by Lloyd, Tom
All living creatures have abandoned the area of Velere’s Fell; I myself have seen wolves and antelope flee north, side by side and disregarding the presence of the other. A wild dread envelops the population as the shadows grow ever stronger and the clamours of night dig their claws into our minds. Your attention is most urgent, the next riot will require military force but my militia joins the people in terror.
— I must assume the Governor sent word by some means to Numarik. Whether the situation grew worse I cannot tell but a response came from one Primarch Getalt:
Governor Corren,
Your request is refused with ridicule and wonder. Were these simpler times I would petition the forum for your removal. Need I remind you that Numarik will be under assault within the week? I only write this to you because your messenger hinders my every step for a response. I shall not even waste the Protector’s time with such nonsense. Without Verliq our city will certainly fall and your situation resolved in the harshest of ways. The greatest army in the Land marches on our people. This unique and beautiful creation of our civilisation stands in greater danger from the War God’s chosen emissary than your ‘plague that walks’. If the Gods preserve us, remain in no doubt there will be consequences for your womanish fears. In the meantime I suggest you attend the defence of your own city.
— The personal diary of the Governor was damaged by fire and I only have scraps relating to his last days. Our intelligence led me to believe him a stoical soldier, but he hung himself before the assault and set fire to his chambers while his family slept. We were fortunate that anything remained. Such as I do have I record here:
The fires of night grow stronger, can it be true? . . . Iliole sends no word, what has become of him . . . the enemy lies to our south, only . . . the Menin come, deliverance is at hand, the Gods forgive us for daring . . .
Dark forms fill the sky, each night I fear . . . so shall I submit to judgement of my soul . . . I have seen the face of death . . . but a creature of the Land. Hateful and warped beasts baying for the blood of the living . . . what have we done to . . .
. . . gone forever, they go and return, but who disturbed . . .
. . . ancient folly . . . Velere is dead . . . cursed forever, we follow the path set by his kind and the Fell shall be that of our children . . .
The shadow speaks to me. I can hear its voice like a knife in the wind.
— As is obvious, the man was lost to madness, but the sickness of this place goes beyond the insanity of its natives. I fear for us all and believe some have gone missing this past night. Daraz Tergev you know and knighted for his bravery, but his eagerness to depart cuts my letter short and it is not your shining presence he covets.
Your Krann ignores all guidance and amuses himself with the population. All order has disintegrated and the men fight amongst themselves in earnest. I shall make one final effort to persuade Krann Visel to withdraw; whether or not I succeed I shall abandon this place with my personal troops and the army standard you entrusted me with. I shall embrace whatever consequences you consider appropriate for this desertion.
I know little of Velere Nostil, who the region is named after, other than his assassination and his father’s legendary grief. It appears this grief became manifest, or some terrible bargain was struck and endures to this day. Whatever the truth of millennia past, it drove refugees onto our spears and a thousand battles to be fought before our assault.
It is true about the absence of living creatures, your soldiers are the only living entities here. No bird or beast remains and it is lack of feasting that may yet cause Visel to save his men. If I fail to return, I pray to Gods I rejected long ago that I can prevent a similar fate for you, my master. The years have been blessed by your intervention and favour, I endeavour to be worthy and shall remain your servant beyond death.
General Gaur, Third Army of the Menin.
My friend,
It is believed in these parts that the Menin lord had intended to secure his own place in history by marching on Darbodus, stronghold of the cursed Elves. After his celebrated duel with the ‘heretic’ Verliq, the Menin lord pushed on to join the third army at Daraban. They were met on the road by Sir Daraz who was received in private by the Menin lord. Immediately after the meeting the Menin lord ordered the return home and all plunder save for Verliq’s library to be abandoned.
A remarkable decision for the greatest warrior of the age, I feel, but less remarkable than the fact that while running for home they were caught on the road by General Gaur and a legion of his personal troops. Krann Visel’s army numbered fifteen thousand when they marched from the Ring of Fire. Though they fought no real battles their fate remains a mystery, as does the engine of the long-dead Aryn Bwr’s curse.
