Chapter 8: Crossing

Up here among the tall spires of the age-old mountains, the wind howled as it swept over the twelve silent riders, tearing at their black, flowing cloaks. Small, hard shards of ice assaulted their eyes, relentless in the perpetual storm, forcing them to squint as they slowly navigated the narrow pass in the darkness. The Cold Edge earned its name for a reason.

Sir Themur kept his hands wrapped inside his cloak, gripping the reins of his horse tightly. The dull, black metal gauntlets he wore on his scarred hands did nothing to contain his body heat, and his fingers burned from the cold wind, as if he had dipped them into a fire made of ice.

Behind him, one of his men coughed violently, the freezing air scraping at his lungs. Risking a brief glance over his shoulder, Themur saw Sir Olmar leaning forward in his saddle, almost to the point of falling off the large black animal he rode. As he watched, the horse stumbled and nearly fell, disoriented by the biting wind and inhuman cold.

“Attention!” Themur commanded forcefully. “We must find shelter. The gale is getting stronger, and the night is late. If we can’t find protection from the wind now, the horses won’t survive until morning.”

With that, the eleven men and women he commanded became more alert. But it wouldn’t last. Exhaustion was creeping in, and their focus would soon waver again.

The Knights Eternal had left the Derimar lands just before noon the same day. Back down there on the savannah, the sun had been bright, and the weather warm. But the higher they got into the mountains, the worse the weather became. It had been bad on their first crossing, but nothing like this. Tonight, for the first time, Themur was beginning to fear they wouldn’t all make it back to the Empire.

Mardocar would sustain them, of course. The cold itself would not kill them. The god of strength and genocide would heal their bodies just as quickly as nature’s rage was destroying them. But he would offer no relief from the pain. It was much like freezing to death, over and over again, with no end in sight until they exited the Cold Edge on the other side.

Although their bodies could take the punishment the mountains were throwing at them, he was less certain about their minds. It would do them no good if they simply gave up, lay down, and allowed the ice to claim their bodies, waiting for Mardocar to take their souls.

“There’s a trail to the left here!” he heard Dame Karleen shout behind him.

Themur raised his closed fist, signaling the Knights behind him to stop.

“Go check it out,” he ordered her, hoping her discovery would turn out to be useful. “Dismount and take a short break,” he told the rest.

A minute later, Dame Karleen returned, riding as quickly as she could through the worsening conditions.

“It’s not great, Sir,” she admitted, “but it’s a whole lot better than what we have here. The path is narrow, with steep cliffs on both sides, so we’ll get some shelter from the wind. But it’s not deep enough. We won’t all fit in there. We’ll have to take turns sleeping. And there’s no space to make a fire.”

Those weren’t conditions Themur looked forward to spending the night in, and he briefly considered ordering the Knights to mount up and continue, hoping to find a better spot to rest in before they became too cold and tired to have the choice taken away from them.

But looking around at the men and women under his command, he realized they had already reached that point in their journey.

“Alright,” he said. “That’ll have to be good enough. Thank you, Dame Karleen. Sir Almand, start a fire out here. Close to the wall, mind you, so it gets some protection from the wind. We’ll split into two groups and sleep in shifts.”

He took the first watch with five other Knights, while Dame Karleen and her men slept inside the crevasse. Three hours later, they made a switch, and after that, Themur did what he could to get a little rest. It was quite impossible, of course. The freezing wind that roared in his ears made sure of that.

Nevertheless, the pause in their travels and the weak heat from the fire was good for morale, he thought.

When morning finally arrived, Themur greeted the pale daylight with relief, once again wondering if he had been wrong in ordering the Knights to stop. Waiting in the cold for a sleep that never came had made him miserable, and he feared that what he had hoped would be a boost for their spirits had instead done the opposite.

The wind continued to be just as strong as it had been during the night, and this high up in the mountains, day or night, the thin air never absorbed enough of the sun’s light to warm their frozen bodies.

Still, the daylight provided them with one important advantage: now they could finally see where they were going, though just barely. The relentless snowfall still turned the air into an impenetrable mass of swirling white flakes, obscuring their vision and making it impossible for the last man in the line to see the first, and vice versa. All they could do was hope that out of the twelve men and women who had ascended the mountains, twelve would also descend from them.

