The castle was his focus. Set at the northern edge of the town, it had been built to fend off Wesmen attacks from Understone Pass. Its sheer outer walls rose more than seventy feet above the town, completely encircling the keep, with turrets set at six intervals providing lookout support, battle direction and archer cover.
The castle's north gates, usually open to trade—the marketplace was inside the castle walls—had been shut and reinforced with bands of steel. Surrounding them, the gate towers were built forward and over an open arch, creating a lethal killing ground. The town walls facing the Wesmen were of similar construction.
Outside the north gates, cavalry were stationed to force any Wesmen advance around the castle back toward the beach. Inside the walls, the townsmen waited. On the walls, archers, swordsmen and mages. And in the keep itself, a simple circular building with battlements built out in a square around its top some fifty feet above the outer walls, the Barons, healers, bodyguards, cooks and many of Gresse's mercenaries.
The battlements, nicknamed “the Crown” because of the way they sat slightly uncomfortably atop the keep, bristled with heavy crossbow positions, oil dumps and Blackthorne's best mages. They had food for three months, and Blackthorne reckoned that if it wasn't over by then, Darrick would have lost Understone, Balaia would be open to pillage and the war lost. All they could do now was wait.
The Wesmen didn't keep them long.
Styliann, mind still clouded with rage and an unquenchable desire for revenge, clattered to a stop at the eastern end of Understone Pass at the head of a column of one hundred Protectors. It was early afternoon. The guards at the pass looked at him fearfully but knew what they had to do. They stood in his path.
“Please state your business,” said one with deferential politeness.
“The slaughter of Wesmen,” said Styliann, his voice matter-of-fact, his face brooking no argument.
“I have orders to hold unauthorised traffic here awaiting clearance from General Darrick.” There was apology in his tone.
“Do you know who I am?” demanded Styliann.
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Then you will also know that it was I who set the orders for your commander to follow. I give myself the clearance to travel the pass. Stand aside.”
The guard looked at him, doubt and anxiety in his mind.
Styliann raised an eyebrow. “Where is Darrick?” he asked.
“At the far end, my Lord, overseeing construction of the fortifications.”
“Then you have discharged your duties admirably,” said Styliann. “He can personally clear me to travel when I meet him.”
The guard smiled, comfortable with Styliann's logic. He stood aside. “Good luck, my Lord.”
Styliann stared down at him. “Luck is something on which I never rely.” He rode into the pass, his Protectors behind him, silent, masked and disturbing.
Styliann's passage through the pass was swift, his horses bred for stamina. He barely noticed the devastation Xetesk's new spell had caused and certainly had no mind to admire its success. He rode on, reaching the end of the pass as dusk gathered, pulling up to a stop when he saw Darrick.
The two men gazed at each other for a time, Darrick reading his face, Styliann burning with the desire to be at the throats of the men who had raped and murdered Selyn. Darrick said nothing, simply nodding, stepping from his path and waving him through. Styliann and the Protectors galloped into Wesmen lands. For them there would be no halt for a night's rest. Styliann had places he needed to reach and something to prove to an arrogant barbarian.
Hirad awoke glad of the leather-clad bivouac shelters Thraun had insisted they raise over themselves the night before. At the time, it had seemed a pointless exercise in irritation, but now, with the rain thrumming on the material above his head, Hirad smiled.
He sat up, scratching his head. He could smell a fire and, looking out, saw Will crouched over his stove, leather over his shoulders and a wide-brimmed hat pulled forward over his face. Water steamed away on an open pot.
Beside Hirad, Ilkar stirred and awoke, opening one eye on the weather.
“Wake me when it's dry,” he said, and turned over.
“I'd hate to be in Understone with this coming down,” said Hirad. Ilkar grunted.
The camp came slowly to life. Set in an area of lightly wooded land on the downhill side of a lively stream, the four shelters sat in a rough semicircle. Will's wood burner was at its centre. They were a long way from Understone Pass and the relative security of Darrick's cavalry, and Hirad felt strangely ill at ease.
