Soldiers of Ruin

by Stephen L. Nowland

  “Fifty,” Aiden repeated, looking at Sayana.

  “That’s a lot, even for this thing,” she answered, hefting the staff.

  “Which way to the throne room from here?” Aiden asked of Nellise.

  “The only way to there from this location is via the main hall, which is through that door and all of those cultists,” she replied, her voice tight with concern.

  “We only need to get them away from the gate controls long enough for Sparky to drop the drawbridge,” Aiden surmised. “Grab their attention and then pull back towards the throne room. I recall those doors are pretty solid, so we should be able to block it off while we confront the duke. We strike hard and fast, while the rest of you get to the main hall before they cut us off.”

  “I am ready,” Valennia stated, gripping her weapon eagerly. Nellise stepped to the fore and drew Solas Aingeal, holding the holy blade with two hands while she whispered a prayer. Aiden glanced around at everyone else, noting the trepidation in their faces and then nodded to Sayana, indicating she should make the opening move.

  When the sorceress was in position, Ronan opened the door and stepped aside as a powerful force rippled through the air from the staff, crashing into the nearest group of cultists and knocking them off their feet. It wasn’t quite what Aiden had expected, but it was perfect for the task at hand. Summoning all of the power at his disposal, he charged into the army of steel-clad warriors.

  With the element of surprise gone, Aiden was met with a wall of flashing steel right from the outset. With his gauntlet adding strength to his already impressive power, Aiden cut a line through their ranks brutal efficiency. The cultists had archers positioned further back in the room, and they shot a torrent of arrows with the Kingdom’s finest longbows, taken from the castle’s own armoury.

  Valennia followed in his wake, keeping his flanks clear with savage efficiency. She kept up the offensive despite taking a hammering from their return strikes, barely even trying to deflect the razor-sharp blade of their foes.

  Aiden’s spectral armour flashed as it took the brunt of the incoming attacks before it finally collapsed, and he felt the sting of an arrow pierce his arm. More surprisingly, when the incantation failed, a crackle of electricity burst out from his breastplate, shocking the cultist that had struck him last and leaving him a smouldering corpse on the fine carpets underfoot. A dozen cultists lay by his side, but the remainder were organised and pressing the advantage of their numbers relentlessly. It was time to retreat.

  “Fall back!” he roared over the din of the battle, unable to spare the time to look around and see if the others were okay. He turned off his gauntlet before it started to scald him and went defensive, focusing on deflecting the incoming attacks while carefully moving back to the huge double doors that led to the throne room. With his speed, he could actually cut the arrows out of the air with a sweep of his sword.

  The doors had been opened already, and glancing around Aiden saw everyone else had pulled back within the hallway beyond. He disengaged and ran for it, easily outdistancing his foes. He hoped Sparky was able to get the drawbridge open, for without more support, they would most likely perish against the sheer number of their enemies.

  Pacian and Ronan were opening up the main doors to the throne room at the other end of the passage when the rest of their group arrived, rushing through the partly-opened doors into the vast chamber beyond, and turning to slam them shut again before the host could reach it.

  Aiden brought down a large plank of wood that fell into place across metal supports, and Valennia went one step further, pushing a couch and table behind the door. The loud thumping sounds they could hear on the other side indicated their enemies were attempting to break through, but they’d need something heavier than armoured fists to break in.

  “Nicely done,” Nellise remarked as she caught her breath, while Aiden looked around the room they had entered. Its red carpets and pennants showed they were in the correct room and at the end of the chamber sat the royal thrones, one of them empty, but the other occupied with a familiar face.

  “Aiden! Thank heaven you’ve returned,” Duke Charles Montague called, stepping out of the throne and rushing to meet them face to face. “The castle has been taken over by imposters! I have been held captive here in the throne room by those blaggards for two days now. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do, Your Grace,” Aiden replied in a quiet, tightly controlled voice. “These men — if they can be called that — are under your command, and you have been involved with them for months in your attempt to wrest control of the throne from the king.”

