The Winter Vow

by Tim Akers

  Suddenly a flame shot out of the column of smoke that Ian had been riding toward. It caressed the edges of smoke before rolling outward in a wave of barely-seen flame. It washed over the ranks of Halverdt’s army. There was a moment of frenzied violence, driving the celestial ranks back. And then… silence.

  Ian rode faster and faster, until the wind whipping past his head was roaring. The dark sky stretched out overhead. They burst through the last line of celestial forces and stumbled into the disorganized, milling mass of Halverdt’s center, the only part of her army that was still standing. There was a ragged storm of combat, raw and vicious, but beyond that Halverdt’s troops stood around dumbfounded. They looked like children waking up from a dream, half-nightmare, half-ecstasy, their weapons and jaws loose. The rest of Ian’s column drew up around him, frantic horses wheeling, knights sawing on the reins, trying to slow them down. Sir Clough looked around and laughed.

  “This is the army of Strife’s fire? They look more like drunkards!”

  “Something has changed. A moment ago these men were killing, maiming…” Sorcha brought her horse to a stop, then slid from the saddle. She knelt and touched the ground. “The flame is guttering. Its heart has gone out.”

  “Something to do with the tree?” Ian asked. Back in that direction, he could make out a fight in the Suhdrin camp, and a column of knights wending their way forward, but the tree itself was as dark as a hole in the world. “Another trick of the void priests?”

  “No. Something closer.” Sorcha put a hand to her heart. “Your father needs you, Ian. Hurry.”

  Ian guided his horse through the dumbstruck masses. He reached a small hill of dead bodies, surrounded by stunned soldiers. There was a small contingent of knights of Houndhallow at the base. He caught Sir Doone’s eye and saluted, but she turned away. Ian dropped from his horse and ran, skidding, up the hill. His father was waiting.

  Malcolm Blakley was slumped on his knees, both arms thrown over the crossguard of his sword. The tip of the feyiron blade was buried in the bodies of the dead. Malcolm’s head lolled forward. His chest heaved, and each deep breath rattled loudly in his chest. Ian slid to a halt beside his father.

  “Father, are you all right? What’s wrong?”

  “I have endured,” Malcolm said. His voice was thin and reedy. “I have lasted… as long… as I can.” He looked up, and Ian’s heart flipped in his chest. Malcolm’s face was cracked and raw, his lips lined with fissures, his eyes as red as blood. “Another must carry it from here.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Ian said. He threw Malcolm’s arm over his shoulder, wincing as the hot metal of his armor burned his neck. “We’ll get you out of here. Back to Houndhallow. Back home, and then—”

  “And then nothing. And then everything.” Malcolm collapsed against him, bowling them both over.

  Ian knelt beside him, listening to the rasping draw of his breath.

  “Where is my wife?”

  “Here, here. I am here.” Sorcha glided up the hill, her feet barely touching the ground. She took Malcolm’s hand. “You know what comes next?”

  “We say things we always meant to say, and then goodbye?”

  “Such a stubborn man,” Sorcha said, shaking her head. “You were always so stubborn. Be still.”

  She placed a hand across his face, and closed his eyes. He relaxed back against the bodies of the dead, his own hand coming to rest on a bloodied skull.

  “This is no place to die,” he muttered.

  “Then you should not have come here,” Sorcha answered.

  Ian grabbed her shoulder. “Mother, you can’t… what are you doing?”

  “Saving him from himself. It’ll be all right, Ian. Everything will be fine. Go win your war.”

  “But—”

  “I said go,” she snapped. “Leave me with my husband.”

  Ian slowly backed away. When he turned, Sir Doone was standing at the bottom of the hill with his horse.

  “Halverdt’s legions are regaining their heads, and the celestials are gathering their courage. Something must be done.”

  “My father, he’s… he’s not…”

  “Your father is not yet dead, and you are not released from the responsibility of being his son,” Doone said sternly. “If he cannot lead us, you must.”

