Fury of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga 5)

by Ellyn, Court

  The Miraji veil thickened again. Kelyn’s command hill disappeared in a heaving sheet of light and shadow. Fucking tricksters.

  “Paggon,” Lothiar said, pointing, “order those two Fire Spear regiments to advance. Around the mist. Attack from this angle.” Best keep the vocabulary elementary, or the ogres might end up in Avidan Wood. Instead, Lothiar demonstrated with his hands that Fire Spear was to assault the humans from the northeast. Should keep them well away from Daryon’s deadly fog. Maybe even lure out the dwarves. Let’s see the crafty bastard send devices in opposite directions.

  Paggon nodded and stomped off.

  Lothiar ducked under a canvas awning. The sun struck the crown of his head with brute fists. The shade was stifling but an improvement. He set a basin upon a trestle table and poured smelly marsh water into it. “Grayscar,” he muttered while tracing the toad-shaped sigil upon the water.

  Nothing happened. No shadowy shifting, no faces coalescing. He had traced the sigil upon water or air nearly every day for the past twenty years. Still, he must’ve missed an angle or curve somewhere. He traced it again.

  The water showed him only the glazed bottom of the basin. Was the ogre dead? Was the Thunderstone clan porting into the Heights or not?

  Lothiar rushed into the sunlight and traced a four-pointed star upon the wind. “Tréandyn,” he called. The sunlight failed to gather to his finger.

  The black stains on the back of his hand had nearly disappeared. The chill lingered, fading more slowly. In his cheek too. He scrubbed his hands and face in the marsh water. The black streaks washed away, but the cold endured. It was as if he had pressed his cheek to ice, held snow in his hand.

  He sank onto a stool. A measly splash, no more. Yet avë ignored his command. The effects would fade. Wouldn’t they? Yes. Yes, they must. It would just take time. How long? Hours? Days? Weeks?

  A twisted frog-thing crawled into the shade, tried to hide under the table. Lothiar gave it a kick, flung it under the hooves of his warhorse. The animal whinnied in surprise and pranced upon the thing, crushing it. When the liquid washed from the bodies of those pitiful creatures, would they bloom again into ogres? Doubtful.

  If Lothiar could not contact his lieutenants, his ogres, how was he to deliver orders? Paper, couriers. Yes, all was not lost. He took a deep, stilling breath, and clenched his hands to quell their trembling.

  Trouble was, he had no paper or quill or ink, and ogres couldn’t read.

  “Cap sick?” Paggon stooped to peer under the awning.

  Lothiar pushed himself to his feet, careful to keep his face neutral. There is always a way. “I need two messengers.” His mouth and throat were as dry as if he’d eaten a handful of sand.

  Paggon’s thick brow pinched. “Messajers?” A word Ironfist had never needed to learn. The sigils had spoiled the lot of them.

  “Two naenion—fast naenion—runners—to deliver messages. To carry my words. One message to Fire Spear. One to Lieutenant Da’ith. They are to sound their horns the instant they see the Thunderstone clan.”

  Paggon nodded, slowly understanding. “Running wid words.” Before he moved off to select his runners, the air at his side rippled. Sparks danced. A portal split open. So close that Paggon lunged aside, howling at the electric sting in his arm.

  Ruvion tumbled through. His chest heaved; his hand clutched a bleeding gash on his ribs; blood and grime streaked him head to heel.

  In the instant before the portal rumbled shut, Lothiar glimpsed the ogre-stained slope of Brogula Kaem. Elarion. Regulars. Swords swinging bright under the sun.

  “Worst nightmare, Captain,” Ruvion grunted. He inspected the gash on his side, showed his teeth. “The Kaem is overrun.”

  Inconvenient and loud. “Dathiel?”

  “And your sister.”

  Lyrienn herself led the Regulars? The agony of betrayal clashed acutely with feelings of pride.

  “Tugark is dead.” Ruvion gulped. “And the avedrin are gone.”

  “That’s not possible. How did they get past the gate?” Bars of baernavë. A single lock, a single key. Next time, he’d fit the gate with three locks and three keys, all hidden in different places.

  “I didn’t investigate, sir. The naenion told me what happened.”

  “You didn’t enter the Pit personally? See with your own damn eyes?”

  “I tried! Nurganurk must be dead too, because I couldn’t invoke her name to open a portal. And I’m not about to go wandering through those tunnels, get lost and get eaten. Sir.”

