“Let’s hope you’re right,” I said.
“We’re about to find out,” said Riordan.
We walked for about three and a half hours. Every moment of it screamed with urgency in my mind. I wanted to sprint as fast as I could for the Grayhold border. There were millions of lives at stake, and I had helped put them in danger. I hadn’t been given much choice in the matter, but still. I had to stop Nicholas, no matter the cost. But Riordan was right. Sprinting for the border would draw attention, and if we drew too much attention, we were going to get killed.
As the caravan rolled towards the border, more companies of Rebel soldiers joined us. All of them looked harried and tense, and each man carried a lot of weapons. The gravel road passed through another of those dead forests, and squads of anthrophages led by individual Archon Elves joined the column. We made sure to stay well away from the Archons. They wore black uniforms, the front of their coats adorned with their three-headed dragon symbol. Like the Rebel Gatekeepers, each Archon would have a Dark One inside his skull, and the Archons would have summoned those Dark Ones through ritual murder.
I wondered how Nicholas planned to deal with his allies once the High Queen was dead. Didn’t he realize the Archons intended to stab him in the back and conquer Earth for themselves? He wasn’t stupid. He had to know they would betray him once they could get away with it. Nicholas wasn’t stupid…but he was arrogant enough to think that he could handle the Archons.
Well, if it came to that, it wouldn’t matter to me, because I would be dead, and Riordan and Russell would be dead with me.
The caravan slowed as it came to a hill, and the anthrophages hissed and snarled as they strained to push the trucks up the slope. I wasn’t sympathetic. It was the first time I had ever seen the damned things do anything useful. The Archons must have employed spells to compel them.
Then we reached the top of the hill. Beyond I saw a broad, barren valley, and…
I came to a sudden shocked halt, Russell next to me, his jaw falling open.
“Keep moving,” murmured Riordan.
I urged Russell forward, and we walked down the far side of the hill towards Nicholas Connor’s army.
It was a huge army.
God, he had tens of thousands of men.
Maybe hundreds of thousands.
I kept walking, but I scanned the valley as we did. I saw thousands of Rebels in their mismatched fatigues and camouflage. There were countless Archons in their black uniforms and orcish mercenaries in their mixture of chain mail and ballistic plates. Near the Archons skulked packs of wraithwolves and anthrophages. Likely the Archons would use them as shock troops during the attack. With the green fire in the sky spilling its light everywhere, it looked like a hellish scene. Like something a crazy artist might have thought up while drunk or stoned.
My stomach twisted with anger. There were millions of people in New York, and Nicholas was going to unleash this army on the city. He wouldn’t care about civilian casualties, and the Archons certainly would not.
Of course, the main attack was the Sky Hammer weapon. The army was just a distraction to hold the High Queen in place while Nicholas got the bomb underneath the Skythrone. Nicholas was sending most of these men to their deaths. Just more necessary sacrifices on the road to building his perfect utopia. I wondered if any of the soldiers and mercenaries in the valley knew that Nicholas intended to throw away their lives. The officers, probably – no doubt they would make sure they remained on this side of the rift way.
Which led to another question, come to think of it.
Just how the hell did Nicholas intend to get this army from Venomhold to New York? He could open rift ways, and so could the other Gatekeepers. There were somewhere between fourteen to eighteen Gatekeepers (I had never found out the exact number), but I had just killed one when we arrived in Venomhold, Russell had shot Victor Lorenz in Milwaukee, and Nicholas had murdered Hailey Adams inside Last Judge Mountain.
So, Nicholas had at most fifteen Gatekeepers, and even the strongest of them could only hold a rift way open for a quarter of an hour. It was going to take a lot more than that to move this many troops to New York.
Nicholas probably had another nasty trick up his sleeve.
I caught Riordan’s eye.
“Time to go,” I muttered.
Riordan nodded, and I quickened my pace, walking past the anthrophages.
“Fenton!” I snapped. The Rebel soldier stiffened as I approached. “I need to get to my staging point. Thanks so much for the escort. I’ll be sure to mention how helpful you were to the Overseer.”
