“Would-be tyrants always snigger when a hero comes knocking, smirking at each other that if they were in charge surely they would have killed the man when he was still a callow youth. Idiots. Do you have any idea how many callow youths are out to kill me, Chancellor? If I killed them all I could make a second Tower out of the corpse pile. The best you can do is massacre here and there and hope it’s one of the dumb ones that survives all the way to your door.”
– Dread Empress Rancorous
A tide of chitinous vermin poured out of the sewers, disgusting eight-legged creatures the size of horses that screeched under the glare of the sun and spread out like a plague. And they kept coming out: a dozen, a hundred. How long until it was a thousand, or even more than that? Arthur turned a glare on the disguised man that could only be Amadeus of the Green Stretch, the Carrion Lord himself. The older man seemed as indifferent to his fury as he was to the screams sounding in the distance.
“You madman,” the Squire shouted. “You’re releasing them into the city!”
“Well spotted,” the Carrion Lord praised.
Arthur suspected he was not imagining that sardonic undertone.
“People are going to die,” the orphan bit out. “Thousands-”
“An entirely foreseeable consequence of giving battle in a crowded city,” the Carrion Lord noted. “Is it only collateral damage not of your own making that offends?”
“Innocents will die,” the Squire seethed. “Innocents are already dying. And you’re playing word games with me?”
“You’re letting the Book do you thinking for you,” the green-eyed man chided. “Think, boy. Where did you see signals being sent up? Where do we stand right now?”
Arthur seized his anger by the neck, slowed it, but did not set it aside. Anger was good, anger was your soul telling you something was unacceptable and you ought to do something about it. But the dark-haired orphan forced himself to think. The flares he’d seen in the sky, they’d been in a broad line going south to north across Ater. A battle line, he thought. The breaches, the place where the spiders were coming through, they were all places where there’d already been fighting. Soldiers.
“You sent them after armies,” the Squire said.
“I did,” the Carrion Lord easily replied. “I’ve known this city for decades, judging where the fighting would take place during the assault was not difficult. Thought that fascinating engine – Masego’s work, yes? – took me by surprise. I had to compensate with some heavy-handedness around the Licosian Gates.”
“You may yet ruin this city and all in it,” Arthur bit out. “Worse yet, what manner of dark bargain did you strike to get power over the spiders?”
The green-eyed man cocked his head to the side, looking amused.
“Arthur Foundling,” he drawled, “are you asking me to tell you my evil plan?”
The Squire paused, slightly embarrassed at being caught out instantly. Still, he must persevere.
“Do you not want to tell anyone of your cunning?” Arthur tried. “Surely a great deal of work went into this.”
Evil always liked to gloat, unless it was the Dead King and his Revenants, but Lady Alexis said those didn’t really count.
“I was going to use you to funnel information to my daughter, but it would be almost unprincipled of me to indulge you after that,” the Carrion Lord noted. “I’d be rewarding an unsavoury habit.”
“The White Knight told me this usually works,” Arthur replied, a tad defensively.
“Well, if the Sword of Judgement said so,” the older man drily said. “We must not make a liar out of Judgement’s favourite meat puppet, I’ll tell you everything.”
Arthur eyed him skeptically. Maybe taking him prisoners would be safer. The Carrion Lord was on the edge of the roof, his sword still in the sheath and he was no longer Named. Just an aging man in light mail. One who was looking at him with calm, cool eyes. The fight would be his to lose, the Squire thought. He’d been training with some of the finest warriors on Calernia. And yet under the weight of those pale green eyes Arthur found he was hesitating. His instincts were telling him it was a bad idea, and though his anger at the horror the old monster had just unleashed on Ater was far from quenched he would not let it bait him into making a mistake.
He must find out how the villain was controlling the horde, what power or artefact, so that the spiders could be forced back below.
“I am not the Tyrant of Helike, child,” the Carrion Lord calmly said. “You are looking for the gimmick, the toy. There is none. I murdered the men and women warding the sewers to keep the creatures out, undid their work sent my associate to stir up the hive. The scent of blood and corpses did the rest.”
The monster’s face was unsmiling.
“There is no undoing this,” he said, and it sounded like a nail hammered into a coffin.
‘’It won’t only be soldiers who die, you fucking animal,” the Squire insisted. “Do you think they won’t spill out beyond the battle lines into the city? It’s only the districts closest to the walls that were evacuated. Civilians are going to die.”
“Yes,” the Carrion Lord nonchalantly said. “Thousands of them. The city will be on the brink of collapse as the horde spreads. The Legions will dig in, the Army of Callow retreat. And meanwhile the High Seats will look at their household troops, their precious private armies so jealously hoarded, see them bleed and die to save people that are nothing to them. Even as we speak they wonder – is this worth it? What am I sacrificing my strength for?”
