CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BREAKING THE NOOSE

 

 

Narentir felt his stomach lurch as the magic faded, and his mouth dropped open at the sight of the enemy horde below. Thousands of savage warriors draped in animal skins, beaten pig-iron armour and horned helms advanced upon a perilously thin line of elven spearmen. Narentir had served his time in the citizen levy, and was no warrior, but even he could tell that the northern tribesmen would smash through the spear hosts with one charge.

He clutched the spear Lirazel had given him as though it was a dangerous serpent that might turn on him at any moment. A heavy shirt of mail weighed on his shoulders, and how anyone expected him to fight while carrying such an extraordinary weight was quite beyond him. Narentir had explained this to Lirazel, but no amount of protest had changed her mind.

“You are one of the asur,” she had said. “You will fight for Ulthuan. There is no other option.”

That had been the end of the discussion, and though he knew he was quite useless as a warrior, he had marched with the Everqueen’s army to a long line of waystones hidden in a mist-shrouded valley deep in the heart of Avelorn. Here, the Everqueen bid her army make camp, and there they had remained for Isha knew how many days, until, as the sunlight began to fade, the same wordless summons that had awakened the denizens of her forest to her presence now brought them to battle readiness.

“Remember to point the sharp end at the enemy,” said Lilani, startling him from his memory and putting a reassuring hand on his arm. “Stay close to me, and you will live through this.”

Narentir took a deep breath and said, “I believe you, my dear, though the gods alone know why.”

“Because you are in love with me,” she said.

“Obviously,” replied Narentir. “But so is half of Ulthuan, and you can’t be right about them all, now can you?”

“Maybe not, but you will live through this,” said Lilani. “And you will tell tales of this day for hundreds of years.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she said, and Narentir took comfort from her certainty.

Cruciform shadows passed overhead as the three eagles banked low over the army of Avelorn. A chittering, cackling mass of sprites and faeries swarmed towards the tribesmen, as flocks of birds swooped down and obscured them in a mass of feathers. The elves of Avelorn followed them, all the dancers, poets and singers of the Everqueen’s realm come together to fight for the land they celebrated in song and verse. Leading them was the Maiden Guard, a solid core of marble-limbed elf-maids with sculpted breastplates and long spears of bronze.

Narentir was carried along by the stream of bodies, one hand clutching his spear to his chest, the other holding on to Lilani’s arm. Despite the dancer’s assurance that he would live, fear took hold of him, and his mouth dried at the thought of facing one of these dreadful barbarian warriors in combat. The bloody heave of battle was for heroes and killers, and he was assuredly neither. He told tales of heroes, he was not a hero himself.

He might die on this hillside.

This could be his last day on Ulthuan.

Narentir turned to Lilani and looked deep into her eyes.

“You’ll look after me, my dear, won’t you?” he said, almost begging.

“Count on it, Narentir,” she replied.

 

Eldain led Starchaser and their Reavers around the rear of the elven army at the gallop. They had left the druchii army behind and now swung around the battered survivors of the attack over the river. The centre still held, and it was strong, but the flanks were buckling under the pressure.

The druchii stranglehold on Tor Elyr was closing ever tighter, and if this were to be the end, then he would face it by Caelir’s side. He could not know for sure that his brother still lived, but the same intuitive belief that Caelir had not died on Naggaroth told him that he still fought on.

Tor Elyr rose up before him, beautiful and shimmering like a dream. How long would it take the druchii and the tribesmen of the north to bring it down? How quickly would this unthinking enemy reduce a city that had endured for centuries to ash and broken glass?

Eldain pictured its marble castles aflame, its silver towers sagging in the awful, intolerable heat of tribal revel fires. He saw its beautiful inhabitants crucified from the highest spires, their blood staining the white cliffs, and the flocks of carrion as they flew in lazy circles, bloated by the feast of flesh below.

Great sorrow replaced the anger in Eldain’s heart at the thought of such wanton destruction and needless murder. Against such bitter hate, what chance did any of the races of the world stand? When such forces of darkness were ranged against all that was bright and pure, how could anything of goodness endure?

