The Herald of Som: Chapter One
The culmination of a thousand years of hatred, feuding, and war wrung itself out over what had once been lush prairie and now was an ashen waste. The Wall of Attrition, a massive wall built to divide the two warring nations, had been breached, and death spilled through the widening gap to engulf the continent in its flood.
The night’s battlefield was vast, illuminated by spreading fire and bursts of deadly light. Mages slung spells and archers loosed arrows over the shoulders of charging infantry. It was impossible to tell if the soldiers lying in the dirt fell to the hands of the enemy or to friendly fire, but that distinction made no difference to the dead.
The massive airship The Roc’s Wing hovered above the western army, and King Wulfric von Orynheim III personally commanded it to shred his hated foe with artillery both mundane and enchanted. Across the battlefield, The Aerwolf viciously returned fire, Grand Duchess Merros Noaji pulling the triggers herself.
Orynian or Merrosian, noble or peasant, it did not matter. Every player was demanded upon the stage. Every soul on that field knew one thing with strange certainty, and that knowledge whipped them into a frenzy. They each knew, one way or another, the Endless War would reach its close that night. A thousand years of strife would end here, now.
The question that all wondered but none could answer was who would survive.
Tyruc scratched at the leather collar bound around his throat. When he attempted to wedge a finger beneath the band, a jolt of blinding pain gripped his head like a vice.
“Leave it be.” The woman to Tyruc’s left wore a matching choker. She stood a head taller than him, her skin ash-gray beneath the layers of grime and her crimson hair pulled back into a tight braid. He figured her for one of the Frostfolk, an uncommon sight on this continent. The leather vest she wore bared her muscled arms, and her pants and boots were similar in material and simplicity.
Tyruc was outfitted similarly, wearing a once-white tunic beneath a leather jerkin. Neither of them was dressed for the battlefield, but the woman’s bearing defied the assumption she was unprepared for what was coming.
“It itches,” Tyruc complained, tempted to dig his fingers in again but deterred by the still lingering ache across his head.
“Then by all means, try to remove it. When your head is crushed, you will certainly stop itching.” Her face remained resolutely turned to the front.
Tyruc’s hand flinched away from where it had drifted again. He craned his neck around to survey his surroundings, hoping the movement might alleviate the chafing.
The ranks in front of him were filled with at least two men to every one woman, and they all wore the same leather collars stamped with arcane sigils.
“Listen well, scum,” bellowed a voice unseen. “You were once criminals, but today you are soldiers for the Royal Army of Orynheim. Be proud that you may die a righteous death.”
A low groan rumbled through the crowd, and Tyruc rolled his eyes skyward.
“Whether thief, murderer, traitor, or enemy combatant, you serve King Wulfric now.” The voice continued giving orders as its owner wove through the conscripted criminals and prisoners of war.
Tyruc looked sidelong at the red-haired woman again. “So which one are you?”
Her eyebrows twitched.
“I mean, what did you do to get put on a leash for these warmongers?”
Her jaw clenched in reply, and Tyruc knew the answer.
“You were one of those ‘enemy combatants,’ right?” He whistled lowly. “It must be rough knowing you either kill your countrymen or get your head blown off by your new necklace.”
“That would be a fair assessment. Now shut up.”
Tyruc declined to do so. “I’m Tyruc. What’s your name, Red?”
He was unsurprised to be met with no response.
“I guess I would be put into the ‘thief’ category myself, though I didn’t really steal anything. ‘Wrong place, wrong time’ kind of deal. I suppose you have no reason to believe that. You probably think I’m just some ‘Orynian dog’ or whatever you Merrosians call people from Orynheim.”
“I do not think that.”
“Oh.” He had not expected her to reply to him earnestly. At that point, his mouth was just running to pass the time and release some small amount of the crushing terror in his chest.
She looked at him fully for the first time with piercing green eyes. “I do not think of Orynians as ‘dogs,’ nor do I think you are a criminal. You are like me; ‘wrong place, wrong time.’” She gave him a brief and humorless grin, exposing tusk-like canines, but Tyruc saw behind it what they all felt. She turned back to the front. “And you can call me what you like; it does not matter. We will all be dead soon.”
