by Sean Rodden
The Prince of the Bloodspawn’s lips curved slightly upward at their corners as he deftly slipped his mace into the specialized harness at his broad back.
“You have been false with me, shaman of shamans,” he said, his voice not much beyond a canorous whisper. “You do understand what war is all about.”
“I do?”
“Yes.”
Umbar’hal’s moss-like brows knotted. The knobby knuckles about the shriveled dragon’s heart ached with arthritic angst. He shook his head, the cranial fetishes in his hair cackling at his incomprehension.
“I…”
“War is about release, Umbar’hal.”
The ancient witchdoctor pondered the words for a moment, then blinked, nodded slowly, and the skulls snared in his hair sang an entirely different song.
Kor ben Dor stepped to Umbar’hal’s side, briefly placing one hand on the stooped giant’s thin shoulder. The shaman bowed his head, let go his grip of the dragon’s heart, reached up and covered the Halflord’s strong hand with his gnarled own.
“Where you lead, Kor ben Dor, the Graniants of Earthfall shall follow.”
The Prince of the Bloodspawn did not immediately respond, but only lowered his hand and stepped away, striding with a specific single-mindedness to the tent’s flaps, throwing them open. The lurid red light of the wounded dawn instantly spilled into the tent like a tidal wave of blood. Kor ben Dor stood at the crux of that crimson flow, a pillar of obsidian, at once black and blazing and brilliant. Immaculate. Impervious.
“I have told you that you would not wish to follow where I must go,” the Halflord reminded the Graniant behind him. “I do not withdraw the sentiment.”
“Yet here we are, Kor ben Dor.”
A short silence during which the Prince bathed in the blood of the stricken sun. And then he murmured enigmatically –
“Are we?”
Umbar’hal narrowed his aged eyes, stared intently at the back of the black silhouette before him. Yes, something is different, so very different. This is not the Halflord that I met beneath the shadow of U’gloch Nur. This…this Halflord is something more. His hand reached for the dragon’s heart once more.
“Kor ben Dor.”
“Umbar’hal.”
The aged shaman of shamans swallowed hard, as though courage was a thing that could be captured and consumed.
“Have you… remembered something? Something of the time before the pain?”
Silence. A prolonged, protracted aphony swollen by bloodlight and blackness.
Then –
“What is there to remember, witchdoctor?”
Umbar’hal grimaced, ducked as though he was dodging a blow.
“Forgive me, Halflord. Your thoughts are ever your own. I did not intend to ask that question, nor did I expect an answer.”
Another pause, palpable and poignant.
“And I did not provide one, shaman.”
With those whispered words, the Prince of the Bloodspawn reached up, loosed the wide raven wings that had been tucked tightly within his hair, and walked out into a woe-wrung world waiting for war.
The hide flaps fell shut silently behind him.
The dirty ochre halflight returned and reigned within the tent once again, but the memory of the blood-coloured dawn remained red and rancid in Umbar’hal’s gaze. The stooped stone giant exhaled a long rattling breath. Let go his grip of the withered drake’s heart. Lowered his eyes.
Noted.
The two Black Shields rode their mar rendera atop the cracked and pitted stone of the long-disused Old Road, often obliged to painstakingly pick their way among solitary sarsens and heaped shards of shattered stone. The renders coughed captiously, pinkish froth foaming and dripping from their gnashing maws. The horrible steeds thrust aside obstacle after irksome obstacle, violently, viciously, launching raucous reprisal against even the smallest impediment to their progress – as though the rock and stone were some form of deeply personal insult against which both beasts had taken unadulterated umbrage.
Well south of the northern limit of the looming Westwall, the pair of Shields turned their irascible mounts eastward, away from the Road and the Wall, abreast the southern flank of the Blood King’s host. The renders gradually regained what passed as calm for them, and the riders found the going over grass and through gorse far less bone-bruising. The sun had by then bailed the bulk of its blood and now rose cold and white before them, a single eye of white fire, seeing all, searing all.
“Wish me a good morning, Ev, and I’ll tear your tongue out. With my teeth.”
“Like your mouth would ever get that close to mine, lizard-face.” Tattooed tigress whiskers twitched. “The very thought – ”
“Nauseates you?” Gren del Mor laughed, a sound like a lacertilian hiss. “Fear not, my pugnacious friend. I do not mean to steal you from your charming Prince.”