  Ian stumbled down the hill in a state of shock, then threw his foot into his stirrup and mounted. There was a gentle rustle through the silent ranks that surrounded him. He glanced over at where his father lay, but Malcolm’s face was obscured by Sorcha’s body. Sweet light played out from Sorcha’s hands, and water ran from her fingers in cold streams. Ian croaked out a laugh.

  “He’s not going to like that,” he muttered. Cold steel brushed his fingers. He looked down to see Malcolm’s feyiron sword being pushed into his hands. Doone was watching him very closely.

  “They have lost their goddess, and the madness that she brought. But this fight is not yet over. Do something.”

  “What? I don’t know what,” Ian said.

  “Anything.” Rolling thunder boomed over them, the sound of spear striking shield. The celestials were on the march once again. “Anything is better than nothing. Better than slaughter.”

  Ian looked around at the mob of expectant faces watching him. What would his father do? What would he say? He had no idea.

  The truth. The one that he knew, at least.

  “Sophie Halverdt is dead, and her madness with her!” he shouted. “You can die at her side, or live at mine!”

  “Hardly… inspiring,” Doone muttered. “Say something about her heresy. Something about the demon that possessed her!”

  “I have had enough of heresies,” Ian answered. He stood in his stirrups and raised his voice, until it boomed across the rolling plains of blood. “This war started with a lie, but it will end with a truth! The gods do not stand with us, or against us, or with our enemies! These divisions have separated us for too long, pagan and celestial, heretic and saint, god and gheist! They must end, and the wars they cause with them. Suhdra and Tener only fall because we stand as Suhdrin, and Tenerran, rather than as brothers and sisters of this land! Look, here rides Castian Jaerdin. He stood with my father from the beginning, and now he rides beside Gwen Adair, the arch-heretic.” Ian pointed to where Jaerdin and Gwen now approached, looking fretfully at the crowds surrounding Ian. “And I will fight at their side against those who would divide us. This is not a battle for the gods, but for mortal flesh and blood. This is not a battle between church and pagan, but between madness and peace. Between those who destroy, and those who build.

  “I am here to build, to create a new land, to build bonds of peace between Suhdra and Tener. There is nothing I have not lost, but there is nothing I cannot gain.” The celestial army loomed closer, their ranks shot through with mist and the hulking bodies of the gheists at their service. “There is this one task remaining. We must come together and kill every last one of these bastards!”

  “Why should we die for you, Ian Blakley?” someone in the crowd shouted. “Why should any of us fight at your side, when even your father drove you from his home, and from his banner?”

  “You should not die for me, or Malcolm Blakley, or Sophie Halverdt, or any other mortal name. You should live. But if you must die, you should die for those you love, and those who deserve your love.” He glanced back at where his mother knelt. His father still wasn’t moving. “Even if neither of you know it. Before it’s too late.”

  A murmur passed through the crowd. The celestial army was nearly on them. The clash of steel signaled the start of fighting, and still most of those who remained were milling about. A few threw down their weapons and ran, threading their way through the crowd, to be joined by others in their flight. Ian watched them go and grimaced.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “Lead by doing, right?”

  He raised his father’s sword and spurred his horse, then bulled through the milling crowds. The soldiers of Halverdt got out of his way as h
e picked up speed, hooves hammering against the hard-packed ground. He charged, alone and screaming, at the celestial line.

  “The hound! The hallow!” Ian shouted. His voice was ragged, and the juddering image of black-clad celestial troops blurred in his vision, as tears filled his eyes. He couldn’t get the image of his father out of his head, lying there, so still. “The hound! The hallow!”

  He crashed into the celestial line. The first rank crumbled under his charge, but a spear snagged his mount and pitched him to the ground. The horse screamed, flailing on the earth, hooves narrowly missing Ian as he rolled away. The celestial host closed on him, axes drawn, dark helms silent as they attacked. He fought them off. His father’s sword cut through steel like paper, but for every mute warrior he killed, two more rose up. They clambered over the dead body of his horse, pressing him away from his own lines, coming at him in carefully coordinated pairs.

