The troll barreled past, noticed his deception, and turned, looking for the short teenager again. He knew that the troll wouldn’t stop now that it had his scent. It was almost like it knew what he carried with him.
A flash of red wyrd lit the night, blasted the side of the troll and drew its attention. That was his break. As it swung toward the threat, Astanel slipped back up to the wall and pursued the troll. Even though its attention was currently engaged, once it was done with the threat it would sniff Astanel out again. He had to strike, or risk being hunted.
Astanel gathered the wyrd about him. It made him shiver. Alarist wyrd wasn’t like wyrd from the well. It carried a foul taste, a shudder to the soul, an almost palpable cry of sorrow.
He felt the wyrd slip down his right arm, gather in his palm like a darkened light, and waited for the crowd to part.
The troll lifted its cudgel and swung with all its might. The ground shook, and Astanel hoped someone wasn’t on the receiving end of that attack, because they would likely be nothing but a broken pile of meat.
It swung the cudgel to the right, and Astanel saw a couple of soldiers dashed against the wall.
Then, like clouds parting to show a glimpse of the sun, the crowd before him parted long enough so he could see the troll completely, and that Angelica and Jovian were fighting it. Purple wyrd flashed from Angelica’s hands, and red wyrd oozed from Jovian. But it was the black wyrd, shattering the night, blasting out of Astanel’s hand, that did the trick. The troll vanished from sight, the alarist wyrd transporting the troll beyond the Black Gate.
Angelica stumbled, and Jovian’s red lightning shivered into the sky without effect. Before the two of them spotted Astanel, the boy saw Mag, standing a little further away, looking around as if she had felt something. Possibly his wyrd?
“Come,” Angelica said, racing toward him. She pulled him along with her and pushed Astanel toward the base of the stairs. He slipped on the first two steps, regained his footing, and raced up along the side, narrowly missing arrows twanging from bows above.
He crested the stairs and caught his breath while he looked for the opening Jovian mentioned. There, just past a line of soldiers, near the breach in the wall. Astanel set out behind the rows of archers. Some of them faced inward, toward the courtyard. They would take aim, and when they were sure it was safe, let loose with an arrow. Others stood facing the army beyond the rampart, and their volley of arrows was unrelenting. But they also had to deal with enemy archers.
An arrow whizzed by his ear and struck an archer facing inward in the back. The archer gasped, swayed, flipped over the parapet of the ramparts and plummeted to the courtyard far below. He wasn’t the only one to fall. Astanel crouched low so the parapet would protect him.
Then he was at the clearing. The parapet fell away on the courtyard side, and he didn’t want to get too close to the breach. He remembered what it was like when the troll rammed the rampart, and how it shook. Astanel could only imagine if another blow like that happened — with his luck the orb would fall into the breach and roll out into enemy hands. He sat the box down away from the breach and opened the lid.
Instantly the soothing calm of the Orb of Aldaras washed over him, strengthening his limbs and calling to his wyrd in a seductive embrace. He closed his eyes and felt the power wash over him. It filled him with resolve, filled him with power, and filled him with courage.
Astanel opened his eyes, and he saw with other eyes, with wyrded vision. The effervescent cloud of power issued from the orb and slipped over the edge of the ramparts. Like a sea of moonlight, it flowed along the bloody snow like water, and where it touched a wyrder, they seemed to shimmer with the silvery power.
Wyrd became stronger, the blasts more intense. Each touch of wyrd damaged so much more than it had before. Astanel could almost see the turn in the tide. Where sick wyrders had been attacking weakly, they grew stronger, healthier. Their wyrd was more focused, each blast knocking back the enemy forces. He smiled. For the first time in his entire life, Astanel knew that there was something better ahead, something he could reach for.
In the throng of people he saw Mag. Strong, filled with purpose, yelling orders that he couldn’t hear from his place on the wall. In her left hand she held a sword, slick with blood; her right hand glowed with green wyrd.
