by T. O. Munro
The cries seemed louder now to Jay’s ears. The ringing clash of battle sounded clearer through the frozen air as he crawled towards Elyas’s prone form. The elf was covered in hoarfrost which froze the blood oozing from his nose. Jay pulled at the fallen lieutenant’s arm and was rewarded by a splutter of bloody breath as the unconscious elf drew in some air. Jay hoped they might live to laugh about their matching injuries.
He tried to rise, dagger in hand as Maelgrum stalked towards the paralysed form of Tordil. The Dark Lord raised his sword high. “Enough isss enough, foolisssh elf.” Jay’s legs were jelly, his knees would not straighten. He tried to crawl at the triumphant wizard, but freezing fear once more filled his veins.
The red bladed sword swung down.
There was a streak of silver, a metallic ring, a flash of red as the sword was struck clean from Maelgrum’s hands. The Dark Lord turned, mouth opening in puzzlement, hands rising as the whistle of another silver arrow and another hummed in the air. Maelgrum’s hands moved in a blur, a shower of arrows rained upon him. Most fell broke in half to the ground, some bounced off an unseen shield or were deflected left or right, a hazard to the combatants who still encircled the scene of combat. The volley faltered and Maelgrum lowered his hands. One silver arrow was embedded in his shoulder, another had scored a deep line in his neck, a flap of black skin lifting in the slight breeze.
He pulled the arrow free with his right hand and raised it up in the air gripped in his fist, then with a snarl he clenched his fingers about the shaft and broke it in two.
Jay at last found the strength to turn and look whence the missiles had come from. An elf lady stood there, all in silver armour, long blond hair flowed from beneath her helm to cloak her shoulders with the colour of straw. She held a bow loosely in her right hand, upon her back there was an empty quiver. Behind her Jay could see how the circle that had surrounded them was broken. There were more elves in silver armour who had shattered the ring’s northern perimeter, and the air was full of human and orcish cries of alarm.
And above it all Maelgrum laughed. “Why,” he exclaimed. “You mussst be Andril’sss pet.”
“I am Marvenna,” the elf lady replied. “I am Liessa’s cousin and I have finally made a choice that was not evil.”
Maelgrum cocked his head to one side. “It may not have been an evil choicsse,” he said. “But it was certainly a ssstupid one.” He snapped his fingers and the red blade was back in his hand. Marvenna dropped the bow and drew her own sword. “You ssshould have ssstayed ssskulking in your Sssilverwood, eeking out your exissstance until you could flee to your precssious Blessssed Realm.”
Marvenna shook her head. “I would know no peace there, you scrap of worn out flesh. I broke a solemn promise and only death will free me from the misery of that guilt.”
“Death?” Maelgrum’s red eyepits flared brightly. “Then I would be mossst happy to oblige. Sssuicidal elvesss are sssomething of a ssspeciality of mine.”
***
“Marvenna has come,” Niarmit murmured as the silver tide flooded past the chateau.
“How many are there?” Pietrsen was shaking his head at the joyous disaster which was both enveloping the enemy on the plain and unnerving those on ridge. They could see the twitch of orcish heads as the commanders opposite them cast nervous glances from the carnage on the valley floor to the weary but still resolute line of Torsden’s spearmen.
“She must have emptied the Silverwood.” Niarmit shook her head. “There’s ten or twelve thousand there. Feyril never brought so many, not even at Bledrag field.”
Eadran sniffed his disdain. “I’d wager nearer fifteen thousand. Say what you like about Andril’s self-serving appeasement, but the strength of the Silverwood was never gambled or diminished in the game of war, unlike Feyril’s people.”
“Steady, men,” Torsden’s voice rang out as a hum of excitement energised his exhausted troop. “Steady.”
The orc line opposite them were restless for a different reason, jostling against each other, looking to their commanders for orders, exchanging glances.
“Advance,” Torsden commanded. The mixed line infantry, Nordsalve, Oostalve and Medyrsalve warriors took a single step of parade ground precision, such that the hill trembled at their footfall; The line of orcs took two ragged and fearful steps back. The salved took another weighty step; the orcs turned and ran.
