He killed an Ashen coming at him and then shifted toward Rinwar, who had come abruptly to life and had struggled free of the remaining servii holding his arm. He snatched the servii’s sword and swung at him; the servii ducked and spun behind him in an acrobatic feat Draken could barely take in. The servii caught Rinwar around the chest and arms. Draken advanced with a growl, sword extended. He’d had enough of this. He should have killed the Landed priest when he first saw him. Without a leader, perhaps the Ashen movement would fail.
The edge of a blade stung the side of Draken’s throat. “Halt now.”
Draken kept moving despite the peril, but Bruche obeyed. Draken’s chilled legs stumbled to a stop and his sword arm fell. So did his heart, right into his stomach. “Galbrait.”
“Put down the sword.”
Set aside Seaborn? But Galbrait’s blade was still cold against his throat. He sighed and let his sword fall. It stuck into the ground at an inglorious angle. Galbrait grunted, “The rest of them.”
Draken pulled the daggers from his belt and wrists and tossed them away, too. He spat, the blade nicking his throat. “I was warned of a betrayer. And here you swore to me.”
“I am sworn to you. I’m saving your life just now.”
Tyrolean was led up, arms bound behind his back, the Ashen holding one of his own swords against his throat. A shudder went through Draken, looking at him.
“Aarin?” he husked out.
Tyrolean shook his head and was shoved off in another direction. He was obviously being treated as a hostage; the Ashen were methodically killing the rest of his servii. The air filled with curses and screams cut short by blades. At least the blasted war cries had faded. Draken could only hope their encampment at the temple ruins was undiscovered as of yet. He had brought five hundred servii to this attack. With any luck some escaped to warn the rest of his troops before Galbrait warned the Ashen where they were.
He lowered his gaze to the boot-stomped dirt. The noises faded around him as he retreated into a calm resolution.
Someone came up behind Draken, pushed him to his knees. He dropped with a grunt. His bad knee was stiff and sore, like a dagger poked up into his thigh. Galbrait unbuckled his bracers, and tied his hands back with a scratchy rope that was too tight. It dug into the skin of his wrists.
The Priest Rinwar strode forward and yanked Seaborn from the dirt, then turned and went into his tasseled tent. Galbrait removed the blade from Draken’s throat. Two Ashen hauled him up and shoved him in the direction the Priest had gone.
Blood had been spilled inside the opulent tent, but the body had been removed. Rinwar’s woman, he supposed, gone like she’d never been. A servant rolled up the bloody rug and hauled it outside.
Rinwar splashed his face in a thin, fine bowl of water—Odd how the bowl made it through the battle intact when the woman did not, Bruche remarked—and he dropped into a chair gilded with moons in their various phases. He didn’t look at Draken, nor Galbrait. He propped an elbow on the armrest, his chin on the heel of his hand, and brooded.
Draken’s jaw itched where a muscle spasmed. “If you’re waiting for attack, you’ll wait a long time. I’m not as worthy a hostage as you might think. Not to anyone outside Auwaer anyway.”
Brilliant. Next beg them to kill you.
Rinwar waved an impatient hand and signaled a servant to bring him a drink. “I’m interested in a fantastic tale my men told me. Not only were you killed aboard their ship after an ill-trained attack on the captain, the ship broke up afterward. They reported the cracks emanated from your body where it lay on the deck—quite dead, I reiterate. And the ship broke up, sinking all of you to the bottom of the sea.”
Draken growled low. “Except for the fifty Monoeans I saved.”
“Which is the most interesting part of the tale, isn’t it? You suffered certain death by both devastating stab wound and drowning, and yet, you lived to save them. And now, here you are.”
“Your point?”
“The gods showed me the way.” Rinwar drank his wine, set his cup down, and rose. “Just as they are now.”
Another grunt. “What way?”
Rinwar nodded to Galbrait, who tightened his grip on Draken’s arms. He tried to struggle free but the young Prince’s long fingers were too strong.
Rinwar picked up Seaborn, held it this way and that to examine the blade. It was sound, fine, if basic. The sword had never had any pretenses at being a pretty thing. Draken struggled harder.
