Saga I: The Serdian War

by Stephen J. Davis

When the clash of swords echo, the journey chasing the past ends and the journey to know today begins.

2. Prologue

PROLOGUE

BENEATH THE AGELESS MOON (I)

I

A perfect disc of cold silver--known to the peoples of All-World simply as "The Moon That Never Sets," although to the Great Old Ones who had once walked the earth, it had been Can'-Ka No Luna, the Ageless Moon--hung above the tiny village that lay on the border of the thick forest that sprawled across the southeastern landscape of the continent of Serdio.

The sun had gone down an hour earlier, but any wanderer could continue traveling on to Seles by the Farson Road, the trade route that snaked through the vast eastern forest, guided first by the watery light from the silvery coin that was Can'-Ka No Luna, then by the town glow in the sky. The road through the Great Serdian Forest widened here as it took on tributaries. Here and there were overhead torchlamps, all of them long since burned out.

The forests to the west of Seles were long gone now, replaced by the monotonous flat prairie country: endless, deserted fields gone to timothy and low shrubs; eerie, deserted estates guarded by brooding, shadowed mansions where demons undeniably walked; leering, empty shanties where the people had either moved on or had been moved along; an occasional dweller's hovel, given away by a single flickering point of light in the dark, or by good-natured farm-families toiling silently in the fields by day. Wheat was the main crop, but there were beans and also some pokeberries. An occasional cow stared at the road lumpishly from between peeled alder poles.

Coaches had passed through Seles four times that day--twice coming and twice going, nearly empty as they came up on the town from the east, fuller as they headed back in the forest.

It was lovely country. It had showered twice that morning. Even the timothy looked green and vibrant. No sign of danger at all.

Here the road made a bend, and beyond it a traveler could look down at Seles. It was at the floor of a circular, bowl-shaped hollow, a shoddy jewel in a cheap setting. There were a number of lights, most of which were clustered around the town square. There looked to be four streets, three running at right angles to the coach road, which was the main avenue of the town. There was a café down there, too, for wandering drifters and caravans alike.

Further on down the path, more houses sporadically lined the road, most of them silent as its occupants turned in for the night. Beyond them, a tiny graveyard with leaning granite-and-wooden slabs surrounded by a ring of sapling trees that were overgrown and choked by vines and the rank devil-grass.

Perhaps five hundred feet further on, there was a chewed wooden sign which read: WELCOME TO SELES. The paint was flaked almost to the point of illegibility. There was another further on, but it was unreadable.

There were people on the streets tonight, but not many. Three ladies wearing black slacks and identical high-collared blouses passed by on the opposite boardwalk of the square. A solemn old man with a straw hat perched firmly on top of his head sat on the steps of the mercantile store. A scrawny tailor with a late customer held his lamp up in his window for a better view.

And in the midst of it all, a young woman was standing on the damp sandy shore of a watering hole on the edge of the village. A cluster of small children was congregated around her.

It is with this young woman that the legend (or at least, so far as I can know or tell, tell ya sorry) truly begins--with her and a stone skipping lightly across water.

II

The cold, watery light from Can'-Ka No Luna, the Moon That Never Sets, reflected on the still black water of the drinking hole. When she bent down to retrieve a smooth, flat stone from the wet sandy shore, Shana Deschain could see her soft image reflected in the black-velvet surface of the water.

Shana Deschain, daughter of Lord-Mayor Alaric Deschain of Seles, was eighteen years old. She was renowned throughout the Eastern Baronies and the River Baronies north of here, and why shouldn't she? She was the avatar of the fantasy of every young man from Seles to Farson, it seemed. Young, sophisticated, and devastatingly gorgeous was the daughter of Alaric.

Shana was a caring, benevolent young woman, with eighteen years' worth of fine golden-brown hair cascading down her back like a torrent of bronzed silk. Her features were soft and like porcelain, her face set with amiable gray eyes, full pouty lips, and a perpetual welcoming smile. She was wearing a white sleeveless silk vest and skirt, both of which were embroidered with royal blue.

She was the only daughter of the mayor of Seles, Chief Guard o' Barony, and as such, her home was in the largest and most ornate house (house was a bit of an understatement, actually; more like a manor) in these parts.

"It's your turn, Isha," Shana whispered to one of the young children she was caring for. There was a little knot of them massed behind her, six or seven in all, and she was watching them every day. Their parents were merchants by trade, and they had left their young ones in the care of the mayor's daughter while they went off to their trading posts along the Marsa Road on the way to the commercial city of Lohan, further to the west past the ridged spine of mountains that bisected Serdio.

Shana had always wanted to visit Lohan herself. She had heard of the plethora of vendors, shops, and goods that were there, just waiting for her. But she had never gone. She did not want to go by herself.

Besides, she had to wait until Dart returned.

That was the one thing Shana Deschain wanted more than anything--to see him walk down the dusty trail into town, gasping for breath, yet stronger than the last time they had been together, which had been almost five years ago. She yearned for his warm, tight embrace, holding her close enough to feel his heart thumping soothingly in his chest. She longed to hear his clear tenor voice, telling her how much he had missed her while on his journey--

Shana heaved a wistful sigh. She had really pined for him during these last five years--ages!--he had been gone. She hoped and prayed with all her heart to Soa, the Creator of All Things, that he would return to her--and soon.

Gods, I hope Dart does not get himself mixed up in this war, she thought, but she pushed that notion out of her mind violently. Dart had promised her, before he had set off on his quest, that despite the temptations of fame and fortune from fighting as a mercenary in the rising conflict between the warring Serdian kingdoms of Basil and Sandora, he would not take up arms against either side unless absolutely necessary.

But on the other hand, if the war did come closer to home here in the Eastern Baronies, Dart might try and get himself involved in the civil war of Serdio...

No, another voice in her head grunted firmly. From what she had picked up from travelers and barroom conversations, Basil and Sandora were in the midst of negotiating a truce, stating that the Eastern Baronies were off-limits in the war. And besides, there would be no point in coming to such an outlying area like Seles anyway...

A delighted squeal from the young girl Isha brought Shana Deschain's mind plummeting back to earth.

"I did it! I did it!" Isha shrieked. She had bounced her flat stone twice on the still black water, and she was leaping up and down, her pigtails flapping wildly.

"Hurrah!" the rest of the kids cheered.

