The Barrow

by Mark Smylie

  Azharites, he had time to think.

  And then the men screamed and suddenly charged.

  Before they could reach him, Sir Theodore and Sir Helgi crashed in wearing their full three-quarter plate harnesses, sending two of the Azharites sprawling while Theodore’s sword ran the third one through the stomach. The two Azharites sprang swiftly back to their feet as Sir Theodore pulled his sword out of their companion. Sir Theodore commenced to bashing away at the Azharite holding a shield, who blocked his flurry of blows, while Sir Helgi rather expertly threw the other back on the ground and then stabbed downward into his gut with his greatsword. As the sword streaked down Stjepan saw the flash of a gleaming rune of victory on the blade, and it pierced through the Azharite’s warded skin to pin him into the ground.

  Freeing his sword, Sir Helgi bellowed at the top of his lungs: “To arms! To arms! We are attacked!”

  A wave of Azharites came rushing in on foot out of the dark as a partially armored Sir Theodras ran in to back up Sir Helgi and Sir Theodore. They met in a clash of arms, blood flying as Azharites went down, but Sir Theodras’ unarmored leg took a great blow to the knee from a heavy iron mace and he went down with a scream with two of the masked berserks on top of him, trying to stab him to death. Sir Theodore leapt to his rescue, killing one of the Azharites with a sharp blow that sheared mask and skull, but a black-clad berserk behind him drove a barbed spear into Theodore’s right buttock and ripped downwards, opening up the back of his thigh where it was unprotected except by cloth, and blood gushed out in great spurts as the knight screamed and stumbled away from the prone Sir Theodras toward where Sir Helgi held off three of the foul attackers. The Azharite shield man used the opening to bring the edge of his shield down in a strike on Sir Theodras’ screaming mouth, silencing him with a bloody crunch.

  All this barely registered on Stjepan; the moment the fighting started he had resumed his search, intent on finding the intruder to his tent, and he saw a trail of firefly lights waft into the air nearby. He slipped through the tents, scanning left and right, following the lights like floating embers. He could see Azharites streaming in on foot through the tall grass, and leaping over the short gaps between the wagons, and he ducked out of the way as one of them ran past him, charging at and spearing Cole Thimber as he lumbered forward. Despite the spear in the gut, the big man waded into a group of the Azharites with a long-hafted iron-headed mace, and bellowing proceeded to start knocking them about. Arrows and darts came flying out of the dark to pepper into the sides of the tents; some of the arrow were on fire, and a couple of the tents looked like they were about to go up in flames.

  Stjepan reached the Ladies’ Tent, where Sirs Lars and Colin Urwed were beset by more of the Azharites. A masked berserk, larger and more muscular than his lean fellows, spun a long-hafted axe in both hands, knocked Sir Lars’ sword aside, and swiftly brought the heavy head of his axe down on the knight, crushing his sallet helmet. The squire Brayden rushed the axe-wielding berserk, and was cleaved almost in two. Seeing the odds going so badly at Annwyn’s tent almost diverted Stjepan from his mission, but an armed and partially armored Arduin, runes gleaming on his sword and breastplate, charged in and with two quick cuts of his war sword he had separated one of the berserk’s arms at the shoulder, and then his head. Squire Wilhem Price leapt in, sword ready, to stand behind Sir Colin, who swung his greatsword around to fend off the rest of the Azharites, and Stjepan kept moving.

  The trail of firefly lights was fading and growing thinner, his frustration growing. A few dozen weaving steps and he found himself almost back at his own tent, having made a rough circle through the camp. Stjepan had to step over Giordus Roame, who’d had an arm lopped off. Stjepan’s heart leapt into his throat and he picked up speed, and he came upon Godewyn, Caider Ross, and Too Tall using poleaxes and bills to advance into a small group of the Azharites, trying to fight side-by-side with some practiced discipline but mostly succeeding in pushing the Azharites back through wild enthusiasm, while Erim was acrobatically fighting two Azharites left standing from a larger group of a half dozen. One of them had an extra long mask, almost shaped like a teardrop and coming to a point, with two great antelope horns jutting up from its top, and he wore a leather cuirass affixed with brass scales and glistening with enchantment. Erim ducked in and out between the two Azharites, stabbing the one with a normal-sized mask in the throat. The long-masked Azharite with the leather cuirass bore down on her, their blades clashing in a cut-and-parry back and forth; he cut her across her left arm and she cried out, but then she dropped low under his next swing and came up, driving her rapier through his stomach under his cuirass and up into his rib cage. He spat blood, then collapsed.

