Death

by Rosie Scott

  “Meaning, essentially, that once we get on the bridge, they'll sabotage it,” I mused, and glanced over at Maggie. “Could they cause the bridge to free fall with such a contraption?”

  “Probably,” Maggie replied, but she shook her head. “But I'm gonna predict that they don't wanna lose such a ritzy lookin' bridge to a temporary defense. I'd betcha they wantcha to get on the bridge so they can raise it and bombard ya with defenses. You'd be stuck on it and couldn't jump off without killin' yerself.”

  “I think you're right,” Azazel agreed, pointing to two locations on the castle wall. “They have launchers of various types. One good throw of a poison, and they could take us out one group at a time. And you can't use your antitoxin rains, Kai. We need to avoid the bridge at all costs.”

  “Then how are we going to get to Golda at all, considering she's defending her castle?” Cerin questioned.

  “Mr. Sassy,” Nyx suggested, nodding toward Holter as he kept himself busy throwing foes over railings.

  I nodded. “We need...something he can carry that we can hold on to. If Holter carries us alone, he'll hurt us with his talons.”

  “How much weight can he carry, love?” Maggie asked.

  “Two grown men's worth,” I replied.

  Maggie wrinkled up her nose. “How about two men and a war hammer?” She glanced down at her weapon. “Holter can carry the hammer while two of ya'll hang onto it. It ain't a blade. It can't injure ya unless I bop ya with it.” Cerin huffed with humor from her wording.

  “You'll be without your weapon,” I pointed out.

  “But if we don't get across that bridge we'll be without yer regent,” Maggie reminded me.

  “It's a good idea,” Azazel decided. “But Maggie will need to stay here while Holter carries us, and we need to be careful not to slip.”

  “If somebody slips, Holter can just drop the hammer and worry about catchin' ya,” Maggie replied, unfazed. “I ain't worried about the hammer as much as I want ya'll safe. I can build me another. Don't worry 'bout leavin' me here, neither. I don't expect lil' Holter to carry me over there. I'd prefer the boy live.”

  I untied the war horn from my belt and blew a double-toot at Holter to get his attention. The oozlum-kin spun toward the noise after flinging a dwarf to her death, and when he noticed my gaze he flew over and hovered above us.

  “The castle,” I began, pointing at it. “I want you to scout it. Note its defenses and set-up while staying as far back from it as you can. They can sabotage the bridge leading to it, so after you scout it we need to see if you can take us over two at a time using Maggie's hammer as a support. The fortress has many defenses, so you need to find a safe route and a place to deliver us where we won't be immediately bombarded. While you scout, I'll move my men up to the bridge and warn the other generals to stay far away from it. We'll meet you there. Understood?”

  Holter nodded once before flying off. Nyx watched after him and mused, “Whoever's dropped off first will be bombarded either way, Kai.”

  Unfazed, I moved my army forward. “That's why I volunteer to go first.”

  Thirty-two

  The suspended golden bridge stretched from just beyond my bloodied boots to the regent's courtyard across a gap a few city blocks long. On the other side, dwarves manned defensive siege weapons and waited. Beside many of them were mages. Some foes scurried over the castle's exterior wall on the edges of the hanging architecture like they were delivering messages to their comrades. Perhaps they knew we were forming a strategy and planned on countering it preemptively.

  Sounds of battle bounced off all the nearby gold and reverberated in my ears. Calder convinced his beastmen to stay back from the area to my left on the hanging platform while Dax stood by to my right. I'd informed all nearby generals of my plans, which saved many beastmen from rampaging forth into the probable trap and ensured the Sentinels understood the danger.

  Dax studied the castle and its courtyard from our distance, nearby firelight reflecting in his turquoise eyes. “I'll send you reinforcements if you can take the bridge controls. Take those, we secure the bridge. Alert me and I'll move my army in behind you.”

  “Will do,” I agreed. “Thank you for supporting this crazy plan.”

  “All your plans are crazy,” Dax replied. “The important thing is that they usually work.” His lips raised in a lazy half-smile before he turned back to his men. Intermingling with the Vhiri were my necromancers. All of my generals temporarily could not lead, so Dax offered to take my men under his wing.

