Darkness Rising

by James E. Wisher

  Damien blasted two more, but the rest made it over the ridge and charged, claws raised to slaughter anyone that got close. Behind the first wave, more trolls appeared, and behind them yet more.

  It looked like a troll avalanche and the six of them were about to get buried.

  Jen cut the arm off one and gutted a second. “Can you fly us out of here?”

  “No.” Damien conjured curved blades of dense soul force and sent them flying into the mass of trolls. The spinning blades decapitated half a dozen in the first pass. “If we break cover the dragon will turn us into frozen treats. I’m not strong enough to shield us all from something that powerful. Plus I don’t know if I can get through its barrier.”

  Jen chopped the head off a troll attempting to reattach its arm to the oozing stump on its shoulder. “Damn it! I guess we’ll have to run.”

  “I can hold the trolls off, go.” Damien guided his spinning swords into another clump of trolls and sliced them into bloody chunks.

  “I can’t leave you here alone.” A troll clawed Jen’s arm, but failed to penetrate her iron skin. She punched it in the face, crushing its skull and driving shards of bone into its brain, killing it instantly.

  “I’ll be fine, trust me.” Damien raised a golden wall between the squad and the trolls. “Go!”

  Jen gave him one last look, concern plain on her frowning face, and then she and her squad sprinted away in a cloud of snow.

  Good, now that they were clear he didn’t have to hold back. Damien dropped the wall and shaped the energy into a bubble around him.

  Trolls raced toward him, foot-long purple tongues hanging out of their mouths, spit flying and freezing on the side of their faces. Ugly things, no doubt about that.

  The first pair of trolls reached his bubble and scraped their black claws against the impenetrable barrier. More trolls gathered around until nothing but rough, pebbly skin, claws, and fangs filled his vision.

  He waited another minute for good measure then conjured a pair of twenty-foot-long blades, one on either side of the bubble, and set them spinning as fast as he could. In an instant he ground over a hundred trolls into so much fertilizer, spattering the snow red for fifty feet in every direction.

  It looked like a butcher shop had exploded.

  A quick look around revealed no more trolls and the dragon’s power moving away. It must have decided to push on through the night. That wasn’t good. If the army reached their line before Damien and the others warned General Kord about the dragon it would be a slaughter.

  He couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Chapter 33

  Jen ran, soul force blazing in her legs, the world a blue-and-green blur. She glanced back over her shoulder in time to see Damien surrounded by a horde of ice trolls. She clenched her jaw and kept going. If her brother could handle a demon, a bunch of trolls wouldn’t bother him. Jen trusted him to survive and catch up. If he didn’t make it she’d kill him.

  “Captain!” Talon pointed at a patch of evergreens a little ways ahead.

  Jen nodded, that would be a good place to rest and wait for Damien to catch up. They raced through the first few rows of spruce and skidded to a stop in a clearing in the center of the stand. It looked like someone had cut some trees and not that long ago if the fresh stumps were any indication. She’d never heard of ogres or trolls cutting timber; they lived in ice caves, at least according to everything she’d read.

  “How long do we wait?” Edward asked.

  Jen wanted to snarl, until my brother catches up, but that wouldn’t be practical with the dragon and its army on the march. “We’ll give him fifteen minutes. If Damien hasn’t caught up by then he isn’t going to.”

  No one argued, which was just as well given her mood. She’d left her brother surrounded by trolls! What kind of sister did that?

  It didn’t matter if he told her to go, or that he was the strongest sorcerer she’d ever seen, he was her brother and she’d left him on his own.

  A branch snapped, jolting her out of her recriminations. That hadn’t taken long. Jen figured even Damien would have needed more time than that to deal with so many trolls. A nine-foot-tall, blue-skinned figure wearing a mask of ice carved to look like a dragon stepped into the clearing, an icy club held loose in one hand. A moment later eight more stepped out of the trees. The silent figures pointed their clubs at Jen and her squad.

