Swan walked up, wearing some of the spiked crab-like armor and carrying a soul spear. A third soul without any tattoo at all joined her as well.
“There are going to be more dead,” Charge said. “And we’ve got mainlander Mokaddians with us.”
Sugar nodded. “We’re all humans here. Send everyone up the canyon. We need to get them as far away from the horn as possible while we have the chance.”
Charge nodded and yelled to the souls.
Then the barking of the howlers rose to an unholy racket.
Sugar turned and saw the Walkers unleashing them, the dark beasts shooting forth.
“Gods,” Charge said in horror.
“Here!” Sugar yelled to the souls. “This way!”
But the souls weren’t fast enough. A howler ran down a soul and tore into him. Two more took down another man and went at him with their wicked mouths.
More souls fled past Sugar and the others with her, but the howlers caught up to those in the back, tearing and ravaging them.
“They die like anything else,” she said to Charge and the others around her. Then she raised her spear and ran at the two closest howlers, screaming her war cry.
Charge and the other armed souls yelled and followed.
* * *
Black Knee hesitated, his muscles bunching and straining at the drawn bow.
Shoot him! The voice commanded.
“Commander!” Black Knee yelled. “Come down!”
Eresh looked at him, but continued to haul up the bundle of six-foot poles. “What are you doing?”
“Flax said to beware the Famished. They’re on the other side.”
“Flax?” Eresh asked. “Flax is a traitor. I saw it with my own eyes.”
The Famished already has him, the voice said.
Confusion, melancholy, grief all roiled in Black Knee’s mind.
“Commander!” he called.
He’s possessed! The voice said. Look at that mad eye, milked over with evil. Look at the anger.
And indeed Commander Eresh’s face was full of wrath.
“Put the bow down,” Eresh called, still hauling up on the rope.
“It’s taken him,” Black Knee said to Russet and Fish. “Ancestors save us.” Then he loosed the arrow.
It flew straight and true, but Eresh hauled hard on the rope. The poles flew upward. And then he was holding them in front of his chest, and the arrowed thocked into the wood.
“Get him!” Eresh cried.
Black Knee snatched up another arrow, nocked it, bent his bow, but a number of Burundians were charging him.
Russet and Fish stepped out to block their way, weapons drawn.
Black Knee turned back to target Eresh, but Commander Eresh was not on the wall. He’d jumped and was running straight for Black Knee, his one good eye burning with fury.
Black Knee loosed his shaft, but Commander Eresh ducked, rolled, and then he was into Black Knee, slamming him back against the rock.
Black Knee struck the commander, tried to draw his knife, but Eresh threw him to the ground.
The Burundians knocked Russet out with a pole and closed in on Fish.
“The commander!” Black Knee shouted. “He’s being ridden by the Famished!”
But the men ignored his pleas.
Black Knee roared and tried to surge to his knees, but the commander was too strong, and then two more of the Burundians were there, holding Black Knee, lashing his arms and feet.
“On the other side!” Black Knee said. “They’re there!”
When the Burundians had tied him, Eresh examined Black Knee’s wrists, felt up his arms. He pulled back Black Knee’s tunic to reveal the arm ring Berosus had given him.
“Here’s the poison,” Eresh said, then yanked the thing off his arm.
The warning voice in Black Knee’s mind was suddenly silenced. But the foreboding lingered. “Commander?” he said.
Eresh snarled and struck Black Knee in the face. “What did we tell you about accepting weaves from any but us!”
“Flax was a terrorman.”
“He wasn’t me. He wasn’t Argoth. He wasn’t Shim.”
But Flax had been one of them.
Then another soldier came running into the crevice pathway.
“Commander!” he cried.
Eresh drew his sword and turned to face him.
“Lord,” the man said, then saw the sword and pulled up short in alarm.
“Did Flax send you too?” Eresh asked.
“Lord Shim sent me,” the man said. “The lines are breaking. We’re being overrun.”
