The Dusk Watchman: Book Five of The Twilight Reign (8 page)

Slowly Gaur turned, aware he was being addressed. ‘Lord Larim,’ he said, his heavy tone even more of a growl than usual.

‘We’ve plans to make.’

Gaur regarded the Chosen of Larat. ‘Why?’

‘Why? Because our current options are death or slavery, and I would prefer to find another.’ Larim gestured to the soldiers with them, perhaps two legions’ worth, now that their former allies had left and headed back towards their home states. ‘I suspect most of them would agree with me.’

There was no reply; Gaur just stared at Larim with an unreadable expression, his tusked jaw still for once, his face empty of emotion.

‘Well? Do you want to live to return home?’

‘Home? What home?’

Larim walked closer. ‘The Ring of Fire is their home, and they look to you to take them there, General.’

The white-eye was bald, his smooth face ageless. He wore a brightly coloured patchwork robe of predominantly yellow and blue, within which were set half-a-dozen glowing magical charms. Though young, Larim had the reptilian air about him that all Larat’s Chosen seemed to possess: an unblinking dispassion that was far from human.

‘Then they will be disappointed,’ Gaur said. ‘My plans are only for revenge.’

‘Revenge?’ Larim laughed. ‘And how do you propose to manage that? There is no revenge to be had here, only more death. Can you not accept that we’ve lost?’

‘I
will
have revenge for my lord’s death,’ Gaur insisted. He looked away, not interested in listening to any more of Larim’s scorn, but the white-eye walked around Gaur’s horse until he was once more in the general’s field of view.

‘Gaur, you will only die,’ Larim said. He cocked his head at the beastman, puzzled by Gaur’s blind determination. ‘Do you think the Gods will care that your lord’s faithful hound followed him even unto death? Do you think the families of these men will appreciate this sacrifice?’

Larim shook his head when he received no answer and turned to the broken troops surrounding them. ‘Soldiers of the Menin, it’s time for you to decide! Do you want to live and one day, perhaps, return home, or do you wish to follow General Gaur to a pointless death?’

The faces were all turned towards him, but no one spoke. If that perturbed Larim he didn’t show it. ‘You have the night to make your decision. Helrect is the nearest city we have not waged war upon. You can go there, or head south and attempt to meet up with the Fourth Army, but either way you don’t have the numbers to cut a path through. The injured will not make it, but the rest of you can. You may live as mercenaries or die as fools. That is your choice.’

‘And your choice?’ Gaur growled.

Larim turned. ‘Mine? My choice is to survive, of course, to return to what is now mine in the Menin homeland.’

‘To run like a coward and abandon us here?’

‘You are only looking for death,’ Larim said with contempt, ‘and you’ll find it without my help. The Ring of Fire is a long way from here, but Govin and I alone can travel faster than any army might.’ He looked to the side, where his one remaining coterie member stood. The small man with a large head shrank under Gaur’s gaze.

‘The troops of the Hidden Tower were slaughtered in Thotel; I have no allegiance to these men.’ Larim opened his mouth to say something more but then he stopped, an expression of surprise appearing on his face.

A moment later his acolyte reacted in the same way, and both men turned to look west over the moor. Those soldiers who followed their gaze saw nothing, just the advancing gloom of dusk as the sun vanished below the eastern horizon for another day.

‘It seems you don’t need to go looking,’ Larim muttered, reaching inside his robe for a silver pendant that bore the rune of his God, Larat. ‘Death has come to find you.’

At last Gaur looked, but there remained nothing to see, just his exhausted soldiers trying to summon the energy to make camp for the night. And then there was something else: though indistinct in the waning light he could just make out something moving beyond the disordered clumps of troops.

Shouts of alarm erupted from the nearest soldiers; men scrambled to their feet and drew their weapons even as they retreated. Gaur turned to Larim but the mage clearly wasn’t the cause of the disruption: the white-eye appeared apprehensive at whatever was happening out there, and his acolyte, Govin, was clearly terrified.

Gaur mounted again and pulled his axe from his saddle. He urged his horse towards the disruption, ignoring Larim as the mage began to say something in protest. The beastman was too exhausted with grief to feel fear any longer – if this was Death come to claim him, so be it.

