Stillbright
Allystaire picked his way through the huddled shapes of all the folk crammed into the Temple. Most of them had been driven to sleep by their fear, and he could hear the regular soft rush of their breath, feel the warmth of it filling the air.
He found Mol, seeming asleep, leaning against the Pillar of the Will, where Gideon’s body also lay. The two were surrounded by a mismatched bunch of the village’s surviving dogs. In particular, Mol curled up with her back against one grey-muzzled, shaggy coated herding dog. Her peaked ears swiveled as Allystaire approached, and she lifted her head, considering him.
“He is a friend,” Mol muttered, and for a moment he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or the dog, but then the dog closed her eyes and lowered her head upon crossed forepaws.
The girl uncurled herself, put her bare feet under her, and stood up. She pushed her hood back and gazed up at him. Though most of the lights in the Temple had gone out, the sky itself was beginning to brighten, and through the ring of windows Allystaire could make out the tracks of tears on her face.
“Mol,” Allystaire whispered. “Do not despair.”
“How could I not? I cannot hear Her, Allystaire. Not at all. Gideon is lost to us. And the day that breaks now brings the Longest Night with it. There is nothing more we can do.”
“Yes, Mol, there is. I am not defeated. Nor are Idgen Marte or Torvul. We may not know what it is that we must do, but we are not done, and I will not give in to despair even if I am dragged before the sorcerers in chains. If is true that this will be our last day, then let us honor Her with how we live it.”
“Pretty speech,” a nearby voice hissed. “Not gonna do us much good when we all die, is it?”
Allystaire turned to face Ivar, her face painted with dirt and blood, leaning heavily on the haft of her spear.
“What is it that you want, Ivar? To be released from your contract so you may try and flee? I never thought I would see the day.”
“We’d make it fifty span out the door before those sorcerers would churn us up into pieces of those bone monsters. Freeze that for a game I want no part of. I’ll stay here and die for my weight because that’s who I am. What I want is for you to remember who you are, and give up on this holy knight nonsense and find your way out o’this.”
“As much as you have seen these months, and still you doubt and deny me and call me a liar.”
“Or a madman.”
“Either way, Captain Ivar, I care not and will hear it no longer. I release you from your contract, along with any of your soldiers who choose to go. I believe my sister paid your commission for a year. For your service, our history, and your losses I will not ask for any of it to be returned. Begone.”
Ivar’s face was stunned, her eyes wide dark circles in the weak pre-dawn light. “Dismissin’ us? How’re we t’get out?”
“It will be turns yet before Delondeur will raise another attack, and I feel confident that the sorcerer’s abominations will not move against us in daylight. You have time to get over the wall. Be gone.”
Allystaire raised a gauntleted fist and pointed towards the door. Ivar looked at him in disbelief, following the direction his finger pointed. Her gap-toothed mouth moved silently several times. Finally she gathered up her spear and stalked off.
The herding dog Mol had reclined against lifted her head and let out a low, soft growl.
“Shhh,” Mol said, and the animal went instantly quiet, but still looked intently at the mercenary’s retreating back. “That may have been a foolish thing, Allystaire,” she muttered as Ivar began waking up other black-mailed forms and speaking quietly but animatedly to them.
“It is not their fight. It is an old bond of mine, and past time they were all broken. Let the rest of this be upon Her Ordained and our people.”
“If you’re done widening the odds against us,” Idgen Marte’s voice came from behind him, “Torvul’d like to speak with you outside.” He could read the anger in the flat tone of her words, and said nothing as he turned to follow her after nodding to Mol. The girl sank back against her grey-muzzled companion, which curled protectively around her.
Once they were outside, Idgen Marte rounded on him. “That was a damn stupid thing. They’re practically the only thing keeping the militia from breaking.”
“And I did not want to spend the rest of the fight waiting for Ivar to sink her spear into my back. It was coming,” Allystaire shot back. “I could feel it.”
“Cold, if you’re going to send anyone out, it ought to be the women and children.”
“They’d not go,” Torvul said. He knelt on the steps of the Temple, working by the light of his sturdy little lamp. A mortar and pestle, several clay jars, and a few crystal bottles lay scattered around him. “And even if they did, they’d never get far.”
“Have we any cards left to play, Torvul?”
