“Call me a bitch, bitch,” she muttered as her agents helped her up. Pinched in her fingers, the silver hook no longer tingled.
She doubted she could step out of the shadows any time soon and not be met by that angry mind—but that was an opening of its own sort. In the interim, she would have to leave the active work to Ticuo. By the hard gleam in his eyes, he wouldn't complain.
*****
The corridor dead-ended in empty air, the floor beyond completely gone. Captain Sarovy stared across the thirty-yard gap to the cluster of soldiers pinned on their ledge, threatened on all sides by spidery metal things. From below; from the walls, crawling down from the upper floor or across from other severed corridors; and from above, where they dropped from the edges of the torn-away ceiling to rebound from the infantrymen's shields.
The men fought three of them now, struggling in the minimal space Voorkei's light had afforded them. Swords flashed, shields flailed, and in the midst of them Sergeant Rallant seemed to be glowing. Several of the men were only half-armored, a fact that Sarovy would scream at Lieutenant Gellart for if only Gellart could be found. Undoubtedly they had shucked their gear to better haul out the supplies they thought they were retrieving.
It did not appear to be going well. As instructed, the men were trying to push the elementals off the ledge, not kill them; Sarovy's memory of fighting those things told him that the infantrymen were not equipped to handle the threat. But the three elementals—two brass or copper and one grey like iron—reshaped themselves at will, their 'feet' digging into the floor and bodies bending around the battering, then lashing out with spikes and whips.
As he watched, a fourth dropped down among the men and spread like liquid at their feet.
“Tanvolthene!” Sarovy snapped, and heard an answer from somewhere behind him. “Make way,” he told the soldiers that crowded the hall. A mix of specialists and archers, they pressed to the walls as best they could as the white-robed mage tried to wiggle through.
A crossbow bolt struck the archway by Sarovy's head. He leaned further into the corridor and glared at the mage.
“I know, I know, I should have been at your heels,” said Tanvolthene as he extricated himself from the crowd, hands raised, “but I wanted to check on Voorkei, make sure he could maintain the portal. It should hold for now, but— My, this looks inconvenient.”
“Bridge it,” said Sarovy.
Tanvolthene raised his brows. “What? Just like that?”
“You're a mage. Use magic.”
“Yes, a mage, not a tactical engineer. I can't—“
Sparks flew from the mage's chest, making Sarovy start. A crossbow bolt dropped to the floor between them. In his fading corona of white light, Tanvolthene made an irritated noise.
“Your wards,” said Sarovy. “They stay active after being hit?”
“I'm a Warder, of course they—“
“Make a bridge with them.”
The mage sputtered, then squinted past him at the ravaged chamber beyond. “I couldn't stretch one all the way to them,” he mused, “but there are enough support columns still standing that I could do it pane-by-pane. They won't hold much...”
“Try. And a ward over this entry—permeable from this side. Can you do that?”
“Easy,” said Tanvolthene, and drew runes in the air. The archway shimmered as if with heat-haze.
As the mage crouched to contemplate the bridge, Sarovy looked back at the crowd. “Keep against the walls. Anyone who can't get an armspan of space, go back through the portal and tell the others to stay there. Calenthane, Nachirovydry, come forward.”
The soldiers shifted accordingly, allowing two archers to squeeze to the fore. Both were Trivestean, the first a mustachioed corporal, the second easily the most aggravating of his countrymen that Sarovy had ever met. With the sides of his head shaved, his remaining short hair slicked back and his eyes lined in kohl, Nachirovydry affected the old warrior style, complete with a disdain for the lives of others. Unfortunately, he was Blaze Company's best archer.
“The crossbowmen. Kill them,” said Sarovy, and made space.
Nachirovydry smirked, then he and Calenthane took up back-to-back stances with the better archer quickly switching his horn ring to his left thumb. A bolt spanged against the archway ward, spitting sparks, and Nachirovydry retaliated before Calenthane could begin to draw.
“One to zero,” he said as someone screeched in the distance. Calenthane scowled and took aim, careful of Tanvolthene's work.
