The palisade went up with a roar and a flash. Scores of Blighted ran through it, inadvertently isolating the lich: for the disguised lich was moving parallel to the defenders, intending to open a fourth hole through the earthworks—and every other Blighted was charging headlong into the hole it had just opened.
Dante headed straight for it, coming to the site of the second attack. Blighted ran at them by the dozens. Gladdic lashed at them with a long blade of ether, cutting through the entire front line and dashing the line behind it with remains. Blays edged to Dante's left, riding slightly ahead. Between their speed and the nether-heightened Odo Sein weapon, he barely had to do more than hold his sword steady to cut through anything that came at them.
They exited the breach and entered another relatively clear spot of unmanned palisade. The disguised lich was just eighty feet ahead, sneaking up toward a wall where soldiers in black and silver fought for their lives.
Hearing the hoofbeats, the lesser lich glanced at the three riders, then popped to its feet. It turned and bolted into the throng. Dante felt Gladdic reach into the ether; a beam of light climbed from the lesser lich's head, marking him. The lich waved his hand, dispelling it, but the twinkle of ether he spent to do so marked him just as well, and Gladdic simply replaced the beam an instant later. The lich seemed to give up, most likely counting on the thousands of Blighted it was about to be surrounded by to protect it instead.
"Were you intending to ride into that?" Blays said. "In case you hadn't noticed the army, they've got a whole army!"
"We don't have a choice." Dante brought the shadows to him. "If it escapes, it'll come back to punch through our next line of defenses as well."
For all their spirit, the destriers slowed at the solid lines of Blighted in front of them. Blays chopped to his right and left, but the undead were so many that some slipped past his guard to rake his mount with their claws. Light gleamed from behind Dante. Gladdic hurled a storm of straight lines into the crowd between them and the retreating lesser lich. These ripped into the enemy, opening a pocket of clear ground for the horses to ride into, but the fearless Blighted filled the hole in moments.
Dante drew on the shaden, launching bolts at the lesser lich's back, but the enemy sorcerer deflected them, beginning to open ground between himself and his pursuit. The horses kicked and stomped; they were bleeding from multiple scratches. If they waded in any further, there would be no keeping the Blighted at bay. They were too many to clear a path to ride through, too.
Then again, there was no need to ride through them. Pulling more nether from the sea shell, Dante moved into the earth. With a low rumble, he lifted a ramp in front of him, unrolling a path straight ahead. Dust fell away from the steep sides. Blays whooped with laughter and charged forward, trampling and slashing at the Blighted. Once the causeway was ten feet high, Dante leveled it out.
He and Gladdic scampered after Blays, who was doing a fine job sweeping the way forward of any and all undead that had kept their footing during the raising of the path. That left Dante free to continue extending the causeway. Bloodied and angry, the destriers galloped ahead, closing on the lich.
The lich again dispelled the beam of ether from its head and dived forward, attempting to hide within the masses. Dante walloped at it with a hammer of nether. The lich parried the portion coming for him, but could do nothing to save the Blighted around it, who were knocked flying.
Exposed, the lesser lich summoned a cage of ether over its head. But whatever purpose it intended for these energies was lost to the ages, as Gladdic had already let loose with a storm of darkness and light. The lich, who had flung himself to the ground, rolled over and sat up, lifting his light-filled hands above his head.
The air about him went crazed with the crackle and flare of competing magics. When it faded, the lesser lich was lying on his back, right leg separated from his body, and the left half of his head nowhere to be seen.
"Congratulations, you found a way to make him even uglier," Blays said. "Now let's get out of here before we find out what being inside a hundred different stomachs feels like."
Blighted were piling themselves against the edge of the causeway, boosting and climbing on top of each other to haul themselves to the surface. There wasn't space for the horses to turn around, so Dante extended the end of the path into a loop. They rode about the circle and galloped back the way they'd come. Blays was still at the head, scything his way through the teeming enemy. Dante and Gladdic knocked down anything that managed to avoid his blades and his mount's hooves, but they barely had to lift a finger until they returned to the foot of the ramp, where a few pulses of shadows flattened the Blighted that had congregated there into a fleshy carpet.
