"Adzel Chapter II" by John H. Blackham

CHAPTER II

THE MASSACRE OF NARTHAZEL

The days went by without a sign of Kithrus or the cloaked figure, but anxiety was mounting in the small village. Something was coming; precisely what, they could not say. As the Village Guard was rising in power, the soldiers became less fearful. They began to send scouting parties deeper and deeper the forest, and never did they lose a single man. Thus encouraged, they found the forest less dangerous than they had. It was on one of the deepest routes that Sanadred found himself lost and separated from his party.

            The light was, as was common in the deep wood, almost completely blotted out by the ceiling of branches and leaves overhead. The leafy bushes covered the ground, so no path was visible, and the twisted oaks wound around the few gaps in the leaves above him to provide a hauntingly beautiful surrounding. The dark green was all around him; the cool, moist air rejuvenating his tired muscles and reassuring his worried mind.

            As if in a dream, he walked around his surrealistically beautiful surroundings with his eyes half-closed and foolish smiles creeping up his waning face. He strayed far from the narrow path that had been dug, strayed from the landmarks he knew; he did not know where he was going; only that he was going south. The deep shadows troubled him not; they were filled only with mystery and intrigue.

            It was not until hours of straying from the path that he began to realize he had done so at all, and he was suddenly filled with fear. Turning around, he sped back along the path he had cut through the underbrush, his heart beating and his mind panicking. As he cursed himself for losing his way, he noticed a cold, blue glow; a cold breeze blew, moving the grass like waves on the ocean. The glow was emanating from an empty patch in the grass, where a circle of stones had been drawn. In the midst of them burned a bluish-white sphere of light, hovering a few feet off the ground.

            But as Sanadred beheld this, the sphere suddenly shot up at his face. Crying out, he dodged the fiery missile, hearing it hum as it passed him with great speed; but he did not dodge well, and it brushed his face. The cold was intense, like ice striking him and leaving its freezing water on his face. Turning sharply, he saw the sphere hurtle into the forest, leaving behind a glimmering trail of silvery sparks, fading away as the fell slowly, like snow. In wonder and surprise, he followed the spheroid glow at a run.

Around him, he saw a vast multitude of spheres flying in the same direction, toward a landmark in the woods that was not yet visible. Sprinting through the ebony-green woods lit only by the unnatural pale glow of the spheres, he felt a chill go down his spine and he realized with a jolt how much noise he was making. Slowing to a cautious walk, he hunched his shoulders slightly and crept through the wood. The spheres flew beyond his sight and for a moment, he found himself completely without light of any kind; after his eyes adjusted, though, he could see a glow through the bushes and trees ahead of him. Darkness had crept up on him and now fell about him, leaving the blue light to light up a small clearing in the woods. The silver light from the moon cast thick shadows on everything around Sanadred, and all was in shades of grey. But in the unnatural blue light, he saw something that made his breath catch in his throat.

            Kithrus hovered perhaps an inch or two off the ground, the light gathering around him, swirling over his head and back to the ground, forming a smoky spiral around him. His face was no longer weathered and old—it was, in fact, quite smooth and handsome, yet his hair was still white and flailed about him as though he was caught in a strong wind that no one else felt. Yet more shocking was that standing in a circular formation around him, were short yet unhealthily thin creatures, encased in metal armour that seemed too heavy for their frail bodies to bear.

            “…You have your orders,” Kithrus said in a voice that made Sanadred jump. The voice was quite deep and smooth, yet not booming or thundering. Sanadred somehow got the feeling that he had come in the middle of a speech, the sort of speech generals used. “The village is hardly defended at all…your numbers will overwhelm them. And you know who we are after.” Kithrus suddenly looked up at Sanadred, who flinched under his gaze…and yet Kithrus had apparently only looked in his direction, for he did not point him out. When he averted his eyes, Sanadred thought again about the speeches generals had made in the legends. Speeches to sadden and speeches to inspire. Speeches to inspire men to kill. His blood ran cold and he scrambled away from the clearing as fast as he could. He cursed as he realized the noise he made, and then sprinted. When he noticed he was not being pursued, he looked behind him to see the short creatures standing over the body of a deer, crooked arrows protruding from it as it kicked weakly, and he turned back and slowed his run, reassured that the deer had likely saved his life. Apparently he had startled it and it charged into the clearing, and the creatures assumed the deer had made the racket.

