Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (58 page)

‘
Here be
Dorubudur
,’ Hawkmoth
told them hushly, searching the place keenly.

There were signs of recent
habitation. Cat bones hanging from trees, animal skulls, tusked
troll skulls, lining the tops of worn, crumbled walls. Some of the
stonework had been painted too. Walls washed red by blood, Hawkmoth
felt, and the guts and innards of intruders laid out on the surface
of sloping walls in a rough pattern of the individuals they once
belonged to, teeth and tongues and eyes completing these macabre
portraits.

And no sooner had the traveling
group emerged from the Dark Wood, than they heard the march of
boots upon rock and there emerged an army of skeleton warriors,
clad haphazardly in armour, some bearing shields, and nearly all
wielding some kind of weapon; maces, swords, morning stars,
halberds, weapons and gear no doubt stolen from foot soldiers from
kingdoms far afield. Hawkmoth knew that many of these skeleton men
were what remained of those fallen foot soldiers; slain by the
witches, left to rot, and finally enchanted, their meatless bodies
rising and sent out as sentries, guards or warriors to do the
bidding of their new masters.

The foul reek that Gargaron and his friends
had detected on arrival grew ever stronger now as the skeleton
guard pressed forward.

Locke laughed. ‘Ah at last, this
day begins to meet my expectations.’ He had withdrawn his
moon-blade, smiling all the while.

Hawkmoth motioned for his
companions to wait. And here he spoke.

‘
Forgive our intrusion, but I am
Hawkmoth Lifegiver, banished sorcerer of Sanctuary. I have with me
friends from afar. The giant, Gargaron Stoneheart of Hovel. Forest
nymph, Melai Willowborne of Thoonsk. Shore dweller, Sir Rishley
Locke, of Barnacle-On-Sea. So hear me, if you will. We come in
peace. And in hopes that we may finally put an end to this war that
has raged for centuries beyond count. I return to you Mama Vekh. If
you require it, I shall gladly give myself over to your keeping, if
you desire it, hold me for a hundred years, for that is how long my
foolish brothers held your Mama Vekh. If that be not enough, then
let me offer up my life to end this conflict. But I plead, lay your
boom weapons to rest. The world is almost at its end, enough blood
has been shed. Let those that still live, live out their days in
peace. Hear me now, please, I implore you.’

There were no let-up in the
eagerness of the skeleton warriors, grunting, hissing, pushing and
heaving against Hawkmoth’s invisible force field. It told Hawkmoth
one thing: that the witches had not changed their command, that
they believed Hawkmoth were an advanced attack party.

He sighed, and glanced left and
right at his companions. ‘Looks like the witches are proving as
stubborn as my Brothers. We have no choice but to
fight.’

Locke grinned. ‘Oh, how
sad.’

‘
So be it,’ Gargaron said,
slurping down some strange brew from a blue gourd that give him a
heightened battle mind. ‘Then let us be done with it.’

Locke frowned. ‘I say, Gargaron.
Might I ask what you are taking there, my friend?’

Gargaron shrugged. ‘Something of
my village druids’ making. Nectre of Newtlilly. A little pain ease
is all. I shan’t be caught out again like I were with those damn
Bewitched.’

Locke smiled. ‘Pain ease, you
say.’

‘
Aye.’

‘
Why do I get the feeling pain
ease is not all you take this for.’

Gargaron shrugged and tossed the
gourd over to Locke who caught it and studied it closely. He then
popped off its lid, tilted it to Gargaron before pouring a measure
down his throat. And then just to be sure, a second
measure…

‘
Right then,’ Hawkmoth called out
to any witch ears that may have been listening. ‘To the leaders of
Vantasia…’ His voice seemed to carry loud across the ruins. ‘Have
it your way!’

2

Hawkmoth slammed down his staff,
point first into the ground and the wall of blue light holding the
skeleton army at bay pulsed and took a formation of mighty mastodon
beasts that charged into the formation of warriors, knocking a
hundred of them flying in a hundred different
directions.

Gargaron, Locke and Melai took
this as a command to attack. And attack they did. Furiously, while
the skeletal guard were rallying themselves.

