The leech-headed chira were waiting on the castle’s side like the gargoyles they’d replaced. They fell like a flock from hell; screeching, clawed things whose blind heads sohow unerringly found their targets.
One of the knights behind shouted a warning too late. Black claws took Declan at full speed, tearing him off the top of the tower. Three of the creatures flapped around him in a ravenous ball while he scread over the open air. They tore his armor off like the most efficient squires in the world and ate him alive mid flight. What dropped into the bay after resembled nothing human.
The air filled with the snaps and cracks of leathery wings. I swung on reflex at a blur of movent, cutting the wing off a flyer at the joint. It slamd into the parapet, its neck breaking from the impact.
But there were many more. They filled the fog, turning the previously silent night into a nightmare of noise and movent.
The creatures seed to have no sense of self preservation. One dove directly into a knight behind Emma, impaling itself on his sword even as they both went over the wall. At a shouted order from Lochwine, the rest of the knights lifted their shields and went low to leave smaller, more solid targets. Their swords crackled with electric aura. When they struck, their targets detonated into smoking at.
But they didn’t have infinite access to that magic. A few blows, then their swords beca mundane steel again with no ti to pull out another Art stone.
“Emma!” I barked. “Give space!”
She had Hyperia down on her knees so none of the creature’s could grab the princess. Emma didn’t even glance my way as she acted. She lifted a closed fist dripping with blood, furrowed her brow in concentration, then hurled those drops out into the air.
Emma’s Art was versatile, more than almost any other I’d seen even across twenty years of travel and warfare. I might have more moves in my arsenal, but each was pre-prescribed in shape and function. Shrike Forest, on the other hand, could be used in a variety of ways — so long as it started with a drop of blood and ended with sothing sharp.
The droplets of blood Emma flicked into the air flashed, then exploded in a fanning rain of phantasmal shrapnel. Knowing as I did that it took incredible control and concentration for her to direct each sprig that grew from those red seeds, it ca as a mild shock that none of the bolts rained down into our group. The chira shrieked as their mbranous wings tore and their flesh peeled apart. They scattered, at least for a few seconds.
Long enough for to shape an Art myself. I spun my axe above my head in what would look to most as a boisterous display. Pale golden fire swept around in a growing whirlwind. I collected it with another several sweeps of my axe until the gold-inlayed blade glowed bright. I drew it in close to my chest, blew out a breath that erged as glowing mist, then swung into the flock.
The Seraph’s Halo had worked well against Yith when he’d possessed Kieran and proved too quick to catch with anything slower. It flickered out into the chira as a spinning golden spiral, thin as a blade of sunlight and sharp as the finest steel. It sliced through bodies, cutting off heads and wings with every rotation. The fiendish war beasts began to tumble limply from the air.
With each spin, the halo grew smaller and dimr until it finally scattered into amber motes. But it’d done its work, killing more than half a dozen of the creatures.
The Steward didn’t waste our expenditure of aura. With a bellow half the castle must have heard, he ordered the group forward. We made it to the tower’s base, Ser Ariel covering us from above. She stood in the sa spot Declan had died, her sword down and her left hand up. She was holding bolts of lightning, hurling them into the regrouping flock. I rembered the fulgurscales she’d taken from the others. Dangerous little stones, those, and seemingly good for more than just electrifying one’s sword.
“We need to get back into the castle,” the Steward bood. “We’re exposed out here, and there could be scores of those things.”
I glanced back towards the walltop as the knights moved into the watch tower. Armored shapes were forming behind us in the mist. The ghouls had been drawn out by our fighting. We shut and barred the tower’s siege door. It would hold for a short ti, against a mundane enemy at least.
“What if they have Art to break it?” One of the knights asked.
“Ghouls can’t use Art,” one of the others said with assured satisfaction. “They don’t have souls.”
“Not true,” I said. “I fought a Mistwalker last year who could wield toxic fus. And they do have souls. You could see their ghosts earlier, rember?”
That clearly didn’t comfort them, but I wasn’t going to spare their feelings for the sake of dogmatic misunderstandings. “The Steward’s right, but that bridge is a kill spot for those creatures. They’ll just drown us in bodies until we all tumble off. Is there another way in?”
“This tower makes a corner section on the wall,” Lochwine said. “Only way is across the bridge, or back the way we ca. There’s a storehouse below if you’d rather just hole up and pray.”
He shrugged. I suspected he didn’t an it as a joke and wouldn’t judge anyone who chose that option.
The Steward grimaced. “Every other route in the halls behind us were barricaded or heavily guarded by the undead. We must press forward.”
