The group reached the top of the tower and walked over to the western side where they faced the king’s tower standing across from them and the courtyard below. The main gates that Will had manned for so many years stood to their right, their twin towers guarding the main portcullis gate and drawbridge. Those towers were about half the height of the tower that they now stood upon.
Across from them, there were three men visible on top of the far tower. One was obviously a Kesh wizard—they stood out in any environment—but this one had his back to them and they could not see his face. The other two were armed and fighting, blows being exchanged just in front of the magic-user. The large man guarding the wizard was facing more to the left as his opponent had tried to flank him, and his profile was more than visible. It was the wild barbarian warrior from the ambush at their homestead a week earlier.
“It’s that damn barbarian. Curse his kind,” Will said, arriving last and watching the spectacle unfold. “Who’s he fighting? The man looks familiar.”
“Agon save us,” Salina yelled. “Bran!” She started screaming.
It took only a second for Cedric’s eyes to go wide, and he started to scream as well. “Father!”
Crossbow bolts were whizzing close by the warriors as both men ignored them. Two arrows, one after another, came from further back where a wooden door was on fire. An unseen figure was silhouetted within, and he was firing arrows at the magic-user. One arrow was deflected by the barbarian’s shield and another was burned to a crisp as the wizard sent another fire spell to intercept the missile.
The wizard took a moment to peer over the wall and yell below after one Kesh bolt went through his tasseled cap. “Damn it, Hork, tell your bowmen to watch what they are shooting at and get up here now!”
The man’s voice sounded familiar, and the high-pitched whiny tone was a bit familiar as well. They recognized him immediately when they saw him.
“Khan”—Salina screamed again—“do something. Save my husband.”
Khan didn’t need any prompting. His eyes narrowed as a special kind of anger welled within him, an anger for those of his former order, and he stepped up onto the lower part of the crenelated tower wall.
“What are you doing? Get down from there,” Will said, moving to pull Khan’s robe and get him off the wall.
Bran finally took a moment to look across at whatever was yelling at him. Malik wasn’t having much success in hitting the wizard as both the barbarian and magic-user were putting up a good fight. Taking the man’s staff seemed impossible now, and Bran wasn’t sure they could get away either.
Looking across, he saw another Kesh wizard stand on the wall, precariously perched in order to raise himself a bit higher. Typical pride for a Kesh wizard, Bran thought to himself. Then he noticed the others. Will, his sergeant of the gate, Cedric, his son, and Salina, his beloved wife. The shock of seeing them almost cost him his life.
Kaz used the distraction to reach out and stab with his large sword at the fierce Ulathan captain, who was one of the most accomplished warriors the barbarian had ever fought. Despite out-massing the other man by a three-to-two ratio and having a much longer and heavier sword, the Ulathan officer was quicker on his reflexes and seemed to know what attacks Kaz would make next, allowing the man to parry his blows.
The large blade was parried, but it caught Bran’s shoulder, slicing through his clothing and drawing blood as it cleaved his skin and muscle right down to his collar bone, which miraculously held.
Salina’s voice rose above the din. “Bran, NO!” she cried in horror, unable to do anything to save her husband.
The lunge took the barbarian just outside of shield range for Hermes, and Malik made them pay for it. His arrow made it past the barbarian’s shield, which was even now moving back at a lighting speed, trying to intercept it. The magic-user screamed and brought his staff up in front of him, his next spell ruined by the attack. By sheer luck, if one could call it that, the staff deflected the missile just enough so that it lodged into the apprentice’s shoulder where it missed its target, having been aimed for the man’s heart. Luck again had saved Hermes.
“Get up here now,” Hermes yelled below. “Shoot, keep shooting,” he yelled at the crossbowmen below.
More bolts whizzed through the air, and the magic-user finally noticed Salina’s group across the courtyard from them. His face paled, and he started to spit and stammer as he made eye contact with Khan.
