Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  To breach their fast citadel became no mean feat, even under the skeleton companies manning their walls since the exodus. Sulfin Evend viewed the harsh prospect, unflinching. For all dangers paled before the impossible action lying ahead of him, now. Granted a cleared field as the last gaggle of protesters were bridled by burly sergeants, the Light’s Lord Commander left the white banner draped over the rail. He resumed his ascent of the siege-tower with no choice but confront the stark madness unleashed by the curse of Desh-thiere.

  He could not move quickly. The plank risers were treacherous, shaken by gusts and made slippery by fresh snow.

  Worse, Ranne met him on the landing above, the chisel-cut frown above his hawk nose riding him haggard with worry. ‘I have to say that black crows will hatch eaglets before you could withstand this onslaught, alive.’

  ‘You say? Then the damnable crows will just have to brood their mirac ulous eggs and oblige!’ Sulfin Evend ducked past.

  Morose for that failure, Ranne shouldered grim duty and pursued.

  Fennick’s Camris-born toughness withstood the cold wind, halfway up to the next tier. ‘No sign yet, of slacking,’ he greeted, looking fraught. ‘Lord? Your only course is to wait out the fit and pray that Lysaer wears himself down to unconsciousness.’ His glance clung to hope, though his freckled face had blisters from more than windburn. This near the top scaffold, the back-lashing heat of each light-burst hissed downward in punishing blasts.

  ‘I know.’ The bitten resurgence of the Hanshire aristocrat meant the warning would be disregarded. Mean as a ferret, Sulfin Evend refused pity as the guardsman’s kind features drained white.

  ‘You’re not going up there!’ Fennick gasped, shocked.

  Ranne kept his silence, beyond distressed. Their past mistake, that once lost them Tysan’s young prince, now haunted the tension between them.

  ‘Someone must try!’ Sulfin Evend insisted, despite his dread terror. ‘Desh-thiere’s curse has prevailed. Lysaer can’t break off! You know this! If he’s not shaken free, he won’t come down standing upright.’ If he came down at all. More likely the madness would drive him to death, as the platform ignited beneath him.

  ‘This cannot happen,’ Sulfin Evend resolved. ‘I have promised the masses an Alliance council of war that he must be left fit to mediate!’

  The man styled as avatar dared not collapse while the Master of Shadow threatened the warfront. The least sign of weakness could not be shielded. Anyone who presumed to usurp Lysaer’s place would be killed in cold blood for presumption.

  ‘My lord, we won’t find your charred carcass to bury!’ Fennick despaired, while Ranne more discreetly gathered himself to block the stair’s upward access.

  ‘I have to go!’ Sulfin Evend ignored the loyal protests, laid open. ‘Nobody else is equipped to survive.’ The blasting barrage on the s’Brydion harbour mouth would be turned upon helping hands in assault. ‘I do know the measure of danger I face.’

  ‘But not how to solve the insane confrontation,’ Fennick argued.

  ‘Then I will have to trust that somewhere, somehow, I can discover an answer.’ Sulfin Evend showed teeth as he drew a firm breath. ‘There are no sureties. I will not live in fear! We cannot hang back and still serve our commitment to the troops under us.’

  What could be done, but salute such rash courage? Ranne edged aside, face turned in rife misery, while Fennick closed a mailed hand on his Lord Commander’s left bracer. ‘Go in grace, then, my lord!’ He let go with regret. ‘Bring yourself down in one piece, if you can.’ Though endangered as well, he rejected retreat. ‘Count on the fact that this stair stays secure, with both of our swords at your back.’

  Far more likely, Sulfin Evend thought wildly, they would all meet flaming oblivion. He adjusted his mail shirt, eased the sword at his hip for quick action, then mounted the plank stair, bent against the onrushing storm that screamed through the gaps in pegged scaffolding. The nailed cover of hides slapped like shot in the gusts, while the pelting snow blanked visibility, and reduced him to a featureless shadow.

  The top platform loomed over him, much too soon. Not that planning could help. Above, the sky split to a sizzling light-bolt. The strike briefly lit the white flakes to gold foil, then curdled their shimmer to billowing steam. The melt pattered down, glazing the board stair with treacherous ice. Sulfin Evend edged upward, hammered by the thunder-clap echoes slamming back off the bay. The siege tower shuddered, belted by every recoil of stress-heated air.