Overhead the sky darkened steadily as dusk marched on towards night. Gaur tasted the sharp tang of fear on the wind as his soldiers fell back from whatever it was that had found them. Before long his horse stopped too, tossing its head with anxiety as it smelled something amiss. He spurred the beast hard, but it had no effect, so Gaur dismounted and advanced on foot as Menin soldiers streamed forward and his horse fled.

Some animal sense danced down Gaur’s spine, like the raised hackles of a dog faced with the unnatural. He tightened his grip on the axe even as he started to make out the figure waiting for him: standing still with eyes fixed on Gaur as the gloom shimmered and danced on either side of it. Thick plates of chitin armour glowed a whitish-amber in the waning light, broad shoulders tapered into slender arms, each carrying a long javelin.

He walked on and at last the figure moved, advancing towards him with a few swift, delicate steps. He saw it more clearly now, a reddened body with pale limbs – four legs like a spider’s, jointed up at the height of its waist, and a segmented thorax twitching behind it like a grossly fat tail. The daemon peered at him with two slanted pairs of eyes formed in an X shape about a slit Gaur guessed was a mouth. Its torso was criss-crossed with burnished gold chains, each bearing shifting, arcane symbols that made Gaur’s eyes water to behold.

He came within ten yards of the monster and stopped, spending a long moment observing it before looking to its left and right as the shimmering air started to coalesce into shadows, hinting at fresh horrors arrayed around what the Menin had intended to call their camp. There were dozens of them, no,
scores
– far more, Gaur realised, than even Larim could have called into existence.

‘Unsummoned by man, yet here you are incarnate,’ Gaur called, unafraid.

‘The breeze sings a song of pain and fear,’ the daemon said in a soft, rasping voice. ‘Drawn to the horrors of your doing we find a Land altered.’ It gestured expansively, at its comrades and its own body. ‘The powers are weakened and we come out to drink the fear of mortals.’ It paused and cocked its head at Gaur. ‘But not you. Your scent is one of hatred alone. Tell me, little mortal, tell me why this is before my kin come to rend your flesh from your bones.’

‘My lord is dead. There is nothing within me but a thirst for revenge now.’ Gaur hefted his axe. ‘If you want my flesh, try to take it.’

The daemon didn’t move, but there came a whisper Gaur realised was laughter. ‘Revenge? How sweet a flavour! Tell me, little mortal, what would you give for your
revenge
?’

Gaur looked back at the broken army behind him, shrouded in the veil of dusk. ‘All I possess.’

The daemon laughed again, quietly joyful at the prospect of more than just mortal flesh now. It raised itself up high and brandished one javelin at the shadows on its right. The shapes drew back a shade while one was dragged forward and slowly coalesced into a grey lizard-like daemon – six-limbed and sinuous, with a frill of barbs to protect its head. The new daemon crawled up to its master, head low to the ground, subservient.

‘You have the grave thief’s scent still?’

The smaller daemon hissed and clawed furiously at the ground, carving deep furrows in the moorland. ‘I smell him,’ it replied, ‘even among the dead of the battlefield.’

The greater daemon stood up on its hind legs and snuffled at the evening air. Gaur could sense its delight, but he remained impassive. Their agenda was their own. He didn’t care what that might be, or who this grave thief was. If they could deliver the destruction he wished upon King Emin and the Narkang armies, that would be enough.

‘Revenge,’ the daemon repeated. It shivered with pleasure and edged closer.

CHAPTER 5

In the grounds of Moorview Castle every possible lantern and torch had been lit to banish the shadows of evening. Ghosts patrolled the walls, barefoot and silent as they savoured the witch of Llehden’s magic upon their bodies. The sky was cloudless and the deepest of blues, punctured by the brightest stars and the lesser moon, Kasi, which lined the stone walls with silver.

‘Not a vessel,’ King Emin whispered to himself. Such was the hush his voice carried to all of the forty or so people there. ‘Not a tool or lamb for the sacrifice, but shadow incarnate.’

‘Still a vessel,’ Isak said, reluctantly looking up from the fire. ‘Azaer’s just a shadow, nothing more.’

‘So how do you kill a shadow?’ Emin asked bitterly. Recalling a conversation he’d had with Legana on the subject, he added, ‘Preferably by giving it everything it wants, then twisting that against it.’

