The first few companies of Eriscobans had entered the gardens when riders returned at a gallop from their pursuit of those enemies who’d fled north from the battle. A paladin named Sir Yancy reached Wolfram’s side, gasping for air, his eyes wide and excited.
“Captain! There are several more enemy columns marching this way. We skirmished, and I fell back before they could encircle me. I think it’s the vanguard of a larger army.”
Another group of the flying reptiles flew overhead. Blast it, where was Yuli? The Harvester take her if she’d abandoned the skies to the enemy.
Wolfram looked back at the jostle of men and horses entering the gardens. They may have abandoned their supplies in service of speed, but it would still take them an hour, maybe two, to get the bulk of the army through that gate and close it against the enemy. He couldn’t very well leave them strung out and vulnerable to a counterattack.
But neither could he ignore the creatures flying toward the center of the gardens. There was no reason for them to carry that extra passenger unless they meant to deposit forces in the heart of the gardens. He made a quick decision.
“Baron,” he said. “Form ranks outside the walls. You must hold the line until our troops have entered. See if this wizard can help.”
“I’m only a keeper,” the man said.
“Keeper, wizard, you’re what we have,” Wolfram said. “Use the walls’ defenses if you can.”
“Where are you going?” Knightsbridge asked.
“I’m taking my paladins to find the great wizard.” Wolfram took a closer look at the various paths, interior walls, and groves of trees. “It’s a labyrinth,” he told the keeper. “How do I find your master?”
“There’s a rune,” the man said. “I’ll activate it. Then drop your reins—the horses will know the way.”
Wolfram gave a curt nod. “Work your magic, friend.” He lifted his sword and raised his voice to bellow over the din. “Blackshields! To me!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Markal left for the Golden Pavilion at a run, and Nathaliey stood behind the gate, eyes closed, palms down, preparing a warning for Chantmer and Narud. With Nathaliey and Markal removed from the action, the east gate had been stripped of its most powerful defenders, and the acolytes, keepers, and lesser apprentices struggled against the might of the Veyrian army trying to batter its way in.
It took her several seconds to gather her will and power. She sent an incantation speeding south and north.
Danger! To the master!
Nathaliey had no time to wait for an echo to roll back and confirm that Narud and Chantmer had heard, so she gathered herself and ran toward the Golden Pavilion. An arrow sang past her ear and impaled itself in the bark of an orange tree. A wasp rider hurled a spear at her from overhead. The gardens turned the spear, and it missed.
And then she was on the woodland trail, protected beneath the canopy, running past cottages where the members of the order lived. She came upon two men next to a dead dragon wasp lying in the midst of leaves and broken branches. One was a wasp rider with a forked spear, and the other a marauder in a gray cloak, a curved, scimitar-like sword in hand.
She didn’t know what had killed the wasp, or what the men intended to do now that they’d crashed into the gardens, but they were standing in front of her own cottage. In front of her shaded fence, her door she’d painted a cheery yellow, when her companions had painted theirs green or red. It was a violation, and outrage washed over her.
Nathaliey picked up a green leaf that had fallen from one of the towering maple trees and lifted it overhead. She reached for the magic buried beneath the woodland trail and threw the leaf overhead, an incantation at her lips.
The two men had been arguing, but looked up as she spoke. The marauder shouted, and they lifted their weapons and came at her. Leaves had already begun to fall from the limbs overhead, slowly at first, then a flurry, then a whirlwind, swarming the invaders like thousands of green moths. The wasp rider went down beneath the mass of leaves, which stuffed themselves into his mouth and nostrils before he could scream. He writhed on the ground, buried in leaves.
The marauder kept coming, and the leaves that hit his cloak withered, turned brown, and crumbled into dust. He gave Nathaliey a wolfish grin as he waded through the swirling leaves, moving slowly, but steadily in her direction, now only twenty paces distant. She took a pinch of dirt from the trail, placed it on her palm, spoke a few words, and blew it in his direction. Dirt and moss and bark tore loose from the road and the surrounding trees and battered at him like a whirlwind.
