Chapter 1

Jonathan stared down at the chaos, the death, the flames and shadows, and felt the tears trickle down his cheeks and into his beard.

“I ... I don’t understand,” Samantha said, reigning in her steed beside him. She pulled off her helmet as well, and hooked the silver-colored platemail underneath her arm. “How did they ... how did they get over the wall?”

“What in Janavere’s name...” Mark rode up beside them, and further, until his horse had to stop itself from walking off the edge of the cliff. “How?”

The city was in flames.

Jonathan and his twelve knights sat upon their mounts, and each reined in at the edge of the cliff, high and above the Valley of the Blessed Sisters. The grand waterfall of Madam Tovere poured over the Great Mountain of Constaner, and washed into the valley. Lush, green land, filled with forests and meadows. Fifty miles in diameter, the valley was surrounded by other mountains, each jagged and steep, and the valley roads between them were blocked by massive walls, built of stone and metal. The Wall Knights of Tanderous guarded those walls, the entrance to the South, and the entrance to the East. The Valley was their home, and it was beautiful.

It burned.

Jonathan pulled off his helmet, and set it against his hip, held in place with one hand. The platemail was heavy, and the slits it had for eye slots did not let him absorb the atrocity before him well. With the helmet at his side in his gauntlet, he was free to stare upon the death of his home, as the sun began to crest over the horizon behind them. The shadow of the cliff they stood upon sank away, hiding from the sun that rose behind them, and with each slither of land the sun lit, the death and mayhem was exposed.

The land still hidden in shadow was plenty visible though, as the flames roared and lit it in its own sinister light. The Humming Bird fields and Iron Wood, were nothing but cinders, and the Selile River ran red, reflecting the flame, or running with blood. Or both.

The City of Madam Vandar sat in the center. A hundred thousand people, the only city on the Death’s Watch frontier, buildings of wood and metal, of brick and glass. The work of a hundred years of sweat, blood, and tears. Beautiful churches and cathedrals, sprawling stables, decorated black smiths with glorious forges, schools for children, a meeting hall where the council gathered, and cozy, comfortable homes surrounded it all, hundreds upon hundreds of them. All in flames.

“How?” Vivienne forced her mount over to his, and hit the back of her armored hand against his armor. “You said the city would be safe!”

“It ... it was safe.” Jonathan pointed to the dips in the mountains to the South, their goal, and a dip in the mountains to the East. Each had high rising black smoke, the lifting sun cutting their souls apart as the fading shadows revealed the remains of their world. “The ... Beizites ... they—”

“They got past the wall!” Eric pushed Vivienne’s horse aside with his own, and screamed out to the valley far beneath them. “Maybe some of them are alive? The Beizites don’t always find everyone. We can—”

Jonathan snapped his hand up. Everyone went silent, and sat straighter upon their mounts, each with their helmet under their arm; half attention.

“The Beizites have taken the South Wall Gate, and the East Wall Gate. They have ... taken the Valley. They—”

“There could still be survivors!” Again, Eric gestured to the valley, voice raised to a near yell.

Jonathan turned to look at the man, and glared. Eric shut up, and lowered his head, grinding his teeth. No words needed to be said. The man was being loud and was risking their lives, on an empty hope.

“The Beizites have overrun the valley,” Jonathan said, voice solid and low. “We know what the Beizites do, and that they leave no survivors. They will track any living human down within hours through smell alone. All we can do is pray that our soldiers and city guard managed to kill as many as we did last night, Janavere willing.” He wanted to scream, to cry, to let his voice waver, but his knights needed him. Cry later, be a beacon of steel and resolution now.

The Knights of Tanderous needed little leadership on the front line, little leadership in battle, little leadership when they had to face the oncoming tide of claws and fangs. They were all battle hardened, had each killed hundreds of Beizites, and had all faced death dozens of times. They were all God-fearing knights of the White Order, served under the Tanderous banner, and vowed to protect the Valley of the Blessed Sisters, each of them without hesitation.

To come home, and find it all for naught? If there was a single evil the world could throw at his knights that could destroy them, it was this. They needed him now.

“Sir,” Samantha said, “do ... do you think the other squadrons...?”

