Jonathan Strahan: Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

The slaughterers of the garrison five hundred years ago, demons from the cursed plain beyond the mountains, awoke once more. A night of swift blood awaited them. A few soft-skinned travelers, such as haplessly sought shelter in this place every now and then. Food to share out, a mouthful of pulped meat—if that—and there would be fierce struggle over even such modest morsels. They’d eat everything but the bones and they’d split the bones and suck out the marrow and then leave the rubbish outside the gate before dawn arrived.

The imp commanding the demons ate its way out from its woven cocoon of human hair and scrambled, claws skittering, on all fours down the south tower’s spiral staircase. Nostrils flaring at the sweet scent of horse and human meat, it clacked its teeth in hungry anticipation. Shin-high, the creature wore a tiny hauberk of scaled armor, a belted sword at its hip not longer than a bear’s canine and nearly as dull. Its head was bare, victim to vanity, permitting its bright stiff shock of white hair to stand fully upright. Its eyes, a lurid yellow, flared with excitement.

Its fiends were awake, but the time for summoning must wait. The imp needed to see the victims with its own eyes, needed to feast on their growing fear. Needed them, indeed, trapped and then devoured by that terrifying realization. A silent command unveiled dark sorcery, swallowing the gatehouse in a swirling miasma of foul vapors, vitriolic and deadly. No, there would be no escape. There never was.

Soon, so very soon, the slaughter would begin. First the humans, and then the horses.

Dullbreath halted in the center of the broad, high-vaulted, pillar-lined hallway just inside the keep’s narrow entrance. He sniffed the air. “Ghosts,” he muttered. “This place was overrun, Captain. Plenty died in here.”

Skint glanced back at the man, studied him for a moment, and then turned her attention once more to the far wall with its row of gaping doorways.

Flapp scanned the mosaic floor and frowned at the black, crumbly streaks all over it. He looked up to peer at the ceiling, but it was too dark to see much of anything up there—no obvious gap open to moonlight, though. “Smells kinda scaly in here.”

Huggs stumped in. “Captain, we got a problem.”

“What?”

“Horses getting edgy. And some kind of ward’s sprung up at the gate. Stinks, burns the eyes and throat just getting close. Probably kill us if we tried to push through.”

“Someone wants us to stay the night,” Dullbreath said, his breathing loud and whistling in the chamber.

“Lonely ghosts?” asked Flapp.

Dullbreath shrugged. “Could be.”

“All right,” Skint said, “we pick us a room with one way in and one way out—”

“Ghosts go through walls, Captain—”

“Huggs, how’s the wound?”

“Wither dug it out. It’ll do.”

Skint nodded and looked around once more. “Fuck ghosts,” she said, “this ain’t ghosts.”

“Shit,” said Huggs, and she walked back outside.

“Stay here, Dull,” ordered Skint. “Sergeant, fire up that lantern and let’s go find us a room.”

“Never thought you cared, Captain.”

The first three chambers along the row in front of them were dark, stinking hovels with passages through to secondary rooms—and those rooms opened out to both sides, their facing walls revealing the keep’s heavy stones where rotted sheets of plaster had peeled away. The two mercenaries did little more than peer into those back chambers. The fourth room was an old armory, picked bare.

Flapp lifted the lantern and said, “See that? There, far corner—a trapdoor.”

They walked to it. The brass ring was gone and the wood looked rotted through. “Give it a prod with your sword,” Skint said.

“You sure?”

“Do it.”

He handed her the lantern and withdrew his long blade of blued Aren steel. As soon as he touched the tip to the door, the planks crumpled, fell in a cloudy whoosh through the hatch. They heard sifting sounds from below.

“That ain’t been used in a long time,” Flapp observed.

Skint edged closer and brought the lantern over the hole. “Iron ladder, Sergeant. Looks like the looters lost their courage.”

“I’m not surprised,” he replied.

“Still drunk, Sergeant?”

“No. Mostly…no.”

“We might want to take a look down there.”

He nodded.

“I think,” she said slowly, turning to face him, “we got ourselves a demon.”

“That’s the smell all right.”

They heard clattering from the main hall.

Skint led the way back to the others.

Wither and Huggs had brought in the crossbows and dart-bags and were pulling and dividing up quarrels. Dullbreath was ratcheting tight the cords on the all-metal fist-punchers, smearing gobs of grease into the thick braids.

“Light the rest of the lanterns, Sergeant,” said Skint, tightening the straps of her gauntlets. “Where’s my helmet, Withy?”

“Behind Dullbreath, Captain.”

“Everybody suit up. The night’s gonna start with a bang. Then we can get some rest.”

“I thought we’d left crap-face demons behind us,” griped Huggs.

“One got out and squirreled up here, that’s all.”

“A magic-shitter, too.”

“It’ll show, we drive it back, corner it, and kill the fucker.”

The others nodded.

High in the rafters, the imp stared down at the five fools. Soldiers! How exciting. They had managed well reining in their panic, but the imp could smell their acrid sweat, that pungent betrayal of terror. It watched as they assembled their weapons, went over each other’s armor—what was left of it—and then, arranging the five lanterns in a broad circle, they donned their helmets—one of those badly cracked, the one on the taller of the two men—and, slotting quarrels into the crossbows, settled into a circle well inside the ring of fitful light.

Sound defensive positioning.

The demon they were now discussing could come from anywhere, after all, any of the doorways, including the one leading outside. Could come from the ceiling, too, for that matter. And the imp grinned with its needle teeth.

All very good, very impressive.

But there wasn’t just one demon, was there?

No. There were lots. And lots. And lots.

The imp awoke sorcery again, sealing the keep’s doorway. One of the women caught the stench of that and she swore. That one had a nose for magic, she did. Too bad it wasn’t going to help.

Still grinning, the imp summoned its fiends.

In the stable, the horses, sensitive to such things, began shrilling and screaming.

Flapp saw the captain lift her head, as if trying to hear something behind the maddened horses. A moment later, she straightened. “Collect up the lanterns. Time to retreat to our room.”

Burdened with gear, crossbows cradled, the lanterns slung by their handles over the stirrups, the group moved in a contracting circle toward a lone gaping doorway.

Flapp was the first through. A quick scan, and then a grunt. “Clear.”

The others quickly filed in.

Huggs made to speak, but the captain silenced her with a gesture, and then, when Skint had everyone’s attention, she hand-talked, fast, precise. Nods answered her all around. Lanterns clunked softly on the floor.

Gray-scaled, trailing cobwebs and shedding mortar dust, the demons poured like foul water down a cataract, round and round the spiral stairs of the north tower. Ten, twenty, thirty, their jaws creaking, fangs clashing, lunging on all fours, tails slithering in their wake. They spilled out onto the landing, talons screeching across the tiles as they rushed the single lit doorway two-thirds of the way down the corridor.

Cries of rising bloodlust shrilled from their throats, a frenzied chorus that could curdle a lump of lard and set it quivering. The imp dropped down from the rafters and scurried into their wake, in time to see the first of the demons plunge through the entrance.