Bannon kept working at the boards, wiggling the gap wider.
“Yes, you will, and you know it,” Jed said. “Once they shatter your knees and peel off your nails with tongs, you’ll talk. You saw those two sorceresses. What if they ignite your fingers like candles, one at a time, until your flesh drips like wax off your finger bones, down to the knuckle?”
Brock began to whimper.
Gritting his teeth, Bannon wobbled the board back and forth. He would have demanded their help, but there wasn’t room for more than one set of hands anyway. He had to do this himself. When the wood creaked, grinding against the adjacent board, Bannon froze at the noise. The gap was wider now, and he could see better out into the camp.
None of the soldiers paid attention to them. The nearest campfire was at least sixty feet away, and Bannon saw shadows beyond. That was where Mrra had vanished. Maybe if he and the other two captives could get out of the shack unseen, they could slip away into the darkness. He had noticed that the ancient soldiers had difficulty seeing in the darkness, so maybe they had a better chance than he had at first thought. How he wished he had his sword!
Even the slimmest chance was better than no chance at all. As he wiggled the board, it squeaked again, much looser now. The camp was settling down for the night, and the moon rose over the hills. He saw the silvery light as a disadvantage, washing away some of their cover.
The squeaky board moved more freely now. With a hard shove he could knock it loose and probably fit his body through the gap, when the time was right. Bannon nodded to himself. “We’ll wait until midnight, and then we run.”
“We’ll be caught,” Jed said. “And killed.”
“Or you can stay here and be killed. I’m trying to help you! Sweet Sea Mother, have you never had to do anything for yourselves in your entire lives?”
The two indignant young men didn’t answer.
The hours crawled by as he listened to the movement in the camp, the activity slowing. The soldiers did not bed down, because unlike normal men, they didn’t need to sleep or eat. He wondered if they ever let down their guard. He had to hope so.
Gradually, much later, the night grew quieter. He kept staring into the darkness, searching for Mrra, just to build his confidence. He got ready to make his move one way or another.
He was surprised to see a flicker of gray and black, a shadow that moved and rippled. He realized it was a human figure, a woman covered in a mottled silk cloak the color of shifting shadows. As the figure trotted on light footsteps toward the shack, Bannon pressed the loose board sideways, widening the gap. She approached, using the painted shadows of her silk cloak for cover. Reaching the wall, the cloaked figure pulled back the camouflage.
“Lila!” he gasped in a whisper.
She held a short sword in her left hand and a full-length sword in her right. It was Sturdy! She had retrieved it somehow. “Come, boy. I’ll get you out of here.”
He wiggled the board and uprooted it like a rotten tooth. He called over his shoulder to the other two, “Come on, we’ve got to go now.”
“You are insane, farm boy,” said Jed.
Brock lunged to his feet. “I’m going to run.”
Lila helped pull the board away and set it aside. Bannon thrust his shoulder into the opening, scraping his chest as he wriggled through the narrow gap. She grabbed his arm, and as he emerged, she handed him the sword. “I found this in the debris outside the camp. I thought you might want it back.”
He gripped the leather-wrapped hilt with a shiver of excitement. “Thank you.”
Brock worked his way through the gap, making the boards groan with his stockier chest. At his side, Jed pulled on the board, and with a loud snap the wood split, creating a greater opening. The sound, though, attracted attention.
“Now!” Lila whispered, tugging Bannon’s arm. “We have to go.”
Jed stumbled after Brock, and they were all outside the shack. The morazeth was already sprinting away, and Bannon followed her, calling to his companions, “Faster!” He could barely see the flickers of Lila beneath her special shadowy cloak. The other two ran after, heaving great breaths.
Then shouts resounded through the ancient army. “Prisoners escaping!” Soldiers ran to the fires, grabbed their weapons and firebrands. Their heavy footfalls thundered louder than their shouts. Three enemy warriors came in from different directions to cut off the escape.