They say you’re the most vulnerable when you’re relaxed, Themur thought afterward.

Believing that traversing the pass would be safer in daylight, Sir Almand failed to pay attention to a spot of slick ice on the ground, hidden beneath a layer of freshly fallen snow. The moment his horse stepped on it, its front right hoof slipped and its knee bent, forming a shape it was never intended to have. Thrashing frantically to regain its balance, the horse tilted to the side, shrieking in panic. As its center of mass shifted, it fell off the path, its screams mixing with those of Sir Almand as the Knight Eternal and his steed disappeared into the deep, dark abyss below.

Mardocar, god of strength, receive the soul of your eternal servant. Torment him as you see fit. Yours is the glory, forever and ever.

The old prayer he had recited so many times before filled Themur with both confidence and dread. Knowing what the fate of his own soul would be, should he die in these mountains, made him more determined than ever to survive them. But for Sir Almand, it was too late. He was now with Mardocar.

The Knights Eternal didn’t stop. There would be no point to it. Sir Almand had been lost since the day he had sold his soul to the gods of the world, eighty-seven years ago. What had just transpired was merely the inevitable end to that pledge, Themur knew. All they could do now was make sure no one else among them had to pay their debts to the god of genocide today.

Sadly, that hope would turn out to be unfounded.

Behind him, Dame Rackar approached, her horse slowly catching up to him until she was close enough that they could talk, despite the howling wind that surrounded them.

“What’s our next objective, Sir?” she asked. “Obviously, the Emperor doesn’t need us in Derimar anymore.”

Themur thought for a while. He wasn’t privy to the orders the Imperial army had been given, but he could still make a few educated guesses.

“We’ve secured the western villages of the Derimar tribes,” he explained to the young Knight behind him. “Their people have all been exterminated, glory to Mardocar, and we’ve taken their buildings to use for barracks, as well as their granaries and water pumps for supplies. The Empire’s foothold in Derimar is now secure.”

He paused, considering how best to express himself. It was crucial that Dame Rackar understood the Knights Eternal served Mardocar, not the Emperor—though with Mardocar being the patron god of the Empire, the distinction was often theoretical at best. Still, she was young, and it was his duty to teach her the true nature of their service to the gods.

“Mardocar has ordered me to Terynia. Once we reach the capital, we’ll get new instructions from our lord. Patience and obedience, Dame Rackar.”

“Glory be to the gods!” she declared, striking the armor on her chest with her gauntlet in a fist-over-heart salute. The impact rang with a sharp metallic clang, cutting through the storm.

After echoing the words, Themur began to consider what the days ahead would bring them. Dame Rackar wasn’t wrong in questioning why they had been sent back to the Empire so soon after arriving in Derimar. Whatever Mardocar had in store for them, Themur had a feeling the next couple of weeks would turn out to be very interesting.

Up ahead, there was a small rockfall. He could hear the scraping sounds of loose stones rolling down the cliffside but paid them little attention. The mountains were always eroded by wind and frost, and the sounds of falling stones were a constant presence around them.

Ignoring the distraction, he returned to his thoughts about their future orders, but didn’t have much time to think about them before Dame Karleen rode up to him, taking the same spot on the path Dame Rackar had previously held.

“If we ever get out of here, Sir,” she shouted above the storm, “I promise I’ll buy us a whole barrel of mead in Terynia. My treat.”

Themur laughed, though the cold and exhaustion made it sound more like a grunt.

“I can’t wait,” he said.

After a brief hesitation, she asked the question that had been on her mind. “We’ll make our usual stops on the way?”

At first, Themur just sat there on his horse, without answering.

“Of course,” he said, finally.

For a while, silence reigned between them, confirming their mutual understanding. Then, unwilling to dwell on the past any longer, he switched subjects.

“You know,” he told his old comrade, “I’m starting to wish the Emperor had decided to round the Cold Edge and go south through the Burn instead of crossing the mountains. But I can’t decide if I’d rather have sand or snow in my eyes!”

“Well, maybe we should have just stayed home then, Sir,” she suggested, only half-joking.

She wasn’t wrong—not entirely. This expedition into Derimar had been the Lion’s idea, not Mardocar’s. Though, given that his mission had included genocide, Themur hadn’t objected. Whether ordered by Mardocar or the Emperor, it still pleased his god.