All in all, their excursion had barely taken two minutes. But the Narashtovikers had had to all but completely abandon the ground behind the outermost fourth layer that the now-dead sorcerer had breached, retreating to the defenses of the third ring instead.
Dante was afraid they were going to have to hack, trample, and be-nether their way through the Blighted clogging the area, but Nak led a sally of soldiers and nethermancers out from the ramparts. Dante rarely enjoyed large-scale war, per se, but he wasn't sure that he'd ever felt the same pride and valor that swelled in him as his soldiers ran from behind safety to come to his aid, each one of them dressed in the black and silver of their homeland and ready to deal death to anyone that threatened the people of that land.
The Blighted fought back viciously, but they didn't have the full strength of their numbers behind them yet. As Dante neared, Nak ordered his people to swing about, and they dovetailed together.
Nak bounced in the saddle of his warhorse not unlike a child's ball tethered to a paddle. "Did you get lost? You seem to have ridden out into the middle of the invasion!"
"The White Lich altered one of his sorcerers to look like a Blighted," Dante said. "He blended in with the others to blow up our defenses."
Blays sheathed his swords, ending their draw on his trace. "Don't worry, we won't be seeing him again. Not until he relocates the other half of his head."
Nak crinkled his brow. "That sounds like a very effective tactic. Which is to say very bad for us. There can't be any doubt the White Lich will try it again."
"I don't know that he can," Dante said. "Maybe that one lesser lich just looked like a Blighted. But get word to everyone to watch out for it. If they see any sign of sorcery along the walls, crush it with everything they have."
Blays glanced up and behind him. "Speaking of being crushed, feel like stopping that?"
He'd only gotten the first words out when Dante felt the ether surging through the sky. Behind them, the night was afire with blues and greens just like those that sometimes danced above the mountains north of Narashtovik in the winter. But these lights were much lower in the sky—and streaking down toward them.
"Incoming!" Dante scooped up nether and shot it up at the gigantic wave of ether.
He was joined by Gladdic, Nak, and the multiple priests who had come out with Nak. Their attacks sliced into the lights, cleaving off a third of them, but the rest rushed on.
"Save your strength!" Dante said. "It's not going to hit us."
Some of the priests looked skeptical, but the green and blue light was now streaming straight down. It made impact, cracking into the ground—and several of the Blighted that had been chasing after them. Earth flew up from the strike, leaving massive furrows in the dirt, as if someone had dragged a giant rake across it. Slabs of stone broke and tilted, leaving the grounds looking like an abandoned graveyard.
They came to the next palisade, galloping through the gate. Behind it, archers were already firing on the Blighted running toward them. As soon as the last Narashtoviker was through, the soldiers slammed and barred the gate.
Dante dismounted, making a quick check of himself for wounds that his body might have ignored in the throes of battle. A lot of scratches, but that was just fine: it meant he wouldn't have to nick
himself to feed the nether any time soon. Blays and Gladdic looked to be in similar shape.
He sent riders to the north and south to warn the others to watch for lesser liches disguised as Blighted, then took to the wooden wall. "I barely saw any of our dead out there, Nak. What were the Blighted doing after they broke through? Fighting over somebody's big toe?"
Nak shook his head. "Oh, we lost many. But the Blighted didn't kill many of them. Instead, they disarmed them, then grabbed them up and ran away like they were carrying a sack of potatoes."
"To be Blighted."
"You would know better than I. Is there a way to undo the condition?"
"Yes. I think so. But it's extremely dangerous. As likely to kill the nethermancer who tries it as it is to save the victim."
"Ah," Nak said quietly. "Then when we see our own, should we kill them? As a mercy?"
"That would be for the best."
