Finally, Lonen rejoined all those men he’d
scattered to the winds, taking several days to travel at night and
hide himself during daylight, timing his crossing to avoid the
blazingly fast and lethal bore tides of the bay before Bára.
Somewhere out there Ion, Arnon, the king, and their best captains
did likewise. They’d form a net around the desert city and draw the
sorcerers away from the walls. Scattered thinly enough by attack on
all sides, the defense would have to fail at one point or
another—allowing the crack Destrye squads into the city with a
single mission in mind.
Destroy the source of the sorcerers’
power.
Another gamble there, that the sorcerers had
not pursued beyond a fixed range because they dared not go too far
from the source of their magic. In a perfect world, the Destrye
would have spent time on feints, testing the theory, determining
the range.
But the world had stopped being perfect the
first time the golems raided.
As Lonen and his men slipped through the
wandering golems who milled about, ghostly white in the darkness,
in a loose defense around the city, he prayed that his squad would
make it through the walls. Not for glory—there would be no glory
this night—but to spare himself the grief of losing another of his
brothers. Or his father. There’d been no word from Natly or his
mother and sisters. No message from any of their dispersed people
on the Trail of New Hope. They hadn’t truly expected any. King
Archimago thought it best to leave no connection between the
refugees and the warriors who went after their enemy. The other
half of their people were as safe as any could make them.
Still, Lonen’s mind insisted on imagining
their gruesome deaths at the fangs and claws of pursuing golems.
Defended by only a few, the women, children, and elderly would be
easy pickings. They carried little water with them, relying on the
old maps to guide them to oases, so the golems should have no
reason to pursue, but there was always a chance…
Too many gambles, too much reliance on luck:
a fickle goddess at best and a vengeful bitch at worst.
In the distance, shouts went up. Ion’s men,
judging by the direction. They’d engaged the enemy and as agreed,
upon running afoul of the golem net first, were sending up as much
noise as possible. The battle mages, inevitably alerted, should
focus their defensive efforts there.
Time to move quickly, before their enemy
realized they’d been stealthily surrounded—as much as a walled city
with rock spires at her back could be. Signaling to his men, Lonen
broke into a ground-eating lope. They fanned out, iron axes and
knives swinging in a pattern to intercept the golems that loomed up
out of the dark. Lonen’s axe bit, his momentum taking him into a
sickening collision with the creature’s slick, resilient body, a
foul parody of a lover’s embrace. Claws raked his back before Lonen
yanked back the axe to slice through the golem from the other
direction. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he finished the
thing, then ran to catch up with his men.
He passed a few, wrestling their own
monsters here and there, but kept going. That was the rule of this
engagement—any man who could get to the wall, should. No stopping
to help anyone. They weren’t out to survive the night. At least not
past getting into the city and destroying the source of the
sorcerers’ power.
Whatever it might be.
Fireballs flew through the night, heralding
the arrival of the mages. The magic fire lit the sky to nearly
daylight brilliance; illuminating Lonen, his men, and the entire
area. A miscalculation there, as the golems, upon seeing them so
clearly, gave chase from all directions. Fortunately for Lonen’s
chances, unfortunately for Arnon’s, most of the golems moved toward
the brightest light, leaving Lonen and his men relatively
unfettered by the mindless creatures.
Lights also flared into life on the city
walls, moving in a progressive wave, voices carrying through the
thin desert air. This time there would be no retreat. They’d
committed utterly. King Archimago had left some forces in reserve,
to send after the refugees on the Trail of New Hope should this
attempt fail, but otherwise he’d bring the remainder of the army up
behind them with the intent of slaughtering first the golems then
the hopefully incapacitated battle mages.
If they all died, they’d do it knowing
they’d given everything to the effort.
Lonen and his men reached the shadow of the
wall after a long slog through the soft, still-hot sand dunes
massed against it. Destrye scouts had noted during the previous
disastrous battle that various gates studded the walls. A large
main gate faced the road, big enough to admit wagons and other
conveyances. As it had in the previous battle, that gate opened,
vomiting out a torrent of battle mages on wagons pulled by golems,
the sorcerers’ golden masks shining as brightly as the torches they
reflected as they moved into position. No going that route.
