“Some fun,” Nilo shouted, holding his own against a fighter who was a head taller and a stone heavier.
“Never better,” Pollard muttered, taking the chance to bring his sword up sharply, biting into his opponent’s sword arm and severing the bone midway between wrist and elbow. On the return blow, he cut clean through the soldier’s neck, grimacing as blood spattered his cloak and drenched his arms.
“What anyone wants with this pile of shit is beyond me,” Pollard grumbled. Mirdalur had been a ruin for generations. Long before the Great Fire leveled Donderath’s grand manors and the Cataclysm laid waste to the kingdom, Mirdalur had crumbled in silence, overrun by weeds, retaken by the birds and foxes.
Once, it had been a place for kings. Pollard knew the legends. Four centuries ago, King Merrill’s ancestor and his chosen noblemen bound the wild magic to their command in a secret chamber at Mirdalur. That story had drawn Blaine McFadden when he returned from exile, and Pollard nearly had him within his grasp, only to lose his prize to an unexpected interloper. That loss still stung, and Pollard was determined not to have it repeated.
Hennoch’s troops fought well. Voss’s mercenaries battled with a ferocity Pollard had only seen in mad dogs. Already, the courtyard was strewn with corpses, the ruined fountain in its center polluted with blood.
“Off with you!” roared a mercenary who seemed as wide as a wagon and as muscled as an ox. Despite the freezing cold, he wore only a leather cuirass over his tunic. Black hair formed a wild cloud around his blunt-nosed face, and his bare arms were covered with runes and drawings of the gods inked into the skin. The battle ax in his hands scythed dangerously from side to side, already bloodied to its hilt.
Pollard took two steps back. If he could not fight strong, he would fight dirty. A throwing knife from a hidden sheath slipped into his hand. As the lumbering giant raised his ax to attack, Pollard sent the blade flying. It sank to the hilt in the big man’s groin, felling him with a howl of agony. He kicked the ax away and stood just out of reach of the fighter’s grasping hands as the mercenary writhed in pain. Then with a sure, clean strike he sent the man’s head rolling.
The mages concentrated their initial attack on a large cistern to one side of the courtyard. Pollard had given orders for them to begin their assault there, believing that the stone shaft hid access to Mirdalur’s underground levels. Fire scoured the walls of the well, searing the dark tunnel with concentrated heat so that flames erupted from the mouth of the well, shooting up into the sky and illuminating the courtyard like a massive torch. Other mages sent tremors deep beneath the surface, in hopes of causing underground rooms and corridors to collapse.
The soldiers cried out in alarm and cursed in anger as the ground rumbled and trembled beneath their feet. A nasty grin spread across Pollard’s face as he pictured the quakes burying the sleeping talishte. Focusing on his anger helped him deal with the pain from the raw sore in the center of his chest and the ceaseless itching from the rest of his skin, made worse by armor and violent movement.
One of Voss’s men came at Pollard, and he waded into the fray, feeling his rage find its way into his sword, his anger spending with every swing and slash. Battle cleansed him, purging the dark thoughts—at least for a while—and reminding him with every spray of blood what it meant to be alive. Battle made him feel vital, yet the wounds he bore for his master took their toll. Nilo ran to join the fight, and Pollard knew that his second-in-command would not have done so had Pollard been at his former strength.
The mages had expanded their fiery attack, scouring every one of the stone buildings aboveground with flame. Voss’s men, pushed from their hiding places by the mage-sent fires, took on Hennoch’s troops with an edge that smacked of personal vendetta. This was the kind of fight Pollard relished, when combatants had a stake in the action, fighting not for gold or promotion but for the chance to thrash someone who had done them wrong.
“Go tell your biter masters that your little game is over,” Pollard grated as he swung, parrying a blow hard enough to make his teeth rattle. He spun, blocking another strike, unsure just how long he could hold both men at bay, and committed himself to finding out.
“That’s rich, coming from you, with a biter master of your own,” one of the men growled. He made no pretense of technique, expecting sheer power to win the day, driving Pollard back several steps with a series of hard, fast strikes that tested Pollard’s reactions.
