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

by J. Edward Neill

  Rellen was all smiles. “You luckster. They told me you were dead. I thought all of you were, you especially with that fighting-stick of yours. Tis good to see you alive.”

  “You are not even hurt,” Saul marveled. “At least not as I would expect. We saw you cleaved, and then a wave of Furyons washed over us. Graehelm be good, how did you manage it?”

  A moment of silence, and the cheer in the room began to dwindle. Garrett had expected as much. He watched as Rellen’s smile began to fade. “I will never be able to explain it.” Rellen sounded more solemn than ever in his life. “By all rights, the giant’s stroke should have killed me. I sometimes think it did, yet here I am. When I sleep, I feel myself falling into a place without light or sound. I see Bruced, Therian, all the rest of my brothers. I think maybe I should not be here, that I should be dead and they alive.”

  “And yet you are the one who survived.” Garrett’s voice echoed from the shadows.

  “Yes,” Rellen sighed. “So I am.”

  Saul rose. The candlelight on his face revealed the darkness growing in his gaze. “You are alive, Rellen, and that is good. But I should tell you of my travels.”

  “Yes, tell me. What happened in the week since the battle?” Rellen sat up straighter. “Garrett tells me few scouts have returned. Dennov says he will send no more.”

  Beard drooping, Saul began. “When we escaped, we were twelve at first, but now ten. One of us turned pale and died from a Furyon bolt, another from a sword wound we hoped might heal. The Furyons were everywhere. We thought to harass them and buy the rest of you some time, but they were too many. It is hard to cut the throats of men who sleep, shit, and break fast in their armor. East and south we looked, but the bulk of the enemy remains at Gholesh Chasm. They are regrouping for an attack upon Tratec, we believe. Their commander has departed, but we think he will return soon.”

  “What of their cause?” Marlos piped up. “Why are they here? Do we know anything more than we did before?”

  Saul swallowed hard. “We heard rumors, much as you have. But all of it, all the talk, amounts to nothing. A slave came to us, a man set loose just to spread fear across Mormist. From him we learned their real name, at least as the refugees and rumor-keepers know it. Lumaur’s letter called them the Furies, as you know, but they call themselves the Furyon Empire, servants of the Emperor of Malog. The red banner they carry is not their own, but that of the kingdom they mean to build atop Graehelm once all of us are destroyed.”

  The four men became quiet, the silence capturing the tower gloom as they dwelled upon what Saul had said. Garrett remained in the shadows. He gazed from the tower window as black clouds began to crawl across the moon. By the time another word was uttered, the moonlight was completely gone, and the room much darker for it.

  “Our defeat is my fault,” said Rellen at last.

  “No,” Garrett interrupted. “Your father sent you blindly. And we are not defeated. The strongest of us remain.”

  Rellen swung his legs around his chair and bounded to his feet. Marlos’s eyes went wide. Garrett was unsurprised.

  “I know what you are trying to do, old friend,” said Rellen. “But this time you are wrong. I squandered our best chance. Barrok was all we had in the north, and now look at them; piled on the shores of the Gholesh. Ahnwyn’s host was destroyed in a matter of hours, which says to me that even our finest are not strong enough. The Furyons are too powerful. I am not worthy to fight them.”

  Garrett mustered no counter. He felt consumed by the night’s darkness, his commitment to wage war a world apart from Rellen, Saul, and Marlos’s.

  Rellen sat down again, looking as pale and weary as a week ago. “I should apologize,” he said sullenly. “All these hours, and most of my thoughts are consumed by Andelusia. Is she really gone? Is she dead? How can no one know what happened to her? Did she gone back to Gryphon all alone? What if something awful happened? What if…what if Nentham caught her? I never should have been so proud. The war be damned, I should’ve taken her beyond Graehelm and left this mess behind.”

  The mere mention of Andelusia wounded Garrett far more than he let show. Every day since returning, he had hoped for her return, and every night he had grieved in silence for her. “It is as I said before.” He emerged from his dark corner, his body stiff as a spear. “She did not go west, far as we can tell. Dennov tells that he tried to stop her, but she was stubborn. He told me she went somewhere into the forest, alone and poorly-supplied. He said her behavior changed after we left, that she complained of nightmares and voices in her room. Believe what you will, she is vanished all the same. We are all poorer for her absence.”

