On the other side, there was a scene of struggle as a large mass of enemy in the center fought his own invading men at the doors from the towers on the opposite side. To the center front and center back of the place were huge iron and wood mechanisms to operate the gates.
Facing him, however, were spearmen crouched low in a line behind large round shields, bearing white clouds and thunderbolts, and behind them a line of archers in dark gray tunics.
The bowmen fired. Talaos leapt backwards out of the way, fast as the arrows, and blocked Imvan and Firio behind him. Arrows clattered against the stone where he'd stood. He missed his throwing daggers. Then another idea came to him.
He sheathed his swords. Briefly, he showed himself around the doorway. The bowmen in the room were quick, and another volley of arrows struck the wall.
In the mere seconds available, he darted forward, and to the shock of all who saw it, he ripped the heavy, thick wooden door from its hinges, and then took it by its sturdy handle like a tower shield in his left hand. He drew his long blade with his right.
Behind him, Firio whistled with an intake of breath.
He charged forward. For a moment, the enemy soldiers were too stunned to react. Then they fired more arrows uselessly against the door he carried in one hand. Behind, Imvan fired an arrow and put it through an archer's throat. Firio threw two daggers in quick succession, faster than the strikes of a snake, and each went through the eye of a bowman.
Then Talaos was upon the enemy. He turned the door sideways and threw it into the faces of the spearmen before him. Blood sprayed where it struck as the men behind toppled. He leapt over the ruin with blades flashing, and cut down the archers left and right. As the startled remaining spearmen turned to deal with him, his grim warriors poured through the doorway and were upon them. Imvan stayed at the stairs, selecting targets, while Firio crept into the room, seeming unimportant as always, and began to deal stealthy death.
On the other side, his men had cleared the areas around the doorways of enemies and fought their way forward with Larogwan and Epos in the forefront. The enemy fell back and formed a defensive position in the center of the vast room. There was an officer in the center, directing them to form a shield wall while bowmen readied behind.
Talaos picked up his door shield, thick with gore on its underside. It was cracked, but held together by its iron bracings. He stepped in front of his men and hurled it like a discus into the center of the enemy. The officer and those around him went crashing in ruin. Then Talaos howled, and he and his men descended like wolves on the startled, leaderless enemy.
It was over in moments.
He gestured to the mechanism at the front of the room. It was flanked by a pair of narrow windows, and then several arrow slits on each side. Then he roared, "Larogwan, take some men and open the gates! The rest of you, to the floor below!"
With that, he raced back to the tower stairs and down with men charging behind. Above, he could hear Vulkas bellowing as he brought more men down the stairs. Elsewhere, Kyrax and Halmir shouted as they followed down their own towers.
The next level had another sturdy door. Warm, almost hot air filtered up through the small gap at its base. Talaos readied, kicked the door open, and drew back as the arrows came. He then went leaping high, his back almost scraping along the thick beams of the ceiling, and over the next volley of arrows. As he flew, he saw a mixed body of soldiers on either side of the door, and archers beyond. He landed in the midst of the bowmen with scything blades.
The men on either side of the door, waiting to ambush, had glanced up as Talaos flew past. Next through the door was Firio, low and unseen on the ground. He darted right and cut a soldier's tendons, then leaped away as others turned to attack him with swords and axes.
Next through the door was Vulkas, who moved his mattock into motion even as he did. He spun left and brought the mattock like a hammer against the anvil of the wall on the left. The closest enemy had the misfortune of being in between. Then more men poured through, and bloody fighting began all round.
Talaos stood in the center of the slaughtered archers. He surveyed the floor, his battlefield, before him. There were small openings above and below at the front and back, where the huge chains of the gates ran. On the floor in the center of the room, there was a rectangular grid of much larger openings: square hatches with iron grates.
On either side of that grid was an area where sturdy beams crossed the floor, with metal mountings for pots of boiling water or oil. At the back of the room was an area of brick flooring and brick furnaces to boil the water, with chimneys out. Men had been working the fires, and with protective clothing, carried pots by means of iron rods to the mountings, where boiling water would be poured on unfortunate invaders below.
