Thousands died. Their voices came to her from all four corners of Shinar, and the wail of the freshly dead—their confusion, anger, and horror—drowned Marah’s mind. She was losing herself in the tide, and without the runes to focus on, she might have lost her own voice in the swell of the teeming dead.
Her focus faltered a little, and many dead sorcerers called to her:
Careful—if you lose control of the source, it will consume you.
Another said, You’ll kill everyone.
Beyond a few warnings, the dead weren’t any help. None of them had any experience fighting such creatures, and Marah was doing things with the runes that few of them understood. She would have gladly surrendered control to the ghosts if they could have shown her how to protect more of the city, but she fumbled at her limits. Shinar was too big to shield, so the people caught in the open died.
Marah knew people were fighting around her. The shedim landed, and the screams of real people joined with the screams of the dead, but she could spare no time to deal with them. People died around her while she was looking at the sky. If she took her eyes off the shield, more people would die. Alone and exposed, she hoped Tyrus could protect her.
Her weariness grew, and the shield shrank. She could only channel so much power to the runes, and as she tired, the source slipped away from her. She sacrificed streets, one by one, and the screams of the dead grew louder.
Gorba Tull is climbing out of King’s Rest.
Marah chewed her lips. She fought to maintain her focus, but the dead described him rising from the dust cloud and glaring right at her. They sent her images of his bulbous body and large bat wings.
He is coming for you, Marah. You need to run.
I can’t run. Where is Ithuriel?
He is buried in the rubble.
She waited for Gorba to kill her. Even if she could have defended herself, she was too tired to stop him. Her legs wobbled, and her shoulders spasmed. She was about to fall over, and if she lost control, she might kill everyone.
Gorba’s wings were torn, and his robes were shredded. Black ichor dripped from dozens of wounds. Ithuriel had torn into him with such a frenzy that he had struggled to escape. The only reason he had survived was a last-second twist that put the archangel on the bottom of their fall. Ithuriel had taken the worst of the impact.
As Gorba climbed in the air, he glared from the shield to the girl. She was defying him once again. Knowing it would enrage Mulciber, Gorba decided to kill her. He flew at her, fearing he had mere seconds to act before Ithuriel chased him down. He raced forward, his anger growing. He had not spent thousands of years climbing out of the Nine Hells so Mulciber could replace him with a little girl. He would destroy her and beg his master’s forgiveness.
Gorba licked his lips as he got closer. He sensed Ithuriel’s strength growing. The archangel could draw a frightening amount of the source to him—he was unlike anything Gorba had ever fought, and he knew he wouldn’t have time to kill Marah himself.
Then he saw Tyrus defending her. The brute was holding a broken gate against a war band while Marah protected them all. Ithuriel rose from the wreckage of the fortress, and Gorba grasped at Tyrus’s mind. He cackled. Her last moment would be a bitter betrayal.
Something battered Tyrus’s skull. He fell to one knee and held his head. He didn’t know what had hit him or from where, but the pain blinded him. A wall of blackness covered his eyes. He feared it was an arrow to the eye, but as the coldness set in, he knew it was the dreamworld.
Dread made his heart race as he remembered Gorba having done that to him once before. The demons wanted to possess his body.
Calm yourself, my sweet. I just need your skin for one moment.
Tyrus snarled and fought, but he couldn’t struggle against his own mind. He wrestled with a cold blackness. The nightmare entangled him, and try as he might, he could not pull out of it. He was drowning in the darkness, and it brought back a dozen bad memories of the Archangel Ramiel sending him messages.
He fought against it, as he had before. He refused to die and roared his anger at the unfairness of it all. A champion should die facing a worthy opponent. To be smothered by darkness insulted him to the core.
He deserved a real death.
His vision blinked in and out, and he saw his body lurching toward Marah. She gave him a frightened look. The darkness pulled him away, but he struggled to speak.