  At the fall of the Azharite with the long mask, the remaining Azharites bolted and fled into the dark, chased by Godewyn and Caider and Too Tall, yelling curses at the top of their lungs.

  Erim, wild-eyed and still in a bit of shock, turned and pointed her weapons as Stjepan approached. The rest of the camp had started to grow quiet, except for someone wounded shrieking into the night. That quickly and it was over.

  “Is it you? Is it you?” she asked him, staring at him, her rapier pointing straight at his throat.

  “It’s me. Is it you?” he replied.

  Her wounded left arm started to shake, and she dropped the point dagger that it held, and then her rapier, and fell to her knees. She felt her face with her good hand as Stjepan crouched beside her. “What in the Six Hells was that?” she whispered. Her face was hot to the touch, as though she had a fever coming on.

  “A glamour—a magician’s mask. Someone took your form, to get close to me and ask some questions. But in the confusion of the attack I lost him . . .” he said, inspecting her wound.

  “A magician? Attacking us with these lunatics?” she asked, looking around her at the masked men scattered around on the ground. She was having trouble focusing. A great fatigue seemed to be welling up inside her.

  Stjepan studied the man with the leather cuirass and long mask for a moment. “Perhaps. They’re Azharites,” he said. “Berserker warriors and warlocks dedicated to the Nameless Cults, the inheritors of Azharad’s Kingdom, either coming upon us or set as guardians for the Black Tower and the barrow. Careful; the blade was poisoned. Their captains and champions like to use the venom of the Éduins asp viper.”

  “What? Poisoned?” Erim asked, and then she fell over in a faint, and started to shake and make choking sounds.

  Stjepan quickly slipped into their tent, and fished through one of his satchels until he found what he was looking for: poultices of the goldenrod leaf, mashed into a paste and enchanted with a simple folk ritual. He slipped back out with the satchel, and pressed several of the poultices onto the gash in her arm, and wound out some clean linen gauze to wrap around the poultices and pin them in place. There was already a bit of foam flaking at the corners of her mouth, but within moments after the poultice was applied her body stopped shaking and her breathing returned to normal.

  Godewyn walked back into the firelight, and watched Stjepan work. Arduin appeared, splattered in blood; Leigh followed warily behind him, looking about nervously and clutching a short sword. One of the wagons and several of the tents were on fire, and Stjepan could see some of Caider and Too Tall trying to douse the wagon with spare water. The shrieking suddenly stopped, and it grew quiet except for faint moans and muffled weeping, the neighing of startled horses and the crackle of things on fire that weren’t supposed to be.

  “King of Heaven,” Arduin said, surveying the scene.

  Somewhere in the camp, a woman’s voice rose.

  Stjepan stood, and he and Godewyn and Arduin and Leigh looked back over the camp.

  “That’s . . . that’s Annwyn,” said Arduin, perplexed. “My sister is . . . singing.” He stared off into the night. “What in Heaven’s name is she singing?”

  Stjepan eyes narrowed. “It’s the Chant Amora d’Afare y Argus. The Love Song of Afare and Argus,”
Stjepan said. He looked up at the starless night sky, saw the last of the firefly lights mixing with embers from the fires and fading into darkness. He closed his eyes and listened to the wind, to the ringing of distant bells, to a tragic love song floating on the gasps of the dying. He sniffed the air, smelt fire and ash, blood and bowels, the sharpness of honest clean steel and the lather of horse sweat, an undercurrent of desperate and abject fear, from somewhere near the hint of something dead and rotting, and underlying it all the rotten stench of abject and absolute corruption.