The marauder staggered, tried to regain his balance, and fell. Before he could regain his feet, the leaves swept up in a wave and buried him. He thrashed beneath them, and they kept drying and breaking apart, but there were too many. Moments later, the struggles ceased.
A few minutes later, Nathaliey emerged from the woodland trail and entered the meadow above the lake and the Golden Pavilion. A heavy concealing spell lay over the shrine-like pavilion itself, and it seemed as though she were staring at it from a distance, across a vast landscape of hills and meadows, where it gleamed as a single point of light beneath its gilded roof. All illusion; the pavilion was no more than a few hundred yards away.
Dragon wasps had landed several dozen marauders in the meadow, and these men groped toward each other, seemingly lost and blind one moment, and the next pushed on by unseen magic that drew them together. Nathaliey felt sorcery; one of the dark acolytes must be near. She spotted him now, and felt his aura.
Her old enemy, Vashti. The one who’d taken her captive and left her starving in a gibbet hanging over the gorge in the mountains. Who’d handed her over to Jasmeen.
The only defenders she could see were three tiny figures at the steps of the Golden Pavilion. One was Memnet, no doubt still exhausted from his earlier fight, but she couldn’t identify the other two. If they were acolytes, the master could draw their power and blast at the enemy. That he hadn’t already, that he’d relied on this simple illusion to hide the shrine, told her that they were not. Most likely keepers.
Where was Markal? He’d been ahead of her, had disappeared into the woods before she could catch up. Shouldn’t he be halfway across the meadow by now, if not already there? Or had he fallen back when seeing the meadow clogged with enemies?
While she was mulling a way to cross the meadow, more wasps landed and dropped off their passengers, then lifted into the sky with flapping leathery wings. There were too many enemies, both wasps and marauders alike, not to mention the dark acolyte. Meanwhile, Nathaliey had called her strongest companions away from the wall’s defense, which would leave Toth—assuming he was still outside—without serious opposition to batter his way inside. He’d carry his army with him.
Nathaliey couldn’t do anything about that now, but she could inflict pain on the forces gathering in the meadow and open a way to the Golden Pavilion. She reached into the ground with her magical senses and felt for the stones buried beneath the sod. The keepers had been busy since the last attack, and there was plenty of power down there to draw. Somewhere beneath the meadow was the library vault, as well, but it was so well hidden that even knowing it was there, she couldn’t sense it.
A hand tightened on her forearm. It was Markal, cloaked in concealing spells, and he drew her into his protective zone.
“No, not here,” he said. “Not yet.”
“They’re going to attack the master. We have to stop them.”
“We’ll be stronger at the pavilion,” he said. “Narud and Chantmer will be on their way, too—I heard your call. Together, we can win this fight.”
She stared at him, and his eyes, cloaked in the shadow of his concealing spell, glittered back at her like embers. Did she trust his judgment? Yes.
“Lead the way,” she said.
They hadn’t gone more than fifty feet, creeping along beneath Markal’s concealing spell, when another swarm of dragon wasps descended on the meadow, the largest for
ce yet. They must have finally shredded whatever defensive dome protected the gardens. There were scores of them, so many that they darkened the sky. It was a horrific sight, and they were all carrying gray-cloaked passengers.
So many marauders. Where had they all come from? Somewhere, back behind his lines, Toth had been raising an entire army of his half-dead warriors. Nathaliey felt like she would choke on despair.
And then a familiar piercing whistle shrieked from the west. A massive wave of griffins dove from the sky. They opened their beaks, and the air filled with their screams. Eager griffin riders leaned out with swords flashing in the late afternoon sun.
There were more dragon wasps than griffins, perhaps two to one. But the wasps were descending, not yet at the ground, and each was laden with a rider and a passenger. The creatures could barely lift their heads before more than a hundred griffins slammed into them from above.
