The Prince of the Veil
Page 43
Immediately, he found himself slammed against the door, and his lungs squeezed as though a giant the size of Tomaz was sitting on his chest.
Shadows and light, don’t let me pass out before she gets here!
Shouts were ringing from outside, and he heard and felt pounding on the door. One of the bolts holding it in the frame popped up like a startled gopher. Stars began to wink at the edges of Davydd’s vision as his heart beat in an awkward sideways manner that was exceedingly painful.
And then the pressure was gone, and Davydd heard, even through the thick oak of the door, a huge crash that sounded like metal smashing against stone. He stepped away from the door and grabbed the bar, still trying to clear his head and take a full breath, when the full length of Titania’s blade sliced through the door right at his head.
He fell backward, not even trying to dodge, simply shocked, and just barely managed to avoid getting spitted on the end of his own blade. Shaking, he made it to his feet, threw back the bar, and opened the door.
Lorna was hanging over the side of the wall where she’d ended up after Titania had shot over the edge, just clearing it.
Good thing she let go, she might have lost her friggin’ hands.
The five Defenders had dove for cover as Titania came shooting past them, and were still on the ground trying to figure out what the hell was happening when Davydd emerged.
“Hello, boys,” he said with a grin, feeling the gold veins pulse along the burnt half of his face. He reached up, grabbed Titania’s hilt, and pulled with both his arm and his mind. The sword came free just as Lorna pulled herself over the edge of the wall and unlimbered her axe, and the Ranger pair set to work.
Within seconds, the Defenders were down for good.
“Clever trick, right?” Davydd gasped, still trying to regain his breath.
“I’m not talking to you,” Lorna growled back.
Davydd laughed and took off running as fast as he could toward the gate house itself. The Rogues on the ground had managed to make their way up the far side of the wall by the opposite watchtower, and they were attacking the Defenders on that side. A handful of archers along the top of the wall saw Davydd and Lorna approaching and shot at them. Two found their mark, piercing Lorna’s arm and bare foot, but with a quick twist the arrows were out, and the wounds were healing. Davydd embraced the Luck Aspect as fully as he could, letting it direct his movements as arrows darted past him, hissing like snakes through the cool night air, and then he was among the archers, cutting left and right, the heavy weight of Titania swinging over and over.
Under the weight of two fighters bearing Aspects, the archers quickly folded and fled, retreating through the gatehouse, where Lorna and Davydd promptly followed them. There were Defenders inside, but in the tight quarters their numbers didn’t matter, and Davydd and Lorna cut them down quickly.
“Go down!” Davydd called to Lorna as they dispatched the final man.
“We need to help the others!” she called back.
Gold lines danced across his vision, and Davydd shook his head viciously.
“Go down!”
She grimaced, but complied, and went for the nearest set of stairs, a winding staircase that was all in a steep, single column. They burst through the wooden door, and found themselves on the ground at the mouth of the first road leading into the city. They were in a Commons area, and though many of the buildings seemed haphazard and shaky, the streets had obviously been kept clear and clean.
To their left was the gate itself, and a small alcove in which the winch that controlled the metal portcullis was situated. There were scores of thin chains lying nearby, and each was attached to the wrists or neck of a dead slave. There were nearly a dozen of them, and each had died in pain. They lay in the alcove, their sides and necks opened with hasty cuts that left red gashes smiling up at the clouded sky, their life drooling out around them.
Davydd bit back the wave of hatred that threatened to overtake him, and cooled his anger, turning it into a hardened spear. He embraced his Luck, letting it control him completely, his only desire to wreak as much havoc as he could. He turned to the right-hand section of the wall, moving parallel to it from down below until he was directly in line with the Kindred and the Defenders fighting furiously up above. There was no smaller wall or balustrade protecting the Imperials from this side, and a cadre of bowmen could have picked them off like prize turkeys even from forty paces further back.
Titania.
“Open the gate,” Davydd said quickly to Lorna, only pausing long enough to see her turn and go for the winch. He widened his stance, threw his weight forward, and launched Titania up toward the wall, where she sunk into the side of one of the Defenders, killing him instantly. As one, the two men flanking him looked down, saw Davydd, and started scrambling back for the gatehouse. Davydd pulled the sword back, and then threw it once again, killing a second man highlighted by the golden lines, this time at the front of the line. This man fell too, and startled the others behind him so badly they stopped in place, shocked, and allowed the Kindred to surge forward. Davydd pulled again, just as he heard the sound of the portcullis winch winding the chain back up.
He glanced over and saw Lorna furiously attacking the winch, throwing her entire weight into it, the metal digging bloody gashes into her skin as she tried to perform alone a task that took a dozen slaves. She teetered just on the edge of raising the metal grating, but no matter how hard she tried her strength was not enough. Davydd pulled Titania back to him, reversed the sword so he was holding the blade itself, and threw it backwards, pushing it with his mind. The sword barely cleared her shoulder, but it did, and a heavy thunk sounded as the pommel struck the arm of the handle and gave Lorna the last bit of force she needed to set the chains in motion.
