Tirielle overheard Typraille say to Quintal, “j’ark said we must not fall back into the tunnels.”
“Interesting armour you have.”
The voice came out of nowhere, startling Tirielle. She has not realised how quiet the plateau was – there were no sounds. The wind stood and only the breathing of the horses behind her broke the still.
Briskle pointed. Stock and solid next to him Yuthran nodded and spoke to Cenphalph, who drew and began walking calming to where Briskle had indicated. Tirielle watched him walking out to the fan of rock, in the middle.
He stopped when the voice came again.
“That’s a good trick. I shall have to remember that.” The wizard laughed, the voice moving away from where Briskle had pointed. Cenphalph stood crouched, sword swerving in front of him.
“There!” Yuthran called out.
“Interesting eyes, too. Still, if you won’t play, I’ll become bored very quickly.”
The wizard was still hidden but Cenphalph turned to look at Briskle for a second anyway. Briskle raised his eyes, unseen under the helm, and pointed in exasperation at yet another plain patch of basalt-hued rock. Cenphalph stared but could not even see a disturbance.
“But questions can wait. I tire of this already.”
Crackling cyan fire spread like sheet lighting across the rock, burning it. An invisible wall broke apart and disappeared into the air with a great whomp, the only sense that something had been there the deafening residue of magic spent. The wizard flickered into life at the centre of it solid as the rock.
He wore no hood today but his thick black hair framed his face with the same effect. His thin nose looked almost like a sword, Cenphalph though, standing way out in front of the others. Then he swallowed. A small sword, admittedly, but one backed up with an army.
Behind the wizard (raising his head up, smiling, hair falling back from his face as he did so) stood the Tenthers. Behind them stood huge men armed with Bayers, holding them tethered at the end of lances that fit under the armpit. Behind them a rank of Hirdinaers, behind them mounted men with great heavy axes.
Behind them clones of the wizard, six of them all dressed in black.
Tirielle’s grip felt weak on the perfect handles of her daggers, the bone suddenly heavy and clumsy. She could feel the blood pounding in her limbs. The Sard could feel it too. All nine swords were now drawn.
All apart from Typraille looked grim – he had a glint in his eye.
Nothing to worry about, she told herself, and crossed her blades. Just the trees in the distance. And hundreds of Protectorate warriors lined up between the cave and them.
Trapped again.
“I think you’ll find we have all the exits covered. By all means, run back into the caves and seek refuge there. I’d like that very much.”
“So is it war you want, Protocrat?” enquired Roth.
“War? For her? I wasn’t aware the Treaty extended to criminals, rahken. But, as you raise the issue, yes. I will happily break it. I am quite sure my masters would merely consider it an unfortunate accident.”
“I doubt the rahken nation will feel the same way…”
The wizard bit his lip in a parody of concern. “Really? What a dreadful shame. Now, Lady, I gave you a chance to come quietly, would you like to play that charade once more today, or shall we get to it, hmm?”
Tirielle turned to Fenore and said quietly, “This is my battle, Fenore. The rahkens need not get involved. I would not bring such an enemy to your home.”
“Regardless, child. The rahkens are already involved. This has long been our battle – we have just avoided it for a time. “
j’ark saw her look to him. “You need not ask, Tirielle. We stand together.”
Fenore nodded. “Then today it begins, we stand divided no longer.”
“Well?” enquired the wizard.
The nine knights merely stood straighter and faced the forces arrayed before them, unwavering swords their reply.
“I see,” he said, eyeing the Sard. “Whenever you’re ready then…”
With a flick of his hand, the Protectorate’s forces advanced.
Tirielle, ordered in no uncertain terms to wait behind, stood twenty feet back. Knives sheathed now, she watched the battle beside Fenore, who was nervously dragging a claw through her mane. She saw Roth drop to its knees as a flaming hirdinaer passed over head and into another attacker. His polished breastplate caught light when it hit him. Cenphalph thrust his sword through the man’s throat and kicked him back.
