Of course, they were paid extremely well. But could that have been enough? If the Cold Rider filled them with such fear that they had fled their world, why return and risk encountering him?
Aedan tried to put himself in Futhark’s place as he considered possibilities, the way his father taught him. Suppose something had made him flee his own world, the home that he had always known? Might there still not be, despite the dangers, a desire to go back? Perhaps.
He could not imagine leaving Anuire permanently. It was the place of his birth, the city where he had grown up. He knew every street and alleyway like the back of his own hand. It would be difficult to leave, never to return. Always, he felt certain, there would be a pull back to his own homeland-and if something had happened to blight Anuire the way this world had been blighted, he had no doubt he would nurture a desire to see it returned to the way it once had been.
Here he was now, out of time, riding through a cold and misty world that always seemed more nightmare than reality, and he felt a desperate longing to be back in his own world, on familiar ground.
Might not, then, the halflings feel the same?
Back home, he would visit the grave of his father every time he returned from a campaign or felt the weight of his responsibilities pulling him down. He would go early in the morning, when the cemetery was still deserted, and sit down on the ground beside the mound of earth that marked his father’s resting place, and he would speak to him, unburdening himself and asking for advice and guidance.
It was not the same, of course, as when his father had still been alive, though Aedan liked to think somewhere in the heavens his father could still hear him and send him strength and wisdom. He took great comfort in it. Perhaps it was like that for Futhark and the other halflings who periodically returned to the world from which they fled.
It was no longer the same, but they still took some comfort in returning.
“Of all the humans I have ever known,” Sylvanna said, breaking into his thoughts, “your silences speak loudest.”
Aedan looked at her and smiled wanly. “Forgive me. I am not being a very good traveling companion on this journey.”
“That was not what I meant,” she said as she rode beside him. “I was not complaining. I was merely remarking on the fact that I can always tell when you are troubled.”
“Have I become so obvious? That is a bad trait in an imperial minister.
I shall have to correct it.”
“We shall make it back; don’t worry- “
“It is my job to worry. The emperor has neither time nor the inclination. I must do his worrying for “And who worries for you?”
“I worry for us both. It can be quite exhausting.”
“If you like, I can worry for you. Then that would relieve you of at least some of your burden.”
He glanced at her and saw that she was smiling.
He grinned despite himself. “You know, sometimes I think you’re actually beginning to act human.”
She sniffed disdainfully. “Well, you don’t have to be insulting.”
The screams were sudden and terrible. They cut through the stillness of the night, coming from behind them, at the rear of the troop formation.
Aedan and Sylvanna wheeled their horses simultaneously, and Sylvanna’s sword sang free of its scabbard. The men in the ranks immediately behind them stopped and without hesitation instantly turned to either side, prepared to meet anything that might come up on their flanks.
Their battle-seasoned instincts served them well, thought Aedan, and it was a good thing too, as became frighteningly apparent within moments.
In the darkness, Aedan could not see what was happening back at the rear of the formation, but he could see the torches there bobbing wildly and erratically, some falling to the ground as the men dropped them to engage whatever was attacking …
or else fell to the ground themselves. But before Aedan could do anything, he heard rapid hoofbeats coming up behind him and an instant later saw the emperor gallop past, sword in hand, heading full speed toward the rear of the formation.
“Sire, wait!” Aedan called out, but Michael was already disappearing into the darkness. He had moved so quickly that not even Lord Korven or any of his retinue riding at the front of the formation had time to react. Aedan swore. “Go after him, you fools!”
he shouted, setting spurs to his own horse.
Sylvanna was right behind him as they set off at a gallop in the emperor’s wake. And it was then that Aedan heard a sound that made his blood run cold.
An unearthly, ululating, keening sound that was half moan, half cry.
He had heard it once before, on a previous expedition through the Shadow World, and that time over a hundred men had died.
It was the cry of the undead.
“Aedan! Watch your flank!” Sylvanna called out from behind him as they galloped headlong after Michael. Aedan glanced to his left, since the troops were on his right, and he saw the walking corpses coming, shambling through the twisted trees like drunken specters.
Some of them were wearing battle dress … or what remained of it.
Rusting armor that squeaked and scraped as they moved; battered helms, some of which were cut almost clean through where a sword had split the skull; rotting tunics beneath chain mail encrusted with rust and covered with spiderwebs; greaves covered with dirt and mud; buckled shields with faded devices on them; tattered remnants of leather shoes and flapping breeches that were little more than rags. Others wore the rotting garb of peasants, through which decayed flesh and agebrowned bones were clearly visible. Decomposing faces stared at him with eyeless sockets in which worms and maggots writhed. And as if the sight of them alone were not bad enough, every one of the horrific things was armed. Those that did not bear swords or spears carried pitchforks, axes, or makeshift clubs.
They had flanked the army, perhaps even surrounded it, Aedan didn’t know, but the first attack came on the rear of their formation. Now the walking dead were pouring out of the woods on both sides of the trail.
One of them came out in front of
Aedan, brandishing a spear. Without slowing, Aedan raised his sword and brought it down as he passed, cutting the shambling corpse’s arm off at the shoulder. It fell writhing to the ground, but still the creature clutched at his stirrup as he went by.
