Eldain loosed a shaft at the exposed neck of a lancer. The arrow sliced deep into his flesh and the warrior toppled from the saddle. His mount snapped at the dangling corpse, biting it in two with one swipe of its jaws. Eldain sent another shaft into the knights, but this arrow ricocheted from a curved shield.
Perhaps a dozen knights were pitched from their saddles, but it was nowhere near enough to stop the charge from hitting home. The druchii heavy cavalry smashed into the bulwark of spears before them and the carnage was terrible. The sheer force of the impact obliterated the front two ranks of the asur battle line, their bodies crushed beneath the clawed feet of the reptilian monsters. Dark lances plunged home, punching screaming elves from their feet as the cold ones bit and tore at those who avoided the stabbing blades.
Eldain reined in his horse at the end of the bridge as blood-maddened cold ones rampaged amongst the dead. Despite the barbed spurs and goads of the black knights, the reptiles paused to gorge themselves on the warm meat laid before them like a feast. The bridge’s defenders fell back from the slaughter, and only the shouted commands of the Sentinel prevented the retreat from becoming a rout.
Though every fibre of his being wanted to ride onto the bridge, Eldain knew his lightly armed Reavers could not hope to stop the black knights. The broken ranks of infantry would need time to rally before marching back into the fray. Eldain’s warriors could not give them that time, but help was coming from a different quarter.
Mitherion Silverfawn stood amid the flow of warriors from the bridge, his silver robes billowing in the cold winds coming off the river. A small band of mages and Sword Masters attended him, and even from here, Eldain saw Rhianna’s father was gaunt and drawn, though the battle had only just begun. Eldain recognised one of Master Silverfawn’s Sword Masters, and he nodded to Yvraine Hawkblade as she unsheathed her mighty greatsword.
Mitherion Silverfawn threw his arms out to the side before bringing his hands together in a mighty thunderclap. The booming echo of the sound was like the hammer of Vaul upon the anvil of the gods, and Eldain’s heart was instantly transported to the days of heroes, when Aenarion and Caledor Dragontamer bestrode the fields of Ulthuan like gods. He hauled back on the reins as a surge of vitality and confidence pounded through his body like the war drums of ancient armies that might conquer the world. He felt as though he could slay every one of the black knights and their monstrous mounts single-handed, riding through them to Morathi herself and cleaving her fell heart in two.
Eldain reluctantly shook off the effects of Mitherion Silverfawn’s magic, knowing it was too dangerous for his warriors to get drawn into such a fight. Fleetness of hoof was their greatest weapon, not charging headlong into heavily armed warriors riding killer beasts.
All around him, elven warriors who had, moments ago, been in full retreat now turned back to the twin piers of crystal horses at the end of the bridge. Light seemed to dance within them, like sunlight in ice, and every warrior felt their wise eyes upon him. They braced their spears and marched back onto the bridge, a cold and merciless fire burning in their eyes.
More warriors manoeuvred towards the bridge, as though drawn by the raw courage of the bridge’s defenders. While the cold ones feasted on the flesh of the dead, the asur marched back onto the bridge with aching laments of Aenarion wrung from every throat.
The dark knights cursed and struck their mounts, but such tender morsels were a rare luxury to these monsters and no amount of threats could rouse them from their feast.
With a rousing war cry, the elven warriors charged into the dark knights, spears thrusting home with strength enough to penetrate mail shirts and iron plates. A score of knights died to the vengeful spears of the asur, and their reptilian mounts screeched with agony as long blades stabbed them repeatedly. The surviving knights saw the murderous determination in the eyes of their foes, and fell back before their grim resolve.
Yet even this would not be enough.
Druchii warriors, fresh to the fight, marched onto the bridge beneath a banner dripping in blood and emblazoned with the rune of Khaine. Their armour and cloaks were plum-coloured and their barbed spears were as black as their hearts. They charged past the slaughtered cold ones and fallen knights to hammer into the scattered spearmen in a clash of blades.
