“Gerant’s got no idea either,” Darya translated.
“I suppose we’ll find out sooner or later.” Leaning back, Katrine picked up her tea again. “If we all survive long enough for my head to feel normal, I’ll be glad to answer questions. For now, though, I’d like to sleep. This scheme will go off better if I’m alert. Or if you are,” she added, beckoning Emeth over with a free hand, “and I know you won’t sleep for fussing.”
“I don’t fuss.”
“And I had better find Hallis,” Amris added. Slowly, he got to his feet, keeping hold of Darya’s hands until the last second. She prolonged the contact by standing as well, easily mirroring his movements.
Now they were far more deeply linked. As a tactician, Amris hoped that it would be an advantage later on. For himself, he was simply glad.
Chapter 40
Katrine and Olvir had bought them most of six hours. Standing on top of the wall with her bow in hand, smelling the reek of a three-day-old battlefield in midafternoon, and watching Thyran’s abattoir advance with the rest of his troops behind it, Darya could only hope they’d used it well.
“He’s not taking any chances,” she said to Gerant. The wizard had brought three of the crawling-faces with him, and two others marched on either side of the rebuilt juggernaut. “Wonder why he didn’t have the whole pack along before.”
Most likely, he was afraid one of them would use the opportunity to further its own ends. Gizath’s nature has its downsides, and not only for us.
“Which means he’s scared now.” She nocked an arrow as the twistedmen grew closer and, along with the rest of the defenders, fired it on Hallis’s command. None of them aimed at the abattoir this time. Twistedmen and beaked things made more satisfying targets, and they died by the score, while others shrieked with the pain of wounds. “I don’t know if that’s good for our plan or not.”
Neither do I.
If Gerant had been able to breathe, Darya knew he’d have been holding his breath as the abattoir took position before the doors again. She sure as hell was. So was Amris, making his way to the center of the wall, just above the doors themselves.
He stopped there, helmet under an arm, the wind blowing through his dark hair. They’d polished his armor to as close to a mirror sheen as it could get after days of battle, and the light caught it now, making him resemble a figure on a stained-glass window. Darya thought of Veryon, Letar’s doomed lover, and wished she hadn’t.
“Thyran of Heliodar!” he called, and drew his sword with his free hand. “We meet again. Accept my challenge, and let us end this with honor.”
“Don’t you dare fucking do it,” Darya whispered.
She didn’t have to worry long. Thyran looked up and his face grew white. His eyes widened and filled even more with the grayish fire of Gizath. “Var Faina? Who… How…” Then he flicked one ringed hand outward, and the face beneath the bone crown filled with contempt, leaving no room for curiosity. “What would you know of honor, you jumped-up farmer’s brat? You, who feared me enough to turn your pet sorcerer’s magic on me at the end? None of my blood would lower himself to cross swords with the likes of you.”
“None of your blood are left, Thyran,” Amris called back. The armies had fallen silent, preparing, waiting. Darya knew how badly the others on the wall wanted to keep firing—she did too—but arrows would be wasted on the abattoir and its riders, and killing the twistedmen would make too much noise. Thyran needed to hear every word. “You made certain of that long ago. Perhaps I had forgotten that the murder of sleeping households was your strength when you had a weapon, that you could never face a warrior without your god holding your hand.”
Thyran screamed in rage then and raised one hand. The construct’s fist fell hard on the doors, cracking them and shaking the walls themselves.
Arrows started flying again, but not as many. Most of the men on the walls were getting themselves down the ladders, dropping bows and pulling spears, swords, or axes in preparation for a fighting retreat on the ground. Darya reached for another arrow, felt the sigil on her forehead, and targeted one of the crawling-faces—not the riders, for they’d be protected, but one of those on the ground.
Her forehead and her hands both burned, but didn’t hurt; it was like sitting a shade too close to a fire for comfort. The arrow stayed in one piece, flew straight, and took the monster right below its ear. It fell, shaking, and its companions turned in what Darya thought was shock.
