Take the Darkness...: Epic Fantasy Series (5 page)

Chapter 9

Dierdra sat in her husband’s command tent and looked at the courier in front of her. He was a nervous looking boy of 16 or so, in the King’s livery and with a sweaty face. Cleary he’d ridden a long way to give her husband this missive. She took the parchment from the boy and snapping the red wax seal on the fine paper to read it.

‘‘The Duke of Twin Plains,’’ she read. ‘‘It has come to the attention of myself and council of trade that a small detachment of your guard and levies have marched from your lands across Red River and are now headed in the direction of Black Rock Keep. As you well know and have been informed before, any troop movements must be cleared in writing by myself or my council. I trust this is a training exercise of some kind, and your troops will not be engaged in any action against Lord Renton or the seat of Black Rock, who have a good history of paying taxes and suppling well-equipped levies to the King’s guard, unlike yourself, who has a very bad history of supplying the worst of levies and being quite remise with your tax collection.’’

Fucking money. She hated this new King, the coiner by name and coiner by nature. He was only 27 and acted like he was the be-all and end-all. His father had been much easier to deal with. He’d known about the Dark Guild and feared them. This new King was living in a dream world where trade councils ran the realm. She had no idea how the King had even found out; surely, some farmer in Red River had run to the King’s couriers and inform him because they might have taken some crops and livestock without paying. What a world. Dierdra looked at the nervous courier and understood the boy’s fear. This had been written just a day or two after they had begun to march. Now her force was arrayed beneath the walls of the Keep and clearly readying an attack.

She stood from behind the desk and approached the boy, who actually flinched as she came towards him. Luthor’s two Dark Guards stood at the boy’s sides; they hadn’t left after showing him into the tent.

‘So what do you see out there, boy?’She asked sweetly.

The boy was terrified, but clearly smart enough to know the correct answer. ‘I see a training exercise.’ He said.

Dierdra smiled, and pulling a few gold coins from her pocket, she pushed them into the boy’s shaking and sweating hand. ‘Good boy. Now, you take your time getting back home, and spend a few days dallying in Pellota on my coin.’

The boy almost sighed with relief. He turned and was ushered out by the guards, who looked to the Duchess as they left and saw her make the sign of the cut across her neck. The guards just nodded and led him away. She could use his blood anyway, as she was starting to feel hungry again.

She paced up and down in the tent with her fine leather boots clicking. She read the letter over and over again, and wished that her husband was here with her. She’d never liked this side of things, and was always much better at being the strong one by his side. Still, in almost every battle he’d fought and won, it had been by listening to her council. Now she just had to follow her own advice.

She had to admire the young King for his organisation, and while she had no wish to get involved in a fight with the royal army, she didn’t have any choice but to try to make this quick and get the hell back to Twin Plains before he found out. Her Captain of the guards came back in and spoke to her.

‘The men are ready for the attack. We’ve 150 grapplers and three companies of archers. Should we proceed with the attack?’

Dierdra slowly ripped up the King’s missive with her fine white fingers. ‘Of course.’

‘Hooks!’ The cry went up from a section of the wall and Grimm, axe in hand ran to the section. There were at least fifty crouching archers and guards spread along the wall, and more waiting in the courtyard to relieve them. He saw the three large metal hooks hanging over the wall and into the field below. He waited to the count of three, and then with quick cuts, leaned over the wall and severed the ropes holding them. The men attached to the ropes fell hard to the ground with the sound of broken bones and cries as arrows whistled past his head. They had archers in the field just waiting for a good shot.

‘Archers, scorpions, litter that field!’ Dagosh yelled as he saw what had happened. The huge scorpions fired their bolts into the field and the archers did the same, yet it was aiming at glinting metals and shadowy running figures in the dark.  Again, the cry of ‘hooks’ went up, and this time a young guardsman cutting the ropes got hit. He fell back hard with an arrow in his throat, the first death. Another guardsman managed to cut the ropes, but this time with the black clad soldiers of Twin Plains’ faces looking at him as they fell. This time, there were muffled thumps as they hit, but no cries.

