The Prince of the Veil

by Hal Emerson

  “As your Prince,” Raven said, using the same voice as Autmaran, “I ride at the Commander’s side. I ride to depose the Empress – and I will stop only when I can no longer raise my limbs to fight. And so do we all –” taking their cue, Tomaz, Leah, and the others rode forward, reaching through their own Aspects and adding further to the blossoming light – “until no drop of blood is left in our bodies. We will fight, and even if we die, we will make the Empire remember us!”

  “Who will join us?” Autmaran cried out. “Who will blaze through this waiting army and make their way to the gates themselves?”

  The army roared again, men and women shouting over each other their affirmations that they would follow even if it meant their deaths. Hands gripped swords, spears, and shields with renewed determination, and everyone from the lowliest Commoner to the best-trained Rogue had fire in their eyes.

  Raven turned to face the Imperial army that was nearly upon them. He raised Aemon’s Blade, and glanced over at Autmaran. The man nodded, his expression fierce.

  Raven spurred Melyngale forward, and charged down the mountain.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Lucien

  The Kindred fell over the mountain ridge in a crashing wave. Seven glowing figures, one of which bore a Crown that shone like the sun in the dark of night, were the first to ride out, and the rest followed on their heels. The Imperial army, heretofore undefeated and certain of victory, faltered in mid-stride. The wave crashed down on them, and in seconds the booming roar of a giant’s voice and the thunderous howls of multiple thousand desperate Exiles split them down the center, rending the first dozen ranks asunder and leaving them dead or dying upon the mountainside.

  The Kindred passed through line after line, sending ripples out before them. Raven and Autmaran were shouting Commands at the top of their voices, forcing men to throw themselves out of their way. The Visigony sought to give chase or at least engage them, but as soon as the first bulk of the Kindred army was past, the Elders rode forth and cried out to them with ancient words, forcing them to fight those whose strength matched their own.

  Raven caught only flashes of memory as he rode down the mountainside, his mind open and soaring in a thousand directions with the power of the Crown upon his head. He remembered cutting down one of the Visigony with nothing but the words rolling from his mouth, simply Commanding the Daemon beneath it to dissipate while Elder Spader drew the attention of the man-machine riding it. In an explosion of energy, the beast disintegrated, leveling the Imperial soldiers around it and clearing more of a path for the Kindred to charge through. He remembered catching an arrow shot at him in his bare hand, his gauntlets having burst and split from the power of the Aspect beneath pouring out gray light. He remembered grabbing a spear from a fallen Imperial and brandishing it above his head, before throwing it at another of the Visigony with such power and speed that it passed through the thing’s chest, spewing out flashing gears and twisted metal.

  The enemy in front of them began to run, turning and fleeing before them in a rout, as Raven, his companions, and the Kindred attacked with the vicious resolve born of a thousand years of hatred and oppression. Nothing could stand before the charge, and when the Imperials split and fled, running sideways off the trail into the mountain forest, the path across the Plains was clear and the race was on.

  Raven and Melyngale hit the ground at the base of the Elmist Mountains and shot across the Plains. The Kindred raced behind them, following they steered around hidden chasms and unexpected dips, racing toward the dark city of Lucien as the clouds above them roiled and jostled one another for position.

  Horns sounded behind them, Imperial horns that brayed out the call to reform and pursue, and Raven bent low over Melyngale’s neck, praying for speed. Dark thoughts ran through his mind, coming from the Crown, but he tightened his grip on his the Blade, and silenced them.

  The city of Lucien rose before them as they raced through the night, and Raven felt his breath catch in his chest.

  He had come home at last.

  It was as if he’d never lived here, and also as though he’d never left. He felt like two men in one body, the way he did when he absorbed a life. But this time it was his own memories, coming back to him over the long span of years, that had split his mind in two. He remembered his first procession through the city streets, his coronation, and above all looking out from the Fortress over the Plains toward the mountains he’d just left, wishing to see the world.

