It was not enough. The champion was pushed back several steps by his tormentors, but then his hulking guards came up beside him, and the paladins were again on the defensive. All around them, the lines of the Basileans shrank as men fell to enemy sword cuts and axe blows. Though three and four of the slaves of the Abyss might fall for every one of the Holy Host, the weight of numbers was still much in the enemy’s favor.
Brother Tebald fell, his chest pierced by a hurled spear. Brother Bartolomo stood over Tebald as the Hearth Knight’s lifeblood flowed from his wound. Tebald’s face had already turned deathly pale. Bartolomo’s only desire now was to prevent the defilement of his friend’s corpse before he too perished in his turn.
“There is nowhere for you to run, puny man,” the demon jeered. “You have fought well. I will honor you by placing your head atop a spear and set it beside ones bearing those of your brother paladin and your general.” It roared with laughter, as if it had been told an uproariously amusing jest.
“Don’t waste your time!” Bartolomo shot back, aiming a cut at the champion’s grinning visage. “You’ll be too busy looking for the heart I’ve ripped from your chest!”
Bartolomo struck again and again at the hateful thing, with skill enough to cleave its shield in two and draw blood from the enemy general’s wrist.
The demon made no sound as Bartolomo’s sword cut open the red flesh of its arm. Its eyes became suffused with anger, and it responded to the strike with a flurry of mighty blows. Bartolomo was driven back and then stumbled over Tebald’s corpse. He awaited the end as the champion raised his sword once more.
Then he heard the blowing of horns.
*****
Along with the sounding of horns there came shouts and songs and the myriad noises of a forest that had come alive. Hundreds, and then thousands, of the People of the Forest emerged from the eaves of the trees that encircled the clearing to take vengeance against the invaders of the Lady’s wood. They came in swarms, they came in small bands and packs, and as lone warriors too, tackling the stunned Abyssals who too late saw them attacking from behind.
A tremor of panic rippled through the horde as the warriors struggled to adjust to the new enemy that had struck them from behind. So intent on their imminent victory had they become, that they had imprudently abandoned all thought of flank and rear security. They had stood, just moments before, on the verge of a great victory. Now, they were on the precipice of defeat. The horde of the Abyss seemed to waver as if pressed by a mighty wave that it feebly attempted to resist. Panic became terror. The urge to flee seized the Abyssals, their miserable hearts filled with fright, but the enemy came at them from every direction, and they had no idea which way to run.
Hundreds of the Abyssals were felled within moments as centaurs and elves emerged from the treeline, their bows flinging inerrant arrows against the stunned enemy. Great rents in the ground opened wide, cracked apart by elementals of the earth. Into them fell hundreds of shocked demons and their thralls. Their cries of dismay were silenced just as quickly as the torn fabric of the soil was closed over them by the elementals, who knitted the tear they had created with the skill of a surgeon stitching shut a wound.
From their air too, the Galahirians attacked, sylphs and sprites filled with rage at the desecrators of their fair forest. Eagles struck from above, talons tearing at the eyes of the cowering mortals and demons beneath them. The darts of the Abyssals could find no mark among the onrushing warriors of Galahir. Elemental spirits of the air blew mightily, driving their missiles back into their own ranks.
Naiads of the waters, armed with tridents, came upon the foul demons in a rush and struck heads from shoulders. Others of their kind felled soul-damned mortals four and five at a time with harpoons sharper than razors. Elsewhere, horned things were crushed beneath the trunk-like legs of a sentient oak, one of the mystical herdsman of the trees of this ancient land.
The demons were pressed ever more tightly together, until they stood shoulder to shoulder, with not even room enough to raise their crude shields or swing their rusting swords. Then spirits of caged fire were among them. These descended like meteors, bursting among the dense-packed islands of the enemy. The Abyssals were seared in the elementals’ flames, shrieking in pain and fear as they sought any means of escape. The horde had never been much of an army. It had been kept together more by easy victory and lust for the flesh of the Basilean foe than by discipline. With hope of victory gone and death by fire imminent, the Abyssals abandoned all thought of mutual protection in favor of personal survival. Like a tall tower that had been shaken to its foundations by a quake, and reduced to a tottering collection of stone blocks, the army of the Abyss split apart into an atomized mob of directionless individuals.