It was a cowardly way to fight a battle, thought Grimm, as he ran back and forth across the wall. Arrows were firing thick and fast from the dark field now, and his own troops of archers were answering back. They often found their targets in tracking where shots came from, but these cowards were literally firing once and then running to a different position. His own men were camped in the same parapet every time, though. A female archer with a shaved head lifted up to fire again, but Grimm saw the captain, Stellos grab the front of her tunic and pull her down just as an arrow flew past where her head would have been. ‘Different positions every time!’ She yelled.

Grimm shouted to the wall. ‘Archers, don’t raise your bloody heads: we’ll do this with swords!’

With the next cry of ‘hooks’ that went up, he ran crouching with the wall as cover to the point,  just a single hook, one alone. Putting his feet against the wall and laying back facing the hook, he waited.  First one hand, then the next and then a boy’s face came over the wall. Grimm thrust his axe up hard into his face and the boy fell back screaming, for a moment, and then there was silence. They all saw it done and it changed the pitch of the night’s fight. The next time the whisper of ‘hooks’ went up, the guards crouched ready and waiting. Only once, when five tried to come at once, did a single man make it over, but Grimm tossed the man bodily off the wall to land hard below. As he looked over, he saw it. All across the field, a hundred archers all running into position, all with flaming arrows in their hands. Shit.

‘Archers, all constant fire!’ He shouted. They all notched bows and started firing. In moments, the flaming arrows were flying overhead or into his men. They were taking the ones in the field down, but falling themselves as well. Stellos stood and an arrow passed so closely that it burned her face, and she dropped with a cry. Grimm took her bow from her and, standing still, started to fire again and again. One, two, three. His archers were full of panic at their captain falling, but once they saw him standing dead still and daring counterattack they did the same. Again and again, they drew and fired until the field was littered with bodies of archers and their fallen flames.

More than a dozen had passed overhead and he heard the cries and saw the Black Rock guards running to douse the flames. They could do that. He’d lost more men than he’d wanted to, but at least they had stopped tonight’s onslaught. Fire arrows and hooks; this woman was a fucking coward. Grimm stood up on the parapet in clear sight. Seth might be gone, but if they were to win, these soldiers would still need hope that they could win. In place of Seth, he would lead as best he could.

He shouted clearly into the dark. ‘Better luck tomorrow, bitch!’ The men cheered as he jumped down just in time, as three arrows filled the air in place of where he’d been standing. He knelt by the captain Stellos, who was being tended by one of her archers. Her face was not badly burned and the redness and blistering looked like it would fade. She was such a stern woman, with a deep cut to the lip healed more than once, and a knocked ear from the sign of a slave. She looked at Grimm and laughed. ‘They ruined my fucking good looks!’ She said it with a dark laugh.

‘Ha-ha, never fear, it’ll heal and you’ll be back to scaring the boys,’ he said back. She was still attractive in his eyes.  Northerners thought strength was attractive in women just as much as good cheek bones or whatever shit the Pellosi liked.

‘I have a favour to ask you.’ He said now.

‘What’s that?’ She asked, holding a wet cloth to her scalded face.

‘I need you to order some of your troops over that wall and haul up the bodies with rope.’

‘Why the fuck would we collect their dead?’

‘So they can’t,’ he said in a dark tone.

Dierdra, the noble Duchess of Twin Plains, screamed in frustration and grabbed the end of her writing desk, then threw it against the floor. ‘What do you mean, you can’t collect the dead?’ She cried.

The captain was a Dark Guard of many years, but had never seen her this angry before. She was a different woman since she’d come back, and her grip on herself was much less than it had used to be. She’d always had a temper and cold ambition, but she was quickly slipping into insanity without her husband at her side. The terrified man spoke back. ‘They are gone. The Northman’s people came over the wall and dragged most of them up with ropes.’

‘That must have taken them hours! Didn’t you try to stop them?’

