Roger Taylor: Into Narsindal

From somewhere inside him he found the courage to denounce Oklar’s work. ‘Is there no end to your corruption, creature?’ he said sadly.

Oklar’s steed craned its neck forward and bellowed at him, its foetid breath making him grimace.

He wrenched his sword out of the ground and lev-elled it at his approaching doom.

Oklar loomed tall and hideous in front of him, his sword suddenly blood red.

Loman felt his terror melt into raging anger and he gathered his mind and his body together for a strike that would cut down both horse and rider even as he died.

Suddenly, he felt a ringing song pass through him and the ominous form in front of him seemed to start in alarm. Its fearsome eyes dimmed a little and then blazed out anew, more terrible than ever. The foul steed too was affected; it twisted its serpentine neck to and fro, and then let out a high-pitched snarl as though it were being strangled.

Then Oklar turned to his two companions and with a great screeching cry dragged his steed about and charged from the field, trampling underfoot any too slow to avoid his awful charge.

Loman stood aghast as he listened to the terrible cry of rage that rose over the tumult of the battle even as it faded into the distance. Relief surged over him.

‘Strange fortunes look over you this day, smith.’

The voice brought Loman back to the heart of his terror again with its dark icy stillness. Oklar was gone, called by some strange event beyond this battle, but Creost and Dar Hastuin remained and it was Creost who had spoken.

So soon sentenced again after his reprieve, Loman was almost unmanned as he turned to face Sumeral’s two other terrible aides. Creost with his flaccid, mouldering, skin, and his black, empty, eyes; and Dar Hastuin, gaunt and blasted, whose empty white-eyed gaze exuded a malevolence quite equal to that from Creost’s dark pits and whose white hair writhed and twisted from under his helm like a mass of blind, venomous, snakes.

Creost’s mount, like Oklar’s, was a grotesque, preda-tory, caricature of a horse, but it was covered with scales, and it glistened with a clinging dampness that was not that from the teeming rain. Dar Hastuin rode Usgreckan.

Both carried swords whose wrongness bit into Lo-man’s soul as deeply as had Oklar’s, but they offered him no temptation now and he tried to watch the approaching figures as he might any other two oppo-nents.

As they neared, he noticed that both the Uhriel had newly healed and livid scars about their faces.

Gavor, he thought, finding strange solace in the sight. His trembling grip tightened on his sword.

He felt Yengar and Olvric come to his side again, swords raised, though neither affected anything other than terror in the face of the slowly advancing Uhriel.

‘If they’re men, they’ll die as men,’ Loman managed to say as he raised his sword to meet them, though he could not keep the tremor from his voice.

‘Indeed they will,’ said the voice behind him.

Loman started violently and looked quickly back over his shoulder.

A rider was there. For a moment he thought it was one of the Lords as he took in the red cloak and the white surcoat, emblazoned with the symbol of the Iron Ring, and covering a fine chain mail armour.

But the rider’s face was covered with a visor and he saw that though blood had oozed through great scars in the armour, and the cloak and surcoat were torn and bloodstained, the blood was old and long dried. He blinked to clear his vision, and as he did so, he heard the song of the metal that formed the mail coat and the simple undecorated sword that the figure carried. It was a lesser song than that of the black sword of Ethriss, but it was beyond any that he had ever made or taken from the Armoury at Anderras Darion.

And the horse was Serian.

‘Hawklan?’ Loman asked, knowing the answer.

‘These are my enemies before they are yours, smith,’ said the figure, its voice muffled by the visor. ‘Go to your true battle-it hangs in the balance, and will remain so no matter what the outcome here. It needs your heart, your will, your skill.’

Loman reached up and the figure took his hand briefly.

‘Light be with you, Loman,’ said the voice softly, then the figure saluted and eased Serian forward past the silent smith.

Loman stepped aside as the figure turned to face the Uhriel. ‘Lord Vanas ak Tyrion, son of Alvan, and king and betrayer of the long dead Menidai. Duke Irgoneth, patricide and usurper of the throne of drowned Akiron. I greet you.’

The two Uhriel stopped their advance as if they had been struck and Loman felt their terrible presence waver.

‘In Ethriss’s name I offer you redemption and re-lease from your torment, if you forsake His way now,’ the figure went on.

There was a long silence, then Dar Hastuin spoke, his voice hissing and shrieking like the winds he rode. ‘What creature are you to know such ancient names and to speak of the Great Heretic thus in our presence?’

‘No creature, Lords,’ the figure replied. Then slowly it reached up and raised the visor. Loman could not see the rider’s face.

‘I offer you redemption, my Lords-or death,’ the voice said. For a moment, Loman saw the two Uhriel become once again men; powerful men, ever seizing, ever fearing, but faced now with that which they had been ever fleeing.

Then the vision was gone.

Neither Uhriel spoke, but both suddenly raised their swords and charged towards the lone figure.

‘We were great warrior kings… before.’

Oklar’s words returned to Loman vividly as he felt the ferocity and power of their charge. No man could stand against such force. He and his two companions would have been brushed aside like chaff for all his strength and their skills.

Usgreckan rose from the ground, shrieking, its huge wings throwing up clouds of spray. Creost’s steed crouched low like a great serpent.

Unexpectedly, Serian leapt forward to meet them. It was a seemingly reckless response to such an attack, but as the protagonists closed, Serian suddenly twisted to one side and the unknown rider struck Usgreckan a blow on the neck that half severed it.

With a terrible cry, the creature crashed into the ground sending its loathsome cargo tumbling among the heaps of dead and dying.

The fall, however, had little or no effect on the Uhriel, and as Serian turned, it was to the sight of Dar Hastuin clambering atop the bodies and shrieking as if the dying Usgreckan had entered his soul. His clawed hand reached out towards the rider who immediately dismounted and strode towards him.

Dar Hastuin screamed again at the approaching figure in some strange language, then he fell silent and the two were face to face, sword to sword-both quite motionless save for the whirling mass of Dar Hastuin’s clawing hair and the rain running from the rider’s armour.

The brief timeless stillness was filigreed about by the sounds of the battle around them and the clamour of Creost recovering control of his mount following Serian’s sudden avoidance. Loman watched, wide-eyed and intent. Then he started suddenly, as did Yengar and Olvric, though both were subtle and experienced swordsmen. They had seen scarcely any movement by either combatant, but now, without either threat or feint and in what seemed to be the flicker of an eye, Dar Hastuin was impaled on the rider’s sword.

His awful scream began, but petered out almost immediately, and the rider was lowering him to the ground amid the other dead, with a strange gentleness.

As his mind fought to recall the beginning and end of this almost unbelievable slaying, Loman saw that Creost had recovered and was charging again; silently and towards the rider’s back.

He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but his responses felt slow and leaden, and even as he heard himself cry out, the rider was turning to face the onslaught.