by Tim Akers
Gwen turned and led them toward Jaerdin’s weaving retreat. The celestial host was shocked by this sudden assault, and fell away from Gwen’s advance. Halfway across the expanse, Jaerdin noticed their approach, and turned his column in their direction. The pursuing celestials doubled their pace. The trailing elements of Jaerdin’s column were swallowed by their closing flanks.
They came together in a thunderous crash. Gwen’s forces passed through Jaerdin’s, his ranks opening to let them pass through unopposed. The spirit-mad riders of the tribes, as much shaman as knight, followed Gwen to slam into the celestial knights. Free from their pursuit, Jaerdin wheeled his knights around and charged into the melee, fighting by Gwen’s side. The celestials broke quickly, their fragile will smashed by the ferocity of Gwen’s attack. She turned to the duke of Redgarden.
“Lord Jaerdin. It’s good to fight at your side again,” she said.
“No time for pleasantries, child. Do you have support? More troops? Pagan rangers?”
“These several hundred spearmen are all I hold, with half that many rangers again. We should be able to hold this position against—”
“We must advance, while the celestials are still surprised. Malcolm Blakley’s position is overwhelmed. If he falls, this entire battle will be lost.” He turned his mount and started back into the fray. “I will explain on the way.”
“But if we advance, we will be crushed in the rout!”
“The gods will guide us. They must. There is too much at risk. Follow, for the sake of all Tenumbra!”
Jaerdin charged forward, followed quickly by his own men. Gwen paused for a brief second, then turned and signaled the advance to Deidra. The ranger gave her a confused look, but then Gwen charged forward, the horns sounded, and the ranks surged in her wake.
* * *
The hammering on the guardroom door settled into a steady drumbeat. Sir Travailler stood nervously by the wall, waiting for Bassion’s soldiers to break through the barrier and kill them all. The vow knight, Sir Trueau, lay on the floor, while Martin attended to her.
“They must have gotten to her before Adair’s heresy was revealed. Meaning she’s been waiting all this time to strike, but why? What good does Bassion get from revealing herself now, just as Halverdt’s army is routing her new allies?”
“What the hell are you going on about?” Travailler snapped. “They’re trying to kill us, you know!”
“Oh, I would be disappointed if they weren’t. Not to mention a great deal more confused than I already am. Are you sure Lady Bassion has not taken on any new advisors in the last year? Someone from the church, or perhaps a scholar from Tener?”
“She would never tolerate a pagan in her court,” Travailler said. “What does this have to do with anything? Why aren’t you using the naether to get us out of here? Cut a hole in the wall, or something?”
“A better question is why Bassion is not using her newfound powers to destroy us. She dealt with those vow knights easily enough, and believe me, a knight of the winter vow is no easy opponent. And yet she struck three down without a thought. So why are we still here?”
“Whatever she did, it’s left no wounds,” Martin said. He looked up from the limp form of Sir Trueau. “I can find nothing wrong with her.”
“Strife is… she is gone from me,” Trueau gasped. “I cannot feel her light at all.”
“Elsa spoke of this as well. She was a victim of the void priests. So has Lady Bassion sworn to the tribe of the void? Hardly seems likely for a duchess of Suhdra to take up the old religion with such enthusiasm.” Lucas sighed. “Though Sacombre did the same. I shouldn’t be surprised that Bassion has fallen to the same heresy.”
The door splintered, and an axe-head shone through. It creaked back and forth, then withdrew. The next blow opened a wide hole in the door. Travailler dashed forward and thrust her sword through the gap, dancing back with blood on her blade, leaving screams behind.
“I do not want to die listening to you philosophize about heretics and history!” she snapped. “Stormwatch, help me secure this door! We’re going to have to go out the way we came in!”
“We can’t let them take this room. If the portcullis opens, Halverdt’s position will be lost.” Martin answered.
“The sooner the better. Lady Halverdt is a madwoman. We need to start thinking about our own lives!” A commotion outside the door interrupted her. Steel rang against steel, and then the door burst open like shattered glass. Travailler screamed and rushed forward. Her swing met steel, and she was brushed aside.