Tyruc looked around and saw that she was right. He and the other conscripts coming from the capital had spent days crammed together in cages loaded onto steam carriages. Their captors denied them anything but the barest scraps of food and water. More than a few dead bodies tumbled out of the steel pens when they had been unloaded on the battlefront, and the rest of them were dead men walking. A few, like the red-haired woman, looked fresher, likely due to being captured nearer to the battlefield.
Tyruc went to speak again, but he was cut off by a brutal jab to his stomach.
The captain of their bedraggled squadron had made his way to the back of the crowd and now grinned ruthlessly at Tyruc’s gasps. The bearded man was incredibly stout, which was common for Mountainfolk, and clad in bright plate armor. His gauntleted fist was buried in Tyruc’s middle, doubling Tyruc over and putting his ear conveniently close to the captain’s face.
“You speak when I tell you to speak,” the captain spat. “You’re here to fight, and if you’re lucky, die quickly.”
The prisoners in the immediate area had turned to watch the spectacle, though the redhead had not moved an inch.
The captain raised his left hand into the air, brandishing the leather strap around his wrist. “If one of you worms tries any magic, tries to run, or even blinks without my permission, you know what will happen.”
Indeed, they had all witnessed the horrific effects of the collars. A dozen or so prisoners had tried to bolt as soon as their manacles were released, and their demises were swift. Another had tried to grab a sword and attack an Orynian footman. His fate had been equally immediate.
“The end may look quick,” the captain whispered in Tyruc’s ear, “but let me assure you, you feel each and every bone in your head compact around your brain before snuffing you out.”
With the fist still pressed forcefully against his diaphragm, Tyruc wheezed in his futile attempt to draw in air.
The captain waited a few more seconds before whispering, “You have permission to breathe for now,” and yanked his fist back.
Tyruc collapsed to the ground in fitful coughs. A sword was flung to the dirt in front of him, and the captain stomped away to bark more orders.
Without waiting for him to catch his breath, an arm snaked beneath his armpit and hauled him to his feet.
“Thanks, Red,” he croaked.
She wordlessly pressed the hilt of his sword into his hands. She faced forward again, armed with her own poorly wrought short sword. “You must learn to shut up.”
The captain soon stood at the head of their formation on a slight hill that might have once been a grassy knoll, now just another mound of raw dirt churned up by marching feet and machines of war. They had been brought through the breach in the Wall and then around the southern side of the hill, hiding them from the view of the main battlefield.
The captain bellowed once more. “We are intercepting a unit of retreating Merrosian maggots. Slaughter the cowards. If you survive, regroup here for the next strike.” He picked up a helmet, donned it, then hefted a wicked war pick over his shoulder. “For Orynheim! CHARGE!”
Had Tyruc not hated the man, the captain’s bravado might have impressed him. The prisoners followed the captain, climbing over the hill to descend into the fray on the other side.
None of them could muster war cries of their own, too exhausted or uncommitted. Their silence resulted in an unintended ambush, catching a blue-bannered unit of Merrosian soldiers by surprise as they staggered away from the battle toward friendly territory. A number of them dropped immediately to the conscripts’ swords. The rest, however, brought up pikes and jabbed back at the prisoners.
Tyruc, being at the back, witnessed the carnage from halfway down the hill. The conscripted unit outnumbered the remaining Merrosians, but they were against trained soldiers. Pikes outreached swords to skewer the poorly armored prisoners and fling them aside or pin them to the ground. Tyruc became aware of the screaming below as well as the groan of fear that came from his own throat.
He was shoved aside roughly as a spear whizzed through the air and planted into the dirt where he had just stood.
“Move!” Red barked. She flung her sword like a javelin into the crowd of soldiers, plucked the spear from the ground, and slid down the hillside toward a blue-garbed soldier facing away from them. Just as the soldier wheeled around, the Frostfolk woman stabbed forward to catch the soldier in the chest.
Tyruc stumbled down the hill after her and slashed his short sword across the back of another soldier charging toward the redhead. Both of their victims fell, and Tyruc looked at his forced compatriot. She suddenly looked much younger than he had first estimated her, her eyes wild and teary, her face blanched. He imagined he looked much the same.
Despite their shared aversion for killing, they proved more than capable of ending a life with a swing or a push of the arm. Consciousness extinguished in a simple gesture.
