Rythe Falls (30 page)

             
Or maybe it's just my eyes
...because the mage himself...the bastard Drayman?

             
There was nothing left of him but skin on the dirt. Shed, like it was nothing more than clothing, it bore the marks of swords and the bruising of Renir's beating. But of the flesh inside, nothing remained.

             
Tirielle was once again at his shoulder, as were Bear, Wen, Quintal and Cenphalph.

             
'She said this was not over...' Tirielle whispered. Perhaps none but Renir heard.

             
'Is this the war we face now? Mages that wear another man's skin like armour?' Renir's fury still hurt him, but his anger was tempered, now. His friend's head had been lifted, and carried off.

             
'He killed Shorn...wanted me dead...for what? A game?'

             
'He had red eyes...like a protocrat...but...' Quintal's voice weakened and his words, his thoughts, seemed to drift.

             
'They're all dead...all destroyed,' said Cenphalph.

             
'Are they?' said Renir. 'Drun...died. Saving me from this...'

             
'He knew he was to die.
Mourn him not
, he said.'

             
Renir thought a moment. 'I'd like to be alone a while, I think.' The cries of the wounded, the dying, still filled the air. 'I should think the coronation's over. Someone...deal with this...I...'

             
But he turned before he finished speaking, and walked with his head down toward the castle. At the foot of the keep's steps he stopped. 'Tirielle...'

             
'My lord? My...Renir?'

             
'Tell our friend...I'm ready. Not tomorrow. Not this evening. Do what you have to do.'

             
'You're ready?'

             
Renir did not turn, but nodded. 'Tell her I no longer fear the dark. She was right, you know...Caeus...Caeus was strong. He had power...but he was wrong. You can't fight dark with light. Can't fight hate with love...and Tirielle?'

             
'Renir?'

             
'Tell her to bring her friends. It's time the Elethyn die...time for them all to die.'

             
'Renir...my King...this is not the way,' said Quintal, not harshly, but in a kind tone.

             
Renir turned and his eyes were like stone. Quintal dropped his gaze, then, a moment later, took a knee.

             
'My King...Drun Sard gave his life...he would not...'

             
'Drun was a friend, Quintal...a good friend...but I will not stand by. I will not give in, or die, or run. I will not hand Sturma or any land, or any people to
this
. We...not me, alone, but we...we will fight. We are at war and war is a dead man's game.'

             
'And if Rythe falls?'

             
'Then darkness rises,' said Renir. His voice was cold, his throat raw, but he meant it. He had nothing to fear from the dark.

*

Epilogue

Even g
ods have their season. Even suns die.

             
As one the Elethyn turned their faces toward the suns. As they did so, a great light began to pour forth from someplace within the sentinel armour, until even those great artifacts could not bear the power. The souls trapped within the strange metal, the metal itself, screamed and became molten, melding with the Hierarch's skin, Hierarch and armour both absorbed by the Sun Destroyers.

             
They glowed brighter still, in power and stature, becoming...as they once were.

             
The zenith of power in the universe. The thing that suns feared.

             
As the Elethyn grew in power, the suns dimmed and the world grew colder. The suns' glory, the dominance of the light, waned.

             
As light fades, so must darkness rise.

             
On Lianthre, snow fell on the plains, in the swamplands where snow had never been seen. On the Seafarer's nascent island frost glimmered in the pools and the seas themselves grew sluggish with ice. The Drayman steppes, the mountains, the sun-baked wastes beyond the Culthorn mountains all knew the touch of cold for the first time in centuries.

             
And on Sturma winter came early and hard. The ground soon turned white, the skies grey and gravid with blizzards. The nights were bleak and long and the days cold and grim.

             
In the dark, the dead things answered the Witch-Queen's call.

The End

First Draft: 31st March 2014 - 21st May 2014

Final Draft:
12th June 2014

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for reading this story. It is, as I said in the foreword, a labour of love. Please consider leaving a review on Amazon
or wherever you purchased this story. A review on Amazon can be very helpful for me, but other readers, too.