Lila sprang forward with a hard kick, planting her foot in the center of one soldier’s chest, knocking him back. More shouts erupted in the night. Torches came closer as warriors hurried to intercept the captives.
Jed and Brock saw the oncoming soldiers and panicked. “They’ll catch us again,” Brock said. “Split up! We’ve got to get away.”
“No, we can all fight together,” Bannon shouted. “Follow Lila.”
The other two tore off in different directions, dodging the soldiers. Bannon kept up with the morazeth, ready with Sturdy to do as much damage as possible. The sword’s edge was dulled and notched from his fighting during the nighttime battle. He couldn’t remember his blood frenzy, but knew he must have killed dozens of Utros’s soldiers. He would have to do that again tonight.
Hardened warriors closed in from opposite directions, and Bannon’s heart sank. Lila threw off her cloak for greater freedom of movement. “At my side, Bannon. Show me how I taught you to fight.”
“But Jed and Brock…” he said.
“They’re lost. For now this is my fight and yours.”
Two soldiers blocked Lila, and more came from other directions. He and the morazeth would have to battle their way through, but Bannon feared he would be captured again, and this time they’d have Lila, too.
A feline blur crashed into the soldiers from the side, knocking two of them flat. Mrra raked her claws across the face of an ancient warrior, tearing the man’s jaw loose, then sprang away from him to attack another soldier.
Lila took advantage of the surprise and pounced on the next fighter, stabbing and hacking with such force that she killed him. Bannon saw his chance, too, and chopped down on the hard armor and stony skin of a fourth opponent. Their unexpected fury cleared a gap.
“Run, boy!” Lila sprang between the fallen soldiers as Mrra continued to attack. The morazeth raced into the shadows toward the charred hills, and Bannon fled after her, burning all the energy he had left, running for his very life. Mrra knocked down another pursuing soldier and crushed his throat in her jaws. Bannon and Lila ran without looking back, although the young man could think only of Jed and Brock still trapped. Maybe they had gotten away. Maybe …
Lila’s voice was rough and raw. “To the wall. There’s a low side door we can use to get back in.”
Bannon didn’t waste breath answering her, just kept up.
Because they were fleet and the half-petrified army was sluggish, they put distance between themselves and the rallying enemy forces. When they were safe, Mrra bounded off on her own, heading into the hills, where she could hide. When Lila slowed her frantic pace to a trot, she flashed Bannon a smile. “I am pleased to see that you survived, boy. It would have been a disappointment to me if you had been killed.”
“To me as well.” Bannon felt a rush of relief as they ran toward the high walls under the moonlight. He didn’t even criticize her for not using his name.
* * *
After the clamor died down, General Utros learned that one of the three prisoners had escaped, although the other two—the weak ones—were recaptured. He was disappointed to lose the young swordsman who had so impressed him with his fighting abilities.
First Commander Enoch reported, “They had assistance, General. Someone slipped in and helped them break free.”
“And there was a sand panther,” reported another soldier. His armor had been mangled, and one gray-white arm showed raked furrows from where the claws had injured him. “One of the combat animals from the Ildakar arenas.”
Utros was not impressed. “And we
had hundreds of thousands of soldiers, who somehow couldn’t stop them.”
He ordered the two prisoners to be brought forward among the ranks. The young men, both bloodied, were dragged closer, weeping. Their wrists had been broken, intentionally, and they moaned in pain. Their bloodstained silken robes were tattered, and both reeked of urine from soaked patches on their pantaloons. Helpless, they looked at their broken wrists, lifting up their arms in disbelief to see their hands flop uselessly.
“We surrendered,” said Brock. “We won’t try to get away again.”
“The problem is, you are worthless to me,” Utros said, “and we have no food for captives.”
The two young men stood shivering as Utros paced before them. “But you can serve another purpose. You can pay for the damage you did, the malicious harm you inflicted upon my army when we were helpless.”
The captives looked up in pain-fogged confusion.
