Willing to Endure: A Dark Fantasy (The Shedim Rebellion Book 3)

by Burke Fitzpatrick

  “My friends are dying.”

  “Which side belongs to your chieftain?”

  “The black things.”

  “So we ran all this way to fight more monsters?” Olroth hawked up phlegm and spat. “That’s just splendid.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “If I die, I’m going to haunt you.”

  Tyrus figured if the men had air to complain, they had air to fight. He set the pace, a quick march, toward Shinar. As the battle drew closer, he shouted as loudly as he could, “Kill the monsters first.” Men behind him picked up the scream, and thousands of voices bellowed at the bone beasts. Tyrus had a terrible feeling that Dura and Marah would be somewhere near the center of the mess. The beasts would target sorcerers first, so Tyrus headed toward the biggest blasts of fire.

  When they closed enough to sprint, the beasts reacted. They raged without handlers. Tyrus recognized the behavior at once, the uncoordinated darting of a few beasts toward the Norsil. If lords controlled the monsters, they would shift as one body. Instead, they frenzied like dogs feeding on a carcass.

  Thousands of thanes crashed into an ocean of beasts. The Norsil matched the savagery of the beasts with screams and blades. The monster’s line buckled first, but they were fearless things. They stood and died instead of running, and when others joined the fray, their ranks swelled and pushed back the Norsil.

  On the front line, Tyrus lost himself in the carnage. The smaller ones were easier to kill than purims, more primitive with no armor or weapons. They had less bulk as well. When Tyrus set his feet and swung his sword from one hip to another, the blade cut through four of the creatures and sent splatters of black blood through the air.

  He counterswung and advanced, hacking and hewing through their ranks until the strange wall of bricks buckled and collapsed. A cloud of yellow dust billowed forth, but deep within it, two giant orbs burned red. Tyrus pulled back and absently dodged a set of claws as he watched a wall breaker emerge from the rent in the wall. Unlike any creature Tyrus had ever seen—twice as big as it should have been and grinning—it climbed over the rubble. With one massive claw, it scooped up three elven sentinels and squeezed the life from them before flinging them into their friends.

  Olroth asked, “How are we supposed to kill that?”

  Tyrus hefted his sword. The new wall breakers were enormous and fast. Sorcerers set them aflame, and still they fought, their great claws cutting a swath through the Gadaran lines. Azmon had pushed the runes for beasts too far. They were no longer demons wrapped in the flesh of men but demons incarnate.

  Warriors swarmed the creatures, hamstringing them, climbing their backs, and hacking at their necks. Spears pushed them back, but the beasts knocked the blades aside. The largest beasts required scores of warriors to kill, but they were not invincible. Tyrus dreaded the carnage though. They killed a fearsome amount of men before they fell.

  The smaller beasts fell easier than purims.

  Before he could attack a wall breaker, dark shapes blocked out the sun. Far above them, beyond the smoke and dust, Azmon rode a flyer in his white robes. Several flyers circled. Each bore lords of the great houses of Rosh. Seven flyers circled the battlefield and rained hellfire down upon the Norsil. The elven and Gadaran sorcerers answered, but it highlighted how vulnerable the Norsil were to sorcery. Without Nisroch to protect them, they would burn alive.

  After what felt like an eternity, Marah led Dura off the walls. They still stood at the center of the swarm of beasts, but the pressure eased as knights and barbarians attacked the horde. She relaxed a little. She had solved one problem, and if she and Dura could survive a while longer, they might escape the monsters.

  Dura leaned on Marah. Her size and billowing robes created an illusion of weight, but underneath it all was a skeletally thin frame. Marah leaned into Dura as well, and they formed a kind of tripod with one set of arms holding each other while their outside arms made gestures of sorcery. They gave up trying to talk. At the center of the howling fiends, nothing they said penetrated the noise.

  Marah sensed runes circling above her. She could not see well enough to make out the details but caught the shadow of bat-like wings swooping overhead. Hellfire rained down upon the knights and barbarians. Distant booms were swallowed by the cacophony of battle.