  His gaze fluttered open and grew hard and grim, and he glanced up the hill toward the hole in the earth that awaited them out there somewhere in the darkness.

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “We’re definitely in the right place.”

  Stjepan was walking up a leaf-strewn forest path, broad high trees of birch and purple-leaf oak, maple and elm, cherry and white ash, cedar and pine stretching out for leagues in all directions. The trunks of the trees and the debris of the forest floor were coated with old layers of lichens and moss, and a rust-red under-brush complemented the ancient patina of grays and dull greens. The leaves were turning burnt red and orange-yellow, into fire and gold, all the brilliant shades of autumn, and so he began to suspect it was a dream. He turned and looked to his right through a break in the trees, and caught a glimpse of a far sloping range of forested evergreen hills, backdropped by a horizon of desolate high mountains. Down to the east a great stone castle sat on a rise over a small riverside city, and he knew that across that river would be the Plain of Stones. Ah. Indeed. This dream, of An-Athair, and my mother, and death. A dream, then, and one that would soon fill him with pain, but still it was pleasant for the moment, and so he kept walking the ancient forest path, drinking in its beauty.

  A fox appeared from out of the underbrush to take a seat on a rock by the side of the road. You are too late, too late, the fox called to him.

  “Too late for what, little lord?” he asked.

  You’ll see, you’ll see, the fox called, and then it slipped off the rock to disappear back into the underbrush.

  He followed the path and the woods fell silent except for the sound of a woman singing somewhere in the distance. If the fox was still nearby he could neither see nor hear it; no bird sang in the branches above. But the woman’s voice seemed familiar, and grew clearer as he walked. He could smell wet earth and leaf and needle, moss and sun-lit stone, and from nearby the smell of something burning.

  He approached a high clearing in the woods. Massive, ancient trees surrounded the clearing, their lower branches filled with dangling amulets and chimes, small sculptures and offerings placed around their trunks. A pyre had been built in the center of the clearing, and a single post erected within it. A woman was tied to the post, her long silk dress slightly torn and soiled with dirt. She was beautiful, wild, her long wavy black hair framing a face of wisdom and power. His mother, Argante. A crowd of their neighbors watched with fear and excitement behind several circles of men dressed in black robes and brown hoods as some of those men stepped forward and lowered torches. The pyre began to catch. The singing was coming from somewhere in the crowd; he could see a woman with golden blonde hair moving behind the watching ranks of his neighbors, but he lost sight of her.

  His young brother, Justin, stood stock still to the side, watching with wide eyes, and Stjepan’s heart broke. Two hooded men, with deer antlers attached to their masks, held his sister on her knees, forcing her to watch as the flames of the pyre grew stronger and higher. He couldn’t see her face but her long curly hair was unmistakable, a deep, dark brown that was almost black, the color of burnt earth. Artesia.

  He walked slowly toward the pyre, coming to stand behind his sister and the men restraining her. He could hear his sister whispering to herself: “That won’t be me. That won’t be me. That won’t be me.” His mother looked down at him, and smiled, as she always did in his dreams. Smoke and flames were rising up around her. Her skin was blackening from the heat, but she seemed serene.

  Artesia could see that her mother was looking at someone behind her. She looked over her shoulder and her eyes met his. He could see anguish, and pain, and hate in her gaze, made all the more terrible because they shared the same dark gaze of judgment. Her struggle intensified, anger welling up in her, and she tore free of the two hooded men. She ran to Stjepan, tears pouring down a face contorted by rage, and she began striking him in the chest, again and again.

  “Why weren’t you here? Why weren’t you here? You could have done something! You could’ve saved her!” she screamed at him.

  Stjepan shook his head. “I . . . I was away, at University . . .” he said. “There was nothing I could . . .” She fell against him, sobbing, and he embraced her in his arms.

  He stared as the flames consumed his mother.

  He did not see or sense the dark figure standing almost right behind him.

  Stjepan awoke and stared at the canvas ceiling of the tent, cast in the blue-gray light of morning. The canvas creaked and rustled in a light breeze. He did not move for a long moment, until he became aware of someone looking at him.

