The fields of Cromlus ran for leagues, it was as a desert of green and blood-red flowers, Daegan thought to herself, and inhabited it was said by Andvari by thousands of different sorts of deer, horses and predators. Notably lynxes, lions and wolves inhabited the plains, hunting all the great variety of prey that lived in the region. There were a few sycamore, pine and birch trees that dotted the landscape however they were few and far apart.

  “These are among some of the vastest fields in all of Antillia,” He explained to them, with nary a glance at them, eyes upon the skies high above them. Skies that were covered by dark grey clouds that menaced them, with thunderous tempests and rain-storms, such that some such as Lauma and Calandra squirmed.

  Ill-accustomed as they were to be out and about during a storm that they could hardly keep from shivering. If they were haunted by the thought of being out in the rain, some as in the case of Lyr laughed loudly, almost excited at the thought of the coming storm.

  “This is a welcome change,” Lyr cheered with a hearty chuckle, “Let the goddess Tempestas throw all that she has against us, we shall endure it!”

  “Aye my prince,” Connor agreed at once, as always his most eager supporter.

  Annoyed by this, Bardulf gave a roll of his eyes, “Must you always agree with all that he says, regardless of the daftness of it? Rain shall only slow us, and will cause any wild horses in these fields to hide away, when we need them most.”

  Connor shrugged his shoulders indifferently, determined to contradict him in turn at every opportunity just as Bardulf always did him. “Pah, why should I be concerned about that? My ancestors once rode upon great-wolves.”

  “You could always try to emulate them, if you wish,” The Wolfram warrior proposed sardonically.

  “Must you two always quarrel so? It grows wearisome,” Fergus intervened impatiently, losing his small quantity of patience for their endless arguments.

  This was often how things went on the road, with this group of travelers as Daegan had discovered; they fought endlessly amongst themselves.

  Though of a combative nature herself, one who could not imagine a life without conflict or glory, the young lass felt herself rapidly wearying of some such as Ronald, Bardulf, Connor, Kyrenas and Lauma who had never known a person they did not like to fight with. The sole one of these five, who could when extracted from the rest of them, be tolerable company was Bardulf.

  There had been countless times when he had not joined in the many arguments that so very often exploded between the rest of them.

  If his father could argue with everyone, on every point Glarald was every bit as exasperated as she was, by their current state of disunity. He tended to very often exchange weary looks alongside Calandra or Fergus at them.

  “I for one am the greatest lover of overcoming adversity and claiming glory, however I would prefer not to see any rain to-day,” Daegan muttered in the hopes to unite the lot of them.

  “Aye,” Glarald agreed at once, with a hearty nod of his head. “I do not much like the idea, of walking through the night under the rain.”

  “There is little else for us to do,” Andvari grunted in response to him, ever the contrarian also doubling his pace. Always the slowest of their troupe due to his considerably shorter legs than their own, with only the petite Daegan truthfully almost as slow in pace as he.

  There was little rain in the first hours, with the Elves singing one of their many hymns if quietly so. Only Kyrenas as always failed to join in the song, his spirit heavy and dour once more, so that he did not walk ahead of their group alongside his kindred. They were joined in song by Fergus, who appeared no happier than the grandson of Mythandralius. Just behind them walked Lyr, accompanied by Connor the two of them throwing continuous glances all about them. Whispering betwixt themselves, they were evidently unnerved by the emptiness of the fields. As there was indeed an air of sorts that hung about the endless green plains that had appeared at first ever so welcoming, yet once they set foot upon it, it ceased to be so.

  Walking to the rear of the troupe was Ronald, who appeared just as anxious as the érians, with Bardulf dourly following as always, his eyes boring a hole through the back so to speak, of Connor MacBaronk.

  Then there followed Daegan and Andvari. The latter was stomping along miserably, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

  This drew her attention to him, for some time she had felt her curiosity piqued by him with his growing apprehension along with her own helping only to make her all the more discomfited. Desirous for a conversation if only to step out of her own mind, so to speak, so that she at last addressed him in a gruff if high voice.

  “By Scota such vast plains, does it eventually turn into hills?” She asked thinking that most lands must be either like those of Gallia that she had heard of only through her father, or akin to those of her homeland, and thus covered in hills.

  “Aye.”

