by Martin Davey
Still men screamed all around the field of death, some with pain and some with fear. Steel-armoured men knelt, writhed in the mud and blood, or lay on backs staring at the brightening sky and waiting to die.
The figure in the black armour and the grey cloak, said nothing, only stood in the middle of the circle and didn’t move.
The screech again. And now Landros realized that it was the Keeper who made the sound, a screeching hissing sound loud enough to make everyone on the field of battle scream and put their hands to their ears and moan and weep in fear and in pain. Not the people in the circle though, those closest to the Nameless One, they sat with straight backs, staring straight ahead, coats and dresses and shawls rippling about them. Landros could see Wes and Torra, Pascal with his red hair ruffling. “No...” Landros said, his knees sliding through mud as he struggled to his feet, his hands squelching in the stuff.
It was difficult to breathe as he ran, stepping over bodies screaming for help. A dead woman, her face white as paper had had an arm severed at the elbow. He stepped over her and her eyes snapped open, blood still oozing from the wound. He ran on, his sword smeared with mud.
The screeching stopped and for a moment the only sound was people screaming and praying and weeping, soon silenced by the voice of Keeper Reioshar, “So even death cannot hold the Betrayer? You think you can hide yourself from the Five with your cheap tricks? If death cannot hold you then an eternity of suffering at our hands in the holy city will be punishment enough.” Light, blinding to look at, spread across the field. Only the circle of the Nameless One remained in shadow, Torra and Wes and Pascal now black silhouettes against the terrible radiance.
The Nameless One said nothing, only shifted in the shadow, drawing a sword, his head still bowed. A sword like any other, no magical light, no magical darkness spearing out of this weapon.
Laughter from the god from the skies. “The Betrayer thinks to draw a weapon against the Keepers? Even in life you weren’t so foolish.” The light dimmed, a brilliant sun falling behind a white cloud on a summer’s day, and the Keeper slowly descended back to the ground, his arms bending impossibly as he drew another weapon from his hip. His swords were short and the blades curved as he waved them in the air and landed back on the ground, his mask red and expressionless as he looked at the Nameless One.
It was difficult to breathe as Landros stumbled over a prone figure in cold armour slick with something thick and wet. “No...” he said again. The air was stale here, dead. He gasped for breath, the air cold despite the sun high in the sky. The breeze had stilled and all seemed quiet just for a moment. And then the Nameless One lifted his head, nothing but blackness within the hood, the sword loose in his hand by his side. Now Landros could see they were struggling, the men of the Watch, they had gags over their mouths and they were struggling, eyes wide and terrified, but they had all been bound together too tightly to move, hands bound behind backs and stakes driven through the chains to keep them circled around the Nameless One.
“Fall back!” Laraine shouted, her horse seeming to feel the change in the air as it kicked and screamed beneath her.
Phailin waved a sword above his head, pointed back beyond the Nameless One. “Fall back! Fall back!”
The last line of the army of the Black Prince still cowered and grovelled before the glory of the Keeper now back on the ground and walking slowly toward them, its robe swaying in the breeze, its green wig rolling down its back and its red mask expressionless.
“Fall back! Fall back!” Phailin and Laraine laid about them with flat of sword and staff, beating their last brave warriors now reduced to shivering wrecks. “Fall back! Fall back!”
But the glory of a god who had ruled the world for three thousand years was too much for the last of the army of the Black Prince and they fell under the green blade, severed heads flying through the air, arms and legs chopped and cut with a speed that was terrible to see as the many-elbowed arm bent in sickening ways. The butchered men were too awed to scream before the god, even as their blood spattered on the mask with the black eyeholes, even as the robe dripped wet with their blood.
White horses fled and left their men to die at the hands of the god. Horses screamed and trod on the dead and the dying in their flight. Only when they were beyond the Nameless One and his circle of captives did the riders rein their mounts in, hind legs skidding on the ground, manes shaking. “To me!” Phailin shouted his sword in the air and his once silver armour now muddied and bloodied, his cloak limp about his slender shoulders. “To me!” Though Landros wasn’t sure to whom he shouted, all knelt or wept or died or were dying. “To me!” The self-declared King shouted.
