Blood in the Valley

  Blood in the Valley

  Heroes of the Valley, Volume 2

  K.J. Coble

  Published by Haymore House Publishing, 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  BLOOD IN THE VALLEY

  First edition. September 26, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 K.J. Coble.

  ISBN: 979-8201732257

  Written by K.J. Coble.

  Also by K.J. Coble

  Hell's Jesters

  Hell's Jesters

  Cry Havoc

  Rebel Hell

  Heroes of the Valley

  Defenders of the Valley

  Blood in the Valley (Coming Soon)

  Stand in the Valley (Coming Soon)

  The Quintorius Chronicles

  Lord of Exiles

  Legion of Exiles

  Republic of Exiles

  The Vothan Guard

  The Tome of Flesh

  Standalone

  Magic Fire - Metal Storm

  The Shadows of Maunathyrr

  Ashes of Freedom

  Beyond the Bulwarks

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also By K.J. Coble

  Dedication

  Prologue | Portents of Disaster

  Chapter One | New Paths

  Chapter Two | Warnings Ignored

  Chapter Three | Departures

  Chapter Four | Fraying Threads

  Chapter Five | Darkness Ascendant

  Chapter Six | Nightmares Realized

  Chapter Seven | Eredynn Besieged

  Chapter Eight | Desperate Plans

  Chapter Nine | Dreams Die

  Chapter Ten | Flight through Shadow and Flame

  Epilogue | Signs of Life

  Sign up for K.J. Coble's Mailing List

  Further Reading: Stand in the Valley

  About the Author

  For Amy, who once reminded me that the way you treat people is the way you get treated, in return.

  Prologue

  Portents of Disaster

  Alochu “Al” Oplexu, Speaker of Candolum, folded and unfolded his hands in agitation as he leaned back in his chair. Wind groaned through the eastern window of his modest office in the uppermost level of the squat, narrow keep at the town’s center. It rose, momentarily howling, and nearly drowned out the words of his visitors as it rose. The foremost of these, a Legionnaire in the frayed red cloak of the Cavalry Cohort and boots mud-caked from a hard ride, paused his report as the gust extinguished candles, set parchment fluttering from Oplexu’s desk, and filled the room with chill.

  “I said shutter that!” Oplexu snapped an aide, who rushed to fasten wooden blinds across the window. “Apologies, Decurion Glastrom,” he said to the Legionnaire. “Please, continue.”

  “We were riding south to relieve the outpost at the southern bend of the Aleil,” Galstrom resumed crisply, “and to investigate rumors of bandits interdicting river traffic. We found the outpost razed and the woods swarming with goblins.”

  “Goblins,” Oplexu snorted. “I assume you showed them the price for such boldness?”

  “No, Speaker,” Glastrom replied with a slight clenching of his blocky jaw. “I wouldn’t risk my small force against such superior numbers.”

  “What numbers?”

  “There were hundreds, several tribes, at least. We counted them twice as we withdrew before them.”

  Oplexu glanced at Mannatus, the High Priest of Saint Reniburn, slouched in a seat before his desk. The crimson-robed cleric touched fingertips to his forehead in silent sign to his deity. “Surely you must be mistaken,” Oplexu said, ignoring the man’s gesture. “Those creatures haven’t dared gather in such numbers in recent memory.”

  “I’m certain of what we saw,” Glastrom said, his hawkish, Thyrrian nose flaring. “And they were on the move, heading north.”

  Oplexu leaned back in his chair, shock dulling his thoughts.

  Mannatus slapped a bejeweled hand upon the desk. “I told you! Our delegates to Eredynn warned Vennitius! But you would not heed the signs! None of you!”

  “Be calm, Your Grace,” Oplexu said, waving the other into silence with a grimace of newborn headache. What the priest said was true; they had tried to warn the Strategos of the Remordan Valley—arrogant Satu Vennitius, safe behind the walls of the district capitol. But that was little comfort now.

  “Speaker, if you would humor me,” Glastrom said, “we’ve been in the saddle the better part of two weeks and have had little news. What word of the expedition against the barbarians in the north?”

