Chapter 9
Mira looked on in shock as the group of foes magically appeared nearly within arm’s reach, materializing out of thin air. A ring of ten cloaked soldiers surrounded a winged woman. Both groups stared at each other for a long, tense moment.
The winged woman finally broke the silence. “So, this is my sister’s whelp, I presume.” She had eerie silver eyes that regarded them coldly, though her gaze focused primarily on Taren. “You have her mettle—I’ll give you that. I’ve been searching for you a long while now, boy.”
“And you must be Nesnys,” Taren replied with admirable calm. “My mother sends her regards.”
Nesnys’s lip curled in disdain. “You’ve proven quite resourceful, slipping free of my grasp, yet imagine my good fortune to find you here in my very camp. And you think to steal my prisoners away? I see I erred and was too merciful.” Her gaze went pointedly to Sianna, who paled. “This time, none shall be spared. Kill them all except the mageling!”
Everything happened at once then. The cloaked soldiers lunged forward, the majority toward Taren, Sianna, and Creel, while a few others went for Ferret and the other men, including Edwin, who had skulked away after Sianna’s scolding.
Mira intercepted the first two attackers. She whipped her staff in an overhand strike, which connected with the man’s helmet with a resounding clang that reverberated up her arms. To her surprise, her foe seemed unaffected. She shifted her weight and kicked her second opponent in the chest, but he merely wobbled backward a step. Then the first soldier was grasping a handful of her cloak, yanking it violently and flinging her aside. The clasp broke, and her cloak tore free. She rolled with the momentum and came back to her feet in an instant.
Taren unleashed a blast of fire at his attackers. Flames gushed over three of the soldiers, halting them in place as they were bathed in fire, cloaks blazing like torches. After a moment, he let up on the fire, and their cloaks fell away in burning wisps. The men’s armor glowed like molten steel from the heat, and it took Mira a moment to realize they weren’t men at all but automatons of the sort they had encountered in the Hall of the Artificers, looking much like Ferret, save for red eyes gleaming from their metallic masklike faces. They whirred and clanked as they advanced, undeterred by the fiery attack.
Two of the constructs seized a shocked Taren, grasping his arms and throwing him to the ground. Creel and Rafe were battling several others, as were Sianna and Iris, the latter two poking at them nervously with a short sword and dagger, respectively.
Ferret collided with one of the enemy constructs with the loud clang of metal. They both fell to the ground, but the girl was quicker to scramble to her feet. She grasped the other by the leg, lifting it to swing it around several times, then hurled the automaton past the wall of fire and over the nearby tents.
Nesnys chanted loudly, and the flames ringing them abruptly dispersed. Human soldiers poured into the clearing to join the battle.
This isn’t looking so good. Mira tightened her grip on her staff and leaped back into the fray. She leg swept one of the automatons holding Taren. It fell heavily to the ground, momentarily relinquishing its grip on the mage. Another reached for her, its fingers grasping, tearing at her tunic. Mira sidestepped and shoved it forward, knocking it into the other one holding Taren, freeing him for the moment. She grabbed her charge’s arm and dragged him clear of the nearest foes.
One of the constructs dove for Mira, trying to tackle her. She dipped under its grasp and drove her shoulder into its metal flank. Pain spasmed down her arm from the impact, but she ignored it, using the construct’s forward momentum against it as it started falling forward. She rose up to her full height, thighs and back protesting at the weight as she spun and then heaved the automaton into a pair of approaching Nebaran soldiers, flattening both men.
Then chaos enveloped them as what seemed like half the Nebaran army charged in. Mira spun around, alternately lashing out with her staff and striking with kicks and elbows to keep the attackers away from Taren, who was slow to regain his feet. One soldier fell back with broken ribs, another with a shattered wrist. A sword stabbed at Taren’s back, but Mira dove forward and knocked it aside, her staff striking the flat of the blade. The man’s eyes widened in surprise, then he was flying away, launched by a spinning kick to the side of the head.
“Creel! Get Sianna away!” Taren shouted, seeming to have recovered. “Ferret, go with them!”
