Tyrcamber blinked. It was a bit like looking through a window of clouded glass. Through the ring he glimpsed something that looked like an island of white stone in a cavern of rough rock, menhirs glowing with blue fire at the island’s edges, waters churning and seething beyond them. It reminded Tyrcamber of the rift that had opened in the courtyard of Castle Grimnir, the rift opened by the Dwyrstone in Castarium, but this burning ring was far larger.
“Impossible,” said Rilmael.
“What is it?” said Tyrcamber again.
“The Great Eye,” said Rilmael.
“An eye?” said Tyrcamber, and then he remembered the conversation before the wedding. “The Great Eye?”
“It is,” said Rilmael, voice grim.
“The Great Eye was on your homeworld,” said Tyrcamber. “Then that gate goes to Andomhaim? To Ridmark Arban’s world?”
“Aye,” said Rilmael. “Most likely the Great Eye is a few hundred miles from Lord Ridmark’s town of Castarium. The Dwyrstones were built to channel and focus the magic of the Great Eye, and the outer ring of Dwyrstones made a ring several hundred miles in circumference. But this should be impossible. The Great Eye should have been destroyed after the depature of the Liberated. It shouldn’t still be there.”
“Well, it clearly is,” said Tyrcamber. “What are we going to do about it?”
Rilmael met Tyrcamber’s gaze. “We cannot let Merovech go through the Great Eye, Tyrcamber. That must be why Merovech withdrew here rather than offering battle elsewhere in Swabathia. The Theophract must have known that the Great Eye’s portal would appear here. If the Great Eye is about to open, that is the work of the Warden or one of his emissaries, likely these Heralds of Ruin. If the Warden passes through the world gate and comes here, then the Frankish Empire will fall. Andomhaim will be destroyed, and worlds beyond count will burn.”
A booming roar echoed out from Merovech’s army, and a winged shadow rose from the midst of the cultist soldiers.
It wasn’t the Theophract, but an immense black dragon, its sides marked with streaks of crimson. The creature’s scales looked like armor of red and black metal, and its wings stretched behind it like thunderclouds. Golden fire blazed in its eyes, and crimson fire writhed and danced around its sword-like talons.
Merovech had taken his dragon form.
His army cheered as the Dragonmaeloch flew overhead, and attacked the loyalist soldiers with renewed ferocity.
***
Chapter 26: The Crown Prince & The Soldier
“Hold!” roared Vegetius, spittle flying from his lips, blood dripping down his face from where a scimitar had clipped his helmet. “I said to hold, damn you! Show these red dogs how men of Andomhaim fight!”
Having shouted that, Vegetius demonstrated, his sword coming down and splitting a crimson orc’s skull. Orcish blood was usually green, and despite their red skin, these orcs’ blood was likewise green. But there were strange dark streaks in it that made Niall think of oil, or maybe the black slime that the urvaalgs Lord Ridmark had killed near Castarium had bled.
Niall could barely think about it as he battled for his life.
Fighting raged along the entire sea harbor. Several ships had caught fire in the melee, and their flames roared upward, plumes of black smoke swirling into the blue sky. To the north, the church bells of Cintarra rang out their alarm, and more militia rushed into the fray. Everywhere Niall looked, he saw the men of Cintarra struggling against the red orcs. The stones of the quays had grown slick with blood, both green and crimson, and the thunder of steel on steel and the roar of shouting voices filled the world.
It was more chaotic than the battle at Castarium by far. At Castarium, the opposing forces had been in more or less orderly lines. Here, as the red orcs poured ashore from their longboats and companies of men rushed to stop them, everything was bloody chaos. Twice Niall feared the men of the Prince’s bodyguard were about to be flanked by the red orcs, only for companies of militiamen to throw themselves into the fray, driving back in the invaders.
Another mob of red orcs charged, howling in a strange language that Niall did not recognize, their white tusks stark against their crimson faces and dark helms. Their black eyes glimmered with the battle lust all orcs shared, and they raised their scimitars high.
“Shield wall!” screamed Vegetius. “Hold, hold, hold!”
