The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (44 page)

He was through.

His riders followed behind him,
breaking the orderly formation of Borchstogs. Giorn shuddered as the black
shadow of Vrulug’s clouds fell over him. The host of Borchstogs stretched before
him, a great dark mass. Their helms glinted. Their eyes burned. There was
enough light for him to see by, and the clouds occasionally flared with
strangely-colored lightning overhead. A fine, bitter mist fell.

Giorn’s sword swept out, hacking
off a Borchstog’s head. A spear jabbed at his middle but scraped off his armor.
He brought his blade down with all the strength his left arm could muster,
cracking his foe’s helmet and splitting his skull to his teeth.

A troll reared above, roaring its
rage. In the darkness it was simply a huge, foul-smelling shadow. Lightning
glimmered off its great sharp teeth.

It stomped down at Giorn. Giorn jerked
the reins, and his horse swept aside. Giorn’s blade lashed out at the troll’s
heel, meaning to cut the tendon there. The heel was armored. Giorn’s blade
glanced off.

He rode on, leading his riders deep
into the Borchstog host. Glarumri wheeled overhead, showering his men with
arrows. The riders did not pause.

Giorn lifted his horn to his lips
and blew, signaling the second charge. His force had distracted Vrulug’s host
and compelled it to shift its focus, realign its warriors. Now the second group
of riders stormed out through the South Gates and bit deep into Vrulug’s host
from the opposite side, where the defenses had faded. Borchstogs screamed. Giorn
grinned tightly.

He hacked and slashed, slaying
Borchstogs all around. A corrupted giant came on him from the rear. He had been
surrounded with a solid wall of Borchstogs to the fore and had been trying to
hack his way through them, when he felt the earth shake behind him. He glanced
over his shoulder to see the giant looming over him, eclipsing the lightning overhead.
Giants were huge, taller even than the trolls, and if they were corrupted by
Gilgaroth they became monstrous. This one seemed to have no skin, and it had
strange tendril-like limbs protruding from its middle.

One of its massive hands grabbed
Giorn’s horse and wrenched horse and rider up off the ground. The other hand
grabbed the horse’s rear legs. The giant pulled in opposite directions. The
horse screamed.

Giorn managed to leap onto the giant’s
arm. He crawled up the limb, hacking at the tendrils that strove to ensnare
him, and crawled onto the giant’s shoulder. From there he plunged his blade
into the giant’s horrid, skinless face. He shoved his sword through its eye,
into its brain, and the monster gave one last groan and fell. Giorn clung
desperately to a tooth as it went down, his stomach rising. The impact knocked
him loose, and he found himself on the ground beside the giant’s head. His
horse, still living, was trying to kick and thrash its way out of the giant’s
lifeless hands.

The circle of Borchstogs converged.

Swearing, limping, his shield lost,
his sword still in the giant’s eye, Giorn backed up until he bumped against the
giant’s skull. The Borchstogs swarmed in.

Giorn jerked his blade free and
thrust it through the throat of the nearest enemy. It gurgled, black blood
spurting, and crumpled to the ground.

The others howled and fell on him.

He set to right and left, ducking
and weaving, hacking and slicing. Forced backward, he managed to crawl atop the
giant. The great corpse was thronged by demons, an island in a sea out of
nightmare. The Borchstogs surged all around, climbing up after Giorn. Giorn
thrust and parried furiously, and blades clanged and sparked.

By then Giorn’s horse had freed
itself. Giorn whistled, and it came. He swung astride, deflecting one last blow
from a Borchstog’s blade, then rode off, trampling the demons in his path. The
Borchstogs howled in fury behind him.

Giorn found his company once more and led them against the
enemy, at last merging with the second group of riders and striking even deeper
into the heart of Vrulug’s host. Ultimately, though, unable to ward off the
arrows from the glarumri and beset all around by demons, Giorn led the riders
in breaking free of the enemy ranks. Returning inside the wall, they streamed
through the sally ports.