Astanel looked down at his own hands and saw the darklight of alarist wyrd there. He didn’t like it, but it was the easiest wyrd he knew how to work with. But it must have been the same way for Mag. She had been an alarist too. She’d had to overcome the wyrd she learned to wield. Now she worked with the well. He wondered if the call of the alarist wyrd was as strong within her now as it was for him, or if like any addiction the feeling would lessen with time.
As if his thoughts drew her attention, Mag glanced up, saw him, and motioned to him. She shook her head, realizing that he wouldn’t be able to get to her easily, and held her right hand to her face. She started talking into it, and when she was done, Mag tossed the orb to him.
When it reached Astanel, the orb projected her voice to him. He watched the words of her message swirl around the surface of the orb, like water circling a drain.
“I have a plan,” she said. “And you are going to help.”
As the orb recited the plan, Astanel nodded to Mag, but she wasn’t looking at him any longer; instead she fought her way to the left staircase.
The power of the orb coursed through Mag. Where she had felt the power of the egrigor like a sickness in her wyrd, this power was like a beacon of hope, empowering her, healing wounds in her wyrd that she hadn’t even known were there.
She cut a path easily before her, making her way to the left side of the ramparts. That side was smaller. When the angel attacked the wall, it was on the left side. In fact, if it hadn’t been for snow that had been piled up there, Mag wouldn’t even have been able to reach the stairs. She struggled through the snow, flashing the occasional blast of wyrd behind her as enemy forces charged at her. The wyrd easily forced them back.
Finally she reached the stairs and pulled herself up onto them. Huffing, she crested the top of the ramparts. There were no archers on this side, and there was little protection from the parapets either. She crawled along the floor, trying to avoid arrows. Nothing would break her concentration more than taking an arrow in the shoulder — or the head.
When she reached the edge, Mag laid her sword down and started willing her wyrd out of her hands, weaving it as one would a tapestry. She let the green wyrd slip through her fingers, braiding in it a vision of what she wanted it to accomplish: a barrier, a protective ooze of sorts around the edges of the walls and the ground of the breach. Mag ordered her wyrd to act, and even as she wove the strands of her wyrd together, she felt it take shape.
It nearly exhausted everything she had, because she was already tired from the battle. And everyone in the courtyard was feeling that exhaustion. They struggled and fought the enemy forces as they poured through the breach, but the enemy seemed tireless. More and more new, refreshed trolls and dwarves came through the hole constantly. It was a never-ending battle, like trying to soak up the contents of the ocean with a rag.
Finally Mag felt her wyrd take shape. It pulsed once along her spine, telling her that her will had been carried out. She hazarded a peek over the edge with wyrded vision. Each stone glowed with a soft green light, like an encasement rested around each. The ground between the breach was bathed with her wyrd.
She nodded to Astanel. Mag hadn’t been able to train him yet in the workings of wyrd, but he could harness the alarist wyrd within him better than she could now that she hadn’t used it in ages. That’s all she needed from him, and she hoped her wyrded barrier would work the way wax held acid away from metal.
She winced as the first bit of his alarist wyrd slipped along the wall encased in her wyrd, but nothing happened. Mag half-feared the wall would vanish completely, but it didn’t. Her wyrd worked well with keeping his at bay. She’d had the
thought because she remembered Sara telling her that Astanel had battled with her, and he’d shot forth black wyrd, and she had shielded against it. Mag didn’t think anything about that until she had gotten a feel for Astanel’s wyrd and realized it was magenta. It was the first she had really heard of an alarist attack being thwarted with a barrier.
Mag shook herself back to the present and watched as the black wyrd started filling up the hole in the wall like a tub with water. It was working just as she wanted. Where the black wyrd rested, no enemies could pass. They tried, and they vanished, transported beyond the Black Gate. Mag smiled, wondering what kind of stir was happening in the Otherworld this moment with all the living creatures just suddenly appearing there.
“Perfect,” she whispered once the flow of enemy forces stopped completely. Mag eased back along the rampart. Once behind the protection of the parapet, she formed another message orb and whispered into it. She tossed the orb behind her and felt it grow larger in the courtyard, bellowing her instructions to the soldiers.
“DON’T APPROACH THE BREACH IN THE WALL. IT IS CLOSED. CLEAN UP THE STRAGGLERS.”
