He had expected this, though perhaps not so early into his campaign. “You must be tired,” he said unctuously. “Come and eat with me. My men don’t consume much these days. The choicest bits are ours.”
“I’m not hungry,” Nimgabul grunted.
With a shrug, he paced before the warlord’s horse. He rather liked that Nimgabul had only brought two hundred, and that already his legion was closing in, swords and glaives at the ready. “You mean to take me before Daćin, where he can do the honors of punishing me himself.” He halted a sword’s length from the snout of Nimgabul’s horse. “But I rather like it here. I think I’ll stay.”
The Furyon’s expression never changed. “You may not stay. Your legion belongs to him.”
“Does it?” He smiled. “To my knowledge, this legion is the Emperor’s. Unless, that is, Daćin has assumed the throne?”
“Daćin is the Emperor’s voice. You are not.”
“Perhaps, but we’re far from Minec, and the Emperor’s will doesn’t always travel intact. You may think otherwise, but I’ve always known Chakran’s wishes, even when he doesn’t speak them.”
“What do you mean?” Nimgabul narrowed his eyes.
“What do I mean? I mean I could use you, warlord. I could use you and your horsemen to great end. Think on it. While your master sits in the forest, you and I can carve through these fields and fall upon the Grae capital. Their armies are destroyed. The people would have no choice but to open their gates and grovel like insects for our mercy. But we’re not merciful. The ash of the Grae remains would become mortar for the first of Tyberia’s palaces. The Emperor would love us for it. Close your eyes and imagine it. Tell me I’m wrong.”
He saw the way Nimgabul shifted in his saddle. Like all the other Furyons. He wants to kill. Malog has him.
“You speak heresy.” Nimgabul resisted.
“Against what religion?” he snorted. “There are no gods looking down on this miserable realm. There’s only war. When Daćin proves too slow and kindly to the conquered Graefolk, whom do you think the reins of this invasion will pass to? The Emperor demands perfection. He wants every Grae exterminated, and soon.”
Nimgabul sat motionless for a time. His grey flesh seemed tauter against his jaw, his eyes smoldering with a rare hint of life. “You would betray the Commander? You’ll not do as he bids?”
“No,” he declared. “I will stay. You should stay as well, if only for the night. You will need time to make your decision.”
“What decision?”
“Whether you will join me, or whether you will return to your master empty-handed,” he said with a smirk.
He gave his back to the warlord and walked through the grass toward the waiting lines of Furyons. Behind him, Nimgabul sat like a stone upon his horse. I’ve won him, he thought. His Commander wants a measured march and slow, slogging attrition. I promise a war unrestrained. Nim will join me. There is no Daćin here, only Archmyr.
Arriving at the black wall of Furyon knights, whose gazes were incurious and whose weapons swayed above the grass like shadows, he turned and faced Nimgabul from afar. He saw the warlord’s men gathering in a great ring. He could not hear what Nimgabul told them, but he glimpsed their smiles taking shape and their grim nods of agreement. In the moments afterward, he saw them cast their gazes north and east as though to give thanks to Malog, whose power had enslaved them all.
Sheep… he thought as he shouldered through the silent masses and slipped back inside his tent. Whatever you’ve done to them, Chakran, you’ve done too well.
Tyberia will be no place I want to live.
The Pale Tower
Beneath a blood-red dawn, Archmyr mounted his warhorse and trotted to Nimgabul’s side.
For the first time in his reckoning, he felt uncomfortable amid the Furyons. His Thillrian platemail, tarnished and grey, stood out singularly amid a sea of black Dageni steel. He was the Pale Knight, and yet for all his pallid, moonlike flesh, he felt like the only one alive.
Like an army of dead, he thought of his legion. They should be eating, sparring, and laughing about all the wenches they have spitted. But look, they only sit and stare.
The Furyons watched listlessly as he rode by, their gazes trailing him like flies behind a carcass. When he came to Nimgabul, the warlord’s riders were saddled and dressed for war, sitting shoulder to shoulder, spears and swords in hand. Mooreye and the rest of Graehelm were still days away, and yet they looked as though the slaughter was already at hand.
