Moontide 04 - Ascendant's Rite

by David Hair

  For the attack he’d summoned all his battle-magi, and the best fighting men from among the rankers: the elite cohorts of Jelaska’s Argundians and Kippenegger’s Bullheads, and Ramon’s personal cohort, who’d refused to stay behind. For now, the unseen windfleet somewhere in the clouds above had not reacted to his mustering, but he didn’t doubt they were watching.

  Mercer said two hours . . . that was nearly an hour and a half ago.

  He’d not told anyone why they were doing this yet: he didn’t want panic. If that was the wrong thing, he’d have about half an hour to live with it. But he did convey urgency.

  ‘Listen, come in close,’ he told the men and magi. He had Jelaska with him, Kip, Gerdhart and Hale. Lanna was here in case she could save anyone who fell. That left just Carmina with the rest of the column, though he doubted keeping her out of the fight would improve her survival chances much. Virgins go straight to Paradise, according to the Book of Kore. I guess I’ll see her there.

  He waved a hand for their attention as another rain-squall began. ‘I’m going to keep this brief. After all we’ve been through, it comes down to this: the empire doesn’t want us to go home. They’re going to destroy the Bridge, with us on it, very soon. There is no time to save the column, and nowhere safe, even on this island. The only chance we have is to take this tower. So we’re going to attack. If you’ve a question, make it a good one, because we’ve got about half an hour to do this.’

  The looks on their faces were eloquent: initial surprise but not shock: they had probably all expected some act of treachery. Arguably not one as drastic as this, though. ‘How do we get in?’ asked one of Ramon’s serjants, Vidran.

  ‘Through the front door. We magi will kick it in, then it’s up and up and up, and kill everyone you meet.’ Seth was curiously unafraid. With so few options, there was no room for doubt. ‘Any other questions?’

  Jelaska shook her head, answering for everyone.

  ‘Good, then let’s go.’

  They strode towards the huge tower, fanning out in case of fire from above, but the only resistance was the wind scouring their faces. Behind them the column lurched into motion again, moving everyone they could onto the island, in case the solid ground might offer some kind of protection from what was to come. Midpoint Island was a barren and pathless lump of rock only a mile or so wide, and being on it or the bridge probably wouldn’t make the slightest difference. But there was no panic, and that was what gave him heart. They reached the steps unopposed, walked right to the door at the foot of the spire, glowing with its own light beneath the black clouds.

  ‘Take us ’arf an hour jus’ to walk up it,’ Harmon, another of Ramon’s men, commented. His flaxen hair was plastered to his face and his blade glistened with rain.

  ‘That’s cos yer a lazy Tocker,’ Vidran grinned. ‘Can’t walk ten paces wi’out needin’ a breather.’

  Jelaska strode to the only entranceway, giant doors at the top of the stairs. At once they began to glow with pale tracery, curved webs of light hinting at the wards beneath. ‘Locking wards, woven with protective spells,’ she reported. She wiped strands of wet hair from her face. ‘The Keepers set them . . . this won’t be instant.’

  They all watched anxiously as the sorceress drew on her gnosis and laid hands on the door.

  ‘Holy shit! Lookit that!’ half of the cohort exclaimed. In the stone-work above, a carved face came to life, peering down at them. Seth prepared to counter whatever it did, but it merely observed as the energies around Jelaska grew.

  ‘Shields up,’ the cohort’s pilus, the always calm Vereloni called Lukaz ordered. ‘Rim to rim, lads.’

  A locking spell was a simple binding enchantment made to hold two objects together; it was easy to cast – and to disrupt, though it took strength. An active counter-spell would usually triumph against a passive lock eventually, though other spells woven in made it more complex – harder and more dangerous to disrupt. He could tell just by the interplay of forces that this one was strongly wrought and multi-faceted.

  Minutes crawled by as they sweated and worried. Seth glanced back down the Bridge; the rest of the army was slowly rolling into motion under the direction of their officers, crawling onto the solid rock of Midpoint.

  Suddenly the air around Jelaska flashed scarlet and a torrent of fire poured from the handles, engulfing her. But she was well-warded, and absorbed the flame with no more cost than charring of the hems and sleeves of her robe. A few seconds later, the lock flashed blue and she stepped back to allow the doors to swing open.

  They should have expected the crossbow bolts that sleeted out of the darkness inside.

