IM 1011 Pt 2 ~ Late Sunner: Gnolls & Pine

[Sire Halfblack]

Late Sunner IM 1011: Gnolls & Pine (Deci, Eartholme & Gothiel)

They might have been taken for slave markets for people seemed to occupy the space where otherwise stalls would cry out their wares. Caravans were not leaving or entering the city. Few carts alone, and these the bravest, drunkest or most foolhardy. Deci’s stores were open, they were under siege by the armies of Myron, or conquered by the tribes, with the first unseen from walls no one climbed and the second fighting only a little where no one wanted to fight them back. It might have been a slaughter had they fought their way but they had not and the anger was in the death of Charmin’ Billy (and that anger was one shared by many of the citizens). It was anger directed at their king right up until he came upon them on this hot day.

The best of the heat between seasons was trapped beneath the city’s low layer of dense and poison smog. People snatched or fought for food, crowds forming as one bundle or another was freed from the stores before it was broken out.

The King appeared.

He hung when he appeared without fanfare in the air so that the sweat and foulness of the air burned away about him. King Troy that was seven foot tall and perfect made of liquid silver with the physique of a young god and the deeply musical voice of true majesty.

“It wasn’t,” said King Troy the Faceless regarding the foul murder of Billy, conquering, siege, shortages, robbery, murder and the absence of nearly every Merchant, Guild Master, Noble, Forge and Halfblack, “me.”

The city had to agree that it was most certainly not. Indeed and as one might pause that evening in the midst of cracking another’s head open like a half-cooked egg, to say ‘Not our Troy, no, no, no...’

That brightly shining angel, what could anyone have been thinking?

*

It was the silence that unnerved him most. Resident of Halgar might he be and whilst a most rural of Lords he was not one to dally overmuch in wild forestland. Indeed (and typifying the rural Nobility) nature was a beautiful horse, lovely enough and very useful but only when tamed, when broken in. They were but a half mile from the edge of the high estates here dominating much of the Forgotten Hills, and that only because some of their scouts were very good. Left to his self Synovius would have been long lost, turned about, and wondering in a bother why more people didn’t have the foresight to lay in a goodly number of pet Yeomen, like himself?

“My Lord Duke,” he said in a whisper. He was with the Duke’s part of the party that had set out to see why they had not been attacked. Clearly that required the Duke, his noble guest and a much smaller number of spearmen to accomplish that, they stood too in case of the expected attack. If it were a trap then the Duke was of a mind that it was for him to trigger it. It came with the big bed and the furry coat. The Duke had only that morning shown Synovius his captive, being a man of war he was not best equipped to deal with a Magiarch falling from the sky. He rather wanted such a fallen star dragged away and done with in whatever way it was that ritualists did. Though in the Duke’s experience that was drink the port and stay behind to comfort the women when came the clarion call of war. The word comfort he given special emphasis, and meant nothing good by it.

They had not been ambushed though. They had not been attacked. The way had not been easy and it was too soon and too quiet to show much new life. The scents were almost giddying here, but the land knew its spouse and Synovius sought about for certain signs as he had done on the estate and considered that it was very probable that the forest had stopped where it had because of simple, common, folklore.

Indeed the effect was as he had surmised, Eartholme being quite possibly the only city whose places of note were all similarly married to the land, through their wardens – and mostly because of the Academy. So it worked for them, and Synovius did not doubt that even now all those towns so important to the city would be swollen by outsiders, albeit those that knew of it and had gone there anyway for market.

He looked up. He thought he heard a horse. Already a stick of the Duke’s hired men had dashed away. They returned no more than an hour later to report that they had found firstly the trail, and secondly a Kintarma.

*

Rust the dust of Deci, real and imagined, ash and the bones of the country that blew across the Badlands of Deci. The sound was that of insects, of a scratching, somewhat metallic, and louder than the wind that drove it. When it settled it did so to carpet the land for a mile, a league, more with that part enough still hanging to haze the air. It made the land hot where it rested. Dull that haze still sparkled. The sound of it lasted longest and never quite died, in time to movements and the stirring of the cloud. Something, more than one, moved therein, unlikely and elemental.

And Viktrum made of stone all still in the centre. Where he watched and learned, and then as the wind returned, renewed, was gone with it too.

*

It had been quite the ride. Long, slow and with him picking his way through a forest now far more crowded that had crossed gullies and cuts, hill, slope and valleys he had walked as often as he had ridden and now he rode not at all since the fading trail he had been assured was the way he wanted had finally faded entirely. So it was with delight that Kintarma had found himself surrounded by a handful of ruffians. Kintarma liked ruffians. They were proud, proper sort of warriors not given to skulking behind cowardly shieldwalls. So he had greeted them cheerfully and when much later they had returned Kintarma had his saddle and harness off and his horse rubbed down, fed and watered.

He looked back the short distance he could penetrate, yards only, towards the dense hills and mountains he could not see. It would take a very big axe. Also and it now occurred to him that he had been particularly not attacked on the journey here. He brushed a twig from the plumes of his helmet and tried to do something about the dirt about his cloak tails and boots. The ruffians set about making a fire which was jolly good of them and a thin man with funny moustaches that seemed to be their leader agreed that, aye, he could speak for the Duke.

“We need to plan,” said Kintarma. He damn well had a plan too and one that given what he had learned on his uneventful journey was being rapidly revised, adapted and happily so since it involved a lot more of the open ground and being on horses bit. Firstly though, “Do you want to be rescued?”

“No, thank’ee.”

“Only you’re surrounded?”

“My estate is marcher land, set to act as the bulwark once against Deci and now to whatever’s handy. To take the Forgotten Hills in any surety an enemy must take my land, my castle, and I.”

Kintarma had a scratch. Out of the saddle he was never entirely comfortable. He supposed on hearing what was said that realistically the Duke was meant to be surrounded. He had to ask though, “Sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Don’t suppose you can spare a few scouts and stuff for us then can you?”

*

His pride was vanity. His surety came from power more than ability. His was a power leant to him, inherited. For him the power was an art and having no hand at the craft he despised it. He was Nomesdan and once he might have been a Prince, but that had gone another way a hundred years before he had first cried. He might have been a Prince here for the dictators of Deci called themselves what they liked in the time they ruled. But that would have dirtied the title he felt was his, would never be, and here he was in exile.

Nomestar had worked at his craft. Hardly born in the gutter still he had likewise not been whelped into indolence and privilege. He had worked hard and often alone, watching ritual even as he managed to find a tutor, a master, and learning as he worked at his craft, each piece bettered, considered.

Nomesdan did what was right because he believed in right, and wrong, or at least that what he did was right because he was pompous. Nomestar did what was right because it was the more difficult path, and nothing worth doing was any other way.

There had been a girl, of course. Young and for Deci strange, born there and corn blond, beautiful, ripe in a land thin in morals, will, body and rewards. She carried her innocence about with her and wore it when convenient. She would have power and be powerful, because she would have the power of others. She was a viper, and Nomesdan loved her whilst Nomestar wanted her.

And here they were in this time of Prince’s. And here they fought. Their battles were with Iron, with Nomesdan enjoying a little fire and Nomestar more than a little stone. They made hills where their ritual sundered through the earth. They turned stone to iron and rainwater to silver. They drew as they battled all the metal of the land to them, to turn, as they fought and so that mountains shook where mountains were the ends of the world.

And no one knew who lived, who died, who won – lost, victor or victim but still where those wills and memories remained they fought when the rust storms raged, rust all that remained of them here and there across the Badlands of Deci.

Viktrum saw them at times. Or caught a word or an action and learnt that much of them. And here where he too went with the rust flats the rust was already that little less rusty. There was iron in it now, a little silver too perhaps? And more perhaps might that be so, but only with one, or the other.

So Viktrum as the rust flats settled again thought to choose.

Nomesdan or Nomestar? Who of the two, for a little while at least?

*

It was a Sunner evening and by the ponds short of Belton Segara panted like a wolf still on the hunt. He ignored the stink, so too the curses of one of his own that tried to walk but on a leg that no longer could take his weight. It was possibly the last such evening of the year, balmy with weeds under him and a diving bird circling in and out of his vision still startled from the fight that had startled damn near everyone involved in it too. Only minutes before and they had been crossing the wide divide between two of the ponds, only concerned with the marshy ground and what it was doing in some cases to their newly stolen boots. The breeze had picked up and with it came the foul stink that had lain like its owners amongst the reeds.

Segara sat up. He laughed, he hawked and spat, suddenly very thirsty. He thought it through and in hindsight it had been no ambush, the beasts had been waiting for he and his to pass by. And no wonder, if when startled they had fought with a savage, desperate energy then whips, nets and clubs had been poor weapons in a real fight.

He stood. Warned by the sudden stink The Lava Flow if jolted from the fair evening and full bellies had reacted with oaths and curses at the sudden attack, and the fight had been as brief as it had been one sided. Segara went to the nearest of the gnolls now, kicking it. Fat as a ball with spindly arms and a club foot still twitched. Its face had not been improved by the ferocious blow that had cracked bone and brains alike, but it hadn’t made it much worse. He saw movement amongst those brains, maggots he saw and this long passed fly season. He turned away. A slaver party, doubtless.

He was not surprised the slavers were empty handed. Most of the places of note to Eartholme had long possessed Wardens, Nobles from the first and arguably best output from the Academy. Warriors, or leaders at least, like Belton only two miles back. Those for leagues about used to Belton as their market, their gathering place, the heart of this area were there and protected from the likes of... these, he thought, offering up another kick.

“Limping is for the weak,” said Segara to Rorst, the only one to suffer more than cuts and plate-sized bruises. “Stop it.”

*

“I wanted peace...”

Sneertwice unused to such a presence actually felt his knees knocking. He had certain orders received from his absent Sire, who was nobly investigating the sudden and suspicious deaths of everybody’s venerable grandmothers somewhere far away. It was difficult work since even their own carters were refusing to move, and goods arriving in the city, if any, were apt to be liberated. “My Lord-King-and-Angel-amongst-us?”

It was early yet here and well above the city there could just be seen the first morning star. Sneertwice was here because the King had orders, and thus a need for scribes, who were reporting that nearly everything they knew concerned grandmothers and Ishma. So here was Sneertwice. He was not sure what ritual Troy had enacted but it was certainly effective. The King hung in the air now beside his infernal Gressen happiness-engine that smoked and choked and looked all in all rather sick with the effort. Sneertiwce stood with a bandolier of scrolls. The King he knew saw so far and so well that he could scarce perceive the gutter at all. Throughout the city and instead of blaming anyone nearly everyone was talking about all the things that were not Troy’s fault. They had expected the King to expunge such blame with the heads of moderately guiltless underlings. To have proud Lords whipped naked through the streets, for fine ladies to be made into painted statues, for inventive torture, distraction and perhaps even for the smallest of whips. They had not for the moment assumed any sort of fighting back against the tribes, not more than...

... “It is, Lord King of Angels.”

“I can see snakes eating some hairy feller, over there, a mile or two away. And two girls in whorish bustle are stabbing to death another in the Rudes. And look, some hairy fellers have just kicked that door in and are helping themselves to...”

It was all in all rather like Deci of old. The Hirds had expected a big old fight, wanted one, but what could fight in the city was waiting, out of sight or stabbing like the two militia girls. It certainly was not looking for trouble. The invaders were being nibbled away at, were robbing, looting and then losing it all again. To Sneertwice’s mind in Deci at least then such an enemy would have two choices, settle or leave. Not now, they were too angry now, and whilst Billy might have sent them out to fight that wasn’t going to happen now. It was all so very messy. Sneertwice rather preferred the order of recent years. He explained things to the King. He was truthful as much as his vows allowed, knowing that the King would not believe that he did this sort of thing so very easily, that his ritual had just made it so much easier still. Quite inspired, Sneertwice thought.