Davydd pulled back on the sword, and caught it in his right hand, looking back up to the top of the wall. The Kindred there had finished what Davydd had started, and already they were chasing the remaining guardsmen through the gatehouse. Davydd went back inside to meet them, rushing up the stairs and killing the Defenders who weren’t taken down from behind by the agile Rogues.
“Where are the others?” he managed to get out as he sucked down huge choking breaths. Only about half of the Kindred he’d seen on the top of the wall had come into the gatehouse.
“They dropped down the inside of the wall,” said Tagel, a woman with brunette hair cut so short she was often mistaken for a man. “They went to help Lorna with the gate.”
A ragged cheer came from outside, and the sound of heavy wood scraping against stone. Davydd and Tagel both grinned at the same time, and dashed to the door. The gate was breeched – they were through.
“We’ve taken the gate,” gasped Timon, one of the Rogues, as he ran up to Davydd holding the reins of his horse, “should we bar it from the inside?”
“No,” Davydd said as he watched his third of the Kindred army pour in, wave after wave flooding into the city. The infantry had all caught up now, and it looked like the Scouts that had been charged with securing their flanks and rear had come in as well. There was no sign of a following force.
The Imperials are all attacking that main gate … shadows and fire, Autmaran is going to have one hell of a time.
“No,” he repeated, “pull all of the Kindred off the wall – the gate is nothing; the city is everything.”
“Sir … you just want to leave it unguarded?”
“No,” Davydd said with a leering grin that shone both red and gold.
“Then what should we do?”
“We destroy it, and make it impossible to re-take.”
He looked to Lorna, who was already standing tall again as her wounds healed. The final wave of Kindred passed through and Davydd grinned at her. She nodded; he could always count on her to know his mind, almost before he knew it himself. Hefting her axe, she strode to the chain that held the metal grating of the gate high above, and with one huge swing the Valerium metal snapped one of
the metal links, and the portcullis came crashing down.
“Bar the doors,” Davydd said.
He turned, wheeling Aron around to face the city of Lucien.
Time to bring a little light to the city of shadow.
“Burn it, and follow me.”
They lit torches immediately, and threw them against the doors with what was left of the oil from the gatehouse lamps. The slicked wood caught quickly, and soon the blaze was fierce, so hot that the iron bars of the portcullis and the wrappings that reinforced the doors began to warp, flow, and meld. No one was getting that gate open again now.
The clouds above them suddenly darkened, and they all looked upward. Strange … they looked to be coiling in around the Fortress, as if something was calling them. Davydd pushed the thought from his mind and spurred Aron forward, as the wood of the city gate burned behind them.
Stop the ritual – that’s our task.
He didn’t know how to navigate this city, but he didn’t really care. His objective was to get to the Fortress and find the cavern beneath it. He didn’t know how he’d manage to do it, but that didn’t really matter either. With over a thousand Kindred at his back and Lorna by his side, there was nothing he couldn’t do.
His luck surged within him, and he grinned.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Innocence Lost
“Commander!” shouted a voice in his ear, bellowing over the cacophony.
Autmaran turned and saw Jaillin standing beside him, the man clad in the red cloak Autmaran had given him when he’d promoted the man after his predecessor fell in the surprise attack outside Lerne.
“Jallin,” he said, just managing to keep the irritation out of his voice. The man always seemed to have a habit of interrupting his train of thought.
“What are your orders, sir?”
“I’m trying to come up with them, man,” Autmaran growled to himself before speaking louder to the officer. “Go secure the gate however you can – and send me Polim and Palum!”
Jaillin saluted and ran as Autmaran turned to face the Plains. The Imperial army was coming straight for him, and while most of his force was inside the gate, either roaming the edges of the city, fighting off what few guardsmen they’d found, or manning the walls for the coming onslaught, there was still at least a third of the army outside the walls.
Thousands of Kindred, and all dog-tired after that shadow-damned run.
“FASTER!” he shouted, his voice cracking out across the blackened ground like thunder as he channeled as much of the Command Aspect as he could. But it wasn’t enough: the remaining Kindred and Commons were already running as fast as they could without keeling over, their faces drawn and haggard. The Imperial Army was closing with deadly speed, the remaining three Visigony on their Daemons out ahead, flanked by rows of cavalry. As soon as they’d realized what the Kindred were planning, the three machine-men had spurred the army to action, forcing them across the field as quickly as was possible. There was no stopping them before they assaulted the walls.
Minutes ticked past as he watched, helpless, and Autmaran felt his heart hammering inside his chest so hard it was like to break his ribs.
We have to hold until Raven gets to the Empress.
They had to close to gates, it was that simple. There was nothing he could do. If the Visigony gained the city once more, they’d be able to hold the gates and allow the rest of the army in. Once fighting began inside the walls, the Kindred were doomed. He had to close them and close them now, even if it meant sacrificing a few of the Kindred rushing toward him now.
Even as the thought passed through his head, he was desperately urging himself to find another way. But the Imperials were too close, and the Kindred had come too far. Every man and woman here was willing to die for this cause, and all would be lost if they didn’t close the gate and fortify this position.
He gritted his teeth and turned to call back Jaillin, ready with the orders, but stopped at the last second.
