by Steve Vera
In the darkness that followed, unit integrity began to crumble, blindness devouring spirit.
Senator Merevus had already fallen in a valiant last stand, he and his Gryphon, besieged on all sides, hacking and tearing as they themselves were torn apart, but the Sorcerer Roland was still up there, wreaking havoc on the Flyborne one by one. As ferocious as it was agile, the half eagle, half lion Gryphon beneath him tore wings and decapitated heads with its devastating beak. Like bait he’d ventured out, blasted and sliced before banking sharply back into the protection of the remaining horse-archers and Warmages waiting below.
But Drynn learned fast. They shifted their focus to the other flank, the one without a Gryphrider to protect their heads, and it was on them that they unleashed their destruction. The distinct crack-crack-crack of their three-prong scourges could be heard through the darkness, as could be the wails of their victims.
And now the Soldiers and Warlocks had arrived.
“Noahvden is right,” De’mond said breathlessly. “They are surrounding us.” His face was ashen and his eyes were no longer dead and steely; they danced with fear and exhaustion. To Gavin’s disappointment, the Collector was still alive, though even his reptilian features were flushed and haggard. One of the biggest distinctions and advantages of the Magi against all other magic-users—Wizards, Sorcerers, Druids and Warmages—was that they could cast the same magic time and again. Once a learned magic-user cast a spell, it was gone until restudied. Only with a full night’s rest and diligent study could the spell be conjured back into the repertoire. That was why the Wizards of Vambrace needed their Vambracian Knights; they required a force to watch their backs, to protect them as they rested. A sort of sick version of yin and yang.
It was also very limiting; in fact, it was the was the reason that the other two Wizards who’d ridden beside De’mond were long dead. Once they’d blown their proverbial loads, they were sitting ducks. And like sitting ducks, they were feasted upon. The Warmages held their own. At least they had their red swords, but they were exhausted. There was no substitute for the full training that was necessary to be a fighter, the brutal conditioning, the ingrained reflexes, and because they couldn’t allocate the proper study to learn the higher-level spells, they were mid-level mages at best. Under normal circumstances they would be forbidding. Here, they just died.
In the dark they could hear snarling, tearing, screaming and the occasional cry of victory as some knight or Sagittarii held off another moment against the Drynn.
The only beacon of hope was the swirling pale-blue light of four Quaranais acting in complete accord, like a symphony. Their blades danced, an arc of pale blue metal through flesh here, a fusillade of light blades there, one would cocoon another, timing it perfectly between strikes, and then unleash their own arcane death. Two were on horses, two on foot.
They were one mind.
“The right flank just folded,” Noah yelled as she slashed her Quaranai across the eyes of a Soldier. It howled and gurgled clutching at its face before she plunged the entire length of her blade into its throat and yanked up, cutting its head in half down the middle. A deep, diagonal furrow had been clawed across her cheek, oozing a continual stream of blood down her face and neck.
“Yet the left holds,” Tarsidion said, engaged with the rather skilled swordplay of a Soldier. Not only were Soldiers nearly indestructible and freakishly strong, they had dexterity and skill, even talent with weapons. Tarsidion had to work to kill him.
All forward momentum had ceased. Until now, they’d still been advancing, slashing and hacking so Gavin could get one step closer to winning this war and destroying that gate. Asmodeous was not here, which meant he was stuck in the Underworld molting. It was the only time he could ever be vulnerable, the only way they could win...all they had to do was get there...just a little farther...
“Forward!” Gavin screamed at the top of his lungs, shredding his esophagus. Right here, right now, right here, right now, right here, right now...
The men were beginning to break. Screams of agony contended with cries of terror and the squeals of dying horses. Gavin ignored it, pushed forward, joined his oldest friends in the madness of battle. Tarsidion appeared as a disembodied ghastly face, throwing sharp shadows cast by the cold light of his sword in a darkness only seen in the deepest chasms of the ocean.
We can do this. Just a bit farther...just a bit...
