THE BERSERKER

Zachary spun round and drove the sword through his opponent’s midsection. The soldier’s mouth fell open as if to scream, but only blood gushed out. Zachary tilted the sword, and the man slid off it and crumpled to the ground. He wiped the blade clean on the man’s tunic, then paused, panting hard, but alert, his senses heightened. Sounds of clashes came to him through the woods, the clang of metal, shouts and cries, the crack of branches. He glanced skyward and through the spaces between the limbs of evergreens he saw that clouds encroached on the stars. He wiped chill sweat from his brow.

The fighting around him waned as his companions subdued the enemy, but there was the sound of more clashes deeper in the forest, so he and his group ran again, leaping logs, thrashing through deadfall, and weaving between tree trunks. Now and again they came across bodies, either that of their foe wearing buckskin, or of their own. They found traps that had been tripped—nets hanging limp from trees, bear traps that clasped stout limbs, and pits with their camouflage of branches removed. They ran past watch fires guarded by only the dead.

Zachary’s Weapons stayed right with him. Rennard ranged farther out, and Fiori disappeared in and out of the shadows. Other members of the River Unit blended into the night wood and were all but silent. He wondered how Enver fared when he stumbled across a Second Empire corpse with a white Eletian arrow in one eye.

They came upon another knot of fighting. The Weapons cleared the path ahead with swift and deadly strikes, but not to be left out, Zachary rammed his buckler into the face of one foe and engaged another with his sword. The warriors of Second Empire had not the prowess with a blade that a swordmaster possessed, but some were better than others. This one was not. Zachary did not play at showing his superior skill, but killed expediently and moved on to the next.

Swordplay in the thick of the forest was not always easy. The sword or his arm got caught up in grasping branches. Maintaining solid footing proved a challenge on the uneven terrain, and tree roots were apt to trip one at a crucial moment. The darkness sent some thrusts askew, lending a dangerous unpredictability to bouts. He rounded on an assailant creeping up on him and bashed the pommel of his sword into the man’s gut.

When they quashed this knot of the enemy, they paused again to catch their breath, the air thick with the foul stench of blood and rent bowels, and the cold cutting edge of winter. The eaves of the forest groaned in an unruly prelude to a storm.

“Weather moving in,” Donal muttered.

“How far to the keep?” Zachary asked.

“I have lost track,” Fiori said. “Lieutenant?”

Rennard was about to answer when a wild gust of wind bent and whipped the trees around and almost knocked Zachary off his feet. Pine cones and branches pelted them. The wind grasped his breath, and he felt the air being drawn from his lungs. The wind hungered, sought sustenance. Undergrowth shriveled right before his eyes and birds fell dead from their perches in the trees. The wind died as suddenly as it had surged, and pine needles drifted softly down on them.

“What in the name of the gods?” Rennard said.

“That was no natural wind,” Zachary said.

“You’re right,” Fiori replied. “Not natural. I wonder what Grandmother is up to. She was devising some major spell during my time at the keep. She called it her ‘great working.’”

“I remember. The Aeon Iire, the seal. She must have found it.”

The others had heard of this aspect of Grandmother’s pursuits during their strategy meetings, so they were not surprised, but they looked disturbed.

“There can’t really be a portal to the hells, can there?” Rennard asked.

“It is in our lore,” Fiori replied. “If it is real, one can see how it would be of interest to Grandmother. As for her use of magic, it is known.”

“Yes, we will proceed with this in mind,” Zachary said, “though I don’t know what we can do to counter the magic. It could all be a big trap, and not just for Westrion’s avatar.”

“It’s all very strange,” Rennard muttered.

Zachary understood. Though he had become accustomed to the concept of magic actively affecting his world, he had also been exposed to it more than most, and not just around his Green Riders. The average Sacoridian was less likely to have encountered magic even as it became more present in the world. As for an avatar of the death god? Even he had a hard time swallowing that bit.

“With respect, sire,” Donal said, “I think we should return you to—”

“We will do no such thing,” he interrupted. “Captain Treman needs all the swords he can muster. Now, we had better move on before the rear guard runs into us.”

Donal looked ready to protest, but Zachary strode off. The others hurried so they would not be left behind.

•   •   •

“What’s that?” Fiori asked. He gestured toward a flickering light some distance off to their side.

“Let us see,” Zachary replied.

