HARBINGER

“Looks like gruel again,” Tegan told Karigan, craning her neck to watch as those ahead of them in line received ladlesful of the stuff. “Big surprise.”

Keeping an army supplied and fed was an enormous challenge, so indeed, Karigan thought, no surprise. The line shuffled forward, everyone with their bowls in hand. Her thoughts kept going back to the scene in Zachary’s tent and the look in his eyes before she’d left. She shook her head, trying not to think of it. It was not easy, but then a conversation going on behind her between an old-timer and a couple of young recruits caught her attention.

“It was third watch last night,” the old-timer was saying, “black as pitch with the rain, and I demanded they show themselves, but no one answered. There were the hoofbeats of just one horse. I strained my eyes, I did, and then saw him out on the field where we’d battled only two hours earlier. Blacker than night, he was, and no rain touched him. A breeze flowed around him. He weren’t any horse of ours, and not any of theirs.” Then he whispered, “He weren’t of our world.”

The young soldiers gasped.

“Aye,” the old-timer said, nodding, “the harbinger of strife and battle himself. But then, who else would it be?”

Some other soldiers scoffed at his story, but Karigan did not.

When they reached the big kettles, her attention turned to receiving her portion of gruel and a wedge of pan bread. She heard no more of the old-timer’s story. Even if he’d not seen Salvistar and was just putting one over on the youngsters, she knew the story to be more than plausible. She’d had, after all, personal experience with the death god’s steed, and this was a battlefield.

Later, after she’d turned in for the night, she burrowed under her blankets, feeling restless on the eve of battle. Even as she twisted and turned, a compulsion came on her to rise, and before she knew it, she was outside the tent, the ground soft and wet beneath her bare feet. The rain had stopped, but a mist hung in the air. The camp was silent, but for her own breaths that curled off her lips in a wisp of steam.

She wrapped her arms around herself against the chill and passed among the still tents as though in a dream. Perhaps it was a dream. She wasn’t sure. As she walked, not a soul stirred, and even the land lay quiescent. Crickets and night creatures kept silent, and no breeze whispered among the boughs of trees. Sentries did not appear to challenge her; no one kept watch.

She passed between stakes driven into the ground with sharpened ends pointed outward as a defense against enemy cavalry. On the field of battle, not all the dead had been recovered by their respective sides. Some lay slumped where they fell, their flesh pale in the dark, others stretched out as though they only slept. She stepped around helms that still contained severed heads securely strapped in.

Luminous, transparent figures moved about the battlefield. A ghostly sergeant silently yelled at his dead soldiers. A warrior attempted to lift his sword from the ground over and over, but the sword was of the living world and he was not.

Some of the spirits began to move with purpose in the same direction. She followed, and they were joined by more. A young drummer boy strode by her, an eager expression on his face.

From the silence came the pounding of hoofbeats and she knew it to be Salvistar. He galloped across the battlefield, the wind that rolled off him collecting spirits. Fluid and powerful, he surged through the night.

He was not alone.

On a knoll a short distance away stood a monumental figure, man-shaped, his raptor’s visage and wings limned by ghostlight. Westrion, god of death, staff in hand, surveyed the harvest of souls. Those spirits not swept in the wind of Salvistar’s passing were subtly directed by Westrion, whether by a nod of his head or a gesture, and either drifted upward toward the heavens, or sank into the ground. Karigan, as avatar, had wielded such power, but she did not join in the dispersal of souls now.

After a time, Westrion seemed to note her presence with a glimmer of light in his eye. Then he extended his great wings and, with a few powerful strokes, ascended into the air and flew away.

Salvistar trotted up to her with a snort and toss of his head. His hide absorbed the night, and his mane and tail flowed in no Earthly breeze. He presented his side to her, an invitation. Curious, she accepted and vaulted onto his bare back. His flesh was neither warm nor cold, and it was as though she sat upon the air, but then she realized, when she looked at her hands, that she, like the souls Westrion had collected, was translucent, not present corporeally. Nor was she clad in the armor of the avatar as she had been the other times she’d ridden Salvistar. She did not feel Westrion’s presence within her.

Salvistar picked his way into the middle of the battlefield among the corpses of people and horses. Equipment—bits of armor and weapons, and the small items carried with them, such as spoons, tokens of luck, waterskins—were scattered on the ground. Arrows impaled the earth and bodies in uneven thickets.

A celestial light gleamed on a figure who strode across the battlefield. She wore bronze scaled armor and a helm of ancient design, and carried spear and shield. A short, double-edged infantry sword was girded on her right hip. She was, Karigan knew, without knowing how she knew, Valora, goddess of war. Her hounds, Soro, Heth, and Bella, ranged around her. Often she was depicted riding in a war chariot across the field of battle, exulting in the carnage, or among the stars, the home of the gods.

She was not alone. Lodan appeared in their long robes. Neither male nor female, Lodan united both as one and symbolized balance in their role as the goddai of justice. Lodan represented the rights and wrongs of the universe, the laws as handed down to humanity. They bore a scroll tucked beneath their arm in which the laws were inscribed.

Karigan understood why Westrion and Valora would visit a battlefield, but not why it had drawn Lodan who presided over the court of the heavens.

