The final teeth in the Furyon trap came from behind the crossbowmen. Thousands of ebon-clad swordsmen swarmed up the slope like locusts. Rellen quailed as he pushed through the rearmost ranks of Lothe’s flailing fighters. They’re too many, he knew. We’re dead.
The enemy waded through Lothe’s knights, deflecting all blows, ebon blades hewing Graehelm steel as though it were made of straw. The Furyons’ black-gauntleted fists crushed bones and steel like glass, and they planted their spears like skinny trees, one in the back of every Grae man they caught running. None they caught were spared, and none taken captive. The counterattack was so swift and gruesome not even the rain could hope to wash away all the blood.
Rellen was swept up in a wave of fleeing men. He saw the enemy carving and crushing and butchering, and like a leaf caught up in the wind, he let himself be torn from the battlefield. All that remained of Lothe’s knights were a few thousand men, fragmented at forest’s edge, and me in the middle of it.
He stood with them, there against the trees. Not all of Lothe’s men had the courage to stay and make a last stand. Many, driven mad with terror, abandoned their brothers and took flight into the dark, rain-shattered forest. He shouted at them, but none listened, for none heard. Only some three thousand brave souls remained, Barrok’s bravest…and deadest, he thought.
He pushed to their ragged front and watched as the Furyon swordsmen finished their butcher’s work on the slopes below. “We have to stop them,” he said to whoever would listen.
“We’re dead men.” The soldier beside him clutched a twenty-notched axe. “See how they carve us. Like flames through a forest of paper!”
He felt well and truly horrified, feeling for the first time the true meaning of death and war. The Furyon host milled some two hundred steps down the slope, busy with murderers’ work, and so he allowed himself a few shallow breaths to witness Lothe’s end. He saw Lothe’s body torn down from his horse by a monstrous Furyon. The broken banner of Barrok fell into the squelching, blood-colored mud, and the Furyon giant took Lothe’s head with an effortless swipe of his blade. That must be the one, the one with the sword, he assumed of the giant. If I kill only one Furyon today, it has to be him.
“Where are the Mormist men?” the soldier beside him shouted.
“They’ve run off! They’re cowards!” spat another.
He had not thought of it until then. He remembered Marlos was in charge of the Mormist host and the three-hundred knights lent by Lothe. “They’d never flee,” he said. “Look. There! Riding from the trees!”
After the slaughter on the slopes, any sensible soldier would have fallen back into the woods to survive. But not Marlos, and not the Mormist men.
His heart climbed from the pit of his belly into his throat when he saw them arrive. Marlos and Bruced riding at their forefront, and Therian close behind, three thousand vengeful souls of Mormist stormed down the cliff-side and onto the slope. The Furyon swordsmen, gloating only moments only, lifted their blades and quavered.
The Barrok fighters beside him tensed. He no longer cared whether they ran or fought. His eyes were on Lothe’s killer, the giant nestled behind the scattered Furyon swordsmen. “There! Down there! Kill the giant!” he screamed at the Mormist men. “Scatter his bones into the river!”
His mind went empty. He saw only crimson. Relieving a Barrok knight of his mount, he vaulted into the saddle and charged downhill. He saw the Gryphon company at the forefront of the Mormist warriors. He glimpsed Marlos, grim as the sky, and Bruced, who looked willing to fight the Furyons all by himself. In the instant before they crashed into the Furyon swordsmen, he joined them. He rode into the midst of the Mormist footmen, who collided with the Furyon sword-host with a sound like a mountainside cracking open. Knowing better than to match the Furyons blade for blade, the Mormist men drew their long knives and tackled the enemy knights, pinning them and sawing through the joints of the gleaming Dageni mail wherever they could.
He rode ahead through the melee. Here and there, he trampled Furyon footmen, but otherwise made like lightning for the river bank. He glimpsed a wall of armored darkness taking shape before him, a mass of men so thick that the end of one Furyon and the beginning of another were hardly distinguishable. Commands were shouted from somewhere behind the dark ranks, orders barked by a towering tree of a man. For a moment, he thought he might plunge alone into the bristling walls of pikes and two-tined spears. He saw the glittering black steel points rise up before him, and rather than stop he forged ahead. Goodbye Mother. Goodbye Father.
