Hearing still served him with tortured clarity. The rough, hard-fought rasp of Lysaer’s breathing bespoke a contest that surpassed the breaking point of surrender. Sound detailed the agony of a will pressed beyond extreme limits, to survive an unbearable pressure.
‘I refuse you,’ Lysaer forced out. Scraped raw with grief, he added, ‘My task here is unfinished. Athera has no champion to take up my sword if I should abandon my purpose or falter.’
The centaur’s reply resounded with sadness, and pity to wring the heart helpless. ‘You are bound by a curse. Nothing less, nothing more. Admit that, and you take the first step to claim back your lost honor.’
‘If you’re right, then I’m damned!’ Lysaer hurled back. ‘My list of dead will be mourned. Across Fate’s Wheel, they will be freed to accept your vaunted redemption.’ Beyond desperation, he choked back his tears, clinging to the ripped shreds of conviction. ‘But if you’re wrong, if your race is demonic and your illusions are lies, then I become worse than damned. I would forfeit salvation before taking the chance of abandoning mankind to the darkness. For the wives, for the mothers, for the children unborn, the least risk is too terrible to contemplate.’
‘The darkness you battle is none but your own,’ the Ilitharis said in mild correction. ‘If you find demons, they will be nothing less than i’methient, the rank creation that springs out of ignorant hatred. I leave you a warning: Daon Ramon is protected by Paravian law, as set forth in Rathain’s crown charter. You and your following embrace no grand cause, but enact wanton ruin and trespass.’
‘Your law is extinct,’ Lysaer insisted. ‘On my sword, hear my promise: mankind’s justice succeeds you. Begone from this place, you are powerless.’
‘Living Paravians still inhabit Athera!’ The stamp of a hoof, and a bass thrum from bare stone issued a warning like distant thunder. ‘I am a shadow called from the past, bearing no more than a shadow’s influence, scion of Halduin. My spirit has departed this world of Athera, and now walks the far realms of Athlieria. Beware, should you challenge my living relations. Even bearing the blood of crown lineage, you shall not stand in defiance before them.’
Faster than Lysaer could frame a response, Sulfin Evend felt a sharp blast of wind strike his cheek. He uncovered his eyes, looked up, beheld the centaur guardian risen into a towering rear. Cleft forehooves lashed sky, stars shining above like wan sparks cast through the radiance of a presence far above an earthbound comprehension. Eclipsed by the creature’s vast shadow, Lysaer’s sunwheel banner snapped and flagged, a white blur in cold darkness with the limp russet trophy of Earl Jieret’s clan braid spiked on the golden finial.
Still rampant, the centaur cried out, ‘Be it known, this desecration has been done to a Man who is as my brother!’ He turned his head to the side, exposing a braid in his mane. The strand count and pattern precisely matched Jieret’s, the badge of regard an ancestral grant awarded to the lineage of s’Valerient. The guardian met the offense with aggrieved rage. His shouted command rang across the night hills in the lyrical cadence of Paravian. ‘Fiaidliel! Ei lys cuen sheduanient i’an!’ Fire-Light! I call you to cleanse this!
The clan braid exploded in a blast of bright flame. Without sound, with no trace of wisped smoke or ripe stink, the degraded remnant was immolated. The Alliance banner beneath flapped pristine, its sunwheel emblem untarnished.
‘You are a marked spirit,’ the centaur guardian addressed Lysaer s’Ilessid in parting. ‘The blood of one caithdein stains your hands already. Woe betide you for the price you shall pay if you dare to murder another.’
Lysaer remained adamant, his proud head thrown back, and his hair like stuck floss against the damp skin of his temples. ‘I will meet any price and execute any criminal to wrest mankind free from the wiles of demons and sorcery.’
‘Then expect you’ll bear consequences. The land here will grant you no welcome.’ The centaur apparition brought from the far past raised his dragon-spine horn. Face tipped skyward, Daon Ramon’s winter starlight like crowning jewels strung through his circlet of oak leaves, he winded a resounding note.