“Need you even ask?” The dwarf picked up a clay jar and sniffed at its powdered contents. “I think I can do a Forbidding.”
“Meaning what?”
“I can keep the creatures from entering the Temple. Not so hard, really, simple matter of seizing upon the energy generated by the faith within and the sense of community and belonging it brings with it. Then I channel it into a song and—”
“Save the theory, dwarf,” Idgen Marte said wearily. “What does it mean?”
“Precisely what I just said. I can seal this building. Cold, I think if I have the time I can funnel them right to ya. Means I’ll have to test my craft against the sorcerer’s will.” He paused then, and heaved a deep sigh. “I’d feel better about it if the boy were able to help.”
“If you can deny them entry, then as long as we can fight them off, the folk inside are safe.”
“From the Wights, yes,” Torvul pointed out. “I haven’t got a way to bar men. Only things with the taint of sorcery. There is, ah, one problem.”
“Go on.”
“Once I do it, no one can go in or out. So those inside the Temple are stuck, and those outside…”
“Likewise. Fine. Prepare and do it. The three of us out here, everyone else in there.”
“I rather thought that’s what ya’d say,” Torvul replied, and he went back to his jars and vials.
“In the meantime,” Allystaire said, “let everyone else get as much rest as they can. You and I,” he pointed to Idgen Marte, “make a sweep of the village. Look for any survivors, anything useful, food and drink. Aye?”
Idgen Marte nodded. “Yell if there’s trouble,” she said, tapping the side of her head.
The door opened behind them. Ivar and five more of the remaining eight Iron Ravens filed out, carrying little beside their weapons and armor.
The captain glared hard at Allystaire as she stalked off, a look he returned calmly and evenly. The others refused to meet his eyes as they slunk off into the morning.
“I’m not even goin’ t’ask,” Torvul muttered as the men moved at a trot down the road.
* * *
Baron Lionel Delondeur had never felt so strong. Not even in the halest day of his life, not even among the elves on the tundra and earning the name Giantsbane, had he been anything like the man he now was. He could simply feel the strength flowing through his arms and legs. All the pain of his age, all the wounds he had ever taken, vanished beneath a flood of power.
“Remember, Baron,” Iriphet said as if hearing the thought, “this will only last for a day or two. What we will do now will take much of the available time.”
“It doesn’t take you so long to craft a Battle-Wight,” the Baron countered.
“If that is what you wish us to make of you then it will take little time at all,” Iriphet said, the barely concealed threat hanging in the air as his voice echoed itself. The sorcerer cocked his head to the side and waited. “I thought not. Now, strip yourself of your common steel. We shall need it.”
Lionel nodded and began unbuckling his armor. His fingers moved among the straps with long-forgotten speed; no pain clogged the joints of his knuckles.
No sooner had bits of his plate begun falling to the frozen grass beneath him than it was lifted into the air and unraveled by tendrils of yellow and blue light.
He tried not to look at the pile of other material the sorcerers had gathered, as it, too, was lifted in the air and stripped. As he watched, bone and steel were melded together in the air, woven inch by inch. The result was the kind of hideous dark metal that ran through the bodies of the Wights and coated the skulls set atop their crudely-knitted forms.
The process was slow and the sounds of the bodies of his men being ripped asunder, the sounds of their clotted blood being heated and pressed against the bone-steel to quench it, might have sickened him, once.
As it was, he barely noted the cold and waited eagerly for the tools suited to his new power. “A sword as well, I think, if we have the time,” he said with casual assurance.
“A sword indeed, Baron,” Gethmasanar answered. “A sword fit to bring down a paladin.”
* * *
“The sun’s movement today is not natural,” Mol said as she stood on the steps of the Temple and contemplated the quality of the light filtering through heavy clouds. “It ought not to be so far past noon. It will be dark all too quickly.”
“Then it’s best you get inside the Temple, lass,” Torvul said. “For I’m about ready to work my Forbidding.” The dwarf clutched a heavy jar that sloshed as he moved. Exotic and unnameable scents rose up from the wide neck as he moved past Allystaire and Idgen Marte.
“Make sure the people know they cannot come out till it is settled,” Allystaire said.
“They’ve food enough for a few days now,” Idgen Marte added wearily. In addition to her bow and her knives, Torvul’s cudgel was thrust awkwardly through her belt. “Though I pray the Mother won’t let it last so long.”