That the denizens of Ghenna walked the night in Velere’s Fell cannot be doubted, no other force bar the Gods has that power. What evil facilitated it I shall not speculate, but I hear whispers that fatal accidents have befallen many suspected of necromancy.
I remain etc,
DAWN
From the hollows and slopes of the valley, tendrils of mist reached out over the Land before the sun rose to banish them for another day. Kastan could already see the blushes of dawn on the horizon. He’d waited half an hour already, watching the darkness of night recede and become the morning gloom; the colours of the day painted on a shadowy canvas as the sky steadily lightened.
Perched downslope, nestled about the meeting rivers, was the village he called home. They would be up and about soon, tramping out into the fields and seeing to the livestock. Wisps of smoke already rose from a few houses, up and away with a vitality the morning mist lacked. A faint breath of breeze brought the scent of the flowers up to his nostrils. That was another thing he intended to fix in his memory before the proud eye of Tsatach appeared in the sky; the clean flavours of the air inextricably bound to the glorious sight of dawn in his mind.
The morning chill didn’t bother him. Kastan had settled into a natural dent in the steep earth, wrapped in a bearskin and cradled by the mountain where he’d spent his whole life. The valley below spread out to the south where the lower ground became lush woodlands fed by the mountain rivers; receding into the distance as dark smears on the horizon. Always open to attack these parts were, but this village was rarely bothered. In Kastan’s life there had been only three raids on the village, the last being just a band of beastmen too pitiful to be captured for the fighting-pits.
That day the men of the village had looked to him for leadership when the alarm was sounded, even the veterans. Only fifteen summers old, Kastan had already possessed an air of authority that made battle-scarred ex-sergeants follow his commands. The immediate obedience had felt both natural and intoxicating.
That day he’d seen the sadness in his father’s eyes as the man saw it was time for Kastan to leave. They both knew it had been coming; he’d bested every man in the village before the end of puberty, but the widower had been able to ignore the day not yet upon them until then. Seeing Kastan lead the counter-charge and cut down the largest of the attackers with ease, it had been clear to all that it was time.
As the sky brightened, Kastan wondered why he felt no regret at leaving. Perhaps because he’d always expected it; that from his youngest memories the old soldiers had told him he would leave to fight – perhaps because this village was always going to be too small for a Menin white-eye, the largest of all men in the entire Land.
Or is it because I’m a white-eye and have no use for regrets?
White-eyes didn’t become farmers, or even blacksmiths or hunters. It had been more than a year since he could safely wrestle or spar with anyone from the village. Since then he’d only laid hands on another when a drunken fight had broken out, his prodigious energy channelled into hard labour and the study of any books he could trade or borrow.
The dawn chorus had ebbed and flowed over the undulating ground even as he’d left the house and walked up here in the predawn dark. The sweet
liquid voice of a thrush rang out between indignant outbursts from a blackbird. A choir of starlings chittered merrily from the village surrounds, but the call he had been hoping for came strong and clear over their gossip.
The red merlin wasn’t one to participate in the greeting of the sun but, as most birds, they had chicks in the nest and were out hunting early. Native only to these parts, it was a rare sight to those who didn’t know where to look and a beloved talisman to locals. The merlin’s shrill ‘kek, kek’ sprang out from the stony slopes and brought a smile to Kastan’s face. It would be years before he heard that sound again.
He didn’t bother looking for the bird. It would be well hidden in the rusty-green undergrowth; three or four bronze tarnished eggs nestled peacefully on the ground. No one knew why the small hunter nested on the ground, often where the slope was little challenge to predators. The snakes that would happily feast of their eggs rarely did so, preferring to keep clear when they themselves could be the meal.