Aedan’s horse dragged it along for several yards before Aedan managed to kick the damned thing loose.
The army didn’t panic. That would have cost them their lives, and they all knew it. Tired as they were, they kept formation and fought the undead as they advanced. The wretched creatures moved slowly, but what they lacked in speed they made up for in relentlessness. And they could not be killed, for they were already dead. The only way to fight them was to dismember them completely, and even then they kept on coming, dragging themselves along the ground like snails. Blades rose and fell repeatedly, and tired as the troops were, the realized they could not pause in their grim work even for an instant. They had faced undead before, though not this many, and a lot of them had not survived to tell the tale.
Aedan saw the emperor. He had ridden to the rear of the formation, where the first attack occurred, and he was rallying the troops, whose formation had been broken up by the initial attack. He called out orders to the men as he laid about him with his blade, turning his horse this way and that to meet the shambling figures that came at him from all sides.
For a moment, Aedan had a memory from childhood leap unbidden to his brain. He recalled how he had tried to frighten young Prince Michael with
lurid and horrifying stories of the Shadow World, spitefully hoping to give him nightmares like the ones he’d had when he was younger. And though Michael had dreamed of the Shadow World after being told those tales just before his bedtime, unlike Aedan, in his dreams, the prince had fearlessly fought the monsters and defeated them. Now, ironically and frighteningly, it was happening in real life.
And just as young Princ
e Michael had shown absolutely no fear in his childhood dreams, the adult emperor displayed none now. And that was precisely what alarmed Aedan as he saw him plunging his mount into the steadily advancing ranks of the undead.
Fear was a function of self-preservation, but it was an emotional response that was utterly lacking in the emperor. Courage, heightened strength and senses, regeneration, and protection from evil were all among his attributes, blood abilities that he had manifested after he had passed through puberty, and since his blood powers stemmed directly from the line of Anduiras, Michael possessed more of them than most. His blood totem was the lion, and like that noble beast, Michael possessed unrelenting courage and fearsome savagery in battle.
However, his blood abilities did not render him invulnerable, though he often acted as if they did. And as Aedan saw him plowing like a juggernaut into the advancing ranks of the undead attacking the rear column of the army, his stomach tightened and fear-induced adrenahn hammered through his system.
As young Ghieste, Lord Korven, Viscount Alam, and the rest of Michael’s mounted retinue came galloping up behind Aedan and Sylvanna, Aedan raised his sword above his head and cried out, “To the emperor!”
Without hesitation, they followed him, cutting their way through the staggering, animated corpses to Michael’s side. However foolhardy Michael’s heroics may have been, thought Aedan, they had galvanized the troops. C)n seeing him riding to join in their defense, they rallied, and their battle cry of “Roele! Roele!” went up, echoing through the darkness. Most of the torches had been flung to the ground, since the troops could not fight and hold them at the same time. Some of them had ignited the undergrowth, which was slow to burn because of the misty damp, but it nevertheless gave Aedan an idea.
“Torch the trees!” he cried out repeatedly as he laid about him with his sword, and in moments, men not in the forefront of the fighting began throwing their torches into the woods and snatching up those which had been dropped and tossing them, as well.
With so many torches soaked in pitch flung into the woods and undergrowth, the flames began to spread despite the dampness, and it gave them light by which to see. At the same time, it provided an unexpected bonus. The undead burned.
With all their bodily fluids long since dried up, the corpses caught ire like kindling. Despite that, they kept on coming, impervious to pain, burning as they walked. Men hacked away at flaming bodies that advanced upon them, but inevitably, the corpses succumbed to the fire and collapsed to the ground.
However, they were not the only ones who fell.
Aedan saw many bodies lying on the ground, and among the burning or dismembered and still writhing corpses of the undead were many of the troops.
Some were badly wounded, others had been slain, and dismembered corpses gnawed at many of them.
Those still alive but too injured to move screamed horribly as the flames reached them, but there was nothing to be done. There was no time or opportunity to pull them back to safety, for there was no safe ground anywhere. The formation of the troops broke up into a wild melee. The undead kept pressing forward, rank upon rank, and the soldiers of the Army of Anuire hacked away at them like men pos sessed.
Aedan fought his way to Michael’s side, with Sylvanna and the others close behind him. They tried to form a protective ring about the emperor, but Michael was not cooperating. He did not remain still for an instant, turning his horse this way and that as the animal reared and plunged through the grisly ranks as flame and smoke rose all around them.
Then Aedan felt a strong wind come up behind him, and as he felt it plucking at his clothes, he heard Gylvain’s voice within his mind.
“Futhark has opened a portal ahead,” he said. “The front ranks are passing through. Get the emperor and bring him back to thefront while the rearguardfights a holding action!”
The wind passed on, circling the fighting, fanning the flames away from the main body of the troops and blowing them back at the undead.
“Sire!” Aedan cried out. “We have a portal! Hurry, Sire, come quickly!”
“Not until the troops are through!” Michael shouted back.
