Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  Farden barely resisted the urge to dash to his side. His armour sparkled with the Bifröst’s fire. Farden’s eyes grew large at the sight of the way it undulated and curved, at the way its scales slipped together in a metallic symphony, the way it… words failed him. It was simply beautiful. Farden could feel it calling to him. He felt his tongue running along the back of his teeth. He ached to go and touch it, but he didn’t. All in good time indeed, he told himself.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, turning back to the god.

  Loki almost looked impressed by the self-restraint. He was still wearing his smile. ‘Many things, Farden. You mentioned punishment. We will start with that.’

  ‘Punish whom?’

  ‘Why,’ Loki said, ‘everyone, of course. Humans, gods, daemons. All of them will know what I’ve done. It’s what an opportunist does, isn’t it? Punish others by taking advantage out of a situation, changing the game, and then playing the best hand?’

  Tyrfing was growling with the strain of holding up his spell. The dead were pushing harder and harder with every minute that went by. ‘You sound more like a megalomaniac than an opportunist, Loki.’

  Farden lifted up his blade again. ‘You sound like Vice.’

  Loki laughed then. ‘That halfbreed? No, I’m the real thing. Or at least I will be,’ he looked up at the roof of the cave again, ‘in a moment.’

  Farden lunged forward, hoping to catch him off guard, but the god was quick. He let Elessi slip further along the bridge. Farden caught himself and stopped short. He quickly lowered the sword. ‘Don’t!’ he cried. At the sound of his voice, Elessi turned, as if she had heard the wind sighing her name. Farden caught a glimpse of her face and felt his heart thud even more. She looked so sad, so lost. She turned away again, and tried once more to break free and shuffle to the void. Fortunately, Loki held her firmly.

  ‘What’s gotten into you? What is this?’

  ‘It is the beginning.’

  ‘Of what? Explain yourself!’

  Loki took a moment to think, smiling all the while. ‘Of many things.’ He looked up again.

  Farden followed his gaze this time. The cave sighed as a hot wind rustled through it. A deep rumbling sound grew loud in their ears. ‘What have you done?’ he asked. The Bifröst began to rattle. ‘What have you done, Loki?’

  Loki raised his spare hand to the rock. ‘Give my regards to your daughter, mage.’

  ‘Farden, you better do something! I can’t hold them!’ Tyrfing strained. His spell was cracking. The rumbling grew louder. The Bifröst began to shake, and violently too. Farden found his feet slipping from under him as the earth trembled. His sword fell and skittered away. The rumbling sound grew to a deafening thunder. Sharp cracks, the sound of stone being split and hammered in to pieces echoed throughout the cave. Tyrfing fell to one knee as his spell waned. He was thrown aside by the dead. ‘Farden!’ he cried out.

  Farden did the only thing he could think of doing. With a snarl, he dug his boots hard into the trembling Bifröst, grabbed his sword, and dived at Loki, blade held high and swinging down to strike.

  He almost made it connect too.

  The second before Farden’s sword introduced itself to Loki’s neck, a searing ball of light and fire came crashing through the cave’s roof. Stone, molten and obliterated, rained with it. The fireball fell straight down, descending on Loki with a huge flash and a whip-crack of thunder. Farden met the fireball head on and was thrown to the bridge like a hammer to an anvil. There was a resounding crack as the Bifröst snapped, and fell away. He flailed wildly as he felt his boots kick at nothing, his stomach taking up residence in his mouth. He felt his hand bounce off something solid and he seized it. A sharp pain ripped through his shoulder. Something else slid past his arm and he grabbed that too, something cold and soft. Half-stunned and half-blinded by fire and smoke, he watched the flaming gold of the bridge tumble into the abyss. Lost.

  Chapter 30

  “The Spines have Roots, and in those Roots burn the molten fires of the old giant. Burned forever, they have, and will burn for forever more.”

  From a chapter of an old Scalussen book, found in the wreckage of the Hjaussfen library

  Samara was shaking. Every fibre, muscle, sinew, and tendon in her body quivered. Every single one of them burned like torches. Her arms were lead weights. Her head was a boulder on shoulders made of glass. Her legs were twisted sticks, bent and broken.

  And yet still she heaved on the sky.

