Beyond the Bulwarks Read online

  Nothing. It was just a doorway.

  And it was locked tight.

  “Damn it!” Durrim smote the doors. “These seals aren’t broken!”

  “Orkall’s diseased dick...” Skarvus swore behind them. “What the Hell do we do now?”

  ***

  The party returned to the camp of the night before with enough haste to embarrass old Skarvus, who muttered about Orkall’s disdain as he brought up the rear. As with the previous evenings, they got the fire going and set the watch. Unlike before, song and conversation remained stillborn as a breeze hissed up out of the gorge and fog thickened beyond the nervous flutter of their blaze.

  Anzo accepted one of the first guard shifts, knowing sleep would be a difficult conquest. Heathen had shrugged indifferently and settled into his cloak, snoring within minutes to the brittle chuckles and jealous stares of their comrades. Anzo found a tree sprouting from an outcropping that overlooked the sharp drop into the gorge and slid down against it, crouching in the cold. His unsheathed saber he set across his thighs while his free hand wandered to the amber bauble. As before, its touch seemed to bring warmth, like the glow of willing flesh under his fingers. He smiled, wondered if he didn’t detect the faintest hint of ginger in the barren wind.

  Grumbles from the Hamrak around the fire cajoled Thalien’s harp from its sack and the bard’s notes clanged against the stillness of the surrounding eve. A tune wandered for a bit, sought inspiration, settled into bright chords that Thalien’s voice joined presently. Chortles and a smatter of clapped hands spoke appreciation as the bard launched into a bawdy tune of women and pursuit and sex. For a time, liveliness defied the night.

  A shadow detached itself from the others, circled the group once before coming up onto Anzo’s crag to join him. “How is it with you, Weasel?” Durrim asked.

  Anzo shrugged. “Another night, another watch...”

  “I’m sure you knew many such with the Vyrm Kyn.”

  Anzo’s hand fell from the bauble, an instinctive motion to shield the tattoo, though his sleeve hid the forearm quite well. “With the Vyrms there was never song, only fear and the expectation of death the next day. We were never a people or even a tribe, just fools who’d bitten off more than we could chew.”

  Durrim nodded. “I think I know something of what you mean. I’d hoped against hope that my father would’ve seen me...really seen me.” His face fell and he tugged absently at his mustache. “I should have known better. Now, I may have condemned us.”

  Silence lengthened between them and Anzo sensed the prince’s need for something from him. “Your men are with you,” he said when no other words came to him.

  “I wonder...” He looked out into the night. “I wonder how many will be remaining when—if—we return. It will be hard on them. I promised so many things when we left for Theregond’s banner. Now, waiting for our doomed little troop’s return, waiting too with their own homes and women and children behind the walls of Caerigoth so close...” He picked up a rock, handled it briefly, and cast it into the night. “Well, I can hardly blame them for abandoning us. I suppose that’s what my father intended.”

  Anzo waited for him to say more. Again, no more was coming and he felt the expectation in the younger man. Brightening his voice, Anzo said, “Tell me more of this Theregond.”

  Durrim’s eyes glimmered. “He is the kind of king I would follow; I would be. Of all the chieftains of the western Vhurrs, he alone sees what must be done. His folk, the Erevulans, are strong and many have already allied with them. But it’s not enough. Maybe if the Marovians hadn’t...” The prince’s jaw clenched out whatever words might have followed. “It’s not enough. If my father would only see, though, it might be. When the Vhurrs of the east come, it must be.”

  “What is it that’s coming?” Anzo asked, tensing. “Durrim, I’ve heard much of this disturbance in the east, but few will speak more. A man I knew spoke of something...” Anzo thought of Ulfun’s words the morning of the massacre, some mention of “...the Faces?”

  Durrim squeezed the rock in his hand till the knuckles popped. “Aye. Them. They are mad dogs, devouring all before them, driven by their master, Grondomagnus. Bah! To say his name is poison. He is a thing, commanding foulest magic and demons drawn from the Endless Hells. His wear the faces of their victims in battle. If they aren’t stopped there will be no Vhurrs. There will be no world.”

  Thalien’s song had ceased. Stillness swept into its absence.

