4

The nearest tribes of Sem barbarians made their home in the wildlands beyond the black line of the Kes. As long as they stayed on their side of the river, and the keep inhabitants kept a close watch out for raiding parties, there was little danger—but tonight, after the commotion of recent events, the guards were not watching where they should have been.

Had that demon on his mountaintop been observing Stafolos Keep since the beginning of the night, and had he eyes that could see both inside and outside its cold stone walls, he would have seen countless small figures slipping into the black flow of the Kes, sliding down the black riverbank that looked out on the wildlands of Nospherus, and swimming soundlessly toward the other side, throughout the night.

The tiny figures looked much like monkeys; judged by their height they could scarcely be more than children or wood-sprites. Yet they braved the dark waters where few would venture, where many horrible things were known to lurk— demonfish, water snakes, and worse. Unlike their foes, the Sem were friends of the river; they had tamed its terrors and knew its secrets. One after another, the small shadows sank into the great stream until only their black heads were showing above its surface.

The Sem had tried many times in the past to attack the keep and drive back the human soldiers of the Middle Country that had violated their lands, yet every attempt had ended in failure, for the Mongauli had been able to catch the barbarian forces divided on either side of the river. With the Kes blocking their route of escape, the Sem who were stuck on the near side were soon outnumbered by the keep guards and slaughtered.

But this time, the small dark forms crossing the river in wave after wave late into the night came in far greater numbers than had ever been seen this close to the keep. They crossed without a sound, upriver and downriver, emerging from the current and running into the trees until they filled every inch of the Taloswood and those parts of the Roodwood that had not been destroyed by the fire. And still they kept coming.

It was just before dawn, and the larger part of the Sem forces had succeeded in crossing the river, when suddenly torches lit all around the rise and a great commotion began inside the keep walls.

The Sem chieftains grew anxious. Orders flew down the ranks, and high-pitched chattering arose from all sides. Then the scouts at the very front of the lines heard voices coming from the keep.

“Someone’s jumped from the tower into the Kes!”

“The Valachian’s escaped!”

More orders passed down the lines, and the chattering ceased. Those that were under the cliff beneath the fortress pressed their bodies as flat as they could against the rocks, and those in the woods lay low and quiet, and they waited for the keep to quiet down again.

But the keep did not go back to sleep. Guards rushed to the battlements and set torches on every wall facing the Kes. Certainly Jarn, the wizened fate-weaver, with his hundred ears and single never-sleeping eye, was in a fickle and mischievous mood tonight. The torches cast their combined light down the cliff, making the surface of the Kes glitter as if the sun itself shone upon it, and the Sem at the cliff’s foot grew greasy with the sweat of fear, flattening themselves to the ground as the venomous lizard does in the midday heat.

Yet Jarn, for his own secret reasons, did not forsake the Sem this night. Had the keep guards merely placed torches by the river, a sharp-eyed sentry would surely have seen the invaders before long—but the soldiers had also built huge watch fires in the outer courtyard to stave off the foredawn cold. The light from the larger blazes was enough to turn the sky red, and fill the keep grounds with the brightness of midday, blinding the eyes of the keep watchers.

“Prepare the boats! We will search the river at dawn!” shouted a captain amidst the troops that huddled around the fires.

“Ach, that runaway’s fish food by now, he is,” came a soldier’s voice.

“The count’s orders are to find his body, and that is what we will do!” the captain replied.

The sky above the keep glowed ruddy orange, deepening the darkness of the woods and the black river, which concealed great numbers of Sem from the watchers at the keep. The unexpected alarm had given the chieftains pause, but the dark of night was their greatest ally, and they knew that if they held their attack until dawn, the advantage in battle would shift in the keep’s favor. Quickly the wildling leaders gathered and conversed in low voices, then spread back out among their troops, giving orders to the warriors of each of the tribes.

At last the leader of all the tribes raised his hand and snapped his horsetail whip in the cool night air. Before the crack had finished echoing off the cliff side, the Sem nearest to the keep had begun to nimbly climb the fortress walls that faced the Kes, while those hiding in the forest quietly closed the distance between themselves and the battlements.