“It’s bound to go wrong somehow,” said King Angel Troy.

“It’s not absolutely necessary,” said Sneertwice to the only man that could have pulled it off with such unlikely ease that he still suspected duplicity, and would have doubted himself too had he not been standing so close to so many reflective surfaces.

Troy moved his eyes back towards the Spire and his Kingly business. “Send for Master Screw...” he said.

*

“Bit slow, boss.”

Asta had been forced to call a halt. He had quite the procession with him and if he wanted to be on the hills and mountains to the north and east they seemed to grow only with a tortuous reluctance. There were wagons and even handcarts and a lot of very angry men, women, dwarves, elves and goblins with hammers, picks and a few rusty spears. These last sat as one and always close to Asta who had raised a levy faster than many might raise taxes. Five hundred of them give or take, it was the first time he had tried it and the first he suspected was always going to be the best. Eartholme folk one and all they had food and cloaks and the wagons came from the Guilds set to raise the fort where it was needed. The levy did not chant, or argue, sing or even pray. They sat in thought and many dug out pipes, their eyes hard and determined that where Asta went to tell a bunch of no-goods to bugger off, then they would go too. They would fight of course, the old that remembered only the glory or victory and the relief of life, and the young that having never been in a battle dearly wanted to.

More distant and now without bothering with guards, lookouts or caring who saw them squatting amongst the wild beetroot a mess of orcs, goblins and anything that passed for either seemed without the least care for any coming trouble. They remembered every fight they had ever had and it may have been a while but for most that was a while too long. The Pit had been loyal to Eartholme for years now and if it had ever seemed strange that elves, dwarves and humans were most notoriously protected by orcs then no one even saw it now.

Big as a bull-ogre and once more in the jagged, bent and bloody noisy plates of battered iron, brass and bronze rings that passed for armour Graduck had a smile that could have eaten an ox. He was happy, he wished to be off. It had taken Asta long enough to kick him awake and say ‘trouble’ to motivate Graduck and by the time they had passed through the city, his ‘Pit. The ‘Pit was cheap too by the standards of Mercenary Helds, they just didn’t have anything to spend the grulls on.

“We’ll get there,” said Asta.

“Y’minds if I sprads ‘em out?” said Graduck. He wanted to split down his Hird and send it running off far and wide, to have a good look, find a few fights and meet up later on. Asta asked him to keep some close by but otherwise nodded. The Dragon only knew he laid no claims to being a great warleader. He watched as the giant orc went to cuff his orders and four-fifths of the Hird hurried away nearly gambolling in delight as they were set to roam and... well, stop trouble. With trouble.

*

There were fifty, twice that? The flats were a long way from the city, a long way from anywhere. They had settled and so still the night that there were stars (albeit only a few) and reflecting something rather than shining for themselves. But a hundred then?

No two were alike, dust and rust, bone and badness. They were elementals, or had at least something of the elemental about them. They were shapes seen only by the dust, like things invisible caught by flung dirt. They crackled too, they moved always and it was their own movement that stirred the flats so show them at all.

Viktrum raised a hand before they closed about him entirely. They froze and doing so vanished as their dust fell away. Not yet, he thought. Later perhaps he would call on the Rordridan.

*

The range was big enough to be seen from afar and crossed two territories just from this side, divided it from two more and come the Deathly a man went around it, or through it – and tat last only here. The pass was pretty much the anchor that held the line between Eartholme and Deci though it had not been so very long since there had been no such divide at all.

“Pass,” said Ruk.

“Definitely the pass,” said Ped, agreeing with a sniff from within his long apron coat of troll-hide and ring. Behind them stood monsters that said nothing at all and thought somewhat less, that had followed them from Keys across Alguz and here through the pass that had been a pain to cross but which was nothing compared to the alternative. The range was of noteworthy size, hard to cross unless by its few trails and possessed of hills that back home would have been mountains. Cutting a swathe through that was... ambitious.

The pass with help might be easier, ten miles or so and narrow in places where the trees made a roof but along which length younger boughs had sprung up.

“Right,” said Ruk. He raised his axe. His monstrous hird honked and howled in answer. Ruk bellowed and they charged.

“No, wait!” said Ped but the beasts had been unleashed and hell had come to tree town.

*

“Where others?” said Bile. It was a place of caves. A canyon where set at one end the sign had spelled out its name and an instruction both, ‘Don’t Go There’. The day had felt longer than he would have liked. The dusk had been a long time coming out here as if the sun so scarcely seen in the city and so blurred by the cloud and smog of the Badlands had lingered to see what next the gods had seen fit to visit upon the diseased of this terrible land.

Certainly he was not the first. He did not like how one of his children bent and coughed, vomited wet lumps of one of those they had caught and who still only yet half eaten lay not so far away. Bile could not remember a ghoul that had vomited before. He frowned and the action tore a fresh line across his face like old parchment folded without care. That ghoul unable to help itself fell on its own sick, slurping it up before others could do so. There were twenty like it about the canyon. Bile who was a fetid sort of fellow at the best of times had never been anywhere like this. Even the air was unpleasant to the touch, and that was a touch not easily avoided.

They had dug out from the deepest caves perhaps three dozen wretches like the one he shook now. Each was crippled, certainly lame, those too sick or too wounded to have escaped. They were damned by the gods. They were plague hounds chased out of the city to take the worst of a pestilence visited upon Deci with them. They lived because they each had to suffer for many hundred. Gnolls had come here and those still able to run had done so. But the gnolls coming here had taken no one. If there was anywhere safe from those little bands of slavers then here it seemed was it, still though some had fled. About the gully were piles of gnoll dung. In wetter nuts signs and symbols had been made where the walls of the gully were easily reached. Bile thought there was something more to the crude symbols but he had no idea what it might be.

“Preacher...”

“Does this Bile look like a preacher to you, sleeperson?” he said. The rotten little man he held easily from the ground with one hand. If he encouraged his captive he did it with threats, or promises to be more exact.

“Forge town... they went, gnolls laughed. Yipped, they let us go, they thought it funny. There was one, gold rings, vain, somehow, it said, said...”

Very touching, Bile thought. He dropped his captive and to help him speak kicked him viciously in the gut. He turned to where the best of his children had dragged the captives together. They had eaten though they would never eat enough, but enough that they did not eat the prisoners – or at least not all at once. They had only the night before almost literally stumbled upon gnolls, only a dozen or so, but big and ferocious and armed for slaving more than war. The fight had been sudden, bloody and violent. The ghouls did not eat the gnolls, few tried. But there had been slaves, prisoners, thinking themselves rescued but not for long.

At length Mr. Talky was able to say, “Said, ‘it’s started then’.”

*

Gothiel... hell, I’m still only in Gothiel. Every time I think I’m going to wake up back in the greenwood. When I was home after that first scrap with the silvery fools, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife until I said ‘yes’ to her moving on. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting way into the back woods. I’m here a week now, waiting for the militia to be manned, the rangers to return. Every minute I stay in this city, I get weaker. And every minute Piney squats in the greenwood, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the temple walls moved in a little tighter.

*

“Mother...” said Nichal. He had left his Pack outside the city though whether it would have inflamed anything was difficult to say now. There were quiet little killings going on so seeing a body now he decided that, aye, it had been best because he was not rightly happy about being here at all.

Berek walked with him, his face clouded. The Old Wolf was here for Billy’s body. Right now and in some other land they were an army and Billy whose talents in the wilds as a King and warlord were limited to looking pretty damn good would not have been more than a banner. But people followed banners as they had followed him here and those wolves were spoiling for a fight that no one wanted to give them. Berek felt he owed Jander, but Jander he noticed was not here.

They were on the relatively quiet street of Hightown. It’s wide spiral went up so threaded with lanes, houses and tunnels that it was a wonder the whole rotten thing did not fall into the abyss that was almost entirely hidden by the bridges and boards that had become streets and storehouses. They neither of them did any good by their glory, or would not when on reaching Billy’s resting place they did not then level the Spire and drag out his killers. They were heroes, figures of myth to the people but the people expected more of them, more than pragmatism and fraternity with those others with whom they shared...

...whatever it was. They walked and they were not alone. Every house was shuttered. Every small estate gate locked and chained. Many had been broken into. There were horrors behind closed doors. Angry the wolves kicked Deci to scream, fight me, fight me, but the city would not and Nichal and Berek had other fights in mind. On which Berek said, “They ain’t gonna listen, not much anyhow.”

“We won’t stay long,” said Nichal.

*

Scaffold covered the walls and where the Militia were still changing over one was knocked about the head by passing stone. Clouds of dust blew about the aptly known Wall Lane where Fundamentors shaped each block as each block arrived. Darig had run about the week before finding stone where no one had thought stone would be and now it hung or was being shaped, floated or merged to the next in a veritable symphony of hard activity. It was difficult in places to see where the walls were being raised as Darig hurried by, calling to one or other of the more important locals to see who would come to hear what he had to say on the steps of the Cathedral? His receding hair hidden under a rag Master Styer was dressed for battle, all flash and wonder put aside in preference for old leather and reliable iron.

“We’ll go of course, Darig – but we should be here. My boys and girls aren’t good for pushing through thickets. You need me here to keep the city safe, otherwise who?”

Darig offered an apologetic look but Aaron arrived only the night before wanted Styer when a choke point was found in a vast and sprawling forest. There were still people being hurried into the city by small knots and scouts from Illion, rangers from the wild places and other scruffy ne’er-do-wells (as Styer would see them). He tried again, “You’ve ordered the walls raised higher, we’re in a fortress, we have all the advantages and if they come against us...”

“I am sorry Styer, Aaron was quite specific. We are not going to stay in the city we are going out to meet the enemy. I need not remind you of your loyalty to Gothiel?” said Darig. Styer ground his teeth but looked away. To anyone else he would have cursed their eyes and told them to walk where they went, but he was staying here behind good stone and in good iron.

“No, Darig - you don’t,” a small lie. He straightened. “Might I at least see to our defences until I am made to leave them?”

Darig tutted, then laughed, and nodded. He watched Styer walk stiffly away with his dignity wrapped about tight about himself. He looked up. There was scarce a cloud in the sky. He pressed on, already and there was quite the crowd waiting for him, and he only having reached the fringes.

*

He had not long returned. In Deci he had stayed only sufficient to find the only carting work going, and he one of the few to take up on it. The city was once again populace, once more fighting with the rural lands pulled in tight. It was to all intents under siege with the fine new roads unused and with slavers more rumoured than realised roaming at will without. Caravans had not been leaving though barges might be. Ore would be piling up if the mines were still occupied. The villages and towns were empty. Carters and even traders were not about to cross a land where the city could not even protect itself, let alone them. But Orion had got work, for despite all Vizier Halfblack was not going to bow to the tribes, to pay the slightest notice to northerly invasion, nor freely roaming beasts and slavers. He at least had announced his defiance of such danger, that business must go on, and if he had said all this from somewhere closer than Bildteve more might have heard.

Still then Orion and a handful of others with their own carts and teams had shifted what bundles they could from Halfblack’s estate out in the Badlands. They had even been escorted, which had been nice.

On his return the city had been enjoying its little war with the King alone (Orion had heard) of all his Council, not to have suffered the unfortunate loss of a grandparent. Selgard indeed had suffered the unfortunate loss of himself and whilst death was somewhere heroes typically only visited, the timing Orion had heard widely said - was impeccable.

The city markets had been desperate, city food being handed out and goods appearing in the hands of stalls and traders still ripping free the bond seals from crates that bore Merchant stamps. There was clearly good treasure to be made in such adversity, certainly Orion had made a little himself which he now drank in the Cart & Hammer in a Forgetown not as empty as it had been when first he had arrived. Still it was nowhere near its bustling self, what with there being a war, or two, oh – but a couple of hundred refuges had hurried here from the city. Some of whom had fled the other way a month or three before.

