The Horde

By Vasilis Petrovic

Diomedes Melas is one of but a hundred survivors of a shattered mountain regiment. He’s also the master of Porphyron, a cyclopean castle that stands as the sentinel of Parnathia, a border province of the Empire of Heracleia. Aratheor Bladefallen is the Lord of Thorns, master of Porphyron’s twin, the cyclopean castle that guards the Kingdom of Valiri, on the other side of the mighty Stonewall mountain range. Ixiak, the Bloody Hand is a darkmage of depthless hatred and the singular ambition of bringing ruin upon the lands of dorians. On the path of war, he refuses to admit defeat. These three leaders and those who follow them inevitably collide and the mountain peaks reverberate with the sound of war’s thunder.
The steel and bronze of the dorian warriors clashes with the bone and iron of the numberless darkspawn, orphic mysticism is pitted against vile magganea and the cyclopean stones bleed. Even that which was built to stand forever, cannot endure for long the crushing grip of the Bloody Hand.

This is an epic fantasy novel close to ninety thousand words long, set in the Age of Thunder. It immerses the reader into the lives and the trials of the dorian peoples as the first millennium of the age comes to a close. This book is the first part of the Castle Porphyron story arc which is comprised of three books and it also launches the Cyclopean Castles series. Those willing to embark on an epic journey have but to open the book and turn the page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vasilis Petrovic
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9786188362406

Vasilis Petrovic

I was a boy in the ‘80s and a young man in the ‘90s and I wouldn’t change that – unless I could live in the Hyborian Age, I’d make that change in an instant. I grew up with European and American comics, science-fiction and fantasy books and the best music and movies that mankind has produced in its history. I was reading Marvel’s Conan comics since grade school and discovered AD&D just on the edge from adolescence to manhood.Since then, my hobbies have accompanied me down the difficult and winding road of life. I wanted to write stories since I was eighteen or so and in fact I’ve written loads of stories that people have enjoyed in a role-playing setting. At some point I decided to do this thing that I’ve always wanted to do and write a true novel. It would annoy me to no end to die before writing at least one fantasy story.So, I began writing a story. It began modestly, with the desire to write one single book tentatively entitled 'The Castle' but it grew quickly and it will be finished after about nine books. Now it’s called 'The Cyclopean Castles' (bigger story, more and bigger castles). On the way, the stories branched out and I began a second series, 'The Blades of Dawn.'I have prayed to Crom for success but he is an uncaring god and he sits alone on his mountain, laughing down at me so to Hell with him! I’ll consider it a success if I finish my stories and I have my books sitting on a bookshelf, keeping company to the likes of Howard, Moorcock, Gemmel and many other beloved fantasy authors. That's all you need to know about me, now go and read one of my books.

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Copyright © 2018 by Vasilis Petrovic

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-618-83624-0-6

First edition, 2018

Cover Illustration: Nele Diel

https://www.nelediel.com

Cover Design: Thanos Petrovic

http://petrovicnasos.wixsite.com/athanasios-petrovits

My Amazon Author Central page

https://www.amazon.com/author/vasilispetrovic

Support me on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/Vasilis_Petrovic

Dedicated to Leda for passing through the gates

Also dedicated to David Gemmel for standing on the six walls at what he thought was the twilight of his life to defend them with axe in hand

Lastly and always, dedicated to Robert E. Howard who came with pen in hand to tread the pages of fantasy with a Cimmerian’s feats

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Crimson Guard.

Chapter 2. The Dragon’s Breath.

Chapter 3. The Game of Kings.

Chapter 4. Master of Porphyron.

Chapter 5. Lord of Thorns.

Chapter 6. The Bloody Hand.

Chapter 7. Granadas.

Chapter 8. Ruins of War.

The Muses whisper to us, mortals, in song and in dream and in the voices of leaf and water and tell us of how things were in the Ages of Myth. From them we know of our past, of the Cosmogony and the Titanomachy and all the other ages, before this one. But those ages are gone, all of the grand works of mortals are dust and the wonders we had achieved are but faded memories of ancient glories.

