by Tom Lloyd
‘Anyone else sense that?’ he murmured.
Fei Ebarn shook her head when Isak turned to her, but Vesna and Legana nodded, their attention focused on the unknown.
‘More than one thing,’ Legana said into Isak’s mind, ‘a presence in the streets – a presence in the lake.’
As though in answer to his question, a figure loomed up from the lake surface ahead of them, startling the nearby soldiers, who scrambled out of the way. The figure standing waist-deep in the water was joined by another, then a third and a fourth; lean, grey faces all silently watched Isak. Heavy, discoloured armour was bound to their filthy bodies by belts and straps, baldrics and fraying leathers. Massive two-handed swords and axes were stowed on their backs and each stared at him through a curtain of dripping, bedraggled hair.
Shock froze Isak to the spot as he saw a gaping, bloodless wound on the neck of one, a mangled arm hanging useless from another. Their pallor was not because of cold or injury; these men were already dead. Doranei had called them the Legion of the Damned.
‘Zhia,’ Isak called softly as the panicking Black Swords fell back in disarray, abandoning Isak’s party as they scattered, ‘is this your doing?’
‘The Legion do not obey me,’ she replied, advancing to join him, ‘only my eldest brother and their own leaders.’
The four sodden figures offered perfunctory bows to Zhia, but Isak could see their attention was focused on him. Dead, milky eyes observed his every movement, but only when Isak raised his black sword in anticipation of an attack did the closest advance another few steps, stopping just at the water’s edge.
Vesna was immediately in front of Isak, his own sword drawn, sparks crackling from his black-iron arm, but the undead soldier appeared not to notice him. The muted scent of decay reached Isak’s party: not rotting flesh, but some mouldering odour mingling with the smell of mud on the shore.
Without warning the four dead soldiers dropped to one knee and bowed their heads. Their leader spoke a brief sentence in a grating, ruined voice, then raised his head to look Isak in the eye.
‘They greet you,’ Mihn translated hesitantly. ‘You bear the sword that can free them from their curse. They pledge themselves to you, in the hope that you will do so once they have proved worthy.’
‘Free them? How?’
‘Their souls were sold,’ Vorizh provided, walking forward until he was face to face with the leader of the legion. The undead warrior stared at him as though desperate to draw his greatsword and attack, but whatever his wishes, he did nothing beyond facing Vorizh down.
‘The necromancer who made them this way tricked them into selling their souls. Those who fall in battle are damned.’
‘And you can’t undo it?’
Vorizh cocked his head at Isak. ‘Why would I wish to? They would have all returned to dust by now, had they lived mortal lives.’
‘You call that life?’ Isak demanded in disbelief.
Before Vorizh could reply an arrow had flashed out from the darkness to strike the nearest of the undead in the side. A second shot dropped between them, then a third caught one in the shoulder.
The leader snarled and drew his weapon, growling some order, and a dozen more damned rose from the lake, weapons ready, as the first four turned to face the knot of soldiers at the bridge-mouth aiming crossbows at them. They advanced with unnatural swiftness, ignoring the hasty shots that danced between them. Two more were caught, one high in his chest, but they snapped the shafts and continued on regardless.
‘No, wait!’ Isak called after them.
The warriors stopped dead, their leader turning to regard Isak once more.
Whether they understood his words or not, the command was clear enough, but before Isak could work out what to say next Mihn broke the tense silence. ‘My Lord, look at the bridge.’
There were more sputtering lights appearing on the bridge as squad upon squad of Black Swords rushed towards them. The crossbowmen at the front were frantically reloading as a commissar bellowed orders, gesturing furiously in Isak’s direction.
‘I can hear them shouting,’ Mihn said quickly. ‘An army of daemons kneeling to you – Isak, they’re saying you have tricked them: they think you are Aryn Bwr reborn. They have ordered the attack!’