“You can’t be serious,” Arthur said, appalled. “You’re saying they’ll retreat?”
“They cannot afford that either,” the green-eyed man said. “Praes needs a capital that is not a smoking hovel full of giant spiders. Neither will they be willing to weaken themselves. So they will, instead, revert to… old habits.”
In the distance, the air screamed so loud that even the chittering of the horde was drowned out. Rifts were ripped open, at first only a few then dozens, and it was as if the floodgates had broken. Devils began pouring out of Lesser Breaches and sorceries fouler still: swarms of green and glittering insects, rivers of purple flame and storms in the shape of giants. And among them, things worse than any of the rest slithered. Swam amongst the spiders, turning them to horrors not of Creation.
“Takisha pulled out the storm elementals,” the Carrion Lord noted, sounding surprised. “Didn’t think she’d risk them with the number of demons that were just sent out. Someone’s in a mood.”
“Demons,” Arthur choked out. “As in plural?”
“At least a dozen,” the green-eyed man said. “Catherine will send out Masego to limit the spread, but the damage has already been done.”
“You did this,” the Squire accused.
“I’ve yet to take a life today,” the Carrion Lord replied, amused. “Besides, you miss the altar for the corpse.”
“I see exactly what you’ve done,” Arthur harshly said.
“I am not of any particular importance today,” the man dismissed. “What matters is this: in the heart of Praes, a city packed tight with men and women from all parts of the empire, the High Seats were seen to make a choice. They could have protected the people they claim are theirs, paying in blood and power to fulfill their sworn duty.”
The skyline of the city boiled, wreathed in a hundred different flavours of madness. In stopping the spread of the giant spiders, in trying to break the horde, the fearsome High Lords of Praes were shattering entire swaths of the capital. How many of them had been evacuated? Too few, Arthur thought.
“Or they could do this,” the Carrion Lord said. “Dread and hatred, burning the world so they can warm their fingers against the flames.”
“All this so you could gloat that your enemies are as terrible as you?” Arthur scorned.
The green-eyed man faintly smiled.
“I gave them the chance, Squire,” he said. “To prove me wrong, to show me that there was some truth to the stories we tell ourselves. That they are the logical conclusion of jino-waza, that their rule is more than a thousand years of fangs ripping into flesh. That they deserve the power Praes has given them.”
He looked, Arthur thought in a moment of terrifying clarity, disappointed. As if he would have liked to be wrong.
“Yet here we are,” the Carrion Lord said. “Before the eyes of all Praes, the High Seats have abdicated their right to rule. They have revealed themselves as nothing more than worms in the flesh. Of all that happens today, that is the only part that matters.”
It wasn’t about the armies, Arthur realized. Or not just about. Whatever it was the man was after, it wasn’t a victory on the field. It was… larger. And, the Squire felt in his bones, infinitely more dangerous.
“What is it you’re doing, Carrion Lord?” the Squire quietly asked.
“I am killing the Dread Empire of Praes,” the madman replied, “one story at a time.”
“Well,” Archer mused, “this went to shit in a hurry.”
As if to punctuate the sentence, the rooftop she was running on exploded in a pillar of blue-grey flames that smelled vaguely of saffron. She landed in a roll on the roof of the temple across the street, reaching for an arrow and halfway nocking it even as the flames across the street collapsed as if they were liquid before beginning to form into a spindly, mantis-like shape. Fortunately, Indrani wasn’t going to have to waste any more arrows distracting the construct: silver Light began to glow right behind her.
“I fucking hate those things,” Alexis grunted, loosing her arrow.
The missile screamed out with Light, blinding to look at even as Named, and hit the construct with a disappointing flopping sound, just sinking into the liquid-like flames. A moment later the entire construct popped as the Light’s continuing presence destroyed the animating spell’s framework, making the entire mass of flame drop to the ground in a smoking rain.
“Eh, after that one demon thing that was like a hundred spiders melted together it’s going to take a lot to impress me today,” Indrani said. “It was impressively creepy, and not just because it didn’t really seem to get the difference between eyes and teeth.”
The Silver Huntress snorted, not disagreeing. Alexis had significantly cheered up since they’d started killing things, although it came and went. Whenever they got close to the Lady it trended downwards, which Cocky had called ‘an apt summation of our childhoods’ when Indrani had shared the thought with her. Speaking of the Concocter, Archer glanced further back and saw that the now purple-haired potioneer was moving around the needles on that fancy little tracking artefact Cat had given them.
