Frostborn: The High Lords Read online

  “Return to your masters,” said Calliande, “and tell them that we will not surrender.”

  The locusari made a clicking noise. “That is…”

  “God’s teeth!” thundered one of the men-at-arms, striding forward with a mace. “Shall we bandy words with a giant insect? What will it do, threaten to buzz in our ears?” He raised the mace.

  “Get back!” said Calliande, staring to cast a spell.

  The locusari was fast. It whirled in a blue blur, rearing up on its hind legs, and its forelegs swept across in a horizontal blow. The strike opened the throat of the man-at-arms, and he fell to his knees, blood sheeting down his tabard. The locusari scouts exploded into motion with metallic shrieks, surging forward to attack. Two of them lunged at Calliande, and Ridmark saw the blurs as more locusari flew into the windows.

  In that instant, Ridmark moved.

  He shot forward, whipping his staff around, and caught one of the locusari scouts across the head. The impact sounded exactly like crushing an insect beneath his boot, albeit much louder. The locusari, for all its speed and strength, was not heavy, and Ridmark’s blow sent it tumbling backwards, its head caved in. The second locusari let out a horrible metallic scream and twisted with inhuman speed, lunging at Ridmark.

  But he had already started moving. He had fought many creatures faster and stronger than humans, and he had noticed that the faster something could move the less quickly it could change direction. The creature’s lunge missed him by a few inches, and Ridmark brought his staff down. He caught the locusari across the wings, crushing them, and the insect-like creature hit the floor with a shriek of fury. It started to turn, but Arandar was already moving, and Heartwarden came down with a flash of steel, Ridmark’s head pulsing with pain from his broken bond with the soulblade. Heartwarden bisected the thrashing locusari, and the creature’s halves fell away from each other, leaking a thick yellowish slime onto the flagstones.

  Around Ridmark the hall exploded into violence as the men-at-arms and knights attacked. The locusari scouts might have been quick and deadly, but they were fragile, and could not stand against the swords and maces of the men of the Northerland. In a matter of moments a half-dozen locusari scouts had been slain, and three more escaped, leaping out the windows to fly away on their buzzing wings.

  Antenora lowered her staff, the sigils cut into the dark wood smoldering with the fury of her magic. Ridmark was glad they had ended the fight before Antenora could bring her spells to bear. If she lost control of her fire, she might have killed everyone in the hall. Morigna’s spells would have been useful against the locusari, calling roots to pull them down or stunning them with sleeping mist…

  Morigna.

  He looked back at her corpse and shiver of pure, uncontrolled fury and grief went through him.

  “All of you, quickly!” said Calliande. “To your posts. Quickly! The Dux will sound the alarm soon, and we must be ready. The Frostborn are coming for Dun Licinia. We must be ready to meet them.”

  The men had been looking for someone to take charge, and the knights and men-at-arms hastened for the doors. Calliande looked at Ridmark and hesitated for a moment.

  “Ridmark,” she said. “I am going to the northern forum. I will be needed there. You…”

  “I will join you shortly,” said Ridmark. “I must attend to something first.”

  She started to answer, but he turned away. He knelt over the dead man-at-arms and pulled away the man’s cloak. The dead man-at-arms had no further need of it, and in truth they might all join him soon enough.

  He took the cloak, knelt next to Morigna, and closed her eyes. He wrapped her body in the cloak, picked her up, and carried her away from the great hall.

  ###

  Sir Arandar of Tarlion, Knight of the Order of the Soulblade, watched the Keeper as Ridmark carried Morigna from the hall. Arandar could see the war upon Calliande’s face as plainly as lines drawn upon a map. She wanted to go after Ridmark, to comfort him, but her duty was plain. The Frostborn had returned, and the Keeper’s power was needed to throw them back.

  Calliande was torn between her heart and her duty.

  Arandar understood that. He understood that far, far better than he might have wished.

  Though with a feeling of heavy dread, he realized it might not matter. They had undertaken the quest to stop the return of the Frostborn, and they had failed. Calliande’s plan to seize the world gate was a sound one, but it was the only plan they had left.

  It would likely fail.

