Chronicles Of Aronshae (3 Book Omnibus)

by J. K. Barber

  “Well I hope we reach the gates soon,” Vlaric said, stumbling slightly, but still keeping his forward momentum. There had come a short lull in the fighting, but the Illyanders had no time to rest. They hastened forward. “Because I can barely see my hand in front of….” Vlaric’s words were cut off by a yell of pain and the warrior went down.

  Parinan called for a halt and knelt in the mud beside Vlaric. The shaft of a crossbow bolt protruded from the black-haired warrior’s leg, half its length buried in the muscle of the man’s thigh. Several short hisses could be heard passing rapidly through the fog around them. “Archers!” Parinan yelled. “Cover!”

  The Illyanders closed ranks, those with shields moving to protect those without. Once assembled, they all ducked down. There was the sound of several bolts impacting the wooden shields of the soldiers or the distinctive TANG of iron ringing on steel as some of the crossbow bolts deflected off of the Snowhaven warrior’s metal shields.

  “Go!” Vlaric said, his voice still strong, but colored with pain. “Go,” he repeated, grabbing Parinan’s arm.

  “Absolutely not,” Parinan said, his tone one of iron. “We’re not leaving you behind.” Thankfully, the orcs had stopped firing, apparently rethinking the wisdom of firing blindly into the fog.

  Vlaric struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on the blonde-haired warrior for support. The right leg of Vlaric’s breeches was already soaked with crimson. “I can’t keep up this way,” he said, gesturing painfully at his thigh, “and you can’t afford to carry me. It would slow you down too much.”

  Nawyn stepped to Vlaric’s side, throwing the wounded man’s arm over her shoulder. “I’ll do it,” she said, already starting to walk forward.

  “’Wyn, please,” he begged, trying to shrug off the woman’s help. “You can’t and we both know it.”

  “Then I’ll help too,” John said, moving Parinan aside to slip under Vlaric’s other arm. The taller man looked around Vlaric, nodding at Nawyn.

  Parinan considered matters for a moment, realizing he didn’t have time to argue the point and also realizing there was no point in arguing. The set of the sorcerer’s jaw was adamant. “Fine,” he said already beginning to move. Without a word, one of the soldiers of the King’s Army fell in beside Parinan, taking Vlaric’s place. Both men nodded once to each other, speech unnecessary.

  The fog around them began to thin, more and more of the town becoming visible as the Illyanders closed on the southern gate.

  Parinan looked to Mashara and Abigale. “What’s happening?” he asked, his words somewhat labored now that they were running as fast as Vlaric’s injured leg allowed. “Can you two not hold the spell?”

  “Of course we can,” Abigale responded. The normally pleasant girl was visibly irritated. “It’s not us,” she said, her voice confused. “Something, or someone, is trying to disperse the fog.”

  As the sorceress said the words, Parinan noticed that the wind had picked up and the fog was beginning to thin further. Beneath the growing breeze, Parinan heard the sound of chanting, the speaker’s voice was hoarse but strong.

  Just then the southern gate of Snowhaven loomed up out of the mists, a dark shape that stretched thirty feet into the air, and the Illyanders slid to a stop on the muddy ground. Vlaric stumbled, but kept his feet, shrugging off the support of John and Nawyn. He stood his ground, as best as his wounded leg would allow, next to Nawyn, facing away from the center of the group.

  The rush of wind picked up and the top of the gate came fully into view. Standing atop the massive structure of wood was a robed figure, clad in blue velvet with a silver mantle around his neck. Even from this distance, Parinan could see that the man’s head was hairless and there were pulsing purple markings across his bald pate. To either side of the bald man, archers lined the wall, but the majority of their attention was focused on something outside the gates and not on the small group of Illyanders already inside.

  “Great Mother preserve us,” Gretta said, shock and dismay breaking her usual stoic demeanor. “I know who that is.”

  “No,” Parinan said, adamantly. “You don’t.”

  “What?” Gretta asked, looking incredulously at him.