             
I hope you enjoyed this tale well enough to come back for more, when the Rythe Quadrilogy concludes.             

             
Also, if you haven't already read the three books that precede the Rythe tales, you might like The Line of Kings Trilogy. It is an extended prequel trilogy to this larger story. Other Rythe titles are laid out at the front of the story in the 'Also By' section. Oh, and look out for a new, stand-alone story set on Rythe - The Warrior's Soul.

             
Read on for a bonus short, 'The Unknown Warrior', set during the battle for Naeth.

Craig, 2014

The Shed.

About the Author:

Craig Saunders has is the author of many novels and novellas, including Deadlift, Rain, A Stranger's Grave and The Estate. He has stories forthcoming from DarkFuse, Grand Mal, and more fantasy tales set in the world of Rythe.

             
He lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and three children, likes nice people and good coffee. Find out more on Amazon, or visit:

             
www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com

             
www.theislandarchive.blogspot.com

             
www.facebook.com/craigrsaundersauthor

             
@GrumbleSprout

Bonus Short Story

The Unknown Warrior

The wounded man looked around. Each movement of his head drove daggers into the bones of his neck. Pinpricks of light stood out against the evening’s glow.

             
His arms ached fiercely, but it felt good. Good to be alive.

So much blood
already spilled, and yet…

H
e found himself smiling, despite the carnage.

The pain was welcome. It was constant. It could not be forgotten. He had forgotten too much. In this perfect moment he was living, there was no escape, no respite, just a constant stream of men to skewer on the end of his blade.

If this was the afterlife, he must have lived well.

He did not know if it was even his sword
he held, but he knew enough of himself to understand how to wield it. It was a fine sword, unembellished and beautifully balanced.

He gave it a practised flick to clear the blood. He saw the sword was etched, perhaps by acid. Rare work indeed, for a sword in the hands of a commoner.

He knew he was a commoner. Only the Thane’s men wore full armour. The Thanes too, of course, but they mostly spent their time directing this war, waving their soldiers on with a chicken leg in one hand and a mistress’ young behind in the other.

Thanes had no use for their fancy armour. Neither did the wounded man. His breastplate had served him well. He could tell, even if he couldn’t remember the blows. It was scored on the front maybe six times, where it had turned away a thrust from a weapon, perhaps a pike, or an axe (although the Draymen they faced rarely used axes), or a short sword.

He noted how his leather bracers were trimmed with steel ringlets. It was quality work.

Not a rich man, then, but one who by the evidence took his work seriously. A warrior of some note, perhaps. Maybe people knew his name. He grinned wryly. Would that he had the chance to ask.

If he was famous, he thought, looking over at the survivors, he was not famous in this country (Sturma, his mind threw at him. He clutched onto the name and found that it held. He knew nothing of himself, but enough of the world to keep on living, if only for a little while longer.)

A dagger of the same etched steel lay beside a downed Drayman. The man was still breathing – the dagger had hit him in the temple, but only the pommel had struck. He was unconscious.

Unconscious, but not near enough Madal’s gates for the wounded warrior’s liking.

He moved toward the sleeping Drayman, the ground shifting like some reluctant whore beneath his feet.

Without a thought as to why, he rammed the point of his sword between the Drayman’s ribs. The fallen warrior passed with only a last gasp escaping his lips. These Drayman, unkempt and filthy savages, these were the enemy. This much he understood. Today, there was to be no mercy. A short glance around the courtyard where they fought was enough to tell him so.

He remembered the enemy well.

He took in his surroundings with a practised eye. Great walls surrounded a stone keep. The keep was crumbling – eons old – but the walls were recently patched. New stone was interspersed with the old. The walls were thick, but ultimately useless. The gates lay broken and twisted on the dirt of the courtyard. A Sturman (his countryman. That seemed right) lay half obscured underneath the massive oak gates. Magic had been used here, but that made no sense. There was no magic on Sturma. But there was no denying it. The gates were warped and ordinary heat or fire would not buckle steel-bound oak so. They would scorch, certainly, and even burn were the heat fierce enough, but buckle, like the memory of the trees they once were had awoken? No.