He considered a mont before nodding. “There are other survivors in the Empress’s bastion. We will redirect our destination.”
I shook my head. “I need to find Calerus and stop this. If he was in the throne room when this started, then I believe he’ll still be there.”
“This is not the ti to be a glory hound, Ser Hewer. Your duty is to the Emperor.”
“And what do you think His Grace will have do?” I asked him pointedly.
The Steward glared at a long mont, but before he could argue further he suddenly coughed, grimaced again, and beca unsteady on his feet. It took two of us to catch him.
When I touched his shoulder, my hand ca back sticky with blood. The royal advisor’s shirt was shredded across his back where a chira had raked him.
“My lord…” My voice was quiet.
“I know.” He t my eye. “Hewer, I don’t particularly trust you, but I’m not sure I can go much further. Take these soldiers and make sure Markham is still alive.”
It was the first ti I’d heard him use his lord’s na.
“If he is not, then find…” He took several deep breaths, sweat beading on his forehead. “Find the Empress and her children. One of them must survive. They are… our future. If we lose both, then this land will… eat itself.”
He grabbed my shoulder, his huge fist large enough to get a firm grip on my pauldron. “And do not let Calerus Vyke leave this castle alive. There must be justice for this. Whatever dark powers he courts, we must deprive them a champion.”
I nodded. then half on impulse I asked him, “What is your na?”
He smiled grimly. “I do not have one. I was grown in an alchemist’s vat in Bantes. I am just… the Steward.”
So of the knights looked taken aback. Apparently, this wasn’t a known secret.
“I will stay here.” The Steward waved us off and moved to a crate to ease himself down. He looked pale, more so than usual. “I’ll just slow you down.”
He lifted his bright blue eyes to regard us with an uncanny intensity. “If soone could spare a sword, I would be grateful.”
One of the knights volunteered to stay with the Steward. After his comrades wished him a quick farewell, which included a firm handshake from Lochwine, we moved out.
“Let cross the bridge first,” I told them. “There were Mistwalkers out there before we got inside. They might have archers.”
Lochwine scratched at his cheek, then repositioned his helt. “Hope you’re fast.”
“He is,” Emma said enigmatically. “Don’t worry.”
“Does anyone have one of those rocks?” I asked.
They gave two. I weighed them in my palm, feeling the thrill of energy they sent through my arm. The echo of a storm, trapped in rock.
I could still hear leathery snaps out in the fog as I peeked out of the door on the tower’s second level. The chira weren’t bothering to be quiet anymore, knowing we had only two ways to go. The bridge was little more than a flat surface atop a narrow arch of stone, barely wide enough for one man. There were no barriers on the sides to protect from a short, final drop into the crags.
To the right was the curtain wall, to the left the Empress’s Bastion with several hundred feet of open water between and it. About twenty paces of that narrow bridge, then I’d be back in the main palace.
Plenty of space to get sward, or shot. I took a breath, stood in the doorway, and rested my axe on my right shoulder.
“I’ll be behind you,” Emma said. “But I can’t move as fast with her.”
She glanced at the still blinded Hyperia.
“I’ll clear the way,” I said. “Keep close to Ser Lochwine and his people.”
Getting across the bridge wasn’t the part we were really worried about. The Mistwalkers had to know where our exit was, and they didn’t have to use the sa paths. The flyers would be ready to make sure we couldn’t retreat once we’d been swallowed into the Fulgurkeep’s maw.
At the end of the thin bridge lay a single innocuous door, strong oak reinforced by iron. No doubt locked and barred. I focused on it, reshaped my soul with a murmur, and crouched.
The glassy gold-white horns that burst out of my shoulders and arms brightened the dim tower room in a pale flash, and the sudden burst of wind that propelled forward made dust and straw erupt in my wake. I shot along the bridge like a scorpion bolt, my vision blurring as the world shifted around . I didn’t even hear the chira above start shrieking, just the roar of air in my ears.
The siege door shattered like a giant had thrown a battering ram through it. Wooden splinters exploded into the space beyond, and by the chorus of startled cries and shouts my guess about the waiting ambush was right.
Just as the Eardeking’s Lance dissipated, I crushed one of the two fulgurscales in my left hand. A crackling spear of yellow lightning erged. It bucked in my hand like a living thing, as though trying to escape . I nearly fouled my throw because of it, but managed to clench my muscles and direct that violent energy. It detonated in the middle of the narrow hall, frying a Mistwalker who’d been lifting an arbalest in my direction and blinding another near him.
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I saw the rest in brief flashes, like snippets of so manic nightmare.
A mouthful of ivory teeth.
Bloodshot eyes wide with shock.
A snarl of rage.