  “Wha…what?” the duke stammered, stopping short several yards away.

  “Do not try to deny it, old man,” Valennia snarled, her blood-covered visage an intimidating sight. “We have evidence, taken from the bloodied corpse of Sir Godfrey implicating you as the perpetrator!”

  “And while you thought to remove our interference by sending us to the Isle of the Dead, it has proved to be your undoing,” Nellise added, as cold and merciless as Aiden had ever heard her speak. “We recovered another copy of ‘Ancient artifacts from Old Tymes’ which makes no mention of the Sceptre of Oblivion.”

  “I don’t understand,” the duke said, continuing to appear bewildered.

  “The bloody thing doesn’t exist!” Pacian roared, rushing forward to grab the old man by his tunic. “You sent us out there to die, all for nothing!”

  “Only through Sir William’s sacrifice did we survive that blighted place, damn you,” Nellise hissed. “Now you will be brought to account for your treason.”

  “Sir William is dead?” the duke whispered.

  “Along with Sir Godfrey,” Aiden added harshly. “Their blood is on your hands.”

  “I swear I have no idea what you’re speaking of,” The duke protested, struggling to keep his footing with Pacian shoving him around. “I give you my word—”

  “Your word doesn’t count for much at the moment,” Aiden muttered. “Soon, the entire City Watch is going to be storming this place and your black-hearted associates will be eliminated or incarcerated. Give up, ‘Your Grace’ — it’s over.”

  “When those men came into the castle, the Royal Guard tried to repel them but there were too many,” the duke protested. “They took the castellan away and left me here, a prisoner in my own home. The princess has been kept in her room, but heaven knows what they have planned for us. I swear to you all, I have nothing to do with this treachery!”

  “And what of this sceptre that you’ve had us running to the four corners of the Kingdom to find, hmm?” Aiden asked.

  “I saw the entry in the book the castellan found, the same as you!” he choked as Pacian grew impatient. The hammering on the doors behind them continued.

  “Someone forged that entry,” Ronan interrupted. “It was bloody brilliant work, but it’s fake. You don’t strike me as the type to do your own work though, so who did you get to do it?”

  “I wasn’t involved, and I cannot make it any clearer than that, damn you!” the duke snapped, mustering his courage. “Only someone who had access to the book could have done it, and I didn’t learn of its existence until the castellan brought it to our attention months ago!”

  Aiden was about to spit back a retort when the full meaning of the duke’s words sank in. A flash of insight swept through his mind as he recalled Castellan Hodges speaking of the book, and how he’d brought it to the king’s attention not long before he set out on his war with Tulsone. Previous encounters with the castellan flashed through Aiden’s mind, and the pieces all fell into place.

  “The castellan has access to the treasury, does he not?” he asked quietly, a terrible feeling of betrayal sweeping through him.

  “Of course he does, in order to conduct the daily affairs… dear God,” the duke breathed, evidently coming to the same conclusion as Aiden.

  “I do not understand — speak plainly!” Valennia co
mplained.

  “The castellan is behind the entire conspiracy against the Crown,” Aiden explained in a low voice. “He had access to the money necessary to hire the mercenaries who attacked Culdeny, the pirates who attacked us at sea, and the assassins who assaulted the senate. He paid someone to forge the entry for the Sceptre of Oblivion, which I suppose he just made up.”

  “Actually, you’d be surprised how easy it is to do it yourself,” Hodges said from nearby, entering the throne room from a side door. He was dressed in his usual clothing, but with the addition of a breastplate similar to the one Aiden was wearing, and a rapier strapped to his belt. “The scribing didn’t have to be exact, for the duke trusts my every word.”

  “Well, if it isn’t ‘Number One’,” Aiden growled in a low voice. “Or should I say number two?”

  “Spare me your country boy wit, Mister Wainwright,” the castellan replied tersely. “Your return from the Isle was not unanticipated, so do not think you have an advantage here.” Pacian released the duke and raised his crossbow, loosing a bolt with all the speed he could muster. It clanged off an invisible barrier around the castellan and fell to the floor as more people entered behind him. Aiden held up a hand to stay Valennia from charging in, as the presence of the magical barrier gave him pause.

