A pair of medvarth came at Gavin, axes in their clawed hands and their muzzles pulled back to reveal their yellowed fangs. Antenora hit the one on the right with a blast of magical fire, scouring the flesh from its skull. The second medvarth swung its axe, and Gavin caught the blow on his dwarven shield. The shield clanged, and a deep ache shot up his weary arm, but the axe did not damage his shield.
His soulblade proved more effective against the medvarth. Truthseeker punched through a gap in the creature’s armor and sought its heart, and the medvarth started to fall. Gavin managed to rip his blade free in time to meet the attack of another medvarth. Steel clanged on steel as he blocked its attack, and his boots slipped on the increasingly blood-slick stones of the rampart. He recovered his balance and struck back, opening a cut on the medvarth’s shoulder. The creature bellowed its rage, and then a militiaman plunged his spear into its neck. The medvarth shuddered, and Gavin drove his soulblade home, finishing off the medvarth.
He yanked Truthseeker free and nodded his thanks to the militiaman, and the other man’s eyes went wide.
Gavin looked up just in time to see the fireball hurtling towards them, trailing a thick line of black smoke in its wake.
“Take cover!” someone screamed.
The fireball slammed into the rampart a dozen yards away, exploding in a wash of fire. A score of men and medvarth went up in flames, screaming, and the rampart shuddered beneath Gavin’s boots.
And then it collapsed, and the world vanished into an avalanche of broken stone and fire.
###
Arandar battled for his life as his kingdom crumbled around him.
The revenants were not a formidable foe, especially to a man wielding a soulblade. Their danger lay in their blood-freezing touch, but the Keeper’s magic had protected the army of Andomhaim from that. They were still inhumanly strong, but they had no weapons, and a disciplined formation of men-at-arms could keep them at bay with spear and shield. The fire of a soulblade tore through them, and Excalibur’s keen edge sliced through the revenants like grass.
There were just so damned many of the things.
A tide of undead flesh clawed its way up the wall and onto the ramparts. Arandar thought of a dozen things he could have done to repulse the revenants. Boiling oil could have been poured from the battlements, incinerating the undead. Catapults set up in the town’s forums and streets would have rained down fire upon the revenants. Even a cavalry charge sent to circle around the town and smash through the revenants would have been enough to get them away from the walls.
Any one of those things would likely have worked, but there were simply no men left to carry them out because every man in Dun Calpurnia was struggling for his life.
The trap of the Frostborn had been masterful, and Arandar had walked right into it. The baffling behavior of the Frostborn army now made sense. Why throw the locusari against the northern wall? Why let the medvarth attack without support from the siege engines and the frost drakes?
They had been waiting for the revenants.
Arandar cursed himself as a fool. He had never considered, not even once, the possibility that the revenants might march along the bottom of the River Moradel. He had never heard of undead doing that, though it made perfect sense in hindsight.
Of course, mistakes were always obvious in hindsight.
Another pair of revenants hauled themselves up the wall, leaving frost in their wake. This pair had once been Mhorite warriors, and likely they had been undead ever since the Anathgrimm and Dux Gareth had smashed Mournacht’s host at Dun Licinia. Once they had been green-skinned with red skulls tattooed over their faces, but a year of undeath had turned their skin a blotchy yellow, their faces and hands covered with frost as blue fire danced on their heads and shoulders.
They reached for Arandar, and he struck first, Excalibur trailing white fire from its blade. The soulblade’s magic would have burned away the cold power animating the revenant, but since Excalibur could cut through anything, that was hardly necessary. The sword sheared through the first undead creature’s neck, and Arandar pivoted, bringing Excalibur around. It was a weak swing, but it didn’t matter because the sword’s magical edge sliced through the undead flesh with ease.