  Yet they would do what they had to do. They would do their duty.

  Even if they failed.

  Calliande stared after Ridmark as he vanished through the door leading to the keep’s chapel, a muscle working in her jaw.

  “Keeper,” said Arandar, and her blue eyes snapped to him, full of pain. “You said it yourself. We must act at once. The Dux and the Comes will have gone to the wall, and…”

  “Yes,” said Calliande. “Yes, you are right, Sir Arandar. I will go at once.” She paused for one more instant. “I must ask a favor of you.”

  “Of course,” said Arandar.

  “Stay with Ridmark for the moment,” said Calliande. “Make sure that…”

  “He does not slay himself in his grief?” said Arandar.

  He understood that notion, too. It had occurred to him more than once.

  “He won’t,” said Calliande. “Not Ridmark. Nothing would make him give up. Not even this. But in his grief…he might throw himself into the foe. He would leave a hundred of them piled around him, but in the end…”

  “Very well,” said Arandar. “We will both join you soon.”

  “Thank you,” said Calliande, and she headed for the keep’s doors, Kharlacht, Gavin, and Antenora following her. Brother Caius stepped to Arandar’s side, his face grim.

  “A dire day,” said Caius.

  “Aye,” said Arandar, and a flash of insight came to him. “But you’ve seen a dire day or two in your time, I would wager.”

  The old dwarf smiled a little, his gray, granite-colored skin creasing with wrinkles. “So have you. Come, then. Let us help the Gray Knight through his dire day. For if we are to prevail, we will need his aid.”

  Arandar looked out the window at the distant pillar of blue flame.

  Even the Gray Knight’s help might not be enough to overcome the storm that had come to Andomhaim.

  Chapter 2: Scouts

  Arandar stepped into the chapel, Brother Caius following.

  Dun Licinia’s keep was small, and the chapel was even smaller, barely large enough to hold twenty standing men. A few candles burned near the altar, throwing shadows across the stone walls. Arandar supposed that the keep’s priest had been saying evening prayers before the town had been called to arms. A wooden crucifix hung over the altar, the image of the dying Dominus Christus upon it carved with exquisite skill. Ridmark stood at the altar, and he had laid Morigna’s wrapped corpse before it.

  The cold expression upon the younger man’s face unsettled Arandar.

  Arandar knew loss all too well. The plague had carried off his wife six years past. The magic of the Magistri was capable of healing many injuries, but their spells were powerless against certain illnesses, and the disease that had taken Isolde had been one of them. Arandar knew the grief and the pain all too well.

  Isolde had not, however, been murdered. Arandar had raged, but there had been no one to rage against. There had been no one upon whom to take revenge. Isolde’s body had gone the way of all mortal flesh, albeit sooner than Arandar had hoped. Her death had been a natural one, and Arandar had no doubt that they would one day stand before the throne of the Dominus Christus together.

  Morigna had been murdered.

  Looking at Ridmark’s face, Arandar could not shake the feeling that something terrible had been born this day. Ridmark Arban had already been a fearsome warrior. Grief over his wife’s death had driven him to seek to stop the return of the Frostborn. The grief
of Ridmark Arban had created the Gray Knight.

  What would his rage create?

  For a moment all three men stood in silence.

  “Did Calliande send you,” said Ridmark at last, “to make sure I don’t kill myself?”

  “Yes,” said Caius.

  Ridmark made a sound that might have been a snort, or perhaps a snarl. “No. She need not fear that. If I die today, it will not be from my own hand.” He took a deep breath, a shudder going through his shoulders. “Dun Licinia is likely to fall, is it not?”

  “We do not know that,” said Caius.

  “But it is probable,” said Arandar. From his own experience of grief, he suspected Ridmark would prefer the hard truth. “The Frostborn would be fools not to strike hard and fast to secure their foothold.”

  “Then Dun Licinia will fall, and we shall have war without end,” said Ridmark. “This room, this chapel, is going to be Morigna’s tomb. I am never going to see her again. So a moment is all I need. A moment to say farewell.” He looked at Arandar and Caius, his eyes cold and hard and blue and dry.

