The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (6 page)

There was an instant stir, people
murmuring and exclaiming to themselves. Raugst bore it all stoically. His bright
eyes, the only thing visible on him, just stared at Giorn, haughty and
immobile.

Meril stepped forward. Giorn had
expected that. Meril and Raugst had been close in recent weeks, drinking and
feasting and whoring together. The two had become quite good friends, by all
accounts.

“This is
madness
!” Meril said. He stared at Giorn as though looking at a
lunatic, and there were loud murmurs of agreement from all around.

Giorn did not back down. Meeting
his brother’s gaze, he said, “Raugst is an agent of the Enemy.”

“Madness!”
Spittle sprayed from Meril’s mouth. Aggressively, he moved toward Giorn, and
for a moment Giorn was tempted to take a step back. He wanted no exchange of
blows with his brother. “Why are you saying these things?”

“Duke Yfrin shot no one, Meril,”
Giorn said. “You’re too young to remember all our days at his manor in Wenris,
chasing rabbits in his garden, while he and Father smoked pipes and recounted
their glory days.” He shook his head. “You’re too young to remember Uncle
Yfrin. But trust me, he shot no one. Yet just before he fell ill—”
“
Pretended
to fall ill!”
“—Raugst gave him something to drink. Something which made him unable to go on
the hunt with us, and thus he looked suspicious from the first.”

“Because he did it!”

Giorn took a breath. “Meril, I am
your older brother and rightful baron. Heed me.”

Glowering, Meril took another step
forward. They were almost touching now. Till now, Giorn had not realized how
tall
his brother was. He actually had to
look up at Meril. The gathering muttered ominously. “You relinquished your
right to the barony,” Meril said.

Niara stepped forward, looking
concerned. “Giorn, Meril, please—”

Giorn motioned her to silence. Not
taking his eyes off Meril, he said, “I ride to war. I haven’t given up the
throne.”

“But you have. And thank the gods. You’d
arrest a friend of mine, the very man who saved my life, the very man
who avenged Rian
. Do you deny it?” Giorn
could feel his breath on his face; it stank of whiskey.

“I don’t deny that that’s how it
appears—”

“There!”

“Nonetheless. I order Raugst
arrested. Furthermore, if Father dies, I order that Raugst be beheaded at
once.”

“Madness!” Sweat coated Meril’s
cheeks and ran down his neck.

Again, Niara tried to intercede. “Please,
Meril, Giorn, you must be reasonable—”

“Away, woman!” Meril said.

He glared at Giorn, and Giorn
counseled himself to be patient, but then Meril actually butted his chest
against Giorn’s, and, staring into brother’s flushed face, Giorn knew they were
about to fight.
How could it have come to
this?

Reason came from a surprising
quarter. Raugst, clearing his throat, said, “Excuse me.”

“You would say something for yourself,
demon?” Giorn said.

Raugst smiled. “Indeed I would. If
what you say is true, and I did poison the duke, there would be poison in my
tent, would there not?”

“Perhaps . . .”

“And if what
I
say is true, and I did not do it, then it is the duke who would
have poison in his tent, for the arrow that pierced the baron was poisoned, was
it not?”

“It was . . .” Giorn shook his
head. “But we’ve already searched his quarters.”

“Search again. More thoroughly.”

Giorn wanted to protest, but it was
such a reasonable request that, had he refused, the crowd would have turned
against him and he would have gotten nowhere. Thus he ordered both tents
searched, he and Meril eying each other tensely all the while. Finally one of
Giorn’s officers approached, holding a small vial of what looked like riding
powder. Looking somewhat sheepish, the officer said, “We found this among the
duke’s belongings. I suppose we missed it during the first searches because it
looked so harmless. This time we went more thoroughly, and we smelled it. It
doesn’t smell like riding powder.”

He uncapped it and proffered it to
Meril and Giorn. Giorn wrinkled his nose at the bitter stench.

Stopping the vial, the officer
said, “Poison, sirs. It must be. And well hidden.”

“Well planted, more like,” Giorn
said. “And what of Raugst’s effects? Did you find anything?”

“No, my lord.”

“There,” said Meril, looking smug. Raugst
stood next to him, seemingly saddened by this whole ugly affair. Giorn wanted
to punch him.

“This proves nothing,” Giorn said. “I
still place Raugst under arrest.”

“You are no longer baron,” Meril
reminded him. “Not until you return. You placed me in charge, remember,
retaining only command of the army.”

Giorn ground his teeth. “I haven’t
time for this. The sun sinks. I need to be away. Even now our allies to the
south are dying, being butchered by Borchstogs.”

“Then you had best go and help
them.”

“I cannot leave with Raugst free.”