“I had thought you were to be King. But I ask myself, now that I’ve a whole kingdom of magic, what need do I have of you?”
Rinwar stepped closer. He raised Seaborn to the level of his hip and pressed the tip against Draken’s chest. It stung. “Of course I can think of one thing you can do for me.”
Draken fell still, teeth gritted. He would not bow to this religious lunatic. “Are you offering terms?”
“Of a sort.”
“What would you have me do, Rinwar?”
“You’re doing it,” Galbrait said.
The lord’s expression didn’t change as he leaned against the sword. The sting oddly disappeared, fading as Seaborn sank into Draken’s chest. Horribly familiar, powerful agony started deep as his heart struggled to pump blood around the foreign metal. A bubbly cough forced itself up Draken’s throat. Rinwar pressed the sword deeper. Then he released it, leaving it in place. Blood splattered the expanse of metal still sticking outside Draken’s chest. The world narrowed to those droplets. Draken gasped, tried to speak, as his body crumpled. Bruche shouted something but his words were incomprehensible echoes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Rent flesh knitting, sinews and muscle and bone trying to reform into a beating heart, breathing lungs.
Draken blinked. His dry mouth gaped. Cruelly tight fingers had him by the arms. His heels dragged behind, scraping along the dirt and sticks and leaves. A blur passed above, the black of a night sky pierced by rays of moonlight. They glinted on the sword still sticking from his chest, glimpsed through his lower lashes.
Draken. The swordhand’s voice was uncommonly gentle.
“What?” He forced the word between cracked lips, more cough than speech. Mostly to see if he could.
Be easy, my friend. I will bring you to Ma’Vanni
Friend. Ah. There were no titles in death. That was a relief, then.
Whoever was dragging him tightened their grip with a sharp grunt. A hand reached out to twitch the sword in his chest, enough to yank his healing flesh apart again. Draken gasped a guttural cry, cut short as blackness tightened on him. No relief of unconsciousness but the Palisade, pulling him more surely than his two bearers, whose steps faltered the closer they got. His head sagged back. Nothingness swallowed his view ahead, the ground dying into it like sand into the sea.
It wavered before him, toward him. His eyes stared and his mind stretched until they ached. His fingers splayed, as if he could catch a bit of the black and pull himself inside.
The ground twitched toward him and he fell. No, they dropped him. Boots shifted back from him, thumping up through the ground into his torn body. He groaned and twisted his head to look. The Palisade wavered before him, swallowing ever more ground. Was it growing? No, reaching for him. He groaned and dragged himself onto his side. One arm stretched out to grip the ground. It bumped into the sword in his chest. He gasped, coughed, nearly succumbing to the oblivion lingering at the edges of pain. His arm continued on its path, fingers digging for purchase in the dirt. He managed to tug himself forward. A bit more—
Draken, no!
Draken got the sense Bruche couldn’t pull him from the Palisade into Ma’Vanni’s watery embrace. But no amount of ethereal cold and power could stop Draken’s compulsion to take refuge inside that silent swath of darkness. Claws of magic hooked into bone and muscle, strengthening the arm dragging his flaccid body forward.
The Palisade reached out to embrace him, slinking over his arm like the shadow of the bane on
the Khein fortress wall. The hooks in his bones tightened and he fell limp with relief as he tumbled into the Palisade’s crevice of unrelenting oblivion.
The pain didn’t release its hold on him, though he was vaguely aware the darkness felt like the perfect bath against his skin. But it didn’t last. A glimmer split the Palisade from far away. It drew nearer, a flame or a small stripe of moonlight. Draken stared, straining his eyes until they ached in their sockets. Nearer still, and the pale flame took on a glimmering shape.
A Brînian szi nêre with locks thick as brush weeds about his shoulders, ornamented with chains and trinkets. A chain of rank hung diagonal against his bare chest in the fashion of Halmar, flat against his chest and disappearing under one brawny arm at the elbow. Crimson tattooed snakes swirled over his arms. He looked familiar … perhaps Draken had seen a painting somewhere, a mural … His high brow and flat cheeks creased with concern.
All he could do was gape up at the szi nêre as he spoke. “Draken. I’m getting you out of here.”
