Shock rippled through the remaining Lucent forces. Holy knights and soldiers stopped and stared at an impossible sight: the champion of the Bright One felled by a brute of an orc. An orc. A lesser race. They could not comprehend it. An inquisitor approached the ruined figure of their fallen lord, hesitant gauntlet reaching out to pull a shard of metal free of his skull with a sucking sound as bits of bone and brain came loose with it.
The Falcon Prince’s eyes snapped open. Golden light bled from the mortal wound in his head. “I… I cannot be killed. Yes… impossible. Impossible. She is with me always. Always… we made sure of that.” He rose on shaky feet. All across the battlefield his men fell to their knees in worship. They had witnessed a miracle!
“Worship us not with words but with swords!” he shouted, casting about for his own blade, resorting to lifting a humble unadorned footman’s weapon from the smoking mud. “For the Goddess!”
His men rose filled with righteous zeal and surged towards the town, a mass of steel and fury baying for blood. Lightning flashed as holy knights used their divine power to carry them past the hasty barricades manned by desperate locals.
“Here they come!” Red Penny shouted, a snarl on her face as she hefted the orcish axe. Her shoulders and legs ached from the strain of combat and her hands were slick with her own blood, a gaping wound running up her forearm. She didn’t care. “Amogg split that bastard’s skull open for us, so let’s finish the job.”
Cooper Street was blocked by a ragged bunch of pirates and female militia, but they stood steady as the steel tide rumbled towards them. They had nowhere to run – another army was coming down from the north, one they were desperately trying not to think about.
She knew inquisitors were now behind their line somewhere in the centre of town, but didn’t have time to think about it before soldiers crashed into the barricade, climbing it and hauling parts away from the other side. All thought dissolved into the madness of cut and kill.
Red Penny hacked and butchered, the axe of Amogg shedding hands and heads as she held the line. None of the enemy could withstand her, but she was only one woman.
A seamstress to her right went down screaming with a belly wound. To her left a militiawoman’s face was laid open by a sword cut and she fell back trying to hold half of it on. Wooden armour, leather, rusted mail and pot-helms were insufficient to the task of protecting them. The militia and townsfolk were insufficient. They were farmers and shepherds, spinners and craftsfolk, not warriors. The remaining Awildan pirates were harder men and women but they were pitifully few. All of them were about to die.
A Lucent soldier scrambled up the barricade, leapt and landed in the space vacated right next to Red Penny. She turned – too slow – and his lips twisted into a savage grin.
The barricade exploded upwards, barrels and broken carts flying as a wall of solid stone rose from the bones of the earth to block off Cooper Street.
The single Lucent soldier gasped, his eyes widening as an old woman with white hair and a walking stick clacked towards him. He recognised her. The blood drained from his face.
“I have rested enough,” Black Herran said, examining her blood-smeared enchanted ring.
The air turned black, thick with shadows that clawed at the soldier, stripping the sword and armour from his flailing limbs. Liquid darkness swallowed him and sank back into the earth below her feet.
Black Herran gasped and clutched her chest, breath hissing. She formed a fist and pounded it until the spasm passed. “Assist me,” she demanded. Red Penny and two others leapt to it.
She was able to block three more streets with walls of stone before succumbing to a blood-flecked coughing fit. “Enough. I am done.”
“Indeed you are,” Maeven said as she approached down a side street, glistening black blade in hand. Blood dripped from it, and it seemed to squirm and throb in her hand. “It is time for you to honour our bargain. Where is my sister?”
Her tattooed, scarred face turned to the terrified militia. “Leave us.”
They hesitated. The necromancer pointed to a bearded pirate and he fell dead as a rock, untouched by any weapon. The rest got the idea and fled, leaving the two magic users alone to finish whatever vile business they had begun.
Red Penny refused to look back: she had far more pressing concerns, and axe or not, she had no intention of facing down demons or the dead.
CHAPTER 40
Tiarnach groaned and shifted weight off his left leg. Something in his knee was broken, two shards of bone grinding together like quern stones. Not much else of him was intact or working as intended. He stood in the gaping hole he’d made in the temple, a sword in each hand, and got ready for his last battle.
