The High King's Vengeance

by Steven Poore

  He shrugged artlessly. “It could have been worse.”

  She almost laughed. “Then I’ll put an end to your suffering. In brief, then – yes.”

  “Yes?” Now he looked confused.

  “Yes Rais,” she said. “Yes, you are my interest.”

  She lifted herself and kissed him, before he could say anything to ruin the moment. This time it was the prince who was hesitant, not her. But it did not take him long to recover.

  The courtyard of the ancient fortress might as well have been empty, or else again populated by risen spirits, for all that Cassia took any notice of what was happening outside of Rais’s embrace. The journey into the North had sapped her of far more than just energy, she thought afterwards, remembering the surge of vitality that followed everywhere Rais touched her. It had taken her strength and her will, and it had stamped her emotions into the dirt. Now she felt as though the gods themselves had watered that ground, and the withered roots of her soul had sprung back into brilliant life.

  When they did pull apart – only far enough for breath, Cassia’s hands locked behind his head so that she could stroke his neck – Rais appeared to have regained his composure, though she noted with satisfaction that his heart beat just as fiercely as her own.

  “You left that revelation almost too late,” he remarked.

  It was Cassia’s turn to shrug, as much as she was able to under these conditions. “It is not you who is telling this story.”

  “I apologise for my temerity,” Rais said solemnly. He pulled her back into another kiss before she could reply.

  Perhaps it was fitting that it was Attis himself who came to interrupt the moment. Her grandfather wore the scandalised, censorious frown of a man plainly disappointed in the conduct of the younger generations, yet there was a sharp glint in his eye as he watched Rais extricate himself and stand with studied insouciance.

  “I wonder if you would care to cast an eye over the final preparations, my lord captain.” Attis gave a meticulous salute and then waited, as though he had issued a challenge.

  Rais brushed at his clothes. He glanced down at Cassia and grinned suddenly, a boyish mixture of embarrassment and glee that she could not resist returning. “I suppose I ought to, at that. Let none say I have ever neglected my duties.”

  Attis saluted again in reply, and Rais walked off to the gateway, tugging at the hems of his shirt.

  Cassia turned her gaze to her grandfather, still uncertain how deep his disapproval ran. “That was unsubtle,” she pointed out quietly. She could still feel the warmth of the prince’s breath and taste the faint spices of his skin, but they were already fading from her memory, like the fleeting scenes of a tale not yet learned by heart.

  “Subtlety and nobility rarely mix well,” Attis said. His lips quirked into a smile. “For a damned heathen, though, he is not so bad as he makes himself out to be, I suppose.”

  Cassia could not hide her surprise. “A compliment? Perhaps I should say the same for you, sir.”

  Attis flicked a hand dismissively. “No honorifics, please, Cassia. Let me be your grandfather for these last few hours at least, even if I have failed in that role until now.”

  The tone of his voice bothered her, though she could not say why. “I do not think you failed.”

  “You are altogether too kind to an old man,” Attis said. He glanced back towards the gate again. “Not so bad, indeed. You might think I disapprove, eh? I was a soldier, Cassia, and I learned many things along the way. Not least of which was that one should always look after one’s own interests.”

  Cassia thought for a moment, weighing his words. Rais’s words. If nothing else, it was plain that conversations must have taken place without her knowledge. She was not sure how she felt about that.

  “Thank you, grandfather,” she said at last.

  Attis breathed out, and the tension left his shoulders. The half-captain was gone, replaced by an old man whose eyes and pale skin spoke of a hard journey with little rest. Just as Arca, and Ultess, and all of the others appeared too. Just as she herself must look.

  “Now: a question. One that nobody else has asked.” Attis bent painfully, into a crouch and stared intently at her. “How does this sorcery of yours work?”

  It was the one question she had hoped nobody would ask. For a moment she considered telling her grandfather that it was not his business, or that he would not understand, or any number of fictions she could reel off from the top of her head. Instead she gathered her courage and shook her head.

