Jerrik caught a mace on his axe. He panted, lungs blasting like a bellows, and grinned like a madman.
This guy’s incredible!
Why hadn’t he ever thought to fight a Blade Stalwart before? He poured every ounce of strength and skill into the battle, and the Blade Stalwart matched him stroke for stroke. The swarthy stalwart nearly matched Jerrik’s size, and was unbelievably strong.
The stalwart drew his twin maces to the left in an odd move that exposed his right flank. Jerrik struck without hesitation.
The stalwart struck at the same time.
The full force of both maces caught the flat of Jerrik’s battle-axe and shattered the great blade. The shock rattled him and knocked him off-balance. He dropped to one knee and shook his head to clear it.
The stalwart stepped in for the kill.
Drystan moved faster.
The lanky Einarri leaped and, using Jerrik’s broad shoulder as a springboard, vaulted a full ten feet off the ground. He sailed above the Blade Stalwart’s maces and slashed at the dark-skinned man’s face with his spear.
The stalwart stumbled, and the spear tip skidded across one shoulder, scraping the scale armor with a shrieking of steel. Drystan landed and rolled, rising to his feet in a single, fluid motion, spear at the ready.
The Blade Stalwart turned back, and Jerrik was ready, one mighty fist cocked back.
Jerrik punched him in the jaw. The blow rocked the stalwart back, and Jerrik wrapped his massive hands over the stalwart’s on the mace handles. The two struggled for control of the weapons.
The stalwart’s armor shifted with a flutter of glowing scales. Jerrik’s shoulders and arms swelled with power, and he threw all his strength against the stalwart’s, trying to drive the maces away.
For the first time in his life, Jerrik wasn’t strong enough.
His eyes widened in surprise as the stalwart stopped the movement of the weapons. And then, his face set in a mask of concentration, the dark-skinned man very slowly pushed Jerrik back, bending the maces toward the Donarri warrior.
Drystan approached, spear raised to strike.
“Back off,” Jerrik growled between clenched teeth. Sweat poured down his face. His arms burned with the effort as he drove his body to the edge of strength. “Get your own. This one’s mine.”
Drystan frowned. “Ungrateful.” Then he turned and headed for Kevlin, who battled Dhanjal twenty paces away.
Their faces only inches apart, the Blade Stalwart said, “I will cover your body with stone in honor of your strength that will soon be mine.”
He pushed even harder.
“Don’t. . .celebrate. . .too. . .soon,” Jerrik panted. His wrists burned as the maces tilted toward him. A little further, and the stalwart would have the advantage.
Then Jerrik would die.
The two men locked gazes as they struggled, and Jerrik realized he couldn’t win this test of strength.
“You got good arms,” Jerrik said. “How strong are your fingers?”
Jerrik squeezed.
Drawing from his deepest reserves of strength, he poured everything he had left into the effort. The stalwart grimaced and tried to pull back, but Jerrik held him and squeezed harder. The dark-skinned man grunted and the brilliant glow of his armor began to fade.
Jerrik's hands and wrists felt like they were immersed in living fire, but he did not relent.
The stalwart howled with pain, and Jerrik shouted as he drove his body to its uttermost limits and crushed the other man’s hands against the handle of his own weapons. The stalwart’s left hand twitched, and his fingers cracked audibly. The scale-clad warrior threw his head back and screamed.
Yanking the mace out of the man’s broken fingers, Jerrik smashed the weapon into the Blade Stalwart’s face, crushing his features and shattering his skull. Blood and grey matter sprayed across Jerrik’s face. He spat a gobbet of flesh.
Stepping back, he struck again, and then a third time.
The stalwart crumpled to the ground, his head a formless, bloody mass.
Jerrik threw his arms wide and roared his victory. He wiped his face and let out an explosive breath.
“Ukko’s Beard, that was a good fight!”
# # #
Drums beat in Kevlin’s soul and power raged in his limbs. Horns never heard by mortal man rang in counterpoint, stoking the flames of that power. A dozen different strings trilled complex scales that set his mind ablaze with possible forms.
The voice spoke, soft but undeniable.
Lost in the song of Savas, Kevlin’s body moved to the beat and danced through the forms, his sword ringing against Dhanjal’s scimitars. The clashing steel provided a perfect harmony to the song in his soul.
Time ceased to exist. Thought was irrelevant. Only honoring the song mattered.
Serve me, the voice said in his head. Surrender all to me and I will give you victory everlasting.
