Chains of Blood

by M. L. Spencer

  Guards swept forward to drive the crowd back as their party dismounted at the foot of one of the watchtowers. Rylan handed his reins to a soldier, then made his way to the Sultan’s side. Sayeed placed a hand on his back and guided him forward, walking within their circle of guards into the tower. There, they took a spiraling staircase up to the battlements, where they exited to a dark and hellish view.

  A strong gust seized Rylan’s hair the moment he stepped out of the protection of the tower’s walls and onto the crenelated roof. The air was fiercely cold, stinging his cheeks and biting his fingers. It brought with it the smell of heated oil and pitch, scents he was familiar with from his years at the front. They provoked an instant response in him, quickening his pulse and tightening his stomach.

  At the sight of the Sultan, the soldiers stationed on the tower stopped all activity and inclined their heads. Sayeed ignored them, hands planted on his hips, surveying the scene. No man dared look at him, and he let them wait long seconds before acknowledging them with a nod.

  The soldiers returned to their stations, while their commanding officer rose and walked forward, bowing low. “Your Majesty, a large force numbering roughly eighty thousand appeared before our gates. Their standards and insignias are unknown to us. We are uncertain of their intentions.”

  To Rylan, one glance over the battlements made their intentions obvious. Whatever host was down there, they were well-armed and well-armored. Their numbers stretched westward in organized units along the north wall, starting at the Lion’s Gate. Rylan glanced at the Sultan and saw Sayeed’s gaze roving over the host below, coolly considering. His fingers tapped absently on the jeweled pommel of the sword at his side.

  “What is this?” he said.

  Rylan turned his attention back to the field, where the ranks of the besieging army had parted to admit a lone man on a gray destrier. The horse moved at a lumbering walk, head down as if exhausted. Its rider was armored in field plate, his helmet shaped like a wolf’s head and adorned with a long horsetail plume. In his right hand, he clutched a feathered spear, and a leather-skinned kite shield hung on his left arm. He drew his horse up just out of bowshot of the walls, well out ahead of his army, and simply waited, the wind whipping his cloak and his horse’s long mane.

  The Sultan’s eyes narrowed as he stared down at the lone warrior below. Scowling, he ordered his commanding officer, “Send an emissary. Find out who they are and why they are here.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty!” The officer turned immediately and made haste to convey the order.

  Rylan moved forward to a crenel and stared down at the scene, a shivering chill passing over him. He was only vaguely aware of Sayeed coming to stand at his side, hands resting on the stone of the parapet. Overhead, mounted behind them on the tower, a trebuchet creaked as its attendant crew labored to raise the counterweight.

  “Do you have any idea what force this is?” Sayeed asked, just loud enough for Rylan to hear him over the wind.

  “No.” He shook his head, staring down at the lone rider’s cloak billowing in the gale. The cloak, combined with the wolf’s-head helmet, made the warrior seem fearsome and otherworldly, like a bestial spirit lured out of the wilds. The emissary sent by Sayeed’s commander rode out of the lee of the wall on a black horse and made his way across the plain.

  “Your Majesty,” called a voice from behind them.

  Rylan turned to see a group of five mages emerge from the tower’s stairwell. He recognized one of them: Grand Master Quinlan Reis. None of the mages offered deference to the Sultan. Rylan wondered at that. Was the status of a mage truly equal to a ruling monarch?

  “Warden Reis,” Sayeed said in acknowledgement. Turning to a gray-haired mage with deep pox scars on his face, he nodded formally. “Warden Dalton.”

  Glancing at Rylan, Quin offered a brief smile. “It’s good to see you alive,” he said to him. “Now try to remain that way.” He walked to the embrasure and stared down at the plain below, frowning deeply. “Were you expecting company?”

  The Sultan scowled, looking deeply troubled. “No. We have no idea who they are.”

  “Neither do I,” Quin said. He tilted his head back, holding his hat on his head as he stared up at the thick blanket of cloud cover darkening the skies. “Whoever they are, they didn’t come unprepared. They brought their own mages with them.”