“Charge!” Torsden commanded, and all along the hill the salved flooded down on an enemy already beaten, more eager to slash their way through their own zombie allies than to face the resurgent army that they had just fought to a standstill.
Pietresen spurred his horse after them. Niarmit watched him go, Eadran’s will weighing down her hands like lead. “Come, girl,” his voice sounded in her head. “It is time.”
“For Maelgrum?”
“Aye, and for you to let me have your trust and your seat on that pretty gilded throne.”
“He is somewhere down there. That is where we will find him.”
“Yes, girl down there, in the midst of thousands of battling soldiers.” Eadran agreed. “When I sunder his soul from his blackened physical form, I want no bodies nearby that his soul may claim. I want him to have no place to go save the prison I have prepared for him.” Eadran looked through Niarmit’s eyes at the tip of the ridge. “There is where we will fight him alone and unobserved.”
“I trust the Goddess will be watching wherever we are,” Niarmit reached for her crescent symbol, stroking its fine filigreed surface.
“You can trust the Goddess if you like, girl. I’ll be trusting in my sword and my sword arm.”
In the Domain of the Helm, Niarmit saw Eadran rise from his throne and cross the short distance to the dais. She felt a nervous lightness in the pit of her belly, not unlike the falling sensation that the Kinslayer had subjected her to during the flight of escape from Morwencairn. The moments when Chirard had control of her body had been a terrible separation. She had felt in those minutes and seconds the nightmare that portly Gregor the Third must have lived for months at a time with his body usurped by the Kinslayer’s cruelty.
Nonetheless she rose from her seat and lifted the Helm’s avatar. She stepped aside as the Vanquisher slipped into her throne and pulled the Helm down upon his own head. There was no flash or bang or stench of scorched flesh, merely a fierce bristling man pulling on a bizarrely shaped war helm.
“Take a seat, girl,” Eadran gestured at the pair of remaining white thrones. “You’ll want to see what we’re about.”
She slipped warily into the throne on the left; it was still warm from Eadran’s presence. The other was the Kinslayer’s by right and, petrified though Chirard was, she still did not dare to trespass on what the mad king might have considered his place and property.
She rested her hands on the arm of her white throne and shut her eyes to see and feel how Eadran was using her physical form. They trotted on horseback towards the top of the hill, accelerating to a canter. “How will we make sure he comes?” she asked. “What signal will we give him, to be sure he answers?”
“Don’t worry about that, girl,” Eadran growled. “If I make it, he will come.”
***
Again Jay felt the shameful fear, the morale draining cold that kept him shivering on the ground and warded away all others from the broad circle of frost in which the Dark Lord fought his private battle.
Elyas moaned insensible and spat blood on the icy summer ground. Tordil stood stock still, caught impotent in the act of raising his sword. Marvenna circled the grinning form of Maelgrum, her sword pointed at his chest. Jay lay on the ground crying frozen tears of despair that his courage should have been so completely sucked from him.
“What promissse did you break, Sssteward, that makesss you ssso eager to ssseek death?” Maelgrum turned slowly on his heel to keep facing the restless Marvenna. He held his own sword low, his eye pits sparkling with a glittering red light.
“I promised a mother that
I would keep her children safe,” Marvenna spoke plainly, watchful eyes following the Dark Lord’s every tiny movement.
“I assssume thisss wasss not jussst any mother.”
“You know well enough who it was.” Anger flecked her speech now. “For all your many crimes the tortured insanity you inflicted on the gentlest dearest creature in the world must rank amongst your blackest sins.”
Maelgrum cocked his head to one side. “You mussst be unfamiliar with the full catalogue of my achievementsss. If we had the leisssure I would let you perussse it.” He grinned. “There are blasssted worldsss spinning asss cindersss in ssspace whose dissssipated inhabitantsss would claim their sssuffering wasss far greater than Liessssa’sss.”
Marvenna gave a curt nod. Jay too accepted there was no reason to doubt Maelgrum’s boast of destruction. “Maybe I might have spared them too,” the steward said. “I should have stirred myself to action when first Lord Andril laid his plans. I should have come then. I should not have let you take her.”
“You think you could have ssstopped me then?” Maelgrum peered at her, bony chin jutting forward in disbelief. “You think you can ssstop me now?”