The primal vibration reechoed through rock and soil, and also through the flesh-and-bone substance of every man within earshot. Ranging harmonics pealed forth and mustered the wind, which arose into whirling gyration. The white banner streamed and snapped back on itself until gold silk and fringe frayed and shredded. Tent canvas billowed like sails and snapped guy ropes. Weapon racks became hurled to the ground. The horses lunged and tore loose from the picket lines. Tracking dogs succumbed to berserk rage and clawed free of their osier cages. Bowstrings snapped. Steel swords suffered stress cracks, while the horn call achieved resonance and belled to an unbearable crescendo.
Athera herself roused to the centaur guardian’s trumpeting summons. Through expanded awareness, Earl Jieret saw the lane forces wax bright and flow molten silver over the hillcrests. As the energy gathered, then surged toward release, the ground trembled and heaved, flinging tent poles helter-skelter, and toppling stacked supplies and wheeled drays like flung toys. Barrel hoops snapped. Restraints flew unraveled. Men wearing amulets or luck charms ripped them off as the seals flared with heat and burst into singeing flame.
Worse, the tin fiend banes guarding the camp border exploded, flinging showers of violet sparks.
Lurking iyats descended to feed on the disturbance. Havoc erupted, a pelting, hammering maelstrom of projectiles as loose pebbles and stray gear whirled aloft. No object escaped the maniacal invention of a fiend storm’s exuberant play.
Loose daggers or sticks, bits of harness, or stacked cookpots, even Sulfin Evend’s discarded arrows, the iyats seized on whatever they found with no shred of discrimination. Natural order unraveled. Torn canvas whooshed flat as tent stakes uprooted. Laces slithered through eyelets and crawled on the ground like live snakes. The cook’s wagon swarmed with airborne utensils, and the tactical maps humped their way out of the wreckage and swooped through the air like huge bats.
If the apparition of the centaur guardian had vanished, the insidious effects of his horn call raged on. Stolid field veterans screamed and pounced, or turned tail and sprinted, as their personal belongings went mad and attacked them with stabbing intent to cause mayhem.
‘Light save us, we’re undone!’ screamed the Etarran watch captain.
‘We’re not,’ Lysaer snapped through rolling tremors and murderously clenched teeth. Still on his feet, though the rocks on the hillsides continued to wail, and the ground quivered like a horse with a stinging fly, he ripped his sword from the scabbard. He spun on his heel, determined strides bent toward the collapsed ruin of the command tent.
Sulfin Evend regrouped the bare semblance of self-possession. He scrambled upright, still unnerved and shaking, and surged in a rush to catch up. ‘What will you do? The men are in no shape to march, far less handle weapons and fight.’
Lysaer turned his head. His face was chipped marble, his eyes blazing rage to outlast all sane choice or argument. ‘First thing, I will run a blade through that redheaded sorcerer’s heart! Fiend storm or not, his body will burn. By the Light, I shall raze his remains down to ash that won’t keep the name of his memory!’
‘And the men?’ Sulfin Evend bore up, sobered cold as he realized the Blessed Prince was yet undaunted. Regardless of setbacks, alone if need be, he intended to press on and complete his campaign to destroy the Master of Shadow. ‘You realize this fiend storm’s unlikely to wane? We have no spare iyat banes. Nothing to avert their spree of destruction before the next bout of bad weather draws them away.’
With baleful purpose, Lysaer stopped short. He drew breath. ‘You will commandeer every soldier we have standing upright. Regardless of rank, have them winnow the ones who are hysterical or faint.’ As a fire broke out amid the wrack of downed canvas, running flares of reflection caught on gold threadwork and the polished steel of his sword quillons. The avatar yet wore the flesh of humanity. If his tone was flat level, his hand jerked a
nd started, the poised tip of his sword as unsteady.
‘The scouts on patrol won’t be back for two hours, and the rest are nigh unto useless!’ Sulfin Evend ran a jaundiced eye over the snarled remains of the camp he had just painstakingly set to sharp order. ‘We don’t have a fighting force. Not until we’ve nursed mass hysteria and salved the bruised nerves of every mother’s son back to bravado. Don’t expect to see discipline before daybreak.’
But the Divine Prince gave emotional frailties short shrift. ‘We’ll be marching before then. You will slap faces, or else appoint surrogates! Have them clasp these men’s weeping, turned heads to their bosoms and croon like their damned mothers until they recover their wits! I don’t care what you do, or which method works best. These troops swore their oath to fight minions of Darkness! Once that s’Valerient barbarian’s ashes are scattered, I will personally cite for desertion any sniveling wretch who’s unfit!’