‘They had archery cover, and if we tried they would have just killed more men. What’s it matter, my lady? They were mostly levies anyway. It’s disturbing to the men, though, is my main concern.’

‘Why is it disturbing?’ The Duchess asked, grabbing his shirt front suddenly.

The captain stuttered with nerves. ‘Well, it scares the men. What are they going to do with them?’

The Duchess wasn’t worried about what they were going to do with them as much as what she couldn’t do now. Elizebetha was a coward with a weak stomach, and she’d never use the dead as fodder for a creature, thus turning her remaining soldiers into an even stronger force, but that’s just what she was planning on doing.

‘How many of them did they get?’

‘We lost one hundred and sixty men last night, and they took up most of the bodies.’

This was another shock, how the night had fared so badly. That’s what happened when she was too busy planning her moves against the King and not worried about the smaller pieces of the puzzle.

‘And what do we estimate on their losses?’ She asked.

‘At least thirty.’He said.

‘At least thirty? So, at this rate they will actually win the battle: they might be dead to a man, but so will we! Now, what’s this shit about the Northman’s forces? The Northman is gone; Seth has left the battle.’

‘It seems they have more than one. This one’s some older man and he’s bloody good with a bow.’

‘How good?’

‘As good as me.’ The Dark Guard said quietly.

Fantastic. Now they had one hundred and sixty bodies of which to share amongst their troop, and soon she’d be facing a force not of three hundred men, but of three hundred Dark Guards. Hopefully, Elizebetha’s weak stomach would save her from that fate. She’d planned to conduct this battle at night. Every night for the next few nights and slowly break them apart. Fire arrows and hooks had won most of her husband’s battles so far, but she was running out of patience.

‘Get the fuck out,’ she said, shoving the man hard in the chest.

Going to her upturned desk, she found her metal flask and, putting the metal flask to her lips, drained it all in two ragged draughts like a drunkard. As she did, she felt the frantic edge to her fade and slowly she began to calm down. She thought to herself about the situation. It was a bad night, but in a way they had done her a favour. The men left in her troop would be even more filled with rage now, thinking of what these heathen bastards were doing to the bodies of their fallen comrades.

She missed her husband and having him by her side, but she was realising more and more that she was losing control of her emotions, and getting more and more filled with anger. She needed to start consuming more blood because she was slipping more and more away from the woman she was capable of being, and becoming just an angry little girl.

‘Guards!’ She called out in a calm voice. Her two loyal men came in and she realised she should actually learn their names: they were good men.

‘Yes Duchess,’ one said as they bowed.

‘Fetch back Captain Reynolds and a bucket, would you?’ She said sweetly.

Chapter 10

It seemed like they had been walking for an age when his sharp eyes started to make out shapes through the snow. She saw the creatures a long time before him, and started to warn him of what to expect.

‘My people are not like me. I’m the only one who has stayed true to the old ways,’ she said. ‘We are from the same land as you, and when we came, we didn’t eat anything at all. The moonlight was enough to sustain us, and here the moonlight shines all the time, so we are much stronger than before. But soon we grew bored. We were here for years and years, never dying, and there were so few of us that we grew weary with nothing to do, and that’s when someone realised. They devoured one of your dead; I have no idea why such a horrible thought came to them, but it did, and then it happened. They were flooded with the memories of that one, all that they had done and witnessed. They saw these things and got to relive them in their minds, feel the pleasure they had enjoyed. Soon the hunting of your kind became something that everyone did, but our bodies aren’t meant to consume meat. It’s a sin, and wrong. Now I’m the only one who looks the way we did, and they shun me. They hate to be reminded of what we once were, and they insult me.’

Soon he saw what she meant. The lumbering creatures slowly came into view and he was truly disgusted. While she looked like a perfectly formed goddess, they appeared as deformed monsters. They had the same pale skin and silver hair, and they still wore little clothing. But their bodies were disgusting. One, a female he assumed, was huge, the fat from her body hanging in rolls around her stomach, and she was massive compared to Silver: she must have weighed at least three times as much, if not more. There were five of them coming towards them. They still moved quickly and with some grace, despite their size, but the sight of them horrified him. As they got closer, he could see their skin was far from pure like hers, and was mottled and rotten, with large red cuts and marks crossing their bodies.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ He whispered as they approached.

