They rode for a day.
Eirik's face was numb. His fingers, even with the triple-layer gloves, had been numb for hours. Cold had seeped into his body and was now residing in his bones.
Yet he continued to ride.
Their elite guard rode in close formation. Ser Konrad rode at the forefront, while Velthan was near the center. Lord Caelum rode alongside him, his handsome face unblemished by the cold, though Eirik noted that the Duke's son was reaching for his waterskin more often.
Their gambit was starting to have its effects.
Eirik looked back at the nine men following him, huddled in their saddles. Olaf's beard was frozen solid. Kael's head was bowed. The rest of the Talons were much the same: quiet, suffering, but in motion nonetheless.
Everyone except Brenn.
The veteran sat in the middle of the Talon formation, surrounded on both sides by two of his fellow soldiers who seemed to be holding him upright on his mount. His face had progressed from a waxy pallor to a grayish-blue that was downright terrifying. His bandaged hand clutched tightly to his chest, but Eirik could see the stains spreading through the cloth even from a distance.
Eirik pushed his pony along, moving to ride alongside Brenn's horse.
"How are you holding up?"
Brenn's eyes were partially closed. For a moment, Eirik thought he hadn't heard the question.
Then the words came out slurred: "Fine, Commander."
"Let me see your hand."
Brenn paused and then held out his arm.
Eirik carefully pulled away the edge of the bandage.
His stomach churned.
The tissue around the wound had turned black. The edges of the cuts Caelum had made were puffy and oozing a thin, yellowish liquid.
Frostbite. With infection.
"Commander?" Brenn's voice was little more than a whisper. "That bad?"
Eirik replaced the bandage.
"We'll get you to shelter," he said. "Just hold on."
He had to speak with Velthan.
Eirik made his way up toward the front of the column where Velthan and Caelum were riding side by side. Being inside the warmth-bubble of the Archmage was like going from winter into early autumn—it was such a relief that Eirik almost gasped.
"Archmage," Eirik said. "How much farther?"
Velthan turned, his eyes creasing in what almost seemed to be amusement.
"Ah, Lord Stormcrow. You arrive just in time."
He raised his staff and pointed to the horizon.
"Look."
Eirik squinted against the glare of snow and sickly green sky.
Nothing at first. Just more of the same that had characterized their entire journey so far.
Then his eyes adjusted.
Walls.
They loomed out of the snow huge and towering. And at their center, almost hidden in the mist of distance and weather, stood a gate.
"Is that—" Eirik's voice caught. "Is that the Sunless City?"
"Not quite," Velthan said, lowering his staff. "This is Frostwatch. A fortress constructed during the peak of General Abercrombie's northern campaign."
The Archmage's tone turned into what Eirik remembered from their first encounter.
"The General realized that no single city, no matter how strong, could single-handedly defend the north. He required a series of defenses—a series of fortifications that would act as chokepoints where any invading force would be funneled into prepared killing zones."
Velthan gestured expansively towards the world around them.
"Frostwatch was the final line before the Sunless City itself. Its walls were to withstand armies ten times its garrison strength."
"But it fell," Eirik continued.
"Everything falls, eventually." The voice was gentle. "The General's supply lines were severed, Frostwatch was the first domino that toppled. The garrison lasted six months on ration alone, then they ate their horses. After that, they ate their leather. Eventually, they ate..."
The Archmage trailed off.
"When the walls finally gave way, the enemy found a city of skeletons."
Eirik gazed at the distant walls.
"And the Sunless City?"
"Maybe a day's ride to the north, but we can't just go around those walls, Lord Stormcrow. The only way through is Frostwatch."
"So we go through."
"Yes." The Archmage's voice lowered. "But you must realize what that entails."
He lifted his staff again, and a burst of light shone out of its tip—a gentle, golden glow that repelled the greenish tinge of the sky.
"ALL SOLDIERS!" Velthan's voice carried across the column. "HALT AND GATHER!"
The column came to a stop. Riders dismounted and formed a loose semicircle around the Archmage. Eirik's Talons were with them, with Brenn between Olaf and another soldier.
Velthan waited until he had the attention of the whole group.
"You have all done very well," he began. "The Badlands crossing is one of the hardest routes that exist, and you have all managed it with the fortitude that one would expect of the Duke's best."
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He paused.
"But I must warn you now of what lies ahead."
