Sevenfold Sword: Unity

by Jonathan Moeller

  Quite a few muridach corpses were piling up down there.

  Tamara looked around, trying to spot another foe, and Calliande’s voice rang out.

  “Be ready!” said the Keeper, her staff glowing with white light in her hand. “Qazaldhar and the muridach priests are getting ready to strike. Can you see them?”

  “The Sight has shown me,” said Athadira, keeping her haughty mien despite the battle, flickers of lightning dancing up and down her jeweled staff. “There, just beyond the foot of the hill.”

  “I can shield us from their attack,” said Calliande, the white fire glowing brighter around her staff, “but you will need to hit them.”

  “The Augurs of the Unity of the Liberated,” said Athadira, “are more than capable of…”

  “The High Augur agrees,” snapped Seruna. Athadira glared at her. “We will strike with elemental spells if your wards can turn aside their attacks.”

  “Lord Rhomathar will guard us against the foot soldiers while we work our spells,” said Athadira, turning her gaze to the Lord Marshal. A troop of gray elven soldiers hurried closer, muridach blood glistening upon the blades of their swords. “Rilmeira will assist.”

  “Tamara, help them,” said Calliande, taking her staff in both hands. “Kalussa, keep breaking as many wheels as you can.”

  Tamara started to agree, and then blue light blazed at the foot of the hill.

  The Maledictus and the muridachs were casting their spell.

  The blue light shone brighter and began to spin. Shadows flowed and twisted through the blue glow, and soon a vortex of shadow and blue fire whirled below. Tamara shivered at the sight of it. She did not have the Sight as Calliande and the Augurs did, but nonetheless, she felt the terrible power radiating from the dark magic below.

  “It’s awful,” whispered Rilmeira. Tamara barely heard her over the howl of the battle.

  Then the muridach priests struck.

  A lance of shadow and blue fire, as large as one of the siege towers, screamed up the slope towards them. Tamara flinched, but Calliande shouted and struck the end of her staff against the ground, thrusting her free hand before her. A wall of white light rose up from the rampart, shimmering and translucent, and the lance of dark magic hammered into it.

  There was a brilliant white flash, followed by a thunderclap. A gust of hot wind blew past Tamara, tugging at her coat and hair, and for an awful instant, she feared the force of the wind would blow her right off the rampart and to the square below. In all the ways she had died in her nightmares, she had yet to die of falling from a great height. But the wind faded away, and she saw blue-white light playing around the Augurs as they cast their spell. Tamara sensed the currents of power snarling around them, the magic centering on the High Augur’s staff. Lightning crawled up and down the staff, and Athadira shouted and raised the weapon.

  A lightning bolt screamed out of the cloudless sky and landed at the foot of the hill with an explosion. Two more lightning bolts fell in rapid succession, and Tamara saw the sudden consternation among the muridach priests. She wondered if the Augurs’ lightning had destroyed Qazaldhar, but doubted it.

  Another lance of dark magic shot up the hill, and Calliande recast her warding spell, raising the wall of pale light to defeat the attack.

  The clang of metal against metal came to Tamara’s ears, and she turned to the east. A mob of muridach soldiers had broken free from one of the siege towers and rushed towards the gate. Likely they had orders to open the gate, but they would also kill the Keeper and the Augurs if they could get away with it.

  Tamara struck first, unleashing a wave of acidic mist that washed over the muridachs. The creatures staggered, screaming their rage and thrashing as the mist burned into them. Rilmeira raised her hand and cast a spell, and she called another of those cones of lightning that ripped into the muridachs. It also set Tamara’s acidic mist ablaze, and the creatures screamed again. The combination of lightning and acid killed about half of them, and the rest were wounded.

  Lord Rhomathar and the swordsmen charged into the fray, blades rising and falling, and finished off the muridachs.

  There was another exchange of white light and blue fire, and then Calliande lowered her staff with a shuddering breath.

  “The power is dissipating,” she said, her voice hoarse with strain and fatigue. “I think you killed about a dozen of the muridach priests.”

