Defenders of the Valley

by K. J. Coble

  “This is our homes we’re talking about, Vohl!” Dodso replied. His eyes gleamed and Jayce wasn’t certain he liked what he saw. “The barbarians are at Edon Village now, but if they march hard, why, they could be at the mouth of the Talos in weeks, burning every settlement along the western lake!”

  Vohl leaned back against the gunwale, scrutinizing the gnome. “So...let me see if I understand this. We get back to Eredynn, bringing word of this uprising and a call to roust out the Legion and the militia and everyone else for a charge to glory?”

  “Well, you don’t have to make it sound so melodramatic...”

  “All of this thanks to Speaker Dodso,” Vohl finished, elbowing Jayce.

  Dodso held his hands to his breast, as if feigning innocence. “If that is the way things play out...”

  Vohl groaned and tugged at Jayce’s arm. “This is the kind of madness I’ve had to listen to for this whole trip!”

  Jayce shook his head. “I don’t know about the politics of it, Vohl, but our gnomish friend makes a good argument. Something will have to be done. I don’t see the Skinners stopping, now that they’ve amassed in numbers no one’s seen in a generation.”

  “Another crusader!” Vohl threw up his hands in exasperation. “Look. This is an uprising—I’ll give you, a particularly savage one—but it’s the same old thing the barbarians have tried before, only to fall apart fighting each other over the spoils.”

  “You really think that?” Jayce asked. “After all you’ve seen?”

  “Even if I’m wrong, do the two of you really think old Vennitius is just going to loan out the Valley Legion?”

  “He will if he intends on honoring ages-old treaties between my Order and the Empire,” a new voice broke in.

  Jayce looked up to see Illah standing over the trio. He tried not to be surprised that he hadn’t even heard her coming.

  “And it’s more than an uprising, Master Rhenn,” Illah said, drilling Vohl with her jade glare. “The Yntuil could have handled an uprising. This is treachery. This is coordinated. This is something moving on a grander scale than you can fathom.”

  Jayce had known Vohl Rhenn for years, ever since they crossed paths in Threshold, trading in things best left off shipping records, and he had never seen the man at a loss for words. He saved his friend the ignominy of attempting a reply by saying, “Care to join us, Illah?”

  “No, thank you,” the elf maiden said. “Though any of that help you spoke of would certainly be appreciated, Master Dodso.”

  The gnome fumbled to say something before settling on a stupid grin and a bow.

  “Thank you.” Illah turned back on Vohl, allowing him to freeze in her stare for a few moments. “I apologize for the interruption. But when I hear stupid things—” she leaned forward, her boot resting between Vohl’s feet where it could easily shoot forward into his crotch “—I can’t help but stamp them out.”

  Vohl glanced down, saying, “So I see.”

  A wisp of smile crossed Illah’s tight lips. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She whirled and strode back towards the bow.

  Vohl drew his knees up and crossed his feet, his ruddy complexion darkening to purple. Dodso snickered at his side.

  Jayce patted Vohl’s shoulder. “You said she could threaten you anytime.”

  “Shut up. Both of you.”

  THE WIZARD’S TOWER rose untouched above clouds of smoke billowing from razed Edon Village. Skinners, dancing about thundering war drums with lusty songs of battle, could not help but cast nervous glances at the structure and make superstitious signs, even as they celebrated their victory.

  Lonadiel felt the pall of uncertainty as he limped through them. Staggering uphill, his bones still throbbing from the punishment they’d endured the previous night, his eyes traced the outline of the tower and had look down with a knife-stroke reminder of failure. Casting his gaze elsewhere brought him no succor as he noted the Skinner burial parties, comprised of hard-faced womenfolk conditioned by the rigors of barbarian lives against tears, dragging their dead into piles that would later be set to ritual flames.

  Some of the piles reached their shoulders.

  Lonadiel stepped over the low wall that had stymied them so long, past tangles of sorcery-charred corpses. Ango Morug lingered near the locked door to the tower. The Verraxian leaned on his staff, eyes narrowed to slits as he regarded the heavy oak and bands of steel. The wizard didn’t seem to notice the elf’s approach and Lonadiel halted at his back, looking over his shoulder.