  “Victory,” Oplexu replied with resignation that no doubt confusted the Legionnaire. But thinking of the political ramifications of holding back his settlement’s Levies from the campaign only worsened his headache. The turmoil amongst his folk had been—still was—real and would reach widespread panic if the officer’s reports turned out to be true. “I’m told by messengers that the expedition remains on the other side of the lake, pacifying the remnants of the dispersed barbarian horde.”

  Glastrom’s jaw worked. “Then we are dispersed.”

  “Yes.” Oplexu stiffened in his seat, suddenly realizing the Legionnaires’ meaning with a sick churn of his gut. “But...but only one Cohort—the Fifth, I believe it was—from Eredynn was dispatched with them.”

  The tension in Glastrom’s stance eased. “That means the First, Veteran and Engineer Cohorts are still in the capitol, plus two cohorts of infantry.” He nodded in satisfaction. “I will ride out immediately and take word to Eredynn.”

  “No!” Mannatus barked. He glared at Oplexu. “Al...Speaker, we have only our own folk if this threat reaches our walls! We must have the Legion!”

  Glastrom’s face rippled with momentary annoyance. “Your Grace, I have twenty men—twenty exhausted men. Your walls are sound. Pull in all your folk and garrison them with your Levies and you will hold the three days it will take us to reach Eredynn and return with our main force.”

  “Three days!” Mannatus cackled without humor. “You assume efficiency among our leaders, my boy, that I fear is not there.”

  “I know Praetor Paelito, Your Grace,” Glastrom replied in a tone chilly with suppressed insult. “He will move swiftly upon receiving word from me.”

  “Then send one of your riders while the rest remain here with us,” Mannatus said. He threw Oplexu a glance for support. “You must understand the stiffening our people need, with the omens of doom abounding of late. The banner of the Legion will give them heart.”

  Glastrom looked at Oplexu with a beseeching expression. Oplexu gnawed a fingernail for a moment before shrugging. “I must concur with the High Priest of Saint Reniburn, Decurion.”

  Mannatus bowed his head to Oplexu. “The wisdom of your office shows again, Speaker.” He rose to his feet and moved past Glastrom with a pat to the officer’s sagging shoulders. “Fear not, lad. It is the work of the gods you do.”

  “Where do you go, Your Grace?” Oplexu called after him.

  The priest paused at the door to the office. “To gather our faithful and pray. With the favor of our Saint and our brave soldiers, we may yet weather this doom that comes.” He withdrew, making signs at his forehead.

  With the door closed at his back, Glastrom growled, “For a man of faith, His Grace seems to have little.” The Legionnaire chanced a glance at Oplexu. “With my apologies, Speaker.”

  Oplexu managed a crooked grin. “Mannatus is a good man, Decurion, and he has his finger to the pulse of our people. Candolum is an ancient town, was once the district capitol before the rise of Eredynn. It i
s said Reniburn, himself, passed through here during in the days after the Seven Cataclysms and raised the temple, entrusting its care, and the care of his faith to our ancestors. My people take that very seriously. When His statue collapsed, weeks ago, it was as if the Saint had forsaken us.”

  Glastrom nodded. “We had heard of some of your troubles.”

  “Many have left since then,” Oplexu continued, “and those merchants who have stayed have capitalized on the tumult, raising prices on even bare necessities. I had a food riot here, a week ago.” He sagged back into his chair, trying to fight off the throbbing behind his eyes. “It’s been all I can do to maintain order. Now this...” He gave himself a shake and sat back up. “But I’m complaining...allow me to have those documents drafted for Eredynn.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Detail a rider or two,” Oplexu said, gesturing his aide to the desk where the man unrolled parchment and melted the tip of an ink stick in a candle. “I will provide my personal seal. That should be enough to rouse Vennitius.”

  “I hope so, sir.”

  Oplexu met the Legionnaire’s eyes while the scribe’s quill scratched across parchment. “You said the goblins were on the move. How soon might they reach us?”