  Two more stars plunged into the ice, right in the middle of the enemy’s line of sleds. Samara would have spared a moment to sneer if she could have. She watched out of the corner of her eye as one sled was reduced to kindling and burnt rags, sending men and corpses reeling. Moments later, a skinny daemon emerged from its smoking ribs, and with a roar, dove straight into the fray.

  Another star fell, striking a dragon in mid-air as it plummeted. Lost Clan or Siren, Samara didn’t know or care. The creature spun out of control and painted the snow with its bright orange blood.

  ‘Samara!’ came a shout from behind her. It was Lilith, cowering in the hollow of the cliff face behind her. She had come as close as she dared, and already the frayed strands of her cloak were smouldering in the heat.

  Samara couldn’t reply if she wanted to. Her teeth were clamped so tightly she suspected that they had fused together.

  ‘Samara!’ Lilith cried again. What did the old bird want, now of all times?!

  ‘The daemons are calling you! That god has called to them! Loki! It’s time!’

  It took a huge effort to turn her head but she managed. There, below on the ice, stood Hokus, decorated with crimson. He was waving his arms at her, drawing a letter in the air. L. For Loki. Lilith was right.

  Samara turned her head back to the sky. Dawn had now risen over the Spine, and the sulphurous belchings of the volcano had mingled with the lightening azure of the sky and turned it a faint green colour. The light wasn’t much of an improvement. The mountains were still spitting fire and great plumes of ash, and with every falling star that rained down, more smoke and steam rose from the snow. A thick smog now hung over the battlefield. Swords, spells, and smog. A deadly combination. If the cries and roars were anything to go by, thought Samara, it was chaos down there. Delicious chaos.

  Part of her wanted to be a part of it, but she had a job to do. Plenty of stars remained. One in particular was next.

  Samara turned to face a patch of sky she hadn’t yet touched. She squinted, finding her next prize. Slowly but surely she bent the spell to her will, clawing at the sky. She could feel the tug of the star as she latched onto it. Pushing magick into her legs and knees she pulled at it, scrabbling for purchase. It was becoming easier with practice, but no less painful. Samara let a strangled cry escape from her throat as she pulled the star from its resting place. As it began to fall, Samara tried to imagine the faces of the gods as one of their own was plucked from the sky, from right under their noses. Would they think it was a trick? A mistake? What would they do? Nothing, more than likely. Useless creatures. This Loki was a traitorous one, that was for sure. A cold betrayer. She liked that.

  Only one thing remained, one reason her eyes sneaked furtive looks of the battlefield. Where was he? she asked herself, deep inside her roaring skull. She needed Farden. She needed his blood like her own.

  ‘And another!’ cried Lerel, as another star flashed in the sky. It was a useless shout. She was alone, after all, save for this snarling beast in front of her. She lashed out at the sabre-cat she was circling, catching it across the face. It hissed at her, slinking away. It didn’t get very far at all. A ball of ice rocketed across the battlefield and punched it into the smoke with a howl.

  Lerel raised her sword to the pale Written standing nearby. She nodded, and moved on to attack a nearby troll with another mage.

  Samara was right. It was chaos on the snow. The lines had fallen apart under the daemons’ onslaught, forcing the army to fight on all
fronts, scattered and battling in little groups and wherever they could. With the smoke and steam, any concept of co-ordinated fighting had crumbled. It was every man, woman, beast, and daemon for themselves. The kind of vicious battle every soldier fears.

  She found herself alone again in the smoke. All around her she saw shapes and heard the roars of battle. She spun around, waving her sword, feeling the fear drum in her chest. She looked up through the haze for the star she had spotted. She was about to shout out another warning when she noticed this one was different. It was not falling straight down, but at an angle, skimming across the mountains like a falling spear. Lerel followed it as it flew from east to west, completely missing the battlefield and the hill. She soon lost it in the smoke, but she felt its thunder in her feet as it collided with something several miles to the west. Perhaps the girl was slipping.

  ‘Did you see that?’ barked a loud voice, making her spin around with her sword. Eyrum caught it deftly on his shield.

  Lerel blew a sigh of relief and wiped a hand across her brow, noting with pain the deep gash across her forehead. Bear claws were sharp indeed. ‘I did,’ she replied. ‘Do you think she’s losing it?’

  ‘I hope so, because we’re dying out here. We can’t fight any more daemons,’ Eyrum growled, and as if it had come to prove his point, a hulking figure stumbled out of the smoke behind them. It spotted them instantly. It snarled, and as it did so its skin rippled, leaking flame from every pore.