Surrounded by his closest friends and people he trusted with his life, he couldn't shake the fear of the new from his bones. He had rarely been in the lands west of Understone Pass before, and with only a small inkling of where they were headed, drawn from maps and stories, he was nervous.
They all took breakfast hunched under their shelters, the rain showing no signs of easing as it shouldered its way through leaf and branch to patter and drum on earth and leather. Across the stream, and on the other side of the gentle slope on which they sat, the land quickly turned harder as it tracked northward, becoming steep climbs, cold peaks and barren plateaux. Their destination lay across easier travel to the southwest.
“How far to the Wrethsires from here?” Hirad asked.
Thraun sat with Will at the far end of the half circle; next to them were Erienne and Denser, his arm about her shoulders, with The Unknown and Jandyr next to Hirad.
“A day, no more,” replied Thraun through a mouthful of bread. “That assumes we can steer clear of Wesmen.”
“We're heading away from their major concentrations, and with so many on the move, if we keep off the path we should be safe enough,” said The Unknown. “Anyway, I've heard you're not bad at keeping hidden.” He smiled.
“Not bad.”
“It's a shock, isn't it, discovering you're something you don't want to be.” The Unknown's voice carried a sorrow so deep that Hirad almost spilled his coffee.
Thraun and the big man locked eyes, every other member of The Raven waiting for the reaction.
But Thraun merely nodded. “Only someone like you can possibly understand the pain and the fear. I would give anything not to be as I am.”
“But in the crypts, you seemed—” said Erienne.
“Only when there is no other way. And then in terror for everything I know and love.” He got up. “I'll saddle the horses.” The Unknown followed him from the camp, leaving the rest to a confused silence.
“It's not a blessing,” said Will eventually, killing the flame in the stove and unhooking the pieces to cool them on the wet earth. “He is terrified that one day he will lose himself in the mind of the wolf and never be able to change back.”
The Raven moved off twenty minutes later, with the rain pounding on leathers and the stream behind them thrashing as it filled. Thraun chose the trail but kept his thoughts to himself.
Hirad and Ilkar dropped back to flank The Unknown, who rode directly behind Denser and Erienne.
“Why did Thraun think you could understand him?” asked Hirad.
“Subtlety never was a strong point of yours, was it, Hirad?” Ilkar sniffed.
The Unknown shook his head. “At least he never changes,” he said. “Look, Hirad, it's complex and not very pleasant. Not to me, anyway.” He looked to Denser, but the Dark Mage was at least giving the impression of not listening. “We were both brought up knowing we were different. You'll have to ask Thraun how he came to know, but the point is, we were both something we didn't want to be yet something we could never escape. Mind you, I believed I could.” The Unknown bit his lip.
“Don't feel you—” began Ilkar.
“No. I might as well. At least this way it's just you two, and Denser already knows. There's nothing random about being chosen as a Protector. I'm a Xeteskian. We—they are bred for strength, stamina and speed from carefully chosen lineage. I was weapons-trained early, and at thirteen discove
red my destiny. It's not something you are supposed to find out, for obvious reasons. I thought I was just being schooled for the College Guard.” He shrugged. “I didn't like the idea that my soul was already sold to the Mount of Xetesk so I ran away. Apparently it happens all the time when people find out, and they let you go. I mean, why not? When you can't escape them even when you die.”
“So you've always known?” Hirad felt at once swept empty with sorrow and distrusted. Here was the secret he'd kept for ten years. “Is this all linked to your name?”
“Yes. Pathetic, really. I couldn't deny my calling but I refused to admit it to myself. I tried false names but they never fit, so I ended up just never telling anyone anything. When Ilkar came up with The Unknown Warrior, that did fit. A name that was no name, if you like. I felt at home.” Another biting of the lip. His eyes glistened and his voice was gruff. “And then, of course, with The Raven, I thought I'd never die. But that's no escape either.” He set his jaw and looked forward.
“Sorry, I've lost you,” said Ilkar.
