by Sean Rodden
The Shield Maiden tapped her breast once, twice.
“Hail, Noldarion.” She cast a quick glance to the crude bulwark of Dwarkash bodies that the Fiannian children had hastily erected. “Though it does not lack for it, you heap honour and glory upon the House of Cilcannan. I commend you. Master Colinnan would be surpassingly proud.” She paused. “As would your mother.”
With an effort approaching titanic proportions, the young Heir managed to keep himself from beaming.
“I thank you, Shield Maiden. My mother is with us, though she likely didn’t witness what I… what we… what was done here. She leads the women of my House on the left of the line.”
Caelle nodded briskly.
“Mistress Lucce is a fierce warrior and a capable captain, Noldarion. Nevertheless, the left flank falters and will fail soon. When it does so, you and your company will strike with me to the right. Understood?”
Instantly, all passion and fervour quit the young Heir’s countenance. A struggle ensued, playing across his fair features, as opposing emotions sought dominance. His cheeks twitched, his lips quivered. His mouth moved as though he wished to speak, yet no words came. But then his face fell still, and the light in his eyes turned dark.
The warrior inclined his head and fisted his rillagh.
“As you say, Shield Maiden.” His voice was deep and even. “As you will.”
Caelle nodded once more, nudged her mirarran about, and stared silently into the maelstrom of battle. She shed a shallow sigh. Far easier to stomach the depredations of war than see the innocence of childhood shattered too soon.
Before her, infant Aranion cooed, but she did not look down. Instead, she checked the set of her shield. Unsheathed her sword.
As I will.
And in that moment, the left flank of the Fiannar collapsed.
At least one poet would argue that the saddest of sad words are ‘it might have been’. Others will claim that ‘I don’t love you anymore’ and ‘I like you as a friend’ are fundamentally more melancholic. Those who opt for simplicity insist that ‘goodbye’ is the word most woeful.
They would all be wrong.
For the most sorrowing words written or spoken or to have formed in the mind of the storyteller are these:
“Children are dying.”
First Knight Lalindel’s voice was the sound of weeping without tears. A knife in a heart too parched to bleed. Absolute anguish and agony. Devastating despair. Half a mile below the altitudinous battlements of Allaura, beneath wafting fogs that were swiftly searing away under the ascendant sun, women and children and mirarra were fighting for their lives. Fighting and falling. Falling and screaming. Screaming and dying.
“Why, yes,” drawled Prime Consul Ingallin. He covered his mouth with one beringed hand. “So they are. How unfortunate.”
The First Knight of the Sul Athaifain whirled upon the Chancellor in fury.
“I have always suspected that you were touched by Shadow, avui mokshar.” Lalindel’s sword whispered from its sheath, a hushed promise of redress, of justice. “I am now certain that you serve the Dark, and have ever done so.”
To either side of him, the Sun Knights in his command also leveled their weapons, scintillant Athain steel shining as white and as silent as the cold morning sun.
Ingallin slowly swivelled his head, peered upon the First Knight. He lowered his hand from his face. Lalindel did not fail to mark the last fleet uncurling of a smile before the Chancellor’s lips straightened once more.
“You would draw upon the Prime Consul of your King? What do you intend, First Knight? Will you cut me down and compound your penchant for insults and insolence with the sin of kinslaughter? And for what? Because I insist on upholding and enforcing the Laws of Gavrayel? You name me avui mokshar, but tell me, which of us here now swoons in the shadow of Asrayal – you or I?”
“You wrote those Laws, mokshar. Or at the least, suggested they be written.”
“I did.”
“Then unwrite them. Now.”
Ingallin sighed. “I am a Law-maker, First Knight, not a lawbreaker. Surely you must know that only the King may unmake a Law once it is decreed. And though we may question them on occasion, it is our sincerest duty, yours and mine, to uphold the Laws of our folk.”
Lalindel pressed the very tip of his sword to the Chancellor’s chest.
“Prince Evangael commanded that I listen carefully to your counsel. I now know why. Your heart is a wasteland, Ingallin. And you have no soul.”
The thin screams of dying children drifted up from the canyon below.
The Prime Consul’s mouth twitched toward a smirk.
