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

by Sean Rodden

  Varonin nodded and gestured to a group of warders nearby.

  Heaving a weary sough, Taresse followed her Lord.

  Alvarion soon paused once more. He pulled closer a borrowed cloak and hood of the Watch – his own had been overly blotched with blood – and peered about him. The field of slaughter stretched in all directions: From the steep rocky slopes of Caramel Dark to the more gradual rise of the Maples; before and behind the three grassy hills and the vales between them; from the corpse-clogged shallows all along the southern bank of the River Ruil to the burned place on the Plains where the fires of the Hellstorm had blasted down. Death and devastation everywhere. The mortal detritus and the metal debris of war. Discarded weapons, battered armour, shattered shields. Spears sticking up at strange angles like the last wretched remnants of a long dead forest. The once-proud pennons of historied tribes and the grand standards of ancient kingdoms, torn and trampled and denuded of their dignity. And bodies, so many bodies, numbered not in the thousands but in the tens of thousands. Men and beasts, Urkroks and stone giants and Unmen, all cast and snarled together in the neverending slumber of dreamless death.

  Scores of Fiannar picked their way among seas of the slain, seeking the corpses of husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends and lovers, collecting the remains, the weapons, the blood-blemished rillagha. They did so in total silence, neither grieving nor keening, but remembering and revering.

  The Lord of the Deathward tucked the shred of a Silver Star standard into his belt. His bleak grey gaze lingered momentarily upon the wide stretch of cursed earth where the Nothirings of Invarnoth had been massacred. The Northmen lay in masses of dead hundreds, entangled with and indistinguishable from their long-loathed nemeses, the Wulfings of Var. Five thousand Sons of Noth. Such senseless slaughter, such noble sacrifice. Alvarion resolved to have the cadavers that could be identified as Nothirings transferred to the thirty-seven longships that remained moored in the Bund and await there instructions from Invarnoth, and should the body of Ingvar Dragonsbane be found, that he be returned in honour to his father, the King of the Nothira. Familiar with Eleric Bloodhand’s infamously foul temperament, Alvarion knew the latter gesture would not go well.

  The Lord heaved the sigh of the dog-tired yet determined man, and looked away. Not far to the east was the centre of the second front, where the ruin of the foe had been wrought by Arbamas and the knights of the Prince’s Own. Already rumour of the Black Prince’s prowess was approaching legendary proportions. Absently, Alvarion wondered what, if anything, was being said of his own.

  “This,” he mused as he picked his way among the numberless dead once more, “is not how I would be remembered.”

  “How is that, nephew? As the Lord and saviour of your people?”

  “Birthright has naught to do with nobility, uncle-wife,” Alvarion said, working his way eastward. His eyes were fixed upon the ground, on the numberless, nameless, faceless dead that lay there. But he did not truly see them. They all simply blurred together now, tossed and tumbled and washed away beneath the waves of guilt that crashed against his salient soul. “And I am certainly no saviour. I know of twenty hundred Deathward souls who would affirm this.”

  “And I know of twenty hundred more who would insist otherwise.”

  “This was an Idallic victory,” attested the Lord as he stepped over the form of a fallen giant, “one from which the Fiannar will likely never recover. Forsooth, some might rename it an Alvaric victory now, and I would neither fault nor resent them for doing so.”

  Taresse sniffed.

  “Cease your wallowing, nephew. That which happened here and Idallion’s tragic triumph at Gan Gebbernin are in no way comparable. The former is a superb illustration of perseverance against all possible odds, whereas the latter was the seal of doom for a dynasty. Many died here, yes, but you have seen to it that our women and children are safe and secure, and the future of the Fiannar is assured.”

  “If you truly believed your own words, uncle-wife, you would temper your tone when speaking with me.”

  The wife of Eldurion sniffed again, frowned at an exceedingly foul odour, then followed her Lord over the prone corpse.

  “I always believe my own words, nephew,” she contended, “and I would do no such – ”

  And abruptly, her words died.

  The Lord of the Fiannar instinctively turned at the sudden cessation of the woman’s speech, Findroth whooshing from its sheath in a burst of golden fire.

