Book of Kinsey: Dark Fate (The Dark Fate Chronicles 2) (26 page)

Dust continued to billow from the wreckage of the rockslide, obscuring their view of the pass. The army came to a halt, facing the unseen foe, and an intense, anticipatory silence settled as they waited to see if the goblin-kin would press into the valley. The dirty clouds lingered as if frozen in time, stretching Kinsey’s already worn nerves taut.

The quiet was finally broken by sinister rolling thunder, uncharacteristic for the light weather this morning. The sky began to darken suddenly, as if the sound still echoing off the canyon walls heralded its coming. Again Kinsey looked upward, this time at the once brightly lit sky, and found the swelling edges of clouds and flickering green light quickly blotting out the sun.

Goblin-kin horns blared from beyond the clouds of dust. Many horns. More than Kinsey thought possible after such a devastating blow. The dust settled to reveal a wall of boulders and crushed bodies blocking Fountainhead’s entrance. Signs of movement atop the massive stones became readily apparent.

“Will ya be addressin’ the troops, ma king?” Gurney shouted as the first hobgoblin appeared, scrambling over the boulders. One became two, and more joined until the trickle became a howling river surging into the field.

“What needs ta be said has already been said,” Thorn replied. He frowned as more and more goblin-kin flowed over the rocks onto the field. The horde began to rush toward the dwarven host as the endless sea of bodies continued to cascade over the rubble. “Now be the time fer action.”

Thorn gave one last glance to either side, checking his forces, before raising Mordekki high over his head. The ancient axe pulsed with life once again, its runes blazing out in defiance of the gathered gloom. Thorn thrust Mordekki forward and yelled, “Charge!” His voice boomed far louder than naturally possible and carried across the field so all could hear. An ear-shattering roar followed as Nerok reared, then plunged forward at a ground-devouring lope.

In that moment, a spike of emotions, hope and rage, pierced Kinsey’s mind. The feelings rushed through him, driving his beast into a frenzied state. The tenuous control that he had established began to ebb under the relentless attack from within and the emotions pressing from without. He almost lost control to the monster and faltered in his attempt to urge Dak into a gallop as he grappled with the reins.

Gurney, Beordin, and the rest of the Ursus cavalry rushed past Kinsey in a flurry of battle cries and dust. Dak reared and danced in confusion as Kinsey’s hands defied his attempts to command them. Heavily armed infantry following the Ursus at a run divided around the pair as Dak spun in confused circles.

“Damnation!” Kinsey screamed in frustration.

“Ma prince!” Jocelyn’s voice penetrated through the rush of armsmen and Kinsey’s internal conflict. “Ma prince. Hang on!”

Fire ran through Kinsey’s veins and his vision began to cloud. He took deep breaths and tried to focus his thoughts on the gentle, rippling waters of the Tanglevine.

“Horus, grab the reins,” Jocelyn yelled from somewhere close.

Dak reared again, and Kinsey toppled from the saddle to land on his back. Hard. The wind rushed out of his lungs while control over the beast slipped further from his grasp. He could just see the dark form of Dak looming over him.

The horse had slipped into a defensive stance, guarding its fallen master, kicking and biting at the many figures that now surrounded them.

“Easy, boy,” Horus pleaded. “Easy.”

Kinsey tried to suck in air, but the thick dust pushed him into fits of coughing. He could feel the tension in his body that presaged the change, and he desperately closed his eyes and filled his mind with peaceful thoughts.

Hands were upon him suddenly, and Kinsey felt himself being dragged out from under his warhorse’s stomping hooves. Jocelyn’s whisper floated past the chaos to his ear. “It be okay, ma prince. Kinsey, it be okay.”

He seized upon her gentle voice, clinging to it as desperately as ever he had fought for anything. The coughing still shook his body, but the fits passed and he was able to draw shallow breaths through lips that were now coated with dust and dirt. The emotions that had plagued him began to subside, and he felt the beast slink away once more to the depths.

“I don’t know what happened. I just lost my focus,” Kinsey wheezed when he could find his voice. He struggled to piece together what had happened and the brush with disaster. “Such powerful emotions...I almost lost...”

Jocelyn’s eyes widened with understanding. “The king. It be the king.”

Kinsey sat up and looked at her, puzzled.
Thorn
had incited the change in him? How could the king have achieved such an act, and even if he could, surely his grandfather wouldn’t go so far as to deliberately cause a transformation without Kinsey’s consent. “How?” he managed. “And why?”

“Mordekki. That weapon be of great power.” She helped Kinsey to his feet. “I felt its influence, too. We all did.” Jocelyn gestured to those nearby, who nodded in response to her claims. She then looked Kinsey in the eyes. “I don’t think he done it on purpose. The king just be rallyin’ the people. Ya got caught up in the storm is all.”

Kinsey nodded slowly. What Jocelyn had said made sense, and he didn’t care to entertain the idea that his grandfather was capable of doing such a thing intentionally.

Jocelyn’s words suddenly brought clarity to Kinsey’s frazzled thoughts. The king had been rallying his people—for the war. “Eos save us,” he shouted. “We’ve a battle to fight!” Kinsey spun around, searching for Dak.

“I think ya be meanin’ ‘Dagda’ save us, ma prince,” Horus said. The warrior was standing close, holding Dak’s reins. The warhorse had calmed and appeared to be enjoying some sort of dried treat from Horus’s hand. Sanderlin and Jorin stood to the side with a group of warriors, eyeing the prince with concern. Horus’s dark eyes had the same concern that the others’ showed, but he also had a conviction that was unusual in the normally lighthearted dwarf.

