Shattered Shields

by Jennifer Brozek

  Sundown.

  The mist began to shift and transform. Something moved within the fog. Soldiers screamed and broke ranks as cold hands dragged them from their saddles, as invisible teeth closed on their throats.

  Something passed in front of Samidar’s face. She swung her sword at it and felt chill radiate along the length of the blade to her hand. She gasped, but kept her grip on the hilt. Something flitted by her again, a gray face that regarded her with dead eyes.

  Raxul!

  More faces and shapes emerged, and some of them formed a protective shield around Samidar. She knew them now, the priestesses and the village dead—all the ghosts of Shaloneh.

  And there, with her sisters, was Jannica.

  “Beloved!” Samidar cried, reaching a hand toward Jannica’s misty shade.

  Jannica smiled back with a dead smile.

  Persea’s soldiers were in full rout, but the ghosts pursued them, taking their full measure of vengeance. Not a man made it back alive to the fortress gates, and riderless horses scattered across the hillside.

  The mist began to dissolve, and the ghosts of Shaloneh faded away. Raxul and Jannica lingered to the last and seemed to join hands in their final moment. Samidar blinked back tears, yet she knew the fight was still not over.

  “Give me the bow, Persea!” she shouted. She had no doubt that the witch could hear her. She urged her stallion forward again toward the gates, picking her way carefully among the torn and shredded bodies.

  A full moon, now just above the horizon, cast her shadow far before her. She glanced back over her shoulder to take note of it, effulgent and deep golden, a conjurer’s moon.

  She saw something else as well, drops of fire in the sky falling with smoky trails straight for her. Samidar raised her right hand, and the buckler on her arm seemed to catch the moonlight and direct it in a new direction. The reflected light brushed against the burning droplets and extinguished them.

  “That trick won’t work twice,” Samidar murmured.

  Persea’s thoughts echoed in Samidar’s mind. Then look for me in Christomerces’s tomb. I’ll show you a new trick.

  Samidar reached the fortress gates and dismounted. She paused long enough to scratch the stallion’s nose and pat its neck then hung her empty quiver and bow on the saddle. The gates stood open just wide enough to let her squeeze inside.

  She drew her sword, but doubted she would need it. The condition of several bodies inside the gate demonstrated that the ghosts had even taken care of the archers on the wall. She crept across a broken courtyard, past a dried-up fountain, as she wondered where a sorcerer’s tomb might be.

  Her buckler continued to glow, as if it contained a shard of moonlight. She held it before her to illuminate her way as she entered the largest of the many structures that made the fortress. Ancient tiles cracked under her feet; rats scurried from the light. Stranger things stirred, but kept to the shadows. She found a spiral staircase and began to climb, guided only by her instincts.

  The highest point, she guessed. In slumber or in death, a sorcerer would still crave a view of the heavens upon which so many things depended. Their vanity would require it. So she climbed, and when she came to the highest room, she found the door invitingly open.

  Stepping across the threshold, Samidar looked around. The room was colonnaded, and between each column a window stood open, unshuttered. The full moon’s light spilled in from the eastward side, illuminating the layers of dust and bits of half-rotted furniture scattered about.

  On one side a huge stone box stood, almost four times the size of any coffin, as large as any bed. Carved into the stone were rows of glyphs and symbols, some of them in Esgarian and other languages she recognized, but most completely alien. What disturbed her most was the way the box stood upright and open to reveal a perfectly preserved man with inhumanly handsome and sweetly composed features.

  “It took me days to break the magical locks and wards on this room,” Persea said. “Weeks more to crack the seals on his tomb.”

  Samidar turned toward Persea as she emerged from the farthest shadows with the Bow of Shaloneh in her hands and an arrow on the string. She wore Jannica’s face again, but now Samidar knew it for the illusion it was. Persea bore only a faint resemblance to her gentler sister.

  Persea clucked her tongue. “Two witches,” she said. “We should have been friends. After all, like Jannica, I’ve also known you in my dreams. I would have shared Christomerces’s knowledge with you.”

  Samidar sneered. “I doubt that.”