  The city was a vision, something taken from the landscape of a dream. A single road connected it all, starting to the east, and curling inward one level at a time in a long, graceful loop. That road was bisected by two long, straight boulevards that ran east to west and north to south, two straight melody lines to give it form, marking the foundation of the city as both austere and indulgent, curved and straight.

  The city built and surged as the spiral continued inward, a masterpiece symphony rushing toward its higher forms as the painted wood structures and simple black shingles of the Commons quarters gave way in fits and starts to sleek, plastered walls with tiled roofs and lavish balconies. Still further in, the structures began to rise still higher, soaring fifty, one hundred, even two hundred feet into the sky. Wide paths and archways spanned the distance between them, layering one upon the other, huge suspended walkways that linked the houses of the Most High so that their feet would never have to touch the sullied ground the Commons dared to tread.

  And then the towering crescendo, the climax of the entire Empire’s ingenuity and might, the Fortress of the Empress itself, piercing the sky and clouds like a tower built to reach the heavens. Made of seven inter-locking spires, the Fortress stood as the ultimate bastion of Imperial might, and anyone who had stood in its shadow knew what it was to be an insect beneath the boot of a giant. All who looked upon it trembled, and knew the Empress to be a god.

  Raven tore his eyes away from the city and dared to glance behind him. The Kindred army was racing across the Plains in his wake, the cavalry flanking the infantry and lending help where possible. Already they had begun to split into their assigned groups, with captains shouting orders. When they hit the gates, they would be ready for the three-pronged assault.

  Raven reached out farther, going past the Exiles, seeking out the twisted lives of the Visigony. He couldn’t find them at first, but instead only succeeded in feeling the Imperial army, already regrouping with its eyes on the Kindred. Raven kept going, drawing on Leah’s Aspect through the Crown to give him farther sight.

  There – three of them left, and coming hard toward them.

  The Elders narrowed down their numbers at least.

  He tried not to think about how many died performing that task. Who? Crane? Ishmael? Ceres, Pan, Stanton? Raven blocked out such thoughts and glanced at his companions as they rode beside him: they too were taking in the city, and he saw fear cross more than one face, followed by the realization that this might be the last time they were ever in each other’s company.

  They’re looking at the greatest city ever built. Until now, I doubt any of them besides Tomaz really knew what they were up against, even when they fought the Children.

  “GO!” shouted Autmaran.

  He waved at Lorna and Davydd, Tomaz and Leah, and the two groups peeled off, followed by their separate forces, as the army split into three. Raven caught Leah’s gaze one last time as she spurred her horse away, and he felt a sick sense of dread settle into the pit of his stomach. She disappeared from his sight and he turned back to face the city. The heavy cavalry rushed on like an avalanche toward the distant gates, the infantry running behind them as quickly as they could, trying to catch up.

  We will hit the gate, and it will be up to them to secure it.

  As if on cue, whatever skeleton crew of guards had been left began to heave the wide oaken doors closed, inch by inch, racing against the speed of the Kindred horses, taken completely unawares by the attack.

  “We’re not going to make
it!” Raven shouted. “The gate is closing too fast!”

  “We’ll make it!” Autmaran shouted back. “Stay on my heel!”

  He spurred his horse’s sides once more, this time drawing blood, and Raven followed suit, the two of them riding neck and neck. They were within five hundred yards of the main gate, and had just merged back onto the long Imperial road that had led them here all the way from Banelyn, and, before that, all the way from Vale itself.

  “We can’t make that!” Raven shouted as their horses’ hooves rang out against the paving stones, adding to the already ear-shattering din.

  “Yes, we can!” Autmaran shouted back.

  Raven shot another glance to his left, then to his right. Both other parts of the army had disappeared around the edges of the city’s outer wall.

  “The gate!” shouted Tym.

  Raven looked forward and saw the metal grill of the portcullis was being lowered into place, just as the heavy wooden doors, so large they required twenty men to move, were being maneuvered into place.