“Gorba. I can’t. Stop…”
The message exhausted him, and the black goo pulled him into a place he could not escape. He felt an arrow hit his back, but the pain faded to nothingness. The battle outside, the roar of the fires—it all went dark.
Gorba whispered, You are such a stubborn mule.
Get out of my head.
Oh, I only need to wear you for a moment. You’re so strong, and she is so frail. One punch should crack her skull.
Tyrus railed against his prison, but the more he fought, the smaller it became. Gorba had won. Tyrus stopped fighting as he imagined Marah’s last moments, dying at his hands, after all he had done to save her. She deserved better. He screamed with impotent rage, but nothing answered.
V
Breonna strained against her bow and let fly. The arrow jumped through the air and smacked against a shield held by one of the Kassiri knights. They were difficult bastards to kill, with a strange talent for catching arrows. They hid behind metal shields just as they hid behind stone walls.
She drew and pulled. Marah was hidden from view behind sorcerers and thanes, so she sighted one of the red sorcerers, a fat bald man, and let fly. He was distracted by one of the demons, which was fighting a group of Marah’s thanes. Her arrow took the sorcerer in the eye, and his head snapped back. His body crumpled to the ground.
She drew another arrow. The sorcerer had fallen as a shot body should fall. She knew she killed him, but Tyrus was refusing to fall. She had hit him with two arrows, yet he’d ignored them. A thane charged at the villa’s gates, and the knights prepared to fight him. She sighted one of them and let fly. She caught him near the base of his throat, and he choked and grabbed at the arrow as he fell to his knees.
The knights held the gate though, so she nocked another arrow and pulled it to her cheek. She sighted Marah, but Tyrus blocked the shot. In frustration, she shot him again and again. The arrows slapped into his back. She saw the arrow hit, and the mail rippled at the strike, but Tyrus ignored the pain. He didn’t have the decency to grunt or grab at the arrow or turn and glare at her.
She pulled another to her cheek and sighted another knight. She vowed to shoot every one of the Kassiri if she had to. When enough of them had fallen, she would have a clean view of Marah. All she needed was a small window, and the little freak would be finished.
Gorba-Tyrus towered over Marah. The arrows were a nuisance that made it harder for Gorba to control his new puppet, but he was within striking distance. He marveled at the strength Tyrus possessed. He was more like a shedim legionnaire than a spindly little mortal. The arms were thick as tree trunks, and the fists were heavy stones. One punch, right in the face, should kill the girl.
She knew it too. She had heard Tyrus’s warning, and her shields faltered. Hellfire hit the only part of Shinar that was not burning. The wide-eyed terror on her face made Gorba giggle.
With another arrow strike, Gorba-Tyrus lurched forward. The body crashed to one knee, but he grabbed her by the robes and had raised a fist when a lightning bolt slammed into Gorba’s real body.
He fled Tyrus’s body to scream and twist in the air. Ithuriel flew at him. His white armor looked untouched by the battle, and he thrust his wretched spear at Gorba—a lightning bolt jumped off the tip of the blade to lance toward Gorba, who managed to deflect the strike. Gorba answered with hellfire. Ithuriel corkscrewed around the blazing orb.
Gorba called legionnaires to his side. A half dozen shedim, who were fighting on the
streets of Shinar, launched into the air to intercept Ithuriel. They would not reach him quickly enough though, so Gorba tucked his wings and hurled himself at the city. Ithuriel dove after him. They collided on the streets, hundreds of yards from Marah.
The shedim swarmed Ithuriel. A sweep of his spear killed one of Gorba’s strongest warriors, and the sight of such force sickened him. They were outmatched. Every time they fought archangels, they outnumbered them, but the true sarbor were always stronger than the lesser shedim forged in the Nine Hells. Only another angel, like Mulciber, could match Ithuriel.