“Be that as it may, my doughty First Knight. I will not weep for it. For a being without a soul is the freest of creatures.” He spread his long arms, made a show of shaking his hands. “And there are no chains on me.”
Lalindel jerked his hand ever so slightly, and a flower of bright blood bloomed about the point of his sword.
“You will provide me the words of power that cast wide the Glass Gate, Chancellor. You will tell them to me. Believe in your black heart that I will gladly suffer eternal damnation to preserve Prince Evangael’s promise of sanctuary.”
A particularly forlorn wail clawed its way up the face of the Glass Gate, like splintered nails shrieking along slate.
Ingallin looked down upon his sullied silks. He sighed shallowly, reached up and grasped the blade of the First Knight’s sword with both hands. Blood oozed between his fingers, but he held the weapon there, precisely where it was, and he smiled. He then pulled blade to him so that the tip sank a little deeper into the meat of his bleeding chest.
“You may flay the skin from my flesh, Lalindel.; you may strip the flesh from my bones; you may crack my bones and suck out the marrow while it is yet warm and wet. But you will not have from me that which you demand. I will not share the words of power with one who would so wilfully and so errantly defy the Laws of Gavrayel. You could slay me where I stand, yes, but it would avail you nothing and less – the Fiannar will still be slaughtered, and you would thereafter be named Kinslaughterer and Oathbreaker and, aye verily, avui mokshar. And word of your sordid shame will spread like the foulest plague throughout the Three Worlds, and the Light will refuse to shine for you, and you will be spurned and shunned by all even unto the Night Beyond the End of Days. You might seek succour in death, but I assure you, you will find none there – only a more persistent and poignant pain. So pray proceed, First Knight. Do as you will. I offer no resistance.”
The First Knight said naught, though fury screamed in his aspect. As the heartrending cry of another dying child violated his ears, he crushed his eyes closed, twisted his head to one side, grimaced –
But he did no more.
Prime Consul Ingallin sneered, scornfully pushing Lalindel’s sword away. His face then assumed an air of exaggerated empathy, and he spread his arms before him, glittering hands uplifted, palms open and empty but for their scarlet stigmata.
‘I understand, my dear Lalindel. I am not bereft of – what is the word? – compassion. I know how difficult it must be for one whose only worth is found in war to witness this unhappy thing” – without looking, he gestured to the massacre being perpetrated below them – “and do nothing. But do not chastise yourself, good Knight, for even the most capable among us do nothing when there is nothing to be done.”
The First Knight turned away from the Chancellor. He lowered his sword, and gazed out and down upon the horror beneath. A pair of high tinny wails slid into his skull like red-hot daggers. Tears of molten silver slipped down his smooth cheeks, slow and silent.
“No.”
Ingallin arched his pale brows. “No? What, pray tell, do you mean by ‘no’, good Lalindel?”
“You are mistaken, Chancellor.”
The Prime Consul hissed inwardly. He took a swift step backward. His pallid features blanched even more as he considered that he had calculated incorrectly, drastically so,
concluding that the First Knight had resolved to murder him after all. Ingallin retreated further, his thin, soft, bejeweled hands rising in perfunctory resistance. He felt a loosening in his abdomen, and something tepid and unseemly slithered down his thighs.
“Yes, Chancellor,” Lalindel proceeded, staring down. The blade of his sword sizzled and crackled with electrical energy. “You are mistaken. Terribly so. For there is never nothing to be done. There is never nothing left for a good and virtuous soul to do, never no option remaining. There is always… something.”
Ingallin reeled and fled.
Lalindel disregarded the Chancellor entirely. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the bitter reeks of death and despair, holding them in his heart as a mourner would hoard pain. He then exhaled, his breath cool and fresh and fragrant. He wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. And followed by each and every warrior in his command, the First Knight of the Sul Athaifain leapt out from the battlements into the dying mists of morning.
The dwar-Durka never saw them coming.
The Ten Axes of the Fifth Army slammed into the back of the Drone’s horde like massive metal-sheathed battering rams equipped with churning axe-blades and thundering hammerheads. Dozens of Dwarks fell in the initial assault. Scores more followed before the bald, crimson-eyed, slate-skinned fiends even realized what was happening, managed to organize themselves, and reacted. More than thirty were already dead when the first savage khurlur were raised in anything resembling a practicable defence or coordinated counter attack.