  “Five Rogue pairs – on me!” Autmaran called.

  The soldiers behind them shifted, and Polim and Palum came forward with eight others as Tym fell back. They pulled ahead, sprinting alone as they formed into a single column that could ride into the city through the narrowest of margins.

  “Shadows and light, shadows and light, shadows and liiiiiight!”

  Autmaran, Raven, and ten Rogues shot through the opening just as the gate crashed down into place.

  “Open the gate, and do not die!” Autmaran shouted to them, the white mane of the Command Aspect glowing around him. The Rogues set to work at once, and Raven watched in awe as they cut down the dozen guards in seconds, moving with perfect precision, inspired to deeds of surpassing heroism by Autmaran’s Command.

  Polim was the first to reach the gatehouse, and he and Palum cleared it. The gate reversed, and the other Rogues held their weapons to the throats of the gathered slaves – slaves, Raven thought, sickened by the collars and bare torsos that showed fresh whip lashings atop long-healed scars, how long has it been since I’ve seen slaves? – until they reversed the course of the enormous gates.

  Alarm bells were ringing throughout the city, and already a panic had begun to spread. Raven reached out with his mind through the Talisman, the effect of it amplified by the Crown, and felt the Visigony and the remaining Imperial Army coming for them from the Elmist Mountains, halfway across the Plains. He cast his mind the other way, into the city, and found the mental signature of thousands of Fortress Guardians spreading out in waves from the lower levels of the Fortress, taking to the streets with the bare few hundred common foot soldiers left in the barracks.

  Shadows and light, the others need to take care of those Guardians or Autmaran will be caught in a vise.

  The gate opened behind him, and the Kindred army poured in, the heavy cavalry pounding down the streets in carefully controlled squadrons, soon followed by those of the light infantry and archer divisions that had caught up, many gasping for breath even as they mounted and manned the walls and gate.

  “Raven!” Autmaran called. “You have a job to do.”

  Raven clenched his jaw and nodded. He pulled back on Melyngale’s reins, and the Crown of Aspects glowed brightly atop his head as he drew on all seven Aspects.

  The Kindred watched him, and he reared Melyngale up and back.

  “Buy me time,” he said, his voice amplified by Command, “and I will buy you freedom.”

  Cheers and shouts from already ragged throats swept him onward as he spun and shot down the Imperial Road that led from the gate in a spiral toward the Fortress. He turned up a side street, taking the first in a series of shortcuts he’d learned as a boy that would take him directly to the Fortress. The Kindred continued cheering as he rode out of sight, but he did not share their enthusiasm.

  This homecoming did not look to be a pleasant one.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Lucky Scoundrel

  Davydd glanced over to his right just as the walls of Lucien blocked the charging column of Autmaran’s force from view.

  He looked back at the section of wall in front of his own force, just in time to see the portcullis slam down before them, and the two enormous halves of the wooden entrance door swing shut. He reached out through the Aspect of Luck and golden lines flashed across his vision, pulling him, pushing him … upwards.

  “UP AND OVER, FRIENDS!”

  The soldiers behind him, a good number of them Rogues and Rangers, immediately started to shift position, following his shouted command. He and Lorna continued to lead; Rogues pulled up alongside them to both their left and right, pulling corded ropes with attached collapsible grappling hooks from their packs.

  Arrows started to rain down on them – but much less than Davydd had expected. He unconsciously spurred his horse to the left, and half a dozen arrows feathered the ground beneath his horse’s hooves instead of the side of his body. He looked up and saw the gate was in a shallow alcove created by the wall, with two large watchtowers at either end that were slightly sloped in ornamental fashion.

  Davydd looked to his right back across the Plains and saw none of the remaining Daemons had followed them – they were headed straight for the main gate, the one that was the most easily attacked. It made sense – they had to know that they only needed to regain one gate in order to surround and crush the Kindred.