  Arandar would have been less unsettled if Ridmark had been weeping hysterically.

  “One moment,” said Ridmark. “Then I shall go to the battle, and kill until I find Imaria Licinius and the Weaver. She will show herself, if only to gloat. Then I shall kill her, or she shall kill me.”

  “We may yet have victory,” said Caius.

  “Perhaps,” said Ridmark, “but I will have vengeance first. Do you think her soul was saved, Brother Caius?”

  “Morigna’s?” said Caius.

  “She always spurned the church,” said Ridmark.

  Caius shrugged. “No one can say for certainty. She would have been baptized as a child, and that sacrament never loses its virtue. She might have turned to the Dominus Christus in her final moments. We cannot read the hearts of other mortals.”

  “Do you tell yourself that to comfort yourself?” said Ridmark. “When you think of whoever it was you lost? It was a death, was it not? A death that drove you from Khald Tormen and to Andomhaim and the church.”

  Caius let out a long sigh. “It was. Yet I cannot comfort myself with such a thought. I was the first of my kindred to be baptized. Do not blame yourself for this, Ridmark…”

  “I don’t,” said Ridmark. “I know what Calliande thinks. Aelia’s death was my fault. This,” his head bowed for a moment, “this…was not my doing. I could have done nothing to save her.” He looked up again, and Arandar thought his eyes looked colder than ever, the scar sharper against the hard lines of his face. “But I can avenge her.”

  “She was a brave and valiant companion,” said Caius. “She followed you without fear, and strode into dangers that few in Andomhaim have ever imagined, let alone faced. She loved you, Ridmark, and she would not wish for you to die.”

  “No,” said Ridmark. “And I did not wish for her to die. But she did.” He straightened up, as if something had finished forming itself within his mind. “And I shall honor her memory by piling the corpses of her murderers at my feet.”

  He stooped and drew aside the cloak covering the body, and Arandar saw Morigna’s sharp features for the last time. There had always been a tightness there, a wariness, save occasionally when she looked at Ridmark. Now her expression had relaxed for the final time, and she looked peaceful.

  And she looked so young. Her tongue had been so sharp that Arandar had forgotten that she had been only twenty years old. He had never completely trusted her, but a pang of regret went through him.

  She should not have died like that.

  And if the Frostborn returned, she would be far from the last to die.

  Ridmark kissed her once and then rested his forehead against hers. For a long moment he remained motionless, and neither Arandar or Caius spoke. Then Ridmark pulled the cloak over Morigna’s face and straightened up, and Arandar had the sense that a different man stood there. A harder, colder man.

  If Imaria Licinius ever fell into his power, she would regret it bitterly.

  “Come,” said Ridmark Arban. “There is killing to be done.”

  He walked from the chapel and did not look back.

  ###

  Ridmark jogged through the streets of Dun Licinia, his staff in hand and his dwarven axe at his belt. He had taken Morigna’s dwarven dagger. Perhaps someday he would have the chance to use it upon Imaria and the Weaver. Caius and Arandar followed him. The dwarven friar had his mace in hand, and Arandar had drawn Heartwarden, the soulblade glimmering with pale white light. Ridmark felt the pain of his broken bond to the sword, but he did not care.

  In fact, he welcomed it. It helped keep him focused, keep his mind clear.

  Right now his mind grappled with a serious problem.

  Namely, how to save Dun Licinia.

  There was an excellent chance that the town was doomed. The Frostborn had fought Calliande once before, centuries ago, and they would realize that she posed the greatest danger to them. Some of the locusari scouts had escaped from the great hall of the keep, and they would return to the Frostborn with news that Calliande was here. For that matter, Ridmark had no doubt that locusari scouts flew overhead, out of sight from human eyes, and they might have spotted Calliande heading to the northern wall. Once the Frostborn knew that Calliande was here, they would strike for Dun Licinia with everything they had. In fact, if Ridmark was in command of the Frostborn, if he had possessed flying scouts like the locusari, he would have…

  He skidded to a stop.

  Around him militia spearmen ran for the northern wall. The northern wall, where Dux Gareth and Sir Joram and Sir Constantine would rally their forces.