For a time, all Sarovy heard was the flick of arrows and the archers' low count, plus Rallant's swearing over the earhook. He could not see with the archers in the way, so instead he tried to reconstruct the battleground in his mind. How would he win this?
What did the Shadow Cult want?
Blood, obviously, and they had gotten it. From a glance, he could tell that a section and a half of his first Shield platoon was gone—fifteen men or more, including a lieutenant. Retaliation for the crushing of their headquarters, no doubt, and with the metal elementals all riled up.
What next? Goblins? And what about the rest of this hateful city?
Should send most of the men back. Concentrate on guarding the mages, extracting Rallant's group. Send scouts later to investigate. Put all on alert, demand answers from the city council.
'Sir,' came Scryer Mako's voice in his head, 'we had an eavesdropper. A cultist. They have Presh and they're watching you right now. Not sure how many. Her thoughts weren't clear.'
“Thank you, Scryer,” he murmured. “I suppose they don't have Presh nearby.”
'In the Shadow Realm. She offered to make a deal.'
“Not the time for it.”
'I know. But will we?'
Sarovy stayed silent. Money was an issue these days, and if the cult wanted any concessions, he couldn't give them. Wouldn't.
'Sir?'
“We'll discuss it. Right now we need extraction. Rallant,” he said, cueing the earhook as he saw the first pane of ward-light stretch out to a support-column, “be prepared to send your men to us, one or two at a time. We'll do what we can to cover them.”
'Captain, you are insane,' came the response.
“Prepare yourself.”
'I have injured. They'll need to be carried.'
“Send them first.”
Unbidden, Nachirovydry stepped out through the hazy ward onto the bridge-section Tanvolthene had just set. “Nachi!” Sarovy snapped at his back, but he wasn't listening; he turned almost casually to face a corner he hadn't been able to reach and started shooting, several arrows pinched between his fingers to keep from having to draw from his quiver. With a snarl, Calenthane followed, loosing on the opposite corner.
“Push the ward out,” Sarovy told Tanvolthene, who muttered something about suicidal idiots and started drawing runes.
A metal hand smacked it from above just as it bulged out to cover the archers. Sparks flew. Sarovy drew his heirloom sword and stabbed up at the copper fingers as they spread like filaments over the ward, and they recoiled, to be replaced by spikes on whip-like appendages.
Tanvolthene swore as the elemental started battering the barrier. Calenthane tried to shoot it but his arrow shattered on impact, scattering splinters and making Nachirovydry turn on him with a snarl.
“Shoot the enemy,” Sarovy shouted in his ear before he could lunge at his comrade.
Nachirovydry snorted but obeyed, and Sarovy joined him on the warded pane to better hack at the invading elemental.
There were more on the walls now, scuttling like lizards toward both Blaze groups, and a great roar of fear went up from the trapped men as one of the support-columns beneath them suddenly gave. Part of the floor subsided at an angle, dropping two men down and leaving another pair flattened to the tilted portion, clinging by their fingertips. Down below, militiamen with mallets scurried out to attack the fallen.
Nachirovydry put an arrow through the first militiaman's neck; Calenthane did the sam
e for the next. Then a pair of metal elementals rose from the debris and the dropped soldiers scrambled away in desperation.
Sarovy started to call out orders, but a crash came from the corridor behind him, followed by a chorus of shouts. Still fending off the copper elemental, he glanced back to see men coming up the hallway past the ones plastered to the walls, Voorkei among them.
“Report!” he shouted even as he struck for the elemental again. It tried to rip the heirloom sword from his hand but he yanked in return, and his grip proved stronger—cutting through several of the elemental's fingers, which pattered off the ward.
“I can't work under these conditions!” said Tanvolthene by his feet.
“Ceiling collafsed,” hollered Voorkei through the crowd. “Fhortal vuried, route cut off!”
Piking pikes, Sarovy thought, then laughed under his breath as he realized the Shadow Cult might be trying to crush them like they had done to it.
