Penumbra - Book 1 (4)

She passed the first three towers relatively uneventfully. As she came under the light of each tower, and often before, a group of soldiers would ride out to greet her, generally recognizing her armour and letting her pass once she mentioned Ganroc and her brother. Sometimes they would ride a little of the way with her, asking if she had seen any movement along the line or heard any word of reinforcements. One group reacted with disgust to her tale of Borin's treachery, stating as a point of pride that most Frontiersmen put their honour before their life, and would never abandon their posts no matter how grievous their wounds. Yet another shared some dried meats and fruits with her, wishing her well on her journey.

Yet it was the spaces in between the towers, where their light was dimmest, that were the longest part of her journey, and they were very frightening to her in their way. Even though she had been traveling hard for some time now, with just the sound of her horse and the ground beneath her as company, riding in the nightmarish arena of the penumbra was a much more remote experience for her, and she felt her isolation keenly. At times, when riding into a valley or through a copse of trees, she was unable to see the light of the towers ahead and a deep trepidation overtook her, but she always rode straight and true, and sure enough the light was always there when she emerged on the other side.

The light itself would occasionally blink on and off, which Alys at first thought to be a trick of the light, or possibly some obstruction she could not see in the darkness. However, as she passed the second tower, she saw that two men were blocking and unblocking the fire with a large canvas, obscuring the light in one direction. They were doing it in a particular pattern, and as she looked back and forth between each tower on the line, she could see that each was blinking to the other, presumably sending some message or status report to the other towers in the line. She wondered what system they were using to interpret the code, but it seemed incomprehensible to her.

The only other thing she saw on her travels were bands of foragers. The foragers were one of the main reasons for the Frontier's existence. They moved about the penumbra, gathering fruits, plants, animals and seed, for return to the daylight of Alys' world. The kingdom itself was not rich in resources of this kind, and while rearing animals and food in the desert was not unknown, it could not be compared to the bounty of life that thrived in the penumbra, where the air was cool enough and the light was soft enough for life to truly thrive. The foragers moved about in bands of different types, some were hunters, some horse tamers, but most were bands of fruit pickers. Alys saw a few working away in the trees, gathered about a caravan where they were harvesting their goods. Foragers were not supposed to work so close to the line, and she could see by their nervous demeanor's that they were keen to quickly move on, but Alys presumed that many foods took time to cultivate and harvest, so it was probably not unknown for the Frontier to creep up on a group of working peasants. The Frontier was all that stood between these workers and the Enemy, creating a zone of safety for them to work in unharassed. Alys raised a hand to the few she saw as she passed. She thought about calling out to say that the umbra was nearly upon them, but presumed they knew their livelihood better than she.

True to Ganroc's word, when the fog layer came down, it did so swiftly, and it did so from the darkness. At first Alys did not understand what she was seeing, as the fog was not thick and did little more than make the night a little grayer, causing Alys to spur Atrius on ever faster, to reach the light of the final tower. But within minutes it had swept over her entirely, and her vision was rapidly limited to a few feet in front of her. Alys' heart began to race and she worked hard to suppress her panic, but she could no longer see the topflame of the watchtower ahead, and when she turned about to see the tower she had just left, that too was obscured in a bank of gray cloud. She could see nothing but the ground ahead, and that took on the crisp unearthly quality that things do when they are suffused with the eerie light that comes with a fog. She wheeled Atrius around, looking for the topflame, but immediately realized that in doing so she had lost her bearings and now no longer knew which direction she faced. She could not even see the light of the sun, for that was diffused by the cloud that had enveloped her, and seemed to come from all about.

Atrius felt her tension and wheeled about again, and she struggled to keep both he and her rising sense of alarm in check.

"Easy there boy, keep it together." she whispered as she patted him, and wished he could do the same for her.

"Got to think, got to think this through calmly." She could go neither back nor forward, since she no longer knew in which direction lay either. Yet she also knew that the longer she stayed still, the closer the line between her world and the darkness would get. She scanned the fog again, looking for anything that might guide her toward the sun, as Banroc had suggested. One part of the fog seemed lighter than another, so, with a quiet "Ah, well.", she spurred Atrius forward and launched him forward into the night, hoping to break free of the fog somehow and regain her bearings. She rode hard for some half an hour, but to no avail, the fog was thicker and darker even than before.

Stopping again and panting hard, she gave in to her desperation and flung her head down on Atrius' flank, knowing not what to do to escape her predicament- for all she knew she was making it worse by running blindly in one direction. She decided she would simply sit still until the fog lifted, and then race to catch up with the Frontier. It would be taking a risk, but she knew that armed parties crossed the umbra all the time, and returned to tell the tale. She would simply have to take the same risk.

