"In Narashtovik, that's what most of us believe. But I've never heard a Collener openly say the same."
Cord laughed and gestured to the soldiers around them. "If the Mallish are on their way to kill us for our beliefs, why not finally speak them out loud?"
She rejoined her peers. A messenger dressed in palace yellow found Dante and informed him the despot wished another audience. An open-walled carriage awaited. Its team of horses were among the first Dante had seen used for travel. At the palace, Ronn whisked him upstairs to the high hall where they'd first met.
Jodd stood over a table blanketed with papers and maps. "Yesterday, you sounded hellbent on snuffing Gladdic's candle."
"Nothing's changed. You won't have to worry about him."
"We're preparing for a fight. But could be they're only here to give us a scare. Or maybe they're passing through on their way to bedevil someone else for once. If we aren't to fight, you aren't to go after Gladdic. Not here."
"I'm not here to cause trouble for Collen. If this isn't war, I won't start one."
The despot looked up from his maps, eyeing Dante. "I've heard you're the type to grab your goals no matter what the cost to others. Give me your word."
"If you can't trust me, how can you trust my word?"
"I can't. But if the gods give a damn, it'll be one more thing to punish you for in hell."
Dante laughed. "I swear it. If I hurt him without your permission, may I be damned by Arawn himself."
"Wonderful." Jodd nodded to the door. "See you in the field."
The sun climbed, slow but steady. The advance of the Mallish was as methodical as the sun's ascent. The city streets were now as silent as the desert floor. Most of the citizens had remained—rather than fear, the primary response to the approaching army was outrage—but they'd shuttered their windows and bolted their doors.
At the cliffs above the path, though, over two thousand soldiers waited with weapons in hand.
"This is a new one," Blays said, looking down as the Mallish troops entered the fringes of the town below. "The besieged outnumber the attackers?"
Dante homed in on Gladdic near the head of the enemy column. "In older times, it was common when the attackers had sorcerers and the defenders didn't. A wall can't keep you safe from the shadows. A handful of ethermancers can collapse your flank in seconds. That's why Mallon and Gask worked so hard to bring the sorcerers under the court's control."
"Like you do any different in Narashtovik?"
"We need them for defense. Besides, they serve freely. Not like those caged bears in Gask."
As the army neared the base of the cliffs, a trickle of citizens ran up the switchbacks, seeking shelter in the city. The gates remained open. Gladdic came to a stop three hundred feet below. Jodd walked to the edge of the cliffs, flanked by four of his generals.
Gladdic stepped forward from his troops, tall and lean. He was joined only by a portly young man, also in gray robes.
"I am Ordon Gladdic of Bressel." His voice cut through the dry air like a freshly stropped knife. "I come on behalf of two kings. Charles, regent of Mallon. And Taim, regent of the heavens and all that lays below them. Both of my masters will be displeased to hear that I have been met by a hostile force."
Jodd stared down at him. "I don't care who you are. Don't care why you're here. You want to talk, come on up. But your army stays down there."
"Your refusal to let us enter a city of the king's own realm will be considered an act of war."
The despot planted his hands on his hips and laughed. "An act of war? What do you call marching a thousand men up to my gates?"
"Insurance that justice will be done." Gladdic bit off each word. "You will step back from the gates. You will lay down your arms and let us inside. You will then turn over all weapons longer than the king's forearm. You will also turn over all those associated with the attack on Cobb's Fort, and assist our investigation of the matter. If you satisfy each of these conditions, then you will preserve peace with Mallon."
"Preserve peace. I'd like that. But there are others who don't think that'd be an honorable deal."
"Who could question the decision of the despot?"
"The ancestors whose remains you defiled at Cobb's Fort!" Jodd bellowed down the cliffs, the cords in his neck as taut as the strings of a lyre. "The only way you're entering this city is on a corpse wagon, you arrogant son of a bitch. Now get back to Bressel before you get sunburned."
His soldiers cheered, hoisting spears and wheels. Far below, Gladdic stared upward, head tilted back, motionless. Dante was wearing plain clothes and had been careful to keep himself separated from Jodd, but he now wished he was peering from the cover of a shuttered window.