Orion looked up from his tankard. He smelled trouble, and distant enough that he had to look around for a moment he soon heard it too.

*

The Spire soon vanished into the poison of the city, the stink of it causing them genuine pain. The Spire was the centre of it. It was the spider, the dark god that had raped the mother and kicked her in the stomach until nothing remained. Across the land the city had raised like a net great tracks, roads, that drained and killed what little there was of nature so that now there was nothing of that remaining, and less still here. Doubtless set forth by the Faceless King, plotted by the Halfblack but made by Jander. And here in the centre of it all that terrible spire as big as any castle and impossibly tall. Its gates were shut and the polished silver mask above them gleamed. And before it a square that was not in shape that at all. And on the cobbles a body that had been arranged and which had not putrefied, and which might have been drunk, sleeping but for the four or five figures about it that washed it and kept it free of the smog, the soot, and the filth.

“The funny little man said you’d come,” said one of the urchins. A girl that had survived the city’s several attempts to exterminate the wolves.

“Funny?” said Berek.

“From Cheapside, neat, tidy, white hair, dressed all exact.”

Berek grunted. Sounded like Ulis. Right then, he bent to where Billy lay and where because the City Spirit wanted it so, so he had remained. Poor little Billy, everyone’s friend. They had passed by a bunch of the remaining murder cultists coming here. They had been murdered.

“You leave ‘im be,” said the girl, Zen. She had seen Billy being murdered. She had wept like others who had not wept since being babies. Everyone loved Billy. She wanted a better shout for the wolves in Deci but the city had killed them before and it would kill again. It should be a better place. And here they were the Old Wolf and the new Young Wolf. She said, “You goin’ to gather everyone, you going to bring ‘em to justice?” she spat towards the Spire.

Neither Old nor Young trusted themselves to answer her.

Zen saw it and that last little piece of light in her died. If you wanted anything done, you did it yourself. She cradled Billy’s head in her lap but others gently took her aside. Berek bent and respectfully picked up the young man.

The sounds of the city seemed distant here, the roar of the Invisible Quarter set against the nervous silence of Hightown. Berek tipped back his head and howled, and across the city what shutters remained opened banged shut. Other voices took up the call, then more. Further still until across the city and hundreds of calls went back and forth at the death of the last of the first King’s of Deci.

*

They moved with the utmost care their hearts firmly in their throats. Their old clothes were torn and patched and coloured by the mud and the bracken in which they had laid for four days. Not so far away four figures stood unmoving. One seemed to stare right at them but did not react, a light wind stirred the needles of his hair and moustaches but that was all. Willock like those with him did not look directly at the pine folk. They moved and carefully again, eyes moving, heads not, up and about and often down. The canopy nearly total there was little under growth, and that helped. One hand rested on a hilt, otherwise scouting out from where they had hidden the Pathfinders might as well have been unarmed. None of them had eaten too well and their water was all but exhausted, but they kept away from a nearby stream as streams were where people went, or expected to find people who did.

They had a long way to go yet still Willock picked up a foot carefully to lower it slowly, and eventually they passed by the closest of the pine folk. There were no animals to disturb and dry twigs and branches were not hidden. The light was dappled and irregular. It was hard, stinking and often ill-regarded work but it had to be done and here at least conditions were (ironically enough considering whom they stalked) ideal.

*

The room was dark by the time he had finished but in Deci that was not unusual. He had no idea whose rooms these were because he rarely waited to ask names. They in a pile in the room beyond and he now rising from his knees he inspected the octogram he had made in the floor. He needed no precious compounds to light, no little sacrifices to make. The star was anyway just there to make a gate, and not a very big one at that.

He clapped his hands together, spoke the rhyme for his mischief and only an hour later did he wake up, fingertips still smoking and any result of his ritual already devoured by the city and the tower of night.

Hmm, right then.

*

“If things don’t look tenable then we’ll retreat,” said Aaron.

“If things don’t look tenable we’ll be in the arse burn of nowhere without any way of retreating. It’s a right old risk,” said Selvar. The two spoke where the Hob were seeing to their horses, the enemy was hardly going to travel along roads or even trails. If they had, then this would be a series of scrappy fights a lot closer to wherever it was they were going. People thought Halgar, that was dandy, but if the enemy had to be there then going through the woods and Heartlands they could already have arrived.

They had waited, or were prowling the greenwood, probably growing in power and that Aaron explained was why they had to fight them. He said, “It’s almost certainly the case that we could shelter in the city and everyone would be safe. It would doubtless make more sense strategically to let them do what they would, and if they are moving meet them in the fields of Halgar. But we have to make sure they don’t have time to grow, or give them something to worry at. We can’t hide here unless they’re coming here.”

“If you say so, Sire.”

Aaron chuckled. Similar conversations were doubtless being had by every hero with their Reeves or hired Masters. That was why heroes raised and ran things. They had to observe a much bigger tapestry. But he knew also that what Selvar said was what a lot of his own Hob thought too. They did not want to die to be an irritation. Spears always liked cheese because they enjoyed a lot of whine, and the current vintage was the certain opinion that the enemy being in their element the poor souls with spears who were not, were just so much bait. Aaron knew speeches and proud words only went so far before any Master that could die and rise again sounded like a pompous fool. Ultimately and the spears would do as he said because they had the heart, the faith and the loyalty to do it – faith in him, but loyalty to one another.

*

It was an absolutely splendid time to be out and about and if the streets, lanes, alleys and roofs were just too bustling for a real gentleman, then a real gentleman always had the under ways. If everything was wet then at least everything was not under water. Well charitably might it be called water, and which had in many places drained, been drawn or just at last gone away. So that now he walked along a street that whilst crushed low enough to make him in places duck his precious head still he walked it mostly alone. It barely took a breath of will to hold the lantern alongside him as he walked twirling a cane he had brought for the hike, and humming to himself an unpleasant tune of his own composition.

He ignored the strange new life that had bloomed here and which seen now was only that which had adapted even faster. Fronds of pale silk and streamers of slippery venom-lace, plants he supposed for certainly they had no mind. Everything was unpleasant down here, he felt rather at home. He stopped at first only when he spied hiding, dying, nearby a frightened mind.

“Hello citizen,” said Talath, raising his hat without anything as gauche as raising a hand. “Dying are we?”

“Bugs, sir...”

“Jolly nice to meet you, Bugs.”

“No, done for me, bug thing, swords,” he coughed fresh bloody foam and groaned. He was in some quite considerable pain. “Nest, in the abyss... drow, drowned, some, don’t know...”

“Jolly good, here are they?”

“No...” he died.

“Oh how very rude,” said Talath. He tutted as he walked away and if he ignored the scavenger snake as thick as his arm that slipped into view intent on dead Mr Bugs then it returned the favour, as first The Sleek and then his lantern vanished down a set of very slippery steps. The last to go was the unpleasant little hum but soon too there was silence and an hour later no Mr Bugs at all.

*

It was bright golden morning with the sun warm and the crater cold with dew shining on the belly of a gargoyle that really had eaten far too much. Faced with needing a bloody great cart and team to even take a good run up at his treasured lovelies Slake had been left with only a few choices. The first was to approach the Duke and bare all, the second was to eat the bloody stuff, the third...

...Oh look, Slake thought, lovelies!

Now he had to dig and that given the distended stone of his stomach meant scratching slowly with one foot. There and whilst the sun rose he found more of the dull, warm stuff and that he scratched round to where he could roll in it, magnificently ugly face wide open. So much had he eaten and so virulent was that which had been eaten, that he looked like cooling lava. Cracks ran about him bright, white and orange, framed by dark chunks of firmer definition. He needed to belch but did not have the ability to. And beside which if the wind turned it might melt his head.

“I must serve...” he said. He stared at the sky. Any time now he was going to get right to it, once some of his lovelies had gone down, after lunch no doubt. A beetle thinking him a rock crawled up one shoulder and across his face. “Oh please, really, I couldn’t manage another thing...”

*

They kept their feet though bent at the waist and many wished they already had their pikes for their shields were heavy. Everything indeed was heavy so that they steamed in laminar and with bundles now dropped to the road, cloaks rolled and red-faced and grateful for the stream that had remained of a river over which the Imperial road had run. They had marched, slept, marched, slept and all on the wide and often impossibly straight Imperial roads with here the forest cut back fifty yards, more in places, looking dense but with an awful lot of shade. It was hotter than home, the land so very different. There their Master had been speaking to tribes as their master was wont to do but they had left the first way back in Keys to follow, which it would, whilst the Pony Tribe would not leave that land for now. But the Hird the Master had recruited had been slovenly, indolent, without the Guards pride so would join them when it would whilst they pressed on like madmen for weeks on end to get here.

“Gothiel by dark,” said Drago. His throat a goblin’s armpit he did not drink until his Honour Guard had. His face was red and he had long since told his feet that he and they would have to go about their own business and talk when all this was over. There were Helds coming from across the Empire and the roads made that possible, but how soon and in what order was impossible to say. “Five minutes,” he said. “Piss if you need as we’ll only stop next to smarten up.” Can’t have the locals think them anything other than magnificent, Drago thought – else what would happen if the wife found out? He blinked. “Make that two minutes!”

*

“Slice?”

“Merchant Sire, proper one too. His place west is thick with those old adventurers he likes to hire, none of ‘em younger then you.”

Orion nodded but he was looking out the window. His companion was about to heave the boards into place that made to measure had stubby bars along each side to lock them into place. The fighting was scrappy, out of earshot but someone was organised. Nonetheless and as Orion watched a half dozen gnolls ran by. They were bigger than he had expected with one fat as butter and all three stinking even here and across from the main drag. Orion started when without warning the fetid jackal-face of another banged into view and only inches from his own. A great hand on a wiry arm caught at him and the smell that clawed at the carter was enough to drive his scream back down his throat. Orion got a foot against the wall, heaving back as he found his sword and with a hard blow up, then down he staggered free as the gnoll yelped and fell back itself. The shutter was banged into place across the window, but not before Orion saw a woman being dragged by, freshly naked like so much meat.

Candles were lit. Orion kicked the hand he had severed into the fireplace. His plain old sword was speckled with corruption where the gnollish ichors had been left from the blow. There came no bangs on the doors. Those inside were all carters, traders, not heroes but tough enough, but not so tough as to run outside with their one life. Someone fetched up a set of bone dice.

“Just a raid, ain’t enough to do much real damage,” said the carter that had spoken last to Orion and who had arrived here not long before he. They all looked up at the whoosh and bang, the carnage sounds of passing adventurers, who passed on by and thus out of thought and mind for the carters holed up here. That suited them all grandly who not likely to have gone to anyone’s aid in the first place now had an excuse as to why.

A cup was rattled. Someone went to dip a couple of fresh jugs. The fighting went to and fro, still scrappy, and then voices called for those that needed help. Orion smelled something burning, but nothing close by. It was his turn with the bones. He picked up the cup.

*

When he drew the sword all mean things were banished. Here in the north Quarter of the city several hundred had gathered to stand, sit in windows and paint the square with their odour. It was not a new blade and its design was that of the barrow. It did not shine, it did not sing, but it was the Dror’Bael, one of the sacred treasures and if they did not know what it was, they knew what they felt. This was the blade that hungered, the truth giver, the death of champions. They were in awe.

“It’s a very nice sword,” said Zen to a pair of ruffians from the mountains who since coming here had taken to dressing in Guild Master robes and pig fat. They spared her a short, rather intense look. They named it for her with withering disgust for such a little padfoot, the whisper running about the square until Berek had to wave them silent again.

“Here’n it is,” said one of the wolves. He panted under his moustaches. “That pair are goin’ terra ‘ave us drag this city back to’era den in bits. ‘Ope you can fights girly?”

