Taking his courage in both hands, he slapped Herod hard across the face. There was no reaction, so he lifted his hand again, gathering his strength for a second blow. A skeletal hand reached up and snared his wrist, while two red eyes bored into his. Reginald felt a moment of absolute terror as Herod focused on him, his magic crackling and spitting on the air. A single word out of place could – would – mean instant death.
“The zombies are falling free,” Herod said, in a surprisingly calm voice. Reginald wasn’t fooled for a moment. “I trust that this is extremely important?”
“Your Grace, the camp is under attack,” Reginald said. The pain in his wrist was mounting rapidly, but Herod didn't even seem to be aware that he was hurting him. “The enemy have burned most of our stores.”
Herod came to his feet in one smooth motion, letting go of Reginald’s wrist. “And so they think they can beat us,” he hissed. “They are afraid to face us in open combat, so they destroy our supplies and hope to condemn us to death in the desert. It is a cowardly miserable plot.”
It looked like a very sensible plan to Reginald, but he wasn’t fool enough to say that out loud. “Leave the General to handle the fires,” Herod ordered, as he picked up his outer robe and donned it, before placing a crown on his head. “We will destroy the fort ourselves.”
He marched out of the tent, eyes glowing with power. After a moment of hesitation, Reginald followed him, running quickly to catch up. The mercenaries and soldiers took one look at Herod’s eyes and fell back, refusing to get in his way. Many of them would doubtless be regretting accepting his contract now, but it was too late. They either won the Battle of the Gap, or they lost...and, in losing, condemned themselves to death. There was no other alternative.
***
“Now,” Eric called. “As soon as we run into the zombies, I want them all burned.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Master Adam said. Most of the fort’s population had mounted horses now, leaving a skeleton guard to hold the fort. If zombies were outflanking them from the rear, the fort was about to become untenable. Eric had tried to encourage the vanguard to come with them, but they’d insisted on remaining behind. “Just try to keep any stragglers off us and we will harvest our share.”
Eric nodded, looking along the line of horses. Eleanor was riding near him, protected by four guardsmen who would give their lives, if necessary, to protect their young charge. The Oracle sat behind her, her hands wrapped around Eleanor’s torso for dear life. She looked scared, for her involvement in the battle meant that she had no way of seeing the future. She might be about to die with the rest of the fort’s defenders. Neither of the young girls had any business being in the line of battle, but somehow it had proven impossible to get rid of them before the fighting started. Besides, Eleanor’s magic might come in handy.
“All right,” he called. “Open the gates!”
The men operating the gates swung them open, revealing the darkened path down towards the other side of the mountains. Eric blew a whistle and the first group of guards galloped down the pass, watching carefully for any sign of zombies in their way. Eric had no idea how Herod had managed to get some zombies over to the other side of the mountains – even zombies would have problems climbing over such rocky crags – but in the end it hardly mattered. It was a fact, one he had to respond to before the enemy managed to put the cork in the bottle. His lips twitched, remembering his days learning how to be a general and how some of his tutors had used much cruder analogies for the tactic.
“Go,” he ordered. His horse cantered to life, leading the way out, although the guards moved up rapidly to cover his beast. The Princess and the Oracle followed him, with additional guards and magicians bringing up the rear. They thundered through the gap, charging down the pass as if their lives depended on it – which, in a sense, they did. They saw no sign of zombies until they reached the end of the pass, where the guards had run into a small pack of zombies and slashed them apart before the zombies could react.
Good thing I had the area evacuated, Eric thought. It had been hard to convince so many small farmers and their families to leave, knowing that their farms and landholdings would be in the path of the enemy, but at least they wouldn't be providing the raw material for more zombies – or, for that matter, for a necromancer. The ground shook violently as something exploded on the other side of the mountain, sending a blast of fire and light into the air. Eric allowed himself a second smile, even as the next set of zombies appeared out of the darkness. Hind’s mission had been a success and – he felt the warm ring and chuckled – she was still alive and safe. His father had told him that one day they would be able to use the rings to communicate, but for the moment he had to settle for a sense of her well-being.
“They’re still coming,” Master Adam said, flatly. The magician lifted his hand and cast a fire spell, blasting the first ten zombies into flaming heaps of ash. They collapsed to the ground, but there were still replacements, walking right towards the small party. The guards unsheathed their swords and prepared to fight, while the other magicians started casting spells of their own. “I can sense hundreds of them, coming from the west.”
Eric’s eyes narrowed in sudden understanding. The bastard had to be sending his zombies through the underground river, the underground river that had killed everyone who had tried to swim though it. What did he care if a few dozen zombies got trapped by the current or battered to pieces on the rocks? There were plenty more where they came from...in fact, in Herod’s place, he wouldn't have sent all of his zombies to prevent escape from the fort. He would have sent some of them further into the land, towards Larkrise, and use them to spread fear and terror. He might even have stumbled across a refugee camp and turned it into a swarming mass of zombies.