  Anzo put his hand on Durrim’s arm. “We will stop them.”

  The Hamrak prince didn’t answer.

  “We will stop them.”

  Durrim tensed. “What was that?”

  Anzo’s veins ran with ice. He shot to his feet, saber in hand. The breeze died. The sway of trees silenced. Mist plumed from the gorge, billowed between the trees, swept up around the camp while the fire guttered and fell low in its cinders. The Hamrak began to rise in throttled silence, weapons leaping from sheaths without sound. Heathen’s snoring sputtered out and the giant sat up, axe already clenched close.

  “There.” The word frothed out in a purl of condensation as chill sank its fingertips into their bones. Durrim gestured into the woods to their right, downhill where the trees thinned at the gorge’s periphery.

  A purplish aurora limned the mists, clung to narrow tree trunks for a teasing instant before it was lost to the swirling dark.

  “The dead...” Durrim said hoarsely and started forward. “They come from the ruins with the night.”

  Anzo followed at the prince’s flank, each step a war against his instincts. Damp undergrowth pulled at his heels, weighted his boots till moisture soaked through to numb his toes. He slipped, stumbled once. Durrim kept going ahead of him, fury and terror at once, drawn onward as though through a nightmare.

  The glow simmered amongst the trees, brighter now, intensifying with a stoked fire’s vibrance then guttering down again. The fog split and fell away from it. Struggling to catch up to Durrim, Anzo paused, grimaced at a flash of heat at his chest. He looked down and saw the same light quickened momentarily in the amber at his chest.

  Realization slammed through the murk of terror.

  Durrim’s strides sped up. A shape sprang before him, a cloaked figure still speckled in flecks of the purple luminescence. He bellowed and raised his sword.

  “Hold!” Anzo shouted and rushed towards him.

  Durrim’s blade lashed the air, missed the figure as it ducked and bleated in surprise. The sword lodged in a tree trunk and Durrim fumbled to get his throwing axe clear for a stroke.

  “Stop!” Anzo grabbed the man before the weapon fell.

  Varya cowered before them, her hood fallen back and her eyes wide with shock.

  “What is this?” Durrim bellowed. He flung Anzo off and backed away from Varya, shaking the axe at them both. “What devil work is this, Weasel? The Flinarr crones said she was a witch! By Orkall, what have you brought into our midst?”

  Oh damn, damn, damn it! Anzo knelt and yanked Varya to her feet. “Have you lost your mind?” He hissed in Aurridian.

  “Answer me, Severnus!” Durrim shrieked.

  “I followed you,” Varya rushed to reply. “I could not let him leave me!”

  Anzo grimaced. Her lack of provisions or gear for the two-day hike made the lie so obvious as to be painful. The air still held the ozone bite of her sorcery.

  “You called to me, Anzo,” Varya pressed, shaking loose of his furious grip. “You don’t know it, but you were calling. You need me now!”

  Durrim backed into a tree, didn’t notice the barrier as he trembled. “What is this...this lunacy?”

  Varya glanced back and forth between the men. “You need me,” she insisted.

  Screams and the crash of weapons carried over the crest of the rise above them. Heathen’s roar drowned them all out, was not his usual berserk battle cry, was the hard bawling of mortal terror.

  “It’s begun!”

  Varya lurch
ed uphill. Durrim stepped into her way, grappled to draw her near, but she writhed loose and kept going. Cursing and clattering into each other, Anzo and Durrim scrambled to catch up.

  A circle of mist had settled around the campsite. In the haze, silhouetted against the dying blaze, the blurred shapes of the Hamraks tossed and lunged and fell. Heathen’s monstrous form stomped through the campfire, scattering sparks before it. Someone was on the ground, screaming. Someone else was laughing.

  Cackling, Anzo realized as he reached the disturbance. And it was not someone—it was something, all around, swirling with the fog, a ghostly titter as brittle and unfeeling as bones rapped together.

  “Around the fire!” Varya hollered. “All of you get close to the fire!”

  Heathen reared up in the confusion, face torn for a moment between confusion and relief. Growling, he shouldered Hamrak behind him, using his mass to corral as many near the blaze as possible. Beyond the fire’s shaking glow, the mists and forest squirmed with something that was not life but hungered to taste it.