Zen smiled and remembered to bare her teeth. She had actually learned a little from the battered old shaman and wolf hag that had been hiding out not so far from here, until the city’s law, The Sleek, had had her dragged out and hung, to dance the Trollsville jig. But this did not seem the time for charms and folklore. So distracted was Zen by her memories that she missed what was said next, and why it resulted in so much sudden shouting.

“Best ger’on girl, nothing good’s gon follow...”

*

“Look, we don’t want to seem ungrateful... but you’re a fecking ghoul.”

He wasn’t as it happened, not exactly. He had put his hat on too which with a big coat was usually disguise enough. No one had looked at him twice in the big city where with a handcart and shovel he had cleared up whilst a fight had still been going on. He had been impressed too. Deci was being looted like a new Held having lost its first battle and pretty much all the loot taken was being spent within three streets. In the posh bits for some reason called the ‘Invisible Quarter’ they were spent in the same street, in one case - in the same place. The sleepers, the mollies, the peddlers, the ale and the tar spirit were going where the fighting was fiercest. But there weren’t any artisans, though he had found an artisan post. It had indeed been just that, with a crossbeam from which had been hung a cage. A cage in which dead and food for snakes had been the last artisan to describe himself as such. The Hundred Guilds of Deci had views. He said, “I ssaved you.”

“Sort of. Look, we work for Big Anath...”

The not-quite-a-ghoul folded his rather-too-long arm about the artisan. He said, “Well, Big Anath ain’t here now, is he..?”

*

He had spent the night before with a family he knew from Forgetown. Indeed and spread about the city nearly everyone he knew from back home had come here. Gideon could hardly blame them. He had come to the same conclusion albeit for different reasons. Most of those he knew were tucked away in the Slurries, the seat of Deci industry and the Quarter most closely associated with Jander. The association was more than enough to explain their presence there, sheltering in quiet foundries and cooking by furnaces. True they wandered, that too was in their nature and so with a number he had entered Cheapside. Sticking to the higher streets and working towards the gate he had not been stopped amongst the crowds, Berry’s lads and lasses knew him well enough and some had even waved or paused to pass the price of fish with the mayor.

Unsure where the little shop would be open he was unsurprised to find it was not, though trying the door anyway he blinked to find that the handle turned.

Therein and the little shop with old velvet drawn across the windows was cool from the white flames of candles that burned cold rather than hot. Still there was a pot of tea. The tidy shelves were arranged with a cornucopia of potions, poultices, tinctures and poisons. He was alone until he sat, and thereafter in the chair opposite it seemed he had always here been in good company. Ulis Tamary looked at Gideon over steepled fingers. A small man his narrowed eyes showed a swirl of soft colour, oil on water.

*

There were a good number and mostly with axes, beards, and arms bared despite the cold. Indeed coming through the greenwood to where he had learned Everdawn could be found the woods had gone from Sunner to Deathly in a matter of yards. A filthy woman living in much worse had harangued him until with those still with him Illion paused and raised both hands to show he came in peace.

If cold it was actually nice to be out of the passing heat, it reminded him of the mountains and the high places and having run for five hard hours to get here Illion allowed himself a brief sigh. In the distance and about the rude little town whose turf fires coloured an otherwise clear sky was a mound, and not some battered old undead thing but clean and clear, well tended and rather impressive in its own way.

“Afternoon, elf,” said one fellow with a very big beard. Crude tattoos on his arms showed serpents.

“That’s the one,” said Illion, “here for your... chieftain? Wizard? Big elf?”

“The-god-that-sleeps-under-the-hill-our-winter-fast-wyrm?”

“Well,” said Illion politely, “Everdawn, certainly.”

The big men closed up to discuss whether this Illion was like the elves that had snuck up the night before and decided he was a little too short to be one of them. Short elves were all right, they decided. Illion might have protested had he heard but to be fair compared to Everdawn’s villages few people could truly claim to be tall.

*

Other than certain ritual difficulties this was his sort of town!

The Quarter had been easy to find - it was where nearly everyone was. Where the food was being handed out and where hairy men helping themselves to the city bounty were then selling it on. People were angry and in the process of his going from gate to Quarter he had seen a barbarian grabbed and dragged away for a knifing, another descended on by harlots with needle knives and more than a few left for the honey their bodies still moving from the snakes that fed on them. Likewise and the ruffians had kicked in doors, robbed what they pleased and set fire to two of the larger buildings close to hand. What fighting there was was brief, bloody – but he sensed some order and knew he saw but a fraction of it. He stared at a well-dressed man nailed to a door, he looked about but the closest he saw of the Watch were a few of their tin hats dumped in the same yard. It was a city in chaos but if any city could live through that then it was Deci.

He swore when he came to the market. More so the bazaar, all the lanes crowded, no one in charge, shouting, fighting, people were being robbed where they stood only to be bustled away elsewhere. He stepped over one couple that rutted away in a space only as wide as his own stretched arms, they cheered, insulted but mostly ignored by anyone about them. There was also some real anger in the air and different to the hairy buggers he had seen before he too pressed himself aside a good score more, these armed and armoured as well as champions pressed through the crowds seeking some poor soul or other.

The stall he pushed rattled, he looked and spied it sold bottles. Good ones too. They sold everything here, at the moment several times over. It was a time of civic disaster and in Deci that meant business was brisk. He turned to grab at the stall holder, to snarl and let a little of old god show. He said, “Where do I find Tamary?”

*

Darig was their leader, had been it seemed for so long few could remember another. There were a good thousand, two, more perhaps as he spoke to them from the steps of the Cathedral. He was asking them to fight, to come with him to the greenwood and there stand in good grace to fight for their land, for their faith and for one another. He was calling the levy and having not done so before was not sure if he was to be surprised by how many shuffled closer to hear what he had to say. Young men and women mostly he saw, and one that seeming eager was caught up by his pa and dragged away though he was by common city tradition old enough to be a man.

Young men puffed themselves up, seeing respect and even a good fight. Others were shamed by friends who so puffed, or by their girls and even young wives into being a man about it. Young women too who scorned the skirts and big eyes of such young wives and were as good as any man, clapped and called to Darig so that he had to wave them to silence. It took some time before he could speak and then it was to tell the many hundred to fetch food and what weapons they had and return here within the hour, for soon they would march.

*

A yard high it sat atop a boar whose head and arse were bloody holes. The world’s supply of this year’s flies drove upwards almost drunkenly, certainly reluctantly, to hang in a mist close by. Bolder, fatter examples continued to crawl over the matted dung, smooth where it had been liquid and baked by the sun. It steamed. Crudely shaped it showed a fair approximation of a horse head.

Kintarma did not find it the least funny. Long in the saddle, his face sore from the cold-water shaving, his best livery worn and too often brushed he dismounted. He hissed, he walked not liking what the god’s had so clearly put horses here to do better. About him a stick of good men and proud women fanned out, spear points low. Grasses thick to the sides and middle of the trail several of their horses started to crop the green. He bent by the effigy.

Not a bad effort, he thought. At any rate for beasts.

“We’ve found more like ‘em up down, along the border,” said Filo. He was the Reeve for Eyger’s Hob now and he and Kintarma had hailed one another after an initial cautious draw on the rein. The enemy was not known to have horses however. Frankly, no one was but for them for half an Empire or more in any direction.

Kintarma too had found other and similar like it. He knew what had to be done, he wanted to cut the enemy’s line of advance and supply and that to his mind had meant the pine road, which realistically meant the pass, to be cleared. Which it was last reported as being the case. There were many advantages to the light horse and right now he was enjoying nearly all of them. Communication was excellent, the wide sweeping he and others were engaged in likewise, and the fights when they came – well, he grinned, they were just dandy.

No enemy had attacked him when before he had made it to the Tallfellow Estate. Supplies weren’t being brought down the pine ‘road’ (what did they need, dirt and rainwater he supposed, who better lived off the land), it was not really a road, but slaves were being taken there. The forest new and old wasn’t a road but a nursery but a spawning pool. Cutting the enemy’s supplies meant stopping slaves being taken to the pines, lashed in place, and for that he had just the weapons at his disposal.

The plan remained if its implementation and draw had been changed by circumstance. Kintarma was happy with that. It required he and his to sweep Eartholme of slaver filth and so far slaver filth, gnolls in bands not even warbands, were easy prey to even a stick of light horse, hob or... other Helds. Whatever they were, slow-something-or-other anyway.

“We found undead too,” said Filo.

“Here?”

Filo nodded in the direction of the border and Deci. Something summoned and sent and unfortunately right when the Empire had set it’s Mount to patrol.

Kintarma chuckled then dug into a saddle bucket for orders he had made in his own particular hand. These he handed to Filo who could take them to the pass. Kintarma to be fair was having far too much fun. He was in his element, which being Eartholme was probably therefore earth. It felt more like the wind, but he kept that thought politically to his self.

*

They dropped at the river to cup water to mouth and neck. Damp to the waist already from the meadow grass they turned to look about themselves to make sure all was as they remembered it. For a hundred yards back the way they had come the only trees in the meadows were saplings. That was the case for a half mile along the river where the meadows blurred once more into the greenwood. At this time of year the river was low enough that it only occupied half its bed and here stones and pebbles had caught and stayed over that year to make a ford wide enough that in the Pestilence the floods could be impressive, when the meadows would be a shallow lake. They were a little shy of a league short of the border with the Halgar Heartlands but a long way from any road and trail. Across the river and the ground sloped more so the trees were closer, but still better than any had hoped to remember.

“It’s about as good as it’s going to get,” said Martin. The greenwood for those that knew forests had no real bottlenecks, where there were trees the enemy could pass. If (as he had seen in the weeks before) the enemy had a number of lines of advance, one of them should come here. It would serve a lot better than trying to clear a field in the middle of the woods, probably with the enemy fighting them at the wrong time and already all about them. Still to get the enemy to come to them they would need bait, and Martin hoped those here would be enough. Still there were things to be done, the odd tree to clear, but nothing like the ambitious work proposed.

Better still and here the river went roughly southwards there to join the Windrush. That meant that the Helds of Gothiel could be brought here without having to pick their way in a long column through the cluttered forest, without track and trail, with an enemy that needed neither.

“Why aren’t they here already?”

It was a fair question, Martin allowed. They had stalked as close as they had cared to and even fought a brief scrap two days and ten leagues away. There was without doubt a lot of variety in the quality of the enemy. He might have stayed and fought longer but the night before he and his discussing the route had remembered this place, flooding as it was prone to so that no one lived hereabouts. Martin thought the river was the Whistle, and no one disagreed. They could not stay. They would have to track it south and to the Windrush then back up to Gothiel – if they were where they thought they were.

*

There were three or so hundred of them and they moved west, across the Badlands in shoes made for cities and with food dwindling, water shortening and for the last day with their shadows teased by gnolls. If not for the older amongst them they might have crossed directly a slave line going north. Only twenty there were real warriors and if most could fight, then the gutter was only an advantage when fighting in it, and with anyone that never had.

A knife was a poor weapon in the wide world against a sword.

They were two days from the Forest and they had been longer on the trail, the bulk for a fortnight with the likes of Zen catching them up the day before and much faster alone. Now they moved in a bustle, hurrying without running and Zen had caught up one little girl who could not keep pace. They were not followed, but paced and by gnolls such as were spotted about the land like weeds where not pulled up by heroes and adventurers.

They were headed towards the Shedeff, and the Forest of Wolves. If things did not turn ugly and soon then the tribes that were dying by inches and taking more with them were not going to stay there forever. Some would doubtless follow the Old and the Young Wolf in the months to come, many would not, and would return or most likely roam some more. But they would leave and the city so painfully quiet for so long would uncurl its self, brush itself down and freed from the bullying of big brothers would take it all out on the little sister. The wolves of Deci such as remained were leaving and these before they were chased away. Townsmen and women, the journey had been hard, though it had been fair weather and easy ground. Zen had no idea what they expected to find in the Forest but whatever lay there she doubted it would be streets and houses.

