Demonstorm lotr-3

by James Barclay

  T, Evunn, am waiting.'

  Screeching with pleasure, the cursyrd descended.

  The pressure on the ForceCones was intensifying. Reavers had torn away windows and ripped timbers and stone from the roof. Only the spells kept them out now. At ground level the situation was no less difficult. WardLocks and investitures bowed under the incessant hammering of the karron. Yellow mana light crackled across

  groaning joints. Plaster castings cracked and crumbled, thudding to the floor.

  The Al-Arynaar waited, their calm spreading to all but one corner of the playhouse. Hirad wasn't hearing the roar of the demons gathered outside, baying for their souls. He was stalking around Rebraal, whose leather and shirt lay on the floor nearby. Denser and Pheone were studying him. Both had hands on his right arm and chest, their eyes closed as the mana probed his badly bruised body.

  'You didn't think it something we needed to know?' Hirad couldn't believe it. He fought to keep his temper, aware that they needed focus for what was sure to come. 'What if we needed you in the line?'

  Rebraal faced up to him, expression set. 'Organisation had to be done. We had to be secure above anything.'

  'We're capable, Rebraal. Or hadn't you noticed? I can speak elvish.'

  T wanted to be sure.'

  Hirad shook his head. 'How bad is it?'

  'Ribs, arm, shoulder. .' Rebraal shrugged and half smiled. 'The rest just aches.'

  'Anything broken?'

  'Of course there is,' said Denser, opening his eyes. 'And of course he also knows that to fix it we'll have to put him to sleep. Fractured collar-bone, three cracked ribs and one broken and leaning on his lung.'

  'Bloody hell, Rebraal,' said Hirad. 'What good do you think you're going to be like that?'

  Rebraal's eyes flared. 'More than if I'm lying over there asleep. I am not in your Raven. I will fight beside you and with my people if I choose.'

  'Perfect,' growled Hirad. 'Want to tell me how you propose to tie up the right-hand side when you can't hold a mace?'

  'I have two hands,' snapped Rebraal. 'I'll fight on the left instead.'

  'And who's on my right, Sirendor Larn? Only he's been dead for eight years. Want to be joining him today?'

  'Hirad, enough,' said The Unknown, striding over from the healer mages. The cut on his forehead had been closed by a

  WarmHeal. It glowed unnaturally red and was edged dark yellow, almost gold in the Globe light. 'Let's get thinking.'

  'That'd be a novelty.'

  'Coldheart, stop it.'

  Hirad leaned into Rebraal. 'Fight with us, but withdraw if you're weakening. Promise me. We can't afford to lose you too.'

  Rebraal nodded, a reluctant gesture. To their left, a six-foot section of the outer wall gave way to the accompaniment of roars from the massed demons outside. Above the tear, a balcony box teetered and collapsed, thundering to the ground and sending up clouds of plaster dust. Karron moved in, wading through the rubble.

  'Get a Cone on that hole!' ordered Rebraal.

  'Gheneer, do it,' said Dila'heth.

  Gheneer moved forwards quickly and swung his spell from the ceiling to the ground.

  'Clear!' he shouted.

  Elves ran left and right. The Cone caught the karron, driving them back outside.

  'I need another Cone on the roof now,' said Dila. 'Afen'erei. Sorry but I need you.'

  The wear)' Al-Arynaar mage dragged herself to her feet. There was not the slightest hint of discontent in her expression. She began to cast.

  'Whatever we're going to do, it had better be fast,' said Hirad. 'These investitures aren't going to last.'

  As if to confirm his words another gap, longer this time, was dragged in the walls. Dila'heth called for more mage back-up. Healers left their charges and ran to the defence. Pheone moved up to the stage once again, urging greater concentration and efficiency.

  'Thraun, all of you, get over here,' called The Unknown into the growing din. 'We're forming up. Someone help Rebraal on with his armour.'

  'Gods falling,' said Hirad. 'They're going to bring this place down on top of us.'

  'The ForceCones will keep the roof up,' said Dila'heth.

  'Not for long,' said Pheone. 'That's a lot of weight and pressure.'

  Thraun led Erienne, Denser and Ark over. Around the playhouse, elven warriors readied themselves. Mages prepared offensive spells and led prayers. Demons howled and shrieked. Reavers gathered in the sky, visible through the tears in the roof. Strike-strain clustered. Another gash was ripped in the playhouse wall. Timbers collapsed bringing more balcony boxes down.