The Archmage raised his staff, and the golden illumination strengthened. In its brilliance, the distant walls of Frostwatch appeared to sharpen.
"When Frostwatch fell, the Khorath–the pre-Skarl nomads–conducted rituals over the bodies—the ancient rituals were designed to make certain the spirits of the dead would never find rest. They wanted the spirits of Frostwatch to be a warning to anyone who would follow in the General's footsteps."
A murmur ran through the ranks.
"The energy inside is tainted. Twisted by the pain and the anger over the years. The spirits of the departed will feed on anything living who enters their territory."
He lifted his free hand, and a glowing barrier of light appeared around all of them.
"This will filter out the psychic emissions that would otherwise drive you to madness in mere minutes of entering." The voice of the Archmage grew stern. "But it comes with a price."
He looked at Eirik directly.
"The barrier will only work if we keep moving forward. As soon as someone turns back, the barrier will fail. For all of us."
Eirik felt the weight of a hundred stares.
"If one man makes a mistake," Velthan went on, "we all die. Do you understand that?"
Nods. Grim, resigned nods.
"Good." The Archmage lowered his hand. "We ride for Frostwatch. And no matter what you are tempted with from the darkness—do not respond."
He turned the pony toward the distant walls.
"Move out."
They set out to Frostwatch as the sun began its downward journey to the horizon.
The walls loomed larger and larger as Eirik walked. What had been impressive from a distance was now just overwhelming. The walls towered above the ground, made of blocks of black stone so large that Eirik couldn’t begin to understand how they’d gotten there.
And the gate.
Where massive doors of reinforced wood and iron must have existed before, now there was only a jagged opening. The wreckage of the doors was strewn across the snow—a mess of splintered wood and twisted metal hinges that had been ripped apart by some cataclysmic power.
The column stopped in front of the breach.
Velthan was the first to dismount. He came towards the entrance and stood before it with his staff held out in front of him like a light in the darkness.
"From here on, we walk," he declared. "The streets of Frostwatch are too tight for horse travel, and our ponies might be vulnerable."
Soldiers started to dismount. Eirik climbed out of his saddle and set to work to Brenn.
The veteran was hardly aware of his surroundings. His face was a deathly white, his breathing coming in short, racking gasps. The black markings on his arm had spread beyond his elbow.
"Olaf," Eirik whispered. "Can you carry him?"
The big man turned to Brenn, then back out into the darkness ahead.
"Aye, Commander. But..."
"I know," Eirik's jaw clenched. "Just get him through. Whatever happens on the other side, we deal with it there."
The ponies were tied to a line of ice-encrusted posts rising from the snow—what may once have been a stable or relay. The ponies appeared nervous, their ears laid back against their heads.
It was as if they could feel something.
"Form up!" The voice of Ser Konrad broke through the tension. "Single file through the breach! No stragglers!"
The soldiers formed a column. Velthan stood at the front of it all, his barrier still glowing around them. Behind the Archmage stood Lord Caelum.
Eirik noticed the Duke's son was sweating, despite the cold. His left eye twitched, once, twice in quick succession.
"Remember," Velthan called out, "Forward only. No matter what you see."
He stepped through the breach.
The barrier shifted with him, keeping its dome of protection over the whole group. The soldiers filed in one by one, leaving behind the gray light of the frozen wasteland to move deeper into the darkness past the walls.
Eirik waited until the majority of the column had passed by. He watched his Talons move in order—Kael, and then the others, and finally Olaf carrying Brenn on his massive shoulders.
He then followed.
The instant he stepped across the threshold, the world changed.
It was pushing against his mind. Not painfully, not quite yet, but insistently. Whispers fluttered at the edge of his hearing, too faint to distinguish but certainly there.
The street in front of them was filled with the aftermath of battle: broken weapons, smashed furniture, and the remains of barricades thrown up in haste and then broken down. Blood. Age-old blood, but conserved by the cold. Splattered against walls, accumulated in doorway pools, frozen in channels that followed the routes of the dead.
And amidst the ruins, barely visible through the frost and the snow—
Bones.
They were everywhere. Spotted randomly around the street, stacked in corners, poking out of mounds of gray ice. Human bones. Small bones.
Children's bones.
"Eyes forward," Velthan commanded. "Do not look. Do not think. Just walk."
The column advanced further into the city.