“Sire! For Haelyn’s sake, come on!, A number of the men around them heard the exchange and shouted out for Michael to go back.
Within moments, the cry was taken up in unison by everyone around them until the firelit night reverberated with the shouts.
“Roele back! Roele back!”
But before he could respond to the entreaties of his troops, disaster struck. As Aedan watched, horrified, Michael’s horse reared up, striking out at several advancing corpses with its hooves, and one of them plunged a spear into the animal’s belly. The horse gave out a shrill, whinnying cry of pain and went down hard. Michael tumbled from the saddle.
“No!” Aedan shouted, urging his mount forward, but several walking corpses blocked his way. He chopped at them frantically with his blade, trying to reach the emperor. The troops fighting closest to him saw it too, and the men surged forward, heedless of their own safety as they tried to reach him. But already Michael was encircled by at least a dozen of the undead, and Aedan could catch no glimpse of him as he desperately fought to reach him.
Suddenly, one of the undead near Michael was brought down, and then another literally went flying, hurled through the air with astonishing force.
Another one went down, and another, and bodies were flying everywhere.
Aedan reached Michael, who like a dervish lay about him with his blade, eyes wide, lips pulled back in a grimace of bestial rage, blood pouring from several wounds. He had unleashed his blood power of divine wrath, and Aedan knew there could be no reasoning with him till it was over.
It was beyond control, and in this godlike state of fearsome rage and bloodlust, Michael would smite friend and foe alike. The episode would not last long, for it called upon all the resources of the body, and when it had passed, it would leave him so exhausted he could barely move. But while he was caught in the grip of this overwhelming power, Michael was like an indiscriminate juggernaut of death, and Aedan did not dare approach him.
“Stay back!” he shouted to Sylvanna as she started to the emperor’s aid.
She glanced at him, startled, then realized what had occurred when she saw Michael laying waste to the undead around him, snarling and growg like a cornered animal, oblivious of his wounds.
Among all the powers that had passed down to the blooded from the old gods, divine wrath was the rarest and most dangerous, for once it was unleashed, there was no stopping it until it ran its course. Those who had it used it only as a last resort, and only in the most dire extremities because it was a power that possessed its wielder absolutely, releasing the feral beast within and magnifying it many times. It turned a human into a raging berserker incapable of rational thought or self-control, bent only on mayhem and survival.
Blood powers were not a certain thing. It was known which hereditary blood abilities ran within each line, but there was no way of predicting which ones would be inherited by any given offspring. The potential for all the blood abilities that ran within the line was there, but some remained latent, to be passed on and perhaps manifested by the succeeding generation. Some manifested themselves shortly after puberty, while others could remain latent for years, dormant until they suddenly manifested without warning.
In most cases, this was no cause for concern, as the majority of blood abilities could manifest themselves without risk to others. Heightened senses could suddenly appear, or animal affinity reveal itself through communication with a totem beast, or iron will appear, or the power to heal. Such abilities did not expose anyone to danger. But others, such as the power to raise elementals or manifest divine wrath, or-in the case of those bloodlines that came down from the evil Azrai-commute decay through touch, could cause injury or death.
The first time Michael had released his divine wrath in battle, he had done so unintentionally. He was sixteen then, and the army had been attacked
by gnolls one night after it made camp. The feral demihumans, a species that appeared to be part man, part wolf, attacked them while they slept, butchering the sentries so quickly and efficiently that they never knew what hit them. The only warning that the sleeping army had were the screams of the first victims.
Michael had come out of his tent, bearing his sword, and was immediately attacked. And that was when it had happened. Suddenly, it was as if he had become a gnoll himself in all but physical appearance.
Though he was just sixteen, several years of campaigning had put plenty of lean muscle on his frame. Still, Aedan was not prepared for what he saw that night.
Michael had suddenly stopped being Michael and instead became some demonic force, unstoppable
and unrelenting. His features had become almost unrecognizable as they twisted themselves into a mask of bestial savagery, and the sounds that came from his throat were growls that were not even remotely human. He killed every one of the creatures that came at him. Afterward, the soldiers who had seen it spread the word, and Michael’s reputation grew.
They all knew what it was. Many of them were blooded themselves, though in the entire army, no one else possessed that power. It was known to run only in the purest bloodlines of Anduiras, Basaia, and Masela, but only a few of the blooded ever manifested it. Aedan knew of only one other blooded noble who was known to have it-Arwyn of Boeruine.
This time, the soldiers recognized the state their emperor was in and did their best to move close enough to give him protection while at the same time keeping well out of his reach. In his state he would attack them as well if they got close enough.
Aedan’s problem, aside from trying to survive himself, was that with Michael in this state, there was no way he could get him to the portal Futhark had opened back into their own world. He had no choice but to wait until the wrath had run its course, and then whisk Michael away.
Once the wrath had faded, Michael would be helpless.
There was no time to pay attention to it, but with a quick glance behind him, Aedan saw that the troops had been withdrawing gradually as the battle had progressed. The tide of it had carried them forward-backward the way Aedan was facing as he fought in the rear guard-toward the portal the halfling guide had opened for them.
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