  Marah dared a counterspell. With the beasts distracted, she took an opening to burn the flyer. Her hellfire streaked through the sky, leaving a smoky trail, before it consumed the monster. The thing plummeted like a burning stone and crashed into the barbarian ranks.

  Tyrus sidestepped a burning flyer that crashed into his men. He followed the smoky trail of the spell to a distant cluster of bone beasts. Their black limbs frenzied around something he could not see. He assumed Dura or Larz or Nemuel would be at the center of the worst fighting.

  He fought to the center, and without commands, the Norsil followed. He became the point of a wedge that drove into the beasts. Claws raked his arms. Monsters already cut in half still bit at his shins. He stomped and hacked as much as he kicked and stabbed, but he fought toward whatever sorcerers the beasts wanted to kill.

  He found Dura, hunched over and ready to collapse. That made sense, but then he caught a glimpse of a little girl wrapped in the folds of Dura’s robes. The sight of Marah left him dismayed. The two of them were all alone at the heart of the battle, and they were filthy with soot, mud, and gore. They looked ashen, as though they bled out, but he saw no wounds.

  With a fierce overhanded slash, Tyrus dismembered the last beast between him and Ishma’s daughter. The Norsil surged forward, pushing the other beasts back. He scooped Marah up.

  A brief lull let him scream, “Are you hurt?”

  Marah yelled back, “Help Dura.”

  “Let me look at you. Are you hurt?”

  “There’s too many voices. Help Dura. She’s dying.”

  Tyrus shifted Marah to one hip, planted his sword into the mud, and reached for Dura. The old woman was all robes and bones. He pulled her up, and she clung to him without a word. Marah buried her face into his neck. Tyrus didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t built to offer comfort. He glanced around the battlefield for help. He needed surgeons or apothecaries or soothsayers, but all about him, monsters butchered barbarians. The scope of it made him stagger. Everywhere he looked, for miles, tens of thousands of demons and warriors fought. Fire rained from the skies, and black smoke clung to the ground. The screams of the dying made him fearful for his wards. He held them tight, not knowing how to keep them safe.

  IV

  From his flyer, Azmon circled the northern gates and what remained of the dwarven wall. The yellow bricks toppled under their own weight into a pile of debris swarming with beasts. The other sides of Shinar were vacant. Elven and Gadaran soldiers abandoned their positions at other gates to hurry to the north, but Azmon paid them little attention. He found his teacher and his daughter still alive. With stubborn effectiveness, they retreated from the front lines.

  The barbarians ripped apart the smaller bone beasts. Azmon had never seen such large warriors fight so savagely before. He cursed himself for not making more wall breakers.

  Rassan flew close to him and shouted. He circled his flyer around Azmon’s, waved for attention, and pointed at the barbarians. The wind tore the words from his mouth, but Azmon caught a faint “Lord… marshal.”

  He followed Rassan’s gestures to the ground and saw Tyrus of Kelnor. He choked and pulled at the reins, nearly stalling his flyer. Azmon steered it into a dive and circled lower. His old friend stood beside Dura. Azmon snarled, and red light clouded his vision. Years had passed, and still the man found new ways to betray Azmon.

  The orb of hellfire he summoned was so large it singed his hair and blistered his flyer’s back. With a primal scream, he flung death at Tyrus. Dura’s dead eyes turned toward Azmon, and with a wave of her hand, she deflected the spell into the ranks of the bone beast
s.

  Azmon roared until his throat cracked. How many times must I suffer this humiliation? His childhood teacher and his childhood friend thwarted his every move. They shamelessly used his own daughter against him. Azmon sent his flyer into a dive. He had the runes to survive and wanted to crush them into the ground.

  Dura appeared spent, but then his daughter sneered, and lightning bolts sparked in her hands. For a brief moment, Azmon saw Ishma’s fury on his daughter’s face—the same sneer that had confronted him years before—and then Marah lashed out at one of the bone lords. Lightning coursed through the flyer, and its skeleton glowed within the black leather.

  Smoldering and limp, it crashed into the dwarven wall.

