Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1)

by J. Edward Neill

  “No. Never say that.” She leaned into him.

  “But it’s true.”

  “No.” She caressed his hands. “Garrett explained everything. He told me about the things you must do. You are your father’s only son, the only one who can do this. Garrett said Graehelm’s in your hands. Whatever you must endure, I will endure it with you.”

  The Gryphon company left the openness of the Crossroad and cut into the forest. Rellen uttered a command to the men around him, and the riders bent to extinguish their torches in a shallow stream of water before continuing.

  Up into the trees they went. By the light of Garrett’s lantern, the company dismounted on a steep incline and led their horses on foot. They wended through the dark spaces between the trees and rocks, climbing the hill slowly, reaching the boulder-ringed camp in the deepest of glooms.

  She and Rellen were last to dismount. While the rest of the men marched wearily into the camp, Rellen slowed his stallion and halted behind the hugest boulder. The darkness was nearly perfect. Sensing his need for attention, she twisted in the saddle and kissed him.

  “You seem happy, but sad.” She squeezed his hand. “What did Nentham do?”

  She saw him swallow hard. “I’m glad to see you,” he told her. “I thought I never would again. That’s all.”

  Even in the dark, she felt his sadness hanging on him. “Fibber. Tell the truth.”

  He drew in a long, weary breath. The rest of his men, already in camp, clamored for him to join them, but he stayed put. It was in that moment Saul happened by. Reins in hand, his eyes hollow and exhausted, he looked to her and shook his head.

  “Truth’s hard to say, Ande.” The night’s frosted air slinked between Saul’s teeth. “These woods, I saw them from afar this evening. Nentham, Mooreye, Mormist...I think you shouldn’t have come here, though I can’t say I’m surprised to see you.”

  Saul’s tenor did well to unnerve her. In the heavy shadows he looked utterly unlike himself, his familiar friendliness absent. When he lowered his head and trotted into the darkness, she worried.

  “We should join the others,” said Rellen.

  “All is not well, is it?” She clutched his hand and brought it to her face.

  “Everything will be explained,” he answered. “But for tonight, I’m happy just to be with you.”

  Rellen urged his stallion into the clearing where Garrett and the rest awaited. She and he dismounted, her hand folded into his as the men of Gryphon plunked down in the wet grass. They gathered around Garrett, their clamor quieting, their ears bent toward him for the tale that was to come.

  Just as she found her seat beside Rellen, a flash of pale lightening flickered through the sky. The wind rustled through the forest, the rain threatening. She wanted to be content, to let her love for Rellen shield her, but in the coming storm she could not help but shiver.

  Three Blasts

  Like twilight, the Furyons descended upon Mormist.

  In three weeks of hateful marching, twenty one days of murder and enslavement and burning, Archmyr’s host laid low the cities of Minec, Orye, and Marku. They fell swiftly beneath the Pale Knight’s strokes, for none were prepared for his savage style of war. The people paid a heavy price of blood and sorrow, and though they begged for mercy, he rarely gave it.

  For in the Pale Knight’s mind, only pain existed, only suffering for those who dared take up arms against him.

  He dealt more than just death. In his path, every surviving man between ten and fifty was swept up and delivered north to the city of Minec. They went as slaves, their freedom stolen. Awaiting them at Minec were Emperor Chakran’s enforcers, brutal men who bent the spirits of the enslaved to breaking, readying them for a life of misery and service. By the time Archmyr’s conquests reached the southernmost edge of Velum, more than four thousand slaves had been culled. Whether driven in long lines or carted inside filthy wagons, they were taken east across the same mountain passage Chakran’s army had used to sneak into Mormist, and from there herded into the Furyon port to await whatever the Emperor had in store.

  The rumors spread.

  Tales of death and enslavement reached the ears of eastern Mormist, filling all hearts with horror. As Archmyr’s host approached the southern ends of Velum, cities emptied. The people of the mountain country abandoned their homes, scurrying in every direction to escape certain slaughter. No defense came to them as they fled, for the Three Lords had long ago sold their freedom. Some fled to the mountains, seeking to hide until the invaders passed. Others fled into the forest, hoping to find whatever help they could.

