It’s that time of year once again, that comes every week, when Shadows & Sorcery emerges from the otherworld, this time in its one-hundred and thirty second form!
Every so often, literally as I’m ready to hit publish, the stories demand sweeping changes be made and frankly I wish they would speak up earlier! But it’s for the best, as these three stories are pretty juicy if I do say so myself—and I do say so!
HEY did you know that the 23rd chapter of The Path of Poison came out last week? You didn’t?? Well go check it out right now in the nifty new subsection of Shadows & Sorcery where you can find every chapter in one handy place, and not that unwieldy pinned post I had cobbled together!
Speaking of previous editions of stuff here, missed the last Shadows & Sorcery? Take a look at that one HERE! It’s got Carloman in it! Everyone loves Carloman!
And of course, my friends, please take a second to let the stories know you liked them—tap that little heart button!
This week, we descend into the jungles to witness the unspeakable Offering War, we pore over the lore of the Cursed Moon, and we join a simple guardsman in an eerie palace who’s about to meet one of the Iron Shadows…
Offering War
They still wore their gold filigree armour, but they fought—they killed like the savages they once were, so long ago, and with the savagery that had built them their empire painted in lies of might and nobility. But there was something more—or something less than savagery in this. Each helmet we prised off them was hiding a slack grin. Whether of pain or ecstasy we couldn't tell. The eyes, glazed and staring off into something we couldn't see, didn't help. They didn't seem to care if it was sweltering jungle, rotting swamp, hip-deep river, or dense hillsides they trod through, it didn't matter if it we cut them down in the first minutes of a battle—I will swear on my eyes some of them didn't even try to regroup or manoeuvre, they just came at us howling and let themselves get slaughtered.
Then, one day, we caught one.
It was in the hills overlooking the vast delta that, not two moons ago, was a vibrant community, with wide tuber fields, fishing nets cast all down the banks, the sounds of song and lively chatter. I often woke up early just to look at the red sun cast its light over the ruins, letting me see all the blood one more time, to remember. We were making our way down to a level span when we saw them, and they saw us. They bellowed commands, drew their long blades, tapering sharply to wicked points, and rushed us. We broke off into the bush, causing their formation to dissipate as we gave flashes of our locations. It worked every time.
We were armed with hammers and daggers, the best thing to get through all that plate. That they must be driven to madness from the heat inside those things crossed everyone's minds. Wasn't that, though. Wasn't just pompous arrogance. Of the ten we met, six were down within minutes, two of our number taking one at a time. Reckless though they were, that didn't mean those swords wouldn't lop an arm off, or a mailled fist not break your ribs. I'd seen too many recruits join up for what they thought were easy kills against a hapless enemy only to learn all too quick that madmen are the worst opponents.
The remaining four made some kind of attempt at turning their backs to each other—it happened every so often, a glimmer of thought—but our shortbows thocked through the thin joints and dropped them. Three were finished off while the last one swung about helplessly. Our one law is kill or be killed. Either kill them, or die trying. By any means. But I guess I woke up that morning with an idea. I told my fighters to hold the enemy down, disarm him, rip the helmet off.
No blades were pointed at his throat, we knew he didn't care. I had a fighter sit on each limb, keep him from even struggling. His eyes followed me. Streaming tears. Almost foaming at the mouth. Narcotics were common in armies. Half the fighters under my command took stuff to keep them steady, or angry. If he was on something, maybe I could identify it, maybe there were supply lines we could hit if a source could be sniffed out. I sat on his chest, and grabbed his head. Checked around his gums—surprised he didn't try to bite me. Checked around his eyes. Combat "medication" always leaves a mark, no point hiding it. But he had nothing I could see. Seemed he was just like this.
I got two of my fighters to make some rough stakes and twine. We carried little into battle. The jungle provided many tools on the go. We tied him to the stakes as he hissed at us. Looked like his eyes were gonna burst as the last one went down. That's when one of my fighters, a bit fiery for her own good sometimes, walked up and kicked him in the side of the head. What do you want here, she asked, and I let her. His head snapped to her, foam flying from his lips.
"The gods!" he spoke between rabid gasps escaping a desperate grimace, "Are hungry! And we! Are their teeth!"