“Krik ahoun, no ki dor,” the man said, ignoring the deadly bowman, content to let Hork deal with him.
“Ak zhuk, mo hor,” Kaz said, complying with Hermes’s request and stepping back into a defensive posture. He wanted desperately to take a killing blow at the wounded Ulathan officer while he had the opportunity, but he had failed to return his shield in time and the hapless wizard took an arrow in his shoulder. Kaz understood that he could be blamed for this, and his honor dictated that he follow his paymaster’s orders. He fought for his clan, and the funds he earned fighting would go to them and his family.
“Face me, worm,” Khan said, his voice magically enhanced to boom out into the night, and it echoed off of all the stone walls, giving an eerie reverberation to it.
“Worm!” Hermes yelled, pulling the arrow from his shoulder and screaming in pain, realizing that his actions were foolish at the moment, but the sight of the Kesh traitor, the actual renegade wizard who had humiliated him before, was too much for him to handle. Finally, Hermes heard what he was longing to hear. Hork was arriving with reinforcements, the three hundred plus steps taking quite a while for them to climb.
Khan pointed his staff at Hermes, commanding, “Ogon, unitchtozhi!”
A huge fireball erupted, crossing the void between them, causing all of the men on the king’s tower to duck behind the crenelated walls.
“Don’t kill him,” Salina said, referring to her husband as the immense ball of flame hit the tower and bathed it in dancing flames.
Khan nodded at Salina for a quick second and then repeated his command and pointed at the courtyard below him. Bolts flew up at him and were consumed by another ball of fire that hit the courtyard with such force that it ignited several wagons, barrels, and troops that were milling about. More than one crossbowman found his weapon on fire, and they dropped them, running for cover.
Hermes didn’t wait, sending his own fireball back at them, and Khan smiled. His eyes lighting up, he managed to get his third ball of fire off in record time. However, the two clashing orbs of flames hit each other a mere dozen feet in front of them, and they all ducked, except for Khan, as the intense heat of the explosion washed over them.
“Time to go. Troops are coming,” Will said, giving the chest to Cedric and moving to the tower’s stairwell as he drew his blade.
“Enough of this,” Khan said, recharging his staff and giving a different command. With an intense glow, the staff channeled a bolt of lightning directly at Hermes’s location. The hapless apprentice ducked again, and the bolt of lightning hit the tower’s wall, breaking off a large section that fell below. Dust billowed around the tower, obscuring all the men there for several seconds. When it cleared, the entire section of wall was gone, and the men were exposed to the side of the tower. A tempting fall was waiting for them, and they had nowhere to hide any longer.
A man moved in the dust, securing what looked like a fine rope around one of the stone crenulations to the southern side of the tower. The man moved with a lithe and speed that looked all too familiar to the Ulathans. He was tall, muscular, and dressed in bloody leathers. With some sort of shout, the man and Bran rushed the large barbarian and, with a combined effort, pushed him into the magic-user.
With no wall to resist, the entire contingent of men, four in all, found themselves falling over the edge as the tall, younger man grabbed at the wizard’s staff. The magic-user said something, and the entire group started to float instead of fall, struggling with one another. The Ulathans watched in horror as their captain, father, a
nd husband fought for his life with the large barbarian.
“Time to go!” Will started to yell as steel clashed behind them.
“No, no, no,” Salina said over and over again, unable to take her eyes off the epic battle.
“Over here, Mister Carvel,” Khan said, turning and letting loose one more bolt of lightning that hit the other tower’s doorway and sent Hork and his troops scrambling for cover as the stone archway partially collapsed, blocking them from accessing the tower top.
Will ran to Khan, who motioned for the rest of them to join him. “Have you lost your mind?” Will asked.
“No time for discussion. Hold hands or grab my staff,” Khan ordered.
Everyone grabbed his staff, the metal feeling very warm to their touch. Khan motioned toward the gate and took a huge leap with his Ulathan companions following him as shouts of Kesh brigands filled the air behind them.
