SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY
Jonathan Moeller
Table of Contents
Description
A brief author’s note
Chapter 1: The Host of Carrion
Chapter 2: The Invasion
Chapter 3: Scythe
Chapter 4: Cathair Avamyr
Chapter 5: Firebow
Chapter 6: Fallback
Chapter 7: The Illicaeryn Jungle
Chapter 8: Cathair Caedyn
Chapter 9: Unity
Chapter 10: Raiders
Chapter 11: A Younger Woman
Chapter 12: The Lord of Carrion
Chapter 13: Siege Machinery
Chapter 14: Regrets
Chapter 15: Thunderbolts
Chapter 16: The Woman In Flames
Chapter 17: Ruin
Chapter 18: Blood of the Dark Elves
Chapter 19: Something New
Chapter 20: Blue Fire
Chapter 21: One Final Chance
Chapter 22: The Last Stand Of The Gray Elves
Chapter 23: Freedom
Chapter 24: Quest
Epilogue: Maledicti
Other books by the author
About the Author
Glossary of Characters
Glossary of Locations
Chart of Kings, Cities, the Maledicti & the Seven Swords
Description
The quest of the Seven Swords will destroy kingdoms.
Ridmark Arban is the Shield Knight, questing to stop the rise of the evil New God. But Ridmark and his companions are caught in the war between the final remnant of the dying gray elves and the brutal muridach horde.
Unless Ridmark can save the gray elves, he and his friends will die, and the New God will rise in power to enslave the world...
Sevenfold Sword: Unity
Copyright 2018 by Jonathan Moeller.
Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.
Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.
Ebook edition published May 2018.
All Rights Reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.
A brief author’s note
At the end of this book, you will find a Glossary of Characters and a Glossary of Locations listing all the major characters and locations in this book, along with a chart listing the nine cities & Kings of the realm of Owyllain, the bearers of the Seven Swords, and the seven high priests of the Maledicti.
A map of the realm of Owyllain is available on the author's website at this link.
A map of the realm of Andomhaim is available on the author’s website at this link.
Chapter 1: The Host of Carrion
Eighty-six days after the quest of the Seven Swords began, eighty-six days after the day in the Year of Our Lord 1488 when the cloaked stranger came to the High King of Andomhaim’s court, Ridmark Arban felt a growing sense of unease.
Perhaps even alarm.
It had become clear that he and his companions were not alone in the foothills of the Gray Mountains.
It was a cloudy day, the sky overhead like a hammered sheet of steel. Ridmark would have expected rain, but Magatai and Tamara Earthcaller agreed that the wind was the wrong direction for a storm. The rain came off the steppes, but it never came from the mountains. That was just as well because it was cooler in the foothills. Ridmark had spent enough days traveling under the blazing sun of Owyllain to appreciate the respite from the heat.
Right now, though, the weather was a distant concern.
The tracks in the valley held his full attention.
There were many shallow valleys in the lower foothills of the Gray Mountains, and Ridmark walked through one. A narrow creek wound its way through the center of the valley, fed by snowmelt from the mountains. The rocky valley was full of tough grasses.
All the grass had been trampled underfoot.
Ridmark took a few steps forward, examining the ground.
Everywhere he looked, on every inch of ground, he saw the tracks of muridachs.
Most of the ratmen wore boots, and he saw the distinctive nailed tracks their boots left on the earth. Other muridachs, usually their scouts and berserkers, preferred to travel barefoot, and they left clawed footprints. Ridmark had seen muridach tracks all over the foothills. According to the men of Kalimnos, the muridachs had been heading south in greater and greater numbers over the last year, marching to war against the weakened gray elves of the Illicaeryn Jungle. Tracks from muridach warbands were a frequent sight in the foothills near Kalimnos.
But an army had left this trail.
And unless Ridmark missed his guess, that army had passed this way recently. Maybe even yesterday.