Many of the townsfolk who couldn’t fight had unwisely chosen to barricade themselves in the cellars of their own homes instead of hiding in the temple. Flames roared up from nearby buildings, hungry tongues spreading from roof to roof. Screams and the clash of steel closed in on the temple. A screaming cart horse galloped past, its mane on fire.
A helmetless inquisitor with shaved scalp dashed through a nearby alley and cut down a couple fleeing their burning home. He spotted the temple and the mass of people huddled inside its heathen walls and noted its single battered guardian. A grin spread across his face.
Tiarnach glanced back at the children. “Clear a space behind me, these pretty boys like spurting fire.”
“Do any of you worship the Bright One?” the knight demanded as he approached their refuge.
Tiarnach noisily hawked up a blob of congealing blood and snot. “Nah. Her tits are no’ big enough for me.”
The inquisitor gasped and his sword ignited with the power of his Goddess. “You will burn for that blasphemy.”
Golden fire splashed against Tiarnach’s chest. It was devoid of any actual divine will – just a sluice gate opened. All that power and all it did was make Tiarnach stronger. He yawned and limped right through the torrent, sword out and ready.
“Oh aye?” he mocked. “And when does the burning start? Tell a man, does your goddess suck your wee cock? Or were her lips open just for me?”
The inquisitor screamed and abandoned his holy power for good old-fashioned bloody murder. He came at Tiarnach swinging furiously. Tiarnach deflected the cut in exchange for a length of steel shaved off his own blade. His bad knee came up to ram into the knight’s groin with the power of a small god. Bone cracked further but steel gave way and bent inwards.
His leg was broken anyway, Tiarnach had figured, so a little bit more wouldn’t hurt – except it really fucking did.
The knight dropped, clutching his mangled groin, a strangled whine emerging from his mouth. Bright blood pissed down his greaves.
Tiarnach hissed in pain and hopped to him. He plunged his sword through the knight’s neck, sawing the point back and forth until the man lay still.
“Aye, aye, all big and brave with power fit to burn a man to ash,” he said. “Piss-poor fighter without it.” Then he needed a piss, so he yanked his tunic up and sprayed it all over the dead inquisitor.
He limped back to the hole in the wall as terrified faces peered out at him. He nodded to the children and resumed his position. The adults seemed as terrified of him as they were of the Lucent Empire, but the children waved and held up their forks and eating knives. They loved him for being a bold bastard with a dirty tongue. They believed he was a god, and their small but pure belief filled him up like a starving man handed a jack of ale and a hunk of buttered bread.
Two more inquisitors with gore-crusted swords emerged from a line of burning buildings with their visors up. One was tall and slender, and the other short but wide as an orc with an ugly face shiny with sweat. They noticed their dead friend and instead of charging immediately they lowered visors and moved to flank him, Tall Boy to the left and Orc Man to the right.
Tiarnach sighed. This fight was going to be a bitch.
Lorimer Felle fought the enemy in the middle of the street. He st
ood steadfast in the centre of a storm of swords. They pierced and cut his flesh in a dozen places as the Lucent Empire overran the Tarnbrooke positions, pushing the desperate militia led by Estevan and Red Penny back towards the market square and the vulnerable families sheltering inside the temple. The enemy were superbly trained veterans, vicious and determined, well-armed and armoured… and utterly unable to kill the vampire lord.
He found it all terribly boring.
His claws raked through a soldier’s helmet, piercing steel, face and skull. He tossed the man aside and sank his fangs into the throat of the next, steel squealing as his teeth punched through armour to feast on hot pulsing blood. It proved a bitter meal. He ripped a chunk out and painted the man’s fellows red, chewing thoughtfully while an enemy sword slid through his ribs and another opened up his belly.
Lorimer did not allow his intestines to fall to the filthy ground; instead they slurped and wriggled back into place, the wound sealing up behind them.
Try as they might, their blades could not destroy him. From behind the enemy battle line, a dozen archers took aim and loosed. He could not dodge them all and wooden shafts pierced his heart and lungs.