In time, the cheering dwindled. Gladdic spoke. His voice wasn't loud, yet it made its way to the top of the cliffs. "Take the city."
Jodd turned to his generals and nodded. They hollered orders to their troops. Squads of infantry descended the top of the slopes, joined by the gold-ribboned wheelers. Archers took position on the bends in the road.
Blays nudged Dante in the ribs. "If Gladdic hangs back, do we have a plan to get at him?"
"He'll have to stay close to support his infantry. If he stays out of range, his army won't last long. We'll follow his retreat and take him on the road."
Below, Mallish soldiers in blue advanced, shields and boards held above their heads. The archers, who bore armbands of orange and silver—devotees of Jorus and Carvahal—fired a smatter of arrows, testing range.
"I don't like this," Naran said. "Gladdic doesn't strike me as one to be goaded into an attack he can't win."
Blays loosened his swords in their sheaths. "Meaning he's planning to get ugly. Sorcerer stuff. You'll probably want to stand back."
Naran stayed put. Dante wasn't sure if that was to his credit or demerit.
Near the bottom of the road, a man screamed. The first casualty of the day. The Collenese archers upped their rate of fire, but the enemy was on the move and far enough downhill that few arrows came close. Most were caught by Mallish shields.
Once the bluecoats had made it past the first few turns, the archers slowed, conserving fire. The Mallish trotted onward, dressed in chain and boiled leather studded with iron. They advanced a quarter of the way up the road, then halfway.
As they negotiated the turn there, the archers loosed a sudden, concentrated volley. Below, a sergeant barked out. The Mallish stopped, hunkering down, shields locked above their heads. Arrows rapped into their shields. As soon as the volley ceased, the soldiers stood and rushed forward. The Colleners fired again. Again, the Mallish turtled up. A single man fell. They moved on.
Over the course of the next leg of the trail, the archers staggered their fire, forcing the bluecoats to slow, then come to a complete stop. The attackers pressed closer to the rock, hampering the archers' angle of fire, then moved on. The archers plinked away at them, but the Mallish were now moving single file. Sticking close to the cliff wall, they left little for the archers to fire on except when they came to the next turn in the road. There, their cover shrank to nothing, leaving a hectic scramble to get behind the next ledge of rock.
Two-thirds of the way up, with the wounded and dead littering the trail behind them, the Mallish stopped their advance, tightened ranks, and lifted an interlocking shield wall over their heads. Four beads of light arced from the soldiers, blinding and terrible.
Dante gawked. "The monks are disguised as soldiers!"
The lights whipped forward, punching through the bodies of four archers. Vivid red viscera spattered the rock wall behind them. The Colleners returned fire, but the arrows thunked into the shields without drawing a single scream.
The priests launched a second volley of pearly light, then a third. One archer after another fell, blood soaking into the dust. Collen had no sorcerers of its own. Nothing to stop the awful light from piercing its soldiers. Dante had to clasp his hands together to prevent himself from tearing into the pr
iests with all he had. He needed to save every drop of his powers for Gladdic.
The archers jogged higher up the trail, seeking angles of fire through the shield wall. Lights spun and slew. Without warning, the archers broke into a run, fleeing uphill.
"Lasted longer than I thought they would," Dante said. "But no one exposed to sorcerers can stand firm for long."
Blays tucked down the corner of his mouth. "You almost sound proud of that."
With the archers in ragged retreat, the Mallish infantry rushed onward. Collen's generals called orders. A column of swordsmen moved downhill and stopped, digging in. The disguised ethermancers turned their attention to the infantry, blasting soldier after soldier to the ground. The front lines wavered.
"Gods damn it." Dante unsheathed his knife and slashed his arm. Nether rushed to his hands. He slung a ball of shadows downhill, intercepting the priests' incoming volley. Nether and ether twinkled away in a blast of sparks.
The priests fired again. Again, Dante swatted it down. One of the sergeants yelled out to Gladdic, who remained with his advisors at the base of the road.
Blays socked Dante on the shoulder. "I thought we weren't going to get involved!"