Landros ran, but it wasn’t to the King or the Queen he ran, it was to his men, Pascal and Wes and Torra, sitting around the Nameless One and struggling against their chains. He fell and he staggered and he ran, gasping for breath in the dead air.
The Nameless One lifted a hand and Landros screamed as he saw his men’s eyes bulge in terror, saw their skin and their hair shrivel and flake, saw them age and wither like apples on the ground, hair turning to grey and then white, faces becoming old and grey and withered, skin sagging, and then peeling away, falling to the ground, white bone showing beneath. “No!” screamed Landros as he watched his men age before his eyes, saw them die before his eyes. Even Pascal with his red hair, slumped forward, red hair turned to white and then falling from his flaking scalp, white bone showing where before there had been brown freckles. Even Wes, young and awkward and quiet screamed and screamed as his thick brown hair withered and his youthful face sagged and flaked. Even Torra was screaming, his hair shrivelling, his face ageing and dying before Landros’s very eyes. Somehow watching Torra was the worst of all. Landros screamed and ran faster and fell and then ran faster again.
A woman was the first to fall, her long hair which had once been blonde now dry and grey, her face which had once been pretty, now nothing but bone and strips of pale flesh, teeth large in the skull face. She slumped forward, her shawl still wrapped about bony shoulders. Wes was next, hair and skin falling away to reveal a smiling skull. Landros had never seen the lad smile in life, so nervous and shy.
Still the Nameless One held his left hand outstretched, his cloak blowing about him and his hood still covering his face.
“The power is strong here!” Laraine shouted, excitement skittering through her voice.
The circle of nine shuddered in terror and fear and pain, life draining out of them like blood from a wound, and they died one by one. Skulls smiling, scraps of skin fluttering on the bone.
Wes, Pascal and Torra all died, withered and aged and dead in moments, and now the Nameless One lifted his head, looking at the Keeper before he pushed his hood back. Landros wanted to look away, remembering the creature in his dream with the hideous flickering face, a hundred, a thousand faces all merging into one. But, as the Nameless One’s hood fell back, he didn’t have that dreadful face; he was a young man, a man not much older than Landros himself with black hair not quite collar length spilling about a narrow serious face with a narrow straight nose and eyes dark as a Clerk’s own. His face was as expressionless as the Keeper’s.
“So it has come to this, has it?” The Keeper stepped over the carnage of the last line of the army of the Black Prince, heedless of its robe trailing through the blood. “Your words as you surrendered at Eshotar mean nothing? Your vows before Keeper Jerohim mean nothing? You slay your own kind so that you might live once more?”
The Nameless One waved a hand and the circle of nine fell backwards, chains chinking as the wasted bodies collapsed around him, thin white skin wisping on white bone, flies buzzing out of gaping mouths, loose clothing fluttering on skeletal bodies. The Nameless One stepped over the bodies, heedless as a man stepping over a log, and rage and hatred filled Landros as he looked at the creature; a creature now looking like nothing more than a young man in black armour with a grey cloak, black hair ruffling in the wind, sword still in his h
and. “They chose to give their lives for the line of the Black Prince, the last of the Kings, for a world without your taint, without the lies of the creatures who hide behind their masks and their lies.” His voice was quiet, cultured and cautious.
Keeper Reioshar laughed, a sibilant hiss behind the mask. “Lies? The lies of the Keepers? This from the one, the betrayer who steals life from our children so that he might take form in the world that is no longer his, this from the one who brings our children in chains and tells us they choose this. Look around you, the great city, your last refuge before our power. Where is it now? Where is your power? This is no longer the world you once knew, betrayer. You have no place here. Leave now and don’t return to this world. Leave the two that name themselves after the Black Prince and the rest of the children shall live. Take your death and dishonour and leave, betrayer.”