"Go on, Shana, 'tis your turn!" Isha proclaimed.

Shana offered a weak sort of smile, then bent down and picked up a flat, smooth rock herself. She bounced it in her palm lightly, then leaned back and, with a practiced flick of her wrist, sent the stone careening across the water.

Doing things like this reminded Shana of Dart. It had been he, not her father the Mayor and Chief Guard o' Barony, who had taught her how to skip stones across water. He had held her wrist carefully in his hand, then flicked it just right.

The young children applauded loudly as the stone bounced across the water seemingly without effort, and actually buried itself in the dirt on the other side of the watering hole. Shana smiled again. The laughter of young children always made her feel better.

"Excuse me, sai?"

Shana wheeled around to see a woman she recognized as Theresa O'Shyven, a plump, middle-aged farmlady who lived with her husband and five children on one of the farms on the outskirts of town. Sai O'Shyven made her way through the small crowd of children, stopping to give Shana a polite curtsey. She wore a dress made of something like burlap.

"Hile, lady-sai O'Shyven," Shana said as she reciprocated the curtsey. "Long days and pleasant nights."

"And may ye have twice the number." The farm-lady's voice was oddly hushed. When Shana straightened, she saw Theresa O'Shyven's forlorn face was etched with deep concern.

"What is it?" Shana asked.

"'Tis your mother, sai," the farmlady answered. "Aye, 'tis her. She would crave a word with you, so she would, if it do please ya."

Oh, gods above, Shana thought, panic rising in her chest.

"Thankee-sai," she told the woman, trying her best to sound calm and cool in front of the young ones, who were all watching with rapt interest.

"Cry your pardon, sai O'Shyven, but would you stay here and mind these young culls while I'm away?"

The plump farmlady nodded. "Of course, sai." And with that, she turned and herded the young children across the square to her own front porch.

Shana did not even hesitate. She quickly ambled across the town square in the other direction, toward the large two-story manor house where the Chief Guard o' Barony and his family resided--her home.

III

Lady Gabrielle Deschain (who had in her youth been known as "Gabrielle of the Forests," she who had been born Gabrielle Veriss, daughter of Abel of Hemphill, wife of Lord High Mayor Alaric Deschain of Seles, and mother of Shana) had once been a vibrant, fair young woman, always laughing and smiling. She had been the flower in the eye of the Eastern Baronies--especially in the eyes of her husband and daughter.

And so it had been that way, until Lady Gabrielle had taken blood-sick.

The oozing sores that blemished and fouled the once-lovely face of Lady Gabrielle meant that she was in the final stages of what the doctors and apothecary vendors called "mandrus," and everyone else referred to as "whore's blossoms." It was a tactless name to a disease afflicting so good and pure a person as Lady Gabrielle Deschain.

The mandrus was one of the worst maladies known to the peoples of All-World, for two reasons. First, those who were afflicted with the mandrus were condemned to a very agonizing, dreadfully wasting death. And secondly, there was no known cure for it.

When the doctors had given their diagnosis, Lady Gabrielle had taken the devastating news better than anybody else. Those who had loved her (and there wasn't a soul in the Eastern Baronies who did not) wept at the news, and it was a rare day when there weren't half a dozen or more people coming to give their condolences to the family, as though Lady Gabrielle was already dead. Even as Gabrielle's condition gradually deteriorated to the point that she was confined to her bed in Barony Hall, she did not complain even once--even though she had been repeatedly felled with burning fevers and festering boils over her skin, and it wouldn't be long before the inevitable came.

Shana softly pushed the door to the manor house open gently. She carefully crossed the spotless floor of the Barony Hall until she reached the ornately-carved staircase, which she ascended carefully so as not to disturb her mother. She finally made it to the head of the stairs, at which point she crossed over to the door to her parents' bedroom.

"Mother?"

She creaked the door open, and saw the room was dark, save for a stunted candle burning in the corner. In the flickering candlelight, Shana could see the dreadfully-wasted silhouette of her mother lying on the silk-draped bed, a damp cloth applied to her burning forehead.

In the corner, Shana saw Tirana, the young brown-skinned servant-girl who had come down from the River Baronies, watching apprehensively from the corner, her jade eyes wide with concern.

Shana glanced at the servant-girl briefly. "Tirana, does she still sleep?" she whispered softly.

Before the young servant-girl could give her reply, Gabrielle Deschain, daughter of Abel, wife of Alaric, and mother of Shana, rasped from the shadows of the dimly-lit room.

"Shana?"

Shana turned at the sound of her mother's weak voice, and she ambled across the room to Gabrielle's bedside. "Aye, Mother, 'tis me."

"Come here, my child, to me," Gabrielle rasped, tilting her head so she could look at her daughter in the flickering light of the candle. "Come here, so I may see ye well."

"Mother, what troubles thee?"

Shana regretted saying such an inept question as soon as it had passed her lips. My mother is lying here, wasting away, dying--and I ask her what's troubles her? Dear gods in heaven, what is the matter with me?

"It matters not, Shana," Lady Gabrielle whispered softly. "Though I cannot lie to ye, who I have raised these last eight-and-ten years. My time has finally come, my darling."

Gabrielle reached one fragile hand for her, and Shana obediently took it and sat down on the bed beside her. As she did, she could see the fingers of virulent-looking red pulsing beneath the ashen skin of her mother's arm. The poison of the mandrus, in her blood, Shana realized sickly. It's spread through her entire body, so it has.

"Do not say that, Mother," Shana said, and she could feel tears welling in her eyes. "Please, I cannot bear to listen--"

"Cry your pardon, my sweet child, but I can feel it," her mother went on, her eyes blazing with a fire that had not been there before.

As Shana looked into those baleful eyes, she remembered lying on her bed, weeping for her mother, and her da' had come in and tried to comfort her.

I know that this is hard on you, Shana, Alaric Deschain had said to her. 'Tis hard on me, as well.

Tears rolled down Shana's cheeks, cutting wide tracks across them. But why her, Da'? Why, by all the gods and fishes? Why should she become sick, the kindest, purest soul in all of Barony?

Her father had shrugged. Ka's will, my darling. Ka comes like a wind. Like a cyclone. Ka has no mercy.

