Oathbreaker ch 9.25 - Revival (Patreon)

Part 3: Wars of Yesteryear

The soldiers arrayed themselves on hills overlooking wildflower fields. Their leaders met on that meadow and discussed terms. Neither side accepted, and in the tradition of their people a duel was offered. One life for tens of thousands.

No one remembers who shot the arrow. If anyone saw it, they either never spoke of it or did not survive the violence that followed. Later it would become the subject of myth and bard song.

All that is remembered are the consequences. A prince was slain before anyone drew a sword, and the blood price for that grief would be high. Historians will say that this was the beginning of the twilight days of the Oroion Kingdoms. It cost that great empire three kings, seven princes, and over fifty thousand soldiers. Legends died and monsters were born on those trampled wildflowers.

The wolf did not care about any of this. It rooted through the dead and dying with eager energy, its tail wagging in excitement as it wandered through its pick of delicacies. Its packmates roamed the fields with other scavengers. Crows and vultures circled the red skies above in the thousands and filled the air with their voices. The wolves shared meals with jackals and wild chimera without competition, for there was so much to eat that struggle between them had little point.

The wars of men had created a strange peace amongst the animals.

The wolf meandered through the killing fields, its nose low to the ground, ears pricked up. It stopped next to a pile of armored bodies and horses. It was the horses that made the wolf pause. They were so rare in recent years, a less familiar scent. That single cavalry charge whose remnants the wolf now snuffled at represented a great portion of the Empire’s remaining stock of good chargers. That battle had tested them against the new breeds of war chimera becoming more common as the preferred chivalric mount, and found the older, unaltered beast wanting.

It meant an interesting meal for the wolf. It began to rip and tear, trying to get through leather and metal barding to find the meat beneath. A wounded man trapped under his steed tried to slap the wolf away, but it just bared its teeth, realized the human couldn’t reach it, then kept at its work. The knight exhausted the last of his strength and expired.

The wolf managed to dislodge a dead man, whose corpse rattled down the mound of bodies, forcing the wolf to leap to one side to avoid it. As the wolf moved forward again to get to its prize, the viper that had been trapped inside the reeking darkness of the corpse mound struck. Its fangs went into the wolf’s neck, sinking deep to release their venom.

The wolf shook the snake off, yelping and snarling with such volume that some of its packmates came to investigate. They whined and barked at the state of their brother. A yearling went to where the snake had fallen and found it limp, though it had taken no wounds. The injured wolf kept shaking its head and letting out occasional chuffs. The pack gathered around and sniffed at their brother, licking him and whining in sympathy.

He did not die or weaken, so they went on with their business. Soon the pack had gorged itself and left the battleground, taking shelter by a nearby brook. The bitten wolf paced, growled at everything, and occasionally had violent coughing fits. The others watched him and avoided his gaze.

The next night, the wolf mated with one of the females and then died. Sixty-six days later, the female gave birth to a litter in which only one pup was born alive. The pack abandoned it.

The pup did not die. It grew, learned to hunt, and became strong. Within a year it was stronger than any other beast in that forest. Other animals learned to avoid its hunting grounds. It became hungry and strayed further to find prey. Forest spirits, drawn by the disturbance this new presence caused, hunted it with bows and spears fashioned of moonlight and shadow. They knew what it was, and had been fighting its like in forgotten ages long before humanity spread across those lands.

The moon was an ally to the forest dwellers. Their quarry avoided all light until it came to the edge of territory settled by men. It haunted the outskirts of their villages and drank the blood of cattle.

The seasons turned, the humans lived their lives, and the shadow in the forest watched.

Spring came. The villagers held a festival. They lit up the darkness with torches and made merry. There was laughter in the night and the music of fiddles. All the women of the village braided holly leaves and bells into their hair, made a great bonfire in the fields, and danced around it with their hands clasped so they formed a spinning circle of capering legs, fluttering skirts, and wild hair.

Something came out of the woods and joined them in a shape like theirs, and they did not notice. It twirled and laughed with them. When they howled to the stars like wolves, the newcomer’s own voice rose into the night with theirs, and the women were impressed at how authentic that cry sounded.

One of the younger women saw the shape that held her hand and noted its paleness. She thought she saw the flash of red eyes and long canines through a curtain of dancing hair. She thought she had perhaps drunk too much mead.