Isak looked around. The Black Swords still on the ziggurat were staring down at them in horror, too bewildered to act, but judging from the numbers massed on the far shore the Night Council had come prepared for any excuse to turn on them. He’d already noticed the massing Black Swords; he didn’t want to find out if that was enough to fight perhaps the most lethal group of individuals ever gathered.
‘Something tells me they’re not going to care about casualties,’ Vesna said, again placing his body between Isak and danger. ‘Do we really want to burn a path through thousands of men just following orders here?’
‘Why not?’ Vorizh asked, his eyes bright with delight. ‘You hold the power of the Gods in your hand – shatter them with a word! Be as Death, walking the battlefield once more.’
Isak didn’t bother replying as he scanned the island for options. There were other bridges, one leading to the far shore, another to the temple island further out on the lake. ‘Anyone see any boats?’ he asked.
‘Not here,’ Vesna replied, ‘and we’re not getting across either bridge without a bloodbath.’
‘You want to defend a temple again? Remember Scree?’ Isak demanded, but he didn’t wait for an answer. Vorizh had silently withdrawn to the great stone ramp and Isak pursued him, determined not to let the vampire from his sight if he could help it.
Meanwhile Zhia had waved back the Legion of the Damned and taken their place facing the Black Swords. She reached out one hand and a nimbus of white light began to circle her. The dark surface of the lake below the bridge seemed to twitch and jump with every intoned word before rising like a leviathan and swallowing the massive bridge. Darkness enveloped it, extinguishing the torches on the nearer half and prompting terrified cries as the men were suddenly struck blind and soaked through.
‘Where are you going?’ Isak called after Vorizh.
The vampire ignored him and went to the statues flanking the ramp, the huge stone wyvern statues that looked so out of place there. He placed a hand on one and began to intone his own spell, but as Isak watched he realised it was not a spell being cast but one being unravelled.
Cracks started appearing on the hind leg of the first wyvern, accompanied by a great creak and the groan of stone under stress. Isak faltered, his left hand pressed against his belly as he remembered another wyvern and another time, but his memories were swept away by a more immediate shock: the grey skin of the statues had started to crumble and fall away, revealing crimson hued scales underneath. The monster looming over Vorizh shuddered and stone cascaded off its flanks like a disintegrating clay mould. Its wings jerked ponderously and stretched up towards the heavens.
Isak turned back to his astonished comrades staring up at the emerging wyverns, except for Zhia, too busy with her delaying spells, and Mihn, whose attention was focused on the dark mass of soldiers on the bridge.
‘To the temple island,’ Isak ordered, forcing himself to turn his back on the wyverns. Vorizh clearly had his own plans, whether or not it included the rest of them. ‘All of you, go!’
He shoved Doranei, the nearest, towards a paved path that led around the island to the ornate covered bridge that led to the temple island. There would be guards, of that he had no doubt, but it looked like it might be the least bloody path away from here. The Night Council had clearly been biding their time and looking for any excuse to erase the threat to their control. They would push forward as hard as they could rather than waiting for cooler heads to prevail.
‘My Lord,’ Vorizh called, and Isak turned to see the two wyverns nearly free of the stone that had encased them. One was stepping down from the pedestal where it had stood for so long; the other was struggling to pry the remaining pieces of stone from the le
athery membranes of its wings.
‘It is time for us to leave,’ Vorizh said, indicating that Isak should take the second of the beasts.
The monster raised its blade-like muzzle to the heavens and screeched deafeningly, then shook its body and snapped its jaws with ravenous intent as it peered at the figures below. Its head started weaving from side to side as it tried to make out what was happening below it.
‘You think I’ll abandon my comrades?’
‘What choice do you have?’ the vampire laughed. ‘To swim with a sword fused to your palm? And you balk at killing Black Swords – men who are nothing to you, men who have abused and murdered their own, for reasons of twisted nonsense. The cruelty and horror they have inflicted – each one should be punished for their crimes, for joining the oppressors out of cowardice or malice at least. Yet you refuse to make that judgment, you who have killed many times before, no doubt. So if you will not fight, here is your alternative!’