  Seth saw a hail of foot-long bolts pluck at Jelaska’s shields, staggering her backwards as her shields were battered scarlet then torn apart. She screamed and doubled over, clutching her belly. The bolts that bypassed her battered the locked shields of Lukaz’s cohort.

  ‘Attack!’ Seth shouted, and hurled himself forward.

  A second volley slammed into his shields and tore them up, but the bolts only ripped his sleeves or grazed him as he ran forward onto a forest of spears. At his side Gerdhart, brandishing a big flanged mace, unleashed a torrent of blue mage-bolts into the massed Imperial Guardsmen shielding the archers. Then with a roar Lukaz’s men poured in, and behind came the mass of Kippenegger’s Bullheads, Kip at their head in his bull helm, zweihandle flashing as he hacked through a line of spearmen.

  Seth followed them in, seeking magi enemies, but a pair of rankers at the side of the entrance lunged at him. He stabbed straight-armed through one’s chest, but took a spear in the thigh; he numbed the pain with healing gnosis and wrenched it out, stabbed the spearman through the throat, then kicked him away. For another thirty seconds it was bewildering carnage, all hack and stab and blast. But men like Vidran and Harmon danced through it, two moves ahead of everyone else, carving paths that others widened and followed. Seth found space as a silver-masked mage on the stairs locked eyes with him, and for a moment they contested a mental link that left him staggered. He was gripped by immense power, Ascendant-strength, and was barely holding on, until Kip – unnoticed in the tumult – hacked at the masked man’s leg and severed it. A second later the masked head rolled and Kip was roaring to his gods. Around him, his men were butchering the Imperial Guardsmen barbarically.

  ‘“How thin the line between man and beast,”’ Seth found himself quoting, adding reflexively, ‘Sytrius the Younger.’

  ‘The Elder, actually,’ Lukaz corrected him, then shouted at his men, while Seth threw him a look of startled appreciation. ‘Find the next doors! Move it!’

  ‘He’s right, we’re done here,’ Gerdhart panted, pulling his mace from the smashed helm of a spearman.

  ‘Jelaska?’

  The chaplain shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  Holy Kore, we pray for our sister Jelaska . . . ‘We go on!’

  He took the lead as they pounded up the stairs.

  *

  ‘The deserters are attacking the tower,’ Yrna Corloi remarked, staring from the side of the windship. ‘Do they know what’s happening?’

  Gyle rubbed at his stubble and wondered. ‘Does it matter? Can they do anything?’

  Corloi scowled. ‘Do I look like a Keeper?’ She closed her eyes and muttered something through a gnostic-link, then turned back to him. ‘Twenty minutes until destruction. The emperor is nervous.’

  ‘Constant Sacrecour is always nervous. But does he have a right to be?’

  ‘Not unless they reach the throne room. Should we help the defenders?’

  ‘No! Why would we go down there? It’s going to explode in twenty minutes.’

  Corloi’s look of contempt was more eloquent than any words. She stalked away to another vantage point, but he noticed she didn’t go rushing off to defend Midpoint, either. He returned his gaze to the tower, focusing on the platform at the pinnacle, where four windsloops were now moored, ready to evacuate the Keepers once the destruction o
f the Bridge had been set in motion. The crystal cluster was now glowing so brightly no one could look straight at it. He’d heard those crystals were so debilitating the magi stationed there had to use special masks and garments to endure them and he understood that now: the air was growing hot and tainted.

  He turned to see Vann Mercer and Ramon Sensini being marched onto the deck. He frowned, then looked at Mater-Imperia as she emerged from her cabin beneath the after-deck, alive with feverish triumph.

  ‘What a day this is, Magister Gyle!’ she called. ‘Lightning, battle – and soon the greatest triumph of my son’s reign. Are you ready for the spectacle?’

  ‘Seth Korion’s men are attacking the Tower.’

  ‘There are twelve Keepers tending Naxius in the main chamber, and ten Volsai with five cohorts of rankers holding the lower levels. Within ten minutes, there is nothing anyone can do to prevent the release of the energy from the Bridge anyway. Korion’s wasting his last breath.’