Ahead of them, he heard another stone fall from the path. Fearing the cliffside wasn’t fully stable in this part of the pass, he ordered the Knights to stop and dismount, while he and Dame Karleen went forward on foot to investigate.

“Be careful,” he told her. “If the ice doesn’t kill you, the rocks just might.”

But the final assault from the mountain did not come from the loose and slippery ground.

One second, the two Knights Eternal were carefully watching their steps as they approached a curve in the path. The next second, a large shadow emerged from beyond the bend and fell on them, dark and terrifying.

Screaming in hunger pains, the short-faced bear that had been stalking them for the past quarter of an hour, carefully staying out of their sight, suddenly made its presence known. Standing tall on its hind legs and fueled by predatory muscles the weight of two horses, it towered almost a man’s length above their heads, as it prepared to strike them with its powerful claws.

Reaching for his heavy sword, Themur desperately prayed to his god for strength, hoping Mardocar would guide his hand. He felt the weight of the weapon in his hand disappear as he struck at the enraged animal, its long blade now supported by the strength of the god of the world.

He was too late.

With a sickening sound of bone being crushed, the bear’s paw struck the side of Dame Karleen’s neck. Its sharp claws ripped her flesh open, severing her carotid artery.

She screamed and fell to the ground. Or perhaps it was he who screamed, and she fell in silence. In the chaos of the battle, he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t hear. All Themur knew was that he only had seconds left. Seconds, in which the god of strength had to guide his sword into the flesh of the beast, or they would both perish.

The tip of his blade, polished to a black mirror, entered the chest of the animal and sliced its heart in two. Blood, warm and thick, pulsated from the wound and quickly solidified as it poured out on the freezing ground.

Dead within seconds, the short-faced bear fell to the side, killed by the hand of man but with the strength only a god could provide. But what should have been a glorious victory for the honor of Mardocar became a tragedy when Themur saw the putrid blood, black as death itself, ebbing from the neck of his old friend as she lay dying beside him on the frozen rocks of the Cold Edge.

He shouted his despair at the top of his lungs, the cry echoing along the cliff faces and mountain tops surrounding them.

“Mardocar!” he screamed. “We need your healing power! Sustain her. I beg you, do not let her die today!”

To his relief, their god honored his part of their dark covenant. Slowly, the skin around the wound in Dame Karleen’s neck began to crawl as her flesh bubbled and knitted itself together.

Then, suddenly, her chest heaved. She made a gasping sound and fell still. The blood that had been flowing from her severed artery moments earlier no longer gushed, but only dribbled slowly. With her heart no longer beating, the last remnants of life ebbed away from her before his very eyes. At the same instant, Mardocar’s healing powers, not working fast enough to keep her alive, ceased entirely.

For more than a century, they had served together. Now, she was gone.

It was all so unnecessary.

He needed her. The Empire needed her.

Their god needed her.

“Mardocar!” he begged, crying into the cold mountain air, desperately hoping to bargain with the god of strength. “Bring her back! Show us your power, lord. Resurrect her! You don’t need to keep her soul. It’s already yours! Return her life to us for a few more years, and her soul will still belong to you. She’s more useful to you alive than dead.”

And Mardocar, true to his form, answered.

“No!”

The voice that forced its way into his thoughts, so familiar from all the times they had previously spoken, was unrelenting.

“She is dead, and I will not resurrect her. Do not ask again!”

Despite the finality of the words, Themur briefly considered repeating his request. Perhaps, he thought, he could come up with a bargain that would satisfy the god of genocide. But with Mardocar already owning both their souls, he had nothing left to offer him.

Numb from the loss of his old friend and comrade, so sudden and unexpected, he eventually let her broken body go, to be claimed by the snow and the ice. For such a magnificent Knight, he thought, the majesty of the Cold Edge was indeed a fitting grave.

But then, as he gently placed her black fist on the armor above her heart, another thought entered his mind, blasphemous and crude.

Why, in his wisdom and power, had Mardocar started to heal her, if he already knew she was going to die anyway?

Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods!

This novel is 43 chapters long, with new installments posted twice each week. Perhaps you’d be interested in reading some of my other stories while you wait for the next update?

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