  An axe struck his shoulder, and he spun. Steel went into his gut. His legs turned to water. Ian fell to the ground. His father’s sword slipped from his hand, and then the sky was filled with twisting mist and the roaring sound of feral gods. Ian punched the nearest face. His fist flattened against steel, knuckles cracking, a jolt of pain going up his arm, leaving the limb numb. Someone’s hand grabbed his throat and dragged him to the ground. Ian struggled, but he could feel cold steel at his neck.

  “Move and you die,” the voice whispered. Ian screamed, and the blade yanked across his throat. He felt warm blood running down his chest. He grabbed at the wound, but the cut was thin and shallow. He looked up to see the knife’s bearer tumble away. A spear protruded from the man’s throat, glistening with blood. His body jerked away, carried by the spear, and the horseman who bore it.

  Knights dressed in gold, knights in red, knights wearing nothing but the dull steel of their armor and the blood of their enemies, flowed over Ian like a morning mist. They poured into the celestial lines like molten iron, burning away the ranks of spear and axe that threatened Ian. In seconds, Ian knelt alone among the dead and dying, his hands still clutched around the cut in his throat. Sir Doone rode up and tossed him a shield. It bore the colors of House Bassion.

  “You’re just enough of a damned fool to make your father proud, and your mother furious,” she called. “Now get off your knees and fight. There are gods to free, and others to free ourselves from.”

  Ian strapped on the shield, then fished through the detritus of battle until he found his father’s sword. He sheathed it, took another from the ground, and charged screaming into battle.

  55

  THERE WAS A moment of unbearable light, and then the tree exploded. Shards of burning wood arced out over the battlefield, and a shockwave staggered those closest to the smoldering trunk. As silence once again descended on the abandoned Suhdrin camp, Gwen sat in her saddle and turned around to stare at the shattered tree. She was glad to have led her forces away from the camp before that happened.

  “Is that good, or is it bad?” she asked. Frair Gilliam rubbed his forehead, wincing in pain.

  “Whatever was binding the gheist to the tree has broken. We will not be able to destroy it now, or contain it. But it seems Halverdt has lost her command of the spirit. So both good and bad,” he said. “We must make of it what we can.”

  “Very well,” Gwen said. She turned back to the battle ahead, putting the tree out of her mind. “Stay close. There’s no telling who here is friend and who is foe. Try to stay out of it as much as you can. Advance!”

  The battle in front of them was a churning pit of chaos. On the left flank the celestial and Halverdt forces were intermingled, and the melee was a desperate affair, fought with fists and knives and bludgeons. Small groups of Halverdt’s soldiers churned through the melee like swarms of god-touched bees, killing anything in their path, and dying in droves. As for the celestials, the black-clad soldiers of the heretics tried to maintain order, but commands were lost in the fray, and columns of spear and shield quickly turned into shouting mobs trying desperately to stay together even as their formations were pulled apart.

  In the wake of the tree’s destruction, there was a brief moment of true violence. A frenzy went through the Suhdrin mobs, short-lived and murderous, like a powder keg going up; any celestial troops unable to reach their own lines were butchered where they stood. Gwen felt a tremendous fury go through her blood, and before she knew it, her fingers were wrapped so tightly around the hilt of her sword that her knuckles were bleeding. Frair Gilliam watched her nervously.

  “The corruption calls to you,” he said. “You must be careful. It will be very easy for you to lose control of the darkness you have absorbed.”

  “If that happens, you know what to do,” Gwen said.

  “Yes. I’m just not sure I’m capable.”

  The ranks of Halverdt’s army, waking from their fury, stood in stunned silence. They let Gwen and her cadre pass unharassed. The celestials had withdrawn, shocked by the sudden violence of the Suhdrin zealots, and unsettled by the trailing silence.

  Jaerdin rode up next to Gwen. “Ian and Sorcha Blakley have apparently joined the company,” he whispered. “I’m not sure how your priest friend will respond to Sorcha’s… way of being.”

  “The Orphanshield rides next to me,” Gwen answered. “Do you think he will balk at her appearance, when the very heretic who started this war counts him an ally?”

  “You will have to tell me how that came about,” Jaerdin said. “It would have avoided a lot of heartache if he could have been converted to our cause earlier.”

