Kell's Legend

by Andy Remic

  Leanoric nodded. “With a little more information, and time, we can encompass them. I still only half believe Mary! Who would dare such an outrage? Who would dare the wrath of my entire army?” With twenty thousand men at his disposal, this made Leanoric perhaps the most powerful warlord between the four Mountain Worlds.

  Elias considered their plan, rubbing his stubbled chin, his lined face focused with concentration. Internally, he analysed different angles, considered different options; he could see what King Leanoric said made sense, made complete sense; yet still it sat bad with him, an uneasy ally, a false lover, a cuckolded husband, a friend behind his back with a knife in his trembling fist.

  “Consider,” said Elias, voice as quiet as ever, and as he spoke his hand came to rest on the hilt of his scabbarded sword—a blade no other man alive had touched. “This General Graal cannot be a foolish man. And yet he marches halfway across Falanor to steal the queen; why? What does he gain?”

  “He makes me chase him.”

  Elias nodded. “Possible. Either chase him, or to undermine your confidence. Maybe both. And yet he has already, so we believe, conquered two major cities with substantial garrisons. So he either has a mighty force to be reckoned with, or…”

  “He’s using blood-oil magick,” said Leanoric, uneasy.

  “Yes. You must seek counsel on this.”

  “There is little time. If I do not muster the Eagle Divisions immediately, the entrapment may not work. Then we’d be forced to fall back…” his mind worked fast. “To Old Skulkra. It is a perfect battleground. And I have a…tactic my father spoke of, decades ago.”

  “But if Graal uses the old magick, your plan will not work anyway,” said Elias. “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “The Graverobber,” said Leanoric, voice sober, voice filled with dread. “I fear he will kill me on sight.”

  “I will go,” said Elias.

  “No, I have another job for you.”

  Elias raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He knew his king would speak in good time.

  Leanoric pursed his lips, lifted his hands to his face, fingers steepled, pressed against his chin. Then he sighed, and it was a sigh of sadness, of somebody who was lost. He spoke, but he would not meet his friend’s gaze.

  “What I ask of you, Elias, I have no right to ask.”

  “You have every right. You are king.”

  “No. I ask this on a personal level. Let us put aside rank, and nobility, for just one moment. What I ask of you, is…almost certain death. But I must ask anyway.”

  Elias bowed his head. “Anything, my king,” he said, voice gentle.

  “I would ask you to travel to the Silva Valley.” Leanoric paused, as if by leaving the words unspoken, he would not have to condemn his general, would not have to murder his friend. He sighed. He met Elias’s gaze, and their eyes locked, in honour and truth and friendship and brotherhood. “I would ask to you find and rescue Alloria.”

  “It would be my honour,” said Elias, without pause for breath.

  “I recognise-”

  “No.” Elias held up a hand. Leanoric stopped. “Do not say it. I am a man of the world, and if I may point out, far more seasoned a warrior than you.” He smiled to take the sting from his words. “I trained with your father, and I admired your father; but I love his son more. And I love my queen. I will do this, Leanoric, but feel no burden of guilt. I do it gladly, of my own free will.”

  Leanoric grasped Elias, a warrior’s grip, wrist to wrist, and beamed him a smile; a grim smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  “I will save the country; but you must save my heart-blood. You must find my wife.”

  “It will be an honour, my friend.”

  “Bring her back to me, Elias.”

  Elias smiled. “That, or die trying,” he said.

  After thirty minutes, Elias was ready to depart. He had a swift black stallion, compact saddlebags and his trusted sword by his hip. He looked down at Leanoric, and the few men gathered.

  “Ride swift,” said Leanoric.

  “Die young,” replied Elias.

  “Not this time, Elias.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Bring her back to me.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, my liege.”

  He touched heels to flanks. The stallion, a fine, proud, unbroken beast of nineteen hands, needed little encouragement, and with a snort of violence galloped off down a wide cart track, and towards the distance snake of grey: the Great North Road.

  Leanoric watched for long, long minutes, long after Elias, his Sword-Champion, had vanished from view. He listened to the night air, to the hiss of the wind, and fancied he could smell snow approaching.