  Below, the Sultan’s emissary wheeled his horse around and galloped back toward the Lion’s Gate. The enemy warrior rode back in the direction he had come, quickly swallowed by the sprawling ranks of his own army. It was long minutes before the Sultan’s envoy emerged from the tower steps to kneel at Sayeed’s feet.

  “Your Majesty,” the man said in a breathless voice, addressing the Sultan from his knees. “They call themselves the Turan Khar. I had discourse with a man who claims to speak with the mouth of their Warlord. They demand our unconditional surrender and the delivery of all mages in the city into their custody. They threaten the subjugation of our populace if we fail to comply with their demands within the hour.”

  The Sultan bared his teeth, his eyes glinting with ire. “Let them try. They will shatter against our walls.” Moving forward, he spat through the opening between merlons. The glob of spittle was quickly seized by a gale and flung backward, landing on one of the officers behind him.

  “The Turan Khar?” Quin echoed over the wind, scratching the unshaven stubble on his cheek.

  Rylan found himself fingering the curved pommel of the sword Sayeed had given him as he gazed down at the enemy ranks gathered below on the plain. If they had no knowledge of the foe they faced, it would be difficult to estimate their capability. More than anything, it was the thick blanket of cloud cover that brought him pause. How many mages would it take to darken the skies like that? And why would they go through the trouble?

  He turned to the Grand Master, asking, “Their mages—can you counter them?”

  Quin shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. It depends on how many there are, how strong they are, and what they’re trained to.”

  The Sultan asked, “Do you know of these people—these Turan Khar?”

  “No,” the Grand Master replied. “But that doesn’t mean anything. The older I get, the more I realize how little I actually know.” He cast one last, grudging stare down at the army, then indicated the mages who had come with him. “I’m leaving you Warden Dalton and three of his battlemages to help ward the gate. I’m going to round up some more defenders.” Clapping the Sultan on the arm, he turned and made his way toward the stairs, black coat billowing behind him.

  They waited after that.

  The unnatural night deepened and darkened around them, the wind continuing its howling assault. Shivering, Rylan drew aside into the lee of a merlon, next to one of the mages who’d come with Quin. The man stood staring vaguely into the distance, hugging his black cloak tight against his body, his auburn hair whipping his face. Hugging himself for warmth, Rylan nodded a stiff greeting.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked the mage, nodding his head to indicate the army below.

  The man blinked as if waking. He ran his gaze over Rylan. “I’m thinking how much I hate the wind,” he said guardedly. “Especially this wind.”

  Rylan agreed. There was something about the wind he didn’t like either. It had a sharp edge to it that cut right through his shirt. “I don’t like those clouds. They worry me.”

  “They worry me too,” the young mage said. “Excuse me.”

  The man brushed past him and walked over to the far corner of the tower, taking up position there. He shot a nervous glance back over his shoulder before turning away again. The look in his eyes wasn’t lost on Rylan. The man didn’t like him. Perhaps he’d been warned about him. Rylan suspected few people would want to keep his company, once they found out his lineage.

  Below on the plain, a low, throbbing pulse overcame the noise of the wind. Rylan leaned over the parapet to get a better view of the plain. At first, he couldn’t
make out where the noise was coming from. It took him a moment to realize the deep-throated rumble issued from rows of enormous drums positioned well behind the enemy lines. The throbbing cadence continued like a steady heartbeat, shaking his gut with every thunderous boom. Somehow, the minutes of waiting had grown into an hour, and he hadn’t realized it. The top of the tower became a flurry of commotion as men took up positions along the battlements. Below, the drums maintained their slow, unremitting tempo, as if beating out a cadence only the gods could march to.

  Until they stopped.

  And the wind stopped with them.