It was then, at the ebb of her despair, that she heard the noise. It sounded like metal striking on metal, and it was so close by that Alys jerked her head up quickly, looking about for its source. Again, all she saw was fog. A few moments later, the noise sounded again, and this time, Alys saw a tiny spark illuminate briefly in the fog, the sort of spark you might make if you struck flint on stone, a brief flicker of light, its afterimage fading into the darkness almost before you registered the spark itself. The spark was directly in front of her, but she found it difficult to judge distance in the miasma of the fog. Was it a dozen feet away, or right in front of her? She did not know. She heard the noise again, but this time right behind her. Before she could turn her head to see where it had came from, again the spark appeared in front of her, again with the strange noise, metal on metal, the sound of someone striking steel on steel. Within moments, a dozen tiny sparks were lighting up all around her, to the left and to the right, in a rough circle in which she was the center. The noise began to take on a pattern, strike, strike, strike, and the rhythm seemed to speed up, striking faster and faster with Aly's increasing pulse. Atrius snorted angrily and turned about again and again, surrounded by the metallic sparks. Then, amongst the strikes, Alys heard the hiss of tongue on teeth, and her blood ran like ice.

As Alys' heart raced, there was a break in the fog bank for one brief moment, and for the first time in her life, Alys saw the Enemy.

To her fearstruck eyes, they appeared as thin, pale skeletons. They had skin, yes, but it was draped so thinly over their bones that Alys could see the joints and sinew flexing over each other, moving under a translucent coat of parchment-white the precise opposite of Alys' sundrenched bronze. Their heads were bulbous, seemingly too large for their spindly bodies. They had wide, black eyes that seemed to bulge out of their heads, and their hair was as white as their skin. They wore armour, but it unlike Alys' leather jerkin it was composed of layered plates of silver metal. Each carried a long, serrated sword, which they were striking against their armoured forearms, causing the sparks that she had seen flying in the darkness, and the terrible, scraping noise. Their was one only a few feet in front of Alys and Atrius, and it was hissing through it's teeth, in an awful rictus of a smile that seemed to linger on even after the fog once again obscured it.

More terrified than she had ever been before, Alys still managed to shakily unsling her bow, tie the bowstring and notch an arrow. She looked about for a spark, pulled back the arrow, and waited again for the fog to lift. She spent a few nervous seconds breathing heavily, waiting for her chance, but before she had her chance a thin, bony hand came out of the fog and grabbed her leg. Alys screamed and her arrow launched into the fog, frittering away harmlessly in the mist. Alys struck the Enemy hard in the face with the side of her fist, then jabbed Atrius hard with her heels to launch in forward. He took one giant leap forward, away from the enemy, but there was another right in front of him, and it grabbed his rein and yanked down hard, pulling him to a stop and twisting him about. He wheeled up on his hind legs and kicked the man in the face, yet it was too late. Almost immediately a host of other hands grabbed at Alys and tore her from the saddle, bringing her to the ground with a thud as they pulled at her hair and arms. Alys was screaming loudly, panic and fear all but drowning out her thinking mind, but from the corner of her perception, that little place inside you that keeps its head when all around you becomes insane, she saw one of the enemy hold up his sword above her, ready to decapitate her as the others kept her pinned to the ground. While Alys wanted to close her eyes, she found she could not.

The evil apparition held the wicked blade aloft for a moment, but before it could bring down the killing blow, a spear flew from the darkness and impaled it through the chest, the spearpoint stabbing out of its back. It wheezed a last breath and toppled to the ground, its sword tumbling harmlessly to the earth. The other creatures about Alys watched their companion expire with wide eyes, not one of them moving for a few moments. Alys then heard the cry: "Kill every last one of them!" and all about her became chaos.

Horses leapt over her, their enormous hooves flying right by her head, and suddenly the air was filled with flying bodies as the wraiths were being cut down by spear and sword. Atop the horses, Alys could see the colours of the King's army, the same colours she now wore, as they hacked and stabbed at her assailants. The Enemy was howling and hissing, running amok as horses came from all directions out of the mist, each warrior striking a killing blow at every ghoul they passed. A spray of blood flew across Alys' face and she screamed again, but before she knew it this was the only sound, as all were slaughtered, and the commotion came to a bloody end.

One of the horses pulled alongside her and its rider jumped off in consternation, leaning at her side before taking off his helmet. A face so familiar it was a mirror of her own, looked down on her.

"Alys?" he said in wide-eyed disbelief. "Gods guts sister, what are you doing here?"

"Rogan." Alys said softly, reaching up to touch his face with bloodied fingers, before fainting outright.