Yet even as despair threatened to overwhelm him, he saw the gates of Tor Elyr opening and ten warriors ride through on black steeds, each as dark as Lotharin. They were few in number, yet it was the banner they rode beneath that restored Eldain’s hope that there was always reason to fight on. Shining like the last sunset, the banner flapped from the armoured prow of a chariot constructed from lacquered black starwood edged in gold that thundered from the city in the midst of the horsemen.

Upon that banner was the rearing silver horse upon a crimson field of Lord Arandir Swiftwing.

“The lord of Tor Elyr rides with his warriors once more!” shouted Laurena Starchaser, and a chorus of skirling yells answered her. Eldain watched the crippled master of the city lift his sword high, a glittering blade of sapphire steel, and in that moment the images of Tor Elyr in flames vanished, replaced with it shining at its most glorious.

The riders and the chariot charged down the statue-lined causeway from the bastion castle at the edge of the bay, and Eldain lifted his sword in salute as Lord Swiftwing’s chariot plunged into the swirling combat in the centre of the battle. To fight alongside the master of Tor Elyr would be an honour, but the northern flank was in danger of collapse, and needed his warriors to keep it steady.

Bodies lay twisted on the frozen riverbank, sprawled next to monstrous beasts with the heads of wolves, bears and bulls. Everywhere Eldain looked, he saw death. The smell of blood, rotten meat and mangy fur was like a poison in the air. A raucous mélange of horns, drums and beaten iron came from the mortal host of tribesmen, a sound to end worlds.

“But not this world,” swore Eldain, riding around groups of wounded elves. They cheered at the sight of Lord Swiftwing riding out, and turned their broken bodies back to the fighting ranks. Riderless horses milled around the edges of the battle, and with every passing moment, Eldain’s Reaver band grew larger as these grieving mounts joined their wild ride.

He saw the horde of northern tribesmen, and his stomach turned at the sight of so terrible and numerous a foe. The savage warlord sat atop his red-raw steed at the centre of the enemy line, and Eldain angled the course of his Reavers towards the edge of a thin line of spears and archers.

The archers were strung in a line two deep and loosed the last of their shafts into the onrushing horde. It wouldn’t be enough to stop the charge, and Eldain knew the spearmen did not have the mass of numbers to stop them either. With perfect synchrony, the Reaver hosts parted and flowed around the flanks of the elven host. Starchaser rode along the edge of the river, while Eldain curved around the eastern end of the line in the shadow of the waystone crowned hill. A bloodied Reaver band milled at the foot of the hill, and Eldain rejoiced to see his brother at its head. His brother had lost his helm and his armour bore all the hallmarks of hard fighting. Caelir saw him and raised his sword with a boyish flourish.

They shouted each other’s name in unison, riding together as a burst of rainbow light blazed from the hillside above them and the warriors of Avelorn took the field. An army like nothing else on this world emerged from the shimmering curtain of light that parted the sky like a silken theatre curtain in a Lothern playhouse.

Creatures of myth and legend, even in a land such as Ulthuan, came at the behest of this army’s leader, and both brothers felt the awesome light of her presence as she trod the grass of Ellyrion.

“She lives…” breathed Caelir. “Thank all the gods!”

Eldain nodded, too dumbfounded to answer as he saw the beautiful elf at the Everqueen’s side. Though outshone by the Queen of Avelorn’s brilliance, she was in every way, more radiant and more precious to Eldain than any divine ruler could ever be.

“Rhianna,” he said.

 

On the western bank of the river, the spectacular arrival of the Everqueen’s army caused a ripple of unease to pass through the ranks of the druchii warriors. Her powers were rightly feared by the denizens of Naggaroth, and their own legends were filled with terrible stories of the fey queen’s ability to bewitch and unmake even the mightiest champion.

Only one amongst the druchii did not quail at her sudden appearance.

Morathi smiled as the glittering host stepped from the blazing portal opened through the waystones. It had only been a matter of time before the bitch of Avelorn intervened, and now that she had made her move, it was time for Morathi to make her own.

