They clung fast to the sides of the dragon boat, praying to their respective gods for deliverance. Sigourd held firm to the intricately carved tail of the boat. The device swept up and back behind his head in imitation of a what the builder of the craft must have imagined such a thing to look like. He stood pinned to that tail, his arms wrapped so tightly around it he started to loose sensation in them. Which is why Sigourd couldn’t be sure of himself when that tail seemed to squirm in his grip.
It was such a quick thing, but still it was enough to register on the young lord even distracted as he was by terror. It felt to him as if the wooden tail pulsed once, like thick muscles were flexing and rolling beneath the scaled, polished skin of the boat. Surely a trick of his imagination.
‘This is it!’ bellowed Jonn Grumble, his voice barely audible over the thunder of the falls, ‘we’re going over...’ and he was right. Suddenly the rim of the great falls was beneath the little boat, the violence of the thrashing waters so unrelenting Sigourd felt as if the boat would shake apart, even as the dragon headed prow of the boat crested that roiling, churning abyssal fault, even as that dragon head jutted out over the falls themselves, which dropped away into forever. They teetered on the very precipice of annihilation, and there would be no escape.
And then the unthinkable happened....
With a soul shredding shriek, like the sound of a bird of prey taking wing to hunt, the dragon boat screamed its defiance to the heavens. The sound itself came from that carved wooden head sculpted into the prow of the vessel. It came from a head that was stretching and swaying on a neck thick with corded, living muscle. It came from a snarling, fanged maw that snapped open and shut as if it were tasting life for the first time, its eyes blinking in the face of the relentless spray kicked up by the deluge.
The curved tail that Sigourd had clung to so fiercely rippled once more before whipping free from its fixed position at the aft of the boat, slashing this way and that, thumping Sigourd into the belly of the boat where he fell heavily between his companions, their eyes and mouths wide with disbelief. The great carved wings that swept along each side of the craft slammed open with a whip-crack, their gargantuan span unfurled in the beat of a heart.
Sigourd saw Jonn Grumble curse in disbelief, but the wild man’s words were lost amongst the deafening sound of the falls and the shrieking of the dragon. And then the waters dropped away beneath them, and they cleared the rim of the great falls.
But they did not fall. At least, they did not drop like a stone into the maelstrom below.
The dragon boat tucked its head and dived through the impenetrable wall of spray. It dived so fast and so steep that Sigourd felt sure they would crash into the waters below. The dragon plummeted hundreds of meters in a matter of instants, such was its furious velocity. They were only meters from the raging surface of the river when the dragon turned its head and swept them up into a sharp climb, snapping the trio back in their seats and plucking them from death’s grasp in the blink of an eye.
CHAPTER 20
Full moon...
Crowds of peasants and day workers who had spent their time laboring in the fields outside of Corrinth Vardis now filed back into the city through the great archway of the main gate. They talked and sang and laughed and grumbled about the days events as they filed back to their homes under the watchful eye of the city constabulary.
In the absence of The Regent and his fighting men, the defense of the city now lay in a skeleton force of two hundred and fifty men at arms, plus another two hundred of The Baron’s own Baratiis 75th, including the company of men that had returned with Huron from their recent foray into the Eastern Fringes.
It had been a long held belief that the city of Corrinth Vardis was largely impenetrable, and could be held for an indefinite period against any foe with naught more than a hundred men to man its defenses, such was the ingenuity of its design.
Of course, this may have been mere hyperbole on the part of those who sought to sing the praises of their city’s elaborate protection. But certainly, Corrinth Vardis had come under siege several dozen times in the course of its long history, and each time had withstood magnificently any attempts to breach its walls by an invading army.
Of course, the premise of the defenses was that the assault came from the outside, with massed men and machines laying futile siege to the city from beyond the great walls that ringed the interior. No one had ever considered the possibility that the assault would come from within, spreading like an infection spreads through a living host to bring it low from the inside out.