With the next form, his sword slipped past a scimitar, drove through a scale on Dhanjal’s glowing armor, and scraped into Dhanjal’s flesh.
And Kevlin could think again--just a little. Enough to answer the voice. I want victory.
You will have it. You will shatter armies, destroy nations.
The song rose to a crescendo and visions of conquest and glory rained down upon his flooded brain. You will bring justice to the world. You will rule all things.
The glory of the vision pounded at him and filled him with joy. He could destroy evil, subdue all enemies. What could be wrong with that?
A dim corner of his mind protested, but he couldn’t form a coherent thought as the song of Savas thundered through his soul. Again his sword slipped past a scimitar, and his heart sang with the glory of impending victory.
Pushing the whispered fears aside, he threw out the thought, I can do this!
It is well, the voice said with another trilling of strings. The drums beat faster, and his body responded, increasing its pace and moving through the forms in a blur.
Surrender the power of Tia Khoa to me, and victory is yours.
The whispered warnings returned, stronger than before, almost understandable, a rip current of danger that tried to pull him back.
It was not enough.
I don’t know how, Kevlin said.
Behold, the way.
As it had once before, a vision opened to his mind even as his body flowed through another form, battered aside Dhanjal’s blades, and slashed the big man across one arm. The armor parted and his sword bit deep, coming away streaked with Dhanjal’s blood.
In his mind, images flashed so quickly that he could not consciously understand them. Release the power and be thou mine, the voice commanded with a clamor of horns that resonated to the deepest corners of his soul. The image of a wall appeared in his mind. A solid, ancient wall.
Shatter the wall. Will it so. Then thy soul shall know power and glory beyond imagining.
A second image flashed with the next beat, and suddenly Kevlin knew how to tear down the wall.
He focused his will.
A new voice spoke into his mind, a familiar voice foreign to the Song.
Victory through slavery is a lie.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Drystan?
Kevlin shuddered mentally, and part of him awoke, struggling to rise above the torrent of the song of Savas.
The price is too high.
Drystan spoke into his mind, calm and confident. And somehow Drystan was there, lending his strength to Kevlin along with his iron discipline. The half-heard whispers of warning rang clear.
I will be no pawn. Slavery is not victory, Kevlin shouted the thought.
The drums pounded harder and the horns blared so loud they shook his skull.
Serve me and inherit glory forever, Savas commanded, driving all other thoughts away. Again the wall appeared in Kevlin’s mind, and everything else faded to whispers.
Savas sings like a girl.
Jerrik’s deep voice rumbled in Kevlin’s mind, and the big man’s incredible strength flowed into Kevlin, forming a bedrock upon which he could anchor. Drystan’s calm discipline buttressed his own thoughts, so that again his mind rose above the song.
Be thou mine, or be destroyed, Savas whispered.
The cadence slowed, and became ominous, threatening. Fear replaced the burning sense of power, and Kevlin’s body shook with terror.
I defy you! Kevlin cried out, throwing every ounce of willpower into the thought.
So be it.
The voice disappeared. The strings and horns stopped instantly.
A single drum beat. Once.
The sound rang through his soul like a death knell.
All of the power, all of the strength, departed with it. Kevlin gasped, once more in control of his body. His arms, his hands, his feet, his head, were again his.
The agony was his alone.
His body screamed for respite. He barely held onto his sword as his limbs quivered with exhaustion. He staggered, and his vision blurred, only to focus a second later. . .
On Dhanjal’s scimitar.
The heavy blade slammed into his chest, rending his chainmail and slicing into the flesh beneath. The force of the blow tumbled Kevlin to the ground, where he lay stunned.
Another scimitar slashed toward his throat, but his strength was gone. His body refused to respond. He couldn’t even blink as the blade descended.
Drystan slammed the butt of his spear into the ground beside Kevlin’s neck, and the heavy scimitar struck it, biting deep into the dense wooden shaft.
Dhanjal wrenched the blade free, and the shaft broke.
Drystan lunged past Kevlin and plunged the head of the broken spear into Dhanjal’s left shoulder. Dhanjal grunted in pain as the spear penetrated his armor and sank into his meaty shoulder.
Dhanjal did not fall. He dropped one scimitar and slashed at Drystan with the other. Drystan rolled out of the way, leaving the head of the spear sticking out of Dhanjal’s shoulder.
Drystan drew his long-knives, their shining steel reflecting Dhanjal’s glowing armor like rainbow flames.
