Half a mile behind him, another tower collapsed, followed seconds later by its likeness across the street. Dante had no way to tell whether this was the work of the lesser liches or the White Lich himself. In fact, he was feeling very blind in general, which was not a strategically wise place to be in when the city you were supposed to defend was being overrun and turning the wrong corner might throw you into a thousand undead or a glowing giant who made a thousand undead look as threatening as a sunny nap in a grassy field.
He twisted in the saddle, searching for flying bugs. He was too far from the river to find any dragonflies, his preferred scouts, but the fresh body of a dead man had already drawn flies. He reined in his horse and dismounted. Using pinpricks of nether, he brought down five of them. As precise as he'd been, two were too mangled for use, but he reanimated the other three and sent them buzzing upward.
With a snarl, two Blighted ran at him from behind a shuttered bakery. Dante drew his Odo Sein blade, cutting the first of them in half with a backhanded snap. Gore spun from the nethereal steel. He backpedaled from the second, impaling it through the throat.
He climbed back into the saddle and hastened eastward. Killing the Blighted had jarred a thought loose from his too-busy mind.
He reactivated his loon. "One more thing. Is Winden there with you?"
Nak took a moment. "Alive and well!"
"Does she have the dreamflowers with her?"
"Well, no. She says she's kept them safe in the palace."
"Put together a team to accompany her to get them."
"We're in the midst of a fight for our lives and you want our sorcerers to go fetch flowers?"
"The White Lich's portals seem to be coming from the Mists. If we're going to understand how he did this—and how to stop him from doing it again—we may need to travel there ourselves."
He closed the loon once more. He had sent one fly back toward Gods' Plaza, one to the bridge he meant to cross, and one a short ways ahead to scout his path. And a good thing: a great mass of Blighted controlled the intersection he'd been about to ride into. He detoured south two blocks, then straightened out, but another pack of the undead drove him further off course. After the third such incident, his path to the southernmost bridge was both shorter and clearer than his original choice, and he diverted to it.
Meanwhile, the third fly reached Gods' Plaza, hanging high in the air. Dante could no longer see any sign of the portal. His heart sank. The square and the blocks around it were so thronged with Blighted he suspected they had all crossed through.
The lich stood beside the fountain in the center of the plaza. Before him, Blighted delivered scores and scores of human captives, then scurried off into the city to find more. Light seared from the writhing bodies of the people and flowed to the lich. When it faded, the people spasmed, as pale as ghosts, and went still.
Then they opened their red eyes and rose as Blighted.
Not long ago, all three of the bridges had been guarded at both ends. But as Dante neared the southerly crossing, his fly saw that it was completely deserted. Dante entered the green around the western foot of the bridge, slowing his horse to a walk. Fresh blood stained the white stone at the end of the bridge. There were no bodies to be seen, be they Mallish or Blighted.
He moved to the side of the bridge and removed an unmarked stone from the wall. A wooden bucket rested inside the cubby behind it. He removed the bucket, sloshing some water into the grass, then set it down and withdrew two untouched shaden.
"About time something went right," he muttered.
He placed them in a lacquered wooden box in his pack. After another look up and down the bridge, he climbed back onto his horse, prodding it up the gradual incline of the crossing. They weren't far from the channel Dante had spent so much time shaping the river into and the current sliced past the bridge's stone feet, churning up foam and small standing waves.
Ether stirred somewhere below him. He scrambled for the shadows, but the attack was already plowing into the underside of the bridge. He swept the nether down into it anyway. Probably, this saved his life: the ether, which was strong enough to have broken the stones into shards and propelled those shards directly into Dante's face, merely broke the bridge instead.
His horse screamed as its footing gave out from beneath it. Dante reached into the stone, meaning to mend it, but they were already falling past it, toward the gray waters below.
He tried to jump from the horse, but his feet were still in the stirrups. He had just enough time to tug them free and launch himself from the beast's back before they both hit the water.
He'd fallen a good thirty feet and he knifed deep into the water. Other than the part where it was a complete disaster, it felt quite good: he'd been running, riding, and climbing amid the heat of the day and had worked up a thorough sweat. He kicked hard for the surface, feeling every ounce of his pack and sword and boots. But at last he broke free, wiping the water from his face and taking in a long breath.
He whirled about, yanking the nether into his hands like he was about to strangle it. He scanned the underside of the bridge for movement. The lesser lich that had knocked him into the water was nowhere to be seen.
Dante was being swept efficiently downstream. He was already too far from the footings of the bridge to swim for them. His horse, meanwhile, had opted for reasons unknown to swim to the eastern bank rather than the meaningfully closer western shore.
Dante paddled after it. "Come back here!"
As well-trained as the destrier was, all that seemed to have gone out the window the instant the bridge had gone out from beneath it. The beast was already nearing the middle of the river and swimming hard. Dante yelled at it twice more, then turned around and kicked for the western bank.
With his pack weighing him down, he could barely keep his head above water. The current was dragging him south faster than he was crawling to the west. He had a sudden vision of the undead sharks swimming up beneath him, their white eyes rolling back as they opened their jaws wide. He swam harder.