            Creeping to what he judged, based on the position of the moon, to be north toward the village, he found his way along the silver-lit leaves a silent path. Sure enough, he came to the river, and the village was only about a tenth of a mile downstream. Slipping into the frigid waters, he could already smell the aroma of baking bread and tobacco from the Inn, and the gentle spinning of the worn arms on the old Mill, regularly blotting out the moon. Feeling slightly relieved, he let the current carry him silently across the river and down to the wooden walls that the Village Guard had erected. The town was hardly fortified, but was better off than it had been. The logs stacked on top of one another held up by long stakes would not withstand more than a simple marauding party.

            He floated to the shallows and waded from there out of the water to the village, soaked thoroughly with water streaming down him on all sides, his shoulder length hair blinding him temporarily. The men sleeping at the parting of the walls woke with a start and quickly snatched their spears from among the logs, stiffening as Sanadred approached.

            “Who goes there?” asked the shorter of the two. Apparently Sanadred was unrecognizable by this point, sopping wet as he was.

            “I am Sanadred Hroll, possibly the first recruit in the guard!” Sanadred replied, wiping his sticking hair out of his face so they could see. The second guard held up a torch.

            “If I may be so bold,” the guard started, frowning in thought, “may I ask if you have been training extensively as of late? I recall you were a man stout in stature, and though you are admittedly stout, but you are rather less so than I remember.” Sanadred looked down at himself. He seemed no different to himself, but then, the light was poor and he did not regularly look at himself in mirrors, and couldn’t make such judgments on his own; and besides, there were more pressing things at hand.

            “I must speak to Swagg,” he said, deciding to pretend the guard’s remark had gone unnoticed. There was a pause, and the shorter guard nodded, turning and motioning for Sanadred to follow.

            The Inn was a tall building, the windows illuminated by the glowing within and torches mounted on the wooden posts near the door. A grand structure, compared to the rest in the village. The guard knocked on the heavy wooden door and waited a moment or two. The door opened to reveal the crowded common room, in which men were drinking and dancing, and women were standing in the corners, shaking their heads at the men’s antics.  Swagg was easily recognizable among the throng of men, his flaming red beard and hair exploiting him from the crowd.

            Sanadred left the guard at the door and rushed over to Swagg, his damp clothes giving him rashes and sticking to him as he walked. Swagg noticed Sanadred when he was within an arm’s reach of him and greeted him with a clap on the back.

            “Sanadred, old boy!” he roared, “Where’ve ye been? Had an encounter with the river, I’d guess!” he proceeded to order a drink for Sanadred and they settled at a table.

            “Swagg, there’s something of dire importance that I must tell you,” Sanadred said, lowering his voice once the mugs arrived. Swagg took a deep drink and leaned closer to Sanadred, listening.

            “I was on deep patrol today,” he began.

            “Aye,” Swagg said slyly, “ye ne’er did report back to the barracks to give us yer findings, did ye? That’s alright…if anything had happened, the others in yer patrol would’ve said sommat.”

            “I became separated from my patrol and was lost,” Sanadred said defensively, “anyway: I stumbled across our old friend Kithrus in my attempt to find my way back.” He proceeded to tell the story of the impending attack on the village, and made a mention of Kithrus’ physical change. “Whoever his really is,” Sanadred said in a voice so low that it was nigh inaudible, “he’s been fooling us well enough for well over fifty years. Whatever his plans and intentions are, we have no clue. Clearly, this goes beyond a feud between him and my father.”

            “That we can worry about later,” Swagg said with as much authority as he could muster while mildly intoxicated, “our first priority is to defend the village. We were ready for a small band of miscreants, not an army.” He paused for a moment. “Sanadred, you know the old stories better than we do; how did your old hero manage to fortify his town?” Sanadred pondered this for a moment or two. It seemed fitting to bring up the original Sanadred at this point, for such feats as the one they were about to attempt had not been attempted, or at least succeed in for centuries, save by him. A plan slowly began forming in Sanadred’s mind, and one that frightened him. He was not the kind to think up such things, and so as he did a chill ran down his spine, and he paled.

            “Is something wrong?” Swagg asked, furrowing his brow in concern. Sanadred shook his head and began speaking.

            “The beasts will need to cross the river in order to directly assault the village,” he said slowly, “and they know that we will fire upon them as they do so, meaning that they either have another plan of attacking, or they have an inexhaustible supply of soldiers. It is very likely they will be cross the river at a point where we cannot see them from the village, and attack us from the side.” Swagg nodded.

