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  VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

  The Hand of the Khryseoi: Act I

  Michael Gardner

  Valley of the Shadow

  First published in New Zealand in 2016 by Page Up Publishing

  Copyright © 2016 by Michael Gardner

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters real or otherwise, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real.

  Edited by Athena Crowley

  Acknowledgements

  My sincere thanks to everyone who helped to create this book, especially my beta readers, Winifred, Kathy and James.

  Special thanks to my Patreon subscribers for their invaluable support. Extra special thanks to my Patreon champions!

  Visit my Patreon page for exclusive content, free stories and more.

  For Hesiod (circa 750 BC to 650 BC), who named the Khryseoi but left their story untold.

  And for Brenna, who completes my particular spirit.

  Contents

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  ~ Chapter 1 ~

  Illyria (Ancient Balkan Peninsula)

  2106 BC

  The horizon was a streak of silver fire separating the ruined land from the dark clouds seething above. Thousands of bodies lay on the blackened plains: men, women and twisted creatures that might have once been human. The air carried the bitter scent of burned flesh.

  Raven stood on the crest of a lifeless hill overlooking the valley. He was dressed in a ragged cloak, giving him the appearance of a great black bird. He held a long bow. A single arrow remained in his quiver but he let the bow slip from his fingers. “Tell me what happens when you die,” he said, in a voice hoarse from shouting.

  At his side stood a heavy-set, blond man with a mane of a beard, also carrying a long bow, which he was using as a crutch. Wolf’s chiton had long since faded to a shade of mottled grey and was covered with dirt and dried blood, although the seams were still bright with yellow dye. He glanced at Raven. “It’s extraordinary, in four hundred years you’ve never died... not once.”

  “Perhaps I’m lucky,” said Raven. “Please, tell me again.”

  “I’ve told you at least a dozen times.”

  Raven looked up at the sky. For a moment, a glimpse of blue appeared through a crack in the shifting clouds. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the clouds had closed again. Looking at his companion, he saw Wolf’s eyes were firmly fixed on the road, a scar on the earth running along the valley. He sat down and gathered his knees under his chin. “This war. I thought I’d feel differently about it coming to an end,” he said.

  Wolf cleared his throat. “Differently?”

  “Yes. At first, I thought I’d feel some sense of triumph. Then I imagined I’d be full of sorrow for the friends we’d lose.”

  Wolf kicked a stone, and Raven listened to it clatter down the hill. “I feel only numb. Is it wrong to feel this way?”

  “Give it time,” said Wolf.

  “For a moment, I thought I saw the blue sky,” said Raven, looking up again.

  Wolf raised his bushy eyebrows but didn’t remove his gaze from the road where their comrades had set out hours before. He put his thumb to his teeth and chewed the nail.

  Raven began to count bodies. He lost track and gave up. The battle had been a swift and brutal affair. The engagements always happened fast. After, they would regroup and gather their strength for the next exchange, but now Phylasso, their leader, had called for an all-or-nothing assault. His plan had come as a shock, not because of the bolder strategy, but because now the war would be decided for better or worse.

  “I think I’m numb because I’ve grown accustomed to this existence. It’s hard to imagine it’ll soon be over,” said Raven. Wolf said nothing. “How many of our friends will return from death this time?”

  “Hard to say... some. Perhaps.” Wolf drew a slow breath. “I’m confident Phylasso weighed up the risks, that he considered how many Khryseoi would be unbound by our enemy.”

  Raven nodded. He looked at Wolf. His friend’s face was unmarked by age or time, forever youthful and firm, but his expression was ravaged and spoke of long years of hardship. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”

  “Numb,” said Wolf.

  At the bottom of the hill, the ground sloped gently into the valley, where dust collected in eddies. A solitary, shambling figure became visible in the half-light, clutching his chest with one arm. He held a short sword made from bone in the other.

  “Give me your arrow!” said Wolf.

  “It’s the last one.”

  “I know. Give it to me!”

