Sons of the Oak

Fallion woke as the boat thudded against the shore, the wind screaming all around.

He grabbed his dagger and leapt up, his hand still aching from his wound, and climbed out of the shelter. Borenson and Myrrima were poling the boat away from the rocks, but the wind was so fierce that their efforts did little good. Fallion looked around, realized that Hadissa and his mother were gone.

“What’s going on?” Fallion cried, and in a moment Jaz was there at his back.

Borenson turned, his face red from effort, and shouted, “Get back inside!”

“Can I help?” Fallion called.

“No!” Borenson shouted, and he turned and peered upriver, his face stark with alarm.

Fallion followed his gaze. A black wind was driving bullets of rain into his face. On the banks, running between trees, dozens of enemy troops rushed toward them.

“Are we going to die?” Jaz asked.

“Get in the shelter,” Borenson shouted, pushing Fallion and Jaz away. The tarp roof of their shelter flapped like a drumhead, thrumming from the wind. Fallion got in the shelter, but scrambled to the back so that he could peer upstream through cracks between the crates.

Something-a strange cloud-was rolling toward them-a ball of night with shadows dancing inside, strengi-saats seemingly carried in a maelstrom.

Lightning flashed overhead and thunder rumbled, troubling the waters. And all around that ball of shadow warriors swarmed toward the boat, moving so swiftly by reason of endowments that Fallion’s eyes could not follow them.

Ahead of the maelstrom, one warrior in the dark tunic of an assassin sprinted toward the boat-Hadissa!

Borenson raced to the door of their little fortress, blocking it with his bulk, and stood guard.

“Hide!” he warned the children. “Find the safest corner.”

Fallion gripped his own dagger. Though he was only nine, he had trained with weaponry for as long as he could remember, and calluses from blade practice had grown thick on his palm and along the inside of his thumb.

Suddenly from the black storm that came rushing toward them came a howl, deep and almost wolflike, but ululating rapidly-like cries of glee with words in them. At first Fallion thought it might be the hunting cries of strengi-saats.

Then he wondered if it might be the wind, howling like some beast. Fallion listened closely.

The ball of wind rolled toward Hadissa, who shouted a battle cry as he turned in one last desperate attempt to meet the enemy.

The wind screamed, and Fallion saw a dark knot of straw suddenly rise up out of the grass and shoot toward Hadissa, hurtling like bolts from a ballista.

The assassin leapt and tried to dodge as he spun in midair. The pieces of straw lanced toward him, and Fallion thought that they had missed, for when Hadissa landed, he stood on the balls of his feet.

But the wind was buffeting him, propping him up like a marionette. It lifted him in the air slowly, letting him spin, so that Fallion could see the ruin of his face.

The straw had pierced his right eye socket, burrowed through his brain, and left a gaping hole out the back of his head. A small tornado whirled through the hole still, sending more bits of straw through his socket, expanding the hole, so that brain matter and flecks of blood hurtled from the back of the wound.

The wind worked Hadissa’s mouth as if he jabbered inanely. Then the wind tossed him high into the air.

Fallion gasped in shock.

Hadissa had always seemed to be a fixture in Fallion’s life, a monolith. Now he was dead.

The maelstrom of dark wind boiled toward the boat.

A ball of lightning hurtled from the blackness and shot toward them. Fallion whirled, placing his back to a box for protection, turning away from the attack.

He peered up at Borenson. The ball lightning sizzled just overhead so that Fallion felt his hair stand on end. There was a crackling sound, a grunt and a cry, and for half a second, Borenson’s chest lit up so brightly that Fallion could see the red of blood and veins in it, the gray shadows of ribs. The blast hurtled him into the air, knocking him overboard.

Fallion let out a startled cry.

Suddenly he was plunged into utter darkness. Then Fallion’s eyes began to readjust.

Myrrima let out a shrill cry and grabbed her bow. Though the wind raged all around, the wizardess seemed calm, collected.

She drew her steel bow to its full and shouted, “Come no farther. You cannot have these children.”

The wind howled and raged. Fallion heard it keen over the boat, ripping trees from the bank by their roots.

Suddenly everything went quiet. For half a second, he just crouched, listening. It was as if the wind had disappeared.

He heard a dull thud, and Fallion felt as if he were at the heart of a storm. He could hear wind swirling around in the distance. Darkness had so enveloped the boat that he could hardly make out Myrrima’s shadow, though she was no more than a dozen feet away.

The enemy was out there, waiting.

Fallion peered through the crack. Around him the rest of the children huddled, trembling from fear.

From out of the darkness strode a man, all in black. At first, Fallion thought that it was a stranger. But then he saw that it was Hadissa, and he was not striding. Instead, he moved in little hops as the wind picked him up a bit, then let him bounce back down, his feet barely touching the ground.

