Whispers of War: The War for the North: Book One

by Sean Rodden

  But Kor ben Dor remembered.

  The Halflord shrugged a kink from his massive shoulders. His eyes widened, whitened, brightened. Beneath him, the monstrous mar render he rode snorted.

  The sixty-odd Fiannar that had passed that way were not Kor ben Dor’s concern. They were gone. He cared nothing of them, for them.

  Not so the two small figures atop the western ridge.

  The Halflord’s huge hand tautened about the haft of his massive mace.

  “Remain.”

  His voice was unexpectedly smooth and soft, seeming almost alien in one so huge and powerful, yet it wanted for neither severity nor finality. The company of Bloodspawn at his back halted instantly.

  Kor ben Dor’s immense mar render moved forward.

  He is beautiful, sister, beautiful, beautiful.

  Yes, he is, brother. A true prince. He is…exquisite.

  Below the tiny twins, the Halflord approached astride a terrible nightmare steed.

  The Prince of the Bloodspawn was gigantic. Had he been standing he would have towered in excess of nine feet, his shoulders square and broad, his arms and thighs thick with muscle. His seeming winged helm was actually his own hair, long tresses artfully wrought to form outspread pinions blacker than the very heart of night. Tattooed talons gripped the brow and temple of a flawless face chiseled into planes and facets, cheeks and chin shaved smooth and shining, as hard and as implacable as diamond. His skin was the colour of damp ash, greying toward black, and his eyes glowed a luminous solid white. He was sheathed in gleaming black steel, save his huge hands and corded thighs and biceps. His cloak was slit into several long broad strips, thrown back now to reveal a pair of opposing sashes upon his breastplate. These bands formed an X, the greening copper arm crossing the heart from lower right to upper left, the blackening silver one atop and opposite. The mace he held was a weapon a god might wield.

  The mar render the Halflord rode was a creature of corruption. An equine atrocity. The demonic destrier stood nearly thirty hands, massively muscled, its neck arched, its withers high, the shoulders sloped. The hindquarters were powerful, the back relatively short, the bones iron-strong. Beneath the steel chamfron its face was straight, broad of forehead and wide of muzzle. Its coat was black, roaning in places, its mane and fetlocks a bright blazing red, a red surpassed only by the crimson fire in its widely set eyes. Foamy froth dripped from jaws which were significantly longer than those of any true horse, a crocodilian maw gaping to bare teeth more reptilian than equine, long and white and wickedly sharp. Its fore-hooves were not hooves at all, but were hideous clawed hands, though hands that served as hooves when balled into fierce ferric fists.

  Rider and mount halted a short distance from the rocky knoll where the children waited.

  The Halflord gazed upward, his white eyes aglow like small moons. The render razed the earth between tearing talons; its snort was stridulant, a deep drakish snarl, so very unlike the nicker of a horse. The head of the giant’s mace thudded to the ground, stirring gusts of dust and ash from the grass, so many grey ghosts roused from spectral slumber. Still astride his steed, the Prince of the Bloodspawn casually rested a forearm on the upright end of the weapon’s extended collapsible shaft, his hand dangling loosely. He regarded the little twins from between talon tattoos, a silent scrutiny, his hard-hewn features revealing nothing.

  “Come.”

  Oh, but he is good, brother. So very good. He sees human children, but knows we are not such. He tells us to descend to him because we have the high ground. He is cautious, yet unafraid. Does he know our power? Or is he simply sure of his own?

  Let us go to him, sister. Let us go, go, go.

  Do you feel that? That energy in the air? That is the essence of him, so vital, so vibrant, vivacious. Such power, such sweet power.

  Yes! Let us go to him. Go, yes, go, yes.

  Patience, brother. The mortal can wait. We will make him –

  “Come.”

  The girl clutched the burned thing nearer to her breast. Her cherubic face clouded with indignation.

  Impertinent barbarian!