“Stavengre, you must sound the retreat,” De’mond said, ashy-faced and sweaty but unbroken. He’d chosen the safest spot on the field, right next to his mortal enemies. At least he wasn’t coasting; he’d put his considerable power to work and had incinerated whole swaths of Flyborne. He had unusual courage for a Wizard. Normally, once bloodied a Wizard ran for the hills, only to return with a pack. Of course, if he did run, he’d probably be run down and butchered.
And he knew it.
Every once in a while Gavin would throw up a globe of light to get their bearings and a glimpse of the chaos of the battlefield before the globe was quickly surrounded and smothered by swirling darkness. Each glimpse was more and more disheartening.
Like a football team down 41-17 in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter, hopelessness began to set in. Not even back-to-back-to-back touchdowns was going to win this one. It was a simple matter of mathematics. They didn’t have enough men.
Screams turned to echoes. The pungent stench of blood and released bowels washed over his nostrils. For a glimmer of a moment, Gavin nearly gave in to the tsunami of chaos raging around him, nearly surrendered to the weight of hopelessness, but he grit his teeth and in the span of a single heartbeat he saw everything, saw what had to be done.
Separating his jaws just wide enough to take the deepest breath he’d ever taken, Gavin bellowed at the top of his lungs, “Fall back!”
Chapter 49
The two flew around the arena like a couple of angry hornets. The fury of their attacks and parries were a constant no-holds-barred, in-your-face cyclone of slashing metal and weaving blades.
Every once in a while they’d disengage and the crowd would scream. Skip particularly loved to try and study the two distinct and deadly styles. Despite the refined and elegant manner of that Ladom’er the Merciless guy, those big, almond eyes had something wild in them, a hybrid of a samurai and an Apache. You could balance a jug of water on that head.
And still, in the face of such perfection, Donovan reigned in his full, dark glory. He circled the Elf like a jaguar, Mitsutada high in both hands, then low, then middle, his eyes two cigarette embers; in fact, Donovan was the one who looked like the bad guy. The one you rooted against.
What he would have given to hear what they were saying to each other.
“So, who do you want to win?” he asked Amanda. She hadn’t wanted to come but orders were orders. Donovan had commanded it.
She unfastened her eyes from the fight and turned to him, her eyes mirroring the blue sky of Mount Olympus. “Donovan,” she finally said and looked back.
“You do realize that if he dies right now you’re free of him.”
“True,” she said. Her eyes were fixed on the Olympians. “But something tells me we’re going to need him.”
“I do not care for Donovan,” Pyrk offered from Amanda’s shoulder, “but I do not want him to die.”
“I do,” Dwensolt said from their right. “His soul is stained.”
The three of them stared at the Druid for a second and then, with the magnetic pull of a particularly grisly car accident, their heads turned back to Mount Olympus, where they witnessed the greatest sword fight in recorded history of the Nu’romian Olympics.
* * *
When the order to retreat had been given three days ago, there had still been forty of them left. Now, after three days of no sleep, no food, no water, constant flight and the relentless rain of ta
lons, scourges and fire, there weren’t even twelve left, and those who were alive owed their existences to the Shardyn Knights and the horses beneath them.
Not even in the first war had Gavin and his knights endured a battle like this. A slaughter like this. Every breath he took was sandpaper against glass, the very act of speech a feat beyond his strength, but the worst part was the constant pulse of white spiking through the middle of his brain surrounded in a haze of fog. Mere thought was hard.
Any water he’d possessed he’d given to his horse. If his steed went down, Gavin went down. Anyone for that matter. They’d seen what had happened to the riders of the horses that were run into the ground—isolation, desperation and a lingering death at the leisure of the Drynn above them.
All Gavin could smell was charred carbon and old blood.
A thick shadow whipped over the tops of the trees under which they’d huddled. Sir Taksony—bloodied, gaunt but undeterred—studied the silence with a finger to his lips and a hand on his sword. Nobody wanted to leave the trees. Gavin noticed that the Captain of the Guard no longer used his two-handed sword.
That required too much strength.
