Blood in the Valley Read online

  “There has still been no word from Eredynn,” Dodso announced, jutting up his whickered chin in his best approximation of defiance. “I have this word, this warning from Jayce Zerron. Candolumn has been attacked, has maybe even fallen.”

  The half-celebratory din of the tent died in a moment, back-patting and words of excitement darkening to shouts and demands. Ulomo blanched and stepped to the map-piled table at the center of the command post, slapped both palms down upon it. “You what? You can’t just take a wizard’s—”

  “Candolum has fallen?” Raynes squawked. “You’re certain of this? Who’s attacking? Are they nearing Eredynn? Andenburgh?”

  “I don’t know anymore than that,” Dodso replied, hands up to placate the crowd in the tent as their cacophony rose, along with their tempers. “All I know is that the wizard warns that the heart of the Valley is thinly-defended if Candolumn goes down.”

  “Nonsense,” Ulomo snarled at him and turned to the others. “The Legion guards Eredynn and the heartlands.”

  “A fraction of it,” Raynes snapped back. “A few Cohorts, obviously not including your own.”

  “Enough to smash anything likely to make an attempt on the District Capitol.” The Legion officer whirled back to Dodso. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, Speaker, but these malcontents have clearly had an effect on your—”

  “Malcontent?” Raynes boomed and gripped his sword handle. “I’ll show you malcontent!”

  “Enough!” Dodso screeched over the din and slammed his baton of office down upon the maps hard enough to warp its remaining pewter wing. “This decision is mine!” He glowered at Ulomo. “We cannot demand these folk stay here chasing ghosts any longer! The barbarians are finished! The job is finished!”

  “Satu Vennitius is still Strategos of the Valley, last I checked,” Ulomo replied coldly and with threat. “And we have no orders.”

  “Are you deaf, hireling?” Raynes spat. “He said the orders are his!”

  Ulomo’s face darkened with rage and he touched his own sword. “Threaten me one more time, farm-hand.”

  “Captain.” Dodso held out a hand pleadingly. “Please, even you have spoken to me of how irregular it is that we’re still here. It makes no sense. And now, with these warnings of further disturbance, you’d rather we stay here, idle, while the rest of the Valley is in peril.”

  “We can say none of that for certain,” he hissed. “Only that your wizard friend told you so.”

  “Jayce Zerron’s word has been good enough for the people of the Valley for a long time,” Vohl spoke up, eyeing the Legionnaire while his hand never moved far from the weapon at his belt.

  Grumbles of agreement from the others rose at the words. Ulomo glanced around, solider enough to know when he was outmanuevered, let his hand fall away from his own weapon and let his features smooth into unreadable stoniness.

  “So that’s that,” Dodso said with finality. He looked around at the others. “Spread the word. Begin preparations for departure. Those of you from this side of the Lake, thank you all for your hospitality.”

  That triggered some chuckles. Had they not had the aid of the contingents from the east side of Lake Remordan, the citizens on the west side would likely still be on the run from the Skinners while their towns burned behind them.

  “You’ll be arrested for this,” Ulomo said. Even spoken softly, the words carried over the sounds fo the others, stilled them into tense, angry silnce. He looked around at them. “All of you are breaking the law.”

  Muddle stepped up to Dodso’s said at the maps and hefted his axe meaningfully onto his shoulder. “Are you planning on carrying that out, soldier-man?”

  Some of the others grinned wickedly, fingering weapons and glaring at the Legionnaire. Others cringed back, want to be nowhere near the possible arch of Muddle’s monstrous swing.

  Vohl stepped up to Dodso’s other side, folded his arms. Gods...in trouble again. He offered the Legionnaire his best attempt at a disarming smile. “Come on, Captain. Certainly, the capitol’s a better place for sorting this out?”

  “Oh, it will be,” Ulomo promised in a voice as icy as the corner of his Legion-issue blade. “And there will be trouble there, for certain.”

  Vohl thought of Jayce’s message and sighed. “You know, I’m afraid you’re going to be more right than you know.”

