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

by J. Edward Neill

  “A rapid change of heart,” said Marlos.

  Dennov gulped. “But no less earnest. Strap a plate to my chest and tie a sword between my fingers. I’ll be the first into battle. There’s only one problem. My knowledge of war is…somewhat lacking.”

  Saul expected Marlos’s wrath, but the captain managed a grim smile. “Your knowledge of war was never important.” He grasped Dennov’s slender shoulders, nearly crushing him. “All the men know the plan to slow the Furies. We’ve rehearsed it more times than I care to remember. As easily as you can open your mouth, any one of us can whisper the plan in your ear. It’s not the message that matters so much, but the messenger.”

  Dennov quavered. “You make it sound so easy.”

  “No, not easy.” Marlos’s smile faded. “We’re five-thousand now, our lives hanging by a thread. We’ve forty captains out there, and no singular soul to lead them. Suck in your fear, little nobleman. Stand tall and look dangerous. I’ll take you to the captains, but ‘tis you who must light the flame beneath them.”

  Marlos let Dennov loose and backed away. Saul watched the young lord straighten and shake the terror loose from his limbs. It is madness to trust in him now. He is weak. And yet this is what war makes of us.

  Marlos marched away. Dennov skittered behind him. A few shared glances of doubt and distrust, and Saul and the rest followed. Tumbled chairs and tables were swept aside as they walked to the castle gate. The castle’s sentries peered down at them from the tops of murder holes, no hope in their gazes.

  In moments, the procession emerged into the darkness of the forest. The winds were fierce, the darkness unbroken save by the tormented flames of dozens of torches. Echoing in the night, the thud of the Furyon wardrums matched the thump of Saul’s heartbeat, hard and steady as the rain.

  “Never mind the rain, lads.” Marlos forged down the path toward Tratec. “Same for the drums. This fight’ll not be like Gholesh. If the Furies bring their storms, they’ll wound themselves as well. If they rush onto the Crossroad, we’ll rain fire down on them from the hills. This fight can be ours if we’re united.”

  Marlos took ten steps farther, and it was then Therian returned. Riding a black garron, seeming so small in his grey, piecemeal armor, the lad rode to his uncle’s side and vaulted off his horse. Any other time, Saul would have believed the boy a showoff, but not tonight. Therian was drenched head to toe in rain, and his hands scarlet with blood.

  “Are you hurt?” Marlos ran to him.

  “No, uncle.” Therian was breathless. “‘Tis Fury blood.”

  “The fighting’s started already? Now? In the dark?”

  “Yes, uncle. Skirmishing on the outer lines. We hold for now, but not for long.”

  The men in Marlos’s company shuddered. The rain on their faces might have been tears of terror, though Saul could not say. “How many have attacked?” He strode between uncle and nephew.

  Therian shivered, his horror claiming all his handsomeness. “We’ve no count, sires,” he stammered. “The night, the rain…they swallow everything. ‘Tis hard enough to number friends, to say nothing of foes. The Furies came up our hill, and we threw them down. But…the ghouls know no fear. Some of them we shot through their eyes and necks, but when we looked for their bodies we found not nearly as many as we expected. Their skins are grey, sires, like dead men. When they talk, it sounds like gibbering, not like any kind of natural language.”

  “Relax, lad.” Marlos tried to assuage him. “What you feel is only the dread of battle. Kill a few more Furies, and you’ll see. They’re not monsters, only men.”

  Saul remembered the faces of the Furyon spies, the one skewered by Marlos’s spear and the other two locked in the dungeons of Verod. Are they diseased? Ensorcelled somehow? What manner of men are we fighting?

  His fears went unspoken. He watched in silence as Marlos erected himself before the tiny company, his face as stern as the stones of Gryphon Keep. Whatever you’re about to say, say it well, Gryphon man.

  The Furyon drums banged harder. The rain swept down like an ocean upended. All the men looked to the sky, where the night’s maw opened wide, wanting to swallow Tratec, Verod, and every soul therein. A last breath, and Marlos uttered his commands.

  Saul thought it was bravely done, and was first to fly to battle.

  The Fey

  Castle Verod lay in silence. The wardrums and the rain were no more. The dawnlight gleamed against the castle stones, the beaded raindrops from yestereve’s storm shining silver beneath the cloudless sunrise.