"If we don't stop the priests, they'll punch right through the defenses. They'll enter the city uncontested."
"But they'll run out of light eventually, won't they?"
"Before or after they've slaughtered every Collener standing on this road?"
Blays grimaced. "Did Collen just forget that it was a good idea to have a few sorcerers kicking around for situations like this?"
"It is illegal here," Naran said. "If someone shows the talent, and wishes to pursue it, they must do so in Mallon."
"Leaving their homeland vulnerable to anyone who can pull a few sparkles out of the air. That's a fiendish little setup."
After some yelling back and forth, the Mallish priests fell back. The bluecoats climbed upward, shields and swords in hand. The ribboned Colleners planted themselves, spears out.
The Mallish picked up speed, roaring as they charged. The two sides met with the clang and swash of steel. With the Mallish halted, the Colleners withdrew their front ranks. Wheelers jogged forward, spinning their long weapons. The weighted iron ends clubbed aside Mallish shields. Spears darted through the gaps. With the shield wall in disarray, the wheelers backpedaled away and the Collenese infantry surged forward, hacking and stabbing.
The Mallish retreated to reform their lines. In the space opened by their withdrawal, a ring of bones lay in the dirt, their pale surfaces painted with black sigils.
Dante's eyes went wide. He turned toward Despot Jodd and yelled, "Pull back your soldiers! Pull them back!"
Beside him, Blays whispered a curse. On the road between the two groups of soldiers, a man's shadow stretched across the dirt—but no one was there to cast it.
The Andrac pulled itself from the ground, eyes shining like two fragments of a lost moon.
15
On the slopes, both Mallish and Colleners fell back as the Andrac stretched its thin arms wide. Long claws spread from its hands. It opened its mouth. A light shined within its throat, silhouetting triangular teeth as black as pitch.
It swiveled its head between the two groups of soldiers, considering, then lowered its arms and charged the Mallish bluecoats.
"A demon!" Gladdic's clear voice cut through the clamor like a shard of broken glass. "The defilers bring a demon to bear against us! Retreat!"
As his soldiers galloped away, he raced up the switchbacks. Blinding light swirled from his priests, striking the Andrac and winking out in flurries of sparks. The ether didn't so much as slow it. It raked its claws across the back of a Mallish soldier. The man wailed and dropped. Black steam gushed from his wounds.
The demon's long strides easily overtook the retreating soldiers. It lashed about, felling five men in a span of seconds. Wherever it struck, the wounds blackened, belching smoke.
"Right," Blays said. "Now I'm very glad we ran from the first one of those."
Dante stared, mouth hanging half open. "It's going after the Mallish. How much control over these things does he have?"
The Star-Eater carved through the laggards, men limping from injuries sustained during the skirmish with the Colleners. It stopped to tear apart the bodies and fling the pieces on the soldiers flowing down the switchback below it. The soldiers parted to allow Gladdic through. He stopped thirty feet from the Andrac. His priests stood a safe distance behind him.
"Demon!" Gladdic lifted a white rod, a crystal glinting from its tip. "Vile summons. Incarnation of filth. How dare you stand here in the sunlight of men?"
The demon stood from the remains of a corpse, blood sizzling from its black claws. It flexed its arms and stepped toward Gladdic.
He thrust the rod forward. "Turn on those who brought you here! Turn on those who would use Arawn's horrors to profane their fellow men! Turn!"
With this last word, white light gushed from the rod. It bathed the Andrac, outlining it in witchfire. The demon swayed, fading to mist-like insubstantiality. Then its form hardened, black as a hole cut through the fabric of reality. It lunged straight up the steep slopes. Before the Colleners had the chance to scream, it slashed the first of them down.
The city's soldiers turned and fled. A vanguard of wheelers formed before the Andrac, jabbing with their spearpoints. These slid right off its blank black surface. A woman wound up and swung the clubbed end with all her might. When it struck the demon, the weapon's shaft broke into splinters.
The beast lurched forward. Bodies spun away from its claws, tumbling down the hillside in puffs of dust.