  Nevertheless, she took her brother’s little hand and together they nimbly descended the rocky rise, stone scraping at the soles of their feet. Reaching the foot of the hill, they moved across the grasses toward the Halflord. His white eyes marked their progress, moving from the boy to the girl to the burned thing and back again.

  “No nearer.”

  The children halted. Smiled up beatifically, blue eyes wide and wet. Her pique passed, the girl parted her lips to speak.

  But the Halflord preempted her.

  “Names.”

  The girl’s mouth remained open, yet she did not speak.

  The boy looked at her, his angelic face pleading.

  Do you know our names, sister? Do you know, know, know?

  I cannot recall, brother. Have we ever had names? I do not remember.

  I do not know, sister. What of the human children? Might we take their names as we have taken their bodies? Might we take them, take them, take, take, take?

  There are none here to tell us what their names were, brother. And we do not possess their memories.

  We do not have names? No names. No, no no, no.

  Be silent!

  “Names.”

  The boy whinged. The girl’s nails dug into the burned thing at her breast.

  “I know what you are.” Kor ben Dor’s voice was deceptively tender. “And I know what you are not. I will have your names.”

  The little girl stamped her foot.

  “And we would have your army, Halflord.”

  Kor ben Dor’s handsome head tilted slightly. The great raven’s wings of his hair seemed to buffet the night.

  “The Bloodspawn are mine, blutsauger,” he declared softly. “You may claim the remainder. If they will have you.”

  He calls us Leech, sister. He knows what we are, what we –

  Oh, shut up!

  As though he had heard them, the Prince of the Bloodspawn smiled.

  “I could have you, Halflord,” the little girl blurted. “I could take you. I could make you –”

  “You have no names.”

  The little boy whimpered. The girl’s eyes flashed with mute fury. Her little fingers ripped into the burned thing.

  “I will call you Waif.” Kor ben Dor jerked his head. “He is Urchin.”

  I will make you scream!

  “You will need clothing.”

  You will scream, mortal! I will take you, and you will scream!

  The Halflord effortlessly hefted his massive mace, reined his monstrous render about, and headed back the way he had come.

  “Follow.”

  Waif screamed.

  7

  THE SHIELD MAIDEN’S TALE

  “Few are the sorrows that surpass

  that of a good tale gone untold.”

  Old Erelian Toast

  Axennus Teagh dreamed of drums and thunder. And beat and peal pursued him across the formless darkness of his slumber, through the fog of waking and into the day.

  And with them came pain.

  He woke in acute agony, every joint in his body aching dryly, his pulse pounding in his ears with the gushing thud of blood on bone. The most minute of movements sent his head aswim, every motion made his stomach turn sickeningly in protest. His eyes cracked open, thin slits of resistance against the gaudy light that sliced past the curtains of the chamber. But daylight pierced his pupils as would a lance, then shattered into long narrow shards of sharp steel that embedded themselves in the back of his skull like a rain of bright white arrows. He threw one arm over his eyes and rolled away from the light, but found no succour in shadow, only a different pain.

  And then, amidst the chaos of anguish and affliction roiling behind his tightly clamped eyes, memories of the previous night slowly seeped back to Axennus like lava creeping on the earth.

  Let the lesson begin!

  Axennus groaned.


  “I would tell you that one should not marry the fruitwines of the South with the dark mead of the Nothirings, not to mention the pocheen of the doughty Rothmen, but I fear such wisdom will have come to you overlate.”

  The familiar voice seemed distant, but was not. Nor was the sweet and soothing tone unwelcome, though it came delicately laced with a sarcasm not very much unlike the Erelian’s own.

  Axennus summoned the strength and the courage to open his eyes once more. The hurt of light returned, but was weakened and had lost its initial violence. His vision was blurred and bleary and seemed limited to black and white and shades of grey. Some moments passed before he could will his sight into focus and once again discern colour, shape, distance.

  Then he saw her.

  “Caelle.”

  His voice came thick and pained for his swollen tongue and bile-grimed mouth. His very teeth ached to their roots.

  The Fiann smiled.