For herself she was excited. She had grown in the city but run in the wilds. She had learned a little and what she had learned at the knee of the late hag had only been enough to tease her appetite for more. There was ritual and witchery, secrets, mysteries and wild romance in the Forest that would never be found in the city. So they crossed the land and avoided the city roads that banded the corpse of mother-nature and cursed the gaze of mother-moon alike.

But for now they ran though the gnolls were few, they suspected, in case they might draw more, across this land of poison and to the rich Forest that lay like a tale well known but unseen, and still further on. And they ran to it.

*

They were few but willing, albeit unremarkable in so many ways and within them nothing of the spark that marked out an adventurer. These were the priests that had some measure of power but whom had been gathered from the villages and from across the city. There were more but to assemble the whole priesthood of Elbereth on the battlefield was to run a considerable risk of losing them. And besides which and though those that had come were very polite about it, she notoriously served another.

“It’s the sap,” said Latona.

Carden Postle set down a book and turned to where he had marked several pages. Old it had survived the Night of Levity and looked to be the work of many different hands. Postle was part of the city Apothecary, seeing to small potions and poultices but whilst they might hear of things, they did not brew outside of what they knew. Perhaps (he had apologised) someone like Gideon in Forgetown might be able to provide a bundle of potions for a Held, but not they. Nonetheless he did describe what they knew, albeit only as described in the lose book, “It is in some ways to do with ritual, power at least. It is probably why we hear they did not cross the Deci territory themselves,” for it was widely thought that in the Badlands of Deci there was probably less nature than could be contained in a rather small sthingy. Here things were not quite the same. He described how most commonly sap formed on those that passed through the area, as needles in the hair, a tint to the skin perhaps. This whilst not harmless made a person to some degree a little part of the Pine, seen and known of. Or otherwise it might (and most commonly) be what turned a man to one of the Pine, but that was a process of days, weeks, more or less Postle did not truly know. “Lastly and where the pine folk are of such age their weapons too are of such pine as they - then there is something akin to venom. To paralyse, to harden muscle to wood.”

“You can make no counter potion?”

He could not, and apologised again. It was work for a hero, with the wit and invention to do so, but certainly with samples. It was nothing that could be taken from the shelf, and even if they could have done anything there were few chirugeons in a city that had so many priests – and all the best of the chirugeons in the Empire had long since been invited, housed and Guilded in Scarlene.

Latona sighed and blessed those there.

*

The row of shops having always stood on a soft rise had remained clear of the waters that for months had seen Cheapside sunken, or rather rising, as people, things and everything else just moved up. Now much of that water had gone so that the streets were in places ankle deep only. But still and people having moved did not return to the floors below. The routes and bridges remained, and for the most part the lower level now revealed was hidden under new streets. It had happened before, it would happen again and the weight of new Cheapside would bear down on the old.

The shops here were good ones, the end of the row the Braided Fox and the western gates of Deci that nowadays and with the improvements still witnessed by the iron and brass scaffold that covered them could probably actually shut! He was not interested in that so much as the neatest of the shops, one of the smallest with bowed out windows, with fresh paint gleaming and the brass catching the light of the lamp that burned above the door. Over the window in a cursive wizard script U. Tammary.

But close enough to read it he was not close enough to open the door. Because there first were rats, big ones, almost as big as a man but wrapped like killers with blades and hooks set firm in paws hidden inside cloth, chain and a jeweller’s resin.

There were more and all about him, if out of reach. And turning back he found himself nose-to-nose with a goblin, stood on a box, in a very big hat. The goblin said, “’Elp you sir? Directions, misdirections, nice ‘at, good meal, throat cut from ear to fecking ear?”

He said with a sneer, “You are?”

The goblin handed over a square of pasteboard such as he had heard the Nobles employed when calling upon one another.

The stranger took it and read aloud, “Absolutely the last person you want to feck with.”

“That’s Sire Absolutely the last person you want to feck with,” said Trundelberry. “Not here, which is where you is, so...”

Not so far away warm light spilled over cobbles. Sire Berry looked, looked back and pushed the traveller back on his way.

“Someone’s got friends in ‘igh places...”

*

The Slaugh had not a care for the Pine, and evaded it no less than others. Here and they were furthest from its influence, that albeit diffuse, scattered like seeds on a good wind. Where they hunted and where they had fought then the dangers were the dead, and where they had watched heroes fight them – and then fought them too and in turn. But this was none of it the Slaugh’s fight, who had rarely felt so potent, so powerful, so unlike the long centuries of exile and service to those immaterial bags of memories and bones.

They smelled elves, they smiled to do so. If they had been warned then still there would be the Vale, and perhaps there were choicer cuts waiting there too?

The wood spoke to them no less than others as they traversed its dappled green and golden sea. The shadows of adventurers were long because they were cast by such very bright lights.

The Slaugh were already gone, had never been, less than silence, less than night.

*

“Why has that log got legs?” said Asta.

“I’ll sssalavage ‘em,” said Ped. “Worry not.”

Asta looked at what might have been a ghoul, well covered but clearly more metal than meat. The hand it waved about in emphasis was a bear trap, of bears were big as golems and made of something more awkward than iron. He said, “And you are?”

“Ped, boss,” he knuckled his forehead with his free hand, one of several he wore spare and in a purpose-made bandolier.

“And you are, a... never mind.” The trees that had sprung up in the pass had been attacked. Not cut down, not carefully brought down, sawed, roped and approached in what was for even experienced lumberjacks was dangerous. No, these trees had been attacked and the nearest looked like it had been brought down with a mace. The ground was a foot deep in splinters and bigger bits of trees. They had chopped down so many trees in just the first hundred yards that Ruk’s Rabble had actually blocked their selves in. It was bloody lucky they had not been attacked from above. Asta called forward the Guildsmen from their wagons. He pointed, “Any of you good with wood?”

“If I can make a suggestion,” said one, “we might want to start with miners?”

Asta rubbed his chin. The sounds of battle, beast-on-inanimate-tree, could still be heard along with the regular sounds of more fallen trunks. Ruk was in danger of burying himself in them. He might have just ordered the bloody thing just set alight but the Shaper Guildsmen had been as frantic as they had been repetitive about how fire never did what it was meant to. The wind too, and as they pointed out the wind was liable to be a right old bastard when it came to Eartholme.

There was a shout as the outer elements of the ‘Pit passed a message back that riders were approaching.

*

It was there that Caes Cor Del stood against the Seven Ruined Giants, said Everdawn. Curled about the topmost ring of his mound the grass was frozen, flowers too, the same as had been there for a year at least. His scales were translucent and he was lean and serpentine, yet still with plenty of himself about the long snout. It was probably the greed in the eyes. The air sparkled as spots of ice formed and fell, nearly spelling his words.

“Very nice,” said Illion. He waited for his scouts to arrive and tell him where they should be but it seemed that Everdawn already knew. A place almost ideal to their needs which Illion had suggested (a little sourly) was remarkably lucky. Everdawn had agreed that to be precisely so, although luck was something made not hoped for. And that had not been the most quizzical thing he had said since coming free of the mound, sheathed in ritual and hungry for battle.

The Giants were of earth and wood, of root and the deep places. But they could not cross water too wide to be stepped over, and at the ford Caes Cor Del stood, feet planted and as they come on him one by one he chopped them first one way, then the next. But each time the pieces would jump up and rejoin. The river did not let him burn them, and they were too swift and so he could not defeat them and they could not best him.

“Is this relevant?” said Illion. He did not say it cruelly, only he was worried without news. His people were particularly swift and would be darting like arrows shot from bow to bow, from tree, to dell, to stream, crag and glade. Willock and Martin would have warned of the direction of advance and Illion’s followers would be passing the word. In truth he knew people had been pouring into the city whether they were threatened or not. Retreating with bows long practised in the butts. What concerned Illion most was that there was not one advance, but several, a number of advances the Pathfinders were beginning to think. That the most northerly concerned them all the most and they had to concentrate on one. Things rarely went exactly to plan.

So they came at Caes Cor Del and together they pulled him down though he chopped them all up as they did so. And though he died and whilst all their pieces flew up to rejoin, the Seven Brothers could not agree on whose pieces belonged to whom! And that is where we shall be going, because I am there, and have been, I see it. And there the pine folk will know too of the anger of their kin, the Seven Brothers, which is why they might attack us, or are. Which yes, he held up a claw, is very lucky but as I say, he opened the claws remaining to show a sparkling snowflake, I truly make my own luck. With which he let free the flake to sparkle, to fly like blossom on the breeze but which unlike other flakes did not warm and die when it was away from the mound.

Illion watched it sparkle as it left them, only to start when he spied where it went one of his scouts emerge from the trees.

*

The trail of destruction was broad enough for a rock to follow. Bodies, evidence of magic and the almost-hush of diminishing spirits. Segara had known that adventurers had ventured forth of course but now he was seeing the evidence of it. He well knew the life himself but it was curious to see what was left behind through different eyes.

The gnolls were instinctive beasts. Some of their tougher champions and warhirds had been put down by adventurers and perhaps more importantly news of that had spread. Fighting warbands then Segara suspected the gnolls would have been driven together, banded up and would now by fighting the likes of the Lava Flow on at least parity. But faced instead with adventurers the gnolls had split into smaller groups. Ideal perhaps for evading and surviving a land crossed by adventurers, but bloody awful that in their wake had come the warbands.

It was like a trap, a ruse that no one had planned, as if on a battlefield when a wall might cluster if facing mount, making it easier prey for hound. The gnolls tactics, such as that could be said of their instinct, had been exactly wrong. And Segara though filled with bubbling confidence and eager to find more thought on that when pointing north. It might have been happy circumstance that had seen the gnolls gloved up for a nut-kicking contest, but that did not mean it had always to be so. “We’ve got quite a way to go,” he said. The Lava Flow chuckled. There wouldn’t be a gnoll in three leagues of here and they did not have the whole, vast territory to cross, because they knew the gnolls were heading towards the mountains, if they had slaves. And another happy circumstance had led to the allies here being based right there.

It was almost too easy. But no one said battle had to be hard.

*

It was despite the purpose for their being here, a fine day. Bright where the sun could run along the river and off the dry earth and stones bleached between the banks. In divided red and green the light Held having come in a lose order stopped to find a little cover on the banks. The trees were not so far away here and in places their roots overhung the banks entirely. Gothiel was hostile territory or they would not be here and that meant arrows, whether right or wrong.

Hunkered down about a tiny fire sufficient only to heat a tin cup of water (and that only slowly) a handful of men did not look up. On their shoulders an old green arrow patch suggested they might have been Pathfinders. From the Red And The Green came a fellow with a black sash and a strict eye, Master Mires. He said, “Who’s in charge here?”

One of the Pathfinders looked up to say after a moment’s pause, “Ain’t you?”

*

The column had crossed the land in a snake and following the land it had accompanied rivers, stream beds and crossed bridges still present from villages and towns that no longer were. Better kept settlements had served as camps, these in places a year dead but not from raid or even the undead so much as a symptom of the exodus that had seen so many return to the city. The city in question here was Bildteve and the column was the army that made up of its militia regular and irregular had not been troubled by so much as a miscreant crow for the ten days it took to arrive where now the Guildsmen worked.