  “I don’t know.”

  Three words she was saying far too often.

  Attis continued to stare at her until she was forced to look away. “I do not believe that. You have come here for a reason, Cassia.”

  She nodded hesitantly.

  “When I came here before, I thought it was haunted,” she said at last. “I saw Malessar’s spirit in the top chamber of the tower, and then later a force of undead soldiers defended the walls against the High King’s attack.”

  “But you said earlier that Malessar himself had brought you here,” Attis pointed out. “How could his spirit be here separately?”

  “I didn’t think of that then,” Cassia said. “I should have.”

  “But you did not. Never mind. You have thought of it since, though.”

  She nodded again. “Malessar said he needed the fire maintained so he would have . . . an anchor here. I think he used the fortress as a sort of . . . pool. A pool of magic that he could draw upon as he went deeper into Caenthell to check the curse wards. The fire was . . .”

  “A link between the sorcerer and the fortress,” Attis finished. “I see, I think. Go on, Cassia.”

  “It came to me that perhaps I could do the same,” she said quietly.

  Attis frowned. “How? Are you a sorcerer too?”

  Cassia shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. But I called those undead soldiers, and I awakened the shieldmen. And I am the heir to Caenthell. I thought that these things, together . . .”

  “But you are not certain.”

  Cassia sighed. This was the crux of the matter. “No,” she admitted.

  It was entirely possible she had made a massive error of judgement. That the fortress would not lend the power Malessar had stored there to her. That the pool of sorcery was now empty. And even before those issues she had to confront the fact that she had no idea how Malessar had connected himself to the fire in the courtyard to begin with. In stories, sorcerers and warlocks powered their magic through small pieces of themselves, as well as through prayers to their patron gods, making every spell a sacrifice of sorts. Cassia wondered if her prayers would be heard, if the sacrifices she had made would be enough for that link to connect her to the fortress while she battled her way through to the High King.

  It was a tremendous risk, one she had not dared reveal to Rais, Havinal or any of the other commanders. She looked up at her grandfather and saw that he must have followed her thoughts. His expression was sober.

  “Then this place is important,” he said. “It must be held. Will your spirits defend it again?”

  Cassia hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t know if they still exist here.”

  They sat in silence while Attis stared up at the shieldmen, motionless upon the wall and facing out into the dead lands beyond. “I am not happy with this.”

  “At this point,” Cassia said, “there is very little I can do about it. I cannot go back.”

  Attis shook his head, some of the moneylender’s old attitude visible once more. “That is not what I meant. You have left yourself open. Who is to feed the fire? Who will watch your back?”

  She frowned. Surely that was already decided. “The shieldmen. Lissus. Hetch, even.”

  Her grandfather grunted and spat onto the ground. “Hewn columns, an Almoul, and a man who knows nothing about you. None of them has the faintest idea how to lead a defence. And you would trust them?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Cassia
replied, exasperated.

  “Yes,” her grandfather said, so firmly that it seemed the decision had already been made. “I am the closest you have to a full commander. And now I know what you intend. I will remain here. The fire will burn until you have won.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but the flat strength of Attis’s gaze overwhelmed her argument before it even passed her lips.

  “With both Lissus and your prince alongside you, you hardly have need of my sword,” Attis continued. “In any case, I am so unpracticed I would be a liability more than an asset. But my tactical skill is undiminished. My mind is as sharp as it has ever been. Your great stone lumps do not think for themselves – I will do that for them.”

  Cassia bit her lip. Meredith had been proof against that argument, at least while he was still flesh. But Meredith was whole leagues and an ocean away now, and she could not deny what Attis said.

  “I did not want to leave you behind,” she said quietly.

  “Oh, I know. Guhl’s Company, the last charge into the jaws of death – the heroic end.” Attis’s voice softened. “A chance to make things right again. But Cassia, for me this is that chance. If I can never stand face to face with that bastard who took your mother away from me, I can still take my part in making certain his plan never comes to fruition. And you cannot deny me that.”

