Mask of Swords (37 page)

Molly appeared next to Mazael in a flicker of darkness, sweat glittering on her forehead.

“Remember when we fought in Arylkrad?” said Mazael.

“All too well,” said Molly.

Mazael looked at Rigoric, backing away as the orcragar advanced, and then glanced at Molly.

His daughter blinked, and then she grinned. “Ah. I understand.”

She sidestepped and vanished. 

Rigoric charged at Mazael, and he backed away, sword flying as he parried and dodged. Rigoric landed several minor hits, blood flowing from Mazael’s cuts, the blades ringing against the golden scales of his armor. Mazael kept retreating as Romaria circled around them, trying to get a clear shot.

Suddenly Rigoric glanced to the side and stopped his advance. Molly appeared out of the shadows, and Rigoric whirled to face her, his swords coming up to block. Yet Molly dropped her weapons and dove, slamming into Rigoric’s knees. The impact rocked the orcragar, but only briefly, and he reversed his swords and prepared to bring them plunging into Molly’s back.

Molly disappeared in a swirl of darkness, and this time she took Rigoric with her. 

They both reappeared a few yards away. Molly gasped in exhaustion and rolled away as Rigoric’s blades came stabbing down. Rigoric, disorientated by his journey through the shadows, lost his balance, his blades clanging off the ground, and Mazael had his chance to strike.

He ran forward, all his weight and strength behind the blow, and swung Talon with both hands. The curved blade sank into Rigoric’s neck, and Mazael ripped the weapon free and swung once, twice, three times more.

Rigoric’s head rolled away in a trail of blood, and his massive body collapsed to the earth with the clang of armor. 

Mazael stepped back, breathing hard, and Molly reclaimed her weapons and scrambled to her feet. The steel threads dangling from Rigoric’s mask writhed and twitched like metallic tentacles.

“That worked,” said Molly. 

Mazael shrugged. “Couldn’t get his mask off his face, so I figured it would be easier to get his head off his shoulders.” 

“Mazael,” said Romaria. “Don’t touch the corpse.” Her blue eyes glimmered in the light of the fires within the burning houses. “The magic in the mask. It’s…”

Gray mist swirled around Rigoric’s head and corpse, and when it cleared both his head, his corpse, and the mask of swords were gone, though the bloodstains still marked the earth.

“What the hell?” said Mazael. “He was a spirit creature?”

“No,” said Romaria. “He was a mortal man. But the mask was powerful. It…I think it might be powerful enough to heal him.”

Mazael shared a look with Molly. Their Demonsouled blood could heal almost anything, given enough time, but it could not heal decapitation. Just how much power did that mask of swords contain?

“We will figure it out later,” said Mazael. “Right now we have a battle to win.”

He turned towards the remaining Crimson Hunters.

###

A second Crimson Hunter went down, speared upon the blade of Adalar’s sword. He and Wesson and Talchar One-Eye had maneuvered around the creature, leading the thains and the armsmen in an attack while Timothy harassed the creature with minor spells. At last Adalar had been able to drive his greatsword through the creature’s head, and it collapsed in death, dissolving back into the spirit world. Across the courtyard, Mazael led the rest of his men in an attack on the final Crimson Hunter, while Lady Molly flickered around it in a haze of shadows.

Which meant that the path was open to the keep. 

“Talchar!” shouted Sigaldra. “Take command here!”

She did not wait for an answer, but sprinted across the square, jumping over the dead valgasts and the men who had been slain in the fighting. Her heart hammered against her ribs, her bow creaking beneath her fingers. Liane was in the keep, along with those too old or sick or young to fight. If the Prophetess had gone to get Liane, she would kill anyone who was in her path. Sigaldra scrambled up the path to the keep, drawing an arrow and setting it to the string of her bow. She would have to be quick. One arrow through the Prophetess’s heart. If she hesitated, if she let the sorceress bring her magic to bear, than Sigaldra was dead and Liane was lost.

Sigaldra slowed as she approached the doors to the great hall. They stood partly ajar, firelight leaking out into the deepening dusk. Sigaldra took a deep breath, calming herself and forcing her hands to stillness as her father and brothers had taught her. 

One shot. She would only get one shot.

She glided through the doors, bow ready in her hands, the arrow resting upon its string. 

