Once walked with Gods e-1

by James Barclay

  Behind them, orbs of brown and green traced up high into the sky, crashing down on buildings or disappearing from sight, their impacts told by the rumbles and echoes of detonation. The rain set alight everything it touched. Quickly, the whole of Harbour Side and Salt were ablaze. Thick smoke fled into the heavens.

  Pelyn had stood and walked to the window to get a closer look. The three of them had belatedly moved onto a balcony, their unfettered view all the more terrifying. Pelyn thought she could hear screams and the clash of weapons. It was hard to be sure. But she knew what she felt.

  Yniss had turned from them. Tual had retreated to his fastness in the forest. Shorth’s arms would have to be wide indeed to embrace all the souls heading his way. Men and magic were rampaging through the elven first city. She watched their castings rise and fall. She felt heat from the fire and cold from the ice.

  She felt a terror so deep it reached through her and back into history. It chilled the souls of the ancients in the halls of the dead. It rooted her where she stood and meant she cared little that her cloak was hanging open or that her erstwhile guards were standing at her shoulders. Not as captors, as Al-Arynaar behind their Arch.

  Pelyn stared while the echoes of light danced on the backs of her eyes. She stood as the skies began to darken for the first rains of the day and the streets drummed already with the sound of the footsteps of elves fleeing they knew not where. And then she turned from the raw power battering her streets and stared straight into Tulan’s stupefied eyes.

  ‘So do you still think you should serve me up to be raped by every Tuali ula in Ysundeneth, or are you going to go and find me some clothes and a sword?’ Katyett and the TaiGethen had been drawn to the north end of the camp some time before dawn as if in response to a growing threat. The nose for danger was, Takaar said, the single biggest difference between a Tai warrior and any other elf. Katyett disagreed, preferring to think of her speed and reactions as her greatest assets.

  Whoever was right, there was no doubting the feeling that they all shared. It was going to be a beautiful morning in one respect only. And while the skies lightened to a glorious blue sluggishly filling with cloud, the scent on the air was bitter and cloying. Calaius smelled wrong.

  The more curious of the Ynissul refugees had begun to join them, looking towards the coast, over the Ultan’s walls and down towards Ysundeneth, the highest spires of which were just about visible on a clear morning such as this. Katyett looked to her left. The iad she had spoken to on the trail yesterday was standing between her and Merrat, his partner behind her. She was called Onelle, and if Katyett could save one elf in all this, it would be her.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll want to see this,’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Onelle.

  ‘Awful power unleashed indiscriminately,’ said Katyett, feeling a sense of helplessness with which she was unfamiliar.

  ‘Tualis grasping power,’ said Onelle.

  Katyett shook her head. ‘You’re looking in the wrong place for your enemy. This is the hand of man under the eye of the cascarg Ynissul. Rogue Tualis are being opportunistic in their atrocities and the grasping of influence.’

  Onelle wanted to say more but a bloom of green light, tinged brown, grew above the city, casting lurid shadows across the ocean. Myriad flashes of deep yellow light appeared in the sky, falling like blossom. Deep-coloured flashes low to the ground, throwing spikes of light up the spires. Flames, yellow and hungry, ate at helpless timbers.

  Katyett swallowed, her throat dry. A cold rage sank deep into her body and soul. Ynissul at the heart of this evil. Ynissul possessed by greed, distorted self-importance and a curious revisionism regarding Takaar. It was not the way of the Ynissul to have such short memories. But then, recognising the truth would be inconvenient.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ whispered Merrat.

  ‘Wait,’ said Katyett. ‘Do nothing different to the plan. Ta-Auum and Serrin will return soon. We’ll have our answers then and perhaps a banner to walk beneath.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Onelle, then blushed. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to intrude on your conversation.’

  ‘This concerns you as much as it does us,’ said Katyett. ‘What don’t you understand?’

  There had to be fifty fires in the city. And more of the deviant power the men had brought with them in evidence. Olmaat had warned them what they’d see. But he didn’t mention how it squeezed at the soul. How the very air felt tainted and the land beneath their feet poisoned.

  ‘Why won’t we go back when the Ynissul have forced order on the city?’

  ‘Order?’ said Merrat. ‘Sorry.’

