The Herald of Carnage may be struck down like any other Eternal, but neither Heaven nor Hell nor Limbo may hold him, for his rage is too great and his spirit too mighty. The fact that he dies, and is sent before Vondelous the Judge, is why he is an Eternal, rather than an immortal. Yet Immortals can be destroyed, and Fraker the Axe is sure to return from the Halls of the Dead until the Last Battle is fought.

-Saint Kalimia, Church of the Crimson Waters of Life

Lord High Marshall Argus von Thelonius XVI, Knight of the Spotted Leopard, Earl of Red Sands, stood outside the command tent, just far enough away from it so the heavy protective magics woven around it would not interfere with his sight. He knew he was making himself into a perfect target for any crossbow armed snipers that might be in the tall grass at the base of the hills where his armies were dug in, but did not care.

He had expected the armies of the City of Crystal Spires to attack the night before, at dawn at the latest, but there had been nothing. Even the harassing crossbow bolts that struck from the grass to hit officers or sentries had ceased the night before. His High Warmage had remarked that even the heavy magic use that had been present from the enemies encampments had ceased. The woman had remarked that the rituals had ceased almost painfully, as if the contributing mages had withdrawn suddenly, almost brutally, from the rituals. That was unusual, as a sudden break from a ritual could easily kill, maim, or even destroy a mage's ability to ever work magic again.

During the night no fires had been seen, and Lord High Marshall Thelonius had ordered the diviners to try to get a look at the enemy encampments. Their divinations had produced little save images of empty trenchworks, hastily abandoned equipment, and the disturbances caused by lingering magical protections from divinations. Almost two hundred thousand living beings had simply vanished, many of them leaving behind important war material. The hasty pullout had not even bothered destroyed the catapults and mangonels that the Crystal Spire forces had labored to assemble. There were even a few war-dogs, horses, chickens, and oxen wandering around the empty encampments.

Where had the enemy gone?

For two months both sides had dug in and skirmished, the closest they had come to battle is when two regiments of scout cavalry had ran into one another in a fierce clash that had lasted less than fifteen minutes before each side had broken off contact.

The City of Crystal Spires had sworn to break the trade embargo that Lord High Marshall Thelonius' home city of Deliarre-Traxx had laid down. No caravans were allowed to use the city-state's highways, ports, or shipping companies to take goods to the City of Crystal Spires for almost a year, and negotiations had broken down over the winter. Neither side would yield, both sides considering the other's stance to be unreasonable, and finally the two great city-states had mobilized their armies to settle the issue since diplomacy had failed.

The City of Crystal Spires had raised a massive army, guarding their borders, garrisoning their satellite cities and villages, and leaving behind a great force to respond to any invasion by Daliarre-Traxx. Rumor put the army at almost a million strong, and High Lord Marshall Thelonius had seen with his own eyes that the City of Crystal Spires had paid the great expense to hire the fabled Split Cliff Mercenaries, mountain giants who sold their great strength and skill to the highest bidder, the mercenaries over thirty feet tall of hardened and trained muscle clad in expensive plate armor forged in the great forges of the massive metropolis of Novak.

Even the easily located giants were missing, divination magic revealing that their armor and weaponry were scattered about, almost as if they had stripped it off as they fled from the drawn up lines. Like everything else about the battle lines of the City of Crystal Spires it was a mystery what could have forced the giant mercenaries to abandon expensive equipment.

Yesterday morning, just after dawn, Lord High Marshall Thelonius had parlayed with the enemy commander, asking her once again if she would withdraw her armies and quit the field, and telling her that his Arch-Duke refused to change the terms or lift the embargo, and he had gravely and formally accepted her refusal. She had been resplendent in her War Master armor, with the screaming eagle that signified she was a graduate of the Von-Lon War College gleaming in the morning sun. Thelonius had detected no weakness or lack of will in the woman, who he knew to be a veteran of many battles, so it made no sense for the City of Crystal Spires to suddenly withdraw without even giving Thelonius the professional courtesy of a formal notification.

