Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  As his mind felt the coldness of the stone of the outer wall, he became dimly aware that the soldiers to his left and right were screaming at him. He could feel one of them punching his shoulder, trying to get him to stand with them. They couldn't understand why the Knight of the Flame wasn't fighting, and he had to spend all his willpower in resisting the urge to abandon his effort and stand.

  So great was his distraction, Caymus was surprised when he finally found the fuse itself. Once found, he wasted no time, though. He quickly grabbed on to the graysilt-laden material, getting as firm a hold as he could manage. As he worked, he felt one of the soldiers next to him dying, felt the fire in his blood suddenly spilling out of his body and onto the ground. He would have wondered which one it was, but he just didn't have time. Instead, he focused on the space, the void around the fuse, focused on pulling it apart, trying to let just some small part of the Conflagration into his world.

  There was the briefest instant, after he felt the conduit open, when he allowed himself the joy of success, the utter rapture at the rush of touching the Conflagration itself. He quickly dismissed the emotions, though; he had work to do.

  "Kepren, get down!" he screamed, trying as hard as he could to make his voice heard above the din of battle.

  The fire he'd coaxed out of the Conflagration traveled up the length of the fuse, then found the barrels of Rill's sludge that sat above the northern gate. In the next moment, the explosion finally came.

  Around each of the barrels of fire-sludge had been placed a few small casks of graysilt. That morning, one of the engineers had explained to him that the design was such that both sludge and silt would catch at the same time, not only igniting the sludge, but also causing an explosion that would shower the deadly concoction in every direction at once.

  Caymus smiled. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell the design had been gruesomely effective. As flames burst above the gathered forces of Black Moon, five barrels worth of the fire-sludge rained down on their heads. He could hear some of the material sizzling as it crept down the sides of the wall, setting fire to the very stone as it descended. The rest of it hissed and popped as it came into contact with armor and skin.

  The engineers' work was unbelievably precise: the amount of graysilt had been carefully measured so that the spray of death wouldn't quite reach the barricades, so only the krealite warriors, and only those who hadn't already pushed their way to the front of the attack, screamed out in pain as their flesh melted away from their bones. Not a single Kepren soldier was so much as touched by fire.

  Those attackers who had already made their way to the barricades spun around to see what had happened, to witness their comrades dying in agony. By now, Caymus was standing, looking at them, preparing for the counterattack. He couldn't see the expressions in those dead eyes, turned away as they were, but he imagined that every one of the attackers registered only complete shock. Presumably, until that very moment, they had, to a man, believed themselves invincible.

  Caymus didn't wait for the stunned warriors to remember where they were. He drew his sword up before him, and as the blade burst into fiery life, he let the fury of the memories of battle pour into his heart. Very briefly, he allowed himself a glance at the body next to him. The dead soldier was, in fact, the one who had held the spark-striker. The death of this man, barely more than a child, flooded his heart with anger, with rage, with an unquenchable desire for revenge. With a battle-cry forged in fury, he vaulted the barricade and set to cutting his enemies down.

  The first two to fall never even knew he had been there. His sword burned so hot that it seared cleanly through their kreal-infused skin, not to mention their armor and bones. He cleaved the head from the first krealite. He swung his blade down through the torso of the second, starting at the shoulder and not stopping until he hit the sacrum. Only the second man was afforded the luxury of a scream, and as he died, he summoned the attentions of his fellows, who turned as one to discover this new threat. Caymus could see that familiar deadness in those eyes, though there was also something else: a mixture of curiosity and fear.

  A few long moments passed as the kreal warriors stared at him, seeming hesitant to approach this huge man with the flaming sword. When they did attack, however, they committed completely, charging as though they were one single-minded entity.