            “What happens then?” he asked, as though the serious topic were sobering him by the minute.

            “I am afraid that we cannot win this battle by merely fighting,” Sanadred said, but before Swagg could say anything, he continued: “therefore, we must use any means necessary to preserve the lives of our people. I have only one proposition: we clear away the remaining outlying trees around the village, giving them no place to hide. We then soak the earth with ale…and when the attack comes, we light the tips of our arrows with flame, setting the ground itself aflame. We must be sure to cover the ground with dried grass and branches, so the fire will last long enough to frighten the beasts away. We then must empty the village and travel to the nearest safe city, and remain there until the threat has passed.” Swagg took this all in with no small degree of amazement at Sanadred’s cunning, but asked one question.

            “How will we know it has passed?” And for once, Sanadred had an answer.

            “Don’t you see? We won’t know. We must never return to this place, for it has been cursed by whatever foul power Kithrus possesses. We will be banished from our own homes, but I believe everyone here will be willing to trade their homes for their lives.”

            And so it was that the forest surrounding the village was hewn down and made into a vast wall around the village, burying the smaller one beneath it. The day the scouts announced that the enemy was moving northward, all the ale the village could spare (what with Swagg amongst them) was poured out onto the fields around the walls, with much straw and branches speckling the earth. The sun crept across the sky, and no sign of an enemy was seen. It was not until the last bleeding rays of the sun had died that the first torches were seen in the distance. Swagg let out a great cry, and the sentries struck their vast bells, alerting all those who were to fight to take their places on the wall, for the wall now had a ramp that led to the battalions above, with room for soldiers and their equipment. They had made a banner under Sanadred’s direction, for banners were a sign of unity and, in military cases, competence. The banner was a cloth of black, set with a crown and three stars, the very design that Sanadred the Great had used in his conquest which earned him the throne of Narthazel. He, too, had saved a village from such an onslaught, though he used his own elite army to do so.

            Every man stood at his post, bow in hand and a torch mounted on a post next to him, poised and prepared to fight. The sun had set entirely, and there was no moon, the stars giving no enlightenment as to their enemy’s position. The silence was deafening; the hearts of many were beating to the rhythm of the approaching torches, the only testimony to the oncoming war, to the lives that were about to be lost. Sanadred’s own heart was in his throat, and he began to feel ill.

            “Alright, there, Sanadred?” came a voice from behind him. He started with surprise, and spun to face Swagg, mirth clearly visible on his face from Sanadred’s leap of fright.

            “Yes, fine, thank you.” Sanadred said, breathing heavily. Swagg grinned.

            “I’ll tell you, lad,” he said, and Sanadred rolled his eyes. Whenever Swagg told any lads anything, it nearly always became a speech. Sure enough, he continued in a meaningful tone. “This battle will be right up your alley. It’s just like the old stories: a group of valiant knights defending their keep against a traitor.”

            “’Valiant knights?’” Sanadred asked, grinning, “about a fivescore band of farmers and villagers. Very reassuring, thank you, Meldin.”

            “No actually, most every man here that wasn’t born here’s a knight,” Swagg said, a matter-of-fact tone audible in his voice, “and that’s about half the men here. After the War of the Nations, a group of Gomthulian knights called the Robesmen decided to settle here in Narthazel, at a hamlet they had been sent to recapture for Gomthul. They were called the Robesmen because they always wore dark cloaks over their armour, letting them become stained and road-worn, so they appeared to most to be weary travellers…until they had their weapons pointed at you and their hoods back. Ah, yes…the golden years. I was one of ‘em…your father was the leader. We managed to avoid the worst of the war by staying in Lendala convincing all the common folk of the nearest villages and hamlets to rebel, and cutting off supply routs to the main Lendalan castles. We had our blades cast in one of the villages where a master-smithy named Dirhem Eredane was overstocked with the metal of a nearby meteor, and called them our ‘robe-blades’…heh…Kithrus seemed particularly keen on getting that unnatural metal for his sword. Aye, Kithrus was numbered among us…but back then, he was a good man. He became bitter over the years after his wife and children all died, and his rival seemed to be off so well…” he paused, and Sanadred listened intently. “Kithrus did something to his sword…kept it hidden away and never used it. Some said he was casting spells on it…others said…well, never mind what others said. Look up.”

