The Conquerors Shadow

by Ari Marmell

  “Orthessis,” Losalis reminded them, “was largely abandoned and completely indefensible. The folk who stayed behind never had a chance, and we all knew it. Pelapheron, on the other hand, is a walled city with a full garrison. Not enough to hold Audriss off, of course, but maybe enough that a sudden strike from the rear could turn the tide.”

  Ellowaine nodded. “A vise, then. Trap them between us and the wall.”

  “Pretty much what I had in mind, yes.”

  “If ye be wrong, it may just be costin’ us our army,” Teagan pointed out.

  “But if we can make it work, it may just end the war,” the larger man countered. “I’ve got scouts ascertaining enemy positions and viable strike points against Pelapheron’s walls. You’ll all have your specific unit assignments by morning.”

  His grin was predatory, splitting his dark beard and making him resemble an unusually mirthful bear. “Get some sleep, people. We have something of a full day ahead of us.”

  LOSALIS, Davro, and Seilloah were once again alone within the tent’s canvas walls. Grimacing irritably, Losalis relit the candle sitting in a shallow brass holder on the table before him, the candle that had guttered out at least four times already that evening.

  “This is all well and good,” Seilloah said worriedly from the other side of the table, “but it doesn’t address our other problem.”

  “You mean the fact that Corvis has been gone for more than a month now?” Davro asked from the cushions, reclining comfortably and clasping his hands behind his head.

  “Of course I mean that!”

  “So where’s the problem?”

  The witch, exasperated beyond any concerns of dignity, actually stamped her foot. “Listen, horn-head, I don’t give a damn about your problems with Corvis! We’re all out here because of him, he’s our godsdamn leader, and he’s missing! What, other than making ever so useful and constructive comments, do you plan to do about it?”

  Davro merely shrugged.

  “Seilloah,” Losalis interjected, “what options do we have? Either Lord Rebaine was successful in his objective, in which case we have to assume he’s got valid reasons for his absence, or he was unsuccessful, in which case he’s dead or imprisoned. Since he’s beyond our help if he’s dead, and he’s beyond our reach if he’s been captured, I don’t see there’s much Davro, or any of us, can do.”

  “If the two of you will excuse me,” Seilloah said stiffly, “I believe I’d best retire for the night. We have, as you were so good to remind us, a busy day ahead of us.”

  The flap snapped shut angrily behind her, as though picking up an echo of the witch’s agitation. Losalis glanced at the candle, which had once more blown out in the sudden breeze, and sighed.

  WHEN THE SUN, bleary-eyed and blinking, rose from his eastward bunk the next morning, it was to observe, with no small measure of surprise, the drastically changed world beneath him. The hardened earth and dormant trees surrounding Pelapheron were wrapped in a heavy coat of white, set to dancing by the light but persistent gusts that trundled through clearings and slid between trees. The world around the endangered community had reacted in advance, spreading a scab of snow across the wounds and scars soon to be inflicted.

  Winter, long held in abeyance by the autumn’s abnormal warmth, finally stretched its icy fingers across Imphallion, grasping its hard-won prize.

  Not that something so insignificant as the weather would alter Valescienn’s plans. Pelapheron’s defenders were startled out of any lingering drowsiness by the sound of thousands upon thousands of men assaulting the city walls.

  The Serpent’s forces hadn’t been camped long enough to have constructed any large siege engines, and they traveled with only a light complement of smaller varieties. A few ballista bolts lunged upward at the defenders, and now and again a small rock would smack into the wall, but by and large the invaders’ tactics were limited so far to frontal assaults with scaling ladders.

  Pelapheron’s defenders, of course, were not similarly constrained. Catapults dropped bushels of stones upon the heads of the attackers, ballistae thrummed as they launched their missiles, and porcupines lobbed dozens of crossbow bolts screaming through the air to shred armor and flesh alike. The pristine white snow went first a sickly pink, and then a rich red. The shrieks of the injured and the dying swarmed like flies.

