Deathblade: A Tale of Malus Darkblade Read online

  TWELVE

  Malus hefted the warpsword high overhead, shouting at the black legions of his horde. He evoked all the old indignities that had been heaped upon the druchii by their despised asur kin. He spoke to his warriors of the ancient hate that had divided a people. He smiled coldly as he recounted the theft of the Phoenix Crown from Malekith by a petty and ungrateful people. With his words, he conjured the vision of lost Nagarythe, now a wasteland haunted by ghosts and monsters and the deluded aesanar. He recited the promise made to the Black Council by the Witch King: that the lands of their birthright, the kingdoms of Ulthuan, would belong to them if they but had the strength to take it.

  ‘Death and blood to the traitors!’ Malus roared, his voice amplified beyond the merely mortal by the excited daemon boiling inside him. Tz’arkan was in its element now, poised upon the edge of slaughter and massacre. Briefly, Malus had considered dulling the daemon with wine, but had at last relented. He might need the accursed might of the daemon to draw upon. After all of these years sharing his flesh with the malignant fiend, he was confident that he knew how much he could tap into Tz’arkan without going too far.

  Without losing control.

  Without losing all that he was and all that he would ever be.

  At his cry, the drachau’s commanders issued the order to attack. The breach was blocked now by the piled carcasses of his own cold ones. No lightning strike by his cavalry would allow Malus to slip behind the walls and seize the Eagle Gate swiftly. No, now he would be forced into a longer fight. His army must outnumber Prince Yvarin’s asur a hundredfold; there could be no question of the final outcome if he had only the garrison to worry about.

  But Malus knew time was a greater enemy to him than the asur guarding the Eagle Gate. The host of Hag Graef had been bolstered during the night by Fleetmaster Aeich and those corsairs who had fled their doomed black ark. Adding thousands of battle-hardened corsairs and militia from the abandoned Eternal Malediction had swollen the ranks of his army, and the addition of Aeich’s surviving seers and sorceresses had added a good deal more magic to his force, making Drusala not quite as essential as she so dearly wanted to be.

  The problem with the arrival of the corsairs was the news they bore with them. They’d been harried by the asur along the entire line of march. Not just by the black-feathered arrows of ashencloaks, but charioteers from Tiranoc too, the advance elements of an entire Tiranocii army that had pursued them from the beachhead. Only a day or so behind Aeich, the Tiranocii force wasn’t big enough to pose a threat to Malus’s army. However, if they struck against the rear of his horde while they were trying to break through the Eagle Gate, the carnage they could wreak would be prodigious.

  Malus didn’t care so much for the loss of warriors, but he was worried about the loss of time. Every hour might bring a relief force from Ellyrion to support the Eagle Gate. Or worse, the skies might fill with dragons from Caledor. The drachau had campaigned against the asur often enough to know that whatever enmity might exist between the kingdoms, they set aside such resentments when faced by a mutual foe. If the dragons came, Malus would never take the Eagle Gate. His army would be smashed and scattered, his own disgrace absolute.

  It is not too late, Malus. Set me loose and victory will yet be yours!

  Spite hissed beneath its master as the horned one sensed the brief flare-up of the daemon’s presence. It took an effort of will, but Malus forced Tz’arkan back into the hinterlands of his soul. Now wasn’t the time to indulge the fiend’s bloodthirsty ambitions. Malus had his own dreams of conquest and slaughter to achieve.

  Blocks of infantry marched into the pass. Malus watched their banners snapping in the wind. He wondered how many of the asur inside recognised the bloodied flags of Hag Graef. He wondered how many hearts had filled with terror as the nature of the foe they faced became apparent. Those who didn’t know the druchii would soon learn.

  The warriors of Clar Karond, the enslaved Naggorites, the soldiers of the Dark Crag itself, all marched behind a screen of skirmishers drawn from the black ark’s militia. Why squander his own slaves when he had those of Aeich to spend? The fleetmaster had been a good deal too vocal about blaming Malus for abandoning the beachhead. Well, now the fleetmaster would be thinking the slaughter of his slaves was his punishment. That mistake would make Aeich less appreciative of the role he and his corsairs were to play in the battle. The best illusions, after all, were those who believed in their own deceit.