  Jen drew on her soul force, enhancing her perception and preparing her body for battle. She raised her blade, eager to take her frustration out on ogre flesh.

  She recognized the ogres standing before them. Numerous reports mentioned the masked berserkers that served as the Ice Queen’s elite troops. They were essentially the monstrous equivalent to warlords.

  The first ogre blurred and attacked her in a rush. Ice club met soul-forged steel with a resounding crash. If she hadn’t sped up her awareness she wouldn’t have gotten the blade up in time.

  All around her the crack of ice on steel filled the clearing.

  Jen pushed the ogre back half a step and counterattacked.

  It matched her blow for blow as they raced around the clearing fighting for an advantage.

  She leapt at a spruce, twisted in midair so her boots hit the trunk, and pushed off with enough force that the tree cracked down the middle.

  At a blinding speed that even her father, the great Fredric the Lightning, would be hard pressed to match, Jen raced toward her opponent.

  The masked ogre raised its club a fraction too late and her sword found its heart. She kicked the brute off her blade in the nick of time as a second berserker barreled toward her with murderous intent. Jen met it head on and the battle began again.

  If any normal person entered the clearing all they would have seen were blurry images racing around in clouds of snow. To Jen’s soul-force-enhanced perception the battle unfolded in real time. This ogre didn’t have the same skill as the first and she soon had it on the defensive. She gashed its leg then cut a shallow groove in its chest.

  Out of the corner of her eye she spotted an ogre coming up at high speed behind Rhys. A second ogre had a death grip on his shield.

  The elder warlord beat on the brute’s arm, trying to force it to let him go, but he’d never turn in time to block the incoming berserker.

  Jen abandoned her wounded opponent and raced to cover Rhys’s back.

  Her sword came up and the ogre’s club came down.

  Steel met flesh at its wrist and the ogre’s club went flying, hand and all.

  Her back cut took its head half off.

  A wet crunch made her spin around in time to see Rhys yank his mace out of the second ogre’s skull. At that moment Damien flew into the clearing.

  Jen tried to shout a warning as her wounded opponent, his injuries all closed up, raced toward her brother, club cocked and ready.

  Chapter 34

  Damien focused on Jen’s sword and quickly sensed the fragment of his soul force several miles distant. He frowned. Why weren’t they still moving? Damien gathered his power and blasted toward them, flying along only a few feet above the ground. He skimmed the fluffy snow, blowing waves of white to the left and right.

  He reached the edge of a spruce grove and had to slow to weave his way through the trees. Unlike a warlord he couldn’t use his soul force to speed up his reactions.

  A minute later he burst into a clearing and found the squad battling a bunch of masked ogres. Damien sensed at once that this lot had warlord-level soul force. Even if he couldn’t sense it the fact that nine ogres were giving Jen and her team a real fight would have told him everything he needed to know. The dragon must have sent a squad of berserkers to deal with them.

  Damien barely had time enough to register the situation when a club appeared out of nowhere and came swinging at his head.

  It bounced off his shield without hurting him, but the force of the blow sent him flying across the clearing toward a second berserker who had his club raised like a forester get
ting ready to chop down a tree. Quick as thought Damien sent a scythe of pure soul force spinning toward the berserker.

  With the speed of a warlord the ogre dodged the worst of the attack, taking only a shallow gash along its ribs. At least the attack forced it to move aside and gave Damien a chance to get his uncontrolled flight righted.

  He managed it not a moment too soon. The first ogre was sprinting across the clearing, its club cocked and ready.

  Not this time.

  Damien expanded and softened his shield. The club struck and sank into the energy web instead of bouncing off. Unlike last time Damien didn’t go flying, instead he stuck to the berserker’s club.

  In the brute’s instant of confusion he blew a head-sized hole through its chest. His opponent crumpled to the snow.