  Taresse stood there, a few strides away, staring at Alvarion with glazed grey eyes. The lines of her face were deeper, darker, and the stoop to her posture was more pronounced, her shoulders slumped, her legs seemingly unsteady. Her wounds numbered in the dozens, most of them minor and abandoned to the ministrations of the morning air, some more serious and bound with balm and bloodstained bandages, a few so severe that they would have made strong men weep. And the greater number of these injuries, Alvarion knew, had been incurred when she had absorbed blows that had been intended for him, and the pain she endured would have been his own were it not for her courage, her unyielding loyalty, the purity of her love.

  And now, on his behalf, in his stead, Taresse had offered her blood and her pain one final time.

  The Fiann’s jaw fell open, and blood bubbled over her lower lip. She fixed her Lord with the all-seeing and unseeing stare of the dead, made a ghastly gurgling sound, then fell face-first to the defiled earth.

  And clinging to her back was the white-frocked form of a pretty little girl.

  The Lord of the Fiannar stumbled backward, shocked, stupefied. The flames of Findroth guttered as though beset by a brumal wind.

  Waif looked up from her insectile crouch. Her cherubic face beamed within a frame of gleaming golden locks. Blood spattered her cheeks. A globule of moist mucus burbled in one nostril. Saliva trickled down her chin. One thin arm clutched a badly burned object tightly to her budding breasts; the hand of the other arm was plunged wrist-deep into the warrior woman’s back.

  Alvarion mutely mouthed his aunt’s name.

  And then the little girl giggled and tore out Taresse’s spine.

  The Lord heard himself scream.

  Waif rose to her feet, standing upon the small of Taresse’s back. The Fiann’s spine hung from her hand like the freshly skinned skeleton of a snake. The girl’s big blue eyes blazed above an insanely giddy grin.

  “That wasn’t very lordly of you, now was it?”

  Alvarion felt a wave of vertigo beset him, whelming against his consciousness, and it was only by sheer strength of will that he remained on his feet. Desperately, still fighting for balance, he bade the fire of Findroth burn the sorcerous assault away.

  But Waif only sniggered once more and licked the snot from her nose. Her tongue was stained black.

  “That won’t work, fool. It isn’t simple sorcery that afflicts you so, but the effects of warped Time. For I existed before Time, and as such I abide outside its laws and limitations. Well, partially so, anyway.” She gestured with Taresse’s wobbling backbone. “See about us? The world has stilled, and those who would aid you, or at least try to, are suspended like so many unblinking gape-mouthed fish in a flash-frozen lake. And they can’t disturb us here inside our little bubble, this tiny temporal irregularity of ours, any more than we can affect them there.”

  The Lord looked around him, and exactly as the little girl had said, everything beyond a certain radius had been struck immobile. Several yards away, Marshal Varonin was motionless in mid-turn, his hood halfway off his head, his sword wedged harmlessly in midair. In every direction, warders of the Watch were static and stabile, stationary figures on a stone motif. In the distance, astride a rigid rearing Arrowwing, the Sun Lord Thrannien faced them, his long braided hair afloat and fixed fast in the pall, an arrow set to a half-drawn string and aimed directly at Waif. Beyond the Prince, vague and blurred above the battlefield, an inert Golden Strype drooped in the dead air like the spirit of a broken man.


  “Go ahead,” snickered Waif, “scream again. They can’t hear you. Or maybe they can. I don’t really know. I don’t really care.” She casually slung Taresse’s spine over one shoulder. “I just like it when you scream. I like it a lot.”

  Lord Alvarion forced the last vestiges of vertigo aside and away. He commanded his heart to beat a little slower, his blood to burn a little cooler, and chased the shivers from his skin. Lowering his sword, he looked again upon the little girl, and his gaze was as stark and as clear as a cloudless winter sky.

  “You will not have that pleasure again, demon,” Alvarion said quietly. “Flay the skin from my flesh, carve my eyes from their sockets, rip my heart from my chest – you will never hear me scream again.”

  “Good ideas, all, but painfully unoriginal, and far too easy. Much like Mak Lorro’s silly stories – did you know that the ugly bitch fancies herself a bard of some talent and importance? Well, fancied, anyway. Getting herself killed kind of got in her way. Death serves and saves us all if we give it enough time.”

