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

by Sean Rodden

  Kor ben Dor pulled back on his render’s reins, checking the beast a mere dozen yards from the dark shape in the mist – a safe distance, he presumed, should such a dimension have even existed within the nebulous hell of Doomfall. The demonic steed’s eyes flashed a scorching red, and spittle dribbled from its maw, spattering the stone between its balled fore-fists. The rock hissed and whistled. Steam rose. And then silence came again, gelid and heavy. Until –

  “Name.”

  The voice was become more substantial, less a thing that might have been only imagined. And a grin like a grimace twisted the Halflord’s lips. The speaker’s manner was disconcertingly familiar. The tone was harsher than was the Prince’s own, and more guttural, reminiscent of great petrous plates grinding in the mantle of the earth – but it was not unpleasant in his ear, the obstinate afflatus of déjà entendu notwithstanding.

  “Name,” the voice repeated, as hard and as real as rock now, though with no inflection of true impatience.

  “There is power in names, Darad. Vast power.”

  “Agreed. Name.”

  No words would be wasted by this one. Fleetingly, the Prince wondered whether any would be left wanting.

  “I am Kor ben Dor, Prince of the Bloodspawn.” And then, as though an afterthought, “I am called the Halflord.”

  The haze parted then, peeled away, revealing the formidable Daradun warrior in all his deceptively quiet power and glory. Drogul the kirun-tar rested on the butt of his broad-bladed war-axe, a living mountain of steely muscle, fully armoured in stone-grey plate and chain, his face obscured by a gruesome war-mask stolen from the nightmares of madmen. The jagged eye openings were pits of pure pitch, blacker than the darkness beyond the stars, deeper than the void left by a dead sun.

  Quoth the Mighty One:

  “Drogul.”

  The Halflord lowered his chin to his breastplate in acknowledgement, his white eyes never straying from the form of the great Chieftain. He said nothing, however, as he sensed the Darad was not done – and he did not err in thinking so.

  “Kor ben Dor… is not your name.”

  “No.”

  “A title then. Do you know its meaning?”

  The Halflord did not immediately respond.

  “Speak freely, giant. There are no ears in this place other than our own.”

  “I do not know its meaning, Drogul of Doomfall. But I suspect it is a message of some sort.”

  “A message.”

  “When the Blood Mages came for me, early in my twentieth year, my father told them my name was Kor ben Dor. I was surprised, for I had never known my father to lie, not for any reason, even to our captors. As they took me away, my father’s eyes implored me not to refute him, and he mouthed the words, ‘He will know’. Then the pain came, and I remembered nothing of the time before.” A succinct pause. “But recently I was… reminded.”

  The Mighty One stared – or at least he seemed to stare. The Halflord could not be certain for the utter blackness, the boundless nihility behind the eye holes of the Darad’s battle-mask.

  “They invaded and infused your brain with pain so that you would forget.”

  “Yes.”

  “But now you remember.”

  “Yes. I remember. I remember everything.”

  “And yet you are here, giant. At the head of an invading army, with your weapon bared and ready.”

  “Yes, Drogul of Doomfall. I am here. But I command only the Bloodspawn, and my weapon is in my lap rather than in my hands.”

  The Mighty One was silent for a moment, as still as a statue, motionless, utterly unmoving. Or did something stir within the darkness of the mask’s optic openings? A flicker of reflected sunlight, perhaps? The concentrated gleam of narrowed eyes? The black burn of wrath?

  “This is Doomfall, giant,” the Darad grated levelly. “This is not a place for parley. You either come in peace… or you leave in pieces.”

  Then it was that the Halflord who glared. Stark and white and wintry cold. And his strong hands settled about the blue shaft of his mace.

  “Do not lose your head, Stone Lord.”

  That strange shining again of the Darad’s eyes. That glittering darkness. That sheen on the surface, death in the depths.

  But no other motion, not so much as a twitch.

  “Master Tulnarron failed to mention your sense of humour, giant. Unfortunately, I’m not prone to laughter.”

  Kor ben Dor’s grip tightened about the shaft of his weapon. His jaw clenched. Beneath him, the teratoid steed dragged steely claws across the stone.