  Rellen flashed a look of anguish. “Just gone, maybe not dead? But why? Why would she leave? If she’s gone, if she’s hurt, I don’t care anymore. Let the Furyons quarter me. Let lightning roast me in my bed.”

  “Rellen, come now…” said Marlos.

  “No. Her leaving was my fault. I could’ve stayed. She begged me, did you know? In this very room, she wept and clawed and told me she loved me. And I threw it away for what? A slaughter in the woods, thirty thousand dead, and me still alive because of a bracelet?”

  Garrett saw Rellen’s courage floundering, paling the same as the candles atop the table. The sight of it heated his blood. “Your pity for her is to be expected.” He neared the table, his shadow tall and threatening. “But your pity for yourself is unbecoming. Put an end to it. Stand tall, as your father would have you. It is my fault Ande is lost. It was I who suggested she come to Mormist, and I who delivered her. We will destroy the Furyons to a man; I swear it. I will bring her back to you. You need but rise and swear you are still with me.”

  Saul and Marlos fell silent. None save Emun had ever spoken to Rellen in such a way. “Send me away if you will.” Garrett offered his open hand, beckoning the young lord to rise. “Cast me from friendship. I will fight the Furies alone if I must. Though I prefer you were with me.”

  Rellen’s paleness faded, a slender smile working its way onto the edge of his mouth. “You want to fight them, no matter how futile?”

  “Nothing futile about it.”

  “We’re dead men,” Rellen said. “We’ll war against them today, but we might as well carve our coffins tomorrow.”

  “We took an oath. There is no such thing as defeat so long as a soldier lives. We lose only when we die, never before.”

  Rellen looked to Saul and Marlos as if hoping for their aid. When they said nothing, he blushed with shame. “An oath...I remember. What can I say to that? Father would roast me alive if I broke my word. So war it will have to be. No running. Just fighting.”

  “Your hand,” bid Garrett.

  Rellen’s hand fell into his. It was sweating, but Rellen’s shake was firm. “Forgive me, Garrett. I lost my nerve. It is just that…Ande. I miss her badly.”

  “As do we all,” said Garrett.

  And I more than most.

  Rebirth

  Dawn, and Rellen awoke in an icy sweat. His clothes were drenched again, his heart crashing beneath his shirt like a stallion’s hooves. The worst sleep ever. He tried to rub the sunlight from his eyes. I feel like dirt, turned and ready for a pile of corpses. It had been the same every morning of late, though he told no one. His sleeps were shallow, his dreams of exploding stars, falling moons, and bitterly painful deaths. He too often dreamed of the wails of Graehelm’s dead, the soldiers crying out his name as they stripped the earth from atop their graves in vain effort to live again. Worst of all were his nightmares. He dreamt of the shades of Andelusia and Bruced, who grasped at his shirt, clinging to him with hands that had no substance. No matter how he reasoned it upon waking, he knew why he suffered. I left a part of me at Gholesh.

  At midmorning, he found Garrett wandering alone in Verod’s courtyard. It was a stark, forlorn place Garrett liked to visit, walled on all sides by thick stone. High weeds littered the sullen grass, while tangled vines crept over every portion of wall not occupied by
a window or door. Only once each day, during the sun’s highest ascent, did any true light ever find its way down into the unhappy place. At all other times the courtyard was sunken into gloom, a sad corner of the world where the folk of Tratec often wandered to reminisce. A perfect place for Garrett, he mused.

  As Garrett stalked across the lonely stones, Rellen stepped out from behind a creaking, weather-bent door. He fell in behind Garrett, tracing his steps as though to follow his state of mind. “Seems the Furies have us right where they want us,” he said as he walked. “We need a miracle to stop them.”

  Garrett kept walking. “There are no miracles. Only men.”

  “I knew you would say that.”

  Garrett stopped in the center of the courtyard. His face was hidden, his back to the world. “We might have known this from Lumaur’s letter. If these were ordinary foes, we could have parleyed with them. We would have known what they wanted. But these are destroyers. They only want death.”

