The Fall to Power (8 page)

             
“I know, we were overrun too quickly.”

             
“How?” The sergeant asked, his patience running thin, fast thinking this trooper to be mad.

             
“Khrdas!”

             
The guardsmen gasped, even the sergeant’s eyes widening at the statement.

             
“You are sure of this?”

             
He drew near to Marlyn, eyes serious. The youth nodded, the desperation in his eyes revealing the truth of his words.

             
The sergeant bit his lip, mind racing, before turning to his men.

             
“They can come down two ways; the staircase from each wall leading down into this guardroom,” he pointed out of the window to the other side of the portcullised gatehouse, “and the other guardroom.” He turned back to Marlyn. “You bolted the door behind you?”

             
A nod.

             
“And the other side?”

             
Marlyn thought furiously, back to the bloodfest of minutes before, then shook his head.

             
“Shit.” The sergeant roared to his men, “To arms! Cross the gatehouse, defend the door; Khrdas or not, they can only come down that staircase one at a time.” He hefted a bow. “And they shall find death waiting to greet them.”

             
He turned to run with his men, but Marlyn’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

             
“My orders were to warn the Lord and seal the Keep!”

             
The sergeant nodded.

             
“Do it, lad. The portcullis is yet raised, for the outer doors are sealed. Cross the courtyard, find Lieutenant Hofsted and explain the situation. Go!”

             
The soldier went to run, pausing for an instant, as he looked up at the Sergeant.

             
“Don’t let their weapons touch you. They’re poisoned; one scratch is death.”

             
The officer nodded in thanks and charged out the door, crossing the gatehouse entrance, strewn with straw and horse muck and flying up the stairs into the guardroom on the other side. Marlyn came out too, longing to join the soldiers that lay in readiness by the staircase door, wishing he could extract some vengeance for his fallen friend and sergeant, but he had other duties.

             
He turned left, away from the thick, impenetrable doors of the gatehouse and ran, underneath the heavy iron portcullis, flying across the stone-flagged courtyard in the direction of the keep.

***

Ranclif crouched in the silence of the dim guardroom along with the twenty troopers under his command. The air was thick and heavy with tension, the smell of sweat and fear, as all eyes were on the door that led down from the right hand wall of the citadel.

             
Their bows were not yet taut, for the strain of holding a nocked arrow for any time was tiring and none of these warriors wanted to be fatigued when the enemy showed their face, trusting instead to their instincts and training to allow them the first shot.

             
And Ranclif, in turn, trusted his men.

             
A minute passed since the youth who’d warned them had fled to the Keep. Then two, still no sound of approaching foes breaking the strained silence.

             
The sergeant frowned, not doubting the sincerity of the threat, for he’d witnessed the horror in the trooper’s eyes, but wondering where the enemy was and what was taking them. Come to think of it, he thought, how did they get to the walls in the first place? None of the tell-tale rumbling of siege towers had shook the ground, nor could ladders reach across the yawning chasm of the moat.

             
They had no wings, that he had heard of. Short of climbing, there was no…

             
His eyes widened in horror as the thought struck him like a slap to the cheek, even as the screeching sound of spiked vambraces scraping down the inner wall of the courtyard squealed through him with a shiver.

             
“Men! Turn, run for the Keep! We are outflanked!”

             
The twenty warriors took heed of the urgency in his voice and flew into action, filing out the door and making to break from the shelter of the gatehouse and into the bright sunlit courtyard, but before they could even get ten paces, a black figure dashed away and into the courtyard, leaving broken chains in his stead, the heavy spiked portcullis coming screeching down from thirty feet up.

             
Most of the troopers stopped, loosing arrows after the receding figure, but one sprinted at full pelt in an effort to roll under the descending gate.

             
Half of him made it to the courtyard.

             
With a resounding clang of metal on stone, the heavy iron grid blocked their path, sealing them like rats caught in a trap of their own devising, the lone figure pinned, groaning in hushed agony through lungs pierced with rusted black iron.

             
From the bright sunlight outside, a figure coalesced, dark and menacing.

             
Ranclif gave a gulp as he recognised the white hair and cold eyes from tales told in the night to scare young children into going to bed.

             
Memphias.

             
The Khrda spoke through the square gaps in the portcullis, his voice calm and polite with only a hint of condescension.

             
“Guardsmen, you have done your duty to your Lord. But your duty to your King demands that you surrender. Return to your guardroom and rest; we will return later and, should you co-operate, you will be allowed to continue your service under whatever new master your King sees fit to appoint as replacement to your traitorous Arbistrath.”

             
His only reply was the streaking, invisible point of an arrow, aimed impeccably at his face, but his hand moved in an impossible blur, snatching the missile from the air and holding it fast.

             
Ranclif lowered his bow with a gormless look of disbelief, as the Khrda turned away with a grunt, dropping the arrow and began to march across the courtyard, stopping for an instant to issue a single order to his men.

             
“Burn them.”

