Oathkeeper (Schooled in Magic Book 20)

by Christopher Nuttall

  She allowed her fingers to touch the bracelet on her wrist. The Death Viper wouldn’t be much use against a necromancer, although... poison worked. Sometimes. She made a note to try it, if the other plans didn’t work. She wished she knew how things were going, back with her other self. Had they convinced the necromancers to attack? Had they held them off? Or had they already been wiped out? Emily thought she’d know if her other self had been killed, but it was impossible to be sure. The bilocation spell was too dangerous to risk pushing it to the limits. No one knew where those limits really were.

  Cat let out a breath. “Do you remember, back in Zangaria?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, flatly. “Those days are over.”

  “I know.” Cat didn’t look particularly repentant. “But we had fun, didn’t we?”

  “Those days are over,” Emily repeated. She listened. Outside the howling was growing louder. “You left me.”

  Cat said nothing for a long moment. “I know,” he said. “I felt I had no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice,” Emily said. She remembered, just for a moment, what she’d done in Dragora. She’d found a third option and made it stick. She hoped. “And I think you made the wrong choice.”

  But the one you could live with, her thoughts added, silently. You paid a price for maintaining your self-respect.

  “Maybe,” Cat said, quietly. He changed the subject. “Is there anyone else? Now?”

  Emily scowled. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, sharply. It was none of his business. “All that matters, right now, is getting to the castle and completing our mission. And when that is over...”

  She shook her head. “We have a job to do,” she said. “We’ll worry about the aftermath when it comes.”

  “Understood.” Cat winked at her. “Do you think Penny was starting to warm up to me?”

  Emily pretended to throw a hex at him. “I think she thinks you’re a prat,” she said. “She’s a very perceptive sorceress.”

  Outside, the wind continued to howl.

  Chapter Twenty (Emily2)

  “LADY EMILY,” SIR ROGER CALLED. “This way!”

  Emily nodded, leading Lady Barb and Penny towards the walls. Soldiers were running everywhere, frantically manning their positions as the enemy came into view. Behind her, the sorcerers hurried to their stations or clambered onto the walls themselves. She kicked herself, mentally, for not sharing the information earlier, even though it had been easier to convince them to sign the contract when they knew they could be attacked at any moment. But now they would have to fight the first battle without the batteries...

  She clambered up onto the battlements and peered into the distance. A cloud of ashy dust was rising from the south, a handful of horsemen clearly visible as they galloped towards the fort. Behind them... Emily shivered as she saw inhuman forms charging after the horses in a desperate bid to catch them before they reached safety. The orcs were faster than she’d realized, perfectly capable of overrunning and killing a fleeing man. Even the horses seemed to be having problems staying ahead of the brutes. Emily felt a stab of sympathy for Dater and his men. The Crown Prince might be an ass, but he didn’t deserve to spend his last moments in an orcish stew pot.

  “Archers, ready,” Sir Roger barked. The archers snapped to, lifting their bows to the skies. “Loose!”

  The archers fired as one. Emily glanced at them, surprised. Archers were more accurate than musketmen - the muskets were so inaccurate that volley fire was the only real hope of actually hitting something - but even so... she shook her head as the orcs impaled themselves on the arrows, some tumbling to the ground as the arrows went through their heads. Bows and arrows looked simple, but arrow wounds were nothing to laugh at. A man might survive a direct hit, only to die of infection shortly after. Richard the Lionheart had died of an infected wound. And Sir Roger’s archers had done everything in their power to make a direct hit as unpleasant as possible.

  Which is technically against the code of war, she thought, as the horsemen cantered up to the gates. But no one takes it seriously against the orcs.

  She frowned. The remaining orcs kept coming, waving their weapons as if they thought they could crash through the walls with ease. Their swords were huge, easily too big and heavy for a human swordsman to carry and use. Sergeant Harkin had been the strongest man she’d ever met and even he couldn’t wield an orcish sword. She wondered, snidely, if that had been deliberate. The necromancers might not have wanted their enemies to pick up dropped swords and turn them against the orcish hordes. Or they might just have gotten lucky. It was quite possible they’d forgotten that swords actually had weight.