  “You don’t know him, not anymore.” Parinan gestured at the chanting man standing above the southern gate. “That is not the man you know. It is simply his body, animated by the Ice Queen’s foul magic. You...,” Parinan’s voice cracked slightly, for he too recognized the man. He had been a friend of Mashara’s from her first days at the Sorcerer’s School. They had often played chess together, during their time spent learning the sorcerous arts. Collecting himself, Parinan continued. “You owe it to the memory of the man you once knew to see that abomination destroyed.”

  Gretta stared at Parinan for a moment, scarcely looking like she recognized the blonde-haired warrior at first, but then understanding crossed her pale features; first understanding and then anger.

  The four sorcerers gathered together and began chanting lowly, small motes of energy appearing in the air around them. The thrum of energy could be felt by all of the Illyanders. The rest hastily arranged themselves in defensive positions around the four blue-robed figures. Hal and Gretta joined half of the soldiers from the King’s Army in front, forming a shield wall to protect the sorcerers from any archers on the wall. Behind, Vlaric and Parinan joined the other soldiers to protect their flank from the enemy on the ground. Vlaric took up a position beside Parinan, the pair supported on their left and right by the brave men who had volunteered for this mission.

  As the words of the hollow voice above them reached a crescendo, a final gust of ice cold wind blew away the fog that had concealed the Illyanders. Without the will of the Snowhaven sorcerers to sustain it, the thick white haze was shredded like cheap parchment in the hands of a child.

  Hal now had a clear view of what lay ahead. The warrior from Valshet gasped at what had been done to the southern gate. Though nowhere near as impressive as the northern gate of Snowhaven, the gate leading to Illyander had never been something Hal would have called flimsy. Now, however, he hardly recognized the wooden portal. Doors from what looked to be every home in Snowhaven had been used to bolster the gate, nailed to the wood using thick metal spikes. Tall trees with their branched hacked off by hatchets lay propped against the gate, more long metal spikes fastening the tops of the beams to the timbers of the gate. A small trench had been dug into the ground to hold the bottoms of the buttresses, wedging the thick logs in place, guaranteeing that they would not be dislodged.

  “We should have brought more sorcerers,” Hal joked from behind his shield, his tone betraying the painful realization behind his jest. “We’ll never get that gate open in time.” To further punctuate the looming hopelessness of the situation, a horn sounded in the distance from beyond the impenetrable wall. The King’s Army was approaching.

  A rain of crossbow bolts caromed off of Gretta’s shield as she nodded her agreement with Hal’s words. Beside her one of the soldiers screamed out in pain, a quarrel sticking out of the meaty part of his calf. As the man’s leg buckled threatening to topple him onto the ground, Gretta reached out with her right hand and grasped the man’s belt. Impossibly, she lifted him, supporting the soldier’s weight, which was easily half again in excess of her own, until he could get his footing back beneath him. A pair of crossbow bolts flew over the soldier’s shield in the heartbeat that he had faltered, luckily missing the sorcerers and the exposed backs of their northern facing comrades. The man’s wooden shield, once more in place, had a small forest of quarrels sticking out of it, as did all the soldiers’ shields. The ground at their feet was littered with the thin wooden shafts of bolts that had not found their mark, the muddy ground rapidly becoming lost beneath the errant or deflected quarrels.

  More grunts of pain sounded around Hal as the orcish crossbows found tender flesh beneath the Illyanders’ chainmail. Bravely, the soldiers continued to hold their shields in place, protecting the sorcerers as
they continued to gather their power.

  Hal called over his shoulder to Parinan. “We can’t keep this up!” he screamed, his normally jovial demeanor becoming lost in the face of the odds against them.

  “We have to,” Parinan yelled, not turning his head. As the fog had lifted, Parinan had gotten a clear view of what faced him as well. Hundreds of orcs, clad in a myriad of armor and carrying a wide and vicious assortment of weapons were marching their way down Snowhaven’s main thoroughfare, murder in their eyes. All their eyes were focused on the eighteen Illyanders that had appeared in their midst. “We have to get that door down or the army is going to be marching into a massacre.”

  “Have you seen this thing?” Hal called back, indicating the now heavily reinforced southern gate.

  Parinan looked over his shoulder, his spirits dropping. “Great Mother,” he said, his tenor crestfallen. “How are we supposed to open that?” he asked of no one, staring at the seeming impenetrable portal.