What matters now is that we win the war that rages on the Earth and in the Heavens. This Age of Thunder, born in cataclysmic fury, is what we have and what we are and what we do now will determine whether another age will succeed the thunder or whether the Cosmos will be surrendered to the empty darkness. This, my child, is your world.

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Chapter 1. Crimson Guard.

939 DT, 2nd Year of the 64th Olympiad, month of Stephanos.

Empire of Heracleia, imperial province of Tymphaea, royal province of Parnathia.

Castle Porphyron bled from a thousand wounds and had already died a hundred deaths but there was no fear and no regret in the hearts of its defenders. The cyclopean stones of the curtain wall, the tall towers and the strong bastions drank the proffered blood eagerly. Under the light of the setting sun, the castle shone like a blood-stained crown and it rose in majestic defiance over the hordes of vile darkspawn that dared to lay siege to it.

We can’t hold, damn their smelly hides – signal for reinforcements, Borg ordered his flag-woman. The chalyvos had volunteered to command the defence of the gate keep. He wanted to be in the thick of the fighting – his axe was thirsty for blood as he was fond of shouting to his foes in the crude pitspeak that they understood. The flag-woman selected a bright red and a green flag out of an open-topped, leather case that hung from her shoulder and waved them in a precise pattern, facing the top of Hippolyte’s tower, where the Captain of the Crimson Guard had set up his headquarters. She breathed a sigh of relief when the answering signal came from one of the flag-men on that tower-top.

Sergeant, the Captain sends the Blooded Blade! The young woman shouted excitedly. Borg only grunted as he and three other guardsmen tried to push the siege ladder off the wall with a steel pole. Unfortunately, there were ogrens – degenerate half-giants with the size and strength to uproot a grown tree – holding the base of those tall siege ladders and the oroks that were already climbing them had added too much weight already. Another booming sound came from the huge ogren-held battering ram that was pounding the main gates.

It’s no damn use. Get ready to throw them off the battlement, Borg ordered, giving up the effort. He drew his axe and ran the length of the wall. He exhorted his archers to shoot until the skin had been scraped off their fingers and ordered his spearmen to die before allowing the enemy to gain the wall. The archers standing on the banquettes hadn’t stopped pouring shaft after shaft upon the onrushing oroks and beastmen, through the crenels and the arrow slits of the merlons. Despite their zeal, their efforts were not enough to deter the besiegers whose eyes flashed with hatred, whose howls of eagerness and screams of anger added to the frantic beat of their skindrums. It was plain to see that the darkspawn had been given drugs to drown their fear and make them thirsty for dorian blood – as if they had any need for the latter.

Not one foot on my wall! The chalyvos shouted when the ugly, helmeted heads of oroks with their tusked mouths and deep-set, hateful eyes appeared over the crenels. He split a helmet and head in two with his axe and laughed. All around him soldiers shouted their battle-cries and thrust their spears into the flesh of their foes. For a time they held the tide back and dying tribesmen rained down from the wall of the gate keep. But the tide of darkness was an oceanic force that would not be held back. An orok set foot on the wall and killed a dorian, lifted him bodily in a murderous rage and threw him off the wall. He got speared by two defenders in retaliation but a crow-headed beastman also set foot on the wall and then another orok and another. The skindrums beat louder and louder and the discordant sound made Borg groan; he knew what the increase in tempo meant. It was the signal for the ogrens to begin climbing the huge siege ladders that could bear their weight. His guardsmen were dying and were being pushed back and soon his wall would belong to the enemy - where were his damn reinforcements?

