Northern Marches, Michigan
Six Hours Past Midnight
Frostbringer 20, 224
(December 11)
Miles had passed by, the tercio’s pikemen and musketeers singing songs and chanting prayers all the way. The Regiment of Fayette marched amid quiet, their own voices all they could hear. Insect life had died under five weeks of nightly frost, birds had flown south; what animals and human inhabitants yet lived in this district were silenced by fear of the Ohioan host. The men took the cold without complaint, rags stuffed into their boots actually keeping their feet dry for a wonder, thanks to the lack of deep snow, and the frozen-solid state of the roads.
They marched by the glimmering light, to the priestess' prayers that seemed to make the stars flash with uncanny sharp clarity. The moon rose high enough to be visible, adding little to the lighting- a fat yellow crescent, but a waning one.
They marched down country lanes and sunken roads. They marched beneath skeletal stands of oak and maple, of blackgum and hornbeam, with their slick fallen leaves. They marched across the carpet of needles from the livelier clusters of white pine and spruce.
After five miles and two brief halts, they marched past the fields and the deserted, nearly undamaged remains of the village of Vignes.
Henri Delatour, son of the Viscount of Vincennes, wouldn't soon forget how perfectly ordinary peasant cottages could seem to gape like grinning skulls in the faintly-lit darkness. Not when you knew what had happened behind those windows and doors.
The captain of musketeers reached down to the skin attached to his saddle and took a drink-
not with the bite of alcohol, that would be folly, but with the different, invigorating flavor of holly tea. His supply was shipped upriver from the south, from Turkish plantations, and very much worth the expense. He'd need his wits about him, and couldn't waste time gathering wool. The rank and file made do with chicot, which simply could not match the vitalizing, galvanizing kick... or, of course, with beer. Perhaps that was the secret to Ohio's success, an army of beer drinkers, but commanded by
yaupon drinkers.
Delatour realized that the starlight, by which they marched, shone down on a patch around the Ohioan column, in the shape of a rough ellipse. As the first hints of dawn touched the eastern horizon behind them, this began to worry him rather less. But it occurred to the young nobleman that, like all forms of illumination during a night march, even the blessing of the living stars might be in some small measure a double-edged sword.
His thoughts were coming back into focus now, the tea doing its work... he watched his men for signs of stumbling or confusion, disputes or injuries. He counted carefully, riding slowly up the column to ensure there were no stragglers. He had sergeants and he had his lieutenants, of course, but these hundred musketeers were
his responsibility. It came as a surprise when from ahead the drums began to play a regimental halt. He turned around, watching as the drumming spread down the line, his own boy taking it up without orders and rightly so... the rear company of musketeers, barely visible in the gloom around a curve in the road, stopped. He waited a few more paces, saw the pikes behind them stop, wait... wait...
“Company... HALT!”
With a shuffle of boots, his musketeers did- grounding their pieces and stopping in place, waiting for further orders. As the column stopped from the rear towards the front, there was no confusion, no risk of one company plowing into the next with twenty-foot spears; Delatour was pleased to see the results were orderly, at least for as far as his eye could penetrate the weakly lit gloom. Presumably there would be a courier coming down the column soon. Delatour saw no need to give orders; his sergeants were doing their jobs well, bustling about, getting the men over to the side of the road, making sure all the musketeers drank and checked their boots. Men folded their cloaks and sat down. The exertion kept the cold at bay, but some of the musketeers were starting to fall out of condition in the confined circumstances of winter quarters.
From ahead he heard the clatter of trotting horses- the couriers. One stopped among the pike company ahead, one came on to him and pulled up alongside him- moving recklessly; the captain was glad his men had cleared the road.
"Colonel's compliments, sir, and we will be making the rest of the march in silence, with only the world's light to guide us. The Kaskaskians have spotted a ruined tower about three miles ahead, and the colonel thinks it might be the wizard's lair. He wants us ready to resume the march in fifteen minutes."
"Thank you, ensign. Carry on. And master-sergeant! Get the men in line by the
side of the road, we shall have a prayer before the march!" He called out to his seniormost sergeant, a tough veteran of nearly thirty years in the Grand Army of the Ohio- a commoner fit to ride herd on the other sergeants was worth a good deal, his father assured him. Delatour paid the extra salary with that unusual rank out of his own pocket, and it was worth it for his services.