The Sard fought together in threes, holding each corner of a shifting triangle at the entrance. Typraille, Unthor and Cenphalph fought to Tirielle’s right. Disper, Yuthran and Briskle to the left, and Quintal, j’ark and Carth at the centre. The Rahkens were pouring from the caves behind Tirielle but there would not be enough to douse this forest fire charging at them.
Typraille crashed his sword double-handed into a Tenther. Protectorate soldiers from most divisions stood tall in the background, waiting to be called on. He swung again, a barbaric grin breaking a stream of blood running under his helm. Cenphalph, fighting to hold the entrance to the cave beside him, struck backhanded through a man’s wrist, severing the tendons.
“Ha! You always were a gawkler, Cenphalph!” Typraille grunted with effort as he blocked a fierce blow aimed at his hip.
“I’m not showing off! I’m out of practice – I meant to take his hand off!”
Unthor called out to him. “There’s so many! I don’t know where to begin!”
“Anywhere you like!” Unthor cried back. “It all ends the same way!”
Roth pushed passed them into the advancing soldiers ahead of them, smashing its fist into one man’s face and breaking the nose of a slow swordsman behind with the back of the man’s head.
“Gentlemen, I’m trying to concentrate. Keep the chatter down.”
The rahkens fought bravely beside the Sard. It was history. More of them poured forth from the entrance to the caves and the Protectorate were pushed back as the triangle filled with rahkens. They slashed their claws across faces, tearing through bone and gristle. They fought an ugly war. While the soldiers that fell to the Sard were still recognisable, the rahkens slain could not be told from each other. They broke the Protectorate ranks swiftly, driving them back.
All rahkens might not be warriors, she thought, but none were shy of a fight.
Then the six wizards came forward and a torrent of driving words began to fall on the front of the rahken ranks. There was such a frenzy on the rahkens that they failed to hear the danger buzzing toward them on the air. They still crashed their fists into armour or raked claws into face, but as suddenly as the triangle has expanded, it began to contract. The Sard fought toward falling allies as the hum of anarchic litanies caught the rahkens in chains and dragged them to earth.
There were instant results for the Protectorate. Tirielle watched in dumb horror as despite her cries of warning the rahken’s normally fluid movements slowed. Some stopped altogether and rose no more. Their coats that protected them in most places from bladed thrusts worked against them as they fell unmoving to the ground to be doused in flame.
The Tenthers fought with ferocity and verve as they pushed the weakening giants and the Sard at their corner back to the tunnel entrance. The elite Protectorate stabbed and thrust at the unprotected bellies and backs of the fallen giants, slashed and hacked at the Sard. In a crashing tidal wave the rear ranks joined the battle and the triangle, punctured, deflated. Outside its shrinking lines flames and smoke were blown on a growing wind of poisoned words.
Tirielle looked anxiously behind her. Fenore had assured them all early in their stay that there were many other ways out of the complex but she knew of none other than this.
Fenore, meanwhile, looked out in sadness at the scene before her. The cries of the dead and dying were all the more poignant for her – she had family out there.
Tirielle saw her concern and reached out to h
er. “Roth is an astounding fighter, Fenore. I know it will be alright.”
“I hope so. Already I see we have fallen. I’m sorry. I can bear the wait no longer. I have to see Ludec… If they use magic against us then perhaps he can counter it.” Fenore’s face was set in a grimace as she looked over the battle raging before her.
“Can no one else?” Tirielle asked, tearing her face away to look at Fenore. The smell of the dead was blowing their way.
“No Tirielle, we are more like humans in that respect than the protocrats. All among us are talented to a certain degree, but few are as powerful as Ludec. And only he among us has experience of this. He has fought them before.”
“Really?”
“Long ago. Wait here – I’ll be back shortly.”
