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

by Sean Rodden

  “Gulgrum.”

  A Darad appeared at Brulwar’s shoulder. His innate aura marked him as one of the uldwar, as an urthron, and as a Captain of the Wandering Guard. Gulgrum was tall for a Stone Lord, approaching six feet, and tremendously broad – basis, perhaps, for the mythologies of some Men in which the Daradur were portrayed as giants. And indeed, his upper arms were as thick around as beer barrels, and each fist was easily the size of a big man’s head. He was entirely bald but for his beard, which cascaded in crudely woven burgundy braids to his belt. He carried an absolutely massive maul, its killing end in excess of four feet from the flat of the hammerhead to the edge of the blood-encrusted blade.

  “Uldwan Dor.”

  Brulwar did not remove his gaze from the vista of violence to the east. “How many of us remain, Captain?”

  “You. Me. A dozen others.”

  “And would they survive the urthrudd, do you think?”

  Gulgrum stared, shrugged his mountainous shoulders. “Maybe some. Maybe all. Maybe none.”

  Earthmaster hefted his immense hammer. The martial strain of the Sun Knights called to him like a song of sirens luring sailors in the southern seas. But he resisted.

  “Gather the Guard, Gulgrum. We must leave this place.”

  The huge Captain scowled. “But the battle is here, uldwan Dor. Here and now. Do we concede the succour of the Fiannar to the Athair? There’s only a thousand of them, after all, and there’s still fourteen of us.”

  Brulwar did not immediately respond, for he felt a specific thrumming in the earth, a terrestrial thunder, emanant from the east. The rumble of hooves and the tramp-tramp-tramping of thousands of men marching at the double. Somewhat faint and distant still, but rising in resonance with each thud of his mighty heart.

  “The battle is everywhere, Captain. We go where we are needed most, and that is no longer here.” The marmoreal smoothness of his voice was scored by rage. “Not in the manner that you mean, but I fear the salvation of the Fiannar is indeed in our hands now. And ours alone.” He let the other Darad absorb the gravity of his words. Then, “Follow when you are ready, Captain.”

  Gulgrum grunted, nodded, and trudged off to collect the Wandering Guard.

  And with the blackest fire in his eyes, the First Made of the Firstmade sank into the rich dark soil of the Cedorrin.

  The Master of the House of Eccuron was cold. So cold. And tired, so very tired. Pain lanced through his legs as though his knees had been pierced with arrows. His elbows and shoulders virtually screamed in their skin, and his wrists felt like they were on fire. But easily the worst of his afflictions was the ceaseless slithering in his gut, where his violated viscera were as a nest of vipers writhing in the dark, eager to burst free.

  Tulnarron knew he was, in sooth, a dead man. A walking corpse. An avenging revenant on the wrong side of that thin pale line between life and death. Sandarre’s sweet song had purchased him only a brief reprieve, and that ephemeral exculpation was accelerating rapidly toward its end. He knew this. He accepted it. And despite his potent pride, or perhaps because of it, he would not rage against the long dark night a second time.

  “The Host stands ready, Tuln. We only await your word.”

  The Master looked away from the emptiness into which he had been staring.

  “Not my word, Sandarre.” His deep mellifluous voice seemed strangely contemplative, almost wistful. “Yours.”

  “Mine, cousin? Why should they await my word?”

  “Because until such time that Arumarron comes of age, you will head the House of Eccuron. You shall be the Warden of the East. As of this day, this hour, this very moment, the command of the Host of Arrenhoth is yours.”

  A look of sheer horror swept across Sandarre’s face.

  “But Mistress Sarrane – ”

  “ – was not born into our House, and her title dies with me.”

  Tulnarron’s words were stiffer, less melodious than was usual, but the Singer was too distressed to mark it.

  “No, Tuln. I refuse! You cannot leave us! There are other Singers, stronger ones, more adept in healing than am I. There are more compelling songs. And we have time. We can repair this. We can – ”

  “Enough, cousin.”

  “But – ”

  “Enough. Your love and loyalty are shining lights, Sandarre. But they are required elsewhere now. For my own heart spills over with such things – and dead men can see in the dark.”

  The Singer gazed at the towering Master of her House, and the beauty of her eyes was augmented for their sheen of welling tears.

  “What do you intend, cousin?”

  Tulnarron exhaled white demons into the dawn.