In the outer courtyard, flasks of wine and mead were passed around the watch fires as the men jested and slowly became drunk. No rafts or boats would be sent out until dawn, they said between bites of vasya fruit, their hands stained red from peeling the rough skins—and why bother hurrying to find someone who had jumped into the Kes? If not the rocks, then one of the water spirits would make a floating corpse out of him soon enough! Not one among them cared to go out into the Marches at night, much less down the black waters of the Kes just to find an escaped mercenary. Here, surrounded by the high keep walls, they felt secure; warming their faces by the fires, drinking from the flask as the mead was passed from hand to hand, they let their watchfulness fade into drowsy contentment.

Suddenly one guard stood, his eyes wide open, looking beyond the fires. He seemed about to shout something, but before a sound escaped his lips he fell to the ground, scratching at his throat. The startled soldier beside him moved to help, lifting him from the ground, and saw that a tiny poison-coated Sem arrow protruded from the dying man’s neck.

The soldiers nearby hurriedly turned to face the outer wall, only to see fur-covered shapes like monkeys springing out of the darkness. Demon fangs jutted out of faces stained red with the juice of the me’ea fruit, and a potent odor wafted off hairy bodies garbed in ragged wolf skins. A guard began to scream, but a heavy stone axe caught him in the head, cracking his skull in two and spraying its contents over the nearest of the watch fires.

For a moment the soldiers flew into chaos. The night was full of Sem, streaming over the keep walls, leaping down into the courtyard. The first wave of wildlings launched their arrows from atop the walls, felling scores of soldiers, then drew their stone axes and charged.

But the Gohran soldiers recovered quickly. They were awake and in armor, ready to hunt the escaped mercenary, and they had not left their swords by their beds. Battered out of their initial shock, they flew into a rage and drew their swords, slicing into the swarm of monkey-like fiends.

The Sem had the advantage of numbers and surprise, but their size was so inferior to that of the average foot soldier that they were forced to fight in groups against each single foe, like a crowd of mad children around a man. Each of the Gohran soldiers was confronted by at least half a dozen of the human monkeys leaping from every side.

In the midst of the battle, a lone black knight swung his broadsword from side to side, sweeping away the creatures in front of him, making his way to the bell tower and up its winding stair. Reaching the top, he stood tall, braving a hail of poisoned arrows, and began ringing the bell to warn the keep of the attack.

“Sem in the night! The keep is under attack!”

Kang, kang, kang, kang! The bell rang furiously as the knight yelled out the alarm—until a stone axe fell on his head and an arrow pierced his right eye. His body toppled off the tower and fell to the cobblestones below where the black knights were desperately trying to wrest control of the battle from the Sem. Forming a long line, they fought with their backs to the doors to the tower and the inner keep; but the Sem fought bravely too, breaking through the knights’ defenses, surging toward the buildings. Each side pushed against the other, and the line of battle wavered, now out into the courtyard, now back toward the tower.

Out in the night, a cry of “Eeya eeya eeay!” rose from the leaders of the Sem lying in the woods, and they began to swarm along the narrow road up to the front of the keep. Those Gohran soldiers still on the outer wall barred the gate and raised the bridge at the top of the path, but with more than half of their number fighting for their lives in the courtyard, they were too few to take advantage of their position. What few arrows and rocks they could shoot down on their foes hardly seemed to make an impact on the massive numbers of Sem storming up the path.

Behind them in the outer courtyard, the tiny wildlings were slowly but surely pushing the keep defenders back. The soldiers there now fought with their backs up against the inner gates, slashing right and left at their small and agile foes; they began to realize that they would soon be overwhelmed by the numerous Sem, who swarmed both inside and outside the keep.

The captain of the fourth squad, plume streaming behind his black helm, saw five young knights, freshly arrived from Torus, fall with poison arrows stuck in their cheeks and eyes.

‘’Keep your heads down! Lower your faceplates, and look away from the outer walls!” the captain shouted, swinging his longsword to sweep the little demons off the battlement where they stood with arrows nocked. Just then, one of the wildling monkeys jumped down onto his back with stone axe raised. A nearby knight yelled a warning and pushed toward them. The Sem jumped clear and swung his axe to meet the approaching warrior, breaking the knight’s black helm in two. The man fell to the ground and the Sem warrior scrambled for the wall, but the captain caught him before he reached it, swinging his longsword to cut the little fiend’s head clear from its body.