  Sulfin Evend clawed towards the hatch, forced to grip with both hands, lashed and blinded by the turbulence. He scrubbed tears from blurred vision, and at last glimpsed Lysaer’s form beside the rope tackles that lowered the siege tower’s drawbridge. Blond hair tangled, his gold trim and fine mantle soot-stained and frayed to singed threads, he howled, fixated on havoc as his next strike hissed aloft.

  Dazzled and rocked by the crash of concussion, Sulfin Evend staggered, off-balanced by the whip-crack of his streaming surcoat. He clung, fighting the buck of stressed timbers, and cleared the closed well of the stairway.

  Now in the open, his last safety was forfeit. Cruel quandary confronted him: the wracked figure that stood, hurling light-bolts, was no man, but a force single-mindedly pitched to strike down the Spinner of Darkness. Anything moving to thwart that directive would be blasted to ash without recourse. The friend poised to coax a cursed mind back to reason could expect to become razed down as an enemy target.

  The dichotomy wounded, straight to the heart: that the same bard whose rare talent had called down the shining notes to frame peace should have turned in assault, wielding Shadow. By that one act, Arithon knew: reflex must trigger the hideous change and drive his half-brother under the fury of Desh-thiere’s murderous insanity.

  ‘Damn your hypocritical promise to Sithaer!’ Sulfin Evend snarled in his helpless agony. He possessed no mage training. No exalted grasp of the mysteries. Upbringing at Hanshire had taught him hedge simples, not the disciplined grace for grand conjury. Conviction alone, backed by his mortal care, would not leave his accursed liege abandoned.

  Sulfin Evend poised himself. Between the release of white levin bolts, he ignored sapping fear, committed himself, and called out to Lysaer by name.

  The avatar spun from the railing and faced him. Flint eyes showed no human awareness. From snarling, bared teeth to flexed hands and torn clothing, this was a possessed creature, become the instrument for an undying revenge. Sized up like meat by that soulless regard, Sulfin Evend choked down his sickened revulsion.

  ‘Lysaer!’ he shouted.

  ‘You’ve come here to meddle!’ the mad voice denounced.

  ‘Fight back!’ Though the plea felt like grasping for straws in a maelstrom, Sulfin Evend resumed with the scorn of his haughty origins. ‘Man and prince, you have birthright! Reclaim your human intelligence!’

  Twice before, intervention had snapped through his liege’s berserk retaliation. But never before across the antipathy roused by the half-brother’s Shadow.

  The mistake defied remedy. Lysaer’s fury twisted. Feral will revelled, triumph run amok on the intoxicate thrill of destruction. Hands lifted, Desh-thiere’s puppet gathered himself. Light blazed for the fire-storm that would torch all insolent interference to ashes.

  Never mind the close target would also ignite the siege platform’s timbers like kindling.

  Unable to run, beyond futile hope, Sulfin Evend flung up a shielding forearm. He cried out, desperate to touch the heart of the man who was lost, imprisoned as the raving antagonist. The grief would not rest, that this animal ferocity would kill: the most staunch of friends and Tysan’s two most reliable liegeman undone without thought, by the Mistwraith’s design.

  Sulfin Evend could do naught except crouch on tucked knees, braced to receive a fireball’s end without screaming.

  That helpless gesture checked fate for a moment. Shocked to be met by unmoving surrender, Lysaer recoiled in hesitation. Light burned in his hands,
an arrested force that seared the winter air like unsheathed magma.

  Sulfin Evend choked, scarcely able to breathe, as his raced thought lamented the failure: that once, a grand harmony channelled through by a Masterbard’s talent had broken the Mistwraith’s delusion long enough to revive the self-honest yearning for peace. If only his cursed liege could be offered the footing to touch that drowned fragment of memory.

  Against the dazzling blast of raw light held poised to annihilate, entreaty threw even the need for survival into eclipse. Sulfin Evend cried, shattered, ‘Lysaer, you have to believe in yourself!’

  The levin bolt crackled, arrested again.

  On that livid instant, insight seemed to pierce through the shattering blast. Sulfin Evend felt his perceptions slow down. On-coming event showed as red-gold flame, laid against finer light, that punched past his galvanic fear. A jolting shock of pure wonder snapped through, that he did in fact See! Need forced open the floodgates: the inherent talent, awake through his oath, raised the heritage of s’Gannley. Gifted by vision, the filigree pattern etched about Lysaer’s form was no less than the veil of the man’s living aura.