The Nameless One smiled and it was cold as the north wind, his eyes like black ice when Clerk Lovelin’s had been spitting coals. He was a handsome man, the Nameless One, but his face was hard and angular and lacking any warmth or compassion in its lines.
Flies buzzed about the bodies behind the Nameless One, the clothes of the skeletal bodies rippling in the breeze. “Bricks and stones and mortar are not where the power lies, you who came from the sky don’t understand what we had, what you stole from us. The power comes from the ground beneath our feet, from the source that the ancients used and soaked into the ground around them. Derantasar was built once, it can and will be built again and the line of the Black Prince will sit on its throne again.” The two were closer now, weapons in hand, dry skeletal bodies with buzzing flies behind the Nameless One, and butchered, bloody bodies behind the Keeper. The Nameless One’s face looked every bit a mask as much as the Keeper’s own. “You ask me where my power is? Feel my power.” And with that, the Nameless One struck at the Keeper, his cloak flapping about his legs and both hands on the hilt of his sword.
He struck fast, the Nameless One, but it could never be fast enough for one of the five Keepers. There was something sickeningly elegant about the parry from Keeper Reioshar, the way his arms bent impossibly inside his robe, the way he stepped back from the attack, spinning and counter attacking, his curved blades flashing in the morning light, his arms bending at two, three different angles. The Nameless One, with his two-handed sword, looked slow and clumsy under the onslaught, but he parried and the blades rang out in the morning sky as the Keeper’s robes whipped in the wind and those who dared look as they knelt moaned in fear and terror to see the enraged god, his green hair whipping about his shoulders. Nobody could stand before such an attack, Landros thought. How could the Nameless One have slain four Keepers in battle? But that was through his lies and deceptions, not with his own blade, and now the black-haired man in the black armour and grey cloak was being driven back and back, his eyes still black, but his face looking older as he fought, lines where there had been smooth skin before. He ducked and parried and retreated before the attack of the spinning, raging god.
The fight was lost. The Nameless One’s hair was turning to grey, skin beginning to slough down his face, his gloved hands moving slower and slower. And still the god attacked.
Landros looked around the field. There had been no men standing before, but now people, men and women, were rising to their feet. Some were sobbing, some silently weeping. All of them watching the god fight. All except one. All except a knight with his helm removed and a fold of skin hanging from his cheek and bouncing as he walked.
“Hey!” shouted Landros. Nobody looked his way. “Hey!” he shouted again, starting to run to the one he had seen following Ysora. Still the knight didn’t look his way. Landros ran faster, his breath loud in his ears, the sounds of the fight behind him loud and almost forgotten as he thought of the woman with the long dark hair and the long skirts, thought of her nervous smile as she had waited for the knight with the wounded face.
He gasped for breath as he ran, his knees feeling weak as he stepped and trod on fallen men and women, slipping on armour and shields. The few who had risen, not many on this side of the battlefield, watched the fight of the god, tears streaking their faces and prayers stumbling from their lips. They were near the trees that had flanked the army of the Black Prince so long ago when there had been order to the battle. Now men knelt next to one another, no idea who they had been fighting for, beyond caring now they watched the god fight the one in the long cloak with the black hair.
Landros wanted nothing more than to cut the knight with his sword when he reached him, instead he pushed the man hard, sending him sprawling, crying out in surprise and falling onto a dead woman, her hair spilling over her face, blue eyes staring up at a blue sky. “Fuck,” the knight said, his armour filthy and bloodied as he struggled to rise to his feet, pushing himself off the dead woman.
Landros kicked him hard in the middle of the back, more of a stamp. “Where is she?” he said, his hand tight about the hilt of his sword. The clash of steel on steel behind him impossibly fast, impossibly loud over his own breathing.
“What?” The knight groaned as he struggled to turn around to see his attacker. “Where’s who?”
“The woman.” Landros tried to control his breathing, still the shaking sword in his hand. “The woman you were following over here.”