  “I had to suffer first,” Gilliam said, hearing them. “Suffer, and lose all that mattered to me. So yes, it would have prevented much pain, but sometimes pain is necessary for there to be change.” He smiled at Jaerdin, his face strained and weary. “This war has shown that, again and again.”

  “And what will change, frair? What will Tenumbra be when this is all finished?” Jaerdin asked.

  “Whatever we make it,” Gilliam said. “Whatever we can salvage.”

  Gwen recognized Ian Blakley at a considerable distance, motioning to them and shouting something to the crowd. She couldn’t hear him, and the silent crowd seemed more confused than anything else. Suddenly, Ian hopped onto a horse and charged wildly through the ranks, straight into the re-forming celestial line.

  “What the hell is he doing?” she asked.

  “It would seem the tree’s madness has not completely passed,” Gilliam said.

  “Or he’s still just a fool,” Jaerdin answered. He signaled to his men, then charged forward. The Suhdrin ranks parted for them, and soon he was crashing into the celestial line, dragging Halverdt’s army along with him. The pagan riders drew their gheists from the air, sparking with everic power as they charged forward in Jaerdin’s wake. Gwen stayed put. Only Frair Gilliam remained at her side.

  The pair rode up to a strange hill of dead bodies. Sorcha Blakley knelt at its peak, her knees soaking in several inches of bloody water that formed a pool. There was a single body in the middle of the pool.

  “Malcolm Blakley?” Gwen asked. The lord of Houndhallow didn’t stir. His face was pale, the ink of his tattoos stark against the skin. Wrinkles of worry and age smoothed flat under Sorcha’s hands. A dozen wounds seeped blood into the pool. The air over his body glowed with warm, gentle light.

  “What happened?” Gilliam asked. He dismounted and went to the edge of the pool, though he seemed unwilling to enter it. “Will he live?”

  “He has already gone,” Sorcha said quietly. “He endured as long as he could, but this war tore him apart. Help me bring him to his rest, frair.”

  The Orphanshield knelt in the water and started the long, quiet chant of passing. Water turned to frost at his touch, but Malcolm lay silent. Gwen turned her face away. Tears stung her eyes, but not for Malcolm. For her own father, unmourned and unburied, his body stolen away by the god of death at the Fen Gate. She had not known Malcolm well enough to feel his death as Sorcha must, and Ia
n. But she knew what it meant to lose a father.

  “Ian goes to avenge his father’s death,” Gwen whispered. “No wonder he seems so mad.”

  “No. I kept it from him, while I could. Let him be his father’s son, for this one day,” Sorcha said quietly. She passed a hand over Malcolm’s forehead, smiling warmly. “Let him fight with the hope of restoring his father’s faith in him. Ian has lost enough today. Let him lose his father tomorrow, with the taste of victory to cut the pain.”

  “It is done,” Gilliam said. Sorcha nodded.

  “Look at him. Still the boy, still the poet. Still the man I fell in love with,” she said. “Leave me here with him. Let me be his wife for these moments, alone, before I must lift the burden of widowhood.”

  Gilliam took Gwen by the shoulder and pulled her away. They led their horses some distance before mounting as quietly as they could.

  When Gwen looked back, Sorcha was still kneeling beside her husband’s body. She was talking to him quietly, smiling and laughing and crying, all of it too much to bear.

  Gwen turned her horse and rode away.

  * * *

  The courtyard of the Reaveholt was a seething mass of humanity. Bassion’s insurrection had not gone off without a hitch, and now those of her soldiers who were loyal to the church were locked in combat with their heretical brethren. It seemed the core of her most fanatical followers had been closest to the gates when they opened, and charged out into battle, to do whatever misdeed Lady Bassion had given them. That left a scant few trying to hold the keep against a large number of soldiers, vow knights, and angry camp followers who knew nothing of her planned betrayal. The result was chaos.

  Elsa strode out of the gatehouse and marched down the walkway that followed the wall. The way was already strewn with dead soldiers, their wounds cauterized, their eyes nothing but empty, smoldering sockets. Martin followed close behind, looking nervously from the corpses to the vow knight, wondering what had become of the Sir LaFey he had known. She seemed much changed.