Flaming balls of hay and wood, bound with iron wire, steeped in pitch and the flammable alchemies devised by the tribal darkmages, had been sailing over the walls ever since the siege had began tonight. The greatest concentration of missiles targeted the area around the gate keep and they’d been landing in the outer courtyard by the dozens. They were of a size that told Dra’Zaal that they were sling-shot by ogrens – the more dexterous of them who could handle a sling at least. As soon as they landed, they spewed torrents of oily, black smoke which quickly became a rolling cloud that was flecked with bright cinders. It covered the entirety of the ground before the gate keep and hung there like a black curtain that was slowly growing. The magganea of the tribal torch-circles threatened to isolate the gate keep from the rest of the wall. When he got the order, by flag-signal, to reinforce the gate keep, Zaal sought for a way to obey. He didn’t dare lead his demi-company of one hundred hoplites through that smoke cloud lest they suffocated – if their throats and lungs weren’t charred first. Could this have been done by design or was it simply bad luck? The Bone Breakers tribe – cursed be its name - had far too many such ‘strokes of luck’ during the siege. He had to admit to himself that the overchief of this tribe was like nothing he had seen before – and he had been fighting and killing darkspawn for all his adult life.

We can’t go through that, Arch-sergeant, it will ruin that pretty face of yours, Bronna told him. Her tone was light but her face betrayed her concern.

Right you are Decarch. Take the third and fourth sworn squads to the Stymphalian and I’ll go to the Lernaean. Meet you on the keep. Zaal ordered. Any route he tried, he wouldn’t get on the gate keep in time so he had to get the soldiers moving immediately. The hoplites split in two forces and each force ran to one of the nearest towers to the gate keep, to gain access to the parapet and make their way to the keep from both sides. By dividing the demi-company, he ensured that there would be less congestion either on the climb up the stairs to the parapet or when crossing the embattled walls. He ran with his heart in his mouth and he asked the gods to help Borg to hold until he got there.

Riva had set up her decarchy on the last floor of the tower on the right corner of the gate keep. She had her soldiers loading and shooting as fast as they could in an effort to stem the flow of tribesmen up the siege ladders but she couldn’t make a dent. All those going up the ladders carried large and surprisingly sturdy shields to protect their open flank and the base of the ladders was likewise protected by an overlapping shield wall. In-between them, the battering ram did its work. The rhythmic booms were only interrupted when the last supply of boiled oil was dropped on the heads of the bearers of the ram. But the Guard had ran out of oil while the tribe didn’t seem to be running out of willing bodies. The Bone Breakers were too well-equipped and their numbers as well as their fanaticism were beyond belief.

She’d been both angry and elated when the tribe had descended from the mountain and had lain siege to Porphyron, more than forty nights ago. At last, she’d have the chance to pay them back for Granadas. She wasn’t the only one to feel that way either; all the survivors of the Snow Lions had been eager to face the tribe again and break them, once and for all. In the beginning, the siege went well because the tribe had made no serious attempts to take the walls. The darkspawn raided the countryside and bided their time, throwing missiles and plague-meat over the walls. They were under the delusion that they could starve or sicken the defenders before the onset of winter. The change in tempo, six nights ago, was both sudden and unexpected. The unveiling of never-before-seen siege ladders that could support ogrens, the well-shielded battering rams and the level of dark magic had come as unwelcome surprises. Combined with the numbers of the tribesmen and the dwindling stores of ammunition, the Guard was rapidly reaching its breaking point. Her elation at the sight of this hated tribe had changed to bitterness at the thought of Porphyron falling to the rapacious darkness.

When the crossbowmen and empyreans that occupied the lower levels of the corner tower began to arrive as a disorderly mob, coughing their lungs out, Riva realized what the torch-circles had done. She took a look through a window that overlooked the inner courtyard and saw the cinder cloud laying thick and heavy, all around the keep, blocking all access. It was expanding and had already flooded the lower levels of the gate keep and its towers. The damn darkmages intended to either suffocate the defenders or burn them alive with their magganea. She didn’t know what would happen first – no one did – and she cared for neither fate. The last floor quickly filled with frantic and demoralized guardsmen. Panic was one step away when some of them shouted to the rest to get the ladder in order to reach the top-door to the roof.

Riva stood before the wooden ladder, propped up on its place inside a niche in the wall, and pointed her crossbow towards the crowd.