He gestured, and soldiers and constructs tumbled away from him in a wave as if they were leaves swept away by a mighty wind. A second tent tore free of the ground, billowing up into the air, then a path was cleared leading down away from the rise. Taren seemed to wobble on his feet at the effort his magic took, but he didn’t collapse, fortunately.
Aware of Creel herding Sianna in the direction Taren had opened, Mira faced off with another trio of soldiers. She lost sight of all the others in the confusion, focused on the nigh impossible task of protecting Taren. More soldiers pressed in, then the men were throwing themselves at her, seeking to drag her down beneath their combined weight, and she knew she couldn’t keep them all at bay. Instead, she instinctively focused her ki around her feet and legs, bolstering her next attack. She leaped upward, spinning in the air and lashing out with both feet. A wave of ki energy rolled off her feet like a small whirlwind, knocking five men to the ground and leaving her momentarily clear of attackers.
But then something struck her with a loud crack, and she staggered forward, pain blazing across her shoulder and back. Nesnys strode toward her, a whip crackling with energy in hand. She snapped the whip back behind her and then struck again. Mira raised her staff to block. The whip coiled around the sturdy length of wood then tightened as Nesnys sought to tear it free of her grasp, but Mira resisted. Her staff suddenly splintered and broke apart in two pieces as the whip retracted.
Shocked, Mira barely dodged the next blow, narrowly deflecting it with one half of her broken staff. She tossed the broken pieces aside.
Nesnys smirked at her destroyed staff, thinking she had the advantage. She brought the lash back to strike again, but Mira went on the offensive. She sprang at the fiend, leveling a powerful kick toward her midsection. Nesnys recoiled, her wings flaring wide before they folded inward, sheathing herself in a cocoon of feathers. However, they weren’t feathers at all but some type of cunningly fashioned metal. The wings flexed slightly at the impact, just enough for Mira to bounce off, her foot and ankle smarting from the collision. Nesnys was forced back a step from the force of the blow, but she spun and flared her wings wide, jagged edges coming within a hairsbreadth of slashing Mira’s face, but she leaned back just in time. She darted in again, inside the reach of Nesnys’s lash, raining a flurry of punches against her black scale armor just as she completed her spin. The demoness tried to catch hold of Mira, the talons of her free hand scratching her neck. Mira twisted and yanked on her wrist, throwing the fiend over her hip and onto the ground.
Nesnys snarled, and a pale dagger appeared in her left hand then sliced through the leg of Mira’s breeches, though it didn’t draw blood. She backed away, but then an automaton seized her from behind, arms clamping around her like bands of steel, pinning her arms to her sides.
“Mira!” Taren cried.
“Run, Taren! Go with the others.” She struggled against the powerful grip but to no avail.
“I won’t leave you.” The others must have heeded Taren’s entreaties to flee, as he was the only one remaining besides Mira, the two of them surrounded by dozens of men and automatons, though the human soldiers gave the mage a wide berth. Taren’s eyes glowed with the magic he held.
“Such loyalty is touching.” Nesnys had regained her feet, her lash somehow reformed into a longsword in her hand. She sheathed the pale dagger and barked a command word, suddenly splitting into four identical duplicates of herself. The four all beat their wings in sync and took to the air.
Taren threw a blast of fire at Nesnys. It struck her, but a
duplicate image simply blinked out. The other three dove at Taren, and he threw himself to the ground. Her sword hacked a deep gouge in the turf, sending dirt and grass flying. He sent another blast into the sky and another image disappeared. Nesnys gained altitude, and Taren took advantage of the brief lull, turning and grasping one arm of the construct holding Mira. His eyes blazed brightly, and she felt power ripple into the automaton. Its arm seemed to resonate violently for a brief instant, then the metal shattered, coming apart in a rain of pieces, cogs and springs bouncing away on the ground.
Mira freed herself from its one-armed hold, backing away and keeping Taren behind her. The automaton, undeterred by the loss of an arm, lunged at her once more. This time, she leaped over its charge, rolling over its shoulder and catching it by the neck and upending the machine, sending it hurtling away, knocking a hole in the crowd of surrounding soldiers.
She turned to find Nesnys striking at Taren, who was busy evading the grasp of yet another automaton. Twin images of the winged fiend soared down and slashed at him. Mira tackled him aside, feeling the sword cut meant for Taren slash across her back. Fire burned along her back down to her hip. She rolled away, wincing as she got back up again. Her wounds were starting to take their toll.
