Water was everywhere, light filtering through the surface but struggling to reach the depths as the two figures plummeted to the bottom. Evrin pulled with his right arm even as his lungs heaved and his body thirsted for air.
Sentar rolled over and over, trying to untangle himself from the glowing wire. Evrin grabbed hold of the man he’d once called brother and tried to hold him as the two men hit the sandy ocean floor.
Sentar attacked Evrin in a frenzy. Evrin felt hands clapped to his head, and excruciating pain wracked his skull and spine, filling his consciousness with fire.
Evrin’s vision closed in until all he could see was a white tunnel with a warm golden light, beckoning him at the end.
His love called.
Evrin Evenstar, Lord of the Sky, followed her down the tunnel.
30
Ella watched in horror as the stairway of light vanished and Evrin and Sentar plunged into the water. For long minutes, only bubbles and hisses of steam indicated where they’d fallen.
Ella gripped Layla’s hand with savage intensity. “Evrin!” she screamed. She was standing now, though she didn’t remember getting to her feet.
All was silent. The onlookers at the beach, the distant ships preparing to unload their deadly cargos, all were still.
Then someone burst from the ocean, thrashing weakly. Ella’s heart thudded with pounding jolts as she tried to see who it was.
The figure was black.
A boat sped out from the foremost ship. The reaching hands of gray-robed necromancers pulled the man in black clothing aboard, before turning back to the ships.
Ella waited, and waited. Long moments passed. A hundred heartbeats became a thousand.
But the old man never came to the surface.
Evrin Evenstar was dead.
“Evrin,” Ella sobbed.
Layla held Ella back as she tried to pull free. Tears sped down Ella’s cheeks as she desperately scanned the surface of the water, knowing her search was futile. The battle between the Lord of the Sky and the Lord of the Night was over. Sentar was evidently wounded, terribly so, but he had emerged the victor.
The ships came forward. The warship that Sentar Scythran had returned to retreated, and soon it was hidden by the line of encroaching vessels.
The line of ships passed the site of the battle and continued forward, crossing into the aqua-blue water. There were suddenly so many of them that they fought for space. With sounds of tearing and groaning, each vessel ran aground bow-first, tilting to the side as keels ground against the sand, sails hurriedly downed.
They had no landing boats: the revenants simply poured off the sides. Tiesto had a few cannon—they would have to abandon any brought here, so most were back with Miro—and thunderous booms split the air as he fired. Splinters flew from the ships and water fountained in great splashes, pieces of enemy warriors flying into the air. Still they came.
Six ships were now aground, and dozens more found gaps between them and made their own landings. Soon the line of enemy vessels crowded the beach; Tiesto’s gunners suffered from no lack of targets.
Ella fixed her reddened stare back on the ridge and waited for Tiesto’s signal. Constructs would sink in the water so this first charge would be made by infantry. Ella would fight with them.
Along the ridge the men in green and brown held their weapons ready. Fighters from the free cities nervously exchanged glances while the Dunfolk archers surrounding Ella readied their bows. Ella saw enchanters in green robes and bladesingers in armorsilk. She saw faces she knew: Jehral, the only man in black, waited near Tiesto’s command center, and with surprise Ella recognized Fergus the ferryman standing not far away with a determined expression on his round face.
A clarion blared and a red light shone from the solitary dirigible flying high above, maintaining a position back toward Castlemere.
“Charge!” the defenders roared with a single voice.
Ella set her mouth with anger. She’d heard Miro speak of battle rage, and it was something she’d felt a few times herself: as the primate’s army crushed the refugees at the Sarsen and at the prison camps in Tingara.
It was the rage that came when trying to right an incredible injustice.
“Go,” Layla said.
Ella ran forward with the infantry as they charged.
The rush to the water’s edge took an eternity and was over in a heartbeat. Ella ran with men and women defending their homeland from the darkest evil. There were thousands of soldiers, all well armored and prepared for what they were about to face.
