War of Wizards (24 page)

Chantmer seemed to rouse himself as the battle raged, and threw his magic into the fray with Darik’s and the conjurers’ to keep the defenders in the fight. More conjurers arrived, and two more mages, including Roghan, with news from the Gate of the Dead. Wights had broken through, but Daniel had pushed them back out at great cost. Those wights had abandoned their attack and were now flowing here to join the main battle. In response, Daniel was sending five thousand more men, but it would take them time to arrive.

The west tower shuddered again. Stones sheared away from the wall and crashed to the ground outside the city. Wights had broken into the tower below them and were streaming in. They came boiling onto the tower roof moments later.

Their faces were distinct now: men with ghostly, gaping wounds, women without eyes, children with faces burned off. Those who seemed whole and beautiful, and those who were little more than rotting corpses. Sometimes, Darik saw both aspects in the same being. Their faces twisted in pain and fear and madness.

Three terrified watchmen tried to oppose them, but ghostly hands plunged into their chests and tore them open. They died screaming. The wights rushed at the wizards.

Chantmer lifted a hand.
“
Torva messor sume tibi!”
 

The spell sucked the light from the air. A feeling of dread washed over Darik, and he shrank back. The wights opened their mouths and screamed. They fled through the door from which they’d come. Chantmer clutched his blackened left hand. The robe fell back from his forearms, and Darik saw that they were bare of tattoos.

“May the Harvester take them,” Chantmer said. He looked down at his withered hand. “If only I had the orb.”

“The wights are breaking through,” Roghan said nervously. “We must abandon this tower before it is overrun.”

Chantmer stared down at his remaining uninjured hand. He glanced at the wights, slowly overwhelming the lines of the defenders below. Others streamed through the broken tower, where they were attacked by men with torches and swords before they could escape into the city. Chantmer then regarded the darkness beyond the enemy army, his eyes glazed, unseeing, far away.

Darik could read his expression and guessed what he was thinking. “Don’t do it, Chantmer. The battle is not yet lost.”

“It is. This city is destroyed.”

“I have both of my hands,” Darik said. “You still have one. Your mages have some strength left. Daniel is marching an army to our relief. We only have to hold out until they arrive, and then fight until dawn.”

“I fled the battlefield once and that preserved my life to fight again.”

Darik grabbed Chantmer’s wrist, not caring about the growl of pain when his hand touched the wizard’s blackened flesh. “No.”

“Let go of me.”

“You are Chantmer the Tall. You are the most powerful wizard of all, or so you’ve told me a hundred times. And now you’re going to run away?”

“What do you mean?” Roghan demanded. “Chantmer, what is he talking about?”

“He came into the city as a stork,” Darik said. “He means to change back into a bird and fly away to safety.”

“We can’t do that,” Roghan said. “We didn’t prepare that spell this time. It’s not tattooed into our flesh.”

Darik grabbed Chantmer’s other wrist to show the wizard’s uninjured right hand. “He doesn’t need a tattoo. And he doesn’t mean to take you with him.”

Chantmer jerked free. “I would take you all if I could, but it is too late. It is all falling apart.”

“Oh, no,” Roghan said. “I didn’t pull your dead body from a swamp so you could leave me to die. If we die, you die with us.” He turned to the other mage, a woman, who still had tattoos on her lower arms, vanishing up in her sleeves. “Hold him.”

Chantmer whispered something, and Darik looked quickly down at the battle raging below, terrified suddenly, knowing that something awful was about to happen. Except that the battle continued much as it had moments earlier, when he’d last looked. Perhaps a little more desperate for the defenders, but no great rout yet, either. The two mages and the other conjurers ran over to look down. Darik saw their anxiety and suddenly remembered Chantmer.

He turned back. Chantmer crouched at the edge of the wall, his arms stretched behind him, his robe shifting, changing, sprouting feathers. His face lengthened, his lips hardened and grew into a beak. The last to go were the eyes, the arrogant gleam meeting Darik’s gaze. A final, dismissive glance. Then he was an enormous black crow. He flapped twice and lifted without a squawk or noise other than the thump of beating wings. Moments later, Chantmer had disappeared into the night.

