Eye of Hel: Stories of the Nine Worlds (Ten Tears Chronicles - a dark fantasy action adventure Book 2)

by Alaric Longward

  ‘They should abandon the wall,’ Dana stated.

  ‘Are you going to ask them to leave so we can cross in peace?’ Anja sneered.

  ‘Maybe we can sing them a lullaby?’ Albine said with a grin. Did she not understand our danger? I thought.

  ‘We need a distraction,’ Dana said calmly, ignoring the others.

  ‘Let Anja strip for them,’ Albine laughed.

  ‘Shut—’

  ‘That would distract our troops as well!’ Bulathon roared and raised his hand to show he was not serious. ‘Sorry.’

  Dana shook her head and looked at the tower, where a colorful bird disappeared. Then another. Then she frowned and looked at the woods. ‘What are the yellow parrots?’

  ‘Roof Nesters,’ Ompar said sullenly. ‘You hungry? They roast rather nicely. Our last meal?’

  ‘Where do they live?’ she asked impatiently.

  ‘Do I look like a damned bird lover?’ Ompar asked. ‘I don’t know. Why?’

  Bulathon chortled. ‘They nest in buildings for the night. Roofs.’

  ‘Is the tower wooden inside?’ she asked with a small smile.

  ‘Yes, wooden supports, wall paneling, furniture, the roof, of course,’ Bulathon said, eyes round with wonder.

  ‘Is the inside guarded from fire?’

  ‘No,’ Bulathon said, frowning.

  Dana pulled at Bulathon. ‘Can your men trap?’

  ‘Trap?’ he asked, and then his eyes brightened. The rogue had no trouble catching up with Dana’s devious thinking. He shot up and gave orders without waiting for Ompar’s opinion on the matter. ‘Yes! Noria! Cul! Start trapping those birds! Find the locals who can do so as well!’ He pointed at the yellow parrots staring down at us with some apprehension. ‘Use the peche nuts. They love the nasty things. Nets! Nuts! Your nuts if we don’t find peche nuts!’ He rushed off.

  ‘What in Seven Secrets is going on?’ Ompar asked, confused.

  ‘You have oil, and get some long rags!’ Dana yelled at one man.

  Ompar looked up to the trees, then the tower. His eyes brightened. ‘It should work.’ He turned to his men. ‘Set about cutting down trees; we need to get over. Make them sturdy. Must not be slippery.’ Men looked at him in terror. Then hundreds looked dubiously at me. Ompar appeared shocked but bowed to me. ‘You had best give the order. I think they are loyal to—’

  ‘Help them!’ I yelled. ‘And obey Ompar from now on! We need the elf.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said with a small grin. ‘Much appreciated. I try to be useful, mistress.’

  ‘What in Frigg’s name are they going to do?’ asked Ulrich. ‘Tell me.’

  It all became evident soon.

  Night was falling, and our army was standing in a semi-circle, staring at the tower. It was fully lighted, and elves manned its wall, their faces grim with tension. Some were pointing beyond us, no doubt seeing some signs of Danar’s army approaching. Behind the troop of thousands of nervous men and women, there were a dozen hidden men on their knees. We looked up to the trees, and then, with a flutter of wings, a dozen parrots returned to the tower. Others flew over the gorge and even beyond. But we held two dozen such birds. Some had been hurt during the capture, and the colorful things hung on the belts of the men, a future meal. The rest were very upset. There was a long oil-soaked rag tied on their clawed legs. The birds looked at the rags in wonder and suspicion and most tried to beak them off.

  Ompar looked back at them. Then at me. I nodded.

  ‘Get ready to light them and free them,’ he whispered. ‘Get ready!’

  The warriors braced themselves. The army rippled. Teams were carrying long, thickly-barked tree trunks that had long nails hammered on the ends and the trunks were fifteen feet long. They would be precarious, deadly even. Three large men of the Arch looked nervous. They would accompany me as we crossed over. Ompar leaned closer. ‘Remember, the Charm Breaker will do well with arrows and spells. But the ballista might be too much.’ I nodded, sweated and feared, and looked up to see two such deadly contraptions on the walls.

  ‘At least they don’t have muskets and cannon,’ Lex said with a small voice.

  I smiled at him, but he could not see it for the helmet. They did not need muskets and cannons as they had Glory.