  He turned his head, and found himself looking into Erim’s eyes. She lay on her side, staring at him bleakly from the other side of the small tent.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to die here,” she whispered.

  He turned and looked at the ceiling of the tent.

  “Neither do I,” he said.

  With the poison in Erim at least neutralized, Stjepan had slipped off into the night, bow and quiver and blades at the ready, to scout the path the Azharites had taken to their camp. He had been filled with fear that they had come from the Black Tower and that more of them might be hidden there. He had found the tracks of a dozen men fleeing back into the east, back along the tracks from which they’d came on a high foot path that paralleled the road they’d come in on; so he could only hope that they had come up from the Uthed Wold and would have to travel all the way back to their hidden citadels in those dark woods in order to garner reinforcements. Two days, maybe three, and then they’ll be back . . . if we’re lucky.

  Stjepan had reported his findings to Arduin and Gilgwyr and Godewyn, and they had wound up agreeing that they had little choice but to suppose that they were not in any further immediate danger, despite the scant little evidence on which to rest such hopes. They had gathered the survivors and then spent part of the night gathering the bodies of the dead into two separate piles. With their own dead—Sir Lars Urwed, Sir Holgar Torgisbain (who had been found on the other side of one of the giant stone vulture heads, in the midst of a cluster of half a dozen Azharite bodies, his armor crushed in by great blows and his flesh rent by stab wounds), Sir Theodras Clowain, Sir Theodore Lis Cawain, the young squire Brayden Vogelwain, red-haired Giordus Roame, and big Cole Thimber—they had cleaned and washed the bodies as best they could, and wrapped them in white cloth and placed them in the back of a wagon, and offered prayers to the King of Heaven. Sir Helgi had wept openly as he prepared the body of his nephew.

  They had piled the Azharites into a shallow pit some small distance from their camp, and then covered it with a shallow heaping of dirt. Twenty-two of the Devil-worshippers, black-masked, rune-covered, dripping in charms and enchantments and poisoned weapons.

  “Half of us gone in an instant,” Arduin had said thickly, as Sir Helgi had spat on the mound of dirt.

  “We’re lucky more of us aren’t dead,” Stjepan had said, setting a shovel down and wiping his hands clean of dirt and sweat. “A testament to your skill at arms, gentlemen. But there was nothing to indicate, either from the tracks or the possessions we have found amongst the dead, if these men were just some random patrol or raiding party that had stumbled over us simply because we are traversing lands that the Azharites claim as theirs, or if our attackers had sought us out as specific quarry. Though I am inclined to think the former.”

  “You think it was ju
st random chance that we were attacked here, right after finding the entrance to the Barrow of Azharad?” Arduin had asked with a scoff.

  “Nonsense. Someone warned them we were coming,” had said Gilgwyr. “By magic or by messenger they knew we would be here.” He had taken a swig from a bottle of wine and passed it to Pallas Quinn, who had already appeared to be well into his cups at that point.

  “That’s just it,” Stjepan had replied. “If you were one of the Azharite warlords of the Uthed Wold and someone had sent you word that a large party of explorers was on its way with a map leading to the burial place of your ancient Sorcerer-King, would you just send thirty men?”

  They had all paused for a moment, staring down at the fresh mound of dirt.

  “Maybe that’s all they had?” Sir Helgi had ventured.

  “Nah, Black-Heart’s right,” Godewyn had said, spitting to one side. “I had a talk with Jack Hardee a few years back when we were on a job into the ruins at Bronrood, he lives up in the Kettle March and knows the Azharites better than just about anybody. He said there’s one of them they call the Horned King, and he’s their master, and several rival Witch-Kings that serve under him as captains of their ruined citadels, and they’ve each got hundreds of these warrior savages in their companies. We saw a fair number of them in their caves and tunnels there. On something potentially this big, if it was me, I’d have sent every available sword I had.” He glanced at Black-Heart. “This could get really bad if they figured out why we were here.”

  Some of them had turned away from the pile of dirt, then, to scan the land around them in the dark with worried eyes.