“Well, keep burning them then,” Eleanor said. She sounded shaky, but she was still holding herself together. She gave a pack of zombies a hard look and they burst into flame. “Keep focused and we’ll get out of this.”
Eric gave his sister an amazed look. She had definitely grown up over the past six months. He remembered, suddenly, that their father was dead and that it fell to him to ensure that she married well, yet he knew that he wouldn't want to force her to marry anyone she didn't want to marry. There was no value in a marriage for political advantage if the bride turned the groom into a frog on her wedding night, or did worse to him. Besides, after all her adventures, Eleanor would probably want to do something exciting with the rest of her life, rather than trying to pretend to be just another Lady of the Court. The Academy would probably be delighted to employ her as a Freelance Mage.
“Don’t burn her,” the Oracle said suddenly, as another form loomed out of the darkness. Eric felt his heart leap as Hind came into view, her face tired, but happy. There was a nasty scar on her forehead from where she had applied the slave gem, one that would never fade. There were places where it would be considered a badge of honour – the slave gems only exploded if the enslaved person broke the spell through force of will – yet he knew that it would cause her problems in the future. No one would know that she had only posed as a slave.
He slipped off his horse and ran to meet her, throwing his arms around her and holding her tightly. He barely heard the mutters of alarm from the guards as they deployed, throwing back the remaining zombies with brutal swordplay and grim determination. Hind hugged him back and he realised suddenly that her clothes were drenched; she hadn't even bothered to work a spell to dry her body. He took off his cloak and rubbed her with it, trying to absorb at least some of the water, before she laughed at him. Eric laughed back and they found themselves giggling like idiots.
“It's done,” Hind said. “The supply tents were completely destroyed.”
Eric frowned. The fort would almost certainly fall, which meant that the army would fall on the green lands beyond the mountain, hoping to live off the land. They would have no other choice; even Herod, for all of his power, would have to feed them if he wanted
to avoid a mutiny. It wouldn't avail them anything, he hoped; he’d also given orders for stockpiles of food to be taken away or destroyed. Even a far smaller army would have problems surviving on what little food there was for several miles around.
“Thank you,” he said. Herod would be getting desperate now, yet...how far would he go to win the battle. It wasn't as if he could surrender. There wasn't the food to feed his army even if it marched right into captivity. “Hind, I...”
“It’s all right,” Hind said. Her lips met his and, just for a moment, he fell into her. Just knowing that she was out there was enough to keep him going. “I know what you meant.”
There was a cough from Eleanor, who was still mounted on her horse. “I know that you two are in love and everything,” she said, “but I think we have a problem.”
Hind’s eyes went wide as she looked away from Eric. Eric’s magical sensitivity was far weaker than his sister’s or his wife’s, but he could still feel...something, like the beating of a mighty drum, coming closer. The air seemed to be tingling with dangerous levels of power, reaching out to pull at them. The remaining zombies seemed to have stopped; frozen, as if the central mind behind them had withdrawn its power. They hadn’t been destroyed, or they would have collapsed into dust, but they seemed to have been taken off the board.
He looked up at Hind. “Hind,” he said. For a moment, he sensed her fear through the ring, before her training pushed it away. A Freelance Mage knew fear, yet they also knew how to control it and turn it into a useful servant. “What is it?”
“Herod,” Hind said. The sound of beating drumbeats seemed to be growing louder. It took Eric a moment to realise that he was hearing it through his magical senses, rather than his ears. A light seemed to be flaring up from the gap, followed by a dull rumbling sound that faded away almost before he registered it for what it was. The light flared up again. This time; it was a strange golden haze, floating in the air. “I think he’s coming to face us in person.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Herod was barely aware of Reginald scurrying along behind him as he marched towards the fort, his power billowing out ahead of him. A handful of guards or mercenaries stared at him as he passed, suddenly terrified of what their leader had become. Herod ignored their stares and the fear he could sense within their minds, knowing that it no longer mattered. His power roared through him, rendering him immune to all challenge or fear. His senses, boosted by necromancy, swept outwards, tasting the dying moments of hundreds of wounded men back at the camp. It was the easiest thing in the world to reach out and kill them, sucking the power of their deaths into his wards. He knew that his wards were leaking and he didn't quite care. It was time to end the war.
He seemed to drift forward, unaware of how many steps he was taking or why, until he finally found himself near the mountains. His boosted senses could sense tiny flickers of very old and ancient magic within the impregnable rocky walls, yet Herod no longer cared about such curiosities. All that mattered now was finding and slaughtering Eric and his wife – and his entire family. He didn't need to take the Princess Eleanor to wed now, not now that his power was so great. No magician ever born, not even the Grandmaster, could stand against him now. He reached out through the links to the zombies and called them back, ordering them to fall back from the fort and wait for him. As an afterthought, he froze the remaining zombies on the other side of the mountains. He – and he alone – was going to have the pleasure of boiling Eric’s brain in his skull.
