The Stormbringer

by Isabel Cooper

  For a siege, it was fairly quiet.

  Darya took a few drinks of water from the flask Olvir offered and tried to get her thoughts in line. The Twisted had been retrieving their wounded for a while, almost since the last attack had stopped. Darya had sort of assumed it was for the same reason most armies did—not that she suspected Thyran or his commanders wasted effort on tenderly nursing their monsters back to health, but a warm body was a warm body, or so she’d thought.

  Olvir was leading her toward the wall. She followed, thinking of questions. “The worst wounded, or all of them? And why bother to get them back if you’re just going to slit their throats—unless they’re going in the stewpot, I guess.”

  “No,” said Olvir, and sighed. “The crow couldn’t give very much detail, Emeth said, or didn’t notice very much, but she did say it was the healthiest—‘the most moving’—and that some aspect of it disturbed her crow, but all he could say was that it was ‘killing in a bad way.’”

  Probably not just eating one another, then. There’d been plenty of that on the battlefield already. If the food had already been dead, she supposed it would have been a cold kind of practical, but usually it wasn’t.

  That sounds like magic, said Gerant, though specifically for what and through what methods I couldn’t say without a closer look, which I have no expectation of getting.

  “Shit,” she muttered, and drew her thumb and forefinger across her eyes to the bridge of her nose, wiping away the last traces of sleep. “Magic.”

  “More or less,” said Olvir, stepping aside so she could climb the ladder. “I hate to wake you with such news, but it seemed good to have as many of ours as we could get awake and on watch—particularly as many of us.” He gestured between the two of them. “Casting no slight on the regular troops, you understand, but we’re fewer in number, and each of us has information they may not.”

  “No, you’re right. I don’t like it, but you’re right.” She glanced down at Olvir, all big eyes and square jaw beneath the mop of auburn hair. Blood and other things kept the armor from shining, but he managed to look the part otherwise. “Has Tinival given you any hints?”

  “No, Sentinel, but he wouldn’t. Justice is very clear in this matter, and they”—he waved a hand beyond the wall, where the fires of Thyran’s camp dotted the plain—“haven’t bothered to lie to us. He strengthens my will and my arm; that’s his part in these matters.”

  “A lightning bolt wouldn’t hurt,” Darya said, but didn’t press the issue. The gods had their constraints, just as mortals did, and that was why she and Olvir were who, or what, they were. “Dale say anything?”

  “No,” Olvir said again, with a regretful shake of his head, “but he is dead to the world. After the last stint of healing, he lost consciousness. Amris and Hallis say to wake him only if the need is dire, and I agree. The Dark Lady’s power is hardest of all the gods’ on mortal flesh and bones.”

  “And there’s only one of him, of course.” Darya sighed. “Mages?”

  “Awake, and analyzing as best they can. If Master Gerant wishes to confer with them—”

  Master Gerant doubts he can add much to the discussion, but they’re welcome to come over here. And tell the young man thank you for the consideration.

  “You always seem your real age at this hour of the morning,” said Darya, “and I never know why. It’s not as though you need to sleep most of the time.” She looked back to Olvir, who was politely waiting. “Glad to chat if they come over here, but doesn’t have much to add right now.”

  Conveying messages was surprisingly annoying. Either her nerves were going to pieces or she’d gotten spoiled talking with Amris.

  “How are the commanders holding up?” she asked, hoping to sound professional and impartial.

  Olvir allowed her the luxury of thinking so, whether she managed it or not, answering gravely. “The strain is great, but they’re strong men, and brave ones. They endure well enough. Better than I could, I think.”

  Neither of them talking about it, Darya not even thinking about it in advance and suspecting the same was true of Olvir, they each drifted to a Sentinel post on the wall, close enough to talk but spaced to cover a decent range if they need to. “You haven’t led armies, then?”

  “No,” he said. “A squadron once or twice, at need, but that’s five or six at most.”

  “More than me. I never really thought about what it took until now.”

