Captain Tyrblanc of the Banneryd Black Storm sat on his saddle, and sharpened his blade upon his lap. The moon was high, three-quarters visible and baleful through the branches. It caused his weapon to gleam, catching on the notch midlength, a bothersome breach of purity. The whetstone clicked passing over it, interrupting the smooth, whistling song of stone on steel. He'd caught it upon the helm of a Royal Guard lieutenant in the charge.
His lips twisted in disdain. Royal Guards. The most overrated soldiers in Lenayin. No northerner had ever sought recruitment in the Royal Guard. That would mean service alongside pagans. Far better to seek glory in the great companies, their names stained in the blood of countless enemies, their ranks free from the defilement of the unworthy. And now, as if further proof were required, there were Royal Guards riding with the traitor-bitch herself.
A rabble if ever he'd seen one. Goat herders from Tyree. Mother-coddled whelps from Rayen. Barbarian animals from Valhanan, home to the traitor-bitch. It had been a pleasure to kill them. He prayed for many more such opportunities. The odds were overwhelming and he knew that he and his men would most likely meet their deaths upon this road to Hadryn. It mattered not. The gods were waiting for them, and they would be honoured in the heavens as heroes. But he would send many pagans down to burn in the fires of Loth in the process and, for now, the certainty of death only made his own glory burn all the brighter.
Two of his men approached, shadows amidst the trees. About the perimeter, men watched from the bushes, invisible to Tyrblanc's eye. The traitors had scouts who could doubtless track his men to this point, particularly given the moon. They would shift camp later, before the moon set behind the hills.
The two men sat opposite, collapsing heavily with stifled groans. The smell of unwashed bodies came clear to Tyrblanc's nostrils. Mail chafed at the shoulders, unmoved since this pursuit had begun. One man removed his helm, and Tyrblanc recognised Corporal Veln in the moon shadow.
“The horses are nearly spent,” Veln said in Haryt, primary tongue of the Banneryd. “There's grass enough, but they need ruffage for true strength. I've searched for polovyn root but we never camp in the right spot.”
Tyrblanc shrugged, still sharpening his blade. “Only a few more days. We've more horses than men now. We can afford to lose a few horses.”
Veln gave him a hard, tired look. “In a great rush to get to paradise, are you, Captain?”
Tyrblanc grinned. “Always,” he said. Veln restrained a hardened smile. Such was the humour of northern men, where death was ever present. “What's the matter, Corporal? Lost your nerve?”
“One kills more of the enemy whilst one is alive,” Veln replied calmly, unruffled by his captain's teasing. A cloud was passing across the moon, dimming its silvery light to gloom amidst the trees. “We are tired, Captain, but should we not press the advantage at night? Surely we could kill more with surprise in the dark?”
Tyrblanc shook his head. “Our object is not to kill them, youngster…although it is a pleasant consequence. Our object is to slow them. Why attack them while they're not moving? They move a little by moonlight, but their numbers are great, they must slow for water and food for the horses. It grows difficult for them to hold such a large formation together.
“And also, at night, the advantage is always with the defender. The defender knows his ground, and knows his position upon it. It is the attacker who becomes confused, moving amidst alien defences. I remember it once, attacking a Cherrovan camp by moonlight…we lost all formation, lost even sense of direction, and nearly lost our entire company. We'd be more sensible to use the night for sleep, so we are rested for better fighting tomorrow. Attacking at night is for fools.”
“Not always,” said a cool female voice not more than five strides away. The men spun in disbelief…something whistled through the air and Veln's companion fell with a gurgling cry, clutching a knife in his throat. From another direction came a whistling arrow and a scream.
“To arms!” Tyrblanc yelled, to the answering shouts of men, steel ringing through the cold night air as blades came out. Tyrblanc ran in the direction from which the knife had come, sword in hand…there were bushes, manheight and indistinct in the gloom. He circled them, stumbling on an unseen root…steel clashed further downhill, then the distinct impact of a blade on mail, only this sound was different. A sharp, ringing crack! as if metal were fracturing.