The courier spurred his horse down the road to the last musketeer company, the other ensign having just leapfrogged past on his way to the pike company behind Delatour's. "Rémy, sound the call back to ranks!" The drummer, who'd stood by with commendable fidelity, began to do so... With the changed tone that meant a call to services. It was about time for their pre-dawn service, in any event, wasn't it?
Delatour's soldiers formed up. Mother Rochelle strode across the frozen mud of the road, seeming barely to notice the chill as something swept over her features, transforming them. Delatour was sure the woman didn't glow, but was... not entirely
sure that he was sure. The priestess' light soprano washed across the musketeers in ringing tones, leading them through the devotionals of the pre-dawn service, drowning out an echo from up the road of what sounded like another company whose commander had had the same idea a minute faster. Then she began her sermon.
"Men of the tercio of Fayette! Behind us stands the land of the good rivers, the homes and churches of the faithful, the resting-places of your honored ancestors! Before us, is death- death militant and hungry, evil and cruel! But you need not fear!
“Yes, you need
not know fear! The stars watch over us- can you feel them? You can certainly see them!” The priestess waved her arm at the still-gleaming stars that positively flamed, now, from the deep blue night. “We may have to fight, some of
us-" she gestured inclusively- "may fall in battle; the risks of a soldier stand in front of us. But as the living stars are with us, no power of unnatural evil can overcome us! Follow your drills, protect your nation, your faith, your banner- and you need not fear for your souls, you need not fear the power of dark sorcery, while you stand with your brothers in the ranks of the tercio of Fayette!”
The men spoke their concluding prayers, their amens, and turned back into route march formation.
The stars faded imperceptibly from the deep blue sky as red-fingered dawn stretched out across the middle of the Empire, coloring the handful of clouds above the Ohioan host with hints of the day to come.
Half an Hour Later
Recommended Listening: Danse Macabre, by Camille Saint-Saëns
This time, quieter the march, the oppressive silence of the woods and fields creeping around them. Much the same in terms of visibility, a hint of the dawn-light's first gleaming starting to take the place of the blessed starlight that had guided them through the night hours. Delatour took hope from that; all things considered he would rather fight under the one broad, warm star of this earth than under a thousand distant, cold ones.
In silence the Regiment of Fayette advanced through the woods, the scouts' horses audible as they scoured the land around for signs of the necromancer's evil.
From ahead Delatour saw an ensign on a white horse coming back to him, this time picking his way along the roadside. Cresting a rise in a road, the junior officer became more visible- Delatour squinted. It was the new one, Travant was his name, yes? Probably another message from Colonel Blanchard, several hundred yards ahead.
“Sir, the colonel's compliments, and we are assuredly close. The scouts believe they saw a few of the walking dead... gathering firewood, of all things.”
Marc Guillory of Detroit, late a mage of the fourth circle as that city counted such things, was not a happy man.
As the sun came up, his mass of zombies ceased their labor of tending the bonfires he used to warm the crude half-shelters he'd directed them to construct around his tower, to keep the dead servants merely
cold, not frozen.
It had been worth it; even a walking corpse would be none the better for freezing solid and thawing out every night. The runes of conjuration he'd carved into the brows of some of his first creations made them- or the imps that inhabited their bodies- intelligent enough to direct the lesser ones in such work. After a fashion, at least. It would probably be less work to let them sink into dormancy, and when the days stopped bringing thaws perhaps he would... except that now an
army was coming toward him!
None of his witless dead had managed to notify him as he slumbered. Even the imp-charged ones were little more than automata, and even if they'd seen the outriders or the spears of that oncoming column, they would have no notion of what to do. And so Guillory had slept, while his worst enemy approached in the night. He'd been tired... but all actions had consequences, and today the price of a good night's rest could easily be the price of a shallow grave- or the stake.
He should have realized there would be survivors of the villages he'd struck to build up his servants before striking out to create a territory for himself further north. Should have known Ohio would send a hunting party, even if he only truck hamlets in the contested zone. On some level, he had- but so
many? The drizzle of plains cavalry hadn't surprised him... but to see more than a thousand men, arms in hand, walking out from the tree-line as one, was more than he had expected.
