Tom Lloyd - The Dusk Watchman

Over the battlefield came the rumble of thunder; the quick bright stab of lightning cut across the sky. Amber felt his lips draw back in a ghastly grin as the air prickled around them. He could feel Karkarn now — the hand of Death on his shoulder had been replaced with the War God’s.

‘Our God is with us!’ one man shouted nearby. ‘His blessings fall upon us!’

‘Karkarn bear witness!’ Amber cried in response, a refrain from an ancient saga of the Menin. ‘The blood we spill, the death we wield — we are war! We are Menin! ’

As they closed on the second line of Devoted defenders, he could see the fear in their faces.

From horseback, Endine watched the beggars, Ruhen’s Children, approach. It was foolish — it was madness — but they were coming. He couldn’t begin to guess how many, but there were thousands, their torn white clothing flapping in the breeze, their voices joined in some low moaning paean. Above their heads he could see the shimmer and dance of unrestrained magic, a vast power unveiled. The grey dust had coated their skin, lending an inhuman, unnatural paleness to the faces slowly edging towards them.

Endine looked around, trying to fathom the ruse of an unarmed mob advancing on formed-up infantry lines. On his right, the Legion of the Damned and the Ghosts had punched like a lance through the enemy lines, taking the king and Legana to their target on the hill, while beyond them the Menin were steadily butchering those opposing them, uncaring of the toll on their own numbers.

The left hadn’t fared as well; Morghien and Wentersorn had exhausted themselves driving off the grey dragon and Vorizh’s wyverns. Even with the Skulls in their hands, neither was mage enough to inflict the damage needed to gain the rise, and the mercenaries were slowly being forced back. Behind the crowd of Ruhen’s Children he could see the cavalry, the battles swift and savage, but nothing that looked conclusive to him.

‘They’re coming, sir!’ yelled an officer, and he and Ebarn drew once more on their Crystal Skulls. Pain screamed down his neck and he almost blacked out at the furious surge of magic running through his body, but he drove it back. Spitting cords of light erupted from his up-stretched arm, wrenched unwillingly back on themselves, until a roiling ball of energy spun above him.

He hurled it towards the mob just before Ebarn scattered dozens of twisting black shapes into the air. The ball of light struck first, exploding like a siege-weapon in the heart of the mob and tossing bodies high. The bright cords flung out in all directions, suddenly released from the magic containing them, crashing out through the mob to set light to dozens more.

The mob faltered just as Ebarn’s magical arrows darted down with the angry zip of hornets, tearing into unprotected flesh with terrible ease, but neither spell stopped them; the dead fell unnoticed and were trampled in the mob’s eagerness to reach the army. The voices grew in intensity and volume, building to an uncontrolled rage as they quickened their advance.

‘Ready!’ called an officer from somewhere through the haze of burnt air surrounding Endine, ‘take the impact!’

And the mob smashed into the shield-wall with a crash that made the ground shake. Endine felt the blow in his bones, and for a moment his control of the magic wavered, fading into nothing as tiny claws of pain dug into his scalp. He saw the enemy clearly now, and heard the panicked shouts from his soldiers, for they didn’t look human: deathly white and hairless, they were more like daemons of the daytime.

They hurled themselves forward with terrible speed, talons raking at armour and bursting through iron-bound shields. Endine saw one spearman drive his weapon into a man’s shoulder. The point slammed home — then glanced up and away, leaving only a grey groove along the white bony plate that covered his chest.

‘They’re swamping us,’ Ebarn shouted, her face frantic as she watched the shield-wall buckle.

The Brotherhood mage was hurling bundles of darting arrows and they were killing their targets, but Ruhen’s Children ignored the deaths and spilled around the shield-wall facing them, desperate to throw themselves at the spearmen. The two mages sat on horseback at the heart of the square, but suddenly Endine felt very alone. Ebarn was right: they would soon be encircled by the white monsters. Even as he recovered himself and cast more burning energies, he saw figures scrambling over the shield-wall itself. The reserve squads ran to meet them, enveloping their furious charges with impaling spears, but it took a hail of blows to fell each one.

Ebarn shrieked with rage as she drew deeper on the Skull and Endine felt a jolt in his stomach as he realised she couldn’t possibly survive such power, but then he followed suit. The Land went white around them as bolts of lightning split the air, scorching men and monsters alike as the two opened themselves completely. Then the shield-wall collapsed under the weight of the fanatics and a great animal howl went up. Endine could barely see what was happening; fire licked the edges of his robes and the horse beneath him screamed in fear.

A group of the monsters ran for him and Endine picked them up and tore open their limbs in a spray of greyish blood. More came, and he watched the flailing figures grappling with each other in their bloodlust. He killed dozens with consuming fire, still they came. Distantly he heard Fei Ebarn’s cries cut off as a detonation of rampant energies ripped her apart, but he had no time to look, for his own gaze was dimming as he continued to lash out at the white figures advancing towards him.

Sharp fingers reached for him, tearing through the flesh on his skinny thighs as they tried to pull him down. His horse bucked and wrenched away from the attackers, and Endine continued to fight as his skin went cold and numb. He barely felt the talons digging deeper, and some fell away as he killed them, but even in the blinding storm cloud surrounding him they fought on.

At last he was done, and the Land went from white to grey to black as one final burst of pain erupted from his heart and the talons closed around his ribs. He fell, and all around him, the heart of the Narkang army died.

Daken scooped up a discarded shield and grinned at Vesna. The white-eye had blood running freely from a torn lip and his cheeks were splattered with the deaths of a dozen men. They stood at the crest of the hill with dead and dying men all around then. The rigid lines of defenders had collapsed and the hill was now a free-for-all, a thousand individual battles being fought up and down its slope.

‘Waiting for those dead bastards to get all the glory?’ Daken rasped, brandishing the shield wildly.

Vesna looked back at the Ghosts and Kingsguard struggling forward in their wake, hampered as much by the corpses covering the ground as by the slope. Beyond them they could see the lower line of defenders was still holding against one legion of Kingsguard, while the Menin had slaughtered those in front of them and were pressing the upper line hard. In any normal battle this would have been won; Vesna would be turning inwards to seal the victory and meet the Menin in a double envelopment, but with nowhere to go, the Devoted couldn’t crumple and run. Their only option was to fight to the death, and thousands had already done so.

‘Wait for the king,’ he commanded. ‘We can’t do it alone.’

‘He’d better hurry, then!’ Daken swapped his axe to his shield-hand and thumped his free fist against his chest. ‘Wake up, bitch! You ain’t sleeping through all of this!’

For a moment nothing happened, then Vesna saw faint trails of blue light creep up from around Daken’s breastplate. Four, then a half-dozen or more, the trails wavered uncertainly in the dull daylight until Daken cackled with mad delight and turned towards the standing stones at the hill’s peak.