But there was no time to mourn their innocence, no time to think on the thousands of tragedies unfolding around them. More soldiers closed in, desperate and sick-looking just like them, and there was no choice but to struggle to survive.
Tyruc and Red fought well together. She handled her acquired spear with astonishing skill, alternating between wide sweeps to keep soldiers at bay and stabbing strikes when they tried to rush in. Tyruc guarded her back, trained in basic swordplay, but he struggled against the enemies’ polearms.
Moment by moment, body by body, they worked together to survive the skirmish.
A few of the blue-coats made it past the conscripted squad, but the vast majority had fallen to their blades. Less than half of the prisoners still stood. They looked about for their hated captain but did not see him in the immediate vicinity. Mumblings of fear roiled through the survivors, wondering aloud if their collars would activate should they be separated from him.
“I saw him fall,” said a Plainfolk woman, her eyes distant and her bloody hands shaking. “He was laughing all the while they were stabbing him.”
“The wristband,” Red prompted. “We find it, we can get out of here.”
The prisoners sprang into action, giving more energy to the search than they had to the preceding fight. They flipped bodies over, Merrosian and Orynian alike, to scrounge through the blood-soaked dirt for the key to their potential survival.
“Soldiers incoming,” a prisoner stage whispered, pointing to the hill they had charged over.
“This way, too!” another announced in reference to the main field.
“Red, do you see anything?” Tyruc asked over his shoulder. He rolled a large, scaley-skinned Merrosian over to check beneath him with no luck.
“Merrosian soldiers incoming from north and west both,” she responded curtly.
As Tyruc scanned around, he caught a glint of shiny armor on the ground closer to the main battlefield. He approached cautiously, Red keeping watch with her spear at the ready and the panicked Plainfolk woman following them.
A sliver of plate armor winked beneath a pair of corpses. Tyruc grunted as he moved them aside, and there lay the captain.
He had a number of punctures punched through his armor, which was apparently more decorative than practical. The dead man’s face was grinning.
A cry sounded from next to them. The Plainfolk woman cheered and waved her arms at the scattered prisoners. “We found it!”
Before she could draw another breath, an arrow struck her in the chest.
“Down!” the red-haired woman commanded.
Tyruc dove to the ground as the prisoners rushed to their spot, and they jostled against each other in their attempts to grab the captain’s braceleted wrist. Arrows peppered the ground and the corpses around them.
A teenaged Seafolk with long turquoise hair and muddy robes managed to grab onto the twitching hand. He locked onto to Tyruc with a desperate question in his eyes.
Tyruc told him, “Just get the strap off; we’ll cover you.”
They all huddled close to the ground, a few of the other prisoners taking arrows and falling. Tyruc quickly sat with his back to the young man and pulled the closest dead body up, shielding himself. Red followed suit, as did several other prisoners.
“Orynians coming down the hill,” one of them screamed, and the Seafolk crushed beneath them sobbed as he worked away at the strap.
“What is taking so long?” Red demanded through clenched teeth. There was more than just frustration in her voice. She was hurt, but there was no way for Tyruc to see by what or how badly. “Cut it off!”
“I can’t! If you cut the strap while it’s still on the wrist, it will detonate our collars.”
“Then definitely don’t do that,” Tyruc said, the weight of his human shield wearing on him.
“I almost have it; just a little more!”
Tyruc’s anxiety spiked at hearing the approach of the soldiers. He risked a glance around his barrier, seeing that while the black-and-red garbed Orynians were getting closer, most of them were not focused on their dogpile but on the battlefield northwest of them. It was from there that the arrows came, and the Orynians were returning fire with arrows and enchanted firearms of their own.
A grunt of triumph followed by a shout of, “Got it!” signaled them all to shove off their body-shields and break in no organized direction.
Tyruc stayed close to the robed Seafolk teen as they both fled eastward. In the panic, he had dropped his sword, so he prayed they would find no interception in their escape. He had also lost sight of the Frostfolk woman.
As they ran southeast, arrows and magic bolts followed them. The Seafolk teenager stumbled and Tyruc caught his elbow, and he saw that the young man was still fiddling with the wristband.
