Roars of War: The War for the North: Book Two

by Sean Rodden

  But Eccuron denies him.

  No, Tulnarron. Not yet. You are not needed here. But you are needed there. A silence like a sword, slashing the Light. Then, and sternly, Go now. Go, and take this token of our great and glorious House with you. And when you return here – and return you shall – I myself will tell your tale for all eternity.

  And Tulnarron protests, but the words that issue forth are not his own, nor are they spoken in his rich melodious tone, but are the light and lilting speech of another. Sweet delicate words woven into an exquisite euphony. And sung.

  “noruccE, arhtif alme, illa, illA…

  hterb hgallir assirve rom, noruccE raniM,

  hterah llir assirve romga, romlE

  noruccE, arhtif alme, illa, illa O…”

  The Master of the House of Eccuron opened his eyes. Felt his heart thunder in his breast. He squeezed the hand that clasped his own so firmly, so fiercely. The cold, the war, the driving rain returned, and the world reverted to insanity, but superimposed upon it all was a beautifully bedraggled face, cherished and beloved.

  “Tuln?”

  Tulnarron gasped for breath. Sucking at the night, he inhaled the chill, the wet, the bitter dark – and with these things, life.

  “Sandarre? Cousin?”

  In answer, a blend of laughter and weeping. “Yes, Tuln. Welcome back.”

  “How – ?”

  “A song, cousin. A lullaby. The Laleth of Eccuron,”

  But as colour reclaimed the Master’s mien, he frowned.

  “That laleth is no lullaby, but a dirge for the dead. More, that was not the song I heard. The words and language were strange to me. The melody seemed familiar… but in a manner I can neither understand nor explain.”

  “I sang the Laleth in reverse, cousin. Last words first and backward. Over and over. Hoping that doing so might beckon you back, rather than send you forth. I knew not what else to do. You were – ”

  Dead.

  But you are right not to say it, Sandarre. Saying it might make it true.

  Memories of dying, of death, inundated the Master’s resurgent sentience, and in a burst of fury he heaved himself upward, an ascendant of war, torrents of rain washing rivers of blood and grime from his form.

  “My sword, Sandarre.”

  “Cousin, we must remove you now. Your recovery is incomplete. I can do no more for you – my voice is nearly spent. We must find another Singer – Trimmanon, perhaps, or Black Alysse, should they still live. I have heard there is a Healer in the – ”

  “Enough, Sandarre.”

  “But you will die. Again.”

  “Even so. My sword, cousin.”

  Sandarre gestured, but the weapon had been fully swallowed by the greasy earth, and neither blade nor haft could be seen. Summoned like a shark drawn to blood in the water, Tulnarron took a single stride, crouched, then drove his hand down into the saturated muck. Strong fingers found and curled about the grip. Straightening, the Master pulled the greatsword forth and free –

  And lo!

  The sword that emerged from the bloodied mud was not the one that had sunken into it. Of like shape, it was, and the extraordinary length was the same, but the pommel and guards were wrought of ancient dragonbone, the handle was wrapped in kuarok leather, and the blade was forged of the very Light itself. His grizzled face slack with awe, with wonderment, the Master held the sword upright before him. The blade thrummed and burned, vivid and radiant, and a sound like the sidereal song of a deep winter night danced at its edges.

  ‘Take this token of our great and glorious House…’

  The Sword of Eccuron. Yll Sabar. Thresher of Souls.

  Tears welled in Tulnarron’s eyes. Sandarre slowly rose to her feet, her unkempt features struck slack with stupefaction. Beyond the makeshift barricade of flesh and iron, the battle receded, to the north mostly, and the dual dins of steel and storm were reduced to a pale drear hum at the back of the brain.

  But nearby, a cough, and the sound of blood bubbling in a tortured throat.

  A look of horror paled Sandarre’s aspect. “Gorn!” she cried, and threw herself over the bulwark of bodies. The Singer splashed across murky pools and ruined grasses, following the sound of another gurgling cough.