Eresh motioned at Black Knee. “Don’t let him out of those knots. And get the scaffold finished. And post a rotted watch!” Then he dash down the path to the door leading to the chambers at the back of the fort.
* * *
The black-clad Urzarian war wolves advanced slowly down the rubble toward Argoth and his men, keeping their lines together, holding their dark shields painted with the wolf heads before them. Underneath their black surcoats embroidered with the white stars of Urz, they wore mail hauberks that ended just above the knee. They were experienced men. Hard men with eyes full of grim murder. Their line was twenty men across. Argoth’s line was longer and could overlap them on the ends, but the war wolves coming behind came forward to extend the length of their line.
Argoth prepared himself to receive their charge. His left leg was forward a bit, shield raised, sword ready to thrust. Fire raged through him. The war wolves were dreadmen, but he was a loreman. He wasn’t limited by the weave.
But, holy Creators, the men down his line had nothing.
“Hold the line!” Argoth shouted, but he knew his men couldn’t. How could they hold their positions against men with three times their strength and speed? They’d fall, and even if Argoth stood, he would soon be surrounded.
“We’re going to gut you like pigs!” one of the war wolves shouted. He pointed his sword at a man in front of him. “You. You’ll be first. And when your idiot friend tries to hit me with his axe, I’m going to take his arm.”
The men to the sides of Argoth hunkered down.
“Look at them cower,” one of the war wolves laughed.
“Big words from men who dribbled out the back end of a cow!” a woman shouted from behind. Then the ranks to the right of Argoth stirred, allowing Matiga and her fist of fell-maidens to push to the front line, stepping in to alternate every other position with the men.
Matiga’s fell-maidens wore helmets and coats of plates over padded jackets. The fell-maidens were still candidates, although he knew Matiga had been teaching them more despite Eresh’s views. They would not be as strong as the war wolves. But they were fast. And wore lighter armor. And multiplied, they would be even faster.
“Come meet your doom, you ox-brained whoresons!” Matiga yelled.
The leader of the war wolves, a man with a horse hair plume rising out of his helmet, laughed. “Women!” he said in disbelief. “There’s your loot, men!”
Matiga’s fell-maidens readied themselves.
“We’re going to plow you with our swords,” the leader said above the wind.
“You’re going to die,” Argoth roared.
The leader shouted, “Mark that one. Be sure to rip his guts.”
They advanced another step. They were only a few paces away, their wolf’s head banner held high. Across from Argoth was a huge man with a monstrous beard and an even larger war axe. The man next to him had a sword. Argoth figured the big man would try to knock Argoth’s shield down with that axe, giving his neighbor a chance to stab Argoth in the face with his sword.
The war wolves advanced. Another step and they’d charge.
Then Argoth heard something: a distant roar. A wave of weakness rolled through him, sank
right down to his bones. It washed over the men around him too, for he saw the shields of both the men with him and the war wolves dip. The Urzmen faltered. A number lowered their weapons a bit.
The horse hair plumed leader growled. “Rotted sleth!” he shouted, obviously thinking the line of Shim’s sleth in front of him had caused that weakness with some magic. “Kill them!”
But a howling wind suddenly screamed down out of the sky, blasting from the back of the fort, kicking up dirt and grit, blowing it into the backs of Argoth’s men and the faces and eyes of the war wolves. The wind hurtled a shield over the heads of Argoth’s warriors and into one of the war wolves, knocking him back.
The other Urzmen squinted, raised their shields to block the wind and grit from their eyes. Some staggered back. Gaps opened in their line. And Argoth saw his chance.
“Now!” Argoth roared and charged. The men and women down the line saw him and followed his lead. The wind was still raging, the war wolves still blinded by the dirt. They tried to make a defense, but the wind was against them, knocking their shields.