Taren slung his dagger, Lightslicer, at Nesnys. The curved, silvery blade spun through the air, and the last image disappeared upon contact. Nesnys turned and banked in midair then dropped right at the two of them, sword plunging downward. Taren and Mira both leaped aside, and the fiend landed between them. She whirled, wings flaring, the sharp tips slashing open Mira’s forearm. Nesnys thrust her sword at Taren, and Mira gasped in horror as the blade pierced his chest.
A rage Mira had never known suddenly boiled up inside her. She kicked the back of Nesnys’s plant leg in the knee, and the demoness fell back awkwardly, sword coming free of Taren, its tip bloodied. Fortunately, it didn’t appear to have sunk deep, although Mira knew that causing a fatal wound wouldn’t take much. She slammed a fist into Nesnys’s face, rocking her head back, then drove a knee into her side. The fiend snarled, spinning away, her wings spiking into the ground and preventing her from falling. She regained her balance in an instant, a slash of her sword near enough to Mira’s face that she could feel the rush of air.
The ground suddenly erupted beneath them, a stony fist gripping Nesnys’s legs. She hacked at the stone, striking sparks, but was held fast. Mira was readying another attack on her, but she intoned words of magic and disappeared.
Mira looked around, surprised, then her gaze went to Taren. He was on his knees, clutching the wound in his chest, face pained. Blood streamed between his fingers.
“Take them down!” Nesnys screamed in fury. The demoness had reappeared in midair a dozen paces overhead.
A spear flew in their direction. Mira swatted it aside, moving nearer to Taren. A crossbow bolt hissed through the air, then another. Taren cried out, and Mira felt a line of fire traced along the back of her neck. Then a barrage of quarrels were streaking in from every direction. She steeled herself, fully expecting to be riddled full of bolts, but her eyes were only on protecting Taren. He staggered to his feet, and Mira realized no other quarrels had ever reached them, instead deflecting harmlessly off a magical globe shimmering around them. Taren wobbled on his feet, a bolt lodged in his thigh. Mira caught him before he could fall, holding him upright. She gasped at how much blood had leaked from his chest wound, soaking his robes.
Oh, Balance, don’t let him die! She pressed her hand to his chest, feeling his heart thumping rapidly as she tried futilely to hold his lifeblood back. This can’t end here in failure.
Taren extended a hand and with a silvery blur, Lightslicer reappeared in his grasp.
Nesnys dropped down from above, hacking her sword against Taren’s defensive sphere. Sparks flew, and her blade rebounded. She snarled a curse and slashed and chopped furiously at the globe. Energy crackled like tiny lightning bolts along the globe as she hammered at it. Automatons marched out of the surrounding throng and pounded at the sphere with their fists.
“Can’t hold much longer,” Taren gasped. “Need to… escape…”
Mira slung his arm over her shoulder and supported his weight. “Can you open another gate?”
“No… takes too much energy.”
Mira dragged him along as they started forward through the crowd in the direction where the enemy troops seemed the thinnest. During the battle, she had lost all sense of direction. The globe stayed centered on them as they walked, though they moved agonizingly slowly. She glimpsed faces filled with fear and hatred surrounding them. As the globe neared the soldiers, most fell away, afraid of the magic, although a few poked at it with spears or fired more crossbows at it. The automatons followed in their wake, pounding the shield steadily with their fists.
Nesnys chanted again, hovering above them, and a stream of hellfire shot from her hands, swirling around the globe in an angry inferno, the flaming tongues black at their hearts, crackling red-orange around the edges. The globe seemed to weaken and contract as they shuffled along. Taren’s breath hissed in thin gasps, and the air turned as hot as a forge within their bubble.
We’re going to die here.
The realization wasn’t as alarming as Mira would have thought. Instead, she accepted that death wasn’t the end, merely a transition point in a journey. Her only regret was that she had failed in her duty to protect Taren.
As rivulets of sweat ran down her face, she glanced over her shoulder, seeing Nesnys’s cruel face illuminated by the stream of hellfire, silvery eyes glinting a malevolent red, lips curved in a smile of triumph.
