“Maybe. Seems to me they were reluctant allies, at best. They hate the lowlands. The heat, the people.”
“They weren’t reluctant when I met them,” Nathaliey said. “When marauders went after their aeries, when the enemy began killing eggs and chicks, the riders joined the war. Yuli is in it until the end—she said so herself.”
“Then where are they?”
“Licking their wounds, arguing new tactics. They probably landed in a forest clearing where it’s cool and there’s water. I don’t know where, but I know they won’t have abandoned us.”
Markal wished he could be as confident.
Yet in spite of the forces arrayed against them, Markal hadn’t given up hope. Yes, there were thousands of enemies gathering around the wall, an army of a size he’d never seen before. Veyrians continued crossing the stream and spreading out to encircle the gardens. What’s more, Narud and Chantmer would be facing similar forces attacking from the north and south.
But Toth hadn’t breached the walls, not yet. He’d suffered hundreds of dead simply taking the bridge. Unlike the last time they were assaulted, they had Memnet, an army of griffins—assuming Nathaliey was right about Yuli—and a barbarian army marching to join the war.
The paladins had retreated with the master, but a dozen of them now came riding up, led by Sir Marissa. They dismounted and took position, ready in case any marauders came over the wall.
Meanwhile, a mass of archers was forming outside to the left of the gate. Wagons crossed the stream carrying arrows, which were heaped in front of the archers. The companions watched warily from atop the wall as two or three hundred men notched arrows, drew, and fired. The arrows zipped high into the air, and looked well placed to rain down on the walls and the keepers, acolytes, and paladins behind the gate. But when they hit the invisible barrier, they splintered and fell harmlessly to the ground outside the garden.
“Keep it up, men,” Nathaliey said. “Go ahead, waste as many arrows as you want.”
Markal had a contrary opinion. “That was a test. The next attack will have sorcery.” He called over a young acolyte. “Raise power,” he told her. “Nathaliey, take her power and strengthen the wall’s barriers.”
“There’s a ward right here that will do the same thing,” Nathaliey said. “Should I activate it instead?”
“Do both.”
The archers notched more arrows, and he wondered if he was wrong. Nathaliey had spent the ward and burned the acolyte’s stored power, and he worried he’d wasted it. Maybe that was the enemy’s intent, to draw out their magic before the real attack began. The Veyrians had no shortage of men and equipment, after all; what were a few arrows?
But the instant the archers let loose, he knew his hunch was correct. Sorcery radiated from somewhere near the ruined bridge, and the arrows hummed with it as they flew from hundreds of bows. The rune Nathaliey activated burst outward like a gust of air. The arrows struck it and broke into pieces. Markal shielded his head with a forearm as shards of wood, twisted metal arrowheads, and fletching rained down on them.
When it was over, Nathaliey looked at him in wonder. “How did you know?”
“It was a guess. These wards aren’t doing any good buried in the stone. I don’t want this wall to be like the bridge—when it fell, we lost a lot of power. Power we could have used, but didn’t. Same situation with the wall. Use the magic—all of it. Save nothing for tomorrow.”
Nevertheless, there were more arrows to fire than wards and magical defenses to knock them down. The enemy would surely feint and probe, so he had to be prudent and make accurate guesses. The archers notched more arrows. Markal had identified the location of the sorcery, and he reached out, testing, seeing if someone was out there gathering power. No, not that he could feel.
Unless there were a second dark acolyte present. In which case, holding back would be a mistake.
Markal had lost track of the dragon wasps while focused on the archers, and they’d cleared from the sky. He doubted they’d gone far. It was only when they began to rise from the far side of the meadow on flapping, leathery wings, that he began to understand. They formed a mass and flew once more toward the walls. Arrows zinged from hundreds of bows, but all attention was on the wasps.
“More sorcery,” Nathaliey said. “It’s on the wasps.”
Sorcery hung about the dragon wasps and rolled ahead of them like a poisonous fog. Markal and the others threw up wards and magical spells. Nathaliey reached all the way to the brook for water and turned it into a spinning icy vortex. Her power had grown, and he watched in amazement as she impaled two wasps with ice spears and blasted three others with a bombardment of giant hailstones.