There was no other reason he could discern. Not only were their enemy legion, they had foul magic users at their beck and call, too.

A strange new world. One he did not fully understand.

But he knew the blade. That would have to be enough for this day.

He spat blood and only then noted that his lip was split and a tooth was cracked. He remembered taking the head wound, but not the blow to the face.

It had always been thus. It was nothing to concern himself over. He knew where he was now, and what he was doing. And, by the look of the ring of Draymen bodies surrounding him, he was good at it.

Hard men stood beside him. Two score or so. Every one of them was bloodied. One man stood aside from the rest. He wore mismatched armour, but apart from gauntlets and a helm he could have been a Thane’s man, or even a battle commander. He searched his memory, straining against his own mind in a struggle that worsened his throbbing head, but he could only remember the man’s name, and that he fought for the man.

To fight for him was to fight for Sturma.

He didn’t know where that came from, but he knew it to be true.

He took stock of the men remaining. The Sturmen in the dirt far outnumbered those standing, but he smiled a little as he counted the Draymar, with their rusting, pi
llaged weapons, and their grossly matted hair.

They looked like dung.

Where did this enmity come from? What wrong had sparked this war? Did it even matter?

He turned his attention to those remaining defenders he could see without turning his head too far. His eye caught that of a man on his left. He was bleeding heavily from a stomach wound – he only wore chain. It might have saved him from a slashing blow, but had obviously provided little protection from the thrust that was soon to kill him. He wouldn’t stand for much longer.

He bled himself, from numerous wounds. His lip, a slash on his unprotected thigh, and a steady seeping from a deep laceration to his skull. It throbbed dully. He knew his brain was swollen, too, but that didn’t explain the emptiness.

“Hold the keep!” cried Renir Esyn, the only man he knew by name. “They come again! You! What’s your name?”

A young beardless warrior replied to the war leader, but his words were lost over the clamour of the Draymen, massed before the keep, banging their weapons together in an awful cacophony.

The nameless warrior couldn’t remember what lay outside those walls, but from the sound of it there was little in the way of resistance. The clattering of weapons was rhythmic, boastful. It was not the chaotic clanging of battle, but of victory.

He smiled to himself. There was little else they could take from him. If his dying breath was to be expended protecting this crumbling keep, then so be it. At least he knew what to do now, and why he was here. It made a refreshing change.

He relied on sight instead of sound.

Renir clasped the young man on his shoulder and pushed him gently toward the keep. Along the way the young soldier took the dying man around the waist, taking care not to touch his wounded stomach, and together they limped toward the keep, where their remarkable physician held court over men’s lives. Border rights, spousal disagreements or cattle prices were not at issue in the doctor’s court, but whether you lived or died. It was a heady kind of judgement. He instinctively did not trust the learned, although logically he understood that he had as great a need of him as the gutted man had.

H
ow did he know there was a healer? Perhaps it was just a logical assumption. He did not know, but he presumed a man such as he was relied often on logic, and not experience.

With no memory, what recourse did he have, but for logic?

His head was tender at the best of times, but now he knew what he was doing here he wouldn’t give up and lay his head down on some healer’s sainted lap. He was a fighting man. He would fight until he could fight no more or the enemy had fallen.

Allies beside you, enemies in front. Rarely was life so simple. Why spoil it by passing out and having to start all over again?

He tore a makeshift bandage from the bottom of his shirt and tied it firmly round his head.

Renir Esyn
approached him, wobbling slightly on his feet. The nameless warrior was gladdened to see he was not the only one affected by the shifting ground. As he came closer, the war leader looked carefully in the nameless warrior’s eyes. “Are you fit? If you’re not, you’re a liability. Take yourself to Drun. Your injuries are grave.”

“No, lord, I am not badly enough injured to risk a physician. I am fit enough.”

