“What does that mean?” Rederick asked, and he again leaned back in the chair, causing the legs to creak dangerously.
“The Dahken need their own place in Aquis.”
“Like Fort Haldon?” asked one of the paladins. Cor didn’t remember his name.
“I mean it both literally and in the hierarchy,” Cor explained, and he continued carefully, “The theocracy that has been the ruling class of Aquis for hundreds of years must be set aside. The Dahken and what we are will never be accepted as long as the priests control the government.”
“It is the way it has always been!” shouted Mora, standing so quickly that her chair was flung to the floor behind her, and she pointed an accusing finger at him. “Forget not that it is you who brought this upon us!”
“Calm yourself Mora,” Rederick said serenely.
“Do we forget what he has done? We sit at a table making deals and plans with the murderer of our own queen! He deserves death and nothing more,” she said, taking her wicked morning star from her belt.
“Put that away and sit! Be silent!” thundered Rederick, slamming his mailed fist into the table so heavily that it nearly splintered. Chastened, Mora did as she was told, but she fumed angrily.
“That is exactly what I mean Rederick,” Cor continued, noting that Keth’s hand slowly moved away from his sword’s hilt. “For us to continue in common purpose, the past must be let go.”
“I believe,” Rederick drew out the second word as he leaned forward, “that men must always look to the future to avoid being blinded by the past, but some have long memories. Others have quick tempers.” This last he said with a sidelong glance at Mora, who still sat soundlessly and stared straight ahead.
“First, we select a good and fair minded king, or queen, separate from the will of the priests.”
“The priests and the temples provide services and guidance to the people,” Rederick argued. “The people need Garod’s guidance to live good lives in His eyes. If you take this away, anarchy and evil wills reign.”
“Then, don’t take it away. You’re a wiser man than you lead on Rederick. The people can receive guidance from their priests without their priests having direct control over the laws. That creates domination and control, not freedom.”
“Can not a secular king be as much a tyrant?” Rederick asked.
“Of course,” Cor conceded, “which is why a balance must be struck. You were Lord of Martherus for years, since about when I was born. Did you rule Martherus with the mailed fist of Garod?”
Broken from her apparent trance, Mora shot her lord a pointed look. Rederick sighed. “You have trapped me Lord Dahken Cor. You know the answer already, don’t you? You’ve had plenty of time to speak to those under my command and those who served under me in Martherus. You know what kind of man I am.”
“I do,” admitted Cor. “You are known for fairness and strength, wisdom and intelligence. And piety. You must be King of Aquis.”
“I do not want the honor, nor am I worthy of it.”
“Which is exactly why it must be you, My Lord,” chimed in Mora, and an “Aye,” was heard from another paladin.
Rederick paused. “This entire thing has been at your hands, almost as if it was one great scheme. Why not claim the throne yourself?”
The question surprised Cor because the answer was plainly written on Mora’s suddenly soured face. “I would never be accepted. It would mean war. No Rederick, Mora is correct. It must be you. I would suggest some form of council or group of advisors to make sure everyone’s interests are protected, but those are finer details for us to figure out later.
“For now, Aquis needs a king to unify its armies, wherever they are. Be King.”
Rederick stood with the clinking of steel armor under his filthy and battle stained robe. “I will think on it,” he said, and he strode out of the hall through one of its many side passages.
30.
“I should go with you,” Keth said as the two men lifted up the round piece of steel.
It was large, two feet or more across, and its weight was considerable. Cor had never paid attention before, but there were a number of these things throughout the city, set into the ground to allow access to the tunnels beneath. It had indentions on the side, perfect for inserting some sort of flat iron bar to use as a lever. Without such, one would not be able to lift the steel cover off of the opening that it protected.
“I should go with you,” Keth repeated. “Nadav will have protection. You’ll need help.”
“No,” Cor disagreed as they rolled the lid off to the side, and he grimaced as the stink from the tunnels made its way inside his helm. No matter how many times he went down there, it still stunk. “Your one and only duty to me is to protect my son and the Dahken. Thyss will be about the city, engulfing the dead in flames and redirecting them into our traps. That means you must be with Cor’El.”
Keth sighed, and he looked as if a thousand different words came to his mind. But he spoke none of them. “Be careful Lord Dahken.”
Cor sat on the rim of the aperture so that his legs dangled below and looked down into the darkness. “I intend to.”
He touched his weapons to reassure himself that they were there before pushing off to drop into the tunnel below. He landed lightly, as the drop couldn’t have been more than five feet, and he had to hunch over to avoid hitting his helm on the tunnel ceiling. He looked up, and Keth dropped a small canvas bundle containing several oiled torches and flint with which to light them. Waving the younger Dahken off, Cor pulled one of the torches from the knapsack and lit it, while above steel scraped on steel and stone as Keth pushed the lid back into place.
Using a schematic that had been found in one of the public works buildings, Cor had crawled through the tunnels a week previously, marking on the walls with chalk. He followed these markings now, knowing that it would take him a solid two hours to reach the outflow tunnels near the river. From there, he would have to make his way up the Byrver’s banks and around the half collapsed outer wall of the city. The problem was time. He would have to give the wall a fairly wide berth to make sure that he came up behind Nadav’s army and not on its flank.
