by Hal Emerson
“Dismissed.”
“Sir!” he said, and left.
“We have to get him,” said a voice behind him.
Autmaran turned and saw Leah. She had made it through the gate with Davydd, and now that her brother was on his way through the relative safety of the Banelyn streets, she had returned in time to overhear the report. Autmaran scanned her quickly for injury, and saw the usual signs of battle, including a number of superficial but painful-looking knife cuts, but no debilitating wounds: the little armor that she wore seemed to have kept her mostly intact. He was about to dismiss her, but he noticed something strange: a long, wrapped bundle strapped along her back. It was in the shape of a sword, and, if the wrappings were any indication, it was made of Valerium. He knew it wasn’t hers: Leah hated swords.
But he dismissed the thought as unimportant. It wouldn’t be the first time someone picked up a new weapon in the middle of battle.
“We don’t know if the report is accurate,” he said, turning and moving back along the way he’d come, scanning the crowd; he saw the way his men were moving, and knew the formations without having to ask the lower officers. He’d been a military man for a long time now – there were things he just understood. Everything was in order.
Until the Imperial army comes rushing through that gate.
“And even if the report is true,” he continued, “there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s one man fighting in a field of soldiers – there are thousands of men out there, and the Imperials outnumber us five to one.”
“We must find him!”
The vehemence in her voice gave him pause. This wasn’t like her: she spoke her mind openly and freely, but she was even more pragmatic than he was. This wasn’t some idealistic under-officer who wanted to bring back all his men; this was Leah Goldwyn, the daughter of one of the most brilliant military minds of his generation, and a budding figure of legend in her own right.
He caught a glimmer of something that distracted him, a flash of sapphire light that came from the base of her wrist before she twisted her sleeve to cover it. He looked up and caught her gaze, and she knew he’d seen it. Those were Talisman markings; he’d bet his life on it.
The Wolf is outside and we killed the Fox … but this was the Eagle’s plan all along. Shadows and fire, whatever happened to Davydd must have happened to her.
“What do you know?” he asked, dispensing with unneeded questions.
“That we need to find Raven.”
“Why?”
“Because he needs his sword.”
Autmaran paused and came to understand the bundle on her back.
“You have Aemon’s Blade.”
“Yes.”
“You think he needs it – why? It’s just a sword.”
“No – it’s not. And he needs it.”
“Why?”
“Because he does!”
A rumbling roar started, just at the edge of hearing, and Autmaran turned to see the Imperial force coalescing before the gate. The last of the Kindred were inside, formed up along the edges of the square and ready to receive the invaders, who would arrive in minutes. The Commander ran to his waiting horse, Alto, and mounted in one swift move. He gestured for Leah to follow, and kicked his heels into Alto’s sides, retreating behind the front lines of his army as they finished forming up in position.
Not my army, but my soldiers, at least.
He was the only senior officer on the front line – no one had heard from the Generals in hours, and from what the soldiers had said, they’d been giving confused orders for most of the night, responding too slowly to events that were already spiraling out of control.
He reined in the horse when he’d reached the back ranks where the reserves of light infantry had formed up along the city’s central street, and saw Leah had followed him. She looked ready to speak again, but he cut her off.
“Look,” he said, “he’s either dead, or he’s coming through that gate. Either way, we need you here.”
She snarled at him and spun away.
Damn it – if she tries to break through now, there’s nothing I can do.
Autmaran felt one of his jaw muscles spasm as he tried to hold back his anger. He swung his gaze around the area inside the Wall, and knew they would at least be able to put up a fight. The houses nearby had been torn and gutted – the walls of the lowest levels had been blown out by some huge force, and scraps of plaster and brick lay everywhere, covered in a thick layer of mud formed by blood, rain, and the ash of the burned Outer City. Furniture, doors, carts, and even dead horses had been pilled up at each of the entrances to the streets leading away from the gate, and the Kindred had formed up behind them, where Autmaran had told them to wait. Where he now stood was about to become a killing field, like some unholy altar where the Imperials would come to die. It was all they could do now, and Autmaran knew it. They’d have a chance behind the barricades, but it was by no means certain. It was all he could do, though. His men and women were in place; the city was as well defended as it could be.
Horns sounded, and Dysuna’s army attacked.
Autmaran pulled back as arrows shot through the open gate, heeling Alto behind the nearest building. He clamped down on his emotions with an iron fist and forced the rising gall inside him back down his throat. He burned his fear within him, using it as fuel, and when he turned back to the Exiled soldiers he was once more the Commander, in control.
“Hold the line!” Autmaran shouted, trying to instill courage in the men before him. He couldn’t let them break – if they lost this ground, that was the end. He looked up and saw the archers on the Wall, now joined by members of the Scouts, raining arrows down on anything that moved outside the Wall, but it clearly wasn’t enough. Imperials had begun to march beneath the large gate as arrows continued to whiz past them overhead; the men in front were heavy infantry, and they had formed into a tortoise formation, with shields locked both over their heads and in front of their bodies.