But there were thousands of dwar-Durka. Five, six thousand, and then some.
And only ten Daradur.
The kulgord had caught and engaged the enemy while about a third of the Dwarkash army was still in the fissure that led to the dolomitic killing ground of the stronghold. The Stone Lords had only a vague notion of what was transpiring beyond their immediate position – for the crevasse jogged hard to the right before opening into the great basin beneath the Glass Wall and the Lamps of Welcome, thus limiting the lines of both sight and sound – but that notion was one of utmost woe and heart-breaking despair. Not their own, of course, as woe and despair were things unfamiliar to the Stone Lords. However, the Deathward of Lady Cerriste were not so insusceptible, and every Daradun warrior there could detect, perceive, and in a limited way feel the Fiannar’s pain. This rare and exceptional empathy and the dim din of distant discord served only to seed the kulgord’s wrath, to feed its fury, and the Ten Axes of the Fifth Army ripped and pummeled the dwar-Durka as though the burly brutes were but desiccated timber in a raging wildfire.
And for a time, raging wildfire was sufficient.
Despite being little more than mindless automatons of war, the Dwarks possessed some semblant sense of self-preservation, and they knew fear. It was fear that controlled them, fear that compelled them, and ironically, fear that made them so incredibly fearsome. But fear also made them vulnerable, susceptible to moments of incapacitating terror, when their eyes would widen and the red fire in them would gutter like torchlight in the wake of a passing giant – and they would forget their hatred, their madness, their lust for blood. And it was then that they could be taken and butchered until such time as they rose from their fugue to strike back in renewed and furious frenzy.
The secret to their destruction was in not permitting them to rise.
Jadun swung his war-axe low as Dandar brought his hammer down high. A dwar-Durk fell, severed in two at the waist; the next Dwark was crushed to the stone floor, his head driven down between his shoulders and lost somewhere amid the pulverized organs in his belly. Two more dwar-Durka swiftly followed. And then two, then four, then six more again.
“I almost forgot how much fun this is, priest!” the Captain shouted as his axe chopped downward, splitting a foe lengthwise along the middle, the two halves of the fiend peeling away in opposite directions. “I could do this forever!”
“You might have to, kulg-Kor,” Dandar replied, one heavy fist punching aside an attack aimed at his Captain’s exposed chest even as his hammerhead obliterated the assailant’s face. “There’s definitely enough of them to keep us busy that long!”
The kulg-Kor and the urthron had fought beside one another for centuries, and for the last one hundred and sixty years they had done so in the same kulgord of the kanga Kulgum. They were thoroughly familiar with one another’s battle styles and fighting tendencies, each intuitively aware of what the other would do in any given circumstance of combat, never needing to guess, never reacting, but only doing. And doing with deadly proficiency. It was thus with all the warriors in Jadun’s company. Unlike the Wandering Guard, who fought as individuals in such loosely connected cohesion that there seemed, deceptively, to be no cohesion at all, each kulgord of the Five Armies operated as a single massive mechanism, coordinated and synchronic, every working part made greater and more lethal for its function within and its service to the whole.
Axes threshed, hammers crushed, mauls mashed.
Dwarks died.
If ever a dark and terrible beauty abided in brutality, it was there, that morning, in the killing machine of that kulgord at war.
Nevertheless, the Fiannar did not have forever.
In war, as in nature, unless specifically directed or trained to do otherwise, antagonists will ever seek the path of least resistance. Hungry prides of lions will stalk and pounce upon the oldest and the weakest antelopes on the savannah; the wolf pack will chase down calves that cannot keep pace with the stampeding herd; carnivorous whales of the great ocean will separate from their pods the seals that are the poorest swimmers. So when the eastern wing of the Fiannar finally collapsed, the dwar-Durka surged to that side, wild dogs on a wounded deer, eager to overwhelm the flailing and failing foe.
Marking this rush to the broken left, and seeing the centre about Watchcaptain Emanthe hold precariously while the right flank stood firm, the Shield Maiden of the Fiannar raised her fiery eyes to the silent sky and her sword to the unseen sun, and a wan grey light washed over both blaze and blade.