Shut Up! She shouted and the soldiers stopped talking and turned to look at her. Get a grip guardsmen. There’s no way out. For those of you who took leave of your senses, I remind you that the best you can do from the tower-top is either jump to your deaths or go down on the embattled parapet. So, get into the mood of killing tribesmen again because we have a situation. The cinder cloud blocks reinforcements to the Bloodaxe and he’s dying. While none of us will shed tears over that, the chalyvos is one of us, therefore we have to help him.

The Captain will send help, we just have to go on top to escape the smoke and stay alive, someone said and heads nodded in agreement.

Fools. The Captain may not even know what’s happening yet and whoever looks out that window will see Zaal’s hoplites running for the nearest towers, instead of running to reinforce the gate keep. All you damsels in distress stop hoping that you’ll get out of this in one piece and without a fight.

The smoke has reached us! Someone shouted and everyone’s attention turned to the danger at hand. The guardsmen shut the floor-door, jammed clothes all around it and pissed on them to block the flow of the hot smoke. There was chaos for a while, until the trapped guardsmen realized that the wet garments had stopped the smoke-flow.

Riva didn’t let them become a mob again and began shouting orders. "All right. I want only my decarchy and the empyreans here. The rest of you take the ladder, go on top in an orderly manner and join Borg’s company on the parapet. Move people!"

The guardsmen complied with her orders without further argument. They were good soldiers as long as they had direction and their fear was kept in check. Still, they were too lightly armed to face the battle outside and when they got up there and they would see, hear and smell the slaughter, they could freeze or panic. If one of them jumped down on the parapet and didn’t give into his fear, then the rest would follow. Fortunately, there was another blackband in Riva’s decarchy. She caught Eloe’s eye and she nodded – no words were needed. The slim, red-haired veteran left her crossbow, drew her xiphos and pushed her way to the fore. She was the first to go up the ladder and the rest followed her. Riva turned her attention to those she had kept with her.

Empyreans, I’d like you up on top but it will take you forever to climb up that ladder and we’d probably have to rope you and pull you up to save time. So, I see that you’re equipped with full-body, flame-resistant armour. Guess what I want you to do. Riva said.

You have to be joking. You want us to go inside the cinder cloud? What for? Decarch Fen’Laros asked her.

The rest of Laros’ soldiers eyed her warily. They reminded her of beetles, with their articulated and oversized boiled leather armour, their full-face helms with the glass-plated eye-slit, and the bronze urns carried on their back, from which emerged flexible tubes to feed their hand siphons.

You’re the only ones who can get into that cloud and come out alive – if you don’t stay too long. I need you at the gate’s machicolation holes, to pour liquid fire upon the battering ram and the base of the siege ladders.

We have no such orders and the Captain considers the last stores of liquid fire more precious than gold. These urns we carry hold the last. I’m not going to use it up without the Captain’s express order. Laros stated.

"Damn it Laros, look outside. The Bloodaxe is nearly overwhelmed, the crossbows can do nothing to stem this flow of besiegers and the ram continues its work. The cinder cloud has just thrown us into disarray and the gate keep is about to fall. The scorpions have ran out of missiles, the murder holes have ran out of oil but you haven’t ran out of liquid fire - not yet. If you wait for orders, it will be too late. Wrap wet towels around your nose and mouths, put helms on and bring on the fire, or we’re doomed. If you burn the ram and the ladders, the crossbows will push them back and reinforcements will have time to reach us and keep the wall.

I know that it’s a desperate plan and I’m asking a lot of you but look outside. It’s all gone to the flame-pit here so let’s make one of our own. Turn the ground outside into the damn Pit of Ever-burning Flame and we may yet win this."

The ten empyreans shared sour looks between them – they hated Riva’s plan but she had a point. If this order had come from anyone else, Laros and his soldiers would have ignored her but Riva had the respect – and sometimes the fear – of other guardsmen, both because she wore the black and because the captain had stood behind her every time during the past year, when she had issued orders to officers of equal or even superior rank.