Though that had never been the plan. Instead
Lonen and his squad ran for the smaller gates. The first they came
to was, of course, tightly closed and barred. That was fine. They
didn’t intend to go
through
it. Lonen would use it as a
platform to lever up. Gripping his knife between his teeth, his axe
secured to his back, he clambered along the bars of the gate. He
reached the lintel above, hauling himself up.
Pausing there, he set a spike between the
stones, pounding it in with a hammer from his belt and looping a
rope through it. He dropped the free end, waiting for Alby’s tug to
confirm he’d grasped it.
Then Lonen climbed.
The towering wall wasn’t the trees and
cliffs of home, but it offered a similar set of chinks and
handholds. Back in the deep shadow cast by the wall, Lonen felt his
way, the old habits from boyhood kicking in. The adage advised not
to look down, but really, for climbing like this, it was often
better not to look at all.
Fix the feet. Reach, fingers smoothing along
the stones. Seek. Find. Grasp.
Then set another spike, connect the rope,
wait for the tug. Repeat.
Fix. Reach. Seek. Find. Grasp.
Fix. Reach. Seek. Find. Grasp.
His world narrowed to only that. No thinking
about the explosions, the spike of lightning and roar of thunder,
the rumble of earth and the harrowing screams of men. All that
dimmed as the trancelike focus on the climb took over. Later he’d
notice the trembling muscle fatigue, the scraped hands and broken
skin bearing testimony to the all-consuming attention to survival,
to gaining the victory of the summit. But in this moment he might
be in the forest, bark rough against his cheek, the rustle of green
leaves above and the chortle of the creek below.
He was suspended there, peaceful again.
Carefree.
Fix. Reach. Seek. Find. Grasp.
Fix. Reach. Seek. Find. Grasp.
Fix. Reach. See—
His scrambling hand hit something wrong,
bright bruising pain in his knuckles. A limb? No, no—the parapet
overhang at the top of the wall. He’d made it.
Inching up his footholds, he gathered
himself into a crouch. The next bit would have to go fast. He found
a grip with one hand, then another as high as he dared. It felt
like it could be the flat surface of the top, but who could be
sure? Tensing his thighs, he sprang, praying he wouldn’t launch
himself directly into a swarm of the enemy.
His hands caught, held.
Slipped.
And he fell in a sickening arc, hands
flailing for purchase. The rope around his waist grabbed hard,
catching all his weight, vising the air out of his lungs, and
slamming him into the wall with a brain-rattling thud.
At least the knife between his teeth helped
silence his grunt of pain.
“Prince Lonen!” Alby hissed from several
lengths below. “Are you all right?”
They’d climbed together enough times for
Alby to know to stay back. Lonen waited to be sure the spike would
hold, then tugged the rope below three times in their all-clear
signal.
Resolute, he made himself climb again,
forcing himself to go as slowly as before.
Don’t assume the
handholds will be the same.
That made for careless
mistakes.
He didn’t count the fall as a mistake—it had
let him glimpse the top of the parapet. Plus, he hadn’t been
spotted. The flat top had been a false perception. Next time he
needed to reach higher and deeper. Now that he had it in his head,
he could do it.
And he would be ready to take out the
crimson-robed sorcerer standing a short distance down the wall,
golden mask facing the tumult in the distance. That priest had been
still, no upraised arms spewing battle magic, so perhaps he
channeled it from whatever foul source they tapped.
Lonen found his final spike again, checked
its stability, then reached for the top once more. Not there. Just
past it. There.
He sprang. Caught. Slipped. Held.
With a mighty kick, he launched himself over
the top. The priest turned in surprise and Lonen knew his gazed
fixed on him even though the golden mask had no eyeholes. No time
for the shudder of revulsion, the instinctive fear. Every moment he
hesitated the priest could raise his hands and end Lonen’s life,
along with the hopes of all the Destrye.