  Spite trotted alongside the armoured mass of spearmen, a regiment that had held the line during the final attack by Naggor against Hag Graef. For their unrivalled brutality on the field, Malus had awarded them the banner of the vanquished Witch Lords. As the spears slowly advanced on the Eagle Gate, that banner was held high before them. A sheet of leathery skin, flayed from the bodies of enemies the Witch Lords had offered in sacrifice to dark Hekarti, the banner had been endowed with powerful enchantments by the Naggorites. As arrows came whistling down from the battlements, they veered sharply away from the dreadspears and deflected into the regiment of swordsmen marching on their flank. A few of the bleakswords fell, their armour pierced by the diverted arrows, their bodies kicked and trampled by the warriors who hastened to fill the gaps in their ranks.

  Orbs of blazing arcane fire came crashing down from the Eagle Gate, incinerating dozens of druchii with each impact. In response, the sorceresses Aeich had brought unleashed their own dark magics against the walls. Lances of writhing lightning, blacker than death and lethal as the kiss of a medusa, seared along the walls. The scorched bodies of asur soldiers hurtled from the battlements, cooked inside their own armour. After an initial assault, the barrage of magic broke into isolated duels as asur mages pitted their abilities against druchii sorcery. Malus could see the white fire and the black lightning crackle and explode as the antithetical conjurations collided. Here and there, the white fire would fade, but along the front nearest the breach, it was the darker sorcery that failed. Malus scowled as he looked in that direction. The loremaster Drusala had spoken of seemed to be taking a hand in defending the gap. The asur’s power must be prodigious to overcome so many sorceresses. Malus wished he could have matched Drusala against him. Whichever way such a contest went, it would make things simpler for the drachau.

  Drusala, however, had other duties at the moment. Her magic was the key to this second assault on the Eagle Gate. The sorcerous deception she had worked to make her dark pegasus seem an ordinary horse had inspired Malus. He’d tasked her with working a still mightier glamour, an illusion that would conceal the true strength of the attack until it came smashing down upon the asur.

  Malus laughed grimly to himself as he watched the mass of slave-soldiers being herded towards the walls. The Naggorites were again acting as a screen for better, more valuable fighters. Every arrow that pierced one of the slaves, every bolt that skewered the marching spearmen, was directed, naturally, at those nearest the wall. The asur didn’t target the ranks behind, that great solid mass of druchii who stormed onwards, the whips of their masters snapping at them and forcing them on. Perhaps, if Shrinastor and the other mages weren’t already occupied, they might have noticed something, detected some hint of the glamour Drusala had worked. But the mages didn’t have the luxury of such wariness, not with their arcane duels unfolding all along the wall.

  Piercing, bestial cries announced that other foes had noticed the deception, or at least had become aware of the great magic being worked at the rear of the Naggorites. Rising from the walls, their plumage burning like molten bronze, the phoenixes circled above the Eagle Gate, a fiery flock that was now stirring itself to action.

  Malus had anticipated this as well. He’d placed his most dependable vassal, Silar Thornblood, with the contingent from Clar Karond. Silar had strict orders. When the phoenixes took wing, the beastmasters were to throw open the cages they had wheeled all the way from the Eternal Malediction.

 
Looking towards the ground the warriors of Clar Karond held, Malus watched as a great swarm rose shrieking and howling into the sky. Harpies, cruel twisted beasts cast in the roughest semblance of she-elves, with great clawed talons for feet and leathery wings sprouting from their backs. They were vile, despicable creatures, eager to torment the weak and helpless, to glut themselves upon the dead. Great flocks of them had followed the black arks – indeed, many of them had been captured in the Eternal Malediction’s rigging – hungry for the victims the druchii slaughtered.

  Sometimes exhibiting a vicious cunning, the harpies were still little more than beasts and it was the instinct of beasts that moved them now. It didn’t matter to the winged fiends that there were scores of dead druchii lying before the Eagle Gate. It didn’t enter their minds to question the battle unfolding around them. Neither hunger nor curiosity governed them now. It was simple brute aggression, the fury of an animal that senses a rival in its domain. Creatures of the sky, the harpies viewed the flock of phoenixes as trespassers, intruders to be destroyed or driven away.