She just looked to me. I pulled out a horn and blew two and half times—to our cells in the immediate vicinity, it meant clear off. To the enemy, it meant we were on the offensive. Another force of them would sweep through this brush soon, and they'd find him tied here. I wanted to know what would happen. I gave the silent order to pick a tree and melt into the green. He saw me do it, but he wasn't looking at the code-gesture.
"Promised! I was promised!" he gurgled.
I swear there are almost as many of them in this jungle as there are us. A couple turns later, about seven or eight savage knights emerged from the treeline. They didn't even stop to look at the one we'd tied down. Two swords were sent through his throat and eyes, and wrenched out, leaving a rich crimson streak on the green. I wasn't surprised, but that didn't make it feel any better. I bet my grandfather asked how one could fight such an enemy. And I bet my children will ask the same question, too.
Starve the bastards would be my answer.
Cursed Moon
"Moon of my forebears, pass not over my house, and hear not my prayers. Moon of my kin, go thee into far places, and hang forever over wastelands. Moon of my children, be wreathed in clouds eternal, and be seen nevermore."
"Old wizard be thy bones dust, be thy flesh ash, be thy spirit mist."
-customary curses uttered after a ritual fullmoon is forecast
"The wandering lunar gods lead sad mockeries of the old rites now, with scraps of their old power, and are reduced to stolen stars from the far heavens in place of a sun."
-excerpt from the Tractatus Lunarum
"The moon was once...a mirror of higher things...a gateway, locus, or prism...in the south they called it an egg, and so touched upon a truth..."
"...moon each night setting to the renewal and continuation of the world...to be breathed upon the land come the dawn."
"The cycle can be seen in man the microcosm. Just as each of us must take to rest, and thus enter that innermost world where our fears, our hopes, are given shape in boundless dream to be actualized in the blazing light of waking life, so too must the world itself, of which man is a part, dream..."
"...as within, so without..."
-fragments of a burnt sorcerer's text
"But the fullmoon was akin to an altar, upon which mighty rituals were once performed...when the moon gods were dear to every heart and hearth all across the world. The...order of the world is, they say, out of synch...it was as a cycle, and man a central part...O Golden Astral Rite do we give thanks, by your honeyed rays do we bathe in cold, cleansing fire..."
-from Sacresolus
"...cursed long ago by a nameless archmagister—upon their race's rotten bones do I spit...failed, and so focused a thousand baleful stains...into the fullmoon ritual were slid black streaks which even now cascade about the lunar prism, cutting to ribbons every prayer and devotion. There is naught that falls from the morning's sun but ash."
-excerpts from recorded sayings of a moonstruck sage
"They're all dead, long dead. And we keep them dead. Oh but if our folk did not utter their curses to that moon! To that cursed altar, that charnel house of maledictions! No stone or shaft of their heart's sorrow will shatter that skin, but scab and scar it...speak not to that thing which hangs as if waiting to drop, lest it really make dust of those bones that may finally draw it all out..."
-from a letter between two priests
Iron Shadows
A king is only welcome so long as he loved, and King Borgas had outstayed his welcome long ago. Two things far beyond his control were all that kept him enthroned: bitter stalemates between secession forces, rebellions, and contenders that wracked the western marches, and the priests he sequestered himself with in his private altars, who exerted just enough influence over their faithful that Borgas actually had a force of arms he might call loyal.
Krag was one of these soldiers. He was a simple man with simple needs, and the pay he received from looking tough in a palace surcoat far exceeded his desired comforts, and the king had been rather generous in his promises of late. But Krag did not particularly care for King Borgas, who had twenty years ago been known, at the very least, as a ferocious warrior, which Krag could appreciate, but Borgas had become a simpering, cowardly, and most of all, generally mean character, whose bent back betrayed his suspicious and distrusting temperament. He held himself with no confidence has a king. For that alone Krag had always thought he deserved to have this throne taken.
Not that the palace was ever lively, save for maybe two celebrations a year, or the odd dinner the king held for his for his sycophants, but tonight it was quiet in a different way. The guards who did their rounds didn't slow down for a bit of banter or a greeting. Just kept on, eyes dead ahead. Everyone knew what was going on. His mate Seraya had made sure the word had got passed around. Likely Borgas knew, too. Something bad had been sent to kill the king.