  JAYCE AND ILLAH RODE out of Eredynn before dawn on foul-tempered geldings purchased at no small cost and with a bit of help from Jayce’s “persuasion”. He might have felt guilty had not the seller, a small landowner with an eye for profit, been so clearly taking advantage of the uncertainty in the city. Jayce reserved his guilt for Danelle; the girl hadn’t come out to see them off, had hidden through the night in her room in the Loving Imp.

  He had no time to make her understand.

  Murky morning dragged, the two riding in silence on the empty highway. Illah seemed drawn in upon herself and Jayce lacked the energy after a largely-sleepless night to pry words from her. He could only assume she sensed the same pall of dread settled like boulders upon his chest. Everywhere he looked, shadows seemed to gather, in the mists, behind trees, scuttling at the edges of sunlight and his very vision. Settling into a trance brought him no respite, showing him the currents of the cosmos, churned into a squall of psychic disturbance that only built with each mile south they progressed.

  Midday came and went, the flashes of sunlight that had graced the morning fading before swells of dark cloud that brought a bone-numbing drizzle. The path of the Legion gone before them was obvious, the road hammered by hundreds into a furrowed pulp that clung to the horses’ hooves, at some places nearly to the knees. Water quivered in puddles, the stink of human and animal waste billowing out to claw at the nostrils.

  Weariness that went beyond sleep pulled tatters free of Jayce’s willpower and he finally broke the silence, saying, “Here’s as good a place as any.”

  Illah nodded. They dismounted and led the horses into the band of trees along the river. There, they broke out some of the provisions the girls from the Loving Imp had provided: salted pork, bread and some butter—a bit of excess, that, but the girls had insisted. Jayce glanced at Illah, chewing a hunk of sourdough absently, her pinched eyes on the highway.

  “What are you feeling?” Jayce asked her.

  “I’ve felt this way before,” she replied quietly, as if afraid someone would hear.

  “Yes?”

  She met his gaze, eyes hardened to jade crystals that mirrored the unease in his gut. “It was the same way after the Watch Tower fell and Lonadiel betrayed us.”

  Jayce nodded slowly. The nearly palpable winds of darkness wafting north had a familiarity to him, too. He thought of Zerrax and his trainings in the Temple of the Sun, the lessons hardening him against entities that dwelt below the material planes. Acolytes of the Sun were instructed in the harnessing of those things; and he had taught those same lessons to Danelle. He wondered at the emanations now thrumming in his soul and shivered to think about what stalked the shadows to the south.

  Lunch completed after more silence, he and Illah mounted up again and resumed their trek. The drizzle worsened, became a steady, soaking rain that obscured the countryside in grey and brown. The overcast deepened and with the sky blackening towards evening, they reached the place where the slow-moving Legion had made camp the night before, some of their fire pits left poorly-covered and still-sputtering, tendrils steaming from under the dirt to fill the air with a woody bite to contrast the damp, muddy pall.

  “Jayce.” Illah stiffened in the saddle and put her hand to the grip of her saber.

  He looked south, saw shapes emerging from the mist. A handful of figures, men in Legion attire, became apparent, two leading horses with one man slouched in the saddle and another sprawled across a second steed’s back. They slowed as they neared, hands going to weapons. Glints of armor peeked out through grime and blood. All wore soiled bandages.

  “Who are you?” the appa
rent leader of the group rasped, drawing his sword.

  “Friends,” Jayce replied.

  The man snorted. “We’ve seen a lot of strange things, ‘friend’.” He brandished the weapon before him. “You’re going to need to prove it.”

  Jayce glanced at Illah and dismounted. He put up his hands and stepped towards the group slowly. “I am Jayce Zerron, of Edon Village, and more recently of the Expeditionary Force.”

  The man blinked and lowered his blade slightly. “The Expedition? Are they with you?” His voice shook with something between feverish hope and disbelief. “Are they coming?”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Seeing the man’s expression fall, Jayce hurried to add, “But they have been warned. They should be back in Eredynn soon.”

  The man glanced over his shoulder at his battered comrades. “Well...they had better damned-well hurry. The Legion is defeated.”

  The news hit Jayce like an expected blow to the belly. He looked down, fought to overcome that which he had feared. “They are falling back from Candolum, then?”

