Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  Another panicky excerpt from ‘Death and all her Beasts’ by Master Wird

  To say the arrival of the dragons was well timed was nothing short of an understatement.

  At the precise moment that the face of the copse burst into several thousand burning fragments of wood and resinous needle, splinters of ice and slush, the southern sky was turned orange by the belching fires of the arriving dragons.

  Towerdawn was the first, skidding to a halt on the ice just long enough for Modren and Durnus to jump, or rather fall, from his side. There was no pretence of grace. The two mages’ legs had turned limp during the ride. They slid from the Old Dragon’s scaly hide and crumpled into two matching heaps in the snow. One of his captains was next, delicately rolling so that the still form of Elessi could be carried off by some waiting snowmads.

  ‘Farden!’ roared Towerdawn, sighting the mage standing against the blaze of the copse, the shadows suddenly alive with creatures from memory and nightmare. ‘A delivery for you!’

  Farden’s reply was a flash of his sword. He had no time for reunions.

  Where the mage was standing, it was all rather confusing. The silent ghost of a pine copse had suddenly exploded into life. A sinister army was pouring from its blazing trees. Giant wolves, shadows he couldn’t even begin to name, swarthy ice trolls, ravens, something slithering, something crystalline glittering in the orange light, Lost Clan dragons, two daemons towering over it all, and in the centre, a slim, glowing figure, hair flying in her own storm winds. Samara. It was an ambush the likes of which he couldn’t have dreamt up if he had tried, and she had orchestrated it all.

  ‘Icewights!’ yelled a nearby snowmad, pointing a shaking finger. Farden followed it, and found two glittering creatures at the end. They looked vaguely human in the light of the fire, but made of glass, razor-sharp and translucent. They slid across the ice as if it were part of them, far outpacing the rest of the chaotic mass galloping behind them. They raised their glassy claws and hissed as they came near. Farden was so stupefied by their appearance that he almost forgot to swing his sword…

  …Almost.

  The steel carved through the face of the icewight like a boulder through a pane of glass. The creature shattered. Farden grit his teeth and shielded his face as shards flew. Cold, sharp shards. The creature crumpled to the ice. The mage looked up to find the other in a very similar position, frantically clawing at the axe-blade that was embedded in its groin. Eyrum twisted, and the creature shattered like the first. Farden poked at the shards with his boots. They were swiftly melting, but still the snowmads behind them were cowering on their knees. Eyrum just shrugged. ‘Easy as that,’ he said, and turned to face the rest.

  Farden felt the blast of wind as the dragons flew overhead. He heard, no, felt, the crunch and roar as they collided in mid-air with their Lost Clan foes. Several plummeted to the ice, ripping and tearing and trumpeting as they fell.

  ‘Farden!’ yelled a voice far behind him. Farden was about to turn when something resembling a boulder with arms and legs burst out of the fiery shadows. He stumbled back, sword glancing uselessly off a stone rib, curved like a tusk. Who on earth was trying to strike up a conversation at this moment in time?! he bellowed inwardly. It turned out to be his uncle, racing across the ice towards him. He slid to a stop just long enough to send a fireball ploughing into the boulder troll’s stomach, and then he ran on. Farden ducked as the orb of flame sent the creature flying. He could smell burning hair.

  When he stood up, a raven was flapping in his face, trying to peck at his eyes. A quick slash with the sword sent it flying across the ice in two separate directions. ‘Next!’ he yelled to the roaring, screeching paint-splash of orange and black that the night had suddenly become. It was madness. Pure, unexpected madness. Fire, ice, creatures, and his daughter in the midst of it all. He couldn’t help but think at that moment that it could all still be traced back to him.

  ‘Farden!’ Tyrfing was still trying to catch up with him. He would have to try harder. Farden spun and slashed as the strange creatures kept coming, sometimes one at a time, others in packs of two, or three. He put his sword through the face of a white snarling fox, and then dashed another icewight to the ground. Something grabbed him from behind, something slithering and tentacled choking him around the neck. There was a dull thwack as Eyrum’s axe bit into its spongy skull, and the thing went limp. Farden looked down to find out what it was and still drew a blank.

  ‘What are these things?’ he yelled.

