by AC Cobble
“Rew, what is going on?” asked Anne.
“You heard those screams? They were from far off, likely the scouts on patrol. I suspect they were taken out so a force could organize to attack underneath the cover of the glamour. Any moment now…” said Rew. He kept turning, studying the camp. He pointed to the north, where the fewest number of soldiers stood between them and the darkness beyond. “There, I hope. When all breaks loose, we’re going north. Stay on my heels and keep moving.”
“Wait, how do you know—“ began Cinda.
“Can’t you see the glamour?” Rew asked, gesturing above them. “Not the spell itself but the effect. There were clouds above when we stopped for the day but not complete coverage. We saw the gleam of the moon on those clouds after the sunset, remember? Right now, there’s not a trace of light from anywhere outside of this camp. Someone has cast a pall of darkness over us, and there’s only one reason they would do that.”
Uncomfortably, Cinda looked above them. She nodded curtly. “We’ll be right behind you.”
At the bottom of the hill, the baron had finally regained his feet, and he was admonishing his soldiers and telling them to run up and arrest Rew and the others. The soldiers looked hesitant, but they’d seen the baron tumble down the hill after a push from Rew. No matter how drunk you were, throwing a noble down a hill was illegal, particularly while inside of that noble’s fiefdom. Watching the soldiers, Rew wondered if he might be able to claim it was king’s business. The soldiers wouldn’t believe that, but it might give them an excuse not to act rashly. Whatever was about to happen, Rew certainly didn’t intend to face it in manacles. The prospect of fighting off these men wasn’t much more attractive.
Reluctantly, the soldiers below started walking his way, but halfway up, they stopped. There was a clash of steel off in the distance, and screams of pain cut through those of mad glee. The baron’s elite guard was soberer than the rest of their compatriots, and they were veterans. They understood what those sounds meant.
“I don’t see anything yet,” muttered Raif.
“The darkness is closing in,” said Rew, pointing toward where they could hear the conflict. “The glamour is overtaking the edge of the battle.”
“Should we run?” asked Zaine. Her bow was in her hand, and an arrow was nocked, but she had nothing to shoot at.
Rew shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Why north?” questioned Raif, looking nervously all around them.
Rew shrugged. “If it is Duke Eeron attacking, then I suspect he’d have arrayed the bulk of his men to the south to cut off Worgon’s escape. If they mean to eradicate the baron’s forces, the first order of business is making sure the army can’t run back to Yarrow.”
“So what do we do?” demanded Zaine.
Rew drew his longsword. “Like I said, stay behind me, and we go north toward Spinesend.”
“We know,” muttered Raif, raising his greatsword. “Always stay behind you.”
“Right,” said Rew. Then, he was hit by a visceral wave of utter, bone-chilling, deathly cold.
14
Rew was flung backward. He stumbled into Anne as a torrential blast of bitter cold assailed him. He raised his arms in front of himself and tried to ground his body in the world, but they were far from his world, and instead of the peace of the wilderness, he found himself clutching at the chaos of battle erupting around them. He teetered, his body and soul scoured by the relentless blast of magic, until he broke through the madness and found the cool calm of the natural world outside of their camp. He clutched it tight and withstood the torrent of death.
For one hundred paces in front of him, a terrible path was blazed through the soldiers, leaving a carpet of dead, frozen bodies. Scores of them, lying twisted and in anguish, ice-cold.
From the darkness at the edge of the camp, a man emerged clad in scarlet robes. His hands were raised above his head, and swirling clouds of green-tinged white smoke churned around him. On his chest, a gleaming silver pendant shone in the light of the fires that still survived outside the path of destruction he’d wrought.
“King’s Sake,” growled Rew. “Necromancers. Zaine, can you shoot that man with an arrow?”
The necromancer strode forward confidently, his lips moving as if he was intoning the words to another terrible spell, but they could not hear him over the screaming of the nearby soldiers who had escaped the initial blast.
“Zaine,” barked Rew, “shoot him!”