Since then, they had not heard a single thing. There had been no morning parlay just as there had been since the two armies faced off against one another a scant handful of miles from the walls of the great city-state of Daliarre-Traxx.

Where had the enemy gone?

Concerned, Lord High Marshall Thelonius had sent a scout to the enemy lines, with a white banner splotched with red to indicate the scout enjoyed the protection of the custom of parlay, and Lord High Marshall Thelonius' adjutant had just told him that the perimeter guards had reported that the scout was riding back hard as if the hounds of Hades were on his tail.

The Lord High Marshall shaded his eyes with one hand and squinted, his long range vision not as good as it had been a few years before despite arcane enhancement, but he could see the man approaching, and knew from the movements that the man was flogging his horse for all it was worth. That was unacceptable, it risked ruining the horse, and Thelonius made a mental note to have the scout's commander have a long talk with the man.

It was strange, the scout was a long time veteran, what could cause the man to risk foundering the house and killing them both?

The mystery deepened when the man pulled to a stop at the guards, spoke briefly, and then continued to charge up the hill toward the Lord High Marshall as if he was either still being pursued or was mounting a single-handed assault upon the command post.

The Lord High Marshall raised his eyebrows as he saw the guards at the gate of the encampment desert their posts, both of them fleeing deeper into the encampment, one throwing aside his spear as he ran. As the scout approached, still astride the horse, the Lord High Marshall saw one of the guards stop to talk to a Field Commander for a moment and then both the guard and the officer begin to flee deeper into the carefully built seigeworks.

The scout came to a sudden stop, the man's mahogany face gray and ashen with fear, his eyes wild, and sweat streaming down his face. The man looked more than half-mad and had lost most the arrows from his quiver, the case that contained his cavalry bow, and his steel-plated leather helmet on his wild ride.

"We must flee!" The man cried out, pulling hard on the reins so that the horse reared and screamed. "Lord High Marshall, you must sound retreat!"

The Lord High Marshall stepped forward, grabbing the reins and yanking them from the scout's hand, glaring at the man thunderously.

"Calm yourself, Sergeant." He ordered, and was grateful to see the man gain a slight bit of his composure. "What kind of report do you call that?"

"Milord, we must flee, doom approaches." The man gasped, lifting shaking hands to rub his face. His pale palms were sweaty even before he rubbed them across his face that was still the color of slate rather than the rich old oak it normally was, and the Lord High Marshall could feel the fear, the terror, rolling off of the scout.

"Is it a dragon?" The Marshall asked. A dragon would be bad if it was old and powerful enough. A young one would be stupid enough to come within range of ballista, arrow, and crossbow bolts. An old one would hold off, use magic to ravage the lines, then sweep in on low passes using its fearsome and deadly breath to obliterate his troops.

"No, Lord High Marshall, worse. Daliarre-Traxx itself may be doomed." The man said, tugging on the reins and trying to free them from his commander. Thelonius could see the panic begin to surge back up inside the other man.

"A demon lord?" That would explain the shattered rituals and abandoned enemy lines. A demon lord would have destroyed the enemy army in a few hours and might have even spent the night chasing down survivors. A demon lord would be very bad, but not insurmountable, the Lord High Marshall had seen a demon lord killed. At a horrible cost, true, but still slain and banished from the mortal realm.

"No, Lord High Marshall, this is no mere demon lord." The scout said, visibly pulling himself together.

"Then what, man? Spit it out!" The High Lord Marshall ordered.

"Fraker the Axe approaches." The words came out like a pronouncement of doom.

The Lord High Marshall felt the reins slip from suddenly nerveless fingers. The words loosened his bowels as they swept through his mind, and he knew he had gone gray and ashen.

Fraker the Axe.

"Is..." The Lord High Marshall licked his lips and swallowed several times before continuing. "Is he drunk?"