  Eyrum spun the axe like a toy. ‘The scum and dredges of the old creatures, drawn by your daughter and her daemons,’ he growled. A constellation of brown blood drops decorated his face.

  ‘Speaking of,’ Farden hissed, looked to his daughter, a few hundred yards ahead, wreaking havoc, flanked by the two daemons from Krauslung. He clenched his red-gold fists together and marched towards her. ‘Enough is enough.’

  ‘Farden!’ Two voices this time. Farden ignored them as well.

  ‘Samara!’ he yelled instead, catching the eyes of his glowing, crackling daughter. The ground around her was a glittering pool of molten ice. It sparked like her skin, the lightning flitting away into the ice and the night. ‘Samara!’

  She had heard him the first time. She raised her hands and threw a wall of energy against him. Even at that distance, the shockwave still tossed Farden onto his back.

  ‘FARDEN!’ Three voices now, deafeningly close. Who is that?! he wondered, as three fireballs flew over his face, so close he felt his nose tingling in the heat. Shortly afterward, three pairs of hands dragged him upright.

  ‘We need to leave. Now!’ it was Tyrfing. His face was sunken and tired but his eyes were wild. He covered his mouth as he coughed. Farden stared at the orange-glowing faces of the men beside him. He had to blink several times to realise who it was. Towerdawn’s shout suddenly made sense.

  ‘Durnus! Modren!’ he yelled, grasping them both. Durnus clapped him heartily on the back, whilst Modren just stood there stiffly. They both said nothing. Both were staring ahead at the daemons flanking Samara. ‘I’m glad you could join the party,’ he added.

  ‘Well, it’s time to leave it,’ Tyrfing hissed.

  ‘What?’ Farden was confused. ‘She is right there!’ His head ached. Something was pounding on it.

  Tyrfing pinched his forehead between his fingers. ‘The armour. Korrin. We’re not ready for this. We need to go, now!’ Tyrfing explained, shaking his nephew by the shoulder. Durnus and Modren busied themselves with keeping the various creatures at bay. The night was filled with crying and yelping. Inhuman and very human sounds together, clambering over each other to fill the air. Tyrfing shouted over it. ‘She’s here for you, Farden. Nobody else. You and I need to leave.’

  ‘Don’t forget me!’ cried a voice. Loki appeared out of the shadows behind them with an urgent, fearful look on his face. His coat was splattered with blood. Orange blood. There was a short dagger in his hand. The perfect alibi.

  Farden scowled at him. ‘Where have you been?’ he snapped.

  ‘Keeping out of trouble.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘Farden!’ Tyrfing barely resisted the urge to slap his nephew. Only another blast of spell saved him from doing so. Everyone but Durnus was thrown to the ice. They could hear the faint laughing of Samara and the daemons in the distance.

  ‘Come face me, Farden!’ came the cry. Farden bared his teeth and raised his sword, but three pairs of hands held him back.

  ‘You don’t stand a chance,’ whispered his uncle’s voice in his ear. ‘And you know it.’ Farden did. The truth was painful, but it was the truth. It often was. It was its business to be so. ‘If we go now, then we can find the rest of the armour,’ Tyrfing added, ‘and come back to face her.’

  ‘I have no idea what you two are jabbering on about, but it better include saving my wife,’ Modren muttered.

  ‘It does,’ Farden replied, elbowing Tyrfing.

  Loki
tucked his dagger into one of his never-ending pockets. ‘Well, are we going or not?’

  Farden took a breath, and nodded. ‘We are,’ he said, and that was that.

  The burning question went something like this: what exactly does one take for an excursion to the underworld? Farden was clueless. He stared dumbfounded at his array of supplies, tossed over the floor as they were in the overturned sled. There was a deep gash through the centre of the vehicle, suspiciously the same shape and size as a dragon’s tail.

  Behind him the battle roared on, half muted by the fur and the cloth. He grit his teeth on every clang and crash. Every flash of light that lit the snow outside the sled. He should have been out there, with the other mages. Swinging his sword like he was meant to. Fighting his daughter.