“Not so safe now, are you?” she called down, laughing giddily as she strung another arrow.
The dozen others on the wall followed her lead. Some arrows still crumpled midair, or missed, and those aimed at the giant still bounced away, but more of the crawling-faces fell, dying or voicing high, burbling screams.
Thyran didn’t turn his head. At his command, the construct hit the gate again, and the wood that had previously held shattered under its strength. One more blow and the doors buckled, then fell.
Darya didn’t bother with the ladder. She dropped her bow, grabbed the wall, and half slid, half climbed, using the footholds she’d carved earlier. As soon as she hit the ground, she drew her sword and ran toward her section of the town, a cluster of buildings where a tenth of the soldiers were trying to imitate a third.
“Hey.” Emeth grinned at her from behind the ranks. “Let’s have some fun before we die.”
“It’s always fun with you,” Darya volleyed back.
Then the charge reached their position.
* * *
All but the best of the archers had retreated already to the comparative safety and high ground of the manor walls before Thyran’s second blow against the gates. The archers themselves had only waited a little longer before swarming down the ladders and joining their fellows, while slightly over a score rushed out to replace them, carrying pikes or swords and wearing the grim expression that said they had no expectation of coming back.
Amris took his place in front of the inner wall, sword drawn and helm back on. Thyran would recognize him now, even with his face hidden. Olvir took his right side, and Branwyn his left. Behind him, Hallis ordered the rest of the soldiers into formation, setting up a shield-wall bristling with weapons. It would hold, Amris hoped, as long as it needed to.
The mages were in the manor. The priests and the wounded were with them. The other Sentinels—Darya among them—were in their places, a good idea whose merit Amris could never have let his heart challenge. He commended his soul to the gods, set his feet, and watched the twistedmen pour through the outer gates and into the town.
Amris marked the charging hordes and saw, too, the movement to left and right. The soldiers in the town, he knew, were fighting a retreat before Thyran’s forces, fleeing into empty buildings halfway between his position and the outer gates and throwing spears from that cover. He saw the twistedmen follow, a few of them falling but the rest pursuing undaunted.
Soldiers ran out the back of the building that Darya would, if all went to plan, have entered. There were fewer, Amris thought, than had gone in, but he couldn’t be sure. He knew that Darya wasn’t among them; he could feel that she was alive, and more or less unhurt. Knowing what came next, that was little comfort.
Slavering, the first ranks of the twistedmen began to close in. Amris braced himself.
The building Darya was in exploded into flame.
Violet fire flared into the sky, and Amris could smell the acrid smoke—only unpleasant for him and those with him, but deadly at close quarters. Gleda and the herbalists had mixed the powder, and Darya had just set it off. Her reforging would protect her, as it did against all poisons, and the twistedmen should die, but that was less certain. The spell told Amris that she was all right, but not whether she’d remain so.
As he brought his sword around to cut the legs out from under the first twistedman, Amris, for the first time in his life, rejoiced
in the fight. Beyond satisfaction at his skill or the hope of victory, he felt, bone-deep, the relief at not thinking for a while, and the glee of avenging himself on those who’d made that comfort necessary.
* * *
Poison didn’t bother Darya, but fire hurt like a bugger, even through Gerant’s protection and her battle lust. She dove out a window and left the dozen twistedmen behind her to their fate, hit the ground, and rolled, both to stifle the flames and so she could come up swinging. She gutted a beaked thing and took the hand off the twistedman behind it as she found her feet. To be fair, they were a bit distracted.
From the alchemical explosion and Emeth’s more normal fires, the buildings collapsed, roaring. Flaming debris hit roofs and walls nearby, not to mention the hay that the defenders had scattered around. As the mages had intended, walls and roofs caught fire far more readily than they normally would have, burned with more force, and sent more bits of themselves flying around.
Thyran’s army screamed as it burned.