A blurring gladius.
Each image ended with the hooked blade of Faen Orgis swinging forward to crunch through steel, severing tough ghoul flesh, burning away spirits that ca loose as ghastly screaming shapes. I moved, and I swung, and I did not stop for anything. The narrow hall let cut through them without being surrounded, a murder corridor where I was the deadly, unstoppable boulder released by an unwary foot on a weighted stone.
The last fell at the end of the hallway. A larger hall opened up beyond it, one of the more regal palace access ways like we’d been in earlier.
I barely felt out of breath.
The last of the Mistwalker ambush lay beneath , spasming as golden fire crawled over his body. “You!” He bared his oversized teeth at , bone white eyes wide with pain and fury. “We rember you!”
He laughed, the sound erging as two voices as he struggled with the ghost trying to peel itself away from him. “You’ll fail just like at Caelfall, Headsman! We’ll gnaw the soul right off your bones, you’ll see.”
I glanced down at him. I’d already seen more impressive monsters that night.
“The Captain will shave you down,” the legionary cackled. “Trim so off the top! We’ve got a score with you for Vaughn.”
I knelt, grabbed him by the front of his breastplate, and lifted him. “Issachar is here?”
“You’re fucked!” He spat at as froth ford on his lips. “Your whole pretty city is fucked. It’s our ti, now. The grandest feast. We’ll fill Garihelm’s canals with shit and corpses, break open every crypt, eat until we’re gorged. Captain’ll take that Silvering whore too, see if everyone thinks her such a pretty jewel when she’s dining on rot and marrow like us. Once you’ve got the hunger, it never goes.”
“Where is he?” I demanded. “Calerus? Your captain? Tell and I’ll end you quick.”
He didn’t seem to hear . The ghoul’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head as the tremors ravaged him, but his grin nearly split his entire face. “A city of the dead all for our own! The Lost Legion no more!”
I dropped him as he burned and died a final death. All the while he smiled, until a gleeful skull was all that remained. Emma and the palace knights caught up just as his ravings went quiet.
“What is it?” Emma asked.
“The captain of the Mistwalker Company is here.” I t her eyes. “We need to get moving.”
“Throne room isn’t far away,” Ser Ariel said. They’d lost another man on the bridge, leaving our group with three Storm Knights, , Emma, and our prisoner. Lochwine and Ariel were both still alive, along with a younger soldier with black skin and a mane of dark brown hair spilling out of his bolt-crested helt. He’d pilfered a crossbow from the guard tower, wielding it along with his tower shield. The arbalest was a heavy weapon, usually too unwieldy to use encumbered, but the man bore a similar build to and hefted it easily.
We moved into a spacious antechamber. Columns held up the vaulted ceiling, separating it out into a series of smaller spaces and providing more cover for potential ambush than I’d like. It went on for so ti.
The fact it was poorly lit didn’t help matters. A low fog rolled around our legs like we walked through a humid cave.
“Do you sense anything?” Emma whispered.
“No. This fog isn’t helping.” I closed my eyes and lifted Faen Orgis to my lips, intending to clear the ghoul mist.
A voice rang out through the columns. “No! Get back into cover, or it’ll—”
I spun and saw a shape shamble into view from behind a column perhaps forty feet away. It was even bigger than the Steward, hunched and powerful looking. I didn’t get a clear view of it, just an almost shapeless silhouette that hinted at a powerful mass.
It held sothing, which it lifted up onto one shoulder with the rattle of chains. A muted hiss found my ears.
“COVER!” I roared and lifted my hand.
There ca a bright flash from the shape, followed by a thunderclap of sound and shocked air. Golden leaves ford into an abstracted tower shield in front of my outstretched hand, and sothing hit it the very second it ford.
Auratic constructs aren’t generally good at protecting against anything that isn’t also made of aura. They’re too short lived and fragile beyond that initial mont of manifestation. Ery Planter reminded of that when he’d broken an aureshield much like this one by doing little more than beating at it with a halberd.
The Aureate Repulsion counters hostile force with a strike of aurefla so long as I don’t budge from my stance. However, it takes most of that power from the opponent’s Art, using the other’s aura as a line to direct itself across. Even from so much as a mile away, if my attacker had hurled a bolt of phantasmal lightning or even just shot an arrow carried by a magical technique, the Repulsion would protect and strike back.
This enemy didn’t use sorcery. What struck was solid iron and burning powder carried by pure physics. It hit the shield, shattered it, and exploded in the sa instant. The shield still saved my life, or my armor did from the ensuing rain of shrapnel, but I was hurled back and skidded a distance on the stone floor.