The griffins were bigger, stronger, and more disciplined than the wasps, many of whom tried to throw their passengers and flee. Some winged south, and when the others saw them escaping, they tried to break, too. A dragon wasp slammed into the ground near Markal and Nathaliey, then tried to crawl away as its guts spilled out and its tattered wings hung limp. It dragged a dead rider with it, crushed in the fall. Seconds later, a griffin fell nearby, swarmed by three wasps, who bit and clawed at its wings. One of the wasps got hold of the griffin rider and carried him away in its jaws.
The battle was still raging overhead when Nathaliey and Markal reached the pavilion, but wasps were dying all around, plummeting to the ground, while the griffin losses were slight in comparison. By the time they scaled the pavilion steps and she looked behind her, the rout was on. Wasps fled in every direction, their numbers gutted, and there were more dead marauders littering the ground than live ones ready to charge the pavilion. Yuli had bought them a reprieve.
Memnet was alone with two archivists, Karla and Erasmus. She’d hoped to see the orb in hand, light flaring out, but it remained hidden. No surprise, as disappointing as that was. He’d exhausted its strength already. Exhausted his own strength.
“We have won some battles,” he said. “Lost others. But the overall war remains in play.”
He sounded remarkably calm, considering that more than a hundred marauders were making their way across the meadow toward them. The defenses in front of the shrine remained dormant.
“There’s a dark acolyte out there,” Nathaliey said.
“I feel him. Do you know which one?”
“Vashti. The one Markal and I faced. The one who tried to turn me.”
“We can handle Vashti,” Memnet said. “Where is the dark wizard?”
“He’s battering down the north gate,” Chantmer’s voice said. He threw back his cowl and materialized in front of the steps to the shrine. His expression was dark. “He was already almost through when I got Nathaliey’s call—we couldn’t hold him back. I would imagine his army is pouring in from the north already. Ten thousand men, and more marching from the Tothian Way.”
“Another army is hitting the east gate,” Markal said. “We killed a thousand, maybe more. I’d estimate another five or six thousand are on their way from that direction.”
These two bits of news hung grimly in the air, casting more of a pall over the pavilion than even the sorcery radiating from the meadow.
“We won’t abandon ourselves to despair,” Memnet said. “Narud is on his way, and others from the order. We’ve lost little so far. We’re alive, and we have our strength and the power of the garden. Griffin riders cleared the wasps from the sky, and paladins are riding hard for the meadow as we speak, with several thousand Eriscoban troops entering the west gate. They’ll be here, too, and we’ll make a good fight of it.”
Nathaliey studied the marauders, trying to figure out what they were up to. It wasn’t a straightforward charge. For a moment she thought they were lost, caught in the perception-distorting effects that she’d noted when coming out of the woods. And if regular enemy troops were on the way, surely the marauders would wait before attacking the Golden Pavilion. Vashti cast his malignant aura over them, but she couldn’t sense its purpose.
A small knot of marauders moved in a line across the meadow. They triggered one of the wards buried beneath the sod. It vibrated momentarily, then exploded with a blast of dirt and rock. The marauders flew backward. But the effect was muted, and the men quickly picked themselves up. Another ward went off a few dozen paces away, with similar results. One of the men who’d triggered it clenched his ankle as if it were broken, but the rest were on their feet again in seconds.
“What are they doing?” Nathaliey said.
“Weakening the defenses,” Markal said. “Triggering our traps, and Vashti’s sorcery is rendering them harmless. They’re clearing the meadow so others can cross without dying.”
That explained a good deal, but the marauders were the enemy’s shock troops, his champions. It was hard to imagine that Toth had gone to so much trouble to bring them into the heart of the gardens, leaving scores of dead marauders, wasps, and riders across the meadow, simply to clear the defenses for the regular troops. There must be some other purpose. She voiced this concern.
“You may be right,” Memnet said. “But we can’t risk waiting until they’ve battered the meadow and rendered it harmless. It’s time to attack.”
They groped outward for the buried defenses. Nathaliey sent the meadow rolling. Chantmer raised debris, heaving up the dead and injured, including dragon wasps, and making it rain on the enemies’ heads. Markal twisted the perspective, and a number of marauders turned around and disappeared into the woods. A smaller number of them emerged again a minute or two later, confused and stumbling.