  The castellan flashed a quick smile, and then pulled out a scroll from his belt. He unfurled it and read the words inked upon the parchment, which crumbled in his hands as the power was released. His body took on a shimmering quality as the invocation took effect. Although the exact nature of it was beyond Aiden, he knew it was something formidable.

  “You’re not the only one to shirk the laws of magic,” he said to Aiden. “The castle has quite an extensive library, which I have made use of for this little confrontation.”

  A black-robed man, heavily wrapped in dark garments stepped into the room with his hands clasped before him like a monk. Aiden immediately recognised him as the leader of the cultists who had attacked the senate, the one who disappeared after Sayana had detonated the building.

  Behind him came an athletic woman holding a sword and dagger in her hands, and again, Aiden recognised her straight away. Sarah Holister, leader of the assassins, who had been captured after their assault on their complex beneath the city, surveyed the group with eyes hungry for revenge. Scars and welts on her body showed she had not been treated well during her stay in the castle dungeons, and she seemed far more dangerous than the first time they had met.

  Finally, the diminutive form of Perry, the deposed raelani guild master came through the door, carrying a sword that seemed almost too big for him over one shoulder. He gave Ronan a sly grin, and the sailor let out a string of curses.

  “What the hell are you doing with these bastards, Perry?” he spat.

  “I was looking for a new career,” he explained easily, casually glancing at the sword. “You and yours are on the wrong side of history, mate — you should have stayed at sea.”

  “Did you have to sacrifice your mates to do it?” Ronan persisted while Aiden locked eyes with Holister.

  “My dark friend here needed to bring back his followers and well, there’s a price that had to be paid when raising the dead.” Perry shrugged.

  “What infamy is this?” the duke breathed, clearly rattled. “You have betrayed your country and your king, Malcolm. Why in God’s name would you kidnap the princess and associate with these monsters?”

  “I had hoped to keep Criosa hidden, rather than killing her,” the castellan replied. “As the last in her royal line, I would need to marry her to become the next king of Aielund.”

  “But why the attack on Culdeny?” Nellise asked in dismay.

  “I had no knowledge of that ‘til after the fact,” the castellan replied delicately. “It seems the late Ronald Bartlett had paid Commander Black an additional bonus to plunder the town for his own ends. I had only paid him to raid Bracksford in order to capture the princess.

  “I had thought sending you to the Isle would have been enough to kill you. My associate here assured me that Aeldrith was still there, and would finish you off with ease.” Castellan Hodges gazed at the black-robed priest with flinty eyes as he said this. “It seems we underestimated your skill.”

  “You are responsible for Sir Godfrey’s death, as well as countless others,” the duke stated, his hands shaking with rage. “You have betrayed everything you have sworn to protect!”

  “It was a difficult choice to make, old friend, but it would have been far worse to stand idly by and watch our country burn in flames as the Ironlord marches to Fairloch.”

  “How do you know we won’t be able to stop it?” Sayana asked.

  “It took the last truly ancient dragon to banish it last time,” Castellan Hodges explained. “My associate tells me that the creature nears death even now, and upon its demise the Ironlord will be free to walk the earth once more.”

  “I took it upon myself to come up with an alternative plan, one that His Majesty would never consider. As king, I will be able to save this land from destruction. It was only a pity that nobody else would understand what I was trying to achieve.”

  “Why do we continue to speak when we could be killing them?” Valennia growled.

  “Because you want to have it all make sense, in some way,” the castellan explained with a grim smile. “My research has shown that the Ironlord isn’t some unthinking engine of destruction — it is quite intelligent, and I believe it can be reasoned with, something the king never accepted, no matter how hard I tried to convince him. I have always, always had the Kingdom’s best interests at heart, but when nobody would listen to reason, I took measures into my own hands.”