  A symbol was etched into the door, what appeared to be a picture of an eye that at the same time also resembled a rising sun. Lonadiel had seen similar characters etched into Morug’s staff and inked on the pages of the battered tomes the wizard often consulted. “A hieroglyph?” Lonadiel asked.

  Morug jumped and spun on Lonadiel, eyes flaring white-hot before settling back to their flowing silver. He shook himself. “What did you say?”

  “That’s an Verraxian hieroglyph,” Lonadiel said, hand reflexively on his saber handle, “is it not?”

  “It is,” Morug hissed, turning to stare at the symbol again.

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means complication,” Morug replied with obvious annoyance. “Do we have any prisoners?”

  Lonadiel snorted. “Do you honestly think any Edonites left behind allowed themselves to be taken alive?”

  Morug glared at him. “Check again. I know of these savages’ love of torture. If you can find any villagers who still draw breath, I need to know what wizard it was that dwelt here.”

  Lonadiel shrugged, knowing it would be a fool’s errand, having seen the feasting fires of the Elders and what it was they feasted upon. “I know that there were two wizards, and one of them was like you; a Verraxian.”

  “Yes, I know,” Morug said. His face went blank for a moment with something Lonadiel thought might be fear. He turned and began to murmur, angling his staff with the headpiece towards the door. Morning sunlight licked the pewter winged-skull and turned crimson. Lonadiel felt the hairs prickle across the back of his neck and retreated a step before he knew what he was doing.

  Snap!

  Cyan flashed from the symbol on the door, jolted the staff from Morug’s grasp. The wizard bent over, a high-pitched groan escaping through clenched teeth as he cradled his hand against his chest.

  Blinking afterimages from his eyes, Lonadiel had to suppress a chuckle as Morug launched into a tirade of Verraxian oaths that culminated with a kick to his fallen staff. “Perhaps a battering-ram would better suffice?” Lonadiel asked without masking his amusement.

  “No physical implement will force this door, fool!” Morug shrieked, whirling on Lonadiel with the white flames back in his gaze. “I would already be inside were that the case!”

  Lonadiel folded his arms and waited as the wizard scooped up his staff. Seriousness overtook his mirth. “So, who do you think this is?”

  “Someone who is supposed to be dead,” Morug replied in sudden quiet. He shook himself and the rage and fear drained from his features, were replaced by his normal smirk. “Tell the elders to fire their pyres and collect what plunder they desire. We need to be moving again, come the next dawn.”

  “You know it will take longer than that,” Lonadiel replied.

  “It had better not,” Morug rasped. A joyless smile pinched the corner of his mouth. “Your little prize draws farther away with each moment.”

  Yes. Lonadiel looked away to hide the sting of the barb. And she would be mine by now, had your magic been a match for whomever it was that dwelt here. Marshalling self-control, he asked, “What direction do we now follow?”

  “South, as before,” Morug said, as if it should be obvious. “We will follow the river, burning or killing anything before us.”

  “To what final purpose?” Lonadiel forced himself to meet the other’s eyes. “We have burned or killed everything before us already, with no goal that I know of.”

  Morug snorted
and shook his head. “Still the ordered, calculating Yntuil, aren’t you?” He broke into a smile that reminded Lonadiel of the agony-locked face of an impaled corpse he’d seen in the smoldering village’s square. “Our cause is destruction. Chaos. Blood. All of it spread across this valley like a stain.”

  “We drive until Eredynn, then?” Lonadiel asked, a catch in his throat making his voice uncertain.

  “Oh, yes...Eredynn will fall.”

  “We will face the Valley Legion before then.” Lonadiel nodded toward the celebrating barbarian masses. “This lot will not find them so easy a foe as these villagers.”

  Morug patted Lonadiel’s arm and the elf wanted to flinch away, as if he had come in contact with something diseased. “So be it,” the wizard said. He turned and strode away in a flutter of cloaks, cackling like a doomed man.

  Lonadiel could not help but feel like one, himself.