No arrows flew from behind, and Rew didn’t want to turn from the necromancer to look at the young thief, so he strode forward, taking advantage of the open space the man’s magic had torn through the camp.
The necromancer saw the approaching ranger. Swinging his arms like he was raising a wood axe, the necromancer brought his fists around and flung a wave of freezing air at Rew. It was the breath of death.
Rew saw it coming this time. He crossed his arms and rooted himself to the earth. Like an icy stream, the spell rushed over him, breaking on the rock of his resistance. He took another step forward, and two more men emerged from the darkness behind the first necromancer. Both of them were adorned in the same crimson robes and were already clutching trailing fistfuls of vapor.
“Blessed Mother,” snapped Rew. The second attack had not been strong, but three trained necromancers in the midst of a field of dead bodies was not something to trifle with. He glanced over his shoulder to see Zaine standing open-mouthed in shock, her bow forgotten in her grip.
Rew turned to the necromancers striding purposefully toward him. It seemed they’d seen him resist their spells. The breath of death swirled around the three of them, trailing in the wake of each spellcaster like a bridal veil.
“Cinda!” snapped Anne. “Death’s grip!”
“W-What?” stammered the noblewoman.
“These men are weak, barely trained,” cried Anne. “Use the death’s grip spell. Draw your power from what they’re holding. With necromantic high magic, the strongest caster controls the flow.”
“I-I don’t…” stammered Cinda.
“Now!” demanded Anne. “Take their power. Do not let them cast at us again!”
Rew kept trotting toward the necromancers, ignoring what was happening behind him. He’d seen the girl’s pitiful casting, and he wasn’t going to trust his life to it.
A howling wave of armed men emerged from the darkness fifty paces behind the necromancers. They were brandishing swords and axes, and they wore the ochre livery of Duke Eeron’s army. They fell upon the stunned soldiers of Baron Worgon who were cowering in fear from the necromancers.
The glamour that encapsulated the campsite fell away. The shine of the moon and the stars felt like a brilliant dawn after the unnatural darkness, but it revealed a terrible truth. Worgon’s surprised, drunken army was surrounded.
Duke Eeron’s men charged into the fray, their weapons rising and falling on the stumbling, startled soldiers of Baron Worgon. In moments, gleaming blades were coated in gore, but even Duke Eeron’s men avoided the necromancers, running wide around the three, spreading into the camp far away from those cold husbands of death.
“Death’s grip, Cinda! Now!”
The three necromancers as one drew back their hands, then they flung the breath of death at Rew. He grimaced, holding up his arms, hoping that in the chaos of the battle he could anchor himself hard enough to survive the combined blast unscathed. Anne was right; they were poorly trained, but all three of them were focused solely on Rew, and the power of departing souls flowed to them like the tide.
Seconds before the twisting tendrils of the breath of death reached him, Rew felt the strange heat of death’s flame building behind his back. He hurled himself out of the way, rolling across thawing bodies and shattered tents that had been caught in the first attack from the necromancers.
Above him, right where he’d been standing, a luminous, chartreuse tongue of fire lanced toward the necromancers, cutting through their breath of death and inc
inerating one of the hapless men in a blink. His flesh boiled and sloughed away, and before Rew could draw a startled gasp, only a skeleton stood in the place the necromancer had been.
The skeleton, animated by the power of the spell, teetered, the soul of the man bound to its old frame. The man’s soul was not properly tied, though, and Cinda clearly had no idea how to direct it, so in the space of half a dozen steps, the skeleton collapsed, just one more body lying on the field of battle.
Rew sprang to his feet, and without looking over his shoulder, he charged.
The remaining two necromancers were staring in horror at the fallen skeleton of their deceased peer, and they didn’t see Rew coming until he was on them. His longword swept in a powerful horizontal arc, taking both of the men through the neck with one blow.
As the necromancers’ severed heads thumped to the ground, Rew turned to see his companions hurrying after him, Raif carrying Cinda who appeared to have fallen into a daze. Zaine was looking around as if she’d finally decided to use her bow, but now she had no obvious targets. Anne was tight-lipped, but she wasn’t putting hands on Cinda, so Rew had to assume the girl was healthy enough they could keep moving.