  Alvarion glanced at the burned thing that the girl held tightly to her chest, and a sudden surge of nausea threatened his self-enforced calm. With some effort, he pushed the biliousness back and down, and spat the sour tang from his tongue.

  “If you have come to parley, demon, then you err in your estimation of my patience. Nevertheless, I will hear you while tolerance persists, though I assure you that that will not be long. So speak swiftly, if you must. And then I shall take my vengeance. You will perish on the Blade of Defurien this day.”

  Waif smiled so very sweetly. “Will I?”

  The Lord said nothing.

  The little girl cocked her head.

  “And what Blade of Defurien might this be? Surely not that which was wrought by Cothra’s hands. For I was there for the forging of that fine work, and I saw its very first flames spark and burn. I saw it wielded in the first war against illustrious Ilurin, and in a dozen wars since. I would know the Blade if it were here before me – and I would know if it is not.”

  Findroth’s fire flickered.

  The girl’s sweet smile twisted into a maniacal grin.

  “And it most definitely is not.”

  More than half a mile away, Thrannien of the Neverborn strove against the stillness of Time. Although he had existed before the Beginning, the Sun Lord’s corporeal form had not, and it now seemed securely bound and shackled in chains the size of mountain ranges. Even the flow of his thoughts was agonizingly slow and deliberate, like a river swollen thick with mud. But his salient soul was no so affected, not so afflicted, and wrath blazed there as would a world aflame, wild and unchecked.

  The Prince could feel his half-drawn bowstring pressing into his fingertips. He could sense the thrum of invisible energy stored in the bent ivory and the stretched silk. He could hear the high thin wail of power struggling for release. And then he realized that the whine was coming from him, from his chest and throat – a war-cry caught and held fast in the icy clutches of frozen Time. He raged against the rigidity of his body, but the only thing the fire of his fury burned was his own soul.

  Thrannien had seen the Fiannian woman step over the headless dead Graniant. He had detected a blinding blur of white and gold as the child inhabited by the sumanam bounded upon her back. And although he had reacted instantly, he had not been swift enough. The Leech had deferred Time – or had leapt beyond its limits – well before the Sun Lord’s bowstring was fully drawn.

  And so the Athain Prince had been compelled to watch the woman fall, to see her spine ripped from her back, to hear the Lord of the Fiannar scream in horror. Compelled to watch and listen and do nothing. He had never felt so helpless, had never been so useless. But as he witnessed Alvarion of the House of Eldurion confront the sumanam, flaming Findroth in hand, he felt the warmth of his wrath move from his soul into his heart, and from there into his bloodstream, seeking his muscles. But its progress was slow, so very slow, like a flow of lava crawling uphill.

  Thrannien concentrated, calling upon the Light. And as his wrath’s heat loosened his throat and reached his tongue, blinding white words formed in his thoughts, and he managed to emit a fragmented humming sound.

  His lips parted imperceptibly. His tongue twitched. Ivory creaked. Soon Thrannien, Prince of the Folk of Gavrayel, would be able to sing.

  And so too would his bow.

  “I wonder, where is Grimroth?” Waif frowned and looked about her, a childish petulance pursing her lips. She gestured eastward with Taresse’s spine. “Is it at that monstrosity you call New Ungloth? Have you sent an assassin to slay poor Suru-luk? Aha! Of course, you have. How very proactive of you! I do applaud your practicality.” She clapped the Fiann’s backbone and the burned thing together once, twice, then returned the former to her shoulder and the latter to her bosom. “Well, I suppose it can and will do no harm to inform you that I suspect your little scheme has succeeded, though I cannot profess to apperceive any particulars. You must tell me how you managed this most impressive feat!”

  Alvarion stood as rigid and as silent as the warders of the Grey Watch suspended in Time about him.

  The little girl’s churlish frown twisted into an angry scowl.