  “As it is,” Persea shrugged, “you are an irrelevant annoyance. When the full moonlight steals across the floor and touches Christomerces’s tomb, I will resurrect him. In gratitude, he will teach me things and share his magic.”

  “He’s not dead,” Samidar said.

  Persea laughed. “Of course he’s dead. A thousand years and more dead! But I can awaken him. Just as a bow can take life, the Death-God’s bow can give it back. It has more power than even the temple sisters know.”

  The moonlight flowed like milk across the dusty floor, and Demonfang began to shiver as the light touched the arcane sarcophagus.

  “It won’t be long now,” Persea said. “All my dreams are coming to fruition.”

  “You’re a fool,” Samidar answered, wondering what she should do or if she should do anything at all. Something was building in the room, some force beyond her understanding. She felt the magic flowing from the Death-God’s bow, from Persea, and from the sarcophagus.

  “You didn’t really think this arrow was for you, did you?” Persea said. With a quick move, she redirected her aim and fired the shaft straight for the sorcerer’s heart.

  Christomerces moved. His hand shot up and caught the arrow as his eyes slowly opened. He gazed at Persea, then at Samidar, and then outward, seeming to see beyond the fortress walls.

  Samidar braced herself for some attack. When none came, she lunged for the Death-God’s bow and ripped it from Persea’s hands. Then she locked one arm around the blond witch’s throat.

  “I did it!” Persea gasped. “I did it! Hear me, Christomerces! I have raised you from the dead! Now teach me!”

  Christomerces snapped the arrow between his fingers. His dry lips strained to move. When he spoke, dust issued from his long-unused throat. “The world is still the same,” he pronounced as he closed his eyes again. “War and fighting. Nothing has changed. You have not changed.”

  The heavy stone lid of the sarcophagus began to close.

  “My Lord!” Persea screamed as all her magicks deserted her. “Don’t desert me! Help me!”

  Samidar tightened her grip on Persea as the witch struggled. “I’m sorry I haunted your dreams,” she said with genuine sorrow in Persea’s ear as she forced Persea forward, ever closer to the sorcerer’s tomb. The immense lid continued to close. “You want a teacher? Then join him.”

  Persea screamed as Samidar pushed her into the closing tomb. To Samidar’s astonishment, Christomerces awoke long enough to catch and wrap the witch tightly in his arms.

  The great stone lid slid shut. Demonfang began to vibrate with an angry intensity as the glyphs and characters that adorned the sarcophagus started to shift and move. Magical wards and locks were closing once again.

  Samidar shot a look toward the chamber doors. They, too, were closing, and she could feel the wards upon them. She flung Hel’s bow and her sword into the corridor beyond and then launched herself in a long dive through the narrowing gap, rolling to her feet again just as the door sealed and faded away to become an unseen part of the bare wall.

  Recovering the bow, sheathing her sword, she made the long descent down the spiral staircase. The moonlight played games with the shadows as she crossed the old courtyard, and she felt eerily alone. Yet, the black stallion waited outside the gate, and her mood lifted.

  Slinging the Death-God’s bow across her back, she mounted the stallion. “I’ll call you Ashur,” she said, “after an ancient Esgarian w
ar god.” She stroked his long neck before she gathered the reins. “Let’s go home.”

  She turned Ashur eastward, toward the moon.

  * * *

  The people of Shaloneh were as silent and stoic as ever as she rode into the village and up to the temple. With the bow still upon her back, she dismounted and entered the Temple of Death. The sight of four priestesses hanging from their makeshift gallows shocked and saddened her, but Raxul had been true to her word. She already missed the old woman.

  She also missed Jannica. For too short a time, Samidar had known love, that most valuable of gifts. She regretted that she had not recognized it sooner, but she would honor it and remember its sweetness.

  As she counted the bodies on the temple floor, she felt the ghosts of Shaloneh around her. She owed them a debt. They had come to her, led by Raxul and the priestesses, in a moment of need. She would honor that, too. Going next to the temple storerooms, she selected quivers of arrows and carried them outside.

  The villagers gathered closer. A little boy crept forward and touched her hand shyly as he looked at her with questioning eyes. A wan smile crossed her lips.

  A gasp went up from the villagers as she held up the Death-God’s bow for all to see.