“New plan,” he said. “Tanvolthene, make the bridge a ramp. Specialists, hit the basement and destroy anything that isn't us.”
Rough chuckles and barks of approval met his words. Tanvolthene sputtered, but Nachirovydry stepped off the bridge and dropped to the lower floor as light as you please, Calenthane following with less grace. Sarovy pressed to the wall as the ruengriin specialists shoved forward, and with a sound of disgust, Tanvolthene bent his bridge into a slide.
The first ruengriin hit it like a child taking on a snowy hill, speeding down with a whoop then skidding his plated backside across the floor for half its length before gaining his feet. The next few followed, but the fifth dropped off the side where Nachirovydry had gone, and Sarovy heard a grunt of impact, then the immediate clang of metal on metal.
Then Voorkei was there, grabbing Tanvolthene by the collar and swinging him out onto the slide. Tanvolthene squawked and flailed as he went, and Voorkei flashed Sarovy a grin before following in a blur of orange robes.
Sarovy stared after them, but both rose with all their pieces attached, Voorkei grabbing the newcomer again to steer him toward Rallant's crew. Several hulking ruengriin formed around them defensively.
“Everyone down. Go, go!” Sarovy shouted, waving the rest forward. A quick headcount gave him twenty-eight men joining Rallant's eighteen, the rest either returned through the portal or lost. A single light bobbed at the rear of the column, illuminating their collapsed back-trail.
Sarovy followed it down into the pit.
*****
Linciard paced the assembly hall, attention screwed to the voices on the earhook. Around him, half-armored soldiers milled and whispered, trying to get abreast of the situation. The other officers were busy smacking laggards awake or assigning posts.
He had thrown on some armor by reflex, even though it was hard to do the buckles with his fingers spasming. Every time he heard Rallant's voice, his blood ran cold; the tension and fear in it felt like knives. There was nothing he could do, and he kept telling himself it was no different than hearing any fellow soldier in peril. He couldn't let it affect him.
Yet still.
Through the open door of the training yard, Scryer Mako cursed furiously; something had happened to the portal. The men who had been waiting to ferry the injured to the infirmary moved instead into the assembly hall, further packing it. Linciard glanced them over: mostly archers and Shield Two, not his men. The lancers had been dispatched to the stables by Benson's command.
He knew he should be there. Suspended or not, he was one of them. But Benson's glare had told him he wasn't welcome, and his hands insisted the same.
Best stay out of the way, he thought bitterly as the crowd swelled. Smoke and nervous sweat filled the hall, and every shift of position rasped chainmail against plate or knocked scabbards together, a slow cacophony of agitation. He couldn't take it—not when he couldn't act—so he edged down the other hall toward the infirmary. Maybe if the medic cleared him...
A few others had sought shelter here, straightening when they saw him. Suspended or not, he still had rank, and acknowledged them brusquely. The earhook had gone silent, and that raked on his nerves even worse than the reports. His imagination drew horrors around the captain and Rallant. Shadow-monsters, metal titans, goblins by the horde...
Faint voices reached him as he approached the infirmary. Medic Shuralla's, and...?
Softer, sinuous—Messenger Cortine's.
“—seek to taint those given into my care,” he was saying. “I will not allow it.”
“Don't come near me!”
“Even your False Light is a charade, woman. You are Dark by nature. I can see it."
“You're a madman!”
Linciard rounded the corner, concerned. Priest and medic stood separated by an infirmary bed which Medic Shuralla had pulled away from the wall in self-defense. She was on the far side, plump face a rictus of fear, red-and-white striped coat rumpled and hair-bun disarrayed as if someone had grabbed it. She gripped the edge of the bed as if prepared to shove it at the priest, who stood still and tense on the other side.
All the beds were empty, the room lit by the arcane sigils on the walls. A red line ringed the door-frame. Linciard crossed it as the priest said, "There are ways to purify even those like you. The cleansing flame, the embrace of the Palace..."
Medic Shuralla fixed on Linciard. “Sir, make him stop this!”