The line of Shimsmen and women roared and crashed into the line of Urzmen. Spears and swords thrust. Axes fell. Argoth plowed into the big bearded man in front of him, knocking him back, but lunged with his sword into the side of the man next to him. The fell-maiden next to Argoth stabbed in with a spear and took another man. The wind rose in ferocity, howling about the fort, throwing dirt into his eyes. Argoth took a solid, but wild blow from the Urzman to his right, and stabbed at the big bearded axeman.
But the wind’s violence and noise continued to rise. Dirt and dust blasted about him, making it hard to hold the shield and even see to fight. The shield was torn out of the hands of the fell-maiden next to Argoth as well as a few others down the line, and then one of the Urzmen at the top of the pile of rubble was carried aloft.
The power of the wind rose again.
“Back!” Argoth shouted, but his words were swallowed by the gale. He shoved backward, dragged on the men next to him. “Back!” he yelled. He was squinting so hard he could barely see, but he turned, shoved the men next to him away from the war wolves.
The whirlwind sounded like a cataract, like tumbling boulders. Argoth’s warriors weren’t going to be able to flee this. He suspected that any moment now a rain of stones would fall upon the men and women in his lines and brain them.
“To ground!” he called uselessly. “To ground!” Then he shoved down as many as he could about him and took cover himself.
The wind howled about them, and then suddenly it shot away to rip and tear over the wall walks and back out to the battlefield.
There was silence. The men of Urz as well as the Shimsmen and women lay stunned. Dirt filled Argoth’s nose and ears and slid under his tunic. He climbed to his feet, spat the dirt out of his mouth, and wiped the dirt from his eyes. The wind raged out across the field toward the Skir Master and was met by another wind to form a terrifying maelstrom that blasted into the Mokaddian ranks, tearing away shields and helmets, sending men to the ground, carrying helmets and shields aloft.
But at the fort, the wind was now nothing more than a breeze. And there, picking themselves off the ground were the war wolves.
Argoth had no idea what was happening with the skir; it seemed Mokad had lost control of them. But whatever was going on, he knew he had only moments to stop the dreadmen in front of him.
“Firemen!” Argoth yelled. “Lances!”
But there were no lancers ready on the walls. He spotted a firelance that had fallen back into the courtyard. Above it on the wall walk sat the barrel and pump. He shot out of the line and raced for the lance. He found the lance still in good order, picked it up, then flew up the stairway with it to the barrel. There was a skin of dust and dirt on the top of the liquid, but the barrel was still mostly full of seafire.
He hooked the lance to the pump and sank the hose through the skin of dirt into the seafire.
“The pump!” he yelled at two men on the wall who were recovering from the blast of wind. They heard him and rushed to the handles, which worked like a see-saw, and began to pump, one man pushing down, the other pulling up, and then reversing. Seafire filled the hose, then shot out the lance in a stream that Argoth pointed at the war wolves. Argoth worked the igniter. Sparks flew. He worked it again. More sparks. And then the seafire ignited, a flash of blue that streaked down the stream of black liquid followed by a raging orange and yellow flame.
“Harder!” he commanded the pumpers.
The men put all their effort into it, and the stream shot out forty, fifty, sixty feet. And the burning liquid fell upon the war wolves. He moved the lance back and forth, hosing them. The burning substance splashed on their faces, their wolf head shields, their surcoats with white stars. The Urzmen screamed, and Matiga, her fell-maidens about her, shouted for the men to tighten the line and charge.
The war wolves broke. Those who were not burning fled back up the pile of stones, scrambling for their lives.
Argoth sprayed them as they went, then turned his fire to the men in front of the walls.
Farther down the wall another lance ignited and began to spray fiery death on the attackers. Then Fire and smoke leapt into the sky down by the gatehouse.
And out on the field, the mad skir wind howled and rumbled across the field, now this way, now that, breaking and scattering the men of Mokad, Nilliam, and Urz.