  My friends and I watched as Holter completed his scouting and flew back to us. Azazel commented, “If Holter found somewhere remote to drop us off at, we could always wait to advance until he brings Cerin and Nyx.”

  Cerin huffed dryly. “What makes you think you're going with Kai? I was planning on it.”

  Azazel shrugged lightly. “I just assumed it was best. Holter's trying to find a good location to deliver us, which means he'll find somewhere far from immediate attack. In that case, this will come in handy.” He reached up to tap on the top curve of his bow behind his head.

  “Azazel's right,” I agreed. “I need him with me first. Enervat can't travel as far as his arrows.”

  “Nothing can,” Nyx teased.

  “I need to learn archery, I guess,” Cerin lamented.

  “I'll teach you,” Azazel offered.

  “I'm sure you would.” Cerin chuckled, before eyeing me with concern. “Will you be okay being carried across that chasm?”

  I glanced down at my boots where the gaps between the golden designs of the patio teased me with images of roofs the size of fingertips and soldiers that were nothing but ants. My heart skipped a beat with sudden anxiety and I replied, “I'll have to be.”

  Holter swooped in and landed on the gold beside us then, his anti-magic guards flickering from a hit of thrown lightning while scouting. I refreshed his protections, explained the rest of the plan, and then waited as he lifted once more and Maggie situated the war hammer in his scaled feet. Holter carried the weight easily, but that wasn't all I had to ask of him.

  “Make it weigh less, maybe,” Nyx suggested.

  “If the metal is lightweight, we risk warping it,” Azazel pointed out, before his eyes brightened with an idea. “We'll make ourselves weigh less, Kai. Less strain on everyone. By the time Holter drops us off, it shouldn't affect us anymore. The time Holter has to endure all the weight will be minimal.”

  “Then we need another soldier who knows alteration to stick here with them,” I replied, motioning to Cerin and Nyx.

  “I'll ask Dax for a volunteer,” Cerin promised.

  I thanked him before taking a deep breath and moving forward. Maggie suggested I hang on to the top end of the war hammer so my hands couldn't slip off due to being between Holter's foot and the weapon's head. Azazel grabbed on to the hammer's handle between Holter's feet for the same reason. We directed alleviate to ourselves just before holding onto the steel handle and locking our fingers.

  “So not only is this dangerous,” Nyx mused as she watched Holter slowly rise with us hanging beneath him, “but it's kind of hilarious, too.” Bright white teeth sparkled between her dark lips as she withheld from laughing.

  “That will be us in a few minutes,” Cerin reminded her dryly, his brow furrowed as he noticed the anxiety on my face. “...Kai?”

  “Go, Holter,” I pleaded, my nostrils flared as I tried not to look down. The scout complied, turning smoothly toward the castle to start our flight. As soon as I saw nothing but open air beneath me, my heart jumped in my throat and I cursed.

  “Don't look, Kai,” Azazel's warning sounded distant as it traveled through the rustling breeze between us.

  “I have to,” I blurted.

  “Close your eyes,” came his next suggestion, so I did.

  The blackness was comforting, whispering deceptively that I was safe for as long as I saw no danger. The flight from the platform to the fortress only took a minute or
two due to Holter's quick pace, but each second was an eternity. The echoes of battle disappeared as they were overridden by the pounding of my heart. When it felt like we'd been in the air forever, my eyes opened against my will just in time to see the dangerously close glimmer of steel from an oncoming ballista dart.

  Crrk! The dart crashed into the life shield surrounding Holter, causing it to flicker as the oozlum-kin fluttered to the side, caught off-balance. It was impossible to see where the dart came from, for the castle was just a blurry mess of stone and random spots of color as my eyes teared up against the breeze of flight. I grunted a few terrified curses as Holter struggled to right himself, squeezing my fingers so tightly together over the hammer's handle they went numb.

  “Eyes closed,” Azazel insisted, and I followed his advice once more.

  “There's no way you saw them open,” I hissed in a ramble, more to keep my mind off of flying than anything else.

  “No, but I hear you panicking.” As always, he was as calm and collected as could be, unfazed by our predicament.