  Silence. Birds were fluttering. We all held our breaths, gathering our bravery. ‘Up and over; up and over,’ I repeated.

  Then it was time.

  ‘Now,’ Ompar ordered with a whisper.

  The men with the birds lit the rags.

  Squawks and terrified screeches filled the night. The elves on the tower looked down, uniformly alarmed. Then, dozens of fire-scorched parrots took off. They flew all around, trailing dripping fire streams. It was both a terrible and beautiful sight. The birds looked like pained spirits as they shot across the dark sky. They scattered all over in panic. Dana’s face was concerned as several flew for the woods, but then, a mass of them fluttered for the chasm. Many flew over. One burst into flames and plummeted into the darkness below. Ten or more landed on the tower’s top floor and disappeared under the roof. The elves looked up, horrified. Many ran off; warnings could be heard.

  We waited for a while. The parrots shrieked. One flew back out, trailing burning thatch. ‘Gods, Odin,’ Ompar prayed. ‘Let it light.’

  And it did.

  A glow could be seen. The parrots went quiet. The elves yelled. Many were up there fighting the fires. I felt someone weaving a spell of ice and water, and knew that someone was calling for a spell of frigid rain. I concentrated and broke it. A bitter wind blew out of the tower instead of rain, and the whole roof exploded in fire by the grace of the flowing air. A burning, screaming elf fell out of a window.

  Ompar grinned, took a deep breath and screamed. ‘Over the moat and attack! Go!’ And on we went. The mass of men moved. The trunks were being hefted over their heads. Nails scraped at arms and scalps, but soon, the mass was at the moat, and the trunks went up and fell with thunder. The elves shrieked warnings. A ballista stone ripped out of the crenellated top and tore into us. Ten men fell, spewing guts and blood, crying or silent. Men charged over; spears held high, the trunks thumping with their steps. Arrows flew up to the elves; many came down. A hellish pandemonium reigned in the dark, and the tower looked like a huge candle. Men fell to the moat and the chasm with shrieks of terror. Others toppled silently. However, over we went. The trunks jumped up and down crazily from our weight. Men were pulling me; shields were covering me. Another ballista tore a hole in the ranks of men behind me. I felt dizzy and realized it had passed very close. Then, spells. I felt a small storm of fire spring to life in front of the keep. It was jumping up and down, the fires spitting more fires and they ignited many men. Men avoided the spell as best they could, but now an ice wall blocked one whole trunk. It stopped the men from reaching the ground before the tower. Men on that trunk hesitated and turned to join the other ones, and some fell with arrows in their flesh. I cursed and saw an elf on top of the wall, standing on two crenellations. He called and braided a spell of fire, and a line of fire tore through a mass of men, exploding in our midst, and a dozen soldiers shrieked and burned on the other side of the moat. The elf was laughing but only as long as it took three arrows to pierce him. He fell back, his handsome face shocked. Another, a female, took his place, and I felt her call for another wall of fire. It was familiar, the one spell we all knew well. I concentrated, tore at the weave and broke her spell, and she looked stunned as fireflies left her hands, harmless and pretty. Then I called for the icy weapon again, and screams filled the top of the wall with thin ice spears, and reddened icicles grew up to the sky. The woman shrieked as one ripped her back open, and she fell forward and landed heavily before the tower, where she remained still in a broken and bloody heap. The top of the tower was now blazing, and elves fell down the stairs, having given up on trying to put it out. Fire rain fell inside the huge structure, furniture and textiles were burning crazily.

  No matter t
he carnage inside, the tower still stopped us from gaining the uncertain safety of Lowpass. We would hammer at stone, and Ompar’s father would come and mop us up.

  The men escorting me kept their shields up, praying. ‘Closer!’ I gasped as an arrow ripped for my head through the cracks in the shields. It bounced off, thanks to the Charm Breaker. I grasped the dreadful spell I had learned from Cosia the Gorgon. It was a watery spell that gathered the gentle liquids of the magical rivers and hardened them. I had hurt Euryale like that. Badly. I weaved the spell. A rock bounced off the helmet of one of my protectors. Men were shoving me, and many gathered below the tower, despite having been told not to. I sobbed, for they would die. I hesitated, and then I saw how above many elves were coming back from their fight with the fire, others left behind dead while trying to put the fire out, but there were still plenty to fight us. A ripping sound could be heard as an elf caster rained down icy shards at men on one bridge. A tall man shrieked, and then a short one, and they grasped the trunk as they fell. The trunk slid and fell over with a grinding complaint, taking a dozen men with it. Only one bridge remained.