Around them, the clash of battle rose. Rew shouted, “Raif, pass her to Anne. I’m going to need you.”
The big youth placed his sister’s feet on the ground and draped her arms over the empath’s shoulder. Cinda’s head lolled bonelessly, but Rew thought he heard her mumbling something, and while her knees wobbled, they didn’t buckle beneath her. Zaine took her other side, and awkwardly helped while still holding her bow. Supported by the other women, Cinda could stand.
Raif drew his greatsword and stood beside Rew. Ahead of them, the way was still open, filled with the devastation of the necromancers’ initial attack. It would not last long. Already, rampaging soldiers had spotted them, and Duke Eeron’s men were veering toward the party. Zaine fired an arrow at one of the men. It clanged off his helmet, snapping the man’s head to the side. He shook it off, cursing.
“Raif,” instructed Rew, speaking loudly over the cacophony of the battle, “you and I are going to smash a hole through their lines. We have to do enough damage to get them out of the way, and then, we keep moving. Remember, we’re not trying to win this fight. We just need to open a path we can run the party through. Zaine, watch our backs. Use your arrows to slow them down. Tell me if they’re chasing us.”
“There have to be thousands of them,” hissed the thief.
“We just have to get through this bunch,” said Rew. He turned, looking at a pack of approaching soldiers bedecked in Duke Eeron’s ochre, their swords coated in the crimson of Baron Worgon’s soldiers’ blood. “If we get into the countryside and have enough distance, I can cover our passage, but we have to get through first.”
Rew and Raif led the way, headed toward a wall of Duke Eeron’s steel. Hundreds of men were appearing out of the countryside, and Rew could hear that behind them, all around the camp, there were thousands more.
The soldiers were naturally hesitant about rushing into the site of the necromancers’ attack, which helped Rew and the others move freely, but it also made them visible in the flickering lights of the campfires and the blazes that sprang up amongst the tents as men fought and scattered flame. The clear night sky cast a cool glow that was nearly blinding after the black of the glamour. Silver and orange illuminated the chaos around them. They charged through a hellscape of frozen, broken bodies, hearts racing, breath coming in tight, panicked bursts. Ahead, a squad of the duke’s men broke off and ventured into the desolate patch Rew and the others were racing across.
“Knock them back on their heels, and I’ll clean them up,” instructed Rew.
Raif hoisted his enchanted greatsword onto his shoulder and trotted out to meet the soldiers. The boy was either too foolish to be afraid, or he was caught in a battle fervor. Whispering a prayer to the Blessed Mother, Rew hoped it was the second. They were surrounded in the midst of a battle, and their only hope was rash action. Luckily, that was Raif’s specialty.
Five of the soldiers approached, showing no caution as around them, their army raged through the unprepared forces of Baron Worgon. Their leader’s plan had worked, and the course of the battle was already clear. All that was left was completing the slaughter.
Raif didn’t know that, though, and as the soldiers came into range, he swung with all of his might. It was an awful blow and a strategy that would surely result in his demise had Rew not been standing behind him.
The tip of Raif’s enchanted greatsword cleaved through the limbs of two of the men, shattering the steel of one of their swords brought up to defend and lodging in the second man’s abdomen, crashing through the chainmail that protected him. The soldier’s eyes grew wide in shock that the blow had carried through his partner, and his senseless hands groped the steel of Raif’s greatsword. The other three soldiers had leapt back, avoiding the powerful strike and stumbling on the uneven mass of dead bodies that had fallen in the necromancers’ attack.
Rew flowed into the wake of Raif’s swing. He struck at the men before they had a chance to recover, sliding one thrust over a man’s chain hauberk into the soldier’s neck. Another, Rew whipped his longsword around and clipped the man right beneath his helmet, sending the metal cap spinning away along with a shower of blood. The third soldier began to recover, swinging his sword wildly at the ranger. Rew ducked, and when he rose, he stabbed the man in the eye.