  “The emboldening effect of drink has not been wholly nullified by sleep, I see,” said she. “You have never before addressed me with the name my mother bestowed upon me, or I am much mistaken.”

  Axennus groaned again.

  “Nevertheless, young though it may be,” continued Caelle casually, her voice the sound of a smile, “I do find our friendship to be sufficiently fast for such familiarity.”

  Another groan.

  Caelle sat upon a finely carved oaken chair by the door, small hands folded demurely upon her lap, her sandaled feet crossed before her. She had foregone the grey of her riding gear in favour of a long gown of cotton, emerald green, an intricate design of white flowers embroidered at the shoulders. Gone also was the broad band of her rillagh, though a thin strap of gold gleamed in its place. Her midnight hair was pulled back from her lovely oval face and tied behind her head with a fine string of gold, and a single silvery bloom shone above one ear. She was otherwise unadorned.

  “Rise, friend Axennus,” commanded the Fiann gently. “I have with me an elixir that may ease your distress.”

  Axennus pushed himself into a sitting position on the bed of down. Though the linens were soft and silken, they seemed to scrape against his skin, leaving his flesh sore and sensitive.

  “Would you also care to remove the pike from my skull?” moaned the afflicted Ambassador.

  “Seek pity elsewhere and from others,” remonstrated the Shield Maiden.

  She stood and took up a plain clay flask from the small table beside the chair, and padded silently to the side of the bed. With her came the scent of sun and summer.

  “Drink,” she demanded. Her demeanor discouraged dissent.

  The flask was warm to the touch and from it arose a fragrance reminiscent of peppermint. Axennus sipped, and instantly his face twisted in repugnance and revulsion.

  “Teller of the Tale!” he coughed, sputtering. “Do you mean to poison me?”

  “Hardly, Southman,” scoffed Caelle, her grey eyes darkening beneath a reproachful frown. “You have proven quite capable of that dubious feat yourself. Rather, it is my own desire to purge you of your poisons.”

  “A more adiaphorous remedy might purge them sooner, certainly.”

  But Axennus could already feel the potent properties of the elixir rushing through him, bone and sinew. And as he sipped again at the bitter liquid, his pain was stripped from him like the dried scab from a wound newly healed. A third and longer drink, and he was refreshed, and his mind and sight were clear.

  He stared incredulously at the drained clay flask.

  “I find myself in your debt once more.”

  “The root of the ethacca plant is a rare but effectual medicine,” Caelle answered the unspoken question, “though continued use may prove toxic over time.”

  “Are you well versed in herb-lore and healing?”

  “I am a Shield Maiden of the Fiannar, and the Fiannar are a folk acutely aware of their mortality. Because we are people doomed to die, ever have we sought to prevent and cure those ailments that we can, and to ease those that we cannot.”

  “A noble quest, Shield Maiden.”

  “We have returned to formalities, I see,” observed Caelle with a wry smile. “Very well, Ambassador. Someone was kind enough to draw you a bath and set out some walking dress for you. I will await you in the courtyard. You will break your fast with me in Druintir this day.”

  Midday’s sun was high and the air was crisp and cool when the Ambassador joined Caelle in the courtyard of the White Manor. There they tarried for a time, watching the Iron Captain and the tenants drill the men of the Ambassadorial Guard. Most guardsmen were ashen-faced and red-eyed for the previous night’s festivities, but if they sought mercy there was little to be found in the brusque sharpness of Bronnus’ barked commands, and even less in the quiet, exacting manner of the Rhelman.

  “There is a price to be paid for pleasure, I see,” mused the Shield Maiden.

  “So my brother would have them believe,” responded Axennus, his eyes twinkling. “He strives to teach them of consequences, of balance – all things in moderation and such nonsense. I would spare all the effort and teach instead the miraculous qualities of the ethacca root.”

  The Fiann frowned, and even in her furrowed brows was there beauty to be found in fair measure.

  “You would achieve their deaths far sooner, Ambassador.”

  “Indeed, Shield Maiden,” Axennus conceded, sighing in feigned sadness. “But they would die happy.”