The noise in the courtyard deafened Joya as she stepped out of the entrance hall and into the melee. She could see bodies everywhere. Their side had taken heavy losses, but across the clearing, through the fighting groups of enemies and allies, Joya could see the glowing darklight boundary that closed the breach in the wall. Cianna stood beside her, hand on her rapier. They had arrived just in time to hear Mag instruct everyone to clean up the stragglers.
“You ready for that?” Cianna asked.
“More than ready,” Joya agreed.
There was a strange noise from beyond the wall that Joya didn’t recognize — a grunt, and then something large was arcing up over the parapet. The archers followed it with their bows. Twangs filled the air as arrow after arrow was released from their weapons, sinking solidly into the object. Even the wyrded fire and lightning blasting at the object from wyrders on the ground didn’t stop it from coming.
Joya’s heart raced in her ears, deafening her to the shouting and the cries for help from the fallen and injured. Distantly she was aware of Angelica readying her shin-buto, and a dwarf slumped to the ground, sliding off the tip of Jovian’s sword. Angelica seemed to know what the object was before it landed.
But then it landed, and Joya didn’t need to guess any longer. The stony object hit hard, snow and earth flying up upon impact. It was gray, like stone, but it appeared to have clothing on it somehow. And then it started to unfold, and Joya realized it wasn’t stone, but gray skin, hard, calloused, and rippling with muscles.
The troll stood, and Joya was bewildered at how anything could have survived that impact. Joya marveled at how tall it was as it stretched its muscles. The creature was easily three times the height of a man. She had seen a few of them in the courtyard, and people took them on easily, or at least it wasn’t impossible to kill them. If this was just one, they could do it.
The troll roared, and that was enough to break Joya’s deafness and bring sound back to her ears. The noise of the courtyard came rushing back to her ears with a force that made her sway on her feet. Over the din she heard a shouted command from a green message orb floating high in the air above the courtyard.
“Kill it, more come!”
“More?” Joya whispered. Cianna sidled up to her, her rapier in one hand, a crossbow in another. She started shooting bolts at the troll, aiming for his head. Her crossbow had a kind of cartridge in it that kept reloading as she shot. It reminded her of Caldamron’s gun. Cianna was good with the weapon, making her way around the troll, circling it even as she shot. Joya wasn’t sure if Cianna was actually hitting her mark when she shot or not, but each bolt hit the troll in the head, so if she wasn’t aiming, she was certainly getting lucky.
Joya called on her wyrd and took aim at the troll, but a group of dwarves chose that moment to rush her.
There were too many dwarves for her to take on with one attack, and they were coming too fast. Joya flung her wyrd into the ground, gave a mental heave, and the ground buckled, knocking the dwarves to the blood-laden snow. Cianna saw the motion and focused her attention on the dwarves. She started unloading bolts into the crowd, and Joya backed up. She didn’t have a melee weapon, which was foolish of her, so she needed to stay out of range.
Joya retreated and Cianna moved forward to engage the dwarves as they came. Cianna darted in and out, shooting with her crossbow at some of the dwarves and engaging others at sword-point.
Joya called the wyrded lightning from within her, and pink electricity danced across the ground, taking the first dwarf by surprise — its focus had been rooted on Cianna. It fell smoking to the ground, its flesh charred, its eyes staring blankly at the sky.
To her left, the troll was busy with a group of soldiers and Angelica. Her sister wore a crazy smile on her face, loving the throng of battle.
Joya could spare no more than a passing glance, however, and turned her attention back to her cousin.
Fire burned through her veins and wreathed her hands in smoke. Joya threw the fire out, aiming straight at a gathering of dwarves. The dwarves combusted even as several more earth-shuddering thuds landed, alerting her to the coming of more trolls.
Joya looked up to see the trolls. They were going to be quickly overrun. Mag was engaged in her own battle, shouting commands to those she could. On the wall, archers and wyrders divided their time between attacking inside the court and beyond the parapets.
They have to be launching them up somehow, Joya thought. No sooner had she thought that than a green orb blurted out orders high above.
“Aim all efforts on destroying those catapults!” Mag’s voice issued out.