Empyreans, any of us who comes alive out of this, has free drinks for a month courtesy of Dea’Riva. Find wet towels or cloth – and I don’t mean the pissed ones - and seal your armours. We have work to do. Laros said and his decarchy complied with muttered curses.

Sar’Gaeson reached the cinder cloud and stopped a few metres farther than the edges of the billowing curtain of smoke to catch his breath. It had stopped expanding outwards because it was filling the gate keep so he knew that he was safe even at one arm’s length away from it. His bodyguards likewise stopped and surrounded him, alert for any danger. The elderly man envied the guardsmen assigned him by the captain; they weren’t even winded and they wore steel helms and chest-plates and carried shields and spears. Gaeson was a wiry man and kept himself fit but the battle against old age could not be won by any mortal. He hoped that the same wasn’t true for this siege. For the sixth night in a row, the darkmages and the voidcasters that huddled inside their torch-circles, worked their evil against Porphyron and its defenders. He was tired of being on the defence, always reacting to the enemy. Tonight, the captain intended to use all that he had been left to break the siege.

Two more damn weeks and the snow would force the tribe – the thought that it was just one tribe never ceased to amaze him – to return to the mountain. But the Guard wouldn’t last for two weeks, not against such unprecedented ferocity. If the captain failed, they were doomed.

The inner courtyard was littered with the foul-smelling, flaming sling-balls and fire-fighting crews were dousing them with water from the deep wells or with shovel-fulls of dirt. The oily smoke spewed by the unclean alchemies of the enemy that was carried inside the castle by the fireballs, was used to fuel spells such as the cinder cloud and so the flames had to be put out. When the wizard’s heartbeat returned to its normal rhythm, he began his spell. His daimon rose and an astral wind carried him beyond the heavens, a silver cord trailing behind, anchoring his spiritual essence to his material form. The archetype he wanted to use as the foundation of his magic lay beyond his reach but that was an eternal truth. Perfection was unattainable and if one tried to possess it despite being unfit for such a conquest, then he would burn in the fire of a star. The mystic sought instead one archetype of similar nature and lesser concept that was within his reach. The daimon merged with one of the ideal forms of purification and followed his silver cord back to his material body. The invigorating astral journey had lasted as much as the quest for an idea and as little as an eyeblink.

He began to build upon the foundation with quintessential energy, drawn from the Aethereal plane until the schema of his spell was ready. Then, the magic began to reinforce its own existence and to impose its ideal form upon its surroundings. Gaeson controlled his schema with adept hands, a craftsman’s hands that had been molding, building and writing spells for as long as a lifetime. The final praxis remained and after another eyeblink, his body began by itself the familiar rote of a secret that belonged to no other. Every spell was a secret, devised and kept safe by the mystic who possessed it. The praxis translated the aethereal schema into the material world. The casting of the spell was equal to a day’s labour to the mystic but to all others, Sar’Gaeson had merely spent a few moments in what seemed to be frenetic, accelerated motion. By the time that his bodyguards had cause to question their eyes and to wonder at the magic that would be crafted, the earth took a breath. The very soil at their feet inhaled and the cinder cloud roiled and shrank and reached out tendrils towards the watching soldiers, as if it wanted to grab something and forestall its fate. The guardsmen raised shields and made steps back with spears uselessly pointed towards the burning smoke.

Be still, you are safe, Gaeson told them. The earth continued to inhale and the cloud shrank further and columns of smoke were pulled out of windows and the gaps between doors and their frames as the gate keep was emptied of the dark magic. Soon, the cinder cloud was sucked into the ground and was no more. Steam rose, the same as boiling water would produce and it came from all around them, it was vented out of the very earth of the courtyard. Gaeson walked to a spot on the ground that was black and his bodyguards followed. That ground caused a revulsion to all who stood around it, such that no one would step on this corrupted patch of earth.