The ones on the other side of the fire ran. Many within the walls tried, and some made it out, scaling the walls or even dashing through the flames, probably hoping to lick their wounds on the other side. Those remaining quickly realized who was to blame.
Darya glanced behind her, saw a clear path to where Amris was fighting with the main force, and eyed the score or so of twistedmen advancing on her. “You bastards don’t smell any better cooked,” she told them, made an obscene gesture, and then turned to run.
They chased, as she knew they would. Darya darted sideways, dodging the swipe of a claw, feeling breath hot on her neck, and trusting Sitha’s gift to let her find the safe places, as her memory wouldn’t serve. She rushed across ground strewn with hay and dirt, leapt as the weight of her pursuers caused the false land to give way, and landed on the other side of what had suddenly become a pit. The noises from below said that the sharpened sticks, coated with poison, had found their marks.
She spotted a building ahead that hadn’t caught fire yet, leapt to a windowsill and then to the roof. From there she saw Emeth, naked and wreathed in flame, laughing as she spun and sliced through her enemies, and Katrine on the other side of the town, glowing with blue light and always moving toward the ground that gave her the best advantage, even as she, like the other two Sentinels, moved generally backward to the rest of the army.
Darya saw the fight by the manor walls, claws scraping ineffectually off Branwyn’s skin, swords shining beneath black blood, spears run through twistedmen and soldiers falling at their comrades’ feet. She saw Amris, standing as a bulwark in the center, armor still shining.
And she saw Thyran, high on his construct, his face inhuman with fury.
Chapter 41
A beaked creature dropped to the dirt, still looking faintly surprised that Amris hadn’t paid any attention to its attempt to entrance him. The ranks of monsters parted for a few seconds, as happened in war, and Amris shook the ichor from his blade and glanced around.
The traps had done their work well, as had the siege before them. Thyran’s creatures now outnumbered Oakford’s soldiers only by two to one, and many of those remaining were scattered, fearing the fire that belonged, by association, to their patron’s deadliest foe. Any who came on them by accident, or was foolish in their purpose, would still meet a quick and messy end, but they had yet to mass and charge. In such disorganization, they were relatively easy prey for the three Sentinels who’d been in the town.
Emeth’s corona of flame and Katrine’s blue glow were hard to miss, but best of all was the sight of Darya atop a roof. Her clothing was in tatters, her armor singed, and her neat tail of braided hair was now short and uneven, blowing around her face in the wind from the fire. She was hurt, the spell revealed that much, but the Sentinels healed quickly.
From her perch, she smiled quickly at Amris, then looked past him to Hallis and waved her sword in a quick but emphatic gesture. The flash of green directed their attention beyond the immediate ranks of twistedmen, who were already moving to the side, and to the giant trundling toward them, its stink of corpses masked by the battlefield stench and the sharp lingering odor of the poison flames.
“Now!” Hallis shouted, and the soldiers scattered as well—but not blindly like the twistedmen before the flames. They broke into small groups, covering one another’s backs as they sped off, leading Thyran’s forces into terrain they knew to be treacherous. Hallis took charge of one group, Olvir and Branwyn each headed another, and Amris led a third.
His were the veterans, ten soldiers who’d been fighting on the border between Oakford and the twistedmen for years. Each had a sigil on their head, each a sword or ax in their hands. Following Amris’s lead, they held their position as the abattoir lumbered nearer, until Amris could no longer see Thyran’s face when he looked up, but only the clumps of bone and sinew forced together by Gizath’s fell power.
Then he and his troops ran to the side, pretending that their nerve had broken at the last. Thyran laughed loud enough to hear over the battle as they took cover behind one of the buildings. The twistedmen closed in on them; the men peeled off to fight them.
Amris put on an extra turn of speed, rounded the other corner of the building, and charged.
* * *
The time was now. Her heartbeat, loud in her ears, provided the rhythm. And gods knew she had her choice of partners.