“Bruche?” There was no air behind the words, just a grunt from the throat.
Bruche knelt over him, laid his hand on his shoulder and gripped Seaborn. “Apologies, Khel Szi. This will hurt.” He gave Draken a savage grin but his wide-set eyes locked on Draken’s, holding his attention as firmly as the hand on his shoulder. He pulled. Seaborn lit as it withdrew. Bruche pressed the grip into Draken’s hand, closing his fingers around it.
Draken screamed as his heart and lungs healed. The Palisade spun, if Bruche was any marker because he swirled around Draken, into him—
A crack! split the blackness. The cold from the ground seeped up into Draken’s muscles. The earth shifted and rumbled beneath his back, rocks pushing up against his back and head. Ahken Khel was the only thing that felt stable, and he gripped it as the sky expanded over him.
Up, Prince.
Draken grunted and sat up. His chest pulled where Seaborn had cut him but otherwise he was healing as usual. Rays of moonlight pierced his eyes and he squinted. Realized. The magical wall had shattered, tumbling into misshapen blocks of emptiness. Beyond the broken, leaning towers of Palisade, grey stone buildings shook and cracked, stones tumbling to the white graveled roads. They crunched the white gravel and dust rose up, shimmering under Khellian’s light like shades of the dead. Screaming Akrasians burst from their homes. Most had weapons.
Draken turned his head and looked back at the woods. Narrow, deep cracks raidiated from him. Beyond his calm pocket, trees shuddered and fell, screaming in some secret language of destruction. Smooth earth burst into dusty clods as roots tore through the ground. Some Ashen were flung violently; others lay trapped or had fallen, tangled in tents and branches, fighting to get free of their own trampling kind. Others rushed through the rubble, climbing the broken nothingness of the Palisade and leaping to the attack, war cries echoing against the devastation. Akrasians erupted into fighting.
Cracks emanated from Draken’s outstretched legs. He sighed and pushed to his feet. Stared at the people running at the destruction instead of from it. Fools all, it was the perfect scene of senseless courage.
And some of them must die.
“Not in the light this time,” Draken muttered. Not from the light Tyrolean envisioned when he mentioned the proverb. Not even the light of the bloody moons. Khellian still glowed stoically, but even he was slipping down toward the trees.
It reminded him. He had work to do. People to find.
Draken ran hard, surprised he could run at all, for the Bastion.
CHAPTER FORTY
No. You must defend the city. Your soldiers need you. And you swore to keep Elena safe. That will be easier if the Akrasians and your troops can manage to drive off the Ashen.
Who is the Prince here? You or me? But Draken’s boots skidded to a stop on the white stone roadway, kicking up pale dust. All around him, Escorts, servii, nobles, and commoners rushed to the fight, some with gardening tools as weapons, or staffs ripped from brooms. A blacksmith and his apprentice wielded unfinished swords. Draken recognized an apprentice he’d met during his stay there. He’d been released from his duties in the bowels of the Bastion then. A promising future for the lad, if he survived the night.
I daresay they can do some proper damage with those, Bruche said.
He turned back, gripping his sword, ready to strike, his stride churning up the distance to the remains of the Palisade. He told himself Elena could wait a little longer. She’d be safe for now in the Bastion with its walls, errings, and Escorts to protect her.
He pushed his will in front of his swordhand—the killing had gotten Bruche riled—and kept moving through the rubble. His hand involuntarily edged toward a jagged chunk of Palisade, but Bruche jerked it back. By the Seven, that could be addicting.
Like Aarinnaie.
Lets hope she’s indulging her addiction, eh? Bruche chuckled, but not in good humor.
Ashen slashed and stabbed their way into the city. The warcries were rising up, a grating killing song. Pockets of fighting had broken out. This first line of defense wasn’t much, mostly civilians in bedclothes. Draken wondered where in Khellian’s name the hundreds of Escorts residing in the city must be.
Defending the water, perhaps. Or at the Bastion.
They could only hope.
