Shadowgod

by Michael Cobley

  “Our veil,” said the scout Qael with a feral smile. “We shall be the unseen.”

  “Where is the gully?” Mazaret said, voice raised above the drumming of the hooves.

  Qael grinned. “Beyond it.”

  Not long after, the first white motes came fluttering down. Moments later the snowfall proper swept over them on a rising wind that drove large icy flakes into their faces as they rode. At first Mazaret was pleased, almost exhilarated at the snow’s arrival but then the blasting chill of it increased. The visible distance was growing steadily shorter and he realised that their ability to fight on horseback would become severely hampered.

  At the far end of the ridge the trail dipped into a long depression in the terrain which ended with a path that rose and curved along the flank of a steep hill. Qael brought them to an abrupt halt here. Mazaret felt a stab of foreboding at the confusion in the man’s face.

  “There should be scouts here to greet us and say when the enemy will arrive,” Qael said.

  “Did Domas send them ahead from Nimas to observe,” Mazaret said, “or was he going to wait till he was in position?”

  Qael was sombre. “He intended to wait.”

  “Then he has been waylaid, or has suffered some other misfortune. We may have to follow the route back – ”

  Then sounds came to them through the rushing snow, cries and the clash of weapons. Qael immediately leaped from his horse and dashed up the hill, falling to hand and knees to crawl the last yard or two. Mazaret was close behind and heard the man curse before reaching his side.

  “Poor fool,” Qael muttered.

  Mazaret was filled with dread at what he saw. From the dozens of corpses, human and horse, that lay scattered across the gully it appeared that the enemy had caught the advance party in the open. After a bloody battle only two of Domas' men were still alive, one prone and bleeding on the ground while the other stood over him with a quarterstaff and weakening visibly as he held off his terrible assailants.

  Four figures surrounded him, and not one among the living. Gore dripped from the cloven head of one, entrails from the midriff of another, while the others had been horribly hacked. All could stand and swing a weapon, and all moved to the will of the two shamen who watched from their horses a few yards away.

  “I have seen the dead walk and kill before now,” Qael said through gritted teeth. “We must act or those men shall surely die.”

  “But look at all those other bodies,” said Terzis, who had joined them. “If we attack, we would be facing more than just four.”

  “We have to get in close enough to kill those shamen,” Mazaret growled. The hand-to– hand fight with the waking dead in Oumetra was still fresh in his memory. “Yet we must conceal the move, or fight an army of corpses.” He looked at Terzis. “Could you create the illusion of, say, a dozen men on horseback with myself in the lead?”

  “Yes, my lord, I can.”

  “Can you maintain four such illusions at the same time?”

  Her eyes widened. “My lord, I’m… not sure – ”

  Mazaret frowned. “And if I order you to do so?”

  The lady mage was still a moment, then nodded sharply. “By your command, my lord.”

  “Good,” Mazaret said. “Then this is what we’ll do…”

  Minutes later, Mazaret and twelve of his knights were galloping along behind the hill to a notch which led into the north of the gully. At the gap they slowed to a halt at a point he was sure was visible from the crest of the hill. A moment passed, then an image of Mazaret on his horse began to appear, wavering as if seen through water. Then details grew sharp, and he was startled at the sight of a grey-haired man past middle-age, garbed in mailed armour and heavy furs, his face lined and weathered, his pale eyes both intense and sorrowful.

  Is this really how I am? he wondered. Or is this how Terzis sees me?

  The rest of his knights were also present in mirror image, patiently waiting as a second group quivered out of nothing and grew solid, then a third and a fourth. Mazaret could hear his men muttering fearfully among themselves and felt a ripple of primitive dread when all his likenesses looked directly at him. Reaching for his blade, he had to grip it hard and tight to quell the trembling that threatened to unman him. Then he raised his sword aloft before lowering it to point at the enemy.

  “The Tree and the Crown!” he cried and spurred his horse into a plunging gallop.