  “Not unfortunate, Drogul of Doomfall.” The Halflord’s voice was softer than the hiss of vapour seeping from the angry earth. “No, not unfortunate at all. I am known for my modesty, but from such mockery there would be no coming back.”

  The blackness of Drogul’s gaze seemed to swell then, like a pall of imminent peril spilling into the gaping divide between rival gods of war – but it was only a dimming of the dawn as Doomfall’s haze oscillated upward to obscure the timorous offerings of a drowsy sun. And under that umbral shadow and the darker adumbrations of opposing fates, the Mighty One decided to disregard the challenge manifest in the Prince’s whispered words.

  Or, more likely, he simply did not care.

  “Nor am I disposed to mockery, giant – unlike those who named you ‘Halflord’.”

  Kor ben Dor peered fixedly at the Lord of Doomfall. The Prince’s breath plumed a rage of dragons, whereas the Stone Lord seemed not to respire at all. The Halflord’s talon tattoo held his features immobile, as though the flesh of his face was hewn of hardest granite – but the Darad was the harder, wrought of solid steel. Gradually, almost of a will of their own, Kor ben Dor’s fingers loosened around the cold shaft of his mace.

  “An insult must cut close to the truth, Drogul of the Daradur, else its blade cut not at all. Nevertheless, no matter how keen its edge, I am not wounded by the truth.”

  “Power in names.”

  Halflord.

  “Yes, Drogul of Doomfall. Power. And truth.”

  Half… Lord.

  A strident silence. Thunderous. Then, and at long last, the Chieftain of the Wandering Guard moved. A nod, slight and subtle, even begrudging – but a nod nevertheless.

  “And your true name, giant?”

  The Prince of the Bloodspawn closed his eyes, rolled his head on his neck, sighed with something akin to pleasure as tension fled the bones and muscles there. His hands moved from his weapon to his left hip and right knee.

  “I was born Ul dor Rain, named in honour of my father’s brother, whom I never knew.” The Prince’s eyes opened, wide and white and glowing with puissance. “But I am Kor ben Dor now. And Kor ben Dor I always shall be.”

  Drogul the kirun-tar nodded once more, and the black light behind his eye slits turned inward, waning swiftly, withdrawing. He raised one hand, removed his horrible war-mask and helm, tossed them aside. The metal clanged as it struck the rock, and the sound was harsh and brash in the ear. But no such harshness, no such brashness was evident in the Stone Lord’s aspect as he re-crossed his thick forearms on the butt of his war-axe. Indeed, his countenance was the very portrait of calm, and the darkness of his gaze was become mild and benevolent, almost gentle.

  “You’re not wrong in believing that that name is a message, giant. Your father foresaw that the forces of Shadow would eventually, inevitably, move to set your might against mine. He wanted me to know who you are.”

  “To spare me?”

  “Or to destroy you, should you have become something… ugly.”

  “I do not seek redemption, Drogul of Doomfall.”

  “And you would find none here, giant.”

  The Halflord opened his mouth, scowled, clapped it closed.

  “I will spare you the asking, Kor ben Dor.” The Mighty One may have smiled within the rust-coloured tangle of his beard. “In the Daradun tongue, Kor ben Dor means ‘Captain, son of Lord’. Your father was never th
e subtlest of souls.”

  “You knew.”

  Drogul nodded. “Your father said I would.”

  “But you knew all along.”

  “Long enough.”

  “What else?”

  “I know that you are not an enemy to Mother Earth. Otherwise, your magic would be ineffective here. And it was certainly potent in your… disagreement… with the Wild One.”

  “Any more?”

  “Only guesses.”

  “Guess, then.”

  “The facial tattoo and the curious hair don’t entirely eradicate your resemblance to your father, as I suppose they’re meant to do.”

  “We were not so marked in the time before the pain. The tattoos were done to the Bloodspawn, not by them.”

  “Your emblem is obviously a malicious mimicry of the Golden Strype.”

  “Again, a thing chosen for us, not by us.”

