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

by Sean Rodden

  Despite the distance, Eldurion easily discerned the Blood King’s words. Word, rather. A single word. A most ancient one.

  A name.

  “Kh’arsh.”

  The underworld heaved and howled. Tremors rippled across the surface of the petrified lake, causing the rock to crack and buckle as would an icebound river in a flash spring thaw. Above the epicentre of these fractures a great vertical slit split apart the caustic air, and from this seeped a foul frondescence of darkness and fire, of energy and entropy, as though the underearth had spread its thin pallid thighs and was delivering the very doom of the world. And perhaps, in sooth, it was.

  The Eldest of the Fiannar felt the power of Grimroth flow up his arm, across his breast, down his legs, entirely enveloping him, immersing him in a golden glow, immuring him in the arcane and archaic armour of Light itself. He cast a look of blended disgust and disdain at the Red Wraith, then turned toward the lawless laceration above the plane of obsidian. He planted his feet firmly in midair, his boots finding fast purchase in the stuff of reality, permitting him to achieve a certain supernal equipoise. Bending at the knees, Eldurion assumed a fighting stance, and raised the Blade of Defurien to guard position. Across his heart, his rillagh blazed.

  The kuarok emerged from the gash, immense and abominable. Fire and nihility, darkness and omnipotence. Appalling, horrible power. The demon hovered in the pale air, one huge gnarled hand holding the haft of a monstrous mace, a thick metal chain dangling from the other. Kh’arsh then marked Eldurion’s presence, and it threw back its heinous horned head and shrieked. Or laughed. Or bellowed. A peal of destruction or the cry of creation? The bang at the beginning of being or an ear-shredding screech at its ending? Whatever it was, the sound sought to pummel and slash the stalwart Deathward warrior, body, mind and soul.

  Sought and failed.

  Miserably.

  For the flames of Grimroth and the icy iron of Eldurion’s spirit would have none of it whatsoever.

  Palm upward, the venerable warrior beckoned the beast forward.

  The demon charged. Flew, rather. Skeletal wings spread wide, wind shrilling through the tears in the tattered membranes, it propelled itself at the solitary foe. All about it raged a tempest of contradiction, of being and not being, a perpetual paradox howling in the heart of the netherearth. With all its terrible might, it lashed out with its chain, and the wickedly bladed end screamed like a comet careering across angry heavens.

  Eldurion leapt aside, swift and agile, as lithe in his last years as he had been in the prime of his youth. He then dashed upward, ascending invisible stairs in the air, and raced directly toward the onrushing fiend. Great trails of golden fire flew at either side of him as would the wings of an avenging angel, and the Blade itself left a train of fire in its wake.

  Demon and Deathward warrior clashed in a convulsion of power and sonance, of red fire and gold, of Light and of Shadow. Sword struck mace, and mace battered sword, again and again and again. The din of battle was more the roaring of luciferous infernos than the ringing of metal on metal. Eldurion fought as fiercely and as skilfully as the finest of his forefathers; Kh’arsh brawled with the otherworldly strength and speed of a raging god. Neither gave a single step, not so much as a finger’s breadth. No mercy, no quarter, and absolutely no alternative other than to slay or be slain.

  Eldurion marked every motion of his adversary, each nuance of the fiend’s fighting style, seeking weakness, probing for patterns that might become predictable, exploitable. Similarly yet oppositely, he was careful not to repeat any sequence of movements himself, be it in attack or defense, lest the foe do unto him that which he would do unto the foe – and do it first, and do it worse.

  And then the Fian saw it. A flaw in the fiend’s execution of its backhand swing that exposed a vulnerability upon its left side as momentum took the head of its weapon temporarily beyond the immediate sphere of battle. And the demon had twice preceded its backhand strike with a sharp tug on the chain in its other hand. A tell, if ever there was one. One that would prove fatal should Eldurion successfully capitalize upon it.

  Block and blow, parry and slash, watching and waiting for the kuarok to make that one insignificant but apotheotic error.

  And then it did so.

  The demon heaved on its chain – harder than before, surely, but definitely the same suggestive tell – and struck for the Fian with a furious backhand swipe of its mace. Knowing that it was coming, Eldurion nimbly darted inside the attack. He lunged, plunging the flaming sword of Defurien deep into the left side of the demon’s abdomen, then ripping the eldritch edge upward toward the black furnace of its heart, tearing a wilding white gash in the reality and nullity of the beast’s being. The fiend screamed, bleeding black fire and red lightning. And the Fian immediately felt a flood of power and strength and vigour rush into his body as the Blade took vitality from the foe and gave graciously unto him.

