The Fall to Power (12 page)

             
He looked over his shoulder, back the way he came, fearing that every moment would be his last as a missile would streak from the half-light of the dusk and strike him betwixt the shoulder blades. But death would not come from behind. He was catapulted forwards, out of his saddle, his ankle breaking with an audible snap as it caught in a stirrup, before he landed, painfully, rolling across sharp branches and hard, frosty ground till he came to a halt.

             
Rising, dazed and concussed, his mouth fell open as he saw his steed fallen and crippled, the rope that had been tied between the thick trunks of two trees having taken her by surprise and sending her crashing to the ground. She raised her head, looking at him with pitiful eyes that spoke of confusion and his heart broke to see her pain. He tried to rise, making the mistake of putting weight on his shattered ankle, the joint grinding with a sickening crunch like gravel as he collapsed to the ground with a gasp of agony. Slowly, determined, Joltan dragged himself across the hard ground, till he was close to his faithful steed.

             
He held his hand out and she muzzled it, intimately, as she was wont to do for years and years. He looked down to her legs, smashed and broken like dry twigs, the hooves pointing the wrong way. With tears pricking his brown, almond-shaped eyes, the Steppes warrior drew a knife from the belt at his waist, wrapping his arms about the thick, muscled neck of his horse in one final embrace.

             
He whispered, low, hushed, comforting in the dark of the woods, even as the sound of approaching boots crunched through the frosty undergrowth.

             
“Rest now, faithful steed. You’ve done well. I shall see you again, soon enough, when we ride the fields of our ancestors.”

             
With that parting promise, he drew the blade across her neck, cutting deep and quick so as to sever the major arteries making her ending as swift and painless as possible. The hot, coppery life-blood gushed out to soak his hand and he whimpered, not realising till now that grief like this was even possible.

             
A moment of pause, out of respect, before he pushed himself upright, once more, taking care this time to keep his weight off the broken and useless ankle. The sounds of men were drawing ever closer now, so he turned, away from his steed, not looking back, and hobbled his way through the gloom, hoping, trusting to his sense of direction that he was going the right way.

             
The cold air singed his lungs, the effort of hopping taking its toll, so after a minute he stopped for a second to catch his breath, making to lean against the trunk of a tree. With a start, he pulled his hand away, as searing pain shot through his palm. With incredulous eyes he gazed at his hand, riven with needle fine droplets of blood, hissing through gritted teeth as he glared accusingly at the spiny tree that befouled this region, but not for long; as he hopped back a step from the tree, to keep his distance from its accursed bark, he felt a subtle crack beneath the sole of his good foot and, with sickening resignation, he knew his fate was sealed.

             
The counterweight flew down the side of the tree, the noose about his ankle tightened, whipping him upside-down in an instant, suspending him head-down, three feet above the ground. The blood rushed to his head so that his pulse began to throb in his temples, blurring his vision, his eyeballs feeling as though they had weights attached, trying to wrench them from their sockets.

             
Helpless, broken, beaten, the Hunter swung there from the trap. The Marzban of the latest raiding party to disappear in the dark of the forest night.

             
Through the rippling blur of his swimming vision, a figure approached, upside-down, and the Clansmen struggled to right his head with burning neck muscles in order to get a better look of more than just his boots.

             
The stranger was of average height, fair-skinned and fair-haired, with a stubbled jaw and everyman eyes that wouldn’t have stood out in the crowd. His attire, that of the humble woodsman, with leather jerkin and furs to keep him warm as he worked the hard, frozen trees of the forest. By his side, he held an axe, unassuming, workman, no different from any other, save the iron head was polished to a sheen with a keen and proud edge. An edge streaked with fresh red.

             
Joltan frowned at the figure, for surely this was no leader of men; this was no more than a peasant, a worker, a nothing. He wracked his brain for what little he knew of Hill-Speak.

             
“Who are you?”

             
The man crouched down, so that he was level with the Marzban’s head.

             
“Alann,” he stated, simply.

             
“What you hope achieve, Alann?”

             
The woodsman smiled.

             
“I will drive your kind from our home.” He continued, his eyes glistening with some deeply rooted hunger for vengeance, “and I will have the head of your immortal Huntsman.”

             
The Clansman threw back his inverted head, laughing heartily and mockingly at the absurdity of the claim, for what mere labourer of the Hill-People could stand against the emissary of a God-King? What use a woodman’s axe against the Huntsman’s Hounds? The scythes of his chariot?

             
He would never know the answers to these questions.

             
The plain and unadorned axe swung up, then down, and the moustachioed face of the Marzban flew off to roll across the forest floor till it rested, stuck against a spiny tree, its face still locked in its rictus grin of mirth.

***

Dreams again. He can tell, because though he’s there, it’s also as though he’s an observer, watching a re-enactment on a stage, part of the experience, yet also separate. This place. Where was he? Ah yes, he remembered now. The Western Deserts.

             
So many years ago.

Invictus strode up the dune, his officers following close behind, before reaching the crest, gazing out upon this latest target of his campaign; Lanakah, Jewel of the Desert, the sole city of any real permanence in a land of Nomads, scorpions and ever-shifting sand.

A wind was blowing, warm and steady, and his keen eyes pierced the hazy distance, reaching out, despite the glaring sun to look beyond the horizon. Ceceline, clad in a gossamer-thin white dress that flapped in the desert breeze, was by his side, looking up with questioning eyes to her King.

“Sandstorm,” he told her. “Approaching from the West, behind the city.”

The Seeress nodded.

