Other Sorcerers marched behind them, shielding against arrows and javelins and Jorga’s continued attacks. With Pol’s clay brigade distracting the Clan warriors, they were able to launch their own counter attacks, sending missiles into the walls of Tia Joi, smashing the stones and beginning to tear through the defenses. Within moments, they’d breach the walls and begin their assault on the curtain wall of the Tower of Joi itself.
A contingent of fierce Clan warriors was holding the center of the line, rallying the Clans to them and allowing those who were fleeing to get back through the River Gate relatively unscathed. Pol directed more clay men against them, but they fired arrows with jade heads into them, causing them to tumble to pieces.
There were hoofbeats behind him and he paid them no mind for a moment. The cavalry had been attacking and withdrawing, attacking and withdrawing over and over, trying to break up the Clans’ lines and draw some of their force into a counterattack across the battlefield where they could be ridden down on both sides. It hadn’t been working, as the warriors holding in front of the gate seemed to have a rigid discipline. He’d become inured to the sound of horses riding back and forth across the battlefield.
But these hoofbeats began to close with him. He looked up for a moment and suddenly the image of Kiera on the street in Lowvale came pouring back into his eyes, Sir Vallan leaning from the saddle, the jagged head of his mace outstretched.
Pol turned his face away at the last minute, the blow glancing just off the top of his helmet, misaimed by a hand unfamiliar with holding a weapon rather than a shield. Pol’s whole world was ringing, the ground spinning beneath him as he tumbled onto it. He pried his helmet from his head, the top dented slightly.
He looked up, and Sir Vallan was wheeling his horse around. When Pol looked past him, the clay men were collapsing. It was his fault, he realized. It felt like his brain was made of cotton, like all his thoughts were coming to him from a very long ways away.
Vallan spurred his horse forward, and for the second time in his life, Pol thought that his luck had run out.
A feather shaft sprouted in the flank of Sir Vallan’s horse. The animal stumbled, then faltered as a second shaft buried itself in its neck. Sir Vallan tried in vain to rein it up, trying desperately to pull it upright and keep from tipping over even as its back leg gave out and it slid through the blood-slicked grass and mud. The horse barely made a sound as it died, but Sir Vallan’s armor crashed to the ground and he screamed in pain as his leg became pinned under the weight of the horse’s corpse.
“No!” he cried, ripping the shield off his missing arm where it’d been strapped on. He slapped the horse’s neck with his good hand. “No, no, no!”
Pol couldn’t remember what day it was. He’d been walking with Kiera through the woods, surely, he thought. They’d met Sir Vallan already. He watched the knight fumble, feet from him, trying to slip out from under the horse, screaming profanities at Pol.
There was a shout and Pol looked up again. A woman, naked save for jewelry and her tattoos, a screaming falcon on her collarbone, stood over him, bow drawn, arrow nocked, ready to kill him instantly. Could he stop an arrow from three feet away? Probably, Pol reasoned. He was Sorcerer Pol the Powerful. It seemed funny, and he laughed.
“Fucked in the head, this one,” said the woman. Another woman, lines deeper in her face, came up and stood next to her, staring down at Pol.
“Well, the chief wanted him,” said the other woman. “She told me take, I take.”
The first woman tossed her bow to another warrior, then knelt and grabbed Pol under the armpit, lifting him onto her shoulders like he was a sack of grain.
“Iandra! This one too?” asked another woman near Sir Vallan.
The older woman shook her head. “Olene didn’t mention any knights. Kill him.”
“No!” cried Sir Vallan again. He stared after Pol as the Sorcerer was carried away toward the Dragon Clan. He looked up at the rapidly rising dragon jade blade above his head. “No! No! No!”
* * * * *
Olene glanced up at the sky, watching as heavy clouds began to take form, then boil over into tendrils that circled over the Tower of Joi. Lightning crackled and she felt the hairs on her body stand on end. A peal of thunder sounded, deafening her to the battle for a moment.
When she looked over at Jorga, he was staring intensely at the sky, his lips moving silently, his hands making gentle stirring motions. They were soaked in blood. Early on, he’d requested that the warriors bring him corpses, and Olene had chilled a little at what he’d used them for.