  Frustrated she at last asked, “Why is it so discomfiting here? It feels horrid, and the stench reminds me of rotted fish or some such horrid stench.”

  “Oh that is not rotted fish,” Andvari murmured troubled.

  “How do you know that? Have you travelled through these plains before?” Daegan inquired of him, keen to continue the discussion though she took little pleasure in this particular conversation or in the company of the Dwarf.

  Andvari threw her a troubled glance, one that appeared more frightened than angry, saying as he did so in an apprehensive voice. “Never, I always circled around them, typically by sea.” He hesitated before he forced himself on reluctantly. “My people, as all people do have heard tell of terrible tales of this place; for it is the Unhallowed Fields.”

  Suddenly far more nervous than she had previously been, Daegan felt her breath begin to be torn from her lips, faster and faster as her anxiety soon metamorphosed itself into fear. She could discern that Bardulf had become all the more apprehensive and he was not alone for the Elves, and Tigruns had also become alarmed.

  The most frightened though was Ronald the sorcerer, who almost tripped over the skirt of his robes at the utterance of the plains’ name. He was saved from humiliation by the still ignorant Lyr, who caught him with an annoyed remark.

  Ronald hardly paid him any mind, preferring to now stare as the Elves did at the Dwarf, their song at an abrupt end.

  “How did these plains garner for themselves, such a name?” Daegan queried with another glance up at the darkened skies, which had only grown greyer and far blacker than when they had first stepped out from the Marcoille forest.

  Andvari hesitated, licked his lips and at last conceded to answer. “I have heard of travelers stepping into these plains and surviving certainly. However, there have been three great battles hereon the plains of death.”

  “Battles?” The red-haired Caled-lass questioned of him, her emerald eyes leaping all about herself. Though tales and songs of battle were amongst her favourites ever recounted, she could not keep from thinking that these battles did not sound at all glorious in nature. Rather, they were likely to have been battles of the utmost horror. This contradicted her upbringing, though he had hardly encouraged such notions, Corin had allowed her believe in such things, just as the rest of the Caleds of Glasvhail believed in glory in battle.

  “Aye, the three battles took place at three different times, I do not know of any stories of battles from the time before my time. I know only that the three battles involved the Amazon Thrasoneira, the cousin of Anameia and her elder sister, who invaded these plains with ten thousand of their finest spears against the Centaurs. These Centaurs who numbered nigh on fifteen-thousand souls, all of whom were to perish in the battle that followed as surely as Thrasoneira’s men and women Amazon warriors did.

  The second battle was between the forces of Thrasoneira’s three sons when they advanced upon the defiant, rebellious Alkippe who refused to bend the knee to the three of them. Their forces had nigh on twelve thousand each, with this battle taking place seventy years after the prior battle.

  The last battle lassie was in the past hundred years, with Arnaud’s younger half-brother Lambert, advancing upon a Centaur and Amazon-alliance army known as the Vyrsaan-Alliance. The greatest alliance ever created in our island’s history, one that was sworn in the sole Centaur city of Vyrsaar. It was there that the Amazons under the lady Melanippe having sworn a sacred oath with the great Centaur chieftain Amykus to destroy the newcomers, doing so upon the holy mountain of Naomhclach.

  The two of them and their forces determined to wipe out Arnaud. Little did they know that their force of thirty thousand would not be enough; they cornered the knights of Lambert farther up north-east of here, near Lambert-Hill. He had I have heard betwixt nine thousand and mayhaps twenty-thousand men, though I am not so certain he had so many as either of those two numbers.”

  “Why is that?” Daegan questioned curiously, entirely unfamiliar with the tales he was recounting to her, and the history of this strange fog-covered island.

  “Because at the time of the battle, Arnaud had not so many numbers as twenty-thousand and he preferred to husband his resources. What is more is that at the same time that this battle took place, there was another that Arnaud was in the midst of combating, north-east against the armies of the Jarls. He was assisted, by old man Sweyn, Arnaud was to endure a great many casualties thereupon the plains of Ordranguard.

  It was thus impossible, for Lambert to have gathered together even nine-thousand men to combat the Vyrsan-Alliance.” Andvari stated with a peculiar amount of reason for one who had previously seemed half-mad. His eyes still flitted about as swiftly, as a hummingbird and darkened with such suspicion of each person or thing he looked upon, to suggest he was not wholly saved from madness.

