by Sean Rodden
Probing the night.
Despite the near total blackness beneath the trees, U’alach’a’aa’s vision remained unhindered; indeed, the demon saw as effortlessly and as acutely in that woodland darkness as it had done in the half-gloom of evening, accustomed as it was to the most lightless deeps of the earth. The world before it was painted in graduations of grey, pale for the greater part, darker nearer the ground, but tinged here and there with ambiguous whitish streaks. The squid did not mark any substantial bleached blotches that would have indicated the presence of creatures with warm wet blood in their veins; nothing to signify the specific ubiety of those lethargic bipedal beings that U’alach’a’aa’ had come to slaughter. Forsooth, no sign did it see that those two-feets had been there at all: Not the white shadow of a handprint on a tree trunk; neither the ghosts of footmarks nor the abstruse paling of rock and root where one of the beings might have taken rest. Nothing but unremarkable sylvan shapes cast in shades of grey.
U’alach’a’aa reared upon its hind limbs, straightened. Intuitively, it sensed a score of shoal-brothers to either side of it doing the same. A low-hanging oak branch stroked its thin shoulders, the lobed leaves instantly shrivelling, withering for the acids oozing from poison pores in the demon’s chitin. The squid shirked irritably, took a long stride forward, away from the touch of the odious green-thing. A satisfactory distance achieved, its head rotated deliberately on its narrow neck. Tentacles fluttered. Crest quivered. Eyes flickered. The night seemed empty. Devoid of life. Completely so.
But U’alach’a’aa knew better.
The two-feets were there. Somewhere. The demon could feel them.
Contracting its cranial crest, the squid repressed a reflexive clacking of its tusked jaws. A splaying of its digits served as a frown. Its tentacles flicked again, snapping authoritatively, and a dozen demons darted forward through the trees.
And dropped dead in their tracks.
Bowstrings sang in the darkness. The wicked whir of fletched death wailed through the oaks. Squids jerked, spun, fell, their thin throats and large eyes pierced by sharp steel broadheads, speared by smooth cedar shafts. Then, the slick wet slashing sound of swords slicing through demonic joints. And in their dying the demogorgai remained true to their rightful reputation for stealth, and made no sound.
U’alach’a’aa did not see its killers. Nor even did it sense them. The arrow that took it through the right eye came from a soft angle slightly above and to the left. The sword which clove its head from its neck swung up from the immediate right. Even as its crest collapsed and its cranium toppled from its shoulders, arrow and all, the doomed squid railed against the implausible delitescence of the foe.
Its head thudded to the ground.
Why did they go undetected, those accursed two-feets?
Rolled.
How did they escape my scrutiny?
Wobbled to a halt.
What manner of creature could –
And then it could protest no longer.
But here, overlate and undermuch, shall unfortunate U’alach’a’aa be provided answers to the questions of its slayers and their impossible stealth, and these answers are both simple and profound:
They were warders of the Grey Watch of the Fiannar.
And they did not wish to be seen.
“I can’t see a thing.” The Iron Captain scowled at the night on Caramel Dark. “And this silence vexes me.”
The Commander nodded, stroked the smooth skin of his chin. The ears of his lean mare were erect and alert, focused forward upon the black eaves of the oakwood to the north.
“That’s precisely the point, Bron. To vex the creatures. You and I, we observe from a distance, fraught with anxiety for what will happen in those woods – or for what is happening, or what may have already happened – and we actually know what waits for the fiends there. Imagine the distress of the demons, then, for they do not know, and few are the fears that surpass that of the unknown.”
“We stir the pot of doubt.”
“Precisely, dear brother.” Axennus cocked his head at an amused angle, smiled whitely. “And surprisingly rather poetic.”
A moment of silence. Watching, but seeing nothing. Listening, but hearing nothing. Uneventful waiting. And then –
“I am not.”
The Commander cast a raised eyebrow toward the Iron Captain.
“Not what? Poetic? Well, you will never wear the board and tassel of the Silver City’s acclaimed Poet Primus, good Bronnus, but you truly exceeded yourself with that little stirring-the-pot analogy, and – ”
“I am not… fraught with anxiety.”