  The man chuckled, a sickened, delirious sound. “They are defeated,” he repeated.

  “How?” Jayce asked, careful to keep his tone controlled and compassionate in the presence of these shaken men.

  The Legionnaire’s eyes wandered over Jayce’s shoulder, seemed to see into some unknown distance. “Ambushed. There were thousands. We were in the rearguard; the Optio told us to run...” The man’s face twisted into knots and he buried it in cupped hands, sobbing. “He told us to run!”

  Jayce looked at Illah, who slouched in the saddle, shoulders fallen like a puppet with its strings released. Jayce turned and put his hand on the Legionnaire’s shoulder. “How far?”

  “A few miles south,” he replied. He wiped his eyes savagely. “You folks had best flee. They will be here soon.”

  “You go,” Jayce said gently. “Take word of this back to Eredynn. We will follow soon.”

  The Legionnaire nodded without really seeming to hear. He waved for the others to follow and the sad, little detachment trudged northward.

  Jayce watched them go, feeling his stomach pinch. Illah dismounted and came to stand beside him. “He’s right. They are close.” She eyed the tree line and hills to the east. “They may be watching us now.”

  “We could take shelter, hide and wait for them here,” he said. “We could get some idea of strength, numbers.”

  Illah shook her head. “I’m going on. I’ve got to get close, find out what is behind this.”

  “Then I will go with you.”

  Illah smiled crookedly. “You’ve some skill at stealth I’ve not heard of?”

  Jayce gave a brittle chuckle. “No. I clamber about in the woods like a hog.”

  “Then this is work for a Yntuil.”

  “I will go with you,” Jayce repeated. He grinned over the resistance in her face. “Just not physically.”

  DEATH CHOKED THE AIR of Maelvynn’s Down, a coppery-tanged fecal sourness that clung at the back of the throat. Crows wheeled overhead, nearly invisible in the darkening sky, their shrilling like the voices of the rejoicing Damned, playing counterpoint to the patter of rain on savaged bodies and smashed armor. Torches danced in the rising fog, passing amongst the slain, willow-the-wisps in search of sparks of life upon which to feed. Their goblin bearers, however, sought only plunder.

  Lonadiel looked across the wreckage of the Valley Legion, torn between revulsion and exaltation. The Legion is destroyed. The storied hammer of Empire lay in eviscerated tatters at his boots, massacred in a single morning. This is the sign, he thought, clenching a fist about his sword. Dark powers, favor me now...I believe.

  “I know you do,” Satayebeb’s voice purred.

  Lonadiel turned and bowed as his mistress approached, striding downhill from her tent, a symbol of victory erected at the top of the bowl, overseeing the slaughter that was the ultimate worship of her. Beyond the sprawling pavilion, ringing the bowl like thousands of baleful eyes in the night, glittered the campfires of the horde, given leave now, after having toppled towns and armies, to rest.

  “Glorious, Mistress,” Lonadiel said, voice going husky, as if in the throes of passion. He shivered with power in his bones that was no longer just her presence, was the birth of something new and dark and unbeatable inside him. “First the Yntuil, now the Legion, and after them...Eredynn, the whole Valley is ours.”

  “They are only the beginning,” she replied, eyes catching a hint of their hellfire glow. “This is like the days of old, the days of blood and thunder, grinding the world under our will. We will be the Vuls of New.”

  “Glorious,” he said again. Something twisted inside him, though, a coiling serpent of regret. “I tried to make...others see.”

  Satayebeb smiled at him. “My poor, fretting Consort. You know it was not just her that you sought. Those others, the damned-fool elves of Mauvynn were given the chance to share in our Order, so long ago. Their choice was loyalty to a failed pantheon of gods who no longer have the will to care.” She set black-nailed fingers upon his arm. “You could not change ages of stubbornness. And you could not change her.”

  “I know it.”

  “Nevertheless,” she said, throwing back her cloak and shaking out her hands, “you may still have her.”

  Lonadiel looked her with a start. “What are you saying?”

  “I promised her to you as a gift,” she replied. “And I always keep my promises.”

  “She is near?” Lonadiel grabbed at her arm. “How do you know this?”