  Rushing to Heathen’s side, Anzo tripped and fell. Skarvus was under him, squalling and clenching at his calf. Gripping the old warrior by the shoulders, Anzo dragged them together into the fire glow. He’d lost his saber and didn’t care. He knew, watching the night quicken around them, that steel would do no good.

  “Take the light!” Varya swept up blazing branches from the campfire and handed them out. She kept one to herself and forced her way to the forefront of men as they knotted together. The brand in her fist began to take on a purple hue. Anzo blew desperately on the charred stick he’d taken to coax its flame back to life. His hand shook so hard he produced only wisps that stung his eyes to tears.

  “Together!” Varya barked. She held her purple frothing branch before her, concentration marking her face with tight shadows and the hard glint of her eyes. The Hamrak clenched around her.

  Skarvus whimpered at Anzo’s side. Glancing down, he saw that the warrior’s legging had been torn away below the knee and his boot hung in tatters of peeled leather. His foot and calf were slashed, strange blue gouges in the flesh that seemed to grow and vein outwards in twists of black.

  “The others!” Durrim groaned. “Thalien...Machrus...where are they?”

  Beyond the shrinking circle of light, the fog clotted and flexed. Cackling slashed at the eardrums, was everywhere, pressing in. Strange words carried on chill breath that very nearly puffed the hairs on the neck, eldritch phrases from a cursed, empty, forgotten place that could be taunts, threats or promises. Shapes slithered wherever the light failed. At a distance, they were almost human figures, prancing and sidling close to reveal flicks of fingernail, teeth, and faces that held beauty as terrible as ivory carved into a sarcophagus. But at the touch of light, the faces blackened, burned down to horrific, bony death grins as they pulled back.

  “Stay together!” Varya commanded. Her firebrand shook in a fist shockingly slender and tiny to face such unholy horror.

  A very human shriek pierced the cacophony and a figure burst through the fog, arms lashing the air, stumbling, falling, and crawling forward to reach the group. It was Thalien. Mist enveloped him, solidified into arms that clawed and tore as he thrashed.

  Anzo leapt forward to grab the bard’s hands. The man looked up, face in rags, lined with blue gashes and spreading black. Eyes plead. Anzo felt hands grabbing his legs—Heathen, he somehow knew, adding his strength to the rescue. Anzo pulled, shoulders creaking at the effort. Thalien bawled in agony, his bones popping in Anzo’s grip.

  Something snapped. Thalien was gone. Anzo saw him for an endless instant as he was dragged squealing into the fog, his eyes twin pinpricks of anguish until they flicked out in the churning darkness. Inhuman laughter rose to howls of triumph and faded.

  ***

  Dawn light speckled the canopy above the campsite and the mists finally thinned away. The party collapsed as they had stood all night, in a circle around the sputtering fire. Anzo’s head lolled on his shoulders, an unbeareable, leaden weight. Eyes burned with a thousand granules of ashy sleeplessness and every breath strained. He was as near broken as any battlefield had left him, figured the others were no better. But as the sky brightened to gray, Durrim and a few others limped out into the woods over Varya’s protests.

  Skarvus moaned beside Anzo. He turned to inspect the man’s injuries, Varya kneeling close. The calf was blackened, flesh puckering around gashes in the muscle. Anzo tugged at the tatters of the man’s boot and the old warrior hissed, clenched at Anzo’s shoulder in agony.

  “Can you feel your toes?” Anzo asked as he drew the rent leather free. He hid a grimace at the sight of shrunken digits, blackened, too, as though instantly frostbitten.

  “Gods, I...I’m cold,” Skarvus whispered through clenching teeth. He blinked away pain, noticed Varya, apparently for the first time. “What’s happening?”

  “Bind it,” Anzo ordered Varya. She complied without question, tearing strips from the ruin of Skarvus' pant leg for a bandage.

  Durrim returned from the woods and tossed something into the clearing. The warped, splintered body of Thalien’s harp rang off the ground. Its strings, twisted in coils about tuning pegs, chimed faintly. Skarvus groaned again.

  “No sight of him or Machrus,” Durrim snarled. He glared at Anzo. “No bodies, no trail—” he toed the ruined instrument “—just that!”