Mol nodded and opened the doors, then looked back to Allystaire. “Is there anything you would say to them?”
“I have no words left. Only what I can do for them. If you must tell them something, say that if it is to be their last night, let them live it in love and affection with each other. Not to let fear make them forget Her.”
“Ask them to pray. For us if they’ve a mind,” Idgen Marte added.
Mol nodded and went inside, closing the doors behind her.
Torvul set down his jar and pulled an aspergillum from his belt, dipped it in, and began flicking droplets of the liquid all along the walls of the Temple and the ground beneath it.
“If one of you’d like to carry this for me it might go a bit faster,” the dwarf said, eyeing the jar. Allystaire bent to pick it up.
They made a long, slow circuit around the walls, across the steps, the dwarf quiet, intent upon his work. Allystaire thought on the coming night, on the Goddess’s words to him. If he closed his eyes, banished all other thoughts, he could almost fix in his mind the image of Her. But then the beauty, the overpowering radiance, would force his mind aside and the image would shatter, leaving behind a surge of desire, a powerful sense of loss.
As they walked he thought of Gideon lying insensate and mindless upon the floor of the Temple. He’d seen a man kicked in the head by a warhorse once who’d lived a few months in much the same way. Food could be forced down his throat, and water, but it was no life; the mind, everything that made the man up, was gone.
And are you gone, too, Gideon? Too soon, my boy, he thought wistfully. So much I had left to teach you. So much to learn from you.
He drove these thoughts away, but they kept coming back. The Goddess. The feel of Her kiss. The desire he probably imagined in Her voice when last She had spoken to him. Gideon, lost.
Suddenly, out loud, he said, “I should have killed Delondeur when I had the chance.”
“Aye,” Torvul agreed. “Like as not, you should’ve.”
“Why did I not?”
“You said it couldn’t be like that,” the dwarf said, dipping the round head of his silver implement back into the bowl he’d filled with the thick, slightly opaque, and heavily-scented liquid. “Couldn’t be assassins in the night. Had to be public, the world had to know why. All that sort of knightly rot.”
“Knightly rot is rather the point.”
“I might argue that the point is seein’ to Her Ladyship’s folk, and Her church.”
“If I had killed him then, the entire barony would have risen to see us crushed. He would be a murdered hero, a martyr.”
“Could be. Or maybe our man Chaddin could’ve seized the reins of power more fully and come to an understanding with us. Doesn’t do us any good to wonder. We’ve a job tonight. Which, as Mol has kindly pointed out, is not as far off as it ought to be.”
“Are the sorcerers so powerful, Torvul, that they can bend the rules of nature?”
“Depends how many there are,” the dwarf said with a shrug. “Might be Braech and Fortune working with them as well. I doubt their clergies just packed up and went home with no share of spoils or credit. Those bastards are powerful, though, as I recall tellin’ a hard-headed knight some months ago. They’ll not make the mistake of getting within your reach twice, I don’t think.”
“What are we to do against them, then?”
“Idgen Marte might have a chance. I…” the dwarf lowered his tool and cocked his head to the side, as if listening to something. His eyes narrowed and his mouth drew into a thin line, crinkling his chin. “I don’t think…I can hold them at bay, maybe. Hold them off. With my craft.” He shook his head as if clearing it. “There were days when they feared my folk, ya know. But I haven’t that craft in my hands. There’s no one who does, and if there were, no songs left to answer them.”
“Answer them?”
The dwarf shook his head and wetted his tool again. “Come on. Let’s mark out the path we want the Wights to follow.”
“Straight up to the stairs. Give me some height. Where will you be?”
“The roof, I suppose. Don’t look at me like that,” he responded to Allystaire’s sudden glare, even though he hadn’t turned around to see it. “I can do more work from up there, and if one of them gets t’me, they’re through anyway. You know by now I’m no coward.”
“Never thought you were. Well, maybe back in Grenthorpe I did.”