  Cassia shook her head. No, she could not. This was, after all, what the entire expedition was about.

  “Very well,” she said at last.

  The gathering at the gate felt like a pressure point, a stream pressing against the thin barrier of a dam. The horses milled around, hemmed in and stamping upon the spot. Cassia was the last to mount, moving carefully through the crowd with the torch she had lit from the main fire. The flame had a blueish tinge that she could not attribute to the fuel alone, and she gave a silent prayer to any gods that might be listening that Malessar’s sorcery would last long enough for her purposes.

  “So we go,” Rais said to her after she had gained her saddle. The horses shuffled until she was closest to the gateway.

  “Will they know that we are coming?” Hetch asked.

  The sky was blacker than it had ever been, as though the banks of unnatural mist had been recalled to defend Caenthell against attack. Vague shapes in the valley below reminded her that the vanished town of Karakhel had returned to a mockery of life on her last visit, as the mists had poured forth to attack the fortress. Cassia had no doubt they would do so again.

  Every step of the way from here onwards would be a battle.

  There were swirls – tendrils, she thought – at the base of the rise the fortress stood upon. Outriders: signs of the High King’s presence here.

  “He suspects,” Cassia said. “He feels our life.”

  She nudged her horse into a walk and it passed hesitantly through the gateway. The shieldmen who could not be comfortably fitted inside the fortress now stood in ranks outside, all facing into the kingdom. Cassia lifted her torch high into the air and looked at the guttering flame. She focused: upon it, upon the drums that thudded through her mind. On the notion that here was her strength, her weaponry.

  Her blood tingled – and surged. The torch flared up into life, burning borrowed energy far more than natural fuel.

  “And now he knows for certain.” She kicked at the horse’s flanks and spurred it down the slope. Rais followed, and Lissus and Arca and Ultess after him, and the rest of Guhl’s Company.

  And the shieldmen marched. Slowly, one foot in front of the other, until Cassia rode past them all. Then, at the edge of her vision, they launched into an earth-shattering run, pounding the land into ruin beneath them.

  Guhl’s Company burned its way into Caenthell.

  25

  Once the shieldmen began to run, they were unstoppable. If Cassia had somehow contrived to bring the side of a mountain down upon Caenthell, it would have had the same effect. Except that here, in human form, the shieldmen had an edge that mere nature could never provide. Their presence pressed at her, forced her onwards as though she was a leaf surging downhill in a flooded stream.

  There were horses to both sides of her, barely visible at the periphery of her vision – unlike the shieldmen, Guhl’s Company and the horses they rode upon were flesh and blood, and they had broken their ranks immediately. She heard shout that was almost a laugh, barely audible over the thumping of stone feet and the drums inside Cassia’s head. That was Rais, she thought, his sword lifted high into the air in exultation.

  To her left, the paired riders of Arca and Ultess, as grim and silent as the shieldmen themselves. Cassia could not see Arca’s face, but she could tell by the way his shoulders were set that the pace of their charge out of the fortress was hurting him. He should not be here. She ought to have forced the old soldier to remain with Attis at the fortress, but it was far too late to change her mind now.

  She had made her last throw of the dice. She could only hope that both luck and the gods were with her.

  Meredith’s sword, strapped tight to her back, jarred her spine in counterpoint to the drums. The other blade, Pelicos’s weapon, slapped and stung her thigh. Cassia held the reins tight in one hand while the flame from her torch streamed out behind her. If Jedrell had not seen her approach before now, this guaranteed that he could not ignore her.

  And indeed, even though the landscape juddered before her eyes, she could see the banks of mist rise and coalesce from the ground ahead of her. Evil poured down into the valley from the higher ground, and dark shapes loomed within. Blocks, slanted lines, hollowed-out walls – the town of Karakhel hauled forcibly back into the world once more. A town that Malessar must once have called home, with taverns, a market, craftsmen and farmers; generations of men and women hammered in the crucible of the North to conquest and battle by the High Kings.