Both undead collapsed to the rampart, and Arandar flung himself into the fray, the Swordbearers and Magistri of his bodyguard fighting alongside him. The high nobles who had been within him also fought, battling to get free of the revenants. Arandar cut down revenant after revenant. Excalibur’s keen edge gave him an advantage that no other soulblade could match, and the soulblade filled him with strength and power, letting him fight longer and harder than a man could otherwise.
He needed to cut his way free. He needed to get the army organized and take command, needed to coordinate a more effective defense against the Frostborn horde.
Unfortunately, he could not, because the town was on fire.
Another volley of fireballs soared overhead, landing in the ruins of the town and exploding with enough force to send a vibration through the wall. The entire northern half of Dun Calpurnia was already sheathed in flames, slowing movement and cutting off groups of men-at-arms from one other. The men on both the western wall and the northern wall were pinned in place, but no help could reach them thanks to the flames.
“We must withdraw!” shouted Dux Leogrance, his sword glittering with frost as his chest rose and fell. The old Dux was giving a good account of himself, but both he and Dux Gareth and Dux Kors looked exhausted. “We must withdraw! If we stay here, we shall be overrun!”
“I agree!” said Prince Cadwall. He started to speak, paused long enough to cut down a pair of revenants, and kept shouting. “We must abandon the town and reform to the south. If we stay we shall be caught in the trap, and the Frostborn can rain fire and ice down upon us at will.”
Arandar stepped back, looking around. “If we leave the town we will lose men. Thousands, probably.”
“We shall all die if we stay here,” said Gareth.
He was right. Arandar saw no way around it. There was no way they could stay here. The Frostborn would grind them down foot by bloody foot. They had to withdraw and reform south of the town. Perhaps they would have to fall all the way back to Castra Carhaine before they could hold a line against the Frostborn. But what about their allies? The dwarves and the Anathgrimm were coming from the west, and the manetaurs were coming from east. If the men of Andomhaim fell back, the Frostborn might be able to defeat the dwarves and the Anathgrimm and the manetaurs one by one.
If the men of Andomhaim stayed here, they would all be killed.
“We haven’t any choice,” said Arandar. “We…”
A fireball soared over his head and slammed into the northern wall, right near the gatehouse. There was a roiling burst of flame, and the tower and a portion of the wall ripped apart in a spray of shattered masonry and burning timber. Screaming men and medvarth and chittering locusari tumbled through the air, wreathed in fires as they fell to their deaths.
As the smoke cleared, Arandar saw that the explosion had torn a breach in the northern wall.
That was it, then. Already the advancing medvarth were heading towards the breach. The explosion was close enough to the Magistri atop the gate that it would have killed or at least disrupted their concentration, which meant that the Magistri would not be able to coordinate their efforts to ward against the freezing breath of the drakes.
“Sound the withdrawal!” said Arandar to the Swordbearers of his guard. “We shall withdraw through the southern gate, and I will place my banner there. We can reform the host, and either withdraw in good order to the south or face the Frostborn here.” They would lose a lot of the supplies that Sir Joram had carefully gathered over the last year. Well, supplies could be replaced, but men could not. “Sound the withdrawal now!”
Those Swordbearers and knights who still had horns lifted them to their lips and blew the prearranged series of blasts that instructed the host to withdraw.
Answering blasts came from the northern wall and along the western wall, and from the observers in the castra atop the hill. Arandar hurried for the stairs, his mind racing. They would have to get through the southern gate as soon as possible, and the army would be vulnerable as they withdrew. Could he arrange for a guard to hold the southern forum? Any men who tried to hold the forum as the others escaped would be slaughtered. Perhaps the Swordbearers could do it and escape, or maybe some of the warriors from the three orcish kingdoms.
Arandar and his guards and the lords reached the town and hurried down a street leading towards the castra. The houses burned around them, the alchemical weapon of the Frostborn blazing inside the brick walls. In places, the heat was so intense that the brick walls had collapsed into heaps of rubble, and the street reminded Arandar of the interior of a baker’s oven. Before the battle, he had wondered what it would feel like to be killed by the cold magic of the Frostborn, but he had never considered that the Frostborn might burn them all alive.