They freefell for several seconds, gaining speed as the ground rushed up to meet them. At nearly the last second, Khan uttered the words that executed a common wizard spell, and they floated the last half-dozen feet, landing between the tower and the gates and coming to a stop right in front of a large stone troll who looked down menacingly at them.
Instantly Salina drew her sword, and Khan motioned for her to stay back. Salina looked over at the other tower just in time to see their floating stop as soon as the elegant rope became taut. The other man, who looked remarkably a lot like Targon, finally wrestled the staff free from the magic-user. Both Bran and the barbarian, who had been grabbed around his shoulder by Hermes with one hand while he tried to maintain his hold on his staff with his other, came free of the entangled mess, and without the staff, all three of the men—Bran, barbarian, and magic-user—plummeted the remaining twenty feet to land at the base of the king’s tower with three distinct dull thuds.
The other man swung on the rope, arcing back to the south and out of sight around the edge of the tower’s curved walls and into the darkness. The rope yanked quickly and then went slack, and a frayed end came back into view to dangle in front of them, mocking the man’s escape at the Kesh below. Both man and staff disappeared beyond the darkness of the courtyard and tower.
Salina started to run toward Bran and immediately encountered a Kesh brigand who tried to take her head off. She pierced the man after parrying his initial blow and engaged two more who looked different and fought differently, both taking their time and working to flank her.
“Get over here,” Khan yelled at her.
“Mother!” Cedric yelled, tossing the chest to Will and drawing his knives and rushing to her aid.
Khan looked at the troll, and it cocked its head. “Do you remember me, Grinder?” The troll nodded and then grunted something. “Good. Help me bring those two back to the gate tower. Put them up there,” Khan said, motioning to the rightmost tower nearest to them.
Grinder nodded and then took off at a lopping run to cover the ten yards between him and the Ulathans. The stone troll was the least intelligent of his brethren and had been abused countless times by the Kesh. Still, his conditioning was to always obey a master, and he saw the other one fall and not come to. Now he vaguely remembered this master, because of all the masters, he was the most kind to him during his life.
It wasn’t as if Grinder was helping the Ulathans from any independent thought or emotion coming from within the troll, rather it was a compelling need, compulsion, and indeed, conditioning that he was forced to obey one of the magic-users, and now he had been given a direct order that he had to obey.
Reaching the pair, he grabbed the slender woman and the young man and turned, running back to the gate towers, smiling a toothless smile at his new master. His teeth had been removed when he was enslaved to prevent him from hurting the brigands too much. More than one brigand had lost his life to an angry troll, and more than one apprentice found out the hard way that they could be seriously injured when a troll became angry. Of course, the troll paid for its disobedience with its life, but that didn’t change the injury to the apprentice.
“Time to go,” Will yelled, pulling his sword and guarding the top of the wide staircase that ascended to the wall, as another staircase rose to reach the east side tower.
“You have been urging us to leave several times now, Mister Carvel. We have taken your advice under counsel and are departing as soon as we get your companions under control,” Khan said, his voice full of frustration.
Both Salina and Cedric were kicking and trying to break free of the massive troll’s grip without success. Soon they were placed behind Will next to Khan, who was pushing them to mount the tower. All four soon fled up the steps, which were designed to be easy to reach, as quick access to the tower and its walls were a part of its defensive design. The other side, however, saw a steep drop into a dry moat and no stairs, footholds, or other means to climb or descend the outer wall.
“What now?” Will asked.
“What about my husband?” Salina yelled at Khan, hitting him once on his chest in anger and grief.
“Look there,” Khan said, readying a spell and yelling for Grinder to stand clear. Salina looked and saw that Bran, the barbarian, and the other wizard were all surrounded by well over a score of elite guards, not the usual brigands, and that all three of the men were knocked out, unmoving, as the wizard was being attended to.