Draken searched the confusion for a familiar face, armor, anything. Nothing. He cursed and fought his way through an Ashen who was too young to wear such a vicious grin on his bloodsplattered face, much less have it fall slack in death. He couldn’t have been much older than Galbrait and his light armor was no match for Seaborn. He gaped at Draken as he died on his sword. Draken let him down gently, his hand under the lad’s arm, and stepped over him. He barely smelled the blood anymore, but his sword was slicked with it, and it had splattered onto his sword arm. His stomach churned but he shoved forward, pushing past a couple of overeager Akrasians risking their lives by studying pieces of the Palisade rather than fighting. They had the rounded bellies and colorful clothes of affluent shopkeepers.
Ahead he saw six Akrasians fighting—they might have been from Reavan’s old honor guard since they were all female and bore the fine black leather armor and green cloaks of upper-rank Escorts. They were outnumbered by four. Draken rushed to their aid. But more came, and more. Draken couldn’t find a rhythm to his strikes and had to let Bruche take over again. He slipped into the battle-trance to let Bruche do as he must without interference. His balance improved, his strikes smoothed into efficiency. From the distance of his retreat inside himself, Draken noted the warcries had died, at least nearby. Everything sounded a bit hollow. At last they killed the last of the Ashen in the immediate vicinity. Bruche herded all the Escorts toward the cover of trees.
One of them whirled on Draken, her lips drawn back in a snarl. “We had that. You should have—” Her gaze stalled at Elena’s pendant. She blinked rapidly and dipped her chin. “Night Lord.”
“Your Highness,” another corrected, leaning on her sword to catch her breath.
“‘My lord’ is sufficient,” Draken said, knowing they had to call him something and wanting to be as close to one of them as possible. “Who is your commander?”
More blinking. “Dead, my lord,” the first said.
Draken frowned. “How? The Monoeans killed him? How many have they killed?”
“Several are dead, but not from attack. There is sickness in Auwaer.”
“The water,” the second added. “They poisoned the water. Even the errings have died.”
“How are you alive?”
There was some shifting on feet, as if they felt guilty for surviving. “We realized after the others and drink wine only, and a little from the cisterns. They’re nearly empty now.”
Draken eased a breath from his tight chest. He’d known Auwaer wasn’t likely to emerge from the siege undamaged, but this—
He looked back through the trees at the ring of crumbled Palisade. Ashen had disappeared into the city,
leaving a trail of dead in their wake. One of the shopkeepers was gutted and bleeding on the white gravel. The other was gone. Ran, likely. Wise man. “How many Escorts in the city?”
“Five hundred, give or take. Maybe five thousand in the vicinity. They’ll be entering riverside by now.”
What was taking so godsforsaken long? “The Escorts and servii outside the wall didn’t attack the Ashen? Nor did you attack from within. Why not?”
“Orders, my lord. From the Bastion itself. We were to wait. Bide our time. Then the sickness, and the Palisade …” She swallowed and stared at the broken pieces, seeming gaps in the world where even Khellian’s fading light could not enter.
“We were ripe for the fight,” the second said. “Doubtless all Akrasians were. But the Queen …” her voice faded.
Not like Auwaer slept through your breaking up the Palisade.
Draken snorted. Warning them of impending attack was the the only advantage to my nearly dying. Again.
“My troops from Khein are at the temple ruins. Did you see any Monoeans go that way?” Damned Galbrait knew all that. It would be a simple betrayal to guide Ashen there. Simpler perhaps than what he’d done to Draken.
Heads shook no all around. That made sense. They’d been stuck inside and then consumed with the fight these past hours. “All right. I have to go there.”
“You can’t go alone. Where are your guards?”
He sighed. “I was captured and … it’s a long story.” He glanced back to the city. Where he could see was all empty but he thought he saw wraithlike smoke filtering up through the night. He sniffed. Definitely smoke. “I don’t have time to explain.” He started away.
“Your Highness! Let us accompany you!”
“No. Back to the city with you. To the Bastion. Protect the Queen. I’ll return for her when I’m able.”
“But—”
“That’s an order, Escort.” He ran off through the trees.
#
Things were quiet at the temple ruins, if tense. Draken accepted a cup of wine from Geffen and gulped it down. She stared at him. “What happened?My lord.”
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