The rogue Detroiter knew he could ambush a careless soldier or two. But how would his power match up against an army?
Could he escape- no. Their cavalry would have blood in their eyes after yesterday; even if none who'd seen him lived, they would
know. With the sun rising to light up his escape, and his tireless yet distinctive steed to track, they would find him, surround him and overwhelm him in a running battle. His slaves would be useless; none of them could keep up with a horse and the mass of them were too sluggish and stupid to block hundreds of horsemen effectively in broad daylight.
Somehow he would have to make a fight of it. At least here, he was in his own keep, surrounded by strength.
Guillory tapped into the ley lines fueling his new home- a tower some other wizard had erected the century before, at a site which would have been reused long ago were it not so close to the boundary-stones that marked the edge of Detroit's domain.
Riding about the countryside, he could slay a man on a horse easily enough. Two, three. With time to prepare, even a few hundred, so long as he caught them unprepared. But with both ley lines carrying power toward him? Perhaps
here, his sorcery was a match for an army... or so Guillory desperately hoped.
It had better work. Even now, the human soldiers were deploying into a tight order of battle, files of men peeling off from the column on the east road and forming a long line that stretched a hundred yards and more across the field of dead grass and frozen mud.
Ah well, a wide target, a narrow one, so long as he could see them and strike them with a single continguous
wave of death, it would matter little. The power was there; he just had to use it.
To Captain Delatour, the old tower looked to be one good storm from falling down in ruins.
On the roof of that tower, a covering sheet of bright white canvas caught a few rays of the rising sun, and against the shadowy darkness of the far west, Delatour caught a glint of sickly green light- a flash- a robed figure standing there on the battlements.
"Oh, for a wall-gun and a stand! I could end this right now!" Guillaume, ever the flamboyant image of a musketeer, with a scarlet hat Delatour would be sad to see go if the Army ever tightened its uniform restrictions, waved his free hand in the air.
"At seven hundred yards?
Really?" The man next to him, dark and nondescript, grey cloak wrapped around himself in the chill so that the captain had to pause a moment to recognize him as Renard, snorted.
"I make it more like five hundred, and you know I could always-"
"Shut up. Don't tempt-" Renard's eyes widened and his voice fell "-fate..."
A cloud of blackness flowed down from the top of that ruined tower, coming on fast as a galloping horse. They had at most two minutes, if that. Cries of alarm rose out from the ranks to Delatour's left and right, a few from his own company. He had to-
"SILENCE IN THE RANKS!" Lieutenant Jourdain, without a single battle to his credit, had gotten the same idea Delatour had.
"Close ranks! STAND! STAND!" The drummers did their part, tapping out prayer cadence, though Delatour could see that little Rémy's face was pale as he saw the death that had swooped down upon Vignes, ripping the soul from the body, casting aside the former to enslave the latter...
The prayers resounded, a great sea as every man fell back upon his faith. No synchronization, alas, but the pikes and musketeers stood strong. Delatour stared into the black cloud, mustering what defiance he could- he could not help but think this might be the end of him, or of all that made him
himself even if his body went on as some rotting puppet... But
no, his heart cried, the words of Mother Rochelle were true, orthodox though she be. He need not fear evil, need not fear sorcery, around him stood brave and faithful men who would not fall, the living stars would not permit it, and the dawn was rising behind them and all doubt fell from his mind, though not all fear...
The captain could hear snatches of speech. Snatches of the same prayers he himself was running through, quietly, circling ever back to the first verses of the Litany to the Heavens.
"Oh thou Stars, lords of the incorruptible void...
illuminate our souls... renew us with your light.
Forgive, pervade, and cleanse... darkness.
... in the name of the saints...
ward us and guide us. Amen..."
Behind them the priestesses were chanting no longer. They sang, now, in a language that might have been the old High Speech but might have been something else, a thing so pure it was incomprehensible to a captain of musketeers whose gifts were all those of war. His mind knew that it was proper, that their words were being used for the good of all.