  “Perhaps they have decided to conserve their strength,” said Seruna. The old woman looked tired, and the black veins beneath her pale skin had grown starker. Tamara hoped the strain would not kill her. She seemed a voice of reason compared to Athadira’s arrogance. A pity she was not the High Augur.

  “Perhaps,” said Calliande. She grimaced and shook her head. “Or they’re preparing a second wave of siege towers, and they want to hold their powers in reserve.”

  Tamara looked up and down the walls and saw that all but four of the siege towers had been destroyed. Yet there was another wave of towers inching forward in the camps below, pushed by more undead muridachs.

  “Perhaps we should follow their example,” said Calliande.

  The towers began rolling forward, and Tamara felt cold dread settle around her.

  They had nearly repulsed the first wave of attack, but Tamara suspected the second would be even stronger.

  ###

  As the sun dipped over the jungle to the west, Ridmark lowered Oathshield, breathing hard. His eyes burned with sweat and smoke, and his shoulders and knees throbbed with dull pain. His armor and clothes were spattered with blood, both muridach and gray elven, though as usual nothing stained his gray cloak.

  Below the wall lay the smashed wreckage of the muridach assaults. Broken timbers and shattered stumps remained of the siege towers, and thousands of dead muridachs carpeted the slopes. The mingled stench of blood, muridach fur, and burned wood was hideous. At the edge of the jungle, the muridach siege camps seethed like an anthill. Ridmark saw them assembling more siege towers and some other machines that he did not recognize, and he had no doubt that the muridachs would launch another attack as soon as they were ready.

  But for now, the first two waves had been repulsed.

  Ridmark had come through the fighting unscathed, as had his companions. But nearly five hundred gray elves had fallen. Some had perished on the blades of muridach swords and axes. Many others had collapsed from exhaustion, overcome by the plague curse. Physical exhaustion lowered the gray elves’ resistance to the curse, and many had collapsed in the middle of the fighting.

  The gray elves had lost a tenth of their fighting force in the first day of fighting. In exchange, they had killed thousands of muridachs, maybe over ten thousand of the creatures, but that barely made a dent in the vast host of Nerzamdrathus.

  Ridmark had been in many battles, had been on both sides of a siege.

  But as he looked at the muridach siege camps, he realized that he saw no chance of victory for the gray elves.

  Chapter 14: Regrets

  Two days later, Calliande slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.

  Twice more the muridachs had thrown massive attacks at the walls of Cathair Caedyn, and twice more they had been repulsed at high cost. The gray elves had held beneath the storm of Nerzamdrathus’s horde, though Calliande did not think they could last much longer. Too many gray elven warriors had been killed in the fighting, and there had not been enough defenders to begin with. So far, the muridachs had been content to launch their attacks against the northern wall. Had they attacked all four sides of the city at once, Cathair Caedyn would have fallen in a day. But perhaps not even the muridachs had enough workers and lumber to construct that many siege towers.

  The magic and valor of the gray elves had held. And, Calliande had to admit, without her husband and her friends, the gray elves would not have held for nearly as long. Without the Shield Knight to rally them, the defense would have collapsed, and the muridachs would have gained a hold on the wall. Without the Swords of E
arth, Air, and Death to break the towers’ ramps, it would have cost far more lives to destroy the towers. Without Kyralion Firebow to rally the defenders again and again, to inspire the gray elves to follow him into the fighting, the muridachs might have swept the city’s ramparts clean of gray elven warriors.

  And without Calliande and Kalussa, many more gray elves would have died.

  Calliande and Kalussa were the only people in Cathair Caedyn who could use the healing magic of the Well of Tarlion. There had been many gray elven wounded, but Calliande and her apprentice had focused on the mortally wounded gray elves, those would have died without assistance. Calliande was used to this kind of work, was used to pulling the agony of mortal wounds into herself again and again.