  Anzo regarded the harp, couldn’t force himself to meet the prince’s stare. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s her doing!” one of the other warriors barked, pointing at Varya. “She’s a witch.”

  “He’s right,” another growled, rising to his feet. Others were doing the same, the circle turning inward on the woman. “She only appeared when those...those things did. String her up!”

  “If any of you thinks to touch the lady, you will die.” Heathen’s voice was almost conversational as he stood, patting the helve of his axe.

  Varya glared about at the men but didn’t stop her work on Skarvus, who watched her with uneasiness, pain still overriding fear. Anzo got up slowly, was aware he still hadn’t recovered his sword. The rest of the Hamrak were six—five if one didn’t count on Skarvus—against Heathen’s axe and Anzo’s fists. Lousy odds in a fight he didn’t want. He made himself look at Durrim now.

  “She is a witch,” he said softly and glanced at her. “And she is mine.”

  “So, you have brought evil into our midst, Weasel.” Durrim’s hand settled on his sword but did not draw. Hurt that was sharp with betrayal seethed behind his eyes. “Tell me why you shouldn’t die now.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I heard her last night,” Durrim replied. “She said you called to her. You summoned her somehow. Was it to finish us now, while we are few and weak? Are you in league with my father?”

  “Don’t be a fool!” Anzo waved a hand at the surrounding woods. “She saved your lives, in case you forgot. If that’s evil, then you are all doomed for your stupidity!”

  The others rumbled and reached for their weapons. Heathen squared his shoulders, grinning with a flash of joyful mania. Durrim’s face tightened, beads of perspiration sprouting on his brow as fingers played near his sword grip.

  “My prince, please...” Skarvus moaned. “They’re right. The curse of this place is working on us all, turning us against each other.”

  Durrim’s eyes narrowed with confusion and inner struggle. Mouthing a curse, he pivoted away. His hand fell from the sword. The others watched him, uncertainty loosening frames that had bristled for the kill moments before.

  “If I wanted you dead, Durrim,” Anzo pressed, “certainly you’d already be so.”

  “My prince...” Skarvus tried to get up but a flinch of agony kept him down. Varya steadied him to continue her work.

  The prince’s shoulderd sagged. “Orkall save us...” He turned back to them and glanced around, put up a hand to wave the others off. “Stand down. Everyone.” Grudgingly, the
others relaxed. Durrim stepped to the fireside and crouched before Skarvus, flicked only the briefest of glances at Varya while she continued her work on the old warrior’s wound. “How bad is it?”

  “I will still be at your side,” Skarvus insisted through a grimace.

  “You’re welcome,” Varya put in as she finished binding Skarvus’ foot tight.

  “Thank you,” Durrim said, almost too quietly to be heard. “It would be better, Weasel who beds with witches” he speared Anzo with a fresh glare “if there were no more surprises.”

  Anzo nodded with a sideways smirk at Varya. “I can only promise for myself, but you have seen that surprise always seems to dog my footsteps.”

  Durrim shrugged. “It will have to do.” He pulled himself back to his feet with a groan that betrayed his own flagging strength. “Now to the business at hand; we have plenty of light, this time.”

  Anzo gawked at him. “You’re planning on going back down?”

  Durrim adjusted his sword belt while the others scurried to make ready, checking weapons, gathering gear scattered by the night’s confrontation. “I’d be no Prince of the Hamrak if I didn’t. Orkall’s eye is upon me. It is my time of trial and I will face it.” A forlorn note took over his voice. “Better death now than trudging back in defeat and the doom of our cause.”

  “Death of the flesh, perhaps,” Varya spoke up, “but a fate for your soul that you cannot imagine.”

  Durrim eyed her uncomfortably. “I suppose you know much of these things, witch?”

  “Her name is Varya,” Heathen rumbled.

  The Prince didn’t look at the giant but softened his tone. “Tell us what these things are, then, woman.”

  Anzo touched Varya’s arm but she seemed to swell up without him, inner strength and confidence that she alone knew the way forward. “They are revenants; creatures once alive that died horribly, violently—often by magic—and seek vengeance on their killers.”