Other wasps struck the fortified air above the wall and crumpled. A wave of arrows hit the barrier, and one of the trebuchets launched its first shot. More arrows, more wasps, more shots from the trebuchets.
Wasps died. Others broke through, carried by the sorcerous fog. Nathaliey cried a warning, and Markal turned to see a second force of wasps flying in from the southeast. The sky was suddenly full of them, and they were penetrating the garden defenses, dropping in low.
Several landed inside the gate, and Marissa and the others scrambled back to their horses, regained their saddles, and drew weapons. Markal pulled up a rune and attacked the first two dragon wasps to touch ground. They flipped end over end, and their riders went sprawling, but others landed unmolested. The wasps each carried a second rider—men in gray cloaks, with dead eyes and pale skin, who leaped clear of the beasts the instant they touched down.
Marauders. Waves of them being lifted in by air, over the walls, and dropped inside the garden. Already a dozen or more were on the ground, forming ranks against the paladins.
Other wasps continued toward the center of the gardens. All flying sluggishly, carrying passengers, burdened by the gardens’ defensive magic. Markal’s mouth was dry. There must be a hundred wasps overhead. A hundred wasps who’d broken through the barrier wall and were each carrying a passenger.
A hundred marauders. This wasn’t a small, probing attack. It was a swift, brutal assault designed to slaughter the defenders from within.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wolfram wanted to ride. He wanted to ride hard. Even after so many days on the road, he was bursting with energy, and his horse chomped and stamped his feet, pulling, trying to break into a gallop.
Ever since the great wizard had appeared and cast his sorcery—no, not sorcery, since this was the good, earth-centered, gods-based magic, he reminded himself—the entire company of Blackshields, together with thousands of troops behind them, had been pressing eagerly up the road, magic filling them with strength and determination.
He’d sent Marissa and two score of Blackshields ahead with Memnet, and they’d have reached the gardens by now, might even be in the thick of the fight. Wolfram had stayed behind with more than a hundred other paladins. There were tens of thousands of enemy troops about, and he didn’t dare leave Baron Knightsbridge without a proper defense against marauder assaults. So close to the end of their march, he couldn’t risk losing it all.
Meanwhile, Memnet had carved a destructive path straight to the gardens, and Eriscoban forces moved unopposed. The wizard’s magic had left the road scorched. Even the grass to the sides was obliterated, fields turned up and blasted. They passed an enemy encampment, and dead enemy soldiers lay everywhere, together with their burned gear, overturned carts, war hounds, dead donkeys, camels, and horses, among the carnage.
Wolfram had caught a glimpse of Memnet the Great’s magical attack, and it had been awesome to behold. Light burned from a stone in his fist. The ground flung rocks, mud, and people skyward as if he were witnessing some colossal beast waking from a slumber far beneath the surface. Clouds formed in an otherwise clear sky and lashed the earth with lightning. When Memnet was done, death and destruction and an empty road remained. If only Wolfram could get the army moving faster and bring them to the fighting at the gard
ens.
Baron Knightsbridge caught up to the vanguard on horseback, escorted forward by Sir Lucas and two other paladins. His face was flushed, his eyes gleaming, and he looked several years younger, as if invigorated by the wizardry.
“The rear of the army is falling behind,” Knightsbridge said. “We’ve got four thousand men strung out between here and the abandoned village. And another fifteen hundred behind that.”
“What the devil is holding them?” Wolfram asked, frustrated.
“The magic was weaker, Sir Wolfram—they didn’t get the full effect. And the men are on foot, carrying arms and armor—they can’t run forever. We have to slow down or we’ll leave them behind.”
Wolfram had learned to rely on Baron Knightsbridge’s counsel. He was a steady, cautious warrior, and the troops instinctively trusted him. He’d held together a collection of men and women from throughout the free kingdoms, warriors who at one point would have been suspicious of each other, if not outright hostile.