Gorba left his warriors to die in his place. He hobbled down a street, spread his wings, and took to the air. He flew toward the sea, filled with dread that the seraphim would drag him back to the ground and finish him off. As it became clear that he had escaped their wrath, he grew angrier at Mulciber, who had sacrificed some of Gorba’s greatest warriors to play games with a child. Gorba dove into the frigid waters of the sea—another insult from the middle world—and hurried toward the Black Gate. When an opportunity presented itself, he vowed to destroy his master.
Tyrus awoke on his knees before Marah. His back was burning, and he struggled to breathe. He wanted to stand, but his legs were weak, and waves of pain hit him as the sight and sound of the battle assaulted his senses. He had gone from pitch-black silence to a world of burning pain and hideous explosions.
Marah looked at him as though he was a monster. “Who are you?”
“I’m sorry.”
She raised a hand to him, and his ears rang. She had blasted him with some kind of white light that sent him flying through the air. He crashed into the villa’s ring wall.
Tyrus had taken five arrows in his back. The villa’s wall hammered them through his torso so the heads pushed out of his chest. He snarled at the pain and slid down the wall in a bloody mess. He collapsed heavily and shook his head. His mind was filthy, abused. He could still feel Gorba cackling at him, playing inside him. A wave of nausea struck, and he vomited bile.
Marah had returned to her sorcery, looking at the sky and trying to hold the burning clouds away from everyone. She looked as exhausted as Tyrus felt. He wanted to call to her, to assure her that he had never meant to hurt her, but he was too busy catching his breath.
An arrow dropped one of Lahar’s knights. Larz Kedar was on the ground, an arrow in one eye. Tyrus had to move. Marah needed him. He crawled across the courtyard. His back hurt too much to stand, but he clawed and kicked his way toward her. With a discarded shield from one of the knights, he knelt before her. She pulled away from him, still afraid. He wanted to say something to win her over, but he didn’t have the words. Two more arrows struck him.
Voices told Marah that Breonna was trying to kill her. She couldn’t do anything about that, though. Her shield had grown too small to be useful. The angels and demons kept fighting, but the demons were trying to escape. The angels hounded them, dragged them down, and fought to finish them off. Marah wanted the shedim to escape. She wanted the fight to leave Shinar.
The fighting had not stopped when Marah was forced to release her runes. She was gasping and resting on her hands and knees while the seraphim hunted down what remained of the shedim. A fireball might crash into the courtyard at any moment, but Marah could do nothing to stop it. She waited to see who else would die.
The teeming dead pained her. She squeezed her eyes shut against the migraine, trying to force the thing away, but its sharpness stabbed at her eyes. She curled up into a ball, cradling her head, and cried.
A voice overpowered the others, and it was as slimy as it was cruel.
Gorba whispered, We shall meet again, prophetess. You will kneel before me or fall like Alivar.
I’ll never serve you.
You need me, Marah. What happens when these people etch you against your will? What if they blunt your powers?
They won’t do that.
Of course they will. You scare them, and they will wrap you in chains.
Marah sensed him traveling toward the sea. More lies.
I can teach you the runes to stop them. You’ll never fear mortals again.
I don’t need your help.
So be it, but we are destined to fight. I’ve spent thousands of years learning how to kill you.
Marah sneered. Then why am I still alive?
The seething hatred vanished. Marah caught a glimpse of Gorba diving into the sea, into the dark depths of the gray waters. Many of the voices laughed at the way she had insulted him, but one cautioned her.
Provoking him is dangerous.
Marah didn’t care. She was tired of threats and bribes. The horror of Shinar unfolded around her. More than half the Norsil had been killed, and many of them were children. No one seemed to care about the dead but her. She had to hear them, and she was powerless to do anything to ease their suffering.
All the suffering wasn’t fair. She wanted people to stop dying.
The fiery storm ended. The world wasn’t as loud as it had been, but thick walls of smoke moved through the city, and the moans of the wounded competed with the cries of the dead. She listened to hurt people pass into the world between worlds. Too weak to block them out, she was forced to listen to the wails of dead children. Gorba had fled, but the number of people who had died to make that happen made the victory pointless.