When Amris charged, so did Darya—but in a different direction, screaming, into the crowd of twistedmen. A blast of cold came from her sword before it struck, stronger for Amris being near—much stronger, this time. Five of the monsters facing her simply burst, as the toad-thing had done back in the forest. Another few literally froze in their tracks, though the looks on what passed for their faces said they’d felt the touch of Gerant’s magic beforehand and hadn’t liked it at all.
The others, surprised and slow and scared, became so many targets in the field. If they stayed and fought, Darya cut them down, sensing dimly that their blood was splashing her face and their bones breaking on her sword’s edge. She let them run if they wanted to. That didn’t bother her.
She couldn’t spare a moment to search for Amris. Their bond told her he was alive and relatively well. That was all she knew, until she ran her sword through the chest of another twistedman and had a space to breathe, to wipe the blood away from her brow, to look toward the abattoir for the figure she knew would be there.
He was. For a man in armor, Amris was dodging well—slashing and pivoting, stabbing and running, using the abattoir’s size and slowness against it as well as Thyran’s rage. “No fire,” Darya panted. “Not yet.”
I think, said Gerant faintly, startling her with his presence, he must be using all his power to control that thing.
“That’s something,” said Darya.
Then she was fighting again, ducking under claws and whipping the arms they belonged to off at the shoulder, kicking backward as one of the twistedmen had a half-bright idea and using the force to cleave up through the rib cage of another. Pain raked down her back, there and then gone in the heat of battle. If she lived, she’d hurt later.
Thud on the ground not far in the distance as the abattoir’s fist struck. Darya ran one of the toad-things through, yanked her sword back, and spun to meet the next attack. Beyond the grisly shoulder of her foe, she spotted Amris, still alive and now moving in, as two figures rushed the abattoir from behind: Katrine and Olvir.
They struck first, each taking a leg at the knee, as far up as they could reach. Divine might backed both of their steel, and the construct felt it. The legs didn’t collapse, but they wavered, wobbled, and gave Amris the opening he needed.
Darya saw him take it before he leapt: knowledge of him and of war took the place of fortune-telling. It was their best chance, and he sank all his strength into it, rising off the ground farther than one mortal man in armor should have been ab
le to do and driving his sword into the exact center of the abattoir.
* * *
In his landing, Amris felt more than one bone break: a rib, he thought from the immediate, intense pain, maybe more, and his sword arm between the elbow and the wrist. He’d left his sword itself in the abattoir, losing his grip on the hilt almost as soon as he’d sunk the blade full-length into the walking pile of corpses.
Through the eye-watering pain, he saw it frozen above him. It, Thyran, and the remaining faceless creatures seemed caught out of time again, and for a heartbeat that and the pain confused him. Had he truly awoken? Had he truly slept? Was Gerant still living, and the notion of a hundred years of stasis a fancy?
No—he felt Darya and Gerant present in the spell, and regretted that she must be sharing some echo of his pain. As Amris had the thought, the abattoir crumbled.
It was sudden and complete, and only the lack of force when the corpses fell apart made it a landslide rather than an explosion. The creature’s riders fell with it, and tumbled through the smoky air above Amris, the mages with their arms flung wide as though they could fly and Thyran still transfixed in disbelief. This was not how events were supposed to unfold.
Hands gripped Amris’s shoulders, and so great was the pain that he started to fight before he realized they were human, and that the face peering into his was Olvir’s. “Thank the gods, you’re alive,” he said. “Can you stand?”
“With help.”
Help he had in Olvir’s strong back and arms, and in Katrine’s tall armored figure standing between them and the twistedmen, who stared at the glowing woman and showed no inclination to approach. They learned, if slowly, and they’d learned fear of humans that day—particularly fear of Sentinels.
“We’d best get you to Dale,” said Olvir. “I don’t like the way you’re breathing.”
“As it is breathing, I like it very much,” Amris replied, but rather spoiled his point by wincing when he talked.
The Stormbringer Page 25