I do this for you.
His final thoughts gave him small comfort, but then he saw he was not alone. Some three hundred of Lothe’s knights broke free of the battle behind him. Their steeds were faster and fresher than his.
They sped past him and reached the enemy first.
The sky was still as inky as twilight, the morning sun still cloaked by shadows. The riverbank soil, soft as pudding, leapt in gouts onto his face. The Gholesh was utterly dark behind the Furyons, and the riverbank sealed behind a seamless wall of Furyon spines. It doesn’t matter, he thought. If I kill that one, the war might end here and now.
He and the Barrok knights plunged headlong. The swords of Barrok flashed through the air, swatting aside enemy spears, while the ends of their lances met shields and breastplates of Dageni steel in a shower of red sparks. Lorsmir’s sword lay sheathed at his side, his hands empty but for the reins. I’ll draw it when I need it. Watch me, Father. I’ll do your gift proud.
When a dozen Barrok knights crashed the Furyon line and opened a hole, he charged through it. He felt so close to the Furyon giant he could almost taste the tang of Lothe’s blood on the beast’s sword, though the feeling soon fell away. His stomach turned when the Furyon masses ahead of him ducked low to the ground. Crossbows. He knew what they were doing. I should have remembered. He winced when he heard the air snap with the scream of a thousand quarrels, and he could only watch as scores of Barrok knights lurched backward and collapsed from their mounts.
His horse was among the last to die. Struck in the neck by a pair of bolts, it went limp beneath his stirrups and hurled him forward as it collapsed. For a half-breath, he soared freely as a falcon until he struck the wet, blood-pooled earth. The Furyons were on him in an instant. He felt three pikes thrusting down at him, gouging the back of his armor with their razor-tined tips. No. Not dying yet, he swore. Not until I kill the giant.
Spitting out a mouthful of blood and wet soil, he jerked himself to his feet. The three spearmen came at him. It was all he could do to flail his arms to slap their pikes away. It was luck that saved him in the end. More knights of Barrok collided with the enemy. A pikeman knocked him down and smacked him in the head with the butt of his weapon, but then sprinted away to deal with the larger danger.
His head felt full of molten slag. His face and hands were numb, his vision streaked with blood, loam, and fire. He sat up, expecting a bolt in the brain or a sword in the gullet, but in the shadows the Furyons ignored him. He blinked hard and peered to the battlefield behind him. The Barrok knights’ charge had taken a heavy toll on the Furyons. Bodies lay in heaps upon the slope, gore and blood and broken limbs scattered in the rain. He watched wide-eyed as the warriors of Mormist drove the Furyon sword-host back. The Graefolk flung torches, blinding dozens, then brought axes and broadswords down upon any whose path they crossed. The enemy armor was thick, but no matter. The Mormist men have vengeance on their side.
And then he saw Garrett.
He squinted into the dark, not believing his eyes. He saw a flock of Furyons sweep toward an outcropping upon which a single man held sway. The Furyons cut through the Mormist men easily enough, but halted at the outcropping’s bottom. Garrett was alone, and undefeatable. With his borrowed Furyon sword, he sheared off Furyon limbs and hewed through Dageni helmets. Three armies, Rellen remembered with a smile. He’ll kill them all if they let him.
Garrett stood like a king atop his pile of st
ones. Twenty Furyons surrounded him and tried to unseat him. They rushed at him in threes, but they fell as quickly as they came, gasping for lack of limb and clutching the terrible wounds he gave them. Effortlessly violent, impossibly graceful, Garrett slaughtered and maimed fifteen Furyons. When it was done, he waved at a clot of some fifty Mormist axe men, urging them to climb over his outcropping and descend upon the Furyons beyond.
Enough. Rellen’s smile faded. The giant awaits.
He spun on the bloodied earth and swiped the red soil from his eyes. The path to the Gholesh was almost clear. Between him and the Furyon beast lay a tunnel of flesh and clashing steel, narrow and dark as the passages beneath Gryphon Keep. He saw Lothe mangled in the mud and broken Grae arrows scattered like windblown kindling. He gazed upon the giant. Shrouded by the darkness at river’s edge, the great Furyon wielded a blade taller than most knights. That must be the one. Rellen closed his fingers around the handle of Lorsmir’s sword and released it from its sheath. He’s the chanter, Lothe’s killer, the storm-bringer. And if not, I’ll kill him all the same.