VI
Breonna had spent all but one arrow. She hurt several thanes and killed a few Kassiri, but she could not get past Tyrus. Marah was there, and weak, an easy mark, if only Tyrus would fall down.
Breonna drew her last arrow and pulled it to her cheek. She waited for Tyrus’s head to rise from the shield. She strained against the bow, but he would not give her a better target. If she could put an arrow in his face, she might finally kill the bastard.
While she waited, she hoped Marah might poke her head out, too. With only one arrow left, Breonna wanted to kill one of the freaks. After everything she had lost fighting for Shinar, at least one of them should die.
Breonna’s arm began to tire, so she took the best shot she had, which put the arrow in the meat between Tyrus’s shoulders. A half dozen arrows bloodied his back, and the last one didn’t knock him over, either. She was rewarded somewhat by the pain it caused. At least it had hit hard enough to get a reaction.
“Filthy shigatz.”
The damage she had done would have killed a man like Olroth, but she remembered nursing Tyrus back to health after his fight with Nisroch. The freak would be walking around again in a matter of days. She cast about the room she was in for something to use as a weapon. She needed more arrows, something she could hurl at the bastard who had destroyed her clans.
She slumped to the floor in defeat.
Lahar and his men fought to hold the villa. Marah was protecting them from the hellish landscape of burning skies and collapsing buildings, and they worked to protect her from Breonna’s thanes, but they kept losing ground. Too many defenders died. An arrow killed Sir Hap, then another killed Larz Kedar. The thanes were held at the villa doors, but the archers took their toll. Lahar knew if they didn’t counterattack, everyone would die.
An arrow hit Sir Rustan in the throat. Lahar saw it happen and tracked the arrow back to Breonna. She was standing in a window across the street.
Lahar’s indignation turned into a murderous rage. He smashed through the thanes at the gate to clear a path. Olroth and Rood pushed forward with him, and they were in the streets, where dozens of thanes rushed them. More archers loosed missiles at them.
He sprinted across the street, shield-bashing thanes aside. His arm was almost useless, but he shouldered past a thane, and the explosion of pain made his anger worse. Olroth and a few of the Ghost Clan saved his life. They crashed into Breonna’s clansmen and bought him an opening to rush into the building.
An arrow bit him in the thigh as he ran through the door. He stumbled and fell inside. Behind hi
m, the door framed a brawl of thanes and archers in the streets, but Lahar sought out the stairs. He hobbled and limped to the second floor.
He found her alone in a dark room. The walls glowed red for a moment as a great blast filled the streets below. She turned to him and drew a knife. She moved faster than he expected, feinting and lunging at him, but he caught the knife on his shield and bashed her with the pommel of his sword.
She hit the ground, and Lahar swung at her neck. The killing stroke banged against a sword, and he turned to see Olroth beside him, his blade blocking Lahar’s.
“She wants her alive.”
“I want her head.”
“We were told to take her alive.”
“Bah!”
Lahar tried to overpower Olroth, but he was too beaten up to do anything. Olroth disarmed him and shoved him to the ground as though he were a child. Lahar sat against a wall and glared at Breonna, who cradled her jaw and shot a murderous glare at Olroth.
She said, “Kill me. Get it over with.”
“There’s nothing I want more,” Olroth said. “But the Ghost Warrior wants you alive.”
“The Ghost Warrior is not a little girl.”
Olroth belted her across the face hard enough to knock her out cold. He stood then and stretched his back. He offered a hand to Lahar, who took it, and pulled him to his feet.
Olroth said, “Do not force me to do the same to you.”
“She should die.”
“That is not for us to decide.”
Lahar limped to the window. The battle seemed to end, but with all the smoke and destruction, he could not say if the day was theirs or not. If an army of demons marched down the street to claim the city as their own, he would not be surprised. The smoke cleared, revealing a landscape of rubble and charred stone. He had not thought his home could look any worse, but the shedim proved him wrong.
Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4) Page 56