The knight laughed, loud and high, He had his forehead on the woman’s stomach near the open wound that killed her. It didn’t seem to bother him as he tried to roll his head around to see Landros. “The Kneeler? She’s over there somewhere.” He lifted his right hand, still struggling to rise. “You want the Kneeling bitch for—“the last of his words were silenced by Landros’s blade sliding hard into the back of his neck. Blood flowed slowly, quicker when Landros pulled his sword free.
He looked back to where the Keeper and the Nameless One still battled, black silhouettes dark against the dawn sky, blades moving fast and deadly. All was lost for the Nameless One, he was being pushed back and back. Laraine and Phailin rode around the battlefield, cloaks flying behind them, the black oak tree under a blazing sun stark against the white. They were shouting, exhorting their men to rise, horses trampling bodies. Landros turned away and walked through the dead, more than once he saw long dark hair covering a face and his heart missed, but when he bent down and moved the hair away his hope burned again. Not Ysora. Some other young man or woman killed in the battle. He let the hair fall gently back over their faces, biting his lip.
It could have been the third or the thirteenth body he stopped to look at. Her hair was soft and thick as he had always known it would be. He stroked it between finger and thumb as he held it away from her face. She lay on the ground, her eyes closed, one arm stretched over her head. Her cheek was pale and soft. All the time he had been following her and yet he never knew her. He remembered her looking up at him from those dark eyes, her hands on his chest. And yet he had never known her. Never would know her. Bitter tears stung his eyes. He had failed Ysora, his failures leading her to this. How could he have lost her in the battle? How could he have lost her at the farm? She’d always seemed just out of reach, something on the horizon, a fleeting figure here and there. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, tears still heavy in his eyes as he stroked her cheek and let her hair fall back. He rested a hand on her narrow shoulder for a moment, trying to will the tears away. They felt selfish.
He looked up as he rose by her side, rage and fury welling within him. He knew it was rage at his own failings, but he willed it at Phailin and Laraine as they shouted and urged their followers to their feet. So few men now. He willed his hatred at the Nameless One stumbling before the Keeper. Hard to see from this distance, but it looked like things were falling from the Nameless One’s face, his cloak whipping about his body. Ysora had wanted to join their fight, “They understand my dreams,” she had said. The memory only brought more tears and Landros willed the memory away. She had wanted to join them but their cause was lost. So few men left and the Nameless One retreating be
fore the wrath of a furious god. Phailin and Laraine raced on their horses shouting words lost in the wind.
And then everything stopped. The wind stopped. The air was stale and cold and dry again and Landros fought for breath. The trees were still, their leaves ceasing their rustling. Even Keeper Reioshar paused his attack, his blades still by his side as the Nameless One stood before him, his left hand raised to his face, sword by his own side. The trees weren’t still, Landros now saw, the leaves were shrivelling and curling, colour leaching from them as they shrivelled and died and fell to the ground like ash. The last few men around Laraine and Phailin fell back to their knees, hands reaching to faces, hands shrivelling and ageing, skin becoming thin and parched, hair turning white and dry and hands fell from faces to show screaming skulls with skin flaking away, white bone and white teeth frozen in agony and fear. White horses reared on their hind legs as people screamed and aged and withered and died around them.
Even the few patches of green grass still on the ground turned brown and dry and curled and withered to nothing. And in the middle of it all, the Nameless One straightened his left arm before him and opened his hand before the Keeper, gloved fingers pointing upwards, palm to Keeper Reioshar.
A simple gesture, but one which made a god scream and scream. Keeper Reioshar’s head was thrown back, mask staring at the sky from where the god had descended three thousand years before. And he howled like a tortured animal, long and loud, and Landros fell to his knees and clamped his hands to his ears. The wind had risen again and the robes of the god fluttered about his body, the clothes of the dead fluttered about their bones and the Nameless One’s cloak rippled as he walked slowly forward, young and dark haired once more. He said nothing as he faced Keeper Reioshar, the god now on his knees before the Nameless One, his green wig fluttering in the wind and his mask now facing the ground.