  ‘Get behind me,’ Eyrum snapped, lifting his axe, twirling it like a twig in lazy fingers. Eyrum was anything but lazy in battle.

  He slipped forward, boots sliding through the snow, betraying his speed. The daemon sensed a lethargic opponent and almost squealed in delight. Claws unsheathed themselves like rusty iron blades from rock scabbards. Teeth dripped with black poison. The daemon poised, and struck, expecting the next thing he saw to be a lumbering Siren, skewered in his claws, ready to be crunched in his jaws.

  Fortunately, Eyrum had slightly different ideas. Moving a dozen paces in the space of a second, he slid under the daemon’s wide stance, a blur with an axe held high and swinging hard, aiming right for the creature’s groin. There was a terrible whine as the daemon felt the sharp blade pass through several prized possessions. Eyrum slid free and jumped up, already swinging the axe like a whip, flaying the charcoal-black hide from the daemon’s back. The creature took three hits, and then spun, knocking Eyrum to the snow. The Siren took the blow like the seasoned fighter he was, bowing into it, taking half the blow by leaning back. Even so, it sent him reeling. Eyrum blinked as he stared at the smoky sky above, breathing hard. The ground shook as the daemon strode forward. Eyrum raised his axe, raised a roar in his throat, and rolled to his feet.

  Instead of a daemon ready to smite him, he found a wriggling, flailing heap. Three mages, all Written, advanced in an arrowhead from the right, Lerel at their centre. Fire and lightning streamed from their gauntleted hands, crooked fingers and sparks flying. They chanted their spells in deadly, rhythmic precision. It wasn’t needed, but it was a formidable sight.

  Soon the daemon was a shivering wreck, half dead or dying already. Eyrum put his axe through its iron skull. He tugged it free with a grimace, examining the thick chunk missing from its edge. ‘Bastard notched my blade.’

  The Written were panting hard. One looked up, eyes dizzy, half focused. It was the older mage, Gossfring. Two sharp flashes of light lit the fog, followed by two deep bangs. ‘They keep coming.’

  ‘Too tough.’

  ‘Can’t see a shitting thing.’

  ‘Rotten battle.’

  ‘Too many,’ and so went their complaints. Eyrum could see the air shimmering around their hands and shoulders. Their polished armour was blackened and scraped. One Written had lost a long ribbon of his scalp. His face was a mask of blood and smoke.

  They ducked as a Lost Clan dragon skimmed low, narrowly clouting one of them with its tail. ‘And those too! Where are our dragons, when you need ‘em?’ shouted Gossfring, arms shivering with fire.

  Towerdawn answered him with a roar. There was an ear-splitting thud in the spinning smoke where the Lost Clan dragon had faded, and then all of a sudden it reappeared. This time it was joined by another dragon, flashing molten gold in the battle’s fire. Jaws snapped like fireworks as the dragons crashed into the snow together. Towerdawn had the other by the neck, and was clawing and raking at his unprotected belly. The noise of the two beasts drowned out the entire battle for just a moment. And it was just a moment. For that was all Towerdawn needed.

  He seized his opening and his opponent’s neck in one swift, lightning move. There was a crunch as his fangs met tough scales and broke them. Towerdawn’s chest swelled and fire bubbled from his mouth, blasting the dragon from point-blank range. With his scales broken, the dragon was done for. He emitted one woeful trumpet before his throat was cooked and seared.

  Eyrum yelled to his king. ‘Old Dragon! We must be making a dent in their numbers now? Surely? Can you see from the sky?’

  Three more bangs shook the air and the snow at their feet. Towerdawn shook his bloodied head. ‘The girl is relentless. There are more now than when they first charged.’

  Eyrum’s face sagged like an old balloon. ‘How can that be?’

  ‘Can we not attack her?’

  Towerdawn looked over his shoulder, gazing into the smoke. ‘Durnus tries. She is too strong.’

  Lerel took a knee and dug her sword into the snow. Hopeless. Nobody said it, but they all knew it. Lerel sighed. ‘Fuck this,’ she snapped. ‘We need Farden.’

  Nobody said that either, but they all knew she was right.

  Chapter 31

  “Even the brightest of stars fade in the daylight.”

  Old Siren proverb

  Say one thing for the dead. They’re accepting creatures.