  'We've got to make a decision here,' said Denser. 'When to drop the spells and use the ColdRoom so at least we can kill some of them.'

  'Only when we have nothing else. We're holding for now,' said Pheone.

  'Raven, form up,' ordered The Unknown. 'Rebraal, my left. Thraun, switch to the right by Hirad. Ark, far left. Denser, you know where you need to be. Erienne can you cast?'

  T don't have much choice, Unknown,' she replied. 'I'll be all right.'

  'Use the weakening casts,' said The Unknown. 'We'll do the rest.'

  'Whatever you say.' She sounded tired. Frail.

  'Ready to move, Raven,' said Hirad. 'Where's Eilaan?'

  'Injured but recovering,' answered Pheone. 'I'll back you up.'

  'ForceCone overhead,' said The Unknown. 'And thank you.'

  Two men ran over to the stage, flinching at the sound of falling stone from behind. Another tear, another weak point. They stopped in front of The Unknown.

  'Captain Suarav.'

  'Sol,' said the captain, a man already in the Xeteskian college guard when The Unknown had been prepared as a Protector. 'Brynel is gone but we aren't done. It would be an honour to fight in your line.'

  The Unknown smiled mirthlessly. 'How the world turns, eh? You're welcome. Our right, by Thraun if you don't mind. Sharyr, I suggest you prepare something suitably lethal. Stand in the mage line.'

  'My pleasure.'

  'Maces, Raven,' said The Unknown. He raised his voice, cutting across the cacophony, Rebraal translating his words. 'Waiting. Remember, we need to force a viable breach if we're going to break for the college. Al-Arynaar, you have to shore up the flanks and rear. Just keep a holding pattern. Dila, Pheone, we need someone near the wounded to bring them out of sleep if we have to.'

  'You want to break out?' asked Pheone.

  'Not if we don't have to. If we can hold them, that's what we'll do.'

  'And then what?'

  'Pray for assistance,' said The Unknown grimly. 'Because if we do have to break out, we'll lose a lot getting to safety.'

  'Let's hope it doesn't come to that,' said Denser.

  The Raven watched the increasing desperation of the Al-Arynaar mages. Hirad's heart thumped in his chest. He felt the adrenalin wash away his aches, hiding them from his body while he prepared for battle. He took a long look at Rebraal. The elf was clearly hampered by his injuries. He stood left-side-on and held his right arm across his chest. He was pale and sweating.

  'Leave the line, Rebraal,' said Hirad. 'You aren't fit to fight.'

  'I'll be the judge,' said Rebraal. 'I do not desert my friends or my people while I can stand.'

  'You aren't in the rainforest now, Rebraal,' said Hirad. 'We need you for later.'

  'Think there's going to be a later, do you?' he asked. 'Listen to the noise. Look out through the holes. We need everyone fighting just to survive for whatever help The Unknown thinks is coming. The Al-Arynaar must see me here in the front line.'

  'Be ready,' said The Unknown.

  He indicated a buckling area of wall behind the raft of injured. The Raven began to move. The WardLock cracked and protested. Plaster burst from the binding. Timbers groaned and splintered. The tear would be at least six yards wide and there weren't enough mages to keep ForceCones in place.

  'Not too close,' warned Hirad. 'It's time to complete those spells.'

  Al-Arynaar moved up o
n either flank, covering the route to the injured. To Hirad's right, Thraun snarled. His yellow-tinged eyes were wide but the set of his body calm and composed. Beside him the Xeteskian, Suarav, gripped his sword tight in his right hand. He was determined but in the shake of his body was the memory of the horrors he had suffered to get to this new place of danger. His soul would not be easily taken.

  The investiture failed. The stone and timber of the playhouse wall

  burst in, tumbling across the gangway and sweeping aside benches. Balcony boxes fell across an area of thirty yards. Dust and debus billowed towards them where they stood at the edge of the standing room, clouding around the edges of the ForceCones. Karron bellowed and squawked. They charged in, reavers behind them.

  'Spells away!' roared The Unknown. 'Raven, let's use what we learned on board ship. Suarav, take our lead. Steady. Steady.'

