The sword defiant, p.1
The Sword Defiant, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan
Excerpt from The Lost War copyright © 2019 by King Lot Publishing Ltd.
Excerpt from Empire of Exiles copyright © 2022 by Erin M. Evans
Cover design by Sophie Harris—LBBG
Cover illustration by Thea Dumitriu
Maps by Jon Hodgson, Handiwork Games
Author photograph by Edel Ryder-Hanrahan
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950259
ISBNs: 9780316537155 (trade paperback), 9780316537308 (ebook)
E3-20230308-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Maps
List of Characters
Part One Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part Two Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Part Three Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Afterword
Discover More
Extras Meet the Author
A Preview of The Lost War
A Preview of Empire of Exiles
Also by Gareth Hanrahan
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LIST OF CHARACTERS
THE NINE HEROES
Peir+ of the Crownland, called the Paladin
Jan of Arshoth, called the Pious, priestess of the Intercessors
Blaise of Ellscoast, called the Scholar, master of the Wailing Tower
Berys the Rootless, later Lady Berys
Lath, a Changeling, called the Beast
Thurn of the As Gola tribe, saviour of the Wilder-folk of the northern woods
Gundan, son of Gwalir, General of the Dwarfholt
Laerlyn, daughter of the Erlking, Princess of the Everwood
Aelfric of Mulladale, called the Bonebreaker, dubbed Sir Lammergeier, Keeper of the Spellbreaker, also known as Alf
IN THE SOUTH
Olva, sister to Aelfric of Mulladale
Long Tom+, father to Aelfric and Olva
Galwyn Forster+, her late husband
Derwyn, her son
Cu, a suspicious dog
Bor, a Rootless mercenary
Torun, a dwarf who seeks to be a wizard
Lyulf Martens, a “merchant” in the blood trade
Abran, a priest turned Rootless knave, in league with Martens
IN NECRAD
Timeon Vond, governor of Necrad
Threeday, a Vatling
Abbess Marat, a priestess of the Intercessors
Gamling, lieutenant to Gundan
Remilard, a guard
Ceremos, an elf-child
Elithadil and Andiriel, his parents
(Formerly of Necrad, now defeated)
The Chieftain of the Marrow-Eaters+, an Ogre
Amerith the Oracle, a Witch Elf Seer
Acraist Wraith-Captain+, Hand of Bone, Wielder of the Sword Spellbreaker
Sundry other vampires, spirits and other horrors+
Lord Bone+ the Necromancer, the Dark Lord
IN THE NEW PROVINCES
Earl Duna, chief among the landholders of the New Provinces
Erdys of Ilaventur, his wife
Their sons, Sir Aelfric the Younger, Idmaer and Dunweld
Sir Prelan, a champion of the tourney ground
Sir Eddard Forster, a knight-errant
Talis+, daughter of Thurn
The Old Man of the Woods, a Wilder mystic
ON THE ISLE OF DAWN
Prince Maedos of Dawn, son of the Erlking, brother to Laerlyn
A simple gardener
PART ONE
From his city of Necrad, Lord Bone sent forth an evil host to despoil the land. Doom was at hand.
Nine arose in answer. Elf and Dwarf, Men of Summerswell and the northern Wild, heroes all. Know them now, for their names shall never be forgotten.
Thurn the Wilder, Lath the Beast,
Gundan of the Dwarfholt, Laerlyn of the Everwood,
Blaise the Scholar, Jan the Pious,
Aelfric Bonebreaker, ever faithful.
First among them, Peir the Paladin, Peir the Peerless.
It was Peir who gathered them and Peir who led them.
And at the last, it was Peir who died for them.
From The Song of the Nine, by Sir Rhuel of the Eaveslands
CHAPTER ONE
His story had not begun in a tavern, but Alf had ended up in one anyway.
“An ogre,” proclaimed the old man from the corner by the hearth, “a fearsome ogre! Iron-toothed, yellow-eyed, arms like oak branches!” He wobbled as he crossed the room towards the table of adventurers. “I saw it not three days ago, up on the High Moor. The beast must be slain, lest it find its way down to our fields and flocks!”
One of the young lads was beefy and broad-shouldered, Mulladale stock. He fancied himself a fighter, with that League-forged sword and patchwork armour. “I’ll wager it’s one of Lord Bone’s minions, left over from the war,” he declared loudly. “We’ll hunt it down!”