  Following him, his men took up the battlecry. Then two of the ghostly bands moved to overtake them, led by mirage Mazaret’s who gestured with their blades and bellowed war shouts in perfect, silent mimicry. A freezing blast of wind tore at their cloaks as they came out from the lee, and dense swirls of snow scoured them with icy claws. The deep moan of the storm seemed to fill the gully like a song and in the eerie madness of the moment he imagined that his horse was his fear, which he was riding into the razored heart of peril.

  A shriek went up from the snow-blurred shamen on their horses as they caught sight of the charge. The lone fighter still held off the walking dead, but he was staggering now. Then there was a second figure at his side, slashing and kicking to hold back the abominable attackers – it was Qael.

  Up ahead Mazaret saw a few carcasses stir beneath their mantles of snow, but they slumped back into stillness when the shamen realised what they were facing. As the leading group of mirages were dispelled, another rode past Mazaret to his left while yet another appeared on his right. Amid their shielding phalanx of illusions Mazaret and his men held to their grim course. They were close enough now to see the shaman’s faces, the bones in their tangled hair, their ritual scars, their hungry malice. And beyond them, way along the gully, Mazaret could just make out figures and shapes approaching through the blurring snowfall…

  Then suddenly there were no ghostly images between himself and the nearest shaman. Across the rapidly diminishing yards the Mogaun looked into Mazaret’s eyes and saw the promise of doom, but before he could do more than began the first mouthings of a cantrip Mazaret’s hurtling blade took his head off with a single blow.

  As the lifeless body toppled from its saddle, Mazaret let out a shout of triumph and reined his horse round in search of the other shaman. The four corpse warriors were sinking down into the snow, and beyond them he saw the remaining Mogaun riding madly up the north slope of the gully. Then movement and noise surged into his awareness as the dim shapes he had seen before were finally upon him, riders armed with spears and poleaxes, wagons full of weeping children and adults, and swordsmen and bowmen on foot running and stumbling as they tried to keep up. Mazaret’s knights fought to control their mounts amid the pandemonium while Mazaret watched for any sign of Domas himself.

  “My lord…”

  He turned at the shout to see Qael tending to several of the arriving wounded and urging them to stay on the wagons.

  “What’s happening?” Mazaret said.

  The scout wiped blood from his cheek and looked up. “Domas and his men were discovered and had to attack the caravan,” he said. “He is fighting a rearguard action with the bulk of his men, trying to give time for the wagons to escape….wait, that’s them now…” He began helping and prodding his charges back into the nearest wagon. “Go – go now!”

  Riders were emerging from the veiled distance, less than a dozen in addition to a couple of riderless steeds. Mazaret bellowed a rallying call to the nearest of his serjeants then turned to signal Kance who he knew was waiting up on the crest of the hill. When he gave the field gesture for a flank attack, the lone figure on the hill waved once then vanished. When Mazaret looked back the survivors of Domas' warband were arriving, bloody, battered and angry. Domas himself was helmless with a raw graze down one side of his face and a wound on his shield hand. He allowed one of his men to tie a bandage before shaking him off and turning his dark and bitter gaze on Mazaret.

  “Where are your fine knights now, my lord?”

  “Waiting and ready, good ser.” With a tilt of
the head he indicated the gully wall to their left, and Domas nodded slowly.

  Snow rushed all about them, growing heavier by the minute. As the wagons rumbled off to the rear, the all-too-few riders and warriors formed a thin line across the gully. Down the far end, at the edge of visibility, a dark mass of horsemen was approaching at an almost leisurely canter.

  “Deathless has a great appetite,” Domas said. “And he hungers yet.”

  “Then let us stick in his craw,” Mazaret said, turning to shout: “Ready spears and bows if you have them...wait for my order…”

  He glanced along the line. Faces were grim and staring or exhausted and beyond fear, but there was no give in them as Azurech’s troops came onwards at the gallop. Snow sprayed from beneath hammering hooves, white breath gushed from horse nostrils and harness clinked and jingled.

  “Wait…” he said.