  ILLAH LAY NAKED AND wracked by the fever in the chambers of Jayce Zerron’s tower. Breath tore from lungs laboring under a great weight. She heard movement in the hall outside the room and fumbled for her saber but found it gone, found all of her things gone. Footsteps stopped at the door. She struggled against the fatigue of illness and injury to rise. She had to find something to defend herself with.

  The door catch clicked and the heavy oak swung inward slowly, hinges shrieking, the sound drawing nails of pain and panic across her mind. A torch guttered low in its sconce in the corridor, barely highlighted the dark figure standing in the doorway. Feeble glimmers played along the edge of a naked blade.

  “No...” Illah croaked. “Please...leave me be.”

  Lonadiel stepped into the room, armor battered, his saber caked with gore that continued up his arm to the elbow. His eyes held fires of lust gone beyond the warmth and passion they had once shared. But his smile remained loving as he drifted to her bedside.

  “Hear me,” Illah plead. “Lonadiel...come back to me. All is not yet lost. We can make this right, you and I. Together, I know we can.”

  Lonadiel hovered over her. He lowered the blade and looked to one side, as if searching for something lost in some distance only he could see.

  Illah reached for his free hand. “I know you. You are not this thing. You are better than this.”

  Lonadiel snapped up her hand in his. Fingers clamped down until blood-caked fingernails bit into her skin. He dragged her upright, ignoring her moan of pain, and put his lips to the back of her hand. His kiss burned like hot steel.

  Illah tried to scream but the strength was not there. Lonadiel released her hand and grabbed the hair at the back of her skull, wrenched her close to him so that he might breathe into her mouth.

  “Better than this?” he asked, the flames igniting his gaze to a hellish glare. “What could be better than this?”

  Lonadiel’s saber rang off the floor as he dropped it to grapple her to the bed...

  Illah flinched awake from her trance. She sat cross-legged near the bow of Rhenn’s riverboat, her saber clenched against her chest. She forced her fingers to unwind from its grip, blood returning in tingles to hands gone mottled from exertion.

  Seated at the bow, smoking his pipe, the half-breed, Muddle, offered her a curious glance.

  The River Imp sat at dock near the mouth of the Talos River at the fishing village of Koen, decent weather and running with the currents having brought it this far south in a fifth of the time it had taken going north. Torches glimmered, lighting some of the village in the pre-dawn twilight. Voices carried across the water, the gnome, Dodso’s voice rising above them all, passing on the warning of what had transpired in the north.

  The deck creaked behind Illah. Muddle looked up from his smoke to nod at the newcomer. Illah could feel the presence without looking and groaned inwardly.

  “I’m in no mood for whatever it is you have to say, Master Rhenn,” she said.

  “Not even for an apology?”

  Illah extended her legs, let the muscles unknot, and glanced over her shoulder at the man. He stood with his arms crossed, grinning in his lop-sided way that the common girls of the Valley no doubt found endearing. She’d seen his type before, the bravado, the bluster, the sledge-hammer way of smashing through life; he wasn’t unlike the barbarians who’d eagerly burned their way from the Watch Tower to Edon Village.

  She wondered if her unknown father had been like him.

  “What apology?” she asked.

  Rhenn shrugged. “Well...my regrets for offending you, earlier, I guess.”

  Illah regarded his grizzled, attractive-despite-itself face and couldn’t help a tentative smile. “I’m certain offending folk is something you’re used to.”

  “Ouch.” Rhenn chuckled and stepped to her side, putting a foot up on the gunwale. His half-hobgoblin partner seemed to take some sign from that and moved aft with a snort partly-hidden in a puff of pipe smoke. “You want to make this easy on man? I said I was sorry.”

  Illah tried to summon some annoyance but found the energy lacking after her vision. She shook her head. “What would you like me to say? Everything is all right? Don’t worry about it?”

  “That’d be nice!” Rhenn replied with forced cheer that he obviously found amusing.

  Annoyance came now at his light tone. Illah stood, setting the point of her sheathed blade to the deck and leaning on it as she drilled the man with her stare. “Well, it’s not all right,” she hissed. “Nothing is all right. Don’t you understand that? Is what is happening really too much to get through that thick skull of yours? Behind us is blood and darkness and it is still coming...coming to your whole land.”

