by T L Drew
‘What is that?’ Ari asked.
‘This is no temple of worship,’ Ser Tovar said, his voice trembling. ‘This is a hall for the dead. The bodies of the most powerful cursed men reside here. We must leave at once – she knows we come for her.’
The stone doors swung shut in the blink of an eye, trapping them inside and separating them from the remainder of the soldiers that were there to protect them. Ser Ivar charged towards the doors and pulled, but the doors refused to pry. ‘Did you see what closed the doors?’ Ari asked Ser Tovar, but he shook his head. There had been nothing there.
‘Help me open them!’ Ser Ivar shouted to his companions as he pulled against the stone, but they did not move from where they stood.
‘There's no use, commander. I told you this place was cursed.’
‘I order you–’
Screaming followed Ser Ivar's voice from behind the sealed doors. They could hear panicked scratching across the stone over their cries of agony, and blood was spilt. Crimson liquid flowed underneath the stone door, washing the marble floor red and staining the light sand. Ser Ivar pulled at the door with all his might, but it came to no avail. ‘What is out there? Answer me!’ He screamed to the men on the other side of the door in the hope one would answer him, but only their shrieks and screeches cried back until they heard nothing at all. The screaming stopped, but the blood continued to flow underneath the door, soaking Ser Ivar's fine boots. And then the silence lifted, and was replaced by the quiet sounds of footsteps outside of the doors. The feet shuffled and fists began to bang against the stone. ‘What’s happening out there?’ Ivar Castle shouted, but no one answered him as the banging grew louder.
Ser Ivar threw off his gloves, wiped his sweat upon his tunic, and grasped his blade again firmly in his hands. He raised it and whipped his head wildly around the room. The blood was no longer alone; black smoked filled the heart of the temple from underneath the door and moved to the open coffins. Black smoke filled the room.
The dead came alive.
Skeletal beings arose from their wooden boxes, fuelled by the black smoke inhabiting their frames, bones grinding against each other with each movement. Black smoky eyes filled them. The bones blackened, and so did the flesh that still clung to them. The bones of the beasts growled and snarled. Ser Ivar backed himself against the door, grasping his blade in disbelief and a newfound fear. It had been true, the temple was cursed, and now they were trapped. Ser Tovar fell to his knees, closed his eyes, and prayed. Ari drew her sword. If only Ser Ivar had headed the northerner's warnings–
‘Tovar, stand! Draw your blade!’ Ser Ivar shouted as the undead came to a stand, low hisses erupting from their skeletal mouths. The dead glanced at their prey with black smoky eyes. Tovar did not listen. He uttered frightful words of prayer as the undead moved towards the old man with haste. In the blink of an eye, Ser Ivar watched on with disbelief as the undead leapt upon the old man and began to consume him, shredding the skin and flesh from his bones. Ser Tovar's screams were deafening.
Ari joined Ser Ivar's side, blades drawn. The dead turned their attention to them as Ser Tovar's cries came to a sudden halt. Nothing was left of him but bones and blood. It had only taken seconds, but Ser Tovar's body crashed to the marble floor before their eyes. Black smoke surrounded the bones, and Ser Tovar rose from the floor once more, fuelled by the black smoke. He had joined the ranks of the undead army, and they advanced towards Ivar Castle and Ari like a predator finding his prey.
‘What do we do?’ Ari asked her commander in a panic as the undead moved towards them, fuelled by the mysterious black smoke. Their black bones were swathed in Old Tovar's blood. A dozen undead approached them with a lust for mortal blood.
‘We fight,’ Ser Ivar uttered bravely although his body trembled, poising himself for battle. He grasped his weapon tighter and watched as the undead moved towards him, drawing blades from the air forged from the black smoke that fuelled their skeletal bodies. Sweat beaded down his forehead as they surrounded him and his companion. The undead swung their ebony swords and snapped their toothy jaws.