  And then he felt another thing.

  Impact.

  Eldurion arched unnaturally backward as he absorbed several simultaneous blows from behind – one in each shoulder blade, one near his left kidney, another through his upper right thigh. Numerous other blades attached to the end of the kuarok’s chain missed or barely grazed him, but the four that had found him were savagely sufficient. Wicked knives, curved and barbed, had penetrated the magical protection afforded by Grimroth, piercing cloak and mail and mortal flesh, punching right through the Fian’s torso and the front of his thigh. Bones snapped, sanguine fluid sprayed. Stunned and bewildered, Eldurion looked down upon the lengths of sinister steel protruding from his belly, saw the blood burning on the blades, realized it was his own, comprehended his time had come – and that he had failed.

  The error had not been the demon’s, truly, but his own.

  Atop his lofty pinnacle, the Blood King cackled.

  Kh’arsh hauled on the chain and cast Eldurion cruelly down. The Fian struck the fractured obsidian with a sickening crunch. A dozen different bones snapped like twigs. He lay there in the crater created by the collision, silent and unmoving, like a dead man in a grave awaiting the cover of earth. Darkness soared behind his dimming eyes. All feeling, all sensation fled his form. His strength deserted him.

  But other things remained.

  Memories. Voices. Waves of emotion. Disconnected visions, random and incomplete, streamed within his shuttered sensibility, an endless parade of broken tokens from his wasted life. A distorted face here, a crooked smile there. The Seven Hills, the glory of Galledine, the cold grey wastes of Coldmire. The Colossus of Defurien towering in the rainy night, sword thrust to the heavens, golden rillagh aglow. The shimmering Stone of Scullain. The procession of visions then accelerated, flashing by in a blur of colour and sound, permitting only the fleetest glimpses and vaguest impressions of things, of places, of people. And then all his consciousness coalesced, swirling franticly down in a vortex of insignificance, futility and denuded vanity. Until there was nothing left of him at all, nothing but –

  Them.

  His wife, his beloved Taresse, armed and armoured and spattered with blood. A humourless smile crooking the corners of her mouth. Did I not tell you to die well, Eldie? I have done as you asked – will you not do the same for me?

  His brother, the lost Lord Amarien, elderly and emaciated, barely recognizable in besmirched rags. Ignobly shackled on a filthy floor, his bony back to a stone wall. His features frightfully gaunt and hollow, but a defiant gleam brightening his bruised eyes. Hold on, little brother. Do not let go. Never let go.

  And Caelle. Brave, beautiful Caelle. Sliding her slim small hand into his own, smiling up at him, the sweetest laughter in her sapphire-specked gaze. Fear not, dear father. I am as much your daughter as I am mother’s.

  Eldurion gasped for breath. The fingertips of his right hand tingled; something pulsated against his palm; a gentle humming sensation slid up his arm. And then a familiar warmth washed over him, through him. Golden fire burned within
, struggling, striving to make him whole once more. He forced his eyes open. Willed them to focus. And saw only the hellish head of the demon’s weapon raised and poised, ready to come down on him.

  The kuarok roared. The Blood King laughed and laughed.

  The fallen Fian tried to rise. Could not. He attempted to roll aside and away, but his broken body yet refused him, betrayed him. He crushed his eyelids closed to bar the image of the demon’s looming mace from his mind. He was unable, however, to shut down his auditory faculty. Was he, Eldurion of the Grey Watch and the House of Defurien, to perish so feebly and so meekly in the bowels of the earth with the Red Wraith’s laughter in his ears?

  Teller, tell a different tale!

  And then he heard another sound. A vociferation. Small and distant, almost frail, but more than a mere memory this time. A child’s voice, calling across space and time, beckoning, earnestly invoking.

  Summoning.

  “Kh’arsh.”

  And in the next instant the demon disappeared.

  Eldurion did not feel the blades leaving his body, but he knew they were gone. As were all traces, all suggestions of physical pain. Tiny tongues of fire dabbed and licked at his wounds, kissing them closed, gilding his blood-smeared skin and garments in gleaming gold. The beat of his heart gradually steadied, stabilized, establishing a rhythmic thunder within him. Blood and flame coursed through his veins. Strength returned to his limbs, clarity reclaimed his mind, and unshakeable resolve reinvested his warrior spirit. His right hand tightened about the grip of Grimroth. Bright yellow fire bloomed.