  “What happened to this last army, Andvari?” Bardulf asked now of the Dwarf, who set his mistrustful gaze upon him. “To the younger half-brother of Arnaud, what is it that you are so frightened to say?”

  “I am not frightened to confess that his men, the flower of Norléans’ chivalry clashed with the thirty-thousand of the Vyrsaar forces thereupon the fields near the great hill. I am also not too scared to say that none left these fields, therefore be careful what you accuse me of dog.” Andvari said with sudden hostility, a grain of fear lingering in his voice.

  Daegan stared at him for a long time, ere she asked him nervously. “If such is the case Sea-Dwarf, what is it that you fear?”

  He hesitated. In the distance, thunder rumbled through the heavens and the heavens darkened at last completely as the suns disappeared and night menaced them with its dark-hold over the land. Each of them quailed and hurried their pace if a little more so, for fear of what not only time threatened them with but the clouds. Filled with desperation, they searched all the more for some distant hill, some cliff or some mountain with caves within it to hide themselves from the rain inside of.

  “I fear,” He at last admitted apprehensively, “I fear only what found each of these armies, and what became of their lost souls for more than one man has crossed these fields, only to lose his reason. These plains are cursed, mark me words lass, they are cursed… why the fields themselves are littered with the bones of the fallen, if ye truly require proof of their truest nature.”

  The disdain some felt such as Lyr, Fergus, and Lauma for the former chieftain of the Margdvarrovs disappeared from sight then. In place of dislike, they were filled with fear and apprehension also.

  These sentiments were to worsen shortly thereafter, when they stumbled upon the first away of armoured Centaur bones, three hours after this exchange. It was Calandra who stumbled upon it, and shrieked as one possessed at the sight of it, with Lauma prepared to kick away the corpse, ere she was stopped by Glarald.

  “Respect the dead,” He said stiffly, earnestly of a mind to respect them if only out of fear of what the repercussions may in fact be for them all, while his father helped Calandra to her feet.

  After this, they found a great many more corpses, some of men, some women, with the vast majority beast-folks with some horses interspersed amidst their ranks here and there. What sickened them all towards these fields was that it took days to cross the fields and each day they stepped onto more than several thousand corpses.

  *****

  The first day of travel was to see them find no escape from the rain, so that they drudged on through the night, coming to rest only when they found a small set of cliffs and hills drenched in rainwater. It was there, under the shadows of the great hills of Cromlus with the rain pouring down upon them all that they sought refuge and lit a small fire.

  “I shall take up the first watch,” Connor said to them, in a stiff voice.

  He spoke thusly, due to the air of exhaustion that hung over them all, and because of the darkened heavens above them. It was as the thunder boomed that the Elves shook with fright, save for Glarald who gazed out at the distant heavens and lightning in fascination.

  Though tired, Daegan could hardly sleep, for this reason she simply rested with her eyes upon the outgrowth of the hill that loomed over them eyes distant. With two large fires to warm their chilled bones, some such as Andvari were still outright miserable, whereas others such as Ronald snored loudly.

  Annoyed by how Lauma and Calandra slunk into tear-filled sleep, Daegan turned to Bardulf who was already asleep ere she turned to Fergus who was on her other side. Seated near to the fire, he shivered and sneezed every once in awhile, his eyes glassy with weariness.

  “Why do they weep so pathetically?” She asked disgusted now by even Kyrenas’ lack of courage in the face of the weather. Certainly it could be frightening, but there was little use in crying over it, she thought. Cormac and her father would never weep so.

  “Of whom do you speak?” Fergus asked, as he followed her gaze to the restless Wilder-Elves. “Oh I see they fear it likely because in their enchanted forest they have never seen nor heard thunder before.”

  “Such is indeed the case,” Glarald affirmed from the opposite side of their encampment, by the second fire, his back to the rest of them just as Connor’s was. Smiling over his shoulder, the son of Kyrenas said to them, “It is something beyond our control therefore we fear and despise it.”

  “Yet you do not appear to share this sentiment, why is that?” Fergus questioned curiously, extending his almost paw-like hands towards the flames in front of him.

  “Because though I have never before seen thunder, I do not fear it, rather it brings to mind thoughts of my other peoples.” He said clumsily, so that he near tripped over the last few words, seeing their incomprehensive expressions he elaborated upon his statement. “I wonder if the other races of Elves fear the outside world so. I shan’t imagine that the High-Elves, Earth-Elves or the Iron-Elves fear it.”

