The tower’s glass front cracked, pierced by a sword, and abruptly burst outwards with a muted yet ominous sound, drawing all eyes in alarm.
Glass and ash showered the foremost nobles and women. Then they espied in the midst of the massive wave of billowing ash a familiar shape; the figure of Courdour Alomar, streaked in black, fully garbed in lacquered ironwood armour, sword and shield in his hands, teeth and whites of eyes gleaming, his laughing mouth pink-red.
Panic should have impelled them to run, but they were stunned, incapable of believing their own eyes. They presented pitifully easy targets for Alomar’s slashing sword and he showed no mercy.
He ran down from the benches where lay at least twelve fresh corpses, and his black imprints traced his steps. He ploughed towards the horse-trough, immersed his head and swished it around, shook his head and sneezed, twice: “Damn! That damned ash!” His eyes streamed, producing white rivulets upon blackened cheeks.
By now the four soldiers studying the puffs of smoke at the dungeon entrance had shaken themselves out of their stunned torpor. They turned as one. And died almost as one.
Alomar’s thought was of the torture chamber and, oddly, he was gravely concerned for Fhord. If they had killed her, after all they had been through –!
He kicked down the door and stepped onto the stone landing.
Thick smoke engulfed him, made him cough.
A couple of guards below at the first level were fighting the smoke with blankets, while trying to quell the shrieking prisoners who clung to the rows of cell-bars. Upon seeing him through the swathing smoke, however, the guards and even some prisoners backed away as though he were some apparition from Below.
Without pausing, Alomar jumped down the stairs and slew the two guards. He yelled to the prisoners: “I’ll release you on my return!”
Coughing on the smoke, he jumped to another broad landing that overlooked the low chamber.
He prepared to meet an upcoming charge from a single man but stayed his sword in time. “Ulran!” he shouted, hoarse. He sneezed again, cursing the ash.
At that moment, as the innman drew alongside him and they clasped hands, the chamber below rumbled.
The black roof collapsed at the far end, directly upon the ashes, all that remained of the mortal body of Cobrora Fhord and her torturer.
Alomar’s eyes quizzed Ulran as they both turned and climbed the stairs, choking on the smoke.
Ulran shook his head.
Alomar nodded, that was all. Later, if they survived, he would spare a thought for Fhord; but not now.
They snatched torches from the wall-sconces and hurried along the echoing passage, shadows flashing. Ulran lagged a little and conserved himself – his side ached.
Finally, in answer to Ulran’s directions, Alomar swerved to the right, grabbed a battle-axe from the wall and ran into a small chamber where Bindar lay.
Ulran followed him through.
“Ulran, friend, you’ve come!” Bindar smiled weakly, stretching his chains.
Alomar’s axe crashed down, shattering the offered metal links.
Then Bindar was free, though unsteady on his feet.
Alomar thrust the battle-axe into the freed man’s hand as Ulran said, “Follow us up, Bindar. We cannot tarry now, we’re making for Yip-nef Dom! Free the prisoners after we’ve left. The city’s outbreak begins now!”
Weary eyes abruptly lightened with a fierce fire. Bindar nodded and followed their flickering torches up the smoke-laden steps.
Another two guards had come down from the courtyard, wet cloths round their faces. As they emerged out of the wall of smoke ahead, Ulran ran forward and swung his chains at their legs. Both fell heavily to the stone steps and Alomar swiftly despatched them to the Fields of the Overlord, though not without some envy.
Shouts and screams reached them, coming from the cells. “They’re down there, Bindar – good luck!”
The red-head veered right, down a gloomy smoke-filled corridor, smashing his battle-axe resoundingly against the locks of the cells. For all his ill-treatment and wounded arm, Bindar’s strength was up to the task.
With shouts of joy, the emaciated prisoners surged out of the cells.
Ulran followed Alomar up the steps, his wounds slowing him; fortunately, they had not broken open afresh. For he felt sure that if he lost more life-blood, his strength would drain away with it.
At the door’s entrance – within the shadows of the arcade – Ulran and Alomar discarded the torches and halted to survey the scene in the courtyard.