  Even as the largest of the phoenixes, a great bird whose plumage was the colour of sapphire and diamond, started to dive towards the shaded palanquin where Drusala worked her enchantment, the harpies hurled themselves upon the phoenixes. The aerial battle was primal, primordial in its savagery. The harpies were immolated by the fires of the phoenixes, their charred bodies sent plummeting down into the massed druchii below. Sheer numbers, however, overwhelmed several of the birds. As they were slashed by the talons of their foes, burning blood spattered across the battlefield, a sizzling rain that scorched the flesh of whatever it struck. One of the phoenixes, several harpies clinging to it with their talons and mauling it with their clawed hands, went smashing down into the battlements. The fiery bird exploded as it perished, immolating its killers and the hapless asur manning that part of the wall.

  The immediate threat of the phoenixes removed, Malus gave the command for the second assault to begin. Nearby, a blood-red banner was unfurled. It was the sign the waiting reaper bolt throwers had been waiting for. The fiendish engines began to pepper the face of the great gates with enormous steel arrows, each as long and thick as an elf’s leg. Dark enchantments had been invested into the bolts, and as the magazines of the repeating bolt throwers churned away, the face of the Eagle Gate was pitted and scarred. Cupolas disintegrated beneath the barrage, sending archers hurtling to their deaths far below. Turrets crumbled, raining rubble onto the walls and smashing the defenders into paste.

  In time with the assault by the reapers, Aeich and his corsairs launched their own attack on the left flank. Grappling irons were hurled onto the battlements while crossbows strove to hold the asur back. From behind their screen of militia and slaves, the murderous corsairs raced to the walls, their sea-dragon cloaks glistening with an oily sheen as the sun shone upon them.

  The attack by the corsairs threw the asur into a panic. Here, the defenders seemed certain, was the main thrust of Malus’s attack. From his vantage, he could see them diverting troops from other parts of the wall, determined to keep the corsairs from gaining a foothold on the battlements. Dozens of corsairs fell screaming as their grapples and ladders were cast down; scores more died as they tried to climb the ropes, their bodies spitted by asur arrows.

  Malus waited until the corsair assault showed the first, faint hint of being driven back. Again, he motioned to the highborn bearing his signal flags. This time the banner that was unfurled was green. Even Spite seemed to understand the meaning behind that signal, the horned one hissing lowly as the command was relayed. Malus laughed at his steed’s temper. He wondered what horror the asur would feel when they saw the next attack.

  The great block of troops behind the Naggorites burst through their ranks, charging through the slave-soldiers as though they weren’t there. The Naggorites scattered in all directions, heedless of the arrows that continued to persecute them from the walls. Some hundreds fell, smashed beneath the force that now surged through their ranks.

  Drusala’s glamour vanished, winking out like a snuffed candle. Where a body of slave-soldiers and their overseers had been, there now charged a dozen war hydras and their minders.

  Absolute panic gripped the asur. Malus could see archers hurriedly reacting to the charging beasts, many of them leaning out from between the crenellations to loose upon the hydras. These fell victim to the bolts of druchii darkshards, plummeting from the walls. Some few sent arrows into the hydras, but the effort was far too feeble to arrest the reptilian assault.

  Bolt throwers were hastily turned back to the gate, their powerful missiles smashing into the war hydras. The monsters simply snapped and gnawed at the spears embedded in their scaly flesh. Drugged by their meal of the night before, they felt no pain, the tiny brains in their many heads aware only of the burning hunger gnawing at their bellies.

  More and more bowfire was unleashed against the war hydras. Now the crackle of magic struck at the beasts. Malus clenched his fist in triumph as he saw asur spearmen trying to dislodge rubble from the shattered turrets onto the heads of the monsters. Between the hydras and the corsairs, the asur were completely committed now. Two deadly foes snapped at their fortifications, enemies too dangerous to ignore.

  The asur commander would doubtless be committing his reserves, any caution abandoned in the face of the double assault. Yvarin, like all of his weakling breed, valued the warriors who served under him. He’d project that same attitude onto his enemy. That was a bit of arrogance that was going to cost him. Malus didn’t care how many lives he squandered. There were thousands more waiting to die so that he might have the glory of seizing the Eagle Gate!

  Prince Yvarin would never guess that both of these perilous assaults were but feints. While the garrison was occupied with these distractions, Malus would be leading the real assault.