  “That’s what I said,” Hal screamed, a gallows smile creasing his face. More bolts banged off of the bald warrior’s shield, causing him to flinch reflexively. “We definitely should have brought more of them,” he said, indicating the four blue robed figures standing resolutely as the world around them began to explode in the chaos of battle.

  Above, the walking corpse of one of the Snowhaven sorcerers yelled out and lightning struck. The soldier beside Hal did not have time to scream before he hit the ground dead, the sickening smell of burnt flesh rising from his blackened body. Without a word, the remaining soldiers closed ranks, filling the gap left by their fallen comrade.

  “He’s not helping matters much either,” Gretta said, indicating the undead sorcerer on the wall above them. That the woman had spoken at all during battle indicated the desperateness of their situation. The other three warriors from Snowhaven took Gretta’s words grimly.

  “Let me,” Vlaric said, hobbling back from the line of Illyanders towards the fallen solider.

  Parinan stepped sideways, covering for his now absent friend. “What are you doing?!” he yelled. “Get back here!”

  Another bolt of lightning fell, striking one of the men beside Parinan, throwing him forward with the impact. Unlike his squad mate, this man was able to scream out in pain, however, he too was dead before his charred body hit the ground.

  “We have to do something about him!” Vlaric screamed, tugging the quiver of arrows off the first dead man. “Son of a…!” the black-haired warrior screamed, a ruined bow in his hand. The heat of the rogue sorcerer’s attack had obliterated the bow’s string.

  Seeing what Vlaric was up to, Gretta tugged a bow over the head of the man next to her, tossing the weapon to Vlaric. Both men stumbled a little because of their wounded legs, but kept their feet. Catching the bow out of the air, Vlaric notched an arrow and hopped forward to stand behind Hal. The black-haired man knelt, sighted down the arrow and let fly.

  Hal spared a look around his shield, his heart leaping to see Vlaric’s arrow reach its mark. The wooden shaft protruded from the black-robed figure’s chest, just left of the man’s heart. The undead sorcerer’s words faltered for a moment and he took half a step backwards with the impact, looking like he might fall.

  Hal’s hopes soon dropped as the creature who wore the face of their friend began speaking anew, regaining his footing and his composure. Casually, the dark figure reached up, snapping the arrow’s shaft and tossing the ruined projectile aside. Another bolt arced from the man’s outstretched hands and Hal heard the dying scream of another man behind him. The bald warrior did not turn around.

  “What are they up to?” Gretta asked, indicating the sorcerers with a nod of her head.

  Parinan followed her gaze, looking to the four blue-robbed people who still stood at the center of their formation and were continuing to gather power around them. He had seen many times his sorceress partner draw energy from the world around her, hold it for the space of a breath and then release it, shaping the power with a few arcane words and gestures. Yet, what she and the others were now doing was different. They had been gathering energy for several minutes and showed no sign of stopping.

  “Mashara?” he asked, trying to get the woman’s attention as best he could as the orcs marched closer. “What are you doing?” Parinan’s voice was filled with concern, bordering on panic. He knew what a sorcerer risked if they channeled too much power. At best, their magical talent would be burnt out, their ability to perform sorcery gone forever. At worst, the sorcerer’s body gave out, killing her. Mashara had related the horror stories told to all novices in the Sorcerer School; tales of men and women who had reached beyond their grasp, literally cooked from the inside by the power they sought to control. Parinan looked at the still smoldering corpse of one of the soldiers and then at the sorcerers.

  “Mashara! No!” he screamed. Parinan took half a step towards her, but hesitated, looking back at the approaching horde of orcs. They were too close for him to break ranks without threatening to collapse the entire line; and they were getting closer with each heavy-booted step.

  Mashara turned her head to look at Parinan, the strain obvious on her face. But, beneath the tension were other emotions. First and foremost being resolve. The sorceress knew the importance of what they were doing here, as did all the others. Parinan spared a glance at the other three blue-robed figures and their silver trimmed mantles. They were not novices. They knew what was at risk and the set of their jaws said more than any words they may have spoken to convince Parinan that what they were doing was what needed to be done. Beneath the resolve though, Parinan saw sadness on Mashara’s face. She also knew the cost of what she had to do. Even if she survived, she would never be Parinan’s partner again. The bond between them would be forever broken with the loss of her magic. Parinan hoped the ties of love that also bound them together would be enough.