Locke heard music. The stirring
tunes of the eighteen-string shelled
jhotar
, and shore horns
and the haunting voices of beautiful crabwomen in song. He were not
certain whether the song existed simply in his mind but to him it
felt as though it rang out through the woodland. That everyone
present could hear it. And it inspired him, strengthened him,
boosted him.

Gargaron heard whispers, the
voices of the female sprites of the Summer Woods bordering Hovel,
voices that warned of an attacker he could not see, and helped him
anticipate attacks he did not see coming. Throwing his sword at
thin air only to have it deflect a swinging blow by some bone-man.
Swinging his sword out behind him, out of his range of sight,
collecting attacks. He charged headlong into mobs of these bone
men, swinging, slashing, parrying, stabbing, pushing his great
sword between their ribs before twisting the blade and tearing the
fiends apart from inside out. Either that or he dashed them up
against trees, splintering them.

Hawkmoth used the world around
him: enchanting strangler trees, getting them to come to life,
their roots like the tentacles of octopus; roots that grabbed
armfuls of skeletals, crushing them, squeezing them, grinding them
to dust and splinters, branches that swept great masses of bone men
aside in single thrusts.

Melai used specific arrows,
ones containing gooey sap that roped and stuck their attackers to
one another, rendering them immobile, to be battered to shards by a
graceful Gargaron.

Locke continued on his crazy
berserk frenzy, roaring and skittering out into mobs of skeletons,
lost amidst their numbers. The darts of his blowflute proved mostly
ineffective; more seemed to miss their targets than hit. So he
allowed his moon-blade do the cutting, each thrust sizzling,
slicing through the skeletons like molten steel through fat. More
than once Melai and Gargaron narrowly avoided being struck by his
frenzied assault. But Locke seemed oblivious to it, yelling and
laughing and talking to the enemy as he cut them down. ‘
Come to
the light,
’ he yelled, ‘
come on!
’ and then, ‘
Ha,
there you go, have at it. Go on, have at it!
’ Then when he
found himself swamped, or his arms pinned, he drove his head at
bone-man sternum, burrowing his horns into ribs, and with a violent
twist of his head, pulled torsos apart in an explosion of shattered
bone.

Zebra slashed and bit and
hissed and tore, and discarded bones flew every which way, like
splinters of a wooden abode ripped apart in a storm. At one stage
the skeletons of giants emerged and Gargaron told the others they
were his. And off he went, battering, slashing, taking on these
enormous fiends who wielded morning stars and maces. Once or twice
he were clobbered, and his shield were smashed to bits. But he soon
had the upper hand, hacking off their arms or legs before relieving
them of their hissing, whining skulls.

In the end there remained but a
few scattered bone men, giant or otherwise, broken and injured,
writhing about the ruins, unable to stand or continue their fight;
some with dark vapour wisping from cracks in their skulls, others
oozing reeking orange marrow from rents in their limbs.

Locke stood there wild-eyed and
panting, looking about bewildered, as if he had just woken up to
what he’d been doing. The stirring music had gone from the world,
now just the sound of his breathing, and the irksome scratch of
busted bone against stone and ruins as bone men writhed weakly
where they had fallen.

Gargaron, more accustomed to
the effects of his war syrup, simply stood there, taking in water,
his muscles fatigued.

Hawkmoth strode forward,
stepping over dying skeletons, climbing up the ruins, clasping his
staff. ‘Stay alert,’ he ordered his companions. ‘The next wave I
fear will be the witches. And they shall be a far tougher force to
reckon with.’

But as he reached the height of
the ruins he suddenly stopped in his tracks. For there they were,
watching him. Thus he froze.

3

Something about the scene
puzzled him.

The attack he had anticipated
did not come. Mighty vanguards of witches on the backs of lizard
steeds did not appear. All he saw, and it left him greatly
suspicious, were a handful of emaciated, terrified witches cowering
beneath an overhanging rock shelf.