“Then stay and imprison him. But
you will have to fight me to do it. Have you gone
mad
, Giorn? He’s Fria’s husband, our own brother now. How could you
speak so against him?”

“It’s the truth,” Giorn clenched
and unclenched his fists at his sides. “Now enough of this. You know as well as
I that I can’t waste time wrestling with you. If we delay here, hundreds of thousands
could die.”

“Then I suppose you have made your
decision.”

Giorn glared at him, then Raugst,
who still looked grieved by all this unpleasantness. “I will return,” Giorn
promised.

“I pray you do,” said Raugst, and
there was something hungry in his eyes.

Quickly Giorn summoned his riders
and made ready to leave. Niara came to him before he departed and kissed his
cheek.

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

“And I you.” He met her eyes. “Do
not let them execute the duke.”

She nodded. “I can’t keep him from
the dungeon, but I’ll make sure that’s as far as Meril goes with it.”

“Thank you.”

“Promise me one thing,” she said.

“Anything.”

“Come back alive.”

He nodded, returned her kiss—again,
on the cheek—and swung astride his horse. Looking back, he could see Raugst
tilting a flask with Meril and chuckling. He grimaced.
There will be a reckoning
.

“Farewell,” he told Niara. Turning
to his riders, he called, “To war!”

He rode to the west, and they
followed, even as the sun turned to blood on the horizon.

Chapter
4

For three days Giorn led his host of eight thousand riders
south from Thiersgald until at last they reached the great bridge that spanned
the Pit of Eresine. The Pit was the steep-walled gorge that ran roughly
east-west and divided Fiarth from Feslan. Giorn crossed the great bridge,
careful not to stare too long over the side, down into the rushing dark
currents a mile and a half below.

Onward he led his men, up into the
rocky, mountainous country of Feslan, the barony that bordered the Aragst Mountains,
the Black Wall that separated Oslog from the free countries of the Alliance, and consequently
bore the brunt of Oslog’s wrath, at least along this stretch of the Wall.

As he went, Giorn tried not to
dwell on the Borchstogs’ reasons for launching an offensive against Feslan.
The Time of Grandeur is approaching.
That’s
what the captured Borchstogs had said. Why now? And why strike at Felgrad? He
was still deeply irritated by their interruption of his plan to have Raugst
executed, and still more irritated that Meril had protected him. It would be a
bitter thing were Giorn to fall in the coming battle with his last words to his
brother spoken in anger.

He led his host up into the
highlands, surrounded by wet-green pines and jutting slabs of granite. Magnificent
vistas spread out before them.

They passed numerous villages, and
here Giorn began to see the effects of the war. Some of the villages were built
upon gentle slopes, surrounded by forests and rivers. Others set into the
cliffs of the mountains. One was even built into the mountain itself, fashioned
from an abandoned mine. But one and all were bustling, overflowing, filled with
refugees from the south. Giorn was obliged to stop at several of these towns
and barter for provisions for his troops and horses, and he saw the streets
teeming with farmers and villagers who had been forced to flee their homes. Pigs
and goats and chickens swarmed the lanes, the refugees having brought what
animals and property they could with them, even though they had no pens or
roofs. Giorn saw many lean-tos in the alleys and even in the main
thoroughfares. Old women watched over their chickens with grim eyes, canes in
hand, ready to swat the head of any urchin that thought to snatch one.

Other refugees had no animals or
trade-skills to procure coin with and were forced into begging, thievery and
prostitution, some at shockingly young ages. Giorn kept his hand on his purse
as he made his way through. Several young women approached him, and boys, but
he turned them all away. He was sure his men would be only too happy to give
these poor souls custom, but he did not stop to camp.

As he led his men on, he saw more
and more evidences of the Borchstog host. Evidently they had ranged far from
Hielsly, spreading terror throughout the barony. Slaughtered pigs and cows,
covered in flies and vultures and stinking under the sun, lay in the fields and
streets of abandoned towns. The vultures wheeled away at the soldiers’ arrival,
and Giorn saw that whoever had slaughtered the animals had taken only the
choicest cuts of meat. Evidently the townspeople had fled the Borchstogs in
fear and had taken only what they could carry. Not all had thought to bring
their livestock with them. It was an eerie feeling, riding through these empty
towns, and Giorn was not glad of it. The fields around these towns were burned
and black. The villagers had fired their wheat and corn rather than leave them
for the ‘stogs.

Even further south he saw worse
sights, towns that were blackened husks, smoke still rising from the ruins. Borchstog
bands had evidently put them to the torch, and recently. Severed human heads
and whole bodies were impaled on sharpened poles in the town squares, or heaped
in mounds amid the rubble, and Giorn chased away the ravens that pecked at
their eyes and ripped at their cheeks. He saw dead men and women tied to
numerous posts, and their mutilated bodies were horrors to look on. Borchstogs
delighted in torture, and Giorn saw the grisly evidence firsthand. When he came
upon the bodies, he drew rein and had his men take them down and burn them. He
had no time for burials.

