Kings and Daemons Page 5

  Maya looked over Seren’s shoulder at Krispen. ‘It seems to me, that you’ve already caught some rotten meat today,’ she said, then started to turn away.

  Seren grabbed her arm hard. ‘Not so fast!’ she said, and Krispen grabbed the other as Maya twisted to free herself. ‘Everyone in the settlement is so so worried about you,’ Seren continued sarcastically, ‘especially your father and the overseer. I think bringing you back will make up for any lost foraging today.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ agreed Krispen, smiling, but without any warmth in his eyes. His fingers dug hard into Maya’s arm.

  ‘I am going back to the settlement already. Now let me go!’ Maya demanded, but neither relaxed their grip; however hard she struggled, and they just laughed nastily at her.

  ‘What is that smell?’ asked Seren, wrinkling her nose at Maya. ‘You stink like bear crap,’ and Krispen laughed.

  Maya couldn’t help herself. ‘At least I don’t smell like I’ve rutted with a pig,’ she said, looking at Krispen. This comment earned her a nasty punch to the stomach, but it was worth it. She made a final effort to twist free, but they wouldn’t let her go and as they marched her between them back to the settlement, the merciless jibing continued.

  -----

  Antoc lay frozen in fear and shock as Kalas knelt alongside him.

  Turning his head to the side, Kalas retched before spewing blood. The horrid saltiness of it filled his mouth, and he needed to drink to take the foulness away. His eyes that had glowed red up until mere moments ago now returned to their deep green.

  Antoc just lay there and looked up at the sky, amazed that he still lived. His heart pounded, and his eyesight was blurred and dim from loss of blood.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Kalas softly, ‘but at the very least you still live, which is more than everyone else here.’ He stood up and moved toward the well, stepping over the bodies, causing the flies that had already begun to gorge to rise up in angry, complaining clouds before returning to their feast. They were so fat and heavy these flies, thought Kalas, but then again there was always so much for them to eat. Spoiled vegetables in the fields, dead or dying fish in the rivers, the whole land was teetering on a knife-edge. He lived almost as far south as he could, the sea just over the horizon. A long way to the east, supposedly the Freestates lands thrived, and they were behind the sickness that destroyed this land, or so the tithe collectors said.

  After he pulled the bucket up from the well, he looked into the water. The face that looked back at him was now the one of his youth, fair hair, taut skin, green eyes albeit somewhat bloodshot, and a solid chin. Certainly not handsome but as strong as the sword he’d used to wield.

  The wind blew softly across the yard, a faint saltiness from the sea carried upon it, and Kalas closed his eyes and let his mind think back to when he last looked like this …

  The land into which Kalas had been born was golden, at least to him way back then.

  It was called the Ember Kingdom and had been ruled by a lineage that stretched back over four hundred years. The land was blessed, full of precious natural resources with good soil for farming to keep its people fed. Most importantly, it was the iron ingots produced by the central and northern regions, sought after by the Freestates and the nations beyond, that helped the kingdom thrive.

  The north, west and south of the realm abutted the endless sea, and only to the east did the kingdom share a border. Toward the northeast, the mountains ended abruptly to be replaced by thickly forested swamp, an unforgiving land within which lay the Kingdom of Eyre, an insular people who loved their trees more than any outsider.

  Further to the south was the Freestates, a land of trade, linking east to west. The Freestates sat on the other side of the Forelorn Mountains, towering peaks with but one pass allowing travel between the two neighbours.

  Born of minor nobility in the southern outreach of the kingdom and only a second son, he’d but two options. To bend the knee before his father and brother while helping at the docks like a commoner, or, to leave his family, travel to the capital and join the royal guard.

  He chose the guard, and his father and brother disowned him on the day he left. Their curses heavy on his ears, shoulders and heart. They stripped him of everything, including whatever love they might have once felt, and his regret was such that the pain never once faded.