He shook his head. “If the city is overrun, then ... then my fellow captains, and their squadrons, are gone.” His fellow Knights of Tanderous would have died to the last man and woman, guarding those gates. And his squadron knew that. Like him, they were hoping against hope, that someone might have survived, that fellow knights Millineue or Gummer or Peterson survived at the wall. He knew they didn’t. They hoped that Samantha’s husband on the farm survived, or that Eric’s sister at the Darrer’s Smithy survived. They didn’t.

Jonathan’s parents didn’t survive, either.

He clenched his jaw until he felt the bone threaten to break. Jonathan was no child, almost forty years of age, and with enough scars to tell more than a few tales. His house was next to his parents’, at his request. After trips beyond the Valley wall, he’d come home, and sit with them outside, where they had tables for them and their neighbors; close friends. They’d drink wine, have pig or fowl, with lettuce and other leaves from old Nancy Tamadan, who would, of course, insist on joining them.

Jonathan shook his head, and put his helmet back on. Inside its metal encasement, no flesh was exposed except for the slits for eyes. He was protected, nothing could harm him, and he could hide his tears better.

“We ride.”

“Sir?” Eric and Samantha said.

“We can’t stay here. The Beizites will find us eventually.” Beizites could never catch knights on horses, but they were relentless. It’d only be a matter of time before their claws swarmed over the paths winding along the great Wall. The monsters had to have come from the East Wall, overwhelmed it, attacked the city, and sent other forces to the South Wall, where Jonathan and his team were headed after their excursion. It was many miles through the winding paths to the reach the South Wall though, the only entrance available to them that led into the Valley, that didn’t involve a thousand-foot drop.

To get to the Blessed Valley, his team would have to fight through the horde, a deadly battle liable to get many of his squadron killed. And even if they succeeded, all that waited for them was the horde’s main force, and the remains of their beloved city. They had no choice but to turn around.

He turned Puteesha back the way they came, and began at a faster pace, something that would gain him distance at a reasonable speed without tiring the horse. They needed to put distance between themselves and the city, and a lot of it.

Vivienne put her helmet on, as did the rest of his crew, before pulling in her horse beside his. “Where will we go? It’s five hundred miles back to the Green Fields, through the Wastelands.”

“We go West.”

“West?” Samantha joined Vivienne’s side, helmet on, hands tight on her reins, trembling. Trembling not for fear of what lay to the West, he was sure, but for her dead husband. “But, from here, we would be forced into the Dead Canyon.”

“Yes.”

“And ... and into Pokala’s domain.”

“ ... yes.”

Eric pulled his horse up beside his, close enough that the knight could reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Jon, we don’t have to. We can ... we can...”

“Can what? Cross the Wastelands? It would take weeks to build up the provisions we’d need, and the Beizites will be swarming over these woods soon. And without an army, we have no defense against the night crawlers. We have no choice.”

“Pokala is going to kill you, Jon. And then us!”

“She won’t kill us. She—”

Eric grabbed the reins of Jon’s horse and yanked, causing their mounts to steer into each other, and come to immediate halts with a few neighs of protest. “You killed Damorok, Jon. Pokala hates your guts, and you know it.”

He’d done more than kill Damorok, they all had. They’d stopped Pokala’s forces on the borders of the Valley on several occasions. They all had demon blood on their hands and blades, and Jon was usually the paladin of choice for patrolling. He had a list of things Pokala hated him for, as long as his arm.

It didn’t matter. They had nowhere else to go, and if they didn’t go now, they were dead. Pokala could be reasoned with, spoken with. The Beizites could not.

The trip down from the mountain was a quiet one, somber. Some of the knights shed a few tears, and at one point, Samantha wept openly, only for Eric to be the one to console her. The two were close, friends, and the death of Samantha’s husband was a blow they all felt. The death of Eric’s sister was a more private affair to the man, but it was plain to see it crushed him terribly, and he took solace in Samantha’s shared misery.