The army would reach the city within the next two hours, and Cor saw no reason why the Loszian would hold off his attack. The Dahken fought to withstand the urge to run.
* * *
“I offer you one chance – surrender now,” said a hundred thousand Nadavs, the voice echoing against Byrverus’ crumbling walls.
“Release the prisoners!” Rederick shouted.
The prisoners consisted of about a dozen Loszian soldiers that had surrendered rather than be slaughtered needlessly defending Byrverus’ palace. They had been gagged so as not to distract the Westerners with screams or pleas of mercy as they had been chained to rocks or large pieces of masonry and loaded into the catapults’ baskets. The catapults themselves were not an important part of the city’s defense, as most of them were located around the outer wall and would be too difficult to defend against the horde, but they were loaded with this specific ammunition to make a point. Honestly, Rederick found the murder of captives somewhat appalling, but he understood Cor’s thinking.
“We want no reason for Nadav to hold his attack,” the Dahken had said. “Using his own people as ammunition for the catapults should raise his ire.”
Nadav was haughty and impulsive, and, for good or ill, he acted such when his rage rose. A month was a long time when one had nothing to do but think and plan about the future, and they could not chance that the Loszian’s temper had cooled. They hoped that launching a dozen live Loszian soldiers, as well as one dead Loszian necromancer, into the midst of Nadav’s army would insult him significantly enough.
Rederick stood on the wall and tracked the course of a dozen missiles as their arms and legs waved uselessly, the rock to which they were strapped somersaulting through the air. They arced for several hundred yards to come crashing down into an endless sea of walking
corpses, an army the likes of which no one had ever seen. Even Rederick paused in fear for just a brief moment as he saw what he faced, and he prayed to Garod that none of his men had stopped to look.
“So be it,” said the Nadavs. It was a mere whisper, said from hundreds of feet away, but the pure force of so many voices carried it through the air.
“Fall back!” Rederick screamed, and his lieutenants took up the call. “Fall back to the first defense point!”
To any untrained observer or even a trained observer who was unaware of the situation, the hurried motions of the Westerners would have appeared to be unorganized, unbridled panic. There were only a few hundred on the outer wall, and they dropped as quickly as they dared to the streets below, rushing madly from place to place like ants who suddenly sense a booted foot above them. They merged on a particularly narrow street, joining with a thousand of their fellows who passed them arms and waited with shallow breaths.
The dead stumbled into the city, some through the wall’s main gates, others clambering over the crumbled walls. They shuffled through streets and lanes and down alleys to find nothing to rend with their bony fingers as dangerous as talons. Nadav silently screamed in frustration, as he had the largest host Rumedia had ever seen and nothing to slay with it. His servants flooded the city, filling its streets as water fills irrigation ditches. One street ended at a once great fallen buildings, and the dead pooled there as they slowly redirected down another route. They found impassible streets, made so by the great earthquake that had signaled their coming those months ago, the paved roads cracked and broken with great abysses or cliffs. Some of the city streets had been blocked by tons and tons of rubble that had no apparent source. The only path they could find was down one narrow lane, only wide enough for five or six to stumble abreast. Then they caught sight of their quarry, and their shuffling feet picked up their pace as Nadav pushed them onward.
He realized his mistake too late as a great horn filled the air to be answered by others.
Everywhere the dead stood or stumbled, attempting to push their way toward their enemy, arrows and white rocks rained from far overhead. Men in groups pushed great pieces of masonry off of the roofs of surrounding buildings, crushing Nadav’s servants by the dozens. Barrels of pitch and oil were dumped on them to be lit by flaming arrows. The fells in droves, hundreds at a time, where they had pooled at the city’s dead ends. Redirected, the dead broke through the doors of the nearby buildings, attempting to find anyway to the rooftops, to those that harried them. Few could find their way up, and those that did found that their prey escaped them to neighboring buildings or down ladders to safety before they could cause harm.
Streaks of flame blazed through the sky from the top of one of the city’s shorter towers as a priestess of Hykan released her god’s fury to burn everything that moved yet did not live. She laughed maniacally as she burned everything she could, having no concern for the buildings around the things she ignited. Thyss had been given leave to do anything she so desired as long as Nadav’s slaves burned, for the city was already destroyed beyond repair. She held nothing back and took the greatest joy she had felt in years, sending her laughter into the heavens.
As Nadav’s vanguard stumbled toward their prey, arrows by the hundreds fired into their ranks from above, along with all of the other forms of siege defense. The first row of Westerners stood firmly, armed with pikes that were in truth little more than pointy sticks measuring almost twenty feet in length. They waited anxiously for their commander’s order, the points of their pikes arrayed directly in front of them. When the command came, they charged the oncoming horde with a great cry, much as an armored knight charges his foe with a lance, and they drove into the dead, driving their sticks through flesh and bone. The spears, their tips sharpened by fire and steel, easily ripped through body after body, so that each one might have easily impaled three or four corpses. So pierced, the enchantment that held them in thrall immediately broke, the bodies falling to the ground in a great heap. The men dropped their spears as soon as they felt the weight pull them downward and ran back to their cohorts. As the dead finally shambled, tripped and crawled their way over their fallen comrades, a second such wave was sent, followed by a third until the narrow lane became nearly impassible, even for the dead.