Pollard struck high with the sword in his right hand, intending to thrust with the large knife in his left. The mercenary blocked the high strike, but before Pollard could score a fatal blow, the fighter swung his sword in an arc, striking the knife with such power that it numbed Pollard’s hand and sent the blade flying.
Pollard and the mercenary circled each other warily, looking for weakness. The mercenary, with his broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms, likely outweighed Pollard by a good bit. Pollard was strong, muscular for a man his age, but not as massive as his opponent, who was likely half his age.
“Tired, old man?” the fighter taunted.
“Scared, young pup?” Pollard rejoined.
Pollard had regained feeling in his left hand, and he drew a shiv out of the folds of his clothing, letting it fall into his grip out of sight. He lunged toward the fighter, ignoring his pain and mounting an attack with his full strength and fury. Skill, training, and long practice fighting while wounded drove Pollard’s movements, giving him a moment’s grace to keep up the attack with his sword while awaiting the moment for the death strike.
The mercenary’s attention was fully invested in tracking Pollard’s sword. He never spotted the flick of the wrist that sent the shiv speeding toward him, or Nilo coming up from behind to stab him through the back. The fighter looked with astonishment at the hilt-deep knife protruding from his chest, staining his filthy shirt crimson. Cursing Pollard and consigning him to the depths of Raka, the mercenary stumbled, swinging wildly with his sword, before collapsing to his knees and falling facedown in the dirt.
Only then did Pollard realize that another, more dangerous enemy had arisen.
Heavy fog rolled in fast, blanketing the courtyard so thickly that Pollard could not see his boots. The day’s weather had been cold, threatening snow, with no swing in temperature to cause the mist. The fog felt sticky, yet cold enough that Pollard wondered how it had not frozen. There was no wind, yet the fog moved swiftly, as if driven by a gale. The air took on an oppressive weight, and the cold went straight to the bone. Pollard fought off a shiver, aware that fear, more than frost, had set his teeth to chattering.
Figures were rising out of the center of the fog. Pollard could not be certain, as the mist billowed and roiled, whether it was one face, eyeing them maliciously, or many. At first, the fog was like a sheet of muslin, stretched tight over a corpse’s face, rendering features hidden and distorted. Then the fog folded in on itself, and it seemed to Pollard that ranks of shadowed figures walked just hidden within the fog, blurred and insubstantial but no less real.
The fog was rising. It was up to the soldiers’ chests, like a swelling tide, and Pollard heard muttering and curses among his men. Voss’s fighters had withdrawn for the moment, making Pollard even more suspicious.
“Mages! We need light!” Pollard shouted, readying his sword should an enemy charge from the mist.
Obligingly, a glare of blindingly white light bathed the courtyard, and for a moment, Pollard and the others could see the shapes more clearly despite the fog, like figures backlit behind a scrim. Whatever walked toward them out of the mist was not human, or at least, was human no longer. Elongated arms with clawlike fingers hung at their sides, and their loose-limbed legs sauntered with the feral assurance of a big cat stalking its prey. Something about the heads was wrong, misshapen, with lantern jaws that could hold long, sharp teeth. Worse, in the glimpse they got of the fog figures, they looked distressingly solid, more so with every step they took, though it seemed to take them a while to emerge.
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As if they’re coming from a long way, Pollard thought. As if they’ve walked here from the Unseen Realm itself.
Something deep in Pollard’s bones screamed for him to run. He started into the fog, terrified and curious, wondering whether the mage-warrior Knights of Esthrane had woken from their daytime slumber to somehow raise the dead. A disquieting thought occurred to him.
The Wraith Lord was cursed to walk the Unseen Realm. If he could cross that void, perhaps he could open the door for others to follow him…
“Retreat!” Hennoch’s voice carried through the fog. “Fall back!”
Pollard felt a guilty rush of shame in the relief that flooded him, just for an instant, as he echoed the call. The things in the fog slowed their advance, as if giving the attackers one last chance at self-preservation.
Voss’s soldiers had no such reserve.