  Gornannon lay upon his back in the corporeal filth of war, half-submerged in an odious sludge of cruor, vomit and shit, his shoulders propped against the enormous corpse of a Graniant. The Fian’s left hand had been severed at the wrist and jets of blood were spurting past a haphazard effort to stay the flow with mud. His right arm was bent at several angles, all of them impossible. He was pinned to the thirsty earth by a great shard of stone, a few feet of which protruded from his lower abdomen like some morbid stake of claim. Beside him, the shaft of his spear was splintered and split, and the steel head had broken off completely and was gone.

  The doomed Fian coughed again, and his lips twisted into a gruesome expression that might have been a smile. Bravely, almost cheerfully, he waved his seeping stump.

  “Was enough… time… Sand?”

  “Yes, Gorn. Yes.” For the second time that night, Sandarre lowered herself to the side of a friend for whom death had come far too soon. “My friend… I can’t… I have nothing left. When the old Watcher… when he said ‘one life for his’, I thought he meant mine.”

  The ghastly grin widened. “To be… honest… was hoping… that, too.”

  Sandarre folded her hands over her friend’s ravaged forearm, squeezed tightly to stem the bleeding. Gornannon closed his eyes. His respiration was slow and irregular, short shallow intakes of cold night air followed by the long rattling exhalations of lifelong hopes and dreams. She watched and listened, saying nothing, simply being there. And just when she thought he was gone, Gornannon’s eyes cracked open once more. But he did not look at her, rather he peered past her, and there came a gleam to his darkened gaze, like a film of starlight, or the sheen of childhood joy.

  “Tuln… you… good?”

  Sandarre did not need to glance behind her to apprehend the looming presence of the Master of the House of Eccuron.

  “Well enough, my dear friend.”

  Gornannon nodded feebly, coughed again. “Nice… sword.”

  There came the low rumble of the Master’s laugh, but he spoke no more.

  “Nothing more… for it… then.” Blood trickled down the dying Fian’s chin. “Sand… dry one… in the case.”

  Sandarre’s smeared hands flitted about the inside of Gornannon’s cloak until she found and withdrew a little silver box.

  “This is the last… there are none left after this one, Gorn,” she said tenderly as she placed a cheroot between her friend’s crimsoned lips.

  “How… fitting.” A sickening sound that served as a chuckle. “Not so… not so long a night… after all.” A few anguished ragged breaths. Then, “Sand… can you… please. Please. It is… it’s time.”

  The Singer nodded. “I can do that.”

  And as she crooned a few soft words, the end of the cheroot sparked and flared, glowed red, and white wraiths of smoke flittered into the cold, cold rain.

  Grinning, Gornannon of the House of Eccuron inhaled deeply.

  And died.

  Sandarre stared for a moment, watched as a fat droplet of rain struck the cheroot, snuffing it out, knocking it askew. She slipped the empty box into a pouch at her belt, then deftly relieved the corpse of its sullied rillagh, slinging the sash over her shoulder as she stood. The eldritch power of Yll Sabar was the sliver of an ice-white sun at her back, a constantly blazing heat, but also a deep and penetrating coldness.

  “Of what old Watcher were you speaking, cousin?”

  The Singer turned away from the wretched ruin of her fallen friend, stared up into Tulnarron’s impassive eyes.

  Ah. Of course. The Deathward do not mourn. But by the Teller’s twisted Tongue, is a passing semblance of grief too much to ask? Does the presence of the old Fian so readily preclude the cavernous absence of a beloved
friend? Cousin, have you no –

  “What old Watcher, Sandarre?”

  But before she could answer, the long wavering wail of a war horn floated into that night of misery and black rain. Doleful and desolate was its hollow cry, a song of loss and lament, of the slow relinquishing of evanescent hope, and the pendent end of all things.

  The Horn of Defurien.

  Sounding the retreat.