  Katyett shook her head. ‘They are not restoring the harmony. They have no interest in its maintenance. If you believe in the Ynissul right to rule, then you will find friends there. If not, you should stay with us.’

  ‘How can the harmony be restored after what has happened to us?’ asked Onelle.

  ‘Because even after the War of Bloods, we learned to live together. To forgive in time. But we can’t think that far ahead yet because it assumes a resolution that leaves the Ynissul in control.’

  ‘You think they might not beat the threads with the power they have at their right hands?’ asked Rydd, Onelle’s partner.

  ‘Oh I have no doubt whatever that Ysundeneth will be cowed by the magic of man. What I fear is the next step.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Onelle.

  Katyett shrugged. ‘Because if I was a man, I would know I wielded all the power and I would have no desire to remain in the pay of any elf.’ Takaar roared his agony and Auum feared for the fallen hero’s life. His collapse had been dramatic, his head striking a rock on the way down. Auum had picked him up, still with the deer around his neck, and run back to the camp. At first he had no idea what had afflicted Takaar. A bite, a sting. A disease he had been fighting. It could have been anything.

  But there were no physical signs of any of those things. When he could, when Takaar’s body was calm enough, Auum checked for bite marks, the tiny sharp red pinpoints that might mean a sting. He looked for discoloured skin, for boils, sores, foam at the mouth, cracks on the scalp, split skin on the feet. Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Whatever raged within Takaar seemed to be confined to his mind, but the pain it brought him, the desperate look in his eyes whenever he forced them open to plead with Auum for help, was excruciating to witness. Feeling utterly helpless, Auum tried to make him comfortable, tried to get water into him and warmth too. He was shivering as if cold, though this dawn was glorious.

  Auum had lit a fire. Had skinned the deer and hung joints above it to roast. The scent was magnificent. Perhaps it would help. Takaar’s torment had been going on for an hour as the sun rose and the clouds gathered. Periodically, he pawed at the ground only to snatch his hands away as if he’d touched hot embers.

  Takaar’s eyes flickered open. They steadied but were not focused on Auum. They looked beyond him, away over the rainforest to the west.

  ‘Gnawing fires,’ he said. ‘Globes puking brown power. Eating everything.’

  ‘Takaar?’ Auum tried to get into his eye line, to get him to come back to himself. ‘Are you bitten? Are you poisoned?’

  ‘It rages through the lines. They run but their footprints turn to ash. Wickedness walks the streets. Feeding on the helpless. There is no defence. Why does the rain not fall?’

  ‘It’s coming,’ said Auum. ‘Soon.’

  Takaar made no sign that he had heard Auum. ‘Separation. Cowering. The spire is lit up. They don’t believe. Hope is only scattered splinters.’

  ‘Please,’ said Auum. ‘Talk to me.’

  Takaar’s voice dropped to a low mumble and nothing he said was distinct. His body had stilled now; only his eyes moved. He was blinking very rapidly. Abruptly, he relaxed completely. Tension flooded from him and he took in a deep and even breath.

  ‘They are killing us,’ he said. ‘And we have ushered them in.’

/>   ‘Who?’ asked Auum. ‘Men?’

  Takaar’s eyes rested on Auum.

  ‘I know why you came here. I am not stupid.’

  Auum fought to meet Takaar’s gaze. It sliced straight through to his soul.

  ‘We need you,’ he said. ‘Not just the TaiGethen. All the elves. They are unpicking all you have done. We’re going back to the War of Bloods unless you agree to stand with us. Unite us again.’

  Takaar sat up and pushed himself back to sit against the bole of a tree in his bivouac. His head was shaking side to side, a small and rapid movement. He glanced to one side.

  ‘I know I caused it. You have no need to remind me of that again. You have been reminding me of my failing every day for ten years. Let me think.’

  Auum found a vision in his head of walking into Ysundeneth with Takaar, only for him to gibber and argue with the voice in his head. Some saviour. Doubt swept him yet again.

  ‘Come back with me. Talk to the TaiGethen and the Silent at least. They are waiting for you.’ Auum took a breath, knowing what he was about to say was a gamble in Takaar’s fraught emotional state. ‘Katyett is waiting for you.’