Arrogant and unpleasant he may be, Lord Penrod the commander of the Knights of Vambrace had shown himself to be a wolverine in battle. His plate mail was thickly spattered with the black licorice blood of the Drynn and his own red blood.
Right beside him, Centurion Tremar, commander of the Nu’romian Legionnaires, lay slung over his horse, the flesh beneath his armor flayed open in ribbons, shredded by a scourge from one of the Flyborne. He’d lasted until just a few hours ago—cool, calm, and simply brilliant under fire. Right until the unconsciousness claimed him.
An explosion of shattered branches and burning leaves blasted through the canopy of the tree grove they’d huddled within, followed by the long, familiar shriek of the Drynn. They didn’t even flinch. Fifteen feet just wasn’t close enough.
At least under here they had a little cover, a moment to catch their breath. Darting from patch of trees to sprinkled groves while harried by the rain of talon, scourge and fire had been the only way they’d survived this long.
The only glint of news not horrific was that at least they only had to contend with the Flyborne and the Warlocks. They’d left their land-locked kindred behind two days ago. There was still hope. They could make it. Daring to peer between the trees, Gavin could see the walls of Nu’rome.
They could do this.
A ball of black-crimson fire burst a mere foot from Gavin’s head, and only the reflex of his cloak saved him from a chargrilled face.
Yet again, they’d been found.
* * *
“Report!” Decanus Markus Arkeides barked in his deepest drill-serjeant’s voice.
His tall, too good-looking, always-better-at-everything cousin Decurion Rashauk Arkeides spun his head at the sound of Markus’s voice. “Markus?” he asked incredulously. “What in the devils are you doing here?” His face was mixture of shock, joy and suspicion. “Are you in trouble? Do tell me you didn’t abandon your post to sit with Lady Varanna?”
“No, no, no my dear Decurion cousin,” Markus said through a grin. “Though that is a valid question. If you must know, I was charged by Centurion Balvados, commander of the godforsaken barren wasteland Southern Outpost, to escort four Shardyn to Nu’rome.”
The multiple expressions on his cousin’s handsome face dried. “Would you say that again?”
“’Tis true,” Markus said smugly. “For once it is I who can tell the more impressive story. You and your gryphon can go—”
Rashauk’s gigantic, mighty gryphon steed did not let Markus finish, squawking so loudly his ears rang.
“All right, Uthulio, I simply jest. I’m surprised you haven’t gone deaf listening to that all the time.”
“You were saying?” his cousin asked, ignoring the gryphon.
“Oh, yes.” He put his finger in his ear and wriggled. “As I was saying. Yes, yes, these four Shardyn I rode with for two weeks on the Road of Nu’rome from the Southern Outpost were not just any band of extinct Shardyn Knights.” He leaned in, grinning wider, not caring that his cousin didn’t believe a word. “They were none other than legendary...Seven...Apprentices. Four of them, at least.” He finished his story with a flourish of his hand.
His cousin mirrored a smaller version of Markus’s grin if by nothing more than the appreciation of a good joke. “Well, tell me, little cousin, where’ve they been? It’s been a hundred and fifty years—”
“A hundred and thirty-seven to be precise. And if you’re curious, they were marooned on Earth.”
Rashauk stared at him, obviously still expecting the punchline, but all he got was Markus’s best deer eyes. His cousin gave a befuddled little shake of his head, a confused laugh and a crinkle of his forehead before he snapped his fingers. “I know what this is,” he said. “You’ve lost another bet, haven’t you? I should have known. What was the bet? To see if you can make a Decurion of the Nu’romian Legionis Aeriali believe in fairytales?” He shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Markus, hope there’s not a lot on the table.” He leaned in. “What are the odds?”
“It would seem that way, wouldn’t it, intrepid cousin?” Markus asked. “There’s more. Would you like to hear who they were traveling with?”
“Not particularly.” His cousin yawned. “I don’t know how you managed to get here for the Olympics. Maybe this babbling of yours was the price, but it is good to see you, cousin.” Rashauk grabbed his cousin’s shoulder armor and shook it affectionately. “Please tell me you are not in trouble.”
