The Sword of Midras

by Tracy Hickman

  Aren shook with a start.

  He had seen this woman before.

  She turned from him, walking west along the top of the wall.

  “That woman!” Aren blurted out.

  “What woman?” Trevan, who had been watching over the wall, turned toward him.

  “That w-woman walking away from us,” Aren stammered as he pointed westward down the length of the wall.

  Trevan frowned as he peered to the west. “What are you talking about? I don’t see anyone.”

  The top of the western wall had vanished beneath another veil of ash and smoke.

  “She was at Midras. I saw her in the ruins there. She was the one who warned me of the Guardians just before they attacked. She was the one who led us to—” Aren suddenly clambered to his feet. “Come on! We’ve got to find her.”

  “Find who?” Trevan called after him as Aren hurried westward along the top of the wall.

  “Come on!” Aren called back. He came to the stairs leading upward and quickly ran up them. Aren could hear Trevan running behind him, struggling to keep up. He rushed past the rows of archers from the Opalis Legion stationed all along the top of the wall. The western tower was a vague shadow through the smoke, getting darker and more solid as Aren ran.

  He saw her moving along the wall behind the sentinels and beyond the western tower. The warriors, each looking outward in anxious anticipation, took no notice of the woman as she passed behind them, the wide skirt of her dress flowing as she ran.

  Aren dashed after her, passing around the western tower and continuing along the top of the wall. He caught another glimpse of her as she turned where the wall jogged outward before it continued toward the northwest and the Fields Gate Tower.

  Aren’s boots slid along the stones as he rushed around the jog in the wall. He could see where the wall ended at the Fields Gate Tower. A guard stood at the closed door that entered the tower.

  The woman had vanished.

  Aren approached the guard at once. “Where is she?”

  “Who, sire?”

  “The woman,” Aren insisted, frustration rising in his voice. “Dark hair and a white dress … She just passed here!”

  “Sire?” the guard answered, a puzzled look on his face.

  Trevan caught up with the captain. “Did any pass this post just now, Mordan?”

  The guard looked back at them with a genuinely puzzled expression. “No, sire! Everyone here has stayed at their posts. We are not due to be relieved for another hour.”

  “I’m not talking about the guards!” Aren shouted. “It was a woman who…”

  The guard stared blankly back at Aren.

  “You’re sure you saw someone?” Trevan asked.

  “I tell you, she was the same woman,” Aren insisted. “She was wearing different clothing and looked at the time as though she had gone through the siege, but I would remember those eyes…”

  Aren stopped speaking.

  A terrible shouting could be heard in the distance beyond the walls.

  “No!” Aren muttered in disbelief. “He wouldn’t be that stupid … couldn’t be that stupid!”

  Trevan turned toward the sound, a terrible cacophony of noise that grew louder by the moment.

  “They’re coming.” Aren grabbed Trevan’s shoulder. “Get your warriors to the wall, Trevan. Do it now!”

  “I thought you said he was going to settle into a siege?” Trevan said.

  “Karpasic isn’t going to wait for a siege and he isn’t going to negotiate to spare the citizens or the town,” Aren insisted. “He’s going to throw his army against the walls of Opalis as hard he has to for as long as it takes to bring it down … and he’s going to do it right here at Fields Gate!”

  The color drained from Trevan’s face as he turned toward the guard. “Mordan! Run the wall and tell the captains they have to hold their ground. Prepare weapons and fire on anything that enters the moats outside the wall. Go! Run!”

  Mordan ran at once, his cries diminishing as he hurried along the top of the wall. Already the archers were moving, nocking their arrows and preparing for the first volley.

  Trevan turned and called down the wall. “Captain Artemis!”

  The young captain was a woman clad in her armor, her weapon at her side as she came running toward them. “Hail, Commander!”

  “Ring the bell, Artemis,” Trevan said without preamble.

  Artemis straightened at the command. “The bell, sire?”