He freed Lorsmir’s blade. Violet flames danced up its length as though it were coated in otherworldly oil. He had almost forgotten the flames. The scathing violet tongues burned far hotter than in his tower room, licking the battlefield air as though thirsty for the breaths of dying men. What’d you make, Lorsmir? He wondered. You must be the only sorcerer in Graehelm. Did Father know? As the flames roiled up the sword’s edges, the Furyons nearby recoiled. He recalled the night in his tower room, the way the flames had set his hearth alight, and the way the blade had threatened to set fire to everything.
Everything but me.
He stalked for the Furyon giant, a throng of Furyons swarming in his way. He waded into them. They came with black blades flashing, but with Lorsmir’s flaming sword he carved through them as though their bodies were sticks and their armor made of parchment thin as a maiden’s bridal veil. He let go of his fear and moved as though he was the flame and the sword his master. Hands, heads, and Dageni steel fell before his advance. He killed six, and then waded into a forest of pikemen. He hacked off the heads of their spears and burned their eyes to blindness. He felt like Garrett must, slaughtering every Furyon daring to wander too near. “Rellen, retreat!” he heard his men scream. Never, he thought. Not until every one of them is destroyed.
It was best he did not look toward those who called for him, for with the merest glance he might have seen Bruced fall, speared from spine to sternum by a needlelike Furyon pike.
Unaware of the light fading in his friend’s eyes, he fought on. The deeper he carved, the hotter the furnace burned in his heart. He massacred his way to the center of the battle only to find himself surrounded. All about him lay the smoking bodies of those he had slain, but when he looked back to see how far he had come, he saw nothing but Furyons in every direction. Forgive me, he begged all those he loved. My little life to avenge all those lost. Tears of anguish streaked down his cheeks like rivers. His sweat turned to steam from the heat of his blade, the raindrops hissing whenever they fell too near. His eyes darting, he sought the tallest shadow amidst the thicket of Furyons.
And there he found Daćin.
He locked gazes with the Furyon beast. The man was as tall as Bruced and almost as wide. The tines upon his armor made him look a monster from a soldier’s nightmare, the warrior of all warriors. Rellen bolted through the darkness, meaning to slay the beast, but in his path stood twelve Furyon elite. “Out of my way!” he shouted at them. “Die!”
The Furyons failed to understand. Three darted into his way. At first they teased him with flickers of their razor swords, but then they danced around him, spiraling closer and closer. He had no fear. He lashed out at the one to his right, striking the enemy’s sword off at the handle before smashing his gauntleted wrist into the Furyon’s forehead. The other pair lunged at him, but he was too fast. He waved his blade past the face of one, searing shut his eyes and sending him screaming to the mud. The other stabbed at his throat, but he caught the blade’s edge with his bare left hand and jerked it aside. He swept Lorsmir’s sword across the Furyon fool’s knees, fusing the Dageni ore with the warrior’s bones. With all his might, he plunged the fiery sword into the Furyon’s breastplate until the point was buried deep in the earth below.
The rest of the enemy backed away. Gasping for breath, he pulled the blade from his fallen foe. His palm, cut to the bone by the Furyon blade, went numb. The blood and grime caking his brow made him feel blind. He went down to a knee, finding himself alone in a great ring of enemies. “What’s the matter?” he shouted at them. “Slaughtering women and children suits you better?”
He saw the silhouette of the giant draw near. Daćin’s shadow seemed a mountain in a blurry field of black. He could not help himself. He mocked the massive Furyon with laughter. “Stormbringer, here I am.”
There was no answer.
“No? Nothing? The rain fears the fire?”
The giant stepped into the ring of lavender light given off by Lorsmir’s blade and rested the tip of his massive blade onto the ground two paces away. That’s not the same sword, Rellen despaired. The other was different. Crows take my soul. This isn’t the Stormbringer.
Clad in articulated black, his body more metal than man, the Furyon giant hoisted his thousand-glyphed shield and tilted his sword to the sky.
“Single combat?” Rellen rose. “Just you and me?”
The beast nodded. “Hammek maer kruta,” he demanded in the Furyon tongue.
