlin said quietly, removing his helm and casting it aside. ‘Here I am to bring you your end, King Aenwald.’ He gripped the sword again along its blade, raising it over his good shoulder like a club, biting down against the pain.

  ‘And none shall weep,’ he said, and swung low.

  The pommel struck the side of Aenwald’s head, jerking it awkwardly with a snap, caving the eye socket.

  ‘For Cunall!’ Harlin roared. He swung again, the pommel connecting with a crunch, the King’s head snapping round limply to the other side, blood pouring from a crushed temple.

  ‘For Keva!’ The pommel sunk the left side of Aenwald’s skull, blood and hair flying.

  ‘Elba!’ An overhand strike. The cross-guard sank into Aenwald’s forehead with a wet crack, blood spitting up into Harlin’s eyes and mouth. He wrenched it free to the sound of tearing flesh.

  ‘Ite!’ He struck downwards again, the cross-guard puncturing bone once more, leaving two square holes in Aenwald’s forehead as he pulled it free.

  ‘Ciara!’ Aenwald’s skull caved in as the cross-guard struck again, blood and bone stinging Harlin’s face as they exploded upward in a red-pink shower. He raised the sword breathlessly, its hilt and pommel dripping gore and clinging meat.

  ‘And for me,’ he said hollowly, and swung again.

  The pommel struck home, and Aenwald’s jaw tore free in a torrent of blood and teeth. Regaining his balance, Harlin bent and roared his hatred long and hard into the ruin of Aenwald’s face, and spat into the mess of bones and brains that lay before him in the snow.

  He staggered as he turned and stepped over the body, Aenwald’s sword slipping from his hand as he went onto his knees. His blood splattered pink across the snow, and the ground came rushing up to meet his face.

  He saw shadows moving in the trees from where he lay, numb and empty. He had thought they were some of his men at first, but when one passed briefly into the light he caught sight of a dark hood and a pale mask before it vanished. He laughed, or tried to, his body was heavy, unwilling. Numbness was spreading through him from the wound in his shoulder, a fuzziness working its way into his head so every thought came slow as if wading through tar against one another. He closed his eyes, cold snow kissing his face.

  ‘Harlin?’

  A thin voice trembled nearby. Rough hands took him by the shoulder and turned him onto his back. He squinted against the woolly sky’s drab light, its flakes descending lazily. Two faces hung over Harlin, their features swimming in and out of focus. Ceatha, hands pressed to her lips, face whiter than the snow that flecked it. There were tears in her eyes. A clansman was to her side, removing his blood-speckled helm. Harlin’s vision swam for a moment before Anselm’s distraught face emerged from the murk.

  ‘Fetch the healers!’ Even so close Anselm’s voice seemed distant and inconsequential.

  ‘Harlin?’ Ceatha said again, voice breaking. She wept for herself, Harlin thought vaguely. Without him she would be nothing again. It was a bittersweet comfort, to think of the chaos he would leave for her in his wake.

  ‘It is over,’ Harlin mumbled, mouth numb and dry. Shapes moved behind her and Anselm, indistinct as his eyes struggled to hold them. More shadows. Dhaine Sidhe? No. Men in leathers and furs. Round shields. Clansmen. They pressed in around him, bloodied, injured, victorious.

  ‘He has slain their King!’ a voice cried, far away.

  ‘Boil some water, he’s wounded!’ Anselm screamed.

  Death was tiring, Harlin found, so awfully tiring. He closed his eyes again and shut out the noise and bustle of activity around him, letting the peace of the stone circle wash over him. It felt good. Dull footfalls thudded nearby, far off, unimportant. A wall of noise, indistinct, unintelligible. He was slipping backwards, dimly aware of the hands upon him, trying to move him.

  Rise.

  Harlin opened his eyes. Who had spoken? Clansmen milled about him in the clearing. Someone had lit a fire nearby. A clansman extinguished it by rushing to hang a pot of water over it and spilling it over the young flames, one of the others shaking him by the throat for it.

  Rise, Harlin.

