Lahar pointed. “They’re running.”
The wall blocked their view, but something caused the elven and Gadaran sorcerers to panic. Many redirected their spells away from Shinar. Others abandoned the ramparts. Klay readied his bow and drew an arrow. He nocked it as a black mass of beasts climbed over the top of the walls.
Lahar whispered, “My God.”
Klay blinked and swallowed at the sheer number of monsters. He remembered the battle in the tunnels of Shinar. The smaller beasts could climb stone with their knifelike claws, and he wondered how long it had taken to make so many of the things. A giant thud shook the yellow walls. Dust leapt out of the cracks. Klay guessed at wall breakers on the far side and more beasts. They were outnumbered.
Lahar drew his sword and thrust at the heavens. “To me!” He leveled the sword at the ramparts. “Save the Reborn.”
Klay leapt toward him. “Wait. There are too many.”
“We can’t leave her.”
“She’s dead.”
“Then I die with her.” Lahar charged. “To me! Save the Reborn!”
The Shinari knights picked up the battle cry and gave chase. Gadaran champions followed, and everyone rallied around Lahar. Klay watched chaos become organized with one simple command. Sorcerers stopped running and launched spells at the beasts tumbling down the walls. The knights rushed past the sorcerers to crash into the monsters.
Klay wanted to follow, but the numbers held him back. He couldn’t believe he was the only one who had done the sums. Lahar was a fool. Klay cast about for others who could count, but everyone was racing to meet the bone beasts, which became an endless mass of black skin and glowing red eyes. Klay saw no way to win.
Lahar waded into them, hacking and slashing with uncanny speed. He became the spear tip of the charge, gleaming in his silver armor and tearing apart beast after beast. Klay had only seen one man fight like that before—Lahar fought like a younger version of Tyrus. What he lacked in the well-trained perfection and brute power he made up for with wrath. Lahar butchered beasts as he climbed the ramps. The sight of it made Klay want to fight. He wanted to save Marah. But he didn’t see how the charge could work. A great blast sent shattered pieces of the wall raining down, and still Lahar pressed forward.
Chobar shoulder bumped Klay in the hips. Klay stumbled and glared at his bear. Chobar raised an eyebrow.
“There are too many.”
Chobar nudged him with his nose.
“Someone needs to report these things to the king.”
Chobar took a step toward the horde and glanced over his shoulder.
“You can’t save her.”
Chobar lumbered into the fight. Klay cursed and followed.
Marah coughed on the smoke. Her throat burned, and dust scratched under her eyelids. Streams of tears muddied her cheeks. An invisible barrier, a tiny hemisphere, kept thousands of claws from her flesh, but she felt the weight of the monsters. They pushed against her barrier, and it trembled under the pressure. She fought to shut out the world. Voices unlike any she had heard before swirled around her, deafening her and robbing her of the ability to think.
She couldn’t hear her own thoughts.
Inside each beast lived multiple voices: demons of the Nine Hells and the dead of Shinar. They were so close they bombarded her with thoughts. Even though nothing was physically touching her, she flinched and crouched.
Her mind became a primal howl. She wanted to be heard, and her need—the emotion of it—morphed the pain and fear and desperation into a single thought.
Help me!
Amazingly, some of the beasts answered. The plea made many mock her, but a few turned on their friends. The knot of creatures struggling to get past her little barrier became a frenzy of black shapes ripping one another apart.
The pressure eased, and the first flickers of hope rekindled. A few seconds later, a meteor crashed near them. Dura warded it away, but the impact knocked her down.
He’s too much for her. She’s too old.
Marah caught the one voice among the throng. She turned toward Shinar with dread. She couldn’t fend off spells and beasts. Dura was spent. Marah decided the beasts were unfair. She had no army to fight for her. Her father cheated, and she didn’t want to fight anymore. She wanted to go home.
She withdrew to a fantasy of a warm bed and a glass of cool water. She was thirsty and exhausted and outnumbered. She was done.
