The Swampling King (The Windwalker Legacy Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

“He saved hundreds of men.” Shona gave a slight, disbelieving shake of her head. “To say that about a swampling feels so strange.”

  “Spirit of All, that must have nearly killed him.” Josen had seen the way the deepcraft sapped Verik’s strength, and that was for tasks much smaller than deflecting giant slabs of falling stone.

  “He’s weak,” said Shona. “But he’s recovering. The swampling girl is tending to him. She was able to… to get him what he needed.”

  “Deepling blood, you mean,” said Josen. “I suppose we have no shortage of that now.”

  Shona frowned, but nodded. “I never thought I would be glad to have Deeplings corpses in the farming flats, but… Verik is the only reason a third of our forces are still alive. We may need him again before this is over.”

  “Isn’t it over already?” Josen moved his hand from around the neck of one of the knights, and gestured vaguely over his shoulder. “Have you looked behind us recently?”

  “You can’t keep making jokes like that!” Shona took a deep breath and rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead, visibly gathering her patience. “Morale is low enough as it is. The men need to know you’re alive, that you haven’t given up. It will help.”

  “Will it?” Josen asked. “This is no joke. Look around. The wall is broken, our army is scattered, and we’ve lost too many men already. Wasted too many lives.” Unbidden, his last memories of Rudol came to him: black blood burrowing into flesh, the look on his face when he’d asked Josen to let him go. “Even if we had the numbers, half of them are too tired to lift their swords. Will it really help anyone if I get them to keep fighting?”

  “What do you suggest, then?” Shona snapped. “I’d love to hear a better plan!”

  “If we… if I surrender, I think Castar will show mercy.” The words stuck in his throat, but Josen forced them out. This wasn’t playing the hero, the way everyone told him he was so fond of doing, or at least he didn’t think he was—this was exhaustion, plain and simple. He couldn’t see any other way, and he was tired, deep down, in the place inside where things like the will to fight lived. Tired of pretending to be something he wasn’t, tired of watching people die in his name. He didn’t expect Castar would do anything good to him, but if it was going to happen either way, he’d sooner have it done than drag it on any longer. “He wants to be the man who saved the Nine Peaks from a bloody war. If I give myself over, and”—he tipped his head toward the crown of blue glass in Shona’s hand—“that horrible thing, maybe no one else has to die.”

  Shona rounded on him. “You want to surrender?”

  Josen flinched at the sudden fury of her voice; one of the knights holding him actually moved back a step. “I—”

  “You want to surrender to the man who tried to kill you? Who sent Deeplings into the Plateaus? You would give the Peaks to the man who murdered my family, while my mother’s body still lies unburned in the eyrie? No.”

  “We can’t win, Shona.”

  “Then we will die fighting!”

  “Remember who you are talking to.” Josen glanced pointedly at the knights surrounding them. As much as he hated it, he was the king now, and people were listening.

  Shona’s jaw clenched as she followed his eyes. Then, abrubtly, she pushed one of the men holding Josen aside, and took his weight herself. “If Your Majesty would grant me a moment to speak alone?”

  Josen only stared at her, until she stepped hard on his foot, and then he blurted, “Yes! Of course.” He gestured for the others to stand aside, and they did; even Eroh seemed to understand, and obediently followed the knights.

  Shona led Josen away several steps, glanced over her shoulder, and then leaned her head close to his. “You didn’t want this responsibility,” she said in a low, dangerous voice. “You begged me to help, to make the hard decisions for you. Well, this decision is made.” She raised Aryllia’s Crown, her knuckles clenched and bloodless around the blue glass. “Lenoden Castar will wear this crown only when there is no breath left in my body.”

  What am I supposed to say to that? She’s supposed to be the reasonable one! “I just don’t…” Another horn distracted him for a moment, from the direction of Castar and his army; Josen glanced over his shoulder at the sound. “I don’t want more people to—”

  “Your Majesty.” The bearded knight with the horn at his belt—Cer Tiron, Shona had called him—approached hesitantly. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I… I thought you should know. These last few signals from Duke Castar were in a common cipher. A demand for identification. An unknown army is coming up the road.”