  Druintir of Lindannan, last city of the Fiannar, was very unlike the urban metropolises of the Free Nations. A single colossal and continuous carving of conjoined caverns and causeways, of myriad manors and mansions, of tunnels and towers, the city had long ago been hewn by hand and heart of the metamorphic stone of the ridge. The marble of which she had been formed was the light grey of a winter dawn, like ice on steel, smooth and gleaming, and throughout her hollowed halls was the cool sweet breath of the stony earth. The tri-tiered waters of the Silver Stair divided the city into north and south, the two portions joined by a series of stone bridges spanning the surface and by a labyrinthine array of tunnels bored through the bedrock. The mist and spray of the Ruil shrouded the city, but did not dampen her, the pristine sheen of the polished stone coming of hand and time rather than the wet of water. And lights of sun and moon and shining star did the doming veil of the Silver Stair admit to the city, though these came softened by their passage through the waterfall’s argentine haze.

  Within the city, the Fiannar were about in number, tall and proud. Axennus saw many men of that folk, fierce and fair, their faces worn with cold and care. He saw some women, more fair of face and form, but no less hard. And still fewer children did he see, and these had been aged beyond their years by knowledge and northern clime. But all the Fiannar, irrespective of age, sex or standing, were of noble countenance and piercing eye, and decked with golden sash. All were humbly clad in stony grey and forest green. And all were armed in some manner, with even the smallest of children bearing a blade at the hip or bow and quiver at the shoulder.

  “You are a people well-readied for war, Shield Maiden,” Axennus observed coolly, his discerning eye marking the shadow that darkened the visages of the Fiannar, his ear harkening to the storm of their silence.

  “We are a people born of war,” replied Caelle flatly. “Where the Fiannar have survived and even flourished, more peaceable and less prepared peoples have been destroyed.” She paused. “But do not mistake precaution for predilection, Ambassador.”

  Sliding shadows signified the ghostly presence of the Grey Watch on the streets of the city, fore and aft and to either side of them. The spectral silence of the grey warders brought an eerie chill to Druintir’s stony heart, like a harbinger of winter, or the cold breath of foredoom.

  “Be assured, Shield Maiden,” Axennus asserted softly, a quirk to his smile, “I mistake little.”

  The Erelian Ambassador and the Fiannian Shield Maiden shared a light meal of wild berries and mountain goa
t cheese upon a terrace overlooking the middle tier of the Silver Stair. The muted roar of the waters hummed through the stone, a ceaseless chant invoking the deepest powers of the earth. The sound was calming, comforting, subliminally massaging muscle and mind. The pair spoke little, and little needed to be spoken. They were at peace in one another’s company, and found solace in their shared silence, like two old friends who measured their bond in decades rather than in days. But the mood was momentary, as neither protracted peace nor sustained silence were in the Erelian’s nature.

  “A pleasant place, Shield Maiden,” sighed the Ambassador, dipping his fingers in a nearby washing basin. “All the more so for the platter and present company.” He glanced up, grinning roguishly. “Both delight the senses.”

  Caelle cocked her head to one side, her raven tresses shining with the sun’s silvered gold, her large round eyes as broad and as bright as the summer skies over Lindannan.

  “Either you are a man of remarkable resilience, Master Ambassador,” she quipped, “or the ethacca root exceeds itself.” Her voice was light and playful, her full lips curling at their corners. “Few are they that wholly recover from an encounter with the good Marshal Eldurion, and none swiftly. Yet here you are, recklessly playing at courtship once again, though your knees be freshly bruised with yesternight’s abashment.”

  Rather than grimace at the memory, Axennus only shrugged. “I have knelt before both father and daughter, Shield Maiden,” he reminded her casually. “Forsooth, what place has pride in the heart that loves?”

  Caelle of the Fiannar scowled, but her eyes shone without shadow.

  “Speak not of love, Southman,” she cautioned quietly. “There are fates worse than Eldurion’s wrath for the heart that goes unheard.”