Chris Evans - Ashes of a Black Frost

“Diplomacy buys time until the army is in place,” it said, looking around at the ancient creatures brought back to life in order to wreak havoc.

The creature smiled, revealing a row of black teeth hoary with frost. The rakkes had picked up a scent and were hunting.

This was an army. Nothing as skilled or precise as the soldiers it had once directed through its efforts at the negotiating table, but these things knew how to kill, and the time for diplomacy was over.

Distant memories of diplomatic missions broke through the whirling chaos of its mind. Armies were often used as leverage, forcing the enemy to concede without blood ever being spilled. It was a quaint notion, and one the creature no longer understood. Its only reason for living, in fact the only thing keeping it alive, was the need to wreak terrible vengeance on those that had wronged it.

The pack picked up its pace and began growling in low, guttural tones to each other. Prey had been spotted. The creature pushed itself forward until it took its rightful position at the head of the pack, its pace unnaturally quick as it scurried across the frozen desert. Its eyes, now frozen orbs of black ice, pivoted within its head with a grating noise of granite on glass. Pain flared in its skull as pure light, and it stumbled before regaining its footing. Forcing its head up, it peered into the darkness. Three hundred yards away a group of three wagons pulled by teams of camels rolled slowly along a caravan path. The creature waited, hoping. A moment later, a column of marching soldiers appeared out of the swirling gloom following the wagons.

The Iron Elves! It had found them. Saliva trickled down what was left of its face as icicle fangs framed its mouth. There would be no ceremony, no elaborate signing of documents, no fake smiles and exaggerated handshakes. This would be a massacre.

It would have its revenge, and the rakkes would feed.

Finding control in its pain, the creature wrapped itself tight around its desire to kill. Rakkes slunk away from it as it began to hum with an eerie vibration.

The creature considered ordering the rakkes to spare its usurper, but there would be no need. Its power was great, too strong for any rakkes to defeat. That task would fall to the former Emissary, and it welcomed it.

“I have brought you food.”

The rakkes gave full throat to their howls. They stomped the ground and beat their chests. Hackles rose and eyes slitted as their world squeezed down into a single red-hazed need.

“Tear them apart!”

The rakkes raced across the snow-covered sand. All along the column shouts and cries rang out. Camels started and tried to flee as their drivers vainly attempted to keep them under control. The soldiers stopped where they were and began to frantically ram charges into their muskets as the rakkes closed to within two hundred yards. The first shots split the night in a ragged, undisciplined burst. Hot yellow tongues of flames illuminated the hasty line of defense as the column made its stand. Here and there a rakke tumbled and fell, a head shattered, a heart holed, but for every rakke brought down dozens more came after it.

A more controlled volley slashed through the forward ranks of the rakkes at a hundred yards, scything down over a dozen. The surviving rakkes only howled louder and leaped over their dead. Fresher meat was only a short distance away.

The creature looked everywhere for the oath-bound soldier that had stolen its place. It tried to marshal its senses enough to search for it, but the smell of blood was in the air and the rising crescendo of the rakke pack overpowered everything until it, too, was consumed with the need to rend flesh.

Cries and shouts rose above the charging rakkes as the men of the column saw their fate moments away. In a feat of arms made possible by sheer desperation they managed one more volley as the rakkes crossed the last ten yards. Rakkes tumbled at their feet in a spray of blood and flesh and bone fragments, their fur smoldering from the burning gunpowder.

And then the rakkes were upon them.

Screams rose and then cut off abruptly as claw and fang made short work of the flesh before them. A few soldiers used their muskets as clubs in one last attempt to cling to life, but their effort only added seconds. Any man who turned and ran was borne down by claws in his back and felt the hot, fetid breath of a rakke in its ear as the beast’s fangs bit down on its neck.

“Where are you?” the creature shouted, wading through the carnage as the rakkes swarmed over the wagons like scavenger beetles stripping the flesh from the carcass of a dead animal. Camels went down under the weight of several rakkes with a last, defiant braying. Drivers were pulled from their benches and torn into bite-sized pieces.

“. . mercy. .”

The creature turned, searching for the source of the plea. It spotted a bloody figure a few feet away half buried under the carnage. Part of a gnawed rib cage obscured its view. It strode over and blasted the carrion to pieces. It looked down. The dead were a mix of elves and men. It began lifting and tossing the bodies aside as if they were no more than pieces of wet, dripping cloth. In its haste to get to the survivor it tore arms from sockets and spilled innards in sickening heaps until finally it found a dwarf. It reached down and grabbed the dwarf by its beard and pulled it from the pile.

“Where is he?”

Frost began to sparkle along the dwarf’s beard as it struggled to breathe. One eye was closed, and it was missing an arm. The wet socket where its shoulder used to be froze over in a black, crackling mess and the dwarf cried out in pain. The creature looked past it to one of the overturned wagons. Artifacts lay spilled in the snow, the gold and gems going unnoticed by the rampaging rakkes. Something about this triggered a memory in it. Library. Kaman Rhal.

“Who are you?”

The dwarf motioned with its one good arm toward its throat and the creature released its grasp, letting it fall to the desert floor. Rakkes moved in to finish it off, but the creature hissed and kept them at bay.

“My. . my name is Griz Jahrfel, I am a merchant. .”

The creature searched what little memory remained and realized its mistake. “You aren’t the Iron Elves!”

The dwarf shook his head. “No. Some of the elves used to be, but not anymore. They work. . they work for me now,” he said, his voice breaking into sobs.

The creature conjured a spear of black ice and stabbed it into the fleshy thigh of the dwarf, who began screaming.

“Where are they? Where?”

“I don’t know! If they left the valley they probably headed west along the main caravan route. Stop, please!”

The creature remembered the jeweled map. It had been a thing of much beauty. Precious metals and sparkling gems gleamed before its eyes, tracing borders and marking the limits of the empire it had once helped expand. That the map was worth a fortune meant nothing to it now, but the location of the caravan route did. It saw it clearly and understood. It vanished the spear and walked away.

“Wait! Kill me, please kill me! Don’t let them-” the dwarf’s words turned into screams as the rakkes moved in.

With blood dripping from their fur and chunks of flesh still hanging from their mouths the pack moved off with the creature urging them on, a strange phrase stuck like a metal pick in what was left of its mind.

Suhundam’s Hill.

Konowa opened his eyes and scanned what little he could see of the desert around them. The acorn against his chest thrummed with a cool intensity. It wasn’t a warning as much as an acknowledgment of power somewhere out there in the dark. He wondered briefly if it could be Visyna, but suspected it was something he’d just as soon never meet.