In the days leading up to an assassination, there had always been a feeling of exhausted futility among all of those in the know. There always had been, and there always would be. It would just create more conflict. More burned villages, more heated tempers, more rash acts. Was the current king—whomever this king happened to be—really that bad? Well, right now, with him on the throne there were burned villages, heated tempers, and rash acts aplenty already. What was there to do but tear him from his throne and cleave his head in twain? Replace him with another? Maybe we'll get another Runnick or Narakh this time. Maybe.
Krag was feeling such things right now. The trepidation of the inevitable dozen splinter factions vying for loyalty, falling in with the right militia, falling out with them, having to save face at every blasted turn. Curse and be-damn them was his thought. Just have a bit of sense. No need for all this. He stewed in this thoughts in the vast, empty marble corridor until a tap on his shoulder almost sent his heart leaping up his throat. Marshall Chookh mumbled out the words: you're on rounds.
Ayrlaah's Blood, Krag swore over and over in his head as he turned a corner and passed under a twisting, gilded lamp set into it. He'd only passed one other guard, they'd shot a glance to each other, nothing more, listening to the dying echoes of each other's footsteps in this cavernous tomb-in-waiting. What he wouldn't give to be down by the wall right now. Open fire. Open air. Mulled wine. The dusky plains out to the east. Chatter and laughs and shouting.
He came now into another yawning corridor, whose vaulted ceiling held murals of the gods. The palace was essentially three of these massive galleries, festooned with stolen, looted, and some original artworks, between each were levels riddled with passages, rooms, and secret chambers. They each led to the head of the palace, where Borgas held audiences, and where he was right now holed up with his priests, before his altars, where he allegedly spent most of his nights. The mosaic floor, with its odd sections of low reliefs, was dulled, chipped, and streaked with old stains from carriages that beasts had pulled through these halls for nobles too important to walk. Also from sieges and assassinations.
Huge braziers that hung from the ceilings lit these halls with a diffuse, misty light. Could make it quite beautiful at times. Right now it seemed as tired as Krag was. Until the black spot he spied shook him into awareness. It kind of looked like someone approaching from the distance. Only there was no bobbing or swaying as it walked, it just slid forward. In fact, the closer it got, the slower Krag walked, and the less like a person it looked. Now, he could read people pretty well. They either said they wanted to fight, or they wanted to run. This shadow didn't want to fight. But it also wasn't going to stop.
The swords provided by King Borgas were decent quality, that much could be said. They came equipped with special scabbards wherein the blade could rest solidly, but had a slit down their length that let them be unsheathed in a flash. Krag did not use this, but instead slowly drew his blade. He hoped the shadow could read his movements. He didn't want to fight, but, well, he wanted to at least make it look to whomever may be watching like he put up some kind of effort. He was being paid after all.
The thing slid as if it had no weight, like it was a blot of thin water on the air. Intangible, with no particular point where it ended and the air around it began. Krag slowly sent out the tip of his single edged sword in a half-hearted thrust.
The blade clanged as if against a mass of solid iron.
That was enough for him. He backed away to the side and let it slide its way up the gallery. He watched it until it just about left sight in the weird haze of the brazier-lamps. He stood there and looked after it for some several minutes. Some wizard's doing? Or one of Borgas' gods? Or his demons, more like. Maybe he knew what was coming and ordered protection.
Then there came a sound, from far off, like a blacksmith's hammer hitting its anvil. It came again and again, followed by a terrible throaty sound. Several more times the blacksmith's hammer sounded, and several more chokes or bleats. Krag shot a look around him. The gallery was still empty. There's a difference between the sound a person makes when they get a fright, or are in pain, and the sound they make when they're afraid for their life. Krag knew that one, and he had never gotten used to it.
Silence came after this, and silence remained even has he watched the shadow slither its way back, across the ground, barely touching it—if it even did—and down the corridor, and, Krag assumed, out of the palace. Well, that was Borgas dealt with. The tension didn't quite leave immediately, but it did become shaky. Was he supposed to go find someone? Marshall Chookh? He did pretty much have the run of the palace to himself, at least for the next few minutes. Half this place would be torn apart the second word got out, and he wasn't likely to get paid now, so he may as well make head way on the proceedings. At the very least, Krag could say that, in a way, old King Borgas kept his word.
Excellent as usual! Thoroughly enjoyed this latest batch of stories, especially the last one with the guard!