Ser Ivar and Ari fought for their lives; they defended each strike, their steel meeting with solid smoke and crashing against the bones of the undead. A smoky blade met with Ser Ivar's thigh, but did not cut into his flesh. He made a cry of pain as the sword slashed him, but swung his blade once more, defending a death blow from slicing into the skin of his neck. Although he had sustained a wound upon his leg, Ari was not faring as well as he; she was not as strong, fast or agile, and the creatures had met their blades with her skin more than once. Every parry was weaker than the one before as blood spilled from Ari's body. Her arms and legs bled and her face had been cut. In a single moment, her head was struck clean from her armoured body, her blood spilling across the marble floor like a crimson flood. Her head rolled through it before it crumbled to black dust. To be touched by the dead was to receive their curse, Ser Ivar realised as her headless body was filled with black smoke. Her death did not sadden him, for she was a woman he had barely known, but her death frightened him more than he already was. Ser Ivar was alone, and the dead were still upon him. Ivar was quick to destroy a reanimated Ari with his blade and the bones crumbled to the floor.
Although many of the dead had turned to dust at the meeting of his blade, there were still many surrounding him in the dark, circular room, and Ser Ivar found himself fighting in the centre, pushed away from the wall as his fight continued. His strength was beginning to waver as the blade of the undead cut at his calf and another sliced against his cheek.
The young knight grunted in pain before thrusting his swords upwards, crushing the metal of his sword into bone. The bone burst into dust as the blade crashed against it, and the undead disappeared into the cold air. Another creature appeared behind Ser Ivar; he spun on his heel, his cloak swirling behind him, and met his blade with another. The undead – with skin still upon the bones and the skull half morphed into that of a wolf – parried, blades flying at one another. Ser Ivar's blade cut through the air in a new direction, catching the dead off guard and sliced the creature's head from the skeletal body. The skull rolled across the marble floor, stopping in the sand, before it crumbled to dust like Ari's had done.
He fought and he bled, until the undead were once again dead.
Ser Ivar's fingers were slippery with thick blood. He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. His breathing was rapid and painful. Ivar could feel his body involuntarily swallowing the black smoke like poison. It filled his lungs and plagued his body with darkness. He could feel her curse inside of him, clutching to his soul. He mumbled panicked words to himself as he dropped his blade, circling the room as he saw he was entirely alone and his body continued to bleed. A million thoughts rushed through his mind and nothing felt real.
The stone doors suddenly opened. He breathed more black smoke.
Ser Ivar felt a rush of relief as the doors parted, and ran towards them with haste, blood glued to his boots. His sudden relief vanished in the instant he felt it; the doors had opened, but his army filled the corridors, their bodies butchered and their hearts still of beating, but their eyes were black with smoke. The darkness fuelled their dead bodies forward towards Ser Ivar, sprinting at the knight. Ivar’s blade was cut from his hands.
JORGEN
This place wasn’t home; home was the sweet smell of fresh wet pine stretching over fields of endless green as far as the eye could see. Home was endless fields of fresh flowers, fat pine forests with bloated roots exposed from the damp soil and twisting grey-black mountains that towered into the swollen rain clouds so magnificent that the tops of the spiking peaks were void from sight. Home was endless dark stone houses and quaint farms, traders selling fine silk and cotton garments, freshly baked bread and rich crimson wine. Home was warm and wet. This cold, bleak place was not Jorgen’s home; home was Balfold, the free realm in the western lands, not the bordering kingdoms of Askavold, where frozen steel collars bound
a hundred thousand men and women in slavery, where the decade long winter continued with no end in sight. Jorgen Black dreamed of the vast green forest that surrounded his father’s castle as he awoke at first light in the wintriness of the murky south of Askavold, dazed and bemused like a lost dog, searching for home. Where am I? He thought as a dull light seeped through the frozen glass, a foreign chill biting at the numbing tips of his fingers and his frozen toes, reminding him that he was far from his own lands.
It was barely light when Jorgen’s onyx eyes fluttered open, disorientated, a world black like a moonless night, arctic soft fur scratching his black beard underneath his broad chin. This world was not like the one he had left, when the world went black around him, drifting into an unwilling slumber at the hit of a glass bottle. Jorgen had been gracelessly carried back to his cold chambers in the Stone Keep, not that he could remember. His head hurt from the drink, he supposed. It always hurt because of the drink – he knew one day it would find him dead.