  “Oh,” said Ridmark as the answer came to him.

  “What is it?” said Arandar. Both Arandar and Caius looked at Ridmark as if he was about to explode.

  It was, he had to admit, a fair assessment.

  “The locusari scouts can fly,” said Ridmark. “So they’re going to try and land inside the town and open the gate. Not the northern gate, since the army gathers there. But the southern gate…”

  “Will be lightly manned,” said Caius, “and the men there will never have fought locusari before.”

  “We’d better run,” said Ridmark.

  He turned and sprinted, boots slapping against the cobblestones, Caius and Arandar keeping pace behind him. A few of the militiamen heading towards the wall gave him odd looks, but Ridmark did not stop to explain. If the Frostborn assailed the northern wall, every man would be needed there.

  Except, of course, for those manning the town’s southern gate.

  “Who holds the southern gate?” shouted Ridmark.

  “Sir Tagrimn Volarus!” said Arandar. “He tired of the feast, so the Dux sent him to guard the wall.”

  That was good. Sir Tagrimn Volarus was old, cantankerous, and unpleasant. He was also a tenacious warrior and a skilled captain who permitted no laxness among the men under his command. In the battle against Mournacht’s forces, he had wielded his massive steel war hammer as easily as if it had been made of paper, smashing Mhorite and dvargir and kobold skulls right and left.

  But old Sir Tagrimn had never fought the locusari before, and even a veteran warrior was at a disadvantage when facing an unknown foe.

  Ridmark burst into the southern forum. This part of the town seemed deserted, the shops lining the square dark and silent. The gates were still closed and barred and locked, and Ridmark saw the glimmer of torchlight in the narrow windows of the octagonal watch towers flanking the gate.

  For the moment all was quiet.

  Ridmark knew that would not last.

  “Sir Tagrimn!” shouted Ridmark at the top of his lungs. “Sir Tagrimn, to arms! To arms! The gate is threatened!”

  He cast a wary glance at the sky.

  The door to the eastern watch tower swung open and Tagrimn Volarus stalked out. The old knight was a balding keg of a man, and he wore battle-scarred armor, a massive scowl on his face.

&
nbsp; “Ridmark Arban?” said Sir Tagrimn. “What the devil is going on? The town is in an uproar and the Dux has sounded the call to arms.”

  “Someone opened the world gate,” said Ridmark. “I don’t know how. The Frostborn have come forth and are marching for the town.”

  “What?” said Tagrimn.

  Ridmark looked up again. “The Frostborn have creatures called locusari. They can fly, and I think some of them are going to try and open the southern…get down!”

  Ridmark shoved Tagrimn back a step, which was the only thing that saved both of their lives.

  A heartbeat later the blue blur shot past them, the creature’s serrated forelimb sweeping like a scythe’s blade. It would have taken off both their heads in one blow. The locusari scout swooped around for another pass, and Ridmark caught a glimpse of the creature’s unblinking black eyes. Then he swung his staff, and the impact shattered the creature’s head. It flipped over him with a weird buzzing noise and slapped into the wall. Tagrimn bellowed and raised his steel war hammer, whipping it over his head with a whooshing noise, and the weapon slammed into another airborne locusari, sending it tumbling to the ground.

  “To arms, lads!” roared Tagrimn. “To arms! The gate is attacked!” Four locusari scouts landed before the closed gate, and the creatures scuttled towards it, reaching for the crossbar. The gate was controlled by a mechanism within the watch towers, but the locusari might not know that. Or they might be strong enough to batter their way through by brute force. Ridmark was not sure which, and he did not want to find out.

  Shouts of alarm came from the watch towers as the men within them took up their weapons, and more blue blurs shot overhead as descending locusari made for the windows. Ridmark sprinted for the gates, whipping his staff around, and attacked. A sweep of his staff knocked the nearest creature upon its back, pinning its wings in place. Before the locusari could right itself, Ridmark brought his staff down, crushing its head. A second locusari came at him, and Ridmark dodged, swinging his staff with enough force to leave a crease upon the creature’s gleaming carapace. It stumbled, and Ridmark’s next blow crushed the creature’s head between his staff and the gate.