“Mal!” Chelsea yelled. She could see he was in a disastrous way. Mal screamed as the other two vampires dropped down to the earth he lay in, ready to set in to their meal.
Chelsea moved to the undead and used her sword as a farmer used a scythe to cut wheat. She took two leaping strides of her own as more vampires poured over the wall into their sanctum, closing the distance to the man she loved. One underhand swipe later she’d cut one of the undead nearly in half at the ribcage, spilling dried up and shriveled organs on the grass, and on Malwynn. The vampire slumped backwards and Chelsea saw her worst fear; fresh red blood running out of its mouth over its chin, and down its neck.
His blood. Malwynn’s blood.
Something inside her broke apart. The rational, calm warrior with years of training and discipline sat down deep in the back of her mind, and the savage woman who saw something precious of hers hurt stepped forward. Leapt forward.
Charged forward. Reckless and angry beyond rationale.
Chelsea unleashed a deep bellow that shook leaves off the trees a hundred yards away. She launched her body parallel to the ground, leading with her sword blade and shield and hit the vampire on top of Malwynn. The blade pierced the vampire in the chest and a fraction of a second later her shield hit right behind, bowling the vampire over, and knocking it off Mal, shattering bone and denting flesh into blackened bruises. She somehow retained control of her adrenaline fueled body, and when the vampire landed on its back—her sword in buried in its chest—she landed right on top with it. Her gloved left fist pummeled the stunned vampire in the face with the edge of her shield repeatedly as she screamed bloody murder and yanked her sword free. Five shield blows came in a row, fast as beating hummingbird wings. Each bash alternated down with matching sword stabs. In a second she’d pulped the undead monster that took Mal to the ground. There would be no more unlife for the thing.
Malwynn’s left arm had been bitten badly by the vampire Chelsea had just killed, just above the elbow in a tiny exposed spot in the armor. Blood ran freely into the ground but that was the least of the necromancer’s worries. Clutching at his left arm near the wrist like a humanoid leech crouched a licking, drooling vampire. Mal looked for his blade, but he’d dropped it and his eyes seemed fogged over with confusion and pain.
The young death mage reached deep, fighting against the raging burn that ate into both of his limbs. He pulled effort from the place where memories of New Picknell and his dead family lived. “Stop,” Mal commanded the vampire.
“Err?” the vampire said, pulling its mouth off of the hole it had chewed in his arm. A stream of his own blood ran over its lip and down its chin as it forgot to swallow. Its yellow-gray eyes were glossy in the flickering firelight, and when they locked on to Mal’s bright blue eyes, The Way came forth, and Mal pressed an inner power he’d used only sparingly in his life. It wasn’t a spell. It was his will, raw and forced, honed by The Way. The vampire looked to Mal with a wholly new expression. Devotion.
“Leave the foundation,” Mal said through gritted teeth. He was in pain, The Way or not. “Protect us from the others.”
The vampire’s eye lit with a glee that came from Mal’s domination. Like the last time he’d given a command to the dead at the heart of The Empire in Graben, the vampire obeyed, and got to its feet. A moment later it jumped over the edge of the collapsed building and tackled an approaching vampire. The two monsters rolled and scrapped on the ground, engaged in mortal combat. Harsh screams of betrayal, pain and savagery pierced the fray.
“Are you okay?” Chelsea asked with wild eyes. She reached out and took his arm, examining the wound. Five steps away, Umaryn grunted as she swung the hammer around, bashing in the skulls and backs of vampires that tried to swarm her. She seemed in the heart of where she should be; in battle against evil.
“I will be. Thank you for that. Help me to my feet,” Mal said, reaching out with the arm that had been bitten near the hand. She helped him up just as yet another vampire lunged at Mal, hot on the scent of his spilled blood.
“Mal!” she exclaimed, trying to push him out of the vampire’s way.
Mal used his bad arm to sidestep her protective gesture. With his damaged hand he reached out to the snarling fanged monster with blue-gray flesh. Mal’s bare hand went up into the face of the vampire, palm to the mouth, but not as a strike. Instead, he gestured for it to… stop.