  Azurech’s riders looked well-armoured, with most wearing concealing helms and small bannerets that fluttered from shoulders and backs.

  “Wait….and – LOOSE!”

  A wave of spears and arrows leaped towards their targets. Some missed entirely, others rebounded from shields and body armour, a few struck riders who cried out and fell, or horses which shrieked and lunged to the side. But the rest never paused. They came straight on. Mazaret stared at the dark and thundering wall of enemies for a moment, then roared the charge and spurred his mount forward.

  The two forces met with a din of battlecries and clashing metal. Amid the barbed and armoured tumult, two horsemen, one with a sword, the other with a spear, rode towards Mazaret. He deflected the spearpoint with his shield and landed a well-aimed boot on the man’s hip, sending him spinning from his saddle. At the same time he leaned away from the swordsman’s slashing blade, slipped past and found himself facing another enemy who he outfought and despatched.

  Then the high voice of horn sounded above the battle’s raw clangour, and Mazaret glanced round to Captain Kance leading the rest of his men down the side of the gully. The galloping wedge of knights held their formation even as they struck the flank of Azurech’s column, splitting it in two. Divided and caught, the enemy’s ranks dissolved into uncoordinated knots and pairs yet still fought on resolutely.

  There was another hornblast and a long line of mounted knights came into view on the opposite rise, while half a dozen charged in from behind the original line. At this, Azurech’s men broke and an attempt to retreat back along the gully turned into a chaotic rout. Unnoticed, the knights up on the rise faded away.

  Terzis, Mazaret thought with a grim smile.

  The victors were pursuing and riding down the vanquished, yet a few still managed to escape. Blood drenched the cold ground and the bodies of men and horses littered the gully, growing pale beneath the falling snow. Those mortally wounded were quickly despatched while surrendered prisoners were being disarmed and forced to leave on foot. Now dismounted, Mazaret strode over to where some score of his and Domas' men stood gathered around something. A few saw him approach, their faces anxious as they stepped aside to let him through to stand over the enemy he had already beaten twice.

  Azurech was a tall, lantern-jawed man but now he measured his length on the ground, propped against the neck of a dead horse. His wounds were ghastly – one leg was shattered and lay bent in implausible places with bone shards visible; one arm was handless while the other was missing entirely from the shoulder.

  Yet still he lived. Black blood soaked his armour and the ground below and around him but the wounds seemed to have staunched themselves. And still he lived and breathed. Within the black iron frame of his helm his face was a waxy white mask, its hollows and wrinkles tinged with a grey-pink hue. Red-rimmed eyes full of burning vitality looked up at Mazaret and the thin-lipped mouth smiled.

  “Your thoughts write themselves in the pages of your eyes, my lord Regent,” said Azurech in a voice unexpectedly deep and articulate. “Thoughts like ‘How can this be?’, and ‘Can he be killed?’, and even ‘Should I take him back for judgement?’”

  “Only the third part of your maunderings has any bearing on my purpose,” Mazaret said. “You will return with us and answer for your foul acts.”

  Azurech gave him an amused look through half-closed eyes. “Hmm, Besh-Darok – a sizeable city by all accounts. Were you to take me there, you might have cause to wish you had done otherwise.”

  In a single, swift movement Mazaret unsheathed his sword and levelled it at the Warlord’s throat.

  “Or I could end your life here,” he said. “One thrust, and no more Deathless.”

  There were nodding heads and murmurs of approval from the gathered soldiers. Mazaret noticed Domas watching from the side, agreeing with the rest.

  Azurech just sneered.

  “My master is the great Shadowking Byrnak, fool, and he has promised me life unending. You have no conception of the powers that you face. Slay me and my master will call my spirit back from the feeble bonds of the Earthmother’s realm and attire me in new flesh. Then we shall resume our joust, you and I.”

  The onlookers muttered fearfully and made warding gestures, but now it was Mazaret’s turn to smile.

  “There are other prisons, “ he said. “The mine and well-dungeons of Roharka, for example – one of those might suit you, in that broken body of yours.”