  “Why do you not think that they fear the lightning or the outside world for that matter?” Daegan asked inquisitively, her mind at last beginning to drift off to the dark realm of sleep, much to her relief.

  “I can answer that question,” Connor answered for the startled Elf, who smiled at his words prompting him to answer. “Because those Elves of whom you speak have been made be it by nature or fate to interact with the world, where you forest-Elves have not. They have also not hidden from nature in some little encampment, denying what lies before their very eyes. Put succinctly, they are not cowards who quake and tremble, at the nearest shadow.”

  It was a harsh assessment of the Elves, and one that Daegan whole-heartedly disagreed with all her heart and soul.

  She might have spat out her denial of his criticism, were it not for the fact that Glarald agreed with them almost at once, “I do agree. Though Arduinna is possibly the sole exception.”

  “That I do not know, though far be it for me to criticise a lady, especially one of her stature, and majesty.” Connor muttered more to himself it seemed, his piggish head bowed deep in thought with his words causing Glarald though he disagreed also with him, to do much the same.

  Troubled by these words, Daegan fell into a deep sleep, not unlike that of her companions. She did dream though, strangely not of Cormac, the sea as she was occasionally wont to do or of her father’s forge. The sound of striking metal and of bellows and fire did not enter into her mind, but rather she dreamt of the dead.

  They rose in the thousands, all of them stinking of death and of melancholy. Their skeletons in some cases still had flesh or clothes clinging to them, in various places much to her disgust and revulsion. Daegan knew this had to be a dream, for it was too horrid to imagine.

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  What drew and held her attention captive far more than aught else was one particular skeleton. He was dressed in what remained of a dark-auburn hauberk, with a torn tunic thrown over it. One that bore the arms of the clan of Arnaud, those of the line of Arnaud the Elder as some called him, which was that of the long-horned and long-tusked crimson boar. A gasp escaped Daegan as she sought to back away, to retreat from him yet her feet would not heed her commands.

  Frozen in place, she could only watch as this sepulchral figure approached her, his index finger extended outwards towards her. His eye-sockets staring straight at her as his bony yellow teeth clattered together.

  “Fffffffffffiiiiii,” He hissed as did all the skeletons, be they womanly Amazons, male ones, Norléanians, Arns, beast-folk or Centaurs. All hissed at her, and cried out approaching her with steady steps that were hardly deterred by the muddy ground beneath their feet.

  Daegan could only shriek and cry.

  *****

  “Wake up, you fool!” Andvari yelled slapping her awake, his blow drawing another cry from her.

  Struck awake, from the darkness of the nightmare Daegan felt a few tears of pain stain her eyes. Her left-cheek down to her jaw-line ached as though it had been burnt in the very fire that they had lit the prior night.

  Blinking her eyes tearfully at him, wounded not simply physically by his actions but in spirit by the blow Daegan could hardly restrain her tears. “Why did you strike me? That hurt!”

  “It was not simply you, he struck a number of us aware,” Ronald jested sourly, rubbing his own cheek.

  “Did you dream of corpses also?” Daegan asked alarmed by his words.

  Her words caused a number of them to exchange worried looks. Only Lyr and Fergus did not appear drowsy still or at all disturbed from the previous night. The two of them having slept quite well, in marked contrast to the rest of their traveling companions, something that they at once took notice of.

  “Aye,” Glarald said with a downcast gaze, a shudder ran through his own body, “It was horrid.”

  “We shall have to hurry from this place, now that we have rested and the storm has begun to abate,” Bardulf decided for the rest of them.

  Most nodded, though Fergus and Lyr appeared a little sceptical.

  It was Andvari who was the most distressed, “It is too late we may in fact, be doomed.”

  “Yet you did not object, to our traversing these plains at the outset,” Fergus grumbled bitterly.

  “Would you have listened to me?” The question was one that the Tigrun protested against many were not so certain if they would have. Some such as Daegan remained utterly convinced that they would have, not that Andvari cared to listen to her grumbling.

  *****

  They left the mound, and the small collection of hills, to journey through the dread-fields of the Unhallowed. It was to take them days ere they could escape them, so vast were they. By the time that they reached the Tìgear-river they were all beyond weary and frenzied. The river was one that the Dwarf admitted to have never crossed or seen before in his life. For the rest of them, three nights of sleeping in turns and dreaming endlessly of the dead reaching for them, had unnerved them.