As Jorgen dreamed of the beauty of Balfold, his thoughts were overpowered by the vociferous sounds of wooden wheels scraping across stone and a door prying open with a deafening creak. It was coupled by a familiar voice ringing excruciatingly through his pounding head, screeching like a dying animal. ‘It’s about time you woke up, you lazy, good-for-nothing bastard.’ Jorgen Black heard the sounds of a familiar young voice ringing through the cold chambers as he lay upon the soft white furs. Each word was as though he was struck again and again by the fragmented glass – not that he could remember who had delivered the blow. It was the voice of his younger brother, a crippled boy from the waist down, his legs twisted and thin like crow’s legs. Erik was close, the sound of the wheels of his chair rolling closer to Jorgen over the icy stone floor. ‘You’re drunk, you’re always fucking drunk. How did I know you would slip back into old habits, even in the capital? The Prince of Askavold is making haste towards your chambers, Jorgen. It’s best not to keep Goran Grey waiting – you know how the prince is.’
‘Kill me now, brother, if you’d be so kind.’ Jorgen drunkenly groaned as he rolled onto his back painfully, his head throbbing with agony. The young, black haired man could hear the great ice dragons outside of the vast castle walls, roaring in the early hours of the frosty morning over the Craghollow ruins. He rolled over in his warm furs and smacked his fist against the icy glass above his bed. ‘Be quiet! My head is in agony as it is without your damn roaring at this hour!’ The lord screamed from his bed towards the window with tired, foggy eyes, but the dragons could not hear his voice as they flew over the mountain tops and roared powerfully in the light of the rising sun. ‘You could almost assume they had no regards for those possessed by the powers of rich red wine and too many bottles of mead.’
‘It’s best to save your voice for the prince.’ Erik reminded his twenty-four-year-old brother as Jorgen rubbed his eyes in the low light of the dark morning.
‘Prince of the fucking Askavold…’ Jorgen acknowledged his brother’s voice, rubbing his thumping head, speaking as though there was something bitter upon his tongue. Although Jorgen was a prince in his own right, he was in another kingdom, in another castle, with another king – this place was not his home.
‘Jorgen Black, wake yourself. The sun is almost above us.’ He heard the rough voice of the Prince of Askavold – Goran Grey – outside of his doors, gruff and tiresome. ‘If the dragons haven’t already woken you, I will do the honours.’
Erik’s lips turned into a knowing smile. Imprisoned in his drunken daze, Jorgen quickly remembered where he was; he was in the southern king's castle in the capital city of Askavold, where the snow plagued the lands, and the king's castle of Stone Keep was the most dangerous place for him to be. The king had two sons, Goran and Andor Grey, and the silent war that waged between the two brothers was the deadliest of all. Unfortunately for Jorgen Black – the son of another king, in another kingdom – he was caught right in the middle of it. ‘My father’s tournament is tomorrow; I will fight my brother in the training yard as preparation when the sun rises; I wish for you to see him fall again by my hand. Never again will we duel with blunt swords, not after the last time. It took long enough to convince Andor to fight me yet again.’
‘Right on cue,’ Jorgen grumbled quietly to Erik as he rubbed his eyes warily. Erik’s lips twisted into a smug smile. It was nearly sunrise. The sun was beginning to show itself over the peaks of the snowy mountains through Jorgen's frosty window. He raised himself painfully in his hard bed, shooting his black eyes through the wintry windows, and saw the flight of the winged creatures through the falling snow. Although dragons were common in the southern kingdom, the Prince of the Balfold was still in awe of the creatures he had barely seen. The dragons always reminded him of Caeda Lienhart, Ragnar’s eldest daughter. It was a name he tried not to think of often; the thoughts of her only plagued him with an unshakable guilt he could never quite escape from.
‘Jorgen!’ Goran Grey shouted for a second time, his fists banging fiercely upon the tainted oak doors.
‘I will be with you in a moment, Your Grace.’ Jorgen urged drunkenly – trying to refrain his tongue from cursing to the heavens – pulling his eyes from the window, dressing himself and wiping the sweat from his forehead. He could barely keep himself focused as the thoughts of the great beasts outside of the castle walls still plagued him. Although the dragons never attacked the cities, they still concerned him greatly, and all his thoughts kept looming back to Caeda. Erik was silent, although he knew precisely what – who – his older brother was thinking about. He dared not to utter her name aloud.