The captain of the third squad, which was defending the inner gate, risked a look over at his brothers fighting under a hail of arrows by the keep walls.“We’re as good as dead if we stay down here!” he shouted, and turned to a nearby knight.“You, guard this gate for just a second—I’m going to open it and run inside to get orders from the count—one second is all I need!”

“Yes, captain!” came the knight’s reply, his voice strained with fear and excitement. The captain heard the youthful voice coming from under his helm and recognized Orro of Torus— the very soldier who had only just escaped execution in the dungeon arena earlier that day.

“On my count!” said the captain, slapping Orro on the shoulder and laughing grimly. “One… two… three!”

The captain turned his back to the fray and unlocked the inner gate. The Sem surged toward him, blocked at the last moment by Orro, who rushed in front of the opening and began to fight for his life. He was good; his sword was soon slick with blood, and with much jabbing and slashing he was able to hold them back from the open door. The captain disappeared into the dark and quiet of the inner keep, the door slamming behind him with a loud clang.

The Gohran soldiers resumed their formation and fought on, yet there seemed no end to their foes. The Sem were like the giant Nospherus, whose thousand heads grow back as soon as they are cut; no matter how many fell, more came to take their place. The Gohran soldiers battled fiercely, though the arrows and axes of their enemy were slowly taking their toll. It was this indomitable strength that had brought the knights of the small hinterlands country of Gohra from their humble beginnings in the Marches to the streets of the crystal city, to the seat of power of the Middle Country. Even when death was certain, they fought bravely for their country’s pride and honor.

More and more arrows rained into the courtyard, and the bodies of the dead fell into the watch fires, sending eerily beautiful golden sparks dancing up into the sky. The screams and the war cries filled the soldiers’ ears, and the light of the watch fires reflected off their blades—the fires were blazing hot now, flames searing the sky, their light revealing swarms of Sem flooding into the keep. The silhouettes of the towers floated above the men fighting for their lives like a strange mirage painted in flickering orange and gold. It looked as though the keep itself were broken and kneeling, sending a death-cry that echoed across the Marches.

“Aiee, eeya, aiee!”

The Sem chieftains raised their fists and gave a signal. A line of Sem archers let loose a volley of arrows streaming tails of fire, the missiles arcing high over the keep walls. Most clattered into the stones of the fortress and fell to the ground, but others struck wooden doors and posts, where they splattered and spread flame to the buildings. The chieftains gave the signal again, and another volley and then another of the fiery arrows flew over the heads of the embattled soldiers like a storm of shooting stars and disappeared into the inner keep.

Now the whole of the keep was lit with flames even brighter than those of the watch fires. This put the defenders at an even greater disadvantage, deepening the darkness beyond from which their attackers could fire with impunity. More Gohran soldiers fell with Sem arrows bristling from their necks.

“We’re losing the main gate!”

The pathetic cry went up, and the soldiers strived to move toward the gate, but they were nearly buried in Sem on all sides, and they were soon forced to abandon their brothers to fight for their very lives. Their faces grew rigid with fatigue and their knees began to buckle under the weight of their armor; the Sem swarmed over them like ants on an elephant’s leg, pulling them to the ground where their axes could reach the soldiers’ unprotected throats.

Orro of Torus was still standing, fighting for his life with the other knights who defended the inner courtyard. He staggered—he had taken a light wound—but then he saw the sky in the east growing gradually lighter, beautiful rose and violet colors seeping into the clouds. Leaning on his broadsword as if it were a crutch, he shouted for joy.

“The sun is rising! Just a little longer and those Sem won’t have a shadow to hide in!” He turned to encourage the guards fighting next to him.“We will win yet! We are the proud warriors of Mongauli”

Orro raised his sword again and scowled. The Sem tribes had never before been so enraged that they would launch an attack of this scale on one of the borderland keeps—but now they were here indeed. The barbarians had penetrated even the inner bailey, and surely they would strike down and kill the Gohran soldiers one by one. Even if the soldiers’ comrades in the keep at Alvon noticed the smoke rising from Stafolos and sent forces to their aid, it was a full three-day ride between the two strongpoints; the other keeps were even more distant. Orro shook his head. Right before his eyes, another black knight sank to the ground, his head split open.