  Hurry, hurry, I told myself. I could not save the fools at the foot of the tower.

  I made sure the braid and weave of magic were good, strong, just like they should be, and then I released the spell at the tower. At first, it seemed I had achieved nothing.

  Then, I saw I was wrong.

  I saw the cracks in the stone wall fill with liquid. Water gushed from deep fountains and conquered every possible space it could find. The whole gate and the wall around it looked like it was crying. Then the water surged from the left cornerstones, and I pushed more and more power to the spell, the suit of armor allowing me to gather so much more power than I should have. I added the hard, harsh ice to the spell. The water froze. It bulged and grew.

  The tower groaned. The gates popped apart into frozen pieces. Stones slid out of place. The tower’s facade toppled in many directions. Stones rained down. Men died, elves screamed, and I saw dozens of elves exposed, holding on to the wobbling tower. I felt Ulrich and Anja release spells of fire at the thickest groups of them, killing many sad souls. Then the thing fell apart.

  A rock rolled over the man next to me. The last man jumped over me, holding his shield up, a manic gleam in the eye slits of his helmet.

  The rock bounced over us. I screamed as a man pushed me under him before groaning from pain.

  I saw Ompar pushing at a rock, men charging the tower, killing disoriented elven folk. Then I passed out.

  CHAPTER 8

  The light was too bright. I saw it through my eyelids. I finally placed an arm across my eyes, and it made a dull clanging sound, for I was still armored. And that’s when I woke up.

  ‘Grab it,’ said a voice. Lex.

  ‘I tried, but she was just too fast,’ answered another voice. Anja.

  I opened my eyes and shot up to sit on a luxurious bed. Anja was still grasping my hand, but let go as she saw I was fully awake. ‘What happened?’ I asked weakly.

  They stared at me dully. ‘We killed two hundred elves in the tower. Lost three hundred men,’ Anja said. ‘We made it through.’

  Lex nodded at a window. ‘We are in his capital.’ Ompar’s. He hated it, I noticed. Outside, the light of Mar shone with a golden-tinted hue, and birds were singing. I got up and swooned. I looked at my armored arms and hands, then my legs. Nothing was broken, at least outwardly.

  ‘We couldn’t remove it,’ Ulrich said apologetically from the side. ‘The armor. It would not budge. I dared not pull harder. You looked like an eel being pulled out of its shell.’

  I wearily pulled off the helmet and placed it on the side. The armor was asking me for permission and after some failures, I managed to give it. It fell off and peeled from around me. They stared at it in stupefaction. Lex nodded and smiled wistfully. ‘Still pretty. There was a huge stone over both of you. That man, Talas, saved you. He died, though.’

  ‘Talas,’ I whispered. ‘I will remember him.’

  Anja scowled at me. ‘Aren’t you going to ask if we lost anyone you knew?’

  ‘Did we?’ I asked her, scowling at her tone. Dana was not there. Nor Cherry. Ompar? ‘Tell me!’

  ‘No,’ she said pettily. ‘Your precious sister is alive. We all are. Not even wounds. And so is your pretty elf. What will we do now?’

  ‘I’ll have to speak with Ompar,’ I answered and ignored their sour looks as I walked over to the window that had a balcony. I enjoyed the cool breeze and looked around, squinting. Lowpass spread out under me. To the east, there was the Spellcoast and the sea. Somewhere there were Euryale’s Gray Downs and beyond it, the lost lands, but this was the fringe of the Coinar lands, and it was beautiful. The yellow parrots still flew in the sky. Their unlucky mates had given us a way inside the tower. And then I saw the tower beyond the bridge.

  It was still smoking. There was not a single wall standing and smoldering bits of trunks and debris dotted it. And there were corpses. Many corpses. A similar tower on our side guarded the bridge defiantly. I looked around the valley. Lowpass was perched on a summit of a small, artificial hill, and similar towers held the bridges leading west and north.

  An elven army dotted the woods.

  There were at least … I thought.

  ‘Eight thousand of them,’ Anja said slowly as if to make a point. ‘All together. Three thousand to each bridge and more in the harbor. And yes, the other bridge and towers are still held by our men. The harbor fell.’

