Gregory Keyes - The Briar King

The sky cracked and lightning fell through its crooked seams. With it came a black sleet tasting of smoke, copper, and brimstone. With it came a howling like a gale from hell.

Carsek drew himself up, clutching his bloody bandages, hoping they would keep his guts in until he saw the end of this, one way or another.

“She must order the charge soon,” he grunted, pushing himself to his feet with the butt of his spear.

A hand jerked at Carsek’s ankle. “Get back down, you fool, if you want to live until the charge.”

Carsek spared a glance at his companion, a man in torn chain mail and no helm, blue eyes pleading through the dark mat of his wet hair.

“ You crouch, Thaniel,” Carsek muttered. “I’ve done enough crouching. Fourteen days we’ve been squatting in these pig holes, sleeping in our own shit and blood. Can’t you hear? They’re fighting up front, and I’ll see it, I will.” He peered through the driving rain, trying to make out what was happening.

“You’ll see death waving hello,” Thaniel said. “That’s what you’ll see. Our time will come soon enough.”

“I’m sick of crawling on my belly in this filth. I was trained to fight on my feet. I want an opponent, one with blood I can spill, with bones I can break. I’m a warrior, by Taranos! I was promised a war, not this slaughter, not wounds given by specters we never see, by ghost-needles and winds of iron.”

“Wish you may and might. I wish for a plump girl named Alis or Favor or How-May-I-Please-You to sit on my lap and feed me plums. I wish for ten pints of ale. I wish for a bed stuffed with swandown. Yet here I am still stuck in the mud, with you . What’s your wishing getting you? Do you see your enemy?”

“I see fields smoking to the horizon, even in this pissing rain. I see these trench graves we dug for ourselves. I see the damned keep, as big as a mountain. I see—” He saw a wall of black, growing larger with impossible speed.

“Slitwind!” he shouted, hurling himself back into the trench. In his haste he landed face first in mud that reeked of ammonia and gangrene.

“What?” Thaniel said, but then even the smoke-gray sun above them was gone, and a sound like a thousand thousand swords on a thousand thousand whetstones scraped at the insides of their skulls. Two men who hadn’t ducked swiftly enough flopped into the mud, headless, blood jetting from their necks.

“Another damned Skasloi magick,” Thaniel said. “I told you.”

Carsek howled in rage and frustration, and the rain fell even harder. Thaniel gripped his arm. “Hold on, Carsek. Wait. It won’t be long, now. When she comes, the magicks of the Skasloi will be as nothing.”

“So you say. I’ve seen nothing to prove it.”

“She has the power.”

Carsek brushed Thaniel’s hand from his shoulder. “You’re one of her own, a Bornman. She’s your queen, your witch. Of course you believe in her.”

“Oh, of course,” Thaniel said. “We believe whatever we’re told, we Bornmen. We’re stupid like that. But you believe in her, too, Carsek, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“She had all the right words. But where is the steel? Your Born Queen has talked us all right into death.”

“Wouldn’t death be better than slavery?”

Carsek tasted blood in his mouth. He spit, and saw that his spittle was black. “Seven sevens of the generations of my fathers have lived and died slaved to the Skasloi lords,” he sneered. “I don’t even know all of their names. You Bornmen have been here for only twenty years. Most of you were whelped otherwhere, without the whip, without the masters. What do you know of slavery? You or your redheaded witch?”

Thaniel didn’t answer for a moment, and when he did, it was without his usual bantering tone. “Carsek, I’ve not known you long, but together we slaughtered the Vhomar giants at the Ford of Silence. We killed so many we made a bridge of their bodies. You and I, we marched across the Gorgon plain, where a quarter of our company fell to dust. I’ve seen you fight. I know your passion. You can’t fool me. Your people have been slaves longer, yes, but it’s all the same. A slave is a slave. And we will win, Carsek, you bloody-handed monster. So drink this, and count your blessings we got this far.”

He passed Carsek a flask. It had something in it that tasted like fire, but it dulled the pain.

“Thanks,” Carsek grunted, handing it back. He paused, then went on. “I’m sorry. It’s just the damned waiting. It’s like being in my cage, before the master sent me out to fight.”

Thaniel nodded, took a swig from the flask himself, then stoppered it. Nearby, Findos the Half-Handed, deep in a fever, shrieked at some memory or nightmare.

“I’ve always wondered, but never asked,”Thaniel said pensively. “Why do you Vhiri Croatani call us the Bornmen, anyway?”

Carsek wiped the rain from his eyes with the back of his hand. “That’s a strange question. It’s what you call yourselves, isn’t it? Vhiri Genian, yes? And your queen, the firstborn of your people in this place, isn’t she named Genia, ‘the Born’?”

Thaniel blinked at him, then threw back his head and laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

Thaniel shook his head. “I see now. In your language that’s how it sounds. But really—” He stopped, for a sudden exclamation had gone up among the men, a mass cry of fear and horror that moved down from the front.

Carsek put his hand down to push himself up, and found the mud strangely warm. A viscous, sweet-smelling fluid was flowing down the trench, two fingers deep.

“By all that’s holy,” Thaniel swore.

It was blood, a river of it.

With an inarticulate cry, Carsek came back to his feet.

“No more of this. No more!”

He started to clamber out of the trench.

“Stop, warrior,” a voice commanded.

A woman’s voice, and it halted him as certainly as the spectral whip of a master.

He turned and saw her .

She wore black mail, and her face above it was whiter than bone. Her long auburn hair hung lank, soaked by the pestilent rain, but she was beautiful as no earthly woman could be. Her eyes sparked like lightning in the heart of a black cloud.

Behind her stood her champions, clad much as she, bared feyswords gleaming like hot brass. Tall and unafraid, they stood. They looked like gods.

“Great queen!” Carsek stammered.

“You are ready to fight, warrior?” she asked.

“I am, Majesty. By Taranos, I am!”

“Pick fifty men and follow me.”

The forward trenches were filled with milled meat, with few pieces still recognizable as human. Carsek tried to ignore the sucking his feet made, somehow different from walking in ordinary mud. He had less success ignoring the stench of opened bowels and fresh offal. What had killed them? A demon? A spell? He didn’t care. They were gone, but he was going to fight , by the Twin and the Bull.