Behind him, grim warriors strode through the shadows, and dark strengisaats floated through the air, borne like kites, appearing briefly and then disappearing again. Myrrima let an arrow fly, and one strengi-saat dropped like a wounded dove.

A fierce light shone, ball lightning spewing around Hadissa’s head, as if the wind wanted Fallion to see this.

Hadissa drew near, a pale marionette, perhaps a hundred paces across the river; his dead mouth flapped like a scrap of cloth in the wind. His one good eye was fixed and growing cloudy, but it was the ragged hole where the other eye should have been that seemed to focus on Fallion. Wind surged through it, into the dead man’s skull, and issued out through his windpipe, causing the ragged flesh to tremble as he spoke.

“Come with me, child,” the wind insisted in a strange, rasping voice. “Long have I waited. You are a lord of the living, but I can make you King of the Dead.”

Fallion’s heart beat so fast that he thought it might break. It took all his courage to keep from running, to keep from leaping into the river, but something inside whispered that fleeing would accomplish nothing. There was something mesmerizing about the voice, haunting.

He could taste the air, a blazing hot streak across the bridge of his cheek-the scent of evil.

“No!” Fallion shouted, his heart hammering with fear.

Myrrima strode to the back of the boat, placing herself between Fallion and Hadissa with another arrow nocked in her bow, and shouted, “Asgaroth, show yourself!”

With a tremendous surge the wind batted her. She went tumbling away to Fallion’s right, skidding across the slick hull of the boat. She hit the gunwale with a thud, grunted in pain, and tried to right herself.

Fallion faced the dead man. The wind keened outside, its voice terrifying, and Hadissa’s face, growing blue in death, seemed to tower above him.

I should get out of here, Fallion thought. I should run, lead the enemy away from the rest of the children.

“In the name of the One True Master,” the wind hissed through Hadissa’s teeth, “I claim you. And by the power of the One Rune, I bind you to me.”

A gust ripped the roof from their little shelter, leaving them open to the sky. Fallion’s shirt ripped, leaving his young chest bare, and he felt wind racing over his flesh-an unpleasant sensation, as if a line of red ants marched upon his skin.

Dimly, a part of his mind became aware that some beast beyond his comprehension drew runes upon him, runes of Air. He could not see them, could not know what they might do. He reached up and tried to brush them off.

But he felt a change taking place, as if cords were wrapping about his chest, making it hard to draw a breath.

“You are mine,” the wind hissed. “You will serve me. Though your heart may burn with righteous desires, your noblest hopes will become fuel to fire despair among mankind. That which you seek to build will crumble to ash. War shall follow you all of your days, and though the world may applaud your slaughter, you will come to know that each of your victories is mine.

“And thus I seal you, till the end of time…”

Fallion stood for a moment in the darkness, Hadissa’s dead face grinning down from the bank, the man’s arms flopping lifelessly. Invisible bands held Fallion upright; and he could not breathe. Indeed, each gasp brought only a dark wind filled with dust.

He realized that he was going to faint. His legs felt as frail as willow fronds. It seemed that the only thing propping him up was the wind.

The storm prowled around the boat like a hunting beast. It gave a keening cry, as if the whole of the heavens were shouting in victory.

Fallion stood on the boat, stunned, filled with terror-not a fear of the beast that had assailed him, but a fear of what he might become.

Now Asgaroth’s dark minions rushed through the trees toward the boats, warriors and monsters. The clouds overhead kept the whole world in shadow; for the second time that day Fallion wished for light.

Almost as if summoned by his wish, the sky brightened, and through howling wind and driving rain Fallion saw a shadow mounted upon a bloodred horse-Asgaroth himself.

In that instant, a small figure rose up from beneath a fallen log near Hadissa, a woman with silver hair flying in the wind. She moved with blinding speed. She raced to Hadissa, reached into his scabbard with one hand, grasped his sword as she passed, sent it flying end over end into the mist and driving rain-

It struck Asgaroth’s chest. For a long moment, Asgaroth sat in seeming astonishment, gazing down at the blade that impaled him.

Fallion’s heart pounded as he watched for a reaction. Asgaroth was a Runelord, drawing power through dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of endowments.

There were stories of men who had taken so much stamina that they could hardly be killed. They could fight on in battle with arms hacked off, trailing their own guts, and live to tell the tale.

It seemed improbable that Asgaroth could be defeated with a single blow from a sword, and Fallion half expected him to come shrieking into battle, drawing the blade that transfixed him as if pulling it from a fleshly scabbard, then wreaking havoc upon them all.

But blood gurgled from Asgaroth’s mouth. The sword seemed to have pierced his lung, perhaps even cleaving his heart in half.

He leaned his head back and a scream issued from his throat. It became louder and louder, a death cry that shook the heavens; a plume of bloody air spewed out of his throat, went swirling skyward.