It had been hard to stay her hand from intervening in the battle, for her powers could easily have destroyed whole swathes of the asur, but in the battle to come she would need all her power to oppose the greatest mage the world had ever seen. No matter that he was completely insane, Caledor Dragontamer was still a force to be reckoned with. Centuries of study and disciplined training had enabled her to shield her thoughts from others, even ones as canny and watchful as Caledor.

He would not see her coming, and the threat he had made all those years ago was surely now as empty as when he had first bluffed her with it. Then she had been young and just discovering the full extent of her power; now she was the mistress of the dark arts, a sorceress unrivalled in ability and strength. No power in the world could match her, not even the shadowy guardians who faded with Caledor on the island.

Morathi’s blood sang with the prospect of her final triumph. Let Malekith tear down the gates of Lothern, and let this host topple the castles of Tor Elyr. These were mere sideshows in the great battle that had begun over five thousand years ago when the fires of Asuryan had left her beloved son a burned and wretched husk.

She could feel the titanic energies swirling around the island even from here. They were calling to her, and she would answer their siren song of salvation with one of destruction.

Morathi shrieked and jabbed her barbed spurs into Sulephet’s flanks. The beast snarled in anger, spreading its wings and powering into the sky. Flocks of screeching, bat-winged harpies rose like flocks of startled carrion, their leathery wings flapping wildly as they struggled to keep up with her dark steed.

Morathi watched the world recede, the desperate life and death struggles playing out upon its surface now meaningless to her. Let whichever side carried the field have its moment of glory. By day’s end it would be irrelevant.

The Everqueen had come to Ellyrion, but Morathi did not care.

She flew away from the battle, over the glittering spires of Tor Elyr towards the magical heart of Ulthuan.

 

The two hosts came together in a clash of mortal bodies and magical flesh. Birds of many colours swooped and dived with razored beaks pecking out eyes and sharp talons raking the skin from exposed limbs. The eagles flew low over the enemy host, slashing with claws and beak as they plucked warriors from the ground and tore them apart in the air.

Elasir, the lord of the eagles, hunted the largest warriors, ripping them to pieces even as they shouted commands to their vassals and huscarls. His brothers did likewise, their ebon claws ripping armour as though it were no more substantial than silk.

Streams of liquid sprites coursed through the tribesmen, biting and tearing with glittering claws of sparkling energy. Towering figures formed from bark and centuries-aged timber and moss stomped through the swirling melee, arms of ash, oak and willow smashing men through the air or crushing them beneath root-formed feet. Fauns gored, wild animals snapped, arrows sliced home, and hurled spell-flames burned the northmen, but even under such fantastical assault they did not break.

These were warriors reared amid the harshest environments imaginable, where life was unimaginably brutal and only the strongest, most ruthless warriors survived. The tribes of the north lived on the very edge of the world, in the scrap of land where the division between the realms of men and daemons was at its thinnest. The touch of Chaos lay upon that land, and the things living in the northern wastes were far stranger and more dangerous than these capering sprites.

Northern axes clove the giants of wood and spears spitted the fauns and wild animals. Swords bludgeoned the birds from the air, and heavy wooden shields bore the brunt of the rain of arrows. In the centre of the northmen, Issyk Kul battered a path through the raging combats to face the oncoming Queen of Avelorn, roaring his eagerness for the fight like a bellowed challenge. His warriors followed him in a swirling mass of rabid blades and clubs, all cohesion lost in the rush to destroy the incandescent elf-queen.

Eldain and Caelir rode around the edges of the tribesmen towards the lower slopes of the hill, loosing arrows into the mass of grunting warriors as they went. They rode without heed for the rest of the battle. Right now, this was all that mattered. Both brothers knew that they owed their lives to the Everqueen, and they rode to fight at her side. They could never repay her mercy or undo the hurt they had done, but they could offer their souls as sons of Ellyrion.

Eldain saw Lirazel lead a charge of the Maiden Guard, their shrill war cries like the wails of a thousand banshees. Their bronze spears plunged into the closest warriors, and then they were in amongst them, leaping, stabbing, kicking, punching and slashing. Elves of both sexes who had no business being warriors fought men who had spent their whole lives in battle, and Eldain wondered at the kind of devotion that could inspire such courage.

Caelir let fly with his last arrow and threw aside his bow.