Axennus peered at his brother. Despite the ermine folds of night, the younger Teagh could with relative ease mark the slightly widened eyes of the elder – the straight back, the stiffness of those broad shoulders, the clenched jaw, that taut fist on the saddle horn. A posture as apprehensive as it was martial.
“You aren’t exactly the picture of relaxation, Bron.”
The Iron Captain’s own smile was little more than a wry half-curve of the lips.
“I’m not the one who’s been rubbing your chin for the last half knell.”
Catching himself in the act, Axennus slowly lowered his hand. His chin and cheeks felt raw and numbed, and not for the chill in the night air atop Caramel Dark.
“Well, you may rub my chin if it makes you feel better, dear brother, but I can’t promise that the men won’t think it’s a little weird…”
Bronnus could only groan.
Tilbeder felt his bones screech.
He pressed his bony back as flat and as close to the cold limestone of the slope as he possibly could, willing his withered form to become one with the rock. The metal manacles at his wrists were cold and hard against his loose skin, the twin lengths of heavy chain attached to each steel band lying upon the dolostone like sleeping serpents. His knobbly knees were bent sharply, with sharp pain in the joints. Only the surprising strength of his scrawny fingers wedged into a convenient crevice and the dubious grip of his bare feet prevented him from sliding unceremoniously down the incline, silvery chains wildly awhirl, taking scores, hundreds of ill-tempered warriors with him. Cautiously, tentatively, he stretched one leg. His knee squeaked like wet wood, protesting every unbearable moment, until it at last achieved a modicum of relief, a reprieve punctuated by a clearly audible crack.
The gigantic flaxen-maned warrior upon his right nudged him with an irreverent elbow. Tilbeder craned his spindly neck, his pinched and weathered face the very mask of righteous indignation. The huge fighter at his side gestured for silence. Tilbeder, in turn, mouthed something that one would not have expected to originate from the lips of such a venerable holy man. But Tilbeder was an Unchained Celebrant of the Cult of Thyr. And his flock were heathen raiders sworn to the tempestuous god of thunder and war. So certain exceptions applied.
“You should have dressed more warmly, Celebrant,” the giant warrior whispered.
“An Unchained is the master of his domain, my jarl,” Tilbeder hissed back. A sudden shiver rattled one of his chains, almost shook him from his perch. “This robe is more than sufficient.”
A gregarious gap-toothed grin. “Obviously.”
Five hundred warriors from the fjords of far Nothira clung tenaciously to the western face of Caramel Dark. Beneath them, the grand Gardens of Galledine rolled southward for leagues upon night-kissed leagues; above them, an open plateau of wind-smoothed limestone glowed eerily in a night bereft of both moon and star; to the north soared the majestic oaken crown of the cuesta; and somewhere southward, less than shadows in the dark, five-score battle-hardened veterans of the Erelian Republic’s legendary Ghost Brigade.
“The Southman rankles me, my jarl. First he insists we sit all day and do nothing while others claim our glory. And now he has us clinging to this cliff like furry little spiders that have lost half their legs.”
“His reasons are sound, Celebrant.”
“Reas
ons? What reasons can he have? My jarl, did you not see? There were Wulfings in that battle today. Wulfings, I tell you! Wulfings under Sten Hjerte’s accursed White Stag banner. Wulfings of Var.”
The gigantic warrior tugged at his bear brush cloak in a frustrated attempt to prevent its brooch from piercing his chin.
“I am certain the Southman took that into consideration, Unchained.”
“Does he deny us our Odwen-given right to slay our most hated enemies? Would he steal from us our just and due vengeance?”
“The Southman’s scheme for the day required order and discipline, Celebrant, not berserkers going... berserk.”
“But the Roths – ”
“According to results, the effectiveness of the Southman’s strategy cannot be disputed. Nor will it be. Not here, not now. And not by you.”
The old man’s lower lip protruded past the upper, quivering, very much like a petulant child’s pout.
“Why must you defer to the Southman, my jarl? The Sons of Noth should not capitulate to merchants and farmers.”
The huge warrior’s sigh whitened the night.