  *

  The stairs went on for ever, but they were still a blur as they stormed upwards. Seth pulled morphic-gnosis into his limbs to give him the strength, as did Gerdhart and Hale, behind him. They slammed into another ambush in a reception hall, with crossbowmen, spearmen and more silver-masked magi firing on them from the balcony above. A furious exchange of mage-fire presaged a blind charge by Kippenegger’s Bullheads, who hurled themselves bodily into a withering volley of fire and shafts, then carved through the defenders. The stairs began to run with blood as Seth and Gerdhart led a second wave, Ramon’s cohort, who were fighting with controlled professionalism.

  The masked magi kept pulling out of reach, taking toll with mage-bolts and fire. They overmatched Seth’s magi in power – they were pure- and half-bloods – but they were scholars and researchers, not battle-magi, and didn’t fight well. Somewhat to his surprise, Seth found he could deal with them. Pilus Lukaz realised the squalor and chaos of battle confused their enemies, so he let Seth, Hale and Gerhardt distract the masked magi while he sent his men at them from unseen angles. Seth was struggling with a masked woman when the pilus himself darted in on her blindside and his shortsword skewered her beneath the armpit and into her heart. She sagged, and her mask slipped to reveal a middle-aged, bewildered face.

  ‘Never liked killin’ women,’ Lukaz muttered.

  ‘You had no choice,’ Seth told him.

  ‘Not this time,’ the Vereloni said. ‘Kill’d a woman I thought I loved in jealousy, years back. Should’a been hung, but got away. Been tryin’ t’make up for it since.’ He straightened. ‘Old story.’

  The hall was cleared. Harmon and Vidran had taken down another masked mage with a deadly double attack, though it cost Harmon a blast of flame in the side that had charred his flesh to the bared ribs. He was now slumped against a wall, unable to move or speak from the pain.

  ‘Healer!’ Lukaz shouted, but there was no time to do anything for him.

  ‘Keep climbing,’ Seth shouted. ‘Kip, you’re in front this time! Move!’

  On they pounded, up and up. The only window they passed was blank and rain-lashed, and still the stair wound on, narrowing with every turn. Seth rounded a curve, then flung himself aside as a crossbow bolt pinged off the wall beside him and ricocheted against Kippenegger’s shields, already broken. Half a dozen more bolts flew harmlessly; the shooters were not even visible. The part of him that was now inured to war thought, They’re panicky. He looked over his shoulder and signed to Kip. ‘Send in rankers to soak up the bolts, then go in.’

  In other words, sacrifice the weak, and push on . . .

  He hated himself, but Kippenegger nodded grimly and began reeling off names. ‘Go! Go!’ he finished, ‘Minaus is watching!’

  While they prepared, Seth closed his eyes and reached with his mind, found the crossbowmen, a dozen frightened men reloading under the eyes of three silver-masked magi. Then he reached further inside himself for something he’d never really used before: battle-divination. He had the training, but had never been able to use it, because fighting scared him.

  I’m beyond scared now. So I may as well give it a try.

  Using Divination to skim the subconscious minds of enemies as you fought them enabled the mage to read their intentions. Instinctive fighters – men like Harmon and Vidran – did it subconsciously, reading the way an opponent moved, anticipating their actions, but the gnosis offered advantages to those with the right affinities.

  He shared a look with Kip. The giant Schlessen reached out, clasped his hand and said ‘Bruder.’ Then he bellowed his orders and the first of his Bullheads tore around the bend into a storm and were battered and thrown backwards in torn heaps – but Seth flung himself around the corner too, screaming ‘A Korion! A Korion!’

  The second rank of crossbowmen all fired at once, triggers jerked in reflex, and the bolts rained onto Seth’s shields or against the wall, but by then he was already at the far wall, where his Divination showed fewer bolts would strike. One grazed his thigh, then his shields reformed and he fired off a mage-bolt. Someone howled and clattered to the stone. Then with a huge roar Kip led more Bullheads barrelling around the corner, driving Seth on into the ranks of crossbowmen. Mage-bolts flashed and a torrent of flames poured over the first men, charring the unprotected, and Kip, shielding to the edge of his ability and beyond, was flung backwards. Those who followed him screamed as if berserk, taking advantage of the respite won them by the front rank to reach their foes and start hacking them apart with axes.

  ‘Kip?’

  Seth hurried to the giant Schlessen. His whole face was burned raw, his leather armour charred brittle, but he grinned fiercely. Then he swore, launched himself at Seth and bore him backwards as the roof fell in.

