Strong, durable, and ruthlessly conditioned, the groll were the preferred shock troops of the Imperium. Tall and hairless, their beady yellow eyes and leathery gray skin were terrifying enough in their own right, but the average groll’s complete fearlessness in battle was what ultimately set them apart from chagari or even human soldiers. They were savages, pure and simple, bred specifically to kill in the name of the Crell Sovereigns. And they were already less than fifty feet away.
Jason fired. Isen’s crossbows were at least modern enough to have self-reloading mechanisms, and he knew he would need every shot. The first bolt pierced the lead groll’s meager breastplate, and the second dug into the creature’s upper thigh. Neither had any discernible effect on its speed or balance, unfortunately, though it did look even angrier than before…if such a thing was even possible. The other soldiers, following Jason’s lead, dropped to their knees and unleashed their own desperate barrage before the brutes could close into melee range.
The lead groll closed within twenty feet before it finally toppled over. Its nearest companion, unconcerned, hoisted up the corpse and used it as a makeshift shield as he stormed forward. Eventually he hurled it at the humans, forcing them to scatter lest they be crushed by the flopping monster’s raw girth, and then they were out of time.
Iouna struck first, leaping over the body and taking a long slash at the closest groll’s legs. The beast swept its off-hand axe down, catching the human’s blade and harmlessly parrying it away. Iouna lurched to the side as his momentum was violently redirected, exposing him to an easy counterattack—but the trailing groll inadvertently saved his life. Just as the monster in front of him hacked downward, the others bowled into their companion from behind, knocking it off balance. Its axe sheared against the stone wall and showered the area with sparks.
Recognizing that his commander was already living on borrowed time, Jason risked a quick shot over Iouna’s shoulder. The quarrel caught the groll right in the throat, and by all rights and measures it should have slumped over and clutched at its hemorrhaging wound…but instead it flinched and smacked the bolt free like a human shooing away an annoying insect. The monster’s axes became an indecipherable blur of silver and red as they flailed wildly through the pile of human soldiers, and a stream of hot blood splashed across Jason’s face and eyes as one of his companions was brutally decapitated. He stumbled backwards, blinded and staggered, before finally tripping over something and collapsing flat onto the stone walkway.
Swearing viciously, Jason clawed the blood from his eyes even as he frantically scuttled away from the melee. The battle was already over. He could struggle to his feet and run back towards the cavern while the groll chewed through the rest of his companions, but that would only buy him another minute, perhaps two, before the monsters plowed forward and caught up with him. Alternatively, he could lie here and continue peppering these things with bolts until they inevitably cut him down. In both scenarios, the groll would eventually reach and slaughter the refugees, and their dramatic final stand would have been for nothing.
Jason settled on a third option. Drawing his sword and squinting past the gore still stinging his eyes, he flipped back to his feet. His sword was far better enchanted that his crossbow, and he knew it would be able to bite deep into the grolls’ flesh—assuming he could live long enough to get close. Taking in a deep breath, he waited for the first available opening and then leapt forward.
His blade met an attack bound for the head of one of the other soldiers, but he wasn’t strong enough to parry it completely. The force of the block twirled him around awkwardly, and he lost a precious second regaining his balance. In that brief instant, the groll’s off-hand finished the job, severing the soldier’s arm at her shoulder. She shrieked in horror as she crumpled to the stone, and another splash of blood splattered across Jason’s face. Wincing, he lunged forward again, this time striking low and catching the creature’s knee. The enchanted steel dug deeply into the groll’s kneecap, and its leg instantly buckled beneath its tremendous weight. Seizing the brief opening, Jason put all of his muscle into a final swing, hacking across his body and slashing the monster’s throat clean open.
Two down, two to go. Just off to his left, Lieutenant Iouna was trapped in a close grapple with one of the groll, and he frantically dodged or parried a spree of axe swings that were slowly but surely driving him back across the walkway. To Jason’s right, the other groll savagely beat the last Isen soldier down to his knees before finally driving its axe into the man’s skull.
Yes, the battle probably was over. Two men against two groll wasn’t just a mismatch—it was a death sentence. But if they could hold their ground for just a little while longer, then perhaps the refugees could get to the cavern and lock themselves in. It wasn’t much of a hope, but it was a hope. And that would have to be enough.
Squeezing his sword in both hands, Jason leapt back into the fray.
***
The Crell assault was as quick and efficient as Ethan had come to expect. The manticore riders split into two loosely-spread groups as they soared in and launched sizzling spheres of orange-white Aetheric flame at Isen’s beleaguered defenders. The fireballs detonated against the battlements, scorching the gray stone black, but mercifully the Imperator’s magic wasn’t quite powerful enough to destroy the wall completely. Human flesh, naturally, was another story altogether.
Ethan watched in helpless horror as the fiery explosions consumed the marksman along the lower level, and to his left a resounding thud rumbled along the wall as the ballista fired in a last, desperate attempt to force the riders to retreat and regroup. The shot missed, of course; the manticore nimbly evaded the massive bolt, and Ethan hefted up his own crossbow and fired mostly out of spite. He had never been much of a marksman, and age only made his aim worse.