The waist-deep water thronged with revenants.
Volleys of arrows sped overhead, plunging into the enemy warriors. Some wore ragged barbaric clothing, big men and women with double-bladed axes and heavy two-handed swords. Others wore the uniforms of their old regiments, lands across the sea now utterly destroyed. All were in advanced stages of decay, with lips rotted away to reveal yellow teeth, mottled black-and-blue rot taking hold of limbs and heads, and grotesque wounds on throats, faces, and bodies, revealing how they’d been killed, or how they’d refused to be put down since.
The defenders formed a long line in the knee-deep water. The crack of musket fire sounded from the ships, and some of the Veldrin defenders returned fire with their own barreled sticks. The arrows of the Dunfolk sprouted from enemy warriors, sending shoulders jerking back or tearing into throats, but making little impact; these warriors simply kept coming.
Ella held her wand in front of her with a shaking hand. The hazel wood felt warm in her palm, then hot as she activated it with a series of chanted runes. The prism of gold-flecked quartz sparked with yellow fire.
A snarling revenant, a woman with torn clothing revealing slashes across her breasts, shot out of the water in front of Ella. Ella sent a bolt of yellow fire into the woman’s eye, and she went down.
The enemy struck the line in numbers, and the sounds of grunting and clashing steel split the air. The Alturan swordsman beside Ella thrust at a barbarian’s neck, but the blow missed as the revenant swerved to the side. The Alturan made a second strike at his opponent’s head. The barbarian’s broadsword blocked the blow, but the Alturan’s glowing blade cut through the steel, and another head went flying.
To Ella’s right, a Halrana was having trouble with an enemy swordsman, a man who’d once been Veldrin by his blue and brown uniform. A bolt from Ella’s wand shattered the revenant’s skull into two pieces. The Halrana nodded his quick thanks.
Ella kept a wide circle around her, taking careful aim with each activation of her wand, making precision strikes to conserve power. Wherever she could, she helped the struggling swordsmen, but she could see the revenants’ numbers now starting to tell. The Alturan beside her went down and Ella shifted, closing ranks with the next man.
Ella saw more beams of yellow fire in the distance and caught sight of Elwin Goss, Master of the Academy, with a wide circle of bodies floating in the water around him. Arrows continued to plunge into the revenants but the once decisive weapon could only slow this enemy; the necromancers stayed hidden in the ships. A volley of musket fire from the enemy vessels cracked, and the Halrana on Ella’s right fell with a hole in his chest. Once more Ella closed ranks.
Ella missed her next shot, and a revenant swung a spiked mace at her head. The warrior on her right blocked the blow and countered with a thrust into the revenant’s face. The glowing blade tore through the snarling warrior’s cheek, sending red blood in all directions.
Ella turned and nodded her thanks, seeing it was Jehral. He gave her a swift nod in return.
The line of defenders closed ranks again and again, and still the enemy kept coming, pouring from the ships, rising from the deeper water in an unending wave.
Ella heard a trumpet blast and looked at Jehral.
“Fall back,” he panted.
Miro watched from the dirigible, carefully judging the moment when the enemy’s numbers outweighed the defenders’ power to hold them in the sea. He
desperately wanted to be fighting down below, but he was working in close concert with Tiesto; their timing was critical.
More ships beached themselves along the shore toward Castlemere, and the line of defenders no longer covered the approach of all the clawing revenants. He couldn’t allow the line to be outflanked.
Miro ordered the retreat.
He shone a light and saw Tiesto raise a flag, hearing a corresponding clarion blast. The defenders fought to hold off the enemy as every second man in the line stepped backward. Then the second line held while the foremost fell back. Miro prayed the retreat wouldn’t turn into a rout.
Finally the defenders turned and ran. Miro’s elite palace guard, held so far in reserve, rushed down to give them time to escape. The revenants that made it to the ridge fell to intense volleys of arrows as rail bows and Dunfolk archers peppered their bodies.