Niall braced himself, shield raised, sword drawn back to strike, and the men on his left and right did the same. There was a frozen, terrible instant before the orcs struck, and a half-dozen details flashed through Niall’s mind – the way the sun flashed off the curved blades of the scimitars, how the red orcs wore steel bracers over their forearms and boots reinforced with metal plates, how the battle rage made their black eyes look like hot coals.
And then the orcs crashed into the shield wall.
Niall adjusted the angle of his shield at the last moment and deflected a swing that otherwise would have found the top of his head. The raw strength of the orcish soldier made his arm ache, but he held against the attack. The man next to him was not so fortunate. He was only wearing a leather coif, not a proper helmet, and the scimitar bit through the leather and split his skull. The militiaman fell with a sound that was more like a gurgling moan than a proper scream. The scimitar, stuck in his skull, fell with him, and the orcish warrior hesitated for a half-second as he tried to wrench the weapon free.
Niall struck in that instant, sword darting forward like a serpent’s tongue. His blade found the orc’s throat and opened it, and the warrior snarled, or tried to. Blood burst from both his throat and his jaws, and in the grip of battle rage, the orc tried to throw himself upon Niall. Instinct and growing experience warned Niall of the danger, and he thrust his shield. The orc’s face impacted against the sheet of heavy oak and iron, and the red orc fell backward and started bleeding to death on the ground.
A shuddering breath ripped from Niall’s lungs, but he ignored it as he ignored the ache in his shoulders and knees and the pounding of his heart. The world shrank to the crimson orc in front of him, and then another, and another. Blood spattered his arms and chest and weapon, both green and crimson. Red blood? He didn’t think it was his. Niall killed and killed, sweat pouring down his face and stinging his eyes. He suddenly wanted a drink of water more than anything he had ever wanted in his life, but another orc attacked him, and Niall had to defend himself.
He cut the orc down, and the warrior joined the others sprawled upon the ground. There were so many dead men, both human and orcish, that it was getting hard to keep his footing. And the shield wall was still getting forced back. Had another wave of longboats launched from the warships beyond the harbor? Niall couldn’t see, and even if he had seen another hundred longboats rowing to the battlefield that the quays had become, he couldn’t have done a damned thing about it.
Yet another orc fell to his blade, and a flare of blue light caught his eye.
One of the red-robed priestesses stood a short distance away, blue fire dancing around her long, pale fingers. Niall couldn’t tell if that was the priestess who had given the speech earlier. The pale, gaunt women all looked alike to his eye. Like all the others, the priestess wore a crimson robe adorned with the strange sigil of a double ring and eight lines across the chest, and eight green eyes glowed in her face. She was casting a spell, and even as Niall looked, she saw him. A manic, wild grin went over her face, and she thrust her clawed hands out, the blue light blazing like a star.
“Down!” shouted Niall. “Get down! Get down!”
He flung himself to the ground, his armor clattering. Some of the nearby men-at-arms heeded him, and some did not. The priestess’s spell ripped from her hands in a cone of blue flame, and it swept across the men still on their feet. The fire did not burn. Instead, it twisted and warped, and the men screamed as strange black growths erupted from their flesh, and they collapsed dead, their bodies twisted and deformed.
Niall heaved off the ground and sprinted at the pri
estess. She grinned at him and began another spell, the blue light brightening around the crimson claws of her fingers, and Niall knew that he would not reach her in time.
So he threw his shield at her.
Part of him wondered if the shield would just bounce off her without effect. Normal steel did not work on creatures of dark magic, urvaalgs and ursaars and worse things, and perhaps the priestesses had that power. But the shield struck the priestess in the face, and her head snapped back, accompanied by a yelp and a burst of red blood from her damaged teeth. Niall sprang upon the priestess. He saw her green eyes, two of them human-shaped, the other six like jewels on her forehead. Her ears were pointed, like those of Lady Third and Lady Selene and Queen Mara, and there was something alien and elven in her features. Niall brought his sword plunging down once, twice, three times in rapid succession, and the priestess’s shriek of rage turned to a moan of pain and then to silence. She fell dead to the ground and did not move.