  Kalussa was not. Yet the girl threw herself into the task, her face growing tight and strained and pale, her eyes glittering with exhaustion. Perhaps she did it as a distraction from her fears over Calem. For his part, Calem flung himself into the battle with grim efficiency, leaving hundreds of butchered muridachs in his wake, and he single-handedly destroyed nearly a score of the siege towers. It had likely taken thousands of muridach warriors and laborers to assemble the siege towers, and Calem alone had destroyed their work.

  But for every muridach they killed, more and more seemed to take their place.

  Calliande grabbed what few snatches of sleep she could in the moments between attacks. After they repulsed another wave of towers and she had healed several dozen warriors, Calliande had been so weary she could barely keep her feet. Ridmark had taken her to one of the empty houses near the northern square, and she had lain down and intended to rest for only a few moments.

  Instead, she had fallen into a deep sleep, too exhausted even to dream.

  When Calliande awoke, morning sunlight leaked through the windows. The room of white stone was empty, the furniture long ago removed, and she lay on a blanket against the wall.

  There were no sounds of alarm, at least not yet, though the faint odor of rotting flesh from outside the walls came to her nostrils. For a moment Calliande lay motionless, fighting the bone-deep fatigue that lay upon her like an iron weight. Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and reached for the Sight.

  She sent it spinning north, seeking for her sons, and found them. Gareth and Joachim were still in Aenesium. Both sleeping, she thought. Still healthy, she could tell that much. She hoped Michael and Father Clement were looking after them. Gareth ought to be a page in the royal court by now. King Hektor would have marched against the Confessor, but he would have left a regent in command of Aenesium, and the Palace of the High Kings would continue the government of Owyllain.

  Calliande hoped her children would stay safe.

  She hoped they would forgive her for leaving them orphaned.

  Because she saw no other outcome to this siege.

  With her eyes closed, Calliande prayed to God, asking for guidance, asking for his protection over the city and the gray elves. She asked for protection for both Owyllain and Andomhaim.

  And most of all, she prayed for her sons.

  At last Calliande opened her eyes and sat up, thirst clawing at her throat and hunger twisting at her belly. At least the danger of starvation was remote. The gray elves’ skill with both the elemental magic of earth and water gave them the ability to call forth fruits and vegetables from the ground with ease, and Calliande herself could summon enough ice to keep the city from dying of thirst.

  The city would fall long before thirst or starvation became a problem.

  She turned her head and saw Ridmark sitting next to her, back propped against the wall, eyes closed.

  Calliande gazed at her husband. She thought he was sleeping, and the harsh lines of his face had relaxed somewhat, his blue eyes closed. Had there always been so much gray at his temples, the lines in his face so deep? Maybe they had, and she hadn’t noticed. In so many ways, he looked no different than when he had charged through the fire to rescue her from that dark elven altar on the Black Mountain ten years ago.

  But he was different now. They both were. Ten years ago, Calliande hadn’t known who she was, her memory lost behind a veil of her own magic. Ten years ago, Ridmark had been a grimmer and angrier man, determined to get himself killed in atonement for his wife’s murder. It had only been ten years ago, but it seemed so much longer.

  She wondered if Ridmark had ever imagined that their lives would end here, far from home in a land they had never heard of until a few months ago. Though given how he had spent years wandering the Wilderland in search of the Frostborn, perhaps he had always known he would die in battle.

  Calliande had thought that he had been sleeping, but his eyes opened, and he smiled a little.

  “How are the children?” he said in a quiet voice.

  “Well, as far as I can tell,” said Calliande. “I think they’re both sleeping.”

  “A good idea, truth be told,” said Ridmark.

  Calliande shook her head. “I’m more hungry than tired.”

  “Thought you might be,” said Ridmark. He reached to the side and picked up a wooden plate. On it lay several slices of bread and sausage and cheese, and he also had a wineskin. “I’ve never been a wizard, but you keep telling me that magic is hungry work.”

  “It is,” said Calliande. The hunger pangs in her stomach got worse as she looked at the food, and she reached over and took a slice of bread and several pieces of sausage. “How many fat Magistri have you ever seen?”

  Ridmark snorted. “About as many fat Swordbearers. Which is to say, none.” Ridmark shook his head, took a bite of bread, and swallowed. “Not that Swordbearers tend to live long enough to get fat.”