Covered in black blood but his own
blood on fire, Giorn mounted the stairs of the gate tower and conferred with
his generals and officers. As per his orders, General Levenril had arrested or
slain all of Raugst’s appointments. Hiatha and her priestesses had arrived, and
she was waiting for him.

“Soon I hope we’ll have need of
you,” he told her.
Raugst, be swift.

He returned his attention to the
oncoming army. His raid had slowed and disrupted Vrulug’s host, but, as he had predicted,
it had not stopped them. Vrulug came on, more wrathful than ever. If anything,
the shadow draping his host deepened. The drums rolled on, steady and
inexorable. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The heart of the ancient monster whose rhythm they
sounded thundered, unwavering and resolute. It was the heartbeat of Gilgaroth
himself, and the Wolf was relentless.

Giorn hoped his charge had at least
bought Raugst some time. He hated to admit it, but he needed the demon. Not
just Giorn, but the city, the world. Should Thiersgald fall, so would Felgrad. And
should Felgrad fall, so would the rest of the Crescent, Giorn had little doubt.
The battle of the End Times would be fought right here, right now, and it all
depended on the creature Giorn loathed above all others. Giorn’s very
civilization was in the hands of a monster.

All too soon, Giorn heard a horn
blow from the enemy host, long and loud. Giorn’s blood ran cold. Even through
the darkness he saw the massive gaurocks reined and prodded into position at
the forefront of the Borchstog formations. Howling, Borchstogs scurried out of
their way. Some were ground into paste.

Men muttered all along the wall.
Here it comes
, some said.
Now it happens.

“Brace yourselves!” Giorn called.

Another horn-blast rang out. The
great serpents slithered forward at terrific speed, out from the shadow of the
clouds. Starlight, moonlight and lightning flickered off their wet scales. The
fifty or more Borchstog riders that bestrode each of their backs hunched low
and raised their shields, expecting an onslaught.

Giorn did not disappoint them. At
his command, the Felgrad archers riddled the gaurocks and their riders with
arrows, but the leviathans could not be deterred. The arrows either glanced off
them or stuck unnoticed. The Borchstogs riders howled defiantly, even as arrows
sank into their shields.

The gaurocks surged on.

“Illiana preserve us,” whispered
Hiatha. Many of the generals repeated the prayer under their breaths.

The Serpents struck the wall.
CRACK!

As Giorn had feared, without the
priestesses’ aid the behemoths managed to breach the wall at half a dozen
points. On both sides of him, Giorn saw clouds of dust billow up from the
impacts, saw the arrow-riddled mounds of the gaurocks, their riders climbing
off them and pouring through the breaches. Somewhere, Vrulug blew on his black
horn, and the rest of the Borchstogs and assorted creatures of the wolf-lord’s
host surged forward, a great tide of them. Some heaved up ladders and battled
the men on the walls. Others poured in through the gaps the gaurocks had
created, following in the wake of the riders. Giorn issued frantic orders,
gathering his men to resist the Borchstogs in the breaches, assembling his
archers to combat the fleet of glarumri that swept down from the black skies,
raining poisoned arrows down upon the men.

The black cloud swept north, and
once more Giorn felt its shadow descend on him. Fine, oily rain misted through
the windows, raising gooseflesh on his arm. Before him, the black tide rolled
unchecked, endless.

His earlier charge had done its
work, and Vrulug’s advance was not as orderly or as effective as it would have
been otherwise. Still, Vrulug held every advantage, and Giorn did not lie to
himself. He could not defeat the wolf-lord.

Thunder rumbled. Blue-white tongues
licked down from the black roof of clouds and struck the wall, again and again.
Men screamed, and sparks flared. The oily taint Giorn had tasted on his tongue
at Wegredon returned.
The Moonstone
,
he thought.
Vrulug is using the Stone.
The wolf-lord had learned to wield it not just to block the priestesses of
Illiana, but to counter the armies of Fiarth, as well.

The tower shook. The generals cried
out in fear.

Giorn gripped the parapet.
What now?
“Hold on!”

It was too late. The ground
rumbled, and the tower rattled. A piece of the roof collapsed, crushing two of
the generals.