The great hall of the keep was silent, the trophies and captured weapons throwing black shadows across the wall in the firelight of the hearths. Men and women and children lay motionless upon the floor, and for a horrified instant, Sigaldra thought that the Prophetess had killed them all. Yet their chests still rose and fell, and Sigaldra realized they were only unconscious. The Prophetess must have stunned them with a spell. 

A shadow moved at the far end of the hall, and the Prophetess herself stepped closer. Liane floated in the air next to her, bound in the grasp of the Prophetess’s magic. She was unconscious, as was everyone else in the hall. Perhaps the Prophetess had simply cast her spell over the entire keep.

She had not yet noticed Sigaldra.

In one fluid motion, Sigaldra raised her bow, drew back her string, and released. The arrow hissed across the hall and slammed into the Prophetess’s chest. 

Or it would have, had the air around the Prophetess not rippled, tearing the arrow to splinters. The sorceress looked up, her green eyes growing wide, and Sigaldra threw aside her bow and drew her short sword, charging across the hall. Again and again she had seen the Prophetess’s spells block arrows, but perhaps they would not stop a blade of good steel.

The Prophetess sneered, her mask of serenity falling to reveal irritated contempt.

“Pathetic,” she said, and gestured.

Invisible bands of force seized Sigaldra, lifted her into the air, and ripped the sword from her grasp. Sigaldra tried to fight, tried even to scream, but the Prophetess’s power clamped her mouth shut. The sorceress stalked closer, Liane floating after her. 

“What vermin you are,” said the Prophetess. All trace of her previous calmness had vanished, and there was nothing but loathing and rage upon her face. “You filthy barbarians, Jutai and Tervingi both. I cannot believe Mazael allowed you to settle upon his land. He should have killed you all. A Travian lord would have killed you all. You…”

Her voice trailed off, and her eyelids fluttered, sweat dripping down her face. The Prophetess shook her head and raked a hand through her hair. She looked exhausted. The effort of all the magic she had cast recently must have finally caught up with her. 

“This would have been so much easier,” said the Prophetess, “if you had just married Liane to that idiot Earnachar like I had planned. He never would have touched her, you know. I would have killed the fool as soon as I no longer needed him. All I needed him to do was to get Liane before anyone could stop me.” She gave a disgusted shake of her head. “You wretched, useless barbarians. By the goddess, what miserable savages you are. You’re worse than the Skuldari – at least most of them are loyal to the goddess.”

Sigaldra tried to scream, tried to fight. The best she could manage was a small grunt. 

The Prophetess laughed. “Still, you can take solace in this. I am glad Mazael did not exterminate you barbarian vermin, because that saved your sister’s life…and your sister is special. She is the one I have sought.” She smiled and tapped Sigaldra’s forehead. “Look at you. What a worthless thing you are. The best you can aspire to is to be a brood mare for some barbarian thug like Earnachar. But your sister…ah, she has a greater destiny. She shall be the instrument for the return of the goddess. I have a child gifted with the Sight, I have the catalyst, and soon I shall have the Mask of Marazadra. And then,” her eyes seemed to shine with something like lust, “and then the goddess will return, and then we shall have order in the world.”

Sigaldra wrenched against the invisible spell.

“But you,” said the Prophetess, stepping past her, “will not be there to see it. I suppose you would chase me like one of the imbecilic shieldmaidens from the barbarous songs your nation loves so much. That could be inconvenient, thought I would enjoy watching the Skuldari torture you to death.” She turned towards the doors, Liane floating motionless and unconscious after her. “Farewell, holdmistress of the Jutai.” The Prophetess lifted her hand, flames burning atop her palm as her face tightened with the strain of one more spell. “The entire purpose of your nation was to produce your sister, the key to the return of the goddess. The rest of you can die forgotten and…”

Something clicked.

An instant later a crossbow quarrel slammed into the side of the Prophetess’s chest. The sorceress fell back with a shocked scream, her green eyes wide with alarm. The spell holding Sigaldra vanished, and she hit the floor hard, the impact knocking the breath from her lungs. 

Adalar stood in the doorway, a crossbow in his hands. He discarded the weapon and raced into the hall, drawing his greatsword from its sheath. Sigaldra got to her knees and snatched her fallen short sword, fury driving her on. 