  We were still in the air moments later when our alleviate spells dispelled, leaving us suddenly holding the weight of our bodies. Holter dipped a bit as the extra weight bombarded him.

  “Gods,” I murmured.

  “No,” Azazel replied, leaving me somewhat confused until he clarified. “There are none left here except for you.” I opened my eyes, seeing him standing on a dark stone wall just before me with a smile. He pried my fingers apart on the hammer when I found it hard to do from their numbness. I dropped to the wall beside him and immediately scanned for enemies. Azazel thanked Holter before grabbing the bow from his back and nocking an arrow. Before I even had a clear picture of our surroundings, a dwarf across the courtyard collapsed from the arrow in my peripheral vision.

  Holter had deposited us on the wall nearest the left side of the castle as far away from the central courtyard as possible. The stone beneath our boots was almost black with a mix of minerals likely similar to the rock of the underground. Just ahead, the barrier dead-ended into the upper levels of the fortress, but there was no way into the building from here; it was simply a wall of rock blocking our path. The cavern's roof was a few stories above our heads. We weren't surrounded, for this section of the far wall had no defenders. There was no reason for it; one look over the exterior battlement revealed only the abyss which led to a fall guaranteed to leave any victims unrecognizable.

  Peering over to the city made me dizzy, so I redirected my attention to the inner fortress. To get to the bridge controls and down to the courtyard, we needed to travel around the entire left wall and through each subsequent watch tower. The closest keep was only a few dozen yards away, but it appeared unmanned. We were too far for the other dwarves to hit us via siege weapons, so as Holter flew out of view to fetch Nyx and Cerin, Azazel and I stayed put.

  Azazel pointed his bow toward the entrance gap between walls at the front of the hanging fortress. It was hundreds of meters over the entire courtyard, but he was confident as he pulled back the string and waited. In the distance, foes yelled orders at each other, and one dwarf in the courtyard took a message from the wall guards to the castle.

  “Come on, lift your head again,” Azazel murmured, holding his bow steady. I followed his gaze to the opposite wall. A glimmer of steel flashed in the crenel of the battlement as a dwarf lifted his head. Azazel's arrow whistled as it promptly fired, nearly skimming the cavern ceiling in its long-distance arc. “Thank you,” Azazel said politely, before firing off another arrow elsewhere.

  A mere moment later, the curious dwarf fell back from the battlement from the arrow. I raised an eyebrow. “Did you just thank your victim?”

  “I did, since he heeded my request,” Azazel replied, and I chuckled. “The bridge controls are unmanned.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That dwarf was one of two defenders. I killed the first before him, hence why the second knew to hide.”

  “You weren't even looking at him to know if you killed him or not,” I retorted, watching as a few dwarves and mages rushed along the left wall to meet us in battle.

  “Did I miss?”

  “No.”

  Azazel smiled in amusement as he loosed another arrow. The shadowy form of a tower guard disappeared from the structure's top window a few keeps down from us on the inward curve of the wall. “Then the controls are unmanned, as I said.”

  “Did you get this arrogance from me?” I teased, noticing Holter flying toward us as he brought Cerin and Nyx to our location in a wide sideways arc to avoid projectiles.

  “Sure did.”

  “Well, such arrogance is causing you to be brash,” I mused playfully. “The controls may be currently unmanned, but they'll send reinforcements. I'm not signaling Dax until we can ensure his men won't get stranded on the bridge.”

  “Good plan and better reasoning,” Azazel complimented, taking out a tower guard on the opposite wall when no further enemies on ours were in view. “Did you get this vigilance from me?”

  “Sure did.” I nudged him affectionately and turned to help Cerin and Nyx down as Holter reached the wall.

  “I saw my life flash before my eyes,” Cerin said dryly as he dropped, speaking of the flight.

  Nyx grinned beside him. “I want to go again. I could do that all day.”

  “Go back to the platform,” I ordered Holter. “Deliver Maggie's hammer back to her and direct her to go with Dax. See if you can't get Calder to send his flying beastmen over as support when we approach the front of this fortress. We'll disable as many defenses as we can on the way.”