Desperately Orro leapt forward, shouting as loud as he could.

“Reinforcements from Alvon Keep will be here soon! With the sun in the sky, we can win! Fight, brave warriors of Mongauli Fight!”

He swung his sword to the right, taking the head off one of the Sem, then knocked aside an arrow with a backhanded stroke. Where in hell is Lord Vanon now? he wondered. It’s his keep that is under attack. Surging forward, the young knight chased down a Sem covered in bright war paint who looked like he might be a chieftain; knocking away his foe’s axe, he cut the wildling to the ground. If only the keep-lord were here; if only there were someone to lead them!

Orro paused in thought for only a split second, but at just that moment, a stone axe hit the back of his black helm hard, and multi-colored sparks shot through his eyes. He staggered and slowly sat down on the cobblestones of the courtyard, the broadsword falling from his loosened grasp. Immediately the battle surged over his fallen body, wildlings and knights clashing with increasing ferocity, until all of the Gohran soldiers guarding the inner gate were dead or too wounded to fight, crumpled beneath the axes of their foes.

An otherworldly howl of victory rose from the throats of the Sem. They rushed and danced over the bodies of the soldiers that lay in heaps on the ground, crushing them beneath their hairy feet as they rushed toward the inner gate. From the rear, a crowd of Sem brought up a large ram, and the gates flew inward with a crash.

‘Yieee! Yieeeee! Yieee!”

‘Yiee ieee!”

Screeching like monkeys, the wildlings jostled their hairy bodies together as they spilled into the dark chill of the inner keep. Orro’s body lay wedged between those of comrades and foes alike, silent and still.

A great cheer rose from the Sem outside the main gates, followed by a tremendous crash of falling stones. The great gates had also fallen. Heedless of their fellows clustered inside, who were crushed when the wall collapsed, the next wave of attackers scrambled over the pile of stone and the corpses of their kin, screaming even more wildly than before as they rushed into the breached fortress.

Soon enough, the entirety of Stafolos Keep was filled with leaping, whelping little creatures. The Sem raised a queer cry and raced into the halls of the keep buildings, cutting down Gohran soldiers as they went. By now, half of the keep was in flames, and the parts that were not burning were buried in Sem. The shouts and orders of the soldiers ceased, turning to the faint groans and death cries of the wounded and dying. The flames crackled and spread, licking greedily with orange tongues at the two towers—one black, one white—that stood at the keep’s very center.

Then dawn broke.

The sun came over the horizon, the child of Janos—a giant, crimson disk that lit the bloodstained stones as brightly as if the fires on the ground had leapt into the sky. High upon its crag in the middle of the dark forest, Stafolos Keep stood on the brink of perdition. The victory cries of the Sem and the crashing sounds of walls collapsing drowned the peaceful morning ballads of the woodland songbirds, while the fire spreading through the keep buildings shot up fingers of flame that wrote the words of apocalypse in the brightening violet sky above.

The clanging of the watchtower bell had long since faded; the watchtower itself was now engulfed in flame. Orro of Torus, lying with the corpses amidst discarded swords and broken arrows, was brought back to consciousness by the sensation of something wet running down his cheek. He wiped at it with his fingers—it was blood. Everything around him seemed vague and blurry, though he couldn’t tell how much of this was due to the oily smoke that roiled everywhere, and how much was due to the pounding in his head. The courtyard was quiet, which meant that the hordes of wildlings must have already gone inside the keep buildings.

Orro stood up, wincing slightly, and began to walk unsteadily, using his sword as a cane. In every direction, the corpses of his comrades and the wildlings lay sprawled on the cobblestones. A hot breeze called up by the blaze swept through the courtyard, causing the cloaks of the dead to flutter. These are the ruins of Stafolos Keep, pride of Gohra. One night is all it took for the strongpoint of the Marches defense to become this hell on earth. Orro wept. He saw a Sem struggling to rise and stabbed it with the point of his broadsword. The knight’s helm had fallen off, exposing his youthful, bloodstained face and blood-shot blue eyes. He started walking toward the white tower. The strength was slowly returning to his limbs. The fires on the main building of the keep were sweeping westward now, toward the white tower, from which the sounds of fierce fighting spilled out into the courtyard. Orro of Torus began to run.