Kastan loved them for that. To make a home where they wished was to invite danger, but the swift birds would fight like demons rather than abandon their eggs. Perhaps that was why they were so fondly regarded by villagers who lived outside the Ring of Fire, vulnerable to the predations of the warped tribes of the Elven Waste.
At last, through the thin lines of cloud that bordered the horizon, the burning lances of dawn pierced the blue above. The dew-kissed pastures before him were bathed in warm, comforting light. Alone on his mountainside, Kastan breathed in the earthy odours of home as the blessings of the Gods blazed up and over him. This was the time of peace that he would store deep inside his heart, the shining core of his soul to sustain him through dark times to come.
He had no illusions about his future. The Reavers were the finest single unit ever to do battle in the history of the Land. As implacable as the Farlan Ghosts were, as furious as the Chetse Lion Guard might prove, the Reavers were greater still. Even the tales of the Elven Dragonguard, Aryn Bwr’s elite, made them out only to be heroes one and all, but the Reavers were not interested in heroism.
Their training was comparable to torture, their ferocity unmatched. An average man wouldn’t survive and few normals ever even tried to join; only the finest of Ascetites whose latent magic had driven them beyond natural limits. But in the main, there was only one sort of man welcome in the Reavers – white-eyes. Exalted and feared equally by their people, the savage sub-breed of humanity were the finest of all warriors and the very name of their regiment struck fear in the hearts of all.
‘A last sunrise?’
Kastan leapt to his feet at the unexpected voice, every instinct suddenly alive. In one movement he was up and spinning to face the newcomer, blade sweeping up from his hip.
‘I hardly think that’s necessary.’
Kastan felt his grip inexplicably weaken. He tried to force his fingers closed again, but couldn’t prevent the longsword falling from his hand and dropping to the ground. His struggle to keep his hand raised faded when he took in the figure before him. Slowly, Kastan stopped fighting and stared in astonishment.
The Menin were a tall, swarthy people with weathered skin and coarse black hair, their women were rarely so fine-featured or slender. A warrior people respected the qualities of strength and honour first and it was said beauty begat weakness.
The woman stood before him was quite unlike any he had met before and dressed equally as fantastically. Long tresses of coppery hair glowed bright in the first rays of dawn; her milky skin looked soft and fragile against the harsh lines of the mountain. A pale blue cape hung from her shoulders, fastened at the neck by an ornate gold brooch. Kastan couldn’t make out the design; the pattern seemed to shift under his keen eyesight, which instead drifted down to the curve of her breasts above a rich green dress.
Her figure was slim and graceful, but the warrior in him could see the power still for all her slender charms. It was her face that really surprised him. A thin jaw, high, chiselled cheekbones and pouting lips curled into a faint smile – arresting and bewitching yet overshadowed by the unnaturally brilliant emerald of her eyes.
‘You picked a fine spot to watch it from, but surely the top of the mountain would be finer still?’
Kastan could hear the goading in her voice. Quite apart from the treacherous ice in spring the mountaintop was full of dangers, but a white-eye was supposed to fear nothing. The prickle of anger deep inside collided with trepidation as he recognised her from the temple wall. For an instant there was a balance between the two in his heart, but he fought them and both receded before the sheer force of will. Surprise, anxiety, recalled knowledge – they all clashed behind those eyes but he refused to allow any such emotion to escape.
‘I’ve seen it before,’ he replied, keeping his voice level and his stance wary. ‘I’m saying goodbye to my home, not to the Land.’
‘I know that. Perhaps better than you might think,’ came her strange reply. She half-turned away, then paused and looked back at him through long lashes.
‘Walk with me a while.’
Kastan stared after the striding figure for an instant, stunned by the impact of her gaze, before he shook himself awake and bent to retrieve his sword. He returned the weapon to its sheath and shook out his cloak before he slipped it over his shoulders.
When he looked up, Kastan gave a start, his mouth falling open in surprise. The mysterious woman had inexplicably covered a hundred yards and stood waiting for him, hands on her hips in exaggerated impatience. Kastan breathed a soft oath as he realised this was all a test of some ineffable design. His lips tightened as a greater resolve came over him. If this were a test then so be it – she would see what sort of man he was.