Late Winter 5670
Stand
Left alone to secure the cleft notch to the Mathorns, Braggen nocked his last arrow. Blinking the salt sting of sweat from his eyes, he drew, aimed, and fired. The shaft hissed out, punched flesh with the ugly, staccato smack that denoted a solid hit. The slavering mastiff charging upslope to attack him pitched head over heels and fell dying.
Through the flung gouts of snow carved up by its final throes, Braggen counted two more. He cast down the bow, ripped his sword from the scabbard, and drew his short knife from his boot cuff. Since boyhood, he had won all the contests when the scouts threw with daggers, left-handed. He gauged his distance, much too aware of his peril if his aim went amiss.
Darkness would lend the brute dogs an advantage. That narrowed his range, meant he must cast his blade at a distance of under ten paces. No margin for error remained. He could gut only one murdering beast on his sword. If another still lived, it would have him.
‘Here’s eleven, for luck,’ Braggen gasped in dry irony. He cocked his wrist, steady from desperate necessity, and watched the paired mastiffs charge in. The wait became punishing. As the dogs closed the distance, their two-legged handlers would discover the disastrous fact that he had spent all his arrows.
Relentlessly trained to make sure of his target, Braggen held off until the last second. The mastiffs hurtled nearer. Their eyes were black pits. Gaping mouths dripped stringing gobs of foam, and their harsh, panting breaths sawed through their fleshy throats. The leading dog had a white blaze on its chest.
Braggen sighted that mark, nervelessly stilled for the lag as the heavy-boned predator gathered its haunches to leap.
The short knife left his hand in a point-blank trajectory; he never saw whether his cast steel struck true. Sword upraised, he braced for the hammering impact as the second dog launched at his face.
His blade pierced the animal from chest to spine and ripped through. Hard impetus slammed its breast against the quillons. Kicking and thrashing its passage from life, it managed to maul his right forearm. Powerful teeth clamped down on his bracer. If the steel studs prevented the worst of the gashing, the creature’s jaws locked down strongly enough to bruise. Braggen rammed his knee into its underbelly and heaved to fling the writhing beast off his sword. The blade bound on bone. He had to stamp down, pin the dog’s struggling body with his boot while he twisted the recalcitrant steel free.
The maneuver cost him dangerous seconds, and gained him a bitten ankle. At long last, the knifed dog stayed down, gushing blood like sprayed ink on a rumpled page of snow.
Downhill from its whimpering carcass, six enemy survivors broke out of cover and ran hell-bent with drawn weapons to harry him.
Braggen tested wrung muscles, found his grip on his sword slightly weakened, the dog’s damage marginal, but enough: the limb was not going to stay trustworthy. The sword’s simple, flat cross guard let him change hands, a skill his kind honed through a lifetime of dedication. With the mauled right, he drew his long dagger. Not stoic at all, now the hour had come, he faced his oncoming foemen. A last wish, he begged for the straight courage to die. He must stand his ground, and not falter in pain, or mire his purpose in regret for the kinfolk and close family left to carry his dwindled lineage after him.
For his prince, for a stake in the future for Rathain’s feal clansman, Braggen determined to make each hard-fought thrust of his blade cost a life until the Etarran patrol overwhelmed him.
The first pair of enemies came on, enraged for nine fellows already fallen to this barbarian marksman’s arrows. They were veterans, too well seasoned to rush blindly in. Braggen promptly marked them as Lysaer’s elite field troops. The alert way they carried their round, spiked targes showed at once they were trained to deflect throwing knives. They drew in without haste as they sized up the ground, then measured the attributes of their opponent.
Braggen gave them no favors. He hung back in the cleft where night shadow would mask him, his littlest knives saved for infighting. A late grandaunt of his had been knocked down by headhunters; fatally wounded, she had taken her killer with a leg stab that opened an artery. An enemy lamed meant one less to trail Arithon. Finesse was not going to matter a damn if Rathain’s crown prince never lived to reach freedom.