Tyrblanc sensed movement behind and spun in time to see one of his men double over as a blade slashed him open, then a horrendous spurt of blood as the head was severed. A shadow danced past the falling body, as light and lithe as smoke on the wind. Tyrblanc charged down the slope toward it, and the shadow flitted one way through the trees, then another. Ahead, another Banneryd man stood with wide stance, eyes darting as he searched for that shadow…then lurched forward with a thump!, face first with an arrow between his shoulder blades.
Another arrowshot thumped and whistled in the dark. Tyrblanc threw himself flat, but it was another man who screamed and fell. Tyrblanc rose behind a tree, staring about desperately as men ran, and tripped, and yelled for lost comrades. The shadow he had been pursuing was nowhere to be seen. Then Corporal Veln arrived, running downhill, his fear evident despite the gloom. Tyrblanc realised his own heart was galloping, that his hands were shaking, and that bile rose in the back of his throat, threatening to choke him.
“Captain!” Veln cried, sliding on one knee to crouch beside him, as if expecting the shadows to strike him dead at any moment. “Captain, they are demons! Demons of Loth! I s-saw the eyes of one…th-the-they burned like fires!”
Tyrblanc muttered a prayer and made the holy sign with a free hand. Death was one thing, death at the hands of evil spirits was another. Steel clashed again, this time upslope, and the gurgling choke of a man swiftly killed.
“To me!” Tyrblanc yelled. “Rally to me! Rally to me and make defence!” Several men came running—one fell, Tyrblanc thought dead but then he scrambled back up, having only tripped…only to fall once more immediately, this time impaled with an arrow. More men came, backing up or running straight, spinning and staring in all directions at once, some swinging at shadows. Another fell to the archer, hands clawing the air…Tyrblanc reckoned he knew the direction this time—downslope, and to the left. Once he had some strength, they would charge that archer, and at least gain a chance against the swordsmen…
Shadows leaped from upslope and down, men yelled warning but were cut down even as the cries left their lips. One man fell near, and Tyrblanc saw the demon clearly for the first time—small, fast and certain, a shine of blue eyes in a pale face. Veln leapt at it with a cry, weapon slashing…the shadow flicked him aside with a clash of steel, cut off his arm and slashed him open through the middle in three blindingly fast, athletic strikes. Men fell to Tyrblanc's left and fell to his right, amid agonised screams and sprays of jetting blood. An arrowshot thudded close behind and another man slumped stiffly to the ground. And then, there was stillness.
But not silence. A man was sobbing, fallen to his knees nearby. Opposing him, one of the shadow demons approached. “Please!” cried the man. “Please don't kill me! Don't take my soul! I beg of you, not my soul! Not the damnation…oh lords, please save me, save me…” The words trailed into prayer, fast and stumbling over terrified sobs and gasps for air.
Tyrblanc realised that he was standing fixed to the spot, as if paralysed. He should kill the sobbing man for his cowardice. But then, how was he still alive? His men were all dead, and he still stood. Somehow, he had not attacked, but rather stood and watched in stunned disbelief. Shame flooded him. He wanted to die…and yet, did not dare to in such evil company. He could not kill the sobbing man, for the sobbing man, somewhere deep in his heart, was himself.
The demon confronting the sobbing man spoke…a male voice, in a tongue of lilting, alien tones. It sounded like a question. A female voice answered…Tyrblanc spun, and found her slender form poised behind him, a bloodstained blade in her hands. Her clothes seemed plain, and a black cloth was folded over her head, covering her hair. The eyes, however, gleamed a terrible, ungodly bronze.
The demon asked the question again. The bronze-eyed she-demon answered shortly, as though in mild exasperation. The he-demon struck, a sword hilt to the face of the sobbing man. The silence that followed was merciful. And yet not…for now, where there had been the conversation of men, and the activity of a night's camp, there was deathly silence.