  I didn’t know the whole of it, by a long shot, said Gerant, and I lived with Amris for years.

  “Must have been good for him,” Darya said quietly, as Olvir tactfully didn’t ask questions, “to have you. Even if you weren’t always around, it seems like a person you love,” the word came oddly to her lips, “could be a method of keeping you together in those situations.”

  Thank you, said Gerant. It went both ways, of course. He listened to me when I was tearing my hair out about theory, and put me to bed a few times when I’d overstretched my abilities and collapsed. But I’m glad to think I helped.

  “I think you still do,” said Darya. “I don’t like thinking of how this would weigh on him if you weren’t around.”

  You care about him too.

  There was no accusation in what Gerant said. Darya was too exhausted to deny it. “Very much.”

  “The Golden Lady wove well when she sent the two of you to Klaishil,” said Olvir. “Or it seems that way to me, from the outside.”

  “Fate’s odd.” That was part of theory that neither she nor Gerant had dwelled on. Sitha’s most senior priests, or the spiders they bred, could tell vague bits of the future if conditions were right. Some people said the Golden Lady herself could see more, or that the Golden Web was not just civilization and craft but fate itself. “But it’s a comforting thought. Thanks.”

  People nearby shifted their weight, murmured to their neighbors, sharpened weapons. Darya looked out again, from the walls to the forest beyond.

  Among the fires of the twistedmen, there was motion—and a seething orange glow.

  * * *

  Amris knew that light of old. Orange though it was, none could have mistaken it for fire. There was a sickly hue about it, as though the person who viewed it did so through a film of dust. No fire moved the way the light did, either, for it swarmed and squirmed as no flame ever had. To either side of him, soldiers turned greenish and swallowed, or looked away.

  “What is it?” one of them choked out.

  “Gizath’s power,” Amris replied. He squinted against the light, wanting badly to give the order to shoot, but knew it would be a waste of needed arrows. The one they needed to kill would be out of range even for the Sentinels. “Rouse the Mourner, please, and have Sitha’s priest standing by as well—and all of our mages. Send them to Hallis. I know not what this will do, but it’s likely we’ll need them for it.”

  They took off down the ladders. Out on the plain, the light kept twisting, looping over and over on itself, and gradually the lower part of it began to darken. Huge legs formed, then a massive block of a trunk.

  Amris heard prayers along the wall, quick, garbled, and desperate. He added his own, but silently—those in command had to stay in control. The hilt of his sword dug into his palm, cutting the skin.

  Arms came next, each the size of three men. The figure bent, not picking up two human-sized forms from the ground but lowering a hand for them to step on, and then raised that hand to the flat top of its torso, onto which the two walked. A head, it seemed, was not necessary.

  “Archers ready!” Hallis called, and Amris repeated it down the wall. He wasn’t certain what good it would do—he suspected the humans on top of the figure had their own protections, or they’d not expose themselves as targets—but it was worth finding out. Perhaps the priests or the mages had been able to enchant some arrows, at that.

  The figure started to
lumber forward. As it came close enough to see, lit by the fires without and Gizath’s decaying radiance within, the prayers along the wall turned to screams.

  It was the dead.

  The corpses hadn’t risen as they’d done in Klaishil, as individuals. Twistedmen didn’t seem to. Instead, Thyran and his mages had built the figure out of them, lashing corpses and body parts together into a blocky giant of rotting flesh and broken bones. They’d cared not about specifics, so the arms, each as thick as three men, were made of legs and ribs as well as hands, and splintered faces stared from the legs and the center of the torso. Power had merged them in parts, but it still flickered at the edges, and individual…bits…moved slightly out of sync with the others at times.

  Yet they moved, and they moved forward, as one. The figure wasn’t heavy enough to make the earth shake, but Amris nonetheless felt his footing tremble beneath him.

  * * *

  Darya shot and shot again, but the arrows skidded away when they got close to the figures on top of the corpse-thing, and when they stuck into it, they did as much good as sticking pins into a wall. At last she dropped the bow and drew her sword, waiting.