Another voice, another stranger, shouted at her. What are you doing? You can’t give up.
I want to go home.
II
Tyrus had set a grueling forced march that lasted eleven weeks. All day and every day, they’d run like packs of wolves. Marked men could jog eighteen hours a day, but only the ones with over a dozen runes kept the pace. Men with fewer runes fell behind or hurt themselves. Of the tens of thousands of warriors that had stayed with Breonna, only about two thousand could run beside him. He saw a couple of hundred thanes with thirty to fifty runes. The bulk of the warriors stayed behind with the women and children.
Weariness and boredom became worse than thirst, bruised heels, and aching knees. From dawn until long past dusk, they jogged over jagged lands, placing one foot after another, over and over, on a journey without end. Tyrus had done the sums enough times to know them by heart—if they covered three miles an hour, eighteen hours a day, they could reach Shinar in eleven weeks. And they enjoyed one advantage: the absence of purims. Normally, the monsters defended their ranges, but they spotted none as they trekked eastward. The boring journey was blissfully free of bloodshed.
Tyrus kept his distance and silence, making sure he was the first up and the last to sleep. The tactic reminded him of Azmon, who would call it an object lesson in endurance. Tyrus ran the hardest, and the men muttered in disbelief. Only the strongest maintained the pace. In this way, or so the thanes whispered, Tyrus chose the best. He hadn’t planned that—speed was his primary concern—but he cultivated the rumors after he overheard them. Often, in little valleys, Tyrus feared the Norsil might abandon him, but at the tops of hills, he saw the strongest thanes scrambling after him.
He maintained a delicate balance between forcing them onward and giving their runes time to heal the damage. Often they walked instead of jogging. They outpaced the women and children, who were months behind the vanguard. Breonna would be seeing to them and their meager supplies with a second group of thanes who protected the baggage train against rival clans.
If the purims built another army, Tyrus was handing them an easy victory. He blushed at the poor planning: overextending his forces to the point that they struggled with basic necessities like food and water. They slaughtered any game they found. At night, before collapsing into rocky beds, warriors foraged for tubers and complained about woman’s work. Tyrus gambled that the purims had fled north to lick their wounds.
The Gadarans worried him more.
Tedious days dragged into a dull existence. They ran and foraged and ran some more. They steered wide of the Gadaran mountain ranges and followed the sea along the southern coast of Argoria. At the ports of Galkir and Calardia, envoys bought some supplies, but it cost them days of haggling because the towns feared being sacked—which, if they’d had siege equipment, would have been the easiest way to resupply. Later, they swung north across the Shinari plains where water became scarce. They traveled out of their way to follow little streams that were more mud than water as spring became summer.
The day they neared Shinar, early in the morning, they heard distant rumbling like a thunderstorm and watched flashes of orange and white on the horizon.
When Tyrus crested a hill, the city of Shinar—dozens of miles away—sprawled across the plains. Many of the Norsil gasped at its size. They whispered questions about how men could build such a thing, but to Tyrus, the city looked wrong. Camps circled the walls, which seemed to be under construction.
Tyr
us stumbled when he recognized the investment. Some fool had built a second wall around the greatest city in creation. Miles of stacked stones competed with Jethlah’s Walls as though an overgrown child built a rival city.
Men asked him what was wrong, but rather than answering, he took up the jog again. The far side of Shinar was the focal point of all the spells. He sought red tents and worried about being set on fire. The battle grew louder as they approached. Running toward it took hours. Then the walls blackened. Tyrus cursed at the sight of thousands of beasts scurrying over the ramparts.
His thoughts turned to Marah and the dreams when she had begged for help. Somewhere in that camp, she waited to be eaten alive. He wanted to sprint to her but overruled his gut and slowed the pace. He needed the thanes to rest before they engaged. Slowing to a walk felt craven, but there were too many beasts to charge. He needed more warriors, which meant waiting for Olroth to bring up the rear.