Roaring like wild beasts, wide-eyed as berserkers, Voss’s mercenaries came out screaming from the edges of the fog. Even they were careful not to slip among the shadow beings in the mist. Whether these were fresh soldiers or whether they had just taken new courage in the pause, Pollard did not know, but the mercenaries swept forward with savage purpose, battle axes and war hammers replacing their swords.
Pollard’s soldiers fled, with Hennoch’s men hard on their heels. Voss’s soldiers ran fast enough to cut down stragglers from the rear lines, harrying them well past the boundaries of the Mirdalur walls. Those whose mounts awaited them nearly flew into their saddles before setting their heels to the horses’ sides, while the foot soldiers ran for their lives.
Voss’s men left off their pursuit at the edge of the forest, sending them on their way with catcalls and jeers, infuriating laughter and insults. The fog did not rest. Tendrils of heavy fog slunk around the horses’ hooves, and wound in and out of the trees. Shadows moved in the fog, allowing disquieting glimpses from time to time, as if the ghosts of Mirdalur had taken it upon themselves to form an ethereal escort, to assure that none of the soldiers would double back to resume the fight.
There was little chance of that, Pollard thought bitterly. Their fleeing soldiers nearly outpaced the horses, which were unusually jittery and ill-tempered. The retreating army soon learned to keep to the center of the forest road after wisps of the fog spooked their horses. The horses bucked and sent their riders flying, landing in the hedgerow with broken bones and snapped necks.
Maybe the Wraith Lord means to hunt us down a few at a time, Pollard thought, aware that he gripped his reins white-knuckled. Inside, he was torn between shame at having run and resignation, aware that a seasoned soldier knows when to retreat to fight another day.
Fog made the forest miserably cold and damp, and it seemed to Pollard that the shadows were unnaturally dark for midday. It was as if the sunlight could not penetrate the branches, though Pollard had ridden this way many times in daylight and found nothing strange.
The road broadened when they emerged from the forest, and the fog hung back, its duty completed. Hennoch’s men put on a burst of speed when the bright daylight came into view, riding at a gallop or running full-out to get out of the shadows and into the cold, clear light of day.
Pollard turned as he reached the crest of a small rise, and looked back at the forest. The fog lingered, stretching along the edge of the forest and filling the road as if to block it. No natural fog moved like that, confirming the certainty of every primal sense. Pollard did not know whether the fog could project emotions, whether it tinkered with their minds, but when he spurred his mount and rode down the other side of the rise, losing the forest to view, he felt a weight lift from his shoulders and the light, somehow, seemed brighter.
For a long time, the army rode in silence. None of the soldiers seemed disposed to the usual banter or bawdy comments, their way to celebrate a victory or take the sting from a defeat. The retreat hung heavily on all of them. Pollard brooded, steeping in self-recrimination and loathing as he rode. His wounds made it agonizing to ride or move, and he bit his lip to keep from crying out. Blood tinged the hem of the shirt he wore under his cuirass, not from battle damage but from the sore, and from where his skin was rubbed raw with the lesions. Cursing under his breath, he gritted his teeth and spurred his horse to catch up to Hennoch, who was near the front of the group.
“What now?” Hennoch asked, not making eye contact as Pollard joined him.
“We regroup,” Pollard replied, having already replayed this conversation a dozen times in his mind before he rode forward.
“Against that?” Hennoch asked in disbelief. “I can lead an army against men. I can rally troops against talishte, though it’s a suicide cause. But something powerful called those spirits, and it was too damn much for us to handle.”
Pollard could hear the fear in Hennoch’s voice, and recognized it as his own. Yet it would not do to allow his liegeman to see that. “There’s always a way,” Pollard said, voice rough with courage he did not feel. “Talishte aren’t invincible and neither are mages.”
“They don’t have to be invincible,” Hennoch replied. “They only have to be stronger than we are.”
It was evening by the time they reached Solsiden, weary and defeated. Pollard did not look forward to recounting the day’s misadventure to Lysander, and his temper flared at the expected humiliation of having been assigned an objective and failing to achieve it.
