"After her, boy! Stop her!
Help
her..."
"No!" said the Armourer. "You must stay here." And he seemed about to draw his own blade when he recognised the Lord Commander. Tauric shrugged at him, and dashed off in pursuit of the girl with his own sword at the ready.
Up ahead, the girl tripped and fell and he heard her cry out in pain. But she got to her feet and ran to the footbridge, paused for an instant to look back at him then ran across. Tauric could hear the Lord Commander's own labouring pace behind him as he reached the bridge, feet hammering on the heavy wooden planks.
On the other side the girl ran straight on, up a sloping alley which curved to the right and away, Tauric hoped, from the square. Perhaps she thought to lose him in the maze of back ways, but she was visibly tiring and he was rapidly closing.
Then she turned the curve into the shadows between high walls and vanished from view. He pushed himself faster, hand grasping the brickwork at the corner for purchase as he hurtled round in time to see her dart into an archway on the left. Panting for breath he got there a second or two later and plunged on, leaping down a row of stone steps, through an ivy-choked opening and out to a dim alley, only to be confronted by a calamitous sight. The girl was sprawled in the mud, her legs trapped by a tanglenet while a man in black leather armour, maybe a city guard, was walking towards her while raising a spear to strike.
Without pause, Tauric threw himself at the guard. The guard saw movement and started to turn, but Tauric slammed into his shoulder and both crashed to the ground. He had his blade ready, holding it like a dagger, and in rage and fear he drove it between the man's shoulders. The guard let out a bellow of agony that reverberated around them, convulsed in agony.
Tauric let go the hilt of his blade and scrambled over to the girl. The guard's death throes, a horrible writhing accompanied by a gasping for breath, lasted a few seconds before he slumped into immobility. There was a roaring and a cheering and only then did Tauric realise that the fight had had scores of witnesses.
He and the girl were at the end of the alleyway, where it opened into the corner of the square. Fires were burning at the other side of the square, and crowds of townspeople armed with poles and axes were gathered around a large dais improvised from crates and furniture upon which was a pile of bodies, nearly all wearing a heavy black leather armour. Rioters danced over the corpses, or spat on them from the sides.
As Tauric worked to help free his companion from the tanglenet, a couple of slatternly market women came over.
"Are you well, dearie? That's a nasty cut, that is..."
"I'll - I am in good shape," he said, confused by their looks of awe, then looked down to see that the leather sleeve had come adrift and his steel arm was showing. He started to pull it back up, but resumed cutting at the tanglenet's fine fibres.
"You should have stayed away," the girl said sullenly. "I was in no danger."
For a moment Tauric was speechless, then inexplicably angry. "No danger? Then what was he about to do with that spear - go rat hunting?"
She shook her head, and Tauric thought he saw a little of the strange fear from before creep back into her eyes.
"Please," she said. "Leave me alone. Take care of yourself instead - "
An awful scream cut through the din, and voices began shouting: "The Mogaun are in the city!...they're in the square!..." In seconds, utter pandemonium ensued, mobs of people running away to the main thoroughfares leading out of the square, or into buildings which offered some safety, however meagre. Some stayed to construct hasty barricades in street entrances or doorways from upturned carts and any looted furniture, while a handful dashed by Tauric and down the alley. Then a column of riders entered the far side of the square at a canter. After a moment or two, the Mogaun split into several groups and attacked the strongest pockets of resistance first.
"We have to get away from here," Tauric said to the girl, but she gave no reply, instead looking behind them along the alleyway. He glanced over his shoulder and saw three figures coming slowly towards them up out of the darkness at the end of the alley. They were dragging their feet as they walked, heads hung low, and as they emerged from the shadows he recognised them as some of the townsfolk who had fled past them just moments before. Then they looked up and Tauric gasped in horror - each face had black pits where eyes had once been, empty sockets which sought out Tauric and the girl and guided their deathly owners onward. The market women shrieked and fled, long skirts lifted clear of their feet.