  Lothiar swung a foot, upended the trestle table, the basin, his bow. Five or more years he’d been rounding up avedrin. Efforts undone in a day. “Do you know which way they went?”

  “East. They’ll make for Tírandon or Avidanyth. Won’t be hard to pick up their trail.”

  Ruvion’s confidence was a balm. Lothiar’s fury cooled. “If they make the Wood, we’ll never recover them.” He righted the table and reclaimed the basin. Most of the marsh water had splashed the awning or soaked into the soil. He shook the ewer, heard the dregs sloshing, and poured the last of the water into the basin. “Open a portal.”

  Ruvion raised an eyebrow. Questioning. Rebellious. Why can’t you do it?

  Lothiar’s face heated. “Don’t ask. Just open the bloody portal.”

  Ruvion dipped his finger into the marsh water and poised it midair. “Know the name of Tugark’s underlings? Any who may still live?”

  “Shit.” Lothiar looked to Paggon.

  Massive shoulders shrugged. Then small red eyes brightened. “Mogo? Linganek? T’reetusk?”

  Ruvion traced the toad sigil, calling each name until one responded. The portal crackled open.

  ~~~~

  37

  The greatsword Contention tasted blood, and Laral thought of Andy. He thought of Wren’s celestial voice and her broken mouth. Of Lesha’s innocence and premature strength. The four-foot-long blade arced, and the moonstone gargoyle crushed bone, thirsty to undo what could not be undone. Rage reared up red in him, and the vengeance it invoked was not a holy thing, as Ruthan said it would be. It was ugly and base, sickening and vastly satisfying.

  Ogres under the fiery spear hurtled up the command hill. A wall of monsters, broken down into individuals that fed Contention’s lust, dying in red wails at Laral’s feet.

  He had to be careful, in an instant decide if the ogre running at him wore hutza or regular steel, lest the greatsword shatter.

  Those wearing the dark dwarven armor were for Haldred. Laral’s former squire fought at his back, as close as the reach of the greatsword allowed. His mighty young shoulders swung the trophy he’d won at his knighting. The wicked serrations of the hutza longsword withstood the beating of hutza clubs and hutza plate and opened skin with the brutal precision of a razor.

  Together Laral and Hal waded deep. Around them fought Aralorris under Kalla; walls of pikes skewered the ogres that made it past the knights. Beside them, Miraji appeared and vanished in hot explosions of swirling sand. Can the ogres even see me? wondered Laral.

  He didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  One of Daryon’s constructs whirred past. At the base of the command hill, amid the Fire Spear charge, it stopped and spun. Black liquid spewed. The charge ended abruptly. Ogres retreated from the tendrils rising from contorting denmates. The blind momentum of those behind shoved them forward again, flinging them headlong into the mist.

  Laral came up against the cold reaching fingers, glared at the ogres snarling on the other side. On the ground between them, ogres flopped, losing form and finding something else.

  The Miraji eased back. Where their veil encountered the writhing tendrils, it dissipated, abandoning the Elarion to fight naked.

  Haldred tugged at Laral’s shoulder. “Withdraw, sir.”

  Laral backed up the hill, stepping over carcasses of enemies and the bodies of allies. Below, the ogres regrouped. No chieftain or war leader appeared to command them; they understood safety in numbers. As a
unit, they wheeled around the mist spattering the hillside. Relentless bastards. They charged up the eastern slope.

  “Here!” Kalla grabbed Laral’s wrist and pushed a ceramic globe into his hand. She tossed one of her own. It struck the ground mere feet in front of the ogres leading the charge. No way to stop or go around in time, half a dozen ogres splashed through the spreading puddle.

  Laral let his globe fly. It struck an ogre on the helm. Abyssal liquid spurted the ogres on every side.

  Kalla shouted over the din: “Kelyn wants a mist barrier all around the command hill.”

  Nearby, Captain Tullyk hefted a crate of globes. “With a narrow corridor on the south side,” he explained, “so the Miraji can get in and out.”

  Laral swiped a globe from the crate and planted it more or less beside the other puddles. Haldred and the soldiers of Blue Mountain’s militia snatched globes of their own and launched them, cheering when they struck the mark.