  The finding of corpses in the fields had hardly aided their mood or improved their desire to continue on. With some such as Calandra and Kyrenas of a mind to turn back, a suggestion that Ronald revived a day and a half after they first uttered the proposal.

  “This place is truly the worst of all places, I have ever seen in my life since my Trial in the Tower of the Wise,” Ronald had proclaimed to the rest of them miserably.

  “Agreed,” Fergus said at once, with a shudder.

  “Nay, we are almost near the end of the fields, we must continue on,” Bardulf insisted refusing to listen to the Tigrun brothers.

  It was as the river appeared within view on that third day, after traversing mostly flat plains with the odd hill or mound along the way that it was decided they should stop, for the night. Though dusk had yet to overtake the heavens, more than a few of their numbers were complaining of being too weary to continue (i.e. Lauma, Calandra and Lyr).

  “I do not think we should stop here, we are almost free of these fields and to stay would be a mistake,” Andvari warned them with a shiver but none of them heeded his words.

  None save for Glarald, who turned now to him, to ask of him, “Why do you say that we should ford the river? Do you fear another night spent herein these fields?”

  “Aye and I would be a fool not to.” The Dwarf replied sharply, with a significant glance to their traveling companions. “For this place has since ancient days been avoided for it is a place of sorrow. Hereupon the fields of the Unhallowed, the men of Antillia along with all the folks of these great lands diminished themselves with massacre after massacre. Thrice have men struggled for dominance in these fields, and thrice did all fall upon the swords of one another so that none ruled over the Misty-Island save for war, division and hatred!”

  Wiser heads might well have heeded his utterances, his great warnings of the sorrow that had begun countless times in the fields of the Unhallowed. Fields that had determined the fate of Antillia more than any other fields save for those in the north known as the Dread-Plains.

  It ought to have been noticed by the heroes that neither, vultures nor crows took roost in these fields. That when dusk menaced there were to be no predators or prey spotted by any man, not wolves, nor deer, nor bears, nor bison. It was to become a great weight of shame for each of them that they had not heeded Andvari’s warnings.

  Affronted by his words Daegan scowled at him, her face flushing red with anger at the implication that she was a fool. It was one of thing to accuse Lyr, or Fergus of being one, or Lauma but she was no such thing.

  Out of spite towards the Dwarf, she voiced her support for Bardulf’s suggestion saying as she did so, “We are all tired, mayhaps some rest will do us good, especially since the river still lies a distance away.” She had difficulty believing her own words, and even more in the suppressing of the nausea that grew in her stomach at her own words.

  *****

  Night did not fall quite so suddenly as it had days prior, with the skies not quite so dark as they had been over the course of their stay in the fields. The once cruel heavens had given way to clear skies again, though those skies appeared black rather than blue or tinted orange due to the descending suns.

  Choosing to seat themselves near to one small hill, with it the only area that had no bones or fallen armaments near it. None of them being keen, to cook their dinner what little remained of a deer they had caught grazing earlier that day.

  Cooking it, they hardly spoke to one another with Andvari refusing to communicate with them. Determined to ignore a number of them, including Bardulf this in spite of the fact that he had previously treated him as his only friend still amongst them, the Dwarf sat apart from them. It was not simply the diminutive former chieftain, who was to pout and set himself apart from the rest of them, but Connor the Bairaz.

  The pig-man unhappy with the rest of them, for rejecting his proposal earlier that day that they ought to bury the dead, “Mayhaps they wish us to properly cremate and bury them.”

  “Nonsense,” Had shouted Andvari who had insisted it would take too long to do so, given the tens of thousands of dead who lay in the fields. “We shall stay here for years, if we were to attempt such a feat.”

  “But if we do not pay respect for the dead, then why should we expect aught more from future generations?” Connor countered bitterly at the time.

  It was this exchange that lay betwixt him and his companions, so that he did bore a heavy grudge against them. Uncharacteristically, he appeared to blame Lyr also, for the prince speaking out in support of the Dwarf against the notion of remaining in the plains to bury the dead.