  “What? Who?” Josen glanced over his shoulder, toward the broken Queensgate. “Wind of Grace, is someone else coming to kill us?”

  Cer Tiron shook his head, a confused look on his face. “They aren’t with Castar, or he doesn’t know they are yet.”

  A surge of hope made Josen’s heart pound. “Whitelake? Aunt Alma?” He realized even as he said it that it was impossible. “No, it can’t be, not this soon.”

  Shona frowned. “There are only three duchies near enough. Castar would know about it if it was Skysreach or Greenwall, and Duke Theo might have sent men to support us from the Wolfshead before, but now that we’ve taken the throne from his daughter… I don’t think he’d send aid for either side. He’s more the kind to stay out of it and then pledge allegiance to the victor. Could it be a ruse? A fake signal, to mislead us?”

  Another horn sounded from the same direction, but fainter, farther away.

  “That wasn’t one of Castar’s, was it?” Josen asked. “It sounded different.”

  “No.” Cer Tiron was staring toward the sound with his mouth half-open. “No, it… Your Majesty, I don’t know how it’s possible, but that was the lord general’s cipher. He’s… he’s calling us to arms.”

  “Eian?” Shona shook her head. “Impossible. How could he—Josen, what in the Above are you grinning about?”

  And Josen was grinning; he couldn’t help himself. He knew what that signal meant.

  “It’s Zerill,” he said. “She came.”

  Zerill

  The Abandoned were already halfway up the road when the first signal came. Zerill glanced to her right at Eian Gryston; like her, he wore Storm Knight greys over chainmail, with a hood pulled low over his face.

  “They want us to identify ourselves,” he whispered.

  Zerill shook her head, and motioned him on.

  They were near five thousand strong, Lighteye and Heartspear warriors together, and several bands of Shadowfeet were positioned around the mountain below the mist, to watch for highlander reinforcements and carry messages if needed. So many of the Abandoned had never before gathered for any purpose but Kinmeet; greater numbers meant a greater chance of being seen, and caught, and killed. Zerill wondered what Arvur All-Kin would think, or the ancestors, or Azlin. Would they be proud to see their people taking the fight to the mountains, or horrified at the prospect of aiding highlanders? She could scarcely believe it was happening, even now—that after everything the highlanders had done, after everything she had done to come this far, her people had still listened.

  But they had. They had listened, and finally, after hours of arguing in Kinmeet, they had believed.

  The Lighteyes led the way up the mountain, and Zerill was at their head, as was her right as Grandmother. Her kinmates ran alongside her, men and women who had once followed her sister: Nikren, a head taller than the rest; Jeva, who hadn’t stopped scowling since the Kinmeet; Ralk, with one large hand on the haft of the maker-forged axe at his back; a thousand others whose names and faces she had known all her life. Of those beside her, only Gryston was not a Lighteye, and Korv, assigned in Kinmeet to be the highlander general’s keeper.

  A full circle of Makers followed just behind the front lines—they were forbidden from directly spilling blood, but their deepcraft would be useful in other ways. Farther back, the Heartspears guarded the rear, under Grandfather Tarv’s command. Below the
mist, it would have been his duty to lead the Abandoned into battle, but not here. The Lighteyes were accustomed to the sun and sky moreso than any kin; only they could guide their people through the light.

  And there was light here, though not as much as there would be higher up. The road was hidden in the shadow of the cliff for now, but still the newly risen sun was uncomfortably bright to Zerill’s eyes. It had been worse when she’d first emerged from the mist, but even now, under the shade of her hood, she had to squint against the light. She wondered how many would die when they crested the cliff, blinded by the sun’s true radiance. Already some of the Heartspears behind had frozen at their first glimpse of sky. Ancestors, let this prove worth the risk.

  She rounded one switchback and then another, past the wreckage of walls and abandoned carts, over the torn and broken bodies of men and Deeplings alike. Her legs burned from the weight of the highlander mail she wore, but she pushed herself on.

