Page 76 of Traitor Son

So many devils. How were there so many devils?

The riverbanks were boiling with them, gray-skinned ghouls and smoking black wolf demons, savaging the figures fleeing for the water. Someone on the hill was waving a torch in frantic arcs, trying to draw the attention of the devils to give someone else a chance to run.

So many devils. Stars, so many devils. Behind him, Siyoun heard a snarling that sent him bolting forward, and he tried not to see the ghoulsscrambling onto the far side of the docks, or feel the wood shaking under the weight of the thing behind him. The boards were warped and splintered, gray with weathering, and their repair was one of the many chores the fishermen frequently discussed amongst themselves, and never quite got around to doing.

On such small things, destinies were sometimes decided.

Beside him, Oranie tripped and went sprawling.

“Oranie!”Siyoun whirled to go back for her, his oar swinging out automatically, and so in the light of the moon he saw with perfect, eternal clarity his wife’s face frozen in a scream, her brown eyes wide with terror, and the sawtoothed maw of the wolf demon descending.

“Run, Siyoun,run!”

All those teethcrunched.

His son stopped crying.

Gone. They were gone. Just like that.

Siyoun turned and ran.

There were many young men standing before doors in the Andelin Valley. Many young mothers making desperate last stands for their children. Many elders sacrificing themselves, so that the next generation might live on. There were cowards and traitors, opportunists and scoundrels, and heroes whose deeds would only be known to the watching eyes of the stars.

A hundred miles away, in the town of Ferrede, there was one young man whose worth had yet to be measured.

“Someone mind that window,” said eighteen year-old Rollon of Hollisey, a squire who was hoping he would live to see his knighthood. As the last light of day faded from the edges of the shutters, the nighttime chorus was rising, and something struck the door a glancing blow, as if to test it.

Rollon and his small party had been chased into Ferrede that morning with the last of the night’s ghouls, after two sleepless weeks on the road. Most of those nights had been spent in treetops, kicking away stranglers and praying their horses would survive the night in makeshift corrals. For one single, blissful hour, Rollon had spotted the smoke rising from the chimneys of Ferrede, saw the stout wooden walls of the cottages, and thought:we’re safe.

As it turned out, the entire population of the village looked at him and thought the same thing.

But as Sir Huber said, that was what it meant to be a man at arms. Rollon had served as page and then as squire to Sir Huber Adaman throughout the Vallethi war, and though Sir Huber was not a loquacious man, it added weight to the words he spoke. He taught his pages that a sword was a responsibility, and if a man took up a weapon, he had an obligation to use it to defend those who could not defend themselves.

That was the oath a knight swore before his lord. And though Rollon was not yet a knight, he had knelt and sworn it before Remin, the Duke of Andelin: that he would protect the people of Ferrede, and build them a safe place against the devils.

Duke Andelin had only been seventeen when he saved Lomonde, Rollon told himself. And he had been a squire, too.

“Put at least two people on each window,” he said, trying to settle everyone else as well as himself. “The windows are high off the ground, and too narrow for anything but stranglers. Even if we lose a shutter, they won’t come flying through all at once. Not into a lit room with lots of people watching.”

Or so he hoped. All the villagers were crammed into three rooms just like this one, drying sheds raised on stone foundations, with high, narrow windows to let the wheat breathe as it dried. It had stout walls to keep out the vermin, and by daylight, it had seemed like a good idea to get everyone together behind those stout walls, with two armed soldiers on each door.

Now it occurred to him that it just meant every devil for fifty miles would be battering at a single structure.

Ghouls snarled at each other, thudding against the door, and behind him, a child started to cry.

“Sir knight,” said one of the women, her voice quavering. This did not seem like the time to remind them he wasn’t a knight yet. “There’s something scratching over here. It sounds like…digging.”

* * *

The glow of torchlight swayed, wobbling from side to side, and then plunged into the dark like a shooting star.

“Get that torch back up!” Remin shouted, moving at once into the new pool of shadow and smashing his shield out, sending three ghouls flying. The devils were streaming into Tresingale like a river, with the larger debris of the wolf demons surging in the flood, and Remin and his men were the riverbank trying to contain them with shields and spears, channeling them into the killing ground of the archers.

Unfortunately, the stranglers were learning to go for the torches.

Tomorrow, they would have to find a way to brace them somehow, Remin thought, moving into position to guard the men working to get the torch tower up and lit again, defending that darkened patch of ground as the devils rushed toward them. They did not fear the light, but they were strongest in the dark, and he went at once for a charging wolf devil, using his own shield as a break wall to smash it up and aside, heaving the beast into an open space in the nearest knot of men. A dozen spears stabbed it at once.

“It’s lit, my lord!” called a man behind him, and the line of shields moved at once back into position, bracing for the next wave of devils.

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