Ashes of a Black Frost

TWENTY-SIX

I want everyone ready to move in ten minutes!” Konowa shouted as he emerged from the steps leading up to the fort’s main square. Passing through the torture chamber again had made his mood very grim. “Grab whatever you can carry and get by the front gate.”

Musket fire sounded along the top of the wall’s forts as soldiers shot down at the massing rakkes. Konowa knew it wouldn’t delay the beasts for long, but hopefully just long enough.

“Major, you had better see this,” Pimmer said from the gate.

Konowa trotted over. “How’s the battle going?”

For an answer, the Viceroy pointed down to the plain below. A single soldier was marching into the open and straight for the whirling madness that had once been Faltinald Gwyn. Frost fire blazed all around the soldier, creating a barrier that no rakke dared approach.

“That’s got to be Renwar,” Konowa said.

Yimt appeared at Konowa’s elbow. “I’d recognize that gimpy walk a mile away. What in the hell does he think he’s doing?”

“He’s challenging Gywn again,” Konowa said, admiring the soldier’s courage. “I told you, Renwar already ripped him apart once before.”

“But did that monster look like that the last time?” Yimt asked.

Konowa didn’t answer. The creature moving toward Renwar looked like nothing so much as a whirling, black storm. Konowa could feel the malevolence of it from here.

“Surely the shades of the dead will aid young Renwar,” Pimmer said. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than several shadows flickered into being near the creature on the desert floor.

But something about them was wrong.

“Those aren’t the Darkly Departed,” Yimt said, starting forward. “Bloody hell. They’re shades of dead rakkes!”

Hundreds of them appeared, emerging from the storm-whipped vortex and flying outward like shrapnel. They were met at once by the shades of the Iron Elves in massive explosions of black frost and ear-splitting cracks. The desert floor gleamed as it iced over. Shadows merged and fragmented in close-quarter combat. The air vibrated with screams and howls as huge chunks of darkness ripped open and then closed as the fighting between the dead escalated from this plane to the next.

The living rakkes took the opportunity to descend on the Iron Elves, charging across the ice with wild abandon. Volley after volley of well-aimed musket fire scythed through their ranks. Limbs and heads flew through the air as the beasts were chopped apart by the lead shot. Blood droplets froze in the air and fell like red glass beads to roll around on the icy ground. Rakkes died by the dozens, but the beasts refused to retreat and launched fresh assaults over the bodies of their fallen.

“You cagey bastard,” Konowa said, his fury rising as he focused on the swirling entity that had once been Viceroy Faltinald Gwyn.

“We have to do something,” Yimt said, turning to look at Konowa. Konowa halted before he’d taken two steps toward the roadway leading down to the desert. His first reaction was to run all the way down there and wade into the beasts with nothing but his saber and his anger. He turned, and with an effort, sheathed his saber, allowing the frost fire to die out. Musket fire from the Iron Elves manning the fort’s walls was crackling like wet pine in a fire. Already, he could hear the shrieks and growls of the rakkes on the far side of the fort.

“The fort is untenable, and the regiment is in trouble. We’re between a rock and an even harder rock. We need to be able to create some kind of diversion,” he said, frustrated that he couldn’t think of anything big enough that would pose a threat to the mass of rakkes attacking the regiment.

“Your father’s a wizard and Miss Tekoy’s a witch,” Yimt said, though Konowa could tell by the tone of his voice he didn’t have much hope in that regard.

Konowa kicked the stone wall of the fort with his boot.

“Unless he’s stopped speaking squirrel I don’t think he’ll be much help, and Visyna is exhausted. Damn it! There has to be something else.” I was wrong to leave the regiment, Konowa realized, horrified that he might very well watch its destruction and not be able to do a bloody thing about it.

“There’s nothing for it then,” Yimt said, standing to his full height and straightening his uniform. He clutched his drukar in his right hand and pointed toward the battle below. “We’ll just have to charge down there and take’em on head on.”

Konowa looked at the dwarf. “That’s suicide and you know it.”

“Aye, but it’s the best kind. Maybe we’ll buy them enough time to get away.”

Konowa was already shaking his head even though he still had no better idea. “We’ll call that plan B. I still want something we can do that gives us at least a five percent chance of survival.”

A small cough alerted Konowa to the presence of Pimmer. “Five percent you say?” he said, offering the two of them a smile he probably only brought out just before revealing the existence of the Calahrian Army outside the opposing diplomat’s capital city. “I think I have just the thing.”

Alwyn felt the presence of the dead rakkes before he saw them. The shades of the dead creatures tore through the wall between this world and the next, staining the air around them with a toxic mix of mindless fear and ravenous hunger. The cries of the living soldiers sounded distant and muted compared to the reaction of the shades of the Iron Elves’ dead.

They charged headlong into the dead creatures, meeting frenzy with the controlled violence of seasoned soldiers. The dead of the Iron Elves slashed and burned their way through the dead creatures, tearing their shadowy forms into fragments that shattered and bled darkness into the night. Frost fire sparked off them and burned holes in the ice on the ground, creating deep, black holes. Wails of absolute agony ebbed and flowed as the battle raged.

Frost fire consumed rakke shades, eating their essence until nothing but disembodied screams of pain remained to echo in the night. The temperature continued to fall as death swept across the mortal plane. It beckoned to things dead and gone eons before rakkes ever walked the earth. Huge, multilegged creatures with spike-crusted claws scrambled into being, lunging and stabbing at the shades of the Iron Elves and forcing them to slowly retreat.

The vortex around the creature continued to grow, its scouring winds tearing and scattering anything and everything they touched. It fed on the darkness, drawing ever more power as time disgorged dead after dead onto the field of battle. Each new creature was more twisted and broken than the last, its memory of what it was so fragmented that it could only piece together parts of what it had once been. What remained as strong as ever, however, was the rapacious need to feed, and these monsters of tentacle and spike, fang and barb, flew at the shades of the Iron Elves with abandon. The shades fell back, and Alwyn let them, knowing that not even they could withstand this force. There was only one way for this madness to stop.

Alwyn took in a breath and breathed out frost fire.

“I challenge you, Gwyn!” Alwyn shouted, and strode forth to meet the darkness head on.