Blue light flared to the right, and Niall whirled, expecting that yet another priestess was casting a spell at him. He spotted another of the red-robed women standing about twenty yards further down the waterfront in front of a quay piled with both dead human soldiers and red orcs.
Accolon Pendragon sprinted at her, Hopesinger shining like a star in his hand. The priestess flung her spell at him, and Accolon raised his soulblade to intercept. He slowed as his soulblade’s power went to protecting him from dark magic, and the priestess’s spell shattered against Hopesinger like glass. The Crown Prince lunged forward with a burst of speed, and the soulblade found the priestess’s heart. She shrieked and tried to rake at him with her clawed fingers, but her blows had no strength, and she slumped to the ground and died.
Another wave of red orcs clambered up the quays, scimitars ready to strike, and Niall stepped back to his place in the shield wall. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that the men of Citnarra were winning the battle, that while the numbers of the red orcs had been thinned, more reinforcements from the city had strengthened the defenders.
Or maybe he was imagining it.
Niall fought on, but he tried to keep the white fire of Hopesinger in sight.
Lord Ridmark had told him to look after Prince Accolon, after all.
###
Hopesinger’s rage burned through Accolon’s mind as he fought and killed.
He had not been a Swordbearer all that long, and he was not used to his link with the soulblade or the abilities it gave him. The soulblade made him stronger and faster, and it enhanced his stamina, which was proving useful just now. But the sword reacted with fury to dark magic, and its rage blazed like fire through the link.
Hopesinger hated dark magic, and the sword would use its bearer to destroy wielders of dark magic.
Another red orc lunged at him. Accolon caught the descending scimitar on his shield. It was the third shield he had used today, scavenged from a slain man-at-arms. His first two shields had been hacked to kindling. The red orc went into a furious attack, the scimitar a weaving blur of steel. Accolon deflected three blows in rapid succession, and on the fourth, he swung the shield, Hopesinger’s power lending strength to the blow. The shield impacted against the orcish soldier’s chest with a loud clang, and the soldier stumbled. Before he could recover, Accolon ripped Hopesinger’s blade across the orc’s throat, and the soldier fell in a spray of green blood.
He turned, torn for a moment about the best course of action. He was the Crown Prince, and his place was to direct the battle and the efforts of the defenders, not fighting in the front line. Yet he was a Swordbearer, and his soulblade was their most powerful weapon against the dark magic of the red-robed priestesses of the Heptarchy, whatever the hell that was. There were a score of Swordbearers at Prince Tywall’s court, and they had stayed aloof from the vicious politics of the Regency Council, focusing instead on their duty of hunting down any creatures of dark magic that wandered into the valley of the River Cintarra. But now Cintarra’s Swordbearers were fighting in the docks, holding back the tide of red orcs and dark magic.
Accolon decided to fall back, to keep his bodyguard around him and try and steer the course of the battle. Then a pulse of blue fire caught his eye, and he saw not one but three of the priestesses standing together, all of them casting spells in his direction.
Despite the dire circumstances, a grim flicker of black humor went through Accolon. Ridmark had often said that the enemy had the power to overrule any plans you made, and it seemed that Accolon was about to see the truth of that yet again.
He rushed to face the priestesses as they released their spell.
Something that looked like a whirling blade fashioned out of liquid shadow leaped from the priestesses and hurtled towards him. Accolon did not stop his run but instead brought up Hopesinger, calling on the soulblade’s power to protect. The whirling blade struck Hopesinger and vanished into black smoke, though to judge from the chill that washed through Accolon, he didn’t want to know what would have happened had the blade touched his flesh.
He leaped forward, Hopesinger’s strength driving him, and struck down the first of the three priestesses. The woman fell dead, and the other two began new spells. The priestess on the right flung a burst of blue fire at him, and Accolon caught it on Hopesinger. In the same motion, he plunged Hopesinger into the priestess’s chest, and the sorceress fell with a shriek. Accolon ripped the soulblade free and wheeled to face the final priestess. She summoned something that looked like a sword fashioned of shadows and charged at Accolon, stabbing and slashing. Accolon deflected three swings, sidestepped, and took off the priestess’s head with a single powerful blow of Hopesinger.