A flash of dim red light erupted from the palm of the necromancer’s hand, illuminating the long fangs of the vampire just as they were about to pierce his skin below the fingers and into the wrist. Instead, the vampire froze in shock. Its eyes looked up to Chelsea, then Mal, and then in an inferno, it erupted head to toe into white hot flames. The vampire took a single step back but the intensity of the fire was too much, and before the second foot touched down on the consecrated ground of New Falun, a billowing pile of ashes fell instead. Mal had used The Way to immolate it.
The foul essence of the undead clung in the air and mixed with the smoke, and Mal breathed deep of it, absorbing the vitae and force that had kept the monster sustained over decades. Chelsea looked back at first in shock at the man she loved and had just saved as his wounds knit shut, and then in relief, realizing he’d destroyed the undead and in the process made himself whole. He had become in his own way, a bit of a vampire.
“You can do that?” she asked as the vampires outside the stone foundation reeled back in sudden fear. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
Mal spoke his response more to them than to her. “I can rend each and every one of them to ash before dawn.” Mal saw a single vampire standing near the back of the now paused masses around them. He stood defiant, fearless, and angry even, and in that moment Mal knew he was their leader. Mal spoke again, and ensured that the bastard could hear him. “And I can do so much worse to them if they keep trying to hurt those I love.”
The vampire leader snarled, and the vampires came again.
It would be a long night, if any of the living survived to complain about it.
The flaming arrows of The Empire hadn’t come yet. The burning missiles were hours overdue and the soldiers of Varrland were growing more and more anxious as the night sky remained dark. No one huddled under the heavy wooden canopies Marcus had ordered built wanted the arrows to fall, but every moment waiting for them to drop from the sky, trailing their black smoke and orange-white sparks meant a bit more adrenaline built, a bit more anger unreleased, and a bit more anxiety bottled up. Corporal Beckett’s fire team sat underneath their damp, dripping engine, rocking back and forth to stay warm in the cool night air, swearing about the Empire’s insolence and arrogance, and to a one, they were starting to shake with anger and frustration. The fire most dangerous to take hold was the one burning in the chests of his soldiers.
Beckett tried to lead. “When the arrows come, we’ll need to move fast, same as last night and the night before. No hesitation, no quitting.”
“Piss on this, Corporal,” one of his older privates replied. The man was an older enlistee who Beckett thought was jaded. The statement only served to bolster Beckett’s thoughts on that matter. “We been here too long, waiting to die. When are we going to take the fight to them?”
Beckett shook his head in the dark under the wagon with the water pump atop it. “Now Private Reader, you know as well as I do our job is to delay and cause The Empire to waste their resources and time while our reinforcements arrive. Every moment we stay alive here in the village is another moment served towards that mission goal.”
Another frustrated private spoke. “Corporal, the wait is too much. I’d rather run out into that field with the ancestors at my back than sit here and get shot at night after night. And where are our reserves? They should’ve arrived by now. I’m starting to think it’s just us versus the Empire.”
Beckett had no proper answer for that question but he knew he couldn’t afford to let morale slip. “You need to worry about the orders I give you Private Smith. Worryi
ng about anything beyond the problem in front of you is a fool’s errand, and will only dull your senses when the time comes to act. And don’t you worry. When our reinforcements arrive on that train, there will be plenty of time spent swinging your sword in that field with the spirits at your back. In a few minute’s time I want runners sent to the fire observers to check in. One runner at a time. Private Reader, you go first to our north observer. Assign a second runner after that.” Idle hands made soldiers angry and undisciplined. Any task was better than nothing.
That seemed to make the men happier. Suddenly, a new man’s voice entered the conversation. The speaker stood outside the relative safety of the wagon’s underside in the packed dirt street. The men jumped when they heard the man talk. He’d snuck up on them. “The makings of a long night men?”
Beckett had heard the voice, but couldn’t place who it belonged to. Someone familiar. Someone friendly. “Yes sir. The waiting tears a man up.”