Given enough time, the manticore riders would have eventually claimed Isen all by themselves, but if this war had proven anything, it was that the Crell Sovereigns left nothing to chance. Even as the mounted Imperators rained fire down upon the walls, behind them emerged the larger, far more terrifying wave of black dragons. The massive beasts were almost too big to be believed—their riders were more like ticks clinging to their backs than soldiers. Most troubling of all, however, were the oversized metallic crates clutched in their mighty talons.
Crates undoubtedly filled to the brim with groll.
“Target the lower body!” Ethan called out to the ballista crew on his left. “Get them to drop the crates!”
The crew cried out their acknowledgements as they lined up their shot, and Ethan took cover behind the wall and grimaced. This wave would probably be the last. By the time the groll actually landed, he doubted they would have anything left to fight besides a handful of charred bodies. But as usual, the Crell wanted to be certain they had killed everyone, even the unarmed refugees…
And then suddenly, impossibly, a trio of silver-scaled dragons soared over the top of the fortress. With a fierce roar that shook the battlements hard enough to knock Ethan flat onto his back, the dragons dove fearlessly into the packs of manticore riders, using the confusion to tear through the center of the Crell lines and latch onto anything they could find with their massive teeth and wicked claws.
Ethan’s breath caught in his throat. It didn’t seem possible. After months wasting away in this forgotten fortress, he had given up hope that reinforcements would ever reach Isen in time. But these new dragon riders hadn’t been sent by the Alliance. They weren’t wearing Solarian tabards; they weren’t wearing the tabards of any Torsian nation. And yet their blue and silver heraldry was recognizable—and welcome—virtually anywhere in the world.
Against all odds, the Knights of the Last Dawn had finally arrived.
The Crell forces almost immediately split in half. The manticore squads banked away, unwilling to engage the enemy dragons in close quarters, and attempted to regroup and change tactics. The black dragons weren’t able to maneuver so easily, but even if
they could—even if their riders commanded it—Ethan doubted they would obey. The brutal Crell breeding techniques corrupted their minds until they loathed members of their own species, and they dove at their silver-scaled cousins with almost gleeful fury.
Soon the sky was filled with the shrieks and roars of mighty beasts locked in a deadly melee, and several of the enchanted groll-filled crates plummeted down onto the fortress before they were ready. One missed Isen completely, and the groll inside leapt free of the wreckage only to find themselves trapped outside the walls; another crate broke open atop the parapets on the lowest level before it bounced down the nearby cliff, dooming the hapless monsters inside to splatter against the rocks below.
But a few of the crates did land in their proper place, and Ethan glanced back over his shoulder to the ballista crew behind him. “There’s nothing more we can do here,” he called out. “We need to get inside and—”
The words died on his lips when a pair of manticore riders swept by overhead and hurled fireballs straight at the ballista. The crew didn’t even have a chance to move; the blazing orbs detonated directly on top of them, roasting them alive and blasting apart the ballista in a shower of flaming cinders and scorched flesh. Ethan tried to dive away and find cover, but it was already too late. The force of the explosion hit him like a hammer in the gut, hurling him backwards against the battlements, and his skull cracked hard enough against the stone that he nearly blacked out.
By the time his vision cleared, he was vaguely aware of the manticore duo swerving away, and he wondered dimly if they would bother looping back around just to finish off a wounded old man. He got his answer just seconds later when one of the riders casually glanced back over his shoulder and flicked a final fireball towards the fortress.
A year ago, back before Ethan’s own channeling abilities had been brutally stripped away from him following the death of the Galvian king, he would have been able to survive the attack. At the very least he could have conjured a protective barrier to block out the flames, and had he been more prepared he might have even been able to counter the Imperator’s magic directly at the source. But today Ethan was just a weak, broken old man who couldn’t even find his crossbow. He had no cover to duck behind and nowhere to run. Fate, it seemed, had decided to offer him a glimpse of salvation before cruelly snatching it away. After everything that had befallen him so far, he expected nothing less.
As the burning sphere streaked down towards him, he closed his eyes and resigned himself to a fiery death—
But somehow, it never came. The wall rattled from another explosion, and a wave of heat washed over his face…but then abruptly vanished. Cracking his left eye back open, Ethan saw a glimmering, silvery shield of Aetheric energy arcing protectively around him, and just beyond the battlements a brilliant bolt of lightning cut through the sky and burned a hole straight through the long neck of one of the manticores. The creature twitched once before freezing in place, and suddenly it was plummeting straight down the cliff face with its shrieking rider trapped in the saddle.
Panicking, the second Imperator madly whipped his head about in a vain effort to find the source of the attack, but it was already too late. A second bolt flashed through the sky and struck his mount cleanly in the torso. The beast dropped like a ball of lead, and soon the skies were empty once again.
Or rather, mostly empty. Dropping down gracefully from the top of the fortress, her long, silvery hair whipping wildly behind her, was a wispy woman sheathed in glimmering scale armor. Electricity crackled at her fingertips, and she scoured the horizon for any other threats. Eventually she landed next to Ethan and offered him a nod and a tight smile.