  Though the torn and mangled bodies seemed endless as the stars, Nathaniel Espa knew well that Valescienn had thrown only a probing force at him. When a single trumpet blast from Valescienn’s heralds called for them to disengage, what had felt a full-fledged offensive left only a few hundred dead in its wake.

  “Report,” Valescienn ordered, eyes never straying from the blood-soaked wall.

  “No exact count yet, sir,” an armor-clad warrior replied, breath steaming like a dragon’s in the frosty air. “Quick estimates would be that we’ve lost about two hundred and fifty, maybe up to three. Enemy casualties are lower, sir, probably about a hundred.”

  “Excellent.” The general’s scars writhed as he smiled. “If you were atop that wall, Captain, you’d certainly judge what just happened to be a probe for weak points, yes?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “Good. Then they should believe that the next wave is a real attempt on the walls.” His smile grew cold. “Pass the ready order to Mithraem and the gnomes.”

  “Yes, sir!” The soldier snapped off a quick salute, which rang sharply against his helm, and trudged rapidly back through the clinging powder.

  It was a tactic Audriss had used often since his campaign began, and it never failed to bring swift victory. The Serpent’s entire mortal army, if truth be told, was little more than a combination of diversion and cleanup crew. The highest walls and the most alert defenders were nigh useless against the shadow-clinging gnomes or Mithraem’s Endless Legion.

  Valescienn gave it another hour before ordering his herald to sound the charge. The Serpent’s warriors leapt forward, voices raised in a cacophony of disparate battle cries, weapons held aloft, but it was a slow, faltering charge, as boots pulled against the weight of the rapacious snow. Arrows and stones fell in a deadly rain, and men once again collapsed with split breastplates and crushed helms. It certainly looked bad for the attacking force, but then, it was supposed to.

  The screams from within the walls, when they finally reached Valescienn’s ears, were a beauty to rival the greatest symphony. The sheets of arrows faltered as the defending archers found themselves facing a threat from behind. Valescienn had hoped that the Endless Legion could take down the bowmen with no warning; an archer with his wooden shafts was a far greater danger to Mithraem’s people than warriors with their blades of steel. Still, he was more than confident in their ability to do their job with minimal losses. With that distraction to ease their way, the first of his human soldiers reached the top of the wall, and the battle for Pelapheron began in earnest.

  Which was, of course, when things fell apart.

  Valescienn was one of the first to hear them coming. It wasn’t quite thunder, for the snow muffled their footsteps, and the earth did not shake beneath their tread. Nevertheless, Audriss’s lieutenant was briefly paralyzed by their sudden appearance, his eyes wide and his jaw agape as the army of Corvis Rebaine charged from the ice-encrusted trees.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The stone-walled hallway echoed—no, shook, really—with the footsteps of half a dozen ogres. Their shoulders hunched and heads bowed, they still barely fit within the corridor built for humans, but they were determined to let neither cramped muscles nor bone-deep weariness slow them down.

  Nor the angry, ever more desperate human jogging in their wake, for that matter.

  “Davro, you’re not listening to me!” Valescienn had to shout just to be heard over the clattering of his flail against the metal of his greaves, to say nothing of the aforementioned marching feet.

  Davro rolled his eye ceiling-ward. “No, Valescienn, I’m listening. You’re just not sayi
ng anything worthwhile.”

  “Damn it, Davro, I told you to stop!” Even as his pale-skinned hand reached out to snatch at the ogre’s belt, a veritable chorus of low growls sounded from six enormous throats. Valescienn found himself staring up at Davro’s narrowing gaze—and at the bristling array of spears beyond.

  Swallowing softly, he released his grip and took a step back. Fearless, Valescienn might have been, but not stupid.

  “Was there something?” Davro queried politely.

  “Davro, think! Think of what we can still accomplish! There’s no reason to give up now! We—”

  “No reason? You haven’t noticed the surrounding armies, the complete lack of surviving fortifications, or the abrupt disappearance of one suddenly less-than-terrifying Terror of the East? You’re not really all that observant, are you?”

  “I’m not an idiot, Davro.”

  “Ah. Just practicing, then?”

