His injured left arm in a sling, Gregorian organized the first vanguard, gathering his soldiers into a tightly packed group. The three captains—young, hard men wearing full platemail—circled around the throng. Karak then leaned down and whispered into Velixar’s ear.
“Do you feel my power flowing through you, High Prophet?”
Velixar closed his eyes, his every nerve dancing on end.
“I do, my Lord.”
“There are still many beasts remaining. Use the Ekreissar to destroy them. Pave the way for my soldiers to enter the walls unscathed.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
Shouting voices followed as Lord Commander Gregorian whipped the vanguard, two hundred of his most eager men, into a frenzy. Velixar gazed straight ahead, the glow from his eyes casting a red haze over his vision. The grayhorn-men trumpeted their strange call, then made their charge from a half mile away, their multiple tusks leading the way as they galloped on all fours.
Velixar turned to Chief Shen. “The beasts! Slay the beasts!” he shouted. Shen drew his two black swords from his back and clanged them together. The elven rangers roared their approval. Velixar then drove his knees into the sides of his horse and took off to greet the beasts head-on. Shadows and purple fire rose from his body, and his vision narrowed to the grayhorn-men’s twisted, horned faces. The pounding of the rangers’ horses followed fast behind him, creating a dull thud like a second heartbeat inside his head.
He released the reins with his right hand, raising that arm into the air. The pendant bouncing against his chest throbbed, and energy crackled at his fingertips, siphoned from Karak’s well of otherworldly power. Pressing down on the stirrups and holding tight to the reins with his left hand, he rose from his saddle, feeling mighty, feeling invincible. At least a hundred of the grayhorn-men had not fled, each a ton of flesh and bone, and they were a thousand feet away and closing fast.
“Ignite!”
The word flew from his lips with the force of a hurricane, awakening the ancient knowledge of the demon he’d swallowed. From his raised hand came a spiraling tentacle of shadow, spurting upward and outward, an extension of himself. The tentacle raced over the dead earth, fast as a bolt of lightning, and then descended on the first of the grayhorns. The beast was thrown backward as if walloped by a boulder, the shadows pouring into its eyes, its snout, its ears. Velixar grinned as the creature’s taut flesh became bloated, and smoke rose from its every orifice. The grayhorn-man then exploded, destroyed by fire from within. The air was filled with flaming blood and bits of meat, and the nearest of the creature’s brethren were impaled by jagged bone fragments. Those few fell screeching to the ground, their great bodies slumping, their elongated snouts trumpeting in pain as their newly created hands tried to rip the shards from their hides. The other grayhorns raced past, casting only cursory glances at their fallen comrades, their eyes alight with rage.
The beasts were close now, too close for Velixar to perform the same trick twice without endangering himself and the elves. Pulling up on the reins and halting his horse mid-stride, he allowed Shen and the Ekreissar to pass him. Shen shouted commands, and half the rangers splayed out wide, lifting their bows with practiced ease, calmly nocking arrows. Their discipline was awe inspiring, and Velixar promised himself that he would help teach the human army to display the same control. The elves released their bowstrings, and shafts flew through the air, the elves’ aim just as impressive as their discipline. Each arrow found its mark, embedding in the thick hides of the charging beasts. Three grayhorns died immediately after being impaled through the eye, and their bodies tumbled down. The dead earth was torn up by their graceless descent, and a few of their brethren fell after colliding with them. Still others clumsily maneuvered around the piles of flesh, the ground shaking beneath their cumbersome weight. Velixar shouted more words of magic, his hands performing a dance before him, and two more of the beasts were cut down, their bones snapping, their innards liquefying, their gray, hard flesh splitting at the seams and pouring out blood.