The Prophetess staggered back, grabbed Liane, and cast a spell. Both the Prophetess and Liane turned hazy and insubstantial, wraiths wrought out of mist and pale light. Sigaldra yelled and stabbed at the Prophetess, but her blade passed through the sorceress as if she was not there.

Even in her ghostly form, Sigaldra saw the smirk on the Prophetess’s features. The sorceress took Liane and fled through the wall, passing through the stonework as if it were not there. 

“No,” spat Sigaldra, “no, no, no.” 

She sprinted out of the hall and back onto the hilltop, but the Prophetess was long gone. 

###

Mazael raised Talon, calling for another charge, when the last Crimson Hunter shuddered.

The giant spider had a score of wounds carved into its armored hide, but none of them had slowed it. Yet now it began to twitch and shudder. Perhaps the wounds had done it more harm than Mazael had thought.

It vanished in a swirl of gray mist, leaving Mazael and the others alone with the dead.

Riothamus lowered his staff with a sigh, the golden flames vanishing from the weapons of the knights and armsmen and thains. 

“What happened?” said Mazael. “Did we kill it?”

“No,” said Riothamus. “The spell holding it here was canceled.”

“Then someone killed the Prophetess?” said Molly. 

“Or she needed the power binding the Crimson Hunter to cast another spell,” said Riothamus. 

“To escape, perhaps,” said Mazael. 

He let out a quiet curse. They had saved Greatheart Keep and the Jutai, driving off the attackers. The battle had been won.

The war, he suspected, was about to begin.

Chapter 20: Debts To Pay

“Bring him,” said Mazael. 

Two days after the battle, he stood in the hall of Greatheart Keep. There was a great deal of work to be done. The dead had to be buried. The Jutai dead had to be burned, their ashes interned in their families’ ancestral urns. The damaged houses had to be rebuilt. At least there was not yet a crop in the ground, and the fires had not damaged the barns storing the seed. Greatheart Keep would be rebuilt in time. Dozens of Jutai had been killed and wounded in the fighting, but the Jutai would recover. 

Assuming, of course, the Skuldari did not overrun the Grim Marches.

Riders had come to Greatheart Keep, bearing messages from the western Grim Marches. Bands of raiders had been seen on the borders with Skuldar, some of them accompanied by valgasts and soliphages. For the first time in living memory, the Skuldari were stirring from their homeland, and they intended to turn their eyes toward the Grim Marches. 

Mazael intended to stop them. 

The two armsmen he had commanded bowed and left the hall, leaving Mazael alone with Romaria, Adalar, Sigaldra, and Timothy. Adalar leaned upon his sheathed greatsword almost as if it was a staff. He had spoken little since the battle, his expression grim. Mazael suspected he blamed himself for the Prophetess’s escape. He shouldn’t – the Prophetess would have escaped in any event, and his intervention had saved Sigaldra’s life. 

Sigaldra said nothing as well, standing motionless at the edge of the dais. Mazael doubted that Sigaldra had slept. She had spent every moment with her people, directing the repairs. 

She had almost ridden out in pursuit of the Prophetess. Mazael had thought to dissuade her, but in the end Sigaldra had dissuaded herself. Neither Romaria nor Riothamus had been able to find any trace of the Prophetess’s trail. The sorceress was too skilled with cloaking spells, and Mazael had no doubt that she would could heal the wound that Adalar’s crossbow had inflicted upon her. 

Mazael intended to find her, recover Liane, and stop the Skuldari. 

First, though, he needed to know where to start. 

A moment later the armsmen returned with Earnachar. The Tervingi headman had lost none of his fierceness nor his bluster in defeat, and he glared at them. Sigaldra took a deep breath, her hand brushing the hilt of the short sword at her belt. 

“Steady,” said Mazael. He knew what she was thinking.

Sigaldra gave a sharp nod, not meeting his eyes. 

“The goddess will destroy you,” said Earnachar, glaring at them. “All of you.”

“She did a poor job of it so far,” said Sigaldra, “seeing as we are still here.”

Earnachar grinned at her. “But your sister isn’t, is she?”

Sigaldra started forward, reaching for her sword, and Adalar stepped to her side. 

“Wait a moment,” said Mazael. “Romaria?” 

“It’s still inside of him,” said Romaria.

Mazael nodded. “Hold him steady.” The armsmen gripped Earnachar’s arms and forced him to his knees. “Timothy.”