The man was a widower. His wife had died young, taking their son to the gods with her. The preosts told him that they were both wandering the night roads now, and that he should pray and give proper sacrifice, so the gods would keep their lanterns lit and his wife and son would not lose their way.

The widower had little to sacrifice. He’d been a soldier in the last war, which left him with a bad leg and nightmares. He wasn’t old, but he moved like an old man, and that combination of youth and poor health made him feel like a charity case in his village. He had a good trade as a carpenter, but he needed help moving materials and struggled to keep an orderly house. His neighbors pitied him and he resented their pity.

He also knew they resented him because so few had come back alive from the war. His limp and the nights he woke his neighbors screaming were constant reminders of those who had not returned.

One night he got very drunk and let his hearth burn late. The widower stared into the flames and wondered if perhaps it might have been easier to die for his king. At least then he would be with his young wife and their baby. Drinking put him in a dark mood.

He was pulled from his ideations by noise from the yard. He kept chickens and goats, as did many of the villagers. It sounded like something was getting at them. He stumbled about his small house until he found his sword and then went to the yard out back. His limping stride brought him into the pen and then to the shed. He had a lantern lit, held it up as he opened the door.

Several chickens were dead. The barn was scattered with feathers and splattered with blood. Whatever had killed them hadn’t bothered with the meat, simply drained them like wineskins and tossed them aside.

It was still in the barn. Its back was turned to him, and it knelt by one of his goats. It turned to look at him with eyes like burning blood.

He dropped the lantern and fled.

The widower spent the next day apologizing to his neighbors. He was very lucky the fire hadn’t spread to any of the houses, or he’d be doing more than apologizing. He promised he would stop drinking so much and agreed to find an apprentice to help him with his work.

He wasn’t even thirty yet, and they treated him like an aging grandfather whose mind was going. He wanted to be angry, but what he’d seen had rattled him and all he felt was scared. He told none of the others what he’d seen, because he’d been the one to cause the fire and knew they wouldn’t believe him. His nightmares and phobias were already well known in their community.

Perhaps he was going mad. He saw a devil drinking nanny milk. He’d grown up on tales of monsters. There were stories of monsters in the west, but that was far away and there’d always been bad things in the west. Those cold wastelands and haunted seas were graveyards to lost empires where heretic sorcerers had ruled over dread ages long forgotten. And to the east lay other benighted lands, great wilds and deep mountains where giants and elves gathered in their own mythic courts, and did not permit the tread of man to disturb them.

Monsters to the west and monsters to the east, with these fractured kingdoms caught in the lands between. The widower had never held an adventurous spirit. There were evils aplenty at home, many of them of the human variety. He’d been at Cortsmede, where fifty-thousand died to make one man emperor.

Yet, strangely, the widower couldn’t remember the smell of feces and blood when he thought back on that battle. He remembered the scent of the flowers. They’d carpeted the meadows and barrows there far as the eye could see. When his leg had been crushed, he’d collapsed in a bed of flowers and been alone with their overpowering scent for half a day and a night before he was found. He’d been sick on the smell of godsdamned flowers.

He’d smelled those flowers last night before walking into the barn. The devil had been wearing them in her hair, like a crown.

The wizard and the priest met at a roadside inn. The priest joked about devils and crossroads. The wizard was not amused.

“Devils do visit places like this,” he said. “Best not draw their attention. They have senses of humor, too.”

The inn was a quiet, comfortable place, owned by a retired soldier and run by his large family. The owner and his wife had a good, quiet life in the country, one that had allowed them both to grow comfortably fat and kept them in good cheer even so close to winter. They treated their guests like their own family, sold wines and meads made by local farmers, and rarely went a night without some form of entertainment. The new emperor liked minstrels, and the roads had no shortage of them. But travelers were growing scarcer as the days grew colder, and it was a quiet evening at the inn. The owner’s wife sat by the fire, knitting, while one of her daughters fetched drinks for the priest and his guest.

The priest didn’t know what to say for a while. He wasn’t good at dark talk. His god preached cheer and promoted the arts. The Emperor was said to be His scion. The Oroion Empire had been ruled by warlords for ages, then most of them slaughtered each other at Cortsmede, and a foppish, unambitious prince in Durranth had found himself wearing the Amaranth Crown.