“We haven’t got time for a lot of reminiscing,” Torvul grumbled. “Besides, I don’t figure on dyin’ tonight. But in case you’re thick enough or slow enough to get your own self killed, I want you to know what you’ve given back t’me. Not my life from the noose, mind. Something more important than that.” The old dwarf faced him, eyeing him from beneath cragged brows. “You made me belong t’something again. I can’t make you understand what that means to a dwarf. Family, clan, caravan—that’s who we are. Exiled from that, I was dead already, just takin’ a long time t’notice. It’s why my craft was failing me. You and Idgen Marte and Her Ladyship gave that back to me. A place. A family. I can never repay that,” the dwarf said with uncharacteristic solemnity. Then, grinning, he added, “Well, if anyone can, it’ll be me. I’m sure I’ll manage to save your life again tonight somehow, eh? Come on.” He stretched, and they went back to the work at hand.
* * *
The notes of Torvul’s song hung in the air as the dwarf stood before the closed doors of the Temple. They could feel the power that resonated from his words, feel as it settled into the stones around them.
For a moment the droplets he’d blessed the building with glowed. Thousands of tiny pinpricks of bright white light flared with the power the dwarf gathered and released, and then sank into the stone. Torvul stepped back, stumbling and falling to one knee.
“Stones above but I need a good lie-in,” the dwarf muttered.
Idgen Marte helped him to his feet, and the dwarf, with the crossbow slung over his back and a heavy bag of potions in one hand, began clambering nimbly up the side of the Temple.
Allystaire studied the stones of the wall for a moment. The lights Torvul had created pulsed faintly within it, shifting and moving and eluding his eye if he looked too closely.
He settled his hammer in its ring on his belt and flexed his hand within his shield. Next to him, Idgen Marte unlimbered Torvul’s cudgel and gave it a few experimental swipes in the air.
“Still with me, Shadow?”
She grinned humorlessly. “You even have to ask?”
Allystaire smiled, though the expression was equally grim. “No. But it fills up the silence.”
“That it does.” She paused, tapped the cudgel against her open palm, and said, “The story doesn’t end here, you know. It can’t. It doesn’t. I won’t let it.”
“It was never a story, Idgen Marte,” Allystaire replied softly. “A dream of one, mayhap.”
“No, but it will be,” she answered with sudden forcefulness. “And in it, you’ll have some foolish name or title that the children think is bold, and that old men secretly thrill to hear. You’ll not be a broken nosed old warlord, nor a bachelor, and that armor you wear will be magic, not just look it.”
“If you say so,” he answered, laughing without much feeling in it. “I am not a bachelor by choice, you know.”
“Out with it. We may be dead soon. I want one damned piece of your story finished before we are.”
“Fine. The woman I wanted to marry? Her name was Dorinne. She was the natural daughter of Lord Joeglan Naswyn, of the Horned Towers. Her father acknowledged her but would not dower her, and my marrying her was out of the question, according to my own father. I went to the Old Baron to plead my case, but he refused to listen to me. Told me I was a young man looking to marry for the wrong reasons, my head turned by a comely shape. That I needed to think of the future of my line and so forth. It was the only time I ever had harsh words with Gerard Oyrwyn. Not long afterwards, he ordered me away on a campaign. While I was gone, my father died. He’d lost a leg a few years before, and was never strong after that. A flux had come to the barony and he succumbed to it. When word reached me, I rode for home, determined then I could marry whomever I wanted, dowry or no.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“The flux was particularly savage.”
The words hung in the air for a moment before their import settled fully on Idgen Marte.
“Allystaire,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. I had no idea it was…Cold. It’s awful.”
“It was fifteen years ago. A lot of time for it to heal.”
“Then tell me it has. Tell me the sting has gone out of it.”
Allystaire fell silent, looked off into the fast-falling darkness.
“I’m sorry, Ally. I didn’t realize it would be that way.”
“It is how things end most of the time,” Allystaire shrugged. “Ugly, painfully.”
“Well let’s make it ugly and painful for them, eh?” She pointed with her cudgel at the path leading towards the Temple. No shapes crowded upon it yet, but as the unnatural darkness settled around them, they both seemed to know, somehow, that Wights lurked just beyond their sight.
* * *
Nyndstir hated skulking. Hated it. But he’d proven to be damn good at it, and now found himself huddled against the wooden wall he’d climbed over, gnawing on a loaf of stale bread and swigging from a jar of beer he’d pilfered from an abandoned house. He’d hidden from the paladin as he’d moved through the village, unsure of getting the time to explain himself.