‘The flesh, we’re not meant to eat it, our bodies hate it, the cuts are from where they have healed... but unlike me, they can only heal partially, as the dead flesh ruins them.’

The five oversized and disgusting Moon’s Children were there with them in moments; they held short black swords on scabbards and were at least covered enough with ratty clothing that Seth didn’t feel the need to be sick, they even smelled bad, like rotting meat, and looking at their eyes, they were cloudy and wandering. The lead one, a male, spoke.

‘Ha-ha, Silver, what are you doing? You’re not welcome amongst us, and with an actual live man.... You must give him to us,’ he said. His words were spoken in a slurring old Northern dialect, and took an age to say, the creature struggling with each word, like a drunk man at a tavern telling a story.

‘Halcon, nice to see you,’ she said with a curtsey. ‘I have a gift for my mother in this one. I wish to come back to the clan and this is to buy my way back in.’

Seth didn’t know how to react, though he knew he had to follow her and so he would, but he’d had no idea about this: he’d thought they were going to fight her mother, not offer him up on a platter to her.

The fat male laughed. ‘You’re not taking him, I’ll take him, and I will be revered and stories will be told of me, not you, you skinny dog. A live one hasn’t been seen before, and I will take the first to her.’

Silver just turned to Seth and smiled, her silver tongue flashing. At that moment, Seth realised the others didn’t have this: he didn’t see the silver flash from them. Maybe they had lost it or maybe it was her own gift.

‘Give him to us or we’ll kill you here and now.’ He said to her.

She just shook her head sadly. ‘Truly I am the only one who follows the old ways. It’s a sin to kill our own, you heathen,’ she spat.

‘That was long ago and you’re no longer protected, so yield him or die. I know you won’t fight back. You’re too fond of mother moon and what she thinks. She’s dead and cold in this place, though. Why do you think she never moves? She’s dead and so is our allegiance to her.

‘Yours maybe, but not mine, and now I have what I’ve need all along,’ she said.

‘And what’s that?’ He asked.

‘A champion,’ she said, then turning to Seth. ‘Champion, kill these disgusting wrenches.’

Without a word, Seth reached up behind him and, taking the pommel of his sword in both hands, he drew it clean from its hard leather scabbard and delivered a lightning fast leftward cut into the creature that called itself Halcon. It was a huge beast of a man, bigger than Flint or Stone, but covered in fat and bulk. His sword blade flashed through the air and cut deep into its pale throat. The creature fell back with a cry as silver blood poured from its throat, and it tried in vain to clutch the wound, but the silver blood soon soaked the snow. Then the rest were upon him.

They moved fast for their size, but not as fast as her, and yet still there were four of them. Stupidly, they seemed to be waiting in turns to fight him. He wondered how often they had faced a man who could actually fight back with a weapon, and not some crazed dead beast. His sword met the black blade of the female one, and he lashed forward with his forehead, smashing her in the face. She fell back with a cry and he finished her with a quick thrust and draw to the heart. The other two came at once, and he traded blows with them back and forth. They hit his sword hard as he countered their blows, swapping from one to the next. He ducked low and delivered a vicious cut to one’s lower legs, sending it toppling down, and he sprung from the crouch with his sword pointed up as he ran the other through, his body pressed hard up against the stinking, disgusting creature. It fell back into the snow, a look of shock in its cloudy eyes.

Seth walked over to the one that lay in the snow, struggling to get up on its damaged leg. Without a thought, he dropped to his knees with an overhead cut and severed its head. Silver blood sprayed out into the snow and onto him. Seth stood panting and looked at the scene. Four were dead and the fifth was running away from them through the snow, blade dropped in the snow as it fled.

Seth looked to her. ‘What about that one?’

She was watching him with a slight smile on her face. ‘Kill them all, I said.’