Valora strode toward Lodan and joined them in the middle of the field. Westrion descended from the heavens and alighted on the ground beside them, and folded his wings back.

“Has your harvest been acceptable, brother?” Valora asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

They spoke a language that had lived beyond time and was no longer known in the world of mortals, not even to the moon priests, and yet Karigan understood. Some thread of her avatar nature must be active for her to comprehend their speech.

“It will be even better on the morrow,” Valora said.

“The two sides are nearly evenly distributed,” Lodan said with approval.

“In which case,” Valora replied, “it will come down to strategy and whose is best.”

They did not seem to perceive Karigan’s presence as she sat upon Salvistar eavesdropping. Except for Westrion, she thought. He was why she was there, and it was he who must be shielding her from the others.

Two more gods arrived, and Karigan felt a thrill, for they were Aeryc and Aeryon, the twins. Aeryon blazed with such light that she was difficult to look upon. A corona of flame seemed to flare, twist, and arc around her. Aeryc, the moonman lover of Queen Laurelyn in song and legend, remained in shadow but for the side of him that faced his sister. They were sun and moon come to Earth.

They spoke of the impending battle, debated who had the advantage, the better strategy, the better fighters, and she wondered again why Aeryc and Aeryon, and Lodan, too, cared enough about this battle to descend from the celestial realm to concern themselves with warring mortals.

“Our mortals must claim victory,” Aeryon said, “lest we lose dominance to the one god.”

And that was when Karigan understood. This battle didn’t have life and death consequences just in the mortal realm, but also for that of the gods. If Sacoridia lost, the god of the Arcosian conquerors would take precedence. Second Empire would not stand for the defeated Sacoridians to continue to pay homage to their gods. Clergy would be persecuted, chapels of the moon destroyed or converted to houses of worship for the one god. Those caught worshipping the old gods would be severely punished. Without supplicants to provide the old gods with sustenance in the form of belief, prayers, offerings, and rituals, they would diminish and fade from the world.

The flame that was Aeryon flared, and Karigan felt the heat of her regard across the space that separated them.

“Salvistar,” the goddess said, “do come forward and show us who has been spying upon us.”

Her voice carried the power and weight of an order, and Salvistar swished his tail and carried Karigan before the gods. She looked wildly about for a way to escape, but she could not move, no matter how much she willed it.

“It is a mortal,” Lodan exclaimed in surprise.

“A warrior,” Valora added, an unfriendly smile on her face. Karigan could not meet her gaze, for her eyes were filled with turmoil, violence, hate, and the maggots of the dead.

“How has this spy come among us?” Aeryc asked. He did not burn bright like his sister, and was visible only where her light illuminated him.

“Mortals who look upon us must have their eyes burned out,” Aeryon told her, “and be made mute so it cannot be spoken of.”

“The mortal is my servant,” Westrion said in his rumbling, deep voice. It was then that Karigan realized his raptor’s visage was more a headdress and mask than a bird’s head, as she saw through to more human, chiseled features beneath.

“Even the servant of Westrion is not permitted, unless in the guise of avatar,” Lodan said.

“This one shall remain unharmed,” Westrion said. He gazed at Aeryc. “Do you not see the light of Laurelyn on her?”

There was a ripple of emotion on Aeryc’s face, the part that did not fall into shadow. “I do,” he said.

“You, sister,” Westrion said to Valora, “see the warrior she is. Much would have been lost to us had she not been one. How much will be lost if she is blinded and made mute?”

“Verily,” she replied, “this one must continue to fight. She brings courage to battle, and death to her foes.”

He turned next to Aeryon. “My servant has driven back the hordes of the damned on two occasions and repaired the seals through which they transgressed. The first includes the one located in the cavern where we were first envisioned and described by mortals. Had she not, this world would be overcome by the dark, the mortals feasted upon, and no one left to worship us.”

Through her link as avatar, Karigan understood him to mean the caverns beneath the royal tombs. It was a memory that Westrion had originally suppressed in her but later restored. Demonkind had nearly escaped their hell and would have brought that hell to the living Earth, but in her role as the avatar that first time, she had prevented the end of the world.

Aeryon did not speak for a while. The corona of flame expanded and receded and, at times, roared with turbulent radiance.

“What are you called, mortal?” she asked Karigan.

“Karigan G’ladheon. I am a Green Rider.”

Again, the long consideration. Then, “I see you can speak with the dead, and you’ve the ability to cross thresholds. This is why my brother favors you. I also see you have been marked by the Mirari, who are powerful tricksters. The Eletians favor you, as well. You are a very unusual mortal creature. Lodan, what say you?”

“The weight of justice carries in favor of this human.” The goddai unrolled their scroll and examined it. “Yes. The qualities extolled preserve this one from immediate maiming. But it must not speak of this meeting.”

“On my honor,” Karigan said, “I will not.”

“So mote shall it be,” Aeryon declared. “Be warned, however, mortal, I now know your name and your soul, and none go unpunished who have seen our aspect. You will continue with your life for now and serve my brother, Westrion, as he sees fit. Your punishment is what I see in your future, and it is that you will know true suffering.”