The arcade further down on the left-hand side had collapsed, revealing a gaping black hole, with flames and smoke sprouting up as though out of the Pit itself. Soldiers had formed a water-bucket chain, though they could not see the end of it as the billows of smoke obscured most of the courtyard. Above this smokescreen rose the Tower of Ash and the wooden benches with the sprawled figures of the slain spectators.
Alomar and Ulran crossed the heaps of ash in front of the tower, and their boots made cracking noises upon the shattered glass. But nobody paid any attention.
Dangling on either side of the royal balcony were richly embroidered pennants, yellow on black. And slung over the topmost benches on poles was an awning.
Unnoticed, the pair climbed the benches and leaped over the bodies.
Almost without pausing, Alomar swung round and offered his cupped hands as a foot-rest.
Ulran placed his right foot neatly in the immortal’s hands and Alomar lifted him with a loud grunt.
Summoning up his strength, the innman sprang upwards, reached out and caught hold of the awning with both bruised hands. He gripped, held tight. The material partially ripped under his weight – as did his abdominal wound.
As he swung suspended – pain lancing – he arched his back and kicked his legs up and over, knees hitting smack! onto the taut canvas. And it held.
For a brief moment he rested and checked the seepage of blood – slight. Then, from here, he bounced over and grabbed hold of a dangling pennant. After testing the strain he hauled himself up, feet against the black-stone wall, hand over hand, his damaged shoulder throbbing. Then he reached out and his fingers wrapped round a carved baluster.
In an instant he was up and over the balcony, though breathless.
The salon was deserted. From here, the courtyard appeared in complete pandemonium, swathes of smoke obscuring vast areas.
Below, Alomar waited patiently, unnoticed by the scurrying soldiers with slopping buckets of water.
Slightly recovered, Ulran tore down the heavy brocade drapes, used Alomar’s knife to slice them into strips and quickly tied them together and to the baluster. The immortal warrior was too heavy to copy Ulran’s athletic feat, so they had decided on this method. Ulran threw the brocade rope over then ran to the salon’s doorway.
A guard hurried up the stairs and gaped stupidly at the bedraggled and bloody sight the innman presented. He fell dead back down the stairs, one at a time.
Grunting and sneezing, Alomar clambered over the balcony.
“Where to now?” queried the innman.
“Down – next floor. I’d wager he’s got the birds in the shrine salon.”
They both cast one last look over their shoulders, through the balcony opening. The sun was setting, the sky already dark.
Running from room to room unchallenged, they came upon the stairs.
As they descended through choking fumes that wafted upwards – the staircase seemed to act as a funnel for the smoke – the half-landing materialised where two guards stood and coughed spasmodically. Ulran took them completely by surprise; the chains on his wrists whipped out at their heads. Helmets flew off and the men tumbled over the banister rail, screeching.
Ulran and Alomar hurried down the rest of the stairs and came out on a wide and not too smoky landing with closed double doors. “This is it.” As Alomar tried the handle he sneezed twice. “Locked! Bolted for the ceremony, I warrant!”
T
he immortal backed up then charged the door with his left shoulder.
Something beyond splintered and cracked. The door gave a little.
They could hear shouts near the panelling on the other side.
“Again,” Alomar said and rammed full into the door with a resounding crash!
***
The doors swung open wide, wobbling on their hinges, and Alomar stumbled in.
Only Ulran’s swift upsweeping snake of chain averted the warrior’s decapitation by a soldier to the right. As the chain wrapped around the axe, Ulran hauled it out of the man’s hand and Alomar sank his sword home.
Everything froze into an unreal tableau as Alomar crashed the doors open. Both seasoned fighters immediately took in the complete scene.
An array of about five hundred inter-connecting large terracotta bowls stood in a semi-circle around the dais. They were supported on scaffolding that placed them roughly two marks high. The area under the bowls themselves was scaffold-free, and upon the floor beneath were trays of sand.