  “Some helpful wisdom, that.” Rellen kicked at piece of cobble. “What happened to ‘The Furies will all die. Grae swords in every Fury throat,’ and such?”

  Garrett glanced to the sky, where grey clouds lurked above the narrow courtyard aperture. “My boasts aside, this is no ordinary war. When nations go to war, the battles are not usually accompanied by storms and indestructible soldiers. You came to it rightly when you spoke of witchcraft, and all of us saw it in Lorsmir’s sword. We can no longer rely on convention. We must be wary of everything we see.”

  “Sorcery…” The word curdled on his tongue. “They must have spent years preparing for this. So now what? We make a final stand? We become the last page in some Fury storybook? How do we beat black storms and swords that carve men up like scythes through wheat?”

  Garrett paced and plodded in the courtyard like a ghost about his crypt. All shadows and secrets again, Rellen lamented. Perfect, just perfect… He stood in place, waiting as Garrett walked a full circle. “Fine, you have no answer,” he said when the grim warrior returned. “I understand. The war aside, I have other things on my mind. Ande…she lives in my dreams. She haunts me, and it kills me. Do you think I was wrong to fall in love with her? Was I selfish to bring her into this life?”

  Garrett shook his head. “You cannot help your heart. If you need to lay blame, lay it on me. I betrayed you by bringing her here.”

  He hesitated before speaking again. Try though he did, he found no bitterness in his heart for Garrett. “I told myself I would try not to think about her. Easy to try, hard to do. Cuts like a knife, it does.”

  “Indeed,” said Garrett. “She deserved better than us.”

  He walked to Garrett’s side. He wished the sun were shining, but grey clouds would have to do. “I thought about what you said last night. You laid a lot at my feet, you know? Wars and heroes and such.”

  “I know,” said Garrett.

  “I came to the conclusion we need a plan. A good one.”

  “Indeed.”

  A deep breath, and he let it out. “We need Jacob, assuming he is King, to rally an army. We have to keep Verod from falling, at least for a while. The Furies must be on the move by now, and if I guess rightly, they will get here long before Jacob can. Meanwhile, we have nothing here to fight with but rags and the ragged.”

  “You mentioned a plan,” Garrett said starkly.

  “Right,” he huffed. “The day is dark, but dead men we are not. I know what you will say to this, but here it is all the same. I woke up this morning, and I knew I had to go back to Graehelm. I have to find Jacob. Only he can raise an army strong enough to give us a chance. Only he can rally Graehelm.”

  “We need you here.” Garrett seemed unsurprised with the plan. “No one else can keep these men from scattering.”

  “See?” He clucked his tongue. “Told you I knew what you would say. But I have a plan for that. Tonight, you will see it.”

  He kept to himself until that evening. Locked in his tower, he mulled and brooded, his plan fermenting in his mind like bittersweet wine. Garrett will hate it, he told himself again and again. No matter. I am not dear Bruced, who would have charged alone into the Furyons. I have to become the thinking man my father always wanted me to be. I have to outsmart the enemy, not outfight him. The grey day passed him by while he lurked in his tower. He answered his door for no one, not even for Dennov, who banged on his door with promises of piping hot stew and a chalice of mead.

  The older the day grew, the less he worried for his plan and the more he dwelled on Andelusia. I cannot escape her, he knew. Like a feather set loose into a gale, she drifted through his mind. He despaired he had not paid enough attention to her. He blamed himself for her disappearance, for he had known all along of the wanderlust beating in her heart. Garrett thinks she is alive. Can she be? If she were, would I run away with her like I promised? Or would I break her heart again? Ach, crows take my tongue. This will drive me mad.

  When suppertime finally came, he dressed himself in his armor and sword, and he left his brooding behind. He took to the stairs and descended to the great hall of Verod, where all was exactly as expected. The hour was late and every sconce stuffed with burning torches. As he set foot into the hall, he saw every seat taken, every corner stuffed to breaking with feasting men. It was just as Garrett and Saul had told him. Dennov was stuffing the gullets of the fighting men in Tratec in order to keep them from fleeing. He saw Marlos, never one to refuse a meal, and Saul glooming where the light was least. He was somewhat surprised to glimpse Ser Endross, last knight of Triaxe, alive and well. Nice of them to survive. Everyone else is dead, he imagined. This room is full of strangers.