After a few terse commands to Nimgabul, he raised his fist and let it fall like a hammer. A murmur spread throughout the horde, and the legion began to move. They were sixty thousand and more, horsemen in the front, infantry in the middle, and a wagon-train of weapons, slaves, and corpses in the rear. The wound they made upon the earth as they marched would not soon heal.
“We shall enjoy this,” rumbled Nimgabul, red cloak catching in the wind.
He regarded the warlord warily. “You and I might, but will they?” He gestured at the ranks darkening the fields behind him. “All the blood we’ve spilled, and not a smile to be seen. They want for nothing anymore.”
“Nothing but death,” Nimgabul grunted.
“Exactly my meaning.”
“Don’t protest, Pale One. This is what you wanted, remember? Now that I think on it, this is what all of us always wanted.”
Alone, he rode ahead of Nimgabul and the rest. The thrum of their blighted footfalls put an ache in his head, the rattling of their collective breath like that of dying men dangling from the gallows. And worse, he thought with a grimace, their stink is strong enough to wilt a pig’s nose. He rode far ahead of them, pleased to be their vanguard. For once, the high grasses and green fields were welcoming, far better than the crushed, diseased earth left in the Furyons’ wake.
For three days they marched.
Like all the days before, their footsteps laid waste to more than grass and fields and flowers. The legion carved through five more villages, farms sprinkled with barns, cottages, and alehouses. At each village, Archmyr commanded that all be left lifeless, that no mercy be given. It felt like a petty chore, but needful to satisfy the Furyons.
No matter his weariness of massacring peasants, and no matter that each village possessed nary a soul to defend themselves, he had little choice in the matter. The march of the Furyons was a tide that could never be stemmed, a red river flowing northward. Wherever they walked, the earth died, and wherever they camped, silence reigned. More often than not, he allowed Nimgabul to give the orders. He found himself watching almost placidly as the warlord commanded houses to be burned, farmers ridden down, and helpless folk mutilated and strung up for all to witness.
On the third night, satisfied by the slaughters of the day, the Furyons camped upon the open plain. Smoke drifted upward on all sides, but for once the sky was cloudless, a rare window to the stars who knew nothing of the horrors worked below. Basking in the moonlight, Archmyr sat before a fire and polished his swords. His blades had not been used in days, for he had yet to meet a Grae man willing to fight.
As he honed the steel to razor sharpness, Nimgabul emerged from the darkness.
“Did you enjoy yourself today?” he snorted as the warlord plodded near his campfire.
Nimgabul halted before the fire. “I did.”
“Good. Tomorrow we do it again. And the next day, and the next.”
For all the blood and ash staining his armor, hands, and face, the Furyon warlord seemed imperturbable. “What of the Moor’s Eye?” the brute asked. “When do we march to the traitor’s house? The Grae mean to join us. Their thousands will be useful during the siege.”
Archmyr pawed at his sparsely stubbled chin. The matter of the Moor’s Eye was an inevitability he had many times dwelled on, but had yet to confront. “Traitors…” he grumbled as he jabbed the tip of one of his swords into the flames. “Daćin wants their aid, but why? One look at the lot of us, and they’ll scurry back to th
eir mothers’ teats.”
He expected Nimgabul to argue on Daćin’s behalf, but the Furyon remained still as a mountain, silent as a stone in the dead of winter. “Nothing, eh?” Archmyr watched the flames lick his blade. “Graehelm’s a weak little country. I’ve many times wondered why the Emperor sent so many of us to conquer it. Most Grae see the storm and flee. The rest of them fight like jackrabbits. So what of the Moor’s Eye? What of Lord Thure? What use will pitchforks and kitchen knives be to monsters like us?”
Nimgabul gazed into the campfire, eyes wide open even as the embers caught the wind and fluttered over his face. “The Moor’s men are numerous,” said the brute. “They might be useful fodder for the march against the capital. Such was our master’s plan.”