  Grayfell, one of Leanoric’s trusted brigadier generals, glanced off into the gloom. “There’s a storm coming,” said the short, gruff soldier, rubbing at his neatly trimmed grey beard. His eyes of piercing yellow met Leanoric’s, and the king gave a curt nod.

  “That’s what I am afraid of,” he said.

  As dawn broke, Elias stopped by a fringe of woodland and surveyed the Great North Road. It glittered in weak dawn light, wreathed with curls of mist, cobbles gleaming like grey and black pearls. For long minutes the king’s Sword-Champion watched, listening, observing, analysing, wondering. He eased out from cover, and within minutes allowed the stallion his lead so that he galloped along the cobbles, hoof-beats clattering through the early morning air.

  Elias rode hard, all day, pausing only in the early afternoon to allow his horse a long cool drink by a still lake. As he stood, stretching his back and working through a variety of stretching exercises taught to cavalry riders, which he usually reserved for before battle, a few eddies of snow drifted around him and he gazed off to the distant northern hills, and saw the white gathering eagerly like icing on a cake. Cursing, Elias continued north, sometimes running the stallion on smooth grass alongside the hard cobbles, sometimes dismounting and walking the beast. He knew in his heart this was going to be a long journey; a test of stamina, and endurance, as well as strength and bravery. Still, Elias thought grimly, he was up for the task.

  That night, camping beneath a stand of Blue Spruce, wrapped in his thick fur roll, Elias came awake as snow brushed his face. His eyes stared up at thick tree boughs ensconced in needles, interlaced above him, rich perfume filling his senses, and beyond at an inky, violet sky. Snowfall increased, and with it a sinking in Elias’s breast. The enemy, with Alloria as prisoner, had a good head start. Snow would slow them down; but it would also slow him. He could only pray they were travelling by cart, or on foot; but he doubted it. They’d kidnapped the Queen of Falanor; they would be riding fast horses, hard, to put as much distance between Falanor’s Eagle Divisions and their reckless prize. Once they hit the Black Pike Mountains, Elias knew he was doomed. The range was treacherous, the valleys and narrow passes a labyrinth, and once inside their enclosing wings Elias would have lost the queen…and even if he did manage to navigate to this Silva Valley, what would he find there? A waiting army? A division of grinning soldiers? Damn, he thought. He had to catch up with them before the Black Pikes. He had to rescue his queen before she entered the death-maze…

  He started before dawn, filled with a rising panic, and an increased level of frustration.

  Elias pushed the stallion hard, too hard he knew, and just after noon as more snow fell muffling hoofbeats on the Great North Road, he spied a village and guided his mount from the cobbles, bearing east down a frozen, rutted track. However, a hundred yards from the collection of rag-tag huddled cottages, he halted. His stallion snorted, stamping the snow.

  Something was wrong, he could feel it, and a cold wind blew, ruffling his high collar and making him shiver. Unconsciously, he loosened his sword in its scabbard as his gaze scanned from left to right, then back.

  Nothing moved. No chickens clucked in the yards, no children squealed, no people walked the street, or stood on corners with pipes and gossip. Elias narrowed his eyes, and di
smounted. Feeling foolish, and yet at the same time fuelling his sense of necessity, he drew his sword and dropped his mount’s reins. He advanced on the deserted village, sword at waist-height, head scanning for enemy…

  And who are the enemy, mocked his subconscious?

  The Army of Iron? Halting in its mighty conquest of Falanor to annihilate one tiny, insignificant village?

  The answer was yes.

  Elias stopped at the head of the main street, and gazed out, and down, across frozen mud and fresh new drifts of snow, at the corpses which littered the thoroughfare. Elias squinted. He’d thought of them as corpses, but as he peered closer, now that he thought about it, they seemed more like…

  “Gods!” he hissed, skin freezing on his bones, blood chilling in his veins, eyes wide, lips narrow, sword gripped unnaturally tight. “What in the Nine Hells has caused this?”

  He stopped by an old man, face down, frame shrivelled, skin little more than parchment shell over brittle narrow bones. Elias dropped to one knee, crunching fresh snow, and rolled the old man onto his back…only to cry out, stumbling back as he realised it wasn’t the corpse of an old man at all, but a young woman, her flesh melted away, skin pulled back over her grinning skull like some parody of decrepitude and death.

