"Yararsız maymun," Taban muttered before slipping his hands around Ciara's waist and lifting her up. The lighter load was easier and she could wrap her entire arms around the branch and slowly rise up until she was hugging it with her body. Getting a secure foothold, she dropped her hand to the priest and helped to haul him up.
Kynton climbed higher into the branches, now that far more reachable ones were within grasp. Taban bowed slightly and said "Your majesty," before hoisting Aldrin up. Ciara grabbed the prince's hand and leveraged him against herself so he wouldn't fall.
Isa glared daggers at the assassin who held his hands open plainly. "I promise, I won't tell a soul," he said before offering his palm for her to step into. The witch flew up, almost missing the dangling hand of the peasant girl. Aldrin offered up his own and together they helped Isa up.
She muttered a moment of thanks and, with Aldrin, climbed higher to the safety of the branches. Taban circled around the bottom of the tree, trying to find his own way up when a dark hand dropped down, followed by another. Ciara draped her entire body across the branch, trying to hook her feet.
The assassin stepped back, cracking a set of fingers from a torso crawling after them, and without turning back, ran forward, leaping for his life. The girl's surprisingly strong arms caught under his armpits as he snagged the edge of the branch. He slid, but Ciara hooked around him and started to slip down, dragging the assassin up.
He in turn kept a tight grip on her and curling his legs up, got a firm hold on the branch. Sweat dribbled off both of them, but they were all secure and in the tree. Taban looked down at the still wiggling torso inching forward, "Thank you, Nightingale," he said sincerely.
"It's all right, I owed you," she admitted before following after the others.
The trees still handful of leaves leftover from last fall shook and rattled as the oversized squirrels tried to roost in its branches. Aldrin and Ciara found refuge beside each other while hugging the sides, Isa collapsed near the assassin close to the base, while Kynton wedged himself deep into a crook like a fat toad.
"Right," the priest said, "so what was the second part of the plan?"
No one answered back; each of them trying furtively to figure out why climbing a tree seemed a good idea at the time. They were out of harm's reach for now. But it also meant they couldn't get down until...
"So we're to sit here until the vultures finish their job, then?" Kynton called back, enjoying the sound of his own voice. "Right, good, I can do that."
Ciara glanced over at Aldrin, hanging across a few branches like they were his personal hammock. Without saying anything, she took his hand and squeezed it. He in turn squeezed back, his eyes watching the slow march of unblinkers descending upon them.
"We know for a fact they can't climb trees?" Kynton continued.
Taban shifted, trying to find a position that didn't cause branches to slap into his crotch and got a static charge that zapped across his gloves. If he hadn't been wearing them, his finger might have been burnt. He followed the arc to the witch gnawing away at her fingernails.
"Witch..." he began, when a shudder broke through the tree. All of them grabbed onto their branches, waiting for the micro earthquake to pass. Just as the leaves stopped dancing another thud shook the branch harder and some of the older branches cracked in response.
"You have got to be kidding me," Kynton said, looking down through his shoes at a pair of unblinkers ramming entire body first into the tree. Each would rear up, try to do a shuffle run and then smack face first before flopping onto his back. While the downed body would struggle to rise, another would take its place. Soon the entire tree was vibrating as an entire army of walking corpses ran at the trunk. He'd have broken into fits of giggling if he weren't facing certain death. Even then, he still snorted when a pair, unable to look where they were going, slipped and fell across a crawling one.
Isa screamed again, her eyes screwed up tight, as if she couldn't face the sight of the unblinkers. Taban looked down at the corpses, a hauntingly familiar blue dancing about their edges, then back to the witch who radiated it. "Witch, what have you to do with this?" he asked measuredly.
Isa didn't answer, her mouth moving in mumbles as if in a hurried prayer. She didn't even flinch at the sound of the assassin drawing his blade. But Ciara saw it, even as she clung for dear life to her branch and Aldrin.
"Taban! What are you doing?!"