  He pushed through the crowd, carving a path to the room’s center. No one seemed to recognize him, which did nothing to settle his nerves. The deepest breath of his life, a last look to a ceiling illuminated by a thousand hanging candles, and he jumped atop the centermost table in the entire hall. Two goblets and a platter were knocked aside when he landed. Men shouted at him, demanding he answer for destroying their supper, but he paid them no attention.

  “Welcome, good people of Mormist, to the halls of Verod!” he crowed, standing tall amid no small amount of curses. “My name is Rellen Gryphon. I come from the house of my father, Emun Gryphon, high Councilor of King Jacob. Some of you might know me. Most will not. I am here as an emissary of Graehelm, and now I ask for a few moments of your time.”

  Like a wave rippling outward from the center of a lake, the silence spread to every corner of the room. Several men at the center table groused and threatened beneath their breaths, but the rest of the room was momentarily his. “Dennov feasts you!” he shouted with a forced smile. “Not a bad way to spend an eve, stuffing our bellies and drinking ourselves stupid. I would do the same were I a younger man.”

  Everywhere, chairs creaked and heads turned. This was his only chance, he knew. “And yet, I wonder if gorging on the spoils of the Dales is the wisest thing to do. You see, my fellows, Verod will not be a feasting hall much longer. While we sit here, increasing our collective girths, the wolves outside our door draw closer. The Furies are coming. Mormist will not save itself. I wonder, if someone were to call upon you, this hall full of proud and gallant men, would you help guard Mormist from ruin, or would you sit before your cups and laugh?”

  A chorus of voices arose from the crowd. Some snickered at his suggestion, others groaned at the interruption, while still others called to him with arguments. It was one of the arguers who shouted loudest. “How can we hope to defeat them?” said a squat, barrel-bellied man, his cheeks half-stuffed with mutton. “Their storm, it kills everything! We are no fools. Better to feast now while we can. Better to fatten up before we run off and find ourselves starving.”

  The room stirred even louder with squabbling. More men than not fell into agreement with the voice. At least I have their attention, he mused. He waited until the quarreling died down before countering the protest. “In a way, you are right,” he addressed
them. “Safety may be found in the Dales, at least for a while. But what will you do when the storm follows you and its damning wind spills across the fields? Where will you go then? Farther west? Do you think the Grandwood will hold you, that the westfolk will open their fields to your mouths and their wives’ beds to your craven cocks? The Furies will not stop at the edge of Mormist. I think by now you all know that the fiends are not purposed to conquest alone. They mean to hunt us all into our graves, to stamp out everything Grae.”

  Filled with doubt, many of the crowd fell quiet. One voice rose above the silence. “You say we must stay and fight, but you give us nothing else,” a brutish mountain man sneered. “What sort of plan does the son of a doddering old Councilor have?”

  He had hoped for just such a challenge. After clapping his hands thunderously, he ripped Lorsmir’s sword from its sheath and held it aloft. Many in the room looked at it and laughed, for at first the blade did nothing. Watch this. He grinned. I bet most of you think the Furies are the only ones with sorcery. Feeling his blood catch fire, he waved Lorsmir’s blade over the table, awakening it from slumber. Like an oiled oak-limb touched by a torch, Lorsmir’s marvel began to burn, blue at first, then violet. The room fell into deathly silence, the men’s faces turning white. They watched as the flames danced and weaved ever higher, threatening to touch the ceiling and roast the timbers to ash. When the fire reached its highest and his blood burned in his veins, he spoke again. He influenced the fire to rise and fall with the sound of his voice, now more fearsome than ever. “A plan, you ask for. A grave for the Furies, you demand. The invaders think themselves invincible, but they are as mortal as you and I. Before this very blade, I saw them fall in droves. I saw their master reel, sweating like a hog upon his spit. An inch we were from victory, as close to destroying the Furies as this fire is to my own skin. It could happen again, and the Furies would not be so lucky!”