However, with the arrival of Talaos and his men, all work had stopped. The two doors on the far side looked to have been braced with spare iron rods and stopped with heavy iron pots. There was banging as Talaos's men tried to smash through the doors. More enemy soldiers, ready for the ambush, stood watch on that side. A pair of officers near the center were shouting orders.
Then, as Talaos watched, his men poured past him and into the enemy. As they advanced, slaying, they hurled some of the defenders over their own iron gratings. Blood dripped through to the gate causeway below. The other doors smashed open at last. The remaining Madmen and their soldiers poured through, and it was soon over.
A great grinding noise filled the chamber as both gates began to open. This floor had arrow slits as well. Talaos walked to one of them as the rest of his men poured down the stairs and gathered, awaiting his command. He took a look.
Down below, outside the walls, was a scene of combat, as ladders raised and men fought. The wind still roared and the rain came down in sheets. In that, arrows were useless, and all would be decided steel to steel. He listened to the creaking of the gate mechanism and looked to the field before those gates, where Kurvan waited with a thousand men.
The gates seem to have opened far enough, for Kurvan bellowed, audible even in the storm, and his men roared with him. Then howling madly, Kurvan charged with a colossal axe in his hands and his thousand men at his back.
Talaos turned to his own men.
He spoke in a deep voice that echoed like distant thunder, "Men, there will be archers in a room on each side of that causeway on the floor below. We'll clear them, then we'll help Kurvan at the gate. After that, we're going to the center of Avrosa, where that fire was burning. You will follow me and go nowhere else unless I order it. You will slay anyone under arms who opposes us, and you will slay any I order you to, without question, but no one else!"
There were looks of surprise from among the grim volunteers.
"I command it!" roared Talaos, voice like a thunderclap.
"We obey!" came the shouted response, the response soldiers of Hunyos used when accepting a formal order. With it, they saluted him, and it was returned by him.
"There is one more thing, men," said Talaos. "You've earned a title of your own, just as we Madmen did against Drosta. We took this place like a wolf on the fold. As of now, you are the Wolves."
Ferocious cheers followed. Talaos raised his hand, and they waited on his word.
"Now men, to it!"
~
Behind the gates of Avrosa spread a broad paved square, and that square ran with rain and blood as Kurvan and his men fought their way through massed ranks of defenders. Talaos hurtled out from a door at the back of the left of the keep, and into the enemy. With the Madmen at his sides and his Wolves behind. At the now-cleared keep, they left fourteen dead of their own, and three hundred or more of the enemy.
Here in the open was a very different kind of battle. Talaos and the Madmen wreaked havoc before them. Further on the flanks, enemy spearmen, some in formations with long pikes, slew some of his Wolves. Squads of enemy cavalry in the gray of Avrosa flanked the plaza, and they charged. On the far side, Kurvan's men simply swarmed around them, tak
ing losses, but pulling them off their horses with axes and knives doing bloody work.
"Leave the cavalry to Kurvan! Men, follow me!" roared Talaos.
He cut a scything path before him, with Vulkas to his left, smashing and hurling unfortunate foes. Like the point of a wedge, they advanced with the other Madmen at their flanks and the Wolves behind. Then they were through, with only buildings and the driving rain before them.
Behind them, Kurvan's men poured up the stairs of the walls, and the heavy infantry marched behind to finish the defenders in the plaza. Talaos smiled as he ran. The commanders knew their business, he thought. He'd done his part. They were in and through the gates. Now, he had business of his own. Business with his only true enemy here. Business with the followers of the Living Prophet.
Down the streets he ran. Close-spaced buildings of three to five stories formed blocks much like those in the Republic, with shops below and housing above. There were few civilians on the streets. Most of the doors they passed were closed, and the windows above were shuttered. Here and there, small squads of enemy soldiers or militia ran to join the battle. Talaos and his men cut them down, hardly pausing. Others simply fled before them.