A short while before, the third squad captain had entered the keep to bring word of the attack. He soon found himself running wildly down gloomy stone halls looking for his lord, or anyone who could tell him what he should do.

It felt to him as if the pandemonium of the courtyard outside had only been a passing dream, a fantasy brought on by fever and the stress of patrolling the Marches, so cool and silent were the inner halls of the keep. On account of the plague, few knights and fewer attendants ventured this far into the building unless their presence was required for scheduled audiences; on a regular day, hardly a living soul would be seen here. Now the building was utterly empty, and a sudden unease came over the captain as his footfalls echoed down the long corridors. It was as if he had somehow passed through a portal into an uninhabited world.

But when he stopped and listened, he could hear the faint sounds of the struggle through the walls: the screams and shouts, the clanging of blades and armor, the watch bell ringing out danger and the panicked neighing of the horses. He kept walking until the long, dark corridor finally came to an end, and he found himself at the foot of the black tower, his path blocked by two massive black barred doors.

The captain hesitated. Even the lowliest slave would surely have chosen death before passing through those doors, for beyond was Count Vanon—Mongaul’s Black Count, alone with death, the smell of rot for his only company. The soldiers in the keep whispered that the count’s body was rotting, slowly but surely, from the plague that would one day claim his life, and they cursed the fate that had placed them here, of all the many strongholds in the Marches, with a lord that seemed forsaken of Janos himself.

The third squad captain threw up his faceplate, his jaw set in a grim look of determination, and he threw back the heavy bar and opened the doors of death. A blast of the foulest air he had ever breathed hit his face, redolent of disease and rotting flesh. He grimaced and ignored it as best he could, shouting up the dark tower stair.

“My lord! Count Vanon!”

“What is it?” The reply came from so nearby that the man jumped back, startled, his eyes straining to see into the deep blackness inside the tower; but as far as he could tell, there was nothing there.

Black knight of Gohra though he was, the captain could not bring himself to step into the darkness where his diseased lord surely waited. He stood where he was and called out again.

“My lord, the worst has come to pass—the Sem are attacking, they are inside the keep!”

“I know,” came the curt reply.

The captain felt a flash of anger—didn’t Vanon care that his troops were outside in the courtyard now, being cut down with axes and felled by arrows? “My lord, they have come in great numbers. I doubt the keep will stand through the night.”

The warrior spoke as calmly as he could, controlling his temper, remembering that he was speaking to an ill man. “The knights of the third are nearly finished, and the fifth has already fallen. The sixth squad now holds the gates, but if more attackers come, the gates will not stand. What would you have us do, sir…?”

“Let them fall then,” the count said, the mocking tone in his voice clear. “Why should I care if the main gates fell? Let the monkeys take the keep, I have no need of it!”

“Lord Count!” the Third Captain sputtered in exasperation—his lord was mad, of that he was certain, and he sought for an argument that would convey the seriousness of the situation. “Why do you think the Sem have attacked in such large numbers? They are wild, yes, but since the year of the snake, there has been an unspoken treaty between us, and we have had peace…but now…this. It is because your orders, Count— because you ordered us to take Sem hostages! It did not take long for the wildlings to realize what was happening to their brethren, and now they have come to rescue them and hurt us in turn. My lord Count, you are responsible for imprisoning their comrades in the tower, for…” The captain swallowed, and hardened his resolve. “For the disappearances. One by one, our prisoners have gone missing and the keep is filled with rumors that you are taking them! Why… what have you done to them?”

“I will tell you,” whispered the count in a calm voice that came like cold fingers raking down the captain’s spine. The man involuntarily took a step back.

“Captain, you are a faithful and brave warrior of Gohra. Leave the fate of the keep to the thread that Jarn has woven on his spinning wheel. I have other things to attend to.”

“My lord!” The knight’s voice was shrill. He took another step back. Before him, the darkness was slowly taking shape, revealing the form it had hidden until now. At last the Black Count of Mongaul—or rather, the thing that had been so named—appeared in the doorway, and the captain, rooted to the spot in fear, began to scream the name of the Dark One… And then the screaming stopped.

In the silence that followed, the viscous, foul-smelling darkness coiled back into the tower, and was gone.