by Garon Whited
I landed on a few of the things, but nothing happened. I picked myself up.
Bronze plowed into several of the things, and I got to watch. Chunks of her disappeared in the thunderous, rent-metal clanging. The sound was from a sudden compression of everything within three or four inches of the impact point.
Since they didn’t go off on me, they were obviously designed to kill Bronze. People were not only out to kill me, not only out to use my own defensive spells against me, but were actively trying new ways to hunt down and kill my horse.
The damage was gruesome. Effectively, Bronze had several bites taken out of her—legs, shoulder, rump, ribs, neck… she was even missing an ear and that part of her head; that one barely missed taking an eye with it. Her condition was awful. One leg was intact; the other three were chopped to different lengths. She couldn’t run, as such; she could only kick and flail forward, frantically clanging and clanking along, spouting fire from every wound like a damaged furnace. She scrambled toward the gate on one good leg and three shortened ones.
My heart, cold and unmoving thing that it was at the moment, hurt to see her.
I cannot, even now, explain how I felt. I can’t even remember it properly. I’ve been angry. I’ve even been out of my head with hunger—a sort of berserk state that I don’t like to contemplate. But this… I don’t know. Rage is such an inadequate word. Fury isn’t even close. Wrath of angels, or wrath of god, perhaps. Rivers turning to blood, plagues of locusts and boils, hail like boulders. I was certainly willing to rain fire on a city and turn anyone involved into a pillar of salt.
I don’t like torture; I’m generally against it. Having said that, understand that I had a burning desire to teach someone in detail about the phrase “a fate worse than death.”
I lashed tendrils into the air, toward the slingers. I could seize and drain them, but it would take much too long at that range, and I had missiles to deflect into the bargain. Instead, I covered Bronze as she made it to the edge of the pivot-gate and pushed her way through. Once she was out of the line of fire, I lashed the slingers with tendrils.
They had some sort of defense. My tendrils flickered over them like raindrops on glass. It didn’t hurt them and it didn’t hurt me, but I couldn’t reach them. It was as though their skin was simply hardened against my tendril-touch. If they were closer, maybe I could force my way through it, or analyze the sort of protection involved and counter it. As it was…
I followed Bronze inside and shoved the gate closed. We really need a way to lock the thing. I would have run a finger along the gate edge to seal it, but the mountain was already busy with more important things. Add it to the list.
Turning from the gate, I saw Bronze had already crossed the huge, open area of the gate courtyard and started up the street toward the peak. Rather than running in a loop around the mountain, she was taking corners, going up in a zigzag; that would be faster in her condition.
I wanted to get under her neck and support her front, taking the load off her shortened front legs so she could move more quickly.
I didn’t. From my position at the gate, I saw some sort of assault force flying straight for the mountain’s upper courtyard. They were already halfway up the mountain and rising higher. It was one elf and a platoon of lightly-armored orku, about twenty combatants altogether. They were holding on to what looked like a rope. The rope was horizontal and taut; they hung from it as though hanging from a crossbar.
If they cut us off from the main door, this was going to end badly.
I knew it in the instant that I saw them, and Bronze knew it. She was already going flat-out, but it would still be a while before she made it to the upper courtyard.
But I might beat them there. I could certainly get there before they sorted themselves out and set up to hold the entrance.
I leaped to the top of a building and started jumping, wishing I’d learned Tort’s flying spell. I pumped power into my gravity-distortion spell, decreasing gravity’s hold over me. It would burn out more quickly, but I didn’t care about it lasting all night; I cared about it lasting the next few minutes. I hurtled over streets, flung myself up to rooftops, dashed across the flat outer precincts and started bounding upward through the inner. I bounced up the central section like an enraged flea.
The elf saw me. His expression was gratifying in the extreme: terror. On the other hand, he started concentrating on the flying rope. It started rising a trifle faster, but must have been near its capacity.
It was going to be close, but I felt I might have a very slight advantage. The city gate is on the northeast arc of the city; the mountain’s inner door is on the north face. The enemy troops were floating up from the western arc, about a quarter-circle off from the inner door. That gave me about a forty-five degree advantage to help offset their head start.
I was right. It was close.
The final leap was a killer; my direction of approach meant I had to clear a long, vertical section of wall above the road to the upper courtyard. I gave it everything I had and still didn’t quite manage to reach the top. On the other hand—my right, as it happens—I did grab at the rock face when I hit it.
My talons ripped right through the leather portion of my gauntlet and dug into the rock. I hung there for an instant, surprised at myself; I didn’t know I could do that. I didn’t have time to be surprised, though. I yanked myself upward while kicking against the stone with my feet, wrenching a scream from my throat as it felt I was wrenching fingernails from my hand. I sailed up, almost exactly vertically, and I burned out the rest of my gravity spell as I tilted it to change the direction and drew me back down just inside the upper wall. I hit and rolled with an awful racket of armor, sprang to my feet, and ran for the door.
The platoon of orku came around the mountain the other way.
I didn’t stop at the door; I shifted back into hyperdrive and everything else went into slow motion.