  Pheone's ForceCone blazed overhead, slapping into the reavers flying in behind the karron. Deep blue FlameOrbs leapt from Denser and Sharyr's fingers, arcing over The Raven and dropping into the pack still outside the playhouse. Hirad felt the heat when they passed, saw the detonations and heard the screams. Mana fire splattered across the defenceless karron. It had the desired effect. Those in front of the fire clustered in.

  'Casting,' muttered Erienne.

  The air dried out all around them. Dust dropped from the sky, clearing the scene dramatically. The One casting, otherwise invisible, struck the karron in the front rank and over a wide arc in front of The Raven. These lesser demons, far more reliant than their better-evolved reaver brethren on the density of mana, sensed the linkage to their life force shorn from them.

  Hirad sensed panic spreading through the karron but another set of FlameOrbs from Denser focused their attention once more. They came on again urged on by the reavers but vulnerable with Erienne's casting settling on them.

  'Ready, Raven!' The Unknown's mace tip tapped rhythmically on the floor of the playhouse. The first karron reached the standing-room floor. 'Stepping up, let's take them.'

  The Unknown double-tapped his mace. At the left-hand side of the line, Ark took a pace forwards and left. He thundered his mace through in an upward curve, following up with a downward slash with his blade. The karron was Icnocked backwards, its stomach opened up, spewing its internal organs to the ground. The Raven all followed suit in order, a heartbeat apart. Blows catching karron on limbs, heads and torsos. The ferocity of the attack stopped the demons in their tracks, confusing them with its direction.

  Suarav hadn't followed the move and had gone straight forwards, many Al-Arynaar likewise. But the space it left between him and

  Thraun was bait the karron in front of it could not resist. It stepped forward and flailed its limbs outwards.

  'Thraun, go.'

  Ahead of The Unknown's order, Thraun had ducked and moved right, coming up under the karron's strikes and crushing its skull with a massive overhead strike. The creature collapsed and Thraun paced forwards and right again, leading die line this time. Suarav had anticipated too and moved with him. His blow was caught by the karron ahead but still the demon was pushed back. The Raven's line drove hard, maces aiming at gut and chin, beating a space in front of them.

  'Down,' ordered Denser.

  They dropped to their haunches, Thraun dragging Suarav with him. IceWind wailed into the space. Simultaneously, Sharyr dropped more FlameOrbs outside the playhouse. The elven flanks moved up left and right, forcing the karron into an ever tighter area. Abruptly, the lesser demons broke and fled into the teeth of screams of rage from the reavers.

  'Hold!' bellowed The Unknown.

  Outside, the demons massed again. Strike-strain bunched and clouded. Karron jostled and reformed. Reavers landed and began to run.

  'Plenty more work to do, Raven. Good start but they might not fall for that again.'

  The Unknown tapped his mace once more and The Raven paused for breath.

  Flanked by guards and with Vuldaroq next to him, Dystran watched. He tried to take it all in but didn't really believe what he saw. Tried to understand and follow the speed of strikes. It was all but impossible, a fact that the demons were finding out in far more brutal fashion.

  Auum and Evunn stood back to back and about a yard apart. Stances slightly crouched and feet planted at shoulder width, they fought with an effortless grace that was simply breathtaking. Dystran couldn't see exactly how they tackled the enemies that came at them on the ground and in the air. They barely seemed to look. But their strikes were efficient and unerringly accurate. He focused on Auum

  as the reavers flew in. Not in great numbers. Perhaps fifteen and accompanied by dozens of the tiny strike-strain. Karron grouped and moved up but did not attack.

  Auum had logged his immediate targets. The first approached on foot, three others in the air around it. Auum dropped and swept its feet from under it, bouncing back and striking out and left with his knife hand at his next target, dragging the point deep into wing membrane. The demon flittered clear. Auum ignored it. The next had whipped out its tail. Auum caught it in front of his face, looped it around his wrist and dragged the reaver from the sky. It bounced onto the ground. The TaiGethen dropped onto its chest and drove his knife up under its arm.