The buildings loomed on either side, houses, businesses, barracks, all of them abandoned and dark. Windows yawned like empty sockets. Doors hung crookedly on shattered hinges. The design was northern, familiar, and that was even worse. These could have been the streets of Frostfall.
Instead, they were tombs.
The whispers grew louder.
Eirik could begin to distinguish words. Bits of talk, pleas, screams caught in a moment of time and repeating in an endless loop. A woman's voice, pleading for mercy. A man's voice, shouting defiance. And beneath it all, the thin wail of children—
The barrier flickered.
The light from Velthan's staff intensified, and the golden dome held steady. But Eirik knew what he had felt—a fleeting moment of weakness.
The spirits had observed them.
"Archmage!" Ser Konrad's voice was strained. "Something's—"
The earth exploded.
They burst forth from the ice in locust-like swarms. They were not ghosts, not in the classical sense. Each was small, no bigger than a clenched fist. They had the bodies of insects: segmented, chitinous, far too many legs, wings that hummed with a distant scream of sound. But their faces—
Each of the creatures had a human face. Small, exquisitely detailed human features contorted in agony. And as they flowed up, Eirik realized in horror that he knew some of them.
Children. They were the features of children he'd knew in his previous life.
"HOLD THE LINE!" Velthan roared.
The sweep of his minions was a wide circle, and golden fire flashed out from his touch. The closest creatures shrieked before disintegrating into tendrils of dark smoke.
Yet for every one who fell, ten more appeared from the ice.
They poured in from all around. They poured in from the frozen earth, from the walls of the buildings. They fell on the column in ravenous droves.
The barrier flared.
Where the creatures hit it, the golden light flashed and spat. The dome held, but Eirik could see the effort on Velthan's face.
"WEAPONS!" Ser Konrad bellowed. "ANYONE WITH ENCHANTED STEEL, FORM A PERIMETER!"
The elite guard responded first, their weapons unsheathed and at the ready. The others huddled in the center, protected by the better-armed members of their ranks.
Eirik drew Grave Drinker.
He pushed forward, adding his presence to the perimeter. His Talons formed up around him.
"Kael, protect Brenn! Everyone else, follow me!"
The creatures trying to test the barrier have found a gap in it.
One of them slipped through—a small horror with the face of a girl barely six years old. It dived at the nearest soldier, a young guard who could not have been much older than twenty.
The guard screamed.
It latched onto his face, its too-many legs wrapping around his head. Its mouth opened—wider than any human mouth could possibly open—and it began to feed.
The scream of the guard ceased abruptly. The body twitched once, twice, and locked into a rigid position.
When the creature separated from him, nothing was left of his face. He fell backward into the snow and didn’t move.
"NO GAPS!" Velthan's voice was thunder. "CLOSE THE LINE!"
Eirik lunged forward as another creature slipped through. Grave Drinker sang through the air, and the void-touched iron connected with the thing's chitinous body.
It shrieked, and burst apart in pieces of darkness.
Energy coursed through his body. The Soul Siphon, drinking deeply from whatever essence the creature contained. The cold in his bones lessened.
Another creature. Another swing. Another infusion of energy.
"THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!" someone screamed.
The swarm was thickening. They obscured what little light was left, reducing the street to a tunnel of twisted faces.
Velthan planted his staff in the earth.
"EVERYONE DOWN!"
Eirik dropped without thinking. Around him, soldiers followed suit—those who heard, at least.
Light burst outward.
Not golden, this time, but white. Blinding white that hurt Eirik's eyes even when he closed them. The noise that came with the light was like a chorus.
The swarm recoiled, creatures dissolving by the hundreds. The pressure against Eirik's mind was gone, as if a great weight had been lifted.
For an instant, there was silence.
Then Velthan's voice: "Move. NOW. Before they regroup."
The column advanced.
They ran through the bone-clogged streets, the frozen blood congealed in the gutters. They ran by buildings that seemed to tilt toward them, the doorways exhaling cold air like the maws of hungry beasts. They ran as the swarm re-formed behind them, the creatures emerging from the ice in an endless tide.
Eirik ran with them, Grave Drinker still clutched in his hand, dispatching any horror that came too near.
"ALMOST THERE!" Konrad roared. "KEEP MOVING!"
The swarm was closing in again. But now the creatures had learned to be cautious. They lingered at the perimeters of Velthan's shield, looking for a weakness.