Deeper and deeper into the
highlands he rode, and as he went the chill in his veins grew colder. The
Borchstogs were close, he could feel them. He could taste a rank, oily
malignance on the air, whispering through the pines and cottonwoods.

Now when he came to the high places
he could see, in the distance, just barely, the infinite sharp teeth of the Aragst Mountains.
Their roots were lost to mist, only the black fangs jutting upward out of the
white roils, ghostly and immortal. A shiver coursed up Giorn’s spine. He could
not help but to imagine the horrors that lay beyond them and the awful wastes
of Oslog itself. And somewhere in those wastes stood the black fortress of
Gilgaroth, the Wolf, the Lord of Ruin, who, it seemed, had turned His gaze upon
Feslan at last.

Giorn led his men over the shoulder
of a certain mountain and up the slopes of Triathad, the mountain where Hielsly
lay. That fair city was on the far side, the southern slope, keeping eternal
watch on the Aragst. Giorn warned his men to be careful and sent scouts to
range far ahead; if Hielsly was near, so too was the enemy. He could feel them
even more strongly now. The hackles on the back of his neck rose higher, and
gooseflesh covered his arms. He heard his men muttering prayers under their
breaths to Brunril and Illiana.

As he was picking his way up the
slope and along a dirt road that ran through the mountain forest, he was
startled by cries of alarm, then cursing and bellowing in Oslogon. A lone
Borchstog, its wrists chained together, was dragged through the dripping pines
and deposited before him. The creature, like all of its race, possessed eyes as
red as hell and flesh as black as death. Resembling a man greatly in aspect, it
stood tall and strong, broad of shoulder and deep of chest, but its face was a
thing of horror –- demonic and loathsome, with thick, sharp teeth, a flat,
broad nose, countless scars and tattoos, and, of course, those red, burning
eyes. Its black, oily hair fell in a lank mane over its shoulders.

“We found this one and several
others guarding the crest,” said the soldier that had brought the Borchstog. He
was the captain of Giorn’s advance scouts and did not have to say what the
fates of the other Borchstogs had been.

“Then that must mean we’re very
near the main host,” Giorn said. “Good.” To the Borchstog, he said, “Do you
speak Havensril?”

It spat on the ground at his
horse’s hooves. In a rough but intelligible voice, it said, “Death to all the
sons of the First Men!”

Acting with shocking swiftness and
violence, it sprang into action. All the time it had been quietly bunching its
arms, pulling at its chains, but now Giorn saw that this was with purpose. For,
with lightning speed, it now pulled so hard with one arm that the other
was wrenched loose from its socket
. There
came a horrid, gristly ripping sound. Black blood spurted, and the creature
roared in agony, but even as it did it was leaping at Giorn. It swung its
severed arm like a club. The redness of its eyes blazed like hellfire.

Giorn dodged the swipe of its arm. Kicked
the creature in the chest. It fell back. By that point his men had recovered
from their shock and had skewered the Borchstog in a dozen places. Its black
blood sprayed the ground.

Even so, the thing never removed
its gaze from Giorn’s. The rage in its eyes faded and at last died, but still
those eyes met his, even as it sagged to the ground. It was a sight Giorn
doubted he would ever forget.

“What shall we do with it, my
lord?” panted the scout captain when the Borchstog was dead.

“It was a noble warrior,” Giorn
said, honestly moved by the creature’s devotion to its cause, “but it was evil,
through and through. Throw it off the nearest cliff.”

Giorn led on. He sent out more
scouts, but no more Borchstog sentries were found. He only hoped that the
individuals of the main Borchstog host did not
all
possess the spirit of that one.

At last he led his soldiers to the
crest of the mountain and stared down at the besieged city of Hielsly, a thick-walled place of splendors
that sat on the very slope of the mountain. It sprawled up and down and side to
side, hugging the crags and fissures, embracing the springs that bubbled up
from below. Its people were known to sing songs to the hardy trees that grew
from the cracks in the rock and to the goats that leapt from crag to crag.

“Amazing,” Giorn said, sweeping his
gaze across the high spires and domes of that mysterious city. Its people were
the stuff of legend, bold and adventurous, cleaving to the old ways, before the
Crescent became so settled. Their priestesses still danced naked through the
streets at night, singing praises to Illiana, Maker and Goddess of the moon. Even
from here Giorn could see the priestesses’ great Temple, stabbing up toward the black heavens,
its bone-white towers seeming to glow.