“The Sons of Noth are merchants and farmers, priest.” Pale blue eyes narrowed. “And I submit to neither man nor god.”
Tilbeder’s shrunken jaws moved up and down, masticating from side to side, as though he was chewing on the greater meaning of the Earl’s words – albeit with fewer than a dozen cracked and yellowed teeth. Tasting a thing not to his liking, the priest ordered a different course.
“How long must we tarry here, my jarl?”
The big man twisted, tugged at his cloak.
“My jarl, how long must – ”
Another strong jerk and a sharp corner of the brooch pricked the whiskerless skin of the warrior’s square chin, drawing a single tiny bubble of blood.
“Thyr’s big bloated balls!”
“My jarl?”
The Mad Earl of Invarnoth ripped the cloak from his broad shoulders, complete with the damnable pin, and ignobly tossed it over the shivering form of the Unchained Celebrant, essentially smothering the ancient little man in warm white fur. An act not of kindness, but of expedience. Necessity. And some little satisfaction.
“As long as we must, priest of Thyr,” growled Ingvar Dragonsbane.
Tilbeder’s ensuing string of expletives was muffled appreciably by the heavy fur of the bearskin.
“And we shall do so in silence.”
The mists are like wet smoke. Rolling and roiling, milling and moiling. A slow dance with the earth. Cloying in the field of flowers; clinging to the rearing rock across the river; climbing the majestic wall of nettled evergreens. The mists are a curtain, a riparian blind in the black, draping the rushing water in white secrets. Congeal and conceal. Subtle and surreal. A deathly shroud for the living, those who remain awake and active in the unstarred night. Chill breath of the north, song of the silver falls, clinging to the skin. Seep and creep, this dream of sleep. This veil for steadfast thousands toiling in the dark.
The ghostly sheath of a very real and lethal blade.
A formidable figure sits astride a massive midnight mount. Black fur and black steel, black gauntlets gripping black reins. His eyes shine in the fog of night, keen as silver knives. He watches as men and women labour in the dark, hauling supplies, leading horses, loading barges. Warriors and workers in flawless, focused cooperation. Diligent, efficient, precise. And then all is ready, all is done.
He does not smile. Nor does he scowl. His is a quiet pride.
Aides attend him, dutifully silent, waiting. He says nothing. Nothing needs to be said.
But he nods. Once.
An attaché rides away into the fog. Moments later the first raft slides from the shore, easing into the current, slipping silently eastward and away. Another follows. And then another. And another. Dozens, scores, hundreds. Four thousand men. Five hundred horses. Riding the white surge into the darkest corner of the night’s soul.
The terrible figure upon the great black charger is the last to go. The magnificent steed spryly springs upon the final flatboat of the flotilla. Able hands impel the raft into the rush of the river, mists whisper across the deck like hushed prayers, a swift swell sweeps all downstream.
And the scents of sea and salt linger, a clandestine covenant in the night.
With the wind, a bitter cold. With the cold, a deeper dark. And with this emboldened darkness, demons.
The demogorgai charged the trees in a scrabbling wave of morphing chitin and clacking rage. Not mere dozens this time, but a horde of hundreds. They attacked with neither hesitation nor trepidation, a rampage of reckless abandon. The beasts burst into the clustered oaks of Caramel Dark upon all fours, tentacles whipping in the sylvan night, eyes sparking with the minutest traces of captured light, seeking the telltale white shadows of the loathsome two-feets.
Finding them, and wishing they had not.
Nearly five scores of the fiends fell within the first few heartbeats, the wicked whir of Deathward arrows a song of doom in the darkness. But then the melody altered, became the clamour of close combat: Steel punching through vulnerable joints, blades striking exoskeletons, razor-lined digits scoring scale and chain; grunts of exertion, roars of exaltation and execration as chitin cracked and flesh was torn and acid sizzled on skin. Perhaps twenty valiant Fiannar held a defensive line for a matter of desperate minutes before dancing back into the darkness, ghosts in the gloom, their pale shades rapidly fading into the forest like the light of spent wicks winking out in a darkened room.