Raif, gaining his footing after his initial wild swing, lunged at another wave of Duke Eeron’s men. The soldiers, having watched their five companions fall beneath the nobleman’s and the ranger’s blades, were not as eager to engage. They retreated, and Raif pursued, wheeling his greatsword in giant, sweeping strokes.
A soldier raised his own blade to meet the nobleman’s, and the lesser steel shattered beneath the weight of the enchanted greatsword. Cursing, the soldier backpedaled, and Raif came after him. He hauled back to chop at the man, but a second soldier stepped in and thrust at the nobleman. Raif staggered, the blow landing solidly on his ribs, but not piercing the steel breastplate he still wore from sparring with Captain Graewald.
Before the soldiers could attack again, Rew was in front of Raif, forcing the men away, giving the nobleman time to recover. Rew caught a swing on the edge of his longsword, turned it, and swiped his weapon against the hilt of his attacker’s sword, stripping it from the startled soldier’s hands.
Rew punched the man in the face, then reached out, grabbed another man by the throat, and threw him to the side. He dodged as a soldier came charging at him and kicked the man’s knee, cracking the bone.
Hundreds of paces behind them, near the command tent, a violent explosion roared, drowning out the sounds of fighting all around them. Rew felt the heat from the blast against the back of his neck. He spun. Debris and bodies flew through the air, raining around the camp like hail scattering before a sudden winter storm. Another detonation ripped the night, fifty paces to the side of the first, and men on both sides of the conflict screamed in terror, rushing away from the magical detonations.
The entire camp was turning into a massive, moving battle, as no one wanted to be near what was happening around the command tent. They kept fighting as they moved away, though, afraid to turn their backs to the high magic or to the enemy.
Knots of Baron Worgon’s men found their peers and guarded each other’s sides as they struggled to fight free. Duke Eeron’s men, holding a huge numerical advantage but no longer the advantage of surprise, smothered Worgon’s forces in some areas and were beaten back in others.
Rew led his party through the chaos. Tents and piles of supplies were burning; bodies littered the ground like branches after a tornado. Men, covered in gleaming steel, sometimes in blood, flashed in and out of the light of the fires, attacking or running.
Zaine held an arrow nocked, but she didn’t fire at anyone, having difficulty telling which side was which in the smoke and the da
rkness.
Rew and Raif tried to keep the soldiers away from their party, but some would randomly stumble close, and they would fight. Most of the time, the soldiers were happy to avoid the small group that did not seem affiliated with either side of the battle. Every dozen steps the party took, another eruption would shake the camp, and they’d hear pained screams as men’s bodies were torn apart.
Near the edge of the encampment, Rew held out his hand to stop the younglings and Anne. Thirty paces in front of them, half a dozen dark shapes darted across the ground, their chittering calls the only thing that had warned him of their approach. He called to the others, “Imps.”
The imps passed them, eagerly streaking into the battle. Rew saw them tearing through the ranks of soldiers, headed toward the command tent. Some conjurer had sent his pets to hunt for Baron Worgon, guessed Rew, and he certainly wasn’t going to stop them. The baron had to be the one responsible for the intermittent explosions. By setting them off in the heart of his camp, the man must be killing as many of his own soldiers as the enemy’s. The baron, drunk on wine and fear, was lashing out wildly, not caring what devastation he caused.
“There!” said Rew, pointing in the direction the imps had come. The creatures, with their talons and teeth, had frightened Duke Eeron’s men out of their way, and there was still a clear path where Rew and the others could sneak through the lines.
Rew shoved a soldier aside then had to pause and bury his longsword in the man’s guts when the soldier tried to fight back. Yanking his blade free, Rew stepped over the body and kept them moving. Near the edge of the fight, far enough away from the explosions that men weren’t running in terror and close enough to freedom that Rew could smell the clean air, they were surrounded by half a dozen of Duke Eeron’s soldiers.
Zaine released her arrow, and miraculously, the steel tip punched into a soldier’s throat. He fell to his knees, and Rew nudged Raif forward to knock a hole in the ring of men where the one had collapsed.