The Crowned (The Blood and Brotherhood Saga, Book 6) (3 page)

As he called to the men outside his tent, a moment passed
before one of his captains peeked through the flap to receive his orders.

“Send Valdadore a gift. A thousand new and thirsty vampire
soldiers to keep them on their toes.”

“Yes, your majesty,” the captain replied, and vanished once
again behind the canvas.

Reaching down to the floor he retrieved his favorite, gem-encrusted
dagger, and raised it above himself in one hand. Without so much as a breath’s
hesitation he plunged it down into his bare abdomen and watched as it pierced
flesh, his blood pooling around it. With a tug he pulled it free and watched as
the skin closed around the blade as it was removed. No more did the blade exit
his flesh, and the wound was healed. Grinning sheepishly, King Sigrant could
not help but feel the excitement that came from realizing you were invincible.

Springing from his cushion with such force that he shattered
both of his legs, the invading king went out to test his abilities, his legs
mending before he landed upon his feet. Some of his champions had been spared
the bite of the vampire whores, at least for the time being. Eventually even
they were likely to succumb to the thirst of one of their peers. For now,
however, these warriors would be his test subjects.

Leaving his candle-lit tent, he was amazed how well he could
see in the darkness. His eyes had become so keen, it were as if the sun shone
even now, late in the night. Within seconds he was at the edge of the camp. Grinning
again, he realized that he moved so fast now that he would have to pay closer
attention to his movements. Already, he had to turn around and go back the way
he had come, having passed his destination. Invading Valdadore had been his
best idea yet, and with his improved army, he could easily destroy any of the
other neighboring nations as well.

He pondered that line of thinking a moment, imagining his
many conquests and victories, before once again reaching the opposite edge to
his camp.

“Shit.”

Turning once again, in the direction he had come, he focused
solely on his destination, careful not to become sidetracked in newly realized
fantasies.

* * * * *

Sara sat uncomfortably within her cage, like a beast being
hauled to slaughter. For better than eighteen hours she had been confined to
the small metal prison, a situation she did not imagine herself getting used to.
Most of that time was spent trundling ever further away from Valdadore. She
wished she could escape and return to help in the fight. It would allow her the
vengeance she desired. Instead she wondered if Valdadore still stood, its
valiant defenders putting up a good fight to retain their home.

After crossing the lake, some hours before, the oxen pulling
the cart had been replaced by great black steeds. These beasts whisked her
along the well beaten road previously trodden by the armies of King Sigrant. A
singular inhabitant traveled with her. A small man adorned by tattoos that
covered nearly every inch of his flesh. It was he who had replaced the oxen
with the large horses when Sara’s care had been transferred on the western
shore of the frozen lake.

She had tried to talk to him once in an attempt to glean
information about where they were going, but found the venture useless. The man
ignored her, sitting just out of reach at the front of the cart. There he
guided the beasts ever onward at a dangerous pace, their hooves thundering down
the road, the creaking cart behind them.

With nothing else to do but count the passing moments, Sara
sat against the back bars of the cage, her arms wrapped around her knees. The
need to sleep being nothing but a memory to her, she waited patiently, praying
to any god who would hear her, for a chance to escape. Even now her power
increased with every passing moment. Sigrant was changing multitudes of humans
to be a monster like her. Whereas he got a portion of power from each of his
direct underlings, he gained a smaller portion from those that they changed. So
too was it with her. Sara was gaining a fraction of the power Sigrant was
gaining, though less than the invading king himself. With every passing minute
she grew stronger, her senses growing keener. She had tested the bars an hour
before, but still was unable to bend them. So she waited, growing ever more
powerful, for the first opportunity that presented itself.

* * * * *

Linaya rode her Valdadorian white stallion beside Zorbin
Ironfist atop the great dire wolf Xanth. The dwarves had brought the pair their
mounts upon exiting the mountains that served as the dwarves’ home. Together
they followed the immense Dwarven army, a sea of a hundred thousand stout men
and women whose polished armor sparkled even in the near absolute darkness. At
the head of the army, the new king of the Dwarven nation marched along with his
advisors and royal guard.