  And the Blood King’s laughter lapsed into silence.

  But before Eldurion could rise, the flame-illuminated air above him split apart again, and Kh’arsh bounded through the chaotic gash in reality. Bellowing, the demon landed upon the prostrate Fian, one huge clawed foot pinning his sword arm to the ground, the other crushing painfully down upon his legs until freshly fused bones snapped once more. Pain came again, flaring darkly, fighting the fire within him. The head of the monster’s mace thumped upon the stone lake meagre inches from his ear.

  The Fian drew his dirric with his left hand and drove the long slim blade into the kuarok’s calf. But all the steel found was smoke and shadow as the fiend’s flaming flesh morphed into black nothingness. Desperately, Eldurion struck again. This time the deadly point of the dirric hit the demon’s hide and glanced harmlessly away. Over and over, again and again, the Fian struck at the beast, flailing wildly, futilely. He might have been screaming, but he was not sure. He may have heard voices, but he was uncertain of that as well. And then, in his ferocious thrashing, his head hammered against the crown of the beast’s mace, and a frightful darkness swirled up, down, all around, and grim grey Eldurion of the House of Defurien saw and heard no more.

  But other eyes were watching, other ears were listening.

  “Kill him.”

  Hideous horns dipped to one side as Kh’arsh cocked its head. Black flame and scarlet smoke issued from its eyes. Its talons tightened about the fallen Fian.

  The Blood King towered to his feet, dire, dreadful, wreathed in red wrongness.

  “Kill the fool.” Suru-luk’s words came in ancient Turian, the dead tongue of the Elder East. His voice was soft, so soft, sleek and wet, the sound of hot blood gushing from an opened artery. “Or has your disgraceful defeat at the hands that ugly troll sapped you of your will as well as your pride? I would not have guessed that strength and courage would abandon you so readily. Kill him. I command it.”

  The kuarok tilted its hideous head to the other side. It peered fixedly – either at Suru-luk or into the darkness behind him. The raging fires of its eyes made it impossible to determine what it was looking at, if indeed it was looking at anything at all. Its skeletal wings flapped slightly. But the demon did not otherwise respond.

  “Kill him, Kh’arsh. Kill him now. I command you.”

  The fiend stared, its fiery eyes flaring, then slimming to mere slits of blistering light.

  YOU KNOW MY NAME, BLOODEATER, AND THIS PERMITS YOU TO SUMMON ME. BUT YOU ARE NOT MY MASTER. YOU DO NOT COMMAND ME.

  Anger drew taut the burnished features of the Blood King’s face. One long-nailed forefinger pointed at the insensible form of Eldurion.

  “He is no ordinary Fiannian warrior. He is a scion of the House of Defurien. And his sword is Grimroth, the Bane of Ilurin.”

  The kuarok did not reply, but only flapped its wings again – perhaps a simple reflex, perhaps its version of a shrug.

  “The Un-God would have you slay the hapless wretch. You know this, demon. Do it. Do it now.”

  A furnace roared in Kh’arsh’s maw.

  YOU PRESUME TO SPEAK FOR MY MASTER? YOU WOULD DO THIS WHEN I – I WHO LOVED AND SERVED HIM BEFORE THE FIRST FAINT GLOWINGS OF TIME – WOULD NOT DEIGN TO DO SO? YOU ARE ARROGANT, BLOODEATER, AND YOU REACH TOO FAR.

  “I am arrogant? I reach too far? You slew one of your very own ilk for no reason but to salve your wounded ego!”

  THE SUMANAUR ARE NO KIN TO THE KUAROKUR. AND YOU WOULD BE WISE TO NOT TREAD THE TREK OF THAT CREATURE’S IMPRUDENCE.

  “You dare threaten me?”

  WITH PLEASURE.

  The Blood King glared at the kuarok. The demon gazed back at him. Or through him. Or past him. Again, it was impossible to tell.

  “You will not be so cocksure when the Un-God learns of your treachery at Doomfall, fiend.”

  THE SUMANAM WILL NOT BE MISSED.

  The Red Wraith laughed.

  “I do not speak of the sumanam. I speak of your revealing the Un-God’s scheme to that trollish chieftain. I suspect Zan-zurak will not be pleased.”