It had been true that many of the militia were Guildsmen, but few of the craft guilds. And in any case such guilds relied on observations and traditions for which a saw was representative rather than practical. The Guild wagons with them worked the land about the hill found by the column’s vanguard, that vanguard (Bal and his Bastards) were now over the border. The light was about as good as it got out here, five hundred yards or so and the hill helped with that. Several hundred men and things-like-to-men slept so that the sounds of the day were snores, and farts, and sleepy grumbling. Arcane did not sleep though he knew he ought to, instead staring out to where a bowshot away the river bent back on itself, and again, the flow slow and shallow that pooled to make spotted lakes that rose in many places no higher than a man’s waist. Thereafter and across that close horizon were trees, and those he watched though they were water colour blurs.

“Sleep,” said Ebonyach, doubly-dead but nursed to some semblance of breath again by the Nightsoil after walked back through the city gates with his grisly message. Arcane grunted. The mood was good amongst the spears he knew. He had half expected after their defeat in the Highlands that things would be otherwise, but they were not heroes and did not expect to win every time.

The ground was shovelled up by an unseen hand, stones, dirt and clay tumbled uphill to settle and be set by the straining Guildsmen nearby. They were building a fort in which one, two Helds at least could fight at need. Arcane was the Commisent of Bildteve and expected the worst - it was pretty much his job to do so.

Come dusk and he would arrange duties and patrols amongst his Masters. The Helds would not disperse too far as he wanted his spears together. If an enemy crossed elsewhere then they would march to greet them, or chase them otherwise. It was two hours Arcane reckoned until that dusk, too late to sleep like others wrapped up in their cloaks.

*

Even once assembled, guides at every Held and more for the rabble they had moved at the speed of the slowest. At least the bulk of the spears had, first along the bank of the Windrush then along the natural, if uneven, road of the Whisper. Normally the fastest the Warlord’s Own had been almost the very opposite having to lead their horses and with care that the loose stone and gravel did not turn a hoof or heel. At least there had been plenty of the real supplies of war in the city. Everyone packed food, walked in new if two-sizes-only boots and each man and women that was a spearman with a new cloak rolled on back or shoulder, along with the rest of the clutter of war even fighting here and in what should have been considered locally. The line had lengthened, thinned, and especially with all the levy (most of which had eaten all their food in three days). Given they had the advantage of fresh water Aaron had had to send his own spears back to make the levy go into the woods to defecate and then well guarded. Every time they started it seemed he got word to halt. He had restrained his complaints to Drago who had only shrugged as if this was the way things always were when in company, and when a Wall wore at a bit of its boot leather.

Frequently they encountered rangers, woodsmen and then up the Whisper a few Pathfinders, then in small groups Martin’s followers. There were a lot of people out there outriding them, but still Aaron had worried about what would have happened had the enemy attacked them there, on the march, river or no river.

“We would have been spanked very hard and then made a fort from our dead,” said Drago.

Word had come back from the Red And The Green, who were already at the ford. Aaron and Drago walking together at the head of the column were now but a short league from the chosen point of possible battle. Only the thought of what this would have been like crossing through a thickly clotted forest made Aaron feel any better. The enemy was not likely to use roads and trails, travelling to some clearing in the Forest heralded by lots of axes and fire would have seen the battle, perhaps, on that journey, amongst the trees and...

“Bloody stones,” said Aaron, stumbling. He was of course more than familiar with woods himself, but he still had feet, and the river was stony, and his boots were more used to riding. “Oh Elbereth, this could have been very bad...”

Drago (whose followers now carried pikes) had to agree. Close up and dirty were two things that had no place to his mind in battle. He had been appointed the Bastion representative here, but what that meant was rather difficult to know. Everyone was taking Aaron’s orders, he would order the battle, he was the Sire. Drago who preferred to be in the front of his brave boys had no complaints certainly.

*

Ruk roared, one side of his face spotted with the blood of the last to die smoked, hissed, which he ignored as he pumped the axe he had adopted for the now in the air. About him and his beasts answered, shouting indecipherably, wailing and in places shaking as if their rage could not be contained nor wasted in what here had been another slaughter.

The pass was out of sight, the hills hidden by trees still, but far away it seemed where here and bodies lay all around. Most dead, some dying. Ruk turned about wanting more only for a mallet to clang in just the right place on a plate of iron and rust on his heavy head. He staggered, he yelled as that head made for a good bell and almost fell before shaking off the pain he calmed a little.

“That’sss the way, chief...” said Ped. He still held the mallet and had put the plate just right during one of the many improvements, just as he would remove it after this battle for something else, and all looking ahead to times just like these.

“Ped!”

“That’sss the one, chief, here you go now.”

Ruk twisted first one way before the next. He remembered the scrap better than he recalled those before it. The gnolls had not banded together for reasons he couldn’t care less for. They were being driven in this direction he knew, some with slaves, many not. They ran to the Pine and that meant that Ruk and others were right in their way. They did not get them all Ped would later suggest, league upon league, several days walk and more ran that line but they were getting a lot of them. He said, “’Tarma-man’s plan, work real good?”

“Well ‘nuff, chief,” Ped did not want to say that luck and circumstance was a big part of it because that was almost always the case. Kintarma doubtless knew it, was pleased by it, just as he was driving the enemy like so much cattle into the pit. Closer to the pass quite literally so, Graduck’s Pit anyway.

Ruk scratched at where something else’s blood was gluing one eye. His Hird was scattered now, monsters spread over a mile or more, the fights brutal and often sudden. He recalled the enemy running at them, outclassed, outfought and frankly without any skill. It might have been different had they been organised into their hirds. But they weren’t so screw ‘em. Ruk scratched his head. The new bits of brain seemed to be working just great.

They would need fires soon. Ped did not reckon ghouls would eat this lot, nor crows, nor worse. That was all right, they had plenty of wood. Ruk had seen it, somewhere..?

“Gaaahhh!” said one of his beasts. Its tiny head was caged upon a chest of prodigious size itself encased in a lot of ribs all crossed together. It pointed. “Gol, gol!”

And there they were. More, “Many?” said Ruk.

“Twelve, sixteen,” Ped counted. “Two dozen?”

They were easy enough to see. They ran and each different. Muzzles flecked with foam, one with a light lance clear through a shoulder. Bits of armour, their bellies grotesque, horrors driven to madness that ran for the safety of the Pine some way beyond Ruk and seemingly ignoring the bodies, the beasts and the bad old day that began to match their run but in its case towards them.

Ruk laughed and hurried to catch up with the twenty or so of his monsters already lolloping at the gnolls.

*

“I couldn’t have asked for much better,” said Aaron.

Latona looking him up and down thought to suggest a different tailor but it did not seem quite the time. Nor strangely for a battle, where here she stood with him to the rear of his army and atop a rise where he had a good view of where the Helds were for the most part sat down. Some slept, it was a nice day. A band of reprobates on the far left called the Stars in Darkness, and huddled together almost conspiratorially. Next to them and snoring the worn out old lucky clothes and tattered gear of the Rad And The Green. Then came the centre with what to many would have been regarded as proper spearmen. Drago’s Honour Guard and Styer’s Iron Held, both stood, armoured, facing front and if in lose order then certainly not straying. Making up the right were Illion’s elves who in some cases were playing some elaborate game of grab-arse, and all under the hungry eyes of a rather small, rather sleekly mean dragon of white ice that she had been told was Everdawn. She thought it lovely that he thought himself a real dragon, ahhhhh, sweet.

But in front of the Helds were the levy. Most all had come here at Drago’s behest but another hundred or two had been cajoled into joining them by Drago and Aaron who had not had the time to mount a proper assault on their good sense, nor were (to be frank, and hereabouts in Gothiel) Darig. The Governor had been forced out of the city by the need to be with the levy that like all such went where their bold hero went. They outnumbered the true spearmen, and argued, fought, worried or sat in big groups with some swords, clubs, and whatever else passed for a weapon once the Helds had thieved the city’s lifetime supply of axes.

“Having marched away from the city, its walls and people, into the woods, how embarrassing is it going to be if these icky pine people attacked Gothiel itself?” she said.

Aaron grunted, looked up and away from his plans for removing the flower of Gothiel from Primus. He said, “What?”

“Gothiel?”

“Oh well now...” he waved off the possibility, or perhaps its importance. He was here to fight, and if the enemy had a chance of winning, then to run away. And the spears knowing this, were reassured a lot more than some three-belt loony whose idea of fighting to the death was he missing supper. Aaron rubbed his hands together to feel the power he had conjured up for the battle.

Latona seeing this asked, “Are you our ritualist?”

“Well there’s Everdawn...”

“What does he do?”

Aaron pointed. “He turns himself into a little dragon.”

Latona smiled gently. “Aw, bless...”

For a moment Aaron considered what he assumed to be an offer. “Can’t hurt,” he said and bowed his head briefly.

Nearby and the nearest of the trees, a copse that might for all they knew sprout the enemy, was convinced to walk away a bit. Aaron watched as with dreadful slowness the trees were led away by the branch, by Illion, and thought it not at all strange.

*

It had been a land empty, where passage was seen and tracks found but which for a week now they had moved across with the stink of the enemy in their snouts. They did not move silently, they moved with howls and scraps amongst themselves. They had left their own trails too, theirs of the trinkets and tools taken from abandoned village, hamlet or settling. Pots and boots, simple broaches or a good skillet carried for a mile then discarded, everything worthless in a land where give it a day more would be found. They had crossed out from Deci with their moods sullen and with some backwards looks. Berek had not wanted to speak of it. He had friends amongst the heroes of that city but his heart was with the wolves. Where Berek had left Billy’s body even Nichal had not known, just that it had been absent three mornings before last and Berek had not been telling.

The tracks were in the main old with fresher spore spattered amongst them. This land had been swept over and the bulk of the gnolls had continued on south, frustrated for the most part at the lack of good slave meat once the stragglers had been chased. The tracks all avoided the city. West of the city Nichal thought the laziest, the most cowardly of the gnolls might still be found in spits and spots but those that had not gone south had gone towards the Pine.

There now they came again having swept in the manner of wolves to-and-fro across a large expanse. Those that had been ahead of them had fled. Nichal was eager to be after them and into the Pine. There at least was nature, if not his then nature still – in the badlands of Deci that the city had for generations raped and tortured the land and if anything then recently they had done worse.

The wolves hurried when they scented the sap, felt the earth and saw the looming trunks that covered the hills and mountains. A bad man might be consigned to the hell of a good one when executed for his sins, Nichal had heard. It seemed he only had to leave the trees of the Shedeff to find his own and all so conveniently made by his friends.

He howled and when joined in that Nichal clawed the air and ripe, stinking earth to dig at the power there and tie it bloody to the howling that ran now about them even when their jaws no longer lolled open.

*

It did not matter that the arrows lit made any chance at hiding redundant. Martin drew and fired and at a pine warrior no further than ten paces away. His followers had spent hours carefully making the arrows, layers of resin and birch, charred and set again so that when they flew they would burn without screwing up the flight. Or more importantly, going out...

Martin drew and fired again and this time did not wait to watch if it hit as he darted back because he was the only one left, everyone else in the Starlight having long since legged it! Making an enemy go where he was meant when he did not need roads was a nightmare, and was rather as it might have been had their positions been reversed – which was not the thing at all, thought Martin who ducked as a short, heavy spear smacked into a tree by his head.

So as the branch that came out towards the further Heartlands had come close to not bothering with the ford at all, but stuck to the trees Martin had stepped up and shot it in the face with a flaming arrow so that it damn did know which way it was supposed to go. He almost swore as first one, then a half dozen further thrown spears rasped to bend about him, jumping and running and not looking round having fired the arrows he had lit and not really wanting to sit still long enough to play silly buggers with flint or magic quite yet.

*

“-the feck up!”

Sat hard on the chieftain’s chest he hid in the shadow of his own hat but for a skinny hand and a knife made purely to make the ear a means to tug out the brain. A year ago what they were squatting in a foot of had been water but where much of that on the surface had sunk it had left a sludge that irritated the skin and in which very strange fish had been found.