“Me too,” said Hirad. “I mean, if you were so anxious not to die, why did you take on all those dogs by yourself?”
“Because when I realised they'd come for me anyway, I thought at least I could die saving you. All of you. And perhaps that I'd get away, dying so far from Xetesk in a place where the mana was unstable. I thought they wouldn't find me.”
“Hang on, can we backtrack a little? What do you mean, they'd come for you anyway?” Ilkar hoped he wasn't beginning to understand. But The Unknown just shook his head again and bore his eyes into Denser's back.
Denser turned his horse and fell in beside Ilkar. “He means that the demons would have taken his soul from him eventually, dead or alive. He means he knew his time was running out. After all, what good is a forty-year-old Protector?” Denser's words were hard but his tone was thick with disgust. “That is why he chose to die, because it was his only chance of saving himself as well as us. But they found him. They stole his death.” He urged his horse to join Erienne once more. “And now you know it all, and why poor Laryon and I wanted to free them. Too many of them were never dead in the first place.”
Hirad formed words but no sound came for a time. He stared first at Denser and then at The Unknown, stunned by what his friend had been carrying all those years. The lies he had told to hide himself not only from them but from himself too. He had never had any future, or choice, and yet he had never once given them the slightest hint of his true self. What he was meant to be, and what he was for a short time.
The Unknown turned to Hirad, as if sensing the barbarian's train of thought. “I wanted what we had to be true so badly that most of the time I believed it myself. The retirement, The Rookery, all of it.”
“And now you can!” Hirad felt a sudden, irrational surge of joy. “When this is over, you can!”
But The Unknown silenced him. “I should never have been released. Too much is lost.” He stifled a sob. Denser looked back over his shoulder, a look of horror on his face. The Unknown nodded. “Just like you, Denser, just like you.”
“What are you talking about?” Ilkar was suddenly frantic.
“The souls of the Protectors meld in the Mount. We are as one. When mine was taken back, part of me, that part that the brotherhood of the Protectors gave me, was lost for ever. I live, I breathe, I laugh, I cry, but inside I am empty. The Gods save any of you from knowing how that feels.”
The Wesmen army, angry, depleted and determined to exact revenge, marched on Blackthorne the following morning. They arrived just as the rain ceased its intermittent sprinkling, and stood well out of spell range.
Blackthorne watched from the Crown, gazing out over his town, its walls and on to the Wesmen-covered grasslands beyond. Gresse, once again by his side, flexed his fingers nervously, seeing the force assemble its ranks and lines. For more than three hours, they poured into the open space, striding to the beat of drums, their standards snapping in the fresh breeze, carts rattling behind, the shouts of leaders mixing with the howls and barks of dogs.
Thousands and thousands of Wesmen carpeted the ground, a sea of fur-clad hate and power ready to wash against the walls of Blackthorne. The Baron shook his head, barely believing so many had survived the carnage on the water. But still they came, the standards now numbering over a hundred, all stabbed into the earth on a rise less than a mile away. Ignoring the temptation to encircle the town, the Wesmen massed before the south gates, their numbers sending ripple after ripple of anxiety through the thin line of defenders.
From the centre of the army that Blackthorne estimated to number seven thousand or more, six Shamen walked calmly forward, flanked by a dozen warriors, furs ruffling in the wind, hard faces taking in the walls, blades sharp and heavy. Immediately, mages on the outer walls began preparing. IceWind, DeathHail, ShieldSheer. The Shamen moved on, and at two hundred yards, Gresse thought they might want to talk. At one hundred and fifty yards, Blackthorne issued fire orders.
Spells crackled across the Shamen's shield, lights flaring over its surface, the DeathHail bouncing and shattering as it met the greater magical force which glowed white in resistance. A storm of arrows arced across the gap, those on target bouncing away as the hard shield held. Still the Shamen walked on. At fifty yards, they stopped to cast.
“You need men inside that shield,” said Gresse. But Blackthorne was ahead of him, the flagmen already giving the orders. There was a flurry of movement by the south gates, a clash of steel and the protestation of wood as the gates began their ponderous opening.