Reginald was saying something to him, but Herod ignored it. It wasn’t helpful or a hindrance, not any longer. All that mattered was reaching the fort – and, beyond it, Eric. He felt an arrow slamming into his wards, then a whole storm of arrows, but none of them could hope to break through his defences. There was so much power surrounding him that it was easy to incinerate the arrows in flight, or turn them back upon the archers who had fired them, but in the end he just left them smashing uselessly against the wards. He paused to consider the fort, taking a moment to admire the long-dead builder who had drawn on the sheer impregnability of the mountains themselves to power the wards. It wasn't quite as impressive as trapping and binding a demon, as the First Emperor had done so long ago, but it was less hazardous. Indeed, unless he missed his guess, the magician who had created the fort had been a necromancer. The thought made him laugh, an eerie cackle that echoed in the cold night air. Wouldn't Eric – and the Academy Tutors, who had warned everyone not to even think about playing with necromancy – be horrified to know the truth?
He opened his Third Eye and scanned the fort, noting the defences and hidden traps, each one designed to slow down a powerful magician and force him to waste power. It was quite clever in a way, but all the wards against far-seers couldn't hold him out any longer. He had the vision of a god, even if he did have the body of a demon. At some level, he was aware that his power was destroying or transforming his body, yet it hardly mattered to him. And, he knew, what didn't matter to him didn't matter to the universe. He was aware of the presence of other magicians in the distance, some on his side – although they might be regretting it now that they saw what he had become – and some who would never serve him, yet they were just tiny specks of light compared to him. He was the sun, illuminating the world and all served at his pleasure. Herod threw back his head and laughed, ignoring the increasingly desperate archers as they strove to bring him down. What could they do to him?
His power focused at his command and reached out towards the fort, summoning up enough power to completely dominate the area. His mind infused itself into the stone, slicing through wards that had never been designed to defeat such a subtle assault, and his thoughts pulsed out through the solid walls. The defenders didn't have a clue what was happening to their building; none of them, he saw with another cackle, had any idea that it was even happening! Eric had withdrawn all of his magicians from the doomed fort and, in doing so, had ensured that it would be lost, along with all of the defenders.
Herod started to focus his power carefully...and then threw caution to the winds. What was the point in hiding his light any longer, when there was no one who could stop him? His power shimmered into life and the fort shattered, ripped apart by the power he’d released and infused into the very material that the long-dead designers had used to build it. The horrified guards had barely a second to realise what had happened before the walls caved in and they fell to their deaths, their deaths adding more power to Herod’s growing stockpile. The traps exploded uselessly, while he stepped into the wards, breaking them down by the simple application of overwhelming force. Nothing could stand against him. He was vaguely aware of deep fissures and spreading cracks in the mountains, but what did they matter to him? He could survive and dominate even if the whole mountain fell on him.
He laughed again and continued to walk. Reginald followed him, his mind a complex blaze of fear and excitement. Herod knew that he could do anything to the younger man now, from stripping him of his form to making him bend his head in the profoundest adoration, yet what was the point? Once Eric was destroyed, once the world was his, there would be time to enjoy his victory. Who knew, he asked himself; perhaps Eric would even try to put up a bit of a fight. It might even prove a challenge, his last and greatest.
***
Hind could feel Herod long before he came into view, an advancing wave of power that dwarfed anything she’d seen in her entire life. At the Academy, she’d been introduced to a heresy that stated that the gods were merely immensely powerful Sprites or Demons, perhaps even magicians who had somehow swollen their powers to unthinkable levels. The hearsay hadn't interested her, for she hadn't thought it believable, but now...Herod seemed almost to be a minor god, walking on Touched. She had sensed the power that had simply shattered the fort and almost urged flight, even though flight would be useless. Herod had enough power to reach out and find them wherever they were, dragging them back to face him.
“Tell the guards to take the
horses and run,” she ordered, as she motioned for the magicians to get ready. Herod might be powerful – hell, he was powerful - but she’d beaten more powerful opponents before. She told the nagging voice in her head, the one that insisted that Herod was far more than just another rogue magician, to shut up and looked over at her husband. She could feel his love for her through the ring and understood, finally, why Eric’s father had never married again. The thought of a life without him, or with someone else, was unthinkable. “Eric...”
She smiled. Men – particularly male magicians – found it hard to confront their own emotions. She understood, even though she thought that most men were silly when it came to women; the girls in her year had joked that that happened because all their blood rushed out of their head and went elsewhere when they saw a pretty girl. Hind, at least, didn’t have the problem of breaking through Eric’s shell; she knew what he was feeling.
“Eric, I love you,” she admitted. Had she ever said it before? She couldn't remember if she had, even though they’d been married and shared a bed together. The last six months might have been the most dangerous of her life, and they might be about to die, but she regretted nothing. Even if she hadn’t married Eric, Herod would have still targeted her for daring to have been born a commoner. “I wish...”
Eric took her hand and squeezed lightly. “I know, love,” he admitted. His blue eyes met hers and they shared a long look. “I love you too.”
The Black Knife Page 45