“Elu shala, stranger,” she said.
Ethan groaned as he struggled to his feet. “Nice entrance,” he muttered. “But a little late.”
“I know,” she replied quietly, shifting her gaze to the smoldering corpses of the ballista crew. “More Crell are already on the way. Can you move?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, clutching at his chest. Apparently half the wood from the ballista had ended up embedded inside his chest. Without his armor, he would have already been dead. “I need…”
“Hold on,” she soothed, cupping her right hand against his chest. “And try to breathe normally.”
A surprisingly intense heat filled her palm as she channeled healing magic into his wounds, and Ethan gently swung his arm around her shoulder for support. Elysians were almost unheard of in this part of Torsia, and the woman’s luminous violet eyes, pale skin, and otherwise sharp features set her apart from the grimy humans that called this part of the world home.
She was Selvhara Narhesti, a druid of Anvira, an ally of the Last Dawn, and the closest thing in the world he had to a real friend.
Before the war, at least. Before he had thrown it all away.
“I take you found Dracian, then,” Ethan managed between labored breaths. The pain had already begun to abate, but he was still finding it difficult to concentrate.
Selvhara nodded distantly. “The Highlord wishes us to flee into the mountain and wait for reinforcements.”
Ethan snorted. “You can tell him we’re already trying to do that. I sent Lieutenant Iouna and Jason to get the refugees moving ten minutes ago.”
“You brought Jason here?” she asked sharply, her violet eyes boring into him.
“He’s a soldier, in case you’ve forgotten. Besides, we didn’t have a choice. There was nowhere else to go.”
Ethan could see her jaw clench tightly even though she tried to hide it. It was difficult to get that kind of emotional response from any elysian, let alone one her age, but somehow he always seemed to find a way. And not generally for the better.
“We need to find Jason and the others and get them inside the mountain,” Selvhara said as she finished channeling and helped him stand straight. She couldn’t repair all the damage this quickly, of course, but she had managed to kill almost all of the pain. “Can you walk now?”
“Yes,” he told her. “How close are our reinforcements?”
“General Tavorus’s forces should be here by nightfall tomorrow. I doubt the Crell will stay that long.”
Ethan grunted and glanced back over his shoulder to check in on the battle. One of the black dragons had suffered a grievous wound, and blood spewed from its neck as it plunged out of the sky and dropped unceremoniously on top of the second wall some seventy feet below. The manticore riders were similarly occupied as they desperately tried to jockey for position against the vastly more powerful silver dragons.
The Crell were distracted for now, but it wouldn’t last forever. The defensive powers of the Knights of the Last Dawn were legendary, but numbers were still numbers in the end. Eventually, they would be overwhelmed…and they had obviously known that before they had come here. But they were willing to fight and die to protect the survivors anyway.
Some would call their dedication honorable. Ethan called it wasteful. The war would have unfolded much differently if Highlord Dracian hadn’t wasted so many of his forces defending strategically worthless farms and villages during the first year.
Still, right now the knights’ valor might save his life…and more importantly, his son’s. Perhaps he could hold off on his criticisms until later.
“We have to let the soldiers know they can pull back,” Ethan said, reaching down to his waist and drawing his sword. “I’ll head to the third level and see who is still alive.”
“Are you certain?” Selvhara asked. “I can move much more easily and—”
“Get the bottom two levels,” he interrupted. “I’ll meet you at the cavern.”
She nodded, a dozen unspoken questions on her lips. “Very well. Good luck.”
“You, too,” he said, touching her arm. “I expect we’re going to need it.”
***
With a bestial roar, the groll backhanded Lieutenant Iouna hard enough to send him skidding across the walkway until he crashed into the wa
ll. Mercifully, he didn’t flip over the edge and plummet to his death, though it might have been a moot point; his head crumpled to the side and he remained still. From his current vantage point, Jason couldn’t tell if the other man was dead or not, but he was definitely out of the fight.
Which meant that Jason was now officially alone.
Grimacing, he lunged at the closest groll, hoping to score a quick kill while the monster was distracted. But he had no such luck—the monster turned and swatted him away like an annoying gnat. Jason bounced off the wall and nearly lost the grip on his sword completely. He had managed to score several decent hits over the past minute, but at this point his muscles were exhausted. He couldn’t muster the strength to pierce the creature’s leathery flesh, and he had resigned himself to becoming a crimson stain along the wall whenever the groll got tired of playing with him. The creature snorted in amusement as it raised one of its massive axes—
And then screeched in pain as a shimmering blue disc smacked it squarely in the forehead.
Jason blinked in confusion, wondering what in the hell had just happened, when he heard a strange whoosh of air from behind his left ear. Turning, he caught a glimpse of a heavily armored man in a blue cloak leap down from the heavens and land upon the walkway. A few seconds later a silver dragon roared past overhead, and suddenly Jason understood.
“Stay behind me,” the Knight of the Last Dawn said, unsheathing his glimmering sword. His left hand flashed with Aetheric power, and another shimmering blue disc melded around his arm to form a perfectly-balanced shield.
The Godswar Saga (Omnibus) Page 2