  A cold and eerie feeling curled up in the pit of Rylan’s stomach. He glanced around at the other men on the watchtower, trying to gauge the situation by the looks in their eyes. What he saw frightened him. No one knew what to expect, that much was obvious. There was no trace of fear in the eyes of the officers, but there was enough concern to make his insides grow chill. He waited, watching, as the quiet dragged on for tedious minutes. The longer it lasted, the more unsettling it became. He could feel the tension in the air stretching thinner and thinner, his nerves stretching with it. His pulse throbbed in his ears, growing louder by the heartbeat.

  A subtle change below caught his attention. The ranks of the army parted slightly. All along the plain, pairs of men and women were making their way forward, wading through the sea of bodies, emerging from the front lines and continuing forward a good distance. They halted just out of bowshot and formed a long, broken line that stretched the full length of the north wall. At their feet glowed a dim, gray-blue mist.

  Rylan stared down at the pair nearest his own position, a man and a woman standing side-by-side. The woman wore garments little better than torn rags, her long, silvery hair hanging in matted snarls. She was young, probably still in her teens, and stood with one arm chained to the gray-skinned man who stood at her side. Both were staring up at the wall. For just a moment, Rylan felt as though their eyes met. But that was impossible; they were too far beneath him to make eye contact. He shivered, glancing sideways at Sayeed. The Sultan leaned with one arm braced against the stone of a merlon, the other hand stroking his beard. He frowned deeply as he surveyed the situation below, his eyes dark and troubled.

  “Be ready,” he warned his commanders.

  The black-cloaked battlemages moved forward and took up positions at his sides.

  “They look like slaves,” one of the men observed. “Or prisoners.”

  The pox-scarred Warden shook his head. “That’s magelight.”

  Rylan looked at the subtle, blue-gray mist beneath the feet of the pair standing beneath them. The light made them look ghostly. The woman’s silver hair whipped about her shoulders, even in the absence of wind.

  “Your Majesty,” said one of Sayeed’s men. “You should go down from here.”

  “Not yet.” The Sultan peered over the edge of the wall, his eyes scanning the plain.

  The long silence continued, stretching until it became unbearable. The air was still and frigid, making Rylan’s breath fog before his face. Down below, the chained mages stood gazing up at the city walls, motionless, their magelight glowing softly in the darkness. The more Rylan stared at them, the more anxious he became.

  A shout from behind made him flinch.

  The mages beneath the walls were moving forward, lifting their hands as if holding something of great weight. Together, they tilted their heads back until they were staring straight up at the sky. Above, glimmers of red light streaked across the clouds, provoking loud crackles of thunder. More lights erupted within the cloudbank, strobing briefly like flickering torchlight. The air around them took on a strange, musty odor, like the smell of damp earth after a heavy rain. The lights in the clouds intensified overhead.

  There was a sudden, crackling thunder. Then an enormous fireball erupted from the clouds and streaked over the walls with a deafening roar, trailing a crackling tail of flames and smoke behind it. It struck with force somewhere in the heart of the city, the violence of its impact trembling the ground and spewing great clouds of smoke into the sky that glowed orange against the surrounding darkness.

  Screams rose from every direction as pandemonium broke loose. All along the walls, trebuchets launched flaming payloads into the attacking army. The long line of enemy mages stood their ground, chained arms raised to the sky. The clouds above flickered hellishly.

  Another ball of fire shot down from the cloudbank with a thunderous roar, striking the watchtower just west of the Lion’s Gate. The tower exploded in a shower of stones and men, taking a section of wall out with it. Enemy forces broke forward, spilling toward the breach, as another flaming projectile crackled through the air, striking another section of wall.

  “Counter them!” the Sultan bellowed at their mages. Overhead, the trebuchet gave a creaking shriek as it loosed its payload upon the forces below.

  The red-haired mage shook his head, his eyes wide and horrified. “I can’t!” he shouted. “They’re too powerful!”

  Rylan glanced back at the Sultan, wondering what Sayeed was going to do. Another fiery projectile streaked down from the clouds, exploding somewhere behind the wall with such force that it shook the tower’s foundations. Below, enemy soldiers swarmed through the breach.

  “They’ll be flanking our position,” Rylan warned.