  Raven offered the shaft to Wolf fletching first. Wolf nocked the arrow, drew back the string and let it loose. The shaft arced high over the valley and found its mark in the man’s chest.

  “What will we use now?” said Raven, as he watched the man drop to his knees and fall face first into the black dirt. It was one of The Forsaken, a half-consumed man, deprived of will but not dead: a soldier of the enemy. “Well, I hope he stays down,” said Raven.

  “It was a good shot,” said Wolf, leaning on his bow again. “It won’t be long now.” He thrust a finger towards the horizon. “There! The end is near!”

  Raven squinted and saw a flash, like a star winking between clouds at night. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen the stars. A thread of smoke rose. After a moment, a spot of soft orange light appeared and began to swell. The liquid fire had been ignited and the enemy’s fortress was in flames. Raven had seen the fortress, at a distance, several times. It was an ever-growing, twisted and terrible rival to Mount Olympus, built from bones and blackened rock, mortared with foul-smelling mud. “We should be there,” he said.

  “Someone has to be the last line of defence. We mustn’t let any Forsaken reach the wall!” Wolf’s bushy brows drew together. “Be thankful, Raven! This is a battle for warriors who enjoy seeing their enemies up close.”

  Raven turned his hands, examining the calluses, nicks and grazes. They healed fast but were an ever-changing feature of his skin. “I take no pleasure in killing, not The Forsaken, nor any of the dark spirits the enemy sets against us,” he said. “Others do. Should I?”

  “It has to be done.”

  They didn’t move for many minutes. In the distance, the flames grew brighter and now Raven could see them dance. He found a peculiar beauty in devastation and rose to his feet to get a better view. “Let’s go and join the fight. We’re of no use here!”

  He felt Wolf’s hand grip his arm.

  “Who will hold the wall if they fail? Make yourself comfortable. We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Raven freed himself from Wolf’s hold and paced back and forth. “I may not enjoy killing but I’ve decided I’d rather be in the battle. What hope will we have of holding the wall alone? We don’t have any more arrows.” His hard leather boots scuffed the scorched earth. “What’s death like? If this is the end, I should be prepared.”

  Wolf scratched his beard. “Death
rarely happens to suit us.”

  “All the more reason I should be ready.”

  Wolf sighed. “It’s not like you to be so... talkative.”

  “I can’t abide the silence.”

  Wolf nodded.

  Raven closed his eyes and listened. Before the war, he had been a hunter. His instinctive connection to nature was strong. Now, every day that passed, he felt that link weaken. He longed for the touch of a breeze passing through a green forest, to hear bird song and to taste sweet water fresh from a stream. He opened his eyes. There was nothing here but ash, dust and silence.

  “Death. Very well,” said Wolf, taking a deep breath. “The means of your death may hurt a great deal or perhaps you’ll be lucky and it’ll be swift. The Forsaken are merciless. In my experience, death has been unpleasant...” He glanced at Raven. “... most unpleasant.”

  Raven swallowed. “Go on.”

  Wolf looked at him for a moment, before returning his gaze to the distant conflict. The fires had spread and a diaphanous curtain of smoke drifted across the Riven Plains. “There’s not much to tell. The body dies, you feel as if you’ve had a dreamless sleep, and then you reawaken as a child.”

  Raven thought about the children returning to the war after reincarnation, some as early as five years old. The barrier that separated life from death was parchment thin, yet incomprehensible to all but the Gods and those trusted with the secret, as he and Wolf had been. Phylasso had given immortality to the thirty thousand men and women who had answered his call. They had become Khryseoi. If their mortal bodies were slain, they were reborn into a new one, which grew fast and retained the memories of past lives. It was as much a curse as a blessing, but it had been the only way to raise an army capable of fighting a God and his horde of twisted subjects.

  “What was it like... being a child again?” said Raven.

  Wolf frowned. “The first time was confusing. The others were a blessed reprieve, for the few short years they lasted. You can see the sky in the lands beyond the wall.”