"This witch knows of the unblinkers. They are tied," he said carefully. Still Isa ignored him, her gnawed down fingers rubbing across a humming crystal. "Killing her might sever the connection."
"What?!" Ciara shouted down. Then three unblinkers made for the tree, bouncing her off the branch in the hard attack. Aldrin screamed as her weight pulled on his shoulder, her body dangling limply, but he refused to let go.
Taban turned to the sight of the girl held only by the weak muscle of a failing boy king. "You will meet your maker," he muttered, looking over at the silent witch and tried to move towards her.
Still Isa ignored him, but even as she hung for life Ciara didn't. "Taban! Don't! You have no way to know if killing her will end any of this!"
"And if I try nothing, we all die," he said back to her.
Ciara switched tactics. Still holding tight to Aldrin she glanced down to find something to break her fall, but only came up with more unblinkers, "Isa! Isa, whatever it was you did, whatever it is you can do, do it now!"
The assassin inched closer to the witch lost in deep thought, his dagger -- dotted with the same three circles -- drawn back. It was little more than the thrust of his arm to end the witch's short life, but Taban hesitated.
"Isa!" Ciara yelled once more, before a hard thud shook the tree and her voice broke into a scream.
Taban swung forward but a burst of energy erupted from the witch's hands, casting his arm aside and almost breaking it. The energy shot forward and burned a path through the snow, melting and then scourging the ground below as well as any unblinkers in the path. The force tossed Isa's limp body deeper into the tree but Taban caught her before she fell. As the final dribble of blue seeped out of her eyes every single unblinker collapsed as an invisible hand cut the strings.
Cautious eyes peered down through the tree's skeletal canopy. "Is it over?" Kynton asked, unable to see much past his own navel.
"Not to put too fine a point on this, but I could use help!" Aldrin cried, Ciara still dangling off him.
Taban pushed the still shaking witch off him and bounded down the tree. They'd served him well for vantage points and there were very few he could move in. Unfortunately, he was a bit late at swooping in to catch the flailing damsel. Before the assassin could even raise his arms, she dropped, right onto a pile of previously walking corpses.
Dead meat thudded in a sickening sound as Ciara hit the pair of soldiers, and she rolled off the bodies as quickly as possible, trying to not think about what broke her fall. Rising slowly, in the hopes nothing was broken, she looked up at Taban, who still stood with his arms outstretched. "What?" she asked him.
"You're a terrible flyer," the assassin muttered, trying to not stare at the gore seeping into the sides of her dress. She absently swiped her chin with the back of a hand, covering her face in what had been a major of the fifth platoon.
Aldrin, realizing he no longer had the strength to pull himself up, glanced down at his feet and called, "Look out below," before following in Ciara's tumbling footsteps.
The prince missed the corpses, and instead hit the snow, his legs giving way so his ass ended up deep into the drift. His teeth rattled from the joining of buttocks with gravity and land. The gory girl offered her hand to Aldrin, who took it and stood, trying to not think about how frozen his behind would be before nightfall.
The witch and the priest skittered down from the tree, each being more careful than the teenagers whose bodies could repair easier from a broken spine or two. Kynton dropped out and walked over to one of the once again torpid corpses,
nudging it with his foot. When it failed to lash out and grab at his brains he turned to the rest, "What in the rutting netherworld was that?"
Isa glared back at the priest but felt the others turning upon her. The assassin, who'd been very close to seeing if he could survive a blast of 12,000 volts through his nervous system, folded his arms menacingly. "Magic," was all she said, hoping that would end the conversation.
"Oh no, little witch with the pale hair and cold heart. You can speak your riddles to the children, but adults are playing now," Taban didn't like having his intended kills talk back to him.
The pale eyes turned upon him, but nary a spark of blue danced about, she'd been drained clean dry. "What does a killer of the sands know of magic? It isn't...you know water," she began, as if she were trying to explain the atom to cavemen, "it comes and it goes. Occasionally there are droughts and sometimes there are floods. Magic is the same."