He took an uneasy look around. Ridmark and his companions would make a tempting target for the muridachs. Of course, any muridach warband that attacked Ridmark and the others would regret it. Ridmark’s wife was the Keeper of Andomhaim and a wielder of powerful magic. Kalussa Pendragon carried the Staff of Blades and could slaughter a troop of muridachs on her own. Tamlin, Krastikon, and Calem bore the Swords of Earth, Death, and Air between them.
And Ridmark could hold his own in a fight.
But could they stand against an entire army of muridachs? For that matter, if the muridachs realized that Ridmark and his companions had three of the Seven Swords, the ratmen might decide it worth the risk to claim weapons of such power.
A different kind of track caught Ridmark’s eye.
It was about a handspan across and sunk deep into the earth as if something heavy had driven the track into the ground. Ridmark had traveled the length and breadth of the Wilderland in Andomhaim and had seen (and fought) many strange creatures, but he had never seen a track quite like this. It looked like the mark of a claw.
Or perhaps that of a giant insect.
It was past time that Ridmark got back to the others. If a muridach army was marching through the foothills of the mountains, they needed to change their route. Perhaps it would be better to swing north, as close to the mountains as they could manage. That would slow their journey, but better to delay a few days than to run into thousands of muridach warriors looking for a fight.
He took one step to the west and stopped.
A flicker of motion had caught his eye.
Ridmark turned in a circle, drawing Oathshield from its scabbard and sweeping his eyes over the valley. Dozens of boulders littered the landscape, dotting the trampled grass, and he glimpsed a moving shadow behind one.
His fingers tightened against Oathshield. Human armies, when they marched to war, always had stragglers, men delayed by ill fortune, or maybe by laziness. Perhaps muridach armies were no different. And perhaps the muridach stragglers, seeing Ridmark’s dark elven armor and his gray elven cloak, had decided he would make an easy target.
He strode towards the boulder, Oathshield coming up in guard, and the muridachs came into sight.
There were four of the creatures. Muridachs tended to be shorter than humans but taller than halflings. These muridachs came to about five and a half feet in height, their bodies covered in brownish-black fur. They walked like humans and used weapons and tools as humans did, but they had the heads of giant rats, with beady black eyes and long, tufted ears pierced with earrings of bronze and copper. They also had giant, chisel-like teeth that could punch through flesh and bone and even armor without muc
h difficulty. Pink tails curled behind them, as thick as Ridmark’s arm. The musky stench of the muridachs’ fur filled Ridmark’s nostrils, and the ratmen advanced.
“This needn’t end in a fight,” said Ridmark in orcish, watching the muridachs. “But if you want a fight, I’ll give you one.”
The muridachs chittered with laughter. The voices of muridachs, at least male muridachs, were deep and raspy. But they all laughed with that same high-pitched, chittering laugh. Something about it grated on Ridmark’s ears and made his skin crawl.
“Give us your sword and armor, human, and we shall let you go,” said one of the muridachs.
Ridmark snorted. “Then you’ll just kill me and eat me.”
Again, the muridachs laughed.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said the muridach leader, “and you have chosen the hard way.”
Ridmark shrugged and took Oathshield in a two-handed grip. “As you wish, then.”
He took one step to the left, and the muridachs hesitated, raising their bronze swords in guard. Strength surged into Ridmark through his bond with Oathshield, and he charged, moving faster than the muridachs would have thought possible. He swung Oathshield with all his strength and the soulblade’s power driving his blow, and he took off the head of the muridach on the left. The rat-like head bounced away, the black eyes wide and staring with surprise, and the furred body fell to the ground, crimson blood spurting from the stump of the neck.
The remaining three muridachs whirled, trying to keep Ridmark in sight, and he drove Oathshield forward. The soulblade punched through the nearest muridach’s leather armor and found its heart. The creature shrieked, and Ridmark ripped his sword free and stepped back.