In bowling, one of the techniques is to put the ball between two pins. This causes them to carom off in different directions and go spinning into other pins in a chain reaction. I did my best to emulate a bowling ball in the open mob of charging orku. I clipped one with my left shoulder and slashed my still-healing fingertips through the neck of one on my right. Blood sprayed from the wound, helping my fingers enormously, but I was already past him and deflecting off another victim as I headed for the rear of the group.
The elf, coiling the magical rope of flying, dropped it when he saw me. It hadn’t reached the ground, yet. He drew his sword as I approached; he must have been incredibly fast. I lashed at him with tendrils but, of course, he was protected by that psychic-armor-skin spell I’d seen earlier. Well, I couldn’t drain him, but I could wrap tendrils around his sword and take it off its line…
His swordpoint met my left pauldron, screamed against it, scored it, and deflected upward.
I met him in direct, central impact and bounced him off the inside of the upper courtyard wall. He didn’t bounce as well as I did. He made a few snapping sounds, a sort of crunching noise, and flopped to the ground. I, meanwhile, went back through the orku still standing and wreaked havoc. In seconds, I chased down all of the screaming, running targets.
With everyone either down and groaning or undeniably dead, I sprang to the top of the wall to look for Bronze. She was still hammering her way determinedly upward like a broken infernal engine. Nothing was anywhere near her. No aerial forces were in sight, and the more mundane wall-climbing sort of invaders were just now getting inside. Unless they had magical, inflatable horses with them or some modular motorcycles, nothing was going to catch Bronze.
At least, nothing at the moment. If they had more surprises, I wanted to see them coming. I stayed right where I was and watched with all the keenness of my remaining eye. If it moved, flickered, or seemed out of place, it was not going to escape my notice, not now.
As it stood, though, I held the upper courtyard secure; Bronze would make it well before the opposition
. That was exactly what I wanted, even if it was a less-than-perfect trip to get to this point.
I hopped down and dragged bodies, living and dead, through the door and into the great hall while the spilled blood slithered and flowed over to me. The door kept drifting closed, which pleased me immensely; the mountain had already achieved that much. As I dragged them in, I didn’t bother biting anything at that point; the blood kept oozing out of all the wounds and flowing directly to me. It didn’t even stain the courtyard. That was good enough for the physical portion of my feeding, at least for now. My left eye started to work again during this, at least well enough to see a little, and it kept getting more clear and focused as time went on.
With a little close-up examination, I figured out how to break the shielding spell on the ones still alive. It was an amulet, not a spell, so it was just a matter of physically taking it in hand and breaking it. It stung to touch it, but it wasn’t a defensive measure, just a side effect of the central focus of the spell. I broke them in two, one by one, and drained the former wearers of enough vitality to keep them unconscious.
I even took a moment to make sure the elf wasn’t about to die; I wanted him alive, provided it wasn’t too inconvenient. Aside from the broken ribs and punctured lung, the rest of his injuries weren’t immediately life-threatening—just painful. I set his arm and both legs and tack-welded the bones together, but didn’t bother to actually fix them.
I popped back out for a situation update and did a fast circuit of the upper courtyard, salvaging the magic rope en passant. No major changes. Bronze was far in the lead and looked likely to stay that way. A contingent of commandos was headed for the city gate, presumably to let everyone else in. The door would just swing open for anyone who bothered to push, but they didn’t know that. Things were progressing in a satisfactory manner. At least there were no new surprises, yet.
Back in the great hall, I hastened my blood intake by simply ripping the heads off of the corpses and stomping on their chests repeatedly. Dead blood is colder, thicker; it doesn’t burst with life like a living victim. It nourishes without pleasing, at least when it’s fresh. It goes old and stale about as quickly as it cools.
As I moved an empty one to stack it on the others, I noticed a small spot of distortion. It was up high, in the balcony area, with a good view of the entire hall. I spotted it anyway, mainly because I was being exceptionally vigilant, but also partly because I’m trying to get into the habit of looking up more often.
I gritted—well, clenched—my teeth. I warned and warned them, and they just don’t listen. Why does no one listen to me when I give them a warning? Do they not take me seriously? Or do they not believe I have the power to follow through? Or the will to do so? Or are they just confident they can counter anything I try? Why do I even bother if it never does any good? Do they think I’m too nice a guy to do anything awful?
Never push a nice guy. Nice guys turn into the scariest sons of bitches when you push them too far.
I grabbed one of the living but more badly-wounded orku, turned my back to the scrying spell, and started working.
I once opened a gate by accident; I sent a scrying spell toward the gate while the gate was reaching toward my dimension. The scrying spell acted like a ground, diverting the gate to my scrying pool. It should work the same way here. Someone was scrying into my mountain, so a gate spell should easily track back along that magical connection and open an actual portal between here and there. I wouldn’t even need to know where “there” was.
Then, with a hole in space established, I could direct something particularly nasty through it. With any luck, I might even kill the caster on the other end. Later, I’ll concoct something truly vicious, so if this isn’t a sufficient deterrent, the next one will be.
First things first.