“I can track it!” This was a woman in green, her face tattooed. A Wilder-woman of the northern woods – or dressed as one, anyway. “We just need to find its trail.”
“There are places of power up on the High Moor,” said a third, face shadowed by his hood. He spoke with the refined tones of a Crownland scholar. An apprentice mage, cloak marked with the sign of the Lord who’d sponsored him. He probably had a star-trap strung outside in the bushes. “Ancient temples, shrines to forgotten spirits. Such an eldritch beast might…”
He paused, portentously. Alf bloody hated it when wizards did that, leaving pauses like pit traps in the conversation. Just get on with it, for pity’s sake.
Life was too short.
“… be drawn to such places. As might other… legacies of Lord Bone.”
“We’ll slay it,” roared the Mulladale lad, “and deliver this village from peril!”
That won a round of applause from the locals, more for the boy’s enthusiasm than any prospect of success. The adventurers huddled over the table, talking ogre-lore, talking about the dangers of the High Moor and the virtues of leaving at first light.
Alf scowled, irritated but unable to say why. He’d finish his drink, he decided, and then turn in. Maybe he’d be drunk enough to fall straight asleep. The loon had disturbed a rare evening of forgetfulness. He’d enjoyed sitting there, listening to village gossip and tall tales and the crackling of the fire. Now, the spell was broken and he had to think about monsters again.
He’d been thinking about monsters for a long time.
The old man sat down next to Alf. Apparently
“Bone’s ogres,” said Alf, “didn’t have tusks.” His voice was croaky from disuse. “They cut ’em off. Your ogre didn’t come out of Necrad.”
“You didn’t see the beast! I did! Only the Pits of Necrad could spawn such—”
“You haven’t seen the sodding Pits, either,” said Alf. He felt the cold rush of anger, and stood up. He needed to be away from people. He stumbled across the room towards the stairs.
Another of the locals caught his arm. “Bit of luck for you, eh?” The fool was grinning and red-cheeked. Twist, break the wrist. Grab his neck, slam his face into the table. Kick him into the two behind him. Then grab a weapon. Alf fought against his honed instincts. The evening’s drinking had not dulled his edge enough.
He dug up words. “What do you mean?”
“You said you were going off up the High Moor tomorrow. You’d run straight into that ogre’s mouth. Best you stay here another few days, ’til it’s safe.”
“Safe,” echoed Alf. He pulled his arm free. “I can’t stay. I have to go and see an old friend.”
The inn’s only private room was upstairs. Sleeping in the common room was a copper a night, the private room an exorbitant six for a poky attic room and the pleasure of hearing the innkeeper snore next door.
Alf locked the door and took Spellbreaker from its hiding place under the bed. The sword slithered in his grasp, metal twisting beneath the dragonhide.
“I could hear them singing about you.” Its voice was a leaden whisper. “About the siege of Necrad.”
“Just a drinking song,” said Alf, “nothing more. They didn’t know it was me.”
“They spoke the name of my true wielder, and woke me from dreams of slaughter.”
“It rhymes with rat-arsed, that’s all.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“It does the way they say it. Acra-sed.”
“It’s pronounced with a hard ‘t’,” said the sword. “Acrai-st the Wraith-Captain, Hand of Bone.”
“Well,” said Alf, “I killed him, so I get to say how it’s said. And it’s rat-arsed. And so am I.”
He shoved the sword back under the bed, then threw himself down, hoping to fall into oblivion. But the same dream caught him again, as it had for a month, and it called him up onto the High Moor to see his friend.
The adventurers left at first light.
Alf left an hour later, after a leisurely breakfast. Getting soft, he muttered to himself, but he still caught up with them at the foot of a steep cliff, arguing over which of the goat paths would bring them up onto the windy plateau of the High Moor. Alf marched past them, shoulders hunched against the cold of autumn.
“Hey! Old man!” called one of them. “There’s a troll out there!”
Alf grunted as he studied the cliff ahead. It was steep, but not insurmountable. Berys and he had scaled the Wailing Tower in the middle of a howling necrostorm. This was nothing. He found a handhold and hauled himself up the rock face, ignoring the cries of the adventurers below. The Wilder girl followed him a little way, but gave up as Alf rapidly outdistanced her.