  The archers fired, again. The orcish line staggered, then broke. Bodies hit the ground, some thrashing helplessly in the dirt before they expired. Emily forced herself to watch, knowing the soldiers would think less of her if she looked away. They wouldn’t say anything, not out loud, but the story would grow in the telling until people were sure she’d turned and run from the fight. She watched an orc waving his arms in the air, trying to get back on his feet before his life ran out. He nearly made it before he fell back and lay still. Emily felt sick, even though she knew the orcs had to die. There was no way to reason with them.

  “Good,” Sir Roger said. She hadn’t heard him walking up to her. “But it’s just the beginning.”

  Emily nodded. “Are we ready?”

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” Sir Roger said. “The supplies are waiting on the other side of the portal.”

  “As long as they let us keep the portal open,” Lady Barb put in. “They’ll be doing everything in their power to disrupt the spellwork.”

  Emily nodded, stiffly. The difficulty wasn’t just holding the walls against an enemy charge, she’d been warned. It was keeping the troopers supplied. Archers couldn’t fire their bows without arrows, musketmen couldn’t fire their muskets without gunpowder and bullets. They couldn’t hold the line if they ran out of supplies, not least because there was little hope of recovering arrows from the dead bodies. They’d designed the arrows to cripple if they didn’t kill and that, perversely, made them fragile. And the orcs could just soak up the arrows and bullets and keep coming, advancing over their dead fellows to get at the defenders. It was going to be a difficult battle.

  She turned back and peered south. More dust was rising, suggesting an entire army was on the march. The Blighted Lands didn’t seem to pose any threats to the orcs, as far as she could tell. They were undeterred by ashy lands and deadly storms and... she had a sudden flash of a storm, filled with white sparks of light. Her other self’s memories? She hoped the other Emily was well on her way to the necromancer’s lair...

  Don’t think too much about her, she reminded herself. One might as well be ordered not to think of pink elephants. Just focus on your side of the mission.

  “Sir!” A messenger, so young he looked to be barely in his teens, ran up to them. “They’re coming from the north!”

  “They must be drawing troops away from the digging,” Sir Roger said, as he led the way around the battlements. “We’re buying time for the Allied Lands, if nothing else.”

  “But it also means they can hit us from both sides,” Lady Barb pointed out. “We might find it harder to keep them from exploiting an opportunity.”

  “We’ll just have to live with it,” Sir Roger said. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

  Emily felt her heart sink as she peered north. A giant cloud of dust was rising up, suggesting an even bigger army... they were about to be caught in a pincer, if one that had probably been inevitable right from the start. The fort was well-situated for controlling the surrounding area, with clear fields of fire in all directions, but the enemy would have no trouble attacking from any direction. Emily wondered, grimly, if they had the manpower to attack from all directions at once. The walls were tough, but not that tough. Lady Barb was right. The reserves wouldn’t be able to throw any intruders back out if they were breakin
g through all along the walls.

  “They didn’t get the timing quite right,” Sir Roger said. “The southern force is going to hit us before the northern force gets into position.”

  “All they have to do is stop and wait,” Lady Barb pointed out. “That’s what any smart commander would do.”

  “Unless he really wanted to win before his superior arrived,” Sir Roger countered. “That’s what cost the Noblest the war.”

  Emily frowned, inwardly, as the enemy forces continued their approach. Sir Roger might be right, although for the wrong reasons. Orcs were tough, but they weren’t very smart. Once their bloodlust rose, they’d charge the defenders and not stop until they won or were wiped out to the last man. The southern force might not be playing politics, in the human sense, but they might not be able to stop and think long enough to let the northern force join them. And... she wondered, suddenly, if they were dealing with two different necromancers. Would they care, much, who actually won the war?

  They might, she thought, as Crown Prince Dater hurried up to them. Whoever takes the fort will get us.