  The charge petered out as the ogres searched for a way around the wall of mist. An axe somersaulted down from the sky. A tantrum. Haldred stepped in front of Laral and batted the weapon away with his shield. “A boon that they’re not archers,” the young knight said.

  Satisfied that their eastern flank was covered, Laral trudged toward Kelyn’s position amid the summit, stretching aching shoulders and hoping for respite. But the western slopes were overrun.

  Drakhan elves and Lady Maeret’s militia struggled to hold the line. Maeret shrieked like a banshee. Her morning star bashed an ogre in the jaw, crushing tusks. The backswing struck another in the eye.

  Kelyn and Drona aided them on horseback. Hooves flashed. Blades and pommels and shields crashed down. Claws tore a hole in the throat of Drona’s animal. She leapt free of the flailing legs, claimed a horse with an empty saddle, and within seconds was back in the fray.

  Amid a cluster of mounted White Mantles, Arryk stood in the stirrups and launched a ceramic globe. It sailed over the heads of the human militia and disappeared among the ogres. Shrieks scraped the sky shortly after.

  Laral found his horse stomping nervously among the tethered animals and hoisted himself into the saddle before his body began to feel its exhaustion. He rode through the press of Mantles. Arryk was grinning with boyish enthusiasm. “Friend Laral! A strange way to fight a battle.” One of the Mantles raised a crate. Arryk reached in and claimed another globe.

  From his vantage point, Laral watched a whirligig buzz past the human line. It rained black as it flew, speckling a long swath of ogres, back and back into the press of the regiment. A great spiked club knocked it from the sky. Black tendrils burst from it, and the south wind wafted the spittle across ogres’ heads and shoulders.

  The king’s dogs were having a fine time. They seemed to think the squirming goblin-things were squawking toys, set loose just for them. Rose, Daisy, and Woodbine pounced them and shook them to death.

  Basi and the copper wolf lunged upon the full-sized ogres, metal claws and fangs rending flesh.

  Still, the human line began to bow. Soldiers and Elarion collapsed like a dam before the flood. Ogres rushed over them. Drona’s replacement horse took an axe in the neck and fell hard on its side. Kelyn plucked her off the ground, hoisted her up behind him. She wore a wince and clutched a shoulder.

  The White Mantles backed their horses, hemming Arryk in tighter. Swords swept down. Blood sprayed white cloaks. A Mantle’s horse toppled, spilling its rider under ogre feet. Captain Rance shouted an order. The Mantles tried to close the breach, but ogres filled it. One of them different from the rest. He had green eyes like a serpent and conical ivory teeth. His helm was a dwarven skull. Long blond locks trailed appallingly down his shoulders.

  With a roar, Arryk tossed a globe. The ogre snatched it from the air, grinned, those ivory teeth shining, and tossed it back. He had the strength of a catapult. The globe burst on Arryk’s splendid hutza breastplate, rocked him back in the saddle. Chill black liquid exploded, splashing Laral’s arm, Rance’s face. The king’s horse reared, tried to spill him. Laral held Arryk upright until the animal settled. By then, the ogre with the dwarf-head helm was hewing through Mantles with a serrated blade.

  Laral seized a globe from the crate and put spurs to flanks. With the momentum of his horse, he crushed the globe against the ogre’s temple. Ice filled his glove, and he understood why Thorn hid his hands these days. He hauled Contention free, raised it to cleave the ogre’s skull in two, but there was no need. The fierce bold creature flailed on the ground. His denmates bellowed, shouting a name Laral didn’t understand. They mourned, that much was clear. Contention and a wave of angry Mantles cut them down while their attention was fixed on their leader’s transformation.

  A thing like a tailless crocodile, pale and dazed, staggered about. Rose leapt upon it, snarling, worrying the creature with manic bites.

  A mace with a head as big as a melon arced. Arryk cried out, but the mastiff payed him no mind. Bone crunched as Rose’s spine shattered. Mantles charged over the ogre who had crushed her.

  “Laral!” Kelyn rode through the pile of dead and transferred Drona to a Mantle’s saddle. “Get His Majesty back to camp! The Fieran regiment will be his escort to Tírandon. Don’t wait for us. Move!”