“Brother!” he shouted. “It’s time!”

Eldain knew exactly what he meant and nodded. “Into them!”

He turned Lotharin towards the tribesmen and unsheathed his sword, riding hard towards the armoured warriors. Hundreds of Reaver Knights rode with him, and their charge was a thing of beauty, perfectly coordinated and smooth as glass. Four hundred horsemen smashed into the fur-clad army, trampling and spearing the mortal warriors in a stampede of shod hooves and blades.

Moving languidly, as though she ghosted down the hillside without touching the ground, the Everqueen came in a shimmering cloud of drifting flower petals and perfumed air. She brought the light with her, and where she so much as glanced, the land threw off the chill of winter and summer blooms rose from the ground. She cast no magic, content to draw the healing energies of the land within her and let it flow into the warriors around her.

At her side, Rhianna displayed no such restraint, basking in the potent wash of magical energies to empower her own spells. Searing fires leapt from her hands, dancing among the tribesmen with screeching cries of predatory birds. Her face was carved from granite, harsh and merciless as she killed, but to Eldain’s eyes she was still wondrous.

Surrounded from all sides, the tribesmen responded by pulling back and bringing their shields around in perfect concert. Arrows thudded into heavy timbers and the Reaver Knights were forced to turn away from the solid barrier of spiked shields and jutting blades. Issyk Kul rode to the edge of the shield wall and raised his sword in challenge to the Everqueen.

“Face me and I shall ruin you, woman!” he shouted.

The Everqueen said nothing, but stepped down to the earth as though to answer the warlord’s challenge. Though the battle continued to rage around the shield wall, it seemed to Eldain that the world around these two combatants faded to shadowy echoes. Kul burst from the shield wall on the back of his mighty steed; a monstrous sword of many blades held over his head and poised to slice the Everqueen in two.

The grass around her surged with life, the green of every shoot and leaf becoming eye-wateringly brilliant and vivid. Until now, Eldain had thought Ellyrion a land of great life and vibrancy, yet the Everqueen’s touch poured the power of primordial creation into its very soul. Sweetly perfumed air spread from her, and the sunlight followed her every step as she faced a warrior who was her opposite in every way.

What she could create, he would destroy.

Where she breathed life, he carried death.

Where his dark patron corrupted, she renewed.

The Everqueen lifted a slender arm and pointed at the red-fleshed steed. Kul’s charge was undone as the horse reared in agony, but it was not the pain of some magical attack that caused it to scream. The warlord leapt from the saddle, as chestnut strands of colour wound their way around the thrashing beast’s legs, like thread onto a weaver’s bobbin. Exposed musculature was once again clothed in flesh and skin, the colour moving upwards until the warm, mahogany coloured coat was reknitting onto the horse’s back. The raw stump of its tail grew again, and a lustrous mane of long black hair sprouted from its gleaming neck.

Within moments, the horse was transformed, the hideous changes wrought upon its form now undone. The horse climbed to its feet, eyes wide and ears pressed flat against its skull as it saw the world with eyes untouched by warping powers.

The northmen shouted oaths to their Dark Gods, horrified at the ease with which their power was broken. Eldain threw off his surprise at the Everqueen’s magic to see that the gap opened in the shieldwall by Kul’s charge was still open. While it remained solid, a shieldwall was virtually impregnable, but once it was broken…

Lotharin saw what Eldain saw and sprang toward the gap.

“Reavers, ho!” shouted Eldain. Some of the tribesmen recognised the danger and moved to close the gap, but Eldain was quicker. Lotharin barged through, using his weight and power to smash men from their feet. More warriors saw the danger and rushed towards the incoming Reaver Knights. Eldain wheeled Lotharin around, lancing his sword through the neck of a tribesman wearing a full-faced helm of iron.

More Reaver Knights joined Eldain and their charge split the shieldwall as a wooden wedge splits a log for the fire. Caelir kicked a warrior in the face and slashed his blade through another man’s arm. Starchaser rode into the shieldwall and her Reavers tore into the northmen from within. What had once been a fortress was now a deathtrap. Hundreds of cavalry charged the disintegrating shieldwall, and the savage warriors of the north were forced to fight as individuals. Though they still outnumbered the elves, they were scattered and alone.

