The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (18 page)

Chapter
12

A cold breeze gusted up from the south, rustling Niara’s
hair, but she barely felt it as she stood atop the wall near the South Gate. To either side
of her, peppered throughout the soldiery, her sister priestesses waited as
well. Her gaze fastened on the sickly, glistening masses of the Borchstog host
as it closed on the wall of the city—a great, devouring shadow against the
gently rolling plain, a shadow that grew closer with every heartbeat, so that
she could all but taste it on her tongue—and could not look away.

“Dear Illiana,” she whispered. They
were more numerous than she had supposed, perhaps twenty thousand.
And this is just an inkling of their true
number. When they’ve rebuilt the Eresine
Bridge . . .

The Borchstogs swept northward, a
vast host that covered the rolling plains like locusts. Only each one was tall
and strong and proud, steeped in shadow. They lived for, and would happily die
for, Gilgaroth. They would laugh as they raped the women of his enemies, as
they flayed the skin from enemy warriors, as they redecorated Thiersgald with
the viscera of the fallen so that vultures wheeled overhead and maggots
wriggled through mounds of flesh, and the reek of it all rose to the impotent
heavens with the smoke from the ruins.

That is what they wanted, Niara
knew—what they had been raised to achieve. They marched in time, each one in
step with the other, so that she could almost feel their footfalls shake the
earth. The closer they drew, the more she felt cold, and ill, and the air
turned sharp and bitter.
Someone powerful
is with them
, she thought.
Someone,
or something
.

They didn’t march in total
darkness. They trampled through the flaming ruins of the farms that checkered
the lands south of the wall. Even now the refugees from those farms flooded the
streets of the city. Some of the soldiers even then watching the Borchstogs
advance hailed from those very farms. Not all of the farmers would have fled,
of course. Some particularly obstinate ones would have remained, and even now
the Borchstogs would be amusing themselves with them.

The creatures came on, beating
their drums as they went. The beats were steady and rhythmic, going before the
army like a chill, stilling the limbs and numbing the minds of the Fiarthans. Niara
drew on the power of the stone she wore about her neck and fought against it,
but it was too powerful to throw off completely.

The Borchstogs marched closer.
Closer.

Niara found herself holding her
breath. The soldiers around her muttered prayers, and, hoping to soothe them, and
perhaps herself, too, she recited an old standard: “Father and Mother, hear us
in our hour of need. Darkness comes upon us, but through You we have Light. Bless
us now as woe becomes us. Bless us as we are tested. Bless us now in this time
of torment, for through us You shine anew.”

“Bless us,” the soldiers repeated. Several
bowed to Niara, and she inclined her head back to them.

The Borchstogs came on. Niara could
smell them now, filthy and foul. Rancid, like rotting meat. The drumbeats
thundered around her, shaking the earth in time to the demons’ footsteps. At
last they came within bowshot range, and Raugst shouted, “Fire!” He occupied
one of the guard towers that rose to either side of the South Gate. As with any city of the Crescent,
the southernmost gate was the most heavily fortified, and the towers were high
and thick. “Fire!” he said again, his voice rolling down from the tower to be
repeated by his captains all along the wall.

The archers obeyed. Arrows thrummed
through the night, dark blurs against the stars, and Borchstogs fell twitching
to the ground, though for the most part the shafts simply embedded in their
broad shields or glanced off their armor. The Borchstogs walked right over
their dead, not stopping.

The air turned more bitter, more
cold.
Vrulug
.
He is truly with them. And he has the Stone.
Niara pushed the
thought aside. The moment for her to lead her order against the Borchstogs had
come, and she must let nothing slow her.

She didn’t summon the light within
her, didn’t use the Grace that was her elvish heritage. That she was reserving,
and strengthening, for a special purpose—should she live long enough to carry
it out. All other options had been discarded; she must launch her desperate
plan, the plan to rid Fiarth of Raugst, once this battle was over.