  For an instant Laral hesitated, a protest heavy on his tongue. He wasn’t finished avenging his family. With Drona and the Mantles to see His Majesty to safety, why dismiss Laral too? He suspected Kelyn didn’t want to see his friend wade too deeply, too rashly, and get himself killed. Laral swallowed his resentment, saluted, and whipped his mount around.

  Arryk, Drona, and the Mantles were already galloping down the hill. Woodbine and Daisy sniffed around their sister, reluctant to leave her, but when Laral took off in pursuit of the king, they heeded Arryk’s whistle at last and chased after him.

  “I won’t be sorry to see the last of this place,” Arryk said as Laral caught up. “Kelyn will follow us, won’t he?”

  Laral peered back. Though the sun burned high and hot, the black mist encircling the command hill drank the light and cast the soldiers in gloom. “I don’t know, sire. I don’t know.”

  They cantered around the killing field where ravens wheeled over Evaronnan corpses. The soldiers assigned to digging mass pyres were gone. Their spades lay abandoned in the grass. Ravens fed uninterrupted.

  Horns echoed. Not from the battleground in the north, but from the camp to the south.

  “What the hell?” Drona peered around the broad plated shoulders of the Mantle she rode behind. “Pick up the pace, will you?”

  The king’s party galloped to the crest of the last hill. Below, the camp was in disarray. Soldiers ran in every direction. Horses bolted past, riderless. On the far southeastern side, a quarter mile distant, tents burst into flame.

  “They’ve swept behind us,” Drona snarled. “Get me down there.” She didn’t wait for her Mantle’s horse to get moving again, but bailed off the animal’s rump and ran down the hill on her own two feet. She disappeared among the tents, aiming for the White Falcon’s pavilion where her regiment had pitched camp.

  The Mantles followed, cautiously advancing along the main avenue between tents, past Kethlyn’s red pavilion and Kelyn’s blue and the king’s green. Shouts, horns, drums beckoned them eastward. Highlanders, Fierans in green surcoats, ran, limped, shuffled toward the king’s entourage, eyes white with terror, faces grimacing with pain, blood oozing from wounds. They made for the hospital pavilions, but no telling if those too were overrun.

  An ogre broke into the avenue, mere feet ahead. His great paw wielded a torch. He paused at the sight of the human riders barring his path, then snarled and defiantly touched flame to the nearest tent. A long line of smoking ruins lay behind him.

  Arryk made a hissing sound. Woodbine and Daisy loped ahead and lunged upon the ogre. Teeth sank deep. The ogre whirled trying to dislodge the dogs, but they hung on, growling and tearing. Contention plunged deep into the ogre’s neck, and the brute never saw i
t coming.

  At a nod from the king, Laral scouted ahead.

  Reaching the end of the avenue, he found highlanders and Fieran soldiers forming ranks. Militia jabbed the butts of their pikes into the soil, erecting a bristling barrier. Ogres bashed against it, impaling themselves as if their lives mattered not one whit. The weight of their deaths splintered the pikes. The mounded bodies provided a road for other ogres to climb. They leapt over the heads of the humans and descended, weapons swinging.

  Highlanders charged in, roaring the names of their forefathers.

  Riding behind the lines, Eliad shouted orders, bolstered the soldiers’ courage.

  Lady Drona argued with Kethlyn. She probably didn’t approve of her regiment being ordered into battle without her knowledge. Maybe she simply resented having to talk to Kethlyn personally. She had found a third horse somewhere. Her dislocated arm drooped against her thigh.

  Laral rode to them. “Can we hold them?”

  “I don’t know,” Kethlyn said. Fever colored his face with bright blotches. A sling guarded his wounded arm. “The newcomers outnumber us, but not by much.”

  “These aren’t the ones we fought at Athmar Bridge,” Drona said. “I’ve never seen this banner.”

  Laral squinted across the glaring sunlight. A black rectangular shape dominated the undyed fabric. A yellow lightning bolt crashed across it. Unnervingly similar to the silhouette of the storm-ringed summit of Tor Roth emblazoned on his own chest.

  “Why hasn’t Kelyn been told?” he demanded.

  Kethlyn took offense. “We sent a runner. Did she not arrive?”

  “We must’ve missed her.” In truth, the hills could easily conceal any number of people, friendly or otherwise.

  Doubt settled in Kethlyn’s eyes. “We’ll send another.” He cantered off, calling for couriers.

  Laral waved the all-clear, and the Mantles ushered the king forward.

  “So much for the escort to Tírandon,” said Rance.