  “Now, one at a time,” she told them, “go inside the temple and bring out your dead.”

  The little boy stepped closer and in a quiet voice asked, “Are you the priestess now?”

  Samidar rumpled his hair. Then, as someone carried the first body into the sunlight, she fitted an arrow to Hel’s bow and aimed it skyward.

  Deadfall

  NANCY FULDA

  JEFFRAN WATCHED THE LINE OF SCREAMING SAVAGES APPROACH. They poured from the sky-rafts in cacophonous waves, jumping off roughly lashed planks of amberwood to race barefooted across the dry yellow grass below. They were both male and female, pale and dark of complexion, a ragged aggregate from a dozen separate cultures. Jeffran’s eye picked out grizzled elders, taut-faced children, one-handed cripples, and even a shorn-headed youth with slagging burns across his body.

  They were conscripts, Jeffran had no doubt—hapless prisoners snatched during raids like this one, warped by some unspeakable mistreatment into this raging lust for slaughter. Jeffran’s heart ached even as he checked the straps on his cuirass and tightened his grip on his spear.

  By happy fortune, late afternoon winds had pushed the high floating logjams off course, causing the rafts to descend east of the village rather than atop it. There would be no repeat of the tragic direct assault that had cost Jeffran his younger brother so many long years ago.

  Jeffran’s patrol, firmly interposed between the small mountain town and its assailants, stood in ordered ranks beneath a crisp highland cloudscape. Golden sunlight caught the edge of their shields and cuirasses, set white shirts blazing against smooth tan skin. Crinkled auburn hair, worn long and loose in the style of the Holy Kingdoms, fell against scarlet half-cloaks.

  The savages were almost upon them. Jeffran shifted his weight, calculating odds. His men were well-trained, but they were also spread thin, only three rows deep at the center of the line. The attacking wave would need to break against the spears and shields of Jeffran’s soldiers, and do it quickly, lest they outwear his force by sheer numbers. Jeffran lifted his spear.

  “By the Blood of the Emperor!” he bellowed, and surged forward. His soldiers sped beside him. They needed momentum, and a lot of it, to dampen the rushing assault. Too little, and the desperate savages would punch right through the defense.

  Jeffran raised his shield as the lines closed. His lowered spear drove into the unarmored gut of an attacker. The impact wrenched his arm, and the spear splintered. He swore and reversed the stub of his weapon. Something crashed against his shield. He stumbled, stabilized by the line of soldiers behind him, and pushed the attacker away. Another savage—a young girl, hair wild above a grimly determined face—swung a cudgel at his head. Jeffran hesitated for a bare moment before thrusting forward, deliberately aiming for her thigh rather than her torso.

  The lines held. Savages, unprepared for resistance by trained and well-equipped troops, dropped quickly, and the battle became a slaughter. Run, curse you, Jeffran thought as he cut down an old man wielding a corroded hunting knife. Break and run. Don’t waste your blood for this.

  But the attackers kept coming. They did not fight as a unit, as Jeffran’s patrol did. Instead, they were a maddening mob of individuals. Some charged the shield line head-on. Others cut sideways, seeking a way around. A doomed few dropped to the ground and attempted to crawl beneath the spears of the defenders. Their eyes were gaunt, their faces lit by an eerie intensity that chilled Jeffran’s spine.

  A large, well-muscled warrior charged the line at full speed. The load cradled in his arms looked, at first, like a child but turned out to be a sawed-off hunk of amberwood. As he neared the shield line, the warrior jumped, tugging a release cord at his neck. A netted bundle of stones dropped from his back. Freed of this extra ballast, the warrior cleared the entire defensive line, soaring effortlessly over three rows of spears. He released the amberwood, allowing it to shoot upward, and yanked a broken broadsword from his belt. With a feral roar, he charged the unprotected rear of the defenders.

  Jeffran cursed. Bellowing, he shouted commands for the rear line to about-face, but the noise of battle kept his voice from carrying. He dropped from formation, allowing the soldier behind him to fill his place, and moved to the back of the patrol.