Elsa LaFey strode into the room. Her eyes went straight to Sir Travailler, giving Martin and Lucas only a glance. When she was sure Travailler wasn’t going to attack her again, she walked to the center of the room and pulled Martin to his feet.
“I’m getting tired of saving the two of you. Is she going to live?”
“Trueau?” Martin stuttered, looking from Elsa’s glowing form to the limp vow knight on the floor. “I think so, but there’s something wrong with her.”
“There’s something wrong with all of us. Help her up, someone. We will need every vow knight we can muster. Even the maimed souls.”
Lucas hoisted Trueau up, and after a moment Travailler lent him a hand.
“Frair Lucas,” Elsa said, “we are needed outside. Bassion’s forces are tearing each other apart, and the lady of the castle has made herself scarce. We need to find her and bring her to Cinder’s justice.”
“How did you get in here?” Sir Travailler asked. “The portcullis is closed, and there are hundreds of Bassion’s knights in the courtyard.”
“I killed a lot of people,” Elsa answered as she turned toward the door. “Stop wasting time in wonder. We have a castle to save.”
53
THE BATTLEFIELD WAS chaos. Soldiers swarmed around Malcolm, fighting for their lives, stumbling past in a daze or locked in battle. Shattered spears became bludgeons, swords gave way to knives, shields were discarded for chokeholds. The ground under Malcolm’s feet was slick with blood and melted snow. He fought his way forward, pummeling step by step toward the place he had last seen Sophie Halverdt.
Overhead, the light was dying. Hours had passed and Malcolm hadn’t noticed. His entire life was consumed with taking one bloody footstep after another, shrugging aside attackers, killing any who raised their sword in his direction, walking over the dead and dying.
He gathered followers. Doone was with him, had always been with him, even though the memory of Bassion’s charge was nearly forgotten in the hours-long fight. The melee pressed all around them. Survivors joined in his wake, wearing the colors of Houndhallow or Greenhall, some from distant houses whose place in this fight was forgotten and their loyalty uncertain. Malcolm fought his way forward, and true soldiers knew to follow that kind of drive.
Slowly, the number of celestials Malcolm had to batter his way through decreased. He met more and more soldiers of Halverdt, wild-eyed and fanatical, their faces smeared with blood and mud. They held no lines, carried no shields, swung madly at their enemies with total disregard for their safety. Tears streamed down their faces, shot through with sparks and leaving trails of ash. Most let Malcolm pass. A few opposed him, so consumed with the fury of their burning god that they recognized neither friend nor foe. Malcolm ended their struggles, gave them peace. It didn’t matter to him anymore. Nothing would stop him. No one would oppose him.
Sophie Halverdt stood on a pile of bodies. She surveyed the battle with furious eyes, sword in hand, shouting encouragement to the churning mob of her faithful who fought and died at her feet. The bloodshed was catastrophic. Her followers gave heed to neither safety nor form, hacking wildly at the celestial guard who kept coming at them, wave after wave of black-clad knights and soldiers and clerics, each one fighting and dying under Sophie’s flame-swept gaze.
As Malcolm approached, the ring of zealots surged toward him. He knocked down the first, a child wielding a dagger in both hands, then blocked an attack
from the second. The man’s sword clattered off Malcolm’s shoulder, but the zealot put too much energy into the attack and pitched forward. Malcolm slammed his knee into the struggling man’s face, then shoved him to the ground and stepped over. Zealots to his left and right jumped at him, forcing Malcolm to fend off a series of frenzied blows that left his arms numb and his head ringing.
“Hold! Let him pass!” Sophie shouted from on high. The zealots backed away, falling onto the swords of the celestial guard that were still pressing down on Malcolm. He slipped through their cordon, leaving his motley guard to deal with both the celestials and any errant attacks from the zealots. He clambered up the pile of bodies. Sophie watched him with unfettered glee.
“Have you ever seen such glory, Houndhallow? The heretics fall before us, and the true light of Strife consumes them, body and soul!”
“Glory, yes, but madness more,” Malcolm answered. Reaching the top of the pile, he straightened and stared Sophie hard in the eyes. “What has become of you, Greenhall? What have you done?”