  “Do not touch me now,” Satayebeb growled without looking at him. He retracted his hand with a yelp, fingertips searing from unearthly hoarfrost suddenly crystallized on the skin. “Wait and watch,” she whispered.

  The rain stilled and a wind gusted down onto the battlefield, carried with it a stink of ancient charnel houses—flesh dried and crackling away from bones powdering to dust, old, old death howling from beyond the mortal realm. Lonadiel fought away shivers as some thing stalked out of the dark, unseen, brought with it a thousand fingers of ice caressing the nerves, whispers puffing at the back of the neck, promising all the torments of hell.

  Among the trampled Legion corpses, goblinoid torches sputtered out. Harsh voices started in annoyance but silenced as if cut out by a massive, throttling fist of fear. The air moaned like the inhaled breath before a scream.

  Movement among the dead.

  Feasting crows bawled disapproval and fluttering skyward. Lonadiel didn’t remember putting his fist to his mouth, only became aware of stifling a shriek when his teeth bit into the back of his knuckles. A body skewered on a spear flopped near his boots, rolled side to side before gaining purchase and staggering to its feet. Splashes of blood stood out against pallid skin. Sunken eyes stared from yellowing sockets, glittering with a black light that saw but did not see. The corpse reached gory hands to the spear in its torso and snapped the shaft off at the wound.

  Behind the corpse, the slaughtered Legion shambled as one to its feet.

  “Mistress,” Lonadiel rasped in awe and horror. For an instant, doubt returned.

  “None can stand before this,” Satayebeb murmured. “None can stand before me.”

  Boots dragged through trampled grass behind them and Lonadiel spun, sword drawn before he knew what he was doing. Groon Blood-drinker stood before him, aglitter in the battered but still-serviceable armor of a Thyrrian Strategos. The hobgoblin looked across the mass of dead faces, seemed to feel their mindless gaze upon him, and hurriedly drew his cloak over the confiscated armor to hide what would have been mockery to them in life.

  “Are they...” he began in a choked voice.

  “They will not harm you,” Satayebeb answered without looking at him.

  The warlord didn’t appear to take any comfort in her words. “You...you asked for me, Unholy One?”

  “I did. Gather your Blood-drinkers and follow them.” Satayebeb gave a dismissive, almost jaunty wave of her hand
. The living-dead Legionnaires turned as one and began to shuffle northward, goblins who’d been rummaging through their bodies scattering before them with fearful bleats.

  “Y-Yes, my Mistress.”

  “Where the Legion camped last night you will find a wizard,” Satayebeb said. “Kill him if they cannot. If you happen to find a half-elf maiden—” she glanced at Lonadiel “—you are to take her alive, if possible.”

  Lonadiel swallowed back conflicting tides of lust and loathing.

  “It will be as you ask, Mistress.” Groon began to go but paused. “What of your guard? Taking the Blood-drinkers will leave you with only the Fenskulkers and their vile Trolls.”

  “A token guard.” Sateyebeb shrugged. “They will be enough for what I have in mind.”

  Groon shot Lonadiel a look of murderous suspicion that couldn’t be missed before he scurried away. Satayebeb turned to Lonadiel and put her hands on his shoulders, one of them wandering up to brush his cheek. The grave chill that had blown through the Down, awakening the dead to her calling, lingered still about her fingertips and he fought back a wince of disgust as they drew tracks of ice across his flesh.

  “I promised you,” she said, smiling with a sweetness that the reality of her belied. “You will have your gift this night.”

  AKRAK AND VRAKA WERE waiting when Groon returned to the Blood-drinker camp, just north of Satayebeb’s pavilion and looking down over the bowl of Mauvynn’s Down. The perch had allowed the entire clan an unnerving view of the slaughtered Legion’s rise from death and shambling march up the road. They were still shambling, a reeking, steaming mass oozing up out of the soggy trap where they’d died.

  “She raises the dead,” Akrak was gasping. Drool ran down his chin and he had his hands up to either side of his face, clawing the hair into knot, clawing the skin raw. “It is as the voices tell...”

  Groon ignored him and nudged Vraka, who was watching the shaman with unsettled eyes. “We follow them,” he said.