Memnet stood at the edge of the raised platform and leaned against one of the wooden pillars holding up the roof. Keepers had repaired the damage from the enemy’s earlier, failed attack, and freshly carved and painted figures wrapped around the columns. He closed his eyes and materialized the orb. Meditating, it seemed.
The others were still harassing the marauders when Narud arrived with several acolytes, keepers, and lesser apprentices. Others from the order shortly followed from around the lake path, and they soon had over half their number at hand, with more arriving every minute. The gardens had hidden their passage and protected them as they made their way to the Golden Pavilion.
But the retreat to their final sanctuary left the gardens protected only by the magic imbued in the walls, trees, stones, and streams. The enemy was battering through. Smoke rose from the north. From the west and south came a booming sound like boulders hurled against the walls.
The first Veyrian troops appeared on the far shore of the lake. Only a few dozen hardy men at first, those who’d forced their way up from the south gate, but there were soon hundreds piling up behind them, all trying to circle around toward the pavilion. The path threw them into the lake or the surrounding marshes. Chantmer gathered a few lesser members of the order and set off to challenge them.
More troops emerged from the woods, the first of the army arriving from the north and east gates. They were battered and bloody, and many had likely fallen along the way, suffocated by vines, dragged under by tree roots. Drowned in pools and ponds that lured them in and held them under. Even so, hundreds were shortly streaming from the woods, and battle trumpets blared from the north, south, and east, marking the progress of more Veyrians through the gardens.
Since Memnet remained on the upper platform with his eyes closed, the others looked to Markal to organize the defense. Keepers had arrived with garden tools, and he set Narud to organize them digging a trench in front of the Golden Pavilion. It was a repeat of the tactic they’d used in the earlier battle, only Narud was stronger than he’d been a few months earlier. He loosened the soil with an incantation, and the dirt practically leaped out of the keepers’ shovels. Still, it was a stopgap measure, at best. The trench might drag people down, but there were so many enemies. Toth cou
ld fill the trench with dead and use them as a bridge for the rest to come over the top.
Nathaliey and several of the acolytes and keepers kept the enemy busy with the defenses buried in the meadow, but she’d already exhausted the runes and wards closest to the woods. There were more in the last few hundred feet before the pavilion, but she’d have to wait for the enemy to make its charge before activating them. Vashti remained in the meadow, casting his auras, clearing the minds of the troops so they could march.
“Toth is coming,” Markal said. “I can feel him, can you?”
Yes, she could. A dark heart of sorcery, somewhere in the woods, moving south toward them. It was so strong that it seemed to rise with the smoke from the burning woods. He’d arrive in minutes. Even before that happened, the enemies in the meadow might reach the Golden Pavilion. They trudged grimly forward, with Vashti’s sorcery spurring them on. She turned a desperate look to Memnet. The master was sitting now, cross-legged, with the orb on his lap. What was he waiting for?
And then, when Nathaliey’s hopes had sunk almost as low as they could, paladins galloped into the meadow from the west. The Blackshields. Captain Wolfram was at their head, together with several others she recognized from a distance.
Wolfram came upon a group of marauders on foot who were driving two or three hundred men on the west flank, apparently trying to bring them to the shore to meet the other army fighting its way around the lake from the south. The paladins hammered into them and quickly drove a wedge into their forces.
Nathaliey sent a small spell of confusion in that direction, targeting the Veyrians. The regular troops turned about, seemingly blinded even though it wasn’t yet dusk. Paladins cut them down to get at the marauders, who put up a good fight, but they were on foot, and few in number on that side.
If Wolfram had immediately pressed forward, he could have galloped across the meadow and reached the Golden Pavilion at the head of a hundred or more paladins. But he held position, even as massive numbers of enemy troops surged into the gap to hold him. The captain’s motive was soon evident: he was protecting columns of barbarian troops marching hard behind them. The Eriscobans rushed into the meadow and lowered a wall of shields and spears just as the Veyrian troops slammed into them.
The Emerald Crown (The Red Sword Trilogy Book 3) Page 26
