Prologue to an end

These mountains will be our ossuary; the sky our cleric. I see my men desperate for death. The waiting has gnawed at their sinews. Three thousand steel cuirasses glint in unending light and hope imbues none. My men. My nation. Doomed to dread and ruin. 

“How will you go about it my love?” She speaks the words so cunningly pride blossoms in him. “Go about what my Queen?” King Vokandor turns to greet his wife standing in the tent’s entrance. A weightless statue silhouetted against nothing but blue sky. Though only a shadow and shape, her beauty outshines the world. “Do not pretend to know your thoughts better than I do.” He could hear the smile in her voice. Even now, at the end, she knew joy. She skirts the war table with swift deftness and stands before him expectantly. A woman of kindness and hope. Whereas he has none, he reflected - as he often does in her light. His shoulders sag beneath resplendent armour. “We cannot win.” The Queen makes no movement. No candles are lit. The fabrics encasing them cast a dark red hue, yet her emerald eyes speak brightly. A truth he cannot bring himself to meet. “I asked you how you will go about it. This is not a King's response.” Smiling again, she moves his face with both palms to hers and presses her mouth into his lips. His hands slide to her waist and his blood returns. “Do not falter. Do not surrender to your darkness.” The words come quickly. Rushed. Between impassioned kisses atop a snowy peak. Above an army lost. “It is not only my darkness that eclipses me.” He speaks to break free from the temptation to enfold himself in her warmth. To remind himself of the doom and duty to which he is bound. “Fight we will. But I bid you. Leave this place. Your loyalty to me is served better from the Sanctuary.” A silent scale. A whisper in the dark brushing his ear. “No, my Lord. Not now. Not ever.” 

She watches from the Commander’s Post. Twixt banners of gold and teal. She burns for me. Woman of the Frodiggan Hills. I hope the fire in her dies with me, so that she may love again. 

Lord Velsig sits beside him on his imperious steed, silence emanating from his Knight’s helm of burnished brass. “If I fall. You are to lead the men in battle until victory is impossible. Then you must order a full retreat.” Velsig barely turns in his hulking armour. An imperceptible nod signals his cognisance. “There is no shame in surviving so that our people may live in some other way. There may be hope yet.” He pours courage into his words, but it does not hold. It falls through him, like blood through chain-mail. Velsig, though silent, sees the folly of his words, the King knows. But a lost hope is sometimes all that stands between valour and oblivion. Ahead the dust cloud grows impossibly. Much of the mountain is consumed by it. The King pulls down the visor of his helm, and shortly thereafter three thousand men do the same. In the whirling dust and grit approaching, amorphous figures toil. Shades of death swirling maces studded with obsidian shards. Riders atop great cave bears wreathed in wicked blue flame. Skinless men bound by tainted curses. Nervousness poisons the horses, which baulk and toss. Shrieks echo across the valley. Mad cackling cuts the sky. Velsig unsheathes his sword and points its tip to the abyss above, which too has turned to dust. Vokandor readies his lance; behind him a cacophony of metal dances and disappears into the sound of impending disaster. The thundering mob grows ever closer, and his heartbeat resounds in his helm. Nonetheless, the King turns to his army. 

“Whatever happens here. You are men of Vokandor. Men of the Ranging Steppe. You have my honour. May the dying light of the world remember your glory.” He sees her one last time. A shadow in the dark. A memory of a dream.

“For the Queen!”