“Such faith,” Markus said with a grin he didn’t really feel. He thought about his trek up the road with Sur Stavengre—a man Markus considered to be a legend—and remembered the intensity of his eyes, the dread that was never far from his gaze.
“There is another reason that I’ve come up here, cousin,” Markus said.
“For you to leave Lady Varrana’s side, there’d better—” Rashauk’s words died in his mouth.
“What is it?” Markus asked. Whatever Rashauk was staring at, it was behind Markus.
Rashauk snatched up his spyglass and threw it up to his eye.
In all the years Markus had known his older cousin (which was his whole life), he couldn’t ever recall seeing the blood drain from his face like that. He was as white as milk.
“By all the gods and devils,” Rashauk breathed. Uthelio his Gryphon squawked in alarm, assaulting his ears.
It wasn’t just his cousin. There was activity on the North Wall as well, pointed fingers and hushed whispers. Baffled and a touch disturbed, Markus slowly turned his head. How terrible could it be? Perhaps it was simply a joke?
No. It was no joke. Jaw open, eyes wide, Markus saw exactly what everyone was entranced by. In the space between their words, a breeze blew through them, heavy with smoke and ash and darker, indescribable smells. Gryphons and their riders, the famed Legionis Arieli all stared to the north.
Markus swallowed. “So it is true,” he murmured.
“What’s true?” Rashauk demanded from his cousin. His affectionate grip turned into a vise. “What is happening, cousin? Tell me everything you know this moment.” He cast another dread-filled stare to the horizon. The crest on his helmet buffeted in the wind.
Markus tried to swallow again but his tongue got in the way. There wasn’t any moisture on it. “The Shardyn had but one message. The Drynn have returned.”
* * *
Dong!
The clang of the bell pierced through the illusion of Mount Olympus like a flashlight in the face. Skip looked right to Dwensolt, whose eyes were fully wide.
Dong! It was audible even through the crowd, and immediately the cheers transformed to questioning murmurs. The clouds in the arena flickered. Even the combatants p
aused to look around.
Dong!
“The bells of Nu’rome are tolling,” Dwensolt said, numbly vacant-eyed. “The city is under attack.”
* * *
Dong!
Donovan paused. He was careful to stay out of range; Ladom’er was a crafty bastard, but there was no mistaking the sound—bells. The Nu’romian equivalent to an air raid siren.
So you failed as you knew you would, Sur Stavengre, Knight of the Shard. It came as no surprise, of course. Donovan could feel the heavens of fate opening up, could see as easily as a fluorescent light what was about to befall the world.
It was destiny.
Ladom’er remained on guard but had stepped farther out of range to study the murmuring crowd audible through the illusion of the Olympus clouds. The Dark Elf sniffed and then looked at the judge, who for the first time appeared in the air within his judge’s pedestal, dissolving the illusion. He looked down at each of them and held up his hand.
“Hold,” he ordered.
“In the more than two centuries I have dwelled within this city,” Ladom’er remarked, or at least that was how Donovan interpreted it, “those bells have only tolled once.”
Dong! Donovan watched Ladom’er’s assured façade flicker with both intrigue and...alarm. The vibrant, powerful colors of the Dark Elf’s soul reached out beyond the arena, like the prominence of a solar storm. The souls of humans did no such things.
The murmurs of the hidden crowd grew louder until even that illusion was dispelled, revealing a sea of baffled, nervous faces.
Dong!
“The first War of the Drynn, it was,” Donovan said. That got Ladom’er’s attention.
“First?”
“Yes,” Donovan answered.
Dong!
“The second one just began.”
* * *
Decurion Rashauk Arkeides led the 7th Flight of the North Wall Squadron, alongside the 4th and 5th Flights. Fifteen Gryphriders in total flew out to beat back the hells of the Underworld and rescue the last remnants of the Shardyn Army. Below him the 1st Equitis Legionis thundered out onto the northern plain, already assembled for battle during the Olympics.