  Takaar didn’t react at once. His eyes searched the ground to his left. A hand rubbed idly at the earth.

  ‘She is alive?’ Takaar nodded to himself and tears began to fall down his cheeks. ‘She is the core of my betrayal. My cowardice. I was never worthy of her attentions and her love. I proved that, didn’t I?’

  Auum said nothing in response. Takaar seemed to be searching inside himself. Auum prayed it was to seek the strength he would need in the days to come.

  ‘Takaar? I am TaiGethen. You are my brother and my Arch. Still to this day. Nothing has changed. We exist to serve Yniss in the ways you taught us. So I ask this of you. Come back to lead us. Come back to unite the threads. Come back to repair the harmony and bring us back into the grace of Yniss.’

  Takaar stared at him for a long time. Fat from the deer hissed and spat into the fire.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘What happened when I ran?’

  Chapter 23

  The last refuge of he who has lost his courage is warm water and a sharp blade. The silence of Tul-Kenerit, the last bastion on Hausolis. Even the din of the approaching Garonin had not been able to mask it. Alone across the courtyard ran Takaar and the eye of every TaiGethen and Al-Arynaar followed him. Every pace he took bled will, belief and courage still further. Auum, like them all, refused to believe what he was witnessing.

  Takaar did not pause, nor look over his shoulder. His hands slapped into the metal of the keep door. He bent his strength to it and slid it wide. He ran into the gloom and was lost to sight. The elves stared after him. Auum felt a desolation sweep him, like he was the only one left standing. He dragged his gaze from the keep, the still-open door, and looked along the rampart to Katyett and Pelyn, standing above the gates.

  A whistling and whining.

  The tumult of the approaching Garonin flooded his senses once more.

  ‘Brace!’ he yelled.

  His shout was taken up across the bastion. Auum looked over the parapet. A hundred barrels had spat smoke and flame. A second volley was incoming and the first was yet to strike.

  ‘Yniss preserve us.’

  Projectiles thundered into the upper section of the walls or flew overhead to drop in the courtyard. Heavy bow emplacements were obliterated. Timber shattered, splinters thrummed away, ripping into face, body and legs. Elves screamed. Impact after impact drove into the rampart wall. Steel bent and split. Stone was shattered. Bodies were flung backwards.

  Auum crouched low behind the walls, his hands over his ears. If any orders were coming, no one could hear them. A great pall of smoke was rising from the gatehouse. He could see his brothers and sisters, ripped open and dismembered, lying on the parapet. Blood smeared every surface.

  Another volley struck home. A projectile slammed into the wall right in front of Auum. Steel bent inwards, stone was shoved back. Auum was thrown from the rampart. He tried to orient his body as it spun helplessly under the force of the blow. The pitted ground of the courtyard rushed to meet him. He managed to turn into the impact, rolling over one shoulder, absorbing much of it. But his legs were not under control and they took him into a bruising tumble before he came to a stop fully seventy feet from where he had been crouched.

  Auum pushed himself to his feet, staggering under sudden pain. He looked down. A thick splinter of wood jutted from his left boot. Blood seeped. He tested his weight on it. Not good. His hands were scraped raw and his leggings torn to shreds. His body armour had saved his torso from major damage.

  Auum looked up at the rampart. Projectiles were dropping onto it and down into the courtyard. He kept staring as he moved towards whatever shelter he could find in the lee of the walls. There was no order up there. Elves were turning from the enemy, running to stair and ladder. Bodies were thick on the ground around him. Most were not moving. Others were already running for the keep.

  The barrage ceased. Smoke wreathed the bastion, clearing slowly. Into the quiet came the cries of the injured and wails of the dying. Prayers were uttered to Yniss and Shorth. Those still largely unhurt were regrouping in the centre of the courtyard. A drumming sound came from without. Garonin infantry. Running.

  ‘Form up!’ Auum spun round. Fresh pain raced up his leg from the impaled foot. It was Katyett. Standing with Pelyn. ‘To me, brothers and sisters. Defend the keep.’

  Auum hobbled towards them. A TaiGethen came to his shoulder, took some weight for him.

  ‘Thank you, Olmaat,’ he said.

  ‘Can you still hold a blade?’ asked Olmaat.