The northmen were doomed, and Eldain swung his horse around as Issyk Kul ran at the Everqueen with his sword swinging for her throat. Once again, she raised a hand, palm up. Kul’s sword vanished into a haze of glittering sparks, as through remembering the fire from which it had been created. The warlord cast aside the hilt as it burst into flames, and screamed his hatred at the Queen of Avelorn.

“You do not hate me, Issyk Kul,” said the Everqueen. “You love me, as I love you.”

“I… I… love no one,” hissed Kul, struggling to reach the Everqueen as though he walked through the thickest mud. “I am to be feared, not loved.”

His every step was a battle, and sinews stood out like taut cables on his neck and chest as he fought to reach her. His hands closed around her neck, and Eldain wanted to scream at such an insult.

“That is a lie,” said the Everqueen. “She loved you, but you offered her to the prince of pleasure for power. You gave away the most precious thing in the world, and for what? Power? You think what you have is power? Mortal power is fleeting, a blink in the eye of the cosmos. Love is eternal, and lasts all the ages of the world.”

Kul screamed and his hands dropped to his sides as he fell to his knees. Eldain saw the healing light of her magic worming its way into his flesh. Kul’s body was swollen with muscle, warped to gross proportions by the Dark Powers he served. The magic of Avelorn filled him, seeking to undo the horrific changes he had willingly accepted. The Everqueen wished to destroy him, but Alarielle would not, for it was anathema to end life when she could restore it.

Eldain saw the northern warlord diminish, as though his entire body was being drained of the corruption that had given him such impossible strength and hatred. The face that was both beautiful and monstrous reshaped itself, losing its magnificence and becoming pugnacious and, worst of all, ordinary. His hair darkened until it was the same sandy, flaxen colour as his warriors, his flesh dirty and bruised, hard and leathery.

But the changes worked on his flesh had been at the whims of the dark prince, and such a god was a jealous master who did not willingly abandon his playthings. Even as the Everqueen remade Kul’s body in its original form, so the petulant god of pleasure incarnate poured his malice, his spite and his perverse glee back into Kul. Ancient powers warred within the champion’s flesh, and the effect was as horrifying as it was sudden.

Renewal and the power of unfettered excess ripped Kul apart, his body expanding and tearing with new growth. Limbs swelled and bloated as the power of the dark prince ran riot within his blood and bone. Gristled extrusions of marrow erupted from the raw flesh of the mutating champion, along with spindly growths, rubbery bladders of meat and hairless body parts that had no business being on the outside of any creature.

Within seconds, nothing that resembled a man remained, simply a mewling mass of degenerate flesh that flopped and squealed and honked its insanity through a dozen flapping mouths. A hundred eyes oozed into existence all over its warp-spawned flesh, and each one of them burned with hatred and madness. A warrior who had once been the chosen of the gods had now been abandoned, cast aside by his master like a broken toy.

Yet this broken toy was still awesomely dangerous, its lashing limbs hooked and barbed with lethal claws, its many mouths filled with swollen, broken teeth and needle-like fangs. The Everqueen’s light was eclipsed by the darkness boiling from the monster’s myriad eyes and it came at her with all the fury of a thing that knows only that the source of its pain is standing before it.

Then Caelir was beside the Everqueen, his borrowed sword held before him.

A bladed limb slashed for the Everqueen, but Caelir’s blade was there to intercept it. He cut it away as more spined, thorny limbs lashed out like a whipping forest of razor-edged blades. He fought with the speed and skill of a Sword Master, slashing grotesque appendages from the creature spawned from Issyk Kul’s remains.

As swiftly as he sliced its unclean flesh, more growths erupted from its heaving bulk. The Maiden Guard surrounded the monstrosity, plunging their spears into its gelatinous body and putting themselves between its rampage and the Everqueen. Lirazel rammed her spear into the creature’s body, gouging and twisting the blade to draw forth spurts of steaming black ichor. The monster screeched and attacked with even greater fury. A slicing barb took Caelir high on the shoulder as another tore his armour just above his hip. He staggered, and a host of blackened limbs struck him with gleeful frenzy.