The voice laughed in understanding. “A plight I think all the men and women here can identify with. Corporal Beckett, might I have a word with you in confidence?” The voice asked pleasantly, taking several steps away towards an alley that led to one of the buildings that they felt would be vulnerable that night. That was why Beckett ordered the engine placed where it was.
Beckett was confused, but knew somehow he had to talk to the person. He had authority. Was he a commanding officer? “Of course.” Beckett crawled out from under their engine and gave chase to the man with the voice into the alleyway. Beckett couldn’t make out who the man was from his rear profile but followed anyway. He wore a dirty brown cloak that even at a distance smelled of a stable, straw, and sweat. It looked ill fitting, and borrowed. The man’s voice was just so familiar…
“Corporal I wanted to thank you and your men for all your hard work these past few difficult days. There are too few of my colleagues left to spread the good word of the ancestors here in Ockham’s Fringe. I wanted to take the time and assure you that I have not forgotten about you, or your men. Neither have our dead.”
Beckett saw the man’s face finally and recognized him. Memories exited the fog of his mind and locked in, and he recalled the man’s name and title; Minister Peiron Fitch, the Apostle who had nearly been killed by turncoats a few day’s prior. “Minister it is good to see you. Thank you for your kind words. If you would, the men would appreciate hearing that as well. If you’d come back before you left that would be a kindness. Was there something special I could do for you? I expect it to get busy at any moment.”
Peiron smiled in a way that made Beckett’s stomach queasy. “No not really, I merely wanted to thank you and your men for working so hard. Ockham’s Fringe would’ve surely burnt flat by now were it not for your leadership.”
The praise felt false, and Beckett put his hand on the hilt of his sword out of instinct. Something felt wrong. “Thank you Minister. I must be going. Would you come back with me?” Beckett wanted desperately to get back to his men. Somehow he knew he would be safer back there with them.
“No, wait,” Minister Fitch said almost desperately, reaching out and almost taking Beckett by the shoulder guard of his leather armor to stop him. Beckett pulled away and lifted his sword a few inches with his offhand.
“Keep your hands to yourself Apostle,” Beckett said with some hostility. “I am no child you steer like a lamb.”
Peiron made an apologetic gesture with the extended hand and apologized, “I’m so sorry Corporal. I didn’t mean for this to-“ he didn’t finish the apology, instead throwing fine sand into the air at him. The grainy stone colored sand hit Beckett flush in the chest and immediately he felt something at work on his mind. A deep and powerful drowsiness hit him out of the aether, and Beckett’s mind collapsed under the weight of Way-triggered fatigue. A sleep spell had been cast upon him.
The soldier’s legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground in the thin street, smacking his head against the stone foundation of the buildings lining the dirty alley. Immediately a dark red stain could be seen spreading down the slate colored stone and into the dirt where Beckett’s shoulder lay. He grunted quietly in half consciousness.
“Good fortune for that, thank the Queen,” Peiron said under his breath. The turncoat slid a razor sharp dagger out from under his stolen brown cloak and hefted its lethal weight. “Not like a lamb eh Corporal Beckett?” After a quick glance up and down the alley, Peiron slid the dagger up inside Beckett’s skull beneath the chin. He had to force it hard to puncture the tongue and roof of the mouth and then the interior of the skull, but the damage to the man’s brain assured the good Corporal would put out no fires that night or any night after. Peiron Fitch wiped the gory dagger off on Beckett’s trousers, and sheathed it. He grabbed the bulkier soldier by the arm and dragged him down the alley, grunting with each step.
“Heavy bastards, soldiers.”
The villain already knew where he had to hide the body, and then he’d be off to the next person on his list. The list was short, but names very important to cross off. Crossed off like poor Corporal Beckett was.
That completed, he would issue another sending to Yefim and Dalibor. One that told them to let loose the flaming arrows because the fires would light tonight.