The war leader studied him, gazing deep into his eyes.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two, lord. I am fine.”

“I am nobody’s lord. What’s your name, warrior?”

He had the sense to look away. “What does it matter? I’ll be dead before suns’ rise.”

“Can’t you remember?”

“No,” he replied with all honesty, but then added, “but it is not unusual for memory to take a leave after a blow to the head. My head remembers the sword well enough.”

“Fine then, but…well, I won’t tell you to leave, but passing out on the end of a pike is no better than being spitted awake.”

“No, I guess not. I’ll be fine.”

Renir Esyn did not seem so sure.
The man that would be king was weighing his options. Nobody liked to have a man with a head wound at their back – they behaved as if possessed of spirits sometimes – but there was little choice.

The war leader needed every man he had.

For a moment it looked as though he meant to add something further, but he just waved a hand absently and strode to stand before the gates.

The warrior
watched as Renir Esyn hefted his axe and stood before the slurred gates. The man who would be king placed the head of the axe against the ground and rested his hands on the haft. After a while, the warrior saw that he had closed his eyes.

Surely they could not hold.

Perhaps, with this man leading them, they would die a worthy death. It might be enough.

No one else spoke. To his right a bearded man hefted a greatsword onto his broad shoulders and rested his chin against his chest.
Most of the men wore stubble, or beards.

The nameless warrior rested his eyes, too. He was weary to the bone, his vision swimming before he shut his eyes on the insanity of the battle before him. Futility, surely. If so, why did he feel so alive?

His muscles ached, and more than one felt torn. Evidently, they had been fighting for some time.

They would not fight for much longer. One more push from the enemy and they would fold. They could not hold the opening. He did not know where the rest of the Sturman army was, or why the keep was important enough for them to throw away their lives, but he
understood on some deeper level that if their war leader demanded their sacrifice, these men would give it willingly. He would not shirk. He would not running screaming into the night, or fall on his own sword.

He was a warrior.

The jarring clatter of weapons from outside halted. It was followed by the pounding of many feet, amplified by the otherwise deserted city streets outside the keep.

The defenders stirred, the light of fire in their eyes. The eyes were willing, but their bodies were nearing the end. They shuffled forward into a line, using their failing strength to hold their weapons proudly before them. They were rock, but even rock crumbles before the storm, eventually. 

Renir Esyn said nothing, but merely looked at each of them, holding every man’s gaze for a second. He raised his broad, glittering axe to them in salute, nodded, and turned back to the gates as the Draymen rushed in.

Maybe he had already said his goodbyes and made his speeches. The warrior would never know.

The enemy poured in, screaming hate in their idiot tongue. Their hair was worn in braids, some had their faces painted. Such observations were irrelevant, though. The warrior looked to their weapons, and their sparse armour. The weight of their bodies would be armour enough.

They could not hold. The enemy were a torrent, a flood of bristling muscle and steel.

What did it matter? For the warrior, the present was all there ever was. Tomorrow did not matter. What did tomorrow matter, when all your yesterdays were forgotten?

With a hoarse cry he swung his sword with all his might. His sword arm was strong enough. With the dagger in his left he parried a blow from a wild haired attacker, turned his wrist and stepped inside the return blow to drive his knife into an unprotected armpit.

There was a moment, when the attackers first flooded into the courtyard, that there was time for fancy swordplay. The warrior realised that he was good at it. The attackers were untutored and ill-equipped. He could have stood all day against such warriors. But it was not that kind of battle. This was not a training ground, as the mounds of the dead testified.

Then, there was no more room for swordplay. The defenders were forced to st
and too close together to swing their crimson blades. It was all about thrusting where you could, or dagger work, or if you were lucky a swift knee followed by a quick killing stroke to a bared neck.

Only Renir stood alone, his blade whirring
. Startling, eerie patterns danced around his head as the light glinted on the steel. Men fought to protect his flanks while the axeman drove the Draymen back toward the gates. His men (and I, I am one of his men for sure, thought the warrior) followed him, side by side.