  Amid all the fleeing souls of Mormist, there were seven who escaped.

  Only hours before Archmyr’s host came to lay waste to their village, the seven riders from the village of Trebidal spurred their mounts southward, making haste across the deep valley between the Crown Mountains and a smaller range of peaks known as Molesh. The spires of Molesh marked the border of Triaxe, a majestic, powerful realm allied closely with Graehelm. After three days, the seven came to the fortress of Gallen Hold, and there they found Lord Ahnwyn, champion of Triaxe, Councilor of Graehelm, and keeper of the south.

  Ahnwyn took the seven in. He listened to their pleas, treated them as honored guests, and on the second day after their arrival he brought them before his host. The hearts of the seven soared high, for on that day they learned that the knights of Triaxe, never once defeated in all their many years, had already been assembled. Emun Gryphon’s message had reached them. Ahnwyn had acted swiftly.

  Thirty thousand strong, Ahnwyn’s host marched northward the next day.

  The seven riders of Trebidal marched with him, believing their salvation was at hand.

  * * *

  Nightfall, and Archmyr hunkered at forest’s edge. Hanging between the husks of two rotting trees, one arm wrapped around each decrepit trunk, he watched the fires of Ahnwyn’s encampment from afar. Amusing, he thought of the Triaxe host. So many souls, so many widows waiting to be made.

  He counted their tents on the open plain beyond the woods, secreting a smile for every method he dreamed of to destroy them. Behind every tree and within every shadow in the forest his soldiers hid, disguised under cover of dusk, invisible to Ahnwyn and his men. Archmyr had long waited for this moment. Finally, a battle. He licked his teeth and grinned, pleased that a challenge was finally at hand.

  As Archmyr haunted the space between his trees like a spider lurking for its prey, two servants of Chakran approached in the twilight. He frowned when he saw them. They who’ve plagued my ear ever since this war began.

  “Lord Archmyr, the enemy will see us,” said the tallest, gauntest of the two. “You should order your men to retreat.”

  He rather relished making the servants of Chakran uncomfortable. Grinning, he spat at their feet. “Like worms, the two of you, wriggling in the muck,” he sneered. “I released prisoners hours ago. They’re to give false tidings of where we are. They’ll run to the Grae rabble, thinking themselves free. They’ll deliver my trap. The Grae will wander into the forest tomorrow believing we’re elsewhere, and we’ll close in around them like wolves on cornered lambs. You need only keep your filthy lights down, your voices too. The Grae must not see us in number.”

  The first of the servants lowered his voice. “Lord Archmyr, you forget yourself. Our master commanded something other than this. He ordered us to use the horn first, then capture the survivors on the plain. Don’t you remember?”

  Grinning, he turned his pale cheek. The last of the sun’s light caught him so, making him seem ever more a ghost. “The Emperor’s otherwise engaged.” He gestured disdainfully to the north. “Without his counsel, I choose how the enemy dies. I say it won’t be on the end of some device of Malog. We’ll fight them tooth and nail in the thickets, not out there at the mercy of their cavalry. By sundown tomorrow, they’ll all be dead.”

  For a moment there was silence. Archmyr relaxed his armored limbs around the trees, hanging low as
a spider might from the strands of his web. But the two servants were uncompromising. They were the keepers of Chakran’s will, not to be taken lightly. “We’re commanded to take prisoners,” the second servant, short and fat as a black-clad pumpkin, dared to say. “One in chains for every two fallen. That’s our promise to the Emperor. You can’t kill them all.”

  Shaking the moisture from his ebon hair, he glowered at the two. Their persistence gnawed at him, enough that he wished them dead. As he looked upon them, licking his teeth, he thought upon the Emperor’s demands. He despised the Furyon tradition of taking slaves.

  In his mind, his enemies were defeated only if their shattered bones lay rotting on the field of battle.

  “And what if I defied the Emperor?” He clucked his tongue. “What if I ordered my legion into open battle, bloody and glorious? When I’m victorious and the enemy’s headless corpses and smiling skulls litter the forest floor, what will the Emperor care? We’ll have won. Isn’t this why he made me Commander, and not you? I’m a Degiliac. I’m a Thillrian. We don’t fail.”