  She wasn’t used to carrying so much metal. What highlander steel the Abandoned scavenged was usually used only by the Heartspears, and then only in open battle. Such heavy armor made climbing and swimming and stalking prey near impossible—much of the time, it wasn’t practical. But to meet an army of highlanders under the light of the sun, they needed every advantage, every protection, and so the front lines of the Lighteyes were armored in the hundred or so mail coats the three kins had been able to gather between them.

  And protection wasn’t the only reason.

  Behind the vanguard of armor-clad warriors, Lighteyes and Heartspears alike wore highlander surcoats and uniforms and clothing brought together over years of raiding caravans and ambushing patrols and outposts, and every face had a hood drawn over it, hiding pale skin and black eyes. But the front lines needed something more. They were closest to the enemy, and the armor made the illusion so much more convincing.

  The highlanders wouldn’t understand what was happening until it was too late.

  Castar signalled again as the Abandoned closed on his rear guard—only a few switchbacks separated them from the mouth of the farming flats now. This time Zerill didn’t need a translation. When Gryston looked at her, she only shook her head again and increased her pace.

  They rounded the last switchbacks quickly, until no more than a few hundred yards remained between Zerill and the first of Castar’s men in their arms of red and gold. The highlanders drew their swords—straight-bladed, not the hooked sabers she was used to seeing in the Swamp—and fell into a defensive line.

  For an instant, doubt flickered across Zerill’s thoughts. So many of the Abandoned had never set foot above the mist at once, not since the rising of the highlanders’ mountains. A brilliance utterly foreign to the Swamp cascaded through the shattered wall just above, and a great many of her people had never seen its like before. When they stepped into that light, they would be all but blind, at least for a time. The Lighteyes would squint and bear it—most, like Zerill, were experienced at adjusting their eyes gradually with ever longer glances at the sky—but the Heartspears would need time to adjust. Time they weren’t likely to have.

  Unless Josen’s men came to their aid.

  “Will they come?” she asked Gryston. “When they understand who is calling, will they come?”

  “I hope so,” said Gryston, and freed the signal-horn hanging at his belt.

  Not the answer she’d wanted, but it had been a pointless question. Josen’s men would join the fight, or they wouldn’t. It was too late to turn back either way.

  Zerill looked to Korv. He had led warriors in battle before; she never had. His eyes met hers, and there was no fear there. He answered the question on her face with a single nod, and he signed, For Azlin.

  It was enough.

  Ignoring the steel saber at her waist, Zerill shrugged her shortspear off her back. All around her, the Lighteyes did the same, readying their weapons for war.

  “Now, highlander,” she said to Gryston. “Sound your horn.”

  And he did, though just a handful of days ago she would have called it impossible, even in her most fanciful dreams. At her command, the lord general of the Knights of the Storm lifted his horn to his lips, and blew.

  Gripping her spear tightly in hand, Zerill led the Abandoned into battle.

  Castar’s knights stood ready to meet them, and they looked more curious than afraid. They’d come to the Plateaus expecting a fight, they just didn’t know yet who this new foe was.

  It was time to show them.

  As she closed the last yards toward the highlanders, Zerill reached up with one hand, and pulled back her hood.

  48. Answering the Call

  Lenoden

  Lenoden Castar watched in silent horror as the swampling force met his.

  A pale wave spread down the road as their hoods fell back, revealing bone-white skin. Lenoden felt suddenly exposed there at the cliff’s edge, like every one of those huge dark eyes was fixed on him and him alone. This can’t be real. It felt like a nightmare, one he might have had before: thousands of swamplings spilling out of the mist, undaunted by the sun’s light. It isn’t possible.

  Below, he could hear the cries of his men: “Swamplings!” and “Their eyes, look at their eyes!” and “Lord of Eagles preserve us!” and other things, mixed in among wordless shouts of surprise and fear. Some stumbled back, trying to create distance; others touched fingers to the centers of foreheads as if the swamplings were spirits that might be warded off by such gestures.