He was getting closer. They came to an area where the buildings were made of fine stone. They had little walled courtyards between them and their neighbors, and towers rising above from their centers. Talaos guessed they were the homes of the wealthy, but unlike the friendly townhouses of the Republic, these looked to him like fortresses in miniature.
Then they reached the civic buildings. There were statues on columns fronting tall colonnades in the old Imperial style. Just like home, thought Talaos. It was not far, could not be far. Then, they heard singing. Even in the rain, the driving wind, and the thunder, they could hear singing by many voices. They rounded a corner.
"What the...!" snarled Kyrax.
Before them was a great plaza, surrounded by the largest of the civic buildings. Around that plaza massed crowds of people, many, but far from all of them, in simple woolen or linen clothes. Some of the men had white caps and some of the women white shawls. They sang. In the midst of rain, wind and death, they sang a song of peace and redemption.
On the far side of the plaza stood a House of the Prophet. It was larger by far than the one in Ipesca. Here and there in the crowd were soldiers. In front of the House of the Prophet stood a small group of men and women, all in simple clothes and white caps or white shawls. They sang as well, the same song of peace, of redemption, and of forgiveness in the next world.
In the midst of the crowd, at the center of the plaza, atop a wide brick platform of eight steps, was a great iron stake with rings and chains. Chained to the stake were four people in smocks of plain linen, looking up vacantly at the sky. Wood was piled beneath and around them. Around the wood, twelve people, six men in robes and beards, and six women in shawls with tight-coiled hair, were pouring oil.
Talaos ran faster, with his men behind him.
As they ran, Kyrax growled, "What are those idiots doing? Fire in a rainstorm..."
There was a flash of green light atop the platform.
The people all around, hundreds of them, sang on. There was joy on their faces. The twelve men and women on the platform watched the people on the pyre solemnly. Then they smiled, the gentle smile of forgiveness.
Amid the rain and wind, as Talaos watched, bright red fires lit in the wood.
Rage.
He would not allow it.
The wind roared to new life. Wind like a gale.
Rain poured from the sky as if unleashed from a dam.
Some of the singers faltered. The men and women on the platform, watching the growing flames, were undisturbed.
The fires flickered in the driving rain.
Electricity flickered in his hands.
Talaos stalked forward. Some in the crowd, those who had faltered in their singing, turned his way. Their eyes widened and their mouths opened with fear.
It was all around him now, raging. Blue-white wrath crackled from his hands and arced into the ground around his feet. The rain poured. The men and women on the platform turned to look at him, and they turned all at once, slowly, with gentle smiles.
There was a flash, and the flames rose anew. The people on the pyre began to scream.
He would not allow it.
Lightning struck from the sky, struck the smiling men and women. One, then another, in great crashing thunderbolts, they hurtled and scattered and died. Their corpses smiled still.
The people in the crowd stopped singing. Some screamed and fled.
Under the oceans of driving rain, the flames flickered out and died.
The men and women at the House of the Prophet seemed undisturbed. They dropped to their knees and sang a new, sonorous, rhythmic song. All except three of them, who walked forward with measured steps. These wore short, pure white robes over billowing white clothes and carried long white staffs bound with copper rings. As Talaos watched, they seemed to slow down, or he again sped up.
From the nearer side of the plaza, from the greatest of the civic buildings, a vast structure with a lofty marble and gilt dome, came fifteen more men and women in purple cloaks and golden laurel wreath diadems, Talaos thought them to be city councilors, patricians, like in the Republic. With these came a troop of soldiers in heavy armor. The patricians themselves were armed, and they were moving their mouths as if giving orders. Slowly.
All of them slowly, moving slowly as if they walked in dreams.
Talaos turned, the lightning in his eyes illuminating the driving rain before him.