  ‘I would speak with Lord Ompar,’ I said.

  She scoffed. ‘Not sure what speaking to damned Ompar will do for us. Oh, by the way. He has no maa’dark here. They all left and joined Danar Coinar. That bastard is camped on something called the Black Ring on the north side of the Lowpass. A hill. They have blocked the drawbridges with siege machines, and they all look determined to come in here and make a mess of things. Ompar’s father is probably afraid we try to break out to Vautan or whatever, but we are not. Bulathon said Danar Coinar has three regiments of his best elven infantry there in the north, three to four thousand elves.’

  ‘No men?’ I asked. ‘They have human slave armies here in the south. But no, I suspect not.’

  ‘They are burning villages all around this land,’ Lex said softly. ‘They are really purging local humans. Can’t help but feel responsible.’

  ‘Albine should,’ I whispered.

  Anja shook her head. ‘You were the one making the plans and leading. You should have silenced the fool.’

  I was nodding. ‘Bulathon said so and he was right. Perhaps we should not have riled them up, then.’ I didn’t see Albine in the room, either. Lowpass was dotted with small villages amidst the foliage below. The fort looked strong, and the harbor rope bridge was guarded by a series of towers, and while there were Danar’s ships blockading it and troops held the quay below, Lowpass was safe for a while. ‘Ompar will call for help. Bardagoon will get here, eventually and aid us. All we have to do is to keep them away from us. As you suggested, Anja.’ My eyes wondered over the thousands of milling elven troops. There was a guard of elves on the end of the bridge, but apparently no assault yet. They were pitching tents. Many tents. And felling trees. And they were indeed assembling siege gear, securing the bridges with terribly strong ballista and catapults guarded by maa’dark and stakes.

  ‘We are in trouble still,’ Lex said softly. ‘It’s time to discuss what to do.’ I heard the door open and then steps. ‘And not with Ompar.’

  I turned, and they were all there. Cherry was sitting on my bed; Albine standing in the corner, listening. Dana was sampling some fruits from a platter set on a black desk. Ulrich looked bothered as he stood near Albine, and was studying the mosaics on the floor. I leaned on the window and scowled at them. ‘I don’t wish to argue. We already have a plan. Anja—’

  ‘We won’t argue,’ Ulrich said, giving a meaningful look to Anja. ‘Anja will leave when we are all safe. Relatively so. If ev
er.’

  ‘If ever?’ I asked. ‘It will be well. Ompar was to send for help. Like Anja suggested yesterday.’

  ‘The day before,’ Dana said. ‘You were out for a day.’

  I nodded, shocked by that but ignored it as irrelevant. ‘He sends out the birds to Trad, and in the meantime, Ompar needs us. He has few maa’dark here. Only men.’

  ‘Only men,’ Lex whispered. ‘You make that sound so … insufficient.’ He was talking about himself and Ompar, of course, and I was still not in the mood for that tone.

  ‘Ompar, my dear Shannon, is a damned fool,’ Anja told me with sudden rage. She kicked a footstool that shattered off the wall. ‘We will have to try to escape on our own. He is tied to this place. He has his people to look after, and he won’t run like a rabbit. Not from here. We are stuck here until the food runs out. And it will. And the birds?’ She laughed bitterly.

  ‘There are no birds?’ I asked softly, dreading the answer.

  ‘No,’ Anja said. ‘There are no birds. They are gone. All gone like a distant memory. And that is why I call him a damned fool. For not securing the keys to our future.’

  Silence. I stared at her, and she stared back at me. I was dealing with the blow, and I was doing badly. I felt rotten; bile filled my mouth, the disappointment tore me inside. ‘He knows who did it?’ I asked her. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘What?’ she asked incredulously. ‘I suppose you will blame me for eating the birds, feathers and all?’

  ‘No,’ I said evenly. ‘I doubt you ate them. I am sorry. But was it one of us?’

  ‘He thinks one of us. Ompar does,’ she allowed. ‘If we fail,’ she said bitterly, ‘we will die. You won’t.’

  ‘Dana won’t either,’ Lex said. ‘They need her to keep Shannon in line.’

  ‘That didn’t exactly work in the Gray Downs, Lex,’ Dana said sourly.

  ‘And the one who betrayed us won’t either,’ Ulrich stated.

  ‘We have to find out who spoke with Tiria,’ Anja said calmly. ‘I know who to ask.’