“Hold!” Autmaran continued to shout, heeling Alto from barricade to barricade, passing between them via the torn-down walls of aristocratic homes. “Wait for them to engage! Stay behind the barricades and make them pay in blood for every inch they wish to take!”
The Imperial soldiers marched on in their tan and gray armor, looking like a moving tide of nightmare shadows. Autmaran reached the far end of the line and saw there the hulking form of Tomaz wedging half a broken cart further into the barricade. The giant spotted him as well, and gave a final heave before turning to go to Autmaran. His armor, what was left of it, was in tatters. Whole patches of his leather jerkin had been torn off, and bare skin showed in a number of places, glowing with a strange ruddy light that made him look bathed in blood.
“Where is Leah – did she make it back through the gate?”
“Yes,” Autmaran said, his words clipped and terse, “but she won’t stop looking for Raven. She’s seen something – and I don’t know what the Talisman has done to her.”
Tomaz went pale beneath his black beard, and his beady black eyes, already hard as stone, turned cold as well, like chips of ice.
“Where is she?”
“The other end of the line.”
“I have to go to her.”
“We need you here.”
“She is my Eshendai.”
Autmaran hesitated for only a fraction of a second before he nodded, and moved on. Tomaz would do what he could for her – and the two of them together were worth at least twenty men in battle. If anyone could help her, and maybe hold her back, it was he.
The giant gone, Autmaran leapt off Alto, spurring the horse back down the street toward the gate to the Inner City, knowing she’d only get in the way now. He hoped he’d see her again. He moved back along the side of the nearest building and knelt behind the barricade, unsheathing his sword, and taking his place on the line among a number of Rangers and Rogues, the special forces of the Kindred army. They nodded to him, their faces grim, and
he looked over the top of the makeshift fortifications.
The Imperials were barely twenty yards away now. A good number of them had fallen to the hail of arrows shot from the Wall, but not nearly enough. Wave after wave of them inched through the broken Formaux gate, and there was no extra force left to come and help the Kindred now. They were all here – even the men and women liberated from Formaux and the legion of men from Roarke under the command of the former Imperial Stannit. There was no one left to come.
So we stand here until they cut us down. They gain not another inch.
“Stand fast!” he shouted suddenly to the thousand or so men behind this stretch of barricade. “If we die today, we die as heroes! Every solider here who fights with me has earned the name of Exile, and we will make the Empire remember us long after we are gone!”
Heat bloomed in the eyes of the Rangers and Rogues around him; arms shifted on weapons, jaws clenched, and lips curled into hateful expressions of contempt and anger.
“Follow me when I say the word,” Autmaran continued. “We will be the first to engage when they reach the barricades.”
They nodded, and waited.
The Commander turned and inched his head the barest fraction over the top edge of the cart in front of him, the wood scratching his bare left cheek.
He caught sight of the approaching army, and was surprised his heart didn’t lurch into his throat. He supposed it didn’t matter much – he’d already made his peace with what he had to do. The Kindred forces had a minute left, tops, before the Imperial army was upon them. Autmaran shifted his gaze to the other barricades – five in all: two for the side streets along the wall, one for the main street, and two for the streets that led off the square at the corners. A large form caught his eye at the barricade where he had started – it was Tomaz, settling into position with the smaller form of Leah beside him.
A small feeling of relief came to him, knowing that both of them had joined the fight. They were iconic figures – the Kindred would take heart just seeing them on the battlefield.
Autmaran shifted back, and took a final deep breath. He soaked in the feeling of his lungs breathing free, and even though the air was choked with ash and smog, he reveled in that last, frozen moment of time. If he died, he’d do it admiring every last breath, with a smile on his lips.
The way Goldwyn had.
I will see him when I wake.
“ATTAAAAAAAACK!”
Autmaran surged into motion, unsheathing his sword and mounting the barricade. The Rangers and Rogues around him rose up as well, shouting wordlessly; the Kindred at the other barricades took up the cry; the Imperials broke rank and came to meet them; the archers on the Wall continued to rain down a blanketing hail of death.
The battle was joined across the courtyard, and no one was spared.
It was the hottest fighting Autmaran had ever seen. Standing in the sludge of ash and blood, trying to see through the falling rain, cutting right and left with his sword, he barely knew where he was. It was almost cleansing, as if his identity had been pulled out of him. He felt alien in this sea of writhing humanity, inhuman amongst the snarling, bestial faces of his fellow men and women. His sword rose and fell over and over with the regular beat of a metronome, lancing through the night to strike at any who stood before him. Bodies fell on all sides as lightning ripped the sky above them, opening up the clouds and unleashing another downpour, this time so torrential it was as though nature, looking on, sought to drown them all for what they did. Autmaran’s sword continued to rise and fall, and the blood of the slain polluted the falling water even as it tried to wash them clean.
The forces were matched, at first. The Imperials were bottlenecked, and their force had been thinned by the Kindred surprise attack. But as more of the heavy infantrymen, clad in the tan and gray of Tibour Province, pressed their way forward, the Kindred couldn’t help but fall back under the weight. Soon they were fighting atop the barricades, and then at the foot of them. The Imperials marched forward relentlessly, and the battle was about to flow into the very streets of Banelyn.