A long mont of dizzy confusion followed. Soone was shouting. I realized it was Emma. What was she saying?
Oh. My na. She was telling to move. That seed like a good idea for so reason, but I couldn’t recall why.
Well, she was a smart girl and usually had my best interest in mind, so I complied. Rolling onto my stomach, I got a knee under and struggled to my feet. My right ear was ringing. Everything was a veil of dust, and bits of the ceiling were tumbling down on my head. There was blood on my temple, in my eye. Bits of tal were stuck into my skin.
Should have worn the damn helt.
My mind ca back to as the shock passed. I stood just as a hulking shape limped through the curling dust. It was a ghoul… no, not just a ghoul.
An ogre ghoul.
He was easily big as Karog, and much less symtrically shaped. One arm was larger than the other, and most of the flesh on his right cheek was missing to reveal yellowed teeth beneath. His eyes were the color of old bone, and he wore a mismatched ensemble of leather, rusting steel, and filthy cloth.
That wasn’t the worst part. Strapped to the shoulder above his larger arm by heavy chains was sothing like a cauldron with a deep neck and a bulbous bottom. It was fashioned of black iron, and smoke trailed from the mouth of the tube.
A cannon. The fucking ghoul was carrying a cannon.
Even powerful as he looked, the undead ogre moved slow and awkward under his burden. He had one arm cradling it like a docker carrying a barrel, stepping forward with a shuffling gait. I watched him slot another iron ball into the weapon, then strike a match against a piece of flint tied to his bracer. He held it up to a fresh fuse.
The bastard would bring this whole place down on our heads if he wasn’t stopped. I lifted my axe, then caught a flash of movent to the side. Behind one of the columns, Emma crouched with the palace guard who’d taken the crossbow. She caught my eye and smiled tightly.
What was her plan? Whatever it was, her ssage seed clear. Distract it.
I might have been fast, but not enough to dodge a cannon ball. What did she expect to do?
The ghoul carefully aid his weapon at , the black interior of its smoking tube promising a gory death. His jaw hung slack, I noted, and he drooled. Perhaps this one preferred to eat his bones in small pieces, and slightly cooked.
Sucking in so air, I laced my breath with aura and spoke.
“Hold your fire.”
The ghoul stared at blankly. I wasn’t sure if my command had worked or if it just didn’t understand Urnic common. Either way, it held its match dangerously close to the fuse.
But didn’t light it.
The knight beside Emma took aim and fired. His crossbow emitted a solid sounding crack as the string released, though it sounded wan compared to the thunderous blast of the Mistwalker’s weapon. The bolt struck the ogre in his tumorous shoulder. He blinked, not even seeming to realized he’d been shot at first. He slowly started to turn.
I started moving, thinking it’d been a distraction to give a shot, but Emma shook her head. I paused.
The cannon-wielder flinched, reached up to the bolt in his left shoulder to pluck it out. It seed to resist his effort. A dull pressure built in the air, and the ogre groaned.
Then, with a tallic screech that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, crimson shrike spears burst out of the ghoul’s body in four separate places. One ca out of his back, two beneath his arm pit, and the third punched up into his neck and through the skull.
He stumbled, gurgled, and didn’t die. With his neck broken and bent at an angle, he still managed to light the fuse and spun to aim the cannon at my squire.
I sprinted forward and slashed low, hamstringing him. The ogre stumbled and went down on a knee. A aty fist slapped at , but I was already out of the way. My eyes went to the fuse. It burned fast.
Too fast.
The cannon fired directly into the ceiling, and it ca tumbling down over the ogre. I lost him in an avalanche of dust and debris, then had to stumble back as more of the ceiling started to collapse over my head. Bits of stone pelted my head and shoulders, forcing to lift my arms protectively.
It must have only lasted monts, but seed to go on forever. When it was done, I coughed and tried to see through the settling dust. “Emma!”
No response. My heart clenched. Had the ceiling co down on her?
I started picking my way around the mound of collapsed masonry that’d buried the cannon-toting ghoul, but paused as shapes began to stalk forward through the gloom around . They lifted gladius’s, iron-headed maces, squared shields and javelins.
Mistwalkers. They’d co in behind their vanguard, using the shock and awe he created as a distraction to surround , spreading throughout the chamber using the columns as cover.
My whole body lit up as aurefla crackled. “Get out of my way.”
They hesitated, perhaps recognizing as the one before had.
Sothing gave in the ceiling above. The blast must have broken sothing important.
Before either I or my ambushers moved, a dark form burst through the dust cloud and slamd into one of them. They hit the ghoul nearly hard as if its friend had fired another cannon blast, and I heard bone crunch. A sword lashed out, cutting another’s neck before swinging around into a guard.
