Surrender to the will of the night

4. Stranglhorm, at Guretha,

Shadowed by the Ice Stranglhorm had been the seat of the Master of the Grail Order for two centuries. A sprawling fortress of small city size, it never faced a serious threat, though it had been besieged a dozen times. The fortifications expanded with the decades. Growth ended only after the Grail Knights pushed the frontiers of the faith so far out that countless subsidiary strongholds had to be built to protect roads and shrines, and to provide local sanctuaries. The pagans called their lost territories the Land of Castles.

Stranglhorm crouched on a moraine, brooding over a bend in the Turuel River, which emptied immediately into the Shallow Sea. Once the waterfront had seethed with activity. A city, Guretha, took life alongside the river, then spread across it, trailing stone bridges behind. But now Guretha was a city swiftly dying.

The Shallow Sea had grown shallower. The Grand Marshes had drained or had frozen. New land had been exposed by the recession of the waters. Navigation had become impossible, except in fits and starts when the tides were favorable. A new breed of ship had come into being. It was wide, had a shallow draught, and was stout enough to survive periodic groundings. When the waters were not frozen.

The northern gulfs of the Shallow Sea no longer thawed. Colonies of sea people no longer existed east of the Ormo Strait. In fact, the mer were almost extinct. Only a few colonies, much diminished, survived in the Andorayan Sea, around underwater wells of power still leaking feebly.

Most all Andoray lay beneath the ice. North Friesland, likewise. During winters the Ormo Strait threatened to become covered with great arching bridges of ice.

The tidal currents were too fierce for the strait itself to freeze. Their power would be tamed only after the level of the seas fell a lot farther.

Where there was any warmth at all hardy men held on, confident that God would turn the seasons. That the wells of power would wax strong again. As in legend they always had.

The Chaldareans of Duarnenia and principalities east of the Shallow Sea had withdrawn to Guretha and other coastal cities established by the Grail Order. Many continued on, desperately, following the Shirstula River south into countries where they would be unwelcome because of their desperation. Clever kings and princes used some to begin clearing lands abandoned since the plague-ridden end days of the Old Empire, when populations had fallen by more than half.

A strange, small army came to Guretha, out of the icy wastes. All thin folk with bones and skulls in their hair, carrying standards made of flayed manskin and totems built of human heads and bones. They seemed half dead themselves. There were no elderly among them. They brought their women and children right up to the edge of the fight. Their eyes were empty and hollow. They reminded their enemies of the draugs of yore, the dead who rose against the living. They did not talk. They attacked. They took food where they found it.

Guretha resisted. Of course. The Grail Knights fought. They committed great slaughters. But wherever resistance solidified something irresistible soon appeared. It wore the shape of a man but had seven fingers on its left hand, six on its right. It was a foul, pale green with hints of brown patches. Its skin appeared polished. It had hard cat’s eyes and smelled of old death newly freed from the ice. It carried a cursed two-handed sword so ancient it was made of bronze. Though soft metal, that blade did not yield to the finest modern steel. It broke through the stoutest shields and breastplates.

The Grail Knights were veterans of long wars. They did not waste themselves on forlorn hopes. Two encounters convinced them they could not overcome Krepnight, the Elect, hand-to-hand.

They stopped fighting. Gurethens who were quick retreated into Stranglhorm. Laggards fled across the bridges to the south bank of the Turuel. The city militias held the bridges. The invaders tried to flank them by crossing over in captured boats.

Krepnight, the Elect, stalked the Grail Knights to their fortress. Archers and crossbowmen kept the accompanying savages at a distance. They were a mob, not an army. What drove them? They were starving, yet seldom allowed themselves to be distracted by food or loot.

The Grail Knights withdrew, over the great drawbridge spanning the dry moat in front of the fortress gate. Engines atop the wall laid missile fires on the attackers. Krepnight, the Elect, suffered several hits. The savages yanked the offending shafts out of him. He forged ahead, undeterred.

Fierce, panicky shouting broke out inside the gate. The drawbridge had risen but a foot when its chains jammed. Then the outer portcullis fell five feet and refused to descend any farther.

Shrieked, frightened orders rattled around inside Stranglhorm. Get the inner portcullis down! But the backup refused to budge.

Decades had passed since the machinery had been asked to do anything but sit and rust.

The attackers cried praises to the Windwalker. They wanted to swarm across that drawbridge. But they would not move ahead of Krepnight, the Elect.

Krepnight, the Elect, would open the way.

The weird thing stepped up onto the drawbridge and crossed, sharp teeth betrayed in triumph. A Grail Knight in full battle gear, astride a huge charger, appeared behind the partially descended portcullis. He bellowed an order that it be raised so he could couch his lance and dispose of the monster. But the portcullis would not rise, either. The Grail Knight turned away, swearing by the body parts of the Founders that he would slay the monster once it came into the forecourt.

Krepnight, the Elect, advanced like confident doom. Today would see the end of Stranglhorm, Guretha, and these faint champions of a spineless southron god.

Krepnight, the Elect, ducked the portcullis and strode forward, charmed sword tasting the darkness of the passage.

Came a roar like all the thunders of a vast storm unleashed at once. Pale, eye-watering smoke billowed out of the gateway. Savages fell by the score, slashed into chopped meat.

The Grail Knights and their hardy foot swept beneath portcullises miraculously healed, then across a drawbridge suddenly fallen into place. The butchery began. Man and boy, mother and child, no mercy was shown. The heathen had shown none themselves. Few escaped. Only a boy named Boogha lived to carry news of an inexplicable defeat. And he died cruelly for having disappointed the Windwalker.