His other knights found solace in each other as well, warm words shared between broken souls. Vivienne and Tuomas, Daniel and Marcus, Laurence and Ludwig, Petteny and Jackson, and Marr and Denmer. The thirteen Wall Knights of Tanderous, primary guard of the South Gate, eleven men, two women, born to fight on the front lines of battle, robbed of everything they fought to protect. Every single one of them wanted to stop, set up camp, mourn, or turn back and suicide charge into the hordes of Beizites. He couldn’t let them mourn, not until they reached the Dead Canyon.

Never had the gentle clop of hooves on the dirt and rocks of the roads been so depressing.

With time, they left the forest at the base of the mountain, and entered the Dead Lands. Rock. Petrified trees. Giant tombstones were scattered about, cracked and worn with hundreds of years of weather, the remains of whatever race came before. Perhaps the demons knew? No one had ever asked them. Maybe he could? Unlikely. No, if things didn’t go according to how he hoped, they’d all be dead, and no one would be asking anyone anything.

And they knew it. They knew there was a good chance they’d die on this last mission, and he was sure some of them wanted that, to go down fighting. But, if things did go according to plan, none of them had to die.

Only him.

With no sunlight left, and the canyon’s mouth before them, open and inviting them into the gorge of blackness and death, Eric raised a hand.

“We camp here.”

Nodding, each knight got off their horse, and got to work. Their mounts were not stallions meant for speed, they were work horses meant for endurance, combat, and loads. The bags of supplies on each horse were immense, and contained many provisions; nothing near what they’d need to make an attempt across the Wastelands, whose border they currently brushed against, but more than enough to set up camp for several nights.

Groaning, they got out of their armor. It took the help of each other to undo the heavy plates, but the Wall Knights did not use squires; couldn’t risk their lives. They did the task in silence, until everyone was in their shirt and trousers, gambesons and sheets of metal set aside. Next, campfires. It was a routine they’d all done many times, with each person knowing their role when it was time to camp for the night. They had the provisions for several tents, and the tools to create a fire. And, being in the Dead Lands, he knew there’d be wood available, dead wood scattered about from acres of likewise dead trees. The petrified forest wood would burn oddly, but it would burn.

Some of his crew set out for the wood, others set up the three tents they had, and the others set to building a barrier around them, something to deter large animals. A hungry bear or rutting deer were not things you wanted to wake up to. For other things, he had a different tool.

With a heavy sigh, and running a hand through his long dark hair, Jonathan squatted down by his pile of armor, his shield, his sword, and withdrew the blade from its sheath. The markings had to be done with a blessed weapon, after all. Once his knights had set up a simple fence, using rocks and sticks, he began to trace the symbols of Janavere.

Each symbol left behind a white scar, burning away the impurities beneath it in the subtle, holy light. Each symbol robbed him of his breath, and he was forced to take a moment to breathe after each. He went quickly, growing more light headed with each symbol, but it needed to be done. And, he didn’t feel like taking his time.

Samantha set a bundle of sticks by the fire in the center of their camp, and came over to him. “Need help?”

“You...” He forced down a deep breath, and continued to the next symbol. “You passed the holy trials?”

“No.”

“Then you know you can’t.” Onto the next symbol. He carved it slowly, focused, listened to the piece of his mind and soul that could touch the holy light. From the connection, into the sword, into the dirt.

“I know. Just ... looking to talk, I guess.”

“I don’t blame you. I’ve been wanting to talk, as well.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because—” Onto the next symbol. Samantha looked down, and brushed her long waves of blonde hair aside. A beautiful woman, Samantha, and Jon winced as he thought of her husband. “Because, if we give into grief now, we’ll be destroyed by it. We can mourn later.”

“I know, I know. But we have to ... to at least acknowledge what happened, what we’re doing, what we’re going to do.”

Other knights walked by, each no longer in armor, each with stern eyes staring at whatever it was they were doing. But, he knew they could hear him, if he started talking. Maybe now was a good time to do just that, to let some emotions out. Or, as he expected, it would unleash sorrow that would pin them under its weight.

“The city is gone, Samantha. Everything is gone, and you knew when you joined the Knights, we have no shelter to go to if the city was lost.” Next symbol.

“Losing the City of Madam Vandar was never an option, Jon. If they died, we died with them. That was the plan.”