  “He was still your king, sir, and the decision was his to make,” the duke answered in a rasping voice. “You have gone mad, and I pity what is about to become of you.” He then clutched at his chest and doubled over, gasping for breath before he toppled to the floor.

  “Uncle Charlie!” a female voice called from far back in the chamber. Princess Criosa had emerged from her room clad in a simple blue dress to see the duke fall, and upon her appearance, the black robed priest had something to say.

  “Since she is no longer needed, I request that she be thrown in with the others down below, Castellan,” he said with a dry, robust voice. “They have proven to be such delicious entertainment,” he added, looking to Valennia with a grim smile visible beneath his hood.

  “Now you die!” she roared, raising the scythe this very priest had once wielded against them and charging at the robed man.

  “Val, wait!” Aiden cried. The distance to the priest wasn’t great, and in her rage Valennia was upon him in moments. The cultist leader watched her approach with a smile, and raised his hands when she was within a few yards. The scythe, still connected to its true owner through some dark magic, vanished from her hands and appeared in his, pointed right at her chest.

  Unable to stop herself, the akoran woman ran right into the weapon, which emerged from her back, cutting through the armour with a horrid screech. Stunned and dismayed, Aiden could only watch in horror as Holister spun around and cut the mortally wounded woman’s head from her neck.

  Sayana screamed in anger and dismay, dropping the staff and throwing her hands together before her. Light blazed along her arms and a crackling bolt of green energy shot from her fingertips. It struck the magical barrier surrounding Castellan Hodges with a thunderous report, shattering it in a shower of blue sparks and knocking everyone in the room flat onto their backs.

  The burst of magical energy was enough to snap Aiden and the others back to reality and with his magically augmented reflexes, he leaped to his feet and immediately charged. His sword was met with steel however, as Holister nimbly moved in and stopped it.

  Aiden locked eyes with the assassin, the uncompromising look of hatred between them almost palpable. In that single moment, Aiden could sense powerful magic suffusing the woman and knew he was in trouble. The instant he p
ulled his blade back, their momentary hesitation evaporated and the two clashed in a flurry of blades and magic that sent sparks flying.

  Time around them appeared to slow as Aiden focused all of his power in a series of cuts and slashes. Whatever magics the castellan had bestowed upon Holister mirrored his own, stealing his advantage and reducing him to simply trying to keep her at bay. Around them, Aiden’c companions and Holister’s dark allies moved towards each other at a quarter of their normal speed, oblivious to the frenzied fight occurring in their midst.

  Contained within a bubble of accelerated time, Aiden’s heart pounded in his ears as he simply tried to keep up. More than once he was struck and his blood flowed as the assassin slowly whittled away at him. He utilised all of the training Kinsey had given him, trying to think further in advance to anticipate the assassin’s moves before they happened.

  The likelihood of assistance was slim, for he could see Nellise was busy fighting the death priest. The black-robed man raised a hand to conjure a blast of dark energy, only to be absorbed by the undying light of her holy blade. Her return stroke met the steel of his scythe, which hummed with a power that it had never shown while Valennia had wielded it. The cleric’s earlier suspicions about the weapon had proven true, and it had cost the akoran’ woman’s life to discover that.

  Thoughts of Valennia’s sudden death ran through Aiden’s overcharged mind and with a snarl of rage, he set aside Kinsey’s finesse training and attempted to bash his way through Holister’s cunning defense.

  Assistance came in the form of arrows shot from high on the wall as Ronan, perched in an ideal position to attack, put an arrow right into Holister’s leg. Aiden glanced up and was startled to see Perry suddenly appear through a glowing door right above him. The raelani killer began to fall through the arcane doorway and used the momentum to drive his sword down towards Ronan’s unsuspecting form.

  Perry’s blade pierced his arm, forcing him to drop the bow and clutch at the terrible wound as the raelani grabbed hold of him and began punching him in the face with the hilt of his sword. Ronan attempted to dislodge his unwanted passenger but the little man was tenacious, driving his knee into the sailor’s ribs and attempting to bring his sword in for a killing stroke.