Many believed that was for the best. Many were tired of war. The priest was one of them. A generation past, his order had been dismissed as wastrels with a drunken fool for a deity, good for nothing but seducing peasant women and playing droll tricks. Now, Halcya Llath was the most esteemed of the New Gods in the Empire, venerated even above Beowyn and Eudora. A remarkable thing, to worship a god of festivals over gods of war in the Oroion.

But dark topics were on the priest’s mind. It was why he’d called in an old favor, and why he sought counsel from a wizard.

“That’s actually what I want to talk to you about, master magus.” He laced and unlaced his fingers, became self conscious about his fidgeting, folded his hands into his sleeves. The man across from him was the very image of his order — grim-faced and bearded, dressed as a traveler in roughspun browns. He even wore a hat just like in the stories, a lumpy gray thing with a wide brim that shadowed his eyes. He made the priest feel foolish, in his yellow habit and crown of ferns.

When he hesitated, the wizard shifted impatiently and spurred the priest of the Halcya to carry on. Hurriedly he said, “There is a darkness here. Some shadow out of the night. We thought it was one of the Sidhe at first, a rogue spirit from the wilds angered by some trespass. Cattle started to die, people in the outer villages complained of night terrors and phantoms… We made inquiries, but could not discover any specific sin the local communities might have committed against the forest. We started with simple investigation, of course. Seeing if it was just mass hysteria or a monster the count’s men could handle, but there were certain omens…”

He’d born witness to those himself, and suddenly had a need to clear his throat, took a draft of beer. “We conducted rites, of course. Llath, in His wisdom, teaches us rituals to drive away dark spirits.”

The wizard grunted. “Depending on what it is, your frolicking might have just drawn it in. Bells, bonfires, and drunk peasants filling the night with noise might chase wolves away, but there are worse than wolves in the world.”

The barely concealed disdain for their faith angered the priest. He was no idiot. He had trained to be a scholar in the university at Nossus before taking up the cloth, and knew how aura worked. He had to take a moment to steady himself before speaking again. “We think it might have come out of the west. Out of the Cambion’s lands.”

Even saying the name turned the taste of beer on his tongue to bile. The room suddenly seemed darker, and the innkeep’s girl, who was sweeping nearby, went pale and tried to pretend like she hadn’t been eavesdropping.

“I know there has been trouble on the borders,” the priest said in a hushed voice, and felt more foolish. He was talking like some courtier at the count’s castle, speaking of trouble at the borders. But he had heard, and he was afraid. “We have said nothing to the people, and the count has dismissed our worries, but we fear it might be some Woed thing come out of the wastes.”

The Magi drummed his fingers against the table. “Your parish leader agrees with this?”

A moment’s hesitation. “He is… not in a fit state to agree or disagree with much of anything. He attempted to lure the phantom in and trap it using one of our rites. It went badly, and the preoster… well. You are free to see for yourself. We have to lock him inside a room at night, but he’s mostly calm during the day.”

The wizard sighed heavily and grabbed his staff. “I’ll see him. Then I’ll see every spot this phantom has left your omens in. How many villages did you say were in this fief?”

The priest told him. The wizard resigned himself to a long week.

The wizard gathered his evidence, and then gathered his will. He’d seen enough to suspect what he was dealing with. Though he’d begun this job disdaining them, the days spent working alongside the priests of the Halcya had instilled in him a begrudging respect for the order. He included them in his preparations, and from them learned of a location in the area where a circle of old menhirs lay. It was a holy place to the local villages, where offerings were left to the Fae Folk and audiences with the gods were sometimes sought.

The wizard planned to use it as a cage. During his investigation, he found one man amongst the villagers, a widower who’d been wounded in the last war. The man had been marked by the phantom, and though he’d shown reluctance, he agreed to help free his community of the danger. The veteran was worn down by his haunting and full of grief, but he went into the circle of menhirs willingly enough. The priests were there in case things went wrong.

They waited until the night of a new moon. The wizard wanted it dark as possible, both to lure the spirit out into the open and because he didn’t want celestial od interfering. Too many beings might be watching on clear nights.

He and the priests of the Halcya hid behind his woven glamours as the widower stood inside the circle of stones and waited. He insisted that it always visited him on the darker nights.

And it did. It came out of the darkness like a dream. It was a shining figure, lit by a pale glow with no source, making it a single bright spot in what seemed like the depths of a black ocean. It took the form of a pretty peasant girl with white flowers in her hair and freckled cheeks dimpled by a wry smile.