  Though she had not spoken, Daegan had felt divided between the desire to honour the dead, as her father had taught her to always do, and the urge to stay away from them. The deceased of these particular plains were unlike any others she had seen, in all her life. They were haunted, and all appeared she had noticed, to be at rest upon their backs so that when she had looked upon them, they had stared back up at her, some with unseeing eyes others with empty sockets.

  “Mayhaps, we require music to cheer our mood,” Lauma proposed with some difficulty, her voice sounded weak.

  “I shan’t think of a single song, that could accomplish such a thing,” Bardulf stated dourly, his head bowed in thought. “We must though we have not buried the dead remember their sorrows, and pay heed to their sufferings and thus pay respect in silence.”

  “I merely, meant that our mood seems too grim,” Lauma complained to him, “For a man who is fixated upon death invites it to his table.”

  “Tush, you know not what you speak of,” Ronald retorted exasperatedly, from where he sat with his back against the hill with his eyes closed.

  Lauma might well have snapped at him, but was brought up short by a single glance from her commanding cousin Kyrenas.

  After this they subsided into silence for a time.

  It was in this kind of dire mood that made Daegan wish she were once again in Glasvhail. In a foul mood, she regained her feet with nary a glance to the others, saying only that she wished to relieve herself.

  Most turned away out of respect, not paying attention to which direction she left for, save for the other two ladies as had become the norm in recent days.

  When alone, she was to hum a small tune to herself and unsheathe her father’s blade rather than move to relieve herself. Keen for the comfort of the unicorn-hilt sword’s light, a light that had transcended and cut through the darkness of all the prior nights passed in the Unhallowed Plains.

  The light was as one that as always made her soul tremble. It was golden and white all at once, it was magnificent and the song it sung appeared quiet and all those things at once. Darkness could not endure in its presence, nor could it have existed at all where that sword was held up.

  Just as evil and dusk were held at bay by this third sun, this light was like they that had been banished by the evil within these fields, was largely overshadowed by this same evil.

  Dismayed that the ordinary glow and shine of the sword passed to her by her father, had nary affected the creeping shadow Daegan put it back into its scabbard, with a sigh of dismay.

  Turning to rejoin her companions, she was startled at the discovery just around the corner of the hill of what appeared to be a hand. The sight of which was lit up by the light of the large fire her friends had lit hours earlier.

  The hand was skeletal, and appeared to have no place being where it was. They had searched the area thoroughly for all bones and corpses, to make certain that they were bereft of all corpses. They had had no wish after-all, to share their sup with the dead.

  This was thus the reason, for which she was so bewildered and knew not what to make of this arm. Turning away from it, she took another four steps, only to slip on what appeared to be the still rotting corpse, of a large warrior.

  Choking on her own cry, Daegan hurried back to her feet and might well have hurried thither from there, back to the encampment were it not for two steps away from it to fall over once more. Falling upon her face in the dirt, she rolled over at once to her back to stare with wide, open and very round eyes. Eyes that met the rotting ones of the large hulking figure, still prone upon the ground before her, with her voice lost for what must have been a century suddenly rediscovered.

  The shriek that was torn from her lips awoke each of her companions to the danger that had come upon them, all of a sudden.

  *****

  Though she fell into a swoon and could not see him move, she knew at once that it was Bardulf who was the first by her side. She knew this, because she remained awake still, though she could hardly move and could hardly see him, aware of him only through her nostrils that smelt his fur. Fur that had been soaked by rain-water so very, very much in the days that had fluttered past them with as much haste, as they had rainwater.

  Torch in hand, and wroth upon his face at the sight of the wicked corpse that sought to grapple Daegan down to end her days, he thrust the tip of it into the eye of the Unliving man before her. The shout that erupted from its lips, was far more terrible than the shriek that it had torn from her or the roar of battle-rage torn from those of Bardulf.

  “Daegan! Are you wounded?” He asked of her, taking her up by the arm with his left hand, his own eyes staring down upon the rotted corpse before her.

  Daegan could only nod vigorously several times, ere she clambered back up to her feet. Her horror echoed by those around her, who retreated from the encroaching corpses that had sprung up all about them. The disgust and revulsion she had felt only grew as it was shared by all those she travelled with.

  In spite of travelling through the fields for a week, none of them had truly expected to meet a single corpse. The Unliving as they knew them in their tongues, at first crawled towards them, wherefore they began to rise up to their feet, to assail them directly, with blades and hands.