Utros said, “You were so brave when we could not move to defend ourselves or see who was attacking us. Do you even think about the horrors you have done? Do you understand the conditions in which you left some of my loyal soldiers? What you did was … evil.”
Utros issued a command, and shuffling figures were led forward, some of them guided by soldiers, others carried on blankets. The two captives, swimming in a sea of their own pain, looked up in horror as the mutilated ones came to face them. One man’s face was a slab of pounded meat, without a nose or eyes, just ripped skin and a smashed mouth. Others had limbs broken off completely, ears torn away, fingers snapped off to leave only chalky, meaty stumps. Several had no faces at all, and they made wet sucking sounds when they inhaled through holes in the battered ruins of their heads.
“No!” cried Jed.
“Behold what you did. These are the mangled ones, but they are my soldiers. They still want to fight the enemy.” He glanced from one whimpering captive to the other. The second boy pissed himself again. “You are both helpless now, just as they were helpless. You mutilated them when they could not fight back. Now, I will give them the same opportunity.” Utros turned to the mangled soldiers. “You can have them.”
The intact warriors stood in a great circle, crowding closer to watch while the two young men wept and wailed for mercy.
The mangled ones closed in on them and practiced mutilation of their own.
CHAPTER 46
Though the siege of Ildakar would continue for some time, Utros could think only about his beloved Majel, who was separated from him by time and death itself. He also needed guidance from his emperor, for whom he had sworn to conquer the known world. Did his orders even still exist?
The two sorceresses had given him a new chance, and they were ready.
Utros clung with childlike hope to the possibility that he might speak with both Kurgan and Majel again. His loyalty and passion were at odds as much as two warring armies, but in his rational mind, he compartmentalized those conflicting desires before they could drive him insane.
After the damage from Ildakar’s unexpected attack had been mitigated, he commanded Ava and Ruva to begin. The twins admired the barrels filled with the blood of innocent children from Stravera. They caressed the staves, pressed down on the intact lids, sensed the red liquid inside and the power it represented.
“We have enough, beloved Utros,” Ruva said.
Ava added, “But we need the other raw materials to forge the lens, ash and sand to make the glass.”
“You shall have everything.” Utros summoned First Commander Enoch. Manpower was the one thing he did not lack.
In the initial part of the siege, his soldiers had dug great trenches, diverted and dammed the wide streams that rolled across the open plain to feed the aqueducts of Ildakar, although the city could still draw water from the river below. Now, what he needed was not water, but sand from the stream banks. His men brought wagonload after wagonload of sand, while the sorceresses cleared a working area near the headquarters structure.
They collected iron taken from Stravera, as well as rusted scraps of armor and thick old chains recovered from the ancient battlefield. Ava and Ruva used their magic to heat and shape the metal, forging an enormous basin seven feet across, which they lined with insulating clay, thus creating a huge glassmaking crucible. They filled the crucible with clean sand from the streambeds, while another contingent of soldiers filled a cart with bitter-smelling ash from the burned grasses, as well as coals from the countless campfires.
Once the ash was mixed with the sand, Ava and Ruva joined hands and used their gift to create a constant flow of heat until the material softened, flowed, and melted. The women took turns stirring their molten mixture for hours.
Utros watched impatiently, smelling the acrid tang, studying the silver-white pool of hot glass. “I can sense the power there,” he said.
Ava flashed him a thin smile. The paint covering her cheeks and shoulders had begun to flake with the sweat of her effort. “This is merely glass. We haven’t yet made it special.”
For half a day, the glass mixture heated, became smoother, purer, until it was ready. Ruva glanced at the barrels filled with innocent blood and responded with a broad smile.
Utros watched but offered no advice, asked no questions. His sorceresses knew what they were doing. Soldiers carried the stained barrels to the crucible, where heat waves shimmered in the air. Their half-petrified skin was able to withstand the searing temperature.
The sisters went to the barrels, caressed the lids. “We’ll need it all, just to be sure.” When they cracked open the barrels, Utros smelled the change in the air, a sour and portentous coppery tang.