The girl tugged Tauric wordlessly by the arm, but first he retrieved his blade then backed away with her. He glanced at the opening he came through just moments before and saw the Armourer and the Lord Commander battling another five living corpses armed with clubs. Who could have done this, he thought, bring these unfortunates to life and send them to fight? Tauric could almost taste his own fear, and found himself trembling all the way from his stomach to his extremities, all except his metal arm, its cold and still hand holding his sword in a level, unwavering grip. It became his anchor as they retreated up the alley towards the square and the awful screaming clamour of the battle.
"The square is too dangerous. We'll have to run past them," whispered the girl as the three eyeless townspeople came nearer and nearer. "They don't look able to keep up with us - "
"I wish I could be that sure," Tauric said, teeth on edge.
"Then I'll distract them while you attack them from the side." And she darted back along the alley, snatched up the spear dropped by the guard earlier and managed to dance away from grasping hands that lunged for her. And, Tauric saw in disbelief, she was grinning as she fended off her attackers.
Mad
, he thought wildly,
she is completely mad
. And raised his sword and rushed to the attack.
But there seemed to be little they could do to harm those who were already dead. Hacked and slashed by blade, or pierced and bludgeoned by spear, they still lumbered back into the fray, forcing the two youngsters away from the alley entrance and out into the square. Tauric could now heard the racket of fighting coming clearly from all around, and feared the sound of approaching hooves. Every joint ached and it seemed that he was covered in a multitude of scrapes, cuts and bruises. Their opponents looked worse with deep gashes, missing fingers, and the other terrible mutilations Tauric and his companion had been forced to inflict in self defense.
Then the girl's spear broke. She stepped back, lost her footing and fell. At once, one of the dead leaped at her. Instinctively, Tauric brought his blade down on the attacker's exposed neck and severed the head. Bloodless, the body collapsed in the dust and Tauric grabbed the girl by and dragged her along the side of a building, searching for an open door. The other two took a few steps in pursuit, then stopped. Confusion passed over their ruined features for second before each let out a single, soul-wrenching howl and fell to the ground.
And behind them, just emerging from the alley's shadows, were three Mogaun warriors. They were smaller and older than others Tauric had seen, and wore strings of bones and feathers over shapeless fur garments. Long grey braids framed wizened faces full of bright hate, and eyes that were trained on Tauric.
"The Mogaun shamen," whispered the girl as Tauric helped her to her feet. "Oh no, they musn't - "
Three pairs of leathery hands rose chest high, long-nailed fingers crooked as if grasping something unseen. The shamen moved their lips in unison, muttering a continual stream of guttural syllables. Tauric felt the hairs on his neck and head prickle while pushing and hammering madly on a door he had found, to no avail. Then the shamen stamped the ground and threw their hands outwards in Tauric's direction.
Tauric was engulfed in a ghastly emanation of power. Strength drained from his limbs and he sank to his knees, his mind racked by a pulling and a tugging as if by claws that searched his very thoughts. This was a horror beyond imagining, in a way worse than the tortures he had suffered at the hands of Byrnak. He wanted to cry out, to somehow let his pain pour out but he was helpless and senseless, crushed beneath a torrent, an ocean of lead and stone...
Suddenly, light penetrated the grey veil, the torment fell away and he felt himself being lifted to his feet. A hand on his arm, his steel arm. The girl. A peculiar radiance cloaked her, and her heard her sob as she raised his metal arm and pointed it at the three startled shamen. Through her quiet weeping she began to whisper a series of strange words over and over and over till he began hearing them in his own mind like a single bell chiming. In one instant he was staring at the Mogaun, blinking the sweat from his eyes, and in the next a pure white fire erupted from his hand and spewed across the intervening space.
The shamen burned. Writhing and screaming, they tried to struggle free of their furs but the fire wrapped itself around their forms, hungrily devouring them.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," the girl was babbling. "I didn't want this, and I don't want to be...." She paused, both hands pulling him closer. "I'm sorry, but I have to do this..."