  A long line of Mormist men made its way up the trail from Tratec, staggering slowly back into the castle gates. Saul marched among them. As the sun began its slow climb above the grey-leafed trees, he wandered into Verod’s grand hall as though stumbling into a dream. I’m alive. For at least another day, this lonely man of Elrain haunts the earth.

  He felt half-asleep, fair stumbling into the hall. Like so many men around him, he made a bed out of a tabletop, stretching his body over the polished planks as though the table were padded with feathers.

  “If the lines should break in our absence…” Marlos climbed atop the table beside him, “…let the Furies come in and catch us sleeping. I want a story told of how we fought last night. Scratch it onto your damnable stick, that the Furies will take it home and read it to their children.”

  He closed his eyes, but remained awake. “It was a good night, but it was only one. They’ll test us every night the same, I think.”

  “Damn you. And damn Rellen.” Marlos sounded drunk with exhaustion. “Maybe the boy was right after all. We’ll hold the bastards back for a few weeks, and Jacob will come a riding. Did you know Graehelm never lost a battle before Gholesh? The Furies should’ve stopped at Minec.”

  Saul gazed to the ceiling, where the planks were dark as twilight. “They want more than Minec’s rocks. They like murder, these monsters. You saw it, same as I.”

  “Aye,” Marlos agreed. “Monsters they are.”

  His stare deepened. The ceiling was dark, almost welcoming him into sleep. “I brained at least seven of them,” he murmured, “But the men beside me say they counted only three lying dead.”

  “Aye,” Marlos said again. “I told you. Monsters…and sorcerers.”

  Sleep came to claim him, blessed and intoxicating. He felt as though he had drunk more wine than his belly could hold, for all that his limbs loosened and sank onto the table. Let them hold, he thought of the reinforcements Dennov had rallied and ordered to hold the eastern ramparts. Three hours, maybe four, and I’ll be ready to fight again.

  He dreamed deeper than he meant to. Long into the morning, he lay on his table like a corpse on a stone slab, reliving every moment of the previous night. His dreams were too real for his liking. He saw the Furyons he had crushed, though never their faces. Their helms were made of inimical black steel, their eyes cold and white behind their masks. Fearless, he remembered them, willing to wade through storms of arrows, climb up spiked ramparts, and leap into trenches bristling with Mormist blades. If the darkness had hindered them, none of them had shown it. They fought in the pitch like wolves prowling the night. I was lucky to survive, he dreamed again and again.

  Lucky, lucky, lucky…

  He did not know what hour it was when the voice woke him. He knew only that Marlos was already sitting up, and that his dreams, collected in his head like cobwebs, took longer than he wanted to depart.

  “Uncle Marlos, Ser Saul,” he heard Therian say. “You’re needed.”

  “Ach, my legs,” Marlos complained. “I’m not a young man any longer. I’m made of lead. What is it, Therian? Has the battle turned?”

  Saul sat up and gazed blearily at uncle and nephew. He could not help but feel a glimmer of hope. Marlos was a mess of blistered fingers, bruised forearms, and nicks, but was still as alive as yesterday. Therian, his armor polished by a night’s worth of rain, was no longer covered in blood. “What is it? The Furies? Did the lines break?” he asked
.

  “No, no.” Therian shook his head. “You might not believe this, but they retreated. The sun’s shining. We still hold the hills.”

  “You’ve been awake this entire time?” Marlos rubbed his head.

  “Aye, uncle. You said to ride between captains and keep them wise to the Furies’ attacks. I did only as you asked.”

  Marlos sobered then, looking prouder than ever of the lad. “You did well, my boy. To wake and find you alive…the only thing better would be for us all to wake up at home.”

  “All well and good, uncle.” Therian flushed at the praise. “But you need to wake faster. Someone’s here to see you.”

  “Who?”

  “Rellen’s friend, the tall one. He has Rellen’s sword.”

  Saul snapped his eyes shut and open again. He looked to Marlos, whose forehead had wrinkled with confusion. “Garrett?” he asked Therian. “Tall and black-clad?”