Tyrus walked a few miles and unslung his sword. The desire to charge left him with fidgety fingers. He twirled his sword and stretched his shoulders and glared at the chaos. He wanted to fight but needed to win more. Every few seconds, he counted his warriors and cursed. He needed more men. He needed more time. And each delay gave the bone beasts a chance to kill Marah.
III
Azmon didn’t know the runes keeping his monsters away from Dura, but the sight of such a thing made him worry. He breathed hard and shook his head, watching the impossible. He had no idea how Dura warded away the beasts, yet she survived.
He closed his eyes and reached out with his senses to see through the beasts. A strange ghost of a girl hovered near Dura. His teacher had not aged well, and he couldn’t believe her ancient features. The jawline and eyebrows were doughy. Purple spots and hundreds of wrinkles covered her face. Her hair had thinned and turned pure white. He almost didn’t recognize her.
The waif at her side drew his attention. She cast spells. Azmon gasped. He couldn’t fathom who she was until he caught the ghost of Ishma in her cheekbones and little rose-petal lips. He severed the connection. The battle made more sense. He was fighting another Reborn. He fought his own daughter.
“Damn you, Ishma.”
Azmon cradled himself. He needed his hands to stop shaking. The revelations came quickly after that. He realized if she had such power as a small child, she would be capable of amazing things when she grew into her powers. His daughter would be the greatest sorcerer House Pathros had ever produced.
Azmon screamed at his bone lords, “Kill the girl!”
Orbs of hellfire burst into life all along Shinar’s wall. He launched more attacks and sensed rather than saw as Dura fended off the spells and Marah drove away the beasts. His impotence twisted his guts into knots. The might of the Roshan Empire should be able to kill a teetering crone and a little girl.
“Your Excellency,” Rassan said, “that sandstorm…”
“What?”
“An army to the south.” Rassan shielded his eyes and pointed. “There are shadows near the base, infantry.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Thousands of infantry are marching on Shinar.”
Azmon smiled. “Mulciber sends the animal men?”
The completeness of their victory, the last-minute surprise to foil Dura, made Azmon chuckle. He marveled at the sheer size of Mulciber’s army and wondered whether his beasts would finish the elves before the animal men tore into their flank. Then he peered closer at the dust storm, and the hairs on the back of his neck stirred. With runes to power his eyes, he saw men. Their shadows left most of the details to the imagination, but the silhouettes didn’t match Gadaran knights. He ticked off a list of nations that might field such an army, and only one answer remained.
He told Rassan, “Those are barbarians.”
“Who do they fight for?”
“Themselves.” Azmon snarled his disbelief. A third faction wanted Shinar, and they’d picked the perfect moment to make their move. “Grigorns.”
Azmon saw an army large enough to fight his monsters even if Dura hadn’t found a way to control them. A child—his own heir—countered his every spell. Shinar was lost. Azmon saw it at once and argued against himself. He couldn’t have spent all that time preparing only to suffer another defeat. He refused to accept that, but Dura had outsmarted him once more, faking a retreat to draw him out into the open.
He punched a rampart. The siege turned against him. If he pulled back into Shinar, he might wait them out, seeing which army survived to continue the siege, but the girl could control the beasts. She could break Jethlah’s Walls. He balled his fists until the knuckles whitened. All his plans meant nothing if he could not control his own beasts.
“Excellency, orders?”
Tempted to die fighting, Azmon went through several scenarios. If his daughter could control beasts, she would use the wall breakers against him. Her spells amazed him in a way he hadn’t felt for years. Not since the shedim had showed him new runes had he been so impressed. Shinar would fall if they stayed—he was certain. Not that day, maybe not for the next month, but they would all die nonetheless. A little waif had outmaneuvered him.