  There was no standing army, for the kingdom itself had been united for longer than anyone remembered. So Kalas had thought it was a posting that would allow him access to the capital's delights amongst educated peers, and to look dashing in a royal guard’s uniform without ever having to put his life at risk.

  How wrong he was, he soon came to find out.

  Despite there being no wars to fight, there were bandits to hunt down, peasants who rebelled at the work that was naturally required of them, and a surprising amount of disillusioned noble houses who needed reminding of who their king was. The Eyre would often raid, and then to the far north brigands would often come down from their mountain caves to kill farmers, and steal livestock. All of these needed to be repulsed and were the responsibility of the king to deal with.

  Thus the royal guard trained and trained. Kalas had erroneously thought no one left the royal guard because it was such a soft job, but lots of people did actually leave, but only if they’d stopped breathing.

  So, with but two choices, to train hard or die, Kalas had chosen to train, finding to his surprise that he had a gift for the sword and shield, the lance and spear, the dagger and the bow.

  He frequently tried to repair the rift with his family, but his letters were returned. The notes attached advised that there was no longer anyone in the family of his name. One day his father and brother came to the royal court on business, and as he’d approached them, his brother had turned away. He stood in front of his father then, heart in hands.

  ‘Will you forgive me now father, after all these years?’ he’d implored beseechingly, eyes wet with emotion.

  His father had looked steadily at him, with no emotion of his own, then replied. ‘If I were truly your father and you were my son, you would never have left your brother and I all those years ago. I have no son by your name and never will.’ With that, his father had turned away and left the very same day.

  Despite this never healing wound, this one regret, life was good, and it had been easy to turn a blind eye to the poverty that he saw when surrounded by such friends amongst the opulence of the capital. The Ember Kingdom, he felt, was just, ruled harshly but fairly, and surely if its people suffered a little hardship, it made them so much stronger. Everyone knew their place.

  Kalas had risen through the ranks to be the weapon master in the king's guard, one below the captain, his best friend Alano. Alano was the only one to almost equal Kalas in the fighting pits, and the bond they had shared was unbreakable.

  But the good life had come to an end. One day a great fleet of longships landed on the southern and northwestern shores of the coast. Where they came from, no one had known, but the men that spilled from them were hardened and cruel, hungry not just for food, but for blood and conquest.

  Spirit talkers had informed the king of their arrival, who in response, sent emissaries on the fastest horses both north and south, one after another to offer peace, gold, even land, yet none returned.

  The foreign armies swept across the lands. The northern army, led by a warrior who called himself Daleth the Witch-King, brushed aside local resistance from the noble houses and their small personal armies. Thousands were slain, and hundreds just disappeared, and the reports were that the Witch-King was a giant amongst men, a near-immortal warrior.

  Local peasants in their settlements and towns were mostly spared in a shrewd move, and only the castles and fortresses of the kingdoms royal houses were brought down, the nobles executed, their knights slaughtered. The peasantry being mostly left alone just shrugged their shoulders and carried on doing what they did, having exchanged one taskmaster for another meant v
ery little.

  The malaise that slowly fell over the land more symbolic of the war than anything malignant.

  The Ember Kingdom’s few gifted, the mages who wandered the lands or who were in the employ of the nobles simply disappeared, and the news of the invading armies stopped coming in.

  The high mages that remained in the capital, by order of a desperate King Anders, had turned to the rarest tomes of elder magic in a final bid to defeat the invading forces. Yet the only spell they’d found offering any hope had been the darkest of them all. With no other choice, the mages sacrificed themselves in the casting of this long forbidden incantation, so that the king and his legion of elite royal guard were possessed by minor daemons in a final throw of the dice.

  Kalas sighed and shuddered at the horror of the memory. Men, friends he’d spent years training with, doused themselves in blood. Where it had come from, no one knew, but worse was to come for they had to drink it too, and as the magi spoke the words in a harsh forgotten tongue, a portal opened to the nine hells and daemons were summoned through to possess the king and his men.