The other two muridachs spread around him. Ridmark retreated, parried a slash with Oathshield, and then struck. His sword bit into the leg of the muridach on his right, and the creature stumbled. Ridmark backed away again as the muridach on his left attacked, and he parried three blows in rapid succession.
After the third attack, the muridach overbalanced, and Ridmark opened its throat with a quick slash of his soulblade. The final muridach howled and charged, and Ridmark parried, shoved, and sent the muridach stumbling back. The ratman’s weight came down on his wounded leg, and the creature staggered.
Ridmark finished the muridach with a quick stab and looked around, but nothing else moved in the valley.
He cleaned the blood from Oathshield’s blade, sheathed the sword, and headed to the west.
If there was a muridach horde loose in the hills, he needed to warn the others before it was too late.
###
Calliande Arban released the Sight with a sigh of relief, rubbing her left temple with her free hand.
It was a morning ritual for her, one she had followed every morning since they had left Aenesium to travel to Kalimnos. Her sons were of her flesh and blood, which meant she could use the Sight to find them anywhere. They remained in Aenesium, in the care of Tamlin’s master-at-arms Michael, and as far as Calliande could tell, they were safe and healthy.
That was a relief. Though it did little to assuage her guilt. She should have been with them, but her duties as Keeper demanded that she leave them in Aenesium. Did they resent her for that, she wondered? Did they feel that she had abandoned them? They had been glad to see her when she and Ridmark had returned to Aenesium after the defeat of the Necromancer, but Gareth and Joachim might have blamed her for leaving again.
Or maybe they wouldn’t. Sometimes children were surprisingly resilient.
And sometimes they were not. King Hektor Pendragon had taken a new queen after the death of Queen Helen…and his eldest son Rypheus had never, ever forgiven him for that. Then again, Rypheus had grown into manhood with the Maledictus Khurazalin whispering poison into his ear.
Thinking of the Maledicti turned her thoughts to the Maledictus of Shadows and the trap at Kalimnos, and that turned Calliande’s guilt into rage. The trap the Maledicti had prepared had thrown the death of Calliande’s daughter into her face, had made her believe that Joanna was alive and healthy. The delusion had shattered when Ridmark had beaten the Maledicti and Third had released Lord Amruthyr from his millennia-long torment.
Perhaps the Maledicti had thought the vision would break Calliande with guilt, as it almost had when Joanna had died.
It had only enraged her.
How dare they. How dare they throw her daughter’s death in her face, use it as a weapon against her. The next time Calliande encountered one of the Maledicti, she would make them regret it.
Though the Maledicti had already heaped up a mountain of crimes, iniquities, and innocent blood in their service to their New God.
That thought reminded her to focus on the present. It would be an ill fate if the Keeper of Andomhaim were taken unawares and slain because she was brooding. Calliande took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders to ease the unaccustomed weight of her new armor, and looked back at the others.
It was a somber company that she and her husband led to the east.
Kalussa Pendragon walked behind Calliande, her face distant, her eyes hooded. Like Calliande, she wore a cuirass of overlapping plates of golden metal that hung to her knees, taken from the dungeons beneath the Tower of Nightmares. Sir Calem brought up the back of the line, his face blank, and he had not spoken a word save to answer a question since they had left Kalimnos. The mind-altering spell had removed Kalussa’s and Calem’s inhibitions, and they had spent that day acting on their attraction to each other. When the spell had broken, and clarity had returned, Kalussa had blamed herself for seducing Calem, and Calem blamed himself for taking advantage of Kalussa.
Calliande had to admit she thought the whole thing foolish, but she was not in the best mood.
Behind Kalussa came Third and Kyralion. Both were lost in thought. Kyralion wore the golden armor that Kolmyrion had given him in the Tower of Nightmares, a golden sword of gray elven steel at his belt. Lord Amruthyr had told Third and Kyralion that the fate of the gray elves lay in their hands. Calliande supposed that would give anyone cause to reflect.