No time to pull his axe. Yanking the knife
from his teeth, he charged, fast and silent as a golem.
The blade sank deep into the priest’s heart,
the slight body falling back, a woman’s gasp of shock rattling from
behind the smooth metal. Her hood fell away and her hair, a mass of
blond silk, spilled over his hands along with the hot blood pumping
from her rent chest. He pulled the knife away and lowered her body
to the walkway below the parapet. Putting her out of easy sight of
her people, yes, but also…
He’d never killed a woman before.
Lucky for him and the Destrye, he hadn’t
known before he dealt the lethal blow, as he might have hesitated.
The woman gasped, lungs frantic for air that would do her no good,
with her life’s blood pooling around her, but he found and cut the
ribbons holding the mask on her face anyway. Dull eyes in a once
lovely face, already going slack with death.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. The words echoed
in his memory. Back to the forest of his youth and a doe he’d
brought down with his bow. The arrow had been enough to drop her,
but fell short of a clean kill. He’d found her in the soft leaves,
glistening eyes dimming exactly like this as her life soaked into
the forest loam, instead of pooling on hard rock, running in black
streams in the cracks of the stones. “I’m sorry,” he said again, as
he had then.
And cut her throat to finish it.
“Their women fight?” Alby breathed next to
him, a world of astonished horror in his voice.
“I don’t know, but they’re complicit.” Lonen
pointed his blade at another crimson-robed priest stationed farther
down, also facing the battle. Still and rapt, unaware of them as if
focused out of her body. “Kill as many as you can.”
“I can’t kill a woman,” Alby said, horrified
gaze still fixed on the dead woman’s face.
Deliberately callous, Lonen wiped his blade
on the priestess’s robes. “They came after us and have killed
our
women, our children, even our hound dogs and house cats.
Forget your sympathy. They’re the monsters. This is a sorceress,
not a woman. Pass the word to the men who reach the top. Kill as
many as they can find who focus on the battle, then get back.”
Alby swallowed back a retort, one that gave
him a look of quiet agony as it went down, then went to obey.
Lonen steeled his gut and went to kill more
sorceresses.
“O
ria, wake up.”
“Hmm?” Oria stretched, then frowned up at
the flickering shadows playing over the high ceiling. The city
walls must be ablaze with torches. Was it that early in the night
still? No, because she’d gone to sleep well after they’d been
doused to night levels. She’d sat out in the terrace garden to
savor the fragrance of the night-blooming flowers and the sight of
the white bats that came in like ghosts to drink from them.
“
Wake up. Bára is under attack.”
Chuffta peered at her from beside her
pillow, eyes catching the orange gleam of flame, turning the calm
green mad.
“The Destrye?” She sat up, threw off the
down comforter, and shivered at the sudden chill. Yanking off her
sleeping gown, she pulled on underthings and a casual gown of
sturdy cotton. “Where’s Alva?”
“
On the walls. All the high-level
sorceresses are on the walls.”
Chuffta’s mind-voice dripped with sorrow and
an unusual blankness behind which something else wailed with
grief.
Oh no.
Mother.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she demanded,
striding out to the terrace and the balcony overlooking the city.
The walls blazed, as did the plain beyond. Thunder boomed through
the sky as lightning forked through it, her father’s magic, alive
and well, which meant her mother should be also. One of Nat’s
fireballs raced out, then fizzled into shivers of descending flame
that quickly winked out.
“
I think some of the Destrye have climbed
the walls and are killing the sorceresses.”
Chuffta gave it to
her fast.
“But why would—” She cut off her own foolish
question. Somehow they knew. The Destrye had discovered the battle
magics would sputter and die without the priestesses feeding it to
the men. Even now the mages were exhausting themselves, only her
father’s storm magic still going strong. Because her mother would
be somewhere near Oria, and not on the walls.
“
Where are you going?”
“To find my mother. She must be nearby.”
“
The city is in chaos. People dying and
grieving the dead. You cannot go down there—it will be too much for
you.”