—Chapter Fifteen—
THE STORM
The vampire stalked around the old town hall as the quartet of bloodied weapons stood within its protective barrier of faith. James had been chanting for hours now keeping the spell active and strong, and he had become hoarse and weary. Neither Mal nor Umaryn could clearly understand the words he spoke any more, but the spirits did. His chant had held the spell strong, and his refusal to quit had kept him going, even when one of the vampires slashed his arm wide open with its bony claws.
Umaryn had caved that monster’s skull in before it could strike a second time, and Chelsea had bound his wound, and all the while, the apostle kept up his talk, summoning the spirits of the dead to surround them with their energy and purity, hedging out the strength and darkness of the vampires of New Falun.
Thirty of the creatures had leapt over the stone and wood trying to get at the hot red blood that ran in their veins, but the moment their cursed necromantic bodies moved inside the outer edge of James’ incantation, they were pummeled by the invisible power of the ancestors, and they lost speed, strength and focus as a result. While still lethal, they became no match for Umaryn’s hammer, Malwynn’s spells, and Chelsea’s sword and board. It had helped tremendously when Mal dominated one of their kind and sent it out to fight against its own. The vampire had torn apart four of his surprised and evil brethren before the rest of them set upon him and tore his dead body apart. Mal had felt the final death of the dominated kindred in his mind like an ache from a cold fall day, or a lost memory whose absence frustrated. He longed to dominate another, but he wanted no part of that demented sense of loss that would come to him when it died. Now was not the time to dominate another.
Not yet.
For the moment, the attack by the undead had been stymied by the four intrepid warriors and there were bodies and piles of ashes all about to show for it, but they knew the menacing calm was but a pause before another unleashed storm. Umaryn had carefully set her hammer down and while Chelsea watched over her, she stacked dead vampire bodies on top of one another to make the leap into the center of the old hall harder for the vampires.
“James,” Mal said in a whisper to his chanting friend. “James you need to stop. Your voice is failing you. Rest and heal Chelsea and Umaryn before you can’t cast anything at all. They have wounds you must attend to and you need to replenish yourself before the vampires make another assault on us.” Mal put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
The apostle looked to his necromancer friend with pleading eyes, his exultations to the dead never ceasing, though the volume of his voice seemed to diminish with every word. After sizing up the medical needs of the two women, and the lethargic, defeated demeanors of the vampires
surrounding them, he finally stopped speaking. The vampires in the village twenty feet away began to stir and rouse, nearly brought to frenzy by the onset of quiet. The leader of their kind silently motioned his arms about to the remaining thirty or so undead, indicating that they should wait. The leader of the dead knew that the effects of James’ spell would linger. Attacking now would result in more of their deaths. Like an obedient pack of wolves, the vampires calmed somewhat, and began to move in a predatory circle about the building’s ruins, staring at the living with starving eyes.
James’ voice was shattered, hoarse and tinny as if he’d been coughing for days. “You are not injured?” he asked Mal.
“I was bitten twice earlier but I had a spell to remedy it. I am fine now. Umaryn’s body must be covered in bruises under that armor. Chelsea’s shoulder is separated, and one of her fingers is broken. She was bitten twice herself.”
“I’ll attend to her first then,” James whispered. “My chant of life will remain active for only a few minutes more. Then these things will come across the wall with nothing but the spirit of Desmond keeping them at bay. I must make my prayers again or they will overrun us.”
“Heal Chelsea. Drink some water. A mouthful of honey too. Let me deal with the vampires for a few minutes. I have some ideas.”
James nodded and went to Chelsea. The young apostle’s body looked frail and drained even though of all of them he had been hurt the least that night. The demands of The Way were as harsh on the body and spirits as war was to the soul and body. He fetched small tidbits of spell materials from pouches at his belt. The life of a healer.
Malwynn steeled his mind, took a deep breath, and walked to the edge of the spell directly towards the man he felt to be the leader of the vampires. Mal locked eyes with him—bright crystalline blue against inky black—and he nodded at the elder being out of respect.
The Echoes of Sin (The Kinless Trilogy Book 3) Page 17