“Our Prince, Gren,” amended Ev lin Dar. “Unless your allegiance has altered and I have not been alerted to the development, I would suggest Kor ben Dor remains our Prince.”
“Yes, of course, Ev,” grinned Gren del Mor, “only I don’t find him nearly as charming as you do.”
The beautiful Black Shield bit back an impulsive objurgation, preferring to simmer in the relative safety of silence. Gren del Mor’s ebullient badinage struck too deep, too true. For her heart was indeed the Halflord’s. And had ever been his. Her visions attested to this. Told her so night after night, when she rested her eyes and relaxed her weary muscles. Fleeting glimpses of the past, flashes of memory, teasing her, tormenting her. Ev lin Dar knew that she and Kor ben Dor had been close, so very close, in their distant youth – in the time before the pain. She remembered. Remembered in brief bursts of light and shadow his touch, his lips, the feel of his taut skin, his warm breath at her neck, his eyes glazed yet gleaming with… with… something.
Yes, she remembered.
And Kor ben Dor had told her that he remembered, too.
Well, not exactly.
I came because the pain is gone. And because I remember. I remember everything.
Prince Kor ben Dor had spoken these words. Not to her, precisely, but she had been there, and she had most certainly heard them.
“Has he spoken to you, Ev?”
The Black Shield started as she registered Gren del Mor’s intrusion into her unintentional reverie – registered his intrusion, but did not quite catch his words.
“Who…Gren, what?”
Gren del Mor sent a sidelong scowl toward his fellow Shield. “You sure that blow to the head didn’t do any permanent damage?”
Ev lin Dar glared at her companion. The tigress snarled.
The lizard winked.
“Never mind, Ev. You may return to your amatory fantasies now.”
Ev lin Dar bit her tongue. Again. Hard.
The two Black Shields came abreast of the first of six lines of Bloodspawn, then turned sharply northward, riding their renders at a rumbling canter before the exquisitely marshalled formation of black-armoured grey-skinned warriors mounted aback crimson-maned coursers.
Immediately in front of the centre of the line, beneath a billowing Black Jack, the Prince of the Bloodspawn sat astride his terrible steed, the raven’s wings of his hair outspread like a corvine cross against the icy white circle of the sun. His armour blazed, a brilliant black light burning inherently within the steel. The pitted patinas had been polished from the copper and silver sashes crisscrossing his breastplate. The long black ribbons of his slitted cloak flitted about him without benefit of breeze, fluttering on surfeit pulsations of the Prince’s prodigious power.
The Black Shields approached.
“Report.”
Ev lin Dar parted her lips to reply, then closed them again, saying nothing, as she marked that the Halflord’s white gaze fell not upon her, but on Gren del Mor only. Her throat swelled, tightened.
“There is nothing to be seen from the rise, Prince Kor,” asserted Gren del Mor. “The ha
ze mocks us. There could be thousands of trolls down there. There could be none.”
“No.”
Gren del Mor frowned. No? No…what? He threw an imploring look at Ev lin Dar, saw nothing expedient writ upon her stiff features, nor anything helpful in her moistened eyes. For a hard woman, she sure was soft.
“No, Prince Kor?”
“No.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I…see.” The severity of Gren del Mor’s scowl threatened to break his face. No. No, I don’t, actually. I don’t see at all.
“There are not thousands of Daradur at Doomfall, Shield,” stated the Halflord, his voice as flat and as sharp as a blade. “Nor are there none.”
“Of course, Prince Kor.”
“I send you to surveil the enemy and you return with nothing but unsolicited suggestions and obvious impossibilities. You disappoint me, Shield.”
Gren del Mor sucked in a surprised breath, lowered his eyes to conceal the wetness welling at their corners, his grey skin darkening as would desert-dry stone splashed with water. The render beneath him was deathly quiet.
The Prince’s cold white regard abandoned the stricken Black Shield and swiveled northward at the unsettling sound of a mar render approaching at speed.
“I can only hope, Shield,” murmured the Halflord as he cracked a crick from his neck, “that Sil kin Hesh bears more cogent and propitious tidings.”
The Black Jack snapped emphatically.