Still Joya attacked, her mind on the catapults outside the wall even as her fire and lightning strikes laid waste to the dwarves in the courtyard. In time the last one fell, and Cianna reloaded her crossbow with another cartridge from the belt on her waist. She took aim at the closest troll, which Jovian was fighting in a flurry of red-wyrded attacks and blade strokes.
Joya took up the attack too, adding her pink lightning to Jovian’s red. He didn’t spare a glance in her direction, all the while trying to keep the attention of the troll on him, dodging here and there, barely evading attacks as the troll’s cudgel thundered holes into the ground.
Joya didn’t know how weapons could actually work on the troll, but they seemed to be doing something. Maybe they were just aggravating it, keeping it focused on Jovian so that others could take it down.
Cianna had abandoned her crossbow strikes, Joya knew, because she could no longer hear the trigger release.
A noise to her right drew Joya’s attention, and a dwarf bounded out from between barracks. In surprise she yelped, releasing a burst of wyrd. Without form, the wyrd seeped into the dwarf, and it crumpled, dead.
Immediately Joya’s head started to ache from the discharge of the formless wyrd. She tried to push the pain aside, but it was there, like a bee buzzing in her ear, distracting her.
Cianna was now adding her ghostly wyrd to the mix.
“One down, three to go!” the green orb overhead cheered in Mag’s voice.
“We’re going to be overwhelmed!” Joya yelled. The trolls were starting to wreak havoc with the army inside the courtyard. More and more broken bodies were piling up — few of those bodies were trolls, and most were allied soldiers.
Joya concentrated all her efforts and let out a blast of lightning that struck the troll in the head. She watched the seeking fingers of electricity tunnel through his ears. The beast stopped, went rigid as the lightning found its brain, and then fell still.
“That’s it!” Cianna said, dodging out of the way of the falling body. It crashed to the ground, sending slight tremors through the earth and knocking snow off the eaves of a nearby barracks. Cianna looked down to her right, as if addressing a child. “Go tell Mag that we need to focus on the brain. The skin is too tough for wyrd
or weapon to penetrate, but if we can get to the brain, the trolls die.”
A thin wisp of gray wyrd manifested and slithered through the air, seeking the short-haired sorceress in green robes shouting commands atop the parapet.
Cianna darted toward another troll, and Jovian moved with her. Joya shrugged off the pain the blast of unfocused wyrd had caused, and followed. She noticed when they reached the troll that it was the one Angelica had focused on. Now there were fewer soldiers; most of them had been smashed into a red stain in the mud by the troll’s cudgel.
“Shoot for the brain, however you can reach it,” the orb shouted. “That’s their weakness. Their skin is too tough to penetrate.”
Jovian looked to Angelica, nodded, and darted between the troll’s legs. He drew the attention of the troll away from Angelica, slicing at its legs as he went between them. The troll lumbered around, taking aim at Jovian yet again.
Jovian dodged another club attack, and Angelica stepped back, taking aim for the head of the troll with her purple wyrd. Cianna had stopped helping attack the troll, and instead engaged a group of dwarves as they rounded on Angelica.
Joya tried to focus her wyrd, thinking of a way to control it once it had left her. She knew that she could focus on a target and have it hit the target, but was there a way to control the path the wyrd took once it struck, or was that happenstance?
As it turned out, there wasn’t any way Joya could control the lightning that spouted from her fingers. She could control where it hit, but she couldn’t shape it into a specific path. She couldn’t influence the wyrd to travel through the ear and to the brain, but she could strike at the ear until it worked.
Angelica was on the other side of the troll, her leather vest and trousers slick with blood and gore, her lapis sword strapped to her back. She had a different approach; she wasn’t using lightning, but instead the wyrd that flew from the stigmata on each hand was like a bolt from Cianna’s crossbow. She would launch it at the troll, aiming for the eyes, but it wasn’t a sure strike. The troll often batted the attacks away, and sometimes when they hit it seemed like there wasn’t enough force behind the attack to make it strike through the eye and to the brain.
On Wings of Chaos (Revenant Wyrd Book 5) Page 18
