"Lord Hammerhand!" It was more of a breathless gasp than a shout, out of the forest below. Back toward Hammerhold, whence they'd come.
"Here," Burrim Hammerhand replied, turning, his sword coming up.
"Lord!" It was a Hammerhold knight, gasping hard after a hasty climb through the dark forest. "News!"
"What is it?" Hammerhand sounded as calm-and grim-as ever.
"Horgul and his army have taken Darswords!"
Hammerhand nodded as if he'd expected this, and said only, "There's more. Worse." It was not a question.
The knight nodded, gasping for breath, then blurted, "Nelthraun, Lord of Stelgond, has marched through Yuskellar, the valley of the Gold Duke-and right through all the Gold Duke's guards, too, when they disputed his passage, though he did not stop to plunder the Duke's mansion or harm the Gold Duke himself-with the stated aim of conquering Ironthorn just as fast as he can get here!"
"What?" The word burst out of Hammerhand in disbelief.
"Six message-birds, lord, all from merchants we pay for news. All bore the same tidings," the knight replied grimly.
Darlok had joined them out of the night, and now snapped, "Stelgond up in arms to come here-where no Lord of Stelgond has ever been, nor wanted to be-and Horgul in Darswords, three holds away from us if he marches on in the direction he's been going. They're coming here because of the Lord Archwizard, lord!"
"Harlhoh, then through the wild Raurklor to Darkriver, then east along the Long Trail to Burnt Bones… and on, to us," Hammerhand mused aloud. "Stelgond alone is more than enough for us to handle, what with the two vipers here in the Vale biting at me day and night to see who'll be lord and who'll be dead. If we must cross swords with this Horgul, too, we'll need all the Forestmother's luck-and anything else the Aumrarr or lorn or anyone else can spare to aid us-to have any hope of holding onto Ironthorn and our lives."
"Where's Stel-" the Lord Leaf started to ask.
"In Tauren," Hammerhand snapped. "A small hold, but wealthy."
"Ah. I have heard," the priest murmured, "that a Doom rides behind this Horgul. The same wizard who aids Lyrose, Malraun the Matchless. If that's true, we are all… doomed."
"Heard where, and from whom?" Hammerhand growled, watching the knight who'd brought the news go pale and flinch back at Jaklar's words.
"In altar-visions, of far-away priests of the Forestmother talking to each other," the Lord Leaf replied.
Hammerhand shot him a hard look, but the priest seemed both sincere-and scared.
He was.
"I have prayed to the Forestmother for guidance," Jaklar whispered, "in case we must flee into the arms of the Raurklor around us. All of Hammerhold, that is. But She has sent me no sign."
Lord Hammerhand rounded on him. "Of course She hasn't. She knows we'll fight to hold Ironthorn, and die doing it. No Ironthar will flee anywhere. If we lose what's dear to us, what is 'living on' worth? Nothing. We stay here, our swords sharp in our hands, and defend our Vale against anyone who comes to try to take it from us."
He stared out into the night, past the torchlight. "Even if every last Stormar or Galathan took up arms and came here, in hosts beyond counting, I would take a stand and try to kill them all. It's glorking near all I know how to do."
Warriors were climbing the hill from all sides, torches flickering wildly in their hands. With the moon now so bright, the flames they carried served more to make them superb targets than to aid their way over the heaped and strewn bodies, but Malraun didn't even bother to shrug at that passing thought. He had more important matters to concern him.
Blasting down these last few wizards before any of them managed to spin a magic to flee this place, for instance.
Darswords had fought furiously against his army. Furiously but hopelessly; they would all die, or were dead already. The children had been hurried away into the forest, of course, by a few of the crones and youngest women. Everyone else would perish.
Malraun was not in the best of moods. Amaxas Horgul had been more boar than man, a brawling, rutting lout governed by his lusts and rages-but he had been a giant on the battlefield, and a man warriors looked to and obeyed.
And now he was dead, and if Malraun was to hold this army together, he would have to lead it himself. Falcon rut and spew! Riding across half Falconfar-the backlands, fly-infested half-was not how he'd planned on spending the next score or so of days. Which meant he'd have to get to know a lot of thick-headed swordswingers rather too well over the next day or so, and hope he could find a war leader among them who could lead them all half as well as Horgul had.
However, there was one task in hand to finish with, first. Scouring out Horgul's slayers.
The Stormar had been a surprise. Who'd have thought a remote Raurklor hold like Darswords could have coin enough to hire wizards from distant Sea of Storms cities, let alone known how to contact them?
Lesser mages or not, they'd been far from overconfident fools, too. They'd hidden among the defenders of the hold, avoiding hurling magical fires and lightnings in favor of peering hard to find the right man, and then hurling mind-lances. By such means they'd slain Horgul and some of his warcaptains, then tried to seize control over the minds of the rest, so as to take over command of the whole host.
If there'd been no Doom standing unseen behind Horgul, it would have worked. As it was, Malraun the Matchless was in the habit of often prying into the minds of Horgul and his captains from afar, and was warned. He'd learned all this from the mind of one startled Stormar mage, then given that unfortunate the same death that had been visited on Horgul, and then magically taken himself and Taeauna to this blood-drenched, moonlit hill nigh Darswords.
The hold itself crowned a hill beside the one he stood on, with the wingless Aumrarr by his side. This hill had been left bare of homes and barns because, fittingly, it was where they buried their dead.
There'd be a lot of burying to do, later, though he doubted anyone would be alive to do it. The slope they were cautiously climbing was heaped and strewn with the dead. The folk of Darswords must have spent every last coin that had been buried under every dirt floor, to hire so many mercenaries to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and fight. And die.
Taeauna raised her sword, peering past it at the last few Stormar huddled atop the hill. They were now hurling all the fires and lightnings they'd avoided using earlier, hence the caution of their ascent. She was shielding him with her body, something that almost brought a smile to Malraun's face. She was his creature, now, in truth; that wasn't something he'd coerced her into doing. When Aumrarr served, they served.
Now she was rising and striding on, a few swift, bent-over steps that took her to the next heap of dead they could shelter behind.
Malraun scrambled to keep up with her, ignoring a groaning, feebly-moving warrior underfoot. Whoever it was lacked the means to harm him, and would die soon enough of his wounds or under the claws and jaws of lurking beasts who'd come out of the forest-or down out of the skies-to feast on the dead.
The Stormar wizards were still hurling death of their own, a roiling wall of flames this time, that marched down the slope, licking empty air, until it engulfed the foremost torch-bearers. Their screams were raw and terrible, but didn't last long.
Malraun smiled. That fiery wall had faded away to nothing already, and the very use of it told him the Stormar were running out of real battle-spells. This would probably take no time at all, once he got close enough to smite them all at once. They knew he was here-or at least, something that could burn out the minds of their fellows was. Hence all the shieldings they'd so hastily conjured. Yet he'd been careful not to hurl fires and lightnings of his own, to give them a target or to frighten them into flight, when he was too far off to trap and hold them.