Call of the Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  “I am glad that you have decided to make your stand at last,” Alaric said, hewing a Machine thug's chest in half. The light of sunset fell upon them, the last glorious rays of the day finding them here, at the center of the battle to hold back this invasion of the dockyards.

  “Me, too,” Guy said, swinging again, this time wildly, at first, then reining it in and striking a loyalist across the throat. A spray of red issued from his neck, and the man staggered back into his own ranks, slowing their approach. “Me, too.”

  The red light of sunset glowed on them, bestowing an otherworldly, almost bloody cast upon the battle. Dark blood glowed red, and Alaric swung again and again, knowing that the results of all this battle hinged upon him–

  Wait.

  The light of the sun was too red, Alaric realized dimly. Some sound crackled in the distance; a quiver of panic ran through the enemy army that surrounded him.

  “What is this?” Alaric muttered, stabbing a loyalist through the chest and pulling his sword free to look. The battle had stopped, all heads turned in one direction – out the open gate.

  The red glow came from there, from the Citadel visible barely in the distance. A crackling red veil of spellcraft covered everything else in his sight beyond it in a scarlet glow. Alaric stared at it for a moment curiously, then it occurred to him where he'd seen this before–

  Sennshann. On the night of the fall.

  Malpravus.

  “What the 'ell is that?” Guy asked, his sword clutched in hand, guarding him. No one was attacking, though; everyone was transfixed on the spell, which seemed to be crawling toward them ever steadily–

  “Death,” Alaric whispered, and his voice rose as did the panic within. “Flee!” he bellowed, with every bit of air in his lungs. “All of you, fall back to the ships and flee!” And with a hand upon Guy's collar, he did just that, dragging the smaller man before the breaking of both armies as the spell of certain doom surged its way over the city of Reikonos – and toward them all.

  Chapter 118

  Vaste

  “Run! Break from this foolish battle and run!” Vaste shouted, taking up and leaping down the stairs. “Get aboard a ship and go!” He waved Letum at the nearest airship, where dark-skinned men on the deck stared out at him, probably wondering what madness had possessed him.

  “What magic is this?” Qualleron was five steps behind him, which was probably only two steps for that giant lunk.

  “Malpravus's,” Vaste returned. The red ovoid dome was growing by the second, sweeping over all of Reikonos. He saw it before he dipped below the horizon, running for whichever ship he could get on. A quick look to his left revealed an interesting sight; an airship rising out of the yards, and three figures running on air toward it: Hiressam, Pamyra and Shirri, unless his eyes much deceived him. They disappeared onto its deck as it turned slowly 'round and then sped away over the wall.

  “Where do we go?” Qualleron asked. “How can we fight it?”

  “There's no fighting it, fool!” Vaste shouted back, hitting the stone paths between ships and seeking swiftly for one that's dock was unlocked. The nearest one, with the dark-skinned men upon the deck, had much shouting happening, as well as those topmasts spinning wildly, but seemed to be still locked in. “Here, help me!” and he ducked under it.

  Qualleron followed, barely squeezing in under the ship. “Help you how?” The ship's engines were whining loudly, and wood supports were straining.

  “Break the locks!” Vaste called, bringing down Letum upon one of the metal locks. It took the blow hard, metal making a noise like glass inside, and the mechanism sprung free. “These people are going to be trapped here, and fall under – that.” He merely nodded his head in the direction of the encroaching spell; everything glowed red in its reflection.

  Qualleron nodded and brought down a blow upon the support nearest him. Its lock shattered, pieces of metal raining away.

  That done, the airship began to rise, no longer encumbered by the locking mechanism that had held it to the earth. In seconds it was fifty feet above them, rising and soaring over the wall, away from red and certain death.

  Other members of the army that had been battling on the wall – some Machine, some Watch, impossible to tell whether they were loyalist or Sanctuary, now – were surging through the shipyards seeking escape. “That way!” Vaste shouted, pointing at the next ship in line. The engines were already up and straining, and men were leaning over from the deck, shouting at Vaste and Qualleron.