  The Crown Prince banged his chest in salute. “We spotted an entire horde of orcs advancing towards us,” he said. “At least ten thousand, perhaps more. They only detached a small force after us.”

  “Which means they’re under tight control,” Sir Roger mused. “There’s a necromancer out there.”

  Emily felt her heart sink. There was a good chance the report was exaggerated - the reports she’d read from the Zangarian Civil War had regularly exaggerated the number of men on the field, as well as the death toll - but it was impossible to be sure. A necromancer - a single necromancer - might be enough to tip the balance in their favor. And... her lips twitched in grim amusement. If one took the reports from the last war literally, all three sides would have been wiped out several times over. Everyone knew not to take the reports too seriously.

  She turned and glanced south. The orcs were picking up speed, an endless rolling tide of bodies that seemed on the verge of steamrolling the fort into the ground. She understood, now, why the orc wave attack was so terrifying, even though modern weapons could stop it in its tracks. She wished, suddenly, for a handful of machine guns... or even a company of tanks. They could have crashed into the enemy lines and crushed them beneath their treads effortlessly, at least until the necromancer intervened. She shivered, reaching out with her senses. There was definitely something there.

  Sir Roger grinned, suddenly. “Thank you, Lady Emily.”

  Emily scowled at his back as he turned and returned to the northern walls. She knew what he meant - he had a chance to die in glorious combat, rather than being sent into exile for being on the wrong side and making the wrong choices - but she also knew too many people were about to die. There was nothing glorious about war, nothing noble about knights in shining armor. Too many of them were just thugs in rusty chainmail. And she’d been the one who’d suggested invading the Blighted Lands.

  Lady Barb caught her arm. “Be careful,” she said. “We can’t afford to lose you.”

  Emily touched her neckline. The teleport gem was there... no, it wasn’t. She felt a flash of panic, before remembering her other self had the gem. But she knew where the fort was, relative to the tower. Or General Pollack’s camp. She could teleport out, if there was no other choice. She just didn’t want to turn and run if it all came crashing down...

  “I will,” she said. The local soldiers might agree that fighting and then running meant living to fight another day, but the nobility would disagree. She snorted at the thought. “You too.”

  She kept her face impassive as she caught up with Sir Roger. The commander was snapping orders to the archers, priming them to hit the orcish mass with immense force. Emily watched, feeling a flicker of admiration for the archers. They could fire between ten to fifteen arrows in a minute, she’d been told, and - for once - there were no supply problems. General Pollack had obtained arrows from all over the Allied Lands and shipped them forward. The archery apprentices were standing behind their masters, ready to pick up the shafts from the giant pile and pass them to the archers. They looked too young to be on the battlefield.

  “Take aim,” Sir Roger barked. “Loose!”

  The archers opened fire, moving so fast they were almost a blur. The first wave of arrows hadn’t even hit their targets by the time the second wave was in the air, hissing ominously as they crashed into the orcs. The advancing wave staggered and stumbled, but kept charging forward. Emily gritted her teeth, noting how the second and third lines were using the first as a kind of human shield. Orcs were tough. A blow that would kill or cripple a human wouldn’t even scratch them. She remembered coming far too close to one’s hide and shuddered. Their hard skins were just too tough for anyone’s peace of mind.

  She watched the line waver slightly as the bodies finally started to hit the ground. The later lines clambered over them and kept coming, waving their weapons madly as they howled in challenge. Sir Roger didn’t respond. The archers continued to fire, releasing bolt after bolt into the enemy mass. It seemed incredible the orcs hadn’t broken - Emily couldn’t even begin to count how many had died in the last few seconds - but they kept coming anyway, their howls getting louder and louder. She braced herself, readying a spell. It was only a matter of time until they started hurling themselves into the fortress...

  “Cannons,” Sir Roger barked. “Fire!”