  “They slow themselves down, bickering and despoiling the countryside as their foul kind are wont to do. But they still move with more purpose than I have ever seen. Something else seems to guide them. And their numbers...”

  Oplexu’s aide paused in his work but the Speaker waved for him to keep at it. “How long?” he repeated.

  “It could be only days,” Glastrom replied, the candlelight etching hard shadows in his weathered face. “It could be sooner.”

  Chapter One

  New Paths

  The wyvern landed with a creak of sinews and a reptilian hiss of released breath. It gave its wings a flap to settle them that nearly jostled Lonadiel off its back, despite thighs clenched tight over its spine and his near-panicked grip around Satayebeb’s waist. The thin woods around the low knob upon which they’d touched down rustled with small animals set to flight by the massive beast, whose kind rarely menaced the lowlands of the Remordan Valley.

  Lonadiel slid from the creature’s back with a groan that was both relief and pain. The flight northward at treetop level had been a blur of terror made nearly unbearable by the agony of the wyvern’s narrow vertebrae hammering up through his crotch. He wobbled as his boots settled on solid ground and his inner thighs, rubbed raw even through leather leggings, seared.

  Satayebeb dismounted casually, fingernails clattering across scales as she ran them along the beast’s sinuous neck. With a sibilant of pleasure, the wyvern snaked its head under the crook of her arm. Drooping eyelids slid back as its gaze came to rest upon Lonadiel and slit irises narrowed to hateful creases.

  “Now, now...” Satayebeb murmured with a playful pat to the monster’s knobby skull. She moved past the beast to the crest of the knob. A light breeze played in her hair, silvered to near-white in the gleam of the risen moon.

  She let her cape of wolf’s hide, black with silver streaking and a gift from the hobgoblins, billow back from her shoulders. She wore a loosely-hanging shift of crudely-stitched leather under it, the garment hardly concealing creamy skin. But the cool of the evening didn’t seem to affect her. She was at once the haughty Thyrrian beauty whose body she’d claimed and the infernal thing of the lower planes she was in fact.

  Giving the wyvern a wide berth, Lonadiel came to stand at her side, looking down across the Valley.

  The Aleil and Icing Rivers split a mile north of them forming a shimmering angle within which a town nestled, its lights glimmering cheerfully in the dark. The rivers protected its flanks and a low wall formed a semicircle along its southern perimeter. A single bridge crossed the Aleil to the northeast from which the old Imperial Highway wound towards Eredynn and the heart of the Valley.

  “Candolum,” Lonadiel said.

  “You’ve been here?” Satayebeb reached out to take his hand.

  Warmth coursed into the elf’s arm, spread to his chest where it set his heart to thumping. With effort, he replied, “Yes. It’s one of the larger towns, not the size of Eredynn or Andenburgh, but substantial enough to offer resistance. The wall, in particular, is well-kept.”

  Satayebeb’s gaze lingered on the battlement-like temple rising from the northernmost point of the settlement, at the divergence of the rivers. Her nostrils flared and Lonadiel thought he saw the momentary glitter of fire in her eyes. “Old Reniburn,” she whispered with a malicious upturn of her lip.

  “He is patron saint of the town,” Lonadiel said. “Legend has it he founded the place.”

  “Oh, yes, He was here,” Satayebeb said in a voice gone bestial, the fires now fully agleam in her irises, “as were Krawn, Ranyar, and all the other ‘heroes’. They passed through here on their way to besiege us at Vul Aronath...” She shivered and released his hand. “But that was long ago.” Her chin tilted upwards with disdain. “Now, there are no more paladins to ride forth and plunge the Rightful Order into ruin.”

  “The army is three days south of here,” Lonadiel said, eager to steer the conversation back to things he understood. “If they do not by now, Candolum will have some warning of us. They’ll be making preparations.”

  “Let them,” Satayebeb snarled. “These Valley simpletons will be hardly an afterthought.”