  The first servant lowered his head. “It won’t matter for the war, milord. You’re right; we’ll claim victory by your way or another. But the method we use will matter for the Emperor’s pride. Remember, Pale One; no man dares do other than what Chakran says. Thousands he’s put to the sword, and for no other reason than thinking for themselves. Remember his mercies, for they are few.”

  He closed his eyes. He dreamed of the servants’ deaths, imagining a dozen ways he might split their ribcages and flay their skins for the crows to feast on. And yet when he reopened his eyes, they were still standing, still breathing.

  “Perhaps...” His exhalation sounded like a dying man’s breath. “Perhaps I’ll let you use the horn. Three quick blasts and a smile for the dead. Though less because Chakran wills it and more because I’m curious.”

  One of the servants nodded. “He will be pleased.”

  “Maybe for now. But not forever.” Archmyr smirked.

  Satisfied, the servants bowed and hurried into the darkness of the deeper wood. Archmyr let loose of his trees. A few dozen paces away sat the servants’ wagon, and beneath the shroud covering it, Chakran’s coiled horn. Pale and wary, he regarded the thing. What use a horn might be for the war, I cannot fathom.

  * * *

  After a sleepless night and an unwanted dawn, he slithered from his tent at the first sign of sunlight.

  The new day was as grim as his soul, and the forest somehow gloomier than yestereve. The trees stood tall and stark all around him, each one sheltering a handful of wakeful, watchful Furyon knights. With the Furyons’ gazes trailing him, he stalked to the forest’s edge and alighted on the ridge overlooking the open plain.

  Ahnwyn was out there, his host stirring for war.

  He swallowed the sight of the Grae legion, gazing across the enemy like a black-winged bird across a field filled with carcasses. Ready as it’ll ever be, he mused of the battlefield. The time is now.

  The pallid sunlight seeped through the clouds, illuminating the trees like great grey towers. The grasses surrounding Ahnwyn’s camp looked sickly yellow, the slopes leading from the forest to the boggy plain bleak and ready to burn. “Look,” he growled to the six captains who gathered behind him. “The meek approach.”

  “They’re greater in number than we expected,” one captain said.

  “And so many are mounted,” added another.

  Smirking, he glanced back to the Furyon knights. Deadly though they looked in their black-tined armor, he savored how they blanched in his presence. “You worry for nothing,” he snorted. “Have any ridden to our flank?”

  “A few score tried.” A third captain nodded. “Our crossbowmen hunted them down. Only a single rider escaped, and him to the north. Most likely, the enemy thinks the rest of our army is at Trebidal. They’ll think to trample us here and lay siege in the north. Our numbers remain secret.”

  He smiled for the sake of the captains’ unease. He glimpsed the forest at their backs, reckoning some sixty-thousand Furyons were hunkered therein, all of them thirsty to shed Graehelm blood. No matter the enemy’s plan, the outcome of the battle was already decided in his mind.

  He looked to each captain, his gaze gone black, and gave his final command. “Behold the Grae, fodder for our spears.” He gestured at Ahnwyn’s distant host, whose warhorses were already stamping the earth. “The lambs are out there, lads. They’re thirty thousand, but we wolves are twice that. You’re the legion of Furyon, the knights of Malog, and they say whatever is wrought by your blades cannot be undone. When any man of theirs steps into this forest, cut him down and drink his soul. If he dies, take his bones and make tokens of them. If he cowers, shackle him for Chakran’s pits. Do this, and the Emperor swears you shall be rewarded.”

  “What of the horn?” one captain dared.

  He looked to the outspoken Furyon and narrowed his eyes. “The horn,” he spat. “Sure enough, it’ll blow. The Emperor’s wishes are ours to fulfill, after all.” His sarcasm dripped like venom.

  As quietly as they had come, the captains broke apart and stalked deeper into the trees, where countless rows of Furyon knights remained in hiding. Ready for war, he sensed, Dageni armor tight to their ribs, black-steel spears clutched in their cold, sweaty palms. Alone atop the ridge, he worried none for his victory to be.