  The agony of being possessed was nothing that Kalas or any man could have prepared themselves for. The sense of defilement had almost overwhelmed them.

  The magi had believed they would gain the strength of the hell-born, the speed, the inexhaustible stamina and they were right, but they hadn’t known that they would share their minds, their thoughts and that the daemons would try to twist them to their wills and ways.

  In the first hour after being possessed, those weakest of will turned against their brothers, the daemon’s thirst for blood too strong for them to resist. The king, Alano, Kalas and the strongest willed of the guard were forced to slay their friends in self-defence. The lower halls of the palace flowed with blood, and the howls of the despairing survivors at what they’d been forced to do echoed from the vaulted ceilings.

  Gone was the easy laughter thereafter, every moment a fight to tame the beast inside, that whispered to kill, to feast on the life of innocents. Kalas remembered the worse thing about that first desperate fight, wasn’t just that he’d killed his sword brothers, men he’d known for years, but it was that he’d licked their blood from his hands and blade and revelled in the taste of a slain friend’s life.

  Once they’d won their individual battle with the will of the daemon inside, they’d all made a pact there and then. They had, each and every one of them, unintentionally become far worse than the very evil they’d set out to fight. So they swore an oath, to kill the Witch-King or die in the attempt. Should they succeed, they would not allow themselves to live beyond the day of battle. The risk was too great.

  Two weeks later, more men had succumbed having lost their wills. The combined armies of the Witch-King had stood before the gates of the capital, ready to do battle. Had they arrived much later, it was doubtful that there would have been any royal guard left to face them, for over two thousand of the guard now lay dead and buried by the hands of their brothers.

  By this time all the population of the city had left. They’d not only run from the invaders but the demonic goings-on within the fortress. Only the king’s son and a few retainers had stayed against their lord's wishes, and they’d watched from atop the battlements as all that remained of the guard followed their king out to battle, riding horses who whinnied in barely controlled terror at those who sat astride them.

  Barely nine hundred men against an army of a hundred thousand. White cloaks billowed in the wind, and burnished armour shone in the morning sun. They’d drawn their swords and ridden toward the enemy.

  Kalas remembered looking at his best friend Alano on his left, the king astride his charger on his right, and the rest of the men as they rode out. He should have felt pride or perhaps sadness at impending doom, maybe sorrow at his family having been erased as had all the other royal houses, but he’d felt none of this.

  Instead, the daemon inside his head had howled its glee, urged him to give in, to let go of his last vestiges of restraint. Kalas had looked around and seen everyone’s faces were twisted, sick apparitions of what they used to be, eyes glowed red, and then as they had closed on the enemy, he’d let the daemon take partial control.

  The approaching army had stopped its advance for a moment. Laughter had rippled through its vast ranks, led by the bass sound of the Witch-King, no doubt with amusement at this last pathetic resistance to his invasion.

  Even as King Anders and the royal guard charged into the foremost ranks of the Witch-King’s army, the laughter continued, as had the jeering from the other enemy troops who had yet to join the fight. They watched in amusement as horses were cut down by long spears, and men fell to the ground, but the laughter died as the screams continued to grow in force.

  Despite being pierced by sword and spear, King Anders and his men had continued to fight with unbelievable speed of blade. Kalas, alongside his king, had his horse cut from under him in the first few moments and was thrown heavily, but his mind hadn’t registered the pain. Instead, he’d just rolled with the fall and come to his feet as quick as lightning, swords in hand.

  Despite the impossible odds they’d cut through the ranks of the enemy horde. Their manic laughter and howls of glee, the shining red eyes as they’d slaughtered, had sent shivers of fear down the spines of the men of the attacking army, who had fought in countless battles and stood undefeated.

  The centre of the enemy line had disappeared like sand through an hourglass, and those who had yet to enter the fray had started to push back frantically as panic had taken hold.