  Incredibly, impossibly, the Mistress of the House of Serra-Collean still stood. Blood flooded freely from a dozen wounds. The left side of her face was grotesquely swollen, her eye buried beneath a lump of discoloured flesh. All about her, Fiannar were fighting and dying, and the last Steel Feather standard of Dalorion had long since been thrown down and trampled into the blood-logged mire of mistold history. She was vaguely aware of the Deathward of her Lord’s House and of the Grey Watch withdrawing in orderly formation through the gap between Lar Fannan and Lar Thurrad. Somewhere off to her right struggled the last warriors of Sennadan’s noble House, battered but unbroken, and the Silver Star shimmered in the night, against which the enemy swarmed like a million ravenous moths to a flickering and fleeting flame. To the North, Teillerian and the fighters of the House of Mirmaddon were as resilient as the foe was relentless, and the conflict there became one of sheer endurance, an internecine battle of attrition. But only twelve score Deathward defenders remained before the gap, and each Fiannian life lost expanded a hole in the resistance, whereas every foe that fell was supplanted by at least two, three, four more.

  The field, Janne knew, was lost. But Lord Alvarion’s retreat was now complete. She could only assume that Tulnarron’s and Ri Niall’s withdrawals were as well.

  Thus there was nothing more for the Mistress to do but die.

  Weeping, Janne swung her battered blade at a huge figure that seemed to erupt from the drowned ground at her feet. The blow was shrugged aside with terrifying ease.

  “Go now, Janne of the House of Serra-Collean,” commanded a voice as smooth as the speaker was massive and black. “Your work here is done. Leave this to us now.”

  Janne gasped, stepped back, her good eye straining against the rain, her mein slack and saturnine. But within her, a flare of amaranthine hope –

  Brulwar.

  To either side of the Earthmaster and all along the front, hulking forms burst from the earth between the Fiannar and the foe. Immediately, the monstrous hammers and angry axes of the extant Wandering Guard tore into the Blood King’s army, rising and falling, slashing and pummeling, and within mere moments the enemy onslaught shuddered and sagged, like bellows bereft of wind.

  “Go, good Janne,” Brulwar repeated, his ebony eyes gleaming, his think fingers heartbreakingly tender upon the Fiann’s ruined face. His tone was equally gentle, but nonetheless insistent, and could not be refused. He lowered his hand, her bright blood staining the tips of his fingers. “Go now. And take with you great pride and glory, for that which you have done here is the very essence of legends.”

  The Mistress then heard the keening of Teillerian’s horn, calling the retreat, and somehow her own shout for the same rose above the incessant clatter of iron and rain. A hand tugged adamantly at her elbow, and with merely a weary nod to the Earthmaster to indicate her gratitude and good wishes, Janne followed brave Avondele, and stumbled after a weakened yet winging White Swan into the dark, dark night.

  No horn blast announced their coming. Neither rising roar of wrath nor bold battle hymn sounded their charge. The saturated turf muted the thunder of their ride; the torrential rain blurred their movements, masked their motion; and the darkness of night blinded all inimical eyes that may have turned their way. Master Collinan and the cold-souled Deathward of the House of Cilcannan. Watchcaptain Harlastian and his Eye of the Grey Watch. And the Black Prince of Ithramis. Their quiet rage tore through the reserve and the rearguard of the Blood King’s host, ripping entire tribes of unsuspecting and ill-prepared Unmen to shreds, making a massacre of the onslaught, scuppering hundreds, thousands of shrieking foes upon shivering northern steel.

  True wrath is a silent storm.

  Arbamas fought alone. His was a fury that no enemy could match, no adversary could withstand – not Unman-at-arms, nor ironclad ogre, nor hideously malformed half-Urk, nor even stone- armoured giant. The Prince’s sword shone with a lustrous light all its own, burning starfire imprisoned in ice, and in his hard hand it howled like an angry winter wind. And at whiles the brilliant blade seemed to shatter, sending wicked shards of steel ripping through the rain, through the night, through the foe, hundreds of deadly daggers, slicing and slaying, cutting and killing. And Arbamas would whisper some shining words, and the sword would be whole once more – if indeed it had truly ever been anything less. Beneath him, the great black charger vaulted and kicked, its hooves striking with the force of Daradun hammers, breaking bodies and obliterating skulls. The sheen from the Prince’s blade cast mount and rider in an uncanny white shadow, eerie and terrible, and the foe fled shrieking before them.

  ‘Mar-agu! Mar-agu! Mar-agu tirhar dacht!’

  Father Death rides this night.