  Through arrested terror, Sulfin Evend watched the flow surrounding the s’Ilessid become muddy again, rifted over by insatiable darkness. He shouted, aghast, using the same phrase. ‘You have to believe in yourself!’

  Again, came the coiling retreat of the murk. He spoke quickly, before the tide faltered. ‘Lysaer! Fight the curse. I know you’re not helpless!’

  The pale lightness resurged. At some deep, innate level, Lysaer was responding.

  Granted that opening, however slight, Sulfin Evend poured all he had into seeking clear words of encouragement. ‘You can listen, Lysaer. Claim your natural self!’ Guided onwards by the gilt sheen of the aura, which strengthened upon reinforcement, Sulfin Evend kept faith, adjusting his phrases to bolster the struggle against Desh-thiere’s obdurate binding.

  ‘Lysaer! You have to choose! Hold out for the love that knows kindness first!’

  Through the crackle of bared light, and the howl of the storm, a pealing scream tore from the throat of a prince, locked into an agonized conflict.

  As the curse ripped back, stronger, contending for dominance, the Lord Commander exhorted. ‘We have more than this moment! You can hold firm. Think! Lysaer!’ While the flickering light flared and battled the dark tendrils wound through his friend’s subtle presence, Sulfin Evend dared more. ‘True justice suspends judgement! You have been well-taught! I entreat you to weigh every angle and seek, until you achieve balanced insight.’

  Against nerve-cracking threat, his Sight tracked the trapped will, embattled within Lysaer’s being.

  ‘The fair ruler does not bow to rage, or act in summary execution.’ Choked by tears, Sulfin Evend bowed his head, his opened hands offered up in appeal. ‘Step forward, Lysaer. Come downstairs on your feet!’ Tenderly careful to avoid direct threat, or make any reference to Shadow, the Lord Commander fed confidence. ‘Together, we can prevail as before. I believe in you, even at risk of my life! Come down! Let us plan by our wits and triumph through the clean use of our human strategy.’

  He talked, while the icy wind lashed him numb. ‘Help me, liege. We will do this in partnership. For rightness, for peace, and not for the wiles of fell entities sealed under Rockfell Peak!’

  Under the wracking, cruel conflict, the poised flare of raised light flickered out. Lysaer had successfully bridled his gift. One reprieve might win others. Sulfin Evend spoke faster. ‘We will advance methodically, by well-planned stages. Claim yourself, and strike for a triumph won with forthright honour.’

  Eyes shut, now guided purely by love, Sulfin Evend fanned the lit ember of hope. Talking until he was raggedly hoarse, he kept on, until by a miracle, or iron persistence, he felt Lysaer’s trembling touch brush against his outstretched palms.

  Sulfin Evend closed his hands, firm. The tears welled up, blinding, as he caught his friend close. Through a shattering precedent, the ferocity of Desh-thiere’s curse stayed beaten back, and held in abeyance.

  The Light’s Lord Commander seized his victory and stood. He bundled his shivering charge beneath the shared warmth of his mantle. ‘Come down, Lysaer. My liege, we can do this! One step at a time. Be assured, I will not ever leave you.’

  Attack came under the white-out blanket of snow, in deepest night with the wind died back to a whisper. Amid fallen quiet, advance teams of sappers and moles crept in over the drifted landscape. They came covered under the squat frames of the sows, which had their wheels replaced by waxed runners. By water, borne on the silent current, oared galleys rode the breast of the tide, gliding up to the harbour-mouth keeps. Their castle-built prows had been fitted out with blunt towers of hide-covered scaffolding and bridges that nuzzled against the high battlements.

  The s’Brydion sentries were not caught by surprise. The garrison responded with vicious tenacity. They hurled hails of rocks from the wet ropes of the catapults; shot quarrels from arbalests and rained pots of hot oil down on the enemy crews shielded under soaked hides and stout framing.

  Numbers told hardest. For each fallen man, the Alliance fielded ten more, fresh and eager to kill for the Light. Sevrand’s companies grappled each on-coming wave. Numbed fingers notched arrows, hurled lances, and spanned cross-bows, with brilliant effect, though the sifting fall of the blizzard blinded the marksmen down to three yards.