Miro watched to see what the enemy commander would do. With Sentar wounded, who was leading them?
Then Miro saw a tall man standing on the beach with a cluster of necromancers. He wore a blue shirt and a three-cornered hat with a white feather. This must be Diemos, the king of Rendar.
Diemos waved an arm, and the revenants formed up; they would wait to disembark all their warriors before making their next attack. It was what Miro would do himself.
Miro drew a shaky breath as he watched the breakers roll over the dismembered bodies of revenants, mingling them together with the fallen defenders.
So far Miro’s defenders had faced stragglers, coming in from deep water in ragged numbers. The enemy had their beachhead now; the commanders and necromancers would form their warriors into an army.
More ships were unloading all the time. There was enough of a force forming up on the beach that any attempt to push them back would be suicide. Yet fully half their numbers were still on the ships. Tiesto’s cannon continued to fire while mortars rained orbs on the beached vessels, but by necessity Tiesto’s force was mobile, and Miro’s strongest weapons were on the ridge guarding the approach to Sarostar.
Miro saw the danger in the growing numbers. He didn’t want the defenders to become trapped on the ridge. Ella was down there. Every moment that passed would make retreat more difficult.
The enemy commander was clever and was waiting to establish his entire force on the beach. The horde on the shore was already so large, Miro struggled to encompass their numbers. In moments their commander would hurl them against Tiesto’s cannon.
“Fly a signal,” Miro instructed the pilot. “Send in the constructs. Everyone else to pull back to the defenses at Castlemere.”
A moment later there was a crash as the doors to the carts hidden in the forest burst open. Animators hurriedly climbed towers and placed tablets at their knees.
Ironmen and woodmen lumbered forward with odd, mechanical movements. The enemy hurriedly formed up, turning to face the new threat.
The constructs charged down from the ridge.
The ironmen glistened, black limbs shining as the light of early morning cast slanted rays on the steel. The polished woodmen held the left flank while ironmen held the right.
They smashed into the enemy, remorseless in their power. The golems and colossi were back at Castlemere, but this was the bulk of Halaran’s military strength, unleashed in one mad charge. Hundreds of Halrana constructs became swallowed by thousands of revenants.
Miro gripped the rail as the animated fought the dead. Tearing his gaze away from the battle, he watched as Tiesto pulled the defenders back, leading the infantry and archers along the ridge until the foremost reached the start of Miro’s long wall. Miro breathed a sigh of relief.
As the creatures of iron and wood battled the undead, soon the only people left at the ridge were the animators themselves, guiding their creations with touches of their controller tablets and spoken words. In a heartbeat, chaos overtook the battlefield, and the constructs’ careful formation broke down.
Cannon boomed from some of the beached ships whose exposed sides faced the battle, tearing through constructs and revenants alike.
A group of revenants broke free and charged the animators on the bank.
Miro cursed. Even against the charge, the animators held their positions. Miro’s heart went out to the courage of these men. Diemos, if the order was his, was clever.
Then something huge broke through the forest.
Miro saw a colossus stride forward in great lumbering bounds. Miro’s heart raced; he’d thought all the colossi were back behind Castlemere. Squinting, he recognized the mighty construct, and in a moment Miro knew who the animator was.
Luca Angelo sat in his controller cage, guiding his colossus with words and gestures as he fought to defend his countrymen.
A great sword blazed in one of the colossus’s huge hands. As the revenants rushed up the ridge, ready to crush the defenseless animators on their towers, a single stroke of the sword tore through a dozen bodies. A foot stomped on a revenant, and the colossus’s free arm swiped at the ground, sending a bunch more flying through the air.
The ironmen and woodmen on the beach were now overwhelmed, their charge ended. The shallow waters heaved with broken bodies. The animators scrabbled down their ladders, and the brown-robed Halrana ran for safety, back toward Castlemere.