Fenton glared at me but nodded. “Ma’am.”
We outpaced the caravan and drew closer to the army.
“That’s a lot of Rebels,” said Russell. “And orcs, and Archons, and anthrophages.”
“Just walk like you know where you’re going,” said Riordan. “Everyone will be busy, so if we don’t draw attention to ourselves, we should be fine.” He pointed. “The border’s just on the other side of that valley. Another two miles.”
“I wonder how Nicholas is going to get all these men to New York,” I said.
“The Gatekeepers, right?” said Russell.
“Yeah, but they have limitations,” I said. I looked at Riordan. “Can the Knight open rift ways?”
“She knows the spell,” said Riordan, “and she can open a large one.” He frowned. “But even that wouldn’t be enough. One gate is one choke point. Homeland Security and the Elven lords could set up a defensive bottleneck there.” He shook his head. “If I had to guess, I would say Connor is going to open many small rift ways and send squads throughout New York to cause chaos.”
“Like when the Archons attacked Milwaukee,” I said.
“Sort of,” said Riordan. “But this time, the Rebels are the ones with the nuke.” He paused. “Better stay quiet now. Just stay together, walk like we know where we’re going, and head for the far side of the valley.”
I nodded, and as I did, I noticed something. The sheet of green fire covered the sky, but it stopped at the far side of the valley. That was the border to Grayhold. Just a little further, and we could get to Grayhold, open a rift way, return to Earth, and warn people about what was to happen.
Then we reached the bottom of the slope and walked into the army of the Rebels.
A bolt of pure fear shot down my spine, mostly for Russell and Riordan since I didn’t care that much what happened to me. We were surrounded by tens of thousands of enemies, and every single one of them would kill us if they knew who we really were. Hell, I had probably encountered some of these men over the last year during my attacks on the Rebel supply bases.
We walked into the army…and no one paid any attention to us.
Riordan had been right. The Rebels, the Archons, and the orcish mercenaries were all busy with the final preparations. I heard officers and sergeants shouting orders, saw men rushing back and forth. Most of the Archons stood in place, keeping watch over the anthrophages and sneering at everyone who came too close. A few of the soldiers glanced at us, but they were all preoccupied with their own tasks. I drew a few lingering glances from the Rebel soldiers once they realized that I was a woman, but Riordan and Russell fit right in.
I felt a twinge of hope. Was this going to work? Sometimes the best way into a place was to simply look busy and walk around like you owned the building, but I had no idea that it would work with an army.
We had made it across the floor of the valley and were just headed up the opposite slope when something went wrong.
A massive, ringing chime echoed overhead like a giant mallet had just struck a house-sized gong. At once the frenetic activity in the valley slowed and ceased in places. We were near a troop of orcish mercenaries and a squad of Rebel soldiers, and both stopped and looked towards the center of the valley.
“We had better stop,” said Riordan. “It will look strange if we don’t.”
I grimaced, nodded, and stopped, and Russe
ll halted next to me. He peered into the valley, frowning, and then his eyes went wide.
“Look,” he said. “Look there. That aisle down the center of the army. I’m not sure, but I think that’s Connor. I think he’s on top of that blue truck.”
I followed his pointing finger, and I saw the truck. It was a blue box truck, the sort deliverymen use, its side painted with the logo of a New York shipping company. Right now, a team of twenty anthrophages pulled the truck, and I spotted two figures standing atop the vehicle. One wore the ballistic armor and fatigues of a Rebel soldier, and the second was a slim man in a dark coat. No, not a man – a woman.
“That’s Karst,” said Riordan. “The Knight of Venomhold.”
“Yeah,” I said, risking a glance around. Most of the army had turned to look at the blue truck. Was Nicholas about to give a speech?
“She’s holding something that’s on fire,” said Russell. “I’m not sure what it is.”
“We should keep going,” I said. “We…”
The gong sounded again, and the air above the blue box truck rippled and flickered. Lights swirled, and colors flashed, and a colossal translucent image appeared above the valley. I found myself looking at giant images of both Nicholas Connor, leader of the Rebels, and Natalya Karst, the Knight of Venomhold.