Yet another failure on his part.
“My lords!” shouted one of the Swordbearers.
Arandar looked up to see one of the fireballs fall from the sky.
Right towards them.
He just had time to duck into a doorway, and then the missile struck the street and exploded, the shock wave hammering into the houses.
###
Gavin didn’t pass out, but he was woozy.
He heaved himself to his feet and looked around, dust and blood sliding off his armor. Broken stones and shattered bricks rasped beneath his boots, and he stumbled several feet before he could catch his balance. For a moment, he feared he would fall backward off the rampart, and then he realized that he was in the northern forum.
The forum. How had he ended up in the forum?
He shook his head, and a cold shock of fear snapped him back to lucidity.
The last explosion had ripped a hole in the town’s wall. The sheer force of the explosion had knocked back the medvarth outside the wall, who had taken the brunt of the fiery blast. But the medvarth were recovering from their shock. Gavin saw that they were about to form up and charge through the breach.
When they did, Dun Calpurnia was lost.
He looked around, trying to think through the ache in his head. It looked as if many of the men who had been near the explosion had been killed. Nearby he saw a soot-covered corpse in a bloodstained white robe who Gavin was pretty sure had been Master Kurastus. In the distance, he heard the wail of war horns, and his tired mind recognized the call for withdrawal. The High King was calling for his men to abandon the town and fall back to the south. Gavin supposed that made sense. If they stayed in the town, the Frostborn could bombard them at will until they all burned alive.
He stepped back as men started to flee from the wall and head towards the south. Perhaps he ought to follow their lead. There would be a moment of indecision as the Frostborn realized that the men of Andomhaim were abandoning the town, and then they would charge with all their strength. Best to be gone by then. He looked around for the others with a surge of fear. Kharlacht and Caius and Camorak had all been up there, and so had Antenora. She had been standing right next to him when the trebuchet’s missile had exploded. Had she survived so much only to fall victim to the explosion?
He spotted a dark coat amidst the rubble, and he cursed and hurried towards it.
Antenora lay half-buried by broken stones, her yellow eyes closed, her gray face marked with blood and dust. She looked dead, but she did not need to breathe, and Gavin began pulling the stones off her, using Truthseeker’s power to augment his strength.
The call for withdrawal rang out again, followed by the boom of another explosion as a trebuchet missile exploded somewhere near the western wall.
“Antenora,” said Gavin. “Antenora, we’ve got to go.” He heaved another stone off her. There was no blood on her chest and stomach, but her left leg was a mangled mess. “Antenora.”
For an awful instant, he was sure that she had died in truth, that the fall from the ruined wall had been enough to kill her at last, but her eyelids fluttered, and then opened all the way. She grimaced, tried to sit up, and then slumped back as her damaged leg failed to support her.
“Gavin Swordbearer,” said Antenora. “It seems that we are losing the battle.”
“Aye,” said Gavin, casting a wary look at the breach in the wall. He wondered if Arandar would be able to hold the army together after this. “We need to go. The army is abandoning the town.”
“I cannot walk,” said Antenora. She tried to stand again, but her damaged leg refused to move.
“It’ll heal,” said Gavin. Her wounds always regenerated in time.
He didn’t think they had that time now. Not the way the medvarth warriors were swarming across the ramparts.
“Not in time,” said Antenora. “Go. I will burn as many of them as I can before I am overwhelmed.”
“No,” said Gavin. He sheathed Truthseeker and dug away more of the rubble around her.
“There is no time!” said Antenora, looking at the damaged wall. “If you do not go at once you will be overwhelmed and slain.”
“I’m not going to leave you here,” said Gavin.
“You must go!” said Antenora, frustration and fear going over her face.
“If I go you’ll be killed,” said Gavin, digging at the rocks holding her in place. He had almost gotten her loose. Just a little more and he would be able to pick her up and carry her.