The current bore him steadily south, toward the unbreached walls that protected Bressel from seaborne invasion. At first he fought it, struggling to keep even with a particular boulder on the shoreline, but he soon realized he wasn't going to have the strength to pull that off, and was content to just keep swimming straight onward now matter how far the river flushed him downstream.
A minute later, with his arms and legs tiring under the weight of his possessions, and the shore still three hundred feet away, he knew he wasn't going to make it.
He cast about for driftwood, flotsam, anything to cling to. Nothing. He grasped hold of the nether, but waited, still kicking his legs and stroking with his arms, fighting for every foot closer he could make it. Only when his arms no longer wanted to lift did he reach down into the mud far below him to raise a platform of stone directly downstream from him.
As he approached it, he reached for it with his legs, planting his feet against the surface, which he'd angled against the current. Even then, the water threatened to rip him away, obliging him to lift the platform's southern edge higher, to where it became a sort of chair.
He took a seat. After a minute, his breathing slowed, but his heart was still going fast. He opened his pack, tossing anything he wouldn't soon need, along with the few items ruined by the water. But he wasn't about to drop the whole thing. Not when he had a pair of shaden in it.
He squinted at the western bank still two hundred feet distant. He'd swum further on any number of occasions, but rarely in full battle dress. He could do what he'd just done again, or raise a whole bridge and walk across, but he was loath to use any nether he didn't have to. Not the way things were going. With his heart rate back to normal, he took several deep breaths, then pushed off.
Once his initial momentum was spent, he began to swim, but much more leisurely than during his first attempt, for he'd remembered that swimming, much like running, was a matter of finding the pace you co
uld maintain. Due to this change in philosophy, or perhaps the lightness of his pack, the shore grew steadily closer without issue, until he reached down with his foot and touched a moss-slick boulder.
Still wary of sharks, he ran to solid ground. As he rested, he sent one of his flies north along the river to the middle bridge. The way was relatively clear of Blighted, but it was going to cost him a couple extra miles. And he was down his horse, too.
He sighed and jogged to the north, squeezing water from his boots with each step.
Over at Gods' Plaza, the Blighted continued to drag more wriggling captives into the square. And the White Lich continued to consume their remnants, converting them into new troops for his army.
A team of Blighted charged through the road ahead, pursuing screaming citizens. Dante crouched in the tall grass by the river, feeling like a coward. Their footsteps receded into the distance.
He stood and moved on, taking in the scene with his scouts. On the middle bridge, which was the oldest of the three and showed patchwork stone where it had been repaired multiple times over the centuries, families ran for the eastern shore, fleeing the Blighted who were seizing more and more of western Bressel, and also the lesser liches, who were roving from stronghold to stronghold, knocking down anything that would prove too troublesome for the Blighted to take.
Some of the citizens were fighting back, battling the Blighted in the streets, or loosing arrows and rocks at them from the windows, but without the aid of sorcerers or trained soldiers, they soon found themselves driven into hiding or routed altogether.
Dante reached the middle bridge. It was long and straight, raised high enough for merchant vessels to sail beneath its arches. Dante had his fly scout skim alongside it all the way to the eastern shore. Once it finished its course, he walked up the ramp to the surface and began to jog across.
His clothes were still heavy with water and his boots were still squelching, leaving faint footprints behind him. Smoke rose from three different points in the eastern districts. Behind him, another tower rumbled to the ground, struck down by the lich's sorcerers.
The ether stirred below him. But he'd already used his fly to spot the lesser lich lurking in the undergirding of the bridge. He reached down into the piling the lich was braced against and punched a spike of stone through the sorcerer's back and out its chest.
The lich squealed like broken iron dragged across glass. Ether shot upward from his hands. Dante ran forward, driving a second spike into the lich's back. Ether ripped into the bridge, looking to tear it apart, but the sorcerer's command was faltering, with some branches of light shooting away harmlessly to dissipate into the air. The bridge crunched but held firm. Before the lich could try again, Dante rammed a third spike into the back of his head and out his mouth.
Dante leaned over the edge of the bridge. The lich had been braced against an angled piece of stonework and would have dropped into the river if not for the three spikes holding him in place. Thin fluids that weren't blood leaked from the massive punctures through his chest and head. Dante moved into the nether inside the enemy. Everything about him seemed quite still and very dead, but just to be sure, Dante blasted his brains to paste.
"That's what you get for trying to pull the same trick twice." He looked about to see if anyone was watching him talk to a dead body, but the bridge was empty.
He reached the other side at a fast jog. He sent his fly ranging ahead, seeking a safe path to the others. He was pleased to discover that Nak and Pressings had fought or maneuvered their forces inside the wall and were currently pushing the enemy back from the eastern gate. Smaller detachments of soldiers were running through the streets, gathering up people and funneling them outside the city, where they ran northeast, into the very forest the White Lich had just abandoned.
Most of the Blighted and liches in the area were tied up opposing these efforts. Dante jogged steadily eastward, only having to detour around enemy movements twice. As he got closer to the fighting, however, it was clear he'd have a problem getting past the enemy lines unless he exited the wall and circled about to the eastern gate.