“What are you doing?” she screamed at him.
“We’re leaving,” he told us. “Back to the Tower. I can hold them from there.”
“Chief!” came a cry. Iandra and her raiders pressed through the crush of warriors around Olene. Two of the raiders were dragging a man with them, cloaked in robes and wearing a badly dented helmet. They tossed him at her feet.
“Pol of the Burr,” said Iandra. Olene examined him for a moment. It was indeed the young sorcerer she’d tricked. He seemed alive, mumbling to himself, but only half aware of what was happening to him.
“The mud soldiers crumbled when he was hit,” said Iandra. “We will still win this fight.”
“Jorga, we have one of their sorcerers,” Olene called to him. “My warriors can overcome this challenge.”
“This battle is already lost,” said Jorga. He bent down, marking the forehead of the corpse in front of him with a bloody X. The thunder rang again and a bolt of lightning struck somewhere just beyond the River Gate, drawing Olene’s attention back to the battle. A melee had broken out at the Gate, a thick press of Clan bodies, mostly Sky Clan, holding back the rattle and clank of the armored Easterners beyond.
There was a rumbling, then the unmistakable groan of timber and rock before they cracked. A section of Tia Joi’s outer wall began to shift, rising up slightly, the earth beneath it moving like water. The wall collapsed, taking out the nearest houses in a shower of rock and dust. Easterners came scurrying through, moving to surround the warriors at the gate.
Jorga lifted the corpse’s head and touched his fingers to its tongue.
There was screaming behind Olene and she looked up. Beyond the bridge to the center of Tia Joi, Olene saw a different corpse shift, as if it were parchment being pushed by a breeze. More corpses were moving, warriors rising back to life, their movements unsteady and unsure, like they were drunk.
“Dishonorable,” muttered Iandra. “He abuses the dead.”
“He has power we don’t understand,” Olene said, but the conviction had drained from her voice.
Jorga watched his handiwork, the risen reinforcements confronting the Coulanian and Vashili soldiers, who screamed and retreated before their own dead rising to try and kill them.
“Will that hold them?” asked Olene.
“No,” said Jorga. “But I know a spell that will.”
He covered the corpse’s mouth and nose with his hands, and closed his eyes.
The circling thunderstorm overhead spun faster, lightning crackling out in sudden bolts, raining indiscriminately down on the buildings of Tia Joi, and the two armies alike. The clouds themselves began to descend around the Tower of Joi, cloaking it in a swirling mass of black vapor and crackling electricity. Jorga watched it crawl down the tower for a moment, then stood up.
“Come, love,” he said, walking to the Tower. “Before it closes. Bring the boy as well.”
Chapter 18
The maelstrom cackled and spat at the soldiers approaching the Tower of Joi. Kiera couldn’t see past the black vapor swirling over the surface of the Tower’s marble.
“Can we get through?”
“None of our magic can penetrate it,” said Heldi, shaking her head.
Lord Cail vai Keller frowned at her. Lord Cail had quickly relieved Kiera of command of the army, something she’d been inordinately grateful for. When the right flank had formed and Pol’s clay army ha
d advanced, Cail had sent her to drive the center forward, allowing the hammer of the left and Aren’s Sea Clan to smash the rest of the Dragon Clan. Kiera had quickly realized she was much better suited to lead directly among the soldiers than try and command the entire battlefield. People like her father, and Elina, and Lord Cail were all much better suited for that purpose. She was a warrior, not a general.
“Well, how long can he keep this up?” he asked.
Heldi threw up her hands up in defeat.
“Indefinitely? He’s a necromancer. It’s forbidden for a reason so I have no idea what’s driving this spell. I do know his power comes from the dead and the whole battlefield is littered with corpses. He raised the ones in the city back to life, but outside the walls are thousands more.”
“It’ll take us days to clear the field,” muttered Lord Cail. “What if we bring our siege engines in? Bring the Tower crashing down.”