‘What sort of a question’s that?’ Vesna interjected. The Mortal-Aspect flexed his black-iron fingers restlessly and reached for a jug of wine. Just as he touched it he changed his mind and withdrew. ‘A shadow can’t be harder to kill than a God, and we have power enough to do that.’ Karkarn’s Iron General raised his armour-clad hand to emphasise his point. When he’d tried to return the Skull of Hunting to Isak, the white-eye had shaken his head sadly and pushed the artefact back, pressing it against Vesna’s vambrace until it moulded itself around the armour as a clear crystal band. Now, unbidden by its new owner, the band around his wrist shone with an inner light that made the Mortal-Aspect stand out even more amidst his mortal companions.

‘Azaer has taken a mortal form,’ the witch of Llehden said from Isak’s side where she sat close with Legana and Mihn, ‘stolen from its owner while still in the womb, most likely, but that does not make the shadow mortal. More likely it possesses the body in the same way a daemon would, and can give it up with ease.’

‘So what, then? It’s weaker than a God, so how can it be so hard to kill?’

‘Not hard to kill,’ Emin said, ‘hard to find, hard to get to, hard to pin down. How do you catch a shadow that can fade from sight?’ He tossed the remains of his cigar into the fire and reached into his brigandine, from which he extricated a slim grey book bound in tarnished metal. Beside him Doranei watched the book warily, as though expecting it to bite him, while continuing to pour liquor down his throat.

‘However,’ Emin continued, raising the book, ‘we may not have to. There is a final arbiter that no daemon or shadow could run from, that extends beyond the physical. Kill a boy with Termin Mystt and no soul inside will be able to escape its power.’

Vesna regarded him incredulously. ‘Your recklessness with the balance of the Land astonishes me. Coming from Isak I can understand it; he was born to upset the order of things and he’s a headstrong white-eye! But you – don’t you know any restraint or caution?’

‘Can you think of another solution?’

‘Yes! Kill the child and his disciples, set their plans back a decade at least and give ourselves time to prepare properly.’

‘It is too late for that,’ Mihn said unexpectedly from Isak’s lee. His voice carried a strange authority that stopped the argument dead. He stood and looked around at the tired, surprised faces around him. Mihn was normally like a ghost at Isak’s side; silent and observing. It was why the witch of Llehden had tattooed him the way she had, to make greatest use of the man he was. As Emin watched him capture their attention by his stance alone, he reminded himself that Mihn had been trained as a Harlequin; shy and unassuming he might be by nature, but addressing an audience was in his blood.

‘The Gods are weakened, the cults undermined. We cannot allow it to continue this way or we serve Azaer’s purpose. In Tirah the cults almost sparked civil war. From all directions we hear that priests have been murdered – how many other cities will be like Scree and try to drive out the Gods? Reports from Byora say that is the case there; consider how many prayers the Gods would receive if we let this play out for five years more.’

‘But to bring into play the Key of Magic too?’ Vesna protested. ‘The weapon eclipses even a Crystal Skull for power – and it isn’t just Death’s own weapon; it’s a part of the Land’s very fabric.’

He appealed to Isak directly, knowing the decision was ultimately his. ‘Isak, the part of me that’s a God fears Termin Mystt being used by either side in this war – fears it being merely present. It’s a fundamental piece of the Land, older than mortal life, old when the Age of Myths was still young!’

Isak shook his head. ‘That doesn’t matter now; we’re too far gone down the path. This Land will be remade; it only remains to decide who’ll do so and how.’

‘How could we even use it?’ Vesna continued, refusing to give up so easily. ‘Who could wield it, me? You? No mortal can touch it without having their sanity stripped away.’

‘No living man,’ Isak corrected with a mad, crooked smile, ‘but what about one who is only half-alive?’

‘And only half-sane!’ Vesna snapped.

His words made Isak smile, and General Daken laughed out loud from the sofa that had been carried out for him. The white-eye’s injuries had opened up again under the strain of the ritual, but he had refused to be left inside when there was drinking to be done.

‘Half-sane too,’ Mihn agreed, ‘but most importantly, carrying the Crystal Skull aligned to Death. We know already they act as buffers for the mind, and of all the Skulls, Ruling should be best able to protect Isak.’

‘This is all still conjecture surely? Gambles and guesswork with the most powerful object in creation – you’re mad! You have no concept of the power you propose to use as a plaything.’