  Thousands of arrows had blotted out the sun and fallen indiscriminately on everyone as the Witch-King in desperation had sought to turn the tide of battle whatever the cost. Kalas had fallen, pierced half a dozen times, yet he’d wrenched the shafts free and turned to bite the neck from a mortally wounded soldier next to him. Renewed strength had surged through his veins, and he’d leapt to his feet and fought on as had many around him, and still the arrows had fallen like rain.

  They’d pushed behind King Anders toward the rise where the Witch-King had stood, victory impossibly getting closer. Yet, the enemy emboldened by their dwindling numbers had fought on anew, and with every step more of Kalas’ brothers had fallen, but the cost on the enemy ranks was hideous.

  Kalas was almost on his knees when the enemy cavalry had started their charge, pierced through again by arrow and sword, an inconceivable number of enemy bodies behind him. The Witch-King had ordered his cavalry to ride everyone down irrespective of side to finish the battle.

  The daemon knew Kalas’ demise would end its existence and was scared. It had left his mind free at the very end, having scurried to hide in the farthest reaches of his subconscious.

  He saw King Anders, a great warrior in his own right finally go down, his head crushed by a mace. There had been perhaps a hundred of his brothers left, and the toll they had taken on the horsemen was horrific, the sounds of the wounded beasts louder even than the screaming men. Yet despite their prowess, his brothers had fallen one by one, their advance slowed, and their hopes died.

  His friend Alano had stood firm until the end. He had fought with his sword in one hand and long dagger in another. As the cavalry had ridden by, Alano had rolled and twisted to cut the legs from under them. Kalas despite his wounds, had fought on in similar fashion and surpassed everyone in dealing death.

  Yet one of the falling horses had cannoned into him, crushed him into the ground. The weight nearly suffocated him, and as more bodies fell on top, he’d struggled to breathe. The last sound he’d heard before his eyes had closed was the screaming as Alano had continued with his own personal slaughter …

  Kalas opened his eyes, the images so fresh, and looked around the yard as he sat on the edge of the well.

  He should have died that day, he thought, died with his friends, died with the king. However, the flowing blood from the dying horse and men that had buried him from sight, nourished the daemon even as i
t cowered, kept him alive. Until at last many days later he dragged himself from under the bloated corpses that had been left to rot in the sun.

  He’d lost his mind then for a while, and the daemon unable to pierce his complete madness with its will, had itself withdrawn again to his subconscious and there it had remained.

  The Ember Kingdom had died that day, to be replaced by the kingdom of the Witch-King. King Anders’ son he later heard had been impaled and the last of the retainers butchered. All written record, all the banners, all the royal houses, wiped from the land in the following months.

  Kalas had long ago realised that the Ember Kingdom and King Anders were not the utopian dream he’d naively thought back when he was younger, but the reign of the Witch-King was far far worse. Kalas was over seventy summers old whereas most only lived into their thirties or forties in this harsh land, so few remembered the green fields, tall trees, fresh water and bountiful harvests.

  Instead, almost everyone had been born into this miserable land of decay and thought the old tales were just poor man’s dreams as opposed to what had actually been.

  Now after all this time, the Witch-King had built an army to fulfil his dreams of conquest that had been shattered by Kalas and his brothers those decades ago.

  Kalas turned his attention to Antoc who struggled to sit up, and deliberated killing him after all before casting the notion aside. He’d already been punished enough beyond what he realised, and perhaps he could still serve a use.

  He’d made an oath over fifty years ago, to kill the Witch-King or to die in the trying and he’d lived with the shame of failure ever since. Now that his daemon kin was awakened once more by blood, it was time to fulfil the oath if he could.

  He strode over to Antoc, whose eyes widened in fright at his approach. ‘I need you to ride to your garrison, tell them of what happened here.’ As he said this, he lifted Antoc to his feet and stripped him of his armour then with little effort lifted him onto the back of one of the horses whose wide fearful eyes mirrored those of Antoc’s himself.