“Found her,” Cocky called out. “She’s not actually far, just on the other side of the Licosian Gates.”
Well fuck, Indrani thought, sharing a look with Alexis. That place had been the stronghold held by the troops and vassals of the High Lady of Kahtan an hour back, but not it was pretty much Spidertown. Spiderville, maybe, considering it was pretty large and swarming with way too many giant spiders. Last she’d seen a few pockets of troops were surviving holed up in buildings behind wards they’d put up, but the highborn had pretty much written off taking it back the traditional way so instead they’d turned to the Praesi specialty: a bunch of devils and weird magical killer things.
“That place is bad enough I think even the devils would go back to the Hells if they had a choice,” Indrani bluntly said.
“Are you saying we let her lose us?” Cocky challenged.
“No,” the Silver Huntress growled. “Fuck that. You still have a set of those blue ones, right?”
“I do,” the Concocter said. “And a full healing set.”
“We go in with a plan this time, then,” Archer insisted. “You don’t have anything that heals ‘arrow through the eye’ which was Alexis almost got last time we thought we were ambushing her.”
“She won’t get me again,” Alexis replied through clenched teeth.
Indrani felt like slugging them both in the face until either sense or teeth came out, knowing the sight of either would be a relief.
“Listen to me,” Indrani said. “We’re not going to beat her like this. She’s better than any of us are.”
“Impressive,” Cocky said, “how you can lick her boot without needing it in front of you.”
Archer was not going to punch her in the throat, no matter how deeply satisfying it would be.
“Cocky,” Alexis warned. “She’s not wrong.”
Indrani glanced at her in surprise, the Huntress refusing to meet her eyes.
“She’s faster and stronger and she has more experience,” Archer said. “If we’re going to get her, it’s by hitting her with something she hasn’t seen yet. That means it’s not me or Alexis who brings this home, Cocky.”
This time it was her that was stared at in surprise.
“She’s taught us most of what we know about fighting,” Indrani elaborated. “She hasn’t taught you shit about brewing. What have you got that would serve as a nasty surprise?”
Cocky hesitated.
“She’s resistant to pretty much all poisons unless it’s ten times the concentration lethal in a human,” the Concocter said. “It’s an elf thing, I think. But that’s for toxins. I’ve seen her smoke wakeleaf, which is a stimulant and nonmagical. Unless she was just puffing at the pipe for the look of it, it means her resistance doesn’t apply to everything.”
“You going somewhere with this?” Alexis bluntly asked.
Cocky scowled at her, but moments later she undid a clasp within her satchel and showed them a small vial with a translucent golden liquid inside.
“This is a purified version of elegy,” the Concocter said.
Indrani’s brow rose.
“The fun times drug?” she asked.
Cocky nodded.
“It won’t harm her, but what makes elegy popular in the first place is that when you take it affects your perception of time,” she said. “I strengthened the elements that cause that and took out the ones that add a sensation of euphoria.”
“She’ll be able to burn it out with her Name,” the Huntress said.
“No quickly,” the Concocter replied with a flash of pearly teeth. “Not with how concentrated it is. There’s enough in there if I dropped in a lake I could see the water as the usual drug.”
Indrani let out a low whistle.
“She’ll need to ingest?” she asked.
“Skin contact would also work, but not nearly as strong,” Cocky said.
“Then we need to cram it in her mouth,” Indrani grimaced. “That’s you and me, Alexis.”
“I’ll take it,” the Huntress immediately said, reaching for the vial.
“It should be me,” Archer said, and when glared at shook her head. “You’re better up close, much as I hate to admit it. You’re more likely to make me an opening than the other way around.”
The admission seemed to mollify the other woman some, and they packed they gear again. Just in time, since one of those damned giant-shaped hurricanes was coming their way again. Indrani had seen what happened to the people and spiders that got sucked in, and she had no intention of being shredded to pieces. They got a move on, avoiding the streets that were entirely aflame and the roving packs of devils in the sky. The Licosian Gates had somehow gotten worse since their last trip thereabouts, which Indrani reluctantly accepted as being pretty impressive. The four massive ancient statues seated on either side of the gates were crawling with spiders trying to puncture the spell bubbles keeping the handful of soldiers atop the gatehouse roof, but that was almost wholesome compared to the rest.