Donal put his hand up to stop him. “Let us investigate first.”

Donal and Rye moved through the underbrush, and in their black uniforms, they vanished into the night. Only the rustling of branches minutes later announced the return of one of them.

“Donal says for you to come,” Rye said.

They followed him toward the light, which turned out to be a lantern sitting on a rock, its flame weak in the heaviness of the dark. Bodies of half a dozen Second Empire soldiers lay about on the ground.

“We’ve a mystery,” Donal said.

Zachary saw what he meant soon enough. The bodies lay unmarked by any violence, not a drop of blood on them, but their faces were contorted in some agony.

“There is more,” Donal said. He took the lantern and passed it over a hole in the ground. “It’s a Second Empire trap.”

The lantern light gleamed off the eyes and fangs of groundmites crumpled at the bottom of the hole, a deep pit. There was no evidence of obvious violence upon them, either, other than the fact that they had fallen into the pit. It was not deep enough to have killed them, just to contain them. In the tangle of limbs was one who looked more prominent than the others with finer furs and necklaces of teeth. On the whole, these ’mites looked better fed than one would expect after so long and hard a winter.

“A mystery, truly,” Zachary said, wondering if these were the same ones that had brought him to Grandmother, “but one we cannot solve right now, for we must go on.”

They left the lantern to mark the pit so others would not fall in it, and before they left, he noticed that much of the vegetation surrounding the bodies and pit appeared to be dead—no needles on the evergreens, the underbrush dry and brittle.

•   •   •

They caught up with the fighting and found, with dismay, the River Unit was being pushed back. Two soldiers rushed toward them with a wounded man between them. Zachary realized with a start that it was Treman, blood staining the front of his tunic.

“Stop, stop,” the captain told his soldiers. “Put me down.”

“Captain,” Zachary said, striding up to him as he was lowered to the ground.

“Sire . . . Met a stronger defense than expected. Our front rank . . . falling apart. Rennard, you must . . .” His head lolled to the side. Either he’d fallen unconscious, or was dead. Rennard blanched.

Zachary wasted no time. He grabbed Rennard’s shoulder. “Come, we must reverse the situation.”

Donal tried to convince him to stay back, but he did not listen. Rennard looked shaken, and he practically dragged the young man with him. Donal and Rye helped form a wedge, with Fiori falling in behind, to force their way through melees in an attempt to reach the front. Even with his eyes well-adjusted to the night, it was not easy to distinguish between friend and foe.

Metal rang against metal, there was the splash of blood, the cries of the wounded and dying, but as Zachary surged forward, he became singularly focused on reaching the front. His sword took on a life of its own, a scythe to reap a bloody harvest. The killing joy came upon him. There were no politics to restrain him, no betrayals to feed doubt. He harnessed all the unexpressed rage that had built up over the years, at the helplessness he’d felt during his captivity, and used it against the enemy.

Second Empire had little in the way of armor, and he threw himself against its warriors. They were too easy to kill, like bugs to be squashed. A thrust to the gut here, the razor’s edge hewing off a head there. He gloried in the spray of their life’s blood upon him.

His Weapons fought to keep up with him. He’d lost track of Rennard and Fiori, somewhere behind him, but felt the troops rallying around him, following his example, pressing back the enemy.

A spiked cudgel descended toward him and he sheared off the arm of the warrior who wielded it. He did not pause to provide the killing blow, but moved on to the next, and the next, stepping on and over bodies to reach the enemy. No longer a man governed by reason or empathy, he was a force of skill, strength, and bloodlust. If any steel touched him, he did not feel it. If anyone stepped in his path, he cut them down.

He soon broke into a clearing, his nostrils flared, and he searched vainly for another enemy to slay. The soldiers of the River Unit flooded in around him, and he raised his sword high above his head.

“Forward! Forward till the enemy falls!”

His words were greeted with a great shout from his soldiers, and they surged after him.

He paused when he felt a cold pinprick upon the heat of his cheek. And then another. He blinked and turned his face up toward the sky as snowflakes sifted between the limbs of trees, drifting this way and that as air currents carried them on their wayward course. For a brief moment, Zachary Hillander came back to himself, remembering how, as a small boy, he took joy at first snowfalls, at the games he would play, his cheeks ruddy and mittens soaked through from building armies of snow soldiers. It was a brief moment only, before he once more scented death on the air and the fury took him again.