The Winds of Strife (The War of the Veil Book 1)

by John Donlan

  They moved deeper into the swamp, away from the farms and roads, to places where few ever went. The trees were thicker in the heart of the marsh, and the undergrowth tangled and wild and untamed. Darius, sword held out firmly before him, slogged on through the reeds and the thorny bushes, past the crooked branches of the trees and the thick growths of Skullshead. He hacked at hanging vines and moss, and cut a path where none could be found. More tracks could be seen ahead, inches deep in the mud at the edges of the pools. Fresher and more recent.

  For an hour he trudged forward, his men grim and silent at his side. Each of them knew that they were tracking dangerous and deadly foes. They had all seen the dismembered body in the field and most of them had been there when the remains of the Tho'reen had been found. They knew, as Darius knew, that they were facing the potential for death. But they followed him on into the darkness and rot of the marsh without question.

  They were getting closer; Darius could feel it in his bones. The tracks were still plainly in sight, though the rain was doing a good job of starting to erode them. If he had done as Torelle asked and returned to the castle, the tracks would not have been here when he returned. As it was, he was starting to wonder if they were not already too late. If they had to go much further...

  Then, suddenly, he pushed through a patch of tall reeds around the outside of a pool of rising water to find himself in a small clearing of flat, muddy ground. In the centre of the clearing was the remains of a fire. It had been dead for hours at least. If the monsters who had killed the farmer had returned here, they had not started the fire again, or even attempted to do so. But the tracks led here, he was certain of that. The ground was churned up by the passage of numerous feet.

  And most of them led away from the clearing, back into the swamp. In the direction of Marsh End. Older tracks. Tracks that had faded almost to nothing. They had been made hours ago, if he had to hazard a guess.

  Darius gasped as he suddenly understood why the tracks had been so easy to follow. He had been right to assume that they were meant to be found. This was a distraction. The monsters already knew where Needra was, and while he was here, trudging through muck and mire, they were on their way to the castle. To his sister, and to Needra.

  “We have been fooled!” he hissed, spinning and moving swiftly back towards the marsh. “The castle is...”

  He did not get the chance to finish what he was saying. Something burst from the trees like a startled animal and charged at one of the guards. Darius had time to see a blur of black before a blade sang and plunged into the guard's chest. He saw a spray of blood as the sword erupted from the man's back, coated in guts and entrails. The man tried to scream as he died, but all that escaped his lips was a gurgle of agony. The sword pulled back and he dropped to his knees. Darius saw the man’s eyes grow dull, and then he toppled forward into the mud.

  Chaos erupted. The guards drove forward, even as two more figures emerged from the trees. They made no sound as they attacked, these butchers. No battle cries, no screams of rage and lust. But they swung their weapons with skill and ferocity enough, however, that two more guards fell even before they realised what was happening.

  Darius bellowed and rushed the nearest of the attackers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his last three men do the same. Swords clashed and the ringing of metal echoed across the dismal expanse of muddy ground as battle was joined.

  One of the attackers swung at Darius. He ducked beneath the blade and brought his own sword up to knock the weapon aside. The cruel, sharp metal was twisted away, but only barely. The wielder was incredibly strong as well as skilled.

  Darius looked up, and as he did so, his blood turned to ice in his veins. He was not looking at the face of a man at all. He did not know what he was looking at, but it did not belong to any human. The face was not even a face at all, in essence. There were no eyes, no mouth, no nose, no ears; not even any hair on the thing's head. Instead, where the features should be, there was wrinkled, dull, leathery skin that covered the entire skull. At first, he thought it was a mask, but he realised his error a moment later. The face had been removed and fleshy patches had been stitched into place instead. He could see the crude twine, rotting in places and falling away, allowing edges of skin to peel back slightly. Something black and wet glistened between the folds of flesh.

  He recoiled backwards, staggered, and almost fell. He had seen foul and monstrous things before - the butchery in the swamp, the dead farmer – but this was something else entirely. He felt his stomach clench with fear as he took several steps backwards.

  The head turned to follow his progress, despite the lack of eyes. It knew where he was, and it could still sense his presence, somehow. Darius shook his head as the monster stomped towards him, the heavy black boots it wore sending clumps of mud into the air. He knew it was hopeless to fight against something like this. It was a work of magic, of black sorcery. How could one hope to even hurt something that was so unnatural, let alone kill it?

  He saw his men still fighting, and he felt a sudden sense of shame wash over him. They had to have seen their opponents by now, but they were battling on. They had not given up. He would do the same, even if it was hopeless.

  Roaring, Darius thrust forward with the point of his blade. It caught his opponent by surprise and the creature had no time to react before the metal tip slid home into its chest. Darius pushed hard, palm on the hilt of his sword, driving it as deep as it would go, surprised yet elated at the lack of resistance. He expected blood to fountain from the wound. He should have been covered in the stuff the instant his weapon slid into flesh. But he was not. He could see where his sword had pierced the thing's body. It was a ragged, torn wound, but there was no blood.

  The creature bellowed and shook its head from side to side. Darius shuddered and pulled his blade back from the hole he had made in the stocky torso. The blade should have been covered in thick blood, but instead, he saw slick, wet mud.