Shen charged, the dexterity of the huge elf a sight to behold as he held his wicked-looking black swords out wide and raced his horse toward a pair of grayhorns. The muscles in the beasts’ shoulders rippled with each lumbering stride as they raced for the Ekreissar chief, deadly tusks and horns pointed forward. Shen pulled his right foot from the stirrup, planted it firmly on his horse’s back, and at the last moment launched himself into the air, tucking into a roll. His horse ducked its head, and the creatures’ tusks passed over it, slicing through the empty space where Shen had just been moments before. The two beasts roared in pain when Shen fell from the sky, his swords held out like daggers, and buried both blades into their backs. The elf’s downward momentum added force to his attack as he dragged his swords along the creatures’ hides. Flesh sliced open in a wide arc, spilling the grayhorns’ guts in a macabre red rain. Shen landed and rolled away as the two dying beasts collided with each other and collapsed, their blood and entrails soaking the dead ground. He was on his feet a moment later, leaping back atop his horse and charging the next grayhorn. His fingers never lost traction on his two swords. The whole while, arrows launched by his underlings rained down around him, yet he never seemed in danger of being struck by one.
A breathtaking spectacle, indeed.
Inspired, Velixar ripped Lionsbane from its sheath and urged his steed forward. Nearly half the remaining grayhorns had fallen, and the Ekreissar, who continued to pummel the beasts with their arrows, were encircling the others. One of the creatures stampeded the circling elves and managed to gore a ranger through the midsection. The elf shrieked as he was lifted high into the air on the grayhorn’s tusks, and then impaled by the horn on the beast’s snout. The elf fell limp as the grayhorn roared, thrashing this way and that, blinded by the flopping dead thing attached to it.
Velixar raced behind the creature and hacked at it with Lionsbane. Its hide was tough, but his blade sliced, severing the tendons on the back of the thing’s tree-trunk legs. It collapsed to its knees, while a blast of panicked air left its elongated snout, filling the air with its trumpetlike bleating.
It was silenced by a wave of Velixar’s hand, which turned both creature and impaled elf inside out. The tide of the battle seemed to be turning, with the grayhorns pushing the Ekreissar back now. Two more elves were killed, their bodies trampled and broken in the dry brown grass, and while Shen and the rangers continued their assault, the grayhorns seemed to be learning. When the twang of bowstrings sounded they dropped their heads, allowing the shafts to enter their thick hides while protecting their more sensitive areas. They also formed defensive positions, grouping shoulder to shoulder with one another, their flailing horns and tusks keeping the elves’ khandars at bay. For mere animals, their survival instinct was remarkable. In many ways, Velixar began to admire them.
Just not enough to let them live.
Bringing his horse to a halt behind the eviscerated grayhorn and its victim, Velixar sheathed Lionsbane and accessed the deeper recesses of the demon’s knowledge. As he twined his hands together, he felt Karak’s strength surge through him, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Arcane words left his mouth, and a liquid feeling of connection permeated his being. His vision returned to him, and he saw the blood and bone of the elf and grayhorn he had eviscerated circling in the air, a funnel of ruin that twisted with the force of gods, ever widening, ever spiraling. The funnel lashed across the ground, guided by Velixar’s own hand, collecting the ruin of the dead that were strewn about until it was nearly as wide as Tower Honor itself. As if sensing the potency of the spell, the grayhorns packed tighter into their defensive circle. The elves, who had ceased with their rain of arrows, backed their horses away. It seemed all eyes were on him, including his divinity’s. Now was the time for him to prove, once and for all, that Karak’s faith in him was not misplaced.
He leaned forward and then thrust his interlocked hands toward the huddled beasts. The death
funnel surged into motion, ripping up chunks of dirt and grass as it spiraled toward the beasts. The base of the funnel grew as it went, the bone fragments within becoming sharper and more deadly with each revolution.
The grayhorns turned to flee, their primal gazes filled with fear. Their giant rumps rose and fell with each leaping stride, the creatures deceptively fast given their size.
They weren’t fast enough.
The death funnel swallowed the slowest grayhorn, ripping the beast off its feet and into the massive spiral of blood, tissue, and bone. Its shrieks were deafening, and Velixar could see the shadow of its form whipping back and forth inside the cyclone. When it was ejected, flesh and muscle flayed from its bones, it landed on the dead ground in a steaming lump.