  “Perhaps I’m not so lucky after all,” said Raven. “I want to see the sky again, and the ocean, and trees.” He sat down again, scooped up a handful of black soil and let it trickle between his fingers. “Why was your first childhood confusing? Tell me more.”

  “Why now?”

  “I want to talk about normal life and remember why I’m here.”

  Wolf sighed. He strode down the slope. A fallen Khryseoi lay there, his body now in the rigour of death. Wolf prised a battered bronze shield from his fingers. It was decorated with Khryseoi Lustre: the name they had given to the pattern formed of thousands of dents and scrapes. Wolf clambered up the hill and set it on the ground for a stool. He sat down, his knees under his chin, facing the battle. Raven saw the glint of distant fire reflected in Wolf’s eyes.

  “For you to understand, I’ll have to tell you about my first death. I believe it is rare among Khryseoi, to have died years before the war began. I still wonder how Phylasso knew the war would take place. What power does he possess, to have the foresight to raise an army before an enemy has even appeared?”

  Raven shrugged. “Phylasso’s power is a mystery to me too.”

  Wolf’s eyes darted back and forth, watching the flames.

  Raven folded his arms across his chest. “He’s a mystery to most Khryseoi,” he added. “Except Solomon, perhaps.”

  “It’s not our place to understand him,” said Wolf.

  “Please continue your story.”

  Wolf drew a slow breath. “Before I was made Khryseoi, my name was Lykos and—”

  “Why have you told me your name?” said Raven. “You’ve guarded it for four hundred years! Why tell me now?”

  Wolf’s frown deepened. “Calm down!” he said. “Does it matter? If we win the day, we can share our true names. The enemy will be gone. If we lose, every land in the world will soon be cold and dead.” He unbuckled his empty quiver and let it fall to the ground.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” said Raven. “Please go on.”

  “My name was Lykos then and I was an old man. My hair was as white as fresh fallen snow and my limbs felt just as cold. I had a maddening cough in my chest which worsened with each passing day. I was coughing up blood. The cloth I used to cover my mouth bore patterns as deeply coloured as black wine. Sometimes, they were oddly beautiful. I had hoped to do great deeds in my life, to be a hero perhaps, remembered in stories and songs. Instead, it was long and inglorious, as it is for most men. I accepted my impending death was the will of the Gods, even though their will felt confusing and cruel. As I lay in my bed, ready to die, a stranger appeared to me: Phylasso.” Wolf closed his eyes. “I remember him as if it were yesterday. He had wildness about him, unkempt hair and beard, clothed in nothing but a loincloth. He’s not like that anymore. The untamed look in his eye has gone and his mood is... restrained.”

  Raven nodded. “He had lightness about him too, before the war.”

  “As you can imagine, I was terrified,” continued Wolf. “I saw a huge misshapen sword strapped to his back and thought a wicked spirit of death had arrived to carry me off to the Abyss. Phylasso placed his hand on my chest and I felt the urge to cough diminish. So I said, ‘My name is Lykos.’ He nodded. As I lay there, with his hand on my chest, I knew him, as if we had been born from the same womb. ‘I need your bravery and cunning. War is coming, like no other,’ he said to me. ‘I’m an old man,’ I said. ‘I can barely get out of bed. How do you expect me to fight in a war?’ He smiled and said, ‘You’ve barely begun your life. Now rest. It will all be clear when you wake.’ ”

  Wolf raised a hand to his mouth, swallowed and let it fall onto his lap.

  “Phylasso had relieved the pain in my chest but I died that night anyway. I awoke as a child and remembered the man I had been, but now I was somebody else too. It was a confusing time, enough to make me wonder if I had dreamed I’d been an old man with a cough. I grew into a man again and saw Phylasso a second time, just before the war began. He took me by the arms and said, ‘Do you understand now?’ ” Wolf looked over his shoulder at Raven. “So there you have it.”

  Raven spread his palms. “How did you answer?”