The woman’s irritation was genuine by the time he had sauntered over, taking time to enjoy the view and even pausing to savour the scent of a wildflower. Her smile vanished when at last he met those flashing eyes, but he managed to betray no consternation at her glower.
‘Do you know who I am, boy?’ she snapped, the honey tones of her voice suddenly supplanted by venom.
‘I do, Lady. You honour me with your presence.’
‘Hah, at least you know when to curb your insolence. Surely you know I am not renowned for my patience?’
‘But of course I dismissed it as the prattling of priests.’
‘You do not believe you should listen to your elders?’
Now he did allow himself to smile, hearing in her voice she was looking for something more than subservience.
‘I’m too young to believe that. Since white-eyes live longer than most humans, I may be persuaded in time.’
She regarded him coldly for a moment. Then a smile broke over her face and the warmth of the sun suddenly returned.
‘In the case of priests, I agree with you. I’m happy to have temples and shrines in my name, but I have little use for the pious. They tend to be deficient in worldly areas and useless to me.’
Kastan nodded, that was well known. The Lady – Fate herself – was unconventional among the Gods, perhaps unique. She wielded little power and commanded few servants, yet was respected as if she were a member of the Upper Circle of the Pantheon. Kastan was burning with curiosity. He had attended his studies well enough to know she gave no straight answers. He would have to earn anything he learned. She was here to tell him something, but Gods were capricious at the best of times.
The Lady stopped, looking north past a copse of gnarled olive trees and into the vast golden rapeseed fields. Kastan took up position slightly down-slope of her, noticing for the first time that she was not much shorter than he. That was rare for any man, but she didn’t appear to be oversized in any way. She merely met him on his own level. Tearing himself away from the burnished curls that spilled down her back, Kastan followed her eyes to focus on a kite hovering ahead.
‘We will sit,’ said the Lady suddenly.
Her words came unnaturally loud to Kastan’s ears, and the compulsion to obey was terrifyingly
strong. Turning, he saw two tree stumps where he would have sworn there had been none before. And yet there they were, weathered by sun and rain and perfectly placed behind the Lady and himself. He sank down gratefully, her command having drained his will to stand. She followed suit with perfect elegance and never once losing sight of the fields ahead.
Once seated, Kastan recovered his wits and wondered what this would mean for his future. He was leaving home today to establish his place in the Land, to seek the fame and glory that was all a white-eye could hope for. That Fate herself had come to speak to him was enough to set a worm of unease in his gut.
All the priests said she was a harsh mistress to those she chose for her designs, and what future could he have serving a God other than the Patron of the Menin? The hand of Fate was as likely a curse as a blessing. But how do you refuse a God when you cannot even remain standing in her presence?
‘What do you hope for in life?’
The question was as abrupt as it was strange and Kastan replied with a blank face. He had been expecting many things, but not such a seemingly idle question.
‘Well, boy? You must have some reason for leaving home.’
‘I . . . my reason for leaving home? I’m a white-eye; I wasn’t born to stand behind oxen all day. Why does any man want to leave home?’
Kastan looked at the perfect features of the Lady and his mind went disconcertingly blank. Her ethereal skin seemed to glow with an inner light rather than the bright rays of dawn.
‘Are you as unthinking as that?’ she replied scornfully.
‘Well . . . I . . . no.’ He gestured to the cultivated fields surrounding the village. ‘I want more from life than this.’ Kastan felt as if a weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders. If it hadn’t been ridiculous, he’d have sworn from the expression before him that she had seen it go.
‘Then tell me.’
‘My family’s poor. We’re farmers and nothing more. But I can make up for the death of my mother in some measure by winning a title or lands – no dynasty of my own but cousins aplenty and a father who’ll soon be too old for ploughing.’