  ‘Shit,’ Farden swore, staring at his supplies like a cow might stare at a page of algebra. The sword was already strapped to his belt. His armour was underneath his cloak. His boots were sound. Did he take food? Did he take coin? What about a blanket? Was it cold in the underworld? Was it hot? Should he take a flint? The spyglass he had borrowed from Lerel?

  ‘Farden!’ came yet another hoarse cry. He was getting bored of hearing his name.

  ‘Shit,’ Farden cursed again, stuffing whatever he could grab with one hand into one of his haversacks and tying it to his shoulder. He took an extra blade, just in case, the spyglass, and the Grimsayer, of course. As he dashed outside, he nearly tripped over a fallen snowmad. The man reached up to him and gurgled something before slumping into the snow. Farden winced. He had seen enough dying men to know another one. There was nothing he could do. With a grimace, he tugged the blanket from his haversack and draped it over him. ‘I guess I’ll see you shortly,’ he mumbled, mostly to himself, and then sprinted as fast as he could to the back of the camp, where Tyrfing was waiting with Ilios.

  The gryphon was clawing at the snow, eager to be off. He had blood on his beak, all different colours. There was the hunter’s fire in his yellow-flecked eyes. He kept clacking his beak and twitching his wings every time a dragon swooped even remotely close. Farden knew the feeling.

  ‘Ready?’ asked his uncle.

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  ‘Good, and you, Loki?’ Tyrfing asked, as the god emerged from behind Ilios. He nodded, patting down his coat.

  ‘Better than ever,’ he said, making Farden glare. The battle clashed on behind them.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re insisting on coming, liar, but mark my words. You stay behind me, and you stay out of our way. If you’re needed, then you’re needed. If you aren’t, you’re just thin air to me. I won’t spare you any breath. Spectator, is what you are. Guide, if needs be. Clear?’ Farden said, aiming his finger like a spear.

  Loki glared back. ‘Crystal,’ he spat.

  Farden jumped onto Ilios’ back before Loki could embellish his answer with any sarcasm. He smoothed the gryphon’s twitching feathers as he dug the mighty Grimsayer from his haversack and lay it flat upon his lap. He spoke into Ilios’ tufted ear. ‘Let’s finish this,’ he said, ‘now or never again.’ He heard the gryphon warble something as his uncle climbed on, and then Loki, weighing no more than a feather. Nobody needed to say a word; the gryphon exploded from the ice and into the sky, winging high above the dying chaos below.

  Farden eagerly looked down. The mages were cutting a path through the ambushers, led by a stoic Durnus and a fearsome Modren. Samara still stood her ground, surrounded by a wall of fire twenty foot tall Only the daemons, and perhaps one other figure, hidden behind a rock near to the burning copse, noticed the gryphon fleeing north. They pointed and roared, but it was too late. Samara was too busy raining fire on the rest of the column to notice. Farden had escaped her wrath for a second time.

  The night was cold out of the heat of battle. Colder still on the high winds and wings of the gryphon. Silent, the three faced the icy wind with grimaces. Farden hunkered down. Face painted orange by the Grimsayer, he watched his destination being drawn in light over, and over, and over again.

  Chapter 24

  “Friends make the very worst of enemies.”

  Old Arka saying

  Morning found a lot of colours on the ice fields.

  Black, from the soot and char of the burnt and burning pines.

  Red, from the fallen, from the human ones at least, splashed and seeping.

  Blues, of the snowmads’ cloaks, as they went about cleaning the dead and their mess.

  Green, from a fallen dragon, lying twisted in a heap.

  Brown, the body of its opponent, their jaws still locked together in death.

  And a palette of grey, the colour of the sky, of the pelts of the fallen wolves, birds, and creatures, of the fallen weapons and armour lying like the forgotten cutlery and crockery in the aftermath of a banquet. Of the moods of the people shuffling about.

  It is easy to spot a veteran in the wake of a battle. They are the ones striding back and forth easily amongst the dead, picking up discarded weapons and armour. Emotionless and silent. They move like crows, from one body to the next. But these weren’t scavengers. These were mages. Valuables went untouched, gawping eyelids were closed, and respect paid to those they recognised.

  ‘How many fallen?’ Durnus asked the cold morning.