Gren del Mor’s glistening gaze met Ev lin Dar’s damp own, and both Black Shields eased their mounts away as an imposing warrior drew his slavering steed to a turf-tearing halt before the Prince of the Bloodspawn.
“Report, Liaison.”
The ’Spawn warrior’s face was thin and grim within the fierce frame of tattooed fangs, his shining black hair shaped into a rearing quiver of hooded snakes, his eyes large and round and colubrine. His very presence was sinister and serpentine. When he spoke, his voice was elapid, a sibilant hiss at the edge of the ear.
“The blutsssauger was unmoved, my Prinsss,” susurrated Sil kin Hesh. “It remains intransssigent, committed to its ssstrategy. The assssault will proceed as planned.”
“Expected.”
“The attack isss to begin with the next knell. Thaumaturgy, followed by missilesss, then skirmishersss.”
“Futility.”
Sil kin Hesh seemed to hesitate. A cleft tongue whipped out to dampen dry lips.
“Speak, Liaison.”
“The blutsssauger was ill-pleasssed that you appointed an intermediary, my Prinsss. It stated that in doing so you intend to insssult it, seek to offend its sensssibilities. It raved rather desultorily for sssome time. And then it made deprecating commentsss about my manner of speech.”
“You restrained yourself.”
“Like it speaksss normally itself, repeating everything the way it doesss, over and over and over and over.”
“Restraint?”
The Liaison nodded. Hooded heads bobbled on bound black necks. “I was not arousssed, my Prinsss. I am ssslow to anger, as the ’Ssspawn go.”
“That is why I selected you, Sil kin Hesh. It would not do well to provoke the creature now. What else?”
Another hesitation accompanied by that flicking forked tongue.
“Speak.”
“The blutsssauger commands you – ”
“Commands me?”
“Urchin’s wordsss, not mine, my Prinsss.”
“Of course.”
“It, ahh, wantsss you to join it to witness the…”
The Liaison’s voice subsided, slithering away into silence for the severity of the storm forming on Kor ben Dor’s face.
“Slaughter.”
Although the Halflord barely sighed the word, the sound was like a scorching scream in all souls that heard it.
The Liaison hissed. Behind him, the Black Shields shared a shiver.
Kor ben Dor closed his eyes, angled his visage to the northern sky, inhaled deeply. The tempest instantly fled his temple, the clouds that had eclipsed his countenance scattered. Sunlight limned his wings in white, the talons of his tattoo holding his handsome face as a loving mother might cradle a child. The streamers of his cape settled and became still. One, two, three long slow softly thudding heartbeats – a moment pure and pristine, as though a benevolent deity had willed precious peace, however fleeting, into the world.
The Prince then lowered his head. Exhaled. Opened his eyes.
And looked directly upon Ev lin Dar.
The Black Shield almost recoiled from that which she perceived in her Prince’s manner – almost, but she stopped herself, and only an infinitesimal widening of her wet eyes betrayed her shock and surprise. Shock and surprise for the thing, so very visceral and primal, dulling the lustre of Kor ben Dor’s ivory gaze; for the thing slackening the skin of his chiseled cheeks, pressing his lips tightly together, turning down the corners of his mouth.
The thing.
Sorrow.
The Halflord blinked. And the thing was gone.
And then he spoke –
“Very well. I will witness this world at war.” A profound pause as power welled within the Prince of the Bloodspawn once more. His slitted cape whirled like whips in the windless air. “At least until such time that this world at war shall witness me.”
Let peal the drums of war.
Dozens, scores, hundreds of Unmannish drums pounded, pounded, pounded, delivering a thundering din unto Doomfall, declaring imminent death and destruction, the battered silence between beats but an unsung dirge for the dead dawn. Conical cow-skin bugarabu drums from the far marches of Ugharo, goblet-shaped jambay membranophones from the northern deeps of Mroch Durva, wooden double-headed mardangami from within the walls of Waldard. Gathering, growing, a tribal thunder hammering the face of the Westwall, assailing the stony composure of the Dragon’s Head, soaring like a sonic storm to smite the very sky.
Urchin grinned. A wide, white, wild soul-eating grin.
“Do you hear that, Halflord? Do you hear it, hear it, hear, hear?”