  But Arbamas and his allies were not the only bringers of death on those sodden killing fields before the Seven Hills that night, and they had not the numbers necessary for a sustained offensive. Eventually, inevitably, the foe regrouped and fought back. And once again, Fiannar and mirarra began to die.

  But then the night shuddered with another sound, a single long lingering yowl of rage and sorrow, lifting into the rain, dismal yet defiant, seeking and beseeching a lucent moon that simply was not there. And as the cry faded into a rumble of thunder, hundreds of huge grey shapes erupted from the eaves of the Maples, streaming down the rise’s slopes like a tide of molten metal, and in their van a great black-maned behemoth with eyes of ice and teeth like swords.

  Teraras, the wolf-king of Galledine, fresh from triumph and slaughter on the heights, was come – and with him nearly nine hundred voracious and vengeful warokka.

  The blood of seven bands of half-Urks yet fresh on their black flews, the war wolves raced into the rain. Claret matted the Alpha’s iron coat and strings of meat whipped about his muzzle as he led his pack east, then south, then west once more – and just as the fight there became most desperate, the warokka plunged with a refrain of soul-chilling howls into the rear ranks of the Blood King’s host. And again, terror swept through the massed enemy, and many there were that buckled and broke and fled screeching into the storm.

  And as swiftly as the Fiannar and the warokka had appeared, they were gone. Smoke in the mist, tears in the rain. But the white sword of the black slayer beckoned the thralls of the Blood King, a ghostly lodestone in the night, inviting and enticing, luring enemy iron. Thousands upon thousands broke from the body of the host of Shadow and followed Father Death and the Fiannar and their giant wolves eastward across the Plains, stomping through the storm, chasing the will-o’-the-wisp of that lambent spectral blade.

  Pursuing it unto their doom.

  Time is a strange thing. The perception of time is stranger still. Only the conscious mind might be aware of the progress of time, of its unfaltering march into perpetuity. But sentient creatures are without exception prejudiced and fallible beings, and their acuities can be skewed. They can be deceived. They can be fooled. They imagine moments, specific points on a line, however fugacious and transient – yet time is but a single moment with neither beginning nor end, a solitary distinct instant to which self-aware entities inexplicably attempt to apply width and depth, constraints, control. An arrogant effort, and entirely futile. To easily inveigled sensitivities, temporal velocity appears to accelerate and tardigrade, to fly with frantic festination on occasions, and to stand absolutely still at others. The factors that influence these errant perceptions are inestimable, infinite: Joy and pleasure; dread, discomfort, weariness; something as mundane as a sliver of meat stuck between the teeth, or as rousing as the raking nails of a lover. Infinite variants, and
not one of them valid. For time is an invariable constant. Only its perceivers die.

  And die they did.

  Had it been hours or mere minutes? How long had the slaves of the Blood King dogged the Black Prince’s shimmering ignis fatuus across the Plains in that night of death and dark rain? The question mattered little, and the answer mattered less – for suddenly the invaders came upon a wall of steel, impervious and impenetrable, and viciously spiked with long lethal spears.

  The Ithramen were assembled atop a rounded rise upon the Northern Plains, an island of martial structure and orderliness in an ocean of discord, against which the tides of bedlam and chaos crashed, insistent but impotent. Frustrated, the enemy attempted to flank the Ithramian formation, first to the south, then upon the north, but everywhere was that bristling hide of steel, and everywhere Unmen and Urkroks died in vain. Wulfings of Var, yet intoxicated by the blood of their victory over the bastard Sons of Noth, brought their battle frenzy to the fray – but berserk as they may have been, they fared no better, and were systematically skewered by a thousand sarissas like an unsound argument pierced and undone by cold precise logic.

  Releasing their mirarra, the Fiannar of the House of Cilcannan and the Eye of the Grey Watch took to their boots and locked shields in solidarity with the Men of Ithramis even as the foe succeeded in encircling their position. Entirely surrounded, the allied formation fluidly adapted, fighting, thrusting, killing in all directions, simultaneously and without ruth.

  And there on the Plains, atop that lonely rise, as the rains finally receded and the first hints of dawn painted faint streaks upon the night’s scarred black canvas, deeds were done that made deathless legends of so many mere mortals.