It was not where Sire Berry wanted to be. He had the drop on the fools that had come here and could have taken them to a wolf in five hard minutes but if he was not about to go against the King then neither was he going to join in with the wolf killing. He had liked Billy and being a cunning soul could taste something of the trouble of what had been done promised. Nichal had made them listen but he hadn’t made them change – they would have run to war, they should have run to war, a bridge across the mountains, tribes and even the Empire. But Billy was dead, and the city had made its choice. Ulis had fecked up, Ulis had expected some cunning that had not been there. King troy was straighter than his forebears and if his Vizier could pull corks with his soul then he had not...

... “Don’t wanna kill yer, fool!”

Deci had killed the wolves. Deci had turned on itself as Deci always would, which was why Deci was the Empire’s unruly youth in its family of cities. Deci did not need enemies, it had itself. Those wolves were angry now and if that had been blunted by the Old Wolf and the Young Wolf as was now, and if they were impotent in the face of the Fallen Angel then still they lashed out. They had pretty much taken the city and no longer knew what to do with it. Cause trouble mostly, but not here.

The chieftain was angry. Sire Berry could not help that. Angry was a sure sign of not being dead though. So Sire Berry bent and pointed out a few Cheapside truths to the proud warrior.

There were tribesmen and wolves, and wolves that were tribesmen and above, about and across from them rats had them dead, caught and off balance. No one yet had died. It was a Deci miracle.

*

They spoke quietly and when the wind picked up. When there was no breeze and nothing moved, then nor did they. No one was in any doubt that Willock could gut, hack in two or cripple whatever remained but they were Pathfinders and their best weapons were becoming their eyes, their wits and admittedly if it came to an argument in the Inn that Willock could gut, hack in two or cripple whatever remained of anyone starting trouble.

They had spent weeks abroad and in this endless green wild. So much of it off even a half-beaten track, and old, but not empty for spread about it and in so many places a hundred little scraps. Every tree an archer they said around here and what with Gothiel’s notoriously deadly woodland when roused, adventurers carving their own name into the damned and Martin creeping about the first casualties had been the leading gnolls. Here with the Pine it seemed the gnolls mostly swept outwards (Deci and Eartholme doubtless) but their vanguard were here but unlike elsewhere nearly all were already dead. Only the very best remaining, and that quite possibly just one group more adventurous than their dead and foul peers and they now well to the south and west again.

Worst of all and once sighted, then dimly, had been elves. But tall, and cruel, and leaking power – those the Pathfinders had let pass and prayed by whom not to be seen in turn.

The Pine though is what they sought and that took more time, because there was more to know, or suspect, or piece together – but was what they did. It was just a little harder where whilst the terrain, season and weather was ideal for the pathfinders so too were they not entirely the only ones.

“Three main groups?” said Willock.

That was the consensus. The Pine was scattered, seeds on a high wind that was coming together as they advanced. Those made in Deci with some champions, heading west and towards where the allies waited. The second was more southerly, more spread out and moving much slower, the third in bits and crumbs, almost unintelligent, bestial. Willock had learned enough to pass on and enough as was more the case to ponder. He nodded to his Pathfinders there and told them to keep out of trouble. It was enough that he might have to.

*

He had not thankfully been the breakfast promised him by King Grudamagh. The dragon was graceful and it curled about itself comfortably leaving the upper third free with long claws pressed together and wings folded. The serpentine head watched Davian with interest as he feasted on eggs and fatty bacon. It was good, Davian thought.

They were well within the hills here, the mine he had spied in fact an entrance to Grudamagh’s halls. There were mines too but here either the dragon’s chambers had been broken into and he roused, or he had woken for his own reasons and set aside such barriers as might have prevented that. The light came from an elemental, captive and angry in a brass bowl above them. The dragon Davian had spied, cast no shadow. The chamber was old, the stone worn but well made at some point if with most angles triangular, dwarf work Davian guessed. He sat at a table and chair brought for the purpose and atop Grudamagh’s hoard, treasures and curiosities and a lot of dragon ore, ironically, but little silver and less gold.

“It is an intriguing idea, a problem, but nothing that is insurmountable surely?”

Grudamagh raised an eye. He had in truth been expecting a visit by the Deci Gents, of a stealthy killer perhaps? He had and this was just as true, been ready for just that. But here and instead Davian had returned to remind him of his offer of breakfast.

“You are king, yet I am lord of this land. Maybe we can both help each other?”

“A king is greater than a lord,” said Grudamagh.

“A king does not concern himself with squabbles, fields, peasants and pigs. Nor too,” said Davian with a light laugh, “does a lord. But a lord might trouble himself with those who do. You are I suspect like I, a scholar of ritual, although one perhaps that is not entirely averse to gutting anyone that thinks that unmanl... seemly.”

“You think to flatter me?”

“I think to be polite.”

“But you think - which is rather refreshing.”

Davian mopped up the last of his eggs. Those here were very different to those back home in Deci. Birds he supposed, where he was used to those from snakes. Not the same at all. These were a lot less fiddly, especially if hard boiled with buttery spearmen. He said, “I don’t wish to threaten you, I truly don’t. I mean nothing of the kind but you know what generally happens in this land?”

“Yes, well...”

“So again and I’m sure we can arrange matters to both our satisfaction. King Grudamagh?”

*

“Up!” said Illion. He went from sprawled on one elbow to upright and weapon ready in the space between the u and the p. The noise of hundreds swearing kicked out the chocks from the panic wagon and where the Helds at least only had to push and shove themselves together the sound of their shouts, of the Reeves pushes and the Master’s steadying calls were swallowed by the startled hundreds of the levy. Even the rattling bang of shields as the walls came together only served to startle them the more. Illion looked to where Styer’s experienced spears had made themselves into a single lump of shielded iron and urged his own followers to let the centre take on any advance. He panicked a little himself when for a moment he could not find his Deci-made potion and shouted when with a smack like a ship’s sails finding wind Everdawn jumped into the air and away.

Illion could just about make out where some of what looked like Martin’s boys and girls were haring through the meadow grass and then the woods that framed the world some distance away visibly started to thicken.

*

It was good land, craggy and with the moon cutting beams across the late darkness. The soil amongst the nettles and bracken seemed to move, so worm-rich was it. The wolves were out of their territory but they loved that, they were raiders no matter their numbers, their glory or the moonlight that clung to them as they passed like raindrops on a Maii morning.

This was nature but it was not their nature, blurred that may be in the Empire but this was older, they might have been here and stalking ten centuries before, and some there recognised the feel of it, the Far North, of tribes and the wilds. They the wolves were the sickle of the shaman whilst about them lurked the enemy, the druid and the dominion. The world beyond was too far away, too distant, half forgotten.

Berek’s eyes and teeth shone where ahead he waited, panting, young again but for the grey in the fur and the look in the eyes.

“Found ‘em?” said Nichal, low and eager.

Berek licked his lips. Berek nodded. “Might be all’ve ‘em,” he said.

*

They almost panicked when their rangers ran through them. Darig had called them up, sang to their souls and of the many he had raised some more had joined them so that now he was in the midst of what he had to guess at were six, seven hundred citizens? It did not escape him that he and they were between the Helds and the enemy, nor that the enemy were themselves now emerging and at a steady run. Martin had appeared and was shouting for order but that somewhere else and Darig was running out of time for pretty speeches he was half sure would have been ashes in the face of a real enemy. So he satisfied himself with pulling out his mace and raising it high, shouted with them so that their fear became anger.

“Gothiel!”

“Gothiel!” they answered, then twice more so that the sound deafened what fear remained and they shamed one another so that Darig had to step forward amongst them. The rabble stretched across the river, a beast that knew that it went forward or it ran away. With a roar the citizens of Gothiel jumped down the bank and across the river, to the far side where they picked up speed and Darig was with them, unable to do much else but start to run!

Arrows snapped overhead now but they could not have been fired flat.

Ahead and running to meet them were a mess of figures, men and women, some children too and of wood but paler even than pine, with their needles black. Gaunt they still wore threads of clothing, some in the pointy-toes of Deci. These carried knives, most clubs and these ran too. Darig supposed that on some level Gothiel and Deci were always going to fight – and only now as the ground was gobbled up between them did Darig remember the joy of chopping down a tree with a mace.

*

The people were a mixed bunch, a little suspicious of him and were without any doubt brigands, bandits, vagabonds, miscreants and raiders! Or had been, they had each done bad things but usually because of bad people. Lords that had misused them, Deci still had peasants after all on the bigger estates, serfs. They had all been dispossessed and the older of them had been on the run since the city had set someone called ‘Siren’ on its rather rampant brigand problem perhaps ten years before.

Yet now they were settled. Grudamagh was their king, but their following of him was more akin to worship. The populace here had been offered another chance, and they had all taken it – although each of them had found this place because they had dreamed of it, and many of Grudamagh, and Davian was not sure what to make of that. Or even if he should.

And the people if suspicious still called him ‘Lord’ he noticed.

One of those more determined than the rest blocked his way when Davian went by the crops they were preparing to harvest. In the badlands of Deci dirt was rarer than gold yet here they had probably brought it down from the mountains of which they were a part, or perhaps it was because they were of a part of the range that it remained. This fellow topped Davian by a head and boasted a beard that could have been rendered down for stock. He said, “We wouldn’t like anything to happen to our dragon, Lord.”

Davian sized the man up, he said remembering something he had heard, “Saw Tully isn’t it? Well Saw Tully then on that at least you and I are of an accord.”

*

“When are you going to stride forward and challenge them?” said Styer loudly. There was laughter. It was that time when any joke no matter how feeble would be greeted with a warm, cruel welcome.

“In a bit,” said Drago, shouting back. The fight was all down the slope and across the Whisper. It seemed bloody awful, like children fighting, or fishwives arguing, a bar brawl, drunks, or ghouls sewed to a chicken two days kept hungry. It was bloody hard to tell what was going on, but he heard Illion call and tried to see what the elf wanted and hoped it was not that the enemy had flanked them somehow.

*

With a hand-sign he sent the last of his people back. For a mile, more, the pine trees had been splintered, broken. Amongst them and for another league well spread about there had been people and these tied there, bound in withy rope, naked and cut to bleed slow and steady into the ground. Slowly here where the sun broke along the lines of the moon they had been cut free. Lifted, warned and taken back. They had a fair distance to go and many had trouble walking.

Berek let his ears tell him when he and Nichal were alone and then together they moved with the utmost caution towards the sound of drums. This was deep into the Forgotten Hills and since they had come nowhere near a pass, doubtless then still Deci, such as that meant anything here, which was very little. There was no sign of man here at all, Berek would have sworn to it that these particular hills and importantly, gullies, had not been crossed for at least a year to his certainty. Longer he would have guessed, at least by anyone of good heart.

The smell was appalling. The stink was a living thing that stood guard in patches of rank mist that they avoided. There were crags and cracks that narrowed. Berek was reminded of caves, and he well knew caves. In these hills adventurers had beasted the beasts, stories had spread, word had run and Berek had a nasty idea that the enemy was trying to do something about that...

“S’quick look and then out, son,” said Berek.

Nichal bared his teeth. “Let’s get close,” he said, “and kill some of them!”

But the Old Wolf looked at the Young Wolf and whispered the alternative as they let their noses do the scouting. How about they waited and without the enemy knowing they had been found, instead of killing some of them, “Kill ‘em all,” said Berek.

*

Darig hammered at the next to reach for him, a club crashing into his back, causing him to stagger as he ducked a third. He turned to break the face of the second and to turn but he was alone with splinters and sawdust in the air about him and everywhere he saw only the pointed faces of bloody Deci fashioned out of smooth wood. It was his least favourite puppet show and with that in mind Darig vanished without the faintest applause.