Without a word, the folk of the wood parted in several places so that the Abyssals could find avenues out of the trap. This was not done out of a sense mercy. A cornered animal will fight to the last when all hope of escape is lost, and this the Galahirians understood better than anyone else. No, the panic-stricken were purposely allowed to flee into the woods where they would be hunted to extinction, with much less danger and cost to their pursuers. The Abyssals began to flee as soon as they found these paths, little suspecting that they were being directed to their slaughter beneath the Lady’s trees.
All around the Basileans, it seemed as if legends had come to life and walked now beneath the blue sky. They recovered from their shock quickly, glad beyond words that this new force was not some reinforcement for the enemy, but the very people whom they had come to fight beside. They redressed their ranks, and made ready to launch their own counterattack.
*****
Zelgarag turned from the prostrate form of the paladin to face the new threat. With the Galahirians was a hydra, a creature made much in the form of a drake, but possessing five heads attached to its body by long, sinuous necks. These heads rose and fell, dragging demons and degenerates alike from their hiding places on the corpse-strewn field and swallowing them whole. Zelgarag prepared to engage this beast and pointed his blade at it, marking it as his chosen foe. Then another thing interposed itself between Zelgarag and the hydra, which briskly stomped off to find other enemies to devour.
Zelgarag looked at the man - for it was a man, and a Basilean paladin at that - with wonder. “Who are you?” Then Zelgarag laughed, and there was no joy in it, but only the cruel humor of one who finds comedy in the pain of others. He gestured to his guards, indicating that they should stand aside and let him deal with this new foe. “No matter, you will be dead soon enough, unremembered, with nothing to mark your passing. Come closer.”
“I want you to know my name, demon,” said the paladin. “I am Dillen Genemer, sworn champion of the Lady whose realm you defile.” Eyes filled with terrible purpose, Dillen raised his sword in challenge. “I know your name as well, demon. You are Zelgarag, a champion amongst the hordes of the Abyss and the master of this army of the damned.”
Dillen strode forward. “Not today will I die. My destiny is other. You, however, have come to the end of the thread woven by Fate. She has decided that yours will be cut today, and I have come to enact her judgment.”
Black blade and silver sword met in a shower of orange and yellow sparks. The paladin swung his sword once more, aiming his cut at the demon’s neck. The fiend parried deftly and sidestepped so that he stood closer and to Dillen’s left, shielded side. He next unleashed an avalanche of blows against Dillen, battering his shield until it fell from his arm in a shower of splinters.
With both hands on his sword, Dillen countered the assault, neutralizing each new attack made by the Abyssal lord. His skill with the blade seemed to bloom, with every lesson he’d ever been taught by his instructors coming together in him in this moment. He cut and thrust efficiently, and very soon, he had forced his foe onto his back foot. With a snap of his sword, he grazed the nose of the enemy general. Black blood dribbled from the scratch.
Zelgarag stepped back from the
combat, touching his nose. Blood covered his fingers. Clearly, no previous opponent had ever landed a blow to his face.
“A bloody nose suits you well,” Dillen said as he circled his opponent, careful to keep the demon champion in front of him at all times. “Perhaps, if you had taken such a wound beforehand, you’d have learned caution, and been more reluctant to invade my Queen’s sacred woods.”
Zelgarag growled. “I will drink your blood from your skull before this day is done!”
“You talk too much. I prefer to fight.”
“I have been merely toying with you, but now, you will die.”
“Your army of fainthearts has fled, creature of Hell. Look around. They have abandoned you. Your plan was clever, but it has failed.”
Zelgarag glanced about and saw that the paladin had spoken truthfully. The vermin that he had led into battle were deserting the field, leaving him alone but for his loyal guard, who were now surrounded and being cut down by the resurgent Basileans.
“I have no idea what trickery you have worked,” Zelgarag hissed, “but I will take your head before I depart!”
