by Mike Adamson
in Issue 116, September 2021
Since before the birth of writing, the sorcerer Malatulis, ancient and dreadful, had dominated all the lands of Tassamoraine. His grim tower of Caer Thunder rose from bleak cliffs by the Eastern Ocean and above that storm-wracked wilderness of breakers and wicked reefs he incanted vehemently to the detriment of all peoples. In his terrible thrall crept his acolytes, and did his bidding without mercy.
Dywan, the soldier, peered up at the tower in the first silver of dawn, and nodded to Carimas, his partner. They could not have been less alike, he of great strength and endurance, she of whipcord and agility, each clad in leather and dark cloth to hide them in this jumble of sea-worn rock. The soldier carried a heavy burden, a long timber case strapped across his back, while his counterpart was equipped with throwing knives and a gracile sword at her shoulder. Three other teams had also crept thither in the dark hours, braving the wind that sought to pluck them from handholds to their deaths. Dawn was the appointed hour, and the partners joined hands with the hard determination of their cause.
“Let this be the day,” Dywan murmured gruffly.
“For freedom,” Carimas whispered, her voice almost lost on the sea wind that tugged wisps of hair from beneath her black head-bindings. They had dedicated themselves to this mission in the belief victory was possible, and all their years of preparation came together in the conflux of this instant.
They took a moment to look into each other’s eyes, give vent to the feelings they had bottled up for so long. They would have declared for each other years gone by but the mission occupied all; their time, their attention, their every waking thought, and by their self-sacrifice, they kept faith with duty. But now, in these last breaths before they committed themselves to faith and hope and conviction, their hearts cried to be heard.
Carimas stroked Dywan’s broad face and he saw something wonderful in her eyes. “May this day bring our oaths to completion,” he murmured, too softly for the others to hear. “For then, surely, we will be free.”
“May the Gods hear you, my friend,” she whispered. “My love… For shall we fail, I doubt we shall live to regret our loss for long.”
Her pragmatism was stark, the words of a warrior born to a task, and he cupped her hand against his cheek. “Faith,” he grunted and kissed her hand before they scrambled on over the sea rocks.
Long had kings chafed under the yoke of mystical tyranny, long schemed to be free of the crushing tithes Malatulis demanded, in gold and stones of value, in foodstuffs and treasured art. It was said his storehouses overflowed centuries ago, and now all gold was reforged into vast ingots it took four men to lift. Dynasties had hailed the overthrow of Malatulis as their cause and purpose, but warriors without number had failed in their quest. It seemed the sorcerer played an endless game of power, setting kings against one another to keep them weak, divided, submissive to his overlordship. His immortality was the virtue of magic, and he had withdrawn arrows from his black-clad breast, to snap them in his pallid fingers, often enough to persuade any casual marksman of the futility of trying. But Voreno, senior alchemist to King Relfsdane, had labored in secret upon a project so terrible, so arcane, it was death to be aware of it, save himself, the king, and the elite squad formed for the purpose; and in this magic had Relfsdane placed his first, best faith
Now, as the four teams crawled closer in the pre-dawn, the tower looming ever more formidably against the last stars, they also reaffirmed their belief in the alchemist’s skill and their own deep training. Each was a sword-master, each wilderness-bred for hardiness and the grim fatalism of the warrior; no team had ever been better-suited to its task, and they had sworn on their blood they would rid the world of its ancient nemesis or die in the attempt.
Dywan and Carimas crouched among the salt-crusted boulders to watch the great tower with hawkish gaze, little by little making out more of the massive stonework as the sky flushed over the ocean. Torches showed at watch-slits in a few places on the otherwise blank seaward face of the edifice, and the warriors, after joining hands one last time, scaled the last fangs of black rock toward the giant foundation in silence, their coming lost in the toss and roll of swells below. Seabirds at their roost were charmed to drowsiness by magics from afar, by talismans worn by each warrior, and the hunters passed like wraiths upon their grim business.