  Seth cried aloud as he felt the men above – from both sides – die, crushed by falling stone. Then the smoke and dust billowed and engulfed them, choking, so that they had to crawl lower, seeking air.

  When they’d managed to find a place where they could breathe, their plight was revealed: the way forward was blocked with debris and crushed bodies, their blood bonding the dust like cement in the cracks. Seth looked up, then lowered his eyes, feeling as crushed as those beneath the rubble. Beside him, Kip sank to his knees.

  There’s no way forward. We can’t go on.

  *

  ‘Ramon,’ Vann Mercer said quietly, ‘thank you for being a friend to Alaron.’

  Nudged from his reverie, Ramon looked sideways. ‘It was my privilege,’ he replied. At least Alaron’s in Javon, out of the danger area. He felt lightheaded, strangely disconnected, constantly distracted by strange perceptions. The aftermath of the poison made it an effort to just stay still and listen, even in this situation.

  ‘Did Alaron know your parentage?’ Vann asked. ‘Your real father?’

  ‘Sol et Lune, no!’ Ramon snorted. ‘I couldn’t trust him not to blurt it out in class.’

  They were chained to the rails of the Imperial Flagship by both wrists, so they couldn’t turn away. He guessed closing his eyes was always an option, but when he did, faces swam into his mind: Julietta, Seth, Sevvie, Lanna, Kip, Lukaz, Jelaska and all the rest. It was easier to just watch the tiny shapes below and pretend he didn’t know them. He’d been seeking some way to intervene, but nothing came to mind.

  ‘We should have stayed in Dhassa,’ he muttered.

  ‘Gyle boasts that this will destroy all of Dhassa and Pontus,’ Vann reminded him.

  ‘Si. Well, we should have stayed in Ardijah then. We were welcome there.’ He thought regretfully of Amiza al’Calipha. I should have stayed with her and our child.

  Which of the tiny dots below was Julietta? Where was Seth? Was it possible some would survive? The Air- or Water-magi, perhaps? Was there anything he could do to help them?

  Imperial windskiffs were swooping over the column, randomly blasting his people for the fun of it: a new variant of ‘braffing’ – shooting birds – for the young mage-nobles to play. Meanwhile, the whole Bridg
e appeared about to be engulfed by the storm waves. He felt so helpless it made him want to scream.

  Pater Sol, I don’t really pray, because you’re just make-believe. But if you want to prove you are real, do something! Prove me wrong! Give me a chance here . . .

  The solarus crystals gleamed brighter still, and suddenly beams of light shot out from four points of the compass and locked on Midpoint Tower, forming a horizontal ‘X’. The countdown to destruction had begun.

  ‘Ah!’ a woman sighed, behind Ramon’s ear. ‘See that, Dubrayle?’

  ‘My name is Sensini,’ he retorted dully.

  Mater-Imperia Lucia waved her hand in merry dismissal. ‘Call yourself what you like.’ She pointed at the bolts of light, visibly excited. ‘It’s irrevocable now: the Bridge is coming down.’ She smiled musingly. ‘My foolish son wanted to see it all from close up, but he’ll be disembarking from the tower any moment now.’ She turned to face Ramon. ‘Enjoy the spectacle, Sensini.’

  It was all he could do at that moment not to lash out, but this still wasn’t the moment he sought . . .

  She walked away towards the forecastle and its viewing platform, calling out to all aboard, the flocks of Imperial courtiers and churchmen on this and all the dozens of other windships in the sky, amplifying her voice into every mind in reach.

 

  Southpoint Tower, Dhassa

  Junesse (Akhira) 930

  24th and last month of the Moontide

  Alaron saw the blast coming; he was already ducking and weaving as his shields deflected the masked woman’s mage-fire. He reached her, slammed his staff through her shields, battering her backwards into the room she’d left. He followed her through as she clutched at her blackened clothing and chest.

  The large circular chamber was filled with rows of bunks and racks of weapons. Two dozen men turned at her cry, but Alaron was inside and moving. She kindled yellow light in her eyes, mesmeric-gnosis, trying to snare his gaze, and he let her, opening up his mental shields, then slamming them closed again: Ascendant-strength battled against her lesser pure-blood powers and she flailed blindly as he tore the linkages between her eyes and her brain, then drove the staff up under her chin, snapping her neck.