When Darik turned back, the others were just looking up, blinking, as if stunned.

“Where did Chantmer—?” Roghan began. He never finished his sentence.

The tower had never ceased its shuddering and now gave a final groaning shake beneath their feet. Then it collapsed.

For a moment Darik felt suspended in air. He was falling sideways, not down. Flying, feeling as though if he started flapping his own arms, he would go winging after Chantmer into the night air. The tower was leaning over the open plaza behind the gates, where the two armies brawled. For a moment, he saw the expressions of Eriscobans and Balsalomians, men staring up at them with gaping mouths, and then he was flailing through the empty air.

It was sixty or seventy feet from the tower to the hard stones below. There was a spell, some magic that would cushion the blow, keep them from dashing to pieces on the ground. Markal had taught it to him, told him how to use it if he were ever thrown from the back of a griffin while in midair combat. It might preserve his life. But he couldn’t remember the words in the old tongue, something about a pillow and the ground. Not fast enough, not in time to say them before he dashed to pieces.

“
Gaudete cum nostris cadunt cervicalia lecti.
” 

Someone else had remembered. Darik felt the words as much as heard them. Roghan, he thought, had said them. The ground rushed up just as fast as before, but when he hit, the stones seemed to give way, as if they were pillows filled with the down of a thousand geese. He hit hard—it still hurt—but he sank several inches and then sprang back up. When he climbed to his feet, he was sore but not injured. Roghan, the other mage, and two of the former torturers rose next to him, muttering and cursing.

“I should have let him rot,” Roghan said through clenched teeth.

“Beware the wights,” the other mage shouted.

They boiled over the wrecked guard tower even before its stones had settled. A cloud of dust rose in the air, and through it flowed dozens of wights. Roghan lifted his hands and called up one of his remaining spells. A coil of shadowy rope materialized in front of him. It lashed forward, snaking through the wights, wrapping around their limbs. The rope jerked them from their feet and tossed them aside.

More wights came through and rushed at the mage. Darik tried to reach the man’s side, but two wights dragged themselves from beneath a heap of rubble and came after Darik with ghostly swords. He drew his own weapon and called the spell from his final tattoo. A rush of fire flowed into his sword and the weapons of the living men fighting all around him. Darik fought his way toward Roghan. His blade cut through wights and sent them shrieking into the sky as wisps of smoke and light.

A wight grabbed Roghan’s arm and dragged him down. The mage cried for help. Darik clashed with two more enemies. Another wight threw itself onto Roghan. The ground shuddered as Roghan cast a spell that hurled them off. More piled onto him. The mage let out a long, shrieking scream.

The wights tore at Roghan’s body with weapons, hands, mouths. They came up with his shredded robes, an arm, bits of flesh in their mouths, the man’s innards. By the time Darik hacked them away, there was nothing left of the man but a gruesome slaughter. Darik fell back, his stomach churning, as more wights came pouring through. The light was fading from his sword. Three wights came at him, their bodies blurring together until they seemed to move as one.

A strong hand grabbed Darik and dragged him backward. It was Captain Rouhani. “Fall back to the palace!”

“We can’t let them in,” Darik said.

“My lord, the battle is lost. Look!”

Wights were entering the city in two other places. Like a river that had jumped its banks, they flowed in a glowing current all along the wall, eating at the stone and mortar. Where they broke through, the wall crumbled and fell and the holes grew still larger. There were still dozens of archers on the wall, shooting flaming arrows into the glowing mass, and by now fresh Marrabatti troops were arriving, led by a troop of Kratian camel riders who came howling into the battle with scimitars flailing. But there were simply too many enemies already in the city, and no way to plug the holes that allowed them entry.

“We have to keep fighting,” Darik insisted. “Daniel is on his way.”

“Listen to me,” Rouhani said. “The palace has its own walls. It can take hundreds of defenders. We’ll fall back and make a stand there. If we can hold out a few more hours, we’ll reclaim the city by daylight.”

“You go. I’ll stay and keep fighting.”

“My lord, no! You have magic—you can shield the khalifa. She needs you. By the Brothers, won’t you help her?”