At the foot of the tower they parted, the soldiers for the hunched upthrusting of a crag which rose alongside the tower a little to the north, their partners beginning a perilous ascent of the stonework itself with the surety of mountain goats. The hour would be upon them with fearful swiftness now—for a jealously-guarded prophecy, unbeknown to any but the astrologers of the court, foretold the rising of the star Artam, at the equinox of spring in the year of the Wyvern, would be the moment of Tassamoraine’s freedom.
That star would crest the horizon, a mere dust mote in the morning sky, minutes before the sun—today.
Carimas had learned her trade with the King’s Mountain Corps, the hardened troops who fought the snow demons in the passes of Assgarfell. She went up the wall with grace, fingers and booted toes finding the divisions of the structural blocks with ease; like a leopard on the prowl, hauling upward as if she merely climbed a ladder, she rose into the clean sea air; her fellow mountaineers were spread around the curve by twenty degrees of arc, so each could see at least one other.
The four had trained for this climb on perilous ascents in the high country, their fitness honed to a razor’s edge so they may go up sheer faces in concert, timed to perfection. They must reach the summit minutes before dawn, and wait unseen like spiders, for the great platform beyond the battlements bore the casting dais of Malatulis, where, beneath his streaming black banners, he greeted the rising sun to roar his spells and ever-strengthen his dominion over matter. None had ever approached so closely unnoticed, and when she paused to rest the warrior-woman let her gaze go to the crag in the growing dawn-light. She saw nothing but knew Dywan and the others would have climbed its blind side and be preparing Voreno’s great alchemy.
She banished all thought of him from her mind, concentrating only upon the mission; there could be nothing else now, for all their futures hinged upon Voreno’s grand enchantment, and their own warrior prowess. Time to think of life and love after. She forced herself on, matching her companions’ progress, the sound of the sea quiet in her ears now. This was the world of the sea wind, and she moved in silver-mauve twilight amid paling stars and the thudding heart of destiny.
On the crag, Dywan and his fellows clung to the rank grass, feeling they rode upon the very shoulder of the world, and hurriedly opened the cases they had borne. A litany was whispered to guide their hands, first this, then that, many parts which must form an arcane whole. From the padded interiors came elongate shapes, wrapped in silk marked with mystical symbols, and carved wooden supports locked into forged and hammered bronze assemblies, then each was mounted upon a low tripod.
A thousand times they had drilled to carry out Voreno’s magic. Their hands remembered how, but their lips moved in the mantra that sealed them to their task, and before the assault team had reached the summit, they were ready.
With a glance to the east, Dywan made out the speck of Artam in the mauve-peach flush of the new day and nodded to his comrades. “The time is nigh, let faith be answered,” he whispered, and they touched the amulets about their necks, under their leathers, for luck. Each hunkered low on the incline of the crag, drew carven stocks into burly shoulders, and lined up on the mage’s dais on the windy heights where flags snapped and strained in the dawn gusts from their masts. Archers had showered Malatulis with arrows without effect, but perhaps *this* he would, just perhaps, not foresee.
The droning of the acolytes came clearly in the brightening morn, and Carimas drew in her strengths, rested upon a structural ledge just below the battlements, and breathed deeply. Not long now—she heard the blasphemous chanting of the corrupted souls who sought power in service to evil, rise as they escorted their master forth. The song was old as the world, a repetition of foul adulations that swore their souls to the dark vision of their lord, and awaited reward in his grim paradise, a perversion of all faith should have been. Their procession moved around the broad summit of the tower in a direction attuned to the wheel of the heavens, and each acolyte would have a special place when the master began his despicable castings.
When their litany ended she heard heavy tread as Malatulis ascended to his dais, knew he would be concentrating before spreading his arms to the coming sun, and as the daylight blossomed into golden nimbus through distant cloud, she poised to strike. Each climber could see the next nearest around the curve, and they traded hand signals to time their assault, counting down, awaiting the instant when hell would rain.