“Flee!” cried one. “Flee the
tower!”

Giorn took one last look at the
hordes of Vrulug, turned and followed Hiatha and the generals down through the building
even as it shook apart around him. Lightning turned the world to white, and he
tasted dust in his mouth. He made it to the ground outside just in time. The
tower groaned and then collapsed, right onto the wall, killing two score men in
an instant.

Giorn stared at the smoking rubble,
feeling rain on his face, and felt one of the soldiers clap his shoulder.

“I hope you’ve lived a virtuous
life, my lord,” the man said. “Make your peace with the Omkar.,” another
agreed. “We go before them soon.” “Better pray it’s soon. Vrulug could keep us
alive for years if he wanted.” The other patted his ornate sword. “Not I.”

Clouds deepened overhead, blocking
out the stars. From their smoky masses lightning flickered down, blasting apart
men with every strike. Thunder nearly deafened Giorn. The ground rumbled
angrily.

“Come,” he called.

He took his officers some distance
away, then looked back to see that great, proud wall that had stood a thousand
years break and crumble as the ground shook it apart from below and lightning
blasted it from above.

“It’s the Moonstone,” Hiatha told
him. “He’s using it against us.”

Giorn had come to that conclusion
himself.

“What shall we do?” General Miled
asked. He was wild-eyed, his wet hair in disarray, his beard matted by rain,
but his jaw was set and he was visibly struggling to maintain his poise.

“We’ll do what we must,” Giorn said.
“Fall back to the inner wall.”

The generals grumbled, but none had
a better suggestion, and soon Giorn was leading the defenders in a rear-guard
action as the host of Felgrad fell back from the outer wall. They poured
through the streets of the city, past the parks, the university, over the
rivers, and regrouped at the ancient fortification of the inner wall. It had
not been used or even particularly maintained in many years, but it was a proud
and beautifully-constructed edifice, half overgrown by vines, and it would
serve.

Giorn mounted this wall alongside
his generals. He deployed the soldiers along it and readied the others on the
ground, then set his men to hacking the vines down so that the Borchstogs could
not use them for handholds.

The greatest portion of Thiersgald
lay between the outer and inner walls, and even now Giorn saw flames shooting
up from the houses and business centers as Vrulug’s host rolled forward. The University
of Hiarn went up in flames. The rain was too weak to put the fire out.

“They’re burning the city,” Hiatha
said. She sounded as though the idea had never occurred to her, as if the city
were inviolate.

Giorn looked sideways at her. “Do
you feel any difference? Is Vrulug still in possession of the Stone?”

“There’s no change.”

He shared grim looks with his
generals. “Perhaps burning the city will slow Vrulug down,” he said. “Perhaps
that will give Raugst the time he needs.”

Unable to do anything else, Giorn watched
the fires spread throughout his city. The flames came closer—closer. Soon
Vrulug would have razed the outer city, and then he would fall on Giorn’s
defenders without mercy. If nothing else, it would be difficult for Vrulug to
utilize his gaurocks against the inner wall. There were too many buildings in
the way, burned or not. This wall was lower and not as thick, though. It would
not be difficult for Vrulug to overcome.

Giorn instructed his men to be
careful when firing upon those who approached the wall. They could be
townspeople who had remained in the outer city, not Borchstogs. A few
Thiersgaldians did trickle in, fleeing their homes at last, but not enough. Not
near enough. Giorn watched for the boys who had gone out looting, but he did not
see them return.

He heard soldiers whisper along the
wall that they were doomed, that Vrulug would prevail, and he did not see how
they could be wrong. Unless Raugst succeeded, they would all perish, and the
ones that died swiftly would be the lucky ones.

Chapter
25

“
Oathbreaker
,”
Raugst snarled, furious. “Bastard!” How could Vrulug be attacking? They had a
deal!

Darkness gathered about him, but he
thrust his torch forward and drove it back, one foot at a time. The stench of
the sewer nauseated him, but he had anger to distract him. He thought of Vrulug,
and rage filled him.