Centuries of bitterness gave the druchii strength, and their spears were red and bloody in moments. The enchantment of Mitherion Silverfawn was losing its power, and the magic that had steeled the hearts of the asur faded like the last rays of sunlight in winter. The fighting was desperate and bloody, shouts of anger and pain echoing from the sides of the bridge as the sundered kin of Ulthuan fought without thought of quarter or clemency.
Warriors from both sides fell to the freezing river below, and blood seeped through the bridge’s rainholes as though Korhandir’s Leap wept for the slaughter being performed upon its divinely crafted arches. The banner of the druchii pulsed with life, as though with a heartbeat of its own.
Eldain twisted in the saddle and sought out Mitherion Silverfawn amid the fog and marching warriors. At last he spied the mage’s silver robes at the edge of the river, and he urged Lotharin through the press of bodies towards him. Silverfawn looked up as he approached and smiled weakly.
“Eldain,” he said. “I am glad to see you alive.”
“Master Silverfawn,” said Eldain. “Any aid you can give us would be most welcome. The bridge will not hold long, and there are druchii across the river to the south.”
“I feared as much,” said Silverfawn cryptically, but Eldain had no time to dwell on the mage’s eccentricities.
“Can you help or not?”
The Sword Masters attending Silverfawn stepped forward, angered by his tone, but Yvraine held them back as the mage nodded.
“I can, Eldain,” said Silverfawn. “But the bridge will fall, I have seen it in every reading of the stars.”
“You have seen the future?” asked Eldain.
“Parts of it, yes,” admitted Silverfawn. “Enough to know that the bridge will fall, and that we must hold this line as long as possible. You understand, time and the future are not linear, but curved, yes? What will be has to be made in the present by our own deeds. We work to create the future, and thus nothing is certain.”
“I do not understand you, Master Silverfawn,” said Eldain. “All I understand is that our people are dying here, and more will die if you do not help.”
“Not help? Of course I will help,” snapped Silverfawn, striding towards the end of the bridge with Yvraine’s Sword Masters at his heels. “As though I would not, the very idea!”
Eldain made to follow, but before he could urge Lotharin onwards, Laurena Starchaser rode next to him. Her hair was matted with dried blood and she had lost her spear somewhere along the way.
“The druchii are crossing the river in ever greater numbers,” she said. “Heavy horse as well as the fast riders.”
Eldain swore. “Our flank is turned.”
“The spear hosts at the southern edge of Tor Elyr are aligning to meet this new threat,” said Starchaser. “But if the druchii take the bridge, we will have no choice but to fall back to the city itself.”
Eldain glanced at the bridge, remembering Mitherion Silverfawn’s words. The bridge would fall, the mage had said, but if there was one thing Eldain had managed to take from his rambling words it was that nothing was set, nothing was ever inevitable.
“Gather thirty of your best riders and follow me, Laurena,” said Eldain.
“Where are we going?” asked Starchaser, even as she wheeled her mount.
“Onto the bridge!” cried Eldain, riding after Mitherion Silverfawn.
The Executioners crossed the river with heavy strides, though how such a thing could happen was a mystery to Menethis. In a land of endless summer, how could a river suddenly freeze? Red mist clawed up from the water’s edge, and the heavily armoured warriors came up the slopes of the hills with their draich swinging in glittering arcs.
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With the Executioners on this side of the river, Menethis finally saw the terrible effigy of bronze and jade on the opposite bank. A towering automaton of blades, it was a mechanical representation of the murder god himself, shaped by madmen and hellions with bare hands on molten metal. Blood streamed down the carven limbs and flowed in endless rivers from the serrated blades held in the statue’s outstretched hands. That blood was collected in a vast bronze reservoir below, a bloodstained cauldron that hissed and spat with poisonous fumes, reeking of spoiled meat.
Chanting, slender-limbed elves with pale skin and near-naked bodies danced around the construction, and the blood of uncounted sacrifices made Menethis want to retch. The malign influence of the thing was potent, and stank of the blackest murder and sorcery.