‘I’ll find another choice,’ Isak said, and Vorizh looked contemptuous before he offered Isak a florid bow and barked a command at the wyvern. With one beat of its enormous wings the creature steadied itself, then leapt into the air, closely followed by its fellow.
Isak went to follow the rest of his companions. Mihn was yet to move; the black-clad man still standing beside Zhia and staring out at the confusion on the bridge.
‘Mihn? What are you doing?’
‘I – I thought I saw …’ He looked up at Isak. ‘It does not matter. I am coming.’
They ran together as fast as Isak could manage, Zhia close behind. A squad of Black Swords blocked the way, but Vesna was already leading the charge; his sword cut a scarlet trail through the night. As the air filled with Daken’s roars and the whip-crack of lashing energies, the ten soldiers simply vanished from their path.
The few other Black Swords remaining on the island fled in the face of such effortless slaughter and they found themselves unimpeded until they reached the bridge. It was half the width of the other, and supported by half a dozen arches.
A reinforced gatehouse stood at either end, blocking the way, but Isak stabbed down onto the gate’s hinges with the tip of Termin Mystt. He missed the edge, instead driving the black sword against the wall, but Death’s own weapon tore through the weathered grey stone as if through butter.
Fei Ebarn sent darting arrows of flame to dissuade anyone within the guardhouse from attacking while Isak chopped artlessly with his reversed sword at the listing gate until the way was clear. He led the rest out onto the bridge, ignoring the heavy beat of wings behind them, and attacked the few soldiers still standing their ground. To no one’s surprise, Termin Mystt parted armour, weapons and flesh with as much ease as it had the stone, killing men with brutal sweeping strokes.
The bridge was covered with arches and small, interconnected buildings, which turned out to be small shrines running the length of the bridge. The moonlight illuminated curved letters inscribed into the parapet running the length; Isak guessed it was an extended prayer rather than some incantation of protection. Beyond the torches fixed at set intervals along the walls adjoining the gatehouse he could see little.
They were alone now, Isak realised; the Legion of the Damned had not followed them around the ziggurat, though Mihn continued to glance back as though watching for them. Without meaning to Isak conjured the image of hundreds of dead men tramping stolidly through the midnight waters beneath them.
All following Death’s own weapon, Isak reminded himself. The dead march in my wake.
He shivered and pushed the thought from his mind. It was not something to dwell on; just that fleeting moment was almost enough to overwhelm Isak with the consequences of what he was doing.
‘We punch through the gate and look for boats,’ Isak declared, pointing to the only other exit from the temple island. They could all see the hundreds of soldiers crossing the bridge to the nearer mainland.
‘And if there aren’t boats?’ Zhia asked.
Isak scowled and looked down at the black sword he carried. ‘Then we may have no choice.’
At the gate Isak sensed a vast gathering of power on either side of him. Fei Ebarn and Zhia both reached out to flay the defensive walls with arcs of flame while Vesna drew on his own Skull and punched the closed gate with raw power. Howls came from inside as stars burst along its length and the gate was smashed inwards, leaving nothing but blood and mangled flesh beyond it.
A great half-dome, the Temple of Alterr, rose behind the guardhouse. It was lit fitfully by ornate silver braziers. A square block stood to the right of that, the open peaked doorway declaring it to be the Temple of Death.
‘That way,’ Isak said, pointing to a break in the walls where a pebbled slope led down to the water, but as they approached Isak realised the wooden posts flanking the slope were clear of boats.
‘Looks like we’ll just have to fucking kill ’em all,’ Daken announced as Isak looked around in vain.
‘There’s got to be another way,’ Isak muttered. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Heretics! Servants of the damned!’ shrieked a voice in the lee of the wall, startling Isak, until he realised he wasn’t being attacked. He peered into the shadows and saw a man sitting in the mud, half hidden by a supporting timber. Hugging his knees to his chest, he stared at them all, his eyes wide with blind terror, and his voice descended into a low, wordless gibber.