Mark this soil because it filtered the magganea of the cinder cloud and holds all the corruption. No one must tread upon it by accident or haste. Gaeson said and his bodyguards rushed to find sticks and string or cloth to mark the ground. In the end they used swords because anything else could burn and the mark would be lost.

Now that the cloud was gone, the desperate battle waged on the gate keep was clearly beheld by all. Brother Death had visited those walls. Lightly armed archers fought bravely by the side of Borg’s spearmen but so many of them lay dead and so much blood watered the crimson stones that Gaeson was of a mind to ignore his orders and rush to aid them. But then he saw heavily-armed hoplites enter the gate keep from the parapets on both sides. At the lead of the right column he saw the Blooded Blade in his mind’s eye and tasted its hunger. The mystic turned to leave, confident that the battle would be won. He had work to do with the castle’s artillery and he had already tarried.

Zaal’s column was the first to reach the gate keep. He was thankful beyond words when the cinder-flecked cloud of smoke began to recede and he had no doubt that it was the wizard’s work. During this siege, Zaal had reconsidered his opinion of the bitter, old man who had been virtually exiled to Porphyron by the Obsidian Order. Diomedes’ faith in the wizard had proven to be justified. After the cloud dispersed, the fire-glow coming from the ground in front of the keep and the gates became visible. Flaming bodies staggered amidst white flames that rose from the ground itself. The besiegers were in disarray. Empyreans had done good work there and crossbow bolts fell upon the massed tribesmen like angry wasps from the gate keep’s arrow-loops. Half the siege ladders were gone and the crossbowmen were taking care of the rest from both sides.

Zaal ascended to the topmost floor of the corner tower, coughing from the hot stench that had soaked into the mortar and the wood of the doors, which were smoking. Zaal and his hoplites found the top floor an ordered nest of crossbowmen and the ladder to the tower-top in place.

Welcome Zaal, I’ve kept them entertained while waiting for you, Riva told him.

Ha! Well-done, lioness. Have I told you that you’re my favourite? Zaal said as he climbed up the ladder.

I’m much too ugly for the likes of you and to tell you the truth, it’s not like I care, she replied and heard him laugh again as she shot a jackal-headed beastman. She watched the tribesman fall down to his death, until he was devoured by the white flames. If she could, she’d have each filthy darkspawn die twice and she’d make their deaths lingering, not quick. One death was not enough but it was a measure of vengeance regardless – payback for the dead of the Guard. Riva reloaded with careful efficiency, took aim and shot again as the hoplites caused a ruckus behind her.

Zaal emerged at the top of the tower and felt like floating on an island in a sea of fire, smoke, noise and carnage. The roof was littered with wooden components, screws, steel fittings, ropes and people. Two teams of artillerists had disassembled the polybolon and the liquid fire siphon – for which there were no more ammunition – and were assembling a heavy ballista. Even with the wall in danger of being overran, they hadn’t stopped working.

Get off my artillery station and go kill some enemies, Gandora shouted at Zaal.

The chalyvaea was genuinely incensed at yet another interruption, while just a staircase away and below her, red slaughter was perpetrated and hulking ogrens growled and swung their tree-trunk clubs, swatting at guardsmen like they were flies. Crazy people, thought Zaal about her and her artillerists but said nothing. He went down the stairs upon the parapet and drew his sword. The Blooded Blade was eager to be drawn and it virtually left its scabbard and leapt into his hand. The blood-red steel of the heavy broadsword began to keen when it was drawn. Blood sprayed and an orok fell dead and was kicked off the wall with a strength that wasn’t human. Blood did not drip from the sword – it was drunk by the red steel and the sword fed mystical strength to the warrior in reciprocation for quenching its hunger. Zaal felt intoxicated and uplifted on a soaring drive to prove his superiority over his foes, to make them tremble at the sight of him. He expected this euphoria however and he resisted the urge to wade recklessly into battle. He had never relinquished control of himself to man, woman or god. He would not give into the hunger of his mystical blade either.

A disfigured, bloated ogren came