"Now, listen to me, Shana, and hear me. Hear me very well. I do not have much longer. My time grows short. So I--"

She suddenly burst into a series of terrible, sputtering coughs. Shana stepped back, careful to avoid the ropy strands of phlegm spraying from her mother's mouth. The mandrus was transmitted through bodily fluids, and while simple physical contact was not enough to make another one ill, if the sick one's blood, saliva, or pus from the oozing sores did, then the mandrus would infect that person. Mayor Alaric, her husband, had had to spend his nights since Lady Gabrielle had fallen ill in the guest suite across the hall.

The hacking coughs did not taper off for what seemed like an eternity to Shana. The young servant-girl cringed in the corner at the grating sounds.

"Mother, speak not, if it pleases ya," Shana whispered, as she adjusted the damp cloth on her mother's forehead carefully. Water trickled in droplets down the temples of Gabrielle's forehead. "Da' will be in soon."

"Nay, my sweet girl," Gabrielle wheezed, swallowing the thick wad of phlegm clinging to hert throat with great effort. Yet she remained determined to speak, and she managed to lift her head off the pillow, her once-lovely auburn hair clinging to her clammy forehead.

"Now, there is something I must say. Ye are not--"

She winced in agony, and once more broke into another fit of painful coughing. Phlegm spewed from her mouth and onto the bed linen (causing the brown-skinned servant-girl to jump in the corner). When Shana glanced with disgust at the phlegm on the linen, she saw blood mixed with the foul substance.

"Ye must listen," Gabrielle gasped. "Ye have--"

Gabrielle suddenly began to sputter in hacking coughs again. Before she could recover and Shana would hear what her mother was trying to tell her, everything in her life changed forever.

IV

Before Gabrielle could stop coughing, the door to Gabrielle's room burst open. Shana glanced up, expecting to see her da', Mayor Alaric Deschain, standing there, his usual concerned gaze on his face.

But it wasn't her father. It was Theresa O'Shyven, the forlorn-looking farmlady who had been watching the young children.

Shana rose to her feet. "Lady-sai, what is--"

--the meaning of all this? was how she meant to finish, but she never got a chance to. The woman was gasping for breath, and as she did, Shana could hear the first of the shrieks coming from outside.

"Cry your pardon, sai!" O'Shyven managed to huff out. "But it's the village--it's under attack!"

"What?"

Shana glanced over at the window on the far wall, and she could see the flickering of torchlight outside--more than normal in a sleepy Barony town like Seles. As she saw them, she could hear another sound--that of horses braying loudly.

"Who's out there, do you ken?" Shana demanded of the farmlady.

Theresa O'Shyven nodded. "Aye, lady-sai. Horsemen. They come on black horses. They wear the sigul of the bleeding eye on their armor."

Shana put a hand to her mouth. She recognized the description of the sigul; hadn't she seen it on the sides of several caravans in the past? "Sandora? Are you telling me Sandora is the one attacking us?"

Theresa O'Shyven nodded again, fervently.

"Dear gods," Shana groaned softly, her thoughts racing at breakneck speed in her head and betraying her composure. She took a deep breath, trying to regain her self-control. "What of the truce?"

"I don't know, sai," O'Shyven replied. "They're burnin' the town, aye, so they are! Killing the livestock! I seen 'em killin' townsfolk, too! With my own eyes did I see--"

Shana turned and knelt down beside her mother, and placed her hand on her mother's shoulder. "I have to go, Mother," she whispered. "I have to find out what's happening, so I do."

Her mother gave the barest nod, then let out a long exhaling sigh.

Shana clenched her fists tightly, then rounded on the young servant-girl in the corner. "You must get to the cellar, so you must!"

The girl nodded and made for the door, but Shana held up her hand, stopping her. "But you must get my mother to the cellar, the both of you." She turned from the girl to the farmlady. "Right now."

"How, sai?" the farmlady asked fretfully. "She's sick with the whore's bl--with the mandrus, cry your pardon--and we cannot touch her, for she might get us sick, too."

Shana wasted no time. "Use the bedsheet, gods curse your eyes!" she yelled. "Carry her out using the bedsheet!"

O'Shyven nodded, and as she and the servant-girl moved on opposite ends of the bed, Shana moved toward the door.

"What are ye going t' do, lady-sai?" the farm-lady asked.

"I'm going to find out what's going on," Shana replied, without even looking back. "I have to."

If only Dart were here--

Shana pushed the thought violently from her mind. He wasn't here, but she was. She must manage without him. And if he never returned, what would she do then? She had to take care of everybody now. Seles was her home, her life, and she wasn't about to let Imperial Sandora burn it to the ground.

She rushed out of the room, and burst into the door across the hall. The door to her own bedroom. She searched about the room frantically for a few moments, then found the yew bow and quiver of arrows she had been given at the age of eleven. She slung the quiver over her back, snatched up the bow, and scrambled down the stairs and out of the house, careful to lock it up behind her. She wasn't about to let a couple of gods-damned Sandorans into her home.But as she stepped across the porch, she saw what was unfolding before her very eyes.

They thundered through the dusty streets of the village, astride great snorting chargers as black as night--a phalanx of cavalrymen wearing the armor of the Grand Army of Imperial Sandora.

Shana watched them storm into the square, and watched with horror as she saw a young boy who lived on one of the farms on the outskirts of the village as he ran screaming down the street, only to end up spitted on the sword of one such cavalryman.

He wasn't the only one. Several of the townsfolk were fleeing through the streets, attempting to scamper into the shadows of the alleyways. But the Sandoran lances and arrows found them anyway.

By the Creator Soa, this cannot be happening.

These were her townspeople, her friends, her family, and they were being butchered like lambs to the slaughter. Blood was spilling into the dusty earth like rainwater. The war-horses were breaking down doors, and the blood-armored Sandorans were charging in and hauling the shrieking occupants out, flinging them in the street. Depending on their disposition, they either simply killed everyone who did not fit the description--female and below age thirty--or they simply beat the living shit out of the villagers. Many used their bulls' hooves or horns to great effect, and villagers died skewered or crushed by the dozens.

Shana bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, and turned just in time to see the tailor's late-night customer as his belly was gutted like a fish by a cavalryman's lance. He groaned once, then toppled backwards to land in the town's stone fountain with a loud splash of water.

She almost collapsed right then, but she managed to keep herself stable, forcing her knees to lock.