Khan shot a fireball into the courtyard where several troops had lined up, spears and pikes facing toward them while several crossbowmen were loading their weapons to fire at them. Several dozen troops were pouring from the twin towers and heading for them with literally no way to stop them, as the stairs were designed to allow a lot of troops access to the castle’s defenses.
“He is dead,” Khan said.
“No, he’s not,” Salina argued.
“We cannot help him even if he lives. We must go now.” Khan motioned to the side where more troops were rushing up the first set of stairs, rushing to attack them.
Salina looked and grabbed her son, holding him close to her. She saw the futility in attacking well over a hundred armed troops, especially these troops who were unlike the brigands she had fought before. She looked over the wall, knowing what she would find, and it didn’t help. “What do we do?” she gave in, asking Khan.
“We flee,” he said, the practical, analytical side of the man coming forth.
“They will have the troll open the gates and follow us,” Will yelled, readying his sword for the first wave of attackers. “We must kill the troll.”
Salina pointed her slender blade at the troll, who growled at her from where he stood, his head nearly reaching their feet, he was so tall. “No, Grinder is not to be harmed. There is another way.”
They gathered around the wizard, and he told them to hold on to him tightly. “This had better work,” Khan said.
“What better work?” Salina asked, looking for her husband in the far distance, unable to see him anymore as the wall of guards completely obstructed her view.
“I am going to bring down the tower.” Khan slammed his staff into the rock floor of the gate tower, and it sunk in magically several inches. He used the words Elister had taught him, and spent extra time to channel in the energy of the charged particles, this time directing it downward at this feet and invoking the lady and the mother instead of Akun, Father Death, as was customary amongst his kind.
“You better do it fast,” Will said, his grammar less than stellar as he swung at the first spear point to reach him. They were on him when Khan’s staff erupted into a bluish, white glow that exploded the very ground at their feet.
The very rock of the ancient tower cracked, and with a huge explosion, the tower imploded, falling into pieces of huge stone slabs, each weighing well over a ton each. The ground rocked, and Kesh brigands, elite mercenaries, the Ulathans, and the Kesh wizard himself all began to plummet with the rock, falling into the gate’s archway in a huge cloud of debris.
At the last second, when the rocks
started to crush them, Khan spoke the same words as he had done at the tower. “Letat vniz!” And they suddenly began to float, watching the brigands, troops and stone crashing below them. With a slight nudge, they floated down into the dust cloud, kicking the stones as they landed until they found themselves at the top of the dry moat, coughing and trying to breathe.
With great effort, they ran hand in hand, with Khan leading and Will carrying the precious chest, down the moat and back up, clearing the debris and tower. The sounds of death, pain, and agony came from within the mess of rock, iron, wood, and rubble. They had succeeded, but at what cost?
Chapter 26
Freedom
They had traveled till dawn, seeing the black smoke in the far eastern sky as the dragon fire rose. They continued to press the horses, pushing them as hard as they could. It was difficult to expect much, and when Dareen and Inga failed to appear, most of them feared the worst. Still, they pressed on till midday when both Chucks and Chester insisted on stopping at a ravine with a very light trickle of water to allow the horses to drink.
“Do you think they’ll send a patrol?” Estelle asked, keeping her son, Matthew, close to her and cherishing each moment with the young boy.
The adults stood near the small creek as the Rockton boys unhitched each horse and led them to drink, allowing them a good several minutes, which seemed an eternity for them.
“I’m sure they will. The question is why haven’t they done so already?” Mary asked the question they were all pondering.
“Perhaps Miss Dareen and Miss Inga managed to confuse them,” Wally said, trying to sound hopeful and getting a look from his wife, Marge, at his formality in referring to the younger ladies.
Gwenny played games with the children, who all got out of the carts to stretch their legs, drink at the creek themselves, and take care of other duties. Mary watched some of the children playing and looked pained as she responded to Wally. “We don’t know each other well . . .”
Dead Druid: Claire-Agon Ranger Book 2 (Ranger Series) Page 38