Menethis tore his gaze from the hideous effigy as arrows slashed down upon the Executioners. Hundreds of shafts were loosed from archers positioned behind and on the flanks of the spear hosts. The red mist clung to the grim warriors, and many of the arrows were burned to ash before they struck home. Hideous beasts came behind the Executioners: draconic creatures with numerous reptilian heads atop serpentine necks, and disfigured abominations goaded by hunchbacked mortals.
Then the charge hit. A forest of stabbing spears punched through the armour of the Executioners’ front rank, drawing blood and then ramming home again.
“Thrust!” cried Menethis, and the warriors behind him shouted as they drove their spears into the enemy ranks.
“Twist! Withdraw!”
Over and over Menethis shouted the mantra of thrust, twist and withdraw, but these cold-eyed killers had no fear of death. Fresh warriors stepped over the bodies of the slain, chopping spear heads from hafts or gripping the weapon that killed them with blood-slick hands and keeping it wedged in their bodies.
Grunts of pain came from the druchii, but no screams. These were tough, grim warriors who understood that pain was a warrior’s lot, and accepted it. Their blades hacked into the spear host, lopping heads and limbs with every stroke. The precision of their blows was extraordinary, honed over a lifetime of beheadings and executions in the name of Khaine.
Though his warriors fought magnificently, the Executioners were now living up to their name, hacking down rank after rank of Ellyrion’s finest. Menethis understood the ebb and flow of a battle well enough to know when the courage of warriors was at its most brittle.
This was that moment, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it breaking.
The terror of the Executioners’ blades became too much for his spear host, and they fled from their murderous strokes, breaking ranks and sprinting for the lines of archers behind them. They fled in ones and twos, all cohesion forgotten in the desperate flight for life. The Executioners cut down those not quick enough to flee, methodical to the last.
“Hold! Stand fast!” shouted Menethis, though it was far too late for mere words to keep the line from disintegrating. As his warriors fled, Menethis stood his ground before the black line of Executioners, his anger at what they had done here like a forest fire in his heart.
“You took Cerion, you took Glorien and now you come for me,” he said, calmer than he would have believed possible. His heartbeat was like thunder over the Annulii as he lifted his sword to his shoulder and charged towards the Executioners with the name of Asuryan upon his lips.
His sword slashed across an Executioner’s chest, the blade sliding up under the cheek plate of the warrior’s helmet to slice his face open. A flap of skin flopped down over his jaw, but still he did not scream. A sweeping two-handed blade arced towards Menethis’ neck, but he leaned into the blow and rammed his sword through the eye slits of the Executioner’s helm.
The warrior dropped with a strangled grunt, but another stepped over his corpse without pause and crashed the pommel of her sword into his forehead. Menethis reeled back, blood streaming down his face as the Executioner closed in for the kill.
He looked up through the visor of her helm. She had the most beautifully violet eyes.
Menethis tried to raise his sword, but the draich was too fast.
The thunder of his heartbeat swelled, but before the Executioner’s blade parted his head from his shoulders, a silver lance punched her from her feet and lifted her high into the air. Thundering shapes of white and silver streamed past him, heavy horse armoured in ithilmar mail and caparisoned in ivory and gold.
Warriors clad in gleaming plate and high silver helms that shone like moonlight on still water rode these mighty steeds, and their lances and swords cut like lightning from the hand of Asuryan himself.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BREAKING POINT
Caelir had heard that at the moment of death, a person’s life would flash before their eyes, but as Issyk Kul’s sword swept towards him, he knew that was a lie. It was not the deeds of the life about to end that paraded through a mind, but the life unlived and the roads not taken.
He saw himself as lord of Ellyr-Charoi with Rhianna at his side, and children playing in the meadows beyond. Horses filled the stables and summer’s calm lay upon the hillsides. In the space of a single heartbeat, Caelir saw the joys, the tears and the absurdities of existence that make up the rich pageant of lives intertwined. Eldain was there too, his brother sat astride Lotharin as he rode the endless plains of Ellyrion with a song in his heart.
It was fiction, a dream of a future that never was and never could be; but it gave him a moment’s comfort in this last breath of life left to him. Caelir closed his eyes but instead of death, he heard an earthy sound like a Chracian’s axe biting fresh wood.