Though she could not see how Third and Kyralion could decide the fate of the gray elves.
Prince Krastikon came next. Like the others, he had taken gray elven armor from the Tower of Nightmares before they had departed Kalimnos, and Calliande had to admit it suited him. Like the others, he looked distant. Perhaps he was thinking of his wife, far away in Trojas. Calliande felt a pang of sympathy for him. With her Sight, she could check on her children whenever she wished, and with her magic, she could find Ridmark anywhere. Krastikon enjoyed no such luxury.
After Krastikon came Tamlin and Tamara, and the two of them looked…
Happy. Unlike the others, they looked happy.
Tamara Earthcaller wore a long coat, a vest of scutian leather, trousers, and dusty boots, and she now carried Lord Amruthyr’s staff in her right hand. She looked at Tamlin, and sometimes her mismatched eyes of purple and blue flashed with delight when she smiled. Tamlin had replaced the bronze armor of an Arcanius Knight with overlapping plates of gray elven steel taken from the Tower of Nightmares, and some of his old gallant manner had resurfaced. He played the courtly knight for Tamara, much to her amusement and pleasure.
Normally, Calliande would have said that it was obvious they were falling in love. Except that Tamara had also been both Tamlin’s slain wife Tysia and Tirdua of Trojas. In a way, it was like a reunion. Calliande had been teaching Tamara to meditate and focus her mind, trying to draw out the memories that troubled her with nightmares, but so far it had not worked.
A squawk came to Calliande’s ears, and she turned her head.
A struthian lizard loped towards them. The creature looked gangly and awkward, with a long neck, waving tail and spindly legs, yet she ran with fluid grace, her tail stretched stiff behind her for balance. Atop the struthian rode a Takai halfling in boots, trousers, and a vest of scutian hide, his muscled arms marked with swirling
tattoos of blue and black. His green eyes remained ever watchful, and he had traded the practice of lacquering his hair into a horned shape for the simplicity of pulling it back into a tail. He carried a bow and a pair of javelins, and Kyralion’s soulstone-empowered sword hung in its scabbard next to his saddle.
Calliande smiled as she saw him. Nothing seemed to dent Magatai’s invincible self-confidence and cheerfulness. The Takai nomads seemed to regard facing death cheerfully as one of the highest virtues.
“Mighty Keeper,” said Magatai, reining up Northwind. “Magatai has returned from scouting to the south.”
“So the mighty Keeper has observed,” said Calliande in a dry voice. Some quirk of the Takai language seemed to cause Magatai to refer to himself in the third person when speaking in Latin. “What have you seen?”
“There are no foes from here to the steppes proper,” said Magatai. “Friend Ridmark has gone to scout to the east and the north, yes?”
“He has,” said Calliande. Magatai was always polite, which seemed to be another trait of the Takai halflings, possibly to cut down on deaths from duels. Yet he always referred to Ridmark as “friend Ridmark,” and he applied the same honorific to Kyralion and Third, but to no one else. It had taken Calliande about a day to figure out that Magatai only spoke that way about those who had accompanied him into the Tower of Nightmares to face the Maledicti and the Scythe. “I think he’s coming back this way. He should be back soon.”
Magatai frowned. “Magatai does not like this wind. It stinks of the ratmen.”
“Do you think they are coming?” said Tamara.
Tamara and Tamlin had drawn closer. Kalussa tried to smile a little at Tamlin and didn’t quite manage it.
“Magatai does not know, Tamara Earthcaller,” said Magatai. He tapped his sword hilt a few times. “The ratmen are ever cunning and must travel in large groups to survive the journey across the Takai steppes, lest the warriors of the Takai destroy them. Magatai fears that we shall encounter such a large band in these hills.” He snorted. “Though since friend Ridmark smote the Maledicti, and if you truly defeated the Necromancer and King Justin, then perhaps the muridachs shall be no threat at all.”
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