  He dove off his horse and threw the reins to an infantry soldier who had hitched a ride with one of the Rangers. The man caught them as he tried to catch his breath, the green and silver of his armor covered in dust and mud from their mad dash across the Plains.

  “Lorna!” Davydd called, looking for his Ashandel.

  “What?” she snapped at him, her voice already coming from the direction of the wall. He spun toward the sound and saw she had rushed forward with the other Exiled Rogues and was literally shielding them with her body, catching arrows with any part of her that could be interposed, be it flesh, armor, or bone.

  “You’re crazy, woman!” Davydd roared as he rushed forward, pulling a spare shield away from the same infantry man who now held his horse’s reins. The man gave a half-hearted shout of indignation and then let it go as he dove out of the way of more arrows. Davydd ran forward and interposed himself between Lorna and the wall, but she pushed him out of the way even as she ripped arrows out of her skin and threw them to the ground.

  “We need to buy them time!” she rasped at him, the shouting only making the rough quality of her voice more pronounced.

  “What, by making yourself the stupidest Ashandel to ever imitate a pincushion?! You can still die!”

  “Says the idiot who rushed out to fight the Lion himself?!”

  A brace of arrows thunked into both his shield and Lorna’s breastplate.

  “Dammit, you harebrained warrior diva! Cover yourself!”

  “Watch who you’re calling names you half-cooked ass!”

  He roared out a laugh, and kept laughing even as a guard looked over the side of the wall and spotted them. In one smooth motion, Davydd unsheathed and threw Titania. The white blade caught the man in the chest and killed him instantly. Two of his fellow guardsmen caught him and pulled him back, twisting the blade inside his body.

  The Aspect of Luck told him to pull the blade, so he did.

  Stuck as it was, the sword remained trapped in the guardsman’s body, and Davydd was ripped away from Lorna’s side and pulled upward toward the lip of the wall with shocking speed while the guardsman’s companions cried out in confusion as the body in their arms tried to pull away from them. They grabbed hold of their companion with all their might, stubbornly refusing to let his body go, which caused Davydd to shoot over the lip of the wall and collide with them like a bowling ball smacking a cluster of pins. As one, they slammed into the rocky battlements, the dead man’s body still holding Titania captive.

  Davydd managed to recover first, staggering back to standing, and smashed his
booted foot into the face of the nearest guardsmen. He felt his heel connect with bone, and saw the man’s head slam into the walkway and stop moving. Davydd had lost his borrowed shield sometime during the startling ascent, so he switched to offense and unsheathed the dagger he wore at his belt. He dove for the final guardsman and opened the artery in his neck before he could free himself from the dead weight of his companion’s body.

  Well, that’s one way to climb a wall.

  With a grunt of effort, he pulled his sword from the body in which it was lodged, and looked back over the lip of the wall. Lorna was staring up at where he’d disappeared with a look of horror on her face as if she’d just seen the city itself eat him whole. He felt an insane urge to laugh, but held back.

  “Lorna!” he shouted. “Catch!”

  With a heavy swing, he threw Titania over the wall, straight for her. She jumped back out of the way, and it sank into the ground.

  “Idiot woman, I said to catch it! Are you deaf as well as dumb?!”

  She screamed something back at him that included the words “– you threw a goddamn sword at me you miserable son of a – ”, but Davydd wasn’t able to catch it all. His presence had been noticed and five guardsmen were closing in on him in the uniform of Defenders, the common Imperial foot soldiers.

  Seriously? They’re being invaded by the whole damn Kindred nation and they put these idiots on the walls?

  Golden lines splintered his vision, and he knew what he had to do.

  I sure as hell hope she picked up the blade.

  He hooked a toe under a fallen sword and kicked it up into his hand just in time to parry the first Defender’s blade. He drove right into the center of the others, and when they shouted in surprise and cleared away, he ran through the watchtower door and forced it shut despite effort from the other side to keep it open. He crashed the bar down and into place, effectively barricading the door, and pulled on Titania.