  Emeth, elsewhere on the wall, sent forth flame. Bones smoldered. Hair caught in places, flickering, and the fire spread feebly to flesh, but the amalgamation of corpses didn’t pause or flinch. A few pieces fell away, none significant.

  Cold may work better once the fire’s died, said Gerant, without much hope.

  “Worth a try,” she said. All the delight she felt in a normal battle was missing. There was no dance, no pattern, just sick and slow progress.

  Olvir didn’t ask what she’d meant. He stood immobile, staring at the giant creature. Darya couldn’t blame him. Amris might have found something helpful to say. He wasn’t there, and Darya kept quiet.

  Now, she could make out the riders themselves. One was a crawling-face, though it was larger than the others, and two extra arms sprouted from its sides. From the side, the other seemed human enough—ordinary, in fact. He was a man of middling height, round-chinned, with dirty blond hair receding back from his forehead. If not for the way he was dressed, Darya would have passed him on the street and not looked at him twice.

  He wore jewels set in bone on all his fingers, and a crown of bone rested on his head, a great diamond at its center. His robes were gray silk, embroidered with gold.

  “Thyran,” she said, and it came out in a child’s whisper.

  His creation raised a colossal arm.

  Darya lifted her sword and let the cold flow through her. It swirled around the construct. Maybe a bit of the flesh looked grayer. She couldn’t really tell.

  The fist hit the gates with a crack that Darya could hear from her place on the wall. They didn’t break then, but they shuddered, and splinters flew.

  And Thyran turned his head toward her.

  The priestess of Sitha was rushing toward the gates, calling on the goddess. The corpse-thing was raising its fist for another blow. Thyran stared in Darya’s direction with rotten orange fire dancing across his eyes.

  She didn’t know if he saw her or was just looking at the section of wall that the latest attack had come from. She was too far away to be sure that he was sneering, triumphant, but she was sure of it anyway. Darya held tight to Gerant, missing the spirit now that he was resting, and waited for the next blow.

  Thyran’s gaze passed over her, moved on to Olvir at her side—and stopped.

  Orange light flashed off the sorcerer’s bone-set rings as he raised one hand to his brow. He froze in place, then actually staggered back a step. His companion on the corpse vehicle turned toward him in surprise and alarm.

  Darya grabbed her bow again. If there was a time to shoot, it was now.

  She fitted an arrow to the string, began to draw, and saw sunset-red light gathering on top of the gates.

  Katrine, she thought. Of course. Letar and Tinival, the blessing that scourged all things turned against their own nature, whether they were undead or Twisted. The lady chose her time.

  Thyran still had his hand pressed to his forehead. The crawling-face reached for him. He shook it off with an impatient gesture.

  Katrine’s light washed down from the gates, a wave larger than Darya had ever seen from her. It struck the corpse-monster just below the knees.

  Vibrant red drowned out the orange-gray hellfire. Within its radiance, bunches of limbs and skulls began to fall away from either side of the construct, dropping like leaves in an autumn wind. It swayed drunkenly. Thyran dropped his hand—dropped both of them—and clung to the top. His companion, not so lucky or so quick to react, stumbled, then fell. Darya heard it screaming until it hit the ground.

  She fired only to see the arrow crumple before it could hit Thyran, like a dozen others sent by people with the same idea. It was no surprise. It didn’t make a dent in her mood, either: that was soaring as she watched the construct fall to one knee, then saw its other leg crumble. Within minutes, it was down to a torso and arms, with fists pounding ineffectually at the ground.

  Thyran stalked off it then, his back stiff with rage. His army parted before him with the speed fear inspired. After a few steps, he turned and made a violent gesture to the union of corpses, which stopped hitting the ground and followed, dragging itself after its master on crumbling arms.

  “Praise the gods and give me a damn drink!” Darya cheered, paying no attention to her raw throat. “What the hell did you do there, knight—ah, shit.”