Onward the man-killing, soul-eating fog, the visible manifestation of evil magic, coming closer, little more than musket-shot away, less. Delatour knew in his mind, this could not stand, this was blasphemy against the Spirit of Man and the life which flowed from the stars, from The star behind him, backing him as the dawn rose and chased away the merely natural shadows. But the unnatural shadow came on, on, and his belly did
not know what his faith told him...
Strangling that he kept his war-face like stone, some of his men glancing back at him, their own fear obvious as they clutched amulets with the hands not needed to support their guns. The musketeers of the Eighth Company prayed with the fervor of men who knew they were damned otherwise, the zeal of those whose only salvation from the executioner's block was a stay of mercy from above.
The cloud came slower now, but tall,
tall, like the wall of a great castle, an impossible and unholy one, a structure of darkness that marched across the field to crush him and all that was his. Looming overhead, over the pikes and the mounted officers and the musketeers, the cloud rolled forward at a lazy, strolling pace. Was the warlock trying to toy with them? Slow... crawling... slower... still, at twice the length of a pikeshaft, the hungry darkness billowing forward, but now the more like a wall as it rippled back, held up by something invisible, unknown, perhaps one barrier, perhaps a shield-wall of a thosuand.
In the core of his spirit, Delatour was no more confident now than he'd been a minute ago... in his faith, he
knew. But his guts un-knotted and his breath came a little less forced... as the Regiment of Fayette cheered wildly, saved by the miracle they had so fervently desired.
Looking to his left, Delatour could see the cloud creeping closer to the six score or so plains horse screening their flank, who had stood slightly to the Ohioans' rear... A few riders cried out and spurred their horses 'round, but others whooped and screamed angrily, waving their swords in the face of doom. Few of the plainsmen knew the living Stars, but they had
courage.
Another prayer ran through his mind...
For those who kneel beside us, at altars not thine own, who lack the Lights that guide us... Stars, let their faith atone!
The captain saw other men glancing left and right at the commotion, some muttering the same words rather than merely cheering their own salvation, the tone of the priestesses' singing changing, but the fog was breaking there too. It could
not overcome so many faithful soldiers, could not bite even the infidels who guarded their backs!
The cloud of wicked sorcery began to thin out, fade, sink into the merely normal dark of the twilight that itself evaporated before the morning sun.
Colonel Blanchard shouted something that Delatour could
almost hear, even over the cheers of the tercio. Certainly he could hear the drums beat out his command to the men-
advance!
Marc Guillory of Detroit, mage of the fourth circle no more, slumped, weary at the flood of mana he'd drawn from the ley lines. They'd taken some of his own power with them, and struggling to control the energies of the tower was in itself enough to exhaust a less determined man. And despite all that power, he had nothing to show for it.
From atop the stone roof he'd had repaired and covered against the weather with stolen canvas, he surveyed the lands around... seeing what had approached him in his sleep as much by his arcane sensitivity to life-force, as by the faint light of dawn that was only now reaching the ground at least a score of yards below his elevated position.
Guillory was not a happy man.
The wave of death he’d used to consume villages and bind them to his service had...
failed, had not merely achieved less than he had hoped, but had failed altogether. His power had been rebuffed, defied, repelled by a magical shield he could neither analyze nor understand. Concentrating with the full power of his second sight, he thought he could see knots of spiritual essence, swirls of power and rays of energy darting back and forth among the Ohioan tercio. But there was nothing he recognized, no
spell of protection. No rival mage worthy of the name, none powerful enough to stand against him, perhaps none at all.
And yet... his spell had recoiled, defeated by that power vacuum, that nothingness he could not see or grasp, that total absence of sorcerous might. The ranks of pikemen and musketeers drew closer, blocks of men five, six, eight ranks deep. Cavalry fanned out to their flanks, cannon were towed up behind. Could he avoid them? Not their plainsmen horse, not in daylight, and the sun was just coming up in the east, behind the Ohioan ranks.