  “Your weapon” – Drogul indicated the massive mace across the Halflord’s muscled thighs, and there was admiration and approbation in the Darad’s ebon eyes – “was forged of the falling star that your father followed to the land of sun and sand.” A short pause, pensive, almost wistful. “Despite the tragedy of that journey, it would seem he found what he was looking for.”

  “So he did.”

  “Those appalling creatures you ride are corruptions of the mirarra.”

  “I prefer the term ‘offspring’.”

  “Your size and the hue of your skin suggest your mother was a Graniant.”

  “Without exception, the Bloodspawn are born of Graniantish mothers. But our parents did not lay together. The Bloodspawn are unnatural… engineered. Some might say we are abominations.”

  Drogul shrugged his massive shoulders. “Some might say the Daradur are abominations.”

  “This is true.”

  “They’d be wrong, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “There is ancient power in you, Kor ben Dor, and not only that which comes to you from your father. I speak of strange and eldritch power native to this Second Earth.”

  The Halflord looked away then, gazing intently into the haze, staring, as though in doing so he might pare back the passage of years and peer into the past, glimpsing perhaps the face of a woman he had always cherished, had always loved, but had never known.

  “She was the shaman of shamans to the Graniants under Earthfall. The most powerful medicine woman in forty generations. I am told she was beautiful. But neither power nor beauty could save her. She did not survive my birth.”

  “She lives on in you, Kor ben Dor. As does your father. That much is obvious.”

  The tattooed talons twisted downward. The ivory eyes glowed.

  “My father may not need to, Stone Lord.”

  For the fraction of an instant, Drogul’s steely composure buckled, and a sound like the hissing of the fractured rock slipped through his heavy whiskers. He then nodded, and the night in his eyes shone.

  “We’ll discuss that possibility another time, giant.”

  The Halflord nodded. “And now, Drogul of Doomfall?”

  The Mighty One shrugged. “Now we decide exactly what it is that we’re doing here.”

  Kor ben Dor lowered his head, his chin nearly touching his shining black breastplate. He stretched splendidly, gloriously, corded muscles rippling like grey fire, and peered up into the tarnished sky over Doomfall. He briefly closed his eyes, sighed forth another steaming dragon – then fixed the great Darad with a piercing white stare.

  “This, Lord of Doomfall,” the Prince of the Bloodspawn said softly, oh so softly, as his massive hands settled again around the shaft of his mace. “We do this.”

  “I can’t hear anything. Ev, why can’t I hear what they are saying? Hell and fire and nasty things, are they even talking?”

  Ev lin Dar did not immediately respond, but gazed through wisps of vapour and smoke to the two titans confronting one another under the ashen tears of morning. The Darad stood only as high as the mar-render’s thick chest, but he gave nothing away in stature, in the surety of his stance, in his absolute certainty and conviction that no foe could ever, would ever better him. The Halflord’s winged hair and broad cloaked back and the Mighty One’s dreadful war-mask prevented the Black Shield from watching the warriors’ words upon their lips, and the cracked stone of Doomfall swallowed all sound that was not its sussurant own.

  “They are conversing, Gren,” Ev lin Dar said with some impatience. “I cannot imagine that they are simply standing there staring at each other.”

  Gren del Mor snorted. “Stranger things happen, Ev. Your beloved Prince is not the most loquacious individual. And rumours are that this Drogul troll does not speak at all.”

  “If only the same were true of you,” muttered the comely Black Shield as she looked down at her hands.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing, Gren,” she replied, studying her battered nails. “Nothing at all.”

  “Oh, I heard you, Ev,” hissed the lean saurian warrior. “Yes, indeed, I heard you. But I will delay my complaint.”

  “Miracles, Gren,” she sighed softly. “Small miracles.”

  Gren del Mor bared his pointy teeth.

  “We’ll address your ill-directed sass later, I assure you. But now” – he pointed with one long tapered finger – “Prince Kor is roused. And black Hell burns in the troll’s eyes.”

  Ev lin Dar looked up from her hands, peered whitely at the warriors in the deliquescent haze – two god-souls in whose terrible hands the world’s future and fate were held in most perilous balance.