These were grim thoughts, but Dante had no time to dwell on them, as the Blighted were already flooding across the open space between the abandoned fourth ring and the newly-fortified third ring. He now saw what the White Lich's blue and green assault had been about: while its primary intention might have been to kill them, as soon as the lich saw that they were probably going to fight it off, he'd diverted it to smash up the ground instead. The Blighted now ran through the furrows and behind the cover of the cracked stone, partially shielded from both archery and sorcery.
Within a matter of a minute, they were throwing themselves against the palisade—and the assaults of the liches were already storming down from above. While the soldiers held the wall, the priests held the air above it, with a few watchful monks mixed in among the men-at-arms to keep a sharp eye out for any more incursions from lesser liches.
Just as the soldiers were rotated from the front when they were injured or exhausted, Dante rotated out the monks and priests who'd spent all their nether, ordering them back to the camp behind the city's original wall to rest up the best they could. For now, he allotted a single shaden each to Nak, Somburr, and the other most talented among them.
There was a great deal of light flashing to the north, where the Mallish held their lines, and rather less of it to the south, where the Drakebane was positioned. The lich had been forced to divert his lieutenants to support the Blighted to prevent them from being completely torn to shreds by the defenders' sorcery. For the moment, it seemed to be resulting in a stalemate on all three fronts.
"Why is he pressing so hard at our center?" Dante said after several minutes. "It's our strongest holding."
"I suspect it is just as you told Lord Pressings," Gladdic said. "The Eiden Rane, facing his stiffest resistance, would rather test it than assume he has the means to break it outright. Remember that he does not think on the same scale of time that we do. He has the patience of mountains."
"That's one option," Blays said from the wall, not interrupting the steady stab and slash of his swords. "The other is he just really hates you two."
Dead Blighted were beginning to pile up at the foot of the palisades. Within another minute, they had a full-fledged ramp of their own corpses, which they scrambled up at close to a run. The line of defenders bent, pushed back from the wall.
"A little help?" Blays called. "Otherwise, we're about to be shredded into the confetti the lich will throw to celebrate his victory!"
Dante glanced at the latest salvo of ether from the White Lich, who was standing well back from the point of conflict. Judging the others had enough power to deal with it, he delved into the dirt just in front of the palisade, yanking it downward. The bodies of the Blighted fell into the pit, while the live ones on top of them were lowered to what had previously been ground level.
The Blighted smashed their fists against the palisade, then bent at the waist and braced themselves against it, letting those behind them use their backs as a platform to leap over the wall. Scowling, Dante pulled the earth back, sending them all falling into it, then clapped it shut like a champing jaw. When he opened it again, the interior was a bloody, fleshy mess.
A volley of ether rained toward them, forcing Dante to back up and redirect his nether to the sky. He was drawing exclusively on a shaden for now, leaving the remainder of his ability in reserve. The nether found the lich's missiles, sparks sputtering heavily as they were broken apart. But a few slipped through, splintering chunks from the top of the palisade and plowing through the soldiers. A priest was knocked backward, dead before he hit the ground.
Another volley was already coming in behind the first. Dante sucked the shaden dry and cast it aside, calling to his servant for another even as he spewed his shadows forth to meet the White Lich's assault. Soldiers reeled back from the wall. Dante wanted to yell at them to hold position, but instants later, bolts of nether snapped into the very spot they'd been occupying. He held his place, averting the worst of the damage.
Glowing ashes of sorcery faded from the air. Splinters of wood and clods of dirt thumped and fluttered to earth. Dante jogged forward, expecting the barrage to be followed up by a wave of Blighted, but instead, the pale undead were pulling back.
And thousands upon thousands of others were circling northwest, to attack the Mallish soldiers' flank, or bypass them altogether.
The Mallish were already calling in their reserves to help buttress their left side. In terms of pure maneuvers, it might have been best to keep the Narashtovikers in place and send up the Tanarians, but Dante considered his people the strongest of the three and wanted to keep them engaged with the Eiden Rane whenever possible.
He instructed his flagmen to signal the Drakebane. The Drakebane signaled back his agreement. Dante called his men to march along the rear of the Mallish and form up on their left. The Tanarians were already on the move to flow into the gap Narashtovik would leave as a result.