“Look around you.” Marvenna waved her sword towards the distant ridge, but kept her eyes on Maelgrum. Jay lifted his head to look at the shattered army fleeing before the silver elves, plumes of fire errupting in the zombie ranks. “Your army is destroyed,” Marvenna said. “You have lost, your end is near.”
Maelgrum lifted his cloaked shoulders in a shrug of indifference. “Orcsss breed and people die, with or without my assssissstance. You will find, Sssteward, that I can grow new alliesss far more easssily than you can grow a new head.”
With that he flung himself at Marvenna, sword scything towards the steward’s neck. She got her own blade up to block his flaming strike, but still the force of it spun her around and off balance. Jay saw Tordil’s little finger twitch as the tall elf struggled against the constraining enchantment. Maelgrum was raining blow upon blow down on Marvenna’s defence. She parried each blow with some skill, but without any glimmer of opportunity for a counter attack. For every neat deflecting of his heavy blade, she had but a heartbeat to raise her weapon before Maelgrum was swinging in with another weighty blow. Jay trembled incontinently.
“You sssee, Sssteward, you sssee why Andril wasss right.” Maelgrum’s voice hissed in the brief hiatus between each ringing clash of steel on steel. “He knew he could not challenge me, none of you could. You cannot ssstrike me any more than you could keep your recklessss promissse to Liesssa.”
“If I had kept my promise, I could have saved Quintala from the evil path she trod.” Marvenna ground out a reply through gritted teeth, launching wounding words where swordplay had failed her. “Without her, you would languish defeated, confined still in the prison they ensnared you with.”
“I wasss not defeated, I wasss tricked.” Maelgrum howled assailing her with a fresh flurry of blows. So fast and yet, for just a fraction of a breath, Jay saw an opening where the Dark lord had let his sword swing too far and left his side open to a thrust from Marvenna if she could just seize the chance. She saw it and she was quick, but Maelgrum was quicker. His blade came back far faster than Jay would have believed possible, with such speed it almost snatched Marvenna’s sword from her grasp. She held on just and then fell to frantic defence as Maelgrum pressed on, entirely in command of himself and of the duel.
“Be not ssso sssure that the feeble pull of your good intensssionsss could have kept Quintala, or in time even Rugan from my ssside.” He glowered at her, his lipless mouth opening to cry out, “They were not jussst Liessssa’sss children, they were mine.”
Marvenna’s eyes widened, surprise had her and then Maelgrum did too. Her sword flew across the circle of frost and stabbed itself to stand quivering in the ground. The point of Maelgrum’s blade was at her throat. She took a step back. He followed, never letting his steel stray more than a quarter inch from the hollow at the base of her neck.
“You came here ssseeking death, Sssteward. Well it hasss found you and will ssspare you from your cousssin’sss wrath.” He said. “I trussst you appreciate thisss my gift to you.”
A voice called out, like the queen’s but richer and deeper. “Maelgrum, accursed lich, I summon you. Zeln and Usna too, I summon you all to my judgement!”
Jay turned his head from the tableau of Marvenna at Maelgrum’s mercy. Behind the Dark Lord an oval window was hanging open in the air and through it was a familiar bare hill top, Jay had stood there the previous night as the army of the Salved had begun their sober preparations for battle.
And in the midst of the window stood the queen. She wore the Helm and held a gleaming sword in either hand, but there was an unfamiliar casualness to her stance and when she spoke again that deep rich quality flavoured her voice. “Will you not come and duel with me?”
Maelgrum turned slowly from his victim to gaze through the window at the distant hilltop and its solitary defender. He tilted his head. “Isss that you, old friend? Isss that you in there?”
“Come,” the queen told him. “We have unfinished business.”
“Unfinissshed?” Maelgrum savoured the word. “I would sssay, it wasss barely ssstarted.”
He strode quickly towards the opening. Behind him, Marvenna stirred from the lethargy of imminent death and sprang for her sword. Seizing the hilt she yanked it from the ground and spun in one fluid motion to strike at the Dark Lord’s back. Maelgrum did not slow but merely spun on his heel as he walked, striking the Elf lady on the helmet with a blow so hard her own sword dropped from nerveless fingers and she crumpled to the ground.