Still the arrows and spells failed to penetrate the Shamen's shield, maintained by two with the remaining four chanting and moving. From the barely open gate, Blackthorne's men squeezed, running full tilt at the casting Shamen. They were too late.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, the Shamen raised their arms above their heads, hands splayed. White fire crackled between their fingers, the strands combining above their heads into four twitching beams which searched for purchase in the air like darting snakes’ tongues. The beams combined to form one pole of shimmering white light which sprang at the town walls, forking like lightning and flickering over them, knocking away dust, mould and lichen. For a moment, there was no discernible effect, then the light could be seen inside the walls, a map of pulsating, flaring veins. The Shamen cut off the beam and threw themselves to the earth, ignoring the swordsmen scant paces away. A two-hundred-foot section of the wall exploded outward, sending stone fragments fizzing through the air at enormous speed. Blackthorne's men never stood a chance, taking the full weight of the explosion.
The Baron's plans dissolved as the wall came down, spilling archers and mages and causing pandemonium along the wall. More arrows flew, this time piercing the bodies of the unprotected Shamen, but the damage was done. Seven thousand Wesmen roared their way toward a breach Blackthorne's men could not hope to fill.
“Dear Gods,” said Blackthorne. He turned to Gresse, his face white. “We'll have to take them hand to hand through the streets. I—”
A flash lit up the sky. FlameOrbs soared away to the closing Wesmen ranks, exploding on impact, deluging men with mana fire. The screams of the unshielded victims rose above the war cries of the survivors.
White fire flared again as the Wesmen approached the breach. The southern gate house collapsed. Spells flickered across the sky, HardRain poured on to the Wesmen in the centre of the charge, IceWind tore through a flank, a quintet of Shamen were destroyed by the columns of a HellFire, but the Wesmen charge was undaunted.
From the base of the castle, soldiers and mercenaries ran to positions around the town, originally fallbacks, now desperate defence.
“Saddle every horse in the compound,” Blackthorne ordered an aide.
“When the time comes, we'll have to take to guerrilla moves in the foothills and plains trails. We can't let them unleash this at Understone.”
The Wesmen reached the devastated gate and walls of Blackthorne a
nd poured through the gaps into the town, sweeping aside the pitifully thin defence. From the standing walls, mages and archers rained fire, ice and steel on the invaders, but by now the Shamen had grouped for defence, and too often the rain bounced off shields, the arrows were knocked aside. And for every Wesman who died, a dozen more took his place. They surged through the town, firing buildings as they passed and cutting down the defenders who fought them at every street corner.
The wall defenders followed the Wesmen's progress through the flaming town, attacking where they could but too often under attack themselves as the Shamen, unhurried groups of arrogant swagger, launched fine meshes of white fire or great rods of hard flame that fell like wet rope on the ramparts. Blackthorne Town was burning down.
“We've lost this one!” shouted Gresse above the roar of the Wesmen, the fires, the calls of the wounded, and the crackle of the Shamen's magic.
The stern Baron nodded, jaw set, eyes rimmed with tears. Less than ten minutes had passed since the Shamen had brought the walls down. He signalled the emergency order. Flagmen and trumpeters announced the loss of Blackthorne, and its defenders and people took to the foothills of the Blackthorne Mountains.
From there, they could track the Wesmen north to Understone Pass, harrying them all the way. But unless the Wytch Lords’ magic was taken from the Shamen, Blackthorne feared nothing could stop the rout of eastern Balaia.
And if they were to lose it, he hoped that at least he and Gresse could watch the Wesmen tear Pontois and the rest of the KTA limb from limb. It would be scant satisfaction, but right now it was all that kept him breathing. Everything he had was gone.
The Arch Temple of the Wrethsires was set in a lush glade fed by hill streams. To the east, a lake sat at the base of the Garan foothills, providing peace. The solitude was completed by steep cliffs climbing two sides, sheer and menacing.
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