“And that is what would have happened, if we were there. We underestimated the Beizites, and the only reason we survive, is because we were lucky.”

“You can’t—”

“Luck. We live because we were lucky.” Next symbol.

“Janavere didn’t—”

“Janavere gave us her protection as far as she was able, as far as she can now.” He gestured to the symbols he drew, and how they glowed before fading into white scars, lost in the shadows. “The Holy One can’t protect us if we try and face thousands of Beizites in suicidal stupidity. We have to make logical decisions, no matter what our emotions tell us.” Mindlessly relying on Janavere was a fool’s game. The goddess did not wish for the weak to leech from her, or rely on her. It was a give and take relationship with the goddess, and she would not help those not capable of helping themselves.

“And going to Pokala is logical?”

“The Valley is overrun, and the mountains will be before dawn. It won’t be long before they reach the Wastelands, and we know they won’t go into the Dead Canyon.” Next symbol.

“Because they’re afraid of Pokala.” She leaned on some of the sticks that made up their poor fence, and glared at him. “We should be, too.”

“ ... we are. I am. But we have no choice. I’ll speak with Pokala, arrange some sort of deal for your lives, and—”

“Our lives. You mean our lives.”

He sighed. He was tempted to not tell her, but that’d be an insult to her intelligence. “Pokala will want me dead, and if I surrender my will her, I am sure she will spare your lives.”

“We’re not going to trade you for a safe place to sleep, Jon!”

He stopped, and glared down at the symbol as he drew it. Each symbol was only a few inches wide, but that didn’t change that each circle, each triangle, each tri-cross and each star, was draining. Samantha’s bitter truths did not help.

“You’ll do as I say.”

“Jon, you can’t be serious.”

He did not reply. As his fellow knights finished preparing their meal and feed for the horses, he finished planting his symbols. The holy symbols surrounded the camp, and would glow bright if crossed, bright enough to wake the knights and scare away animals. They’d also burn demons and the alien Beizites alike.

“It’s not up for discussion, Sam.”

“Jon, please, we need to talk about this. This isn’t like usual. We’ve always—”

“Sam.” He slipped between the fence sticks, and glared at her, glared hard. She gulped, stepped back, and lowered her head.

Sighing, he sat down by the fire, and ate his meal.

Nothing happened. No one attacked them during the night, no wild bear stumbled onto their camp by the smell of roasting meat, and no demons took advantage of their sleeping. The Beizites didn’t find them either.

But, it was easy to see his knights didn’t sleep well. Nightmares, maybe. He had them. His parents, screaming, dying, over and over under the claws and teeth of swarming Beizites. Torn apart, literally. No doubt the rest of his knights had gone through the same, and no doubt it would affect their stamina.

Everyone packed up the gear in silence. They destroyed the camp, hid all signs of their passing, reequipped their armor, tended to the horses, and resumed their journey. His knights moved slow, arms and legs heavy, and each picked up their sword and shield as if they weighed twice what they did. Their armor was worse, and donning it might as well have been strapping a coffin to their backs.

It didn’t matter. They could rest, and mourn, once Pokala gave them sanctuary. He probably wouldn’t live to see it, but the demoness would be bound to her word, and his knights would live. Maybe she’d even let him live, long enough to see them move on.

He rolled his eyes at his own stupidity, and gave Puteesha a gentle kick in her sides. Within moments, thirteen work horses were trotting out from the Dead Lands, down from the edge of the Wastelands their path nudged against, and into the Dead Canyon.

Its walls welcomed them like a mouth, with many jagged teeth above on the coiling curves of rock. Vast, half a mile wide, with no plant life upon the nigh black earth. Bits of dirt and sand caught the air as their horses stirred the ground, and the breeze picked them up, creating small twisters. Their mounts did not use blinders, and the sand had no trouble attacking the horses’ vision. They had to go slow.

The canyon did not care if they went slow. The path was not walked by men or steed, and there was no trail through the rough earth. As much as jagged rocks scaled the walls and hung from the overhangs above, it littered their path as well, and their mounts struggled. Any slip would mean an injured leg, and there was no saving a lame horse in this situation. Slower, and slower, through the mouth of death.