  Four other ogres lay dead or dying while another five battled Jen and her squad at speeds so fast Damien could just follow the battle. The only reason he knew how many fought was by counting the different soul forces. In a fight where he couldn’t even see where the combatants stood from one instant to the next he didn’t dare launch an attack, he’d be as likely to hit one of his comrades as an ogre.

  A second later an ogre appeared out of the scrum, unmoving, its leg half severed below the knee. Before Damien could blast it, its head went flying off into the trees. He didn’t know which blur killed it. He guessed his sister given the smoothness of the cut.

  Warlords and berserkers raced around the clearing at speeds he could hardly process. Damien stood, surrounded by his shield, and let the battle play out without him. An ogre went down, and another a second later. It looked like his side was winning.

  The final berserker appeared directly in front of Damien, perhaps thinking him an easier target than the warlords, and brought its club down on his head. The blow drove him, shield and all, a foot into the snow. Damien narrowed his eyes and a dozen spears of soul force pierced the ogre’s body.

  The rest of the squad stood, panting, surrounded by dead ogres. Edward’s arm hung at a funny angle, attesting to the fact that at least one ogre got a solid blow in. He walked over to a good-sized spruce and slammed his shoulder into it. The joint popped back into place and healing soul force rushed to repair the remaining damage.

  Jen straightened and hurried over to Damien. “You okay?” Ogre blood dripped from her sword and spattered her face.

  She made a gruesome sight, like a warrior goddess of legend, worshiped by primitive people with blood sacrifices.

  “I’m fine, you?”

  She bent down and cleaned her sword off with a handful of snow. “I’m good. Never fought berserkers before. They had some skill.”

  Edward grunted, but made no other comment. It appeared he was the only one injured. “What about the trolls?” Talon asked.

  “I shredded them. The dragon’s marching through the night. If we don’t hurry they’ll reach the pass ahead of us.”

  Chapter 35

  After an exhausting night of running the team finally left the Ice Queen’s territory behind just as dawn lightened the ever-present clouds. The only sign they’d crossed over into the kingdom was the sun finally breaking through the gloom. They saw no soldiers, not even the pickets assigned to the perimeter. The general must have called everyone to the central pass.

  After the fight with the berserkers a reluctant Damien had tried to fly back ahead of the others to warn the general. He hated leaving the others behind, but as his sister pointed out he could make the trip faster than any of them.

  He didn’t get over fifty feet off the ground before he slammed into a barrier. The dragon must’ve conjured it to keep them from rushing back to warn their army. With no other options they’d run along as fast as possible and hoped for the best.

  They took a moment to catch their breath then the squad turned north. Damien didn’t know how the dragon managed it, but it had raised a sheer wall of ice, blocking them from making a direct run to the central pass. The wall forced them to travel miles out of their way, delaying and exhausting them.

  Damien didn’t know what difference a handful of warlords and a single sorcerer would make, but they were determined to make the effort. The squad hadn’t gone more than a hundred paces when a wide-eyed soldier came running towards them as fast as the deep snow would allow. Every few seconds he glanced back over his shoulder, as though he expected to find an ogre on his tail.

  Jen raised her hand. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  The soldier turned his terrified gaze their way. “A dragon! A bloody big dragon appeared out of nowhere.”

  They surrounded the trembling soldier. “Slow down. Just tell us what happened.” Jen rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slow. “A third army arrived just before dawn. Thousands of monsters came howling down the pass. We was ready for them though. The sorcerers hammered the first wave, broke their line, and left the stragglers for us to clean up. We was winning, ’til that dragon rose out of the ground. It sent a blast of ice across our line, froze better than a hundred of our boys solid. The commanders shouted orders, but we’d had it. Last I saw that damn dragon was stomping on the stragglers. Looked like it was having fun too.”

  Jen let the soldier go. They couldn’t blame him for running. “We’re too late.”