  Heimdall’s eyes roved over the battlefield. He could still see the magick burning in some of the corpses, leaking away like the morning’s mist, rising to join the rivers of it pulsing through the grey sky above. He winced. ‘Thirty-six.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Soldiers, mostly. Ten sailors. Two mages. One dragon and her rider. The rest are snowmads,’ replied the god, like a merchant totting coins.

  ‘Bitch,’ spat Eyrum, regarding the nearby fallen dragon with his one good eye. Towerdawn and the others were gathered around its corpse.

  Durnus scratched his head. ‘Why did she attack? Why now?’

  ‘It was completely out of the blue. She must have been waiting for us in the trees. Caught us off guard well enough. Only Farden seemed to sense it,’ Eyrum replied. He absently thumbed his notched axe-blade as he spoke.

  ‘But why risk it now, when she could have just carried on north?’

  ‘It is either anger for her father, or they are worried about our presence, and how we could hamper their plans,’ said Heimdall. ‘This is a good sign.’

  Eyrum tugged his eye away from the dead dragon. ‘With all due respect, my lord,’ he began, bowing his head respectfully, ‘it hardly looks like a good sign from where I’m standing.’ Heimdall didn’t reply to that.

  ‘Any news from the sentries?’ Durnus asked, as Modren sauntered up to them, snow clinging to his boots.

  ‘Not a whisper,’ said the Undermage. ‘Wherever they’ve gone, it’s not here. That copse is sticks and charcoal. Nothing in there. Still no sign of the missing Written either. His body’s gone.’

  ‘That is rather disturbing,’ Durnus surmised. ‘Why take the body?’

  ‘She’s always had a penchant for our mages. Maybe she eats them,’ Modren scowled. ‘I’d believe anything at this stage, after what I saw last night. Ice-creatures. Giant wolves. We should have stayed in Krauslung. At least Malvus I can understand. Malvus I know bleeds red if I stick him,’ he said, kicking a patch of blue snow beside his boot.

  ‘Then I take it that it’s probably not the best time to discuss where Farden and Tyrfing are headed?’ Eyrum sighed.

  Modren dropped his chin in his hand and blew a sigh through pursed lips. ‘And I thought you Sirens didn’t have a sense of humour,’ he said. The sled was silent. The only sound was the fidgeting of the two snowmads sitting in the corner, busying themselves with repairing a pair of bloody boots. Anything to keep the battle from their minds. It had been quite a night for all. The others couldn’t help but feel for them. They hadn’t asked to be involved with any of this.

  Heimdall tutted. ‘He is quite serious, mage.’

  ‘Well then, I would say he was mad, if it did
n’t involve saving Elessi. I suppose I should be grateful, as well as confused,’ Modren replied. This was all rather strange news to him. One moment Farden was leaving to fetch Siren healers, the next moment he was leaving for Hel.

  It was news to Durnus too. A concerned look had fallen over his face. His brow had creased up like old paper, his lips tighter than a merchant’s purse. ‘And Tyrfing has gone with him?’

  ‘And Loki too,’ replied Heimdall. Durnus nodded as slowly as a person can nod. He stared around with his sightless eyes, not letting them linger too long on one spot lest the tears took their chances.

  ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘I hope so. Somebody needs to keep Farden in check,’ Modren muttered.

  Eyrum thumped his axe-handle on the deck of the sled. ‘Actually, mage,’ he said, ‘Farden’s been the one keeping us in check.’

  Modren didn’t even bother to hide his surprise. ‘Then the world truly has been turned upside down.’

  And so the four of them sat in silence for a while, ruminating on the night, on Farden, and what they both held in store for the world.

  It was Durnus who sprang to his feet first. ‘Tell me, Eyrum, can anybody amongst this crowd speak the language of these snowmads?’

  Eyrum took his chin from the butt of his axe. ‘A few.’

  ‘Good. Will you find them for me?’

  The big Siren nodded and got to his feet.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Durnus?’ Modren asked.

  Durnus flashed a tight smile and turned to Heimdall. ‘You were headed north, were you not? Before we arrived?’

  ‘We were,’ Heimdall replied.

  ‘North it is then. We need to be ready when Farden and Tyrfing emerge from whatever hole they’re intent on crawling down. We follow Samara’s trail, and buy them some time.’