Darik cast a final glance into the night sky, looking for a crow that might be soaring overhead, looking for a place to land. He saw nothing. Rouhani was still tugging on his arm, urging him to fall back. At last, Darik turned with a final curse for Chantmer the Tall and joined Rouhani in fleeing toward the palace to make a final stand.

Chapter Twenty-three

Markal glanced desperately from the dragon to the two giants wading toward them with spiked clubs flailing. King Whelan’s forces were still pouring through the breach, but pinned between the army on the ground and the monster squatting atop the burning wreckage of the tower, the assault was about to collapse disastrously.

Then, a familiar horn sounded to the west, a long, single note as clear and deep as an icy mountain river. Hope rose in Markal’s breast. It was Daria Flockheart, giving the order to attack. The dragon had been gathering his flames but now turned its head toward the sky. It bellowed angrily and lifted into the sky with a beat of its mighty wings.

There was no time to enjoy the small victory, as the giants came charging in. Veyrians on foot and horse gathered behind them, using the two brutes as a wedge to push back Whelan’s forces.

“Spears!” Whelan shouted.

Markal found himself suddenly in the thick of a raging battle. Swords and spears thrust up at him, but he used a thread of magic here, a bit of wizardry there, and turned the blows aside. One man grabbed him by the leg, but Sofiana calmly raised her crossbow and shot him in the chest. Markal had almost forgotten she was riding next to him.

Whelan lost his horse to a spear thrust, but came up on foot, Soultrup in hand. The magical sword danced and weaved, thrust and hacked, one moment graceful, the next overpowering. Knights Temperate came in behind Whelan. Together, they faced the first giant.

The king ducked beneath a massive blow that would have shattered his chest had it landed. He came up swinging and hacked at the giant’s leg. The sword cut through the heavy armor and bit deep in the calf. The giant bellowed in pain.

The other giant bashed his way to join the fight. Knights tried to stop him, but he crushed a man and his horse with a single blow and swept two others out of the way with another. Whelan still had his hands full and couldn’t face a second giant. It would reach the king in a moment.

Markal reached deep into the orb. “
Animum, ut obliviscatur.
” 

Turn his mind, make him forget.
 

The second giant stopped suddenly and turned in a complete circle. It looked confused, and for a moment, it seemed as though it had forgotten about the battle entirely. By the time the spell faded, several knights had forced the giant back into the general melee.

Whelan ducked another blow from his wounded foe. He came up behind the giant and swung Soultrup in a wide arc from his shoulder. The king was a tall man, but even outstretched, the blow only reached the giant’s thigh. It cut through the armor and buried itself in the giant’s leg.

The giant roared and twisted so violently that the sword was jerked out of Whelan’s hands. The giant flailed blindly with his club. Markal jumped from his horse to grab Whelan and pulled him back, while Sofiana readied another bolt. When the giant turned, she fired. The bolt hit the giant in its left eye. He went down. Whelan sprang forward to recover his sword, and three of his men came rushing up to mount their own attack.

They hacked and stabbed until the giant was dead. Even in his death, he killed one more man, crushed with a mailed fist to the side of the head. Meanwhile, the second giant was still fighting, still causing mayhem to their rear, but he was in the thick of a larger battle now and unable to charge at the king and his companions.

Markal spotted Narud and called him over. The other wizard had lost his mount but had cast a spell over himself, and the fighting men on both sides parted as he walked through the battle. Markal helped Narud onto his horse.

Whelan’s army had punctured the enemy lines, but it took a few minutes to gather enough men to ride further into the city. When they set off, they had roughly eighty riders, plus the king’s daughter and the two wizards. Hundreds more were still fighting their way into the city, but Whelan wanted to move swiftly before the Veyrians mounted a counterattack.

Markal expected opposition as they funneled through narrow, cobbled streets—surely, the dark wizard had reserves, and they would spring out in a trap—and he studied side streets, imagining an alternate way toward Toth’s citadel. But no soldiers rushed to block them, and there were few civilians, even. Where were the lamps in the windows? The people on roofs watching the battle? After the first few blocks into Veyre, it seemed as though the entire city was deserted.