He stared intently at the highest
tower, the central one. Its upper chamber shone most fiercely, though it was
not a painful glow, but soft and white and moon-like. Supposedly the
priestesses here wielded the fabulous Moonstone of song and tale. The myths
varied, but according to some Illiana herself had gifted it to them—a final
gift to the race of Man before the Omkar turned their back on them for all
time. Giorn had never truly believed in the Stone, but Niara said it existed
and so he was forced to give the legend the benefit of the doubt.

It was a marvelous city, but
currently masses of Borchstogs huddled in their smoking camps flung about its
mighty walls, tainting Hielsly with their very presence. According to the
messengers, the Borchstogs had launched their attack nearly two weeks ago, and
Giorn could see that they had dug in.

There were ranks upon ranks of the
filthy creatures, many grouped around great bonfires whose columns of smoke
rose high into the black sky, blotting out the stars. Looking through a spyglass,
Giorn saw that Borchstogs were dancing and cavorting about the pyres, seeming
to howl or sing or chant, possibly in some ritual to their Master. Indeed, Giorn
saw bodies of still-moving human captives be thrown upon the fires, and he
ground his teeth as the Borchstogs lifted their heads and howled.

Other Borchstogs were gathered in
the torture parks, where Giorn saw rows and rows of posts the creatures had
erected, surely cut from the forests of the region, and upon each post writhed
a naked human captive, still living, still bleeding. The Borchstogs prodded
them with lances, whipped them with barbed whips, flayed strips of skin off
them with knives, and cut others down for rape and mutilation. Giorn, who could
stand no more, handed the spyglass back to Hanen, his second-in-command.

“The siege ends tonight,” Giorn
said, feeling sweat stand on his brow.

Hanen, his own eyes hard as he
stared down upon the Borchstog forces, simply nodded.

Giorn dispatched scouts to mark the Borchstog positions,
then consulted with his generals to devise their plan of attack. At Giorn’s
direction, soldiers rolled boulders to the brink of the many short cliffs that
lined the upper reaches of the mountain. When they were in position, Giorn
shouted, “Now!”

The soldiers shoved the boulders
over, and Giorn watched eagerly as the great stones, covered in moss and dirt
and severed roots, rolled and bounced and clattered down the cliffs and slopes,
sending up plumes of dirt. The Borchstogs stirred and pointed. Some set up a
cry and there was much pushing and shoving to get out of the way, but for many
it was too late. The boulders tore straight into the thick of the camps,
killing and scattering the demons by the scores. They abandoned their pyres. They
abandoned their victims. Giorn’s men laughed.

But he was far from done. To
further the Borchstogs’ disarray, Giorn now directed his archers, positioned
further down the slope. “Fire at will!” he said.

They loosed their arrows, slaying
the hellspawn even as they scrambled out of the way of the bouncing boulders. Along
the cliffs, Giorn’s men laughed even louder, watching the demons flee and fall
and be ground to paste, watching the bonfires spark and explode as boulders
smashed through them.

Only then, when the Borchstogs’
formations were utterly shattered, did Giorn turn to his riders and say, “To
war!”

“To war!”

He led the three thousand riders
down from the peak to clear a path to the northern gates of Hielsly. His heart
leapt into his throat as he thundered into the midst of the Borchstogs. They
spread like a black sea all around him, howling for his flesh, their red eyes
burning into him, their white teeth flashing, their tar-black faces flickering
by the light of the bonfires. The stench of rotting meet nearly gagged him.

A lance whirled by his head. An
arrow glanced off his helm, setting his ears to ringing. Another embedded
itself in his saddle. The Borchstogs pressed in close. He spurred his horse on,
grinding the creatures beneath its hooves.

His sword hacked chests, cleaved in
skulls and drank deep of black blood, but at last the Borchstogs pressed in too
close and Giorn lifted his horn and blew three short notes.

At once, three of his generals,
leading more troops, speared into the Borchstog ranks from three different
directions, inciting even greater chaos and fear among the Oslogon ranks. Giorn
heard a Borchstog horn blow, long and loud, and gradually the Borchstogs broke
away from the fighting and withdrew, leaving a battlefield scarred by fire and
filth and corpses, both man and demon.

Giorn’s men cheered and gathered to
him at his call. By that time Hielsly had responded and its lord, Baron Oscrin
Hysthir, brought a host out to assist Giorn in pursuing the Borchstogs and
driving them away. Giorn and the Baron chased them through the forest of pines
and eucalyptus that stretched south of the city, at last sending the Borchstogs
fleeing over the cliffs and down their ropes. Giorn laughed as he chopped
through one rope, sending two-score Borchstogs plunging to their deaths in the
forests below. Their screams soothed something deep inside him, and for the
first time in days he began to breathe easy.