Fenore turned and started running. Then she was gone and Tirielle alone bore witness to the battle. She could see the wizard who had taunted her at the far end of the field, removed to a palisade made from some mesh steel. She was sure it had been the same wizard who had taken her captive outside Lianthre. With him stood a row of chanting wizards.
The rahkens were falling heavily now. At a distance from the wizards the rahkens were unaffected, but it was only a matter of time before they realised this and advanced. She would have to do something. She let her mind loose and waited for the answer to come. The girl’s voice came to her instead.
Talk to it.
The power knocked her to her knees. If the girl insists on talking to me like that my brains are going to spill.
Talk to it…she had said.
She looked for Roth.
*
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Jek broke his own rules about flaunting power and materialised back in front of the waiting Protocrats. There was no need for a roof over the Speculate today. The suns were bright.
“Yes, yes.” He shrugged off the amazed gazes of the on-looking Speculate. ”More rules to break, I’m afraid,” he told the waiting council.
“I need ten Incantors, now. Sent one division of Particlates also, they will need sustenance. We are winning the day, as I am sure you have all had your own Prognosticators tell you. Soon we will have a prize – and, perhaps, a mystery.”
He turned to Klan before the rest left. “You have my orders. You will take five Tens and yourself – I assume you do not wish for assistance?”
Nobody dare interrupt, but whispers grew among the other Speculate, waiting to exit hall.
Klan said nothing and looked at Jek. No, he thought. Now is not the time. Let Jek keep his secrets. There was one here who employed an assassin. How else had the Speculate found Tirielle? Could he smell through rock and rahken magic?
“I will suffice.”
“Good.” Jek favoured Klan with a smile as the whispers stopped. It wouldn’t pay to have him get too good at this. “Go to Teryithyr. Set up our base there. It has begun and we must make our move soon. The scouts wait on the coast by the ice floes. When the mercenary Shorn comes we will have him. Now we take the girl. Klan, your services in this are not needed. We will have the girl and the man eventually. They are still far behind us. I do not know if they are even aware of the wizard’s location for all their rambling. We make time for ourselves while everyone is looking the other way.”
There was no dissent from the gathering.
Jek waved them away. “Then I dissolve this session. If the wizards cannot take this woman and a few beasts perhaps she is meant to live.”
“And the treaty with rahkens, are we to fight them as well, come the return?” Paenth Dorn D’tha asked. The Head of the Prognosticators was brave to speak out after such a spectacular failure, but the question was on the mind of all present.
“They are inconsequential. Now go to it.”
Jek blinked out of existence. A reminder of the power of an ascendant would not hurt. He was dismissive, but he too was beginning to worry. The rahkens, few though they might be, the girl, Shorn heading north.
None of that would matter if Klan continued his ascent.
*
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Fenore and Ludec came back faster than Tirielle would have imagined possible had she not had such an education in Roth. Ludec nodded to her as he ran outside. He clambered over the cavern’s mouth to stand on an arch created by wind and no little endeavour by the rahken clan. From where he stood he could clearly see the vicious symbols spilling out into the air over his burning family. Natural looking, like they were grown from the air. He could not see what they were doing, though. The symbols were there. But what were they doing?
While he stood and thought, Ludec called down to Tirielle and Fenore. “I cannot see how it works!”
Tirielle called back. “Then Fenore and I have a plan! Can you call Roth? Fenore says you can speak within minds – we need Roth’s help!”
“I will pass it on, I can see Roth there – to the right.” He pointed, pride evident in the set of his face and a small upturning of his grin. Tirielle tried to look over the battle but was too short.
They told him their plan.
As the rahkens and the Sard fell back tighter and tighter, coming closer to Tirielle’s and Fenore’s small oasis, Ludec saw some of the fallen still lived. Soon now, all the ranks of the Protocrats would come. His warriors would grant him time.
The Tenthers were fully committed, he realised.