  “Well...that’s uplifting.”

  “Another joke.” Illah snorted humorlessly. “Life is just a big one to sorts like you, isn’t it?”

  “No.” A bit of hurt flickered across his features. “But it doesn’t hurt to laugh at it. If there are any gods, I’m sure they find us worth a chuckle or two.”

  “Do you know what a Yntuil is, Master Rhenn?”

  He shrugged.

  “Yntuil means ‘student’ in the Eld Tongue of my people,” Illah said. “We are students of life, death—” she held up her saber “—the gods, their creation, the balance and order of that creation, and...” she paused to make certain he was paying attention “...and students of those things that would destroy that balance and order. I have walked paths alongside things that would mock your nightmares. I have heard the whispering of the shadows that crowd the corners of bedrooms while folk, like you, try to curl under their bed sheets and tell themselves that they are not there. Now, you tell me; is that something to laugh at?”

  Rhenn seemed to consider her words, but only for an instant. The grin returned. “Hell, I’d just stoke the fire if it got too dark.”

  Illah blew out an exasperated breath. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Why?”

  “Why stay?” Illah said, turning away to lean on the gunwale. “Certainly you have other things to do.”

  “Maybe. But nothing this fun.”

  Rehnn didn’t go. But Illah didn’t make him. They stood in silence for a time, watching torches flicker in Koen.

  Voices rose as the sun crested the horizon. The pier to which the Imp was moored groaned as the gnome tromped its length, his grin visible even in the poor light. Someone called something at his back. He turned and waved, shouting, “I’ll be back with an army to crush the scum!”

  “Damn,” Rhenn whispered as the villagers cheered. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Then you know a little of what it is to be a Yntuil, Master Rhenn,” Illah said, “all of the time.”

  Chapter Eight

  Arrivals

  Groon Blood-Drinker looked down from the foothills of the Labyrinthines at a river, winding its way north into the forested reaches of the Remordan Valley. A warm wind carried southwest into his face and he grinned as weeks of frigid marching thawed from his core.

  “The Aleil River,” Brathug Foulstench
said at Groon’s side. The goblin rubbed spidery hands together. “My clan once fattened itself upon human trade along its length, before their shiny legions drove us into the mountains.”

  “And we’ll be wasting no time upon it now,” Groon said, eyeing the diminutive chieftain for a moment. He turned to find Akrak and saw the shaman a few feet away, muttering as he picked up rocks one at a time and inspected each for the gods knew what. “Get over here, Akrak!”

  The shaman dropping the handful of pebbles he’d been babbling to and scuttled to the warlord’s side. “Yes, Deadly One?”

  “Where do your visions lead us from here?”

  Akrak wiped mucous from a running nose and pointed a dripping fingernail northwest. “Follow the spine of the foothills,” he said. “She waits for us there.”

  Groon nodded. He turned to regard the column spilling from the Howling Gap. The Blood-Drinkers held the lead. Behind them teemed goblinoid masses, thousands of them, Akrak had told him in moments of lucidity – Groon had to take his word, never having learned to count that high. Lesser clans, some relations to the Foulstenches, others isolated pockets of hardy mountain-dwellers had accumulated along the line of the march. Lumbering behind those, huge, bulging shapes appeared from the haze of higher elevations; ogres, their deep voices rumbling beneath the goblinoid babble.

  The warlord of the Blood-Drinkers had taken to accepting the growing horde’s attraction to his banner. With Akrak’s pronouncements of destiny and Brathug’s willing subordination to him, he was beginning to believe. More than that, he was beginning to see the future before him as he hadn’t in over a year.

  Calls from below drew Groon’s attention back to the front. Vraka jogged up the rocky hillside, an animal pelt-clad goblin Groon did not recognize scampering along at his heels. Below them, at the edge of mist-wreathed forest, movement fluttered amongst the trees. Bow-legged shapes and pinpricks of yellowy eyes gathered in the gloom. Further back, stooping figures with craggy, ashen gray flesh milled.