The torches were quite visible now; the enemy could not be any less than twenty yards. It was then that they heard the dried branches snap under hundreds of armoured feet. Several men had lit their first arrows already and were preparing to fire, but Sanadred bade they hold for a moment or two longer. Sanadred gave a nervous whimper that he prayed was inaudible, and Swagg left to his post. The footfalls were coming faster. A full minute passed, and then every man nearly dropped their bows when Sanadred cried “Fire!” tearing through the silence. Many panicking men fumbled with their bows, but managed to light their arrows and fire them, more or less in the general direction of the torches and their shrouded bearers.

            There came a shriek like a blade drawn across glass, and it seemed time stood still, stopping suddenly like a bursting heart between the ticks of the clock. Then the earth erupted in flame, searing through the grass and ale. The flames roared up well over fifty feet high, spreading like lava on rock. The roar of the fires were enough to drown out the bestial shrieks of the creatures, now nothing more than writhing shadows among the glow, and a stench like burning meat reached the village. A cheer rose above the din from the walls, men and women alike raising their voices in a collective, confident cry.

            “Let’s see ‘em charge through that!” Swagg shouted to be heard over the din to Sanadred, “Excellent work, laddie! But all that ale! ‘Tis true, no war is without sacrifice!” He chuckled, knowing that no one could hear him but himself. But he paused as well. There was something in Sanadred’s eye that sent a chill down his spine despite the blazing heat in front of them. The smoke blotted out the moon entirely, a mantle drawn across the sky, but the light from the fire was more than enough illumination for the soldiers to fire more unnecessary arrows into the din. As though there were not dying creatures before him or hundreds of people depending on him behind him, a grin began to break out on Sanadred’s face; much more thin than Swagg remembered it ever being.

            “It’s not over,” Sanadred said in a quiet voice that should have been lost in the sounds of battle around him, “The hardest part has yet to come.” As these strangely audible words left his lips, the flame parted from the river to the village, wide enough for five large men to walk through abreast. Standing directly in the path was a tall man, standing straight with a regal posture, his elbow-length hair flowing behind him, untouched by the scene of carnage on either side of him. He wore sparse armour about himself, a partial breastplate and iron leggings, plates covering his shoulders, and black velvet was draped around his shoulders, flowing behind him as he walked slowly to the wooden wall.

            “Kithrus!” Swagg cried from the battalion, “You dare return!” he turned to the archers by him and ordered them to kill him. Each arrow fired found its mark and in moments, Kithrus was bristling with arrow shafts.  Through the envelope of fletch, however, none saw the smile on his face. He took another step, and there was a sharp intake of breath. The wood of the shafts splintered and fell to the charred and barren earth, revealing Kithrus without so much a dent in his breastplate. With one gauntleted hand, he gestured at the wall with an open hand, and clenched it suddenly into a fist, and pointing it toward the ground. The thick nails and wedges holding together the wall undid themselves, and left the wood to fall to the ground, men falling with it. Dust filled the air, mixed with smoke and ash, and through the fray, Sanadred was vaguely visible standing proudly with a long, jagged sword in his hand.

            For the first time in a thousand years, Kithrus felt numbness in the middle of his forehead and he began to feel cold, despite the flames licking his mantle, and he recalled groggily that the emotion was called dread; Sanadred had drawn the sword. Staring at the blade he himself had supplied his opponent with, he saw the great and obvious flaw in his plan and felt like quite the idiot, another emotion that he was rather unfamiliar with. Drawing upon his own powers, he knew already the outcome. But the more he thought this, the more he began to realise that he could still redeem himself of his mistake…

*          *          *

Sanadred stood quickly the instant he hit the ground, and nearly fell back over again. Feeling a sharp stabbing pain in his shin, he knew his leg was broken. The ruin of the wall they had spent so long fortifying lay sprawled around him, and there were bodies littering the earth, some conscious and alive, others not breathing. An occasional man would still be alive and alert, but fled in panic as soon as he came to. Sanadred would have done the same had he any mobility in him at all. There was a footfall behind him, and he turned quickly, again nearly toppling himself, to see the silhouette of Kithrus against the flame. Adrenaline rushed through his veins and panic gripped his mind. Hands shaking, he reached for his sword belt, not feeling at all like the hero he had tried to be when planning the battle. Nothing in warfare went as planned, and he felt like a fool for having thought this battle would be an exception. As his quivering hand reached the leather-wrapped hilt of his sword, he gripped it until his fingers turned white and gave it a sharp jerk. To his shock and amazement, it left the leather sheath freely, though a thin shard of the blade had broken off and fell to the earth, leaving the weapon completely unbalanced, not to mention the fact that it was already uselessly dull. Still in a panic, he found a stone and scraped the blade along it rapidly in a desperate attempt to sharpen it, then brought it level to his face, until his chin was framed by the crossgaurd, saluting Kithrus.