As that blur of movent slowed, I beheld the ripple of a red cloak and heard the rattle of iron links.
More figures appeared as a dozen or more castle guard, so tourney knights, and unarmored nobles with swords in hand crashed into the invaders. After my initial surprise, I stepped in to help them.
It was a short, ugly, confusing lee. The intermixed fog and dust of a crumbling ceiling made it impossible to see much even with my magicked vision, turning everything into a strange chaos of shadowy shapes, grunts, shouts, and ringing tal. The ghouls seed unable to retreat back into their mist, perhaps because the destruction thinned it out too much.
When it was over, I was breathing hard and leaning one foot on a pile of rubble, my axe propped on the ground like a cane. One of my rescuers stepped forward and removed his pointed cowl.
“Hendry.” I breathed a sigh of relief to see him alive. He looked pale, and there were bruises crawling up his neck, but he had blood on his sword and focused eyes.
“You’re alive.” He sounded relieved as I did. “I thought…” He froze. “Emma?”
“Help find her.” I nodded to the mound of rubble.
Hendry’s face turned from pale to ashen, but he followed without more questions. Castle occupants, many armored and so not, moved about the antechambers as they collected their wounded or finished off surviving enemies. So of them looked like servants, and I even noted one page who couldn’t have been older than eleven with a crossbow he could barely lift.
I found Ser Lochwine being tended to by a clericon in a blood-sared robe. He’d taken a spear to the hip, but the priest didn’t look too panicked. When I asked after Emma, he shook his head.
“Lost her in that first cannon shot. We were fighting ghouls trying to flank you. She took Ser Iren and scrambled off, told to watch this one.”
He nodded to his left, and I saw Hyperia on the ground near a broken column. She was in a side-seated position, her legs and skirts stretched out to one side. The bag remained on her head.
I stomped over and hauled the princess to her feet with little gentleness. She didn’t fight , though it took a couple tugs to get her to support her own weight. I searched the surrounding carnage.
“Who’s she?” Hendry asked.
I ignored him. I had a hundred questions for the boy, but suspected he couldn’t answer most of them and knew he probably didn’t know where anyone was any more than the Steward had.
My eyes fell on one figure directing so of the people in the hall. Vander Braeve still wore his tourney armor, and with his mussed brown hair and neat beard he looked the classical image of a well born soldier.
I put him from my mind. If Emma had gone under the ceiling, then I’d…
I didn’t know.
We searched for about five minutes, until nearby raised voices drew our attention. Hendry fell into step behind as I approached a group clustered around so fallen rubble. Two n were trying to lift a large slab of masonry, and I caught sight of soone under it through the veil of mist.
Drawing closer I recognized Ser Iren, the knight who’d helped Emma shoot her blood into the ogre. He was trapped under the slab, his face gray with dust and streaked with sweat. He tried to lift the stone off with the help of two others, one a palace guard and the other a tourney knight in armor that toed the line between decorative flamboyance and functionality.
Beneath Iren, I caught sight of a slimr form. I felt a thrill of fear.
Hendry helped without direction. With four of us assisting, Iren managed to dislodge the huge stone. Only then did I notice the greave over his right leg was crumpled nearly flat, with blood spilling out of the armor’s seams. How he wasn’t screaming in pain I had no idea, but soone caught him as the stone slamd into the ground and he slumped.
I knelt by my squire. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.
“Em…” Hendry fell to his knees next to , reaching out to Emma’s ash-coated face. “She’s not breathing,” He said in near panic.
She was my responsibility. I’d dragged her into this, pulled her along across endless miles and nurous bloody confrontations. She had no stake in this war, no loyalty to the realms.
Just to , and to what she wanted to beco.
Had she always looked so small? She’d never been tall, and even long months of hardship and her training at the Fane had left her more wiry than anything. Even Caim’s chain shirt didn’t add much.
My powers had changed. I didn’t understand how, or what it entailed, but my own fast healing was sohow accelerated. Did it an that, perhaps…
Could I do it again? Could my touch heal now?
I reached toward Emma’s face, focusing on my own inner warmth. I had to try.
Just before I touched her, Emma suddenly shivered and opened her eyes. Her hand caught my wrist and she flicked wide amber eyes to . “What are you doing?”
I almost gasped in relief. “Are you hurt?”
She grimaced and tried to sit with our help. “Nothing feels broken, but…”
She started coughing violently, and just as much ash ca out as spit. Hendry closed his eyes and bowed his head, muttering a prayer under his breath.
It struck , through the surge of relief, that she’d reacted to my impending touch with an almost instinctive fear.
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