  “Honor demands sacrifice,” Qualleron said quietly, meeting Vaste's eyes.

  Vaste only looked at him for a second before waving, wildly, toward the surging humans coming down from the wall. “Yeah. Sure. Over here! Get on this ship!” He ducked beneath, Qualleron following, to set the damned thing free before it was too late.

  Chapter 119

  Cyrus

  The truck engine whined as it rattled along the avenue and through the broken gates of the dockyards. The street had been clear the whole way through, and Cyrus had regarded it with near disbelief the whole while, and, if he was being honest, a measure of shock as well.

  The city of Reikonos was being sacrificed to turn their Lord Protector into a mad god, and the people were taking it by hiding in their homes.

  “I think the battle is over,” Cyrus said numbly as they coasted through the shattered gate, the wheels thudding over the downed wooden barrier.

  “Oh?” Baynvyn's attention seemed entirely on the wheel, on the road ahead. There were hints of a battle here, fallen bodies that he ran over without concern, but the remainder of said army was draining even now into the gaps between airships, funneled like grains of salt through an hourglass neck. “Who won?”

  “Malpravus,” Cyrus said, looking back again. The truck was angled so that he could no longer see out of the gate, but the bubble of life-consuming spell-magic was visible over the top, and cast the entire dockyards in a terrible crimson glow.

  Baynvyn took the truck into a rough turn, skirting the edge of the wall for some distance. A very few airships and many empty docks went by as they went down the row, Cyrus watching as though partially removed from his body. He had a hard time mustering up the presence of mind to come up with an idea, a stratagem, any sort of command. Instead, Baynvyn did as Baynvyn wanted, and brought the truck to the last remaining airship at the end of the row. Empty docks waited beyond, signs of wise people who had already fled in advance of this cataclysm.

  “Let's go,” Baynvyn said, throwing open his door and springing out.

  Cyrus waited only a moment – an eternity given he was still clutching Praelior and Epalette – and then opened his own door to step out. His boots found firm footing on the stones that made the road encircling the yards, and yet he lost his balance and almost took a knee as he watched red light play over everything, the dome of the deathly spell crawling inevitably toward the dockyards wall.

  “Come on, fool!” Baynvyn shouted, seizing Cyrus's arm and pulling. It had no effect, for Cyrus did not want it to.

  “I can't,” Cyrus said quietly, and reversed his grip on Epalette. The blade clutched in his gauntlet, Cyrus felt the shadow fall from him as he became visible again, dimly aware that in their entire ride, he must have been shrouded. “Here.”

  Baynvyn hesitated only a second, then seized Epalette by the hilt. “What are you doing?” he asked, at speed, now that his weapon was returned.

  “This is my city,” Cyrus said, turning his back to Baynvyn. The spell advanced, terrible and beautiful all at once. “I can't leave it.” He bowed his head, and the awareness that every soul in this town was about to die crashed down on him. “Not now. Not in its final hour.”

  “It's his city now,” Baynvyn said. “Nothing you can do to stop it, not even throwing yourself into the path of that spell. You'd just be adding to his power, right?”

  Cyrus just stared at the approach of death as an engine started behind him. “Yes. But not by much, at this point.”
He cast a look back at Baynvyn. “Go on. Get out of here.”

  Baynvyn seemed to hesitate, eyes flicking to Cyrus's belt. “My pistol.”