  “Maybe not.” Damien gathered his power. Since they were clear of the Ice Queen’s territory the barrier should be clear. It was probably a suicide mission, but if he couldn’t kill the dragon a lot of soldiers would die. “At the very least I’ve got to try.”

  “Damien!” She shouted after him, but he’d already leapt into the air and turned toward the battle.

  Damien raced through the sky. The central pass lay a couple of miles from the army camp. Below him tiny figures of fleeing soldiers raced away from the battlefield.

  The army had routed, pure and simple. No discipline or direction influenced the men, just a need to escape the horror of the dragon.

  Damien understood, he’d felt the beast’s power in its unfocused state and it dwarfed the demon he killed last summer. The plain truth was Damien doubted he could kill the dragon. He’d probably hit it with everything he had and get a laugh for his trouble. But what choice did he have? If all those people died and he did nothing he’d never be able to face himself again.

  It took less than a minute to reach the pass. The dragon’s forces had blocked the retreat of the majority of the kingdom’s soldiers. Towering over everything was a horror of icy spikes, horns, and fangs. The dragon had to measure over fifty yards, not counting its sinuous tail. Beside and behind it thousands of ogres and trolls watched it slaughter the trapped humans.

  Damien gathered his soul force. Golden energy rushed out of his center and collected in a seething ball in front of him. Any moment he expected the dragon to sense his power and look up, but it was having too much fun to spare Damien a glance. As his power grew the dragon raised a taloned foot and brought it crashing down on half a dozen men, crushing and slashing them to ribbons.

  Bastard!

  He drew deeper, pulling the power out in a river.

  When he’d drawn every drop of energy he had, Damien loosed the blast at the dragon in a single focused lightning bolt.

  He fell.

  The world went black and the ground rushed to meet him.

  Damien hoped he’d pass out before he struck. Hitting the ground from this height would hurt, for a moment at least.

  Chapter 36

  “Damien!” Jen shouted after her brother again. He ignored her, racing off to do something very brave and stupid.

  She drew on her depleted soul force and sprinted after him. Despite her speed Damien pulled away from her.

  She dodged spruce trees that seemed to appear from nowhere, her accelerated senses allowing her to make decisions ten times faster than a normal person. What was he thinking, trying to take on a dragon on his own? They should gather reinforcements, especially more sorcerers, and make a pr
oper counterattack.

  Jen leapt an eight-foot boulder. But if they did that they’d lose the forces fighting in the central pass along with General Kord, who almost certainly had led the soldiers himself. Damien must have realized that as well.

  Idiot!

  A tear froze on her cheek. If anything happened to him… No, she wouldn’t allow anything to happen to him. She was his big sister and it was her job to keep him safe, even if he didn’t think he needed to be kept safe anymore.

  A line of retreating soldiers streamed past her. She was moving so fast most of them didn’t even notice her. In the sky above, Damien had come to a stop. He floated, facing toward the pass, still a mile away. In front of him golden energy gathered. He wasted no effort disguising his conjuring.

  She clenched her teeth and ran faster. She had to get to him before he released his power. If Damien gave it everything he had there’d be nothing left to hold him up

  She was still a hundred yards short of her brother when a thunderous explosion shook the ground. The energy he’d summoned crackled like a lightning bolt toward the pass. Damien fell. He had no power left to stay in the sky.

  She gathered herself and leapt. As she flew toward her brother she glanced into the pass in time to see his attack slam into a massive dragon made of ice. It roared louder than the explosion, bits of its body flying in all directions.

  Damien thudded into her arms.

  He groaned. “Hey, sis. I think I overdid it.” Then he passed out.

  She landed in the snow, turned, and sprinted toward camp. There’d be healers there. Someone could do something for him. Jen ran so fast a wake of snow rose and fell on either side of her, washing over the occasional group of soldiers she passed, their shouts and curses drowned out by the wind in her ears. She dodged the sparse trees and weary soldiers with equal indifference. Her only thought was to get Damien to the healers as fast as possible.