“Here they come!” cried White Cloud, pointing up the side of the valley where a bone white avalanche of Shadowsoldiers was sweeping down towards them.

     Captain Mordicus drew the Sword of Retribution and the five thousand Fu Nangian soldiers followed suit, the morning sun gleaming on the forest of sharp steel as they waited for the command to advance. Mordicus wasn’t the kind of man who believed in hiding behind walls of stone, no matter how strong. He believed in meeting the enemy on the battlefield and believed that the Sword of Retribution had come into his possession for that very purpose.

     Since emerging from the Underworld just under a month before, there’d hardly been a day in which he hadn’t been in the thick of battle, moving from place to place wherever the fighting was hardest and driving the enemy back from besieged walls and ramparts wherever he went. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, had fallen before the holy blade. Some dying on its more than razor sharp edge, others struck down by the power of the divine weapon as it hurled bolts of righteous destruction into the ranks of the sinners. The beleaguered Fu Nangians had welcomed his arrival as the answer to their prayers, giving them fresh hope as they felt the power of the holy sword flooding through them, and the relentless advance of the tide of evil had slowed for the first time since the war began.

     The fact that the Shadowsoldiers outnumbered them almost four to one didn’t bother them too much, therefore, and they gathered fearlessly behind the huge, powerfully muscled priest as he pointed the Sword towards the oncoming enemy. “Fear not, faithful guardians of righteousness!” he called back to them. “Victory shall be ours, I promise you, for Samnos Himself is with us this day! Feel His sacred presence! See where the foul obscenities of the undead lie rotting and broken, cast asunder by the glorious God of Righteous Warfare! Now only the living stand against us, and they too shall feel the wrath of Samnos! His hand shall be raised up against the sinners, and you shall be the sword in that hand, as He is your shield! Feel His power and have faith! He is with us!”

     The Fu Nangians roared with bloodlust, fired up almost to a berserker rage by the priest’s words as they waved their dragon banners and strained forward like dogs on the leash, waiting impatiently for the order to attack.

     Mordicus kept them waiting until the enemy were only a couple of hundred yards away, screaming with hatred and throwing up clouds of billowing dust as they thundered towards them. In their lead, the Shadowwizard rode on the back of a monstrous undead warhorse, one of the few undead creatures that could endure the aura of holiness radiating from the sword, and overhead a flock of wyvern riders swooped and dived, picking off individual defenders with poisoned arrows. The Shadowarmies controlled the sky. The black haired, yellow skinned Fu Nangians had nothing they could put into the air against them, but Mordicus was confident their impact would be minimal.

     He waited until the onrushing enemy was so close that only his charismatic presence prevented the defenders behind him from breaking ranks in panic, so that when he finally gave the order to attack it came as such a blessed relief that they charged forward with enthusiasm. The discipline he'd instilled into them was still enough for them to resist the impulse to spread out into a line, however, as their every instinct told them to do. Instead, they remained in a tight group behind the priest, as he’d ordered. Against such numerical odds it was inevitable they’d be surrounded and it would be foolish to try to avoid it, but perhaps they could turn it to their advantage.

     The second before the two armies met, the leading Fu Nangians thrust their double headed pikes deep into the dusty, arid ground and pushed them forward so that their upper, steel tipped points were pointing towards the enemy. Unable to stop in time, the leading Shadowsoldiers couldn’t avoid falling onto the pikes, the high strength alloy blades easily penetrating their white painted breastplates, and as the following ranks were thrown into confusion the second rank of Fu Nangians took ruthless advantage and took a terrible toll, their spears finding the gaps in their armour with practised ease.

     Now the Fu Nangians began to spread out, forming a double circle around which the Shadowsoldiers spread until they formed a second circle, enclosing the first. Only Mordicus himself failed to take part in the well practised formation, preferring to fight alone in the midst of the enemy where he could swing the Sword of Retribution in wild abandon, secure in the knowledge that only enemies lay within its deadly, sacred arc. For twenty yards in all directions around him the Shadowsoldiers scattered in terror, their only thought to get as far away from the terrible priest as possible. Mordicus strode forward, disrupting the enemies’ carefully rehearsed formations and allowing the Fu Nangians to reap the benefit, cutting them down by the hundreds until the ground was littered with their bodies and the dusty soil muddy with Shadowsoldier blood. The Fu Nangians cheered as they slew, and the Shadowsoldiers screamed in despair, some of them throwing themselves to the ground and whimpering piteously as the priest approached.

     Then, suddenly, the Shadowwizard was there, and the priest just barely had time to raise the Sword to ward off the terrible death spells directed at him. Other spells followed in quick succession, the wizard knowing that his one hope lay in keeping the priest off guard, too busy defending himself to launch any attacks of his own. A fireball blossomed around him, therefore, the flames licking and tearing at the shield of divine power surrounding the priest, and the tinder dry grass around him was set ablaze, making soldiers of both armies back away fearfully. Then a blast of searing cold leapt from the wizard’s fingers, rebounding off the priest’s shields to freeze a pair of Fu Nangians who’d remained too close in case he needed help. Mordicus risked a glance at them as one fell into the ashes of the brush fire, shattering like a statue of glass, while the other, less badly affected, managed to stagger away, shivering as flakes of ice fell away from his frostbitten body.