Scattered amongst the hundreds of workers and peasants returning from a hard days toiling in the fields, there were those who did not talk and laugh and joke with their supposed fellows. They kept their own quiet council, and turned their faces away from the casual scrutiny of the constabulary as they passed beneath the great arch and into the city proper. They carried pitch forks and trowels and spades, and wore the garments of those workers they’d quietly killed out of sight of the rest of their fellows. Under their stolen garments of rags and desiccated cloth they carried their real tools. Knives and blades and garrote wires for the business of quiet murder. After entering the city they disappeared into the thronging crowds and gathering darkness as high above a full moon rose to its zenith in the darkening sky.
Those subversives waited patiently for the traffic into the city to abate. They waited for the mighty portcullis of the main gate to slide down heavily into place, clanking shut with a resonant clang. They waited patiently for the constabulary manning that great entranceway to relax into laughing and horseplay of their own. Lighting up pipes of heady, aromatic tobacco and talking animatedly of the crude antics of the more adventurous whores working the city’s taverns and brothels. They waited for the full moon to ascend to its position of transmutational prominence in the night sky. Only then did they make their move.
Drawing blades and unwinding garrote wires they stalked the unsuspecting constabulary, falling upon the hapless guardsmen, who choked and bled out under cover of the enfolding night. Their blood, flowing darkly, glittered like quicksilver in the light of the ascendant moon.
Once the slaying of the watchers of the main gate had been accomplished, and no other remained alive who might raise an alarm, those who had posed as the city’s peasantry moved to open once more the heavy portcullis. They pulled at the archaic leavers, activating heavy chains as thick as a man’s leg which clanked and clattered loudly as the gate rose again to disappear into the meters thick walls of the great arch.
Waiting in the darkness beyond the gateway, trans-human horrors poured into the city. Bael and his hundreds of wulfen brethren. Nearly five hundred of them, fully transformed into snarling beasts of shaggy fur and razor fangs stormed through the gateway, howling at the moon, exultant at the prospect of shedding so much human blood for their cause.
Death had come to Corrinth Vardis, and it fell upon the inhabitants of the city. Soon, the howling of the wulfen was joined in chorus by the screams of the dying.
Veronique staggered down the corridor. She could barely lift her feet so heavy was the burden of grief that rested upon her.
Sigourd was dead. Her son, her beautiful son was gone forever. She would never again have the chance of holding him in her arms. Of seeing him laugh or cry or sit proudly in the saddle before riding out to hunt. She would never again get to see him nervously pushing his breakfast around the plate on the morning of a joust or tournament. He had always hated the pretense of the affairs of state, mused Veronique with an almost smile upon her lips. That smile faded quickly when the reality of her loss washed over her once more.
Veronique was numb. She could barely feel her limbs let alone the excruciating pain of the anguish she knew she ought to be feeling at this moment. But the pain was coming.
The full horror of the nightmare knight’s revelation and the fact of her husbands betrayal, very likely to his death, had yet to descend upon her. She knew that when
that time came the agony of loss would break upon her heart like waves upon the shore. It would submerge her, and suffocate her. There would be nothing left of the woman she was when the tides of torment finally receded. If they ever did.
Huron marched beside her, the sharp, clack, clack of his heavy footsteps echoing along the corridors length. Rhythmic, monotonous. A metronome beat to mark the rising pressure in Veronique’s heart.
The knight had said nothing since being ordered by The Baron to escort the Lady Veronique to the cells in the bowels of the castle. Such a thought filled Huron with a feeling of utter disgust. To picture such a one as the Lady imprisoned in those dank chambers was beyond abominable. He wanted to reach out to the woman who shuffled along before him. He wanted to hold her and comfort her, although he realized that the action was totally unfamiliar to him. He had never in all his life so much as entertained a polite conversation with such a woman as she, let alone divulged the depths of his own great turmoil in the face of her presumed heartbreak.