Then, spinning on without a glance at his fallen foe, Maelgrum stepped through the portal and the opening shrank to a dot and disappeared behind him.
The frost evaporated and with it went Jay’s all consuming fear. He rose to his feet in shame fuelled anger. Tordil too broke free from his enchantment and flung himself at Elyas’s side turning his lieutenant over. Elyas spluttered and mumbled through his bruises, “did we win? Did we beat him?”
“We have won the battle,” the tall elf told him. “But we have not beaten Maelgrum, not yet.”
Tordil looked across to where Marvenna was pushing herself wearily into a sitting position. She pulled off her helmet with some difficulty, for the metal was dented out of shape, and shook her hair free. Jay saw her meet Tordil’s gaze and hold it. The elf captain gave the steward a brief short nod of acknowledgement and after a second’s grace, Marvenna returned the gesture in kind. Elyas coughed out some more bloody phlegm and laughed. “He means to say thank you, Steward, for saving our lives.”
Marvenna nodded towards the space where Maelgrum had disappeared. “The queen has repaid that debt in kind, now who will save her from Maelgrum’s wrath?”
The trio of elves rose unsteadily to their feet, Elyas leaning heavily on Tordil and Marvenna’s steps scarcely more certain than a toddler’s. Jay stood too and strode south across the battle field, for once outpacing his elven companions. His cheeks burned red with shame. Three elves had gambled their lives in combat with Maelgrum and he had shivered and wept on the ground while they did it.
The valley floor had broken up into islands of battle. The silver elves from the north and the soldiers of the salved streaming of the ridge to the south and east had caught the enemy in the maw of a giant trap and were chewing him into little pieces. A man could walk across the gaps between this patchwork of combat and ahead, as though Goddess sent, a horse stood chewing at a tuft of grass. A bloody smear across its flank suggested that all had not gone well for its former rider. The animal itself seemed unharmed, refreshed even. It made little protest as Jay heaved himself into the saddle and turned its head south-east in pursuit of his family’s murderer and vengeance.
***
Niarmit sat on the white throne, her mind a helpless passenger in her own body as Eadran stalked backwards and Maelgrum followed him. The hilltop was bare, t
he gate was gone and they were alone. Maelgrum’s dark shape cast a long dark shadow as the sun crept down towards the western horizon. Niarmit opened her eyes in the Domain of the Helm to look at Eadran, with the fast fading hours of daylight it seemed like she would have no chance to say farewell to her father before death and the Goddess claimed him. She opened her mouth to share the realisation, but the Vanquisher sat perfectly still upon the gilded throne, scarcely less of a statue than the Kinslayer, his focus entirely in the material world.
She shut her own eyes and saw again the watchful figure of Maelgrum, dextrously spinning his red bladed sword. Her attention, like Eadran’s, was entirely on the Dark Lord even though she was little more than a spectator in the battle that her body was about to have.
“I sssee you favour the tenisssho ssstyle ssstill,” Maelgrum hissed. “Perhapsss I will follow your exsssample.” He stretched out his left hand and glanced at it as he flicked his fingers. A second red blade appeared in his palm, his skeletal fingers closing over the hilt.
In that instant, Eadran was upon him the twin blades of The Father and The Son raining down so fast that all Niarmit could see through her own eyes was a blur of steel. Maelgrum parried, but only at the cost of giving ground, stepping back as Eadran maintained a blinding speed of assault. Niarmit gasped at the duel, knowing that each simple clash of blades was a culmination of consumate skill and lightning reflexes as each swordsman anticipated and blocked the other’s blows.
“You have not lossst the ssskillsss I taught you,” Maelgrum said. “You make thisss bitchesss’sss sssword armsss dancsse a pretty tune.”
Eadran was grimly silent carving left and right. Niarmit felt the tendons in her wrists straining as they worked the mighty swords in tiny micro-movements, fractional adjustments of the angle of each blade to best deflect the Dark Lord’s blows and so open an opportunity for a counter stroke. She knew not what forge Maelgrum had drawn his weapons from. However, unlike orcish scimitars and outlander longswords, the Dark Lord’s blades withstood the thunderous crash of Eadran’s enchanted weapons. They gleamed still true and free from notch or other injury.