Lions in the Dark

[critter 2812]

Spoiler

 

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THE MOTHER’S FIRE

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A thousand hooves pounded along a road she once knew.

 

The years taught her to fight alone: to steal to the road in the night, to move by foot and strike in silence. It was a life on the outskirts of a far grander war.

 

This was no outskirt. Before them sprawled dread forces the like of which she’d never seen. The earth itself seemed to weep; the grass twisting for mercy, crimson like blood not yet shed, and the skies clouded by sick gray swathes of smoke and shadow. Sulfur crept through the air, rotten stink twisting around the cavalry’s horse-sweat and leather. 

 

Her blade had been hers for nigh-on thirty years, but not once did she raise it among so many. On the horizon towered demons and a golem of warped flesh and bone alongside shambling, groaning monstrosities. The Descendants’ cavalry sat astride their horses in shifting certainty – knowing at any moment the foe would be upon them, but not to what end.

 

It was invigorating. She could almost taste the blood unspilled, the hungry burn of courage and righteous fury alike burning in her veins. She yearned to spur their horses forward and cut a swathe through – to conquer for the Light, to cloak themselves in glory.

 

Soon. Sooner and sooner still. But not yet.

 

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THE FIRST CUT

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They’d named her hope. 

 

Nadya. White light bounced from her sword unto the steel of the Weiss women as their horses nickered and stamped their hooves beside one another. Nadya’s rallying calls cut like steel through the throng, a ringing bell without a tremble. Behind their line Kazimir readied his greatsword, though unseen to her: willful son. Petyr, trustworthy, sat just behind him. Azja, beauty, clutched the reins of their steed.

 

Her eyes met Nadya’s. Then the younger woman’s blade plunged not into a foe, but upwards; a rallying command roared from the young warrior, as before and behind the soldiers began to surge forth.

“GODAN protect us,” Azja said.

 

“Courage guide us,” Sabine replied.

 

Then she was falling from her daughter’s horse, and fire rained from the sky.

 

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THE YOUNG BLOOD

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Azja rode on.

 

Of course Sabine had swung for the first and largest demon she could find. Of course it took her, in one blow of its spear, from their steed into the dirt; and of course now she rose to face it head-on and alone. From around the breadth of it and through the glow of its blue hellfire, she could still make out the silhouette of dark armor and the swish of a Zvaervauld mare’s tail. In a moment, a memory –

 

– a girl of thirteen winters, blood on her armor, bandages to her throat; red on white on skin, tears unshed – 

 

before the distant crack of Azja’s flail against the weak ribs of the undead drew her back. She would endure. Sabine, on the other hand, had a towering behemoth of flame and wrath to contend with. By instinct her blade drove through its spear, wood splintering beneath her white flame as she rose shouting – only to fall again, the beast toppling them both into a pit of more mundane fire. Her steel drove across its throat as she fumbled for the merciful hand of a stranger, black blood drenching them like the most warped baptismal waters.

 

Elsewhere, Azja’s flail and shield drove through foe after foe; relentless, unyielding. The girl Sabine feared for was not to be found in the warrior ahead, beating down the grotesque flesh golem she meant to slaughter alongside a throng of fellow fighters. The lastborn child had long since endured her proving grounds. Now she sought to soak them in blood.

 

Around them, the fray unfurled.

 

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THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

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Terror and death drive even the hardest warriors to call for their mothers. Sometimes, they answered.

 

“I was brave,” Duncan Baruch – a man she remembered as a boy, round-faced and jeering from behind a bar or laying on flattery in the barracks – called. He sat dazed, battered; something broken, maybe? Another lay sprawled in the dirt, medics swarming like flies. Her own daughter, commanding Nadya, spat blood. One son hovered over the other – Petyr. Petyr. Shrouded in strange light, Petyr – 

 

– burned and battered and bloodied. Ever-bold Nadya and ever-brooding Petyr, twins, both beneath the tending hands of weary healers. Around them, kings spoke softly of a grim futures. Worse wounded moaned in pain and grief, and the fires still burned, curling plumes of dark smoke like the funeral pyres to come.

 

But Petyr lived. Moreover he lived through something she did not yet understand, though the whispers around them spoke of halos; of a blade in his hands unlike the steel of mortal forges. 

 

She saw no halo. She saw no blade. She saw a boy, his eyes a mirror of hers as she cradled his helm. His blood soaked her hands, but he lived; and now they had the grim honor of taking the twin’s broken bodies home.

 

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THE HEALING DAWN

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Clean light flickered through the clinic windows. 

 

Joren, Nadya’s betrothed, had at last allowed her to coax him into a cot and mop the grime from his face. Healers fluttered over Nadya and Petyr; Azja already at rest, Kazimir blessedly unscathed, shifting to and fro with water and his easy smile. Outside, the city murmured: word spreading as the soldiers poured back in, though many carried. Somewhere, kings and holymen plotted the grand next move. 

 

To their family, though, life was simpler. They would heal. Bones would set, bruises would fade. The dents to their armor would be repaired and leather polished, blades sharpened, potions restocked and kits restored. And when dark smoke once more plumed on the horizon or the warhorn once more bellowed, they would ride.

 

Sunset felt ever-nearer to Sabine. Stooping over her children, she couldn’t ignore the silver curls escaping her braids. Time wove an ache into her bones she couldn’t escape, and the batterings of battle took ever-longer to heal. In some ways she envied their youth – their vigor, their banter even from their hospital beds. In others, she feared (and she did not often fear) how bright their light shone – how easily it might be snuffed.

 

But there, on that day and in that clinic, she allowed those fears to become distant. They lived. When the next challenge came they would meet it, and if it were their last, then the rest might meet the next with twice the vigor they had before.

 

So it had been, and so it would be. At least, she supposed, for now.  

 

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