A new movement downslope caught Tyrblanc's eye—a male figure, holding a huge bow, advancing past the bodies of his victims on silent feet. There was no uncertainty in the way he surveyed the surrounding night, an arrow nocked to the string. He did not stare about in bewilderment as a human man might. It was almost as though he could see his surroundings as clearly as daylight.
The moon chose that moment to break clear of the cloud and lit the forest silver. The hillside about Tyrblanc's boots flowed red with blood. The sightless eyes of his comrades stared aghast at the trees or the ground. Men known to him by name. Men of honour. Men of long friendship and service, to earthly masters and to gods alike. It did not seem real that this could be their fate. How had the gods allowed such a thing?
“You present me with a puzzle, Captain,” the approaching he-demon said then, in faultless, barely accented Lenay. “Should I show you mercy, when you and your kind would never grant any to me or my kind should our positions be reversed?”
They were serrin, Tyrblanc knew. Rarely if ever seen in the north. But he cared not what scholars, lowlanders and local pagans might call them. A demon was a demon, by any other name. They were not human, they were unnatural and they had no gods. Death was too good for them.
“I would not beg for your mercy were it the only thing between me and eternal damnation!” Tyrblanc snarled. The sword was still in his hand. It trembled, so tight was his grip.
“Believe me, Captain,” the he-demon said, with a narrowing of brilliant green eyes as he stopped and leaned upon his enormous bow, “your begging or otherwise shall have no bearing upon my decision. Reason may sway me. My pride is serrin. I do not require you to beg.”
“We should let him go,” said the bronze-eyed she-demon, coming to stand alongside. Her hair was short and her posture lithe. “He can tell the others what happened. It should be a warning.”
The he-demon inclined his head in her direction, as if conceding that reason. “We should kill him, and this one,” said the other demon who had knocked the sobbing soldier unconscious. “They fear us. They fear for their souls should they die at our hands. Allowing one to survive will lessen that fear. We should make it absolute.” And the demon with the bow inclined his head to him, also. He turned his burning gaze upon the one who stood at Tyrblanc's back.
Tyrblanc turned around, slowly. The small one who had killed Veln, he realised, was also a female. Her eyes, fixed upon the carnage about Tyrblanc's feet, were troubled. Sad, even.
“Should all the rivers run red with blood,” she said quietly, “and all the forests turn to ash and coal. Should black rain fall, and the spawning salmon gasp its last breath, and the green wren no longer sing its joy to the sun, where then, good friends, should our glory lie?”
Tyrblanc stared in disbelief. It was Tullamayne the she-demon quoted. Tullamayne the Udalyn, from the days before the Udalyn were corrupted by false-prophets, and disgraced their name to eternal damnation by betraying the true and rightful gods. Tullamayne, who seemed so often, and so sadly, to predict his own people's coming betrayal, and their coming demise. How could one so evil speak the words of Tullamayne with such sad conviction? How did the gods not strike her down where she stood?
The green-eyed demon gazed at his companion. His brilliant eyes, for the faintest moment, seemed not filled with evil or terror, but…sadness. “Aisha says to spare you,” he said to Tyrblanc. “Aisha reminds me that not all men of the north have always been so filled with fear and rage. Remember, Captain, that the words of an Udalyn saved your life. The words of a people you seek to destroy. Think of them, and think of us, and be grateful. And perhaps tell your fellow haters, so that they too might understand the true meaning of mercy.”
“I reject your mercy,” Tyrblanc spat.
“Mercy,” pressed the he-demon, in quiet, deadly tones, “is confronting the thing that would destroy your people and letting it live. There are many of my people who no longer consider themselves capable of such mercy. You are fortunate, this beautiful night, to have encountered me instead.” His hand whipped to one shoulder and pulled clear a blade to hold the point unwavering before the captain's throat. “Strike, if you will, and defy my mercy. Or drop your blade, and accept it. Precious it is, as are all things so rare. The days of serrin mercy, I fear, shall soon be a thing of the past.”