But something changed.
The implacable tide of men, the steady, stoic movement of the Empire’s army, faltered. It was no more than a slight ripple at first, and Autmaran thought the impression came from his own fatigue, his own exhaustion from being awake for two full days and nights. His vision had begun to fade to a haze at the edges, and reality seemed more and more like a dream to him. But the movement shifted again. The formation of the Imperial army began to jerk and shift, somehow out of control. Voices rose in unison somewhere far in the distance, far from the Kindred barricades. Thunder rolled through the sky, wiping the noise away, but when the rumbling died the sound was louder. Autmaran and the Rangers alongside him attacked the Imperials before them, and when they fell no new men replaced them. The Commander signaled the Exiled men and women to come forward, and they easily regained the ground they’d lost. They met the Imperials at the base of the barricade, and two more men fell beneath his blade, clearing his way. He reached the height of the barricade, now a ruined mass of rain-soaked splinters. Despite its sorry state, it gave him the height he needed to see through the rain, through the thick, black night; something was forming at the back of the Imperial ranks, something that made no sense.
The cries of panic mounted, rising one atop the other until a cacophonous insanity gripped the entire army. The men closest to the Wall were pushing away from it, running, fleeing, from something behind them. Autmaran imagined he could smell the terror in the air; the emotion was so palpable it should have had the strength to gain corporeal form.
“What’s happening?” croaked one of the Rangers at his elbow, she too looking out at the distant motion with wide eyes.
Autmaran opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Leah … is this what she saw?
Lightning ripped through the sky, striking a metal flagpole atop the Black Wall, and the flash of light revealed a single figure in black, buried in a sea of gray and tan. The other Kindred at the barricades struck down the panicked Imperials before them, but then faltered as the men stopped coming. The enemy ranks had turned around now, and they were facing the threat that had come at them from the Wall, through the open gate.
Lightning flashed again, and Autmaran caught sight of the figure once more. His heart began to beat too quickly – what he had seen wasn’t a man. It couldn’t be. Had the Bloodmages created a new Daemon? A Daemon that had turned on the Imperial army?
Once more, lightning, and this time the clap of thunder that came behind was echoed by a groaning, beastly roar from the distant figure. Autmaran didn’t know what was happening, but he was a man of instinct and intuition: something was wrong. He didn’t know what, and he didn’t know how, but something had gone very, very wrong.
The Kindred on the barricades were forming up for an advance – they were readying to attack the confused Imperial force.
“No!” Autmaran called, motioning to them. His voice came out in a harsh creak, like an old, ill-used door hinge. He cleared his throat, and spoke again:
“NO!”
The single word cracked out of his mouth like a whip, and the captains getting ready to lead the charge backed down as they saw him standing atop the central barricade with arms raised, his tattered red cloak flapping behind him. He turned to the Ranger at his elbow, a young woman he thought was named Yehana.
“Send word to the Kindred,” he said quickly, “we hold our ground. No one moves past the barricades – we don’t know what this is.”
The woman nodded, shared the message with three others, and then all four were off and running. Autmaran turned his attention to the man on his right, an Eshendai Rogue, dark skinned with a thin face.
“Find a way to get us more light,” he said. “I don’t care how you do it – build up the braziers on the Wall, light more torches, burn a building, whatever – we need to see what’s happening. Go now.”
The
man nodded, and left.
Autmaran turned back to the scene before him, trying to peer through the darkness that cloaked the swirling shapes. What was out there? What was happening? The shouts were louder, and there was a terrible sound coming from the center of the square, a sound of ripping and tearing that accompanied the clash of steel on steel. The closer Autmaran looked, the deeper the darkness at the center of the group seemed to be. Whatever was doing this was there in the middle. Autmaran peered closer, drawn in with a mixture of fascination and horror, and could just make out movement through the pouring rain: long limbs, black and glistening, swinging back and forth. Were there two things there? Surely no Daemon could –
“Autmaran!”
He turned and saw Leah coming toward him, flanked by Tomaz.
“You have to pull the Kindred back,” she said quickly, her green eyes boring into him, even through the darkness. “They can’t help – it needs to be us, and us alone.”
“What the hell are you talking about? We’re in the middle of a battle – if we withdraw now, then there’s no chance –”
“The battle is over,” rumbled giant Tomaz. His eyes were bloodshot, and his beard crusted with blood. “We have won – but our job isn’t finished.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know who that is,” Leah said, gesturing frantically to the distant fighting. “You know who is at the center of that.”
“Who…?”
In a flash, it all came together. He spun and looked out again.
No … no, that can’t be him. Please, don’t let it be him.
“You!” he shouted, pointing to another soldier nearby. “Send word – we gather here for a final attack; the Prince of the Veil is in the center of that force, we need to retrieve –”
Lightning struck the metal flagpole once again, and this time, through the thinning crowd of soldiers, Autmaran saw the figure clearly. Horror gripped him, and he faltered, taking a step back.