He had an army of his own- after a fashion. He had a thousand or so minions, such as they were. His zombies were, in all honesty, not the equal of a skilled fighting-man. One could animate the dead to fight on that level- beyond it, even. It had been done,
was done. But there were arts required, to reinforce tissues threatened by decay, to repair damage that the walking dead could not heal, lacking the natural processes of a living creature. To bolster their strength and coordination. And in his handful of snatched texts, from before he had been driven out by the arrogant lords of Detroit for combining their demonology with necromancy... he did not know enough! His research into the lore of the death-lords from before the War of Souls, and of the more modern- and more ancient- treatises of Tarn, had been incomplete!
And grimly, Guillory realized that the same death-lords he'd thought to emulate had been overthrown by the very ancestors of the army that faced him today.
For all his arrogance, Guillory was not a
complete fool. He knew he would need reinforcements of some kind... powerful ones. Falling back on his classical training, mind racing to the most powerful being of whom he knew, Guillory began tracing the proper polygons of augmentation in chalk, to boost and enhance the circle engraved on the floor.
He had never performed a summoning like this, but he knew the formalism from the lesser ones of his apprenticeship. With the augmentations, the magic that would command a lesser demon could also command a greater. And while another might fear the power of such a being as a shadow-lord, Guillory would remain safe from the entity's wrath, inside the bubble of defense generated by the graven circle in the stone, empowered by his knowledge of the true name of that which he was conjuring up.
Guillory's preparations were such that he needed no sacrifice at this moment, not as such. But he was in a hurry, one was desirable- and yet he was surrounded by, and in command of, only the dead. Wincing as his ceremonial dagger pricked the ball of his thumb, he allowed a few drops of his own blood to fall on the critical node. Further risk- but he could feel the resilient power flowing into his defensive wards, and it was
working!
A cloud of darkness materialized around the circle of conjuration, congealed into a humanoid figure, fourteen feet tall if it was an inch, heavy-bodied but clad in dark, light-drinking anti-flame that swathed its form like a robe. The shadow-lord loomed before him, blocking the rays of the morning sun, emitting palpable heat from its balefires. It gazed down at him, eyes glaring with a yellow brilliance and a penetrating intelligence. It looked around, then focused on Guillory.
“Xazonar, by power and blood I summon thee..."
"I see that... but where is thy sacrifice, hedge-wizard? I have had only a taste of blood... but I would have it all!" The demon's voice, gut-shaking in its depth and resonance, was also transparently mocking.
"So tell me, little mage, where is the rest?"
Guillory hurried through the formalisms as the overpowering monster examined his wards, with a curious eye... and a practiced one, he feared. The circle would hold, it
had to...
Almost gasping, the renegade shuddered through the words "By th- this circle I bind thee! H- heed my words, oh, oh... shadow-lord!”
”No.”
Guillory had used as the basis of his magic circle a remnant six generations old, by human reckoning. He had reshaped a few of the stones himself, repaired some of the damage so that the outer curve of his protective barrier at least
potentially strong. It was, in fact, fairly forceful. Ideally, strong enough even to ward against a shadow-lord. The ideal was not the reality; the barrier was not, as it so very much needed to be, truly circular. This introduced a flaw, a weakness, in the summoner's warding. Guillory never had been the best of geometers... or of stonecarvers.
Overconfidence, it turned out, had only
almost killed the renegade. Mistaking the radius of a circle for its diameter proved rather more fatal. Xazonar grinned as only a demon could grin, and burst Guillory's dome of force with a single blow of its immense, burning fist.
Delatour's eyes widened, and the common soldiers gave in to cries of shock and dismay shook the Ohioan ranks as the coal-black fiend rose atop the tower, unfolding itself, easily twice the height of a man and wrapped in a veil of dark un-flame that seemed to devour the sunlight. Its eyes burned with a piercing quality that gave it it a definite, distinctive,
gaze when Delatour looked at the creature's face, despite the great distance.
The colonel's drummer beat for a halt, and all were only too glad to obey.
Shock turned into confusion as the devil turned upon the glinting bubble of sorcery the warlock had woven, shattering it; from four hundred yards one could only know so much, but what Delatour could see was enough to tell him that the evil wizard was finally and definitively dead.
Spontaneously, of one, the regimental chaplains began the prayers of protection from evil once again, the star-robed women speaking slowly and clearly as their litanies were put to the test in terrible earnest. For whatever reason, the prayer was not granted at once- the fiend on the tower did not vanish. They shifted to the songs of protection and deliverance.
