Tristan Dineen - Falhorne

FALHORNE

By Tristan Dineen

Book One: The World is Burning

Unhappy the land where heroes are needed. Bertolt Brecht

Falhorne: The World is Burning

Copyright 2022

Tristan Dineen

Guelph, ON, Canada

https://titanustribune.blogspot.com/

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except for brief excerpts used in reviews.

ISBN (print): 978-1-7779788-0-8

ISBN (e-book): 978-1-7779788-1-5

Cover Design by Anthony OBrien

www.bookcoverdesign.store

Characters

The Falhorne

Vitus, Praetor of the Falhorne in the Grand Principality of Vinos

Tagus, Black Vinosian Falhorne and Vituss former apprentice

Piso, Falhorne and Vituss apprentice (killed at Fallonier Fields)

Porus, Falhorne (hanged by the Vinosian authorities)

Tarquinus, Black Vinosian Falhorne

Callidus, renegade Falhorne and leader of the resistance in Trastamere

The Asylum

Skarlos, Asylum Watchman and former mercenary

Remus, Asylum Watchman

Valens, Asylum Watchman and brother of Remus

Jesta, Speaker of the Asylums Agoge Council, former armorer

Secunda, Councillor of the Agoge, former weaver

Nestor, Councillor of the Agoge, former leatherworker

Clodius, Councillor of the Agoge, former dockworker

Corvus, Councillor of the Agoge and member of the Association

Arbaces, elderly Old Believer and former soldier

Mia, Secundas niece and granddaughter of Nestor

Fiore City

Sir Cosimo Gratano, son of Duke Sandro of Trastamere

Commodus Resti, Bailiff of Fiore

Cornelia (Corrie), Taguss wife and local midwife

Callus, Vituss serving boy and Taguss informal apprentice

Nicco, gnomish member of the Association, former weaver

Gorgo, Samosian refugee and Association member

Meno, gnomish alchemist and brother of Nicco

Aileanor, Menos mysterious companion

Agelaus, Captain of the princes Gendarmerie

Arnim, Captain of the princes Gendarmerie

Chero Julianus-Agricola, Grand Prince of Vinos

Theophilus, Bishop of Fiore

Maxim de Tolley, Guildmaster of Fiore

Owain Trevelyan, Tarnish Ambassador to Vinos

Giovanni Lechianno, Alchemist

Prologue The Battle of the Fallonier Fields

Advance!

The Royal Army of Vinos lurched unsteadily into motion with a great groan of metal and the stamp of boot leather on hard baked earth. Noble knights, peasant pikemen and mercenary men-at-arms marched across the dry fields, preparing to enter battle while ignoring the hooded pariahs in their midst. The low, unearthly chant driving many of the princes soldiers to hastily make the sign of the Almighty Sun across their chests for fear of being tainted. Whole battalions kept their distance from the dark figures as the opposing battle lines closed. For none wished to fight alongside the Falhorne. Only the infamous Corpse Company of the Royal Gendarmerie stayed close to the hooded warriors and they were dead men anyway. Dead men overseeing heretics on the wrong side of a holy war.

One heretic stood out from the others. His grizzled face cloaked in shadow above black plate armor. His eyes of blank white chalk staring into the mass of Templars, feudal levies and warrior priests, steadily approaching across the barren stretch of farmland. Vitus Bastarnae, praetor of the Falhorne of Vinos, was again defying the Church, along with the bounty that the Inquisition had placed on his head. Unlike the thousands of reluctant soldiers in the princes ranks that day, he had no fear for his immortal soul. Fear meant nothing to the dead.

The morning sun had finally pierced the towering grey clouds, yet the praetor saw nothing but darkness as he spoke the final words of the chant and tightened the grip on his halberd. Ashen figures stalked forward in the shadow of a black mountain. He heard nothing but the moaning of a spectral legion. All was empty as the hand of death descended and the corpse-state claimed him, its voiceless call washing over the ranks of the initiated as the veil grew thin.

Mortis.

Vitus felt the Black Kings summons. Felt it resonate in the minds of his apprentices. Tagus on his left and Piso on his right. He began to move. Nineteen others following in his wake, wicked polearms glinting with a deathly glow. Drawn forward by that which could not be foresworn.

Now he was running. They were all running. Black robes fluttering like carrion birds in flight. Completely subsumed in Mortis, Vitus was barely conscious of the half-seen shadows moving at his side or the crack of incoming arquebus shots left and right. He was a fleet-footed corpse alongside other fleet-footed corpses, dim shadow-wreathed eyes focused solely on what lay ahead. Everything was paling into insignificance: the low-hanging black clouds, the gunfire, the screams of the dying, the war cries, and the clash of steel. The world was closing in, everything blurring, merging, melding into a single image of a descending blade he was in Barbarus .

Flashing, spasming images of formless clashing colors raced through an endless grey void. Ahead were white pulsating things, shrieking and writhing toward him as through murky water choked with dust. In this place between worlds, the only thing with a hard-edge, the only thing to have any solid definition at all, was the blade of his great halberd, that blazed with a sickly yellow flame yet gave off no heat. He could not see his hands, they had been swallowed into nothingness, but his weapon leapt forward at the white things like it possessed a will of its own.

One of the writhing forms noiselessly exploded under the impact, shooting rays of bright light in all directions that burned and dissipated into the void. The damas that was no longer his own crashed into a second white form and impaled a third, directed by forces beyond life and death. He had become a weapon of the gods.

The world, the screams, the cries, the crash of blades under slate grey skies, all of it exploded back into focus, as Vitus crashed into the man-at-arms in front of him like wild bull. The soldier fell back as the halberds spike rammed through the breastplate of his neighbor with crushing force, impaling him like a stuck boar. Adrenaline and something more coursing through his veins, the Falhorne wrenched the spike free and swung the halberds axe-head in a great decapitating arc, severing the fallen soldiers head in a fountain of viscera. Another soul for the Black King.

He did not pause, though his vision was dim. Ozone filled his nostrils, and he was only vaguely aware of the black armored figure of Piso, splitting the skull of another fallen soldier as he tried to rise to his feet. To his right, he recognized the uncertain outlines of similar black-clad soldiers as the second rank engaged the enemy with their pole-axes and bill-hooks. His body felt as heavy as a granite boulder, but the numbness of the enduring corpse-state soon enveloped these sensations once more. Without flinching, he parried a blinding sword thrust aimed directly at his face, his riposte sending the spike of his halberd through the soldiers right eye, before using the sharpened butt end of the weapon to disembowel his companion and delivering a savage kick to the crotch of a third enemy.

By then his eyes had rolled back into place and his senses had sufficiently returned to reveal the true extent of the carnage that he and his comrades had wreaked upon the foe. An entire battalion must have been destroyed to account for the piles of dismembered bodies strewn across the bloody grass. He saw Tagus slice a man clean in two with his halberd, the ruined halves flopping to the ground like sides of meat in an abattoir. Piso was pulling his weapon free from the unrecognizable remains of a hapless soldier whom he had literally crushed with one blow. And at the heart of the press, he dispassionately watched as his own weapon rose and fell in bloody arcs.