  Olvir was slumped over the edge of the wall, only his breathing showing that he still lived.

  Chapter 38

  The courtyard was full of the soldiers Hallis had called forth, knowing the twistedmen would be right behind any breach of the gates. He and Amris walked among them, sending the most exhausted to get some rest and the walking wounded back to what recovery they could manage, calming where they could and giving what answers they knew. Hallis put together a squad to help reinforce the gates because wood and stone would give Sitha’s magic more to work with.

  In the infirmary itself, Dale the Mourner still slept like the dead, and nobody had felt the need to rouse him. The recent attack had wounded nothing but the gates themselves—and Katrine, the Sentinel who sat in a dark corner with her eyes closed and her hands wrapped around a mug of strong-smelling tea. Emeth knelt behind her, rubbing her temples.

  “Will you be well?” Amris asked quietly, stopping in front of them.

  “With herbs and time,” said Katrine. “I’m seeing two of everything just now.”

  “That was a blow most well struck out there,” Amris said. “That we held is thanks to you, and to your sword-spirit. I hope,” he added, clearing his throat and thinking of Gerant’s sudden absence and the conversation he’d had with Darya, “they don’t suffer from it in any lasting sense.”

  “No, thank you,” Katrine replied. “I think they’re well enough. The gem didn’t crack.”

  “And neither did you,” Emeth added, stroking the blond curls fondly, “though it was too damned near for my liking. That thing…” She looked up at Amris. “I’ve seen her take down a half-dozen undead and not suffer like this. And it’s still out there.”

  He nodded. “It is. And Thyran is. Yet we’re still here, and I’ll take some comfort from that. The mages are working on defenses even now, and perhaps on spells that will hurt that creature if it should return.” None of them had sounded very hopeful about it, but he didn’t need to say so. Emeth’s dark gaze held no trace of hope. “He seemed hurt for a moment, just before you struck, Sentinel. Do you believe he could sense the power as you called it forth?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing else has.”

  “And there’s another root in this particular stew,” said a voice from behind him.

  Even though the spell had reassured Amris all through the fight, hearing Darya was still a spot of
warmth in his chest. He turned and saw her, straggle-haired and tired and lovely, carrying a helmet and gorget that would have never fit her. Behind her came Olvir, white-faced and unsteady of gait.

  “Are you injured?” Amris looked swiftly over the knight, seeing no immediate signs of fresh blood, nor any new bruises as far as he could make out. Mingled with a friend’s concern and a commander’s responsibility for those he commanded was an unpleasant sense of upheaval. He’d been certain there were no wounded.

  “Not exactly,” Olvir said, sitting with none of the grace Tinival’s warriors usually showed. “I don’t really know how to start.”

  It was Darya who started, summing the situation up from her perspective in three blunt sentences while Olvir tried to find words. Thyran had stared at Olvir. He hadn’t seemed to like the results. At some point afterward—“though I hadn’t exactly been paying attention; I’d say I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t believe me and you wouldn’t want me to be, if you had any damn sense”—in Darya’s words, the knight had collapsed.

  “She’s right,” said Olvir. “And that’s as much as I can be certain of.”

  “Be uncertain, then,” said Darya, “but be uncertain out loud, dammit.”

  Startled, Olvir laughed, and Amris with him, though he was less surprised. The other man began, “I remember Thyran looking at me, of course. It’s not likely I could forget.”

  “He’s very memorable,” Amris agreed grimly.

  “Yes. He…” Olvir lifted his hands, then dropped them back to his sides. “At the time, I thought it was a quality of his alone. There was a—I don’t know quite how to put it—a sense… I wouldn’t call it recognition. I didn’t know him at all, save from tales. But when I looked at him, I felt as if, oh, as if I’d heard three lines of a song and would be humming it all day until I could bring the fourth to mind. It was far more overwhelming, though, and not in my mind. Not in words at all, and I don’t think I could have put it into words at the time. None of you felt it?”