My first thought was that it looked like a giant public-address hologram.
My second thought was alarm, because I figured out how Nicholas was going to get all those troops to New York.
Karst was holding a Cruciform Eye.
It was a crystalline sphere the size of a bowling ball, though Karst’s thin hands held it without any signs of strain. Fire roiled and seethed within the crystalline sphere, save for a dark cross in its depths. The sphere looked like a burning eye with a cross-shaped pupil, which was where the name originated. But the Cruciform Eye wasn’t actually an eye, but a magical device that created rift ways. The Eye could open dozens of rift ways at once, and it could hold them open with ease. That meant Nicholas could flood New York with his army quickly, and his forces could pour into the city from dozens of different points at once.
That was very bad.
The glow from the Eye painted Karst’s face with bloody light, making her look ghoulish. She looked like an attractive albeit unremarkable woman in early middle age, with a thin face and dark hair. If she had been an actress, she would have spent a lot of time playing the prosecuting attorney on crime dramas. But she was far more dangerous than she looked. Natalya Karst had been the Knight of Venomhold since shortly after the Conquest, and during that entire time, she had been an implacable foe of the High Queen and an ally of the Dark Ones. A lord of a Shadowlands demesne was invincible within the bounds of the demesne, though the lord could never leave his or her demesne. Because of that, the Knight of Venomhold had been a constant but minor foe to the High Queen.
It had taken her alliance with Nicholas Connor to make her so dangerous.
Nicholas was wearing the same fatigues and body armor he had worn in Last Judge Mountain. Probably there hadn’t been time to change. I spotted the detonator for the Sky Hammer still clipped to his gun belt. All he had to do was pull the trigger, and in five minutes the Sky Hammer would go off. And once the timer reached the two-minute mark, the reaction was irreversible. Nothing could stop the detonation.
For a moment I entertained the thought of Cloaking, grabbing the detonator, arming the Sky Hammer, and blasting them to hell. I discarded the idea as impractical. For one thing, the Knight might be powerful enough to see through Cloak spells. For another thing, the detonator wouldn’t work in the Shadowlands. Nicholas had probably taken the batteries out of the device so it wouldn’t catch fire the way my phone had.
Nicholas started speaking. His voice boomed down from the image like a thunderclap. He probably got a kick out of that.
“Soldiers of the Revolution!” said Nicholas. “Allies from the Archons of Kalvarion and the orcs of Oragtar! I bid you welcome, and urge you to pause and reflect on this historic moment. After three hundred years, the High Queen shall fall. The Elven nobles shall fall, their government shall collapse, and Earth shall be ours!”
A roaring cheer rose up from the gathered soldiers. The orcs bellowed and stabbed their axes into the air. The Archons clapped politely, amusement on their alien features.
“Our mission has been successful,” said Nicholas. “The soldiers of the Revolution have located the Sky Hammer weapon, and it is in the truck beneath me at this very moment. Once, our predecessors thought to use this weapon to destroy the High Queen, but they were thwarted by treachery. Today we shall finish their plan, and free mankind from the grasp of the High Queen and her nobles.”
I resisted the urge to smirk since it would have drawn unwelcome attention. Nicholas hadn’t mentioned General Jeremy Shane, and he used to talk nonstop about Shane. Of course, Nicholas had been pretty annoyed that Shane had guessed some “Marxist shithead” (Shane’s exact words) would fall prey to the plans of the Forerunner.
My urge to smirk faded. Nicholas also hadn’t mentioned what the Sky Hammer actually did. No doubt he had told his men that it was an advanced weapon that would kill the High Queen. That was true enough, but it would kill New York and most of Nicholas’s army, and it would also rip the Skythrone from the air and cause a nuclear winter to engulf Earth for at least a year.
Yeah. The Rebels were fine with killing ninety percent of the population to ensure that the remaining ten percent lived free of the Elves…but I bet their minds would change quick if they found out Nicholas included them in the ninety percent.