  Never stopping, he rose and turned, sweeping his right foot high over the head of Evunn, scattering the strike-strain that dived on him. His momentum carried him round and he planted his foot before delivering an extraordinary series of strikes that Dystran couldn't follow. The first downed demon had got to its haunches in time to catch a boot in its face, sending it sprawling. Auum's arms were a blur. Dystran could see the flash of his knife in the sunlight. He saw reavers beaten aside, he saw them die in spasm and he saw strike-strain flung far and wide. He saw Auum block the odd strike and deliver a riposte before he had any right to be balanced. His limb speed was simply awesome. As if it was being directed from elsewhere.

  Seven reaver bodies lay on the ground around the two TaiGethen. The others gathered and dived straight down. The elves waited. Without a word, they dived left and right in concert, cartwheeling back onto their feet and running back into the space they'd vacated. The reavers had landed hard and were in some disarray. The TaiGethen ploughed into them. Evunn took the lead, his punches designed to cripple temporarily. His knife sheered wing membrane, his fists and fingers crushed throat and thumped into chest, nose and temple, his feet denied them balance.

  Behind him came Auum, sliding into their prone forms, knives in both hands driving home. His body was a shadow across the courtyard. And where he went, demons died. Fifteen reavers were downed and strike-strain littered the ground before the karron attacked too.

  Auum and Evunn stood to face them, bowed fractionally and walked calmly back towards the tower complex. The two elves strode past Dystran without saying a word. Their bodies were covered in small cuts. Evunn had a long gash down one arm and Auum's left leg was dripping blood.

  Dystran ordered the doors closed. Heavily invested with protection, they would stand massive bombardment by the karron should the need arise, and Dystran had no doubt that it would.

  He watched the elves return to the catacombs.

  'Extraordinary,' he said.

  'But even they knew when to stop,' said Vuldaroq. 'A handful of demons are dead and tens of thousands still fly.'

  'If only we had a few hundred more like them, eh?'

  'Shame that you killed so many of them with the Elfsorrow, isn't it?'

  Dystran glanced sharply at Vuldaroq but there was no blame in his expression, merely statement.

  'And all for nothing,' he said, feeling suddenly weary. 'Would that I could have that time over.'

  Chapter 38

  The karron attacked again, backed by reavers on the ground, underneath Pheone's ForceCone. They swamped the space inside the playhouse, driving hard into The Raven and taking on the Al-Arynaar flanking forces. Erienne cast again, rendering the enemy vulnerable. But without offensive spell back-up, barring D
enser and Sharyr, the demons slowly made ground.

  'Firm up left,' barked The Unknown.

  Rebraal took a glance. The Al-Arynaar had faltered. They were distracted by the rubble and broken benches around them and the slope of the auditorium. Reavers, floating a couple of feet from the ground, were hitting them hard.

  'Gheneer,' he called. 'Bring up defence.'

  But he knew there was very little of that. He struck out at a karron's hammer limb. The spikes of his mace dragged gouges in its flesh. It reared and fell back. Ark followed up and drove his sword deep into its gut. In the heartbeat's space, Rebraal assessed their situation. It was becoming ever more forlorn. The cursyrd were pressing on every casting, keeping the pressure up on the Force-Cone mages, not letting them have a moment's respite. In five areas around the playhouse and all across the roof, reavers and karron launched themselves at the constructs. And every time they did, more plaster and loose stone was dislodged and a degree of stamina leeched from the caster. It was only a matter of time.

  In front of him, more cursyrd poured through the gap which they widened at every stroke. Overhead, the timbers supporting the roof shifted, seeking new solidity they'd never find. The walls of the building were seriously compromised. Without the ForceCones overhead, Rebraal wasn't sure the roof would hold.

  They had been forced a few paces back across the floor towards

  the stage. Rebraal felt tired. His right arm ached up at the shoulder where the collar-bone was cracked and every breath sent a skewer of pain through his chest. Sweat dripped down his face and he had the first inklings of a shake in his left arm. The mace felt too heavy.

  Pheone swept her ForceCone above their heads once more. Strike-strain were dispersed to all points, squeaking frustration. Rebraal blocked a spike arm and reversed his mace across the neck of a reaver following up. The cursyrd reared into the air and was pinned against the wall by the Cone. Ark battered the skull of a karron, sending the creature back into the lines behind. The Unknown jabbed his mace into the eyes of another and he could hear Hirad's shouts clear across the floor. The barbarian demanded more effort. He demanded strength and unbroken will in Darrick's name. All those around him gave it without question.