"But there's been no magic for almost three hundred years," Aldrin cut in.
"A very, very long drought," Isa said, "and with all the rain hiding in the clouds, you know a major storm is coming."
"So that's why you can make corpses move?" Kynton asked, trying to slide away from the woman he'd been needling for weeks.
"I cannot make the corpses move! I can't make magic!" she shouted, wanting to finally get it all out. Let loose the real secrets of the witches, "We're not creators, witches are born conduits. The magic, the energy, whatever you want to call it, it finds us, it tries to use us.
"And so we have gemstones, rocks to focus the static charge building up and use it for constructive purposes. Most of the common rabble never notice, only laughing at a spark or two," she glared directly at the priest who rubbed the back of his head and turned behind him. Isa sighed and continued, "But sometimes, in some places in Arda, the volcano, the hot spring, however you wish to view it, it's bursting with untapped potential magic."
"Why not collect and store it?" Aldrin asked, his mind running back to some of those old Dwarven books that spoke of cities sparkling with light deep underground with nary a flame in sight.
"I..." for the first time Isa stuttered, not ready to own up to her own shortcomings, "We do not know how. The best most witches can do is balance, but the tide's been turning. Even in the face of the unblinkers, most witches cannot redirect enough of the pull to bring down one."
Ciara, rising from wiping her hands and arms in the snow said, "And you took down an entire army."
The witch's white eyes looked around herself at the path of destruction the excess energy caused, some of the ground still sparked in the waning flames. "Yes," was all she responded, terrified of what lay inside her, what her mother found all those years ago tucked inside some ramshackle farming village. An almost perfect conduit.
"And we are to believe the witch?" Taban asked, watching the woman as a snake does a particularly crafty mouse.
Aldrin looked over at Ciara, who he knew hated any mention of magic, but she seemed to take Isa at her word, nodding back at the lost prince. "I see no reason not to," he said and she shrugged her shoulders in agreement, it was the most logical conclusion they had in the face of walking corpses.
"It matters not if you believe me or no, we should leave regardless," Isa said.
"Why?"
"The magic is already returning," the witch's words barely left her throat before an arrow whizzed past her head, landing deep into their rescue tree.
"Be you friend or foe of the crown!" a voice called from a mounted shadow in the distance.
The exhausted group looked around at each other and slowly raised their hands to show just how incredibly unhelpful they'd all be in a fight. Aldrin tried to drop his voice and boomed out, "Friend!"
"Does anyone ever answer back with foe?" Kynton whispered to Isa, who promptly slammed his toe with her heel.
The mounted shadow rode quickly into view, a very loaded bow facing down the boy prince, followed by another pair. Scouts most likely, hunting the battlefield for any who'd somehow survived and spotted a witch throwing a hundred foot long stream of fire into the air.
"We're..." Aldrin started, trying to get on good footing, but the lead solider only scoffed.
"I dunna care who ya are. You go back to our camp 'til we figure out if you be friend or foe."
"For a point of order, what will happen if you find out we're friend?" Kynton asked, his finger nudging into the dancing arrow.
"Ye'll be drafted into the army!" the scout cried proudly, as if they weren't surrounded by about 78% of the army.
"And, just for completion's sake, what if we're a foe?"
"Ye'll have your intestines ripped from out yer bellybutton and tossed to the dogs. Then ol' Ham here will cut out yer heart and show it to you."
Ham for his part knocked a broken war axe against his oversized helmet and grinned. Kynton swallowed and nodded, "Right, glad for the information."
"Enough talking, now get yer asses movin'," the scout shouted, nudging the party forward with his arrow. Kynton took the first step towards the east, followed by the others.
As the scouts and their prisoners (or recruits) turned away from the tree, a severed hand's fingers began to tap out, counting down the days.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A girl's giggle reverberated across the near idyllic scene as a pair of servants, not much into womanhood, carted a basket between them chattering on about the warm day. The sun was awake for the first time in weeks, and glinted off their hairpins that were in no way bent forks of the King's personal service. An all seeing eye watched the two and made the calculation to call them on their thieving later. Even she was letting the heartening rays of spring lighten her nearly constant dour mood.