Nyndstir was no coward, but he wasn’t an idiot, either.
He suddenly lowered the bread as he heard a faint wet scream float over the village from the west.
When it died, another followed it. And another.
And with each one, it got noticeably darker.
“Braech,” Nyndstir muttered haltingly, his tongue unused to prayer. “I don’t think ya bless this, priest in their camp or no. I think ya bless those who’re brave with no more than steel in their hands.”
Another scream. Night fell, all at once, in a manner so clearly unnatural that Nyndstir felt his hair standing on end.
“Bless me tonight, Braech, if ya would. I set a bad course. Every man is bound to do that now’n then. Bless me and help me set it right.”
With that, he downed the last of the beer, dropped the jug, hefted his axe, and skulked off into the night.
* * *
The quick, awful screams and the falling dark raced each other across Thornhurst to the steps of the Mother’s Temple. From behind the stone walls, Allystaire heard the sudden cries of dismay.
He set his feet and unlimbered his hammer.
Battle-Wights swarmed down the road, dozens of them. Not as large or as fierce as the Wights that had assaulted the town the first time. They seemed more carelessly made, loosely stitched together. Well behind them, what remained of Delondeur’s men marched on. The crowd of them seemed improbably small, but Allystaire didn’t have time to think on that at the moment.
The entire world, the darkness that crowded in on the Temple, the scores of people crammed into it, fearful and crying, all of it melted away from Allystaire’s mind.
There was only his hammer, only his arms, and the Wights that pressed upon him. Bone flew away in chunks whenever he struck. Limbs were shattered, exposed spines severed with a blow.
Funneled towards him by Torvul’s Forbidding, they came in twos and threes, loping awkwardly to their destruction. Some tried pushing themselves against the line Torvul had drawn around the Temple, and one or two were crushed against empty air by the press of their own fellows.
He had his feet planted on the stones of the Temple he had helped to raise, the Temple that had started with a pile of rocks in a field. The song of the Mother flowed still in his limbs, though fainter than it had. No matter, though. What strength it still granted him would be enough.
In the place he stood now, with the Shadow of the Mother at his right hand, they could come as long and in as many numbers as they wished. They could come and be crushed upon his hammer. He could feel cracks in the stout oak haft lengthening towards the head.
When it broke, and it would, he would have his fists.
Allystaire felt as though the proud boast he had given to the Mother was closer to true now than when he’d made it. Let the whole world come. Let the Choiron Symod bring the Sea Dragon’s devoted berserkers, and the Marynth Evolyn bring all the assassins she dared to hire. Let Fortune bring Her hired blades. When they came within the range of his hammer, they would die.
He realized, only then, that he was speaking aloud, bellowing his rage at the mindless Wights that crowded in on him. A small one, barely cobbled together out of mail rings pulled and spliced into wire and hastily wrapped around bones scuttled at him, swinging broken blades from the ends of its arms. He smashed its skull contemptuously. He saw the others pull back, and he laughed raggedly.
“Even your abominations fear us, sorcerer,” he yelled, and he heard the cold wind carry his voice, sending it ringing over the ruined village. “Even the dead will not face the Mother’s wrath! Do they learn their cowardice from you?”
Many of the Wights continued to press upon Torvul’s barrier. He saw one, suddenly bathed in a chilling blue light, begin to push a bladed hand purposefully through it. The lights embedded in the stone began winking and dying.
I can’t hold it, Allystaire. Torvul’s mental voice sounded thin and worn in his mind. I’ve got…we have to drive them off.
Suddenly the Wights that had scuttled away were bathed in an intense, pure white light. Allystaire had but a second to wonder before he heard Torvul’s voice from the roof bellowing above even his, and he spared a glance back to see the dwarf holding up his lantern in one hand, the wide beam it threw unnaturally bright.
“The Arm still strikes for the Mother,” the dwarf yelled, his voice thunderingly loud. “He stands still and bright!” he roared. “A lamp in the darkness! No mark upon him! Why does he stand alone?” The dwarf jumped nimbly from the roof, landed hard on his feet on the steps, and charged to Allystaire’s side, yelling again. “Still. Bright!”