Kevlin struggled to his feet, but Drystan said, “My turn. Jerrik wouldn’t share, so I hope you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead,” Kevlin said with a weak wave of one hand.
Drystan lunged.
Dhanjal met him with a heavy stroke clearly meant to drive past the much smaller long-knives and smash Drystan to the ground. But Drystan deflected the heavy blade and whirled around Dhanjal in his trademark spin.
Dhanjal struck again, but Drystan proved faster. He stabbed at the base of Dhanjal’s neck, where the scales ended in a metal collar. The blade punched through the seam and plunged to the hilt into Dhanjal’s chest.
Dhanjal shuddered and spat blood. He wobbled and the brilliant glow of his armor started to fade. He tried to strike with his scimitar, but lacked the strength. Drystan slashed the heavy weapon to the ground.
Dhanjal sank to his knees, his breath shallow and his skin fading to gray.
Kevlin stepped to Drystan’s side, and Jerrik joined them, his heavy broadsword in hand.
Dhanjal met Kevlin’s scowl. “I am defeated.” He dipped his chin in a little bow. “Burn my body, brother, and bear well the honor of Savas.”
“Savas does not own my soul.”
Raising his sword overhead, Kevlin declared, “For your murders, you are sentenced to death.”
He brought the sword down.
A collective groan from hundreds of throats surprised Kevlin. He had forgotten the mercenaries. The leather-clad army stared in disbelief at their fallen leader.
Then they ran.
As one, they turned and bolted for the forest. The outriders pursued and began cutting down the stragglers.
An inhumanly fast blur raced past Kevlin, trailing twin streaks of blue fire. Nikias charged through the mercenary host, the whirling Bladestaff dropping anyone who didn’t jump out of his way. He reached the trees first, and spun.
Nikias lifted the Bladestaff high. “Surrender, or we will cut you down like dogs!”
Many of the mercenaries threw down their weapons and dropped to their knees, pleading for mercy. A hundred or more changed course and ran for the trees on either side of Nikias.
“King-killers,” Nikias shouted, charging after them.
Drystan nodded toward Nikias. “You know, that lad’s got promise. He might just make a decent soldier someday.”
Kevlin clasped wrists with his swordbrothers. “Thank you, brothers. Without your strength and discipline, I wouldn’t have survived today.”
“I wish you hadn’t exhausted him,” Drystan said. “There wasn’t much left for me to finish off.”
Jerrik chuckled. “You just hate admitting you lost.”
“I didn’t lose,” Drystan said. “I helped you and Kevlin both.”
“Aye,” Jerrik said. “You did that. But you just admitted Kevlin did most of the work on Dhanjal, just like I did on the other.”
“That’s not fair. I was just being polite, letting you go first.”
“Doesn’t change things."
The entire valley shuddered, and the three turned to stare up at the keep.
“Sherah’s Teeth,” Kevlin breathed at the sight of the waterfall that suddenly appeared above the keep. The torrent washed over the walls and tumbled down the slope toward Harafin.
A terrible dread sank into Kevlin’s heart as he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.
Antigonus.
Dhanjal was dead, but the price might be Antigonus’ life.
“Come on,” he shouted. “We have to get up there.”
He ran for the nearest horse with his brothers at his heels.
# # #
Harafin reined his mount. Soldiers cried out in fear as the floodwaters tumbled toward them, drowning out all sound with its rumbling menace. Borne along in the torrent, all manner of debris churned to the surface only to disappear again.
He recognized some of it as the tumbling bodies of people. He blew out a tired breath. This assault was proving far more difficult than he had hoped.
Carefully crafting the spell to minimize its cost in magic, Harafin formed a gently curving shield across the slope. The raging water glanced off the shield’s shallow angle, followed its curve toward the river, and thundered off the edge of the slope in its mindless rampage.
Harafin set a line of curved shields just in front of the leading edge of the water, forming the barrier like a series of long teeth. Water poured through the openings while debris caught on the teeth and catapulted into the air out of the water.
Each time a body tumbled into view, Harafin pointed and, using a gentle blast of air, pushed it beyond the churning waters to fall onto a cushion of air.
Some of the people screamed and windmilled their limbs, while others hung limp in the air and lay unmoving where they landed. One Sentinel changed course on his own.
The flood subsided after a moment, leaving the steep slope scoured down to bare rock. The road was gone. Harafin was only a quarter mile from the plateau, but he did not have the strength to throw himself or Leander that high.
Climbing would take at least an hour.
They didn’t have that much time.