  AGAIN, BLOODEATER, YOU ASSUME TO KNOW MORE OF MY MASTER THAN YOU TRULY DO. An evocative pause. THE TRUTH IS FOREVER BEHIND YOU.

  Suru-luk’s narrow eyes narrowed further. He stood atop the peak of his pinnacle in contemplative silence, his robes flowing like sheets of blood in a vacuum. His lips first pursed, then curled smoothly into a smile – or a snarl.

  “Your galimatias irks me, demon. I care not whether you slay this Fian or spare him. But should you choose the latter, at least afford me the courtesy of telling me why.”

  YOU WOULD NOT UNDERSTAND, BLOODEATER.

  Gleaming white canines flashed. “Try me.”

  The kuarok stared at, through, past the Red Wraith a moment longer. It then looked down upon the crumpled form of the Deathward warrior. It angled its head again, pondering, brooding, oddly contemplative and reflective. Its existence sizzled and crackled with the ravenous fires of a crematory, and it hefted its unholy mace. But even as it did so, the weapon melted away, deliquescing, morphing into oblivion. And the fiend reached down, wrapped one horrible hand about the warrior’s waist, lifting him from the splintered stone. It raised the figure to its face, tilted its horns to the other side. The body drooped in its clasp, bent backward, limp and immobile, long grey hair hanging like curtains of dead moss, the dreaded Blade of Defurien dangling precariously from the tips of failing fingers.

  Kh’arsh then lowered its hand, raised its blazing gaze toward the Blood King once more, and spoke one final word.

  HONOUR.

  And with Eldurion and Grimroth yet in its grasp, Kh’arsh of the kuarokur stepped into another rip in reality, and was gone.

  Suru-luk shook with fury.

  He could feel the blood of a million victims seething in his thirty-century-old veins. His unbeating heart burned. The void in him that had been created by the negation of the earthblight was filled to overflowing with irrational rage. But he soon settled into a simmering calm more appropriate to the long undead. The power buzzing in his hands quieted. The dangerous light in his eyes dimmed. And rightfully so. The despised Blade of Defurien had been removed, perhaps irrevocably, from play; a few setbacks on the battlefields of the North notwithstanding, the Un-God’s scheme was unfolding beautifully; and most importantly, the threat to his own person was passed.

  Thoroughly pleased wit
h himself, the Blood King of the Wraithren settled back on his soaring throne of stone.

  All is well. Quite well and proceeding almost as planned. I will deal with the demon later. The Un-God will be ill-pleased to hear that the –

  He was disturbed from his train of thought by an odd sensation centred in the area between his spine and his left shoulder blade. A warm hand on his back, perhaps, or the gentle nudge of an elbow. As he twisted his head about in curiosity, he noticed something anomalous, out of place and time, protruding from his chest – a long black shaft, decorated in intricate glyphs of gold, and terminating in a lethal lanceolate point. He became aware of a hot searing pain in his cold dead heart, and terrifying realization bloomed like blood from an open wound. But before he could react, his vision spun violently out of both focus and control, gyrating wildly, as though the entire underworld was rotating in a dozen directions at once. And then he felt the rock of the rigidified lake rise up and smash hard into his face. The stone struck again – and again, and again – though each impact was less brutal than the one preceding it.

  Mercifully, the blows soon ceased. The world wobbled briefly, then became still.

  The Blood King found himself gaping up at his lofty perch so far away, saw his red-robed body seated there, unmoving, heedless and headless. He may have glimpsed the shade of a shadow and an incongruous blur of gold in the darkness at his back, but he was not sure. Indeed, the only thing of which he was certain was… was… nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Nothing at –

  18

  WHEN THE SUN RISES IN THE WEST

  “If honour and valour were easy things,

  more decent folk would practice them.”

  Valerian, first King of New Erellan

  The Fend was burning.

  Light emanated in beams of calescent colour from the tightly twined eaves of the forest, thrusting rays of red and yellow into the fog of morn like so many flaming spears piercing the belly of a dying dragon. And soon and swiftly the light of the lances swirled and merged, blended together, until the entire face of Faendomin shone like white gold. And from this soft and silken second dawn emerged a fantastic figure, seeming more an apparition of myth or legend than anything fixed in the realm of reality. But this was no whimsical vision, no caprice of mortal fancy – this was a warrior spirit in warrior form, terrible and true, and he was as real as the world in which he had chosen to abide.