The face of Niara rose up in front
of his mind’s eye, then, and everything else faded away. How could she be dead?
It seemed impossible. What made it even worse was the surety that she could
have healed herself had she not given him her grace. She had, though, and now
she was gone—and slain by one who loved her! It was a cruel jest of uncaring
gods. Raugst had thought, foolishly, that now that he was beyond the sway of
Gilgaroth, the goodly gods would smile on him and his endeavors. But no. The
world was just as loathsome and unkind as ever. He was half-tempted to abandon
his quest, simply to crouch down in these tunnels and await the fall of
Thiersgald.

Knowing that Niara would have
wished otherwise, he pressed on. He walked beside the foul currents of the
sewer, where the underground escape route connected and intertwined for a ways.
He held a rag to his nose and mouth, though it did little good.

Why
does Vrulug attack?
The wolf-lord was violating their arrangement. Raugst
had become king; Felgrad should be safe. Perhaps when Raugst met with him and
showed the wolf-lord his signet ring, Vrulug would relent.
That was our bargain, curse him.

A dark figure emerged from a cross-tunnel,
and another behind it—inhuman things, tall and furred and monstrous. Raugst’s
torch caught their gleaming, slaver-coated fangs and turned their eyes to
glittering red orbs.

They advanced on him.

He held his torch in closer, giving
them a look at his face. “Molest me and suffer,” he warned, a hand straying to
the hilt of his light-blessed sword.

“My lord,” one growled. “We did not
expect you.”

“Good. I don’t like to have my
itinerary known.” He strode forward, his lieutenants falling in beside him.

“No sign of Giorn or his men,” said
one.

“There won’t be.”

“Pardon, my lord?”

“I’ve dealt with him to my
satisfaction.”

They fell silent. He had positioned
them and others down here to prevent Giorn from reaching Castle Wesrain by the
secret route, and now that Giorn was not a threat they were doubtlessly
wondering what their new orders would be. He could obviously not order them to
return to the castle—although, he reflected, it would be amusing to see Giorn’s
face if he did.

“You lot’ll stay here,” he said. “I
have other enemies that might try and attack.”

“We shall, my lord.”

“Leave me.”

They withdrew, merging with the
darkness of the sewers with eerie ease.

Raugst moved on. He had informed
Giorn of the creatures in these tunnels, though Giorn had already guessed at
their presence, and he did not doubt that the baron would send a raiding party
to deal with them in time. Raugst would never know. He never planned to return
to Thiersgald. He had worked and schemed to become King of Felgrad, and he had
done it, but with Niara’s death civilization held little meaning for him, and
little interest. He would return to the wild, there to live out his days as a
creature of the woods. Whether he would keep his man-shape or resume his
wolf-form he did not know, but he looked forward to the solitude and splendor
of the forest.

At times during his trek through
the darkness he would come across other of his lieutenants, but when they
realized who he was they merely bowed and became one with the shadows once
more. Finally he emerged from the tunnels and passed through the waterfall,
which washed away of the stench of the tunnels, though it did douse his royal
finery.

He came ashore and made his way
through the woods until they ended. Before him stretched the gently rolling hills
that led to the South Gates, and between him and the Gates lay Vrulug’s army—vast,
dark, crushing. Borchstogs swarmed the walls, and Raugst saw several breaches
where gaurocks had struck. He sighed. Many buildings would be razed, and many men
would die. He could not stop that. But perhaps, just perhaps, he could prevent
the total obliteration of Thiersgald and the rest of Felgrad.

Rain fell on his head and
shoulders, pattering against his face, but he barely felt it. He strode through
the blackened wastes left in Vrulug’s wake, where tens of thousands of
Borchstogs and other fell things had passed, trampling and tearing the earth. All
was mud. He came upon some sentries Vrulug had left to guard his rear. Riding
murmeksa, the large, tusked hog-like creatures favored by the Borchstog
cavalry, the soldiers surrounded him, lances bristling.

“It is I,” he said in Oslogon,
“Raugst, high servant of Vrulug.” He hoped they could not feel the presence of
the light-blessed sword. He had raided Saria’s apartment and taken several
tokens of hers, and he hoped the darkness they radiated would mask the sword.