Chaos reigned the night. Not satisfied with mere terror and murder, the Sandorans also vandalized and destroyed anything they could get their hands on. Shana saw one large trooper take a fancy to several glittering gems embedded in the eyes of the statues that stood outside the cathedral, and he swung his heavy war hammer, shattering the heads of these cherubic sentries.

That seemed to jerk Shana from her horrified daze, and she reached back and pulled an arrow from her quiver. She had been doing this for years, and she could do it in her sleep. Pull back, release, pull back, release--

Think steady, keep going, girl, you can do this, just keep going, keep your mind on track.

Shana's thoughts were racing in her head. And she froze right then, the arrow still in her hand.

She watched as several of the Sandoran knights began to lob blazing torches into the air, then observed the torches as they arced into the air before landing on the thatched roofs of the houses on either side of the square. She wanted to scream, but her throat was locked. She couldn't make a sound.

"There she is!"

She whirled around, and she saw a massive figure positioned astride an enormous charger, watching her expressionlessly.

The newcomer was a veritable leviathan of a man. A heavy mace was slung across his back, and a sword dripping with sticky crimson. He wore tarnished brass armor that seemed to be coming apart at the seams; the breastplate was emblazoned with a sigul that somehow sent a chill down her spine.

He wore a flowing, grime-encrusted cape and a helmet topped with two wickedly-curved horns. One eye was covered with a white silk patch. The remaining eye was red-rimmed and rather beady. His grimy, doughy face was covered with a grimy growth of stubble, and was blotched with purple sores, some of them open and festering.

The mandrus, Shana thought, revolted. He's got the mandrus.

The helmeted monster of a man grinned viciously, baring dirt-streaked, yellowing teeth as the air around them filled with the thundering of countless hooves and the screams of dying villagers. As Shana watched in horror, the huge man raised his sword and cleaved the head from the shoulders of the elderly fellow in the straw hat from the town mercantile just as he ran past, screaming.

Shana wanted to run, all instincts told her to run, but yet she stood her ground fiercely. The massive rotund figure of the horseman spurred his steed, and advanced slowly and methodically on her. Finally, the tip of his bloodstained sword was inches from her throat.

Shana raised the bow, and prepared to draw the string back.

"Put that away, my cully," the giant man rumbled in a low, guttural grunt, in an accent so thick that the sense of his words was almost lost. "Put it away, my dear heart. Ye're a fierce trim, aye, that's clear, but this time you're outmatched."

V

Blood pattered on the wooden floor of the veranda from the horseman's sword. The giant man's remaining eye was fixed solely on the girl. Shana would have given anything at that moment to run, but she stood her ground nonetheless. It was her home, and she was going to protect it.

The man looked as if he might have a year to live, two at most... and the last few months of those years were apt to be very unpleasant. This man was not so far along in the stages of the mandrus at Shana's mother, but he was sick, no doubt about that. Facing a dangerous man was always a bad business, but at least one could calculate the odds in such an encounter. When you were facing the dead, however, everything changed.

"Do yer know what I'll do to you if you shoot that bow?" the horseman asked. "Do yer ken whatcher old friend Beson just happens to do to those who fight? This sword's already pointed at ye, and it's already tasted blood--and once it's tasted blood, it wants more, so it does!"

He cackled happily for a moment, and then his face grew still and grave once more. All humor left it, as if a switch had been turned somewhere in his degenerating brains.

"The goodness of m' 'eart's is all that's keepin' me from cuttin' off yer pretty little head, dearie. If you shoot me with that, ye better hope ye don't miss, 'cause if ye do, there's going to be a wery big hole where yer throat once was, I reckon. So do ye want to put away your bow, or shall we both toddle off to hell on the same handcart?"

Shana briefly considered trying to shoot the sword out of Beson's hand, saw how tightly the giant man was gripping it, and lowered her bow, yet still kept the arrow nocked in its string.

"Ah, good!" Beson cried, cheerful once more. "I knew ye was a trig cove, just lookin' at yer! Oh, yes! So I did!"

"What do you want?" Shana asked, although she thought she already knew this, too.

Beson raised his free hand and pointed a dirty finger at her. "Ye's what I want, so it is. Now come out 'ere and get with th' others, dearie."

"You've destroyed my village," Shana muttered softly. "You murdered my friends--my family. And you expect me to just follow you out of here? You're out of your mind!"

The horseman cackled cheerily. "Not at all, cully! You're the one who's lost 'er mind if you disbelieve me. At the wery least, ye should--"

Shana didn't hesitate a second. Before the giant man could even finish his sentence, she raised the bow again, nocked the arrow into the bowstring, and released it all in one fluid motion. She watched as the yew shaft glanced off of the horseman's cheekbone, then ricocheted off the brass rim of the man's helmet, then off into the darkness.

It was enough.

The horseman let out a thundering roar, nearly toppling off his great steed. His grubby gloved hands clutched at his face, feeling warm blood course down his cheek. Yellowish pus from the mandrus sore the arrow had ripped through oozed down with the blood as well. While he was distracted, Shana had done the one thing she could have done.

She ran.

Shana leaped off her front porch, and sprinted as fast as her legs could carry her, toward the outskirts of town, toward the Great Serdian Forest. As she sprinted down the dusty avenue of town, she could hear the voice of the massive horseman as he yelled out to her.

"Gods damn yer eyes, ye dirty cull!"

Shana didn't even care about what the giant of a man called her anymore. The only thing she wanted was to get as far away from here as possible. She managed to reach the burning wooden skeleton of the mercantile, at which point she whirled around and, in the space of five seconds, she snatched three arrows from her quiver and fired them in rapid succession, making sure that she wasn't going to be taken prisoner without a fight.

The first two arrows arced through the air, vanishing into the black columns of smoke wafting through the charred wreckages of village homes and stables. The third, however, buried itself in the shoulder of a Sandoran cavalryman, who let out a loud squawk as he tumbled off his steed, the barb of the arrow sticking out of his upper arm.

Suddenly, there was a shrill, harried scream from Shana's left, and doors suddenly threw themselves open. Forms lunged. The trap was sprung. Men in longhandles and men in dirty dungarees. Women in slacks and in faded dresses. Even children, tagging after their parents. And in every hand, there was a chunk of wood or a knife or some other edged weapon.

Shana whirled around, and saw old Herkimer Tasman, Dart's old teacher and swordmaster, at the head of the small horde of villagers, a silent figure in patched leather trousers and a green cotton shirt that had been cinched high with his old, wide infantry belt. The green of his shirt merged with the black of the night around him.

