Plight of an Empire

Chapter Thirty Six- part 2: Audriel

All around her, the white seemed to go on forever.  Only the snow covered spruces and conifers broke the never-ending white flats.  The sun reflecting off the snow would have blinded her, but compared to the glimmering of her armor, it was nothing.

The north-horse beneath her started whining and shaking his head.  He threatened to rear, but she calmed him with a pet of his mane.  Slayer, she had named him, was spooked.  Soon after, the other horses started whining and rearing.  A few threw off their riders before sprinting off, away from here.  They are close.  They were upon her.  But where?

“Your Grace,” said Lord Mortyn Noyce, who was riding alongside her.  “Look.”  He pointed an outstretched finger ahead.

She squinted her eyes against the harsh light of the snow.  In the distance, a grey figure emerged from the stark white beyond.  Everything behind her faded away as she watched the figure approach.  It seemed that her life had taken the opposite of her dream.  She had the army at her back and her opponent walked alone.  She wondered whether it was Lisbette or Laelette that was approaching her.  She hoped it was Lisbette.  She would return the favor that the bitch did for her father.

“Could it be a survivor?” asked Lord Noyce.

Audriel shook her head.  “No,” she said.  “It is the one I am meant to slay.”

No sooner than she spoke those words, a thousand roars pierced the sky.  She had been told of the ear-splintering bellow produced by these beasts, but words were nothing to this.  The horses screamed, rearing and throwing off their riders.  Her own horse reared beneath her, crying out against the onslaught of noise.  She hung on by the black mane of Slayer with both hands.  But the blare of the beasts was too much.  She clapped her hands over her ears, praying for it to stop.

Then she was on the ground, writhing in the snow.  Even with her eyes squeezed shut, she could see the twins watching her thrash about in agony.  They were winning and they knew it.  Man was nothing against the mighty Behemoth.

But soon, they would be her monsters.  She would take the beasts from them just like they took her father away from her.

She opened her eyes only to see hundreds of men floundering in the snow, having lost their mounts.  She was better than this.  She was the high queen of the empire.  She would not be brought down by mere beasts.  Putting one hand in the snow and the other on her tome, she pushed herself up.  Across the line, she saw Arkayus’s five golems standing tall.  He could have helped her.  He could have been given power.  But he threw it back in her face.  So she was going to take it and use it.  It was what she was here to do.

To the north, the grey figure had stopped.  But what she saw took the air out of her.  Hundreds, maybe thousands, of great, white beasts stood alongside the figure.  They were nothing like Audriel had imagined.  They were far worse.

Bigger than any beast she had ever heard of, the Behemoths towered over the grey figure.  Their white pelts would have been beautiful had they not been stained red with blood and gore.  The blood of my people, she knew.  On their shoulders, the head of neither twin sat.  Instead, she saw a head made for teeth.

The roars came to a stop.

The grey figure began to walk to the line.  She looked into its face, trying to determine which twin it was.  But the closer it came, the more she began to realize that it was neither twin.  Nor was it human.  This beast was taller than any man ought to be.  But it walked upright like a man.  What is this thing?  Could Adrianne have been wrong about the twins?  She was right about everything else.  She knew about the spell, the armor, even that Arkayus would reject her offer.  She couldn’t have been wrong.