  Azmon licked his lips. Marah was the strongest sorceress on the field. Dura could deflect his spells, and Marah could burn his flyers. Sobered by fear, he pulled into a retreat. Bone lords cast fire toward the ground, and the elven sorcerers erected shields. They countered with spells that the lords dodged or blocked.

  He guided his flyer higher, retreating out of range and waiting for fire to lick his shoulders. The thought made his back crawl. The air chilled, and the surviving lords followed. A few returned to Shinar, probably going to their families. Azmon noted Rassan flying straight to his villa and decided to let him go. When Azmon leveled out and glanced down, Shinar appeared like a black sore on a yellow plain with so many ants surrounding it. The Jewel of the West claimed his legacy. History would laugh at him for being a violent fool. They would say his hunger was bigger than his stomach.

  Sornum called to him. He belonged far away, past the Grigorn Sea and deep within the heart of the Roshan Empire. However, his homeland would offer little comfort. Dura would follow. She would spend the rest of her life conquering each of his cities. She would not rest until she sacked the seat of his power.

  Azmon closed his eyes and reached out with his senses to the flyers of the other lords. They followed him east. The flight over the ocean would be long and hard, especially for the lords who burdened their beasts with family and servants. Once they passed the coastline, they would struggle to stay awake for the multiday journey, but Azmon fought against such dreary thoughts. After years of being walled into a dead city, he enjoyed the wind in his hair.

  V

  Tyrus held Marah and Dura. They had saved his life. He watched Azmon howl his fury and cast spells. When Azmon screamed, it sent all of the beasts into a terrible frenzy, and Tyrus feared they would lose the battle. He imagined Marah burning alive before the beasts finished them. When Dura deflected the spell and Marah killed one of the lords, the battle shifted again. In the span of a few seconds, the Norsil turned the tide.

  The Norsil hacked apart the smaller beasts. Gadarans, elves, and Norsil all struggled with the wall breakers. Arrows, spears, and flames peppered the giant beasts, and still they fought. The sky had been cleared of flyers, though. After Marah started killing flyers, Azmon and the lords abandoned the fight.

  Tyrus’s thirst for vengeance fled with Azmon. He had hoped to enjoy the moment—to defeat Azmon—but he didn’t. The bad memories remained, and slowly he understood that the Imperial Guard, the army he had built, was not on the field. The lords turned all his soldiers into beasts—a generation of men, lost. The Roshan Empire represented Tyrus’s life’s work, and it lay in shambles. All the decades of conquest meant nothing.

  A score of thanes engaged one of the last wall breakers. Polearms pushed aside its massive claws as warriors swarmed and hacked at its legs. The thing toppled but thrashed on its back as the thanes struggled to finish it.

  The din of battle dampened as the last beasts were circled and destroyed. Tyrus struggled to pull himself out of old memories. His whole life had been spent building an empire, and he couldn’t even kill the one man who’d started it all.

  Another disaster loomed.

  He sensed the uncertainty in the Norsil as they regrouped. They watched the elves and Gadarans, who were also trying to regroup while fending off a few rampaging monsters. As the common enemy perished, the survivors plotted more bloodshed.

  “Dura, can you hear me?”

  “Get me out of here.”

  Tyrus had to lean down to hear her. “Where is Lord Nemuel?”

  “I don’t recognize anything.”

  Tyrus grunted. He shifted Marah into the crook of one arm and scooped Dura into the other. He cradled them both in his massive arms until their knees and feet met near his stomach. With a sense of dread, he left his sword behind. The battlefield was littered with dead men and discarded weapons, though. Walking over them all without spilling his precious cargo became a challenge. And, he thought a little too slowly, approaching without a blade might help him soothe the elves.

  He turned and gestured with his chin for the Norsil to hold back. Approaching the elves with lowered eyes, he stopped about a dozen yards from them and surrendered Dura and Marah. The elves lowered their swords when he backed away. Familiar faces pushed to the front of their lines. Tyrus spotted Larz Kedar and Klay. Behind the line, a great fuzzy head rose above the shoulders of the other men.

  Chobar sniffed at Tyrus.

  Lord Nemuel limped forward. Blood dripped down his front, and his cheeks were sunken, but he raised a hand to hold back the sentinels. Larz Kedar and a couple of sorcerers dashed forward and whisked Marah and Dura away.