The funnel’s density grew with each beast it devoured, until it became so large that it seemed to swirl nearly a thousand feet wide. The fleeing grayhorn-men were annihilated, one by one, until a scant few remained. Velixar watched from a distance as they disappeared into the skeletal forest, their massive bodies colliding with the dead trees in their horrified flight. He snapped his fingers and the death funnel abruptly ceased to spin. Each bone fragment, each strip of blackened flesh, each drop of blood hung in the air for a precious few seconds before falling to the ground in a deafening rain of gore.
Shen glanced over at him, his wide-set eyes alive with fear. The Ekreissar chief then dismounted, crossed his black swords over his chest, and fell to one knee. The rest of the rangers followed their chief’s lead, showing subservience to the swallower of demons.
Velixar’s belly filled with pride as the pendant against his chest pulsed with heat. He spun his horse around to look for Karak and saw that the deity was staring at him, eyes aglow, arms crossed. The god nodded in approval while the thousands of soldiers behind him gaped in awe. Velixar then caught Lord Commander Gregorian’s eye, raised his right hand to the sky, and pointed two fingers toward the smoking hole in the wall around Mordeina.
The Lord Commander needed no further invitation. The man yanked his horse’s reins with his good arm, urging it to the side.
“March forth!” he shouted. “Slay the worshippers of the false god!” The entirety of the first vanguard hollered their approval. The riotous thudding of clanging armor and stomping feet sounded as the soldiers began to charge across the dead field covered with the remains of the grayhorns. The second vanguard stepped up, preparing to follow.
Velixar sat and watched as the soldiers rushed past him, weapons raised, spittle flying from their lips. They would do their god proud, just as he had.
The assault on Mordeina had begun.
CHAPTER
46
The demons were upon them, swooping from the heavens, snatching women and children, slaughtering any who opposed. As Ahaesarus listened to them scream, his vision blacked out, his body searing with pain. He sensed people leaping over him as he lay on his back.
A foot connected with his side, rolling him over. He remained where he was, elbow pressing into the soft earth, while his sight slowly returned. Muffled voices shouted warnings. Something slumped to the ground beside him, and he lifted his head, not wanting to see Malodia take her final breath, but bound by honor and love to do just that.
The world came clear to him, and he saw that the body alongside him was not his dead wife’s, but rather that of a young man with curly red-blond hair. His dead eyes stared at Ahaesarus until they were covered in blood from the ugly wound on the side of his head. The Warden reached over, his every muscle aching, and felt the man’s chest. His heart was still.
The screaming and clamor of the stampede continued as Ahaesarus sat up. There were bodies everywhere, some writhing in pain, most stilled, all covered with gashes and bruises and surrounded by large chunks of heavy, jagged stone. The Warden looked up at the twin walls Ashhur had helped raise, at the wide crevasse that had been solid stone moments before. Someone crashed into him from behind, knocking him forward, and he bent painfully at the waist, his chin almost kissing his knees.
He rolled, got up on all fours, and surveyed the pandemonium all around him. The people were rushing about in a mad panic, an endless mob of them, their roughspun stained with grime, ash, and blood. His fellow Wardens tried to usher them along in an organized manner toward the manse on the hill, but the mob’s panic was too great. He watched as one of his brethren was trampled by a swarm of terrified men and women, disappearing from view. The last Ahaesarus saw of him was his hand rising above the bobbing heads in a feeble attempt to make them stop.
With the crowds moving steadily away from him, he took a moment to grab hold of his ears and rock back and forth. There was a persistent buzzing in his head that muffled all other sound, almost as if he were underwater. Confusion abounded as he tried to remember what had happened, why everything had gone so insane so quickly.
Then it came to him. He had been in Manse DuTaureau, arguing with Isabel about what his punishment should be for releasing Geris Felhorn from his prison, when her son Patrick barged in with his incendiary revelation. After that he had left Isabel to her tears and walked down the path to the gate to rejoin his regiment of Wardens and a few of Turock Escheton’s pupils. Almost as soon as he’d arrived, he was temporarily blinded and blown backward by a massive explosion. He remembered seeing Ashhur atop that wall moments before his world became a complete whiteout, and he flung his head from side to side, searching in a panic. It did not take him long to spot the western deity, sprawled out on the ground a few hundred feet away, surrounded by a congress of Wardens. Judarius was among them, a wound between his green and gold-flecked eyes leaking blood. His fellow Lordship mentor shouted out orders. Ashhur’s arms were grabbed, and the Wardens proceeded to lug him across the debris-littered ground.