  Elias stalked down the street, his horror rising, his hatred rising, his rage and anger fuelled to a white-hot furnace by what he saw. And he knew; knew without truly understanding the intricacies of blood-oil magick that this this was a result of the dark art; the old art.

  “Bastards,” he said, shaking his head, gazing down at children, shrivelled husks, still holding hands. Their faces were far from platters of serenity; they had died in terrible pain, without honour, without dignity, and Elias stared and stared and cursed and spat to one side of the street.

  “Is this what Graal has in store for us?” he muttered, considering this Army of Iron and its white-haired general.

  Back down the street, a scream rent the air, and it took Elias long slack moments to realise it was his horse. He turned and ran, skidding on ice as he rounded two low-walled cottages, their doors barely high enough to allow a child entry.

  The horse was on its side, in the street, quivering as if in the throes of epilepsy. Mist curled in tendrils at boot-height and Elias narrowed his eyes, approaching warily, searching left and right for signs of enemy. Had it been struck by an arrow? Or something more sinister? He was ashamed to notice that his hands shook.

  “A fine beast,” came a soft, lilting voice, mature and yet…deranged, to Elias’s ears. “Such a shame the source is poor, toxic you understand, for purposes of refinement. Otherwise, we might not have to harvest you.”

  Elias whirled, sword flashing up, to see a tall creature in thin white robes, delicately embroidered in gold and blue. But it was the face that sent shivers down Elias’s spine, and had the hairs on his neck crackling like thin ice over a deep pond. The face was flat, oval, hairless, and incredibly pale. Small black eyes watched Elias with what he considered to be intelligence, and the nose was little more than slits in pale skin. The creature, for this was no man, breathed fast, hissing and hissing and sending more shudders to wrack Elias’s body as it suddenly moved towards him, bobbing as it walked, a display which would have been almost comical if it wasn’t for the aura of death and the stench of putrefaction which seemed to pervade the creature and its surroundings with every living, breathing pore…

  “What are you?” breathed Elias, words barely more than a whisper.

  The creature came close. “I am a Harvester, boy. And you are Elias.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “I know many things,” said the Harvester, and lifted its hand, the sleeve of its robe falling back to reveal long, bony fingers. “I know you are the friend of King Leanoric. I know you seek his Queen, Alloria, taken by the vile Watchmaker Graal…but all in time, my son, all in time, for you are prime fodder, are you not? And you have information which may aid our cause. Come, come to me…”

  Elias leapt, but even as he leapt ice-smoke poured from the Harvester, from its tiny black eyes and open mouth, from its fingers and very core and it slammed Elias, dropping him in a moment, sword frozen to the skin of his fingers, body convulsing and juddering, spastic fits wracking him with a violence he could not have believed possible…

  “Let’s take away your pretty toy,” said the Harvester, stepping close, and Elias saw the skin stripped from his fingers leaving several with nothing more than bone and a few strips of dangling, pink flesh. And as Elias dropped into a descent of terror and disbelief, and pain and raw burning agony, he could still hear the Harvester talking as it worked, and remembered those five bony fingers hovering over his heart…“Come to me now, boy, come to the Harvester, we’ll look after you, we’ll take you to the Watchmaker and you’ll have such a pretty time, you’ll have the time of your life…”

  Elias opened his eyes. It was dark, and cold, and wooden walls surrounded him. For a terrible long moment he thought he was in a coffin, buried alive beneath fetid soil with worms struggling to ease through cracks and eat his eyes as he still breathed…a scream welled in his throat, bubbling through phlegm as his hands slapped out, thudding against wood…

  “Where am I?” he croaked, realising he was terribly dehydrated, blinking, coughing, and he sat up and realised he wasn’t in a box, but a cart, and it bumped over rough ground and he stared down at his hand where two fingers were nothing more than torn and shattered bone, and he screamed, even though there was no pain, he screamed and his screams echoed out through the darkness…

  “Quiet!” snapped a soldier, his sword prodding Elias in the chest and forcing him back to his rump in the cart.