Ava and Ruva watched with delight as burly soldiers lifted the barrels to the edge of the crucible with its roiling molten glass. The sorceresses muttered spells, called upon their gift, shifted the material structure of the mixture. At a signal, the soldiers tilted the kegs and poured the dark red liquid into the lake of glass. The screech of evaporating burned blood sounded like the wails of countless slain children. The red stain swirled in the molten slurry as Ava and Ruva used their gift to churn it like a thick stew of dark magic.
When it was done, both women let out a long sigh of relief. “The mixture is complete,” Ruva said. “The glass and blood can now become the lens. The innocent spirits have left their mark, and when the lens is finished, the invisible traces of their former lives will let you see through the veil.”
In the back of his mind Utros heard a hint of Majel’s voice, her laughter, whispered endearments she spoke to him after they had enjoyed each other. “How soon will it be ready?”
“Several steps remain,” Ava said. “We still have to pour and set the glass.”
In the dirt outside the command structure, they had fashioned a shallow crater six feet across. Releasing a trickle of power through the palms of their hands, they had fused the dirt and clay into a hard impenetrable mold. Now, the sisters broke open the drain in the giant crucible and guided the viscous blood-tinted fluid out, letting it pour into the hardened crater until it became a pool of solidifying glass.
Utros stood beside the two sorceresses, admiring the molten glass. The substance shimmered as it wrestled with its heat and its new shape.
“Even with our magic, it will take a day to cool, beloved Utros. Then we can perfect its surface, raise up the lens, and activate the final spell.”
Utros sighed and pushed back his anticipation. “I’ve waited fifteen centuries already, but one more day will seem like an eternity.”
The sorceresses stroked the general’s arms, pressing their cold, hard flesh against his. “We will help you through it,” Ruva said.
“Soon,” Ava whispered. “Soon, you will see through the veil.”
* * *
The next sunset, the clouds over the mountains grew crimson, as if the blood of children had been added to the sky, too. Utros watched, restless, his heart torn. He was ready to face the spirit of his emperor, ready to see his beloved Majel again.
/> A normal lens of such size would have taken weeks to cool gradually, insulated and controlled so as to leave no flaws in the glass, but Ava and Ruva guided the process themselves, using their gift to stroke the internal crystalline structure, to calm it as it hardened and stabilized. When they declared the blank lens ready, they knelt over the solidified pond of glass and used their hands to smooth and shape the outer surface. They fashioned the precise curve they had seen in their minds when they designed it.
When the process was complete, thirty of the general’s strongest soldiers attached ropes, used cloth-wrapped bars, and levered the hardened glass out of the crater mold, pulling it upright while the sorceresses formed a frame to hold the lens like a mirror, six feet high. The women went to opposite sides of the glass blank and worked with their hands, scrubbing, shaping, smoothing, making the lens transparent.
Utros was fascinated by every detail, but his thoughts were preoccupied with what he would say. As part of his long-standing orders from Iron Fang, he had continued the siege on Ildakar, and he had no doubt the city would fall eventually, but his mission for his emperor extended beyond Ildakar. He had promised to conquer the entire world, and he wouldn’t need all his thousands of warriors to maintain the siege here. He had already sent many armies out on important expeditions.
From his main palace in Orogang, Emperor Kurgan had wanted to rule the Old World. It was a fractured continent for the taking, and Utros had taken it. He had been shocked, but not surprised, when the emissary Nathan Rahl explained that the empire had swiftly fallen apart after Kurgan’s death. The conquered territories required firm military control, but Utros did not dream of administering an entire continent. His orders were to conquer, not rule.
While his awakened army continued the siege, he made plans to recapture the lands that had once fallen under his military fist. Some of his dispatched armies would make their way to the coast, some would travel south, others would head into the hills and mountains to the north, or along the Killraven River. They would head as far as they could march, seizing territory in the near-forgotten name of Emperor Kurgan.
Siege of Stone Page 32