He looked at his own men. Some of them stood transfixed by what they watched, others moved slowly forward, slowly as the councilors and the enemy soldiers. No time to wait for them, he thought. Ahead was the House of the Prophet. He summoned his wrath. He would strike it down as he had the servants of the Prophet on the platform.
He called his wrath, his lightning, from the sky. It struck the House. He watched the bolt crack between the building and the sky. While all the men and women around, the falling rain and the gentle wind moved with such slowness, the lightning at least moved at a speed like his.
But something was wrong. The bolt struck, but the House of the Prophet did not fall. With the flash of lightning, an answering flash of faint green light flowed around the building. The power of the Prophet, rising to challenge his. He raged. He would call down more lightning, over and over again until the House was destroyed. He would... No.
He remembered, he was here to explore that place, to find secrets of the Prophet's beliefs against the wishes of the Prophet's followers. This was not the time. He calmed. The people fleeing all around began to move with faster steps, as did the three walking steadily toward him. The wind picked up and the rain flew faster and faster in the gale.
Now the three men came swiftly. Their measured steps were as fast as other men could run. They raised the long staffs in their hands, and placid smiles appeared on their faces.
He turned back to look at the city patricians and the troops that guarded them. He could hear sounds of battle far away, as the city was even now falling. Even so, amidst it all, soldiers of Avrosa converged on the square, and the councilors gave orders.
The patricians who had allowed his enemy into their city, who had allowed the burnings.
No longer.
Power crackled anew along his blades and in his eyes.
He turned to his men, pointed to the councilors on the steps of their building, and shouted with a thundering voice, "Free the people on the Pyre! Kill the patricians and the soldiers!"
With grim faces, the Madmen and the Wolves turned that way.
Talaos turned to face the three smiling men with staffs.
They moved swift as thought, as one, and their staffs flickered with green light.
He leapt forward, high and far, blades flashing blue-white under the black sky.
They raised their staffs.
He whirled, blades spinning. He brought his long blade down from on high against the leftmost of the men. The foe blocked the strike with his green-lit staff. There was a crack as electricity arced around, but the blade glanced away. Talaos landed, flying past them, flipped, and turned to face them again.
The leftmost spun and now brought his own weapon down toward Talaos's head, but the latter slipped aside, swift as the wind. Even as he did so, the second, the center, stabbed the end of his staff forward like a spear. It cracked against the strong steel of Talaos's breastplate, doing little harm of its own, but it flashed with green light, and agony coursed through his body.
In reply, Talaos launched to the attack, blades sweeping and stabbing. The foe stepped backwards, parrying and deflecting each strike with spins and twists of his staff.
Then the third man, the rightmost, leapt in a wide sweeping turn around Talaos, swinging his staff as he went, and it cracked against Talaos's back. More agony wracked him. Now the first, the leftmost, swept low, and struck Talaos's armored shin with another green flash. The greave cushioned the blow, but the pain reached him nonetheless. Pain coursed through him.
He took a step forward, suddenly sluggish.
All three staffs struck him at once. Green flashes. Agony.
He dropped to his knees. The light in his hands and blades began to dim.
They circled him. They swept their staffs down upon him, smiling placidly.
Once, twice, three times. Agony ripped through his body and spirit as they circled and struck. They moved as one now, steps and strikes in perfect, unwavering time.
They circled and struck, smooth, rhythmic steps in time, then struck again.
Power of the Prophet. Power in the staffs. Power in the perfect rhythmic circling steps of the men and the strikes of the staffs. Steps and strikes in unison, rhythmic as music and song.
Like dancers in a dance of pain, they circled, stepped, and struck.
Behind him, he could hear the voices of the men and women still singing. Their song was in a language he couldn't understand, but it was sonorous, slow, rhythmic, and the voices were in time with the steps of the circling men. The strongest notes of the song were in unison with each strike of the staffs, and each new wave of agony. In his wrath against the House of the Prophet, wrath he felt was now spent and wasted, he had forgotten the singers.
The Storm's Own Son (Book 2) Page 5