*

The first wave of the pine folk left behind them bodies and bits of their own. They were a third down and chased after an enemy half of whom they had beaten as the levy ran, terrified and broken in places to fall at the ford and scramble back up the hill. Ahead they could see where the Helds stood locked and defensive whilst they the levy ever aggressive had first shown them how to fight, only to show them how to die.

To their cries the Helds did not part for them, did not break their shieldwalls nor set down their spears or pikes. The quickest caught where to their left and the line’s right Illion’s March of Dragons did press in a little closer and there then in the van again was Darig who pulled at them, screamed at them to go in that direction, but they were many still and without regard for one another were as concerned not to run into the bright points of their allies to the front.

Where then with Illion’s elves now calling at them too Everdawn flashed overhead. Everdawn was over them and gone with a passing of cold winter and a hard freeze that blew over the enemy behind them. There and the leading three score of the Deci pine levy fell, cracked or outright blew apart just as from the opposite direction and at last with a clear target Martin was able to shoot. Everdawn was up and gone as the flaming arrows snapped into the enemy so that for a long minute the air along the line burned with fire threads that joined and parted to leave a cat’s cradle of smoke before the shieldwalls and pikes. Again and again they fired and more of this wave jumped, to fall and fall again. Now close enough for a spear cast the enemy’s wave just disintegrated so that the only thing to reach the lines were sparks and smouldering pine.

And it was of a sudden quite still.

*

“We stole plenty fer now, Dad,” said Jamjar.

The spots of rain came through the smog without disturbing it much and that not much above the tallest rooftops hereabouts the rain had the feel of an ambush about it. Cheapside had filled up again because Cheapside always did. Thousands had sheltered here and if Cheapside was what people meant when they warned folk about Deci then it had roofs, and rooms, and for now food because Sire Berry had made sure if there was any in town then it went here. And if Jamjar and the rest had not found enough then he, Sire Berry, would have made sure that certain Merchants were paid for their time. In truth Sire Berry did not know the specifics for Sire Berry had a Quarter to run.

People were fighting because people always did, but the wolves weren’t here because here had not been safe enough for them on more than one occasion. Whilst Jamjar had worked with Slat Henry to do what had to be done Sire Berry had risked a night off his turf and in the Northern Quarter. Because that was where the wolves were and where they were learning not to be else drip their numbers away as Deci fed on them - and from where at least one Hird had left already. What wolves remained amongst the city were there too, Sire Berry knew, and the story went would leave soon. Which meant the Blood had won and the wolves would be gone from Deci, or at least...

...Ma Berry had warned him. Ma had said that the dead were about them. Not the manky sort of Bildteve or the plough zombies of Thimon. Not Nightsoil or gaggles of lichs plotting over tea. Ghosts, city ghosts, and the city had a lot of those.

“Dad, thethse people?” said Jamjar, pronouncing people as ‘pipple’.

“Yus, son?”

“This’th den of thieves, this’th people, they expect, more...”

Sire Berry knew it. The Nobles may have won against the wolves but it was the wolves that walked the streets and the Nobles that had fled. The people here did not know about the Deci Hunt and would not put up with it, they had expectations. Sire Berry was in the position whereby having made the Quarter his, he had now to damn well protect it! In crushing the gangs, his was the only knife sharp enough for war.

There about him Cheapside, he was the daddy now true – but they were all his stepsons now.

*

“Calm, rest, wait...” said Latona. They were well behind what Aaron called his pavilion in the trees but which had amongst them here no pines, nor spruce, but beech, elm and birch. She took those she had brought with her from the city amongst them where they could do most good, the broken levy still terrified and in some cases unworthily ashamed. Darig was there putting aside feelings with scorn, they had fought and they had run, but they had fought and that was the important thing.

“I have them,” he said and Latona for some reason not liking the silence agreed to leave Darig’s people to him.

*

“I’m Joron,” said Slake.

“I don’t think so.”

Slake scratched himself with the tip of an ornamental wing. They were not far from the pass that was now considerably narrowed by the timber that had been piled either side where it widened. Still with saw and axe the work progressed, a bigger job than most had thought likely but all of whom had never tried their selves to chop down a tree. Nor had to think about how it might fall, where and with what result. People nearby were looking at him so Slake knuckled his forehead to Asta. Well outside the pass by a mile or more the blaze of a bloody great bonfire was being fed, and yet still the stink of the smoke was that of what it burned. Those that rested nearby all boasted a wound. By the distant light of the bonfire Slake thought he could make out the shapes of warriors (or something close). He said, “I came through the woods, the hills, I didn’t see any...” he waved in the direction of the nearest tree. He looked back to where rising from the bonfire the firefly sparks of a great blaze lit the immediate night sky. “You want that shifted to the big woody bit?”

“The Shapers say that fire is not a slave. If we set a fire in the forest, in the hills, it might burn out. It might roar high and wild. It might scorch a bit. It might start a fire that will go on for years. But it won’t do what we want it to.”

“So do you want me to..?”

Asta grunted. He would let Joron’s monkey know when he had decided the matter for himself. Noticing what Slake had said he asked, “Pine warriors? You saw none?”

“No, Governor,” a knuckle and a forehead once more.

Asta nodded. They had been attacked here by increasingly dribbly little bands of gnolls, fifty or so dribbly little bands. Ruk and then Graduck were out there enjoying what Kintarma was so clearly driving towards them. Twice groups had broken through or simply been missed, so as to reach the pass. Their delight at seeing the hard working folk of Eartholme had died only shortly before they had when the levy had fallen on them with no little help from the rumbling great elementals that even now sat as little cairns here and there but all close enough to rise at his command. He said, “I’m beginning to think that the fighting enemy, is all over...” he waved in the general direction of the pass and thence Gothiel. “The Pine at any rate. There is doubtless more to it than that, but...”

“Want me to go and find out?”

Asta grinned. He patted the gargoyle on the head. He nodded and then when Joron’s pet did not move shooed it away with a flapping of his hands.

*

The spearmen in their ranks remained where they were until with sharp words from amongst them several of Drago’s Honour Guard that knew something of chirgeury and the handful of hard-faced priests amongst the Iron Held were allowed from their positions. Men and women in those Helds were pushed closer to fill the gaps, as if from losses from a fight they watched and waited for. Yet they saw no enemy.

Led by Latona they moved down the slope a short way, where they hunted for the levy not yet dead, or whose wounds if otherwise mortal remained within her reach at least. There were few between here and the ruins of the fight on the other side of the shallow river ford, and there were none there that could be helped, and no one here that would have gone with her so close to a possible enemy had she wished them to.

Latona prayed as she worked, this but a scrap, a skirmish, a wet taste of real battle where men and women died but more often screamed themselves with the last of their life, not as resilient as heroes nor as likely to return. Before they left this place the dead would have to be burned, it was the local way, so that the embers and sparks would rise and join the stars. She did not think the dead could join the Pine, but why take such chances?

*


They quite literally shat themselves.

The smell reached them a little slower than the yips and snarls that accompanied it. Arcane cuffed at his nose to conceal a retch, and he was not alone in this. Pitched up here for days now since the fort had been completed the spears were eating what they had brought with them and probably best then the Guilds had brought tools, else they would have had to work out how to eat hammer and spade. The Pine had not emerged from the trees, he had not truly expected it to, but he had been surprised before now and rarely with colourful parcels tied up in ribbons.

He had watched the gnolls approaching. Calling and laughing, barking and growling. Three dozen he had counted and lightly armed, they might have been fast had they not been so lazy. He wondered at their story for a moment. He was astonished when ignoring where he stood over the gate they had been surprised to find it barred.

That was when four or so hundred spears and swords had banged against shield rim and blade. Arcane had clapped his hands together so that the Bildteve gloom had been lit with his lightning. The gnolls clearly unused to the poor light of Bildteve jumped back now which is when they soiled the newly packed earth of the little hill. They turned about and two fighting one another to be first away, fled.

They fled first south only to see a shieldwall, and then north to find likewise as with their Master’s shouts turned the line slowly inwards. They scrambled like cats in a crucible; the ground seemed slippery as they ran back towards the river whereupon the bastards revealed their selves.

Cowards they might have been and gnolls were stupid, were slavers, and assumed then that so too was everyone else. They were the scouts, the leading edge of this little advance and outnumbered terribly as they were still they howled as they made to fight. Their temper took hold and shook their fear. Bujo might have failed them but they would drag down the dead with them to distract Mama Paja in the hell that awaited them.

But Arcane had other ideas. Not one of his fine and loyal militia was a price worth paying for such scum. So that when he threw his arms wide the night banged open, a wind ran from the fort as the gnolls ran at the Bastards they vanished under a torrent of howling elementals. The shieldwalls were buffeted, the scrap between them was chaotic but when of a sudden it cleared of the gnolls there was barely a sign.

“And let that be a lesson to you,” said Arcane.

*

“Three?”

Willock nodded, his best guess (but all scouting was that in a land like this). Either three Hirds or two big ones, they all looked the same and with the sun going down to the west behind them it was hard to make out better detail. Nonetheless he had seen those closest to here, and so described them. One Hird perhaps old, very tribal, mail of iron and helmets of banded bronze, shields and swords preserved from some time when they had been turned that nonetheless had a wooden quality to them. They had moustaches of needles and tiny, odd little leaves. They had moved through the greenwood soundlessly. He said, “The rest of the same style, but more recent. A tribe from the mountains or Keys, or somewhere – caught, enslaved and turned.”

Aaron grunted. The damp meadow grass smouldered so that trails of wet smoke dotted the ground before the Helds, so thickly trampled and sewn with the pine. The enemy were distant and watched them, just as they could not have avoided seeing what had happened to their own levy, a levy that might if left this month been a militia, and thence a season more and a Hird.

He called for the Helds to send their Masters. Reeves shouted at spears to look forward whilst one at a time the Held Masters joined him. Aaron said, “Thoughts?”

“Spears are grounded, take an effort to make them go forward, in any order,” said Illion. The spears had been ground to be defensive and defensive they would be. Also they did not want to go into the forest-proper.

Besides which, “I’m not going in after them,” said Drago.

They talked whilst looking down the slope and not at one another. The enemy had not expected them, had not expected formal battle. Their chaff raided and turned from Deci had been too new to be controllable, aggressive - eager. Those still in the woods and across the meadow were not going to advance at them over open ground – not having seen what Martin would do to them over the clear terrain. Still this place had a myth to it they drew them.

“They’re going,” said Martin, eyes sheltered from the setting sun.

“See if you can see where they go?”

“By tracking them,” Darig said, arriving too. He was not about to send the pride of Gothiel into a trap, not when they could be tracked a while after. “Is that all of them?”

“No,” said Willock. “This might have made them all pause, it might draw them here, it might...” he said no more, just looked at where no longer could an enemy be seen. Like all of them he would have wished an end to it, neat, here and now. But the Pine did not care to oblige, as nor would they it if their position had been reversed.

“Everdawn says they’ll still be drawn to this place,” said Illion. He explained and by the time he had finished the wyrm had sailed back about the field to land lightly, with a yawn and to frost the ground about him. “Their champions perhaps, those older ones...”

“We don’t know.”

“But we shall,” said Willock. “How long can you remain here?”

The weather was good, food was short for everyone but Drago’s Honour Guard (who still seemed amply supplied), but harvest was upon them, or hell – they could ferry more here. Certainly a week without much trouble, they had plenty of firewood. Then they would decide and perhaps...

Martin and Willock had already moved away to work on tasks and tactics. They called over Illion, leaving the Helds there gathered to wait for battle, a bottle or biscuits for all it affected the lights and Hound of Gothiel, the Empire, and for some even both.

“You’ll all meet in a week,” said Everdawn. Then, “Because you do,” and grinned.

It was a bright golden evening in the greenwood of Gothiel and the embers of the youngling Pine made fireflies in the falling night.

By Alan Morgan