Linaya watched in awe as the immense army marched, each of
them in step, pounding the ground beneath them in a steady thunderous rhythm. Every
dwarf bore a great hammer resting upon their shoulder, a feat that she was sure
would grow tiring in little to no time. Thus far, however, she had not noticed
a single soldier switch arms or move to relieve the pains of hefting such a
weight for so long a time.

“Zorbin…” Linaya near shouted over the pounding of the Dwarven
army’s feet. “Why do the dwarves carry no torches with them? Would it not be
safer if those in front could better see the ground before them?”

“We dwarves see better in darkness than you humans, a
benefit, methinks, that comes with living underground, m’lady. It also hides
our numbers from any enemy scouts who may hear us coming.”

“Makes sense.”

“We may not war with the other races of men often, m’lady,
but I assure you that little has changed in war since the races of men first
discovered one another,” Zorbin grumbled.

Linaya shifted upon her mount, restless, wishing they could
move faster. She could not wait to return to Valdadore, Dwarven army in tow,
finally feeling she was doing her part to save her people. She relaxed her grip
upon the reins once again, an act she had had to repeat on several occasions. She
hoped they arrived to find Valdadore and her defenders holding strong, especially
Garret. She missed him dearly and looked forward to his embrace. For now all
there was to do was wait and hope they arrived in time.

Borrik could hear them coming and smell them as they neared.
Nearly an hour had passed since he had given the warning that they were coming.
The enemy screamed and yelled like crazed animals, and as they came into sight
of the beacon fires that surrounded the city, it was apparent that they were
not what was expected. Immediately he knew them for what they were. These
beasts were like Princess Sara, moving unnaturally, like fluid over the surface
of the ground.

Their leaps covered too much ground, their strides were
unnaturally long. They bounded over the meager ground defenses of spiked poles
and pits like stags leaping brambles in the forest.

Borrik watched them come, studying their movements and
speeds. They were but a small fraction of Sigrant’s force, and though they
moved like Sara they were slower. These were a shadow of what the princess had
become, but even so he knew that if they made it past the walls and into the
city, the common people would have little chance against the faster and
stronger mimics of humans.

Everyone saw them coming, and a cheer arose upon the
battlements on the wall as the wave of Sigrant’s soldiers came to a halt
outside the gleaming white walls of the city. Their cheers ceased abruptly when
the first of the creatures began digging fingernails and toenails into unseen
holds in the stone and started to scale the supposedly smooth walls. Within
seconds the creatures’ comrades followed suit, each of them scratching and
clawing up the walls like spiders. Up they came, a thousand unholy enemies.

Borrik watched as realization struck Valdadore’s defenders. Its
remaining mages began flinging fire down the walls, incinerating those
attackers too slow to move out of the way. Borrik joined them, summoning his
own fireballs in two of his four hands and hurling them down upon the bloodthirsty
wretches. He heard the boom when Garret invoked his blessing, and was sad in
the knowing that no further booms beyond his own would come. All they needed to
do was hold out until Seth came.

Touching his armor and whispering a prayer to Seth, Borrik
exploded in a concussive boom before leaping from the wall. The cold updrafts
hitting the immense walls helped keep him aloft as he swept dangerously close,
pulling his nearest enemies free of their holdings, letting them plummet to the
ground. Others he cleaved with blade or burned with fire, but they climbed too
fast and already were nearing the top of the wall in many locations.

* * * * *

Garret watched the enemy climb, believing them yet another
type of blessed troop in Sigrant’s arsenal. He swore at his bad luck, angered
beyond measure that against these troops his ballista and other war mechanisms
were useless. They moved too fast and kept distance from one another. Before he
knew what was happening the attackers were climbing the walls like insects
swarming out of a hive. His mages and archers began an assault in retaliation
but there were so few left, their impact was miniscule.

