Fredric
Orrush Khatak, North Kell
There was no hope of concealing their approach. The road cut a straight tract between the steep mounds of the Barrowdales, wide enough for four hundred men or for two hundred heavy knights riding abreast at a hard gallop. The entirety of Kell’s surviving knighthood, all that could be drawn from the four corners of the barony in the time at hand and spread out in ten gleaming lines.
A mile or two on, the body of the Uthuk Y’llan began. Where it ended, Fredric could not say or guess. It spilled over the surrounding hillsides, vanished down the neck of the valley. Their campfires were like moonlight reflecting off waves at sea. Snatches of frenzied music, the Uthuk having an apparent preference for percussive instruments and shrieking horns, rose above the churn of voice and fury but there was no rhyme or meter to it that Fredric could catch. It was an impossible number, defying comprehensions, and Fredric found it surprisingly easy to avoid dwelling on the insanity of attacking such a host head on. Above them reared the Gate.
It was impossible to look at for too long before one’s heart began to beat overfast and one’s eyes waver. A shadow and a malice leaked out of it, something that made even the steel-tempered Knights of the Yeron that flanked him turn irritable. What Fredric saw when he looked he could not describe: treachery, grief, a land engulfed, and afterwards he took pains to look anywhere but at the colossal monument they cantered towards. Only the supposed hero, sheathed in the golden halo of her rune-magic, seemed unaffected. Looking at her, however, even for a moment, brought him no ease. The knights were more afraid of her than they were of the Uthuk Y’llan.
Fredric did not know what to think of her.
“I hope when this is over you will tell me the story of how you came by that,” he said, over the pound of hooves, refusing still to look her in the eye. “I am no scholar, but I have read something of rune lore. I have never seen a design quite like that one in your hand, nor heard of a rune being written into the body of a living person.”
“I dream of it sometimes,” said Andira, looking down into her bare palm. “I seldom remember it when I wake, and it comes to me less now than it used too. I do not know what that means, if it means anything at all.”
“They must see that we are coming by now,” yelled the nearest of the Knights of the Yeron. Her name was Sathe Caldergart. The electors of the Order had recognized her seniority for the purposes of the battle but had yet to ordain her properly as grandmarshal, and thus she retained her old rank of lance marshal and had refused the honor of wielding Unkindness even in Kell’s dire need. She rode with her visor up, revealing graying hair, a face cleft by a diagonal scar and with one eye covered by a felt patch. The wind practically screamed through her spurs, through the golden wings of her helmet and the elaborate flutes in her armor. “Why don’t they react?”
“They are a barbarian horde,” Fredric shouted back. “To my eye they are overconfident in their strength. Their focus is on their unholy ritual instead of on the west road.”
Fredric felt himself flush with excitement. Here was a chance at real battle. A purer battle. There were no walls to fight over, no civilians to fear for, just two thousand of his best and noblest, and a single charge for death and glory. He allowed himself a grim smile inside his visored helm. If the Uthuk thought themselves triumphant over Kellar then he would be at the forefront of a rude awakening. He would break the Swarm under the lance and hooves of his knights, and all without a single sword in aid from Dhernas or Forthyn or the corsair soldiers of his mother-in-law’s island fiefs. He would carry this day, and it would be his name they hailed when next the lords met in Archaut.
“Do not be taken in,” Andira warned, reading his thoughts even through the steel of his helm. “Be ruthless, but be cold. Pride and ambition are the domain of the Ynfernael. Hatred feeds it, in thought or in deed, and regardless of righteousness. The Uthuk Y’llan will no doubt feel differently, but to the demon king of the Ynfernael it does not matter who bleeds in the greatest number today.”
Dame Caldergart scoffed. “This is not a joust, lady. Would you have us blunt our lances too?”
Andira regarded her coldly. The knight shrank visibly from her light. “I would have you strike with true purpose, strike your lance cleanly through the heart of the Swarm and do not allow yourself to be distracted. However sincerely the Uthuk Y’llan invite you to slaughter. Strike for the witches that command this horde and strike hard, slay them before they can conjure the demon king from his ivory palace in the Ynfernael. Fail in that and this battle will become one that is wholly beyond you.”
“I will not fail,” said Fredric, as though he had suddenly become the itinerant knight and she the baroness.
“I will hold you to that.”
“You are certain that the summoning of the demon king is their intention?” said Fredric.
“I am,” said Andira. “Nothing less than the massacre of a nation would be enough to herald the return of Baelziffar to Mennara.”
Again Fredric felt himself grow angry, but it was a purer hate, arising this time from within himself rather than from the ire washing out from the Gate.
The Locust Swarm seemed without number. His knights would deliver an almighty cull, but he had read enough yellowed treatises, and experienced enough battle of his own, to know that a host as great as this one would eventually bog down even the mightiest cavalry and overwhelm them. They needed infantry to secure a position. They needed archers to harry the Uthuk, to hem their flanks, to pin their own cavalry and demon flyers and support the knights’ attack. They needed what he had implicitly known he had been lacking since he had looked out from the walls of Castle Kellar and wondered at his barony’s normalcy on the eve of war and that was more time and more soldiers. Andira did not care. She said as much, and Fredric could only admire her bluntness.
They would win this battle now or they would lose it forever.
“We will prevail!” he yelled, as much to bolster his own courage as to inspire his knights.
“My powers will be needed to make us a path to the Gate,” said Andira. “For your own good and the good of all, it is on you to be sure that no sword or arrow can strike me down until the queen of the swarm lies broken under the bodies of her sisters.”
“For Litiana.” He nodded to Sathe Caldergart, who in turn drew her horse closer to Andira’s. He drew his sword and held it aloft to ride amidst the streaming banners of Kell. The slow leach of the Ynfernael winked crimson along its golden edge, the natural magicks of the dragons spitting violently in competition from the Rune of Fate beaten into the base of the blade.
“We are the Shield of Daqan!” he roared. “We face the fire and the shadow, emblems bared and proud, daring death to strike us as it may and knowing no fear. We do not ask for more than this. We do not question. We do it because for two thousand years we always have. We are the first people. We have fought off all the monsters of this world and we have won. We will fight them again today because it is not in our blood to lose. We are the Shield of Daqan. We are Kellar!”
His warriors responded in like voice, a triumph of fierce shouts and strident horns. “Kellar!” they yelled back “Dragonslayer!”
“There is no retreat!” Fredric cried. “I for one will not die an old man in Dhernas.”
The knights laughed as they couched their lances. Two thousand of them. It sounded like a forest falling, trampled under a stampede of avenging hooves.