  “You heard me, Captain,” Trevan said. “Do it now.”

  “Sire!” Captain Artemis said, her right fist rising to her chest in sharp salute. She ducked at once through the door of the tower and disappeared.

  “A bell?” Aren asked. “What does the bell…?”

  “We may not have told you everything about the defenses of Opalis,” Trevan said quickly, and then he turned to one of the knights standing behind the line on the wall. “Sir Llewellyn! Take Captain Bennis here back to the barracks at once and secure him … then muster whoever remains and bring them back here at once!”

  “Aye, sire!” the knight replied. “You’re coming with me, Captain Bennis.”

  “I am doing no such thing!” Aren snapped. “If you’re going to save this city from this lunatic, you’re going to need—”

  “Here they come!” someone shouted down the wall. The dull, harplike sound of bowstrings being released filled the air. They were in near unison at first but quickly fell into a continuous, ragged volley.

  A wuthering sound came in almost instant reply. Aren could see the long streaks rushing over the wall like a sudden, deadly rain. They arched downward, some short of the wall, some rushing down on the wall, and still more falling toward the rooftops and streets behind them.

  Aren fell at once and rolled toward the crenellations at the top of the wall. Commander Trevan cried out as he leaped into the doorway of the tower. Captain Llewellyn ducked behind the tower, shielded by its bulk. The archers along the wall ducked behind the crenellations, but not all of them were quick enough to avoid the terrible cascade of arrows.

  Blood began to stain the top of the wall. Aren could hear the panic rising from the streets of the city behind the wall.

  Aren pulled himself up and looked out. The depression was filling with water from the river, the sluice gate having at last been opened. Ranks of warriors from the Westreach Army had fallen at the volleys from the walls. Some lay unmoving while many more struggled to get back to their feet as the waters rushed toward them. Others, still carrying their ladders to assault the walls, were pressing forward under a renewed withering round of arrow fire from the walls. It was a death pit; the charge there was faltering as the dead and drowning were slowly being covered by the diverted waters of the West Jaana River.

  But it was the causeway coming toward the gate that gripped Aren’s attention. There, running toward the gate were three monstrous creatures the likes of which he had never seen before. They were human in general shape but gargantuan; each stood nearly fifteen feet in height. They had arms the size of tree trunks, powerful legs that were larger still. They were clad in armor patterned after the Obsidian design, but at an enormous scale. Their eyes glowed red in the failing light, fixed on the closed gates to the north of the tower.

  Behind them was a phalanx of warriors, their long shields held up in tortoise formation. Those in the center held their shields over their heads in an overlapping pattern while those at the sides of the formation held them so as to form a wall at their sides. These made their way more slowly along the causeway and toward the gate.

  “Captain!” Sir Llewellyn shouted, reaching down to grab Aren. “You’re coming with…”

  Another volley of arrows flew toward the wall from the smoke-laden darkness of the burned town beyond the walls. Aren flattened against the crenellation just as the arrows slammed against the stones. A dozen arrows slammed against Sir Llewellyn, though none found their mark between the plates of the knight’s armor. He s
taggered backward under the hail of blows, losing his footing and falling on his back.

  More archers lay still along the wall. Blood began to form in pools, mixing one with another from the fallen on the wall.

  Aren then heard the bell ringing frantically from its bell tower over the Fields Gate.

  A hand appeared before Aren. He took the hand as it pulled him up and swung him back around the tower.

  “Stay here!” Trevan shouted as he released Aren’s hand.

  “Not likely!” Aren replied.

  The wall shook beneath their feet. Both the commander and the captain reeled slightly.

  Trevan regained his footing, drawing his sword. “What was that?”

  “You’ve got a problem!” Aren yelled, and pointed down past the tower to the approaches of the gate below.

  The gigantic creatures had reached the gate. Arrows stuck out from them like quills. Each of them seemed more enraged than harmed by the wounds.