Luca Angelo swung the enchanted sword left and right, clearing the ground in front of him before moving deep into the horde. The immense blade tore through the enemy, but rather than breaking free from the onslaught, Luca fought on. His controller cage on top of the gigantic head sparkled with color. Miro held his breath as the colossus carved a path toward the man in the three-cornered hat.
Thunderous roars followed puffs of smoke as cannon fired.
A ball struck the colossus square in the chest.
The construct fell down on its back, but whatever Luca did, he managed to get the colossus back to one knee. Revenants climbed up the legs and arms but still the Halrana animator chopped into flesh with the huge enchanted sword, wiping out revenants in numbers, giving his countrymen the time they needed to escape.
Enemy warriors climbed up the limbs to reach the controller cage and tore it open. Swords stabbed in through the gaps in the metal and with a rumble the colossus once more fell on its back.
This time it was still.
Miro released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as he wiped a hand across his face, watching as order returned to the enemy’s ranks. More ships beached further away from Castlemere. Today’s battle was over.
There were bodies everywhere, but with relatively few fallen defenders, at least there would be little fodder for the enemy’s war machine. Miro knew the suffering it would cause his men to fight their friends. Miro and Tiesto had sacrificed the constructs, but they’d used them well.
He ordered the pilot to take him back to the defenses outside Castlemere.
The next attack would come soon.
31
Miro felt tension in every bone of his body as he sat in his command tent, staring at the canvas wall, waiting for the scouts to tell him of the enemy’s approach.
The day passed slowly and inexorably, and then it was night. At dusk a scout told him the enemy had spent all day unloading. The attack would come the next day.
Another day, bought with blood.
Miro needed to hold. He needed to hold for reinforcements from the other houses. There were too many revenants. He knew he could never win unaided.
He missed Amber. He hadn’t heard from her in an age. In a way, he was relieved that she was far from the battle, but he’d been expecting a message from her, and still none came.
Miro ate something and then he tried to sleep. He remembered Evrin Evenstar’s sacrifice and felt the ache of sadness. Evrin had done something incredible: he’d hurt Sentar, and he’d removed the greatest threat of all, even if it was only for a time.
Miro hoped Sentar was mortally wounded. He hoped the Lord of the Night was in terrible pain.
As he tr
ied to sleep, he remembered the last time he’d seen Amber, at Rialan Palace in Ralanast. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve her, but he thanked the stars every day. He thanked the Lord of the Sky.
He caught a few hours of snatched sleep, and then a low voice outside his tent woke him just before dawn.
“Miro.” It was Beorn. “They’re here.”
Miro stood at the middle of the long wall, with Beorn by his side. In front of them another glorious day revealed the killing ground: a gentle slope of cleared earth heading down to the ruins of Castlemere.
“Tiesto is in place?” Miro said.
“On the far right.” Beorn nodded. “Any last orders before I take the left?”
“Yes,” Miro said. He met his lord marshal’s gaze. “Stay alive.”
Miro and Beorn clasped arms, and then Beorn left Miro standing with defenders on all sides, but alone. Miro thought about the times he’d made rousing speeches to his men. This time, no words came to his mind; they were fighting for their lives, for their families, and for their homes. They knew it as well as he did.
He followed the wall with his eyes, first to the left until it disappeared toward the distant shore, then to the right where he could just make out the barricade of fallen trees keeping the wall’s flank firmly guarded by the forest. Each tower along the wall’s length had a cannon sighted at the beach. There were eighty-six towers.
The killing ground stretched ahead. The red warning flags had been removed, and to walk into that area meant death.
Behind the wall, the majority of Miro’s army lay in wait, formed three deep along the entire line. Dunfolk archers crouched behind their taller allies, and every two hundred paces a flying brigade of elite Alturan heavy infantry prepared to rally the defenders and close any breaches. Close to Miro’s right was one of the gaps in the wall they’d left to enable the defenders to make sorties.
Then Miro heard it: calls and shouts, the sound of marching feet. A scout rushed forward to make his report.
The Lore Of The Evermen (Book 4) Page 22