Shimsmen who were waiting in reserve now raced to the walls. From the east wall others hurled a dozen smoking, half-gallon clay balls of fireshot out into the enemy lines. The fireshot broke upon the men and shields and ground, splashing those close to it, igniting their legs and the bottoms of their shields.
Inside the fort, the terrormen and hammermen were yelling, forming their troops of archers up, rushing to walls and gaps to get at the enemy from a range close enough to penetrate armor.
Argoth’s heart soared. The ancestors must have heard their calls. Or maybe it was the Creators themselves turning Mokad’s own winds upon them.
Burning bits of seafire spray blew back from the lance and scorched Argoth’s hands and arms, but he paid it no mind, and didn’t know where the lancer’s protecting leather gloves, coat, and hood were anyway. He turned his lance and rained fire upon the ladders that still stood, then rained burning murder upon the Mokaddians and Urzmen roiling in chaos down on the ground in front of the walls.
30
Flax
BEROSUS STAGGERED BACK a step, shielding his eyes from the debris, as a skir wind blasted past and down toward the river. He turned to Shaymash, the fat Skir Master. “What are you doing?” he shouted.
Shaymash held a skir staff aloft, gritting his teeth, obviously struggling to control the situation. “One of the urgom has slipped its thrall.”
“Skir don’t just slip their thralls.”
“Something attacked,” the fat man snapped back. “I suggest you find who it is before they all slip!”
Across the field, streams of seafire shot down over a large swath of men.
One of Shaymash’s acolytes spoke. “There’s someone causing problems with the souls.”
“Nilliam?” Berosus asked.
“No, it’s . . . the girl.”
“The girl? What girl?”
“The Koramite sleth. She’s here.”
“That can’t be,” Berosus said.
The acolyte cringed at his anger. “It is her, Great One.”
How was that possible? She should have been locked up in Whitecliff. He wondered about the seeking he’d performed. The girl had seemed so ignorant. So pliable. But maybe that had all been a ploy.
He realized now it had all been too easy.
These people had ripped a Divine away from the Glory, ripped the supposedly unbreakable ties that bound that Divine to the Sublime. Argoth claimed it was some other power, but
would he spill his secrets at the first meeting with foreign sleth? No. And Ke had told him the same story, but at the same time he’d said that Talen had killed the Sublime.
These people had raised a servant from the earth and lied about its origin. Or maybe they hadn’t done it on their own. They couldn’t have done it on their own. Shim’s army had risen too quickly. The girl and Ke—they had hidden something from him. Or maybe they hadn’t known. Maybe Shim and Argoth had kept some secrets back from them. But Berosus now knew what that secret was.
Nilliam was in this. Cunning Nilliam.
The skir wind blasted into his ships on the river. Out on the field, the lords of Nilliam halted their men.
Oh, yes. It was all clear. Nilliam had engineered this trap. They would let Mokad spend its strength against Shim’s army, then come in for the kill. He’d never thought Nilliam should have been part of the coalition. And now he was proven right.
Fury rose in him. Nilliam would pay for this. He would finish off Shim’s army. Then he would harvest every last man of Nilliam on this field. And then he would march on the villages of the Newlanders until the blood flowed like rivers.
He had other wind riders, but none had his power. And this distraction needed to be done and finished. “A wind!” he shouted at Shaymash. “You’re going to put me right on top of those firelancers.”
The kite men and other wind riders usually wore brass goggles, a leather cap to protect the face and ears, and leather gloves. An acolyte ran forward with the gear, but Berosus only took the goggles, then stepped out onto the field in front of the Skir Master. Moments later the rushing of a great wind howled toward him from the river. It whistled over tree limbs, catching their edges. Then it slammed into the men behind.
Berosus ran a number of steps, then leapt, and the wind took him, carried him aloft. Debris pelted the skin of his face, filled his hair. He shot forward up over the battlefield, dipped, and then another gust took him over the path of the arrows being shot from the walls. He flared his Fire until his might rippled through him.
Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 Page 32