“Ride!” she cried aloud, fierce and fell. “Ei vech aphan, Fiannari! Salsylen atinai! Dhir dri, mirarrai! Dhir! Ride!”
And forth they rode.
Racing across the stone floor of the basin, Caelle’s company swiftly closed the distance between itself and the remnants of the Deathward line. Intuitively aware of the Shield Maiden’s intentions, the embattled warriors of the right wing pulled away from the western cliff, permitting the party passage between their steel and the gorge’s stone. And with weapons bared and bristling, Caelle and her guard plunged into the raving madness of the melee, and thenceforth all was war and wrath and ruin.
Mundar of Dul-darad led the charge. War-axes churning, the great Stone Lord threshed through the throng of dwar-Durka, and none there were that could stand against him. The ironclad fiends fell away from him like hovels in a hurricane, many of them flying apart in bits and pieces and cloven chunks. He was immediately followed by Chelyse and Noldarion, leading a wedge of Green Watch and determined Deathward youth. At the heart of the formation rode Caelle, her sword drawn and at the ready, her small shield hovering protectively over the swaddled bundle between her thighs.
In the wake of the wedge ran scores upon scores of younger children, most of whom were grim and quiet, some alarmingly so, while others were wide-eyed and weeping. A small number of the very youngest were wailing aloud. But most were armed and able, all were Fiannar to their very cores, and none would go down into the long darkness without hot blood on their blades. The right flank of the Deathward line quickly closed aside and behind the children, enfolding about them, ushering them along the edifice, where warding them from Dwarkash attacks was an easier task, and few were the foes that penetrated that fence of ire and iron. But whenever a Dwark did manage to come against them, the children swarmed him like bees stirred from an imperiled nest, stinging him to death with sleek lengths of Fiannian steel.
At the canyon’s he
art, the centre of the line swiftly formed a defensive circle. Fewer than two hundred weary and wounded women struggled there, ferocious and frantic. Watchcaptain Emanthe led them, an incarnation of War if ever there was one, and her battle fury was the stuff from which myths are made. Shields emblazoned with the Flaming Sword, the White Swan and the Silver Star were pressed together to form a round wall, and from behind this shining barrier long swords and longer spears slid with lethal precision, and raging dwar-Durka were slain by the dozen. Nevertheless, the circle slowly shrank in upon itself as valiant Fiannar fell beneath the storm of khurlur that crashed against them, and the burning resolve of the defenders deteriorated into a thing more akin to ice-cold resignation. The beleaguered women started to sing, and their song was a sorrow of the soul, a laleth to their own departing, and tears of blood streamed down their cheeks. But when Emanthe went down with a cry of inconceivable and inconsolable grief, their laleth lapsed, and was replaced by the slick wet sounds of silent dying. Set after unseeing set, the Eyes of Doom drooped closed.
The Fiannar on the shattered left flank fared even worse. Far worse. The atrocities that transpired in that place and the specific horrors visited upon the women and children there will not be described here. Neither here nor otherwhere, not at any time, not for any reason. Forsooth, though the Teller himself may possess the apposite and appropriate words, there are things in the Three Worlds so invidious, so insidious, that their stories should be forever left unspoken. Some tales need never be told. Verily, there are miseries that must be denied the company they so dearly love.
The Shield Maiden’s wedge of warriors drove deep into the Dwarkash horde. Hacking and slashing, thrusting and slicing, they fought their way along the western cliff, keeping the rock to their right, striving to push through and past the mass of enraged enemies. Mundar of the Wandering Guard ploughed the field of battle, sowing the seeds of fear and doubt in the minds of the dwar-Durka, reaping his hellish harvest of flesh and blood. Chelyse’s sword rang of death and slaughter, and her bright red tresses flew about her like torrents of blood aflame. Noldarion brawled as would the Raging Bull beneath which he rode, bawling challenges to his foes and calling encouragement to his friends, and the warrior who had been a boy became a hero of everlasting legend. And warders of the Green Watch fended the flank, steadfast and staunch, determinedly deflecting all assaults away from the Shield Maiden and her precious charge.