  “They’re not attacking the gates!” Trevan shouted in disbelief. “They’re attacking the stone!”

  The monsters gripped the stones around the gate, wrenching them from their places and tossing them aside. The gates, no longer having stone to hold them in place, tore loose with the stone as the wall at the gate began to collapse.

  Suddenly a sheet of purple-blue light fell over the city, a dome of lightning and shifting light extending from the citadel tower down over all of Opalis. It fitted itself to the top of the wall, a great shield over the city. The volley of arrows from the Obsidian Army broke against its surface, sliding down to clatter harmlessly on the ground. The arrows of Opalis’s own archers, however, passed unhindered from the wall through the shield, continuing their work of death against the undeterred waves of warriors struggling to reach the wall.

  “The Titans’ Shield,” Trevan said as he gazed up in awe-filled relief. “I just hope it lasts long enough.”

  “How long is that?” Aren asked.

  “I don’t know,” Trevan said. “We’ve never had to use it before.”

  The ground beneath them again shook. The monstrous giants were further outraged by the magical shield that had fallen over the city. They began pulling huge handfuls of stone out with both hands. In a moment the gate collapsed entirely, the wall crashing downward.

  The great wall began to come apart beneath their feet, the tower behind them shuddering.

  “Oh no!” Trevan cried out.

  The wall continued to collapse in their direction. Trevan grabbed Aren by the arm, pulling him away from the tower and throwing him back along the top of the wall. The tower came apart behind him, crashing down on top of the commander.

  Aren staggered back to his feet.

  The tower was gone.

  Trevan lay partially buried beneath its stones.

  He was not moving.

  CHAPTER

  23

  The Gate

  Aren rushed toward the fallen commander. He dropped to his hands and knees and pulled fiercely at the debris, shoving the shattered stones aside. He turned his face back down the wall, shouting desperately. “Llewellyn! Help me!”

  The knight stood unmoving on what remained standing of the wall, blinking back at him.

  “Sir Llewellyn!” Aren barked in his command voice. “Come here! Now!”

  The knight shook as he broke the bonds of the stupor that held him. He dropped beside Aren, pulling furiously at the stones that had nearly entombed the commander. In moments, the battered, dust-laden form of Trevan had been uncovered.

  A pool of blood was spreading out from beneath Trevan’s head.

  “Help me get him free,” Aren ordered as he squatted down, pressing his boots against the rubble as he positioned himself at the head of the still figure of the commander. He could feel himself slip over the blood beneath where he sat. Aren put both arms beneath the commander’s shoulders and pulled, trying to slide the fallen warrior out of the wreckage. Trevan’s body remained where it had fallen. “Keep digging!”

  Trevan’s body came free on the second try.

  Aren stopped at once and examined the body before him. It was obvious that both the legs were badly broken. The external bleeding from the head did not concern him nearly as much as the less obvious and far more dangerous internal bleeding at which he could only guess.

  “He’s still breathing,” Aren observed.

  “What do we do?”

  “What?” Aren looked up.

  “Please, sir.” It was the knight Llewellyn, gazing up at him from where he knelt next to his commander. “What do we do?”

  It was not until that moment that Aren realized just how truly young the knight kneeling next to him was. It was not just the years that were reflected in the large eyes staring back at him, but no amount of training had prepared this man for the reality of what he was facing.

  How many more of you are there standing on these walls? Aren thought at once. How many will die?

  Aren stood, taking in the battle around him. Time slowed in his mind as he turned. Below the wall on which they stood, he could see a group of elves, each of their bodies marked with paint, charging across the flooded approach, running across on the backs of the fallen dead beneath their feet. They were trying to reach the breached gate and fallen wall ahead of the humans, who were still in their tortoise formation and inching their way closer by the moment on the causeway. The warriors on the wall continued to fire their arrows down on the elves, but they moved with such swiftness and erratic course that the archers were having trouble leading them properly. On the other side, where the wall had collapsed and with it the Fields Gate, Aren could see the magical barrier had extended down to the debris and was keeping two of the enormous beasts at bay, but the third had reached into the rubble and pulled a huge slab of stone that had formed the top of the gate. The monster was lifting the stone upward with all its strength against the glowing barrier.