  Lenoden had known already that the swamplings weren’t what most thought they were, known it ever since he’d met Auren and the boy in the Swamp. But he’d never expected this. Even when he’d seen them marching up the mountain, even when he’d seen those hoods and wondered who in the Peaks would have thought them necessary, he hadn’t guessed. No man of the Peaks could have. Since the Rising, not a single swampling had set foot above the mist—or if they had, they hadn’t been caught doing it. I could imagine some few of them sneaking in to spy, but this many? They’re supposed to be afraid of the light!

  If they were, it wasn’t doing anything to stop them. The swamplings were pushing hard against the rear guard now, and Lenoden’s men were giving way. And not just giving way, but breaking entirely. Facing an army of silent, pale spectres with eyes like obsidian, the men of the Peaks fled as if the foulest children of the King in the Deep were chasing them; as if the great wyrms and deeper things without names had burrowed free of the earth to scale the Queensmount.

  The first to turn and run were slaughtered from behind, and that only made it worse. Those farther up began to shove and trample one another, desperate to escape. Some few of his knights kept their heads, tried to bring together something of a fighting retreat, but not nearly enough. True Knights of the Storm—men and women who had faced swamplings time and again below the mist—might have held their ground, but too many of Lenoden’s knights were hardly knights at all, just callow young men he had granted a title in exchange for some favor or another.

  And how could he blame them? Every boy and girl in the Peaks was raised on tales of the swamplings as savages who wielded blood magicks and revelled in dark rituals, who slaughtered for the joy of it and fed the bodies to their Deepling pets. In some ways, they were worse than the Deeplings, especially here. Beetlebacks and rotborn and the like sometimes roamed above the mist at night, when they were hungry. Swamplings never did. Few ever saw one in the flesh—most had only the stories. And when an army of childhood terrors rose out of the Swamp, what man could be expected to hold his position? This is the price for making them monsters. We wanted an enemy that was beyond sympathy, and this is the price. Perhaps, with more time to prepare, his men could have been convinced to see them as flesh and blood, as enemies that could be fought, but those hoods, the reveal at the last instant…

  Someone had planned this ambush all too well.

  And Lenoden knew who it was.

  He looked at Cer Horte—the man was frozen with terror, g
aping at the swampling horde.

  “Horte,” Lenoden said. “That last signal. That was the lord general’s cipher, wasn’t it?”

  No answer. Horte just stared, trembling.

  Lenoden prodded him sharply in the side. “Horte!”

  Horte jumped, and let out a strangled yelp. It took him a moment to regain his composure. “I’m… I’m sorry, Your Grace. You’re right. It was Gryston’s signal. They… they must have deciphered it somehow.”

  “No. He gave it to them himself. He brought them here to save Josen.” And knowing that made it all real, let him put aside the disbelief that had paralyzed him. If Eian Gryston could bargain with the swamplings, they were no nightmares; just men and women like any other, maneuvering for advantage. Lenoden could deal with that. They were a threat, and a serious one, at the worst possible moment, but they could be beaten. Defeat wasn’t an option. He’d come too far to let it be. “Sound an order. I want a line here, just inside the wall. The rear guard will fall back to meet us, but anyone else caught fleeing will be treated as a traitor and a deserter. We’ll catch the swamplings as they come out of the cliff’s shadow—the sun will blind them.”

  Horte’s eyes widened. “But… Your Grace, they must have summoned those Deeplings, and broken the Queensgate. How can we fight witchcraft like that?”

  “Look again, Horte. They’ve done everything they can to make us see monsters, so that’s what we see. But they are no monsters.” Lenoden looked down over those pale faces once more, and now he could see them as they were: the same enemy he’d faced hundreds of times in the Swamp, with the same weaknesses.

  “I promise you,” he said, “they will die like men.”

  Shona

  They found Falyn Morne in the same place Shona had left her, standing amidst her knights and calling orders to the adjutants following behind her.

  There were more men now than there had been when Shona left—most of the reserves and what remained of the Queensgate’s defenders, with only a few stragglers still scattered across the fields. They were more organized now, too, formed into something like orderly ranks. Perhaps fifteen hundred, Shona estimated, to Castar’s four thousand. That was a fight they couldn’t win without help. By the Above, I hope Josen is right about those horns.