  “I told him I still didn’t,” said Wolf, turning back to watch the battle fires. “I’ve never sought to understand our gift.” He stood up, squinted and thrust his forefinger to the valley. “Someone is coming!”

  Raven grabbed his bow and slung his empty quiver across his back.

  “What good is a bow without arrows?” said Wolf.

  Raven held it anyway. In the distance, a group of figures appeared from the dusty haze. To his eye, there were about a hundred, moving slowly. His knuckles turned white against the grip. “The Forsaken?”

  Wolf shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Look, some are helping others to walk! Come!”

  Raven looked at his bow. Although he had repaired it many times and woven more strings than he could remember, he knew there was nothing he could do with it now. As he took off at a sprint, heading towards the group, he dropped it. He heard Wolf’s heavy footfalls close behind. They ran along the blackened road, not caring about the dust stinging their eyes, or how the air burned their lungs and throats. As he approached, wiping tears from his eyes, Raven saw the returning Khryseoi more clearly. Most were wounded with cuts and burns. Few carried the burden of armour, weapon or shield. As he neared, the group stopped. Some sat down on the bare earth. Others simply collapsed from exhaustion.

  Raven took the first Khryseoi he met by the arms, a tall dark-skinned man. He couldn’t remember his name. “Did we prevail?” he said, still catching his breath.

  “I don’t know,” the man replied. He motioned for those still standing to sit and eased himself onto the ground. Raven and Wolf sat opposite. “Solomon was able to find a way to cross the Riven Plains. Our losses were great, but Phylasso and two thousand Khryseoi survived. They stormed the enemy’s fortress. It burns now, as you can see. Eury
nomos has been subdued. His power over The Forsaken has been broken. We saw his army collapse where they stood, those that still had flesh. Others fell in a heap of bones. The oldest dissolved into dust and were scattered on the wind.”

  Raven laughed. “Then we’ve won!”

  The man shook his head. “I’m not certain it was a victory. Phylasso sacrificed himself to end the war.”

  “Sacrificed?” whispered Wolf.

  The man nodded. “Yes. Phylasso confronted Eurynomos and smote off his head. In that moment, we thought we had won, but maggots crawled from The God of Death’s neck and began to weave his head anew. Phylasso lunged at Eurynomos and wrestled with him, lifting his body into the air. Our enemy was weakened but not beaten. Phylasso carried a vine of still-living ivy and used it to bind Eurynomos tight. He took the Dark God through the breach between worlds, closing it behind them.”

  “Phylasso has gone?” said Raven. “Gone where?”

  The man shrugged. “Perhaps they went to the place that lies beyond this world, to the Valley of the Shadow. But yes, he’s gone. There’s nothing we can do now but watch the enemy’s fortress burn and hope Phylasso returns.”

  * * *

  The Khryseoi survivors made the return journey to the wall. The structure was built from dead tree trunks, the remains of forests that had once covered the land. It extended from the northern to the southern coast in a half-circle to contain the enemy. Without the wall and the Khryseoi to guard it, Eurynomos’s influence would have spread across the world unchecked, ending all life as he sought to avenge himself upon the Gods for his imprisonment in Tartarus.

  Raven felt a lightness in his step as the watchtowers appeared in the distance. This had been his home for the better part of four hundred years. The land where he had been born was a distant memory. He doubted he would recognise it now and he knew his family were long dead. All that remained was a dull ache in his heart.

  Those Khryseoi who were still able lit the watch fires and tended to the wounded as they had done after every battle. When everyone had been bandaged, fed and put to rest, Raven took the stairs to the top of the wall and sat on the edge. Two days before, he had been able to look in either direction and see the watch fires extending as far as the eye could see, flickering through the night. Now, only one had been lit. As the sun set, the fire did little to ward off the deep dark. In the distance, he saw the soft glow of the burning fortress, even though the flames were diminishing. He wanted to sleep but was afraid to close his eyes in case the one remaining watch fire went out.