             
The guardsmen shuffled backwards in fear as two Khrdas came forward from the pack, each hefting black ceramic containers emblazoned with etchings of flames. They hurled them, the flasks shattering against the portcullis and spraying their contents far and wide, the clear, reeking liquid soaking the straw-covered floor of gatehouse and the unfortunate man who still lay, impaled, before spontaneously combusting, the wave of heat washing over the troopers and rippling the air.

             
Through the smoke and chemical fumes that stung their eyes, the troopers fought their way to the winding mechanism for the front gates, all the while trying desperately to ignore the agonising screams of their trapped comrade.

             
With grunts of exertion, they heaved on the windlass with all their might, spurred on by the advancing flames that tore their way through the dry straw of the floor. Slowly, the heavy front gates began to part, allowing the cooling rush of fresh air to blast through. They didn’t wait for the doors to fully open, for they were only men and the gates were designed for horse and cart, instead squeezing their way out as soon as the gap allowed, standing and blinking in the sudden brightness of the causeway.

             
Ranclif stood, hands on knees, his fevered lungs drawing in great gulps of cool, fresh air, as his body shuddered with relief after its near-death experience.

             
Slowly, his eyes grew accustomed to the sunlit stone and he frowned, in puzzlement, at the figure that stood on the causeway in front of them.

             
The man was tall, dazzling both in sheen and looks, with long, windswept hair and a stone-headed hammer of titanic stature resting head down on the floor by his side.

             
He flashed them a disarming smile before speaking to them in cheery, youthful tones.

             
“Going somewhere?”

             
His smile morphed, in an instant, into a savage snarl, his face contorting into a death mask of unbridled bloodlust as he charged the nineteen startled men, his hammer whirling an arc of death as he cackled in manic glee.

***

              “Khrdas?”

             
Lord Arbistrath shivered in barely suppressed fear at the very sound of the word. This was not what he’d let himself in for. This was not what he had wanted. His father had been an honourable man, doing what was right by his people, even it was in contradiction to the King’s wishes. Arbistrath had tried to live by that example. As a lone child, with few friends of his own age, and no wife, he had done his best to fight down his own haughty, proud nature and win the respect of his people.

             
But now the Khrdas had been loosed and there was only ever one outcome.

             
“Rise.”

             
The youth got to his feet. He was broad with the meaty forearms that came with wielding the pitchfork and scythe, but not as tall as Arbistrath. His smooth skin and youthful demeanour told the Lord that he was not much younger than him, maybe nineteen summers compared to Arbistrath’s twenty four.

             
“What is your name?”

             
“Marlyn, sire.”

             
“You did well, Marlyn. Go to Hofsted, he will find further use for you.”

             
“Yes, sire.”

             
The young trooper scuttled off to join the burly Lieutenant who stood with his officers, ever twiddling his grey handle-bar moustache. How many times had Arbistrath told the man to shave that thing? Sure, it wasn’t the greasy long trails of a Clansman, but moustaches to the young Lord always appeared so…  unseemly.

             
He laughed for a moment, at the absurdity of such mundane thoughts in the dire situation, before turning to the centre of the hall, to the intricate circle of chalk, lit by candles and incense, the heavy, sweet aroma filling the air and making him quite light-headed.

             
The shamans had been drawing the circle since morning and the rite was nearly complete, the complex devices and symbols written therein hurting his eyes to look at if he gazed too long in the dim half-light of the hall with its windows shuttered and barred.

As he made his way over, the girl turned to him, the lynchpin, the orchestrator, the ambassador from the Valley of the Spirits and, once again, he was struck by the delicacy of her features, the petiteness of her slender form and the copper-red hair that descended in gently spiralling curls to frame her green eyes.

“How long do we have left?” she asked, her matter-of-factness belying her youth.

“If the outer door to the keep holds out, then forever,” he replied, eyes gazing at the corridor that led to the entrance of the stronghold. “But if they have some way of breaching that, then minutes.”

She nodded, only a glimmer in her eyes betraying the nerves she felt, before turning back to her assistants. The circle of transportation was nearly ready, and she could already feel the build-up of elemental power in the ether, as spirits gathered about, drawn in by the ancient symbols as surely as night-time moths to a lamp. Minutes. Minutes might just be enough.

A smash of splintered wood, followed by cries of alarm and the crashing reports of metal on metal from far down the corridor.

Or then again, maybe not.

***

              “Hold, men!”

             
The Lieutenant’s voice rang loud and clear through the corridor, rising high above the din of battle – or slaughter – in an effort to stem the tide of fear that swept the guard.

             
The Khrdas came at them, down the wide corridor, flipping over the hastily erected defences, dodging arrows and gutting the stalwart defenders with a hideous grace. The sheer speed and ferocity was overwhelming the Pen-Tulador town guard, more suited as they were to putting down tavern brawls and bringing sheep rustlers to justice than fighting close-combat warfare against elite soldiers. The sharp defensive stakes they hid behind in groups were next to useless against the agile infantry, made for stopping the charging bulk of horse.

             
“Damn,” Hofsted growled to himself, “we’re getting slaughtered.”