It seemed to work. The Borchstog captain
lowered his lance and the others followed. “Lord Raugst,” he said, bowing his
head. “I’m Captain Grastrig. Welcome to the Age of Grandeur.” He smiled, and
his teeth had chunks of human flesh in them. “Master Vrulug said you might seek
an audience.”

“I do. Will you give me escort?”

Grastrig ordered one of his
soldiers to ride behind another, freeing up a steed for Raugst. With him in the
center, the band rode toward the outer wall of the city. Raugst saw that the
defenders were in retreat and that fires spread throughout Outer Thiersgald. As
he drew nearer, the smell of smoke made him cough. The rain dampened it, but
not enough.

Again he worried about his sword,
and he found his hand resting on its pommel. It had become more than a mere
weapon to him, he realized. Niara had poured her Light and Grace into it. Raugst
liked to think that she had poured some of herself into it, as well—that, in a
way, she was here with him.

Grastrig led him through the
blasted gateway with its ruined towers and then through the chaotic streets of
the city. Houses burned all around, and screams rose into the night from every
quarter. Raugst had ordered the outer city emptied, but apparently many had
stayed—to loot, to prevent looting, or out of simple human stubbornness. Raugst
frowned to see the devastation around him. Despite himself, he had come to view
Thiersgald as his home, or at least his responsibility. The Borchstogs showed
him through the broad main avenues lined with trees, from which bodies hung,
twisting in the hot winds. Others dangled from lampposts or were nailed to
doors. Still more Thiersgaldians lived, though not happily, and their screams
made sweat stand out on Raugst’s forehead.

He wondered where Vrulug would have
made his headquarters. Perhaps the University. There were some fine buildings
there, if any still stood. Perhaps Ferin Island, the small isle in the center
of the river, where an ancient castle stood, now a museum. Or perhaps it would
suit Vrulug’s grisly moods to make his lair in a graveyard, or a school, or . .
.

Grastrig brought Raugst toward the Temple
of Illiana. As the white towers neared, Raugst grew cold despite the heat of
the fires.
No
, he thought.
Surely even Vrulug wouldn’t—

But of course he would.

Raugst hoped they might be swinging
around the structure to a destination on the other side, but the Borchstogs
began to slow, and finally Grastrig drew rein before the temple gates.

“This is it,” he said.

Raugst’s legs almost did not
support his weight as he dismounted. He found it difficult to catch his breath.

He gazed up at the slender white
spires framed against the black night sky, saw the ornate dome glowing with
light, and he had a grave foreboding.
Not
this. Anything but this.

Muttering praises to Vrulug and
Gilgaroth, Grastrig led him through the gates, past and the courtyards with its
gazebo and high elm trees, then up the wide stairs, flanked by lacy white
columns, and inside. Raugst hesitated before he crossed the threshold, too
briefly for his escorts to notice, then marshaled his resolve and stepped
across.

It was worse than he’d feared. The
high white halls of the temple were now the settings for debauchery and
carnage. Red blood ran across white marble, and the delicate bodies of
priestesses in their white robes sprawled along the floor. These were the young
priestesses, the acolytes. The more experienced ones would have had ridden off
to war. Raugst’s escorts led him through the dining halls, and he saw
Borchstogs holding priestesses down on the tables, taking turns with them. Other
priestesses were being tied to the columns and mutilated. Their screams drove
shards of ice through Raugst.

This
is all my fault
. He had told Niara of his plans, of his arrangement with
Vrulug, that Vrulug would not attack. Raugst had emptied Outer Thiersgald as a
precaution, certainly, but mainly he had done it to keep up appearances. Niara
had believed in him and had not forced her priestesses to evacuate with the
others.
I promised her I could save them,
and now they’re dead, or worse.

Grinding his teeth, he stepped over
and around the graceful bodies, some of which still twitched. Some of the
priestesses had apparently slain themselves rather than be taken, but most had
not had such easy deaths.