A bolt of fire suddenly slammed into Nesnys’s hip, sending her spinning away. The stream of hellfire cut off, and the fiend fought to stay aloft. Another bolt of fire crackled in, but the fiend twisted in midair, the attack striking her wing and fizzling out.
“I challenge you to single combat, Nesnys, spawn of the Engineer and Raelach, she who was once Seraph Arahne!” a voice cried.
The erinys Sirath flew into view, tendrils of flame curling off the bow in her hands. She fired a couple more rapid shots, but her arrows this time were aimed ahead of Mira and Taren, blasting a few soldiers from their path. Fighters dove and took cover, leaving the way momentarily clear.
Soldiers stood around gaping in shock. The automatons had stopped their persistent assault on the sphere during Nesnys’s magical assault and seemed to be awaiting further orders.
“Sirath, you have meddled for the last time, you cursed harpy!” Nesnys shrieked in rage. “I shall destroy you utterly this time!”
Mira and Taren pushed ahead, through the scorched edge of the clearing where the circle of fire had burned. They passed through a lane between two large pavilions then started down the hillside and picked up their pace, Taren panting weakly as she supported him.
A glance back showed the two fiends facing off in midair, a hundred paces apart, hovering in place as their wings slowly beat against the air. Sirath glided nearer to Mira and Taren. “Farewell, son of Neratiri. May you live to destroy this termagant along with all her fell schemes.”
“I thank you, Sirath,” Taren said.
Sirath nodded in return, a beatific smile on her face, and in that moment, Mira glimpsed the stunning beauty she had once possessed as a celestial. Then Sirath was soaring up into the night, loosing a rapid stream of fiery arrows at Nesnys.
The latter spun and twisted away, Sirath’s arrows tracing lines of fire across the night sky like shooting stars.
Mira turned her attention back to their own plight. They were at the edge of a large clearing with a bonfire, endless rows of soldiers’ tents beyond that. A cordon of steel barred their path beyond the bonfire, although the Nebarans didn’t seem to be in any hurry to tangle with Taren’s magic.
Why should they? It must be obvious we won’t last but a few more moments… They can wait us out till we fall then finish us.
Shouted orders came from behind them
as officers sought to regain order and muster a pursuit. Boots drummed the ground, and armor jingled as ranks of soldiers raced down the hillside. She and Taren were surrounded.
“Taren, can you summon that flying disc again? Else we’ll die here.” She hated to ask any more of him, but she was speaking truth.
His face was ashen, slick with sweat, but he nodded, leaning ever more heavily on Mira. “I-I think so… Just a moment.”
The globe shimmered as he altered its magic, shimmering with an opalescence. For a moment, Mira couldn’t help but think they were ensconced within a soap bubble. She looked around nervously, men within a dozen paces and closing in, armored automatons among their ranks.
Then she and Taren were rising off the ground, the sphere levitating in the same manner as the disc had earlier. The bottom was smooth and curved, so standing was difficult, and Mira had to shift her stance, bracing Taren against her hip. They bobbed a couple feet off the ground for a moment then scudded forward, men diving out of the way with startled shouts. Spears and quarrels ricocheted off the globe as Taren guided them higher, out of melee range. The lights of the camp retreated swiftly, then they were enveloped in darkness, soaring onward into the night.
All the while, Mira kept repeating a mantra to herself as she supported her wounded friend. Please don’t die on me.
Chapter 10
Kulnor watched as the strange armored lass with glowing purple eyes charged through a group of Nebaran fighters like a battering ram, sending them flying like an aurochs barreling through a stack of empty ale casks. Men cried out, flung away into tents and colliding with each other, tumbling and landing in a sprawl of limbs and fallen weapons.
He didn’t understand exactly what Ferret was, nor what those mechanical soldiers they had encountered were either, but they were clearly forged from the same mold. Ferret acted like a real person—if he hadn’t seen her metallic features, he might not have known the difference. But the constructs, if they were sentient, seemed of limited intelligence, from the brief encounter he’d seen. They reminded him of those clockwork windup toys he’d seen a traveling merchant selling in the market once when he was a small lad.
Trial of the Thaumaturge (Scions of Nexus Book 3) Page 7