Rival torrents of spiders and dog-shaped devils were ripping into each other in the streets around it, savagely devouring each other’s flesh while still alive, and some sort of ritual had gone awry enough that balls of lightning were careening across the streets, bouncing off wood and stone but searing flesh with strikes wherever they found it. Some sort of giant snake made of ice and bone had gone wild, which would not have been as much of a problem if it apparently didn’t ‘eat’ creatures that came too close to its body and then vomit them back out from the great maw as masses of leech-like bone creatures that liked to burrow inside the spiders and eat them from the inside. And at the heart of the mess, perched atop a tall statue of Terribilis the Second, the Lady of the Lake stood with her bow at the ready.
Looking bored, she let an arrow loose. it straight through a shield spell, taking a mage in the throat. The blue panel flickered out and moments later spiders began to pour in, screams following as the survivors inside were devoured alive.
“Well,” Indrani said. “Good a place as any to fight her, I suppose.”
“She’s not moving,” Cocky frowned. “Baiting us?”
“No, she’s here for a reason,” Alexis said, eyes narrowing. “Look at her face, she’s already gotten bored of this.”
Archer rose to her full height, cracking her neck.
“Well,” she said. “Let’s see if we remedy that.
“Our empire seems like such a fragile thing, at first glance,” the Carrion Lord said. “Always warring with itself, always eating its young. Half the reason we take the sickness abroad is that there is too much of it festering in our guts. And yet, for all its many and monumental failures, the Dread Empire has stood for over thirteen hundred years.”
“You’ve been broken before,” the Squire said. “We brought it down, your Tower.”
Eleanor Fairfax had answered the madness of Triumphant sword in hand, as Catherine Foundling had risen to cast out the chains of the Conquest. Evil could last, but it never prospered for long.
“We have,” the Carrion Lord easily agreed. “And yet once the crisis passed the Empire formed anew. Its constituent parts came together again instead of staying parted, even though most High Seats are enemies and despise the Tower ruling over them besides. Sowhy?”
“Safety in numbers,” the Squire said. “I’ve seen it out west, the strange alliances peril will forge.”
Even the vilest sorts would come to man the wall if the sky grew dark enough.
“If external pressure was the preeminent cause for unification, once that pressure ceased the unity would begin to collapse,” the Carrion Lord said. “Yet there have been long periods of relative peace with Callow and the Free Cities that saw no such thing happen.”
Arthur frowned. He had never been a great lover of history writ in the large, the wars and treaties and the trades, but that did not sound untrue to him.
“Then because the people of Praes want to be as a single nation,” the Squire said instead.
“Close,” the Carrion Lord praised. “It is because they believe they are a nation.”
“Is there a difference?” the Squire said.
“Belief is what comes after desire,” the Carrion Lord replied. “Belief has foundations. The Dread Empire stands because enough of us believe in the myths of it, the stories of it. So long as those remain, like rivers going to the sea our empire will always remake itself.”
“That’s not what fate is,” the Squire refused. “It’s not some curse that can’t be broken. If you do it clever, if you do it right, you can change things.”
“I believed that, once,” the Carrion Lord mildly said. “Then, in my old age, I looked back and found that all the terrible works of my life had been built on quicksand. It was most galling, to realize that the Tyrant of Helike was not entirely wrong when he scorned me.”
The old monster did not look all that galled, shrugging.
“But we learn or we die,” the Carrion Lord said. “And so once again I picked up a sword and a plan.”
“You want to burn it all,” the Squire accused.
“I want to take off the noose around our necks,” the Carrion Lord said. “There is no kind way to do such a thing.”
“Did you even try?” the Squire harshly asked. “You disappeared for years, and when the Black Queen came east to settle affairs you stayed a ghost. Now you reappear, and to do what?”
He gestured at the capital around them, the hell it had turned into.
“The first story is that Praes is a nation,” the Carrion Lord calmly said. “A single realm, not a pack of squabbling fiefdoms. That one was the hardest to kill, the longest. It took years to choke it out: a fourth of the Empire became a realm of its own, Kahtan rose as a queendom of the Hungering Sands and the edges of our territory broke away.”
“You didn’t do that,” the Squire said. “You caused none of it.”
“I did not need to,” the Carrion Lord said. “All that was required of me was to ensure that the hounds fighting over the carcass would never bite into the same piece of flesh. So that they could all bury their snouts in the corpse and never realize until they stood nose-to-nose.”
He paused, startled, as he realized what had been implied.
“Gods, you helped them do it?” the Squire said.
“I have been a faithful friend to even my enemies,” the Carrion Lord agreed. “The second was faster to kill, but it cost me more. It was… difficult, killing the Legions of Terror.”
“Kala,” the Squire said. “They stood and they bled and they broke.”