A ripple had parted the running wave of Kindred. Autmaran squinted through the dark night, cursing the wavering light of torches for throwing shadows and the harsher chemical lights of the city streets for being too far away to actually illuminate anything. He caught sight of a group of Exiled infantry that had stopped and turned, standing their ground as their compatriots rushed past. The Scouts and the remnants of the main force split around this hard, compact core, diverting to either side as a stream around a boulder. Autmaran saw pikes and spears among them, as well as swords; he saw flashes of red and black, along with brown homespun and the cast-off colors of Tyne mixed with the green-silver-and-black of the Exiled Kindred.
Jaillin. The idiot thought I told him to take a force back out!
Stannit, the huge bear of a man who’d been a captain of the guard in the Imperial city of Roarke, strode forward and beat his armored chest, taunting the Daemons to come for them.
“The idiots are going to get themselves killed!” Polim shouted in anguish as he ran up beside him with Palum, both staring over the wall.
The man isn’t stupid … why would he make his stand there?
Suddenly lessons he hadn’t thought of in years were running through his head for no apparent reason, lessons drilled into him by his former mentor, General Goldwyn.
Everything is balanced. In life, as in war and battle, you need to work with opposites. Everything, no matter how powerful, has a weakness. The bigger the strength, the bigger the weakness, if you can find it.
Autmaran changed the angle he was looking at the battlefield, and realized that while the area fifty yards away from the wall was still cloaked in shadow, the whole area directly in front of the gates was lit brightly by the torches he’d ordered mounted on the walls for visibility. There was even a brazier over the wide gate itself nearly the height of three men in diameter that, if lit, would make it even brighter. Goldwyn’s voice continued to roll through Autmaran’s head, a loop of memory that wouldn’t stop.
Take, for example, Daemons, the deadliest of the enemy’s weapons. They are immensely powerful, and in an area of their element, nearly invincible.
The remaining Visigony, Vynap at their head with Sylva close behind, barreled down toward the group, throwing the last of the straggling Kindred out of their way. What was happening? What was the last piece of the puzzle here that someone else had already put together? Were the idiots being insanely brave, or did they have a plan after all?
Daemons can’t resist their opposite, Goldwyn continued. Earth Daemons lose power when pushed into the air, Fire Daemons cannot cross water, and a torch thrown on an Ice Daemon will leave a mark worse than a burn on any man, woman, or child.
The last of the Daemons suddenly shot up into the sky and swooped down from overhead, landing on a number of Kindred along the walls. They shot arrows at the creature, driving it back, and as it pushed off again, Autmaran saw the ghostly figure and huge wings of an Air Daemon, its white skin so tight around its body that it looked like an enormous, skeletal bat.
“Sir!” shouted a voice; turning, he saw it was Palum. “Commander, what do you want us to do?”
The only way to defeat a Daemon was with weapons made of Valerium, but there were precious few of those left, and he’d have to commit soldiers outside the gates. He could close the gates like he’d planned, but that would leave thousands left outside to be slaughtered. He had managed to catch one Visigony off guard during the charge and Commanded the Daemon to dissipate, but there was little chance of repeating the same trick against them now.
“Commander! Sir, what do we do?”
Autmaran turned to Palum, but his mind had gone completely, utterly blank.
I’m not Goldwyn. His lessons can roll through my brain all they want, but I don’t have his genius. If he were here, he’d know how to win. They deserve him, not me.
“SIR! What are you orders?”
Goldwyn wouldn’t have needed Valerium; he would have said Autmaran wasn’t thinking about the problem the righ
t way. Any problem with just one solution was a problem that hadn’t been thought through entirely.
Great strength … great weakness.
Autmaran felt a shock go through him that he didn’t fully understand, but without question he was up and running along the battlements, following the sudden understanding he had blazing through his head, the sudden certainly that whatever Stannit and Jallin were doing wasn’t random, wasn’t a desperate final call for death. He glanced back over the side of the wall again, out over the field, and watched the group of soldiers standing there shift as they prepared for the Daemons to crash into them, moving just enough to reveal a smaller figure standing beside Stannit. Autmaran pulled up short, halfway to the brazier, all rational thought suddenly gone.
He started screaming into the wind that blew over the wall. He felt cords and tendons tense throughout his throat as he shouted Commands with all his might, but the gale produced by the diving Air Daemon threw them back into his face. He continued shouting, his voice rolling out with earsplitting power, and still he wasn’t heard. He rocked back on his heels, dazed, and realized the boy was on his own.
* * *
Tym pulled his sword from his sheath and stared wide-eyed at the Daemons rushing toward them. His body, now the long and lanky shape of a seventeen year old, still jerked and shifted in odd ways when he tried to use it, and he was now shaking so badly he was having trouble keeping his grip on the sword as well.
Prince Raven needs time – and I can’t let the Visigony stop him.
He saw the truth now, everywhere he looked, on every face, like he could read the heart of everyone around him as easily as he’d always been able to read a book. And what was more, he could see through the Bloodmage enchantments of the Daemons, could see right through their skin to the runes that held them together like enormous jigsaw puzzles or archways with intricately placed keystones.
And in that truth, he knew how to stop them.
Light – and then Valerium.