Unconsciously, he clenched and unclenched his armored fists in frustration. Huron sought to release his aggressions through the only means he knew. Violent action.
‘I regret the...death of the young lord,’ the words came from Huron’s mouth unbidden. He almost surprised himself by lending voice to the desperate thoughts in his head.
Veronique made no indication that she had registered the knight’s attempt at communication. Huron wondered if she’d even heard him at all. He he could not help himself, he was compelled.
‘My lady,’ he began again, ‘I regret...’
He paused mid sentence as Veronique stopped suddenly before him. She turned slowly to regard the knight from behind eyes shot red with tears. Her face was an impassive and hollow thing in the dim candle light of the corridor. She appeared more wraith than woman, her fine features sunken and hollowed out as if all the life essence had been leeched from her.
‘You regret...?’ she whispered. It was more accusation than question.
For a moment, the knight stood non plussed. For the first time in his life he was rooted to the spot by inaction. Confronted with the stark and depthless sorrow in her eyes, Huron found himself unable to formulate any more meaningful response that the weak platitudes he’d thought to attempt.
Veronique lunched herself at him. It was so sudden that she caught the knight off guard as he stood there in a stupor, managing to get close enough to beat her delicate fists upon his armor, and scratch great red weals along the side of his bearded face before Huron brought his hands up to shied himself.
Veronique screamed and wailed, unleashing all of the torment that had lain coiled within her in a blaze of incandescent rage. The wave had finally broken upon the shore, and she allowed herself to be swept up in it. Her hate and pain and guilt came gushing out of her in a torrent, and she directed it all upon the nightmare knight.
Huron, more fearful that she might damage herself than him, swept her up in his arms, pulling Veronique close so that all she could do was struggle futilely against his great, armored strength.
After many moments she relented, having burned out the blazing fire of her hatred she collapsed into his embrace, totally spent by by the hurricane of her emotions. She sobbed quietly in his arms for many moments more, almost in a fever state.
The knight held her. This was as close as he’d ever come to sharing something even remotely like an emotive connection with the object of his desires, and the feeling felt both strange and wonderful despite its bitter context.
‘It is a great pity that warning did not reach you sooner of The Baron’s perfidy,’ said the knight, ‘perhaps we might have at least saved The Regent, and spared you some suffering.’
Slowly, like a wounded bird, Veronique raised her head to look upon the knight. Huron could not help but marvel at the beauty of her, even ravaged as she was by grief.
‘It was you,’ she said, ‘you sent the note.’
Huron was quiet then, content to merely look upon the lady in his arms.
‘I don’t understand...’ said Veronique.
‘I am sworn to serve. But even duty must have its limits. I could not stand by and watch as The Baron served up your lord to his enemies.’
‘You did this in the name of honor?’ said Veronique, her sneering tone cutting into the nightmare knight as surely as any blade.
‘No,’ Huron insisted, ‘not for honor. I did this for...’
Huron allowed the sentence to trail away, but a note of understanding dawned in the eyes of Veronique. ‘Your gesture was not in vain,’ she said, ‘I was able to despatch a rider to warn my husband. With the god’s favor he’ll reach The Regent before it’s too late.’
Huron nodded, ‘You realize that there is slim hope of The Regent being able to avoid the ambush.’
Veronique’s eyes blazed then, a righteous light filling them from some place of defiance deep within, ‘I’ll take whatever hope I can find.’
A loud tolling began peeling about the corridor jut then, and beyond that its metallic resonance rolled around the skies above the palace, finding its way to the ears of all within the city’s limits.
Huron looked up suddenly, ‘The tower watch,’ he exclaimed, ‘the city is under attack!’
CHAPTER 21
Bloodletters...
Corinth Vardis was awash with blood as the wulfen tore through its narrow streets. Bael’s horde fell upon man, woman and child, rending them apart with an animalistic ferocity that beggared belief. The frantic screaming of the populace mingled with the berserk howling of their attackers, and above it all, the bells of the high towers of the city rang unendingly in warning that had come far too late.