  “What does it matter? I am already dead. My soul just doesn’t know it yet. Nay, what matters is that Arumarron comes into his strength with the proper guidance and direction. Sarrane has glimpsed his destiny, and it is steeped in glory. But he is a rash and impetuous youth, and he can be – ”

  Sandarre laughed in spite of the hurt in her soul. “I can handle Arumarron, Tuln. The Teller knows you were by far the greater challenge.”

  Tulnarron placed one large hand on the Fiann’s shoulder. The softness in his eyes would surely have broken even the hardest of hearts.

  “You have always been good to me, cousin. Often overly so. And just as frequently I was so very undeserving.” He inhaled deeply, sighed heavily. “Let us not quarrel now. Do these last few things for me with neither reluctance nor complaint. Lead our House. Teach my son. And save our people.”

  Sandarre grimaced. “No pressure.”

  “None at all, Sand.”

  The Singer looked away eastward, where war was making the world bleed.

  “I will do these things for you, cousin. And I will do them without reluctance.” Sandarre met her Master’s gaze evenly, and there was no telling between the cold fires of resolve in either warrior’s eyes. “But I cannot promise that I will not complain. Often. And profusely.”

  Tulnarron smiled then, and the blood staining his teeth did nothing to detract from his terrible beauty.

  “Even so.”

  And the Master of the House of Eccuron turned away. Forever.

  Beauty can be found anywhere, everywhere. Even the unlikeliest of places.

  In the profound and breathless peace of a deathbed vigil. In the hot animal hunger of wanton lust. In the glistening tears of a bereaved mother. In the sublime pain of a broken heart. In the purity of an enemy’s hate. In the endless longing of unrequited love. In the intricate imagery of well-constructed lies. In the silence of a night that is old and cold and darker than a rich man’s soul. In the precise calculating genius of immaculate evil. And in the balletic rise and fall of the blood-sullied sword of war.

  Verily, beauty is a fatal thing, alluring and enchanting, by which all capacity for reason is imperiled. Better that Men look to the ugliness in the world, lest they all be fooled.

  Nonetheless, one beauty there was that was just as it seemed and only as it seemed, and was made all the more beautiful through its mastery of the foulest horror of all. For the only thing in the entirity of Second Earth fairer than the Sul Athaifain of the Athair was the Sul Athaifain of the Athair at war.

  Tall and terrible, luxuriant with Light, as smooth and as supple in motion as gentle waves and leaping flames, Prince Evangael fought with the elegance and grace of a summer sunrise, and his golden sword coughed loud leonine roars as he sliced and sleaved and slew. To each side of him, half a thousand Sun Knights sang their song of slaughter to otherworldly chimes of doom, their swords ripping with unrelenting rhythm into the foes, their spears thrusting in lethal synchronicity. The marvelous elliamir reared and careered and careened and kicked, a delightful dance of death, their hooves alight with sunfire, painting the morn with scintillant flame and exquisite enemy blood. So glorious and gallant, so magnificent were the Sul Athaifain in their rendering of ruin that many were the adversaries who went willingly to their dooms – and some,
it was later told, even did so with a smile.

  The Sun Lord Thrannien rode Arrowwing through the rolling heave and press of the Blood King’s army, his iridescent ivory bow singing its own eversweet refrain of carnage – sigh, creak, strum, whirrrrr! Over and over, a repetitive chorus that neither grew old in the ear nor wore wearily at the warrior soul. And though Thrannien rode without escort, alone and unguarded amidst a mass of enemies, few tried to oppose him, and those that did so failed terribly. Sigh, creak, strum, whirrrrr! Too swift, too strong, too powerful the song. Towering Graniants fell in heaps on the points of perfectly placed projectiles; Unmen and Urkroks collapsed before the razor-sharp edges at the bow’s outside curves; howling half-Urks were pulverized by the lashing hooves of the elliam. Everything around Thrannien died. He was a Prince of the Athair, Sun Lord of the Neverborn, and no enemy upon the field that day could stay him.

  Such is the way of it when gods walk the earth.