“You can try,” said Princess Fione. She’d acquired a gleaming suit of lacquered white armor, her helmet crowned in spires. Even Kiera, dressed from head to toe in jade, didn’t cut as stunning a figure as the princess. It also helped that the princess’ wasn’t stained with blood. “But I do not think you would get very far, any more than you could bring the walls of Tia Vashil down with stones.”
“Inside that tower is a necromancer and a Dragon Clan queen,” said Lord Cail. “We’ll fight this battle again in twenty years if we don’t stop them here today. We need to do something.”
“What if we starve them out?”
“The Tower is quite well-provisioned. It’s meant to hold for years with a full garrison.”
“By Vash’s song, how about someone tells me something that can get in there?” asked Lord Cail. He threw his sword on the ground in frustration, only to leap to his feet when lightning crackled out of the maelstrom and struck a nearby house.
“Princess Fione, a prisoner for you,” said Aren, throwing a woman at her feet.
“Oh? Yes... that’s…” began Fione.
“This is Iandra the Raider, Olene’s most trusted captain after Varomar,” said Aren.
Kiera knelt down before Iandra. Aren had bound the raider’s hands behind her back, so Kiera lifted the woman’s chin for her.
“How many are in the tower with Jorga and Olene?”
Iandra spat at her. Kiera dropped the woman’s chin in the dirt, causing Iandra to yelp as she bit her tongue.
“I get so clumsy when people disrespect me,” said Kiera, picking the raider’s head off the dirt again. “I apologize, Lady Iandra. How many are with Jorga and Olene?”
“My chief has already escaped and is returning to the West.”
“Is that even possible?” asked Kiera.
Lord Cail shook his head. “We attacked from the west. We control the entire west bank. Unless she slipped across the east bank and headed north around the source. But the Sorcerers have already scryed for this.”
“Sounds like you’re lying,” said Kiera. “And, really, when you think about it, lying is a form of disrespect.”
“Kili take you,” Iandra moaned at her, as Kiera lifted her head again. Kiera grabbed her by the throat and pulled her up a bit.
“Let me explain something to you, ‘Iandra the Raider.’ One of your assassins nearly killed my father. And me, for that matter. I assume you had a hand in planning it. So, if you don’t talk, we really won’t have a use for you, which means there’s nothing to really stop me from having a very intimate conversation with you.”
“Lady Kiera, may I talk to her?” asked Fione.
“As you wish, princess,” said Kiera, hauling Iandra to her feet and turning her about to face Fione.
“She kneels before her new chief,” said Aren, stepping forward to drive Iandra’s knees to the ground.
“I am sorry for your treatment here,” Fione said to Iandra. “You see, Chief Aren and I have an agreement. The Sea Clan has sworn allegiance to me. Every warrior who recognizes Aren as their master and myself as Aren’s master will receive land in the Joian Marches. I have offered the same arrangement to the warriors we’ve taken prisoner. Many have sworn into Aren’s new unified Clan. I make the same offer to you.”
“A true warrior would never betray the Clan.”
“Aren tells me that’s not true, and that Chief Olene is a perfect example of such a warrior. She led the Clans east on a lark, at the behest of your enemy, a Sorcerer. And she rose to her position through betrayal and deceit.”
Iandra was silent. Fione waited for a moment, expecting a response.
“Well, I’m sorry again,” said the Princess, when none was forthcoming. “That really leaves us with nothing to protect you from Lady Kiera.”
She looked at Kiera and gestured to Iandra.
“I release her to your care.”
Iandra looked up in shock as Kiera hauled her to back to her feet.
“Olene and Jorga took the Sorcerer with them,” she blurted. “They sent most of us out to hold the wall, but my raiders ran when they saw the numbers. They have an honor guard with them, no more than a dozen of my women.”
“What Sorcerer? There’s another with Jorga?”
“No, we took him on the battlefield. The one who came to Tia Joi before. The one Jorga threw in the river.”
“Pol?” asked Kiera. She hadn’t seen the Sorcerer since the counter-attack. “Pol’s in there with them?”
“If he’s alive.”
Kiera tossed Iandra to the ground and she yelped. The Lady of vai Ullan barely registered it. She flipped her visor down and marched toward the maelstrom.