Antenora grunted, raised her staff, and pointed it towards the breach in the wall. A sphere of flame flickered to life over the end of the staff, spinning faster and faster as she drew on her magic.
“I should have died fifteen centuries ago,” said Antenora. The sphere spun faster, widening as it did, and Gavin started to feel the heat of it as he worked to pull the rocks off her. “If I meet true death here at last, well, then it will be a small loss. Go!”
“It would not be a small loss!” said Gavin. He got the last of the stones off her. She wasn’t that heavy, and he ought to be able to carry her out of Dun Calpurnia until her leg repaired itself.
“My death would not be a great loss! Yours would be!” said Antenora. “Go! At least let me save you. At least let me do one thing right. I love you, and I would not see you slain. Please, go!”
Gavin stared at her, torn. He loved her, too, and nor would he see her slain. He knew that she was right, that if he stayed here, he would die alongside her. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t make himself leave her.
He nodded, straightened up, and drew Truthseeker, the blade shimmering with white flame. Gavin stepped to the side, putting himself in a location where he could defend her while still leaving her a clear line of sight to work her magic.
“Oh, Gavin,” said Antenora, her raspy voice heavy with sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t. I can’t do it. I just can’t.”
He braced himself, preparing to fight to the end.
“What are you doing, you idiot?”
The hoarse voice was exhausted and irritated.
Gavin blinked and saw Camorak hurrying towards him, Caius and Kharlacht following. Camorak looked terrible, his face tight and glittering with sweat, his eyes heavy with exhaustion, but he was still on his feet. Both Caius and Kharlacht were covered in dust and spattered with blood, but they seemed unwounded.
“Her leg,” said Gavin. “It won’t heal in time…”
“Damn it,” muttered Camorak. “Can’t heal her. Spell won’t work because of the curse.”
Kharlacht sheathed his greatsword, stooped, and picked up Antenora with a grunt. She twisted around in his arms, bracing the staff against one of his shoulder plates to point behind him.
“Thank you,” said Gavin.
“She can throw fire to slow our foes,” said Kharlacht. “But we must go now.”
Even as he spoke, a roar came from the breach in the wall, and the medvarth surged forward, chargin
g into the town.
Antenora thrust her staff, the sphere of flame leaping from its end and hurtling towards the enemy. It landed amid the medvarth and exploded, throwing a dozen of the creatures into the air. A wall of flame sprang up from the breach, closing it off, and the medvarth charge faltered.
It would not falter for long.
“Go!” said Caius, and they hurried forward, joining the exodus from the ruins of Dun Calpurnia.
###
Arandar’s mind drifted and spun. One moment he was in a ruined town, fire raining from the sky around him. The next he was back in Tarlion, walking with Isolde down the Via Ecclesia, their first child in her arms. The next he was fighting for his life outside the siege walls of Tarlion, the Enlightened of Incariel rushing to kill him…
“Lord High King!” said a man. “Lord High King!”
“He’s alive,” said a second voice.
“Lord High King!” said the first man.
Arandar’s eyes snapped open.
He was slumped in a doorway in the burning ruins of Dun Calpurnia, his head resting against the rough brick. Constantine Licinius stood nearby, another Swordbearer next to him. Soot covered Constantine’s face, and there was a cut on his temple, but he was otherwise hale.
The same could not be said of most of the rest of Arandar’s guards and companions.
Arandar hauled himself to his feet with a curse, looking over the street. He saw Dux Leogrance’s corpse first. A piece of flying rubble had hit him in the head and staved in half of his skull. Dux Gareth lay a few yards away, flames still dancing on his legs. The shock of the explosion must have killed him, and his sightless eyes stared unblinkingly at the plumes of smoke overhead. Several of the other Swordbearers and Magistri had been killed by the explosion.
Frostborn: The Dragon Knight (Frostborn #14) Page 26