A hundred thousand horrible voices sounded Nadav’s frenzied frustration all at once in a sound so horrible that the defenders nearly lost heart.
Another horn sounded, a deeper horn blown in a particular rhythm. All of the Westerners on the ground began to pull back through the city’s first inner wall. Those who stood atop that wall ran to the nearest stairs downward, for the wall would soon be overrun. Those who defended the city from on high clambered across the roofs, using wood planks to cross from one to another. Theirs was the greatest peril to this point, for many of them were cut off from the rest of their people. As they fled the rooftops, many of them stumbled headlong into masses of the undead, with nowhere else to run.
Eventually, the corpses climbed over mountain of bodies in the narrow lane and began to pursue the Westerners toward one of Byrverus inner walls. Made of granite instead of limestone, the wall seemed to have well survived the quakes from months previously. The lane led right up to the edifice and through one of its many gates, and it was through this gate that the Westerner’s fled as the horn again sounded.
Thyss pulled her mind back a little closer to sanity for just a moment as the horn reached her ears that second time. She knew that it meant a retreat to the second chokehold, the second point of defense. She also knew that it meant she was all alone past the first inner wall or that she would be very soon. Looking below, she saw thousands of corpses lying on the ground motionless behind the wave of those that walked. Many were on fire, whether from her efforts or those men who had been pouring the oil and pitch. She felt a slight breeze blow through her unrestrained hair; she had removed it from her normal ponytail to be free as she destroyed. She caught the breeze with her arms, and a wisp of cloud blew from the tower toward the inner part of Byrverus.
* * *
A man waited just below the ground, under tons of granite and masonry. He was no hero, no soldier, not even a mason nor a builder of any kind. But he was a lover of his city. Byrverus had been good to him for years as he forged an empire of cutthroats and mercenaries, people that did the violent wishes of others for money, and it was time that he repaid the favor. His empire was gone, his network of mercenaries, murderers and thieves completely disbanded and destroyed by the Loszian invasion.
Laird had thought it would be at the hands of failure – his failure to have a stupid minor lord slain. Twice.
When the dead began to rise, he and his closest cutthroats had holed themselves up in his shitbox in the less desirable part of the city. They clutched their weapons to their breasts in fear, listening to the screams of the petty thieves and the whores as they were ripped limb from limb. Many of them had paid Laird and his organization for protection, and yet when the time came, Laird and his people dared not show their faces in the streets. This is not to say that the dying didn’t come banging on his door, begging for their lives. Laird was simply too scared to care.
When the Loszian host left for Martherus, Laird’s surviving loyal followers dispersed as most of them made off in the night. They left him to his empire and his city. He stood in its ruins and realized he had nothing – no wealth, no family, no power that anyone would care about. No one recognized him of course. Laird had spent his whole life learning how to not be noticed. Once he left his ruins, he discarded his torn and soiled silks in favor of drab wool clothing that he tore from corpses in the streets. He rubbed dirt and shit on his skin, clothes and even his face so as to make him appear a poor survivor. When Western soldiers found him, no one questioned him.
His brother was dead, and Laird had nothing left to offer anyone except his life.
This gate had been chosen for a reason. It looked structurally sound, but the granit
e foundation had been damaged below the ground. There were passages inside the great wall, and one led to the gate’s southern support column. Here the granite was cracked and very nearly shattered, straining under the weight it held aloft. When the echo of the second horn reached his ears, Laird picked up his great hammer, the one specifically given to him for this job, and began to swing its heavy head into the support. He fancied that he could hear the thousands of thudding dead feet as they passed through the gate overhead. He fancied he could hear them still, even as the cracking sounds of the granite filled his ears and the tons of stone overhead crushed his bones.
* * *
Cor moved as cautiously as possible while maintaining a brisk pace through the never ending villages that wrapped the city of Byrverus for miles around. Nothing had stood in his way, neither in the sewer nor the outflow tunnels, and it had almost been a pleasant run on a cool autumn day as he made his way up from the river. The air was crisp with that slight bite that foretold of an early winter, and the breeze carried a musky odor that Cor always associated with the falling of the leaves. The sense of danger, followed by the distance sounds of fighting worked to dispel the illusion.
The sound of a great collapse of stone, a reminder of Sanctum’s cave in that nearly killed him, told Cor how the battle progressed. Rederick had bought him some time, but the battle would progress more quickly now. Cor had yet to come across the first picket, outrider or scout, and he couldn’t be sure how much time he had. He needed to know how close he was; he needed to find a building with some height to it.
He also needed to see Thyss and Cor’El and Keth. And even Rederick and Mora. He’d left them all to fight and die in the city, while he gallivanted on this fool’s errand. He should have stayed in the city. He could count on only he and Thyss to slay the hundreds or thousands of countless foes to protect their son. No, that was not so. Keth would die protecting Cor’El, and if Nadav’s host made it that far, then Rederick and the Westerners were already dead.
Darkness and Steel Page 25