The reaction was automatic, instantaneous, horrific. The massive knight that Shana had shot at wheeled his steed around (nearly toppling off as he did so), his heavy sword raised over his head.

No! Shana wanted to scream at them, but it wouldn't have done any good: the small band of ragtag villagers charging to meet a vastly superior Sandoran cavalry unit was genocide.

Herk Tasman pumped his huge and twisted fist into the air. "Come on, maggots!" he growled in the Low Speech. His voice was flat, with a slight, drunken rasp. "Get them all, gods blast your eyes!"

Sticks flew through the air, rained on the Sandorans. They reeled back briefly, fending them off. Shana watched with satisfaction as a wooden plank with a nail pounded raggedly through it ripped at the massive man's arm and drew blood. A man with a beard stubble and sweat-stained armpits lunged, flying at the giant knight with a dull kitchen knife held in one paw. The Sandoran knight that had called himself Beson swung his sword and the man thumped into the street. His false teeth shot out as his chin struck and grinned, spit-shiny, in the dirt.

The Sandorans astride their massive horses swarmed in to meet the oncoming horde, and Shana watched in horror as the gleam of metal clashed with the bright red glare of blood.

"Get 'em all!" someone was screaming: "For your fathers' sake, bring them down!"

"Bastards!" another voice cried. Sticks rained on the horsemen. A knife struck one of the giant Sandoran's boots and bounced. "You gods-damned bastards!"

Beson charged through the crowd on his horse, chopping his way through the middle of them, riding as the bodies fell, his sword picking the targets with ease and dreadful accuracy. Two men and a woman went down, and his horse galloped through the hole they left.

"Kill him!" Tasman howled, pointing at the giant man with the point of his cutlass. "Kill that one and the rest will fall!"

Beson led them a feverish parade across the street and toward the rickety general store that faced the livery. Beson then wheeled his horse around again and charged one more into the oncoming crowd. Behind them, those Beson and the rest of the Sandorans had slain lay in the dust.

They never hesitated or faltered, Shana observed with horror, although the Sandorans cut them down like wheat and most of the villagers had probably never been in a fight before.

The rest of the Sandorans came in on both sides of the crowd, closing in on them. Beson charged right up the middle, swinging his blade as he went, with a rapidity that was surprising for a man of his size. The mob came up and Shana saw Master Tasman at the head of the crowd, his face zealously blank, his eyes filled with bland fire. She watched the old man as he buried his blade into the neck of one of the Sandorans' horses, and as the steed collapsed to the ground, Tasman's cutlass took the rider's head a second later.

Beson, meanwhile, had reached the livery, which had caught fire. He turned and made his way through the crowd again. Three men hustled after him, with grimaces on their faces. They saw him, saw him seeing them, and the grimaces curdled in the second before he took their heads off with one sweeping blow.

A woman had followed them, howling. She was large and fat and known around Seles as Aunt Mill. A pair of arrows were buried in her back a second later, courtesy of a pair of Sandoran archers. Beson drove the blade of his sword into her throat a moment afterwards. She fell backwards and she landed in a whorish sprawl, her skirt rucked up between her thighs.

Then it was Herk Tasman himself, running at Beson, waving his gore-stippled cutlass over his head. Beson sneered and came at him, bringing his own dripping blade up to meet him.

He swung, and was surprised when the old man parried the blow. Beson reeled back for a moment as Tasman thrust in with a blow of his own. The thrust grazed the flank of the captain's horse, barely missing Beson's left ankle.

"Gods damn you!" Beson roared, and his large booted foot suddenly lashed out, driving with full force into Tasman's chest. Tasman cried out, and Shana could even hear the brittle cracking sound of Tasman's ribs snapping.

Tasman sank to the dusty earth, and in the second before it happened, Shana could see the old warrior's face had become strangely serene, despite the fact his ribs had been broken and the blood was trickling down the side of his mouth. Beson kicked him again. Blood sprayed from the swordmaster's mouth in a phlegmy wad.

There were fewer of the crowd now; the Sandorans had run through them like a mower's scythe. They all stared at Herk Tasman for a moment in tableau, watching as he seemed to accordion into himself and waver like a shimmer of heat. Then he fell, raising a thick cloud of dust as he struck the ground.

Shana reached back for her quiver, hoping to launch more arrows toward the lowdown bastards that were torching her village to the ground (the bloated captain would be her personal preference).

Shana thought they would break with Tasman down, but someone threw a knife. The hilt struck Beson squarely in the mouth and sent him reeling. Heeding Tasman's advice of taking out the leader, they came at him in a reaching, vicious clot.

Then they were on him, the ones that were left. Beson beat back at them with his sword, and then they were whaling on him, stabbing him. He threw a pair of them off his left arm and straightened on horseback. He swung his blade into them. He was stabbed in the shoulder. He was stabbed in the back. He was hit across the ribs. He was stabbed in his flabby ass with what might have been a meat-fork.

Shana then watched as a small boy--one of the young cullies she had been watching before this had all happened--squirmed at the giant man and made the only deep cut, across the bulge of his calf. Shana turned away just as Beson took his head off.

They were scattering now, and the Sandorans let them have it again. The ones left began to retreat to the burning, pitted buildings, and still they were cut down. The last one made it as far as the general shop's burning porch, and then an arrow took him in the back of his neck. "Yowp!" the man cried, and fell over. It was Seles's final word on the business.

VI

The giant man was bleeding from perhaps twenty different wounds, all of them shallow except for the cut across his calf. His thick, leathery skin which erupted in oozing sores had protected him.

But not for long, Shana thought grimly as she raised her bow, preparing to fire.

She then watched as the corpulent horseman who had cornered her as he snatched a blazing torch from one of his underlings. He nudged his horse forward, then reeled back and lobbed the burning torch onto the roof of her house, where it instantly began to burn.

No! Mother!

Shana Deschain, daughter of Alaric and Gabrielle, rushed towards the house that she had lived in for as long as she could remember. The house that was now burning brilliantly as the flames spread voraciously across the roof, the flames gorging themselves on the wooden framework.

Dart.

The young warrior had been like a son to Lady Gabrielle and Mayor Alaric, and both of them had, like Shana, wanted him to return from his journey more than anything in the world. As tears began to well up in her eyes as she tore across the street, Shana wondered whether or not Dart would have wanted to see the woman who had been like a surrogate mother to him as she lay on her deathbed.