  The wound he had delivered should have been fatal. A man would have died instantly, but the creature seemed almost unhurt. Almost. As it lumbered forward again, blade raised, Darius thought that it was moving more slowly, as though the sword thrust had damaged it more than he had at first thought.

  But it was not dead, and showed no signs of dying. Darius pressed his attack, parrying the creature's blade each time it struck and then swinging forward in attacks of his own. His arm ached each time he hit his opponent's blade, but he pushed on until he saw an opening. He took it, hacking the edge of his weapon down into the shoulder of the creature. The metal slid down easily, cutting through flesh and what should have been bone. He expected resistance, but once more, the blade went through the creature as if it was made from butter. When the sword appeared on the underside of the shoulder, Darius almost dropped his weapon in surprise.

  The severed arm dropped to the mud with a revolting squelch and lay there, fingers still twitching. Darius looked at the wound and again, expected to see blood gushing from it. What he saw instead was dirt. Wet, congealed, foul smelling dirt, slopping from the wound and dropping to the ground. Worms and other insects wriggled in the mess, as though they had been freshly dug up from the earth.

  He had no time to wonder. Even with its arm missing, the monster was still pressing the attack. But Darius was winning now, though. He could sense it. He parried the slower attacks with ease, thrust the enemy's sword away every time it came close. He drove forward and pushed the creature backwards, towards the swamp. It stumbled, and as it did so, Darius pulled his blade back over his shoulder and then swung forward as fast and as hard as he could.

  The featureless head was cut from the torso cleanly. It tottered in place for a second, then dropped to the ground where it bounced once and then lay still.

  Darius took a step back, wary, wondering if even that was enough to end the creature. He did not have to wonder for long. The trunk of the thing rocked for a moment as fresh, slimy mud oozed from the stump of its neck. Darius
saw more worms wriggling there, in the glistening muck that passed for blood. He felt sick. The torso shook and then, quite suddenly, toppled over and crashed to the mud below.

  It lay there, twitching, still not quite dead. Darius wondered what it might take to kill the thing completely. If sorcery and vile magic had given it life, would anything truly end the spell? He watched for just a second, sickened to his very core, then heard a scream from one of his men.

  He looked up and saw that one of the remaining two attackers had driven a sword through the chest of one of his guards. The man slid from the blade and collapsed onto the ground, dead. Life was fragile. If only it was the same for the monsters.

  Darius charged in behind the creature that had killed the guard and swung his sword, aiming for the neck. His blade bit deep, but did not go all the way through. The head remained attached to the body by a thin strip of wrinkled, pale flesh. Repulsed, Darius reeled away, and saw the head topple sideways out of the corner of his eye, bang against the creature's shoulder, and then hang there, mockingly.

  “The head!” he yelled to the last of his men. “Remove the head! It is the only way.”

  Whether the embattled guardsmen heard him or not, he didn't know, but they seemed to redouble their efforts against the last of the monstrous attackers. One of the men was bleeding from a cut to his arm, though not badly, and the other had a gash across his chest that would need attention. But they were alive, and still fighting.

  Darius joined them, drawing the attention of the creature long enough that the man with the slash on his arm was able to end it. He slid his sword through the neck of the monster, then pulled viciously to the side, severing it from the neck.

  When it was done, and all three of the things lay on the muddy ground, Darius turned to his men grimly. “This was a diversion,” he hissed. “A trick, to draw us away from the real threat. There are more of these things, and they are on their way to Marsh End. They may even be there by now.”

  “The soldiers there will deal with them, my lord,” one of the men said. He was staring down at the still bodies in shock and horror, his face drained of colour and his body shaking.

  “They do not even know the threat is coming,” Darius said. “We need to ride, and fast. With luck, these things will be on foot. We may yet be able to get back in time to warn the city.”

  He cleaned his sword as quickly as he could, sheathed it, and then led the two men back through the swamp.

  His mind was fixed firmly on Torelle and Needra. The creatures were going for Needra, which meant that his sister would be in just as much danger. He would not let either of them die today, not while he had a breath left in his body.

  Twenty-Three

  Lysena shivered and drew her fur cloak tight around her body. In the weeks since she had last visited the mountains, winter had grown closer, the snow thicker, the winds more bitter. Before too long, even the lower meadows and the capital itself would be blanketed in white. Each breath she expelled frosted and turned to mist the instant it left her nose or mouth, and despite the thick layers she wore, she still felt the cruel chill biting almost to the bone.

  Captain Jaran sat astride his horse beside her, peering up the steep mountain slopes with a mixture of curiosity and barely disguised fear. He knew now what lay up there in the woods, waiting for them, and she could see the stark terror was gripping him like the icy hand of winter. Lysena shared his fears, but as the Queen of Arrenissia, she had a duty to protect its people, and she could not let fear take her.