  He gazed across the plain, but in the midst of dreaming the enemy’s destruction, the Emperor’s servants returned. Behind them, the wagon carrying Chakran’s horn inched forward on the heels of two huge draft horses.

  “Chakran’s toy,” he chided them. “Waste of a wagon and two good horses.”

  The first servant tossed back his hood. He seemed no longer humble, but steely-chinned and grave. “Don’t curse what you don’t understand, Thillrian.”

  “Look. The enemy rouses.” Archmyr pointed to the plain, where Ahnwyn’s host took shape like a spear about to be hurled. “Sounding that thing will give us away. You should know, Furyon fools, it’ll not be my blood spilling because of your folly, but that of your countrymen. Think about it.”

  He moved to the wagon and plucked the horses’ reins from the Furyon lad who guided it. The wagon rumbled to an awkward halt, wheels cocked against gnarled tree roots. The servants moved toward him as though to ward him away, though they carried no weapons. “Stand down, Pale One,” the first servant ordered. “The horn’s not for you, not for anyone save us. Tend to your own affairs, lest you defy the Emperor.”

  He released the reins with a contemptuous glare. He glared at the servants like a hungry wolf, dreaming of how delicious their throats might taste. “Go then,” he cursed them. “If that’s what the Emperor commands. You see your brethren? You see how they wait and hide for the enemy to overstep? How many of them will be butchered because your pretty little horn gives them away? I’ll wait in the shadows while the Grae crash into the woods, and I’ll watch as they skewer you with their swords. If you dare sound that thing, don’t retreat to me thinking you’ll be safe. Spears will await you.”

  The servants gave no reply. They were changed men since yestereve, their gazes as blank and void as the miserable morning sky. Like corpses given legs, they shuffled to the wagon and tore the crimson shroud off, fully revealing the Emperor’s horn.

  Made by the faceless craftsfolk of Malog, the horn’s shape was tortured. Its upper half was made of beaten bronze and lusterless gold, and its bottom of bone-mortar and human remains. Even he shivered at the sight. No common instrument, he finally understood. Something else, something forged in darkness.

  No matter that it made his stomach turn and his skin go cold, he shook his head and walked away.

  And then Ahnwyn’s host offered its challenge.

  Even as Archmyr slunk deeper into the trees, he heard the deafening roar of thirty thousand knights of Triaxe. The warriors of Gallen Hold beat their drums like thunderclouds crashing. They cried out for glory, for war, for the destruction of
those who dared wreak horror upon Mormist. That the Grae host screamed so loudly betrayed to Archmyr that the enemy knew his host was near, and that they feared him less than expected. Good. His black heart raced. Plenty on both sides will die today.

  Crouched beside a tree, he fixed his gaze upon the horn, the same as all the men around him. Blow it, and let us be on with the bloodshed.

  “What’s that thing?” He overheard a Furyon ask.

  “From Malog,” another answered. “From Chakran’s forge.”

  “I heard they used the bones of the Davin Kal,” another mumbled. “Ground their best warriors up with the horses. Mixed them all together.”

  “No,” said still another, gravest of the lot. “I heard they found it in Dageni. The gold and bronze were smelted like any other, but the bones belong to everyone, one set from every nation in the world.”

  He allowed them their beliefs. Whatever they think of Chakran’s toy matters none so long as they fight furiously.

  Ahnwyn’s host roared again, battering their war drums louder and louder as they marched toward the forest’s edge. Though he tried to ignore it, Archmyr could not help but look to the horn. He watched the Emperor’s servants climb into the wagon, and he swore when they did the wind began to wail, whipping through the leaves and biting him beneath his armor. The Furyons and the Grae must have felt the same, for when the chilling breeze carried miserably over the land, the voices of Ahnwyn’s army became distant, as though every last one of them had been plunged beneath freezing water.

  The fell wind whispered, the Furyons’ grips tightened upon their weapons, and the taller of the Emperor’s two servants took his place before the great mouthpiece of the horn. The servant heaved his chest, filled his lungs with air, and blew three times.

  Three times the horn sounded, and three times the world shuddered.