I wrapped my spell around the living victim, bit his throat, and sucked the blood out of him in one long, sudden surge. I folded his spirit—his soul, if you like—in a web of dark tendrils and caught it, compressed it, pureed it, and pumped it into the spell. It’s a nasty, evil thing, this sacrificial magic technique; it was outlawed in Zirafel and is still outlawed in every kingdom of the world that I know of.
The technique is supposed to take a piece of the user’s soul along with it whenever it’s used. There’s some debate as to whether or not that applies to bloodsucking fiends, though. At night, it’s an open question as to whether or not I qualify to have a soul. And, if I do, do I keep adding to it whenever I eat someone else’s?
It was a risk I was prepared to take. I didn’t have a choice.
Opening any gate, even a small one, even a simple, space-folding one, is something no one does lightly; even professional magicians spend a lot of time and effort in preparations. I, on the other hand, have an uncanny ability to take all the power of a living being, yank it out, and shovel it into a spell like coal into a steam engine.
With my tiny gate spell built and charged—but not yet activated—I worked on the second portion of my plan. The firepits in the great hall were all lit and burning brightly. That made four sizable fires for me to use. I visited three of them; I wanted at least one left alone for a later portion of my overall plan.
I ripped bracers off some of the orku corpses, then set one plate of metal on the edge of each firepit. Each bracer became the focus of a spell to gather and contain the energy of the fires. Each firepit would charge the magical capacitor with heat—all the heat put out by the firepit, concentrated and stored. Later, when I released the spell, all that energy would be dumped instantly throughout the steel.
Assuming the spells could hold it all. If they overloaded, they would fail. But a safety cutoff would take time to develop… later, later. I’d over-build the structure of the spells and take the risk.
That done, I started fanning the flames, urging the air to move down one side of the firepit and up the other, making the wood blaze brighter and hotter. The more burning that got done, the more energy would be stored—again, assuming nothing blew up prematurely. In for a penny…
Outside, Bronze started up the final leg of the road, the long stretch above the last intersection, leading up to the inner courtyard gate. This street ran against the flat cliff face of the central peak of the city. Invaders were still crawling their way up the city streets. The main gate was now open; elven riders had reached it and actually tried to open it, rather than waiting for someone inside to do it. Oh, well. They’d already proven they weren’t stupid. Unwise, perhaps, but not stupid.
Back inside, I had a nasty thought and immediately set to work on it.
I built a magical matrix around each of my armor-bombs. This plucked oxygen out of the air and held it in a three-dimensional, crystal-like lattice, forming layers over the surface of the steel bracers. When all that thermal energy vaporized the steel plates, the expanding cloud of vaporized, superheated metal would have a lot of concentrated oxygen to mix with. With a little luck, I would have the first use of steel as an explosive, or at least an incendiary device.
While that started sucking in oxygen, I went out to greet Bronze. I opened the courtyard gate as she made the final leg of the trip, swung it shut behind her, and used a couple of the daggers from the corpses to wedge it. Not that it needed wedging; we were well ahead of the pursuit. I just wanted everyone coming this way to think I was desperately trying anything to keep them out.
I got my shoulder under her head and lifted. I walked forward, supporting her front, while her one good leg, in the rear, hopped along. We went inside and I lowered her gently down to her shortened forelegs.
She eyed the living prisoners, but didn’t set them on fire. I’m not sure I would have had that much restraint. I know I wouldn’t have tried to stop her if she chose to torch them, or just crush them. But Bronze is a nicer person than I am.
Okay, time to do things I didn’t want observed. Therefore, time to end the observer.
I gathered up the plates, now covered in what looked like
a pale blue glass, and headed for the door again. The flames in those three firepits had burned up most of their fuel, reducing them to little more than glowing beds of coals. I have no idea how many joules are stored in wood, but several pounds of wood provided heat for each metal plate. I was confident that the concentration would be sufficient.
For the next bit, I stood under the balcony and therefore not in visual range of the scrying sensor. I cast another gravity-altering spell to make sure I could make the leap. I nested the curved metal plates together, prepared everything else for immediate use, and made my move.
I stepped out from under the balcony, jumped straight up, and activated my gate spell. A crackling ring of distortion, blackness, and flickering rainbow lightning appeared, overwhelming the scrying sensor as the hole in space opened. It was about ten or eleven inches in diameter and revealed a youngish-looking man, brown hair, white eyes, wearing dark blue robes. He looked familiar; I wondered where I had seen him before. He barely had time to look startled—he didn’t have time to look terrified—before I slam-dunked three metal plates through the opening, bashing him in the face and knocking him down. As I started falling, I simultaneously jerked the containment spells loose and slammed the portal.
I landed lightly, hoping the bright white light I’d glimpsed not only flash-fried him, but set fire to the room. If I was lucky, maybe it also blew out any windows.
Any more scrying windows? No, not a one to be seen. Good.
I kicked swords and daggers under the door, wedging it thoroughly. Then I grabbed the living bodies and lined them up, side by side. Spell latticework surrounded them; black lines of soul-draining tendrils connected to energy points in their bodies. While they lived, power would flow from them into the spell; while they lived, they were generators, putting more power into a holding spell while I prepared the main one.