“Messenger Cortine,” said Linciard warily. The priest half-turned his head. “We, uh, we need you with the men, to provide spiritual guidance while we struggle with the cult.”
For a moment Cortine was a statue, the very corner of a white eye visible to Linciard, his jaw and hands clenched tight. Linciard shifted nervously. He'd never seen a priest behave threateningly; they'd always seemed such gentle men.
Then Cortine nodded and turned. “Of course, sergeant. My apologies, it was not my intention to neglect my duties. Has there been word from the fray?”
“Not much, Messenger. The portal collapsed. The lancers are heading out to the site.”
“Ah. I should give them my blessing, then. And you.”
Linciard stayed still as the priest reached unerringly to touch his brow. His fingers were warm, like a brush of spring sunlight. “Thank you, Messenger,” he mumbled.
“Of course. Lead on, sergeant.”
"Ah...no, I'd best make sure the infirmary is ready.”
The priest regarded him with those featureless eyes, then nodded and stepped past with an offhand comment of, "We shall speak further, Medic."
As he disappeared around the corner, Medic Shuralla exhaled, round shoulders slumping, and turned a grateful look on Linciard. "He tried to attack me.”
"He wouldn't—“ But it certainly looked like he had, so Linciard swallowed his words and moved to help shift the bed back into position. "Priests get angry like anyone, I suppose."
"Not quite like anyone. I don't understand how you can work for them."
"We don't. We work for the army."
She favored him with one of those womanly expressions he knew as exasperated disapproval. "And your army works for the Empire, which works for your Light."
"Well...yes, but— Actually, no." He frowned as he helped her push another disturbed bed back into place. "I used to be in the Gold Army, and the Gold serves Wyndon more than the Empire. The Sapphire serves Trivestes mostly—their General is always Trivestean. Crimson is from everywhere, so maybe we're more Imperial than the others. Our new General won't tell us crap, though, which angers the captain something fierce..."
He stopped, realizing he shouldn't be telling this to a heretic.
Shuralla's expression was quizzical. "You don't follow the Imperial Light?"
"Uh." He looked toward the door, uncertain. But if she just wanted to know about him, she'd spent enough time stitching and bandaging him that he supposed she'd earned some trust. "I do, but I'm not about to cut my bits off and don a robe, you know?"
"Cut your—"
"Yeah, they... Well, that
's the rumor."
"But you're a lay follower?"
"I suppose. I got some schooling at a temple when I was a boy, so I know a few of the chants. Uh, I light a Midwinter candle..."
She looked at him strangely. "I thought you'd be more vehement."
"Why? It's just boring rituals and raising the sun. Don't tell anyone I said that. My eldest sister is really religious—she's always on about the Long Darkness—but...after the fiftieth time we've talked about it, I'm done, so why can't we move on to more interesting things?"
"And your fellow soldiers?"
"I don't know. The Drixi are fanatics and some of the Amands are really devout, but Amands take everything seriously. And the specialists are...special. But the rest of them?" He shrugged. "I think the Jernizen worship a lion, and who knows about the Brother Islanders?"
"And this is accepted?"
"Ignored. For now, anyway. New General might have other ideas."
"He is the Field Marshal and High Templar?"
"Yeah."
"That sounds like quite a convergence."
"He's been both for years. —But I shouldn't speculate. Do you need help with any..." He started to gesture at the rest of the room, with its waiting beds and cupboards of supplies, and saw her flinch. Only then did he realize she was still keeping a bed between them, and wondered what she thought of him. How threatening he appeared even from that distance. "I'm not useful for anything else,” he offered lamely.
"No, I have my own preparations to make," said Shuralla. "But thank you. You've been most helpful."
"Sure," said Linciard, and bobbed her a nod, then headed out the door. Talking hadn't seemed problematic while he was doing it, but now he wasn't sure, and as he rejoined the mass of anxious men in the assembly hall, he felt the tension coil in his belly again.
The earhook was far too quiet.
*****
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 53