Leaping down that denuded slope came a hundred makrasha howling for blood. In reckless abandon, they slid from one ledge to the next, their massive bodies absorbing impacts that would have splintered men’s legs.
They chanted a single word. “Abaval!”
Harafin gazed from the monsters toward the shattered wall where Tanathos was no longer visible. Several pieces of information clicked together, completing the puzzle.
One fact drowned out the rest.
Leander’s long-time quarry had just made a fatal mistake.
# # #
Leander rocked back in his saddle as if struck a physical blow. His face drained of color and he stared at the onrushing creatures, eyes wide with disbelief. The shock only lasted a heartbeat, a heartbeat that thundered through the old stalwart with more force than the recent floodwaters.
“Abaval!”
The chant ripped through his mind, uprooting long-suppressed memories and parading them past his mind’s eye.
“Abaval!”
He saw again the bodies of his wife and daughter, tortured and mutilated.
“Abaval!”
His heart beat again and, with it, rage shook him with uncontrollable fury. He vaulted from the saddle and scrambled up the slope toward the makrasha. His war hammer appeared in his hand, already burning with brilliant blue fire.
“Abaval!”
Memories he’d carefully shuttered for more than a century blasted away all restraint and seared his mind, driving his fury to white-hot intensity. His eyes blazed with madness as he charged toward the monsters, hammer raised to kill.
The makrasha came on, oblivious of the danger. A score of them fired crossbows at the lone attacker.
Leander extended his hammer, and a sheet of blue flame exploded from it to consume the approaching missiles. Howling a wordless cry, Leander threw himself to a wide ledge thirty feet up the slope where he met the first group of monsters.
He shattered them.
Howls of bloodlust turned into death cries, and every makrasha that ventured within reach fell to the old man’s fury. Blood fountained around him in crimson sheets as he flung broken corpses aside to reach the enemy. The air around him sparked and crackled, and jagged fingers of light crawled across his skin.
The makrasha leaped at him from all sides, trying to surround him and bring him down. He never slowed, and his howling battle cry echoed back from the mountain, a death dirge that drove fear into makrasha hearts.
Soldiers in the company struggled up the hill to Leander's aid, attacking the fringes of the makrasha force, though most of the beasts clustered around the lone old man.
Leander fought on, driven beyond the brink of madness. He was soaked with blood, and it dripped from his beard. His face contorted in a mask of rage, and his eyes blazed. He struck and spun, and struck again, every blow killing yet another makrasha.
He moved through the ranks of creatures like a cyclone, shattering monsters and flinging aside the bloody ruin of their corpses. Makrasha fought each other to get away. Dozens leaped off the ledge and fell to the waiting ranks of soldiers below.
When the last makrasha crumpled into a bloody mass at his feet, Leander stood panting, hammer raised and eyes wild.
Harafin called up to Leander from the foot of the blasted slope. “Come, my old friend. I need your mind as well as your hammer to win this day.”
Leander spun, a snarl on his face. He hovered on the brink of the precipice, the control gained over the past century barely holding madness in check.
Finally, he blinked and slowly lowered his hammer to his side.
He wiped blood from his face. “It’s Tanathos. I know my enemy now. He cannot escape me.”
Justice, not vengeance, will be done.
“If he reaches the heart of the mountain, he’ll have nearly enough power to rival the six accidental gods,” Harafin said.
“It will not stop me,” Leander said. “The gods will die in the days to come. Tanathos dies today.”
Harafin frowned. “Speak not of the death of gods yet. We are not ready.”
“The time is upon us, whether we are ready or not.”
“I know, but not today.”
“Very well.” Leander blew out a breath and surveyed the slope. “I’m not a great climber. Get me to the top.”
Harafin dismounted, looking tired. Soldiers helped him climb to Leander’s ledge. The next fifty feet rose in a sheer, vertical slope.
“My power is all but spent,” Harafin said.
“We need to get up there,” Leander said.
He could feel the dearth of latent magic. He’d exhausted the flicker of actinic gift still available to him in his fight with the makrasha. The lack of magic didn’t affect his shield of faith, but he lacked any way to get them up the cliff.
“Let us hope the heart of the mountain is well sealed,” Harafin said. “It will delay Tanathos.”
“I hope it’s enough,” Leander said.
Harafin pointed at the steep rock face. Stone chips flew up, as if invisible pickaxes chopped at the slope. In seconds, he carved a wide step in the rock.
“This is going to take too long,” Leander growled
“Let me know when you think of a better idea.”
Harafin pointed again, and another step appeared.