She drew strength from the white
stone she wore about her neck, blessed long ago by a powerful elf, and sent a
beam of light deep into the advancing Borchstogs. Screams rose up and many of
the demons crumpled. At the signal of her initial salvo, her priestesses drew
on the power of their own elvish artifacts and blasted the approaching
Borchstogs. It was an awesome sight, the white-garbed priestesses of the Light
arrayed along the jutting arc of the wall smiting the demons of Oslog that
surged forward like a dark, devouring sea. The Borchstogs wore helms with masks
shaped like monsters, bulls, wolves, rotting human faces, and they stopped and
wilted when struck by the light.

On their host came, steady and
inexorable. Borchstogs reached the walls, flung up ladders and gave battle to
the men. Niara tensed as the first wave swarmed up, and the knights about her
set upon the demons. Then her veins filled with fire. She flung out her hand,
light flashed, and a Borchstog fell away. Then another.

A knight stumbled backward, a sword
protruding from his abdomen. Blood fountained and slicked the stones at his
feet. The knight nearly collided with Niara, and she had to step out of the
way. The Borchstog that had stuck him lunged for her. She drew on the strength
of the jewel, and a white-hot beam burst forth from her and consumed him
utterly so that he was ash and blackened bone by the time he crashed into her. She
barely felt the impact, though she felt its heat singe her clothes. The knights
around her screamed and scurried away from the sudden blaze. Breathing heavily,
Niara turned to face the next threat.

Swords clanged, sparked and
shattered all along the walls. The great cacophony of war overwhelmed her. At
any moment she feared a Borchstog might slay her, and several times she was
forced to dodge and strike, and twice she was obliged to reposition herself
along the wall. Fortunately, the soldiers around her, devout lads all, shielded
her from the worst of it, and she in turn did what she could to aid them—blinding
the Borchstogs with her light-stone, smiting them with beams of energy, fogging
their minds when she could.

Hours passed. Two generals led
thousands of riders out from the eastern and western gates, and these drove
their forces deep into the Oslogon ranks, breaking their formations and
stymieing their advance.

Legions of glarumri swept down from
the skies and rained arrows, some flaming, some poisonous, into the men below. Some
of the glarum-riding Borchstogs sent their flaming shafts into the houses of
the city, and fires rose up into the night. Quickly bucket brigades formed and
quenched the flames. Priestesses helped. Archers in the high towers drove the
glarumri back, and many of the black-feathered birds plummeted to the ground.

Niara drew on the white stone until
its energies were exhausted, which happened much sooner than it should have. Indeed,
she was having a great deal of difficulty harnessing the light, as though
something were blocking it, weakening it. She had never felt the like before.

You
are now irrelevant.
What did that mean?

Fortunately, she had another stone,
and another. Such artifacts were limited in quantity, and she began to fear
that she would run out. Every single one lasted for less time than the one
before, as if whatever strange force opposed her grew in strength. What could
it be? Without Grace to aid them, the forces of Thiersgald were vulnerable.

For the moment the men held strong.
With the aid of the generals who had stymied Vrulug’s advance, the
Thiersgaldian forces repelled the Borchstogs, and to much cheering along the
walls the Borchstogs drew back, out of arrow range. They began to pitch their
tents and make camp.

Thiersgald was under siege.

The withdrawal of the Borchstogs
wasn’t the end of the drama. It wasn’t long before their ranks folded away and
Borchstog drummers began beating their drums again, slowly, rhythmically. Men
along the wall stirred and muttered.

A ghastly procession stepped from
the line of Borchstogs and approached the South
Gate. A tall, dark figure strode in the middle, but
Niara could not get a good look at him at first. A dozen black-robed priests
escorted him and lit the way before him with red jewels that glowed with
hellfire. The priests looked like men, but their flesh was a pale, worm-belly
white, and their noses had been severed. And their teeth, their needle-sharp
teeth . . .

A Borchstog standard-bearer strode
before the procession, holding aloft on a sharpened pole the dismembered carcass
of what had been a young boy with close-cropped hair. The sharpened pole had
been run up through his anus and exited his mouth. Coagulated blood clung to
the tip and darkened the pole’s sides. A fat black snake coiled about him, its
scales glimmering by the light of the torches along the wall.