She should have been at his side. The regret felt like a wound, an emptiness in his chest. With such talent, House Pathros could have defeated the shedim and the seraphim. They could have torn Mulciber apart. He sent a message to his beasts, an image of the girl and his teacher, with instructions to kill them both. He heard a lull in the battle as the army of monsters disengaged the elves and charged back to the wall. A pity to waste such talent, but he couldn’t let the threat stand.
The beasts belonged to him.
Torn between wanting his daughter’s secrets and needing to eliminate a new threat, Azmon wondered if he might capture her. She dominated a battlefield at the age of six. What does it mean? The answer made him stagger: his daughter was a prophet. Eyes opened, he finally understood why the angels had conspired with his wife. Clarity humbled him. What a fool he had been, to assume he was the most powerful sorcerer in the world when everyone else had been worrying about his daughter. His advantages—his creatures and his runes—slipped away from him, leaving one last tool.
“Rassan, come with me.”
“If we abandon the beasts, they might gain control of them all.”
“She’s not that strong.” Azmon sensed the limits of her influence, but he grimaced. “Not yet. Signal the lords to follow.”
As they climbed downstairs, Rassan asked, “What are we doing?”
“Heading to the flyers.”
Rassan sounded scandalized. “We flee?”
“We fight from the air.”
Marah helped Dura navigate the ramps down the walls. She kept her eyes on the yellow bricks beneath their feet and tried to ignore the horde of snarling monsters. Drool flung through the air. Some beasts crashed into her barrier while others defended her. She had no control over them, nor did she understand the battle. Black things—all howls and teeth and red eyes—tore each other apart.
Marah cried for help, and the beasts that listened tried to cut a path down the ramps, but it was never more than two or three feet long because other monsters tackled the ones who fought for her and ripped them apart.
In the distance, knights charged the beasts. Marah couldn’t see that far, but she understood it from the voices of the deceased. If the voices were echoes of the dead, the recently dead were the loudest. Shock, dismay, denial, anger—a heady mix of screams left Marah sobbing and struggling to walk. She stood in the well of an impossible amount of suffering. She couldn’t shut out the noise, and to her, the battle was fought twice. Monsters killed men in front of her, and then the voices of the dead described their demise.
They wailed for answers, but she knew nothing. Caught in a world of ghosts, Marah couldn’t hear Dura shouting in her ear. Inch by inch, Marah helped her crawl down the walls.
“We need to get off the wall.” Marah chanted the words to block out the screaming voices. She helped Dura hobble down the ramps. “We need to get off the wall.” They went slowly, and all around them, furious fangs and claws fought against her little bubble of safety. Marah ignored them. “We need to get off the wall.” As they went, they had to crawl over the torn-apart bodies of smaller beasts. A few creatures fought for her, but she ignored them too.
“We need to get off the wall.”
Near the base, elves and Gadarans struggled to reach them. Marah paid them little mind as she summoned another meteor and destroyed the dwarven wall. The structure buckled and tumbled, burying many of the beasts. She fought to keep the bubble up, but she was lost in her own head. With her eyes shut, she only heard the shadows moaning and crying.
She couldn’t find her own voice.
She sagged to her knees, clutching at Dura. As long as she held Dura, Marah would fight to keep her grandmother alive. She held the bony legs and struggled with consciousness. She was so tired that she thought she might sleep for a moment. The idea terrified her awake. If she nodded off, the beasts would rip her grandmother apart.
Two thousand thanes joined Tyrus and watched the battle for Shinar. They were the greatest warriors of Breonna’s clans, men with dozens of red marks, a few with over fifty. Tyrus waited until Olroth pushed toward the front, and then he waited again for Olroth to catch his breath. The man seemed taken with a fever. Bright-red splotches colored his cheeks, and a steady trickle of sweat dripped off his chin. He stood next to Tyrus, leaning on his knees, gasping for air.
Olroth shook his head at the battle. “You want to attack that?”
Willing to Endure: A Dark Fantasy (The Shedim Rebellion Book 3) Page 42