One man, presumably the royal tester, stood naked underneath one of the bowls and a red liquid trickled from its underside upon his head and shoulders. As Alomar burst in, the tester was busy lathering the liquid onto his chest while Por-al Row’s invocation echoed:
“Come, children of Bridansor and preside over the operation of this day. Come, Incomprehensible Nikkonslor with all your might, haste to my assistance and be propitious to my undertakings, be kind and refuse me not your Powerful Aid–”
Yip-nef Dom sat upon the dais to one side of the alchemist. He only wore a colourful bathrobe, awaiting the results on the tester.
Above the bowls, suspended from the rafters, were tethered red tellars, eight to a cage. And above the tester’s bowl lay the body of a red tellar, its life-blood spilling down into the bowl.
The remaining birds watched, restless, silent, their reflections appearing mauve in the high glass windows that surrounded the salon.
Upon suspended wooden platforms beside the cages were soldiers, each armed with a long slim spear to slash the birds’ throats.
Diminutive in the gigantic salon, Iayen stood by her father’s side.
Soldiers numbered about twenty on each side of the salon, armed with pike, sword and shield. Though judging by the number of bowls, the chosen initiates for invulnerability would be close at hand, to stand under the showers of blood.
“Slay them!” shrieked Por-al Row.
But as twenty or so soldiers began to charge, Yip-nef Dom barked, “No! Hold!”
As they stopped in their tracks, the king said, “Wait! Let us see how the tester fares!” He turned to Por-al Row. “Is his initiation finished, Enchanter?”
A croak: “Yes, sire – it’ll work – he’s invulnerable.”
“Good.” He signalled to the sergeant-at-arms at the front of the group of soldiers: “Give him your sword, Sergeant.”
Alomar signalled to Ulran, this is my fight.
Another volunteer stepped down, dropped his cloak and stood under a bowl, his tall, stocky and powerfully muscled naked body glistening with some arcane preparatory solution. And another red tellar’s throat was cut.
“Continue with your invocation, Por-al Row, while we watch Courdour Alomar face your invulnerable warrior!”
“Yes, sire.”
The tester didn’t seem too confident, standing naked before the armoured Alomar, his borrowed sword held without enthusiasm.
Sword in his left hand, Alomar lunged forward.
Instinctively, the tester parried and the metal clanged.
Once the battle was joined, the tester proved himself an able opponent, giving no ground. His body shone with a coppery sheen.
Still finding breathing difficult, Alomar sweated and couldn’t blink the salty moisture away. He had often tested himself with his left hand, but he would never be a good sinister swordsman, however long he lived! But he could match this opponent blow for blow, at least.
They skirted the trellis-work of scaffolding.
Alomar parried and sliced, feinted and jabbed, and missed, but a wooden upright shattered, the bowl above toppling to smash into pieces to one side of them.
An opening, and Alomar seized it, sliced down at the tester’s chest – and the sword clanged as if against a metal bell!
Heartened by this exhibition of invulnerability, the tester grew reckless, pressed in his attack, and Alomar backed against another upright.
Yelling in triumph, the tester slashed at Alomar’s armour.
But Alomar side-stepped and jumped up, slid his sword into the tester’s wide open shouting mouth, pushing in and down with all his might.
The tester stared, disbelieving and then gagged. Suddenly, blood spurted up the sword’s length, and vomit: and the coppery patina on his body cracked and flaked away.
External, not internal invulnerability, mused Alomar as he struggled to free his sword.
The second volunteer, a great hulk of a man, bore down on Alomar, brandishing a long-sword. And Alomar still hadn’t retrieved his own weapon from the dead tester.
He stumbled back over shards of bowl, and fell.
The hulk slammed his sword down but Alomar rolled away.
The blade clanged on stone, sent sparks flying.
Again and again, Alomar rolled out of the way but was unable to get up, his attacker was too quick, too close, too good! This one kept his mouth shut, offering no access to his vulnerable vitals.
Alomar snatched his poniard, threw it and it bounced, flew off the man’s body, issuing a hollow coppery sound.
A third volunteer was soaking under a bloody shower, he noticed, glancing over his shoulder as he rolled yet again.