  Parinan’s thoughts of love and loss were ripped away as the solider beside him cried out, “Here they come!” The warrior turned to see orcs in the front of the approaching mob break into a run, weapons extended and throats bellowing out guttural war cries. Parinan braced to receive the first wave, overlapping his shield with the man next to him to add support. The soldier to Parinan’s left did the same, forming an unbroken wall of wood and steel to give the sorcerers as much time as they could.

  Vlaric cursed. Though another of his arrows had found its mark, what would have been a death blow barely hindered the corrupted sorcerer on the wall above them. “For the love of the Mother,” he said. “What does it take to kill these things?”

  Hal laughed as more crossbow bolts thudded against his shield, bouncing off or breaking entirely against the steel. The ground around the Illyanders facing the southern gate was becoming increasingly littered with the broken quarrels of the orcs above them. “Good grief!” Hal said, his voice full of mirth despite their degrading situation. “You’re a worse shot than they are,” the shaven-headed warrior joked, indicating the blue-skinned crossbowmen on the wall. From his sheltered position behind Hal, Vlaric had put half a dozen arrows into the undead sorcerer, each one a killing or disabling shot. However, Vlaric’s arrows had scarcely served to hinder the corrupted creature’s killing strokes of lightning. Four more soldiers had gone down, their bodies smoldering and steaming in the cold Snowhaven air. The only bit of luck the Illyanders had had since the battle began was that more and more of the Ice Queen’s men were turning their attentions to the King’s Army outside. From the sound of the army’s horns, they were an arrow’s flight away from Snowhaven. In fact, several of the orcs had already begun sending their own quarrels southward, ignoring the dwindling group of Illyanders inside.

  “Oh, really?” Vlaric said, notching another arrow to his bow. “Now you’re just trying to hurt my feelings,” he said in mock distress as he took aim again. Vlaric took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he sighted down the arrow’s shaft. After several moments of stillness the black-haired warrior loosed
, silently praying for the Great Mother to guide his hand.

  Vlaric cheered from his kneeling position, pointing to the wall above. His arrow had indeed found its mark. Hal snuck a look around the edge of his shield, his spirits rising. The blighted sorcerer had his hands to his throat, the fletching of an arrow protruding from between his grasping fingers.

  “See?” Vlaric boasted. “Alive or dead, you can’t cast if your jaw is pinned shut to the back of your skull.” As the creature turned, Hal saw the truth of his friend’s words. Vlaric’s arrow had pierced the soft skin underneath the dead man’s jaw, the arrow head now protruding from the tattooed sickly pale skin on the back of the man’s head. Unfortunately, the pulsing gem at the center of the tattoos remained untouched by the arrow’s broad head.

  “About time,” Hal said, his tone gently mocking. “If you took much longer I wa….” His voice was cut off by a howl of pain. One of the crossbow-wielding orcs above had found his mark, hitting the warrior in the thigh. As the bald-headed warrior’s leg buckled, another shaft took him in the neck, slipping past his lowered shield. Hal’s body hit the ground, blood pouring from the quarrel imbedded just above his pauldron.

  Vlaric had only a moment to mourn his dying friend before a handful of crossbow bolts struck him as well. With Hal’s shield no longer covering the black-haired warrior, the orcs on the wall above had taken advantage of his lack of protection, burying nearly a dozen quarrels into the warrior before the soldiers that had stood beside Hal closed the gap left by the man’s death.

  Gretta cried out in impotent rage, unable to help her fallen comrades or avenge their deaths on the orcs above. As she turned to call out to Parinan she was almost blinded by the sorcerers as they finally released the sorcerous energies they had been building up for so long. Great arcs of lightning flew from the outstretched hands of the four blue-robed figures, making Gretta’s world go white with the liberated power. Before she closed her eyes against the brilliance, she saw the first impact of the onrushing orcs against the shield wall behind her. Even though it held, she saw the feet of Parinan and the soldiers around him slide several inches in the mud. Eventually she knew that they would be driven back too far and the orcs would reach the sorcerers. Gretta hoped against reason that the line would hold long enough.