He clacked his teeth together and rolled his shoulders as if to shake Nimgabul’s presence off his skin. He hated it when the warlord referred to Daćin as his master, and he hated his questions even more. “Why are you here, Nim?” He glowered down the length of his sword. “What does the Moor’s Eye matter to you? You and yours seem content to kill everyone by yourselves. You spent half a day forcing Grae men to carve each other up just for the privilege of a quick death. You spent the other half staring at their corpses as though you wished you could bring them back just to butcher them again. Since when does strategy matter to you? Remember that you’ve betrayed Daćin. You’re mine now. If I decide to join with the Moor’s Eye, so be it. If I command us to march right past the traitor’s nest, you’ll do it with me.”
Nimgabul shook his head. “I am not yours.”
“Oh?” He smirked.
“I fight beneath your banner, but I belong to Malog.”
The way the brute said it almost made him shiver. “What’s so grand about Malog that has the lot of you gaping every night at the sky and never sleeping?”
Nimgabul remained eerily still. “Have you ever gone to the black citadel?”
“No. Chakran told me—”
“…that only Furyons are permitted to go. Those of us who are pure of blood and powerful of spirit.”
“Something like that,” he mocked. “The Emperor likes his stories.”
Nimgabul looked down at him. “Malog is where the heart is.” The warlord tapped his black breastplate. “For centuries, we’ve made pilgrimages. Now Chakran rises, and the heart begins to beat. It whispers at night, and its voice is what we hear. You think us cold, but the power of Malog beats hot in our blood when enemies are near. Look and see for yourself. Watch the stars shiver. See the shadows stretch beneath your feet. You are Thillrian. You can’t fully understand. But the signs are there for all to see. Malog is our master now.”
Madness. He turned a hard cheek to Nimgabul. You’re just a means to my end. “Go then,” he commanded. “And never speak to me of Malog again.”
“What of the Moor’s Eye?”
“I’ll sleep and decide. Either way, you’ll get your slaughters.”
Nimgabul left him. He was alone again and glad for it. After a long while of staring into the sky, he let his breath loose as though he had held it for days. His hardness lessened, his shoulders sagged, and his usual, murderous mood vanished from his face. War for the sake of war, remember? he told himself with less certainty than usual. They’ll all die in the end.
Midnight approached. A curtain of clouds swept across the stars, and the wind began to blow. Sleepless and alone, he wandered away from the camp and farther from the Furyons. He walked where the grasses still lived, where the tops were green and as high as his waist. He looked to the south and saw the Furyons sitting like rotting reeds in the darkness, every stem and stalk withered in their presence. They neither spoke nor sang nor rejoiced in conquest as they had in Davin Kal and a hundred other battlefields. They did not practice at swordplay, sharpen their blades, or even so much as glance at the stock of Grae girls locked in Chakran’s slave wagons. Ghosts. He shook his head at them. They take no passion in what we do. This war could be any war. Their enemy is whomever I say. It’s commendable…and pitiful.
He stood in the wind and gazed at the sailing clouds for longer than he knew. For once, he felt as alone as he wanted to be. Were only the world always as empty as this, he mused. Just me and nothing else. No voices, no cities, no need to ever speak again.
He smirked at his own foolishness, and a rare thought crawled into his mind. For only an instant, he wondered what it would be like to leap atop his horse and abandon the war. He imagined what his life might be like were he a common man, a righteous soul cleansing the world of evil men just like himself. I’d kill me first. He smiled at the thought. Me, then Chakran, then Nim and all the rest. There might even be peace. But for how long?
A day, a year, and then a new war would begin.
For five days after that night, he marched his legion northward.
The Dalefolk knew his name by now. When the dark line of Furyons appeared upon the horizon, the wisest of the Grae scattered, while the rest begged for mercy. “We have nothing,” they would cry. “All our sons are sent to war, and all our daughters are with children. Please, we beg you. Spare us.”
Had he been alone, he might have spared their lives and let them spread his name farther and wider, but instead he remanded their fates to Nimgabul. The warlord and his brethren cared nothing for names or reputations. They rounded up every man, woman, and child in each village, and set fires that burned flesh and bone like paper.
The death march continued, and the Dales were forever changed. The lush, flower-filled meadows became scars upon the earth, the people either slaughtered or driven into the wilderness. The path of the Furyon flames grew many days wide and many days long, the skies from end to end choked with funeral ash. The few Dalefolk who survived returned to their homes only to find fields burning, wells poisoned, and bodies dangling from every roof, signpost, and tree.