He yawned as his body ejected the offending arrows. He ripped the shield arm off a screaming soldier and beat the next man to death with it. “Do not believe all those old tales of wooden stakes through the heart killing my kind. It is merely a muscle like any other.”
He blurred into action, claws ripping men open left and right, punches and kicks crushing skulls and shattering ribcages. He was bored, but he was also buying time for Estevan to retreat to safety and throw up more defences. That mortal was the only thing important to Lorimer in this entire dreary town. Well, that and Maeven’s promise to help retake his homeland.
“Where are your god-touched knights and your vaunted holy powers?” he shouted, grabbing a soldier’s hand and squeezing until it popped. He snatched the falling sword and danced among them, too swift and skilful to stop, and too strong to resist. They quailed before him. The vampire snarled as they whimpered and fell back stinking of terror. “Fight me!”
“I will fight you, creature of darkness,” a voice cried. The Lucent soldiers peeled back to form a corridor. A dishevelled, golden-eyed knight with a haggard face covered in blood limped forward, flanked by four inquisitors bearing deadly burning blades. The Falcon Prince had come, his skull split down the middle of the forehead and held together only by magic and willpower.
A shiver of unaccustomed weakness ripped through Lorimer. He spied six robed acolytes murmuring prayers against him, and had to concentrate to shrug off their power. “Hello, Amadden,” he said. “It has been a long time since last we talked. And time, it seems, has not been kind to your looks. Still, you have risen far since the days when you were one of Black Herran’s captains.”
Shocked faces turned to the Falcon Prince, whose lips thinned to bloodless lines. “Speak not of that treacherous whore,” he yelled. “Once I have taken your head, I will have hers too.”
Lorimer sighed and shook his head sadly. “Come, come. There is no need for vulgarity between two gentlemen, especially from one who bears the title of prince. I can fix your face before we begin, if you would like? It would be the work of moments, and the least I can do for an old ally. Your chosen weapon is the longsword, is it not? I am eager to see how your skills have grown.”
“We were never allies,” the Falcon Prince snarled, golden light burning in his eyes. “And this is no duel, monster, this is an extermination of vermin.” He bellowed in rage and unleashed a torrent of golden fire down the street towards the vampire. All four holy knights accompanying him added their magical might to his own. The buildings on either side erupted into flames, stone walls and metal fixings running like water. The muddy ground baked hard and brittle.
The fire dwindled and the Falcon Prince fell to one knee, panting. Fresh blood poured down his face – he had used the power of the Bright One to attack instead of keeping his broken form together. Worried footmen helped him back up.
Smoke belched from the ruined homes on either side of the street. “Check for any sign of a body,” he demanded. “That was Lorimer Felle, the last and most dreadful of the vampires.”
Two holy knights strode down the street, eyes straining through smoke and drifting ash.
The ground exploded beneath them, claws screeching through steel and bone as an unholy burned beast rose from the earth. Lorimer’s smoking and sizzling hand speared through an inquisitor’s breastplate and ripped the heart free in a shower of gore. He was on the other in a heartbeat, the vampire’s head shifting into that of a vicious wolf. His jaws clamped either side of the knight’s helmet. The knight screamed – briefly – as helmet and skull both crumpled under the pressure.
The vampire turned to face his foes, a nightmarish amalgam of man and wolf that gave them pause. “That was unsporting,” he growled. “One might even consider it the height of rudeness.”
He leapt into action, charging at the Falcon Prince five times faster than any man. His jaws opened wide, bloody fangs ready to rip and tear.
The Falcon Prince opened his arms wide in welcome and his head faced skywards, eyes closed in prayer.
A hand’s-breadth from tearing off his face, the Lucent Goddess’ power stopped Lorimer’s charge. Massive weight slammed down on him. He growled and fought against it, claws inching towards vulnerable flesh, so close he could smell the blood of his prey. “Duel me like a man, Amadden,” he said. “If you dare, without hiding behind your cruel god.”