  “No need to be so rude, Master Lord Sir. Nor is it warranted – I have known latrine slaves who were higher and mightier than you. If you consider me to be beneath you, imagine how this one feels.” She stamped one small foot on Taresse’s back. Then, tilting her head at a thoughtful angle, the golden child looked down upon the dead Fiann, and the furrows in her face fell away. She raised her gaze once more, and smiled. “Ah! I think I have it now – you sent this one’s capable husband on your errand of murder with the Blade in hand. Of course! Where else would the good Marshal Eldurion be? He isn’t here, certainly, else he would be at your side. And he did not partake in the festivities over these last few days.”

  The Lord of the Fiannar kept his lips clasped together, clenched his teeth a touch more tightly. He resisted the urge to reach up and draw an errant finger over the scar beneath his left eye; his arm remained at his side and he balled his hand into a fist instead. Amber and angry, Findroth’s flames whorled up his other arm.

  The little girl stepped down from the dead woman’s back, and skipped deliberately and directly to Lord Alvarion. She stopped there, less than a stride from him, staring up at him with those round blue eyes, her tousled blonde locks ever so radiant in the opaque light. She bounced on the balls of her feet and giggled.

  “Am I vexing you, Master Lord Sir? Am I being insufferable and irksome? Surely you would not strike a child! A wife, perhaps, but never a child.” Waif grinned so broadly that her face became a caricature of itself. “Tell me, do you beat the beautiful Lady Cerriste? Do you punish her when she makes mistakes or misbehaves? And do you enjoy hurting her? I only ask because” – and impossibly, the girl’s grin widened – “I know I do.”

  Alvarion wanted to take a step back – no, two steps, three steps, more – he wanted to place distance between himself and the horrid creature that stood before him, looking up at him in the guise of a child, grinning, giggling. But he did not withdraw, he did not retreat. Nor did he move forward. He but stood his ground, pushing his rage back and down, clearing his mind of the dark things that the Leech would have infest and fester there. The tip of Findroth’s blade touched the ground a palm’s width from the demonic imp’s dirty feet. Tongues of fire licked closer still.

  “You cannot hurt her, demon,” the Lord of the Deathward said quietly, defiantly. “She is quite safe, and well beyond your reach. But I am not. I am right here, right now. And should you wish to harm me, you are welcome to try.”

  Waif puckered her lips, nodded her head, then shook it.

  “The safety of the Lady and her being beyond my reach are two totally different things. But tomatoes, potatoes, right? Another tale for another time. What really interests me is the mystery of why you do not smite me, Master Lord Sir, of why you don’t s
trike me down. Do you believe that, as it is with most total cunts and cocksuckers, my own existence is punishment enough? Or have you simply lost your passion for violence? Ah, that is a part of it, I see! But there is more. There’s something else, isn’t there? Something so basic, so fundamental that it’s perfectly primal. I touched on it earlier, I think: You simply cannot bring yourself to harm a child.”

  Alvarion’s hand strayed to the scar on his cheek.

  The little girl beamed triumphantly.

  “Do I hit the target, Master Lord Sir? I do, don’t I? Or at least near enough not to make any difference. I wonder, what would it take to stir you to strike me? I have slain your dear old auntie and made a scarf of her spine – blood and bone are the new black, if you haven’t heard – yet here you stand, cold as a fish, completely unmoved. Perhaps you are more resilient than I thought. Or maybe you didn’t like her that much after all. Either way, I do believe I have something that will succeed in fanning the flames of your wrath. Or break you utterly.”

  The Lord lowered his hand.

  Waif stood on her tiptoes and leaned forward conspiratorially.

  “You see, I don’t share your sentiments about hurting children. Why would I? Most of them are just going to grow up to be assholes anyway.”

  The little girl smirked like a scamp, settled back on her heels again, then stepped aside. She motioned with the burned thing, and the air above Taresse’s body shimmered as something smooth and ovoid materialized there. Initially, the conjuration seemed like a large pane of glass, sheer and transparent, and Alvarion could see through it to the corpse-ridden battlefield beyond. Then it appeared to be a mirror, its flat vertical surface reflecting precise images of Waif, the Lord, and the vast empty expanse of the Northern Plains behind them. And finally, it became a smooth crystal screen, glinting brightly about its circumference, but bleak and dismal in its depths.

  And that which was portrayed therein was darker still.