  From the harbour-side watch turrets, s’Brydion defenders hurled flaming rags and fire-pots in fierce effort to disable the floating siege towers. When the soaked planks on the galleys failed to ignite, they fought hand to hand, against yelling hordes who rushed them from the platforms and swarmed over the glass-studded crenels. With sword and pike, sprayed in blood, they met the on-coming invaders with bitter, then desperate resistance, their drilled skill at arms and inspired heroics sustained without reinforcement. Snow muffled their horn-calls. The reserve force that guarded the citadel slept, uninformed throughout the grim hours of darkness.

  With no lull in the storm front, a candle-lamp signal relayed by mirror could not pierce the gloom past twenty paces.

  Therefore, the ugly news broke with the dawn: that a third of the shore-side watch turrets were fallen, with the last of them crumbling under punishment by sappers, or battling invasion with crippling losses. The small boat with the messenger pulled in through driving snow at the Sea Gate, his sloshing bilge wracked with dying men, and his slumped oarsmen bristled with arrows. Elaira and Glendien were called to attend them, while the hastily bandaged young officer was rushed away to report to Duke Bransian.

  This was not defeat by the overwhelming horror of fire-borne Light, but the relentless ferocity of superior numbers, applied with blunt force.

  Alestron’s emergency council of war dissolved into a rapid deployment, not for relief, but in counter-attack to hold the battle-line long enough to enact an ordered retreat. The staring fact could not be redressed: that Alithiel’s clarion cry to serve peace had stripped the defences under full strength. Where fewer troops could man the great engines, and still mount a barrage of hurled fire-shot, chained balls, and barbed quarrels, the storm robbed that advantage. The smothering snowfall showed no sign of slacking, after the lull. Stiffening gusts snapped the ice off the crenels as the gale-wind reversed, and rose, snarling.

  Inevitably, Vhandon became the duke’s spokesman to approach the Teir’s’Ffalenn.

  The chamber equipped as Elaira’s still-room was deserted. Since the enchantress was yet engaged in spelled surgery to salvage the traumatically wounded, the first hurdle the veteran captain encountered was the Shandian liegeman, in full arms and clan leathers at Arithon’s chamber door. Kyrialt bristled, prepared to deny entrance, though the raised voices within proved Rathain’s prince was not sleeping.

  ‘You’re not here for condolences,’ the young man surmised, through the bang! as something solid hammered onto the floorboards. ‘I suggest you come later.’

 
‘Or not at all.’ In no mood to prevaricate, Vhandon yanked off his helm. Cramped in the dim stairwell, he clawed clotted ice from his nape and cut to the brutal chase. ‘I’m not here for the eulogy, but to appeal on state auspices. Feylind’s free-booting venture is costing the citadel a butcher’s toll in men’s lives.’

  ‘That’s Melhalla’s affair,’ Kyrialt stated, cool. ‘Show respect. We are mourning the grace of Shand’s fallen.’

  ‘Don’t cry histrionics!’ snapped Vhandon, through more muffled thumps, and renewed argument in the shut chamber. Eyes like chipped slate yielded no quarter for anyone’s bereaved emotion. ‘I knew Feylind well enough! A volatile spirit, and her own mistress, she died of her adult will. No cosseting order of Arithon’s could sway her brash mind-set. He sees this, past doubt. Never coddle him!’

  Through a locked pause, the fighting heart of each man sized the other one up: the older campaigner with blunt-set jaw prepared to lash callow youth into line, and the younger tempted to use cheek against the bark of a senior captain who relied upon strong-arm authority to cow his subordinate troops.

  Then Dakar’s hounding anguish pierced the wood door. ‘Arithon! No! The concept’s unthinkable!’

  Vhandon sighed. ‘Don’t worry. I wish I was anywhere else! But the mission is mine. Since I backed the Evenstar’s past affray at sea, I saw his Grace cherish Feylind as he would his own daughter. He’ll be gone beyond heart-sore and desolate.’

  Naked honesty always won Kyrialt’s respect. ‘Go gently, then,’ he said in grave warning, then stood down and let Vhandon past.

  The field-captain rattled the latch to announce company, and swung open the studded door. Under the storm-lit glare from the casements, no head turned to meet him as he stepped through.

  Dakar stood by an upset frame chair, railing in petrified conscience. ‘No way will I back this! Not even for my Fellowship master’s sworn charge.’

  Arithon opposed him from the bench seat at the trestle. Too apparently calm, he said nothing at all, while the unsettled third party spun at last and faced the breached doorway, his silver-blond hair disarrayed.