From inside the Temple, Allystaire heard the words echoed, rising into a chant that stirred him from his place upon the steps. The doors of the Temple burst open, and the folk who’d sheltered there poured out of it, weapons in hand. Giraud the mason, rock-hammer swinging, led the way. At his side, Henri and Norbert brandished unstrung bows like staves. Behind them came Renard, all his militiamen. In one voice, they roared the name the dwarf had put to him, and with them behind him and more on their heels, Allystaire charged into the pool of light cast by Torvul’s lantern.
The dwarf ran beside him, matching him step for step. In Torvul’s other hand, he held his crossbow, but had turned it around on his arm. Allystaire glimpsed the odd, smooth blue stone crossbow shift and change in Torvul’s hand, saw the curled end straighten into a spike. With another bellowed cry, this time in his own tongue, Torvul rushed forward and drove it through the head of a Wight that stood inert, and then crumbled into powder and broken metal.
Allystaire swung his hammer almost blindly, felt the cracks threaten to take it, dropped it to the ground and swung with his fists, his elbows, his knees. Without even thinking it, without checking to look, he knew that just beyond the lantern light gave Idgen Marte raced ahead of them, her borrowed cudgel a deadly blur in her hands.
He sought out the Wight that had brought down Torvul’s barrier. The glow that had suffused it was gone, but he smashed it to pieces nonetheless.
Before them, the Wights were overwhelmed, destroyed bit by bit, levered to the ground and crushed under boots, cudgels, and heavy rocks. Beyond them in the blue-black dark they could hear what was left of the Baron’s spearmen and horse pounding away in full retreat, officers cursing and urging the men, whether to stay or to fly faster, Allystaire couldn’t have said. He took a few steps down the path after them till he heard Idgen Marte’s voice in his head.
No, she hissed. This is still not done!
He drew to a stop, fists clenched, and yelled after them. “Come for me again, Lionel! Bring your sorcerers and put an end to your shame!”
He turned then, looking around for his hammer, saw Giraud smashing at what was left of one of the Wights, legless, as it tried to crawl away. The two dozen or so men that had charged out in the stonemason’s wake stood in the circle of Torvul’s lamp-light. He walked to join them, and the white light made a dazzling radiance against his untouched, unmarked, unbloodied armor.
The men, among them Chaddin and one of his knights, stared at him in open-mouthed wonder, till again, someone spoke the words the Wit had made a battle cry, then another voice joined in, and another, till the remaining defenders of Thornhurst chanted it as one word. A word that he knew, now, replaced the surname he had left behind.
“Still-BRIGHT, Still-BRIGHT, Still-BRIGHT.” Torvul’s voice, deep and resonant, chanted the loudest of them all.
He raised his hands, and they quieted instantly. “We are not done, men,” he said, his voice practically a ragged croak. “We are not yet clear. till dawn,” he said. “till dawn we must carry the light ourselves. We must hold for the return of Her sun.”
And with the men behind him and flushed with their temporary victory Allystaire Stillbright, the Arm of the Mother, made his way back towards Her Temple.
We may yet win, he thought, sharing the notion with Torvul and Idgen Marte.
And then he heard a powerful voice behind him yell into the unnatural darkness.
“Allystaire! You’ve called for me to face you. Now come and reap the fruit of your boasting!”
Allystaire, Idgen Marte, Torvul, and the village folk turned as one. Torvul lifted his lantern.
It was a feigned retreat, Allystaire thought, suddenly sickened. Meanwhile, he circled back.
In the light thrown by the dwarf’s lantern, Baron Lionel Delondeur stood in a suit of armor that seemed to drink in the light. Dark grey, dull, yet somehow sickeningly reflective. Where the light hit it, the surface suggested a dark red-brown was mixed in among the grey.
It was made of the same stuff as the Battle-Wights, Allystaire could see. The Baron wore no helm. His eyes were wide and bulging in a face that seemed to have lost a decade or more, and his white hair seemed blond once again. Planted in the turf next to him was an enormous sword, as long as he was tall, made of the same stuff as his armor, as wide across as Allystaire’s hands laid next to one another.
Armor and a sword made of men, Allystaire thought. Made of the very bodies of men.
“Pausing now, I see,” the Baron boomed, striding forward and lifting his enormous sword casually in one hand, cutting at the air. “Afraid to face me now that I’m on equal footing, eh?”