The trackers soon realized the cliffs on both sides offered no trail for ascent. Braggen had already ascertained that no enterprising climbers could be dispatched the long way to flank him. The sole option they had was a frontal assault on a chasm too narrow to admit more than two men abreast. If both tried to rush him, the space was too cramped for the reach of their swords: they would find their technique disastrously hampered, as likely to injure themselves as their enemy in the close press of amêlée.
Their best men with the short bow were already dead. With shrewd foresight, Braggen had dropped those two earliest. His antagonists were unlikely to appreciate the fresh difficulty. Under cover, in darkness, a bad shot was too likely to gift him with an arrow to pick someone else off at leisure.
The Etarrans grasped the grim pitfalls well enough, their disgruntled talk peppered with epithets as their fellows drew abreast and fanned out.
The thin man in the lead summed up with a nerveless accuracy. ‘No way. Can’t flush the motherless fox with covering fire while he’s pinned down in a fight. Our man with the sword would be far too likely to take a shaft in the back.’
‘No choice, then,’ said the veteran who replaced the slain officer. ‘We’ll go one at a time, hand to hand. Back in Etarra, the unblooded survivors can buy his killer three nights with a harlot. As my personal stake, I’ll throw in all the beer tonight’s hero can drink.’
‘Don’t send Gery first,’ someone jeered, to a companion’s snatched cough of laughter. ‘If he wins, his new wife will spit him.’
‘She’ll do worse, I promise, if I spend my month’s pay getting one of you oxen rolled in a brothel!’ the offended party sniped back.
Lest the banter distract from the bloody work ahead, the ringleader swiftly quelled them. ‘Listen up! We draw lots. As the first pick gets tired, the man next in line will replace him. Six to one odds, the hell-spawned barbarian must eventually wear himself down.’
Whatever their method of deliberation, the outcome took but a moment. A man broke away and unsheathed his blade and approached the rock cleft on cat strides. Braggen tagged his light tread and deliberate balance, and knew beyond doubt his opponent was going to be uncommonly skilled. Candidates who earned the sunwheel badge of life service were never less than exceptional. A springing, hot sweat slicked Braggen’s palms underneath his thin gloves. He cursed fickle nerves, gently shifted his stance onto the balls of his feet. He faced the grim charge his clan chieftain had asked of him, his last course of action bitter and set, and the life in his veins summer sweet.
He had the advantage of facing an opponent limned against ambient light. By contrast, the Etarran must seek an armed adversary shaded in seamless darkness, half-masked among obscuring rock. A sword thrust would cast a flat line of reflection, thin reference up
on which to engage in a bout of lethal combat. The added endangerment made the attacker move in with hair-trigger alertness. He would not strike first, or grope blind for his quarry. Nor would he make the green fool’s mistake and work his way in too close. A sharp, seasoned veteran, he came on with care and listened for Braggen’s quick breathing.
The thrust he expected shot out of ink shadow with only the soft, warning grate as boot leather ground upon stone. He parried the lunge with a predator’s speed, flexed knee leading, and his body in flawless form, presented sidewards. The shorter reach of the clansman’s poised dagger was granted no opening to strike.
The urge became overpowering, to release strung-up tension through expletives. Both combatants curbed the temptation to vent. Curses and insults would not hold off death or lessen the fear that stalked in lockstep with the danger. Quick and quiet, they closed in deep earnest, their duel marked by the flurried scrape of fast footfalls, the forced calm of each breath, and the shearing clashes as steel hammered steel amid the pitch blanket of darkness.
Then, as Braggen had dreaded, the backup man crept toward the notch in the rock. His silhouette melded into the outline of his Etarran antagonist and blurred clear perception beyond recourse. The odds traded sides, with the defending clansman hampered by distraction. The bystander’s stray noise now overlaid the small, vital clues that matched his offensive to his combatant.
Braggen fell back on his merciless training and the honed edge of his clan hunter’s instincts. His first lessons had not been conducted in a closed hall, with waxed floors and candles for lighting, but in the deep wood, with obstructions and roots, and the inconvenience of glaring sunlight. He had sparred by night, even in filthy weather, with the rain a cold sluice in his eyes. A man learned to trust more than sight and hearing, bruised and cut by his betters until he outstripped learned limits, and found he could move in and strike without thought on the prompt of intuitive reflex.