  But all the while, the Athain Prince hunted the elusive sumanam, looking for the Leech in every set of enemy eyes, listening for that telltale screech, alert to the distinct stink of immortal evil that he had trained himself to detect so long ago, in another age, in another World. At whiles, he thought he caught the spoor of the fiend, faint and indistinct, but he could not locate the source. He was unable to find the mortal shell in which the horrid creature hid. The Master of the House of Eccuron had sent word that the Leech had defiled a child, a little blonde girl from the ill-fated hamlet of Maple Creek, had taken her, had possessed her corporeal form like a savagely clawed hand in a silken glove. Thrannien worried that the child’s soul had fallen to the fiend as well, a fate far worse than death, leaps and bounds beyond any mortal conception of pain – and he could only hope and pray that the Teller had told a different Tale.

  Sigh, creak, strum, whirrrrr!

  Only hope and pray – and kill. Oh yes, he could kill. Without ruth, without remorse. Repeatedly. Until such time as his worthy hunt ended.

  Lord Alvarion had grown weary of war. His eyes were sore with the shadows of ten thousand deaths, his ears raked raw by the screams of the dying. His righteous anger, his essential battle fury had deserted him. And in the wake of his vanished wrath came a pervasive fatigue, and a sadness nigh upon melancholy. Simply said, he was tired of killing. And he had seen too many of his people slain.

  The Fiannar did not mourn, he knew. But perhaps we should.

  Stepping back from the fray, Alvarion whispered the flames from his sword.

  “Why does the Leech not call the retreat?” asked Varonin as he moved to his Lord’s side. “Surely, the demon knows that we would not give chase. The Athair have drawn their line in the dirt. The caelroth remain on their feet through sheer power of will only. And though we be loath to say it aloud, the Deathward would assuredly prefer reprieve to pursuit at this time. The Leech need only withdraw, and the Blood King’s army would be saved.”

  “The demon has neither the inclination nor the intention to save lives, Marshal,” said Taresse, leaning on her sword, her glazed grey gaze fastened upon the vast prairie beyond the rearguard of the enemy. “Either they all die here this day, or we do.”

  “They are without food and provisions,” Alvarion reminded them, “and the Northern Plains have been laid waste. The Blood King erred gravely in sending the red wind in the van of his army. They were left with nothing to forage where there once was plenty. Their only hope now is total victory, but with the loss of the Vein they can neither breach nor break the lines of the Neverborn – and so they know no hope at all.”

  Taresse lifted her arm as though it was laden with lead, and with her blood-blackened sword she pointed eastward.

  “And now, nephew, they know even less.”

  Silmarien’s face shone with a joy that only the young can muster. High atop the Warwatch, the precocious Signaller pressed his body perilously over the stone parapet, as though in leaning so he might come meaningfully closer to the scene to which he was bearing witness. A scene that he would never forget, a scene indelibly etched into his mind and heart. For the thing he saw was surely made of the mistbound stuff of dreams, and as it hastened westward across the Plains his soul exalted.

  “The Blue Banner soars!” Silmarien cried, the sun of new morning aglow in his face. “The North March Mounted Reserve rides! And there! Master Colinnan and the House of Cilcannan! I can see Harlastian’s Eye of the Watch! And wolves, the war wolves of Galledine, hundreds of them running at the wings. And look, Speedy, look! The Black Prince and his Ithramen! Oh, see how they shine!”

  Spedamon did not look.

  “I do not need to see them,” said the older Fian, his head bowed, his gaze never straying from the stiff unmoving form stretched across the rounded stumps of his legs. “I have no reason to disbelieve you.”

  “But it is so glorious!” Silmarien insisted. “The banners, the bronze, sunlight gleaming on steel! You must see this for yourself! How did I not mark them earlier? How was I so blind? There was a great white fog on the grasses, but I did not think – ”

  “The great white fog was in your mind, Silly. An illusion, there and not there. A Watcher needs to be able to discern the difference.” Spedamon’s voice was wistful and distant. “But you are young, and not entirely incompetent – there remains some very real reason to harbour hope for you.”

  Silmarien turned at the older man’s tone, and was struck by that which he saw. The lines in Spedamon’s face seemed deeper, darker, his lips oddly thin and pale, and the light in his gaze was dimmed. A pallid shade had invaded his cheeks and chin, and the skin beneath his eyes looked bruised, making his mien a macabre masque of luminance and gloom. Verily, the young Watcher had never seen a harder, more haggard visage.

  “Speedy.”

  The old warder did not reply.

  “Spedamon. Let the bird go.”