  Clearer this time. He saw Ceatha briefly in a gap between the bodies that fretted over his wound, sobbing fiercely into Anselm’s shoulder, his old friend looking upon him mournfully.

  Duana?

  Harlin fought against the numbness and the cold and staggered slowly to his feet, a wall of sound engulfing him as consciousness returned. It stopped abruptly, faces of steel and flesh gaping openly at him.

  ‘No Marcher can slay Túthal’s heir!’ a clansman cried, birthing a storm of adulation.

  Harlin stared about him in confusion as his men whooped and cheered, a thousand voices roaring their acclamation, hailing him as this and that, giving him new names and titles. He tired of it and pushed past them, feeling hands touching him briefly, seeking to take some of his good fortune or steal a blessing from him of some kind.

  He found himself shuffling, limping almost, his body wracked with pain so vile he thought his bowels would open before he pushed past the last of his awe-struck kinsmen. He made instinctively for the hill he had met the dawn upon, seeking solace and isolation for his final moments. It felt a good place to die. And so he fought on, limping towards it through the trees.

  ‘Harlin!’ Anselm came running to him from his side and laid a hand on his chest. From the corner of his eye he saw him shake his head. ‘You can’t, you must rest, you’re –’

  ‘I would look out upon the land I just tore the heart from, Anselm,’ he mumbled through parched lips. ‘One last time before my end. Do not stop me.’

  ‘Then let me help you, brother,’ Anselm said gravely, and drew Harlin’s arm across his shoulders.

  Ceatha appeared then, edging into view from between trees, still pale, still trembling and tearful. She took his weight on the other side without a word, mindful of his still-bleeding wound. It is always surprising how much blood a man has in him when he is cut, even more so when it is his own.

  They teetered together through the wood, helping Harlin with his footing, his legs weakening with every step. The climb up the hill was a drunken jumble of pushing, pulling and cursing on its slope to a chorus of clattering stones.

  Harlin collapsed against the boulder that waited at the peak, blood spilling down it. Every breath was a forced lungful of ice, sharp and exhausting, a chest full of razorblades. The cold dug deeper into him, seeking to quench what little warmth was left inside. Anselm moved to take his weight again, but Harlin waved him off, peering at him with a blood-crusted eye. ‘Leave me, both of you.’ He slid down to the ground.

  ‘Not a bastard’s chance, I’m afraid,’ Anselm snorted, Ceatha shaking her head stormily beside him, ‘I’m with you till the very end, Harlin.’

  Ceatha touched his face. ‘Oh, Harlin,’ she sniffed, fresh tears welling, ‘look at you. Look at you! Was it worth it?’ Her h
and came away bloody. ‘We could have done so much together,’ she gasped, ‘so much, we –’

  ‘I have lived for this one moment alone,’ he muttered thickly, ‘to see the man who took all that I loved dead at my feet.’ Ceatha shook, a sob taking her, and looked away from him. ‘I never wanted anything,’ Harlin groaned, ‘anything at all but revenge. All my life… has been misery and hate because of Aenwald. But now… soon… it will finally end. Help me look out at the land, would you? Please? I find that moving grows difficult.’

  Ceatha wiped her eyes and nodded, hoisting him to his feet with Anselm. They moved him around the other side of the rock, useless legs dragging, and sat him back against it. Harlin drew a deep and painful breath, Anselm and Ceatha seating themselves either side of him as he stared out over the Sombrewine, snow falling slowly over its frozen, gullied landscape. It reminded Harlin of the lowlands of home before it was broken, of how they would become a serene, diamond landscape, beautiful even in the cruellest of winters.

  The three sat quietly for a time, content to watch the snow fall and listen to Harlin’s laboured, wheezing breaths rattle in his chest, the earth beneath him dark with blood. Anselm broke the silence, talking of their early days together in the Blackshield Dogs, of the good times they’d shared on the road, times of laughter and foolishness. Ceatha tittered and sniffed alternately, hands wiping her face often, while Harlin smiled faintly with dry lips at those ancient memories, his own chuckles trapped in his throat.