  Valescienn ignored him. “I know we’re in a bad position, but it’s not untenable. They’re not ready yet; they think they can come in and wipe us out at their leisure. A sudden sally, a single thrust through the encampments, and we can be through them before they can react!”

  “Kovul shinak, et,” Davro marveled to a handful of ogrish chuckles. Corvis’s lieutenant—former lieutenant—didn’t need to speak the language to understand that he was not being complimented.

  “We’ll lose a chunk of the army,” he admitted, “but not so much that we can’t rebuild! They’re tired of war, they’ll be back to feuding with one another in weeks! We can still—”

  “Valescienn.”

  “What?”

  “Shut up.” Davro hunched down farther still, bringing his one eye on level with the human’s two. “Corvis is gone. The war is over. You want to stay and fight? You go right on ahead. We, however, are going home.”

  “Davro, I can’t do this without the ogres!”

  “Then I guess you have a problem, don’t you?”

  Behind Valescienn’s pale skin, the slow flushing of his face looked almost like a growing forest fire, and he seemed literally unable to catch his breath. “I will not let you ruin this for me, you damn savage!”

  “Me ruin this? Remember that army we just talked about? I’d think—”

  Valescienn’s hand dropped to the hilt of his flail; Davro’s hand dropped to Valescienn’s. The meaty fist snapped shut and the rattling of the chain ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Valescienn fell to one knee, grunting, as the bones in his forearm shifted, threatening to give way entirely.

  “Because we’ve fought together,” Davro whispered to him, “side by side, you’re still alive. Try that again, and you die messy.”

  “You took an oath, Davro,” Valescienn whispered through the pain. “In Chalsene’s name!”

  “An oath to Corvis Rebaine, Valescienn. Not to you.”

  Valescienn collapsed to the floor, gasping in relief, as Davro let loose his grip. Without a word, the ogres turned as one and resumed their inexorable march toward the exit.

  “I won’t forget this, Davro!” Valescienn shouted after them.

  But the only answer he got was the slamming of a heavy door, and the pounding of large feet receding swiftly into the ash-coated streets of Denathere.

  ANY OTHER TIME, they’d have posed little threat. Without even counting the Endless Legion or the gnomes, the Serpent’s army outnumbered the Terror’s several times over. But nothing about these circumstances was normal. Audriss’s army found itself, for the first time since they’d taken Denathere, trapped in a defensive battle, crushed between the unyielding stone walls and a flanking foe.

  Valescienn didn’t even bother calling orders, for no one could possibly have heard him over the surrounding roar. With a furious cry, the scarred man met the enemy, short sword clasped loosely in his left hand, barbed flail whirling from his right.

  Expertly, he parried an overhand blow with his short blade, even as he wrapped the chain of his flail around the soldier’s calf. Valescienn yanked hard, driving the flail’s spines deeper into armor and flesh, jerking his opponent’s leg out from under him. Even as the man fell screaming to the snow, Valescienn’s short sword flickered forward and down. The screaming ended abruptly with a wet gurgle.

  Snow crunched behind him and he whipped around, rising from his crouch. Flesh ripped as the ball-and-chain tore free and a second of Rebaine’s soldiers went down, the side of his head caved in, shreds of his dead companion’s leg muscles dangling from his skull where they’d been stuck to the barbs.

  But while Valescienn held his own against the surprise assault, his men fared less well. The defenders on the wall, heartened by the unexpected arrival of reinforcements, redoubled their efforts against both the attackers without and the invaders within. Arrows dropped on the Serpent’s soldiers with increasing speed, rocks and boiling pitch poured from the ramparts, scaling ladders were shoved back with long poles or else doused in oil and set ablaze (and then shoved back with long poles). The Terror’s forces harried the armies, attacking at the edges of the battle and then veering off, only to return moments later in a thrust aimed straight at the heart of the melee. Even as Audriss’s soldiers tried to regroup, the officers could see that the damage was done. Units were scattered, companions separated, commanders isolated from their subordinates. And still the arrows fell, and still the enemy advanced.