Garret called upon his blessing and a moment later watched
as Borrik did the same before flinging himself over the edge of the wall. A
minute. Maybe two. That was all the time Garret had before they breached the
top of the wall and inevitably made it into the city. If that happened the
gates would be compromised and all was lost.

Then it struck him.

Dashing down the walkway atop the wall, Garret watched as
his remaining soldiers dove aside at his approach. He had no time to slow. Reaching
the first great cauldron, he bent his knees to prepare for the right moment.

Usually these cauldrons, filled with boiling oil, were tilted
into a stone gutter that led down into the wall and out a sluice that caused it
to rain down below the wall on gathered troops and siege engines. The problem
was that in this case the enemy was on the wall, not below it on the ground. Garret
had a solution.

Planting his feet and wrapping his one immense, metallic arm
around the cauldron, he shoved with all his might, leveraging the giant bronze
container against the battlements. Growling with the exertion, he pressed
upwards with his legs as the cauldron scraped slowly up the stone. Reaching the
top, he pressed further still as the oil began to spill out.

“Mages!” Garret shouted in a deep resounding tone that was
sure to be heard by everyone. With that single word he pressed once more, and
using his shoulder he tipped the giant cauldron over the edge of the wall and
began sliding it down the wall to coat as much as he could.

Boiling oil cascaded down the wall. Invaders not only fell
from the burning torment from above, but those who remained found it impossible
to find a hand or foot hold any higher than their current position. Those below
Garret either fell or found themselves sitting ducks, for as soon as the
cauldron was emptied, the king released it to fall again to the stones of the
castle wall with a hollow resounding toll. On that mark, battle mages unleashed
their inferno upon the oil-coated section of wall, burning those who remained
and creating a fire barrier for any who climbed from below.

Garret dared not wait, he had only protected a hundred feet
or so of the wall that stretched on for what now seemed an eternity. Running
once more, he approached the next cauldron and began to lift it as Borrik
slammed to the stone wall opposite him. Together they lifted the second immense
container of boiling fluid and repeated the process.

By the fourth cauldron some of the invaders peaked the wall,
but Garret dared not stop, hoping his men could handle the foes.

“Borrik, we must continue!” he shouted, to a replied nod.

There was no one else able to lift the giant cauldrons. Even
the great werewolf was having issues, his skin beginning to blister on his
hands and arms as the fur burned away.

Minutes passed and the men upon this western wall managed to
hold their foes as the king and great wolf dumped cauldron after cauldron,
working their way northward along the wall, but they were too slow. Ahead, more
and more of the foreign men topped the wall and the defenders could not hold
them. Garret witnessed as the unnatural invaders pounced upon his meager
forces, biting and clawing them ferociously. They drank the blood of those they
felled before leaping to the rooftops beyond, to be lost again in darkness. He
had seen another drink the blood of her foes.

It was no use, and Garret abandoned the next cauldron,
rushing past it to help those falling back upon the wall. Borrik leapt into the
air, out of his way, and took up the fight as well. Within seconds, the masses
of the enemy began breaching the wall everywhere the burning oil did not
protect. The city would fall on the very first night.

With that thought Garret got his wish as his vision turned
red and a chuckle escaped his lips, before he drew his massive blade and began
hacking the unholy creatures to bits. He stomped ahead on the wall, allies
trying to make a clear path as he came. The one-armed king, a giant among men,
cut a path of gore upon the great stone wall as hundreds of the creatures
poured over the edge to meet the defenders.

Approaching a group that did not flee at his approach,
Garret swung low, knowing the things would easily leap above his blade. Then,
mid swing, he changed the angle of his attack and bending one knee he arced his
blade upwards, catching more than half of the creatures across the abdomens,
effectively severing each of them in two.