Behind him stood a ring of spearmen, fewer than the two score there ought to have been. But enough, given how exposed Allystaire’s remaining men were.
“What have you done, Lionel? What have you become?”
“What I needed to become,” he bellowed. “What you drove me to. You with your demon’s bargain, the strength of ten or more. You with your Gifts and your talk of a Goddess and the presumption to lecture me on how to rule my own people. You did this.”
“My people does not mean the same as my furniture, or my sword, or even my horse, Lionel. It never did. But you are beyond understanding that now.”
Allystaire drew his own sword and held it out with both hands, pointed it at the Baron as he addressed the spearmen behind him. “Do you see it? Do you see that he is wearing your comrades, your brothers of battle? You are nothing to him. You are things.”
“ENOUGH.” Delondeur charged forward, swinging his sword in a wild, two-handed arc that Allystaire easily shifted away from. The blade drove a long furrow into the ground; the grass that it touched sizzled. “Those men served me in life, and now they serve me in death.”
Allystaire circled warily, his sword held out, watching Delondeur’s blade carefully. “How many of them died too soon, Lionel? How many were killed to bring on this unnatural night? How many died to give you that sword to fight me with?”
“It is their honor to die for me. It is their duty to die for me.” Another wild overhand cut.
This time, Allystaire met it with his own blade. The shock that traveled up his arms when the swords met took him aback, almost drove him to a knee. Lionel leaned into the cut, trying to force Allystaire back.
“It has to be their choice!” Allystaire bellowed. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Baron to address the Delondeur spearmen, but he yelled his words for them anyway. “How many of you want to die on a sorcerer’s table? How many of you want your bodies twisted into this?”
He found a surge of strength to push the Baron back, and pressed him with a mid-level swing, swept tight. Lionel knocked it aside with obvious contempt.
“They do not choose to serve me,” the Baron yelled. “They are born to it. They are born to be a sword in my hand, a shield between me and my enemies. They ought to come happily to their end if it means serving me, no matter how.”
The Baron followed his words with a series of fast cuts. Faster, Allystaire was sure, than Lionel Delondeur had ever swung a sword on his youngest and strongest days. He found himself giving ground. The men behind him, Torvul and Idgen Marte among them, scattered, most making for the Temple stairs. More of the folk, including some of the Delondeur prisoners, had spilled out of the Temple to watch the duel unfolding before them.
I cannot match his pace or tire him out, Allystaire thought as he danced away from another blow. He swung, more for the sake of feeling like he fought back, trying a high line that Delondeur ducked under with the agility of a much younger man. Lionel reversed his sword and jabbed the hilt, a rough thing with a huge dark stone in the pommel, straight into Allystaire’s chest.
He sprawled to the ground, but not for long. To lie there was to die, so Allystaire rolled to his left and pushed himself quickly back to his feet. He was upright in time to see Delondeur pulling his sword free from another grey and smoking wound in the earth.
He was, Allystaire noted, a bit slow pulling the blade clear.
“How many did you give to them for this strength, Lionel? How many for this unnatural youth?”
“Just one,” Lionel roared, rushing towards Allystaire and swinging low. Allystaire got his blade in the way, slowed down the cut, but didn’t stop it, couldn’t stop it. Instead of taking him in the thigh it bit into his calf.
Allystaire stumbled away, half dragging the leg behind him. It would hurt, later. He had no time for it now. He spared a glance at Lionel’s face. It was the face of a madman, all sense and understanding fled from it. The eyes were wide and bulging, the mouth set in a rictus grin.
“What was his name?” Allystaire shouted, shuffling back, putting distance between himself and the Baron.
Delondeur paused, his sword raised. “What?”
“His name. The man that was killed to grant you this strength. What was his name?”
“Darrus Cartin,” Delondeur spat. “Some knightling. No one. His strength serves me better than it ever would have served him.”
Allystaire heard the murmuring, the shocked sounds, both from the Delondeur line and along the steps of the Temple. He couldn’t spare a glance because once again, Lionel was rushing at him, his sword a blur. He was able to catch Delondeur’s edge with his flat, spreading his hand upward along his own blade, but he felt the steel shiver.
They pressed against each other, strength against strength. Sword arms were flattened against armored chests. The Gift of a Goddess strove against the blood magic of the sorcerers.