None of his knights wore their helmet, him included. Out of the way, but at reach for easy access in case they were attacked. It was stupid, but he assured them Pokala would not attack first; demons didn’t use bows and arrows anyway. If he was wrong, well, the helmets wouldn’t help them.

The canyon closed over them, and no longer could the sun reach them. Like teeth, the ceiling of curved, sharp rocks pressed together, sealing the maw of earth over their heads. The canyon became a cave, a mouth accepting them into the stomach of the beast.

Jon and several of his knights each lit a torch, and held them high. The cave looked like how he imagined the throat of a titan dragon, waves that indented against the rolling wall every few feet, like snake ribs. Beneath them, the pebbles and stones dispersed, no longer littering their path; a side effect of a ceiling, he supposed. Instead, the teeth of a cave surrounded them. He’d once heard scholars refer to them as stalagmites and stalactites, but most simply called them cave teeth. Many hung from above, and many blocked their path from below.

They couldn’t leave their mounts behind, but the worsening path grew more and more dangerous to ride across. Sighing, Jon slid off his, and began to guide Puteesha through the maze of teeth poking up from the ground. There had to be a path. If the demons came through the caves, they must have been able to navigate the maze. Probably. Hopefully.

Their pace turned into a crawl. Every inch forward was pain, even with a torch held ahead to make sure there would be no deadly misstep. He tried to keep his sighs quiet; no need to have his misery rest on his knights’ minds, but he was growing tired, mentally and physically. The cave was oppressive, endless darkness, and as far as he could tell, it’d started to grow larger as they went down the subtle slope. It truly did feel like they were walking into the belly of a beast. No one could do that and not feel the weight of it, not since they were leaving behind a ruined hope and ravaged dream.

Goodbye, Valley of the Blessed Sisters. Hello, Pokala’s domain of death and destruction. Whatever it took to save his knights, so be it.

One of his knights slipped. Everyone froze, and Jon immediately turned around to see Eric sitting on his ass.

“You ok?” Jon said, holding up his torch closer so he could see what happened.

“Barely. By the powers, I ... I slipped off.”

“Slipped off? I ... oh.” The darkness around Eric’s leg was not one cast by the cave’s teeth. It was true darkness, a fall off into endless black.

The teeth-filled path they walked, had become a bridge of stone over an abyss. Their journey had just become a hundred times harder.

“Single file,” he said. “Go slow, and focus on the path only. No demon could attack us on such a precarious bridge.” Not a lie, but he wasn’t sure it was true either. It should be true. And the courage it’d give his knights was needed, as they walked upon the tongue of Lithiana herself.

Thank Janavere that the teeth beneath their feet started to fade. But at the same time, the bridge in the chasm of darkness thinned until it was only four feet wide. If Puteesha reared, there was a good chance she’d fall, or worse, turn and knock one of his knights off with her. Slow and steady was their only option.

It was a mile of gradual, painful, sluggish progress. The teeth were still there, only short now, and that wasn’t necessarily better. Easy to slip on, or trip on, especially now that they were only an inch high. Every single step was arduous, with torch down and ahead of him to find both his footing, but provide the light for Puteesha to do the same.

Only upon the end of the not-path, did the bridge begin to open its tight grip, and did the teeth under their feet begin to fade out entirely.

The stone slowly became smooth, the way metal could be if rubbed thousands upon thousands of times. Demons must have walked over it, to and fro, for hundreds of years, but he heard nor saw a one. He held up his torch high, as did the rest of his knights, and they continued along on the bottom of the chasm, the ceiling and sides so far they were beyond the light of the fire. The cave was big enough to hold any number of untold horrors, and that included sleeping dragons.

A light flickered in the distance, subtle, an amber star against the empty black. They moved closer, walking a little more casually now that the floor was no longer trying to kill them, but stayed slow all the same. No need to ride in and spook the inevitable army of darkness that awaited them. Sighing, Jon squeezed his torch tighter, and moved toward the amber dot.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

Samantha came up beside him, horse reins in her hand, torch held well above her. “Sure you don’t want to turn around?”

“It took us five hours to cover a single mile.”