With each footfall of the members
of the procession, the Borchstog drummers beat their drums.
Boom
, step.
Boom
, step. Drawing closer with each beat, so that Niara winced
with every throb. She had to steel herself to see that hideous standard. She
knew that the snake represented a victorious Gilgaroth and the dead boy his
fallen foes.

The surreal procession drew the
attention of the men, who they murmured fearfully along the wall. “Vrulug!”
they whispered. “
The wolf-lord comes.”
They made signs to ward off evil, and so did the priestesses in their midst.

It
was
the wolf-lord. As the procession approached the wall and the
torch-light that bathed it, Niara saw the tall dark figure in the center of the
procession, his eyes reflecting the light of the fires. At first he was just as
shadow, then she caught the fire-light gleaming off his fur on one side, and
his black armor. She saw firelight stroking his long claws, and turning his
sharp teeth red. He remained half in shadow, half in fire-light, but even so
she could see his wolf-like head, grim and terrible, a living reminder of
Gilgaroth, the Breaker, the Great Wolf.

Vrulug stopped before the South Gate and called,
“Tremble, mortals! Your end has come!”
Several nervous archers loosed arrows at him, but the whistling shafts burst
into flame and fell from the sky. Vrulug laughed, and the hairs on the back of
Niara’s neck stood up.

“Come forth, leader of Men, and
address me!”

Raugst mounted to a landing on one
of the towers that flanked the South
Gate. “I am here, hellspawn! Speak your piece and be
off!”

They eyed each other, Raugst and
Vrulug—and Niara, who was standing not far from the pretender, fancied she saw
a faint smile play at the corner of Raugst’s lips.

“Surrender!” Vrulug called. “Surrender
now and I’ll preserve some of your number as slaves and sport. Refuse and you
will die, every one.”

Raugst seemed to hesitate, as if honestly
considering the proposal. It was here, at this critical moment, that he turned
his head and stared Niara directly in the eye.
Is this why he released me—so that I could see how he holds the fate of
Thiersgald in his hands?

All along the wall, men waited
breathlessly to see what their baron would do. Raugst swelled his chest and with
a contemptuous sneer said, “We will never surrender, spawn of Gilgaroth! You
are a plague upon the earth and when we have driven you forth we will salt the
very ground where you stand!”

Men shouted their approval.

Vrulug bellowed in mock rage, and
the Borchstog host roared at his back.
Their
rage was genuine. They likely didn’t know the details of the plan. Their roar
was a thunderous, primal sound that jangled Niara’s nerves and made her grind
her teeth. At last it faded, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Very well, lord of Men,” Vrulug
called. “Then you have sealed your fate and the fate of your people!” He stalked
off, and his eerie priests drew back with him, taking the standard-bearer with
them.

We’re
doomed
, Niara thought. Then she remembered her last reservoir of energy. She
remembered her mad plan, and she had hope. But it was not much.

The Borchstogs made their camps and tortured men they had
captured during the fighting. The screams of the soldiers rose high into the
night, and the eyes of the Fiarthan troops along the wall blazed with fury. Many
argued that they should lead a charge out and scatter the Borchstogs, but their
leaders cautioned against this; the Fiarthans’ numbers were too few. They had
lost too many in the Vale of Irrys, while the Borchstogs were many and led by
Vrulug.

Niara stayed along the wall,
helping tend to wounded soldiers as best she could and leading others in prayer
until Raugst drew her aside. He had seen battle and was drenched in blood. His
eyes twinkled. “Do you see?” he whispered. “Do you see now?”

He had taken her wrist, and she
jerked it away from him. “Why didn’t you surrender? Isn’t that what you’re here
to do?”

“As soon as I had given the order,
my own men would have beheaded me. No, I have a different plan, but just as
simple. Before dawn, Thiersgald will fall. Make your decision soon, and make it
well, Niara, or it will be you up on the next pole.” With that he stalked away,
and she glared after him.
No
.
Soon it will YOU who submits, not me.