At last, on the ninth dawn since Nimgabul had joined him, Archmyr ordered the legion to halt. A city lay before him, not one of timber and straw, but of black iron and crenellated stone. Mooreye City, dark and forbidding, struck out against the prairie like a mountain jutting from still waters. Even to Archmyr it seemed an uninviting place, where the darkest hearts of Graehelm surely lived. The grand city had nine walls and nine gates. Each gate was fanged with steel spikes, while atop many of the spikes heads were mounted, doubtless belonging to men who had tried to travel west and warn the Grae capital of the war.
“So this is it? The Moor’s Eye?” he grumbled to Nimgabul. “Looks like Morellellus, only...punier.”
A small, cold-watered lake sat between his host and Mooreye’s easternmost wall. Its waters were the same somber hue as the morning’s clouds, its surface unbroken save for a few sad trees jutting from its shore. Hardly a soul was in sight near the water or anywhere else. No camps. No Daćin. He smiled. All the better.
A low, distant thunder crackled in the east, threatening the skies with Furyon’s slowly approaching wrath. At a leisured pace, Archmyr rode to vanguard of his host. He looked to the city, surveying it, deciding what next to do. As he did, the easternmost gate opened wide, spewing out some fifty Grae riders, who galloped toward him and his noiseless horde.
The riders slowed, stopping twenty paces away. Nentham’s emissaries, he reckoned. Hand-picked for their foul hearts and fouler designs for Graehelm. Three of the fifty approached, one of them a small, ugly man dressed in blue and black robes. The Wart, Archmyr named the little man. A perfect speaker for the Grae.
The Wart trotted closest of all and pulled back his hood. He was an old man, dour as a dying tree. Archmyr did all he could not to laugh.
Annoyed, the old herald spoke loudly. “Lord Nentham Thure, master of these lands, welcomes our allies to Mooreye. Which of you speaks the common tongue? Who amongst you is the one named Daćin?”
Archmyr grinned. “I speak it well enough.”
“Ah, then you must be Daćin? Or his speaker?”
“Daćin’s indisposed for the moment,” he sa
id with a smirk. “I’m Archmyr Degiliac, better known as the Pale Knight. I come from Shivershore, coldest corner of Thillria, and at the present I am the voice of the Furyons. The army you see is mine. As I speak, so does the Emperor listen.”
The Wart turned his nose up as though to sniff the truth out of the dampness swirling about the plain. “I see,” the old man said. “Pale Knight indeed. Perhaps you’ve come to tell us why the Dales are awash in fire, or why all the people are dead. They say you killed women and children, and that your Furyon fellows made the Dalesmen gut each other for the favor of the sword over your pyres. Is this true? Lord Thure is displeased. This was never the agreement.”
Archmyr shrugged. “You Grae never fail to disappoint. Would you prefer the grass folk sack your city while you’re away at battle? As I hear it, they hate you as much as they hate us. If I’d let them be, they’d have risen against you. Besides, it’s not our way to let enemies roam freely. Rebellions understand nothing but the sword.”
The herald sneered, “Those people were Lord Thure’s to rule, his and no one else’s. You put us in a hard place, Pale Knight. I’ll have to convey your apologies to his lordship and pray he sees your way of thinking.”
“Yes.” He rolled his eyes. “Convey them, for they are many.”
The Wart puckered his face, but after a hard look at the silent ranks of Furyons, seemed to bite back the worst of his words. “I suppose if you’re the master of this army, Pale Knight, then these commands are for you. Lord Thure wishes that you make your encampment north of the city, in the fallow fields. On the morrow, five hundred of yours will meet five hundred of ours and march through the city center at noon. Our banners will fly together. Our alliance will be sealed. Tonight you and your captains will meet with Lord Thure, and tomorrow we declare war upon western Graehelm. Do you agree to this?”
That any man should condescend to him or place a command upon his legion amused him. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Show us this camp. I’ll eat, then decide whether to meet your little lord.”
Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1) Page 62