  How many troops had the asur dared leave to guard the breach?

  From behind the gruesome rampart of slaughtered cold ones, the Eataine Guard watched as the druchii assault intensified. Corsairs were mounting an assault on the walls, trying to secure even the smallest presence there so that they could open the way for the mass of black-armoured infantry below. The rampaging war hydras threw themselves against the silver and starwood doors of the gate itself. Two of the beasts had been felled by eagle claw bolt throwers, while three more of the monsters writhed in their death throes as magical fire was poured down on them from spouts and murder holes. Still, the surviving reptiles flung themselves at the gate, clawing it with their feet and spitting at it with their venom.

  A grim silence held the Eataine Guard. They felt shame at watching their comrades fighting all across the wall while their own position was as quiet as the tomb. They longed to throw themselves at the enemy; in their minds rang the bloody song of Khaine, the call to war that stirred the heart of every elf. Unlike the foul druchii, the asur knew better than to give themselves wholly to the Bloody-handed God. Khaine had his place, he had his purpose, but the elf who harkened only to his war-song would soon become a monster. The example set by the druchii was proof of that.

  A murmur swept through the white-clad warriors, astonishment as they found their commander, Prince Yvarin, returning to the breach. His arm was still swaddled in the arcane poultice Shrinastor had fashioned for him. It was crafted from feathers donated by the phoenixes and its glow shone out from beneath the prince’s armour, exuding a warmth that brought beads of perspiration to the brows of those standing too near. Yvarin’s shattered shield had been replaced by one gifted to him by the captain of the Silver Pelts, a mark of esteem and solidarity from the contingent from Chrace. Not to be outdone, the Talons of Tor Caldea had bestowed on him a breastplate of finely wrought ithilmar and obsidian, which, they claimed, had been forged in dragonfire by the mightiest dragon mages.

  Prince Yvarin was uneasy about the heroic regard he was afforded by his troops. After the thwarting of Da
rkblade’s first assault, Yvarin had been hailed as a champion of his people, his deeds at the wall magnified in the telling and the retelling until even the Caledorians were whispering his name in awed respect. He’d become the rallying point for his entire garrison. Elves who had gazed upon the size and evil of Darkblade’s horde, who had felt the tremor of fear and doom in their hearts, now spoke of triumph and glory. Resignation to fate had been replaced with greater purpose: victory! To win the battle, not simply wear down the druchii host and break the impetus of their invasion. To finish it here and now, not lay the seeds from which would grow the triumph of another army. To be the victors themselves, not the martyred dead of future remembrance.

  It was humbling to have such hope vested in him. But while Yvarin had dreamed of fame and glory, he now found it had a sour taste. Never before had he felt the weight of responsibility lie so heavily upon his shoulders. The entire garrison was united behind him; no longer disparate contingents from the ten kingdoms, they had embraced a new identity – the defenders of the Eagle Gate. He’d told them as much in the speech he’d given after Shrinastor administered to his hurts. He had been stunned by the cheers and salutes his sentiment had been met with. Not the cries of warriors resigned to their duty, but of true hope.

  Darkblade’s second assault was much grander than that first bold dash to the breach. Yvarin had hoped to deceive his enemy away from where the fortress was weakest. As he’d commanded his troops from the ramparts, as he’d watched the druchii attack unfold, a terrible premonition had occurred to him. He’d shown guile in trying to draw Darkblade away from the breach. Why should he expect anything less from the infamous Tyrant of Hag Graef?

  The corsairs on the walls, the war hydras at the gate, these were both terrible foes, but perhaps that was exactly why they’d been set loose. Thunder to distract from the lightning. From the beak of the eagle, Yvarin had studied the deployment of Darkblade’s army. As the war hydras burst out from their glamour and trampled the druchii warriors screening them, the first alarm sounded in Yvarin’s brain. The survivors of the treacherous assault by the hydras were being reformed, whipped and threatened back into positions away from the gates. The haste and brutality of the slavemasters indicated that whatever purpose the regrouping had, it was both important and urgent. As they reformed at the other side of the hydras and away from the corsairs, it appeared to Yvarin that there was only one possible reason for these actions. Darkblade intended another assault on the breach.