  In the distance thousands of Centaur corpses began to rise, to the consternation of all. What was more was that they were not the singular cavalry to arise from the fields.

  Some remained upon the ground, to better ambush them. This was the case of one who grabbed at Glarald, seizing him by the foot, when he was distracted as he rescued Lauma. Rescuing her by thrusting his torch into the skull of one of the Unliving Tigruns who had reached for her, his cry as he was now grabbed echoed throughout the land.

  From vale to vale, from one edge of the river to its very end the dead arose as though amongst the living. Never had such horror been seen since the days of Cormac the Hero defeated the Dark Elf warlock Svarteilios.

  To the disconcertment of all, though he tried to resort to light and flame, Ronald’s puny flames sputtered out no sooner had they departed from his staff, the light of which was at once extinguished, the moment the crystal began to shine.

  The exclamation of shock and terror that erupted from him was one they felt in all their hearts. He might well have been run through then, were it not for Fergus, who throve to his rescue with his own duo of torches, one in each hand. Tearing at the magi’s robes and the trousers of the younger twin the Unliving though would not be denied, nor would they allow them safe passage.

  Their bony fingers, and rotting hands and clanking jaws called for the Tigruns who retreated steadily, inch by inch. Neither having ever in all their thirty nearing forty years experienced such terror as they felt then at that moment. Seeing this, Lyr and Bardulf both shouted, one for another torch as his own snapped in the jaws of one of the Unliving, and the former in the direction of Daegan.

  “Your sword Daegan! Your sword, draw it less we shall not see from next they strike once our torches sputter out!” Lyr shouted from one side of the encampment striving against one of the Unliving to rescue Andvari.

  Maddened by the sight of the dead, who hissed and grabbed at him the Dwarf could only back away weeping and praying to the gods, whom had in his faith forged the world. His tears flowed as rain upon the ground, and into his beard slickening it in spite of the tuffs of hair torn from it by the dead. This was the only diversion he had from his prayers, as he groaned and wept from his pain at their touch.

  Panting and almost crying from fear, Daegan drew her sword once more. Once again the light of Cosantóir shone upon the Unhallowed Plains, though its light was diminished considerably. Just as her faith had been broken in it, so too did its light falter for her, though she knew not yet how this had happened.

  “I cannot see anything!” Lyr complained as he struck with his torch at another of the Unliving.

  “Glarald!” Shrieked Kyrenas leaping forward to throw himself bodily into the midst of the Unliving, with his cousin Calandra and the ever-faithful Connor by his side.

  Moving sluggishly to try to assist the screaming Elf, Daegan was almost thrown aside by the swift-footed Lauma. Her wits her own once more, the Elf-maiden was to slap the slack hands of the daughter of Corin, and to seize the white-sword from her grasp.

  “Give it to me!” Lauma shouted now herself, leaping forward to slash at the Unliving that separated her from her cousin.

  In this manner she rescued him, with Glarald injured and bruised needing to be retrieved by Connor, from the hordes of the dead.

  *****

  They might well have perished then, prayers upon their lips and battle-cries echoing to the heavens. They might well have joined the dead in their resting there in the vast fields of the Unhallowed, uncared for by the living. But it was then that Lyr took command, proving himself every bit the man his father and great-uncle were, shouting at them as he assisted Bardulf in fending off one of the Unliving Centaurs.

  “Retreat, we must retreat o’er the river, lest we be overwhelmed as they all hurry hither!” Lyr bellowed waving his torch as one who is maddened.

  “But it still lies some distance away,” Ronald protested helplessly.

  The sorcerer was swiftly robbed of his choice, as he was swept up into the arms of the retreating Lyr. This tore a great cry of rage now from the proud brother of Fergus, one that echoed for many leagues, and that might well have frightened any of the living who might have been near them, had there been any of them near at hand.

  The rest of them wasted no time in joining them in flight, as next to fly towards the safety of the river was Kyrenas who did so with his son’s arm thrown about his shoulder. Then came the daughters of Arduinna the Shining, who were themselves followed by Andvari who refused to be left behind. Fergus was next to flee with Connor and Bardulf at the rear.

  They hesitated ere their departure from the camp, for the river if only to bicker one last time. The topic of their disagreement was over the matter of Daegan.

  “Connor seize Daegan!” Bardulf bellowed furiously.