Pollard felt his spirits lift, just a bit, as they rode up to the front of the manor house. Despite everything else, he was home. His clothes were bloody from the fight and dirty from the road. Muscles and joints ached from the pounding of battle and the interminable ride, sorer than they should be from the fight alone. His proxy wounds were taking a steep toll, and it would likely be some time before he recovered enough to fight again. Worse, his battle wounds were serious enough to require the attention of a healer, and he loathed revealing his weakness. Most of all, Pollard wanted to pour himself some brandy and nurse his grievances in solitude.
Hennoch and his troops veered off before they neared the manor, returning to their camp. The mages went with them. Nilo accompanied Pollard to Solsiden, along with his personal guard.
“Was it the Wraith Lord, do you think, who summoned the fog spirits?” Nilo asked, now that they had some privacy for the first time since the battle.
Pollard shrugged ill-temperedly. “Perhaps. Who knows? I never heard that any of the Knights of Esthrane were necromancers, but then again, they’ve hardly trumpeted their abilities for all to know.”
“What will you do about Lysander?” Nilo asked, undeterred by Pollard’s foul mood. He had weathered many of Pollard’s rages, and he met them all with an unflappable equanimity that got under Pollard’s skin all the more for its affability.
Pollard let out a string of curses until his temper was spent, then sighed and shrugged. “Damned if I know, Nilo. Things went wrong today. Perhaps mages can’t be conscripted, even if they’re bound by the kruvgaldur to our talishte. Could they have done more to push back against those… things?” He shrugged once more. “Could they? Who knows. Perhaps.”
“Then again, if it really was the Wraith Lord who pried the gates of the Unseen Realm ajar, could anyone have stood against it?” Nilo countered.
“Humph,” Pollard said, unconvinced.
Nilo raised an eyebrow. “Look at it this way. There’s no glory in leading an army into slaughter for ego’s sake.”
Pollard glowered at him. “Perhaps not,” he admitted grudgingly.
Nilo let that go, perhaps realizing there was no good reply. But after a silence, Nilo slid a glance toward Pollard. “What of the wounds?” he asked.
Pollard took his meaning immediately. Nilo was not inquiring about the damage Pollard had taken in the battle: a few gashes and bruises that would heal. Pollard knew that Nilo meant the wounds he endured from Reese’s captivity, which had grown steadily worse.
“Not good,” he admitted. The wounds that mimicked his talishte master’s torture wore at hi
s body and soul. It was impossible to move, to think, to sleep without them at the forefront of his mind. The skin lesions rubbed so against his tunic that without an undershirt of fine silk his skin was covered in a bloody sheen from even mild exertion. He was certain his shirt would be stuck to the blood when he retired for bed, after the action of the fight.
Worst of all was the sore on his chest. It ached to the bone with every breath. Pollard was certain that he would succumb to Reese’s wounds long before the fifty-year imprisonment was over, even if his master did not.
“I just want sufficient brandy for the pain and a night’s rest,” Pollard said, certain Nilo could hear the weariness in his voice.
They rounded the bend, and found Solsiden bright with lights. Pollard felt his temper flare. “Who would dare—” he started, but before he could finish his sentence, he knew. Talishte, he thought. For some reason, the talishte have come. I would know if Reese ceased to exist. So the alternative…
“What do you want me to do?” Nilo asked quietly. He had intended to stay the night at the manor. Kerr would have been expecting both of them after the battle, and made ready with dinner and whatever healing supplies were necessary. These new, unwelcome talishte intruders called for a change of plans, and until he knew what they wanted, Pollard decided to keep Nilo clear of his new “guests.”
“Go back to camp,” Pollard said as they slowed their horses to a halt just beyond the manor wall. “I’ll send for you in the morning, once I know what’s going on.”
Nilo nodded. “Very well,” he said, turning his horse in the direction from which they had just come. “Good night.”
Pollard gave a curt nod in reply, but he was certain his night would be anything but good.
Warily, Pollard rode the rest of the way in silence, accompanied by his guards. At the front of the manor, he saw no horses tethered, yet footprints marked the light dusting of snow that had fallen in the last candlemark. A groom ran out to grab the reins to his horse as Pollard swung down from his saddle. An effort of will was required not to wince at the strain the movement put on his wounds.
War of Shadows: Book Three of the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga Page 48