  Cyrus glanced down; it was still in his belt. “Oh. H–”

  A thunderous punch hit him squarely in the nose, knocking him back. His helm was flipped asunder a moment later, and a knee found the perfect spot on his wrist to knock loose Rodanthar from his hand–

  Cyrus tumbled back, watching his blade flip through the air–

  Baynvyn caught it perfectly – and now he had two godly weapons–

  “Don't be stupid,” Baynvyn said, and caught him in the side of the head with a kick, as the red in Cyrus's vision flashed once, brightly, then turned black–

  Chapter 120

  Alaric

  Two airships collided as they tried to rise, and flames billowed out the side of both as they fell back to the earth, crashing into the spinning blades of a third ship. It became a burning pyre of death, though not nearly as large as the spell-generated wave of death coming behind them, Alaric realized, looking over his shoulder to the slow-moving red light that was now coursing over the top of the dockyard wall–

  “Where do we go, Alaric?” Guy asked, as another ship flew over their heads. It shadowed them, racing up and away, someone tumbling over the deck and shattering onto the ground in a dock two dozen paces from them. Screams and cries were all around them, a mad dash under way as both armies, only moments before at war with one another, now fought merely to find a ship and survive.

  “I don't know,” Alaric said, casting his gaze about. There were few enough ships left in the dock, now, and fewer still had engines running. With the spell at the gates, he knew the time was short; it was crawling its way across the ground toward them, and soon would reach the very edge of Reikonos.

  Would it stop there? Or would it move on, making its way across the wider world? Alaric thought of the map that Curatio had shown him – poor, dear Curatio, surely dead, as he glanced at the sword in Guy's hand – and the very idea of this evil red spell coursing its way across the entirety of it?

  Well, it turned a stomach that Alaric had previously thought had reached maximum turn when Malpravus had consumed Sanctuary. That he'd had a purpose in mind for the power he'd absorbed had not dawned on Alaric. That it would be unleashed so soon...

  “I have failed monumentally,” Alaric whispered.

  “There!” Guy shouted, pointing at a ship nearby. Its propellers were turning, but a good hundred men were between them and it, and all of them seemed to see it at the same time. A flood of men harkened in that direction, and surged up the steps and platforms toward it, pouring over the sides before Alaric and Guy even managed to get close.

  The ship was in the sky a moment later, men screaming and falling from the platforms into the empty dock like water over a fall.

  Suddenly Alaric felt the briefest surge of gratitude for his earlier command to unlock the airships. At least not everyone here would be caught up in his folly. Enough would die as it was; any that escaped were but smallest relief for a conscience that would not be long for this world.

  Another look toward the red; it was nearly upon them now.

  “Where do we go?” asked a man, dressed all in black, standing beside Alaric. Neither Machine thug nor City Watch, he seemed desperately out of place here. It occurred to him that the man was looking directly at him, with a long face and a bald head, his eyes sunken and sad. “Where do we go now?” Another ship flew into the sky and a chorus of screams and cries and calls to come back went ignored as it departed in a roar of engines.

  “I don't know,” Alaric said, looking and seeing nothing over the heads of the scattered, fleeing armies. There was a dock beside him, the wooden frame scaffolding high enough that he could see over the carnage. With Aterum in hand, Alaric climbed the first level of it, then the next, coming to stand on a platform just a bit taller than the height of two men.

  The spell was closing in now; it had reached the first row of airship docks and he could see the wood frames distort as the energy coruscated over them. It was seeking life as surely as any scourge, and the frame merely submerged into the spell, still visible and whole beneath it, ignored as irrelevant in the red blaze's quest for death or rather, life.

  There were few enough ships left now, and none nearby that had so much as an engine running. Alaric watched one take off from the far side of the yard, toward the edge where Sanctuary had been, a strangely-shaped one that sped up so quickly that it might as well have been pulled by a man holding a godly weapon. Some were still taking off at the back of the yards, but—

  “We wouldn't make it there in time,” Alaric whispered.

  “What?” Guy asked.

  Alaric stooped and offered the smaller man a hand. Guy took it, and he pulled him up. Without thinking, he offered a hand to the man all in black cloth, as well, for why not? He, too, took it, and then they were three, with a perfect view to the end of their lives.

  “There's nothing,” the man clad in black cried. His long face was a map of perfect-lined despair. His voice broke, and he lowered his bald head.