The force pressing down on Lorimer doubled. Trebled. Irresistible force slammed him to the ground, bones cracking and grinding as if stamped on by a giant boot. He tried to rise and failed to lift so much as a finger.
“Men do not duel dangerous animals,” the Falcon Prince said, teeth clenched and blood running down his face. “They hunt them down and dispose of them.”
Lorimer managed a chuckle. “The sheer arrogance of assuming that everything you believe to be just and true happens to be so. And that the many who disagree with you are evil, or somehow lesser. You are deluded to declare your many murders righteous by painting white over the blackest of deeds. You have made a murdering tyrant of yourself.”
“You are naught but a beast given life by dark magic,” the Falcon Prince said. “All life must die, and all darkness must be purified by Her light.” He looked to his men. “Burn this thing to ash.”
His remaining two holy knights stepped forward and extended their swords. Fire poured over the motionless vampire at their feet. Acolytes stepped forward to add their prayers to the assault.
Lorimer Felle was no stranger to pain, but even he screamed as his flesh was burned away layer by layer. He bit back the agony and resolved to die with pride. “You may have defeated me,” he snarled, “but the good and the free will always rise to thwart you, tyrant.” He grinned, his lips burning away to expose nightmarish fangs. “My people will be free. This is not over.”
The Falcon Prince did not deign to answer. He watched the vampire burn until it fell silent, the legend that was Lorimer Felle reduced to nothing but macabre bones crumbling to ash in the centre of that magical inferno.
Of the many things the lying beast had said to him, it was not his words but that last grin that got under the Falcon Prince’s skin. For a moment he felt a heavy doom upon his back. He prayed to his Goddess and in her light shook it off. Then he marched onwards into the town in search of Black Herran and his depraved sister.
Predictably, the two inquisitors tried their fire on Tiarnach first. They were nothing if not dull-witted pricks.
“Argh,” the war god cried, writhing in the centre of the blaze. “Aw naw, you got me, you mighty bastards! I’m burning to death. Burning, I say!”
Tall Boy and Orc Man intensified the blaze, gritting their teeth against the pain such effort caused them. Mortal bodies were not sturdy enough to channel a god’s power for long, and they had already done s
o several times during the assault on the town. Tiarnach, on the other hand, was able to steal a little of that unfocused divine power for his own, the worst of his wounds steaming as they slowly closed up. Sadly, his body remained a wreck and his knee was still in bits.
He reckoned it might have been his sniggering that gave the game away.
On seeing him healing, they cut off their fire. After a moment’s consideration their burning blades also extinguished. They intended to use mortal steel to end him.
“Aw,” he said with a sad face. “And here I thought you were going to heal me all up.”
Tall Boy scowled. “I do not know what manner of dark creature you are to withstand the Bright One’s touch, but your reign of terror ends here.”
Tiarnach nodded back to the people cowering inside the temple. “Aye, right. Reign o’ terror, is it? I’m not the arseholes burning towns and villages and ripping wee babes from their mother’s breasts.”
That got their attention focused solely on him, with nothing left over for the civilians inside the temple behind him. His body was hurting, but he was a hard bastard through and through, and he’d be damned if he’d let runts like these put him in the mud; he still had the Falcon Prince to face.
Tall Boy attacked from the left and the squat Orc Man from the right, identical opening moves to every one of the Lucent knights he’d fought so far – diagonal cuts meant to open him up from shoulder to opposite hip. These knights were drilled to perfection, which made them all too easy to predict. If he’d fought one, he’d fought them all.
Tiarnach’s knee was done for, so his movement was limited. He couldn’t parry one and dodge the other so instead he attacked Tall Boy, who boasted the greater reach. The other knight’s sword cut only air as he moved, and Tall Boy’s sword was still descending as Tiarnach dashed forward into the blow, with an explosion of pain from his knee.
The inquisitor’s eyes widened in panic as Tiarnach’s sword point came up, scraping along his chest plate and up through the soft tissue under the chin, cleaving through the roof of Tall Boy’s mouth and into the brain.
The Maleficent Seven Page 35