  A throkk had fallen from the sky during the worst of the storm, striking the summit of the Warwatch with a gruesome crunch. One wing was twisted and folded back unnaturally, the other had snapped when it slammed against the stone. The huge war hawk’s head lolled loosely upon its neck, its beak broken into razor-sharp shards, its round argent eyes staring vacantly, vacuously. The dark grey contour feathers of its back and rump and the exposed silver down of its breast were drenched with blood, both red and black, and its tail was badly scorched.

  “Leave it,” repeated the Signaller. “Let the bird go. Please.”

  Spedamon slumped in his strange wheeled chair, his skin yet shriveled from the night’s rain, the dead raptor draped across what remained of his ruined thighs. He had changed. Fundamentally and irrevocably. And not for the better. Something had shattered within him. His sense of humour had been torn from him; his ability to see the sheen in the dullest and darkest of things had been devastated. And his eternal optimism had proven not so everlasting after all.

  Guilt is a weight that can crush even the strongest of spirits.

  For it had been he, Spedamon of the Grey Watch, who had bidden the great war hawks of the north from their rocky roosts on the Rothrange. It had been he who had summoned them into the skies over the Seven Hills to do battle with the golgarrai. He had called the throkka to war, urging them from the safety and security of their eyries to senseless slaughter and inevitable extinction. He, Spedamon of the Grey Watch, was their destroyer as surely as though he had snapped their necks with his own withered hands.

  “You should go, Silmarien.” The old warder said quietly. “Go down to the killing fields. Join with the Watch, bloody your blade in battle. Plunge yourself in the ecstasy of victory, and drink deep from the grail of glory. For surely you will find neither here.”

  Silmarien peered at his companion with concern, with compassion, but there was also a cloud of confusion flushing his fair features. He had seen but twenty-one summers of Second Earth, and lacked the knowledge and experience necessary for immersive empathy. He did, however, feel a sincere sympathy for the venerable Watcher, a tender
affinity born of love and respect and the simple decency of a good man. And though he knew not why, he found that he wanted to weep.

  “Speedy – ”

  “Go, Silly.” Spedamon waved one hand. “Just go. The need for signalmen has passed. Go join the fray. Should you not do so, the day will come that you will wish you had. And you are far too young to be burdened by regret.”

  Silmarien gazed at his friend through a translucent film of tears. He was rewarded with a cracked smile beneath a grey scowl, and the emphatic jerk of a grizzled chin. Go. The youthful warder wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, heaved a heavy sigh, then nodded. And taking up his sword and spear, Silmarien of the Grey Watch began the long descent of Dead Man’s Climb.

  Spedamon saw his comrade go, then looked down upon the bloodied, broken carcass of the war hawk once more. He inhaled deeply, holding his breath for fear of whimpering. His body shuddered beneath the guilt and shame racking him, ravaging him. Such dreadful guilt and shame. The two were frequently compared to rust eating at iron, chewing and devouring the soul until, like the decaying metal, nothing was left of it save dust. But his own shame and guilt were more akin to acid, burning rapidly, irresistibly, gorging a path to his heart, seeking to punish him, to destroy him.

  And well they should. He had sent the noble throkka to their doom. And from that there could be no recovering, and for it no forgiveness. Not ever.

  And he was far too old to be burdened by regret.

  Watcher Spedamon lowered his chin to his chest. Tenderly, lovingly, he petted the dead bird’s head. He then exhaled softly, so very softly. And did not inhale again.

  The allied army came to a halt half a mile from the Blood King’s rearguard and reserve forces. Six distinct rectangular formations of warriors from Lindannan and Ithramis and the Erelian Republic. Black-clad Arbamas and the white-armoured knights of the Prince’s Own were front and centre, three lines deep and shining in the sun. Aback their magnificent mirarra and anchored by Harlastian’s Eye of the Watch, Colinnan and the House of Cilcannan held the southern flank beneath the stampeding standard of the Raging Bull. To the north was assembled the fabled North March Mounted Reserve, the brothers Teagh and Runningwolf of Rheln at the fore, the Blue Banner rippling like water in the morning light. Behind the Southmen and the Fiannar were blocks of Ithramian cavalry, and between these were massed the serried ranks of the Black Prince’s infantry. And prowling the Plains to the south and running along the River Ruil were the warokka of Teraras, Lord of Galledine.