The demogorgai shrieked and clattered and gave chase.
More bowstrings strummed, spears sailed.
Demons dropped. Death reigned.
Harlastian dashed between the great black boles of soaring oaks, nine or ten wraithlike warders of the Grey Watch to either shoulder, a thin line of resolute resistance, mobile and fleet of foot over the forest floor. Another ten deft and deadly Deathward warriors had taken to the trees, leaping lithely from bough to bough along familiar paths, ways so well-known that neither haste nor darkness posed them any real peril.
At a pre-established point, Harlastian halted, knowing that his warriors would also pause in their planned flight. Kneeling in the night, he retrieved a cache of arrows and a second spear from a hollow in an ancient oak. Words of power danced on the Watchcaptain’s lips, a soft sweet refrain to prevent both the warmth and the scent of his flesh from betraying him. Then he was off again, darting through the darkness, bent low in a running crouch, circling in a wide arc, in the general direction from which he had come.
Fast. Feral. Like a great grey wolf racing to a kill.
The Grey Watch fell upon the southern flank of the foe as a spectral storm of spears and swords and singing cedar shafts. More eidolons of mist than mere mortal men, the Deathward seemed. So swift and dexterous, so very lethal. The squids screeched and screamed, clacking to and through the doors of uncounted deaths. Entire shoals of the creatures were slaughtered as fierce Fiannian steel threshed fiendish flesh. Caramel Dark shook and shuddered, titanic trees rumbling with the battle between Deathward blades and demons enraged, the former the fewer, but also the nimbler and the deadlier.
Eventually, the squids rallied about one of their number, a towering shrieker that clacked more loudly and morphed more furiously than its brethren, and some semblance of structured combat began in earnest. Where the forest permitted, the demons formed imprecise yet effective lines and squares. Flanks were protected, rents were reinforced, while the fiercest fighters among them held the fore. Inky jets of black acid shot from clavicular glands, forming corrosive clouds in the air, severely limiting the two-feets’ options. Tentacles extended, elongating unnaturally, scourging the night like suckered whips taming an obstinate beast, further restricting the enemy’s movements. Stride by encouraging stride, the remaining shoals of squids pressed slowly, determinedly, inexorably forward.
Harlastian and his company of Grey Watch fell back, giving ground as
gradually as possible, striving in steadfast and sturdy silence save for the fatal whispers of sword and spear.
The demogorgai developed an idea, albeit a vague one, of the number of foes they faced in the forest. And such a small number it was. At a screech from their leader, several of the fiends spun and raced back into the trees, a quadrupedal sprint through the night toward the lip of the cliff.
They were pursued.
Arrows rained down on them as unseen hunters harried and hounded them from the leafy heights, and one by one the demons died. But more runners were sent, and the few Fiannar fighting from the boughs could not hope to fell them all. So as first one and then another of the scurrying squids reached the ridgeline and rejoined the main mass of demons hunkered on the hogback, the hunters in the branches abandoned the chase and turned back.
And in that moment, there arose a cry in the darkness of Carn a Mil Darach that shrilled in the ear like a dull blade carving living bone.
The first of Harlastian’s gallant Watchers had fallen.
“Did you hear that, Axo?”
The Commander of the North March Mounted Reserve tugged his grey throw a touch more tightly about himself. Pale breath streamed from between the cheek guards of his helm.
“I did.”
The death scream reverberating in his ears like shouted guilt, Axennus Teagh’s gaze strayed from the black line of night-fettered forest to the iridescent eastern slope of Caramel Dark. Although that which he saw there had been anticipated, was entirely expected, the Commander felt a sharp chill seep into his being – for the deduction that a terrible event was likely to happen and the actuality of witnessing it occur were two profoundly different things.
Again, and with little in the way of desired result, Axennus drew his drab blanket closer.
As though the dying Deathward warrior’s final cry was the blast of a battle horn, the shimmering horde of netherworldly fiends shrieked in answer and surged forward, upward. A tide of phasing chitin, of clattering claws and undulant tentacles, the squids stormed the woods, crashing unopposed through the perimetral shrub into the beleaguered depths of the oaken fortress.