“And I’m more than willing to spend another five per mile going back.”

“We have no choice, Sam.”

“You’re trying to save us by sacrificing yourself. You think any of us want that? We’d rather die together, then live and let you die.”

He grumbled, and shook his head as they kept walking. “We don’t all have to die.”

“Jon, come on. We’ve lost everything. My husband is dead. The city is destroyed and the Valley is gone. You think—”

He reached out, and grabbed the collar of her breastplate. A hard jerk brought her closer, and she stared at him as he glared at her, cutting through her bullshit with his eyes.

“You’re going to live. And I might too, for all we know. Shut up, and follow.” He let her go, took Puteesha’s reins, and continued. No more arguments. He was done trying to convince them this was the correct decision. He was probably going to die, and they’d live; it was the only course of action left to them. Maybe Pokala would feel generous, and give them the provisions they needed to cross the Wastelands. Maybe.

With an angry groan, Samantha went quiet, and followed as commanded. The rest of his knights had heard him, and they also kept quiet as they grew closer to the distant light. With time, another light appeared, and another. The amber light in the distance painted the silhouette of a structure, something tall and wide, and it filled the colossal girth of the cave.

A castle. Jon gulped as its shape became more obvious, and stared at the unusual curve of its design. Like the cave teeth they’d passed, it looked like the enormous building was made of the cave stone, except someone had taken centuries to carve intricate shapes into it, and out of it. Spires, walls, all carved of the rock, but spikes erupted from them with the natural flow of something alive; the work of a talented, and disturbed sculptor. Massive, sprawling in its size, the castle could house thousands, tens of thousands of men and women, and it merged into the walls and roof of the cave like flesh merged with flesh.

Glowing rocks came into view. Sitting upon braziers of black metal, the rocks glowed with the same flickering as fire might, as if they were alive, or had somehow managed to capture fire within them. The metal itself looked unusual, and as the squadron grew closer to the castle, Jon realized much of the odd material was used to accent features of the stone building. There were windows, without glass but lined with metal spikes. There were doors, or rather gates, made of bars of the black metal. Many of the spikes that jutted out from the castle walls and spires were small black metal spikes, while other larger ones were carved out of the ancient stone itself.

Perhaps it was a mineral unique to the Dead Canyon, and this cave that contained it. No human had passed the gaping maw of the Dead Canyon in decades, and returned to speak of it. What journals that survived from earlier contained little information, only warnings of darkness and skittering claws in the black. With luck, his knights would be able to write their own journals, and share them with the clergy at the Green Fields.

The knights came to a standstill, as they began to look around at the cave teeth that stuck up from the ground. The teeth had suddenly begun to grow again, dozens of them, each as wide as a horse and as tall as a tower. Some of the glowing rocks were in the stone of these cave teeth, and as they flickered with their fiery light, the knights began to notice the creatures that hid within the teeths’ shadows.

“Jonathan Tearmire,” a voice called out, echoing in the cave, almost booming with rage, “you dare assault my home?” Despite the thickness of the voice, it had a feminine pitch to it, layered by the echoes over top the crashing thunder.

“I am not here to fight!” he called out. The cave caught his voice as well, turning it into a booming echo. Not as powerful as whoever was yelling his name, but still.

A chorus of hisses and roars rumbled up from the walls of stone. Quiet at first, but they flowed into each other, catching both the echoes, and joining the voices of their fellow monsters.

With reflex, the knights put their backs to each other, and Jonathan heard more than a few gasps, as the creatures came close enough to reveal the glow of their eyes. Amber, same as the crystals, same as fire. A couple, then dozens, then hundreds of the glowing, slitted eyes appeared in the dark, getting close enough that their unnatural glow could be seen by human eyes. They stayed perhaps fifty feet away, but they surrounded the knights with ease, more than enough of them to completely circle them, and show a wall of eyes in all directions. Thousands of demons, thousands of eyes, some hanging from the ceiling, some hovering overhead and flying by, most on foot around them, all blurs of silhouettes in the black.

“I should think not.”

Her, her voice. Without the booming echoes, he could recognize it, despite the constant growls and whispers of her army. He should be able to see her, he—