  “Aye, that’s the one.” Therian beamed. “He and the little fellow sneaked up the ridge below the castle only an hour ago.”

  Saul hardly believed it. Surely the lad’s mistaken, he thought. “What about Rellen? Is he here?”

  Therian shrugged. “Not that I can tell.”

  “The mountain man, here?” Marlos vaulted off his table. “Without Rellen? My guts be tangled in a Furyon spear! Take us, boy. Lead us to the man, and hurry!”

  Saul stood, still half-asleep. Plucking up his staff, he wandered after Therian and Marlos. He took giant strides after them, his mail rattling against his legs, his battlestaff like an old sleeping oak atop his shoulder. Therian ran out of the gate, shoving past scores of men returning from battle. Why didn’t Garrett come to the castle? he wondered. Where’s Rellen? This can’t be a good thing.

  Therian and Marlos ran and ran. Saul followed blindly. They led him off the common path and down a hillside brimming with sharp-limbed trees and thorny shrubs. The sun sparkled in his eyes, blinding him, but Therian never slowed. The lad twisted between a thousand trees, as comfortable in the forest as a sparrow in the sky.

  “Where are you taking us?” he called after them.

  “To the ridge,” Therian shouted back. “You’ll see.”

  “Damned, but you’re too fast,” he panted.

  With sweat dripping and muscles biting, he crashed down the slope, rounded a hundred trees, and plowed through a final labyrinth of sickly limbs and leaves. And then he stopped. In the clearing before him awaited a sight he was not sure he believed. Garrett... He stared at the tall man of Mormist, who wore Rellen’s sword at his side. And another… He glanced at the stranger beside Garrett. Who’s this?

  He plodded into the clearing. The open space of forest floor was blanketed with sodden leaves and grey, rotting deadfalls. Standing before him was Garrett, flanked by a slender man swimming in robes that seemed not one color, but a thousand. The two were speaking to one another, neither of them smiling. “This place is on the edge of a nightmare from which it won’t awaken,” he heard the slender stranger say to Garrett. “We have to hurry.”

  Marlos blustered into the conversation. “What’s this? Garrett? How are you here and not at war? Where’s Rellen? Why’ve you called us here?”

  Garrett was just as Saul remembered. Tall as a tower, clad in raiment blacker than any building in Gryphon, his shadow leapt across the clearing, seeming darker even than night. “Garrett…” Saul knelt to catch his breath. “Where have you been?”

  Garrett crouched low to the earth and scooped a handful of loose soil into his palms. He kneaded the dirt, the look on his face as forbidding as the first cloud in the vanguard of a Furyon thunderhead. “Saul, Marlos,” he greeted. “I thought to find you both strung from Furyon spears.”

  “No way to greet a friend,” said Marlos.

  Garrett stood, a half head taller than everyone else. “Forgive my bluntness. It has been a long journey, and you will not want to hear what I have to say.”

  Marlos grimaced. “Oh, but I do. Therian pulled us from battle, you see. We’ve Furies to dig graves for, and plenty more to kill. And yet here you are: no Rellen, no Emun, and no army. I’m dying with anticipation, you might say.”

  Garrett glanced to his diminutive comrade and then to Saul and Marlos. The sunlight seemed not to touch him through the canopy, pooling around him like sparkling water about an island of darkness. “Therian,” he addressed the lad, “Is this all?”

  Therian gulped. “The other is on his way. He promised food and heavy furs, just as you asked for.”

  Marlos’s temper thinned. “That you are here means one of two things. Either Rellen’s released you to deliver some grave message, or he’s dead. Tell us now. Don’t delay the truth.”

  Garrett strode to the nearest tree, its bark black and dying. “I cannot speak for Rellen. When he left, he was alive.”

  “When he left?”

  “Yes. He went to Mooreye. He was alive when last I saw him.”

  “Mooreye? Rellen went there?” Marlos narrowed his eyes. “So you’re here and he’s there? Your friendship must’ve ended, and yet you have his sword. What goes here, Garrett? I like none of this. Who’s this stranger who takes Rellen’s place beside you?”

  Saul felt the tension in the air. Something’s wrong here, he sensed. Garrett wouldn’t leave Rellen willingly. Why return here in secret?

  Without an army, why return at all?