No time for that! she screamed at herself as she managed to reach the front veranda of the house. She didn't even notice the Sandoran cavalry as they spurred their horses away from the house. If she had, things might have happened differently, or not at all. But all she wanted was to make sure that her mother was s--

That was when the house exploded in a massive ball of flame and debris.

VII

It was not the only one--several of the houses and barns on this side of the square blew apart in a magnificent incandescence. Villagers were running around, screaming their heads off. Stones and chunks of wood and glass flew through the night sky.

In the moments before the house went up, Shana had enough time to see the front doors burst open and watch as Theresa O'Shyven came staggering from the house, bellowing loudly. It didn't take long for Shana to realize why: the woman's clothes were afire, and she was flailing about wildly. A second later, an arrow from a Sandoran trooper ricocheted off the front post of the veranda and buried itself in sai O'Shyven's face, sending her toppling backward into the burning doorway, where she did not rise.

Shana froze in mid-step, staring at the dead woman lying on the veranda. She turned her head, in the direction of where the Sandorans were watching, and had enough time for one more thought--oh, you bastards--and then the world blew up around her.

The sound was a deep, belching thud that seemed to shove Shana's eardrums inward and suck the breath out of her throat. The ground rolled under her feet like a wave under a boat, and a large, burning wall of wind planted itself against her belly and shoved her backward. She thought she moved against it for a step--maybe even two or three steps--and then she was lifted off her feet and hurled bodily into the air. She finally crashed against the dusty ground, skidding over it a few feet before coming to a halt at the foot of the stone fountain.

Shana was overwhelmed at first by the extreme heat of the blast, and then a feeling of confusion and sorrow. Everything was beginning to fade now, and that's when she felt the ground rise up beneath her.

Where are you, Dart?

She could feel the blackness of unconsciousness tugging at her mind, and although she desperately grappled against it, it was clear it was a losing battle.

Dart... why aren't you here to rescue me? Why haven't you protected me, just like long ago when we were young? Why does Imperial Sandora want me? Will you come rescue me, wherever I go? Will I be with my mother? What did she want to tell me? Dart... answer me... please...

As she felt her awareness and perception begin to drain away into blackness, her gaze drifted upward, to the sky. Her eyes focused blearily on the silver coin of Can'-Ka No Luna, and her final thought before the blackness fell was: The Moon... I have never really noticed it before, so I haven't. It's so beautiful...

Then darkness rushed in to steal her thoughts and hopes away like a thief in the night, and Shana Deschain's world tilted crazily, and it all went black.

VIII

The fires burned wickedly, sparing nothing as they illuminated the night sky. Columns of towering, almost solid black smoke drifted up into the heavens, so thick that the watery silver moonlight from The Moon That Never Sets barely penetrated the thick black haze. Most of the buildings in the small village of the Eastern Baronies were collapsing into cinders, only the sturdiest managing to remain standing.

Villagers were being cut down like wheat by the soldiers. As they were a peaceful people unused to fighting, the townsfolk stood almost no chance as they were being butchered. Screams of terror and agony echoed through the air as blood spilled onto the dusty path.

All in all, it was nothing short of a massacre.

Beson lumbered into the town square, his massive dripping fist clamped around the nape of Shana Deschain's neck. He grunted and hurled the unconscious girl to the dusty earth beside the shattered remains of the stone fountain, where the other women of the village were held at swordpoint.

"Captain?"

Beson turned to face a young Sandoran goshawk (what some might call a corporal in other lands), whose clean-shaven face looked rather disgruntled. "What is it, goshawk?"

"Well, sai, I have a question."

Beson frowned at him--an expression that made the goshawk's stomach clench. "'Tis about this raid, my cully?"

"Aye."

"Then forget and be done with it," Captain Beson grunted. "Ye don't have the aw-thor-ity, and I don't neither. We do what we're told, so we do."

"Aye, but sai," the goshawk pushed on, "I read the orders, ye understand. I wanted to ask ye before we started this, but--"

The massive captain whirled on him like a striking serpent. "Well, what is it, my fine boy? Do ye have a problem with our orders then?"

The goshawk noted that Beson's hand had slipped down to the hilt of his blood-streaked sword, and he swallowed. "Nay," he went on. "'Tis our orders never said we were to be killin' all the men, sai."

Beson freed his saber with a throaty rasp of steel. "So, you are questionin' me orders?"

"Nay, Captain," the goshawk said hastily, scuttling back. "I was simply makin' a comment. I didn't mean nothin' by it, sai."

Beson gazed at the young man for a moment. Then his face broke in an oozing, grotesque grin. He sheathed his saber again. "Aye," he said. "At least you got a mind to think. Ain't many like that here."

The goshawk nodded, frowning as Beson wheeled to face the carnage of the battle with the townsfolk. A few of the Sandorans were gathering the dead and dragging them to one of the alleys, where the bodies were being stacked like cordwood. His good eye scanned the corpses lying scattered about the dusty street. He seemed satisfied, and was about to turn back when he froze.

"What's wrong, Captain?"

Beson's brow furrowed. "Where's the old son?" he asked. "The old fool what was the leader?"

The goshawk shrugged. "Mayhap they put him with the rest of the dead, sai."

"With his armor on?"

"Aye."

"Yer a bunch of fools, cully," Beson snorted. "Let's go take a look, shall we? Step lively, now." Beson stalked out of the square, the young goshawk trailing behind in his wake.

The corpses piled in the alley had been crammed in hastily--the bodies of men, women, and children who either didn't match the description or tried to resist. When Beson reached it, his remaining eye flickered over the dead. He then stepped back, allowing the goshawk to see the grisly sight.

"Well, my dear son, where is he?"

"Don't know, sai." The goshawk bent down, peering into the shadows of the alley at the bodies stacked within. "Could be h--"

He stopped. His eyes bulged from their sockets. He let out a harsh rasping cough, and began clawing at the blade that had suddenly appeared in his throat.

Beson observed the Sandoran looking at him wildly with his dying eyes and grinned. He then planted a heavy boot into the young man's chest and shoved him back, at the same time wrenching the dagger from the goshawk's neck. Blood spouted as though from a geyser. The goshawk stared at him in disbelief, then he fell face-first into the dirt.