  If not for the fact that the barricade had been directly behind him, the dozens of men rushing toward Caymus might have been able to overwhelm him with sheer force of numbers. The fact that he could keep his back against the makeshift wall, however, meant that he couldn't be completely flanked, and so could keep his attention, at least partially, on each and every one of his attackers. Behind the barricade, too, Carlson and the other soldier were still striking out fast with their pikes. Their weapons didn't penetrate the skins of the krealites, of course, but they did force them backward, giving Caymus just a little more room to maneuver.

  Caymus had to struggle not to lose himself in the fury of it all. He was certain that he could take down huge swaths of his opponents with wide swings, but he knew that to fight so recklessly would only be effective so long as he didn't make a mistake. He had to concentrate, had to feel the movements of his opponents, had to move with them, to keep himself alive long enough to kill them all.

  Two krealite blades struck out at him at once: one from directly in front, and one from the left. His instinct was to dodge to the right, but he knew that was foolish, would just land him within range of another set of swords. Instead, he stepped to the left, into the path of one of the blades. As he did so, he took his left hand from the grip of his own sword and choked up on it, grabbing the blade about two feet up, allowing himself to fight with the huge weapon in these tight quarters. He lifted the sword just high enough to deflect the leftmost blade over his shoulder, then stabbed his sword, like a spear, through the eye of the blade's owner. The attacker who had been in front missed completely, his error overextending him and leaving him open. Caymus pulled his sword, still aligned horizontally, free from the leftmost opponent, and slammed the pommel into the second attacker's skull, knocking him to the ground.

  In the next moment, he felt another blade stabbing at him from the right. He still had the prone form of the second attacker on the ground next to him, preventing his feet from moving properly, so he reached out into his sword, took hold of the flames that surrounded it, and shaped them—shaped them!—into a spear of fire that jabbed out into the face of the third attacker. The burst of flame didn't kill the man, didn't even hurt him, but it was enough that it knocked him backward and prevented him from completing his swing.

  Again and again, multiple attackers went for him, and again and again, he defended, holding his sword like a spear, barely deflecting the blades that came for him and tearing through the dark flesh of anyone who got too close. Every once in awhile, he would find himself in another unfavorable situation where he needed just that split-second more to react, and when he did, he instinctively shaped the flames that engulfed his sword, using them as a weapon, and sometimes as a shield, to buy himself those precious extra moments.

  He was fighting perfectly, using both his eyes and his mind to perceive his opponents, using his own skill with the sword, the memories that the sword contained, and the power of a shaper to cut down, to burn his enemies. He was the Conflagration's true champion, the Knight of the Flame.

  On the other side of the road, he could tell that things weren't going as well. As he jumped, dodged, and sprang, he could hear the crack and splinter of the tearing of wood at one of the barricades. When he chanced a look over the heads of his enemies, he saw that the structure which stood before one of the wider alleyways was collapsing under the weight of its attackers. He wished he could get over there and help, could afford time to seal the gap, but there was no way he could move that quickly, not with all of these blades around him.

  "First one's coming!" called a voice from behind him. Caymus knew what the signal meant, had be
en anxious for the real counter-attack to start. He chanced a quick glance over his shoulder to see if he could gauge the projectile's path. The fiery ball appeared to be at the apex of its flight and he couldn't afford to keep his attention on it long enough to be able to determine where it would land. "Back! Back!" called the voice again, now with an overtone of panic.

  The fireball struck directly into the space where the North Gate had been, where a large cluster of Black Moon soldiers now stood. The ball seemed to rupture when it hit and a mass of black, flaming liquid splashed out over the dark soldiers. Two of the krealite creatures, their expressionless, skull-like faces raised up toward the sky, were also caught in the fiery spatter. Caymus was relieved to note that the sludge burned through their carapaces as easily as it did the soldiers. Believing that the fire-sludge would burn hot enough to kill a monster was one thing; seeing the proof with his own eyes was quite another.

  His relief didn't last, however. As he cleaved another soldier's legs from his torso, he noticed the shadows of both soldier and creature running across the battlements of the wall.