‘Perfect,’ Zhia declared and reached out towards the man, who didn’t even have time to cry out as he was dragged through the air. Deftly Zhia grabbed the man by the throat, handling him as if he was as light as a rag-doll, and brought the keening figure up to her mouth to bite hard into his jugular. The man flailed and spasmed in her grip, but the small woman stood as still as a statue while she drank, and then held him up to inspect her handiwork. Trails of blood, black in the moonlight, ran down her chin, and the wound in his neck pulsed darkly down onto the scarf that marked him as a commissar.
With a brush of her finger Zhia sealed up the man’s wound. The man fell limp and she tossed him aside to fall like a dead thing on the moonlit ground.
‘He’ll bring us our horses tomorrow,’ she announced to her companions. ‘I’m sure the city will be in too much chaos for anyone to notice their absence straight away.’
‘Since when did you care about horses?’ Doranei demanded.
She smiled. ‘A girl with skin as fair as mine needs to be prepared. Some of us don’t like to travel light.’ She wiped the blood from her face and licked her fingers clean while Isak skirted further around the temple of Death until he had a better view of the bridge they now had to cross. Thanks to the torches he could see the soldiers had stopped near the centre: the nearer half of the bridge was in darkness. Most importantly, there weren’t Black Swords charging towards them.
‘What’s going on?’ he wondered aloud, and magic burst into life around him as the mages drew on their Crystal Skulls to investigate.
‘Fighting,’ Ebarn reported after a moment. ‘Different factions of commissars?’
Even as she said it they caught the clash of steel rising above the lap of water, punctuated by the sound of distant shouting.
Isak closed his eyes and let his senses rise up through the cool air, borne by the churn of magic inside him. High above the city he felt the invisible dart of bats come to greet him, drawn by their master’s sword. Isak ignored Death’s winged attendants, leaving them to swoop and spiral around his mind while he looked further still. There were daemons out there, keeping to the dark places beyond the light on the city walls, but he feared that might not last if the blood of hundreds was shed and the threat of Termin Mystt left.
‘They’re not soldiers,’ Zhia added, opening her eyes again, ‘that’s a mob. I think the people of Vanach have worked out what the Night Council intend for their saviour.’
‘They’re going to be sorely disappointed with me,’ Isak muttered. He looked back at the bridge they had just crossed. There was movement
on it already: the first few pursuers were summoning their bravery. ‘More importantly, where do we go now? It won’t be long before we’re cornered here.’
No one had any answer at first, then Veil ran down the tiny pebble beach to the water’s edge. ‘Zhia,’ he called, ‘just how powerful is the sword?’
She laughed. ‘ “How powerful”? What sort of an idiot asks that?’
‘Okay, so I’m an idiot: let me ask instead, how much of its power can Isak safely use?’ he snapped back. ‘The Menin attack on a Narkang border town – I heard they used magic to freeze the moat.’
‘You want to freeze the entire lake? Are you mad? I can’t even see the far end from here!’ Isak exclaimed.
‘Not the whole lake, just enough for us to walk on,’ Veil persisted, pointing with his twin spikes. ‘Rivers and lakes freeze in winter, don’t they, but not completely: we just need a foot or so on the top, just enough to cross on, surely.’
‘Ice?’ Isak said thoughtfully, joining Veil. ‘Why not?’
He touched Termin Myst to the lapping water and closed his eyes. He had never learned how to do such things in the past, but with such astonishing power at his command he guessed finesse wouldn’t matter that much. By focusing the earth-shattering power through the image in his mind, it should be done easily enough.
The wind immediately picked up and someone behind him gasped as the temperature immediately plummeted. Isak felt the cold on his skin: a sheen of moisture on scars that still remembered the heat of the Dark Place. The crisp smell of frost appeared on his clothes as magic began to pour through the black sword and into the water below. Opening his eyes, Isak watched the black surface of the lake grow cloudy, then whiteness spread as quickly as flames through straw, a menacing crackle cutting the tense silence around them. Before long a white path had spread before him, driving like a spear-thrust out across the water towards the far shore.