"Ye shouldn't never question orders," Beson muttered, the killer's grin still on his dripping face. "'Tis a pity yer had to go to the clearing at the end of the path like that, so it is, but yer should have held yer tongue."

Beson turned and tromped his way back to the square. He brought the blade of his dagger to his lips and licked the side of it, tasting the metallic tang of the steel and the sticky warm blood dripping from it. He laughed as he did it--a horrible sound, like something evil rising from the primordial ooze.

To Aron Beson, there was nothing like the taste of blood.

Nothing.

IX

In short, it was a massacre.

And Commander Atrus was hating every minute of it.

As the Lord High Commander of the Imperial Army of Sandora, he normally would not have ordered the sacking of a peaceful village in the neutral Eastern Baronies. But despite the heavy weight of guilt and remorse he felt now, he also felt relieved. He had a job to do, and he was spared of leading the assault.

However, a detachment from the notorious Fifth Imperial Cavalry, under the leadership of the brutal Aron Beson, was taking great and inhuman pleasure in the carnage. Beson, the most despicable man Atrus had ever had the misfortune to meet, had ordered that his men slay all those who tried to resist (except for those who fit the description of their target). It made Atrus sick to his stomach.

To speak of the devil himself, Atrus saw the captain in the middle of the town square, near the shattered remains of a stone fountain. The massive mountain of a man sensed the commander's presence, and turned and goaded his charger over towards him, a horrible grin on his sore-pocked face. His one good eye peered slyly from beneath the rim of his horned helmet. His armor was rent in several places with shallow cuts.

"Hile, Commander," Beson grunted, tapping his helmeted forehead clumsily. "Long days an' pleasant nights to ye."

"And may you have twice the number, Captain Beson," Atrus replied courteously, not showing the disdain he inwardly felt.

"Too likely!" Beson laughed. "I'll be dead in a year if luck's with me!" He grinned mirthlessly, revealing his oozing gums, then swept his bloated arm around. "Well, ye've done it, Commander. This town belongs to ye now, aye, so it does. Ye and Emperor Doel."

"Good." Atrus's eyes swept the village, careful to disguise the contempt for the malicious, merciless Beson, who was also the notorious head warden at Hellena Prison, the most horrible penitentiary in All-World. Even though Beson would not have dared retaliate against his superior's disdain, it was best not to make an enemy of the most bloodthirsty man on the face of this earth. Even their great leader, His Excellency Emperor Doel of the Empire of Sandora, thought it wise not to cross Captain Beson, even if the brute had but a few short years left.

"We should kill them all," Beson prodded eagerly, licking his blistered lips in anticipation. "Should kill the whole bunch of 'em, aye, so we should. Serve 'em right proper, it would."

"We have orders, Captain," Atrus reminded him. "And ye should do well to remember that."

Beson scoffed. Atrus spurred his own horse toward the town square, his black armor with red trim gleaming immaculately in the glow from The Moon That Never Sets. On his breastplate was engraved the silver emblem that was Emperor Doel's sigul, the eye.

Atrus hated that wide-open, staring eye, couldn't imagine what had possessed Emperor Doel to pick it in the first place. Why not a mailed fist? Crossed swords? Or a bird? A falcon, for instance--a falcon would have made a fine sigul. But that eye--

He clambered off his horse, a tall, broad knight who commanded an imposing presence amongst his men. As he did, he placed the reins in the hands of a nearby cavalryman, then turned to face a young Sandoran officer as he scrambled over to his commander.

"Hile, Great Commander," the young officer acknowledged softly, tapping his forehead with his fist briskly. "Long days and pleasant nights."

"And may you have twice the number," Atrus replied, tapping his own forehead in response. "I have come to observe your work."

"And I have come," another voice--one that made Atrus's flesh creep--whispered from his left, "to identify the target."

Atrus wheeled around to face the direction the voice had come from. A figure emerged from the hazy gloom to Atrus's left. Despite his best efforts, the fearless Great Commander of Imperial Sandora himself felt a cold chill run down his spine.

The speaker was a tall figure, nearly as tall as Atrus himself (the Great Commander actually stood six-foot-five, without his armor). But unlike the other, the figure appeared to possess more power than even the Great Commander himself. Even though the figure was clearly tall, Atrus could not tell exactly how tall he was, for the man was shrouded in a black robe and hood, which swathed his features in shadow. By the way he spoke, it was clear that the world seemed almost indifferent to him.

Around the campfires, the men would speak in hushed tones when this man was brought up, and because they did not know his name, they only referred to him as "the man in black." But they knew nothing else about him--who he was, where he had come from, even whether he was human or not.

The man in black nodded toward the square, where the group of maidens and young farm-wives were now being held at spearpoint. "Are those all the women?"

"Yar." It was Beson, who had just lumbered over to join them. "Every girrul younger than thirty year old, s' far's I know."

The man in black suddenly whirled around, and even Aron Beson stepped back.

"All younger than fifty, I warrant," Beson said hastily, and Atrus noted the giant man's knees were quaking.

The man in black studied Beson silently for a moment, as though idly deciding whether to skin the man alive or not. Then he turned back to the prisoners. "Line them up."

The Sandorans scrambled to comply. Beson joined them, stalking away from the hooded man. He calmed himself by swinging a ham-sized fist against the side of a young Sandoran's head when the soldier failed to clear out of his path. He headed toward the crumbling fountain (he noted with grisly satisfaction that the headless corpse of a man lay half-in, half-out of the fountain itself). There, he saw a pair of cavalrymen as they stood gathered around something lying on the ground next to the fountain's shattered remains. When they saw their captain striding towards them, they parted, allowing Atrus to see what they were gathered around.

It was the body of the young woman who had shot at him.

Beson's bowels clenched tightly for a moment. What if she had been injured, and what if she was the one they were here for? Emperor Doel had specifically told them not to harm her. If she were, Beson's head would certainly end up on a spike in front of the Black Castle.

"Cry your pardon, sai," one of the cavalrymen explained. "She just fainted."

"Put her in line, for your father's sake!" Beson snarled. He turned away--and nearly ran into the man in black, who stood no more than an arm's length away. He snarled a curse and leapt back. The man in black's expression didn't change, but Beson had the distinct impression that he was amused.

The hooded man looked over the unconscious girl. "Why is she not in line?"

"She passed out," Beson mumbled.