“It is your head that will be mine,” Dillen promised. He raised his sword, saluted the champion, and assumed a defensive posture. “Are you scared? I hope that you are.”
Zelgarag bellowed with rage and strode toward Dillen. He lifted his sword above his head and broke into a run. He did not get far. A spearhead of Basilean steel protruded from his chest, blood gushing from the wound. Behind him stood Bartolomo on unsteady feet. The knight paladin sank to his knees, drained of what little energy he had left to him. Dillen rushed forward and struck Zelgarag’s head from his torso. It plopped to the ground, a look of fury mixed with shock frozen forever onto his dead visage.
Bartolomo wheezed. “So good of you to show up, Dillen. I was afraid you’d miss this party entirely.” He chuckled a little. “Don’t look so worried. I’ll live, minus an eye.” Then he grew serious. “I had feared the worst for you. But you have saved us.”
Dillen knelt beside the older knight and sat him up. “I found the People of the Green Lady.” He nodded to the folk of the forest, who were chasing the remaining Abyssals from the field to meet their doom in the depths of the woods. “I am one of them now. I must leave.”
Bartolomo coughed. A small rivulet of blood fell down his cheek from beneath the bandage over his left eye. “What do you mean?”
Dillen stood. “I am the Lady’s knight now. I am no longer a Blade of Onzyan. I must go, and join my people.”
“What are you saying? We are to fight beside the Galahirians too.”
“And you will, but without me. I belong to her now, not Basilea.” What else could he say that Bartolomo would understand? That the Lady’s price for saving the Basileans was his sworn service to her unto death? The Green Lady had showed him many things, of the past, the present, and perhaps even the future. She had shown him what lurked in the deepest parts of the earth, horrifying and unfathomably wicked things inimical to all life. She had allowed him a glimpse of the very fracture in her own soul, in which light and darkness vied unceasingly for supremacy. She had granted him comprehension of the grand stakes for which she played. She competed for not just cities or border fortresses, as did the lords of Men, but for the survival of all living things. There had been so many other revelations in the transcendent vision which the Lady had gifted to him, inexpressible in speech, but much of which he had nonetheless understood with his heart. Not all of it had been clear, but after seeing it, he had not hesitated to pledge himself to Her. He was needed to be a defender of Nature in the World Without the Lady’s realm. He would go where the Lady’s other folk could not; into the cities of Men and their castles too; he would sail aboard their ships to the far lands where his knowledge of Mannish ways and his sharp sword would be invaluable. He would venture into the dark places where the Lady’s light too often failed to penetrate. The weak and defenseless he would uplift; the wicked he would humble. Just as an earthquake might change the age-old course of a river in an instant, the trajectory of his own future had been forever altered by this fleeting moment in time. He knew that he had made the right choice.
Bartolomo’s face was creased briefly with confusion. Then he smiled. “Whatever has happened, I know that I can do naught to stop you. Go.”
“Thank you, Brother.”
Dillen waited until Stevven, Arkbald, and Bartolomo’s squire, Jedd, came up and took charge of the wounded man. “It is good to see you both alive.”
“I knew you would make it back to us,” Stevven said. “There’s no braver man in this army than you.”
Dillen nodded his thanks. He stood and turned to leave.
“What shall I tell your father?” Bartolomo asked before Dillen had gone far. “He will want to know what has become of you.”
“Tell him. . . tell him that I have found myself.”
*****
Night had come and a stillness covered the field. There were no survivors from the Abyssal army. The Basileans and their forest allies had been thorough in dispatching the enemy wounded before they had marched off.
A solitary figure picked her way across the sea of bodies. Damathana had waited until after midnight to be sure that she would not be seen. She stood in the center of the field, standing before the pile formed from the cold corpses of Zelgarag’s guards. In their midst was an upright spear, a black spear, that had once belonged to Zelgarag. Now it was his head that adorned it, and not that of the Basilean general whom he had slain. She looked at her dead lover in his eyes. They were blank, staring mindlessly into the distance. Her own eyes did not blink as she studied his. No tears either escaped them to moisten her cheeks. She turned on her heel and strode off.
She did not look back.