  There, as the stone was pressed upward, an opening in the barrier was widening between its colossal legs. Lightning raged at its edges, struggling to close in on itself, but the screaming monster held its ground, pushing harder upward.

  Beyond that opening lay defenseless all the city of Opalis.

  “Run to the barracks,” Aren said, his voice more strong and sure than he felt. “Order everyone there to the Fields Gate. We have to hold the gate or the city is lost. Do you understand?”

  The knight nodded.

  “Go! Now!”

  The knight jumped up and fled eastward down the wall.

  Aren took in a deep breath and then knelt down next to the motionless body of the commander. The once bright blue mantle of the commander was now stained with his own blood and caked with dust from the collapsed tower, but the silver crest of the falcon with its spread wings could still clearly be made out. Without hesitation, Aren reached down for the edge of the mantle and quickly pulled it free over the lolling head of Trevan.

  “Please,” he muttered to himself. “Don’t anyone look too closely.”

  The smoke of Brambletown still drifting over the broken wall, Aren quickly put Trevan’s mantle over his head. It settled heavily on his shoulders even as he turned around back toward the wall.

  “Captain!” he called.

  “Hail, Commander!” came the reply through the obscuring smoke.

  “Concentrate your fire on the causeway!” Aren called back. “Ignore the elves unless they try to scale the wall!”

  “Elves?” the captain asked back. “What are elves?”

  “Those painted monsters charging the wall,” Aren corrected. “Just … just fire on the causeway!”

  “Aye, sire!”

  Aren looked about the wall. The collapse had left a slope of debris just beyond where the tower had once stood. Part of the wreckage had cascaded outside the mystical barrier, but much of the sloping jumble lay inside the glowing and flashing blue lights. Aren bound down the rubble, nearly losing his footing on the slope twice before he found mor
e stable ground at the level of the city. Several of the buildings nearest the gate had been heavily damaged as well, causing Aren to cross back behind them into the alleyways that connected to Muse Way beyond.

  He burst into the street filled with chaos. Citizens were running in blind panic, desperate to find safety where none could be found. Aren pushed through them for a few moments before bursting into the square behind where the Fields Gate had once stood. The square was empty now, the gate smashed to ruins and the walls to either side fallen as well.

  There, where the gate had once been, stood the gigantic form of the monster, raising the stone over its head, pushing the glowing shield of the city back.

  Between its feet, Aren could already see the elves pouring into the square.

  Aren, facing them alone, drew his sword.

  “Khianati!” Aren yelled as loudly as he could, directly toward the large elf charging toward him before the others. He knew this would be the chief of the elves, who always preferred to lead them into battle. “Pengkhianatan dari belakang!”

  The chief of the elves stopped, looking around in confusion, anger, and outrage.

  “Peri dikhianati!” Aren shouted. His voice was hoarse and dry. “Peri terjaga! Hewa meningalkan Peri matikan!”

  The elven chief raised his arms and screamed. His piercing voice made Aren cringe, but he knew it had been shaped that way to carry over the noise of battle.

  The elves stopped their charge, their weapons raised in anticipation of death and conquest.

  Aren kept his eyes on the chief. He was enormously powerful and terrible to look at. Aren could not remember this particular chief, but he fervently hoped this one would react in the same way as every other chief he had commanded.

  In that moment, Aren knew the chief.

  He knew there was nothing there.

  Nothing, at least, in the sense of what had once been there. This had once been a man, he knew, and that man had been reshaped by the Obsidians into this monster of war and conquest. There was nothing here of his life, his former self, his memories, or his soul. Whatever this man had once been had been stripped from him and replaced with hatred, fear, and power.