Down the hill, Gladdic smiled. He spread his arms to his men. "I have turned the darkness against its master! Sally forth. We will purify the city of this awful taint."
His soldiers cheered, waving their swords high. They regrouped and jogged up the road in the company of the priests.
"This was a stunt," Dante murmured. Like a knife on a whetstone, anger made each word sharper and sharper. "He summoned the Andrac, then made it attack his people to make it look like we'd called it here. And he had no problem sacrificing a dozen of his own men to put the blame on the Colleners."
Blays grunted. "Most of the soldiers he sacrificed were already wounded. No good in the fight. That man's mind is as cold as an iceberg."
"We already know Gladdic's soul is lost," Naran said. "And if we don't stop that demon, this city will be forfeit to him."
Dante turned to run toward the despot, but Blays grabbed his sleeve, pointing downhill. "Look!"
Cord stood alone on the road, wheel angled behind her body. Her laughter boomed. "Come then, demon! If you kill me, I die for my people. But if I kill you, what have you died for?"
The Andrac moved toward her, shoulders swaying.
"Cord, you idiot!" Blays cupped his hand to his mouth. "Dying down there won't do anyone any good!"
She showed no sign of having heard. With the demon nearing, Dante reached into the road, softened the rock to mud, and let it slide downhill with a great whoosh, opening a deep gash between Cord and the Andrac.
Cord looked uphill and down. "What sorcery is this?"
She jogged backward from the gap. The demon crouched its legs and jumped. Cord's face went stony. As it sailed toward her, she turned and ran straight up the hill, rocks sliding from under her feet. The Andrac followed in bounds, closing quickly. Dante yanked away the rocks beneath it. Small landslides clattered away. The demon slipped repeatedly, but each time it looked ready to fall downhill, it found a small foothold and leaped upward again. The Collenese infantry flooded back onto the butte.
Despot Jodd strode up beside Dante, flanked by generals and advisors. "What is that thing?"
"It's just as Gladdic said," Dante said. "It's a demon. Your soldiers can't harm it."
He ran his hand down his beard. "Can you?"
"We're about to find out."
The Andrac came to the top of
the cliff. It paused there, arms extended from its sides, and flexed its claws. The Colleners withdrew, forming a wide ring around it. The Mallish had advanced most of the way up the road behind the creature, but they kept their distance, too.
Dante gathered fistfuls of nether to him. He fired it at the Andrac in little needles, probing. The Andrac slowed and brought its arms closer to its body. Every scrap of nether that touched its body disappeared. As if the beast was drinking it. The demon flex its arms and bounded forward.
Heart pounding like a war drum, Dante conjured every speck of ether he could condense from the air. He formed an icicle of light sharper than any spear and thrust it at the demon's heart.
The point punched through the demon's chest. The Star-Eater reeled back, shrieking like tearing metal. A two-inch hole gaped through its chest, the desert visible on the other side. The city seemed to hold its breath.
The Andrac lowered its chin, regarding the wound. The patch of desert on the other side of its chest began to shrink. Bit by bit, the hole contracted until the demon's chest was a seamless patch of darkness.
"Oh," Dante said. "We're screwed."
Blays unsheathed his swords. "My turn."
The demon took a step forward. Dante grabbed at Blays' elbow. "You can't possibly think you can hurt it with steel!"
"According to that story of yours, Gott took on an Andrac with his sword." Blays strolled toward the demon. "Besides, you said they come from the shadows, right? Let's see how it likes being fought on its home turf."
Blays disappeared mid-step. As always when people saw him shadowalk, the crowd gasped. The Andrac jerked back its head and fell into a fighting crouch. It skipped back a step. The air around it rippled. It swiped at the disturbance, then yanked back its arm, shaking it. The demon circled, slashing repeatedly, then darted to the side with preternatural quickness. Step by step, it backed toward the cliff.
Without warning, it sprung forward, claws whisking through the air as it made attack after attack. Sometimes its arms stopped mid-strike, arrested by an invisible sword. After a ferocious exchange, Blays was dumped bodily back into the visible world. He staggered backward. Blood coursed down his left arm.
The Silver Thief Page 22