"No, Lord High Marshall, he walks a straight path along the road, his hobnailed boots striking sparks from the stones and his spurs ringing loud enough to be heard at a league."

Sober. By the Gods, what had his city done to offend the Gods themselves so that they would send Fraker the Axe into the midst of it? And a sober Fraker to boot.

"Is he clad in armor?" The words came out almost a whisper.

"Yes, Lord High Marshall, night black war-machine plate with red edging, with his shield held proudly on one arm and his axe held in his other hand." The scout said. The man swallowed deeply. "He is not dragging the head of the axe along the ground, but instead holds it ready for battle."

"Lord Adjutant Clineas!" The Lord High Marshall bellowed out as he released the reins, whirling around and running toward the tent, all thoughts of dignity and pride forgotten. Behind him the scout reclaimed control of the reins and spurred his mount down the hill, fleeing toward the city, but the Lord High Marshall paid him no mind.

"Clineas!" The Lord High Marshall called again, charging into the tent. The dapper Clineas, a thin man in perfectly applied noble officer's facepaint, turned languorously from where he had been looking at the sand table that had been crafted into an image of the enemy lines. His face looked bored, soft with his vices and pleasures, and he raised a carefully plucked eyebrow in response to the High Lord Marshall's tone.

"Yes, MiLord?" The man asked, his voice carrying the affected drawl of the higher levels of nobility.

"Sound retreat, order the men to abandon everything, we must make for the city with all due haste." The High Lord Marshall said, moving quickly over to his weapon belt and pulling out his dagger. He continued talking as he dug the point of the knife into his heavy plate mail and began cutting free the straps that held it in place. "Forget forming them up into formations and marching, just tell every man to make for the city at top speed as quickly as they individually can."

The Lord Adjutant made a disapproving face as the High Lord Marshall's engraved and embossed breastplate fell to the floor, sparks jumping off it as the magic built into the metal clashed with the protections built into the floor of the tent to keep enemies from coming up from the earth.

"Sir, calm yourself. The enemy hasn't been seen in hours, there is no threat to the legions we have gathered here." The High Lord Marshall had freed himself from the armor about his torso and was tearing free his shoulder pieces and casting them aside.

"If we do not abandon these siegeworks, all who stay behind will be slain to the last man." The High Lord Marshall said coldly, belting on his weapon belt. If his family's sword had not been scabbarded on it, he would have abandoned the weapon belt as well as his own armor. As Clineas stared in shock at his commander, the High Lord Marshall grabbed a handful of wineskins and quickly tied them to his weapon belt, then pulled his ornate helmet off and tossed it on the sandtable, disrupting the scale model that had taken hours to build.

"MiLord, what could threaten the might of the city of Daliarre-Traxx? Have you been consumed by madness like some brainless commoner?" The nobleman sneered.

"Fraker the Axe has been spotted heading for us." The High Lord Marshall shot back, shaking his arms out of his armor. "Now sound the retreat."

"Fraker the Axe? Here?" Clineas sputtered.

"He's sober, Clineas. Which means he's irritable." The High Lord Marshall threw over his shoulder as he exited the tent, running for the nearest signalman.

"MiLord, wait for me!" Clineas called out, grabbing his family's heirloom blade and following his commander. Outside horns began to bray out the call to retreat, to fall back as fast as possible to the city itself.

* * * * *

"...like I'm some Novak errand boy or something, like I don't have better things to do," The giant rumbled as he moved down the road. His heavy armor was crafted of steel plates over three inches thick and covered him from head to foot. The plates were angled to give the best deflection against weapons and magics. No spikes adorned it, nothing to catch and guide attacker's weapons. It was enameled jet black, the edges of each piece trimmed with dark crimson paint. On his right shoulder the interlocking triangles signifying his rank as an Iron Lord of the Iron Legion were inlaid in simple iron. On his left shoulder the skull atop a pair of crossed spears signified his rank as a Lord General of the Stygian Wave was painted in dark crimson. The armor was stark in its lack of inlay or decoration, and the open mask of the helmet revealed a dark brown face, crisscrossed with scars, with a nose that changed direction twice. The man's mouth was twisted by the scar that started above the right eye and ended at the left corner of his mouth, crossing the bridge of his nose, and nearly was as wide as a man's thumb. His brown eyes were set deep in his head, beneath a heavy brow and thick bushy eyebrows. His hair was brown and sweat soaked despite the cloth band around the man's forehead.