Riordan tugged at my elbow. I glanced at him, and he beckoned for Russell and me to follow him. I wondered why, and then I saw that while everyone around us was staring at the images of Nicholas and Karst, quite a few people were still working. Which meant it wouldn’t draw attention if we kept moving.
I nodded, and Russell and I followed him.
“Today will be the final battle of the war of the Revolution, and the first step towards a new and unified Earth,” said Nicholas. “There will be no more rich and poor, no more Elven nobles, no more opposing governments, no more social classes, no more religions, no more strife and disunity. A new and stronger Earth shall rise from the ashes of the High Queen’s tyranny! In time, we shall export the Revolution to other worlds, and Earth shall take its place as a great power. We shall fuse mankind with the Dark Ones, and humanity shall be invincible and unconquerable!”
Again, came the cheers, though the Archons kept up with that polite, disdainful clapping. Russell and Riordan and I kept moving. We were almost to the far side of the valley now. Just a little further, and we could run up the slope and get to Grayhold. I could see the border, see where the green fire came to an abrupt halt and the empty black sky resumed. Another three-quarters of a mile, maybe?
“Soldiers, move to your final staging points,” said Nicholas. He reached for his belt, lifted a mechanical man-at-arms’ watch, and hit a button. “The attack will begin in exactly six hours.”
Six hours. We had six hours to save the world.
But now I knew exactly what Nicholas’s plan was. Karst would use the Cruciform Eye to open dozens of rift ways, and the Rebels and their allies would swarm through. And once the High Queen and her defenders were locked in battle, Karst would open one more rift way and the anthrophages would push the blue box truck through it. Nicholas would deposit the truck under the Skythrone, arm the Sky Hammer, and retreat back to Venomhold.
Five minutes later, the world would end.
Or at least, that was Nicholas’s plan. Just a little further, and I could escape back to Earth. One phone call to Arvalaeon and I would make sure Nicky’s plan blew up in his smug face.
We reached the edge of the valley.
Another twenty steps, and we would be clear of Nicholas’s army.
Then things went to hell.
I heard a familiar voice, and I looked to the left. I saw a truck full of ammun
ition, and a dozen Rebel soldiers unloaded it as Nicholas’s speech continued. Overseeing them was a man in fatigues and ballistic armor, his hair patchy and piebald. The reason his hair was patchy was the scarring on his face, and he had acquired that scarring when he had pissed off an elder bloodrat.
Well. That wasn’t exactly accurate. I had pissed off the elder bloodrat. The scarred man had gotten the brunt of its temper.
I was standing a dozen paces from Martin Corbisher.
He was berating one of the soldiers, yelling about the schedule, and his eyes happened to meet mine.
“Aw, shit,” I muttered.
For a terrible instant, we stared at each other, and then his eyes went wide with fear.
My initial, irrational reaction was vicious satisfaction that he was so frightened of me.
Then my rational mind kicked in, and I realized that we were in a lot of trouble.
“It’s her!” screamed Corbisher, pointing at me. “She’s an Inquisition agent! Kill her, kill her, kill her!”
Chapter 5: Border Disputes
Something like forty Rebels and orcish mercenaries turned to look at me, but Russell, Riordan, and I were already moving.
Russell yanked out his collapsible tactical baton, which was a useful weapon, but less so when surrounded by thousands of enemy soldiers. Riordan’s Shadowmorph blade sprang from his right hand while lightning snarled around his left hand. I summoned as much magical power as I could hold, a sphere of fire whirling to life over my palm.
Because I was going to kill Martin Corbisher.
He had gotten away from me in Venomhold and in Last Judge Mountain, but he wasn’t going to get away from me this time.
But Corbisher was already casting a spell, shadow fire snarling around his fingers. I hurled my fireball at him, and it exploded with a howl of flame and a boom. I knocked Corbisher over, but the warding spell he had cast saved his life. The dozen Rebel soldiers around him were less lucky, and the fire killed them. I growled, drawing together power for another spell, and then the enemy rushed us.
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