  “Did the Darad just nod?”

  “Hard to tell, Ev... but our Prince seems a little more relaxed.”

  “Now that was definitely a nod.”

  There came a clang and the ringing song of metal on stone as the mighty Darad tossed his morbid metal war-mask aside.

  Gren del Mor gazed, bit down a little too hard on his scaled lips with overly pointy teeth, shook his head.

  “Not sure if that was a good sign or not...”

  “Gren, you’re bleeding.”

  “You do know we’re at war, right?”

  Ev lin Dar’s subsequent growl caused her render to toss its fiery mane and carve deep gouges in the rock with its claws. Careful not to draw blood, the Shield gnawed her own lip, chewing on the loud silence that comes of the superhuman determination not to engage with fools. She returned her regard to the contest of wills in progress.

  “The Darad seems verbose enough now, Gren.”

  “If the troll nods any more he’s going to fall asleep.”

  Ev lin Dar noticed something, narrowed her eyes. Her teeth clenched. The tigress’ whiskers twitched.

  “Hush, Gren... wait. Prince Kor prepares. Something is...”

  And in that moment the rock beneath the renders rolled and groaned, and the thousand stony throats of Doomfall gasped great clouds of smoke and ash.

  The Halflord, tall and terrible in the saddle, tugged his monstrous mar-render about, placing his back to the mighty Drogul, to dark Doomfall and its four-score-and-some indomitable defenders. The ribbons of the Prince’s cloak stretched like prodigious raven’s wings from his wide shoulders, black and beautiful, curving before him to gather all in a dread embrace. Kor ben Dor raised his gigantic cobalt-blue mace on high, and spears of half-golden sunlight shimmered and shone on the flanges of the huge head, colouring the strange celestial steel a bright and gleaming green.

  And as silent as the threat of thunder in a storm’s dream, the morning roared.

  Then it was that the Halflord’s luminous eyes met those of Ev lin Dar and Gren del Mor. A thing passed between them, from the Prince of the Bloodspawn to the most loyal members of his elite bodyguard. Not a command, not an order. There was something deeper in the thing shared, something more pronounced and meaningful than any martial edict. And verily, the two Black Shields were not mere warders swordsworn to secure their royal charge’s welfare – nay, n
ot just that. The thing was an imploration, simple and direct, unspoken, but staunchly and unmistakably manifest in Kor ben Dor’s radiant white gaze. An overture made not to simple sentinels, not to bodyguards burdened with bounden duty – but to friends. True friends. The kind of friends that expect little, demand nothing and offer everything –

  Stand with me.

  All decisions reached and acted on change the world. Each and every choice made of free will modifies the reality of existence. Sometimes the alteration is insignificant, imperceptible; other times, the effects can persist for generations, centuries, millennia. A few rock the world to its core, blasting all fates and forgone conclusions apart, ravaging and revising the future forever. A little boy picks up his first wooden sword with his left hand and years later becomes the champion of the fighting pits because none of his opponents know how to defend against strength coming from the wrong side; a dying miser buries his hoard under this rock rather than that tree for a desperately impoverished goatherd to discover nine hundred years later; a woman lays with one man in favour of another, and the daughter who was to be Empress is never born. Choices, actions, consequences – every soul a puppeteer, and the world’s destiny dancing on unnumbered oh-so-flimsy strings. Pray tell, why are hapless mortals entrusted with such abominable power?

  Stand. With. Me.

  The Black Shields met their Prince’s gaze, held it, felt the quiet ferocity of his puissance caress their cheeks as might the gentle hand of an approving father.

  “Well, Ev,” murmured Gren del Mor as he adjusted his vambraces, “It would appear the time has finally come. Right here, right now, this moment. He has done the thing, as we knew he would – heroes, legends, love, in all their damned glory. His deed and our decision. And the two shall forever define us all.”

  Ev lin Dar inhaled deeply against a scurrying sensation in her stomach. Her hand found and folded about the pommel of her sword, grasping tightly.

  “Yes, Gren. Here we are.”

  A grin like a knife-wound slit Gren del Mor’s lacertilian face. He reached for his weapon.