  Klay stepped forward with an arrow nocked. His gaze darted from Tyrus’s empty hands to the army behind him. For a strange moment, Tyrus remembered meeting the ranger like that, years before, in Paltiel. He had held the bow the same way, with the same confused aggression. The years had changed him, though. He had grown thicker in the shoulders and fuller in the cheeks. Worry had left lines on his face.

  Klay said, “I thought you were dead.”

  “Not for lack of trying.”

  Klay looked at the Norsil. “What have you done?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Take them away from here. The elves will rip them apart.”

  “By my count, it’s your side that will lose.”

  Klay frowned. “Is that how it is?”

  Tyrus appreciated the predicament. He didn’t want to kill them, but he wouldn’t hold back if he was attacked. He had many things to say to the man, but he couldn’t be too friendly in front of the Norsil and shrugged an answer.

  Klay said, “But you have no sorcerers.”

  “Many of them have over fifty runes. Imagine an army of King Laels.”

  “But how? They have no sorcerers.”

  “Grigorns etch them.”

  Klay’s mouth fell open.

  “It’s a long story. Do your best to keep the truce, and I’ll do mine. When people calm down, I’ll send word to Dura for a parlay.”

  Tyrus left. If they talked more, they might grasp forearms, and he didn’t need angry young men accusing him of collusion. No one looked to be in the mood for peace. He wanted to avoid bloodshed and didn’t know how.

  Olroth pushed to the front of the Norsil line, which gladdened Tyrus’s heart. He had so few friends anymore that he would hate to lose the chieftain.

  Tyrus asked, “Still alive?”

  “Barely. These things don’t die like they should. They keep biting after you gut them. Not surprised to see you still standing.”

  Tyrus wanted to escape the carnage. He craved fresh air. The smells of burning flesh and dead beasts—their putrid black blood mixing with the blood of men to form a muddy obscenity around his ankles—made him cough. The odor sullied his lungs.

  Olroth asked, “You let the prisoners go?”

  “Prisoners? No. A gesture of good faith.”

  “What do you mean? What are we doing about the Kassiri?”

  “Order the men to withdraw. South. I’ll ask the Kassiri to go north. We can talk after we see to the wounded.”

  “They fight with the elves, Tyrus.” Olroth clench
ed his jaw. “And their sorcerers are exhausted. We can finish this.”

  “No.”

  “Tyrus—”

  “You will do nothing to hurt that girl. You understand me? Anyone who attacks them answers to me.”

  “The one you let go? Who is she?”

  “She is the heir of the Roshan Empire and the Queen of Narbor.”

  “Oh, wait. Your chieftain’s daughter.” Olroth slapped his forehead. “She is the daughter of your woman. Isn’t she?”

  Tyrus scowled. He didn’t understand the questions or the hatred for the elves. He waited for Olroth to speak his mind.

  “Did you march us all this way for that little girl?”

  “She bears a birth rune,” Tyrus said, “a mark on her chest.”

  “She was born with it?” Olroth whispered, “We haven’t seen a Blue Blade since Kordel.”

  “Kordel was a Reborn?”

  “The night sky itself bowed before him.”

  They fell silent and studied the battlefield. The Gadarans and elves had absorbed the greatest losses from the beasts. The Norsil outnumbered the elves but lacked sorcerers. Victory had cost both sides dearly. Tyrus worried about elven runes. If they wanted to survive, they should attack while the sorcerers were tired, but Tyrus hoped he might convince Dura to talk to the elves on their behalf.

  Tyrus said, “Let’s leave the mud and find some fresh air.”

  “The others won’t like this. We can press the advantage now.”

  “You saw her in the center. The sorcery and the beasts could not touch her.”

  “She is one of them.”

  “So am I, Olroth. She came to me in my dreams, asking for help against the demons. We must do this.”

  “You can’t force a peace with the elves. The clans will abandon you. They will march home to reclaim their lands.”

  “She knows runes. She can read your marks.”

  “We are not Hill Folk. We won’t kneel before the Red Towers or those elven bastards.”