  A second warrior soared over the defensive line, releasing a second hunk of amberwood to drift skyward. Farther down the ranks, the man with the broken broadsword yanked his weapon across the backs of the soldiers’ unprotected knees.

  Jeffran flinched. He’d put his newest recruits in that back line. Eager lads, fresh from training, but unskilled in combat. He’d meant to keep them safe.

  Another swipe from the broadsword. Three more men went down.

  Jeffran leveled the spike of his broken spear, jumping backward to avoid an attack from the savage nearest him. A second blow thudded against Jeffran’s shield. He made a jab with the spear, but his opponent stepped sideways, dodging.

  They faced off warily. For all his skill leading soldiers, Jeffran had no prowess as a solo fighter. He was no match for this hulking brute, this leather-skinned monster with what looked like human bones knotted in his hair. Jeffran shifted the spear in his hand, sweat sticking along the back of his shirt.

  Down the line, his new recruits had finally recognized the danger and were forming up to face the threat from the rear. But they were overcompensating, pulling too many men from the critical second line, leaving the foremost soldiers without support as they struggled to repel the continuing onslaught. Jeffran had to get over there, had to get them back in formation before the attackers pushed through.

  Jeffran grunted, catching another attack on his shield. This time, instead of thrusting forward, he pivoted, whirling from the blow to his shield and spinning to strike backhand at the enemy’s unprotected torso. He felt the spike hit flesh, heard the grunt that accompanied it, and threw his weight forward.

  “Second line, hold!” he bellowed. “Third line, threat to rear! You there, with the axe! Get your menfolk out here and help hold the line!” This last was yelled to the village leader, who stood with a group of stalwart farmers. They’d gathered as a final line of defense for their wives and children, in case the savages broke through.

  The tide of battle began to turn. Jeffran strode behind his soldiers like a tiger prowling its cage, directing concerted attacks on three more savages who attempted to jump the lines.

  Abruptly, the savages retreated. They did not break in ones and twos, like warriors who had lost their courage. Nor did they back carefully away from the conflict. They simply whirled and fled, all at once, like a child’s toys yanked backward by invisible strings. Jeffran forbore to pursue them, choosing instead to maintain the lines of defense until the amberwood rafts had risen from the p
lains and faded into dark smudges against the windswept heavens.

  Turning to coordinate the care of the wounded, his foot caught against the impaled corpse of a fallen savage. The man was well-muscled, nearing middle age, and clearly from the Kindu principalities. His affixed earlobes and tumbling dark hair were unmistakable. Jeffran knelt to finger the tattered strips of cloth tied around the man’s bicep, traditional local markers of a father with young children.

  “How did they compel you to this monstrosity?” Jeffran murmured. “Why didn’t you flee back to your family?”

  There had been opportunities enough, in the mad hectic scramble of battle. Jeffran’s troops would willingly have spared the lives of any who surrendered, yet no savage ever did. And the few piteous creatures whose wounds prevented them from retreating did not survive long as captives. They snarled and raged against their restraints, tearing their own bodies to ribbons in their frantic efforts to escape. Jeffran would have thought them soul-maddened, but they carried no signs of the dust.

  His jaw tightened. Too many years. For too many years, this game of raid and rebuff, thrust and counterthrust had been played, with the cost measured in human blood. Jeffran had once believed there was no alternative, that even the Eternal Emperor’s wisdom could not stem the savage tide. Now, though. . . . Over the past few months, disturbing rumors had trickled along the trade routes, secrets whispered from maid to water boy and back again in battered candlelit corners, with furtive sidelong glances to both sides. Secrets overheard by weary soldiers, on their way to or from some desperate mission.

  Secrets that could change the world.

  Jeffran grimaced and bent to straighten the tattered braided strips along the dead man’s arm. He rose and wiped the blood from his fingers.

  It was time to do more than merely listen.

  Jeffran approached the capital warily. He had been three weeks on the road, his horse muddy and dust-flecked, his patrol entrusted to the competent care of his second-in-command. His weapons thumped against his saddlebags, jangling counterpoint to the aching hollow uncertainty in his chest. Given the circumstances, the Eternal Emperor’s servants were unlikely to condemn him for leaving his post. Mostly unlikely. Hopefully, anyway.