     Another fireball hit the priest, and he felt his shields beginning to weaken. Roaring with fury, he raised the Sword, aiming its tip at the wizard, and spoke the word that sent a bolt of lightning flashing out at him. The wizard had raised his own shields, though, and the bolt was deflected into a company of ogres, scattering them like bowling pins.

     Mordicus strode forward, knowing that the way to beat the wizard was to get close to him. More spells tore at the priest’s shields, weakening them further, but the wizard had no way of knowing how weak it was. For all he could see, none of his attacks were having any affect at all and the terrible priest was just laughing insolently at him as he approached. His only thought was to stop his advance, to keep him away, so instead of aiming his spells at the priest himself he aimed them at the ground in front of him.

     A patch of dusty ground the size of a small swimming pool turned into sucking mud right in front of the priest, who walked right into it before he knew what was happening. At first he was merely annoyed and tried to retrace his steps, intending to simply walk around it, but by the time he was in it up to the waist he knew he was in trouble.

     He began praying to Samnos, beseeching the God of War to grant him the power to solidify the mud so he could climb out, but the wizard was still raining spells on him. Only low level spells now, as he’d used up most of his magic. Mordicus was easily able to deflect them, but the effort of maintaining the shield meant that Mordicus couldn’t concentrate on his prayers and the power of Samnos eluded him. He sank up to his chest, up to his shoulders, up to his chin, and still there was no solid ground under his feet. His wildly groping hands found the edge of the pool, though, and with a heave of his powerful shoulders he began to pull himself out.

     Suddenly, though, there was an arrow in his shoulder, the heavy steel head penetrating his chain mail vest as though it were cotton. One of the wyvern riders had swooped in low while he’d been preoccupied and the arrow, not being magical, had been unaffected by the shield of divine power. The priest reached out with his other hand, spoke a word and the wyvern exploded into a shower of blood and scales. He then pulled the arrow out, cast it insolently aside and prepared to pull himself back up onto solid ground.

     But suddenly there was no strength left in his shoulder, and a numbness was spreading all down his left side. Poison! he realised, and he hurriedly prayed to Samnos for the power to heal himself. The small arrow wound vanished, along with a number of other small wounds he’d suffered during the course of the battle, but the numbness continued to spread, now affecting his other side, and he began to sink again as the strength went out of his arms. The last thing he saw, before the mud closed over his head, was the wizard standing over him, a look of astonishment on his face as if he couldn’t believe he’d beaten him.

     Mordicus knew he was dead, but there was no fear in him. None of the mortal terror that another man might have felt in the same situation. He knew that he was going to Samnos, to fight beside him in the eternal battle against evil in the next life, and the only thought in his head as his lungs filled with mud was ‘I guess it had to come to this sooner or later’. He lost consciousness quite peacefully a few moments later. His heart continued to beat for a couple of minutes longer while the level of oxygen in his bloodstream was still high enough, and only when it finally stopped did the Sword of Retribution, floating down next to him, vanish.

     For the second time in less than three months, the Sword flew through ethereal space, homing in on the next most powerful priest of Samnos in the world. It flew in a straight line, travelling up to a hundred miles below the curving surface of Tharia and passing through chambers and caverns unsuspected by the surface dwellers. Caverns inhabited by creatures so strange and alien that the merest glimpse of them would have driven any human to instant insanity. The Sword was oblivious to them, however, and they to it, and a few minutes later it had left them behind, approaching the surface again. Half an hour after the death of Captain Mordicus, it reappeared in a blaze of glory in front of another priest, sitting in his tent, polishing the wicked spikes running in a crest along the top of his helmet.

     The astonishment on the priest’s face lasted for only a moment, to be replaced by sadness and a grim acceptance. So I’m now the most powerful priest of Samnos in the world, am I? he thought, his lips forming a tight, thin line. I had no idea things were that bad. He stared at the Sword for a few moments longer, contemplating the fact that every priest of Samnos more powerful than himself in the world was now dead, and then he dropped to one knee before it, praying to the God of Righteous Warfare that he would prove worthy of the honour now bestowed upon him.

     “Grant me the strength and the courage to bear the burden Thou hast placed upon me,” he intoned solemnly. “And the wisdom to use this power to Thy greater glory, not mine. Grant me the humility not to exult in the deaths of the sinners soon to be sent to their judgement and the serenity to accept my own judgement when the time comes. All power and glory to Thee, my Lord. Thy will be done.”

     He remained kneeling for a few moments longer, his head bowed in silent contemplation, before standing again and placing his helmet carefully on his head, and then Darian Resalintas, formerly of Fort Battleaxe, reached out and grasped the Sword of Retribution firmly by the hilt.

                 To be continued.

The tale of the Fourth Shadowwar concludes in The Scrolls of Skava

     The fate of the world hangs in the balance. Belthar faces imminent defeat, and if the empire falls there will be nothing left to oppose the armies of darkness. One hope remains. One last all or nothing gamble, but for it to succeed the heroes of civilisation have to find a way to team up with their bitterest enemies. Creatures every bit as evil as the Bone Prince but whose existence is also threatened by the undead hordes. Side by side, they must march together into the very heart of the Shadow…

The Legend of the Blue Wizard then continues with the six volume epic collective titled The Last Perfect Days.

The Rossem Project
The Flight of the Dragonfly
The Rings of Salammis
Tak
The Worlds of the Sheaf
The Gem lords