"There I was, enjoying myself in that brothel with all the fine men and women and whiskey, and that little weasel Pliazli shows up and tells me that I have to do another stupid errand." The man continued complaining, his arms swinging. In his right hand he was carrying a massive axe, the leading edge gleaming in the sunlight, the backside a solid hammer, the whole surface engraved and inlaid with precious metals and gems. On his left arm was a shield, clean and enameled with his crest.

The crest was an axe was laying at a 45 degree angle, the enamel red above the axe and blue below it. Wreathed laurels were just beneath the head of the axe in the middle of the shield, and a pair of crossed spears were in the lower right. In the upper left of the shield's face was a crowned skull, split down the middle, with lightning bolts above the sundered crown.

It became quickly obviously that the man was massive. The armor sheathed legs as wide as grown man, his arms were the size of an opera singer's thighs, his shoulders as wide as most men could reach their outstretched arms, and in armor the man stood nearly nine feet tall, and his spurs rang on the cobblestones of the road.

Around his waist a thick belt of leather was adorned with pouches, had a few empty wineskins hanging from it, and had a cradle for the heavy axe. On one hook hung an iron mask enameled black with red edging on one side, and plain iron on the other, to be worn when going into battle. From one of the large pouches a small reptilian head poked out, the finely scaled hide a mottled pattern of dark and light green. The little lizard, with a head no larger than an peach-pit, blinked its large black eyes, looked up, and began making high pitched peeping at the man.

"Yes, I know we'd been there for two months, but that's not the point." The man grumbled, "I still had plenty of money, and my knee still hurt from where I twisted it when I stepped in the gopher hole and fell."

The little lizard peeped some more, this time the sound somehow disapproving.

"No it wasn't! If the nymph didn't want me chasing her, she shouldn't have ran." Fraker protested. "How is it my fault that she ran across that forest clearing full of gopher nests?"

More peeping followed, this time definitely sounding angry.

"I already apologized for falling and squishing you. You didn't break anything." The man said, sounding sulky. "If you'd get out and walk, you wouldn't have to worry about me falling on you." The man listened for a moment, then snorted. "I know it hurts your little leg to walk, but I keep telling you, you can't just live in my belt pouch for the rest of your life, eventually you're going to get bigger.""

Smug peeping followed, and the giant stopped dead in his tracks.

"What do you mean she told you that you can stay in there as long as you want?" He asked, looking down at his diminutive companion. "Do you really think that means you can just live in there no matter how big you get?"

More peeping, and the giant scowled. "You've decided you aren't going to get any bigger? It doesn't work like that, I keep telling you." He listened to the high pitched cheeping for a second. "You've been in there two years? That can't be right, you should be an adult." The peeping was smug again. "And I'm telling you it doesn't work that way."

A bird swept close by, and the Peeper watched it, then peeped softly.

"Yeah, it would be neat to fly." Fraker agreed, then snorted. "Then we could have just flown here, instead of taking the World Roads and getting chased by that thrice damned ravager for a week." He snapped his fingers. "I'll bet that's why Pliazli told me to do this, Step-Mother told him to do it, and he weaseled out of it just like he slithers out of everything! I'll bet this is his chore, not mine." Fraker looked down at the Peeper. "When we run into him next time, let's stuff him head down in a rain barrel and kick it."

The Peeper at his sides gaped open its mouth, revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth and four small fangs, and made choking sounds of laughter.