  For truly, there was nothing. The spell of death crept on toward them, unerring, unstopping, and yet there were no ships left to–

  A shadow fell over them, abrupt, sudden, a roar filling his ears.

  Alaric looked up. The dark edges of a ship glowed red in the spell-light, a few faces peering over the rails and down at him, at them.

  And one of them...

  Was Mazirin.

  Chapter 121

  Vaste

  “Hrungh!” Qualleron's grunt took on a feral, furious quality as he brought down his blade, again, upon the locks of the airship dock. It shattered once more, and Vaste noticed for the first time that a dozen or more small gouges had worked their way into the blade. It was chipped up and down, from their work here, certainly.

  The airship above them started to do some grunting of its own. Freed, it began to lift, rising, albeit slower than some of the others, which had blown out of their docks so swiftly that they might as well have been tossed like gnomes.

  “Come!” Qualleron shouted, beckoning Vaste on. Men were spilling over the boarding plank, not for the first time in the last few minutes as the ship departed. Qualleron was racing out of the skeletal framework of the dock. There was more to do, surely, and–

  Vaste stopped, almost plowing into Qualleron right at the edge of the dock. “What the–” Vaste started to ask.

  Qualleron spun on him, then looked up. Vaste followed his gaze.

  The edge of the airship was some ten feet above them, and rising slowly.

  “What is it?” Vaste asked, about to turn his head to look at Qualleron to elaborate with, “What the hell are you waiting for?” when he felt it.

  Qualleron grabbed him around the collar, and it was not a subtle tug. It was a full-fledged yank, the assertive superiority of a much stronger troll than him – naturally, anyhow – as he took hold of Vaste and looked him squarely in the eyes for a moment. “I do this in remembrance of a woman whose honor was unquestionable.”

  “What–?”

  Qualleron dropped Vaste down for but a second, and he realized exactly what was going to happen a moment before it did.

  The troll threw him straight up, and Vaste found himself rising, Letum in hand, with slightly more time to think than would have been possible under normal circumstances. This gave him time to do three things.

  First, he cast a quick sublingual round of Falcon's Essence on Qualleron.

  Second, he speared the troll bastard with the base of Letum as he started to fly. He caught Qualleron squarely between the legs, and boy did he hit...the boys. “Well deserved,” Vaste muttered.

  Taken in turn, these two actions sent Qualleron flying up into the air. Their paths nearly diverged; Vaste's momentum from Qualleron's throw was prodigious. He was going to fly up over the side of that airship. Qualleron, on the other hand, was likely to flip o
ver and fall (nearly) back to the earth if not interrupted.

  Which he was. Vaste caught him by the back of his own garment, and with the strength of Letum, hauled him up squarely, with a little help from Falcon's Essence.

  They both spilled onto the airship's deck with a terrible thud, rocking the ship. The blades above were spinning madly, and Vaste felt pinned to the deck as surely as if he'd been nailed to it. All his wind left him, but he found himself there – safely, surprisingly – even as he looked back–

  The red light of the spell was crawling its way across the distant shipyard, like a flood over flat lands. And Vaste watched, trapped against that deck, as they rose into the darkening skies faster than the spell could advance.

  Chapter 122

  Guy

  “Mother's effing milk,” Guy muttered into the roar of the ship's engines, blowing warm air down upon them where they stood on the shaky wooden platform. “Is that the Amatgarosan captain you been fawnin' over?”

  The ship overhead fluttered there for a moment before sweeping down just a bit lower. Peering up, Guy could see it was, indeed, that very same captain. He looked from Alaric to the executioner – the clothes made it obvious who the bloke was, really – standing with them. Guy shuffled, trying not to be too ostentatious about it, away from the executioner. He couldn't very well smell the fellow, but he almost felt like he could.

  “Grab on!” the captain shouted down at them. Guy was pressed to ask what she meant–