  ‘Both of them. Just don’t ask me to fight open hand.’

  ‘That time is past, I think.’

  They hurried to the lines of elves at the door of the keep. It still stood open against what they knew was to come but which had to be delayed for every possible moment. Perhaps three hundred stood before the keep. Al-Arynaar and TaiGethen. Lines eight deep. Weapons ready.

  Katyett stood front and centre. Her Tai was gone, Jaleea injured and surely unable to survive. Takaar fled. So Pelyn was next to her. Arch of the Al-Arynaar with the new Arch of the TaiGethen. Some strength still remained. Elves stood with them. Courage endured.

  There was a metallic rattle, rhythmic. The steel plating on the walls of the bastion was shaking. The eyes of most elves were on the gates. They shouldn’t have been; the Garonin were climbing the walls. Gauntleted hands grasped the ruined rampart. Helmeted heads and armoured bodies appeared. Legs thumped down onto the parapet. Without pause, they jumped down into the courtyard and the flood of enemy stormed in like a wave breaching a dam.

  ‘Steady,’ called Katyett. ‘Steady. On my order, front four ranks move up to engage.’

  The Garonin covered the ground with frightening speed. Weapons were level. Barrels spat short tongues of flame. Defenceless elves were cut down.

  ‘Engage!’

  TaiGethen and Al-Arynaar ran forward. Unable to fight on the move, Auum stood with Olmaat in front of the door of the keep. TaiGethen, sprinting ahead of their Al-Arynaar comrades, flew at the Garonin soldiers. Blades flashed. Enemies fell. A roar rose among the defenders. A release of anger, an expression of frustration and shock.

  Katyett slammed both feet into the face plate of a Garonin soldier, bearing him to the ground. One of her blades sliced across his throat. The other swept low, chopping into the ankles of another enemy. Katyett powered up, her first blade chopping into the gut of a third. Her second blade came down on the neck of the one she had crippled.

  The Garonin could not track her movements. Her speed confused them. Her strength surprised them and her will baffled them. But the elves were so few, the TaiGethen fewer still amongst them. Weapons fire intensified. Garonin and elf alike were cut down in the blizzard. The Al-Arynaar in front of the keep made to move up.

  ‘No.’ Olmaat’s voice was strong. ‘Withdraw. Get insid
e the keep. This battle is done.’

  And it was. But Katyett was deep in the fight. Pelyn, with ten Al-Arynaar, was forcing a path towards her. There was a shouted exchange. The elves disengaged, those that could.

  ‘Back!’ shouted Olmaat. ‘Back into the keep. Defend the bore.’ The gates crashed in. The Tul-Kenerit was truly laid open. The machines began to roll in. Weapons fire skipped and cracked off the walls of the keep. There were screams from within. The keep was full of elves waiting to leave.

  ‘We need someone down at the gate. We just need people through. As many as can travel,’ said Auum.

  ‘Go,’ said Olmaat.

  ‘Not me. Ferille?’ The door guard turned. ‘Get down to the gate. Do everything you can to get as many through as you can. Try to avoid panic. Hard, I know. Tell them we will give them as much time as we can. And Ferille. Don’t leave yourself behind. When the time comes don’t hesitate. Go through.’

  The last of the TaiGethen ran in on a hail of fire. Inside, waiting to descend, ordinary elves were already falling prey to the panic Auum had sought to avoid. Katyett dived through the door, Garonin after her.

  ‘Close the door!’ called Olmaat.

  He ducked a swinging fist and thumped a blade into a Garonin gut. The soldier staggered back, colliding with the closing door. Auum threw a jaqrui, the blade cutting deep into the top of his helmet. The enemy sagged down. The door clanged shut. Elves surged over the marooned Garonin. Brief silence in the entrance hall was punctuated by hard breathing echoing into the rafters.

  Lantern light illuminated a cold steel room, circular and with a wide spiral staircase leading down into a brightly lit space, noisy with the voices of ordinary elves desperate to escape. They were packed in tight and the tunnels through which they had arrived would be crowded with more. Below them, the bore. A three hundred foot deep hole at the bottom of which was the gateway to Calaius. It was this that the Garonin desired and which the elves dare not let them take or Calaius would also be laid waste.