The Fall of Waterstone

Name in Battle

Before the dark wind they galloped:

The spearman who led the charge at Dag Aethas,

The songcrafter of Aerith, bearing Kaesgrithil,

The uncrown’d one, hope-winner, faithful beyond measure.

Unveiled they rode, and so too thenathlàs

Their wills contended. Then the battle was joined.

—Taeglin of Dorael, The Saga of Six

There are only two songs of these events, and I do not like either. They do not speak of how the first riderless Elder horse dropped, galloping heart-strain and treacherous footing finally claiming one life, then another. I felt both like bolts to my own shrinking flesh, seidhr flaming inside the ache-quivering mass my head had become, and the Jewel burned desperately.

Daerith dropped his reins, rising in the stirrups to nock; Arneior’s spear was out of the saddle-bucket and she snapped a glance at me, the leather-wrapped ends of her braids afloat upon the storm of our wild career. On our other side Yedras’s spearblade gleamed ferocious blue, and wolf-cries rose both right and left.

The liches—great and small—had almost ringed us. I felt them without needing to see, a furious chill hating all that lives, the stain of their presence spreading as the westron horizon worked to swallow a huge, terribly exhausted crimson disc.

The sun’s daily death would presage our own.

Another horse screamed with fear. There was a flicker of movement, Gelad bursting through both his forms in quick succession, his sword giving a forlorn reddish glimmer as it cleaved a lich’s head free—or tried to, colorless sparks struck from iron armor and the undead thing screeching at the blow.

The songs speak of the closing ring, and the nathlàs taking shape from the storm’s darkness, each a whirling as of embers carried on a bonfire’s breath and the scorchgleam of eyes under spike-crowned helms. They say there were three of the greatest liches present that evening, each with a complement of their undead thralls, but I do not know.

I remember only a jarring, a weightlessness as Aeredh’s horse reared, its obedience finally snapping as an overstretched hawser may, and I was flung. The impact is mercifully blank in memory; so is the confusion as the mounts galloping behind us avoided my body, whether by instinct or mere chance. A jumble of images, sensations—spearblade flashing, Arneior’s warcry a high bright note amid hoof-thunder and howling, wolfsnarl and the clatter of blades, Daerith’s bow speaking again, Aeredh shouting in the Old Tongue—breaks over me in a wave of trembling whenever I think upon it, and I do not often do so.

It is… uncomfortable.

Somehow the Crownless was still beside me, and somehow he pulled me upright. The darkness was all around, and in that moment I saw not the storm nor the wolves of Naras, nor even my shieldmaid.

There was only the wind, full of stinging ice and heatless red sparks, and the black figures in their thornmetal armor. Their mantles spread in defiance of howling air, darkness more than physical freighted with clot-rotted seidhr, and their blades were rust-pitted yet terribly long, terribly sharp. They carry mace as well as sword, and either weapon may leave a sliver in the flesh of other beings, working inward even if the prey escapes.

Before I had not seen their faces, just a blessed obscurity, but that dusk I glimpsed the ruin of things dragged from the long rest of death, given a simulacrum of life by foul acts too twisted to be called seidhr, and witnessing that horror might have driven me gratefully insane.

For the nathlàs, the Seven, are mighty indeed. They are spirits who chose to follow their master in his first rebellion against the Allmother, in a treason against existence itself, and they hate what they betrayed. They draw souls from Hel’s many countries, kidnapping them to bleak servitude, and against either kind of undead nothing mortal lasts long. Contagion they bear as well as hatred, and ’tis difficult to say which burns the deepest, or coldest.

Yet I was not catapulted into madness, for between me and the terror of lichgaze was a bright blue coruscation, subtle selves burning upon their outlines as the Elder unveiled more than their physical forms. Visible and hidden are the same in them; tall and terrible was the son of Aerith in that extremity.

No less so were the harpist and spearman of fallen Nithraen, arriving to either side. I reeled, and a feverish iron bar fell over my shoulders—my shieldmaid’s arm, straight and sure even if no hope remained unto us.

At least we die together, I thought, and gathered myself to strike a final blow in whatever pitiful way I could.

Arneior held fast, her spear lifted against the terrible weight of a greater lich’s eyeless regard. The weapon shivered under that impact. Aeredh’s sword blazed. A far sweeter refrain battled the scream of moving air, impossible seidhr-fueled storming, and a harsh, hate-soaked screech.

The song was Daerith’s, granr unleashed as he had once before upon the Glass when facing both nathlàs and snow-hag. The music granted him was mighty, an echo of the Allmother’s own making-magic, but the cacophony around us was too swallowing-vast.