Dante and his troops were still moving north behind the Mallish when the Blighted broke from their maneuvers into an all-out charge on the Mallish lines. Ether twinkled behind them.
"Priests, with me!" Dante called. "The rest of you, keep moving into position!"
He swung his horse about and galloped toward one of the raised pathways he'd built as spokes between the layers of defenses, taking it toward the Mallish front, his sorcerers parading behind him. The lookouts and messengers posted on the road scattered to make way.
Geometric lightning burned across the front. Men cried out. Debris arced into the air, lit by the answering strikes of the Mallish. The yells of fear and pain were replaced by those of battle; the Blighted had come to the barriers. There were a great deal of men between himself and the front, but from his saddle, Dante could see that the undead were already entering through a hole punched in the defenses.
The front was a crush of soldiers and he had never liked trying to wield the nether while mounted—the shifting and jarring of the horse made it hard to concentrate—so he jumped from the saddle and ran forward on foot, the nether swirling about him. Blays caught up to him, swords sheathed for the moment. Ether was still harrowing into the Mallish soldiers, driving them away from the wreckage of the palisade and making it hard to see.
Yet one thing was clear: the city's priests were lacking in ether. With no shaden to supplement them, the clergy was able to do little more than keep themselves alive as the White Lich and his lieutenants tore into the soldiers. The entire front line fell like they'd been held up by the same just-clipped string. The Blighted bounded over the dead and into the next line of soldiers, whose faces were pallid, frozen with the terror of troops about to break.
Dante pulled nether from the shaden in a steady draft and fired off bolts as fast as he could shape them. This time, it was the entire front line of Blighted who fell. The Mallish, who'd been leaning back, about to retreat further, edged forward.
Another blade of ether swooped at them from above, but Gladdic was already on it, breaking it with a shaden-augmented riposte of shadows. Other nethermancers were arriving behind them, slugging it out
with the lesser liches.
The beleaguered Mallish priests thrust their fists in the air and cheered, gray robes flapping. They let loose as they could, giving the soldiers a bit of breathing room even as more Blighted poured through the breach.
With the others holding off the enemy's sorcery, Dante ducked his mind into the ground where the palisade had been ripped out, intending to sink it and duplicate the chewing-jaws trick he'd pulled off just minutes earlier.
The power of the White Lich crashed into him like a flail. Dante reeled back, gasping for breath. Someone ran to his side—Nak, judging by the man's round shape, but Dante's eyes weren't quite working—no, his eyes were fine, but his mind couldn't decipher what they were telling him.
Without warning, everything snapped back into place. It felt like some seconds had passed. A new wave of darkness and light rolled from the liches, bowling over fifty men. Its edge flashed toward Blays, who'd been holding out near the end of the line. He swore and blinked into the shadows.
The pocket of Blighted who'd made it through swelled into a bulge. The Mallish were getting that look on their faces again. Several Mallish priests retreated from the fray, their powers tapped out. Most of the remainder fought with shaky hands and sweating faces. Within minutes, they would exhaust themselves. And then Narashtovik would see how long they could hold on before they gave out, too.
The throng of Blighted that had come through the gap swelled like a cyst about to burst. Two more Mallish ethermancers turned to leave the fray, one of them limping, hanging onto the other's shoulder for support. To Dante's right, Gladdic staggered back from a hammer-blow of light, grimacing, smoke trailing from his hair.
A slim figure dashed into the melee of men and Blighted, dark hair streaming behind her. Her bone-and-steel bracers glinted in the light cast by the ether as she raised a shaden above her head. Nether flooded from the mouth of the shell, forming a vortex around her. Its swirling edges winked with silver and purple as she began to activate it.
Dante swung his head toward the White Lich, a glowing, towering figure standing fifty yards behind the front lines. He pulled ropes of nether from his own shaden and fired a cloud of bolts at the lich. The enemy raised his heavy hand and knocked each one down with ease.
The Spear of Stars Page 29