  The darkness in Garrett’s gaze confirmed his fear. It was no good reason he and the slender stranger had come. “Marlos, Saul, no matter how hard you fight, the Furies will defeat you.” His stare penetrated them. “They will smile when we kill a hundred of theirs, and they a thousand of ours. Whether we fight or run and hide, they will root us out wherever they find us. This you know, I think. Rellen’s plan to protect Graehelm was founded with good intentions, but he never could have predicted the Furies’ power.”

  Saul saw the frown crossing Marlos’s face. Every man in the clearing knew Garrett’s words were true.

  “But…” Garrett paused, gathering the words to his tongue, “that is not the whole of it. There is hope yet. This is Dank, servant of Lord Emun, guardian of House Gryphon. He knows a way to destroy the Furies, or so he says. Rellen broke from me when I joined Dank, but gave me his sword before parting.”

  Saul knew where Marlos’s argument would go. He decided to intervene. “If the Furies can be beaten, tell us how. We all want to know.”

  “Aye,” agreed Marlos. “Enlighten us.”

  Garrett shut his eyes, seeming to steady his faith in a belief unspoken. “I did not leave Rellen lightly. But after what Dank and Lady Gryphon herself told me, I felt I had no other choice. A great evil has awoken in Furyon. Rellen did not want to believe it, but even so he sent me here to fetch you for our cause. We need you to come with us. Dank has proposed it, and so I agree.”

  “Ha!” Marlos laughed. “Here we sit in the middle of battle, and you’d ask us to leave? Did you enjoy a few swigs of wine this morning? Or has Saul gone and cracked your skull with his battle-stick?”

  Garrett ignored the outburst. “We need you, Marlos. You as well, Saul. You are not meant to die at Verod. Our journey will take us to Furyon, to the heart of the matter. I have broken all my oaths to join with Dank, and I would rather not do it alone. Come with us. Come now. The matter of Furyon is of the direst sort. You know the sort of man I am. I would not ask you to abandon Verod lightly.”

  Saul leaned on his staff and stared hard at Garrett and the stranger. “You want us to run away? Now when the enemy is closest? Garrett, of all the men, I expected better. You’re no coward. Why do this?”

  “You do not understand,” said Garrett. “You assume that because I have asked you to leave Verod, yours will become the coward’s path. Nothing could be more untrue. A great wickedness has awakened in Furyon. It is said if we do not destroy the Object the Furies have unearthed, we will allow back to life an evil age, long forgotten.”

  Saul’s heart beat harder beneath his
mail. Garrett was no liar, he knew, and yet it sounds like madness. “What do you mean, an evil age? What are you talking about?”

  “For me to explain would take the whole day, time we do not have. I know what happens here. The day of battle has come, and you would not abandon it to chase some madman’s fantasy. But hear me; hear me now if ever you heard me. If my companion speaks rightly, if Lord Emun was right to trust in him, then you must come with me. A black season is upon us. If you stay here to die when the real threat lingers so far away, your sacrifices will be in vain, and the enemy will destroy you. Look to your hearts. Think of the storm, the sorcery, the indestructible weapons the Furies wield. These things have a source, and the source must be undone.”

  In that instant, Saul saw it. The look in Garrett’s eyes was the same look he had seen many times in Rellen. His mind’s made up, he knew. He’s deadly serious. He must’ve seen something. But what?

  He backed a step away, trying to make sense of it all, and just as he did, the thunder of the Furyon host boomed in the distance. The din of the drums was faint at first, but grew louder until the earth quaked, the trees shivered, and the clouds writhed as if tormented by the sound.

  “You go to Furyon?” questioned Marlos. “And just how? Do you have an army? A fleet of warships? Did the crows pluck out your brains on your way back to Mormist? You let Rellen go to Mooreye…and for this?”

  “All of it will be explained.” Garrett glanced to the sky, where the clouds gathered. “But first you must join me. I am no fool. I do not lightly agree to journey into lands where annihilation awaits me. Your sacrifice will be a profound one. You will not see your men again, and many will call you cowards. But if you knew what I know, if you opened your hearts to the truth behind the shadows, you would make the same choice as I. We must go to Furyon. To stay here is to condemn Graehelm to oblivion.”