“Lady Kiera, where are you going?” called Fione.
“In fifty pounds of dragon jade?” called Kiera. “Wherever the hells I want.”
* * * * *
Kiera pushed forward into the churning vapor, lightning lancing out of the darkness. It struck her armor and disappeared the moment it did. The vapor began to melt away as she moved through it, sealing up behind her as she moved on, so that when she looked back, the princess and Lord Cail and Aren had all disappeared. The doors of the Tower were closed, but, as she discovered, not locked. She pulled one open, only for the hinges to rip off the wall and the whole thing to go flying away into the storm. Her armor was creaking, cracks running through the back of her gauntlets, the gryphons on them beginning to lose shape and form. When Kiera flexed her fingers, the material felt thin and brittle against her knuckles. She decided not to push it further.
She stepped into the entrance hall of the Tower, tendrils of vapor clinging to her for a moment before dissipating. When she took a step forward, green dust floated off her armor. Keira padded down the hall, listening carefully for the sounds of Clan warriors waiting. Voices echoed down the hall, two women talking, the raiders left behind. She glanced around, looking for a weapon, but finding nothing obvious took the brass rod from a tapestry, carrying it like a club in one hand as she stalked to the corner and peeked around.
Two Dragon Clan warriors, both of them with the falling falcon of Iandra’s raiders on their collarbones, stood in the center of the hall, not feet from where Kiera stood with her curtain rod at the ready. She ducked back around the corner before either saw her.
“Fucking Olene,” grumbled one. “Brought us all out East to die.”
“Hush,” the other cautioned. “Her necromancer could hear you.”
“Even a necromancer still has to deal with our jade.”
“You saw him raise the dead. And the one on the other side made men out of dirt. These Sorcerers are too strong.”
“Why do we have to stand guard if he’s so strong, then?”
“They went up to the throne room,” said the other. “Need a good pair of eyes to watch the door.”
“There’s a fucking cloud of lightning outside the door.”
“Well, maybe they've got some sort of lightning shield or something. They’re tricksy, these Sorcerers.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Fuck fucking Olene, f
or fucking a fucking necromancer.”
“Shut up, he’ll hear you!”
“Yeah, shut up,” said Kiera, swinging her curtain rod through the air. The taller of the two caught it on the side of the head, and she went tumbling to the ground, dropping the jade broadsword she carried. Kiera made a grab for the weapon, but the other warrior was faster on the uptake than she’d hoped, and a slash meant to separate her from her fingers caused her to leap away from the sword.
The second raider advanced on Kiera as her companion tried to find her senses on the floor. Kiera gripped the rod like a stave, holding it front of her. She caught the first blow square on the rod, just in front of her face, twisting it to send the blade sliding down its surface, then pushed the end into the raider’s stomach. The raider dodged away from Kiera, grunting at the pain, and Kiera spun the rod around, transferring her grip to the end, extending the reach far enough to sweep the raider’s legs out from underneath her, the sword spinning away. Kiera made a grab for it, dropping the curtain rod, her gauntlet closing around the sword, the other woman falling on her suddenly, bearing her to the ground. She rolled, slashing at her attacker, and there was a scream as the raider fell away.
The first woman had regained her senses and her weapon, and she came charging at Kiera as her friend lay bleeding on the floor. Kiera dodged one heavy blow, caught another, parried a third. The warrior went high, striking to cleave Kiera apart at the shoulder, and Kiera met her weapon with her own. They struggled for a moment, the weapons locked over their heads, and then Kiera smashed the front of her helmet into the other woman’s face, sending her stumbling backwards, clutching at the wreckage of her nose. Kiera send her down with another slash.
She ran to the stairs, determined to head for the throne room. At the last second, she leapt back, the part of her brain that Master Hralgar had drilled over and over to react without thinking suddenly taking over. A blade went whizzing through the air where she’d just been as a warrior leapt from her hiding place inside the stairs. The missed strike carried the woman forward, and Kiera grabbed her arm above the elbow, then rapped her on the head with the pommel of her sword, reducing the raider to a heap.
Dragon Jade Chronicle: The Warlock And The Warrior Page 47