Allystaire felt his toes beginning to dig into the grass; he was losing traction from the wounded leg. He was losing, period.
“Go on, Coldbourne,” Lionel whispered. “Sink to the ground, give in. Give me your head and I will grant merciful deaths to your pathetic following.”
“I will give you nothing,” Allystaire spat, his arms trembling from the exertion. He spun away, tried a back-hand that clanged harmlessly off of Delondeur’s armor, but seemed to enrage the madman all the more.
Lionel’s blade swept down in another two-handed cut. Allystaire’s sword rose to meet it, caught it, turned aside, and broke off a foot from the hilt. The paladin staggered backwards with the force of the blow.
He held the broken jagged piece out in front of him, considered it a moment, then hurled it straight at Delondeur’s face.
Had it been an axe, a knife, something weighted for the throw, it might have worked, taken an eye, or sunk in so deep as to end the fight.
Instead, flying awkwardly, it nicked Lionel’s cheek and drew a thick line of blood beneath his eye, but no more.
Lionel smiled, raising his sword in a mock salute. “Are you ready to die, Coldbourne?”
“My name,” Allystaire grated out, “is Allystaire Stillbright.” He felt the Goddess’s song thrum in his limbs, aching for a release.
Trip. Then move to your right. Torvul’s voice sounded in his head. Allystaire didn’t know where the dwarf was, but he didn’t stop to ask.
Lionel charged, his sword raised above his head, preparing a two-handed cut that would split Allystaire down the middle.
He took the dwarf’s advice and threw himself to the ground, then rolled to his right.
Lionel was moving too fast to adjust, and his arms were already swinging. The sword sizzled into the earth once more, sinking the first foot of its length into the ground.
And it stuck. Lionel tugged at it with both hands, but the sword didn’t move.
Now. Now! Torvul’s thoughts raged. Allystaire sprang to his feet and launched himself at the Baron in a flying tackle, pushing off from his good leg.
The clash of their armor was ear-splitting, like two giants made of metal thrown against one another. Allystaire felt Lionel’s hands tear free from the sword, and for a moment, the shock of his attack combined with the strength of the Goddess’s Gift kept his enemy’s arms pinned to his side.
Allystaire was wearing a helm. Lionel was not. So when Allystaire slammed his head into the Baron’s face, he felt his own nose crunch beneath his nose-guard, and half of Delondeur’s face cave in.
The fight was not gone out of Lionel yet, though. Allystaire scrambled to his knees overtop of the Baron. Their hands fought for purchase and position, but Allystaire’s were more purposeful. Lionel thrashed madly, wildly, with the pain of the blow he’d taken.
Allystaire smiled grimly as he realized that his left hand had brushed Lionel’s throat. Still the Baron’s arms crashed against him. The blows were painful. Ribs cracked. But what was pain?
Pain was merely a cost. He would pay it. When it came to killing the man Lionel Delondeur had become, the paladin would pay it and smile.
This, Allystaire knew, was part of the difference between them.
“I am willing to be hurt for them, Lionel,” he roared. One of the Baron’s hands wrapped around his wrist, but Allystaire focused, even as his bones grated. “I am willing to suffer for them.” An errant fist brushed his jaw but he ignored it, finally seating the heel of his left hand high on Delondeur’s chest, crumpling some of the grim armor beneath it and gaining the leverage he needed. Allystaire drew back his right hand and smashed his curled fist into Delondeur’s face, shattering the baron’s jaw. Lionel’s arms fell weakly to the ground.
“You take strength from them, Lionel,” the paladin bellowed. “Mine is given for them.”
His right fist crashed again into the Baron’s face. Lionel’s armored form stilled. Again. His skull crumbled beneath the blow.
The Arm of the Mother stood up on his one good leg, staring at the ruined face of the dead Baron Delondeur beneath him. “It did not have to be this way. You were a better man than this, once.” Allystaire looked to the line of Delondeur spearmen then, who eyed him uncertainly. Perhaps one in three hefted their weapons.
From behind him, two voices cried out, each assuming an air of command. “HOLD, men of Delondeur! By order of your Baron,” said one, “Baroness,” the other. Allystaire turned to see Chaddin and Landen, the latter’s hands bound in front of her, both rushing down the stairs.
Then the world suddenly exploded in a rush of sickly yellow light.