            Kithrus himself hesitated for a moment, and then drew a sword of his own, of kingly stature and craftsmanship, from an elaborate black sheath on his back. He gripped it with both hands and reared back for a charge. Why he chose such an open stance and used such predictable form, Sanadred could only guess, at least until Kithrus truly did charge. Sanadred brought his blade up parallel to the ground with a stiff and straight arm, a classic counter-charge. Unfortunately, Kithrus had an unsettling amount of experience in the art of sword fighting, and batted Sanadred’s blade away easily, knocking it out of his weakened hands. At this, Sanadred lost all control of himself. His veins chorded, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, muscles he wasn’t aware of bulging as though overstretched, and he let out a feral shriek as he hurled himself at Kithrus.

*          *          *

Kithrus breathed for the first time in hours, it seemed to him, when the sword left Sanadred’s hand. The ancient barrow-wrought blade would do no harm to his undead flesh this eve. Of course, he wasn’t entirely surprised when Sanadred went mad in panic. The instinct for survival was too strong in him, and he would stop at nothing to prevent his own death. What surprised him was that as Sanadred collided with him, he felt the vengeance of his master’s spirit inside the boy. Shocked he was, enough so that he stumbled backward, but before he could think to stand again, before even he had hit the ground, he felt an inexplicable pain in his spine. Letting out a cry for the first time in many centuries, his eyes darted to his chest to see the shard of a sword jutting through his breastplate as it passed through him from behind. Though no weapon but the one now lying on the ground ten yards away could do Kithrus any real harm, all began to go black and blurry; all sound began to echo and die. The darkness at the corners of his vision crept swiftly to the centre, where it dominated and he saw no more; the sounds of fire carnage and havoc around him began to fade, flanging themselves in his head and playing themselves over and over, like a minstrel practicing on her lute, each time growing softer, until he could hear no more than he could see.

*          *          *

            Among the ruin and smouldering remains of cottages rose a black smoke that greyed the sky, choking it clean of the crows and ravens that would normally have been preying on the corpses splayed about what was left of the village. A few men and women were standing, slowly and mournfully burying the dead and aiding the wounded. Running between the tents was Meldin, better known as Swagg among the men, informing everyone he met that they were to meet at what was left of the village square by sunset, and to have with them all their belongings, packed and ready to go. So it was that as the sun sank in the blood-red western sky, there was a mass of dirty, tired farmers, their wives, and their children.

            “My friends,” Swagg called as he entered the square, hauling his massive self onto a makeshift stage with no amount of ease or grace, “we have suffered a terrible loss last night. The known leader of our enemy was, as you know, our very own Kithrus.” The name was met with much booing and hissing. Swagg nodded and waved them to silence, his head held solemnly.

            “But he was slain by none other than our...recently missing friend Sanadred.” This statement was, however, met with surprise and no small amount of mourning. Many men bowed their heads in respect, as did the women. “The bestial creatures that we massacred,” Swagg continued, followed by some muttering of approval, “may not have been slain, I fear. The few men we could afford to send found trails and tracks that suggest that the survivors have regrouped and will most likely plan to attack tonight, while we are licking our wounds.”

            “Then let us hunt them down and slay them!” Cried Malagent, one of the last surviving experienced soldiers. There was a roar of approval which Swagg again waved to silence.

            “That would be most impossible,” Swagg said with a note of regret in his voice, “honourable as our intentions and deadly as our wrath would be in that endeavour, we must come to grips with reality: we do not know the terrain was well as they do, and they have a steep advantage in training and arsenal. They attacked us last night clad in iron while we were clad in leather. We would only suffer more deaths and make ourselves more vulnerable. No, we must escape with all haste and make for Daem Lendala, the nearest castle. It is owned by a good knight in King Grodrim’s service, and he will give us refuge until we have regained our strength in numbers and can retake our land.” At these words, there was a silence. The sun had almost completely set, and its last crimson rays were bleeding in the sky. Finally, Malagent spoke.

            “How, then, will we reach Lendala before our pursuers overtake us?” At this, Swagg smiled.