Gargaron and Melai drew up
carefully on his flanks. (Locke had taken it upon himself to scurry
about on his serpent taking up skulls as trophies, hooking them to
the sides of his serpent’s saddle). Gargaron felt both a mixture of
fear and anger as he set his eyes upon them. Fear that the beings
he had come so far to see were now suddenly right before him, and
anger that here were folk who had caused the death of his girls,
the death of all his friends, his home, the deaths of millions
across Godrik’s Vale. Melai too felt anger, but she also felt pity
for instantly she saw the witches were in a terrible state.

‘Do not be fooled,’ Hawkmoth
warned. ‘They fool us to lull us. Their attack will come. Of that
you can be certain.’

4

The attack however did not
eventuate.

The witches huddled there,
watching their invaders.

They were ashen skinned hags,
Gargaron observed, bony, bug-eyed, black toothed. They wore
piercings through their upper arms and legs, they had bulbous sacks
of flesh hanging from the sides of their bellies; each sack
perforated by a blackened opening, where Gargaron had heard witches
stored and carried tinctures and poisons and mind altering
brews.

As he watched, one of them, an
older more haggard looking thing, squeezed some wisping grey,
thick, viscous bubbles from one of those sacks in her belly and
threatened to throw them at Hawkmoth if he came any closer.
‘
Leave us!
’ she howled. ‘
You have done enough! Leave us
be!
’

Hawkmoth withdrew his staff and
held out his spare hand, as a conciliatory gesture. ‘Wait,’ he
said, ‘please, do not release your ghost stones. We come in
peace.’

The hag laughed. ‘Peace? Ha!
What would you know of peace?! You decimate us, you decimate our
armies! Why sing peace when all you know is dealing death?!’

Hawkmoth frowned. ‘If it be the
army of these bone-men you speak of then we decimated them merely
as a measure of self-defence. I did herald our arrival and
intentions. Did you not hear it?’

‘Aye, we heard it,
sevuck
! But why should we trust the poison from the mouth of
one such as you?!’

Hawkmoth frowned again. He
knelt now and unhitched the bundle from his shoulders. He lay it
before the witches, untied it, pulled it open and let them feast
their eyes upon its contents.

He stood and withdrew, allowing
them time to absorb and study and accept.

At first their faces were of
disbelief, of suspicion, but quickly it turned to recognition and
sorrow. Even anger.

Hawkmoth spoke up again. ‘I am
deeply sorry for her hundred year incarceration. I am deeply sorry
that my forebears and current overseers of Sanctuary felt the need
to firstly take her from you, and then to hold her to ransom. I
acknowledge that it has caused your kind undue pain, anger and
continued animosity toward my brethren. Therefore, what I said
earlier, still stands. So hear me: I offer my life to you, for
whichever way you see fit to use it. If you should choose to take
my life here today then so be it. If it puts a stop to your boom
weapons, if it puts a stop to all this dying, then I wish for only
that and nothing more.’

‘Leave us,’ the hag screeched.
‘Leave us to our Mother now that she be returned. Are you not
satisfied?’

Hawkmoth bowed. ‘I shall give
you time to accept her back. But I shall not leave. I will return
in one hour to hear your verdict.’

5

Hawkmoth retreated, calling
back Gargaron and Melai, and they climbed down the ruins to where
Locke presided over an excessive number of bone trophies.

They sat to wait out the hour.
Though Hawkmoth surveyed all approaches to these ruins from the
surrounding woodland.

Gargaron watched him. ‘Do you
expect an attack?’

‘I declare that I do not fully
comprehend what is going on here. Though, aye, I feel they delay
things while the greater number of their kind surround our
position.’

This comment had them all
searching the surrounding forest.

‘Are you really meaning to give
your life over to them?’ Melai enquired as they sat there scouring
the woodland. ‘Or be that some false ploy?’

‘If giving up my life means
putting an instant stop to the boom weapons and the curse that goes
with it, if it means my dear wife go on living, that all the
animals I have saved shall not perish, that you my friends can set
forth from here and eek out some sort of life after all of this,
then so be it. I can ask for no greater calling.’

It were not something Gargaron wished to hear.
And he hoped it would not come to that.

6

The hag Hawkmoth had addressed
fetched him on the hour. Hawkmoth were chatting amongst his
friends, ever speculating on what the witches planned to do.