Rellen knew the monster’s meaning. War with me, he guessed. Or some such.
He stood, the flame of his blade glowing brighter. Through his mind flashed the faces of all those he loved, but then his heart fell numb and all his feeling died. “Corrupt,” he spat at the giant. “You play at honor, but you use thunder and lightning to kill my countrymen. Cowards. You may win today, but the emptiness of war will consume you. We’ll haunt you to the ends of the world.”
He hurled himself at the giant. The other Furyons watched, their presence like a dark, faceless fence hemming him in. A dozen wild strokes, and he surprised himself by driving the giant back toward the river. Again and again he flailed on the Furyon’s shield, sending a cloud of crimson sparks into the air, though to his amazement the shield never broke. The beast let fly his massive blade in several sweeping arcs, but he was too fast, ducking beneath the cumbersome weapon with ease.
And so began the battle.
He and the giant circled each other at length, lashing out with fire and black steel. Their dance, swift and fueled by fury in the beginning, soon became a plodding exchange of slow, battering strokes. A dozen times Rellen threw all his weight against his foe, but with sword and shoulder succeeded only in bruising himself. Meanwhile the giant dealt out a number of blows that might have sundered a mountainside, but Lorsmir’s unbreakable blade easily turned them all aside.
He and the giant dueled for what seemed an eternity. The surrounding battle ground to a terrible end. Though the Mormist host valiantly stormed the Furyons, it was not nearly enough. Too many in number, the Furyons took their losses before tearing through the Mormist host like flames through cobwebs, afterward carving their way into the remnants of Lothe’s army. Only those who fled into the forest survived, for all the rest were broken and cleaved, their bodies left to waste in the darkness. The Furyon swordsmen took no respite. They swarmed back down the slope after the slaughter and trapped the remaining Barrok knights. What little chance the Grae had for victory was drowned in a deluge of swords and spears, and in the end every blue banner torn down and broken in the mud.
Rellen backed away from his fight with the giant, battered and half-senseless. He shambled through the mud, wild-eyed and panting, listening as the dying wails of his countrymen caught in the air. We have lost, he knew. We have failed. Tears streaming, he lowered his sword until its flaming tip sizzled in the muck. He turned his head to listen to the wretched sound of his coun
trymen dying, hearing in his heart the last whimpers of mighty Graehelm. His sword went thirsty in the absence of his fury. The violet flames flickered and went out.
He stood, beaten by the rain, defeated.
The Furyon giant lofted his sword high and wheeled it in a deadly arc. Rellen heard his body break, but felt nothing. The night closed around him, engulfing him like winter, suffocating him in darkness. It seemed no worse than sleep, no more painful than collapsing upon a bed of downy and snow. He fell into the muck, heedless, the sounds of battle little different than the laughter of children.
The Furyon knelt beside him.
The beast’s Dageni armor was pitted with smoking fissures, its surface seared and blistered. Grunting, Daćin reached out over Rellen’s motionless body, his hand seeking the hilt of Lorsmir’s sword. He threw aside his gauntlet and scrabbled to lift the blade, but when he closed his hand around the cold hilt, the unthinkable happened. A burst of light, a mote of silver bolder than the blaze of dawn, smote him and all the Furyons around him. Like a thousand exploding stars the light erupted from Rellen’s bracer, for an instant illuminating the valley as though the sun were shining brightly. Daćin was blinded. He reeled and tumbled into the mud. The light vanished and the battlefield returned to darkness, but all the Furyons near the riverbank could but scream.
Even as Daćin tumbled, two riders burst through the Furyon lines and sped toward the place where Rellen had fallen. Cries of alarm arose from every Furyon who saw, for these riders were no soldiers of theirs. All the Furyons not blinded by the light gave chase. They feared their master was in danger, and they followed like hounds on the hunt, dark blades flashing like meteors.
On the backs of their warhorses, the two riders raced to where Rellen lay limply in the mud. Marlos was first to swoop down from his mount. “Rellen!” he shouted. “Damn fool! Wake up!”
Garrett leapt down beside him. He saw the Furyon beast stirring on the ground nearby. “Hurry,” he told Marlos, then kicked the Furyon giant in the head so hard it sent the big man spinning. “We have no time.”
Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1) Page 29