  “Valescienn!” It was a primal sound, the roar of a hurricane. It carried well across the tumult, climbing the wind and striding across heads to reach the ears of Audriss’s beleaguered lieutenant. Eyes narrowed, stretching his scars into an ugly white line, he turned to meet the source of that voice.

  “Davro …”

  Nor was he alone, gods take him! With a fury to drown the battle cry of Kassek War-Bringer himself, a scream split the frigid air: a hundred inhuman voices, shrieking the Night-Bringer’s unhallowed name. Sliding from the snow-coated trees came an entire wedge of ogres, a living, snarling avalanche of muscle and steel. The first of them, taller and broader than Davro himself, carried an iron-headed maul. It rose and fell methodically, and if it was not a speedy weapon, well, it had no need to be. The first man within reach of that crushing sledge, unable to leap aside due to the snow piled around his feet, threw his shield up over his head in desperation. It, along with the arm behind it and most of the man’s body from the waist up, disintegrated into a wet smear on impact.

  And everywhere the ogres struck was more of the same. Swords broad enough to cleave a horse in twain laughed at such conceits as armor; axe blades the size of body shields cut through men like wheat; and those horrendous mauls pounded everything beneath them—metal, flesh, bone, and blood—into indefinable pulp. Here and there, an ogre who’d somehow lost his weapon laid about him with fists and horn, and more of Audriss’s soldiers fell to the ground, torn and bleeding.

  Valescienn did not, however, have much time to absorb what Davro’s people were doing to his men, not if he wanted to prevent Davro’s spear from doing the same to him. The insanely long weapon licked outward long before Davro came within the human’s reach, and Valescienn realized, even as he hurled himself from the heart-seeking blade, that he would have to bring the fight to the ogre.

  He rolled back to his feet, his entire left side coated in a patina of blood-soaked snow. His brow creased in rage, Davro spun, slicing his spear in a horizontal arc. Unable to dodge a second time, Valescienn braced himself for the coming shock and twisted toward the spear, flail and sword crossing in an X-shaped parry.

  Though he did indeed prevent the spear from sinking home, the terrible force of the blow knocked him from his feet. His arms aching, his hands ringing from the impact, he heaved himself upright once more, just before Davro’s spear plunged down into the snow where he’d fallen.

  Valescienn lunged desperately, aware that he might never again find himself so far inside the ogre’s reach. The short sword flicked outward, stabbing at the weak spot in the ogre’s armor between stom
ach and waist.

  And Davro laughed.

  It was a harsh, heavy laugh, ridiculing Valescienn even for the attempt. And even as he recoiled, face red with fury, the human realized why. He’d been too stunned by the force of the ogre’s blow to notice earlier, but the short sword with which he’d attempted to gut his opponent was little more than an inch of jagged metal. The rest of the blade had snapped clean off when he’d parried the weighty spear.

  Cursing defiantly, Valescienn hurled the useless weapon at his foe and gripped his flail in both hands. For a moment, the two opponents circled, each waiting for the other to move.

  “Why are you here, Davro?” Valescienn taunted, buying time. “I thought you preferred slaughtering sheep and pigs to people.”

  If he’d been hoping to stun the ogre with his knowledge of Davro’s dark secret, he was destined for disappointment. “Obviously,” Davro replied, “you were mistaken.” He grinned maniacally. “Or Audriss was mistaken. Or Audriss’s pet demon, Pekatherosh. Maybe it was his mistake?”

  Valescienn’s scowl darkened, but he, too, was unsurprised at the extent of the enemy’s knowledge.

  “Loyalty to Rebaine, then?” Valescienn continued, jerking away from an experimental spear thrust, though he knew he was once more beyond reach.

  “If I’d known we’d be having such an in-depth conversation, Valescienn, I’d have brought wine and pastries. Since I didn’t, do we want to get on with trying to kill each other?”

  But Valescienn saw before him a different sort of opening. “We could,” he admitted. “But there’s no point now, is there? What with Rebaine having been captured and all.”

  Finally, finally he evoked a reaction. The ogre tried to hide it as quickly as it occurred, but Valescienn knew he’d seen that ugly, single eye go wide, seen the horn twitch with a sudden doubt. “What are you talking about?”