His shoulders, his knees ached as he climbed. Old fool. Showing off for what? To impress some village children? Why not wave Spellbreaker around? Or carry Lord Bone’s skull around on a pole? If you want glory, you’re twenty years too late, he thought to himself. He climbed on, stretching muscles grown stiff from disuse.
At the top, he sat down on a rock to catch his breath. He’d winded himself. The Wailing Tower, too, was nearly twenty years ago.
He pulled his cloak around himself to ward off the breeze, and lingered there for a few minutes. He watched the adventurers as they debated which path to take, and eventually decided on the wrong one, circling south-east along the cliffs until they vanished into the broken landscape below the moor. He looked out west, across the Mulladales, a patchwork of low hills and farmlands and wooded coppices. Little villages, little lives. All safe.
Twenty years ago? Twenty-one? Whenever it was, Lord Bone’s armies came down those goat paths. Undead warriors scuttling down the cliffs head first like bony lizards. Wilder scouts with faces painted pale as death. Witch Elf knights mounted on winged dreadworms. Golems, furnaces blazing with balefire. Between all those horrors and the Mulladales stood just nine heroes.
“It was twenty-two years ago,” said Spellbreaker. The damn sword was listening to his thoughts again – or had he spoken out loud? “Twenty-two years since I ate the soul of the Illuminated.”
“We beat you bastards good,” said Alf. “And chased you out of the temple. Peir nearly slew Acraist then, do you remember?”
“Vividly,” replied the sword.
Peir, his hammer blazing with the fire of the Intercessors. Berys, flinging vials of holy water she’d filched from the temple. Gundan, bellowing a war cry as he swung Chopper. Gods, they were so young then. Children, really, only a few years older than the idiot ogre-hunters. The battle of the temple was where they’d first proved themselves heroes. The start of a long, bitter war against Lord Bone. Oh, they’d got side-tracked – there’d been prophecies and quests and strife aplenty to lead them astray – but the path to Necrad began right here, on the edge of the High Moor.
He imagined his younger self struggling up those cliffs, that cheap pig-sticker of a sword clenched in his teeth. What would he have done, if that young warrior reached to the top and saw his future sitting there? Old, tired, tough as old boots. Still had all his limbs, but plenty of scars.
“We won,” he whispered to the shade of the past, “and it’s still bloody hard.”
“You,” said the sword, “are going crazy. You should get back to Necrad, where you belong.”
“When I’m ready.”
“I can call a dreadworm. Even here.”
“No.”
“Anything could be happening there. We’ve been away for more than two years, moping.” There was an unusual edge to the sword’s plea. Alf reached down and pulled Spellbreaker from its scabbard, so he could look the blade in the gemstone eye on its hilt and—
—Reflected in the polished black steel as it crept up behind him. Grey hide, hairy, iron-tusked maw drooling. Ogre.
Alf threw himself forward as the monster lunged at him and rolled to the edge of the cliff. Pebbles and dirt tumbled down the precipice, but he caught himself before he followed them over. He hoisted Spellbreaker, but the sword suddenly became impossibly heavy and threatened to tug him backwards over the cliff.
One of the bastard blade’s infrequent bouts of treachery. Fine.
He flung the heavy sword at the onrushing ogre, and the monster stumbled over it. Its ropy arms reached for him, but Alf dodged along the cliff edge, seized the monster’s wrist and pulled with all his might. The ogre, abruptly aware of the danger that they’d both fall to their deaths, scrambled away from the edge. It was off balance, and vulnerable. Alf leapt on the monster’s back and drove one elbow into its ear. The ogre bellowed in pain and fell forward onto the rock he’d been sitting on. Blood gushed from its nose, and the sight sparked unexpected joy in Alf. For a moment, he felt young again, and full of purpose. This, this was what he was meant for!
The ogre tried to dislodge him, but Alf wrapped his legs around its chest, digging his knees into its armpits, his hands clutching shanks of the monster’s hair. He bellowed into the ogre’s ear in the creature’s own language.
“Do you know who I am? I’m the man who killed the Chieftain of the Marrow-Eaters!”
The ogre clawed at him, ripping at his cloak. Its claws scrabbled against the dwarven mail Alf wore beneath his shirt. Alf got his arm locked across the ogre’s throat and squeezed.