He tried to turn towards her but she was whispering again and the words were like tiny silver birds which entered his head, their wings striking against the inside of his skull, making it ring like a cave of glass. Tauric was staring into her reddened, tear-wet eyes when a blinding light filled his head and wiped her from his sight.
The next thing he saw was a dozen Mogaun riders galloping straight for him across the square, feathers fluttering from the points of spears couched at him. The night seemed like day, and the riders wavered as if seen through water, yet Tauric felt as if his body was strong and heavy, his feet planted solidly on the ground. He could see such details, such a vividness in everything, individual hairs of soft rich brown and deep iron black in the furs the warriors wore, or the sheen of firelight reflected from the hammered texture of the crude leaf mail they wore. The blinding light shifted within him and his metal arm sang. Suddenly the riders let go their spears and weapons, some toppling to the ground to scrape and claw at their scalps, while the rest of the horses halted in their charge and began leaping and bucking wildly to dislodge those still hanging on.
A demented joy filled Tauric as he strode around the square, giving himself over to the whispering light, letting it do its work, and staring in fascination at what he wrought. Groups of warriors rushed him and were thrust back dead or wounded, blood jewelling their limbs or the ground. Hard-pressed defenders in the barricaded positions around the square hoarsely cheered him as he dispensed retribution with the hot white power which blazed around his steel arm. One heedlessly brave Mogaun climbed the outside of a shop front to leap on him from above, but the light in his head saw it before he did, caught the assailant and hurled him across the square and through the shutters of an upper storey window.
"You cannot harm me!" he shouted.
This is not you
, screamed a voice inside himself.
You are not doing this - this is being done to you
...
The light began to dim. The words in his mind grew slower and deeper. Then he saw some of the defenders clambering over their barricades and was confused for a moment or two before seeing the surviving Mogaun horsemen regrouping at the other side. It seemed that they were preparing for another charge, then they turned and rode from the square. Cheers and triumphant shouting went up all around, but Tauric felt as though everything was falling away from him. The light in his head was guttering now and the vividness of things was blurred, losing all presence and beauty. He had been filled beyond his limits and was now emptying to the dregs of his spirit.
Tauric's legs gave way and he slumped to a sprawled sitting position. He heard someone calling his name, the broken word only making sense after being repeated several times. The words in his head were grave and stately now, tones of finality, of resolution. A man in leather armour crouched down before him, a slender, middle-aged man with grey hair and blood oozing from cuts on his brow and cheek. The Lord Commander Mazaret, he realised dully. Then he began wondering about the girl - he still didn't know her name, yet she was important somehow...
Then his grasp of his surroundings dissolved and blackness took him down into nothingness.
* * *
While the physician attended to the arrow wound in his shoulder, Mazaret sat in a heavily ornate chair by the audience chamber's window, gazing out at the city of Oumetra. It had been raining, and noon sunlight was edging through breaks in the cloud, making the city shine. The audience chamber was high up in the Great Keep and from where he sat Mazaret could see the massive structures of the city's founders and the lesser, frailer buildings which clustered around them. And if he leaned forward a little he could see the crowds still gathered in the courtyard below, all hoping for a glimpse of the youth who had performed wonders at what was becoming known as the Battle of Imperial Square.
Frowning, he sat back, provoking an agonising twinge in his shoulder.
"My lord," said the physician in exasperation. "I cannot work if you keep moving thus - "
"Good sir, you have been burrowing in my arm for half the morning. What do you hope to find?"
The physician was a slender, ascetic man with a neatly trimmed grey beard and moustache, and he wore a long rich yellow robe embroidered in red at the collar and cuffs. He gave the Lord Commander a vaguely disappointed look. "With respect, my lord, the arrow head shattered on piercing your armour but the shaft drove tiny shards of flint deep into the flesh. I have extracted several fragments but still have others to recover. May I advise another mouthful or two of the fraol?"
Mazaret scowled and raised to his lips a silver flask chased with hunting scenes and took a swallow. The powerful Dalbari liquor coursed down into his stomach and a pleasant warmth spread through him.