  They were getting out of the bottleneck.

  ***

  "Number two, load another!" Despite the clatter of machinery and the din of raised voices, Captain Draya's commands were easy to hear and understand. Rill did as he was told. He and Daniel grabbed another of the small barrels of fire-sludge from beside the wall and started loading it into the cup of catapult number two.

  Rill had been glad that Draya had taken his suggestion of using the smaller, twenty-gallon barrels as ammunition for the catapults, rather than the larger, fifty-gallon affairs. The bigger containers would hold more sludge, yes, but the smaller ones would not only fit more snugly into the catapults themselves, but their lower mass meant they could be fired further and aimed more precisely.

  He and Daniel moved as quickly as they dared, but they took their time when it came to actually placing the barrel. The containers, while water-tight, had been relieved of half of their banding, and the remaining bands had been filed down to near their breaking point. They were designed so that that each barrel would break easily upon hitting its target, allowing it to splash its fiery contents over a large area. The design also meant, however, that before actually being fired, the barrels were much more fragile than anybody was particularly comfortable with.

  "Number one, aim and brace!" When the barrel had been placed, standing on its end in the catapult's cup, Rill and Daniel each took a step back. Each then turned to look at Draya, then raised his right hand, indicating he was a safe distance from the machinery. Rill chanced a quick glance over at catapult number one, about a dozen yards away, where another team of engineers prepared their shot.

  "Number two, douse!" Draya called out, and another engineer, one who had been standing nearby, poured a ladle's worth of fire-sludge over the barrel. He then used a glob of pitch to stick a fuse to the top. The fuse was of the quick-burning variety, though it didn't burn as fast as those currently being used up at the gate, and was exactly four feet long.

  "Number one, fire when ready!" Rill didn't like the procedure one bit. As the third engineer worked, he turned to watch catapult number one as it loosed its projectile. The arm swung up, lifting the barrel into the air. The projectile sailed upward for about two seconds, then burst into flame. He hated how little time they had between the lighting of the fuse and the firing of the engine. He hated how fragile the barrels were, thinking that even just the force of the launch could be enough to break the bands holding them together. If that happened, they'd all be burning within seconds, dead within a minute.

  "Number one, reset!" Rill may have disliked the procedure, but he'd not been able to come up with any better ideas, not with the minuscule amount of time they'd had to come up with a solution that would allow them to catapult fire-sludge into the ranks of their enemies.

  "Number two, aim and brace!" This was the part Rill hated most. As the four-man team who were responsible for maneuvering the engine made certain it was positioned to deliver its fiery ammunition to the right spot, Rill and Daniel moved to stand shoulder-to shoulder, facing the third barrel-man and holding the fuse between their two bodies. Their job was to keep any stray sparks from landing on the now sludge-covered barrel. Rill felt himself shuddering with thoughts of things that could go wrong in just a split-second.

  The two of them raised the arms that weren't holding the fuse—Rill's left, Daniel's right—indicating that they were ready. A moment later, the men behind Rill shouted out that the machine was properly aimed and that they were ready to fire.

  This was the really dangerous part.

  "Number two!" shouted Captain Draya, "fire when ready!"

  At the captain's command, the fuse man held the fuse in one hand and squeezed his striker against it with the other, scraping the piece of flint over the length of steel and sending sparks everywhere. The fuse didn't catch. He squeezed again, and this time it caught, sizzling and popping with life. All at once, the man dropped the fuse and Rill and Daniel stepped away from each other and dropped their arms, indicating to the watching catapult team that the fuse was lit.

  Before Rill could take another step away, the great arm of the catapult was whooshing up past his ear, the sound of the sizzling fuse following right behind it. A moment later, he turned to see the barrel aloft, sailing over the walls and buildings of the Guard District. A moment after that, the fuse reached the pitch and the sludge-covered body of the barrel blossomed into a fiery mass, looking suddenly a great deal more dangerous.