“Lesser soldiers would have shattered years before,” the Carrion Lord said, his pride without veil. “It took an ocean of brutal futility to end that story – it was fresher than the rest. A battle where three sisters fought, none believing in their cause or truly hating the other. A battle where weapons of war killed men by the dozens in heartbeats without swords even touching, where entire armies deserted to one side or the other. It ground the pride of the Conquest to dust.”
“And today you burn the High Lords,” the Squire said. “Half the city going with them.”
“More of a quarter, I should think,” the Carrion Lord amusedly replied.
“You could make a river,” the Squire coldly said, “of the blood you’ve spilled today.”
“Child, I have spilled seas,” the Carrion Lord smiled.
The old monster shrugged.
“And what of it? You look at today’s corpses and balk, but even if I’d put every soul in this city to the sword I would still be the lesser evil,” the Carrion Lord said. “What are a few years of my bloody hands, compared to the Tower’s thousand years of screams and darkness? How many more days like this one will you demand Calernia suffer before my cruelty becomes warranted? How more crowned butchers and torturers and madmen, how many more Triumphants?”
The orphan’s fingers tightened around his sword. Evil always had its reasons.
“The excuses of a man who knows nothing except how to destroy,” the Squire said.
“We are what we are,” the Carrion Lord said, eyes smiling. “Someone charged me, once, to become a man who deserves to live in a better world.”
“Only a fool,” the Squire said, “would have believed that you could.”
The monster looked out at the madness swallowing the city.
“You’re not wrong,” the Carrion Lord said. “Old dogs only have so many tricks in them. But I made this mess, you see. It’s mine to clean up. So now I give you a warning, one you are to carry to my daughter.”
“And who are you to warn the Queen of Callow of anything?” the Squire challenged.
“The man who forced three armies to retreat without baring his sword,” the Carrion Lord calmly replied.
Arthur swallowed that, did not deny it.
“This is not yet done,” the Carrion Lord said. “Tread carefully: I will not tolerate Praes to be handed out like a bauble, or its affairs settled as if you had conquered us. You do not rule here.”
“Threats,” the Squire snorted. “What will that do?”
“Draw a line in the sand,” the Carrion Lord said. “And you I leave with a question. You have been, after all, of great use to me.”
“I did nothing for you,” the Squire harshly replied.
“You helped me draw their eye,” the Carrion Lord said, and looked down at the street. “Did you hear me, Gods Below? I paid my dues. Three stories I burned on your altar, the pillars of an empire, and one more still lies ahead. The greatest of them, the oldest and most terrible.”
Arthur shivered, looking to the sides. Nothing had changed, not even the wind or the foul scent of smoke, but the world felt… still. As if it did not dare move.
“I gave an oath,” the Carrion Lord said. “I’ll see it through to the end.”
“The Hellgods will not save you,” the Squire got out.
“That,” the Carrion Lord said, “is rather the point. As for our debt, boy, I ask you this: why do you seek the Black Knight?”
Arthur frowned.
“We have a pattern of three,” the Squire said.
“And this makes her your enemy?” the Carrion Lord asked.
“She’s a villain,” the Squire flatly said.
“So is your queen,” the Carrion Lord said. “Her and many you’ve fought with, never against.”
“She’s the leader of the Legions of Terror,” the Squire said.
“The army defending a realm you are invading,” the Carrion Lord said. “For one of Below’s, that is reason enough. I had thought your lot to require more than that.”
“Don’t muddle it up,” the Squire growled. “She’s tried to kill me too, and I survived. You want me to just let her go now that I hold her to account?”
“I want you to answer a simple question,” the Carrion Lord said. “Why is it that Nim Mardottir is your enemy, Squire?”
Arthur’s mouth was already hallway open when the man raised his hand.
“Do not speak in haste,” the Carrion Lord said. “A squire must, in time, become a knight.”
Green eyes studied him coolly.
“Consider, Arthur Foundling, what manner of a knight you are to be.”
Arthur’s hand stayed tight round his sword.
“You think I’ll just let you leave now?” the Squire said. “That I won’t take you prisoner?”
The old monster looked up at the sky. No to contemplate, Arthur realized as he followed the look, but to look at the height of the sun. The time.
“I think you are about to be needed elsewhere,” the Carrion Lord. “And that-”
The other man’s voice had lowered, so Arthur leaned closer to try to understand even as the green-eyed man turned towards him.
That was when the brightstick went off in his face.
Northeast of Ater, on a low slope overlooking the distant camps of the nobles, a silhouette was cut into sight by the angle of the sun. The orc stroked the back of his mount, a great wolf large as a bull, and glanced back at the other riders behind him.
“Tell the Warlord now is the time,” Chief Troke Snaketooth gravelled. “Ater is ripe for the picking.”