So unexpected was the attack that the remaining city guard had not the wit or quickness to respond decisively to the rampaging hordes of fanged horrors running amok within the walls. Fragmented pockets of resistance consisting of small groups of bewildered soldiery, bolstered by a scattering of citizens who were desperate enough to fight back, attempted to repel the monsters in their midst.They met them with sword and lance and pitchfork. They met the beasts in the street, or atop buildings, or in the ornamental gardens.
And there they died. Overrun before they had any real hope of organizing a coherent defense, their blood ran freely to mingle with that of their families and neighbors.
The wulfen leapt from pillar to post, from rooftop to rooftop. Moving so quickly and covering such distance that before the screams of the dying had died down in one neighborhood, they had already swept on through to the next, and there the chorus of death would rise again.
In the ensuing chaos, fires had started in several buildings, the ravenous flames whipped up by a dread wind, fanning them maliciously so that they burned all the more furiously.
Soon enough, the lower tenements near the main gate were a great writhing conflagration, the inferno sweeping from building to building, consuming the city as the wulfen consumed its citizenry. It was like the blazing ruin of the wulfen’s own village, except that this time it was their turn to visit such abhorrent destruction upon the homes of innocents. That was their aim all along. To retaliate for the murder of one of their own communities. They had traveled for weeks to bring their retribution down upon the heads of their hated foes, and this was their moment.
Then it started to rain. It rained so hard that in minutes the ground was turned to a muddy, bloody slurry, churned underfoot by human and wulfen alike as the wholesale slaughter began to ebb and flow.
In spite of the downpour, the fires throughout the city burned brighter still, as if in defiance of the elements. Vengeance would not be denied the wulfen on this day.
Bael had taken a cohort of his chosen, leading them through the city in the direction of one place. His intention was not the mindless slaughter of the peasantry. Leave that to his brothers and sisters. Oh no, he had a far grander target to reach. He would storm the palace itself, he would personally oversee the slaughter of the thrice accursed Fe
llhammers.
To deprive a nation of its ruling elite would be to deprive it of the ability to function as a united entity. Far easier then to drag that nation into confusion and chaos. Take the head, and the body will die.
Bael had to admit that even given the flawless execution of his plan to enter the city, he had found the resistance to the invasion somewhat less engaging than he’d anticipated. Significantly so. He had expected the defense of the city to be fierce, but it was as if the majority of the defenders were absent. Instead of masses of well regimented and well armored soldiers struggling to hold back the marauding wulfen, he found little more than a rag tag skeleton force of guardsmen and numberless screaming peasants.
Nevertheless, he would not question the good favors of fortune. He had managed to penetrate easily enough the walls of the inner palace, where inside the organized resistance was somewhat more substantial.
The fighting down through the corridors had been fiercest in the direction of the throne room. The remaining Baratiis 75th, disciplined and well drilled, had managed to barricade and fortify access to that part of the palace. They had held their defenses staunchly, their blades and shields coming into play against the razor teeth and dagger claws of Bael and his brethren. Both sides met there in the tight confines of those narrow, dark corridors. The fighting was stiflingly close as sword clashed with talon, and mailed fists and snatching claws struck out in the mad fury of the struggle. But men, even those as well appointed as the Baratiis, were no match for the savage ferocity of the wulfen at close quarters. Armor was rent and flesh was torn like silk as claws and teeth flashed. More blood flowed.
Mortaron had not envisaged this. He had not foreseen such a monumental twist of fate laying all his grand schemes to waste. His careful designs, their foundations carefully laid over the course of decades, had risen so steadily. Brick by brick he had watched his towering ambitions soaring above the mediocrity of his peers. He had given everything he had to ensure that he would one day sit upon the throne of the city of Corrinth Vardis. That he alone would rule the land of Atos. That he would be the one to hold sway over its considerable wealth and indomitable armies.
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