  Holter took off for another return trip. The creak of a swinging heavy metal door echoed out from the opposite side of the nearest keep as the defenders from the far wall finally neared us. The locked door before us didn't open, however. I prepared enervat and waited, my eyes on the tower's upper open horizontal window.

  The first head that popped up in the opening was that of a mage, and she'd already prepared a spell herself. A misshapen boulder hurtled straight into the front of Nyx's shield, breaking it and sending her tumbling back. Thinking quickly, Azazel dropped his equipped arrow to grab Nyx's arm as she flew by, saving her from falling over the edge of the battlement. The black magic of my spell hit the mage and exploded, but the energy crawled over an alteration shield I hadn't noticed in the darkness of the tower's shadow and was absorbed. Some power returned to me moments later, proving that the magic had reached others I hadn't seen. But the earth mage was still standing, and now she had excess energy. She backed away from the window, allowing her the time to build another spell without being targeted.

  Cerin regenerated Nyx's shield before throwing a death bomb at the guard room of the tower. While some power returned to him, the mage reappeared a moment later, an even larger boulder twirling between her palms. She understood how easy it would be to force us to fall to our deaths from here, so her strategy hadn't changed. And now, using the excess energy we'd given her, the rock was twice its predecessor's size.

  She threw the boulder. With the sharpened senses of a new high, I lifted my arms up and directed my own spell to the thrown stone as it rushed over my head. Granules of sand rained over us as the rock broke down mid-flight, and then it crashed to the wall just after Azazel dodged it, half its original size. Azazel fired his bow in immediate retaliation. Protected only by anti-magic guards, the mage quickly succumbed to the arrow and collapsed.

  I reached one hand out to the center of the keep's locked door. Seconds later, its metal slowly disintegrated from the middle until a small hole appeared, leaking a glow of internal firelight. A dwarven crossbow bolt immediately fired through and bounced off of Cerin's shield. Nyx retaliated with a charm spell, and the noises of a scuffle sounded from within the keep. As the door continued to break down into sand and chunks of metal, I reached through the widening hole and unlocked it from the outside.

  The door swung open on its hinges, leaving a trail
of dark dust. Inside the lowest level of the keep, a bloodied comrade knocked the charmed crossbowman unconscious. Newly alerted to my entrance, all eyes turned to me. Death magic hissed as it raced out from my boots, the fog quickly filling the base of the room and affecting all. Bodies fell in heavy lumps in unison, leaving only those with magic protections.

  One mage raised both palms to the open doorway as my friends filed through, and a torrent of water gushed forward, flushing Cerin and Nyx back outside as Azazel hurried to aid them. I struggled to keep my footing as remnants of the water collected in the room and swirled around my boots. The mage had an absorb magic shield, but it was slightly faded after my earlier death spell and would break easily.

  Creatius a friz projectille a multipla. As the mage continued forcing water through the doorway like a deterrent, I used her own element against her. I thrust both palms forward, unleashing a barrage of ice shards.

  The first two projectiles hit her shield only to melt and absorb, but then the guard finally dissipated. The mage panicked as she noticed her new vulnerability, but my attack was relentless. Four more acute ice spikes rapidly impaled the woman in a row, the force sending her flying until her back hit a wooden supply cabinet. She croaked her last breaths while hanging from the furniture, nailed to it by her own element. A puddle of bloodied water gathered just below her dangling feet. Only when we cleared the room and left did she fall after the ice weakened with fading body heat.

  When we finally reached the inward curve of the fortress's wall after fighting through each of its towers on the left side, the other armies we'd left across the golden bridge appeared once more. Silver-blue movement pulled my attention to Calder as he thrust both arms toward us from the edge of the platform opposite the castle. At once, his entire flying unit ascended and separated from the other beastmen, advancing to give us support.

  As I'd surmised, the bridge controls had been manned again while we'd fought our way here. For the first time, I was close enough to see them. The chain that controlled the bridge threaded through a pulley hanging from the cavern ceiling above and connected to the wall across the gap of the fortress's entrance, where it rolled on a spool. The spool had a crank on either side and secured to the stone below. We couldn't get to the controls without descending a nearby staircase to the courtyard and going up another to the opposite wall. The only thing keeping us from doing that was the mass of castle defenders flooding up to us from the courtyard.