“What have I done? Only what the goddess does through me! I am bringing the light of Strife to this desolate plain. The very fire of the one true flame will spread out from this place, until it fills the world with its glory!” She spread her arms, the sword dangling loosely in her palm. “We are witnessing the birth of a new world, Houndhallow.”
“Flames consume, but only to destroy, and they leave only ash behind. Your people are being slaughtered, Greenhall! You have to pull them back!”
“It is the goddess that drives them forward. Who am I to countermand her direction?”
“You are their lord, their commander, and the warden of their souls!” Malcolm barked. “You have lost sight of your throne, just like your father.”
“My father was murdered by these people. What cost is too great, to avenge his death?”
“This cost,” Malcolm said, throwing his arm wide. “These dead! You are not seeking victory, or vengeance, or even justice. You seek only destruction!”
“The road to glory is lined with the grateful dead. I don’t ask anything of them that they’re not willing to give,” Sophie answered. She straightened up, holding her sword comfortably at her waist, tip down. “Am I to understand that you have lost faith in this crusade, Houndhallow?”
“Faith? Why do we speak of faith, when our armies are broken, and your madness still runs through their veins?” He pointed to the piles of dead beneath them. “More of these belong to your banner than that of our enemies, Greenhall.”
“My madness, as you call it, is a gift from the goddess. And it is the only thing that is keeping these soldiers from fleeing. I should have known you would turn as soon as things got difficult, Houndhallow. You let my father down, you let Tener down, and now you are going to let your followers down.” Sophie laid her hand flat against her sword, drawing the blade across her palm like a strop. Where steel touched flesh, the metal changed. It crackled with broken fire, scars opening in the weapon, pulsing with infernal light. “You will be my last warning to the north, Malcolm Blakley. The light of Strife is coming for the Tenerran heretics. Submit, and prosper. Defy me—” she pointed the sword at Malcolm, dropping into a formal dueling stance “—and you defy the goddess herself!”
“You’re starting to think a bit much of yourself.” Malcolm swung his blade, cutting through the air with the black feyiron. Steel clashed, and sparks flew. Sophie fell back, darting out with her blade, touching Malcolm at shoulder, biceps, belly with a series of quick jabs. Everywhere her sword touched, his armor yielded, bubbling with heat. Malcolm felt the tip of her sword brush his flesh. Pain seared his skin.
“Your time is past, Reaverbane.” She slithered forward, unleashing a flurry of jabs that Malcolm batted away, his sword ringing with the impact. He stumbled on a corpse and nearly fell. Sophie laughed as she danced away. “Reaverbane. Such a joke. Will they still be calling you that when you’re a dotard, rotting away in your bed, muttering children’s rhymes to yourself? If you even live that long. If I let you live that long!”
“My life is not in your hands, child,” Malcolm said. He steeled himself for the onslaught. When it did not come immediately, he leapt forward, swinging his blade in a wide, sweeping arc. Sophie’s laughter chimed through the air as she sidestepped, riposting his backswing, jabbing his toe as he flowed into the next attack. He limped back.
“That remains to be seen,” Sophie said. “But I feel good about my chances. I always wondered about you, you know. Were you as great as people said? I only ever knew you as an old man, bristling at my father’s every word, playing the church’s mule and the Circle’s tame barbarian. Don’t you get tired of that?”
“More than you will ever know,” Malcolm said. He feinted, and Sophie’s counter swept through empty air. As she recovered, he stepped forward and punched her in the throat. “Suhdrins always talk too much.”
Sophie rolled away from Malcolm, grabbing her throat. Malcolm followed, swinging down with his sword, barely missing as she slipped down the pile of bodies. His next swing took her in her outstretched arm, cracking steel and bone. She finally retrieved her sword and stood, left arm dangling.
“And Tenerrans never learn to smile,” she croaked. “But you will. You will!”
Sophie’s face was breaking. The raw wound of her throat, skin torn where Malcolm’s gauntlet had crushed her windpipe, was peeling open. Cracks formed in her face, and the jigsaw pieces of her face slowly fell out of place. Like a stained-glass window whose panes are out of alignment, Sophie’s face took on a nightmare cast. Malcolm saw that she was weeping flower petals, and the glassy irises of her eyes were changing into sunflowers. Her mouth gaped open, and another mouth appeared behind the slack skin of her lips. Narrow jaws, slick bone, teeth as thin and jagged as broken glass, pushed out of her mouth like a child being born.