  "Number one, load!" Rill wished he could see what actually happened to the barrel when it finally landed at the North Gate. He really hoped the team's aim was true, that it was landing on the enemy, and not their own soldiers. He'd never forgive himself if the latter turned out to be the case.

  Of course, he thought, living to regret it would mean first surviving the day.

  "Number two, reset!"

  As the catapult team cranked the arm of the machine back into position, Rill wondered how things were going up at the North Gate. Caymus would be there, of course, as well as a few dozen soldiers. He wondered how the strategy of keeping the enemy bottled up there was going, if the fireballs they were hurling in that direction were even hitting anything besides empty ground. Normally, there would have been a dozen men between here and there, using flags to communicate hits and misses. There simply hadn't been time, nor the required number of men, this morning.

  "Number one, douse!" Rill turned his gaze upward, past the wall of the marshaling yard and up to the roofs of the high buildings around the edges of the Guard District, wondering if there might still be a good place to put a man, someone who could at least see farther than any of them could manage at the moment. His breath caught when he noticed dark shadows moving along those roofs. He knew those shapes. Those were krealites: not the men, but the creatures.

  When his gaze shifted to the walls closer to him, though, he saw the thing that made his heart stop. At the top of the wall of the Keep, just above the marshaling yard, a hooded, cloaked figure held a bow with a drawn arrow. The end of the arrow was lit, and it seemed aimed at catapult one.

  "Look out!" The words had barely escaped his lips when the arrow was loosed. Rill only just heard the percussive sound of the missile striking wood before the barrel burst and the entire catapult lit.

  The two men who had placed the barrel, as well as the four-man aiming team, seemed to have had some benefit from Rill's warning—they must have all been as wary of the dangers the barrels posed to them as he—and were a step or two away from the machine when it started burning. The man who had been, at that moment, placing the fuse, however, was not so fortunate. The barrel burst toward him, spraying him with burning pain.

  Not taking the time to consciously think, Rill found himself taking the scene in, letting his mind process what was happening and assess what needed to be done. The burning man couldn't be saved, not with as much sludge as was covering
him now. He, however, had not been the target. If the hooded figure had wanted to kill the one man, he didn't need to use a flaming arrow to do it. No, the target had been the catapult itself. Remembering back a few seconds, he also recollected that when archer's arm had been exposed, it had appeared as pink, healthy tissue, not at all infected with kreal. The hooded figure wasn't one of the krealite invaders and, therefore, he had to be the same saboteur that had been undoing their defenses for weeks.

  Rill looked up again just as the figure melted away, seeming to simply drop down the other side of the wall. All of the other engineers were running toward the blaze that the saboteur had created, trying to save either the catapult or their burning, dying friend. Rill knew he was the only one thinking about the attacker, and not the attack. He turned and ran out of the yard. He was going to catch this traitor before he could cause any more trouble.

  ***

  "I don't care if you get angry, Your Majesty," Be'Var said, irritably, "so long as you keep still!"

  Garrin gave the master a few quick nods, holding his side as the man worked to seal up veins and arteries and who-knew-what else. As he worked hard to ignore the pain in his gut, Garrin realized how impressed he was with the old man's ability to focus. Despite everything going on down below, the master's hand on his abdomen felt gentle and calm. His eyes were closed in deep concentration. Only Be'Var's gruff words gave him away as being anything but completely serene in that moment.

  In spite of having torn his wound open again, Garrin was still managing to stand, to rise over the crenellations of the White Spire and see what was happening in his city. He didn't like what his eyes were telling him. His soldiers seemed to have managed to hold Black Moon at the North Gate for a time, but the enemy was spreading out, now. He'd caught more than a few of the insectoid monsters wandering along the northern wall, and he could see masses of dark soldiers spreading out, like a fungus over spoiled food. They were making their way into the Grass District now, many of them coming in from the West Gate.