  The ground heaved as the cannons hurled magically-primed balls into the enemy. The orcs recoiled as the white-hot shot plunged through their ranks, burning and scalding beyond all hope of salvation. The wind shifted, blowing the aroma of burning flesh towards the defenders. Emily saw an orc stagger, then sprint away. His left arm was missing, his entire body scorched and blackened. Others broke and ran too, scattering in all directions. The fear the necromancer inspired in them had been broken by an even greater terror... Emily felt a rush of relief, tinged with fear. They’d defeated one force, at least until the necromancer managed to round the survivors up again, but at a cost. They’d fired hundreds - no, thousands - of arrows in the last few minutes. How long could they sustain that rate of fire?

  She glanced at the pile of arrows. They’d had tens of thousands of arrows ready to go, but the pile was nearly depleted. If they ran out...

  “Bring up the resupply, then take your positions along the southern wall,” Sir Roger ordered, curtly. “The reserves can cover the rear.”

  The archers nodded, grabbing flasks of water and draining them as they headed along the battlements. Emily watched them go, then looked south. The ground was littered with bodies, all orcs. A handful were twitching, still alive yet hopelessly condemned to death. The necromancers wouldn’t waste time recovering them, let alone giving the poor creatures any kind of medical treatment. Their fellows would collect and eat the bodies later, leaving nothing to waste. Emily felt sick. Orcs could eat anything. They wouldn’t be poisoned if they ate rotting flesh.

  We could find a way around it, she mused. It wouldn’t be hard to come up with a potion that would poison any orc foolish enough to drink it. And it wasn’t as if the Nameless World didn’t already have the concept of biological warfare. Poisoning wells and tossing dead bodies into walled towns was an old concept, one that wasn’t even against the code of war. And it might give us an edge.

  She swallowed, hard, as the wind shifted again. The stench of burning flesh - and worse - wafted across the battlefield. Her gorge rose... she swallowed, hard, to keep herself from throwing up. She’d been lucky she’d only had hardtack and salt beef for breakfast. The noble commanders had eaten much better... she tried not to think about it as she turned and headed to the southern wall. They were probably used to the stench.

  “I had an idea,” she said, when she caught up with Lady Barb. “What if we poison the arrows?”

  “Technically against the code,” Lady Barb said. “But these are orcs.”

  Emily nodded. If they poisoned an
orc, the orcs who ate the body would be poisoned too. It was just a matter of finding something that would be an effective poison. She wished she’d thought of that - too - before the fighting actually started. They could have devised the potion well before they committed themselves to the fort... she shook her head. There was no point in crying over spilt milk. She’d just have to settle for getting it done as quickly as possible.

  “Penny,” Lady Barb called. Her apprentice was standing near the walls, looking grim. “Tell the alchemists we have a job for them.”

  “Yes, My Lady,” Penny said.

  Emily glanced at her, then peered at the portal. The soldiers and porters were already transporting vast numbers of arrows from the camp. She hoped the supplies would last. General Pollack had ordered hundreds of thousands... she was starting to think he should have ordered millions. She made a mental note to get in touch with Alassa and Imaiqah, to urge them to speed things up as much as possible. Arrows weren’t that hard to make, were they?

  “It went better than I’d feared,” Lady Barb said quietly, as Penny hurried away. “But this is only the beginning. They’ll keep raining orcs and monsters on us until we fall.”

  Emily nodded. She could feel something in the distance, a presence - a power - she hadn’t felt for years. A necromancer, a full-fledged necromancer, was coming. She shivered, despite herself... despite all the tricks she’d planned for when the necromancer finally made his appearance. King Randor had been powerful, but he hadn’t had anywhere near enough time to build up his power. And he’d almost killed her... she braced herself as she sensed the power coming closer. It was only a matter of time before they were put to the ultimate test.

  “We wanted them to attack us,” she said. She smiled, although she was starting to feel as if they’d been staked out to die. No, as if they’d staked themselves out to die. Her other self would have her chance to enter the Castle at the End of the Land and reignite the nexus point, winning the war in one fell swoop. “I guess we’re getting our wish.”