Eldain leapt from his saddle and cut a path towards the creature through its whipping limbs, organic debris and thrashing, frond-like tentacles. Stinking fluids gushed from each wound, and Eldain retched at the miasma as a jelly-like limb of toothed suckers wrapped itself around Caelir and lifted him into the air. A pair of mouths rippled into existence on the monster’s unquiet flesh, fangs like sword blades unsheathing from drooling gums of pus-yellow meat.

Before they could bite down, Eldain slashed his sword through the side of the creature’s head. A flood of stinking black blood and fatty tissue frothed from the wound. The reek was incredible, rotten meat and decaying matter that smelled as though unearthed from a freshly opened grave.

The beast hurled Caelir aside, gurgling in lunatic amusement as it sensed a more succulent morsel nearby. Eldain ran to his brother’s side as Rhianna stepped before Issyk Kul’s new and repulsive form. The Everqueen’s light filled her, white fire shining in her eyes and blazing along her body like the magic that thundered through the Annulii.

“Are you hurt?” said Eldain.

“I’m bleeding, but nothing serious,” answered Caelir. “Come on, we have to help her.”

“No,” said Eldain, holding Caelir back. “This is not a fight for the likes of us, brother.”

Rhianna stood before the monster, unfazed by its expanding horror, and magical vortices of fire spun around her body in pulsing waves.

Acidic drool and hissing spittle flew from the monster’s jaws as it hauled its lumpen mass towards her on twisted limbs of misshapen bone and roiling frills of undulant flesh. Faces blurred on its drum-taut skin as though a hundred bodies writhed within it, and claws, teeth and drooling orifices opened in the meat of its distended belly.

“I am a mage of Saphery,” said Rhianna, her voice resonating with wells of power no mortal ought to tap. “And a daughter of Ulthuan. The blood of queens flows in my veins.”

Eldain and Caelir shielded their eyes as a torrent of blazing light erupted from Rhianna’s body. A horizontal geyser of white fire shot from her hands and eyes.

It was killing magic. Dangerous magic. Old magic…

Alarielle would not destroy, but Rhianna was more than willing to do so.

The light played over Kul’s transformed flesh, and where it touched, it burned like the fires of Asuryan himself. Like tallow before a flame, bloated flesh sizzled and ran like butter. Drooling ropes of it melted from grossly twisted and deformed bones that cracked in the heat with a sound of splitting wood. The creature’s many mouths gave voice to one ululating shriek of pain and horror as its body was devoured by the cleansing flame of Avelorn.

Eldain tasted the ancient power of this magic. This was the energy that had brought the world into being, a fragment of the power that had shaped worlds and allowed its builders to cross from one side of the cosmos to the other in a single step. Against its awesome potency, the power of the dark prince was as a leaf in a hurricane.

Kul’s body shrank before the firestorm, but whatever spark of life remained to animate his monstrous form remained alive until the last. The screaming went on until nothing remained of the creature save a molten pool of smouldering ash and liquid bone.

 

The spear hosts charged into the ragged horde of northmen, and drove them back with disciplined thrusts of their weapons. With graceful, methodical precision, the tribesmen were either slain or driven back to the river. Caught between the precise slaughter of the spears and the crazed whirl of magical beings, spells and creatures of legend, the warriors of Issyk Kul had already held beyond the limits of human endurance.

And, without him to lead them, they broke.

Here and there, small groups banded together, but the Reavers simply circled them and sent well-aimed shafts through helmets, exposed limbs and necks until they too collapsed. Fewer than a hundred warriors survived to reach the riverbank.

The spear hosts left the final slaughter to the creatures of Avelorn, obeying the shouted commands of their sentinels to reform and march to the aid of the centre. The Everqueen moved through the wounded, spreading her healing light to those who were still beyond the reach of Morai-Heg’s banshees. She would take no part in the killing, and the magical beings she had brought to Ellyrion swarmed around the edges of the spear hosts, eager to take their killing to the centre.

Beneath the ragged, battle-torn banners of Tor Elyr’s citizen levy, the victorious warriors of the northern flank turned south.