The Gathering Storm
Something is coming:
He ran, dropping Fest’s lead line and leaving Eagle and sergeant behind, stumbled, tripped once and fell hard, jolting himself right up through his shoulders. One greave, rent from a sword blow, pinched at the back of his knees. Drawing his knife he cut the straps as he picked himself up and ran on. If Wendilgard were there, he would slay her for her treachery. No quarter, no ransom.
Lightning flashed, and again, and again, and in each flash he saw the faces of his men, haggard, drained, but determined as they marched on into what fate they did not know, only believed that he would lead them to victory or to shelter.
Out in the forest an uncanny path gleamed. He saw it now, crossing the road at an angle. Not too much farther up the trail Wendilgard had camped yesterday, and beyond that, having lost his way because of anger and doubt, he had encountered the Lost Ones. Surely they had moved on.
He ran. The transition from woodland to open space came abruptly. One moment branches whipped past him, the next he bolted out under the stars and right there, just beyond the last tree, he tripped and fell hard across a body, caught himself on an outflung arm. Lightning flashed again and he saw that he lay on top of the corpse of a man wearing the sigh of Avaria’s lion, one of Wendilgard’s soldiers. Dead with no apparent wound, no blood staining the ground around him, and quite stiff, which meant he had died many hours ago, long before Wendilgard’s forces had attacked Sanglant’s forces below the bluff.
Avarian dead lay scattered across the clearing throughout the ruins of Wendilgard’s bivouac, under the shadow of those ancient walls. Again a flash illuminated the clearing. A stone’s toss from him lay the torn remnants of her proud banner and, across it, her body. Her red-and-white tabard was dusty but otherwise intact and unstained; her lips were pulled back in a rictus grin, and her eyes stared at the heavens although it was quite obvious she no longer saw anything.
Wendilgard was dead.
She had died fighting—but not against him. The Ashioi had killed her, the same ones he had met in the forest, and her Avarians had blamed him and taken what revenge they could by aiding Liutgard.
He jumped up and ran out into the clearing. It was dominated by a low hill on whose height a fortress had once stood, although it was now only shattered walls and fallen stones. He crossed the outer works of the fortress, so fallen and moss-covered that it appeared to be little more than a garden wall. Sanglant plunged right into the midst of a skirmish, his own men screaming and shouting as they fell back before the determined onslaught of the Ashioi. By the light of their torches he glimpsed the scene: the Lost Ones poured out of the fortress.
They had taken refuge there at dawn—so he guessed—as though it had been their place long ago and they defended it now against interlopers.
Night slammed down again. He rushed forward to the front ranks where men stumbled back, some falling to shadowy darts that dissolved as quickly as they struck. He pushed past the ragged line where Fulk and a few others held their ground to let the others retreat. He had thought the battle lost, but now he realized he had forgotten the one chess piece he had thought he would never dare to play, that he would, in fact, never want to play.
Hadn’t his mother abandoned him? Had she loved him at all? Yet her blood had mingled with that of his father to create him. She would always be part of him, and never more so than now.
He pulled off his helm, gulped in air, then shouted. “Cousin! I pray you, Cousin! Heed me, who is son to Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari. I need your help!”
“Prince Sanglant!” Fulk called him back.
He jumped into the gap and raised his sword as the clearing lit again, casting a pallor over the melee. A rank of shades stared at him, many wearing the bodies of men but the faces of animals. They paused as he called out once more.
“Cousin! I am the son of Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari. Heed me! We are cousins. Kinsmen. Why do we fight?”
The shades drew back to let the shadow prince approach. He and Sanglant stood among the corpses of Wendilgard’s troop and a few fresh Wendish ones, facing each other with their soldiers at their back, all of his living and solid and all of the Ashioi insubstantial shades.
“You stand in our sacred ground, a fortress once dedicated to She Who Will Not Have A Husband. These others camped here, so we slew as many as we could and drove off the rest. Now we must hasten.”
“I pray you, aid me, and I will aid you. I am pursued by an army of humankind who seek my destruction and who seek yours as well. Listen!”
A bolt of lighting scorched the sky, hanging in the air for three breaths before it flicked out, leaving behind an afterimage that cut a blazing line across the rank of shadow elves who stood listening. Waiting. He saw trees through the outline of their bodies. Far back, he heard a horn call ring out and the sound of clashing weapons, and a horse’s screams.