When they first arrived, the tower was little more than a disgusting boy's club, with knights left to their own devices stuffing filthy laundry and old chicken bones into every open crevice. It was either the divine hand of Scepticar or a lot of bloody good luck that most of the old castle's staff wound up following behind her husband and his pack through the pass. An army was a difficult thing to move, an army with its own wait staff doubly so. But she whipped most of the few squires still sewing buttons onto their shirts while still wearing them into shape with the help of her handful of girls. Bralda momentarily touched her head, her fingers crumpling around a greying curl and tried to put her missing daughter our of her mind. She'd raged for nearly 24 straight hours at Asim for letting her go, even as she accepted in her heart it was the logical move. It just wasn't the right one.
"'ey! Talia, keep your elbows up. Don't be dropping your entire days work into the mud like last time," her voice rang across the steep cliff towards the river's edge. The Tower of Ashar was built on what had been prophesied to be its own island, until the god of the sea tossed out an old couch that was getting in the way, and turned the sea into a river. It was a folktale to pass the time between the fifth round of "the wheels on the wagon go round and round" while on patrol.
Talia curtsied towards her mistress, but didn't raise her arm, sending a pair of Albrant's knickers into the mud. Bralda sighed, but, putting aside the typical cursing she'd have laid out on the girl, stalked forward. Most of the others were on the rocks at the other edge, pretending to wash clothes and not in anyway splashing mostly themselves while the knights watched. She'd been young once herself and knew all the tricks. Shaking her head and loosening more of the red curls from her hair scarf, the only sense of civility in the Keep leaned down to pick up the errant knickers and froze. Something glinted in the distance. Something that should not be there.
Bralda rose slowly, not wanting to give away that she noticed, when a blood-curdling scream rang out from the other side of the tower, where she foolishly left her girls alone. Breaking into a run, she dashed towards the screams as if she could do something about it. As her feet crushed the few strands of grass trying to poke through the weakening snow, she unknotted her headscarf and waved it about crying, "Get to the Keep! Get
back to the Keep! We're invaded!"
The trip was a wearing one for Marciano. He already etched a detailed note of every surface in his house he intended to nap upon once this was all over, and that was before the Emperor finished securing his last sack of relics upon the priests' horses. The General wondered briefly if he should point out the folly of bringing men of god into battle, but thought better of it. If they were doing this for the sake of Argur, then maybe her men should see the dirty work up close for once.
He tried to ignore the groans and cries of his men as their saddle sore legs once again fell onto the warhorses. Not many of the steeds survived the hell on the ships, but it didn't matter. Not many of his men survived the hell on the battlefield, either. They'd taken most of the Queen's fist out, but she got in a few rounds herself. The ones who couldn't move he offered promises of a long rest away from battle and the lies that he'd be back for them soon. Even as he spurred Peter away from those injured and dying cheering him on, he didn't look back. He didn't want all those trusting, hopeful faces to follow his dreams.
Vasska was in a rare form, offering actual tactical advantage at times, and deferring to the General willingly when strategy was necessary. Marciano would almost think their fight was behind them were it not for the way the Emperor's eyes would swing to his as if he were trying to climb inside his skull and scoop it out. At least the man wasn't bringing any of the heads with him. He hoped.
Two days of hard travel, with less than thirty men under him, they found the Tower breaking into the sky on the horizon. She was white, whiter than an old girl her age should be, with a few broken parapets squaring the entire tower's ramparts. Most likely a pair of archers patrolled it regularly, if they were wise.
Marciano pulled Vasska aside and said, "Whatever your plan is to take the tower, it's best to hear it now."
The Emperor smiled that infuriating grin as if he read ahead of the class, "We march up to the gate and knock."
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