The temple, a place of light and
beauty and grace, had been profaned. Blood spattered the walls, congealed in
pools upon the floor, slim white bodies lying in them, some still moving. The
Borchstogs’ grunts echoed down the halls, accompanied by squeals of pain.

Grastrig ushered Raugst through the
Hall of Beginning. Here it was hot and steamy.
Like Hell
. The Borchstogs had discovered the furnaces below the
Pool. Likely they were down there even then, in the sweltering, smoking heat,
driving their slaves to stoke the fires. The Pool was not just steaming but
boiling. The very air burned Raugst’s lungs. As he watched through wisps of
vapor, a group of Borchstogs dragged a writhing priestess toward the water,
which churned like a witch’s cauldron, running red with the girls that had gone
before. The priestess was blond and green-eyed, young and fair. Naked, crying,
she was dragged to the bubbling Pool, obviously having already been raped;
Raugst could see the bruising. As he watched, helpless, the Borchstogs,
laughing, hurled her into the boiling water, where several other bodies were
already bobbing, red as apples. She screamed and thrashed, then fell silent.

Raugst looked away, and Grastrig
led him to a winding stairway. Raugst realized he was being led to the Inner
Sanctum. Dread built in him. The Inner Sanctum was the touchstone to the gods,
to Illiana of whose grace and beauty an entire religion had been founded upon. That
room had been the place of Raugst’s birth, in a way. Now he supposed it would
be the place of his death.

The stairs ended and they came to
the threshold of that room of Light. Again Raugst hesitated, then, trembling,
stepped over. The smell of death rose about him.

Before him towered Vrulug—tall, batwinged,
wolf-headed, encased in ebon armor, spattered with blood and stinking of death,
standing over the altar of Illiana, where he held down a naked priestess. A
gaggle of his black-robed priests surrounded him. Raugst had always hated
Vrulug’s priests, with their slick white skin and skeletal visages. Now the
priests chanted ominously, cowled heads bowed in prayer.

Raugst wanted to intervene, but
there was nothing he could do. The white slab of veined marble glimmered in the
light of the two braziers. Raugst knew Niara would from time to time place candles
or incense or flowers on the altar, but that was it. Never anything like this.

Vrulug produced a ceremonial knife
and slit the girl’s throat. Her blood spattered the white altar, and her body
jerked and twitched for a while, then subsided, her blood running in rivers
down the sides of the slab. Raugst felt sick. The priests ended their chant.

“There,” said Vrulug in Oslogon. “Now
this is an altar to Gilgaroth.
Roschk Gilgaroth
!”

“Roschk
Gilgaroth!”

The veins in the white marble slab
of the altar began to turn black. The veins spread, joined up with others,
tributaries leading into rivers, and soon the whole altar was crisscrossed in malignant
black lines, which then seeped outward. It would not be long before the whole
thing turned black. Raugst felt the altar emanate a chill, a darkness, and it
seemed that the block of stone hummed and the air rippled around it, the
ripples spreading, changing all they touched. This was now a fell place, a
place of the Dark One. Raugst could taste it on his tongue, a rancid, bitter
oiliness. And here, where he and Niara had made love for the first time! It was
obscene. His hands turned into fists at his sides. He tried to relax them.
Appear natural
, he told himself.

Grastrig had been silent, awaiting
the end of the ritual. Now he cleared his throat, drawing Lord Vrulug’s
attention.

“My lord, you have a visitor.”

The wolf-lord’s eyes burned bright
when they saw Raugst. He gestured for Raugst to step forward, saying “Come.”

Raugst obeyed. The slender bodies
of priestesses lay strewn about the room. A pile of their body parts had been
heaped at the base of the white altar of Illiana, and black candles had been lit
and mounted on it. The bitter taint that filled the air grew stronger and
raised the hackles on the back of Raugst’s neck.
Mother’s milk
, he told himself.
I
used to live for the feel of Gilgaroth’s presence.
He threaded his way
around the blood-soaked bodies and through the chanting priests, who parted
before him. He hoped and prayed that his former master did not feel the
presence of the sword.