“The Ember is said to recall the Red Storm,” said one of the Crowmen in a rasping voice. He was hook-nosed and big and old, ugly as sin. Stegra knew him as Drekka Darkwing, once their finest warrior, uncle to their leader Tarek. He gave his nephew wise council now, rather than the heads of his enemies. “The Ember is a spark that lights the fire, and when it burns bright the Red Storm returns.”
There were shudders in the crowd, hisses as the women quietened their whimpering children. One young boy was sobbing loudly, and his mother stood and dragged him out of the hall, cursing him all the while. She had to pass the Wild Weepers to get there. All were glowering, but quiet now, still bearing their cruel blunts and blades. The accusations hurled at them had not been taken well. Blood-Eye looked like he could set fire to the hall and march out laughing, as he listened to them all die.
Stegra met his eyes. “You have heard what’s been said, Blood-Eye. The signs and omens. And you have seen the snows fall thick upon your peaks. You know we have no choice. You know it. So I ask you again. Will you lead us through the mountains?”
This time no one shouted out at him, or said they were not wanted. There were no scathing words from Kusto Crowbane or Arnel Hammerhand, no insults and allegations from the others gathered in the hall. A silence fell, deep as the Rifts of Relkor. Blood-Eye stared out, emotionless, stretching the silence out. Then at last he grinned that bloody grin and shook his head. “No.”
He turned to the pelt door, his Weepers falling in about him. Stegra’s men were there, blocking the way out. They looked up at him, not sure what to do. There were only four of them, against ten. Stegra stared down the serpent fire, through the flickering flames, the rising smokes. He wanted to march down there and take Blood-Eye’s head from his shoulders himself, but what could he do? The man would not be for turning, the Snowfist knew. He grunted and waved a hand. “So be it,” he growled. “Let them pass.”
“Craven!” someone bellowed after them.
“Betrayer!” said another.
Others shouted them off as Blood-Eye and his men slipped out into the storm, their voices full of hate. They were men of the free lands beyond the realm of the steel lords. They were kin. Dark kin, yes, but kin, and yet they were to turn their backs on their brothers and their sisters and let them die in the snow. Stegra looked down at Tarek, disgusted. “Are you with us?” he asked him.
The chief of the Crowmen nodded. “There are ways I know. Perilous ways, but if we leave soon…”
A scream ripped through the air outside.
Everyone stopped, eyes moving to the door. Blood-Eye, Stegra thought. They had the rage in them. The bloody gums. They came here to kill…
“On me, Snowkins!” The Snowfist marched down the earthen steps and through the tables, past the serpent flame. His men pressed in about him, pulling weapons from their hips and backs. There were more screams outside, ringing on the howling wind. Other warriors joined them. Hraka was calling his Stone Men to arms in their own tongue. Narek, son of Tarek, was drawing black steel from his feathered cloak and his best warriors were doing the same. Blood-Eye had brought only ten men into the hall, but outside? How many were lurking outside?
Another scream rang out, and then another, and another. Stegra was running now, his son at his hip. He reached the pelt door and swept it aside, pressing into the great white storm. The camp was spread out before him, a thousand shelters and tents raised in clusters and clumps, shadows in the mist. There was screaming out there, half heard through the storm. Shapes ghosted through squalls of snow, rushing in different directions.
“Blood-Eye!” Stegra bellowed. He set off at a hard march, boots crunching through the snow. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a group of people standing and staring out into the camp. He glanced at them as he passed and saw the Wild Weepers there, Blood-Eye with them. Some were looking up. Stegra swung about. “You! Is this you? You treacherous…”
The next scream was much closer. A woman right behind him. His eyes snapped back, his words cut off. There was a shadow above, a large shadow slicing through the sky, moving quicker than he would have believed. It went straight over them, fading into the mists with a rush of air. A stream of red light went with it, burning.
“The Ember!” someone screamed. “The Ember has come!”
Chaos erupted about him. Voices rang out across the valley. His eyes widened, bright and clear as moonstones, reflecting the sudden light of the gushing crimson flame that poured down from the skies. Tents burst afire, one and then another and then another and then another as that red river emptied upon them. Stegra watched on in horror as men scrambled out, flames pouring from their cloaks, to throw themselves down into the snow. A line of greatyaks was caught beneath the blaze, their huge fur coats combusting, the shelters on their backs throwing smoke into the sky. The animals reared, ripping at their ropes and fastenings, charging away in all directions. Two crashed into each other and fell down to die. Another went running headlong through the camp of the Stone Men, knocking giants aside as they tried to calm it, smashing into their shelters and lean-tos. Another three were lumbering away in a wild frenzy, straight through the other camps, the fires spreading.
“Bring it down!” someone bellowed. “Bring it down!”
Hraka the Great rushed passed him, with his Stone Men following in a thunder. Black Merryl was screaming out some wild incantation in words Stegra did not know, her hands raised to the skies. A sudden wind blew past him, coming from the camp, bringing with it smoke and ash that choked him. He coughed, raised a hand to his mouth. He could feel the rush of wind as the Ember flew overhead, feel the burning heat as it blew down its searing flame. “Snowskins!” he spluttered. “Snowskins, on me!” They had no weapons to kill this beast, but they had to try. He stepped forward.
There was a sound to his side, a grunt of pain. Stegra turned. Kusto Crowbane was on his knees, blood pulsing from between his fingers as he clutched at his throat. A Wild Weeper stood before him, a short savage stabbing blade in his fist. Two quick thrusts and he put out Kusto’s eyes, blood gushing from the sockets. Kusto fell.