The priestess’s head rolled away and fell into the harbor, her red-robed body collapsing to the ground in a pool of blood. Accolon turned, seeking another foe, and a roar of fury filled his ears.
The red orc charged at him.
The orcish warrior was huge, over seven and a half feet tall. Nearly all the other red orcs that Accolon had fought today had worn black chain mail and spiked helmets. This orc wore plate armor of red steel adorned with reliefs that looked like stylized spiders, variants on the double-ring symbol the priestesses had on their robes. Sigils of bloody fire burned on the armor, glyphs of blood sorcery for enhanced speed and strength. In his right hand, the huge orc carried a red greatsword. Even as Accolon shifted position to meet the attack, the armored orcs seized his greatsword in both hands and raised the blade high.
At the last moment, Accolon realized that even with Hopesinger’s strength, he could not possibly hope to block the huge sword. He dodged to the side, and the greatsword struck the ground with a ringing clang. Accolon hammered Hopesinger at his foe, and the blade rebounded from the red cuirass, though some of the sigils in the crimson armor went dark. The armored orc roared and recovered far faster than Accolon would have thought, and he just barely avoided getting cut in half by the huge sword.
Accolon found himself driven back by the armored orc, trying to get away from the sweeps of the greatsword. Twice men-at-arms rushed to aid the harried Crown Prince, and both times the armored orc cut them in half, the greatsword barely slowing as it sliced through flesh and bone. Against a normal foe wielding a greatsword, Accolon would have used Hopesinger’s speed to land a hit while his foe prepared his weapon for a blow. That had always been Kharlacht’s counsel for facing an enemy with a greatsword. But the armored orc was fast, nearly as fast as Accolon. Likely the spells on the armor gave the orc speed to match a Swordbearer.
Accolon’s boot caught on the arm of a slain soldier, and he tumbled backward and fell. His armor clattered as he hit the ground, and the breath exploded from his lungs. The huge orc roared in triumph and raised his sword high, preparing to let it fall.
But the orc’s roar of victory turned to a bellow of pain. The armored warrior jerked to the side, and Accolon saw Niall of Ebor dodging, the handle of a battle axe jutting from the orc’s back. The armored orc snarled and lashed his great
sword at the new foe, but Niall was quick enough to avoid the blow. Accolon surged off the ground, drawing on Hopesinger for every shred of strength and speed the soulblade could give him. He swung the blade with everything he had driving the blow, and the soulblade’s edge crunched into the orc’s neck. The armored warrior groaned and stumbled to one knee, and Accolon drew back Hopesinger once more and took his foe’s head off.
The armored body fell with a clang, the head rolling away.
Accolon let out a long breath and stepped back, Hopesinger burning in his fist.
“My lord, are you wounded?” said Niall. He looked as tired as Accolon felt, his armor and face smeared with soot and blood. Yet none of the blood was Niall’s, and his eyes were still bright and strong, if bloodshot. “My lord?”
“I am unhurt,” said Accolon at last, forcing the words through his dry throat. His bodyguard, scattered by the fury of the red orcs and the spells of the priestesses, was converging back on him. “That’s twice now you’ve saved my life, Niall of Ebor.”
Niall blinked and then grinned. “Lord Ridmark told me to, my lord. He’s a hard man to disobey.”
Accolon snorted. “So I have noticed.” Sir Peter and more knights rushed to join him, and Accolon managed to get his breathing under control and looked around. The fighting still raged fiercely up and down the quays, and in places, the red orcs had gotten the upper hand. Yet no more longboats had launched from the warships. It was hard to judge from this distance, but Accolon thought the warships had no boats left.
They had landed all the troops they had.
The battle had to be decided, right now.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, he heard a deep, rumbling war horn come from the north. Accolon turned his head, looking towards the street that led back to the Prince’s Palace, and saw orcish warriors advancing.
But these orcs had green skin, not red. They also had masks of black bone that grew from within their flesh, and spikes of bone that jutted from their forearms. The orcs wore a combination of chain mail and heavy steel plate and carried massive shields and broadswords.
Dragontiarna: Thieves Page 37