Ulran watched the fight with half a mind; the other half was gauging distances, while he rattled his chains threateningly to dissuade the slowly encroaching soldiers. None seemed anxious to attack him – they’d wait, let the invulnerable ones do that. Besides, they all seemed to be enjoying the fight.
Now, Alomar grabbed a broken wooden pole, twisted and swung it round at his assailant’s legs.
The invulnerable hulk overbalanced, fell against more scaffolding which rocked then fell apart, tumbling another bowl to the flagstones, the jagged pieces glancing off the hulk’s coppery body as if mere hail-stones.
Alomar jabbed the pole into the man’s belly.
Doubling up, winded, the hulk offered his chin as a tempting target.
Alomar jerked his knee up and his hands down hard; there should have been a fatal, satisfying crack of bone, but instead the man lunged, growling and it seemed that everyone present held their breath as Alomar reeled back, gripping the sword blade that protruded from his abdomen.
He stared at it, and smiled. “At last!” he shouted then with an enormous clatter he fell backwards amid broken wood and pottery.
Grinning amidst the cheers from the soldiers, Yip-nef Dom’s invulnerable warrior leapt forward and grabbed his sword hilt and pushed it deeper into Courdour Alomar.
But instead of blood gushing out, blinding white beams of light sprayed in all directions.
No-one ever knew where the words came from but in every skull they resonated, terrifying in their power and unconcealed rage: “How DARE you sully the blood of the Wings of the Overlord!” The incandescent light travelled up the sword and suddenly the invulnerable warrior looked thin and terribly weak. Within an instant, he was a green-tinged skeleton, crumpling to the floor, and his sword had exploded into harmless star-dust and vanished.
Alomar painfully eased himself up. “Damn!” was all he said as he pulled his sword from the tester’s mouth.
Before anyone could react to the strange turn of events, Ulran snatched a shagunblend lamp to his right and threw it at the prospective third invulnerable warrior.
His aim was good: the warrior slipped on the blood and sand; he fell over and screamed, beating his head as his long hair burned and crackled. As he writhed he upset and smashed a bowl into a thousan
d gory shards.
Ulran’s ears buzzed with the red tellars’ plight as his lethal chains swathed a path through the soldiers, yet not a sound did the birds make.
Through the fighting formation he had glimpsed the king, now wielding Ulran’s own sword and shouting encouragement to his men. He must retrieve that sword – for if he died it would be returned to its source.
Slashing and slaying with his left sword-hand, Alomar immediately appreciated the need for an escape route for the birds. In the few pauses as the soldiers held back to get second wind and fresh courage, Alomar whirled his sling-shot and the small stones from his belt-pouch whistled high, raucously, shattering window after window.
Spears rained down from the swaying platforms, but claimed more soldiers and left Ulran and Alomar unscathed.
Men with smashed skulls fell to right and left as Ulran used a borrowed sword to plough through them, his blood singing. His legs darted out and his lethal feet penetrated through shields and silenced hearts.
Now his wounds were forgotten, of the past. Later, if he lived, pain would return, doubtless redoubled. But this was now!
Broken and bleeding, the soldiers lay in his wake and groaned or hobbled away, beaten.
“Stop them!” screamed the king, louder, closer.
Only four soldiers stood between the scaffolding, bowls and Ulran. Beyond, cringed the figure of Yip-nef Dom.
Ulran wrenched free a dying soldier’s shield and flung it over the soldiers’ heads and the bowls.
The king saw it coming and ducked, but lost his footing on a pool of the red tellar’s blood.
Yip-nef Dom fell forward, his face paling. The sword of Ulran rang out loudly, sounding above the din of Alomar’s battle and the screams of the dying.
As Ulran fought his way through the four soldiers and toppled the scaffolding and bowls, he saw reinforcements.
Obviously, the remainder of the chosen five hundred: they emerged from the doorway behind the dais. Iayen was pointing in Ulran’s direction, her crooked features black with hatred, mouth flecked with spittle.
Alomar met them head-on.
Por-al Row stared at the innman, incantations drooling off his fleshy wet lips. Abruptly he flicked his hands out, and green powder sprayed into Ulran’s eyes.
Floreskand_Wings Page 37