  There was no clamouring. No angry whispers. No pushing. No retribution. Loki pushed himself from his rock-dusted knees and stood tall. Like a man standing for the first time, it felt. Straight-backed and sure, shoulders rolling for the crowd. Flexing, testing, grinning, all the while grinning.

  Loki was alive.

  Loki was powerful.

  He felt it in every pore, pocket, and follicle. Felt it in every vein, vessel, and tingle. He could feel the air, the dust, the ground beneath his cold and tough boots. Sensation, after a millennium of nothing, was euphoric. Loki looked at the dead milling about in front of him. If they were disappointed about the bridge, they didn’t show it. They gazed at him like tired sheep, eyes saying nothing. ‘I don’t envy you,’ he told them with a warm smile. He reached for the first, an old woman standing like a weary arch. Loki clasped her by the neck, took a deep breath, and savoured the soul’s power flowing into him. ‘Ahh,’ he sighed, exhaling. The shadow was a little fainter for it, a little more crooked.

  ‘And now to other business,’ he muttered, turning on his heel, hearing the stone crunch. With a swagger normally reserved for drunken kings, Loki ran his fingers along the crumbled wall of the Bifröst, following its curves around and around, until he was leaning over where the rock fell away. He folded his arms, rested his chin on his hands, and smiled down at the man lying slumped against the bridge’s broken wall.

  Ignoring the armour, he wasn’t that much to look at. A few scraggly tattoos, faded and bled with age, spiralled around his fingers and wrists. A long beard was in the middle of escaping from the chin of his helmet, like a frothing river fleeing a tawny cave. Only his face, framed by the red and gold of his open visor, was remarkable. Remarkably young, for a fifteen-hundred year-old man. Barely in his twenties, by Loki’s reckoning, though there was an age about him that was hard to see without peering closely. It was the eyes that gave it away. Korrin’s eyes were like marbles stolen from an older man. They had a depth and a hardness to them that youth couldn’t buy.

  Loki was about to speak when all of a sudden, Korrin chuckled. It was a dry old sound from a throat that hadn’t tas
ted the faintest hint of liquid in the best part of five centuries.

  ‘I’ve seen them all,’ he rasped, with a tongue as shrivelled and dry as a boot in the Paraian sun. ‘I’ve seen them all. I’ve seen creatures stranger than you’d ever care to wonder. I’ve seen men and women plainer than parchment. I’ve seen warlords nudge shoulders with thralls and peasants. I’ve seen princesses and kings mingle with their own servants, not a hint of recognition in their eyes. I’ve seen old men with young wives. I’ve seen young men with old faces. Young widowers and old bastards, them too. I’ve seen children, littler than you’d care to imagine. I’ve seen grown men by the drove. I’ve seen soldiers in their crowds, still lined up in battle lines. I’ve seen the ones snapped up before their time. I’ve seen dragons more ancient than some of these walls. The ones who died fighting, still painted in righteous blood. The ones who died cowering, still wearing the stains of their own piss. I’ve seen thieves sent to the noose. I’ve seen murderers on the run. I’ve seen judges, scholars, maids, teachers, farmers, bakers, butchers, smiths, sailors, and all the bloody rest. I’ve seen a few traitors too, in my time. And believe me, god, I’ve been here a very long time indeed. I know a traitor when I see one. Easy to spot, once you’ve seen a few.’

  Loki was intrigued, he had to admit. ‘Tell me, how do you spot one?’

  Korrin flicked up two fingers, making no effort to turn them over. ‘Two ways, aside from their actions. Two types, you might say. One’s a fidgety sort. They wring their hands. They might have a twitch. Plagued with guilt.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘Your kind. The ones who beam with pride. Like pillagers counting the notches on their blades. You’re easier to spot.’

  ‘And tell me, Korrin,’ said Loki, leaning close. ‘How do you spot a deserter?’

  Korrin chuckled again. He flashed teeth yellow like desert sands. ‘I’ll tell you this for free. Make a man sit in one place long enough, and he’ll meet himself ten, a hundred, a thousand times over. With nobody but the dead for example, and nothing but his thoughts and actions to keep him company, there’s nothing left to do but look inwards. I’ve met Korrin the deserter. I’ve met Korrin the hero too. I know them both very well. You can’t shake me with your forked tongue, god. You’re a thousand years too late.’