Kinsey blinked. There had been a subtle undertone to his companions over the passing weeks as he continued to invoke his old habits and faith, but this was the first that he had been corrected in so blunt a fashion. In all the years that he had worshiped Eos, primary patron of the human kingdoms, he had never felt so much as a whisper to his subconscious. Dagda, on the other hand, apparently had a real and present interest not only in the lives of his followers but in Kinsey himself. Perhaps it was time to begin making a change. He nodded slowly to himself and then once more while meeting Horus’s strangely intent gaze and taking the offered reins. “You’re right, Horus. Dagda.”

“We’ll catch up ta ya at the front lines,” Jocelyn said as Kinsey swung into the saddle and spurred Dak into motion.

“Again, I owe you,” Kinsey yelled to her as he and Dak galloped away.

The faint call of Jocelyn’s voice followed him. “I know.”

Thorn gripped Mordekki, pouring as much of himself into the artifact as he could withstand. All his joy and hope after finally finding Kinsey, all the anger and rage he felt at wronging his son those sixty years ago, flowed into the mystical weapon and radiated out to his people. His followers would absorb those emotions—become those emotions—and in return he could feel them become one in purpose.

The king roared with Nerok as the white giant crashed into the advancing mass of the horde. There was no halting the mighty beast’s charge. The great bear parted their ranks as a prow cuts through calm waters. Spear and sword broke against the modified barding that the dwarves had hurriedly sized for the giant beast. Goblin, hobgoblin, and all cousins of the blasphemous creatures were trampled under Nerok’s massive weight and momentum. Those attempting to escape the calamity of fur and claws were either knocked through the air or snapped up in ravening jaws to be torn to pieces.

To either side of the king and Nerok, Gurney and Beordin tore through the horde’s ranks with their Ursus mounts as well. The two dwarves worked short bows furiously, raining arrows down upon hapless hobgoblins while filling the air with their battle cries. The rest of the Ursus cavalry followed, five hundred strong, creating a wedge that leveled all who stood before them.

Despite the devastating impact of the Ursus, they were hopelessly outnumbered and could not sustain such exertion for long. On Thorn’s command, the wedge of giant bears collapsed into a circle to make their stand. The hobgoblins and their screeching allies closed about them like water rushing in to cover a thrown pebble.

Exhaustion crept along the fringes of Thorn’s mind, and he released the flow of emotions that Mordekki greedily siphoned from him.
I am too old for this,
Thorn thought while shaking his head to sharpen his weary senses.

A ragged bolt whizzed past his ear, and the howl of a furious hobgoblin quickly followed, surprisingly close. A solitary monster had managed to slip inside the ranks of the Ursus to clamber up the barding on Nerok’s rear flank.

Instinct from more than three centuries of training took control as Thorn swung Mordekki in a wide arc toward the sound. The great axe bit into something solid just behind his field of vision and slowed for only an instant as the blade slid through metal and bone. A spray of black heart’s blood flew forward from the sundered flesh and spattered Nerok’s snow-white fur.

Dismissing the dead, Thorn scanned the sea of goblin-kin looking for the bowman and would-be regicide.
There you are.
Thorn’s gaze settled on a goblin desperately trying to reload a wretched crossbow. The string had been cranked back, and the little wretch’s hands fumbled with a bolt as he clung to the stock of the weapon.

“Yer doom be sealed, maggot!” Thorn growled. He took Mordekki in both hands and raised the great axe over his head. With a mighty grunt, Thorn hurled the weapon at the frantic goblin.

Mordekki tumbled through the air in a blur. One of the axe’s razor-sharp blades struck the goblin right on the crown of his lowered head, splitting it like a ripe melon and lodging in the trunk below. Dark blood and brains fell to the ground along with the goblin’s twitching body.

Thorn opened his hand and thrust his arm forward toward the weapon of his forefathers. Mordekki, buried in the goblin’s skull, shimmered as the runes along its head and haft throbbed with life. Within the blink of an eye, the ancient artifact disappeared entirely and reappeared in Thorn’s outstretched hand as if it had never left.

The sound of metal crashing into metal echoed from behind the king. Thorn turned in his saddle to see that his infantry had caught up and were hammering their way into the goblin-kin that had closed behind the battling Ursus. The troops were in fine form, hacking and slashing the enemy to pieces while pressing forward as if an army of practice dummies stood before them.

The king turned back to the fore and smiled deeply as he raised Mordekki to throw once more, confident that victory would be theirs this day.

K
INSEY
leaned low as he raced toward the front lines. Dak’s heavy legs churned below the protective barding supplied by the dwarves. Dislodged divots flew into the air in their wake until he caught up with the reinforcements that waited to join the fray.

The dwarves’ battle line was an imposing sight. Some fifteen men deep, the front line appeared impassable. Long shields formed a virtually unbroken barrier through which short swords were thrust into the howling mass. Long pikes and halberds were manned just behind, jabbing and piercing over the shield wall into the goblinoid foes that attempted to break through the protective barrier. Sharp-eyed rescue teams worked amongst the pikemen, searching for the wounded or fallen. Once found, the injured were spirited away behind the lines to be tended or comforted in their passing. Behind the pikes were regiments of crossbowmen, firing over their brothers in arms into the seemingly endless horde. Lord Tagen and the remaining seven houses would have a fine anvil to smash their hammer against.