The widower gasped like a man struck at the sight of the shining woman. The wizard knew he’d have to act fast, the moment the creature stepped through the boundary marked by the menhirs, or the man would waver. He signaled the priests to be ready. They were all armed with whips of thornvines and jugs of honey and sour milk. Strange sorceries, but every practitioner of the Auratic Arts had their own allegories. Servants of the gods, and even the gods themselves, were no different.

The widower tried to beckon the thing wearing his wife’s face into the circle. It laughed as though he were teasing it and tried to coax him out. The man was not a good actor. He was fast losing confidence, and a strange expression replaced the humor on the night-phantom’s face. Something contemplative and subtly sad, as though it saw through him and was more weary than angry.

Yet it took his hand anyway and let him pull it into the circle. They exchanged whispers the wizard didn’t hear.

No matter. He had it. He lifted his staff and pulled a thread of light from it, like an archer drawing back the string of his longbow. The creature wearing the shape of the peasant girl tilted its head, as though hearing something in its surroundings.

Too late. He released his spell, and a line of silver clove the night, like a sliver of lightning stretched out perfectly straight. It produced a clean musical note.

He did not miss.

Ronan collapsed to the ground in front of me like a puppet with its strings cut as the thread of light went through him. I stared down at him numbly for a moment, heedless of the movement in the forest and the energy I’d sensed gathering. After a moment’s hesitation, I knelt in the grass, took his head in my hands and cradled it on my lap, brushed his hair aside.

He lived only moments. His eyes locked on mine, focused with effort as he tried to speak. “I knew,” he managed to say in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “I knew… you weren’t really her. I… Nettle, I’m sorry.”

A tear escaped his right eye and ran down the side of his face, and then he was gone. The weeds drank the blood I’d claimed for my own. He died with his eyes still open and fixed on the face of his dead wife. I leaned down, pressed my lips to his, and inhaled deeply.

Nothing. His soul was already gone, devoured by the menhirs. Those undead rocks had been starving for a sacrifice, which was why I’d been trying to get him away from them.

There were raised voices from outside the circle, men shouting and arguing. The magus and his sidekicks approached the outer ring of standing stones. One was dressed as a vagabond in roughspun and the rest as priests of the Gilded Deer. They stared at me with expressions that ranged between horror and naked terror, save for the wizard, who only looked resigned.

“You murdered him!” One of the priests accused as he stared at Ronan’s corpse. His voice had an edge of hysteria.

The wizard shook his head. “The menhirs are gravity wells of od, they redirected my spell. It’s an unfortunate hazard of working with magics like this, and I did warn you all of the risks.”

A lie. He’d aimed that spell intentionally, had allowed the menhirs to eat Ronan’s soul. Each of the tall rocks were carved with a face, the menagerie ranging between expressions that seemed to change every time they fell out of view. They were glowing with a ghostly green hue, wakened by their meal, and I felt the net formed by that energy holding me to the spot. The wizard hadn’t just needed bait to spring his trap, but also a sacrifice.

“He understood the risks,” the wizard said in the tone of one trying to convince himself. “He used to be a soldier.”

“What is it?” One of the priests asked as it stared at me. “Some kind of nymph? She’s beautiful…”

“Don’t look it in the eye,” the wizard snapped at the group. “That, my friends, is Adversarium Apex. A demon.” He planted his staff and faced me with arms outspread. “I’ve trapped you, Abgrûdai.”

I ran my hand over Ronan’s cheek, wiping his tears away, then closed his eyes. “For now. These stones won’t hold me forever.”

The wizard snorted. “There is an anathema on this ground, one I intend to reinforce. Not so much as an insect will approach this spot to effect your escape, demon. The stones might weather down enough to free you in four or five thousand years, if you’re lucky.”

I opened my mouth in a silent ah. “This is the part where we bargain, I suppose?”

The wizard nodded without humor. “We will start with your true name. I will have other questions. Cooperate, and I will send you back to the Abyss when I’m done instead of leaving you here for the menhirs to feed on.”

The priests began to protest. The wizard furrowed his brow, and in a tone of distracted apology said, “Excuse me a moment.”

He killed all of them, and fed their souls to the menhirs as well. The stones feasted well and became more aware, their whispering voices stuttering through the air. The necromancer nodded in satisfaction and began to ask his questions. When I did not answer, he left and did not return for a week.

The corpses remained where they lay and rotted slow, for as he promised, no scavengers came to eat them. Not even flies.