  Azurech’s gaze grew hard with hate. “There are ways and ways. I may have no talent for sorcery, but my master’s will can reach out to touch the deepest pit and the highest peak. I shall not remain captive for long.”

  “How sad,” Mazaret said to the gathered men. “Witless as well as deathless. Have one of the wagons brought so that we might transport our luckless guest – ”

  A sound penetrated the muffling moan of the snowstorm, a brazen cry that shivered down from the sky. Fearful eyes peered into the blurred distance. Mazaret tightened his grip on his sword and was about to ask for Terzis when the sound came again, louder and closer and quickly followed by an answering cry from another quarter. Both climbed the scale into tearing shrieks that grew ever nearer…

  “Deliverance,” murmured Azurech, just as a great winged form emerged from the grey veils of the snowstorm. Spines ridged its back, whiplike tendrils flailed from its wingtips and sharp cusps jutted from the joints of its lower legs and the knuckles of its clawed forearms. The narrow, armoured head possessed wide jaws filled with serrated teeth and a slender black tongue, but below it, in the upper chest between the clutching claws, was a second mouth, its thin lips gaping to reveal rows of incurving fangs.

  “Spears and bows!” Mazaret roared, but most of the men broke and ran in the face of the screaming, onrushing horror. The remaining few were readying their weapons when someone behind Mazaret yelled in fright….and something struck the back of his head, hurling him to the ground. There was a numb pain in the back of his head and a dizzy nausea as he struggled to regain his feet. Then he realised that someone was dragging him away, trying to get him to stand. As he did, he caught sight of a second monster, a long serpentine shape of armoured segments with two pairs of wings keeping it aloft.

  Nighthunters, he thought hazily. But how…

  Then, with faster wingbeats, it began to rise into the air, followed by the double-jawed one which was carrying a limp form in its foreclaws.

  Azurech.

  “Flee, Lord Commander…” came that mocking voice. “Take your rabble and flee back to your hovel city, and to your bride…”

  Pain throbbed in Mazaret's head, and a sudden fury took him.

  “To the horses!” he cried, lurching upright. “We...hunt him...now…”

  But his legs shook and he would have fallen had other hands not grabbed him in time.

  “My lord, you’re badly wounded,” said Captain Kance, his face as blurred as the sound of his voice. Next to him was Terzis and Domas, and Mazaret was about to speak when pain stabbed in his head.

  “Half your scalp is flayed,” Terzis said. “You must rest...that I ca
n heal you….”

  Yes, you are right, he wanted to say but his eyes felt like caves that he was falling backwards into, caves that swallowed him in dark oblivion.

  Chapter Five

  Up rocky stairs,

  From the black halls of death,

  Came cold, fierce spirits,

  With our fate in their hands.

  —Calabos, Beneath The Towers, Act 3, ii. 12

  It was the second night since the Low Coronation, and in secluded chambers near the Earthmother shrine in the Keep of Day, Alael slept. And in sleeping, she dreamed.

  Soothed by a warm cup of mulled wine, she had drifted effortlessly away into misty slumber which gave way to vivid reverie. She dreamed that she was standing in a pillared room in the Keep of Day, talking with Abbess Halimer. Bright sunlight poured in through an open window to flood the room with gold while sweet scents spread from bowls of flowers hung from the pillars.

  Why are you so sad, child? said Abbess Halimer, but Alael was trying to hear what someone was singing in the garden below the window, a song about rings and crowns and winter…

  You must bind up your sorrow, the Abbess said behind her. You have much to do.

  Alael turned, ready to deny any feelings of sadness, but froze in silence when she saw that the Abbess had been talking to Tauric, not her. The young emperor kissed the Abbess' hand, bowed solemnly to her then crossed to an open door, pausing on the threshold to give Alael a single, brief look of longing. He was attired in a black doublet over a sky-blue shirt, and wore on his head a slender silver circlet adorned with small red stones. Her heart leaped at the sight but before she could speak he was gone, the door closing behind him.