  “No.” Calliande took the wineskin, had a drink, and passed it to him. The strange gray elven wine burned against her tongue, but it wasn’t strong enough to make her woozy, and it did quench her thirst. “And I suppose neither shall we.” She sighed. “I wonder if Gareth and Joachim will ever find out what happened to us.”

  Ridmark was silent for a moment. “The siege isn’t over yet. A battle is not decided until it’s finished.”

  “No,” said Calliande, “but sometimes the outcome is clear before the swords are even drawn. Sometimes battles are decided before they even begin.”

  “Sometimes,” agreed Ridmark. “But we don’t yet know if this is one or not.”

  She laughed. “I’m not one of your soldiers. You don’t have to keep my morale up.”

  “You’re my wife. Keeping your morale up is more important.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” said Calliande, taking another piece of bread.

  “And maybe you’re right,” said Ridmark. “Maybe this is the end. You know I am not an optimistic man. But to lie down and wait for death…no, that is not in my nature.” He looked at her. “If it was, I suppose I would have died years before I met you.”

  “And I would be the worse for it,” said Calliande. She thought for a moment. “Dead, for that matter.”

  They ate and drank in silence for a while, passing the wineskin back and forth between them.

  “Do you think we can win?” said Calliande at last.

  Ridmark shook his head. “Probably not. There are just too many muridachs and too few gray elves. If we could find a way out of the city, I would take it. Better that than letting the Seven Swords fall into the hands of Nerzamdrathus. Though he can only wield one of the Seven at a time. The muridach horde would likely tear itself apart fighting over the three Swords, and they would never come anywhere near Owyllain itself. But Cathair Caedyn is probably going to fall.”

  “That is not cheering,” said Calliande.

  “No,” said Ridmark. “But if Nerzamdrathus or Qazaldhar make a mistake, it could fall apart on them. You know what the muridachs are like. This horde is being held together by fear of the Great King and reverence for the prophet of the Lord of Carrion. If we can kill Nerzamdrathus, the muridach lords will likely tear each other apart before Qazaldhar can reestablish contr
ol. And if we can destroy Qazaldhar himself…I suspect he’s the one keeping Nerzamdrathus on the throne of the Great King. Without the Maledictus of Death watching his back, one of the muridach lords might get ambitious and assassinate him, or Nerzamdrathus might make a mistake.”

  “I wish I had your confidence,” said Calliande.

  Ridmark shrugged. “It is a simple problem. Either we die fighting, or we win and see our sons again.”

  She nodded and then smiled. “It is simple when you put it that way.” She paused. “I don’t suppose Third knows anything new?”

  “No,” said Ridmark. “If she’s destined to somehow save or destroy the gray elves, I can’t see how. Perhaps the Augurs simply misinterpreted the vision.” A dry note entered his voice. “You’ve met the High Augur. The woman would die before she admitted to making a mistake.”

  “Aye,” said Calliande. It would have been easy to blame Athadira for the doom of the gray elves. But even if the High Augur had the battlefield skill of Alexander the Great, the wisdom of Solomon, and the courage of Arthur Pendragon, that still wouldn’t have been enough.

  She wondered what Kyralion felt as he watched the end of his people approach. Perhaps the Romans upon Old Earth had felt that way as they saw the barbarians march through the gates, or perhaps the knights of Arthur Pendragon had felt the same after the High King had fallen to his bastard son’s treachery.

  All Calliande felt was the overwhelming desire to see her sons once more.

  But they were far away, and there was work to do.

  “Thank you for bringing me food,” said Calliande, finishing off the last of the bread.

  Ridmark nodded. “If I didn’t, you would neglect to eat and work yourself until you fell over.”

  “I would not,” said Calliande.

  He raised an eyebrow. “When was the last time you ate properly?”

  “It was…ah…” She frowned. “We weren’t yet inside Cathair Caedyn.”

  “My point exactly,” said Ridmark. He got to his feet. “Ready?”