  Elias said nothing, but cradled his wounded hand and gazed around through veils of red sweet nausea. Darkness and mist filled his vision, and through the vapour like ghosts walked soldiers, ten, a hundred, a thousand, and each one had a pale face and crimson eyes and white hair; their armour was black, and Elias leant forward and vomited into his own lap, and stared for a long time at strings of saliva and puke as he rewound his brain and played through the meeting with…the Harvester? So. He had found the army. But how long had he been unconscious? How far from Leanoric was he now? He could have travelled a hundred miles, or a thousand. No, he thought to himself, staring again at his flesh-stripped fingers. Realisation struck him worse than any axe blow to the back of the head.

  His hand was crippled; a deformed relic.

  He could no longer hold a sword.

  Tears ran down his face then, and all dignity and pride fled him. He knew, deep down, that all men feared something more than all else; each man had a breaking point, whether it be cancer, loss of sight, the death of children or parents. But for Elias, Sword-Champion of Falanor, it was a loss of his right to swordsmanship.

  Random images flickered through his mind, and he realised he was delirious.

  He was a boy again, practising with a wooden blade…

  He was a man, teaching his own children the art of the sword…

  He was standing, shivering, behind the curtains as Leanoric killed his father, King Searlan…

  Time flowed like black honey; with no meaning. The cart stopped and he was given bread and water, but did nothing more than vomit when it hit his stomach. A harsh voice snapped, “Leave him, if he dies, he dies.”

  “No. Graal will have the entire fucking army flogged!”

  “Damn that Harvester; if he’d done his job a’right, we wouldn’t be having these problems.” There came a curse in another, guttural, almost mechanical language, and harsh hands with smooth skin forced more water down his throat. This, Elias managed to retain, and after another few miles bouncing in the cart, which he now realised was drawn by two pale, milk-skinned geldings, they halted and Elias was dragged from the platform, his hands bound tight behind his back with thin gold wire which bit his skin and made him cry out…it felt like he was being eaten by insects. Glancing back, he watched th
e wire moving constantly, with tiny blades, like tiny teeth, all made of copper and brass and continually sawing.

  Elias was forced through the camp. They were on high moorland. Trees formed a solid black wall to the north. Above, the stars were obscured by bunching snow-clouds. Mist swirled around his boots. His hand throbbed, fingers stinging him like nothing on earth; and tears still flowed like acid down his cheeks. How had he been taken so easily?

  Elias grimaced. If this was the sort of magick they were using, if an icy blast could take out the best Sword-Champion of Falanor in a few seconds of confusion, of utter cold, then this new threat, this new menace, this terrible foe was going to roll over Leanoric’s Eagle Divisions like a hot knife through butter.

  We’re doomed, he realised.

  I must get to the king. I must warn the king!

  Elias was dropped to the ground, and he realised he was prostrate within a circle of men. He looked up, around at their faces which showed no empathy, no emotion, and then a black armoured warrior, tall and elegant, wearing a black helm obscuring his long, flowing white hair, turned and gazed at him.

  “You are Elias,” he said. “The Sword-Champion of Falanor.”

  “I am!” Pride flared in his breast. They could torture him, but he would not talk. He spat at the soldier. “Damn you, what do you horse-fuckers want?”

  “I know you think me sadistic,” spoke the soldier, looking up at the sky. “You are incorrect. When I punish, I punish without pleasure. When I torture, I torture for knowledge, progression, and for truth. And when I kill…I kill to feed.”

  “Then kill me, and be done with it!” snarled Elias, fury rising. He tried to surge up, to attack this arrogant albino, but only then did he realise hands pinned his soldiers, holding him to the ground.

  “No,” said Graal, dropping to one knee and staring into Elias’s face. “Today is not your day. This time, it is not your time.” He half-turned. “Bring her.”

  Queen Alloria was dragged, kicking and struggling, to the centre of the circle. She was beaten, her face bloodied, her arms tied behind her back with wire, blood covering her bare arms and wrists and hands. But she did not cry. She held her head high, eyes fierce, and she spat at Graal as she was thrown to the heather. She struggled to her knees and glared at her captors, glared at the albino soldiers around.