The shock was such as the world had never known. Like drumbeats through the dawn, a sound never before heard in battle crackled over the tower and acolytes went down howling as it seemed a swarm of bees clouded the dais. In another heartbeat the climbers went up and over, swords appeared in a blur and chimed against the blades of the acolytes as throwing knives appeared spontaneously in throat and chest. Now it was butcher-work, a red haze before their eyes as they hacked through the mage’s servants to reach the dais upon which was stretched the black-robed figure of the sorcerer. From breast to shaven dome, his body was scattered with red wounds, ghastly as if crows had worried at a day-old corpse; he lay deathly, but before Carimas’s eyes he began to twitch, the wounds gradually closing one by one, and she redoubled her efforts, blade flickering like summer lightning to weave a web of pain through the blades of his defenders. She struck down the last, and leapt to the great timber platform, sensing the life of the mage still seething, inviolate of all physical damage.
In that terrible moment, Malatulis’s eyes came convulsively open and he drew breath to scream before her blade descended in a whistling arc, parting head cleanly from shoulders. The loathsome skull rolled, scream dying as the breath failed in his throat, and his quivering body convulsed, clawing desperately with uncoordinated hands as if it flailed for its lost member, seeking to set it back upon his shoulders.
The warriors felt reality itself tremble, all that existed stood in peril as the laws obeyed by nature quavered. As if the world ended, thunder burst from a clear sky, and all were shaken to their knees, but as the onslaught faded the fight went out of the surviving acolytes. They stumbled, fell to their knees, and pawed their eyes as if seeing the world clearly for the first time, waking in a charnel house without memory of how they came to this impasse. Carimas swiftly took up the dreadful head with its frozen, silent scream, impaled upon the point of her sword, and raised it to the first glimmer of the sun—before striding through the press of fallen bodies to the battlements and flinging it far out into the clean air, where it fell, long and long, into the dark ocean.
#
Two warriors had fallen in the battle, but when Dywan and the others ascended the keep stairs, to hack the mage’s body limb from limb with massive blows of their swords, the survivors knew their world had changed.
“Free we stand,” Dywan growled as the six survivors joined hands in a circle. “May the reign of hate be gone from Tassamoraine.”
The others chorused their agreement, and Carimas went up to the platform to hack through the hoisting lines of the mage’s banners. Never again would they fly from those masts, announcing his tyranny, and the wind tore them free, sending them fluttering like misshapen bats in the morning light. Watchers far away awaited that signal of victory, and the king’s men would take possession of this fortress within the hour.
Dywan and Carimas came together at the battlements above the sea, and stared at the dark waters, almost unable to credit the ancient mage was no more. But gradually they drew near, let arms go about each other, and dared believe they had won a future for their land, and for themselves. Perhaps peace and love would be the reward for a life spent in hard duty, and now they may live long to savor it.
But as they stood by the upper battlements, the clean wind in their faces, the warriors shared a glance of foreboding. Freed from the tyranny of the sorcerer, their civilization may blossom at last, yet they knew the dread secret of Voreno had the power to enslave it once more. He had discovered a strange admixture of chemicals forming a dark powder which responded violently to a simple spark and propelled handfuls of lead spheres faster than the eye could see; at once so simple, and yet so awful, for it betrayed all the arts of combat, and removed honor from struggle.
Each felt the same shame, that the skills defining their warrior trade had not been instrumental in the fall of the mage, thus potentially heralding an entirely new dimension of human struggle. The king had assured them it was a weapon too terrible to contemplate, and henceforth the secret would be locked away. They could only trust that it would indeed be a thousand years before its like was ever seen again.
Yet, somehow, knowing the hearts of men, they could not bring themselves to truly believe it.
©September 2021, Mike Adamson
Mike Adamson holds a Doctoral degree from Flinders University of South Australia. After early aspirations in art and writing, Mike returned to study and secured qualifications in both marine biology and archaeology. Mike has been a university educator since 2006, has worked in the replication of convincing ancient fossils, is a passionate photographer, a master-level hobbyist, and a journalist for international magazines. Short fiction sales include to The Strand, Little Blue Marble, Weird Tales, Abyss and Apex, Daily Science Fiction, Compelling Science Fiction and Nature Futures. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery. Mike has placed 150 stories to date. You can catch up with his writing career at ‘The View From the Keyboard,’ http://mike-adamson.blogspot.com