Or unless he speared right through them.
This was perhaps not the greatest idea. But after traveling for miles ducking the Blighted, cowering as they grabbed up men and women to be turned into half-minded, wrathful undead, he felt a sudden and overwhelming need to kill some of them.
He sent the fly buzzing above the lines. The lich's forces were currently holding a string of intersections, blocking access to the south and west. The goal was clear: contain the soldiers of Mallon and Narashtovik to a small part of the city while the Eiden Rane methodically converted the rest of the populace into Blighted.
They needed to break through. And they needed to do it now. He cut toward the southern edge of the battle where the fighting was least frenetic. Three blocks from the front, he opened his pack and withdrew a shaden. Another block closer and a group of eight Blighted patrolled an intersection, watching for attacks from the rear. Dante tapped into the shaden. Nether sprung from his hand like black sparrows. All eight Blighted fell dead. Dante stopped, bringing forth more shadows from the shell and sending them into the bodies. They arose under his command.
He stuck close to the fronts of the buildings as he advanced with his undead. Down the street, a horde of Blighted were pushing a wall of Mallish troops back step by step. A priest lay dead behind the Blighted lines, his gray robes torn and blood-soaked.
Dante broke into a run, his zombies bounding along beside him. Still using the shaden, he summoned forth a whirling fog of shadows. A single Blighted looked over its shoulder as the volley of nether tore into their rear line.
A score of them fell dead. Those in front of them whirled and ran headlong toward Dante. He dropped back three steps, sending the zombies forth as he conjured up a second volley. The zombies staggered into the path of the enemy, engaging half of them. Dante knocked down any foe that slipped past. The Blighted ripped up the zombies as fast as they could, but the delay was just enough time for him to summon and fire off a third round of bolts.
The rear of the enemy formation—if a mass of clawing, rending bodies could be called that—sagged toward him. At the front, the Mallish soldiers roared war cries and hewed their way forward, looking to break the Blighted then and there. As far as Dante knew, breaking them was impossible, but the undead were confused between slaughtering the squadron of men in front of them or doing away with the much more troublesome individual behind them. To make their job that much harder, Dante reanimated a dozen of their own dead and added them to the fray. He drew his sword, keeping the shaden in his other hand, and joined the melee.
It was over within another minute. Dead Blighted lay heaped by the dozens. The Mallish moved to hold the street, calling for aid and for their surgeons to come see to their wounded. Some nodded at Dante and gave thanks, but others watched him with mistrust, even fear, disturbed by the potency of the nether.
With the street secured, he jogged north to where the others were holding a square. Citizens passed through, heading for the gate, while messengers dashed back and forth and soldiers rotated in and out from the lines of combat. The air smelled of blood and sweat and horses and the faint tang of vinegar that sometimes came from the Blighted.
Blays turned, as if expecting him, and looked him up and down. "Finally decided we might need to be concerned about the sneak attack of the entire city?"
"In the last hour, I've nearly died more times than you've been arrested." Dante looked about the square. "Where's Lord Pressings? The lich is about to take hold of the western half of the city. We have to engage him, pin him down."
Gladdic turned toward the west. "He is Blighting the citizens, isn't he?"
"By the thousands. Which means the longer we stay put—"
Hoofbeats announced themselves behind them. Pressings rode up on a gray-blue courser that looked capable of running for three straight days before needing a breather. Pressings' face
was smudged and bloody and his hair was flattened with sweat, and the steel of his breastplate was dented and scratched, but he still carried himself with the happy anger of chieftains and lords born to wage war.
"You live," he said. "Your man Nak tells me the White Lich has seized everything west of the Chanset."
Dante nodded. "He opened a portal into the Gods' Plaza, the same as he did over here. He's Blighting everyone he can get his hands. There's almost no resistance. We need to fight our way to him and stanch the bleeding before he converts everyone in that half of the city."
"Fight our way to him?"
"I think that will be more effective than trying to surrender our way to him."
"Precisely what do you think we've been doing here? Do you not see the dead? The blood and the steel?"
"I might have noticed something along those lines, yes."
"We have been fighting all the time that you've been gone, Lord Galand. This is all the further we've gotten. How do you expect us to fight our way across the entire city?"
"You crossed the wall. That was the hard part. From here, it's just a matter of advancing street by street until we reach the west side."
"Even if we had double the men, the task would be hopeless. All of the bridges across the river have been knocked down."
"That's impossible," Dante said, even though he knew perfectly well that it was. "I crossed one of them less than half an hour ago. Even if they are out, I can repair one of them. Or lift a causeway."
"Enough!" Pressings clenched his gauntlet into a fist. "The lich has outmaneuvered us. And we lack the manpower to stymie him because a third of our soldiers have fled the field." He gazed to the north, mouth twisting into a sneer. "I have never met a more depraved and cowardly people than those swamp-dwelling androgynes. In fleeing a disaster of their own making, they killed our king. Took claim of our city. Then convinced us—those they had wronged beyond measure—to stand with them against this menace. And when that menace comes for us, too, what do they do? They turn their backs and run!"
The Spear of Stars Page 34