Stegra’s eyes flared open in a terrible rage. He could see Blood-Eye standing there, smiling his bloody smile. “We’re all going to die anyway,” the Wildest Weeper said. He tore a length of serrated steel from his hip and pointed it right at the Snowfist. “Might as well kill you first.”
Stegra the Snowfist, Chieftain of the Snowskins, drew an axe from the strap on his back. He looked at his friend Kusto Crowbane, blinded and dying on the floor, saw the blood spreading out across the snow, red on white, steaming. Away in the camp, the fires were spreading. A thousand voices rang out in terror on the wind. It was the end, and Stegra knew it. So be it, he thought.
He stepped toward his enemy, roaring.
1
He dreamt of a table, set high above the world.
Cloud cloaked it, and a vibrant golden light, raining down upon the fallen men of Varin’s Order.
Cups and chalices and mugs uncountable filled the cedar wood surface, brimming with ale and mead and whiskey and wine, quaffed and refilled as the stories were sung. A hundred voices echoed out in account, some epic, some tragic, some humorous, regaling the men around them of their triumphs and toils, their victories and vices, to cheers and laughs and sombre silence as appropriate for the tale being told. The table was long, endlessly long, bleeding away to the edge of sight and sound. Into the far distance it unrolled, as straight and true as the immutable movement of time, the men sitting shoulder to shoulder to either side, drinking and feasting and singing in this, the greatest of the Eternal Halls.
The noise was cacophonous, joyful and all-consuming, a din of impenetrable merriment and mirth. Men came and went as they pleased, fading through the clouds that cloaked the hall to visit with their friends and loved ones. There were many chambers among the Eternal Halls, many rooms and gardens and terraces, some open to all, others restricted to but a few. The Knights of Varin could walk freely, the Steel Father himself had decreed. His Table was not to be a prison sentence, he had said, to shackle his knights forever to the seat they had been assigned. “Let them stand and leave and wander,” he had proclaimed. “Let them visit their loved ones at their need, and return, whenever they so wish.”
Yet always to the same seat, when they did. A seat determined by the sum of a man’s attainments, when walking the ephemeral plane.
There were faces Amron knew. Faces of old friends, lost but never forgotten. First Blades and kings, warriors and champions, famous faces he’d seen depicted in ink and dye and wood and stone, carved and drawn and painted. At the head sat Varin himself, thunderous of voice, impossibly grand of stature, with a great blue mantle swaying at his back, silver armour of pristine brilliance shining out with a light of its own.
The very greatest of his bloodline sat about him. His eldest son Elin, powerful and proud, his youngest Ayrin, temperate and wise. Amron saw in his dream his namesake, Amron the Bold, son of Ayrin, grandson of Varin, who had renewed war after an age of peace, seeking vengeance for his grandfather’s fall. He saw King Gideon the Great, who had won the War of Wrath two thousand years ago, and Balion the Brute, one of the greatest warriors the north had ever known, scourge of dragons, Master of Winds and Mist. His own father had been named for Gideon, his grandfather for Balion. Both sat among the privileged few, with other great First Blades of the past; Rufus Taynar and Oswald Manfrey and more, so many more.
Amron stood aside, observing and ignored, the only man living among a great hall of the dead. The man grows to fit the name, he thought, recalling what his father had told him once. Now here his father was, sitting with Gideon the Great, and his grandfather too with Balion the Brute. Great names. The making of great men. He looked from one man to the next, then found that King Amron the Bold was looking right at him, and he alone among the host. “The man grows to fit the name,” he said, in a thick and heavy voice. “Have you earned mine, Amron Daecar? You, who let my city fall.”
Amron had no answer. He found his eyes moving away.
A drum-beat sounded, sudden as thunder, a single thud crashing through the hall. Amron turned his eyes back to the head to find Varin himself rising to his feet, towering above them all. He held an arm aloft, and called, “Brothers, sons, my children, my family, my friends. Another joins us. Another ascends to his seat.” He gestured to the side of the hall, where the cloak of clouds began to part to make a doorway. The silhouette of a man took form, approaching. “We welcome to our family another Daecar,” King Varin bellowed out. “Vesryn, son of Gideon, grandson of Balion, to take his place among us. The only other man to have fended off the Dread!”
The silence was shattered as Vesryn stepped forth to join them. A thousand voices sang out his name, and fists beat down loudly upon the table, clattering countless cups and plates and jugs.
“Vesryn Daecar!” they roared. “Daecar! Daecar! He who stood against the Dread!”
Varin was smiling and waving him over, and near the head of the table, a seat was being drawn back. Amron recognised the figure of Vesryn the Valiant, an ancient First Blade and champion for whom his brother had been named. “I give you my appellation, Vesryn Daecar,” he proclaimed, to a round of raucous cheers. “Valiant is the man who stands alone against the Dread. Vesryn the Valiant is you now, my brother.”
Vesryn shook his head humbly. “I was not alone, my lords. My brother, my nephew, we all…”
But his next words were swallowed by noise, as all the men huddled about him, demanding he tell his tale. Amron felt himself being drawn away, as though expelled by some unseen force, the clouds thickening, voices dimming. He could faintly hear Vesryn calling out for Aleron. “My seat…my seat…I will give my seat to him…” He could see Amron the Bold still staring at him, jaw fixed in disapproval. “You let my city fall. You’ve not yet earned my name, Amron Daecar…”