“I feel the work of the desert sorcerers,” she replied, “the Sand Lords; they have set the djinns, the spirits of the desert against us.”

“It will be an annoyance.”

“Don’t worry, I can counter whatever cloud of dust the spirits send our way.”

The looming Barbarian King looked down on her, smiling.

“Very well, I put my trust in you, my dear.” He reached behind his back, grasping the hilt of Dexter, raising the titanic, stone glaive high above his head, the obsidian facets refracting the desert sun into a myriad dazzling rainbow arcs. “Men! Follow me to victory – we win this town for Merethia!”

Behind him, behind his officers and their sub-officers, an army of five thousand Clansmen roared out in reply, weapons thrust high into the air.

“For Merethia!” they cried. “For Invictus!”

He smiled, then charged forwards, his army following behind, struggling to keep pace with the seven foot God-King whose long, tree-trunk legs powered him with ease over the sucking sand. Seconds, before the blurred form of Invictus slowed, coming close now to the sealed front gates of the sandstone town, noting with amusement the ranks of dark-skinned archers lining the ramparts. They fired, but he ignored them for now, the few arrows that struck him rebounding harmlessly off his leather-tough skin.

He reached the front gates of thick, sturdy wood, twenty feet tall and a foot thick, impressed that enough oak had been acquired in the middle of the desert in order to form such a mighty barricade; the desert people must have travelled far and traded much to acquire it. He shattered the gates with one kick of his sandaled foot, the inward explosion of splinters bowling over a troupe of dozens that had been sent to meet him.

Standing in the now empty gateway, the King turned to look back at his troops as they charged across the clearing before the city, noting with some dismay that they suffered beneath the withering hail of missiles from the archers that bedecked the city walls. Nodding, he reached with his free hand and unsheathed Sinister, the left hand glaive with its broad, flat cleaver-like blade. Releasing his hold on the weapon, it floated in front of him, by its own volition, awaiting his command.

“Defend.”

At the word, the glaive flew, instantly accelerating to invisible speeds, till it hovered above the heart of the charging army, where it licked out, this way, that way, countless times each second, shielding the men from the relentless barrage of arrows. Invictus grunted in satisfaction; fully half the missiles were no longer reaching his men, their flights intercepted by the slicing form of his weapon.

He turned, leaving the glaive to continue its tireless work without him, focusing on forging ahead through the city itself, even as the first waves of his men forced their way through the gap he’d opened in the defences, swarming up the steps to assault the archers on the ramparts. The scattered defenders before him, dazed by the destruction of the heavy door, had begun to stir, gathering their senses and rising, eyes wide in fear as the God-King bore down on them.

A blur of motion, a rushing of wind, and twenty nine of the thirty warriors were dead, dismembered in an instant, Invictus towering over their leader, who stood, terrified, the neck-piece of his finely embroidered desert headdress quaking in tune to his tremblings. Invictus expected the man to fall to his knees, grovelling, but no, miraculously the warrior pieced together his shattered nerves, before charging the King, who merely watched with a raised eyebrow, as the warrior sped towards him, a shrill, warbling battle-cry on his lips.

A moment later, the warrior was backing away now, gazing in confusion at the bronze sword now bent out of shape, almost semi-circular where it had struck the King on his iron-hard arm. His contemplation was rudely interrupted by the obsidian point of Dexter that lanced into his chest, neatly piercing the sternum and spearing out a foot from his back.

A clang of metal as the desert-man dropped his sword to the ground, gurgling in shock, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth as slowly, inexorably, he was lifted clean off the ground, suspended on the end of the six foot glaive, feet dangling helplessly in the air. Invictus made some quick calculations, before grinning, then powering the blade upwards, vertical over his head, his hapless victim sliding clean off the end in a spray of blood and launching high, high into the air, his screams receding into the distance.

Ceceline would have quite the shock when the still-screaming warrior lands ten feet from her, chuckled the King to himself. He looked up to the sky above the sandstone city, the clear blue air turning a mucky orange as the sandstorm approached. He hoped that he hadn’t distracted her too much, for if the storm were to hit, then things would get interesting. While he was certain he could still fight in the dust, possibly even take the city single-handed, he wasn’t so sure how his men would fare.

And what point a General, with no troops to lead?

***

The Clansman approached the top table with barely disguised nerves, for the wrath of the Huntmaster was terrible to behold. And the messenger bore no good news.

              “My… my Lord Kurnos.”

             
The rotund and ruddy faced commander turned, his beard still soaked with the last remnants of an entire pint of Vorda, the fumes of which rocked the messenger back on his feet, yet the belligerent eyes that glared out from that lined face bore no trace of intoxication as of yet, only the veiled threat that there would be consequences should the interruption not have a good reason.

             
“Well what is it? Speak, Clansman!”

The Huntsmaster’s deep bellowing voice boomed throughout the Hall of Pen-Argyle, drowning out the din of music and merriment, for the Hounds of Kurnos, those berserker Barbarians, his loyal corps of chariot-riding hunters, were long prone to losing themselves in the excess of a party when not abroad on the hunt.

The messenger cleared his throat, grooming his long moustache in nervous anticipation of the outburst to come.

“My Lord, we have received Falcons from the commanders of the raiding parties scouring the foothills.”

“Go on…”

“Three more parties have gone missing, my Lord. Among them, Marzban Joltar’s.”

He flinched, expecting a bellow of rage to come his way, then relaxed as it seemed none was forthcoming. An instant later, he was flattened, as his Lord’s stone stein came hurtling out of the air to smash him on the nose and send him sprawling, unconscious to the floor.