“What in blazes are you doing with that thing?!” he demanded, painfully aware of the collar still around his neck.
“I got it loose enough to slip off, but it’s not deactivated yet,” he responded. “You have to untie the knot in a certain way or it will—”
“Kill us?” Tyruc pulled him up short. “You know how to untie it, right? You wouldn’t be messing with it if you didn’t, right?” He shook him. “Right?!”
The Seafolk teen stammered, “I-I-I think so?”
“Why do you say that like a question?!”
A blast of lightning struck the ground next to them, flinging them off their feet. Tyruc’s ears rang. As the dirt driven into the air cleared, their attacker’s silhouette approached.
A black-robed Orynian caster stood ten yards away, her outstretched palm sizzling. She smirked as she paced forward, and she traced a complex series of glowing sigils in the air with her fingers.
Tyruc was never much of a magic user, but he recognized that she was a trained mage gearing up for something unpleasant.
“Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!” he whimpered as he crawled further away from the woman and toward the Seafolk. Running was no longer an option with a caster in range.
The aquatic-featured man knelt and worried away at the thread keeping the band encircled, sporadically glancing up at their approaching demise. Tyruc, unarmed and unable to think of what else to try, scoured the ground for rocks and chucked them at the mage.
His aim was awful. Four rocks flew well past her in succession.
The sigils she had drawn in the air connected into an intricate web, nearly complete.
Tyruc kissed the last rock in his hand, prayed, and flung it sideways as though skipping it across a glassy-surfaced pond back home.
It glanced sharply off the mage’s eyebrow. The damage was inconsequential, but her concentration slipped, and the floating runes broke apart and dissolved. She glowered at Tyruc, swinging her hands around in a much simpler conjuration that would likely be no less deadly.
Tyruc squinted against the oncoming spell, but nothing came save for a sharp gasp.
A spear tip protruded from the Orynian woman’s chest, and Red stood behind her. She pushed forward a fraction more, and a final wrenching cry came from the spellcaster before she fell to the side. The redhead yanked her spear from the corpse, grunting against the pain of an arrow shaft stuck in her left thigh.
Tyruc panted, at a loss for words.
“I was shot by an arrow.”
“I see that.”
“You hit me with a rock.”
“I am very sorry. Thanks for saving me.”
“Twice. Can I remove this yet?” she asked, pointing to the collar around her throat.
Tyruc got up and gestured at the Seafolk, who still worked away on the band.
He looked up at them apologetically. “There is only one more stitch, but the knot is too small.”
Tyruc waited for more of an explanation. “What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t get it off, and our collars are still active. If anything happens to it…” he trailed off.
With a grunt of frustration, Red snatched the band, took part of it in her teeth, and yanked it open, popping the last stitch.
Both of them reached vainly to stop her, but when none of their heads imploded, they blinked at each other in disbelief.
Red threw the band down and reached up to her collar. She tugged on it sharply, and an audible pop signaled the end of her leash. “At least that is done.”
The Seafolk teenager pulled his own choker free with the accompanying pop and laughed, slightly hysterical.
Tyruc put his hand to his choker and slid his fingers past the edge, feeling the skin of his neck underneath, when shouts came from the west again.
Eight Orynian soldiers charged toward them, two of them in armor and the other six in begrimed civilian clothes.
“Just one thing after another,” Tyruc groaned, and he fled in the opposite direction. He glanced back, but neither of his compatriots ran with him.
Something unspoken passed between the woman and the young man in a look. Their oncoming attackers were more prisoners, their own magic leashes caught around their throats.
The armored soldiers both had leather wristbands.
The redhead raised her spear, barely standing on her injured leg, and the Seafolk youth began drawing sigils in the air much like the Orynian caster had, though his hands were trembling.
Tyruc understood their decision. They had just managed, by some miracle, to escape from captivity and certain death, but here were other poor souls in the same predicament. Tyruc felt the pull to go back, to fight with them and free more unwilling combatants and, when it came to it, probably die trying.
But Tyruc was no fighter. He was a nobody who had no stake in this war and no compunction to be a hero. “Wrong time, wrong place.”
He ran.
Coming up in Chapter Two:
Tyruc is trapped in a Merrosian healer’s tent, and a new horror is unleashed upon the battlefield.