Atop a shattered granitic tor near the middle of the half-Urk formation, the beaming boy perched cross-legged upon a gorgeously groomed highland pony. The beast was the best of its breed, stocky, strong, densely boned, with a good sloping shoulder, deep chest and well-sprung ribs. The thick chestnut coat gleamed, the flaxen mane rippling in the crisp light of the morning sun like undulant waves of azoth. Its long tail twitched in tempo with the beating drums, swatting rhythmically at an accompanying entourage of bh’ritsi – an entourage that, along with the gristly train of entrails depending from the gutted belly, adroitly demonstrated the small detail that the pony was, in fact, dead.
“Boom, boom, boom!” The boy gleefully clapped his hands to the beat. “Isn’t it fine, Halflord? Fine, fine! Boom, boom, boom, boom!”
Astride his mar render well below the crest of the tor, yet at eye-level with the little boy, Kor ben Dor did not respond beyond simply rolling his shoulders seriatim. A render-length behind him, his bodyguard of Black Shields rolled other aspects of their anatomy: Gren del Mor, his tongue, in order to prevent a dangerously caustic comment from passing his lips; Ev lin Dar, her eyes, as is oft a woman’s wont in the company of excessively exuberant children.
Urchin stopped clapping to the beat of the Unmannish drums long enough to gesture impatiently toward the wedges of Urkroks. Almost immediately, massively muscled hammerers among the clans from Horachia and the Blackbones took up the beat, battering gigantic metal barrels with clubs of wood and stone. Another frantic gesture, and half-Urks to either side of the tor hefted monstrous mallets to pummel sheets of malformed metal suspended on chains from tree-trunk frames. The resultant din of drum and barrel and gong was an unrelenting thunder, a cacophony of pound and crash, mounting the morning, driving wantonly into the defile at Doomfall, over and over and over, again and again.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Urchi
n shrieked with glee, but even that horrid creature’s piercing cry was lost in the cataclysmic clamour of the drumstorm. Naught else could be heard beyond the beating of those skins and sheets. Nothing could breach that towering wall of noise. Verily, no sound in the world could –
DUN.
Instantly the drumstorm died.
Urchin froze. The ground quivered with the memory of that solitary peal. Half a thousand batterers and beaters stayed their arms mid-strike. A hushed stir rippled the ranks of the Blood King’s host. Great clouds of dust drifted down the face of the Westwall. Algid fog spilled like white rage from the eyes of the Dragon.
DUN.
The little boy lowered his hands, bit his lip.
That second beat sent tremors radiating outward in vaguely visible waves from the wrathful roil at Doomfall, and the earth beneath twenty thousand sets of booted feet bucked and bowled and rolled. Vast chunks of the Westwall shook loose and cascaded down in a shower of shattered stone. Cold sunlight painted the twin horns of the Dragon’s Head with pale fire.
DUN.
Urchin emitted a thin whine.
The mists and ash-clouds and gaseous gusts of Doomfall seethed and swirled, combining, coalescing into a whorl that seemed so animate and alive. Round and round the whorl whirled, spawning a vortex of smoke and vapour and dust, rising from the deeps of the defile, spiraling skyward. A funnel of fury, a twisting column of ash and fog, towering taller and taller, swiftly drawing even with the precipice of the Westwall. And at the reeling pillar’s empyreal zenith, the terrifying semblance of an enormous deiform fist.
There it loomed. The god-fist of Doomfall. Clenched. Colossal. Catastrophic.
The very skin of the earth shivered.
And then the fist came down.
DOOM!!!
Earth exploded. Tremendous quakes hove and broke the ground. Great black cracks split the bedrock. The enfuried force of the fist pummeled eastward through stone and soil into the massed ranks of the Blood King’s army. Squares were rent asunder, wedges fractured into fragments, lines shattered and scattered. In that fateful falling of one fell fist of fog, the meticulously ordered formation of the host instantly and absolutely disintegrated.
The rocky knoll beneath the pony trembled, teetered. Urchin screeched in rage and frustration as he willed his unliving mount to remain upright, desperately scrabbling for balance on the haphazardly heaving stone. When all four legs were at last braced surely beneath him, the demonic imp shook a futile little fist and railed “No! No! No! No!” at the indomitable indifference of Doomfall.