Crimson Winter
By Brandon Rospond
Despite the burning passion and adrenaline of combat, the northern winds bit thoroughly through Gavin Stalspar's armor. Even though the colors of the banner he fought under were different, he was ever accustomed to the heavy armor and the two-handed greatsword that he used to cut down another infernal creature of the Abyss. Immediately, his eyes shifted to the next demon that furiously charged at him. Gavin brought his sword up on the defense, parrying and blocking where he could, but this inferno-fueled beast with skin reddened by hellfire was stronger than the last of its kin; he felt himself retreating slightly from the press of steel. Utilizing years of knowledge of knighthood, Gavin found his footing and pushed back with both hands to gain ground. Finding an opening in the demon's haphazard defense, he sliced diagonally, cleaving the lower Abyssal’s chest in two and leaving the beast bleeding out in the snow.
“Ho there, Sir Brooding!” a voice called out from behind Gavin. He pulled off his winged helmet, exposing his shaven head to the bitter winds, as his green eyes looked behind him. “Save some of the beasties for the rest of the Alliance!”
An elf, probably in his late twenties, only a few years younger than himself, came sauntering over with his bow held low in one hand and an arrow twirled between the fingers of the other. A sly smile was curled inside of his dark goatee as he eyed over the fallen Abyssals surrounding Gavin.
“I know you're no novice to this sort of thing, but I think some of the others would like the chance to send these bastards back to the Abyss!”
“Darriel,” the grizzled man nodded toward his ally. “So is that it? Have they stopped their assault?”
“For now.”
Gavin turned when he heard a snarl behind him. One of the demons that he had struck down had not been killed. It dragged itself onto its knees, the snow stained red as it pulled itself forward, its hell-forged blade still held in an offensive gesture. Gavin turned back to Darriel, who casually held up his bow with his one arm, eyeing the Abyssal with one eye closed, scrunching up his facial features in mock analysis. Eventually, he made a clicking of his tongue and shook his head, dropping the bow and shrugging with a smug grin at Gavin. The form
er knight sighed before taking a few steps forward and driving his blade through the creature.
Retrieving his greatsword, he turned to face the unit of leather and fur clad northmen he had been assigned, each person with long, thick beards and hair, which were in stark contrast to Gavin’s light scruff. “We’re done here. Fall back to the city.”
His men obliged without hesitation, slinging their heavy weapons over shoulders or back in sheaths, and Gavin turned once more to Darriel. The two led their respective units through the battlefield, along icy paths that led to the fortress of the Northern Alliance, the citadel in the Winterlands known as Chill.
“What is the status of our forces?” Gavin's gravelly voice spoke just above the bite of the winds as he replaced his helmet.
“Eh, nothing exciting,” Darriel shrugged, still twirling his arrow. “Casualties minimal on our side, seems the enemy just threw together another force to keep us on our toes.”
“Or to probe us,” Gavin added, grimly.
“Yes, or to probe us. Whatever bizarre and amazing secrets our visionary leader, the great Prince Talannar Icekin has hidden in this icy tundra!”
Darriel waited several long seconds before Gavin finally turned to look at him, wiggling his eyebrows as if to accent his words. The older man did not share in the elf's humor and looked away.
“Ah, Sir Brooding, I expected as much stoicism from you. But alas,” the elf pointed ahead to where another group of warriors gathered under a gold, blue, and silver banner, “there are some friendly faces that still live!”
The elf finally put the arrow in the quiver slung to his back and raised his hand to wave at their allies. As they continued walking, two more unit leaders joined them, their troops following several paces back. One man was formerly of the clans known as the Varangur; Gorram Shurad, while wearing color ribbons identifying himself as part of the Alliance, wore armor even heavier than Gavin's, sporting a helmet with horns spiked into the air. His neckline and where each piece of armor ended was lined with a mixture of different furs, all wolves that he had fought alongside that had fallen in battle, each a piece now forever remaining with him. The other was a woman, Hilde Taneber formerly of the Hegemony of Basilea, whose intimidating presence in her own heavy armor was only further accentuated by the three dark scar lines that ran diagonally down her left cheek.
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