She was wearing a white shirt and matching skirt. The sleeves and such were embroidered with royal blue trim, the colors of the Eastern Baronies. Around her middle was a bronze belt of sorts. She wore casual deerskin boots, and brown fingerless gloves. Her shoulder-length, golden-brown hair was matted with dirt. Her eyes were closed, but she was clearly unconscious, the lids masking the soft brown color of her eyes.

Beson glared down at the unconscious woman with obvious distaste. "Aye, she was a trig one, so she was, but wery pert. I should like to kick her brains right out her tender little asshole, so I should."

"That's enough, Captain," Atrus growled without looking back.

Beson sneered and stalked off, to take part in the mayhem and destruction that was going on all around them. Atrus sighed, shaking his head. He then turned to watch the man in black, who reached into the folds of his cloak and plucked out what appeared to be a tiny blue-white sphere. He knelt down beside the unconscious woman. He placed his hand on her chin, and tilted her head smoothly to face his. He then took the tiny sphere, and placed the blue-white orb on her forehead.

Suddenly, the air was filled with a soft humming, like the air during a lightning storm. Above, the clouds and smoke suddenly dissolved and dissipated, fully exposing the blue-black velvet of the night sky. The tiny pinpricks of Old Star and Old Mother, and the larger silver coin that was Can'-Ka No Luna, the Ageless Moon, The Moon That Never Sets. On the ground at their feet, the soldiers watched as the girl's body suddenly bucked twice, as though tremors had just wracked her bones.

As she shuddered and trembled, the orb in the man in black's hand suddenly glowed with a bright blue radiance. As he watched, a beam of silvery-blue light abruptly shot from the center of the girl's forehead and into the glowing globe in his hand. From where he stood, Atrus could feel the power pulsing within the sphere. It had been the power of this shaft of light that had caused the girl to tremble.

As the commander and his men watched, the beam appeared to be etching some sort of pattern on the young woman's forehead; in the sapphire glow, the luminosity seemed to be engraving itself in her soft skin.

What brand of sigul is that? Atrus thought to himself. And on the heels of that: No doubt about it, she's the one we've come for.

As these thoughts passed through his mind, the beam of light suddenly intensified. As he and the other cavalrymen around him watched, intrigued, a thin ray of pale-blue radiance lanced into the air, seeming to disappear into the cold, pale light of

(Can'-Ka No Luna)

the Moon That Never Sets itself.

A few moments passed, and then the blue light suddenly dissolved, then died away, yet the light did not exactly fade, but rather seemed to melt and liquefy into the darkness. Then it was gone, leaving not even the barest imprint of the strange sigul on the young woman's forehead.

The man in black nodded as he straightened, stepping back from the young woman's cataleptic figure. "She is the one."

He wheeled around and slipped the shimmering blue globe into his cloak again. He then stalked briskly past the torch-wielding Sandorans who were watching him expectantly. Atrus followed him. "Is this all really necessary?"

"Yes, Great Commander, it is all necessary," the man in black replied, his voice barely over a stern whisper, yet still brimming with power. It's the command of His Excellency, the Great Emperor Doel. He has ordered that the girl be taken into custody."

"To Hellena?" Atrus demanded, trying his best to keep from sounding too timid in the face of this cloaked stranger. "She wouldn't last a week there!"

"If only you knew the truth, Commander," the man in black said.

"Then tell me," Atrus grunted. "She is that important?"

"Yes. She is of the greatest importance."

"But is she vital enough to annihilate an entire village for?" Atrus swept a gloved hand around the smoldering husks of homes and stables around them. "Who is this girl, anyway?"

The man in black shook his head. "That is not your concern, Commander. All you need concern yourself with is the girl makes it to Hellena alive."

He said this with finality. The man in black then turned and headed back toward his own horse, the conversation ended right then and there.

Still unsure of why they were sacking an entire Barony village just to take one girl, Atrus turned and called over to the band of cavalrymen who were still loitering around the young woman's unconscious form.

"Take the girl!" he called out. "We're taking her to Hellena--and make sure she doesn't get a scratch!"

"Aye! Right away, sai!"

Atrus turned and gave the signal to inform the rest of his battalion that they needed to hurry up and finish what they were doing.

It was time to go back.

The sooner the better, he thought.

While he did not trust the man in black as far as he could sling a wagon coach, Atrus of Sandora knew that, because he carried the authority of Emperor Doel in the field, he would have to follow his orders.

It did not make him any happier.

X

Less than ten minutes later, it was all over. The deed was done.

The brutal cavalry detachment loyal to the sadistic Captain Beson, who had personally slaughtered nineteen unarmed and defenseless citizens of Seles, had performed the grisly coup de grace before they left, and it would be this act of all-out cruelty that would haunt Commander Atrus until his dying day.

Beson and his officers had rounded up eleven townsfolk (six men, three women, and two young culls who were barely school-age) who had, instead of attempting to run or take up arms against their attackers, decided it would be best to surrender. The brutal captain had indeed promised them leniency in exchange for their cooperation. Beson then ordered one of his lieutenants to take them to one of the timothy fields on the edge of town.

The officers had corralled the eleven villagers into one such field at spearpoint. When they arrived, the villagers saw three large and rather hoary apple trees in the middle of the field, a trio of splendidly ominous silhouettes which climbed into the night sky. When they were marched closer, they saw that a small group of cavalrymen had strung up eleven ropes on the thickest branches, all of which ended in knotted loops.

Nooses.

Despite pleas for pardons and promises and curses of damnation, all eleven men, women, and children were hoisted up on horseback and their heads put into the noosed ropes. A minute later, all were dangling high over the timothy grass below. Some had been lucky and had been killed instantly as their necks were snapped like twigs; others were unfortunate enough to strangle to death slowly until their faces had gone purple and their struggles ceased.

Either way, the result was the same.

After this final act of brutality, the orders had come through to abandon the town. They were moving out.

The soldiers placed their captive on the back of a riderless charger, her legs and arms bound by thick ropes. The young woman that they had come all this way and killed so many to capture was unconscious, and Shana Deschain would not awaken for another seven hours, and by this time she would already be halfway to the dreaded prison on the Hellena Peninsula.

With a crisp slash of whips and the shrieking of stallions, the Imperial Army's cavalry, with Commander Atrus and the mysterious man in black at the head of the phalanx, charged off into the darkness, the village smoldering to ruin behind them.