Page 42 of The Kingdom of Flames

The Lord of the Red Banners had arrived. His steed was blood and armor, snarling its cry into the air. Encarmine’s circlet was ablaze, and crows or demons circled his brow. Gone was the stately soldier. His armor was warped, shining crimson. He was the visage of black and red, and where he rode, crows seemed to follow, carrion pickers for his onslaught.

Encarmine crashed into the Scarlet host. Vermilion’s fighters went flying in pieces. The Red Lord’s blade was practically burning, and his eyes blazed red.

“CELESTINE!” he roared, and she trembled at the sound of his voice. The Scarlet Lord was a monster, a fiend. But Encarmine, in his full rage, frightened her.

This is him. Truly him. He is the cry of widows and keeps torn asunder.

She smelled fields burning that were not there. The lord of war and battle, of challenge and conquest, was among the Scarlet host. He swung and split men in half. He reached down and ripped out throats. Eyes burst under the shove of his gauntleted fingers. His circlet was horned, almost like a helm. A demon of war.

“Encarmine!” Vermilion screamed to him.

Dozens of men swarmed her Red Lord. Celestine looked up to see his forces approaching, but the Red Lord had broken away and taken the battle on himself. Scarlet cavalry flew from the flanks of the ruined castle, and the Red Banners responded. There were war cries. There were threats and oaths shouted in the wind.

Encarmine was terrible to behold. Unnerving. It was as if the essence of every war, every battle, every siege stained the air. When he roared, it was the sound of a thousand men shouting. When he killed, it sounded like a battlefield instead of a single blow. Reality of this strange realm formed around him. Men died by the dozens until he was in a frenzy of spraying blood and cleaved bodies. His sword never ceased moving.

A mounted pikemen rode over his compatriots to stab at him, and Encarmine swung around and felled the horse with a brutal swipe of his hand. The rider fell to his knees, and Celestine saw him press an armored boot down on him, the weight of a castle crushing the man so slowly as Encarmine pressed him into bone and burst organ.

Vermilion leapt from the tower, a landing that would have killed any man or beast. But he landed like silk.

Red Bannered cavalry routed, seeing the Scarlet Lord, and broke for him. Celestine mouthed for them not to come close. He was too deadly, but the grim and determined faces of her comrades wouldn’t be put away even if they could have heard her. This was an insult. His existence, his presence, an affront to their realm and way of life.

Crows circled, and sunlight burned where Encarmine moved. She saw a man screech as her Lord gutted him, then backhanded another armored man in full plate, dashing his skull like a rotted melon in his helm.

Red cavalry slammed into Vermilion. He wore no armor. He was tall, monstrous, his circlet dripping blood. The air around him circled with flapping bats and creatures of the night, but nothing stopped the proud Red soldiers from assaulting him. Dozens of spears dipped. They broke against his clawed hands. Where Encarmine was wrath and war incarnate, Vermilion became something else. A predator in a nest. His hands snaked out faster than lightning, rending armor apart. Blinding horses. Snatching spears away and feeding them back to their owners in brutal thrusts that erupted through their bodies.

It was horrific. Dreadful. The sheer number of men made it impossible to move, turning killing into a chaotic frenzy. The Scarlet soldiers, pale and vicious, fought with brutality. But nothing could match the Red Banners, a life made for this onslaught. They killed two for every one of their own that fell. Dozens more died in the melee with Vermilion, but Encarmine’s feet were thick with a river of blood.

Celestine watched, her clothing hanging about her in tatters. The sound of it was enough to drive anyone mad. Steel, horses screaming, men spitting and dying and gurgling.

Encarmine and Vermilion came for one another. A circlet of bone and flesh meeting one of black iron and red mist. Vermilion threw himself upon Encarmine, the Scarlet Lord digging into his flanks and face so fast it was hard to see. Encarmine snarled, snapping a spiked fist into the fiend’s face. He moved like a god. This was his land, this enemy: beneath him. It wasn’t just hatred; it was contempt, and Encarmine slid his runed sword across Vermilion’s leg indifferently, as if he were dealing with a child.

Vermilion shrieked in rage. He flew at Encarmine, but Encarmine’s defense was impregnable, his onslaught unstoppable. The two of them were a blur of scarlet and blazing red.

The final blow came. Encarmine took a raking claw to his head so hard his circlet shifted, but he pushed through, bringing his sword up in two hands. Vermilion snapped the sword out of his hand, but Encarmine kept his hand moving, grabbing the Lord of Autumn’s throat and lifting him so high, rage bellowing, before impaling him on a scarlet banner protruding from the ground.

The clouds broke above Celestine, and the agonizing howl of Vermilion echoed across the battlefield. She held her hands to her ears. Those too close to the Lords of Season fell to their knees, eardrums bursting.

“Welcome to the Red Realm,” Encarmine growled, sliding the Scarlet Lord’s body lower, impaling him further onto the spear. The point erupted through his collarbone, his haunting pale form becoming a cruciform nightmare. “You feed on blood, little fiend, but I am the storm. It is shed in my name.”

Vermilion howled and struggled against the long banner.

Encarmine impaled his hands above him before dragging him from the field like a long-spitted hog behind him. Celestine watched in terror as the Scarlet Lord put to such abject butchery. Encarmine found his mount and rode, towing the screaming Scarlet Lord behind his horse. Back and forth, even as the Scarlet forces fled and ran for the river where their boats waited.

Somehow, Celestine could hear Encarmine even from so far away. His voice and words carried by magic.

“I hear you heal better than any other, Vermilion. Let’s see the touch of summer welcome you as it should.”

Just then, the sky parted, and the sun beamed down. It shone on the two of them.

Vermilion let fly a scream that Celestine knew would haunt her dreams forever. Dragged into sunlight, impaled, his pale flesh began to turn red, then black with acrid smoke. The sun above their two figures intensified, roasting him.

Encarmine turned from his vanquished foe. A message to all who entered his realm. His armies were doing the same. Their fury and hatred let loose. They ran among the wounded, silencing them with spears or drawing their cries out before hoisting their screaming bodies high on displays of their macabre warning.

Celestine felt the red eyes of her lord upon her. Her body no longer hurt. Her heart was hammering. Conquest, victory, the close kiss of defeat—all washed over her, and even though she had no part in this battle, she felt a part of its victory. The pinpoint leverage that the onslaught, that hundreds had slain and maimed.

Encarmine marched towards the tower. His tower. Celestine’s eyes locked onto his, his body covered in blood. His armor dented and ruined, but his back was straight, unbroken, marching from the destroyed Lord behind him, insignificant—not even worth a backward glance.

Men chanted his name on the battlefield. As they had for a thousand years. As they would for another thousand. His name wasn’t Encarmine. It wasn’t any word. It was the grunt a warrior made when battling another. It was the sound of a hundred boots marching. It was the lament of the widow, the orphan. The impaled and mutilated opponent.

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