  On her other side was Kindrey Lolsk. The ancient loremaster looked even more withered outside of the stuffy, dim confines of the archives. She would have preferred that he remain behind in the castle, but he had insisted he come with them. He had wanted to see the Frendrith so that he could learn its true nature. He looked uncomfortable in the saddle of his horse, and his old frame shook constantly from the cold. His old bones were not accustomed to conditions like these. He should have been beside a warm, comfortable fire, not here.

  Lysena frowned and tore her gaze from him. She had no idea how he planned to traverse the mountain at his age, but he had been adamant that he could do it. She swore a silent promise to herself that if he struggled any more than he already was, she would send him back to the city with several of her men, no matter how much he protested.

  Stretching out behind the queen were two dozen soldiers, all of them armed to the teeth and dressed in armour. Lysena did not believe they would be much use against the thing that awaited them, but fighting was not the purpose of this journey in any case. And Jaran had insisted on the presence of the soldiers. The Frendrith was not the only danger in the mountains.

  Lysena pointed up towards where the tree line began above them. “We will ride as far as we can, but the slopes become impassable further up and we will have to take to our feet.”

  She heard Kindrey mutter something, but was unable to catch the words. Her frown deepened as she turned her horse up onto the slope. Puffs of white drifted lazily up into the air as the horse picked a path upwards.

  “I still believe this is a mistake, your majesty,” Jaran said as he rode beside her.

  “I know,” Lysena replied quickly, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “But the magic Kindrey wove should protect us from the power of this thing, unless its strength has grown more than we believe. If that is the case, then staying away would not have saved us in any case.”

  The ritual that the loremaster had performed before they left had been ancient, recorded in one of the oldest books in the archives. It had dated back almost to the time of the Candrille. It had detailed a ritual and ancient spell that was supposed to safeguard against the powers of the Frendrith. Of course, there had been no way to test its effectiveness, and even Lysena herself was unsure if it would work or not. Magic was a long forgotten art, and there were few alive who even believed in it now. But it had been one of the only options open to her. She needed to know what she was up against.

  “I understand, my queen,” Jaran said, choosing his words carefully. “But we should have taken more time to learn of our enemy. Even the most foolish of generals do not go into battle without first understanding what they are fighting.”

  “We are not here to fight, and there was no time to prepare any more than we already have! Who knows how many have already died to feed this entity? Would you have preferred to wait while it grows stronger still? You read those old accounts the same as I did. When it reaches its full power, no force known to men could stop it.”

  Jaran clenched his jaw tight. Lysena knew that deep down, he agreed with her, that his arguments were borne out of worry for her. Even so, she could not let his words force her to doubt her decision. She was queen, and her say was final.

  “As you say, your majesty. I will speak of it no more, and trust your judgement.”

  Jaran fell silent, and Lysena was glad of the respite. She feared that any more, and she would lose her nerve, now, when it was most important she show strength.

  The slope grew steeper as the party ascended. Snow broke free from the layer that covered the ground and tumbled downwards at regular intervals. It was a treacherous route, but there was no other way into the mountains and the cabin that was their destination. Up ahead, she knew of a small, relatively sheltered and flat clearing where they would camp for the evening. She had no intention of facing the thing ahead during the night.

  The soldiers had no real trouble scaling the steeply angled slope, but Kendrey struggled as much as she had feared he might. Before they had travelled far, he was wheezing and gasping for breath, and his wrinkled and weathered features were far paler than they should have been, his lips and cheeks tinged with an unhealthy blue colour. Lysena looked at him with concern, and every time he noticed her attention, he tried to straighten his back and breathe more easily. Lysena doubted very much that he would make it all the way to the top.

  They reached the clearing in the late afternoon, as the sky had b
egun to darken towards night. While her men began to set up a crude camp within the open space, Lysena turned to the old loremaster with concern. “You will wait here for us tomorrow,” she said, keeping her voice as even and as neutral as she could.

  “Your Majesty, I need to...”

  “You do not need to do anything,” she told him. “If the Frendrith is there, I will describe it to you… so long as your ritual worked and we survive to tell the tale. If it does not work, then at least you will live through it all. If we do not return, I want you to find a way to defeat this abomination.”

  Kindrey looked pained, but he did not try to argue with his queen. Lysena was relieved, she did not want to have to force the issue any further than she already had.

  “Do not get too close,” he warned. “The Frendrith can kill from a distance. And if it should attack, do not attempt to fight it. Your weapons will, in all likelihood, be useless against it, and may only anger it further. Run from it. That is the only way, my queen.”

  “I have no intention of trying to fight,” Lysena told him wryly. “If there was any other way, I would not even be here. Such is the price of ruling, I suppose.”

  Kindrey smiled for the first time. “So it is. Your father always understood that, and I now you do too. You must make the difficult decisions, and do things that others cannot, because it is your duty.”

  “If my father understood one thing, it was duty.” Lysena sighed and turned her head to stare up the mountain. The cabin was just a few miles away. They would reach it early the following morning. She supposed they could have got there this evening if they had pushed onwards, but event he thought of returning to the old hut at night was enough to make her blood run cold.

  Kindrey nodded. “He was a good man, and a good king, but even he never had to face anything like this. I worry for you, your Majesty. Between the threat of the Frendrith and the potential for war, the realm is in a precarious position.”