“An unlovely smile, if ever I saw one,” Malcolm muttered.
The gheist wearing Sophie Halverdt struck, swinging her sword with a disjointed arm, the blow as quick and fluid as rainfall. Malcolm barely caught the point of her blade on the forte of his sword, turning it aside. She battered him with the shattered bone-whip of her maimed arm, lurching forward to snap at his neck with nightmare jaws, clawing at his eyes, his throat. Malcolm shoved her back, but she landed bonelessly, rolled as awkwardly as a corpse cut from the noose, and stood back up. Her smile was growing, until it filled the broken ruin of her face.
“They will not remember you when I am done, Houndhallow. I will consume even the memory of you, until there is nothing left but hollow regret and flame!”
Sophie leapt forward, rag-doll arms flailing, jaws cracking together, the sword just a forgotten tool at the end of a broken arm. Malcolm met the charge with his blade, feyiron sizzling through flesh, tearing Sophie’s armor and driving her back. The bodies shifted beneath him, and he stumbled, the only thing saving him from her wild attack. Wounds tore open across her skin, but each one glimmered with inner fire. Sparks lined the edges of her eyes. Each time Malcolm cut her, a jet of flame flashed out, and soon her entire body was smoldering. Her sword clattered to the ground, her fingers melted into its steel, flesh and bone tearing loose from her hand. She was burning alive, burning dead, burning out of this mortal world.
“The armies of Suhdra and Tener will bow before me! The church will fall, and the tribes, and all the faithful of the gods old and new. I will carve a kingdom from their flesh, sanctified in flame, burned into the stone of the earth.” Sophie started coming apart. Spears of flame shot out of her body, and her voice rang like a dropped bell. Mad flares of burning metal dripped from what remained of her armor. Of her flesh, there was nothing but cracked scar and seared bone.
She charged at Malcolm, howling like a banshee. Malcolm set his feet and slammed down with the pommel of his blade, crushing the howling projectile of her skull. Though it seared his skin, he planted the tip of his sword in the gaping jaws of her throat and shoved, driving the blade d
own her spine. Sophie came apart around the feyiron sword, splintering like a tree struck by lightning. There was a moment of unimaginable light and heat and flame, then her dry husk rattled against his chest and came apart.
Sophie’s remnants took halting steps in a dozen different directions, leg and hips this way, other leg that way, an arm spinning through the air spurting flames like a firework, ribs peeling back and shuffling to the ground. Finally the last wisp of her snuffed out, consumed by its own flame, leaving nothing but drifting ash and a memory of cinders.
Malcolm stood in the center of a blackened circle of ash, eyes wide, face smeared with soot and oily blood. Tiny flames crawled across his cloak, digging into the iron gray of his hair, burrowing through his chain mail like maggots. He let out a ragged breath and collapsed to his knees.
“Sometimes, all you have to do is endure,” he whispered. “Endure, and pray it will be enough.”
This time, it was.
54
IAN COULD SEE his father was fighting for his life. The glowing figure that had been Sophie Halverdt battered against him. There was a flash, and the world changed. From his place on the battlefield, Ian felt rather than saw the burning tree behind him explode. A wave of flame rolled through the air, the shockwave jostling his bones and turning his teeth into cymbals. He could see nothing in the column of smoke at the center of the celestial army.
“Father!” he screamed, and spurred his horse forward. Tears stung his eyes, but he kept his focus on the smoke and the flame. The horse maneuvered its way through the crashing bodies and blistering swords that surrounded him. Ian choked back tears and screamed again. “Forward! Forward! Into the fray!”
His men didn’t need any urging. The celestial army was descending on them. Ian’s initial charge had shocked the enemy, scattering them as they pursued the fleeing left flank of Halverdt’s army. Now they were re-forming, ranking up and closing on the irritating splinter of Ian’s column of knights in the side of their force. If Ian slowed, they would reach him. As long as he kept bounding forward, he would stay ahead of their blades.