A horn sounded, drawing Ahaesarus’s attention back to the gaping fissure in Mordeina’s wall. The gap was wide enough for twenty grayhorns to stride through abreast of one another. He peered through the smoke and flames, watching as a considerable number of black shapes moved ever closer to the enclosed settlement. He stood on shaky legs, stumbling over corpses and chunks of wall. It was hard to see clearly through the smoke, but he swore there was a strange sort of lightning striking the ground on the other side. What followed were inhuman howls, and the repetitious clomp-clomp-clomp of charging horses’ hooves.
Not a moment later, three men came charging through the smoking breach atop majestic black chargers. They wore full plate armor, painted black, and great helms covering their faces. Each helm was adorned with a pair of horns, like a bull’s, and the soldiers’ breastplates bore the roaring lion of Karak. The three stopped once they reached open ground, spinning about on their chargers. The one in the center lifted his helm, exposing the youthful face of a young man no older than twenty, and then brought a horn to his lips and blew it in the direction of the aperture. That done, he returned the horn to his saddlebag and drew his sword, waving it in circles above his head. Before his helm was pulled back over his face, Ahaesarus caught a glimpse of his eyes. His gaze was hard and intense for a youth, much like Wallace’s when faced with Turock’s interrogation.
The roar of a mob followed, riotous like a legion of drunkards after a night of inebriation, and a stream of armor-clad men came screaming through the breach. They ran with their weapons held out before them, madness in their eyes. Any stragglers were cut down instantly, their blood filling the air. The people shrieked, fleeing as fast as they could, only to be slaughtered by the three who had rode on horseback.
“We must fight!” he heard someone yell, and Ahaesarus spun around to see Judarius leading a cluster of Wardens toward the invading soldiers. Mennon was with him, as were Ludwig and Florio and Judah and thirty others. The soldiers kept coming, their numbers too great to count, their movements too frantic for Ahaesarus to follow.
Steel met steel with a violent clang.
He then remembered what he had told Isabel before Lady DuTaureau had sent him to Drake: “If any w
ere to lash out at Ashhur’s children, I would strike them down or perish trying. And when Karak arrives on our doorstep, he will discover just how much I mean those words.”
It was time for that pronouncement to become a reality.
Ahaesarus swallowed his fear and charged into the melee with a roar. His fist flew, connected with the head of a helmless soldier. The young man’s head snapped to the side and he crumpled to the ground. Ahaesarus dodged the thrust of yet another soldier, slid to the ground, and lifted the sword of the man he had struck. He was not skilled with it, but what he lacked in skill he made up for with determination. He wielded the sword like he would wield his sickle back in Algrahar when it came time to trim his fields, swiping it wildly back and forth, keeping his motions low. He hacked off feet and clanged the weapon against thighs enclosed in chainmail. A blade pierced his side, but he barely felt it. Instead he looped around, catching the one who’d stabbed him with an elbow to the chin. The man fell to the side, howling, only to be replaced by another. Ahaesarus kept fighting, even though he was rapidly tiring as he became drenched in blood.
Something hard caught him underneath the chin. The force of the blow was enough to snap his head back and make him bite his tongue. Ahaesarus stumbled, barely keeping hold of his sword, and collapsed to his knees. Hands were on him in an instant, yanking him backward by the arms.
“No!” he shouted, struggling against his captors.
“Stop fighting!” shouted a familiar voice.
When Ahaesarus craned his neck, he saw that Mennon and Grendel were the ones lugging him away from the battle. He heard screams and looked down again. More and more soldiers poured through the hole in the wall like ants from a mound, at least three hundred of them. Any who stood in their way, Warden and human alike, were slaughtered. And in the midst of it all Judarius stood tall, swinging a massive club of stone, pummeling those unlucky enough to stand within reach.
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