  The town stood in her way.

  Tendrils of mist snaked through the air, as though they would entangle the legs of the horses. Cassia swung her torch over her head, a small part of her mind marvelling at the sharp blue core of the flame, and shouted her defiance. She heard Rais and Lissus – and even Hetch, lost somewhere in the middle of her charge – join her. Defiance, anger, determination. The pride that came with the knowledge that what she was doing was right.

  The nearest tendrils of mist simply burst, unable to even reach her. Cassia felt moisture in the air, light and stale at the same time, as the mist recoiled from her. At her side Rais slashed outwards and severed more questing fingers. And then the first of the shieldmen – hard, unstoppable stone, more solid than the land of Caenthell itself – hit the outriders of the mist.

  Stone weapons sliced effortlessly through wraiths. Nebulous limbs burst against stone bodies. The mist became a confused mass of water – it was like trying to fight the morning dew.

  A scream, away to her left. She whipped her head around, seeking the source. One of the horses was riderless, galloping away hard at an angle. There was a dark blur in the solidity of the mist nearby – a fleeting impression, as that patch of ground was already behind them.

  “Close up!” she shouted. “Stay inside the shieldmen!”

  She couldn’t tell if anybody heard her.

  Mist streamed at her like the shaft of a spear, trying to seize the hand in which she held the torch. Cassia jerked aside and swung at it, and the shaft vaporised. Rais snarled curses, hacking and slashing with his blade, keeping the malevolence back but little more than that.

  Karakhel was close enough now for her to see the darkness pouring forth from the empty gates. This was the solid power of the High King, the real substance of the soul that had been penned behind the curse wards for so many centuries. Fast and fluid, and much more dangerous than the tendrils that had seeped across the North so far.

  Jedrell knew she was here, and he doubtless knew why. The High King would not allow her into the heart of his dead kingdom. Karakhel would be the real test of her strength.

  Craw. Now.

  For a
long moment – an eternal heartbeat – Cassia thought the dragon had changed its mind, turned to the other side or been intimidated away from the battle by the force of Jedrell’s power. Her charge would founder and fail, sucked into the ground just as the rest of the North had been. The war drums of Caenthell would be the last thing she heard as the mists stripped away her flesh.

  Then the weight of the air around her changed. Even in full flight, her hair plastered to her skull and shoulders, she felt the dragon’s approach overhead.

  “The town!” Rais shouted. “Cassia, we must turn aside – or we will be torn to – ”

  His voice was lost in the roar of dragonfire.

  Flames ripped across the breadth of the ghostly town. The air boiled and burned with a dank, stale odour and Karakhel faded, like shadows in sudden sun. The mists recoiled as though stung.

  Craw wheeled overhead, and as it passed it pressed Cassia down into her saddle with its presence. The dragon breathed again; the withered grasses leaped into flame. The horses and stone soldiers of Guhl’s Company advanced into the heat behind her. Her poor horse was barely controllable, quivering with panic, but Cassia kicked the beast’s flanks and drove it forward, her torch raised high over her head.

  Jedrell had played his hand, and now it was her turn. It was time to show the damned spirits that this was her land, not theirs. Cassia roared out loud, a wordless shout that would have terrified any human foe. No hero from the Age of Talons had ever achieved so much, she thought. Not even Pelicos.

  The ground exploded around her. Earth flew past her head in great clumps; stones whipped by and stung her skin. She rode on, filled with such a powerful lust for battle that she envied the soldiers who followed her for their past experience. Telling tales of epic charges and swordfights was one thing; this was completely different. It was exhilarating. There was no other word for it. Little wonder the likes of Arca the Brave foundered outside of the legions . . .

  A rock the size of her two fists together came so close to striking her that Cassia was forced to duck, abruptly realising the danger.