Suddenly the wind grew in ferocity. The cry rose from a scream to a rumbling roar. Blood spewed skyward; Asgaroth seemed to explode, his arms and torso ripping away like worn cloth, and a huge wind gusted up, a vortex that rose and rose into a towering tornado that lifted his horse from the ground, sucked up nearby trees, and pulled tufts of grass and dirt into the medley.

An elemental of air, Fallion realized.

Asgaroth had been a servant of Air, a wind-driven wizard, and thus had an elemental within him.

The more powerful the sorcerer, the greater the elemental. The creature rising up now was monumental.

The wind screamed around them, whirling madly, as if the heavens themselves were coming to life, as if the sky would split in half. Asgaroth’s troops and the strengi-saats shouted and tried to rush away from the vortex.

The wind tore the voices of men and monsters away, so that their cries came from a seeming distance, like the cries of gulls far out to sea, and Fallion saw more than one strengi-saat whirl up into the maelstrom, snarling and shrieking as it was torn asunder.

Quickly the tornado grew, its base remaining on the ground while its top whirled up into the slate gray clouds, lost to sight, where suddenly even the clouds whirled and turned green and lightning crackled and shone like a crown.

Many men and creatures ran for their lives, but Iome was the fastest of them, and she raced now, a Runelord in the height of her power, leaping ten yards to a stride. In five bounds she raced down the bank and hit the water, then tried to run across it, her feet a blur. But she didn’t have enough endowments of metabolism, and by the time that she was three-quarters of the way across the river, she floundered, bobbed underwater, and an instant later shot up at the side of the boat and pulled herself in.

Meanwhile, Myrrima was shouting to Borenson, “Grab the pole,” as she tried fishing him from the river. The boat had beached, but the current was dragging Borenson downstream.

Groggily, Borenson cursed and sputtered, trying to make it to the boat. Fallion gaped in surprise, supposing that Borenson had been killed by the lightning.

Fallion raced to the gunwale and grabbed Borenson’s cape, tried pulling him in, but Borenson wore ring mail beneath his tunic, and Fallion could hardly budge him. It wasn’t until Iome grasped Borenson that they were able to drag him into the boat.

By then, the tornado had reached its full height, and now it thundered toward them, making the earth rumble, pulling whole trees up by their roots, slinging boulders across the ground.

The wind surged, singing past Fallion’s ears, tugging his clothes, slapping his face.

Several of Asgaroth’s warriors were racing toward the boat, and now they looked back in horror as the tornado overtook them, plucked them up kicking and screaming, their arms waving in the air, bearing them into the heavens.

This is the end, Fallion thought.

He suddenly became conscious that Rhianna was grasping onto his leg, as if to hold on to him for support. Talon clutched her baby sister and hunched over protectively, while all of the other children screamed in fear.

The only one who showed no fear was Myrrima. She calmly picked up her bow, drew an arrow from the quiver at her back, and fired into the broiling tempest.

The bolt flew true, singing into the funnel cloud.

What is she thinking? Fallion wondered. An arrow won’t help.

But the wind suddenly roared like a wounded animal and grew in fury. Dark dirt surged up, blackening the funnel cloud.

To Fallion’s utter amazement, the tornado stopped in its course, leapt in the air, and reeled backward over the land, only to touch down a quarter of a mile away, where it plucked up trees and dirt and hurled them in its fury.

It blurred away, at dozens of miles per hour.

In mere seconds it was gone.

He peered at Myrrima in awe, recalled how she had washed her arrows in water at dawn.

She must have cast a powerful spell indeed, Fallion realized.

The world seemed to go still. Fallion could hear the roar of the tornado in the distance, could even feel the rumble through the soles of his shoes, but nearby there wasn’t a sound.

And above, the clouds shattered like glass, and to Fallion’s delight, the sun burst through clear and strong, its rays slanting in through rain. Suddenly the most brutal gray clouds he had ever seen became nothing but a backdrop for a brilliant rainbow.

Everyone just stood or sat on the boat, breathing heavily, Talon weeping in relief, Borenson looking up at the skies in wonder, Iome laughing and sniffing.

It was in such circumstances that a warhorn blew a moment later, and some of Mystarria’s own troops came rushing along the riverbank.

Dozens of Asgaroth’s men had escaped, along with no small number of strengi-saats. Many of the enemy troops had crawled into thickets seeking shelter, and all along the riverbank the Mystarrians engaged whatever enemy they could find, dragged them from their hiding holes, and put them to the sword. They sang a battle song as they slew.

“We are born to blood and war,

Like our fathers were, a thousand years before.

Sound the horn. Strike the blow!

Down to grief or glory go!”

Myrrima looked out upon the slaughter, and whispered, “I never knew that such rough old hawks could sing so beautifully.”

But Fallion watched it all in dismay, for he could still feel the fiery ants marching across his chest with tiny feet of wind, and he wondered.

Am I cursed?