Standing before him was a glistening tree trunk, and embedded in the wood was Issyk Kul’s monstrous sword. Ice and water ran from its branches, and the sweet smell of new sap filled Caelir’s nostrils as it poured like amber blood from where Kul’s blade had hacked into it. The ground creaked beneath Caelir, and he saw the splintered hole in the ice where the tree had burst through the ice covering the river’s surface.
Kul wrenched his sword from the softwood, and Caelir sprang away as the ice bucked and heaved beneath him. Jagged black cracks split the ice, racing away in zigzag courses from the new roots and branches pushing their way up from below. An entire forest was rising from the depths of the river, growing with incredible ferocity.
“Life magic!” hissed Kul, as though the presence of such things were anathema to him.
Caelir was astounded, and scrambled away from this burgeoning forest as the ice heaved and split apart. This was no passive greenery, but aggressive growth like the ancient forest trees said to dwell within the forgotten heart of Athel Loren. Jagged roots speared up into the tribesmen, piercing their flesh and growing up through their bodies.
He lost sight of Issyk Kul as spreading branches ensnared terrified warriors and looped around limbs to tear them off with wrenching heaves of growth. Scores of armoured tribesmen were lifted from the ground and impaled upon sharp, new-grown wood or ripped in two by spreading branches. Within moments, a thick forest of dripping trees had arisen from the river, and hundreds of torn bodies hung from their branches like corpses in gibbets.
Nor was the threat of the forest the only danger.
As roots burst the ice, a measure of the sorcery holding the water in its frozen state was unravelled, and screaming warriors dropped through into the river. In the midst of this rampant fecundity strode a mage in emerald robes that swirled in the billowing streams of magic that spiralled around him like a caged whirlwind.
“Anurion!” cried Caelir.
The mage ignored him and strode into the howling mass of tribesmen. His arms wove complex patterns, and where he gestured new life erupted from the ground to entangle, to stab and to tear. The river became a thick forest, dense with dark trees and overhanging boughs of thorny wood. So complete was Anurion’s mastery of life-giving magic that it mattered not that thick sheet ice lay between him and the touch of earth.
Baying and blooded tribesmen who had esca
ped the slaughter of the rampaging forest threaded a path through the trees towards the mage. A throwing axe was turned aside by the swaying branches of a willow, and a hurled spear changed in flight to become a twisting sapling that spun harmlessly away. A raven-fletched arrow sliced into Anurion’s thigh, and blood stained his robes with vivid scarlet.
A tribesman in a wolf-faced mask hurled himself at Anurion. The mage pointed a finger at him, and the branch of a tree lashed out to take his head off with the precision of a rapier. More closed in, and the forest defended its creator, grasping roots dragging men beneath the river and long saplings slashing like razor-edged whips to open throats and remove limbs.
Yet it had cost Anurion dear to raise a forest from the depths of the river, and already its rapid growth was slowing. Caelir took up a fallen spear from the body of a slain Reaver Knight and half ran, half slipped towards Anurion.
The mage saw him and shook his head.
A wall of thorns and thick, grasping briars arose, completely blocking Caelir’s path towards Anurion.
“No!” shouted Caelir. “Anurion! Come back!”
Caelir’s voice was lost in the bellows of the mortal warriors, and tears stung his eyes at the thought of the line of Anurion the Green being ended forever. No sooner had the thought arisen, than a spectral voice sounded in his mind.
So long as one blade of grass or flower blooms in Ulthuan, I will live on.
Caelir tore at the jagged coils of briars. The thorns, recognising one of their own, turned their barbs from his skin.
“Anurion, no!” he yelled. “Please! Come back to us!”
Make them pay, Caelir. That is all I ask, make them pay…
Caelir nodded and turned from the sheets of briars, weeping and stumbling over the disintegrating ice towards the riverbank. Reaver Knights rode back to solid ground as yet more of the ice cracked and came away from the riverbank. He leapt as the ice beneath him retuned to water, breathless and grief-struck at the loss of Anurion.