Snapping, growling, a crunching impact and a whine, a terrified bugling as a horse plunged into the wall of screaming darkness—I could not worry for the wolves, nor for the Elder. All I could do was cling to my Arneior, for I knew we were going to die.

“Alcar ala?ssilar!”The voice shivered around us, breaking into pieces, and a silverthread sound accompanied it. ’Twas not the howl of orukhar horns nor the death-fueled screeching of liches, but the breath of a silver-chased Elder instrument, high and strong. It spoke again, and a tide of barking with it. Hoofbeats swelled, and several more cries broke in a white-foaming crash.

It is oft the Elder way to give the name of their house or its most-cherished words when charging into battle, much as those taken by the battle-madness will growl Odynn’s titles or the name of a loved one, or Northerners will ken upon the deed of a much-respected ancestor at the attack.

“Nithraen arena?nai!” Yedras shouted, and surged to meet the foe. Daerith’s bow hummed; he sang as he loosed, each bolt freighted with stinging Elder might.

They broke upon the battle like a sudden spring flood in a Taurain bailkah, like a towering storm-driven wave upon a pebbled beach, like a deep-frozen river suddenly shaking off its shackles and becoming a wall of water scouring the throat of its bed. More pale Elder horses, more burning-blue forms, more weapons blazing, and such was their suddenness the lesser liches broke and fled in confusion. A smaller tide clustered the white horses’ legs, hounds brindle and grey, their dark gazes lambent and their teeth showing as they snarled, bell-baying at the filth.

Still the Elder horn sounded, and the battle-cries echoed. “Alcar ala?ssar! Faevril-imr alaein!”

I did not see the nathlàs flee; the songs say they were driven off by the charge, for terrible is the wrath of those Elder who were born in the uttermost West, soaked in the light of the Blessed. There were many of them, overwhelming even those powerful spirits, and among their number the sons of Faevril were not counted least.

Dark Curiaen the Subtle, so named because he was regarded a craftsman nearly as great as his sire, plunged a Westron-wrought blade into the back of a lich of Kaer Morgulis that day; such was the power of his strike the thing gave a terrible grinding scream and fled, its sable mantle dispersing upon a clear cold wind. Caelgor the Fair, his blondness shining no less than the horn he wound, rode with his hunting-pack—brindle, black, and grey, sleek and quick, hounds I had complimented in Nithraen, and well they deserved it. Those beasts were rumored to have been gifts from Orolim himself, though the Fair had lost the finest of their number to an Elder princess long ago.

Their followers were of Faevril’s people, much reduced since leaving the West but still loyal unto death and more than fell enough at need. Outnumbering them were a crowd of Elder warriors clad in grey, blue, and shining, their cloak-brooches shaped like silver nightingales within a thorn-circle and the mantles almost as shadowy as the one I wore.

The people of Dorael, of Aenarian Greycloak its king and Melair the Cloak-Weaver, had come to our aid.

It was Caelgor who plucked me from the ground, lifting me skyward with no more effort than a bondsmaid retrieving a dropped rag. Once more I was sideways upon an Elder saddle, and if the Fair had not Aeredh’s gentleness at least he did not let me fall or simply throw me like a sack over the pommel either. His brother likewise swept up Arn, who had the presence of mind to take his hand instead of waiting to be hauled, settling behind instead of before him, and such was the Subtle’s skill that neither were scratched by her spear or his sword during the maneuver.

Others bent to lift the wolves of Naras, riding double from the field; the Nithraen folk knew to expect this manner of help and were willing enough to be borne away as well. All realized, of course, that the nathlàs would be only temporarily dazed.

Another thunder of hooves swirled about us, this time accompanied by the excited cries of hounds as they surrounded Caelgor’s great pale steed. I could not even look for my shieldmaid, my head ringing from lich-cry and terror. The Jewel quivered inside my ribs like a frightened nestling, and we overtook our few horses stagger-fleeing the battle, sweeping them along—for the Elder would leave none of their friends in distress, even mute four-foots.

Like a falling star we streaked over hard sheer ice atop half-cored drifts, and either we had been closer than I thought or the speed of our passage was prodigious indeed, for it seemed only a few endless moments later we plunged between massive tree-trunks. A soft fragrant shadow enveloped us, the storm’s noise cut cleanly as if by a sharp knife, and the ice faded. Hooves sank into rich loam rising through swiftly fading traces of snow, winter falling away upon either side, and over horse-sound and jinglecreak of tack there echoed a sleepy rill of birdsong.