To his right, near the center of the regiment's line- yes, it was Travant riding out, flag of truce clipped to his saddle like it was the shaft of a lance. Colonel Blanchard must have decided to talk...
Delatour's surprise breached his war face, the men murmuring superstitiously, as they saw the young ensign ride across the field to parley with the devil on the tower.
Quietly, Delatour dismounted- the better to load his pistols from the musically-jingling pouch at his belt. Talking with devils was famously risky, after all, and a captain of musketeers would be wise to listen to his ghosts when such matters were afoot.
Xazonar the shadow-lord looked down from the height of the half-ruined tower, not particularly discomfited by staring into the teeth of the rising sun behind them. Fire, it was comfortable with; fire was an old ally.
This realm was apparently a human realm, at least this part of it was- wintry enough to be uncomfortable even for them, but clearly they were making the best of it. Otherwise, there wouldn't be an army of a thousand-odd human soldiers drawn up in array before the tower on which the feckless mortal wizard had summoned him.
One warrior on horseback rode out from the ranks of the human host. Either a champion or a messenger; either was likely when mortal armies encountered it, in its experience. This one had fixed to his saddle a banner of white- probably not a war-flag, it lacked decoration, and there was no magic attached to it. Also with some sort of crudely made trumpet in his hand... Though the human bore a sword at his side, and a few other devices Xazonar did not know, in places that suggested they were meant to be drawn quickly and wielded in battle.
A messenger. On another day, Xazonar might have mocked or obliterated a messenger sent by humans. But this particular lot of mortals were new to its experience, as was the heat-shimmer glow of wards in front of the ranks of their spears. The demon was not in the mood to trifle with a new force that might be some kind of a threat, even if they were uniformly its lessers. Not to the extent of disregarding an ancient propriety such as the safety of heralds.
The human messenger drew closer, reined in his horse, and shouted into that speaking-trumpet. That cone of brass amplified the voice of a plains ape into something almost respectable in its intensity.
"Hello the tower! I bear words from Sieur Charles Blanchard, knight of the Falls, baronet of Broken Ridge, colonel of the regiment of Fayette! Can you understand the Ohioan speech?"
Descrying the intent of the words, the shadow-lord replied. It recognized this language, a slightly debased version of one common in a human realm it remembered from, oh... four or five centuries ago. It needed no amplification to be heard clearly by the rider, probably not to be heard by the human army a hundred or so strides away. It certainly didn't bother with any.
"I can. But what hast thou to say to me?"
"We came for the wizard, and he is dead! Depart from this world, trouble our lands no more, and we will not come against you in war this day!"
Xazonar glowered at the human army. These were some
very insolent mortals, clearly in need of instruction in the natural order of things. There couldn't possibly be more than fifteen hundred of them, with a double handful of things-on-wagons that it thought might be scaled-up versions of those clever new alchemical stone-throwers humans used.
The shadow-lord thought quickly. What were its assets? It had a commanding height on which to stand without undue exertion, giving it good survey of the human ranks. It had the stones of the tower, which were charged enough with the magics of the local ley line to permit some interesting possibilities. It had- about a thousand knots of death-magic, troublesome to take over from the dead necromancer, and... its brow wrinkled in distaste. These were some
very low-grade zombies. Not worth the trouble to seize command of, really. Oh well, at least it could use them for raw materials. This could actually be challenging.
And the decades had been long since it had gotten a chance to instruct such a host in this way. To be sure, propriety should be observed even with mortals, but for them to challenge a shadow-lord thus in formal
Stepping off the tower, Xazonar folded its arms, grinning with fanged maw as it stood as firmly on the air as it had on the roof. Perhaps more firmly. Unlike the slain Guillory,
its sorcery was reliable and solid, the product of millenia of practice and a nature closer to the heart of magic than any human's. By contrast, the roof of the old tower had groaned to bear the weight of the shadow-lord's dense body.
In a voice deeper than any human throat could have duplicated, it replied, so very audible to the humans across the field. It then laughed as the herald wheeled his horse and departed at a frightened gallop, hearing its words.
"You should have brought more soldiers, little ones. Come at me if you dare!"