Together, they had marched into the populated east, with its decadent khalifates, its brutal slave lords, and its hostile, drought-stricken climate. Wolfram and Knightsbridge made no promises to their forces about how long the war would last, how many Eriscobans would return home, and how many would see their funeral pyres burn on the wrong side of the Spine, their ashes scattered over unknown soil, and their wights wandering in strange lands. Yet still they had followed.
Griffins had departed for war that morning, and a fair number later retreated west, nursing wounds or riderless. He was shocked when giant winged reptiles flew overhead in pursuit, carrying riders with spears.
Someone said they were dragons. Wolfram didn’t think so; a dragon was the size of a barn and could breathe fire. But they were something akin to that, and fresh fear of aerial attacks rippled through the army. A small clump of griffins appeared and scattered the creatures before they could descend on Wolfram’s army, but it was clear that the beasts had met the griffins in battle and done them harm.
Over the previous twenty minutes, twenty or thirty griffins had flown back and forth over his army. More dragon wasps were spotted to the south, and the griffins set off in pursuit, then returned to patrol overhead.
“She’s protecting us,” Wolfram said.
Knightsbridge frowned. “What?”
“Yuli. The griffin riders. They’re keeping those monsters off us. We’d be under assault from above without her flocks. Without her, we’d have to turtle down and wait it out.”
“What does that have to do with our strung-out forces?”
“Everything. If there were armies marching to ambush us or attack our supply columns, don’t you think Yuli would have warned us? They’re up in the sky—they can see everything.”
“Not marauders. Not with the sorcery of their gray cloaks.”
“Maybe not,” Wolfram conceded, “but she’d have spotted regular troops.”
“And what do we do with this information?” Knightsbridge asked.
“The battle is waiting for us. We only need to join it.” He was growing excited. “So we drop the wagon supplies. Drop everything but a man’s sword, shield, and armor. Leave our supplies guarded with a few dozen men—enough to deter scavengers and bandits—and carry everyone else to the gardens at full speed. The wizard said we’re only a few miles out—the first troops could arrive in less than an hour. The slower troops will pour in as reinforcements.”
“Leave our supplies,” Knightsbridge said flatly.
“We’re close. I can hear the battle. And they need us. The wizard was spent when he cast that spell—he won’t have enough left to blast the enemy. Even the griffin riders have fought and taken losses, while we have yet to clash swords.”
Knightsbridge twisted his horse’s reins. “We’ve dragged those supplies through the mountains, fought off raiding parties. Carefully husbanded our resources for a long campaign.”
“We’re almost there.”
“And if the enemy lays siege once we’re trapped behind those walls? That’s all our food. We’ll starve without it.”
“The wizard can open a path to our supplies.”
“How will he do that? You said he was spent. And he hasn’t even faced the sorcerer yet. Sir Wolfram, this is a gamble. A gamble that this battle ends here and now. If it doesn’t, if it lasts, then we die.”
“We may die anyway, friend. Let’s make sure if we go, we do it fighting with our friends by our side. Not out here, isolated, arriving so late that we face the sorcerer’s full wrath alone.”
The baron hesitated, and Wolfram could see the man’s loyalty warring with his desire to protect his men and keep them fed. Knightsbridge’s instincts had brought the army safely to this point, and Wolfram was asking him to cast them aside in a single, desperate thrust.
At last the baron nodded. “I’ll make it happen.”
#
The army surged once they’d dropped their supplies, carried forward by lightened burdens and strengthened by the magic Memnet the Great had cast on them before departing. Men ran at a trot, horses needed to be held back from a full gallop. Trumpets sounded, and cheers and battle cries rang out.
They were climbing a slight rise when Wolfram caught his first glimpse of the garden walls. They seemed unimpressive, slender, of cut stone, with no towers or inner keeps rising above them. The gate was wood, reinforced with iron, but there was no drawbridge, no moat where an enemy would be forced to descend and climb again while suffering a hail of stones and arrows. There wasn’t even a proper wall walk with battlements to protect a patrol. Trees rose from the interior, large leafy oaks and maples, and there were even flowering vines spreading down the exterior, which seemed like an invitation to scale the walls.