When the drumming, unheard in the clamour, ended, seven warriors clad in golem armour poured from the holes in the ground. In seconds the Protocrats were in disarray. The muscular beastlords strained to hold the leashes on the bayers as they growled and pulled toward the huge golems. The rain of words, directed over their heads, did not affect them – nor did the Bayers. Their teeth smashed against the crystal. The crystal shredded their jaws and paws.
The golem warriors smashed a huge hole through the Protectorate’s idle forces while the rest, more advanced on the battle field, could do nothing to halt them. But the wizards could. The rain hit.
Ludec had hoped they would last longer. He saw the golem warriors slow as the hail of words drew closer to the wizards and fell on them. He had until the Protocrats figured out how to kill them to untangle chains he could not see.
While he was thinking, a hole opened in reality, and more wizards poured into the steel ring. Wizards in red robes came behind them and knelt, and a black swarm sucked in the air from around them. The foliage behind them blossomed into flame.
The red robes inhaled life from around them, feeding it to the black robed wizards who joined the chant. As each new protocrat joined more rahkens fell.
Ludec calmed himself as he felt the power of the words grow. His hackles rose.
He saw a gap.
Now.
He called and Roth heard him.
*
Chapter Eighty
The wizard, Tirielle’s bane, stood in front of the other chanters watching the battle unfold. The Speculate would be pleased. The rahkens were effectively useless. Soon he would move his men forward.
He let himself slip into the rhythm of the chant, still itching to have her head. One rahken warrior stood on an outcropping, overlooking the battle. He wondered if he was a leader, like him. He had failed before but this time he would succeed. Instead of one torture there would be others. Behind him the trees had already wilted and died. The Particlates were sucking the life from their surroundings, feeding it to the chanters to sustain them – and the chant. The chant was the only way to win the battle.
The rahkens would feel like lead had entered their veins. Looking at their fallen burn wouldn’t help morale either and they truly were being crushed. Soon, soon. He hated waiting. Soon they would be in the tunnels. Then they would be completely and utterly destroyed. The Speculate had entrusted him with the spell. Taught it to him, and he would not let him down, not again. The blackened trees behind him caught on a wind, a passing breeze, and ash floated past on the air. He looked around, certain something was waiting there. Nothing. Just
dead trees waiting to return to the earth. He walked slowly round to the back of the chanters and watched. The golems all stood still – he hadn’t expected the chant to work on golems but he did not mind unexpected fortune.
He didn’t know how Jek had known where the traitorous bitch A’m Dralorn was either, but then that was why Jek was Speculate.
*
Chapter Eighty-One
“Rally on me!” cried Quintal at the fore, with j’ark and Carth by his side.
And Roth looked up to see its chance.
It dashed through the line along the high sheer rocks at the edge of the plateau’s arc and into the trees. In the haze of battle no one saw it go.
While Roth ran, Ludec let the colour of his eyes spread out into cloud and brown rain fell forth on the centre of the battle.
Ludec was unable to break the hold the words had, but the sudden downpour doused the burning dead and wounded. It did not matter that he could not break the chanting wizard’s hold on his people – only that Roth got through.
If he had to sacrifice his child for this, then so be it.
The rahkens saw the unnatural rain falling all around them and felt something invigorating them. They fought with renewed strength, battling forward against the Tenthers and the Hirdinaers behind them. Blades glanced from their thick fur or were pulled up short of important organs. Most of the rahkens were bleeding, mostly the younger warriors, but none badly enough to warrant retreat. Those rahkens that were able rendered a route through their enemy to their fallen.
Roth powered its great legs into greater speed and flew through the hills off to the trees while everything else on the battlefield was distracted by the brown rain. When it reached the trees Roth circled round. It ran, dodging the strained trunks and protruding roots, until ahead it saw the lush forest gradually breaking into varying stages of decay. Past crisp dry trees and eventually on to black. His shoulder brushed one as it dodged through them, when the ground began to even out and become softer under foot. It smashed one with sideswipe as it passed. Ash flew.
Rythe Awakes (The Rythe Trilogy) Page 34