  With a curse, the Sultan signaled his guards to retreat from the battlements and made haste toward the stairwell. Rylan moved after him, staggering as another roaring fireball impacted with the ground. The air was chokingly thick with smoke, the entire atmosphere glowing orange from the fires devouring the city. Rylan took the tower steps two at a time, following on the heels of the Sultan’s party. When he reached the level of the street, he ran out of the tower and emerged into chaos. The horses they’d arrived on were gone. Groups of soldiers sprinted past them toward a melee that had overrun the square behind the Lion’s Gate. There, the city’s defenders were being cut down by the flood of enemy soldiers spilling over the rubble of the wall.

  Drawing his sword, the Sultan started toward the thick of the fighting. But he went only a couple of steps before he drew up short. His sword sagged at his side, his shoulders slouching. He stared ahead at the slaughter, color and resolve draining from his face.

  “This fight is lost,” he said. He swung around to face his commander. “Order a retreat. We’ve lost this quarter. Withdraw to the far side of the canal!”

  With one last, reproachful glare, he turned and hastened away from the flagging battle. Rylan bared his sword and, flanked by his personal guards, followed the Sultan’s party as they dodged into a narrow alley. Shouts and screams jarred the night, the dance of flames casting torturous shadows on the high walls that surrounded them. Rylan followed them through an open gate and around a corner, the passage narrowing.

  With a crackling rumble, a fireball streaked by low overhead, slamming into the street just a block away. Rylan was flung off his feet, his sword wrenched from his hand. The thunder of the impact rattled his brain and deafened is ears. He covered his head as fragments of buildings showered down around him. The ground trembled, and the night glowed a bloody orange.

  When he dared look up, he found himself in a silent world covered in a thick layer of gray dust. He staggered to his feet, choking and sputtering, scanning the debris-littered alley for his sword. Coughing into his sleeve, he tried to shield his face from the swirling dust. He freed his sword from under a chunk of rubble, then bent to check on a man who lay unmoving at his feet. He retracted his hand quickly. The soldier was dead, part of his head caved in.

  “The way ahead is blocked!” one of the Sultan’s officers shouted. “We have to turn back!”

  Rylan glanced back the way they had come and saw only the lights of fires.

  Sayeed nodded, coughing as he stumbled forward, his face and hair painted gray with ash. Rylan waved his guards ahead, then started after the last man into a shattered alley. The path, barely wide enough for t
wo men walking abreast, twined and twisted through a residential neighborhood. The walls of the houses were three stories high, completely cutting off the view of the rest of the city. Rylan had no idea how much of Karikesh remained standing and what had already fallen. The lights of the fires danced along the walls, smoke and dust thickening the air.

  A warning shout stopped their progress.

  The Sultan’s men drew their swords and sprinted ahead to engage a group of enemy soldiers. Rylan started toward them but then stopped himself. Instead, he swung around and jogged back the way they had come, scanning the street behind them, making sure they hadn’t been flanked. The sounds of the scuffle ended quickly. Glancing back, he saw only corpses lying in the alley where the fight had just been. The Sultan and his men were already sprinting, disappearing around a corner ahead.

  Rylan started after them. But a silhouette jumped in front of him, blocking his path. The shadow stepped into the firelight, revealing features he recognized.

  It was the woman who’d almost killed him.

  The sight of her made him freeze, his insides chilling instantly. She took a step toward him. Gasping in shock, Rylan staggered backward, heart pounding. He scanned the alley, looking for an escape. The shadow of a doorway caught his eye, and he bolted past her toward it.

  He managed only two steps before she leaped at him, knocking him to the ground. He tried rolling away from her, but she was too fast. The woman threw herself on top of him, sliding her arms under his body and clutching him tight. He bucked and squirmed beneath her, trying to fight her off.

  The alley started fading. He screamed and struggled harder, but the more he fought, the more the world faded around him. Or maybe he was fading. Whichever; it didn’t matter. The ground dissolved beneath him, and suddenly he was falling.

  14

  The Battle of Karikesh