Which Veyrian troops were attempting to do. A small army of several hundred men had thrown up ladders and were trying to get up and over, using the vines as leverage and urged forward by a handful of marauders.
The vines, far from providing easy purchase, were a living, writhing obstacle. Tendrils grabbed men by the ankles and dragged them, writhing, into the leaves. Other vines wrapped around ladder rungs and snapped them like twigs, or pulsed and threw the ladders down.
The Veyrians continued doggedly in the face of these obstacles, while others hammered the gate with an iron-capped battering ram. The door barely made a hollow, defiant thumping sound no matter how hard they threw themselves into it.
Wolfram looked up at the wall and was surprised to see no defenders. Apparently, no defender was needed, the way the wall and gate were repelling any attempts to get inside. Dozens of Veyrians had crawled back with broken arms and other injuries, leaving dead companions behind. It was one of these injured men who spotted Wolfram’s forces and gave a warning cry.
Somehow, the Eriscobans had approached within eyeshot before being noticed, even though he had a hundred riders and more than a thousand men within five minutes of him, and they were kicking up a thick dust along the scorched road. The sound of all those boots and hooves should have been audible for miles; Wolfram had certainly heard the enemy long before he spotted them. More of Memnet’s magic?
Wolfram lifted his arm and shouted for a charge. A roar rose from the Blackshields. His horse surged, and he drew his sword and lifted his shield.
The Veyrians attempted to form ranks against the charging riders, but the first wave of paladins crashed into them before they could take position. Wolfram’s force swept through with a whirlwind of swords and bashing shields. Enemies fell, heads split open, shoulders crushed by sweeping blows. Necks severed. By the time Sir Lucas charged in with a second wave of paladins, Wolfram had already opened a wide gash in the enemy force.
He rode on, almost stunned by the feeble opposition. Lucas’s paladins were gaining on him, then overtaking him on his right flank. All around them, the enemy fell under their blows.
There were only a few hundred Veyrians in total, not much of an army—he knew this, and knew that King Toth’s real stre
ngth was elsewhere—but a surge of righteous joy rose in his breast to see the enemy fleeing the battlefield after a few minutes of combat. Baron Knightsbridge’s foot soldiers began to press in from behind, and they pinned the Veyrians between their spears and the garden walls, where vines engulfed and strangled.
A determined knot of Veyrians broke free in a run, trying to fight their way around the edge of the wall toward the north, where the bulk of the enemy army was likely flowing down from the Tothian Way. A mixed group of paladins and regular Eriscoban cavalry rode after them, while Wolfram concentrated on mopping up the remnants.
The battle wasn’t yet over when the gate swung open. A single, solitary figure appeared on the other side and beckoned them to enter. Wolfram gaped. He’d assaulted multiple castles, fortified camps, and other set positions over the past months, yet this entire stretch of the wall seemed to have been guarded by one man.
Baron Knightsbridge was up ahead, his face splattered with another man’s blood. He rode through the gate and turned back around with his eyes wide, searching until he picked out Wolfram.
“Sir Wolfram! You have to see this.”
“No time for gawking. Get your men inside.”
As Knightsbridge went to work, Wolfram rode ahead to have a look for himself. He stopped just inside the gate, stunned by the beauty of what he saw. The interior of the gardens was like a vision of Paradise, the ancestral home of the brother gods. Fruiting trees rose from rolling carpets of neatly trimmed, impossibly green grass. Flowering vines with blossoms larger than dinner plates crawled up trellises. A fountain threw out cool, clear water. A rich, sweet scent wafted over him: flowers and clean water and a dense, green smell of life.
Shadows darkened this heavenly vision, and he glanced skyward. Dozens of long, lizard-like creatures came swooping low over the wall. More of the monsters that had menaced them on the road. Each creature carried two riders, and they winged toward the center of the gardens. Was this a spying mission, a flyover, or was this the start of an aerial attack like the ones Yuli’s griffin riders had mounted in the high passes?
The Emerald Crown (The Red Sword Trilogy Book 3) Page 25