  “I need not take commands from a Wolfram, nor will I turn my back to an enemy,” Connor argued at once, with his typical piggish behaviour.

  “This is no order but a plea,” The Wolfram yelled desperately, shedding his pride as he might have fur in the warmest of summers, in his desperation to rescue the ivory-skinned lady frozen just behind him. “A plea to rescue a lady, Connor as your prince or Meallán might have otherwise done!”

  If Daegan had not been frozen by fear, and revulsion at the sight of the many, many Unliving that surrounded her, having to her mind arisen from the depths of her worst nightmares she might well have wondered at Bardulf’s words. Never one to make any sort of peace or pact with the Bairaz, he nonetheless surmounted all expectations of him, just as the érian pig-man did.

  Though he returned the wolf’s disdain for him, and though he despised the notion of fleeing from battle, hungry for the same glory his father Baronk had achieved in the fields of Nualláin nigh on twenty years ago, Connor did just that. Though, his people might well have condemned such an act, and though it repulsed him to his core, to take orders from Bardulf as it did to flee, he seized Daegan and fled.

  Enveloped in his arms as though little more than a child, Daegan did not feel safe in spite of how she failed to resist or protest. Still scared out of her wits, she strove and throve as best she could, to restore reason to her own spirit. Yet still she remained still, unable to move or do much more than weep. Reduced to a helpless child, as she had been to her mind the night upon the Mound of Griogair she clung if unconsciously so to Connor.

  In the rear-guard of their forces Bardulf took flight not long after the mighty Connor MacBaronk, his legs carrying him almost as swiftly as the Bairaz’s own.

  *****

  The shock of the water, of the feeling of coldness overwhelming what little warmth there still was within her.

  Daegan’s lungs soon emptied of air and filled with the water of the Tìgear, eyes soon blinded by the rush of the water she let slip a cry that none were to ever hear. With the Bairaz whom held her, quick to kick out with his lungs and to carry her to safety regardless of the weight of his armour. An agile swimmer in spite of his bulk and size, Connor was to prove once again just how he had survived, the straits between the Lordly and Misty Isles, at that moment.

  Swimming thither across the raging sea, it took him near to an hour of kicking across it, sucking in air and then diving down below the surface once again. The second to last to take to the sea, he it was who was second to first to reach the shores of the north-side of the river.

  His strength and confidence in the sea filled his companions with awe and admiration for him. Only Daegan, who had the awful experience of being transported across the sea in his arms, brought up to the surface ere she was pulled down below the tempestuous waves once more without warning. And she alone felt revulsion and fury at the manner in which he swam, deeming him later as she could hardly string together a proper thought then, a terrible swimmer.

  Though he strove mightily against the waves as he had been bidden, by the heir of Griogair, strangely Connor could no more overtake Kyrenas, than he could flee faster than a bird in flight.

  Inspired by desperation and terror for his only son, Kyrenas out-swam even the Bairaz. Dragging Glarald along in his wake, he was certainly weighed down by his son’s weight, greater as it was than that of Daegan, but this appeared at that moment no great burden.

  He was as Herakles at that moment, with the strength of a thousand men, and just as much paternal passion in his every movement as the ancient hero had felt for all his sons. In spite of Daegan’s experience, of being carried to safety was a horrid one; that of Glarald was infinitely better in comparison if only in terms of the carefulness with which he was treated. Only his injuries sustained at the hands of the Unliving was to tarnish, the experience.

  The plains of the living-dead behind them, and the smaller fields of Solsikke yawning before and to the west of them, they drew themselves to the grassy-shore coughing and weeping.

  The first to speak was Bardulf, who shuddered and complained, “Why must it always end,” He huffed and sucked in plenty of air over the course of another minute, resting between Calandra and Ronald. “Why must it always end… in us needing to ford either the sea or a river?”

  “Because the gods despise us methinks,” Fergus retorted from where he had pulled himself and his brother from the sea, next to Lauma and Andvari.

  “Do not speak of the gods in that manner, brother,” Ronald scolded wearily, coughing and expulsing water ere he wept and shuddered at the experience he had just endured.

  Fergus grumbled but did not answer.

  Glarald for his own part lay upon his back with a faraway look in his eyes and a small smile upon his lips, “At least by the good grace… of Freyja the Protector we have lived…”

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