‘I do not wish for you to call me ‘Your Grace’ again,’ Goran Grey laughed from the other side of the door, but he did not enter Jorgen's dark chambers. ‘My father may insist upon his friends calling him lord or majesty, but my friends merely need to call me by my name.’
Jorgen struggled to find words. ‘Perhaps I am readying myself for the day you'll become the king. One day we’ll be kings together, ruling over two kingdoms.’
‘My father may be old but he is still strong.’ Goran Grey – his brother by law – assured. ‘He has many years left upon the throne of bones.’
‘Luckily for us,’ Erik uttered under his breath and rolled his black eyes as he wheeled his chair towards the door. Jorgen threw his black cloak around his broad shoulders, the collar lined with dark fur of the southern wolves, and took hold of his shining long sword, Night, which was crafted from the finest southern steel, even though Jorgen did not come from the south at all. He was a western man by blood, and one day the west of the world would be his to rule. He fastened his cloak with a silver pin, forged into the shape of a crow, the same crow that was placed upon the Black House's banners. He took a deep breath, holstered his sword, and opened the large oak door.
The eldest son of the southern king was waiting for his honoured guest in the cold stone corridors of the Stone Keep. Goran Grey's hair was as black as ink and touched the tops of his shoulders, curling like his mother’s hair had. He was shorter than Jorgen was and his eyes were as green as the western plains. Goran had the common pale southern skin. ‘I waited long enough.’ The prince laughed, a young man yet to reach his twenty fifth name day – although they were both princes and of the same age, both equals, Goran didn’t seem to agree. He leaned his broad body against the cold stone, his body clad in light steel and fur. His blade was already in his grasp with desperation to use it.
‘You’re sober,’ Jorgen noticed as he closed the doors of his chambers behind his crippled brother. Sobriety between the brothers-by-law was rare.
‘You’re far from it; did you fall asleep with too much mead in your stomach?’
‘No.’ Jorgen lied with the hint of a smile on his full lips.
‘My brother’s a liar,’ Erik insisted with a mocking smile. Jorgen kicked his brother’s chair with his worn leather boots. ‘He fell asleep drunk for the forth night this week.’
‘And I heard
from a whore that you couldn’t get that thing between your legs to work.’ Jorgen’s lips twisted into a grin as he pointed at his brother’s lap. The seventeen-year-old crippled boy hit his older brother in the stomach with a weak fist. The Prince of Askavold was laughing, only for a short second, before his voice became serious and suddenly desperate.
‘Come now, quickly my friends; let us not keep my sword waiting.’ Goran grinned at the thought of fighting with his younger brother. ‘I had my steel sharpened for the occasion.’
The laughter died. Jorgen’s rosy lips fell back into a stiff, hard line, trying to stand straight with the drink still clouding his mind.
‘Perhaps you should not repeat the events of the past,’ Jorgen Black urged carefully as he followed Goran through the cold twisting corridors of the Stone Keep. Keeping his balance was a difficulty. Jorgen leaned himself on the back of Erik’s wheeled chair and pushed him behind the Prince of Askavold. The prince moved with urgency past servants and suited guards with the fox crest printed on their silver armour. They were all hurrying themselves to watch the two Princes of Askavold duel. They all wished to see blood spill for a second time. ‘You know what happened the last time you fought your brother with sharpened steel.’ Jorgen said, disturbed.
‘How could I forget?’ Goran grinned in delight. ‘You missed a glorious fight.’
‘Glorious?’ Sick bastard, Jorgen thought, although the words nearly slipped from his loose tongue.
Goran smiled. ‘Perhaps one of the greatest moments in my life, Jorgen; I could not think of a better word to describe the feeling of a victory over that little bastard brother of mine, watching him beg for my mercy.’
Jorgen need not reply to his brother-by-law; he may have missed the fight between Goran and Andor Grey, but he had seen enough. Andor Grey's pain had been anything but glorious. There had been no honour in it. The ache in his chest grew deeper at the remembrance; memories of his earlier years involuntarily visiting the Stone Keep retuned callously, even though he had spent most of his time in the capital drunk. White and dark days, sitting upon the icy balcony in the city’s coldness, a tattered book in his rough hand and a bottle of ale in the other, suddenly disturbed by the sounds of Andor Grey's screaming and sudden blood before his dark eyes as far as the eye could see...