  Lonadiel ground his teeth. Memories smoldered with in him, of the battle at Graystone Glade, where the Valley folk—the simpletons, as she put it—had shattered the barbarian army he and that dead fool wizard, Ango Morug had led. “I have no doubt our forces will take the town, Mistress, but Eredynn is certain to have word before long, as well. We’re within a couple days’ march on good roads. The Legion will certainly sally forth in strength. If they catch us while we are—”

  “Candolum will fall before then,” Satayebeb cut him off. “And as for their mighty Legion...I want them out in the open.”

  “Mistress,” Lonadiel breathed with shock, “our numbers are substantial, indeed. But the Legion is long-used to such odds. To face them on the open field—”

  “Do you doubt?” Satayebeb whirled, eyes drilling into him with their hellish glare. Lonadiel felt his chest tighten, as if crushed under a great weight. He swayed, felt his balance begin to go and sagged to one knee. Memory sprang forth, as if torn bleeding from the wound of his mind. He was no longer Lonadiel, former-Yntuil warrior-priest, now infamous traitor, but Lonadiel the child, crying for his parents after the fires of a barbarian rampage had consumed his home and left him alone, orphaned.

  Satayebeb towered over him. “Do you?”

  “I...I...” Lonadiel let his chin drop to his chest, unable to meet that piercing gaze and the images it could wrench free any longer. “Mistress, please forgive my weakness. I am yours, of course.”

  Satayebeb shook her head and turned away. Lonadiel shivered and clenched his arms about him, reassured to feel his body back in the present. Gathering his courage, he forced himself to look up, once more. Satayebeb’s eyes were again on the spire of the Saint Reniburn temple.

  “I will forgive you your mortal concerns,” she said. “Eventually, you’ll learn to look beyond them—” she glanced over her shoulder at him with a flicker of crimson glow “—or you will not.” She turned back to the overlook. “Understand this now; I do not underestimate the challenges before us. But our adversaries are merely men; and men make mistakes.”

  Lonadiel rose uncertainly to his feet. “Yes, Mistress.”

  “The city of Eredynn is the political heart of the Valley, yes?”

  Lonadiel nodded.

  “Crushing that will break the will of the region. The rest will be mopping-up. And from there...who knows? My power grows with each day on this plane of existence. Soon, once your seed is quickening within me, my presence here will be cemented. Then there will be no limit to where we can go.”

  Having regained most of h
is breath and composure, Lonadiel nodded. “It will be as you say, Mistress. I see it. I believe it.”

  “I know you do.” She turned to him, the glow gone from her eyes, replaced by a flicker of surprisingly-human mischief. She smirked. “You said you were here before. She was with you?”

  Lonadiel found himself avoiding Satayebeb’s stare again. It pointless, he knew; she could be in among his thoughts before he was himself aware of them. “Yes, she was,” he replied, glumly, hating that he had no secrets before those eyes.

  Satayebeb chortled. “She torments you still. How charming. When I lived before, I often played amongst you mortals, took part in your passion games, played my own with your nasty little jealousies.”

  “She is nothing to me now.” Lonadiel winced, knew the lie would be detected even as he spoke it.

  “Of course, she isn’t,” Satayebeb said, voice oozing sarcasm. She took his hand and again he felt the warm current of lust. “But I think I shall have to get her for you; a gift to my troubled new groom.”

  Lonadiel thought of Illah—Ilanahl Aloicil, his partner in the Yntuil order, his closest ally, once, and so much more. He imagined her in the claws of the twisted, depraved things that he could not have imagined before looking into the eyes of Satayebeb and seeing—truly knowing—what Hell promised. Her imagined screams of torment, her fear, her stare of accusation and betrayal cut to whatever tatters remained of his soul, sickening him, but filling him with something else, too.

  Relief.

  Relief that he would not endure that same torment alone.

  “Thank you, Mistress,” he said to the demon-goddess, meaning it with everything he had once been.

  “YOU CAN’T STOP THINKING about me,” Lonadiel said. Behind him, the Watch Tower of the Yntuil burned, silhouetting him with the glare of its demise, as it had that terrible night when his treachery had turned the whole world upside-down.