Her lips trembled. The man was Marcus.
Marcus knew they were going at his hidden gate. It made sense to him. It’s what he’d do, and he knew now there was no chance that his secrets were still his to have. All the cards were on the table as the saying went, and all his chips were in the center. The short sending Samrale received a few hours prior informing him that his reinforcements were finally coming had given him tremendous confidence in the face of almost certain defeat, and he used that news to bolster the morale of his men. They had cheered and hollered. Just a few more hours. One last stand.
He stopped in the narrow street and looked around at the men and women who moved about calmly but with purpose. Men and women he led. Men and women he taught. Men and women he would die beside.
He thought of Umaryn.
Marcus took a deep breath and tilted his head high, looking into the sky. Slashing across in the daylight blue, near the bright sun he saw a dancer in the sky. The ancient white specks often fluttered and clustered about at night screaming across the night sky like a child might run in a field, chasing a firefly. They were seen as signs of good luck, and right now, as the Empire came to knock at his door, he smiled at the speck, and thanked the ancestors for sending him a good omen.
Yefim walked with slumped shoulders, his head down. Under a tattered cloak covered in blood and gore he wore the heaviest plate Dalibor could find for him. He had not been born in a big body, and it took some time for them to find armor small enough for his body to operate properly. The heavy helm he wore tired his neck to the point of impossible fatigue, and yet he took one step after another. Under his arm he held the clay urn that contained the entire foul miasma he’d asked the general for. In his mind he had the spell readied, and he had plenty of death around him to funnel into the spell. If he had a functioning heart, it would’ve beaten hard with excitement.
He only had to get within throwing distance…
“What’s happening?” Malwynn asked. His words were thick with sleep.
“The Empire is doing something. See?” she pointed at the wall and all the moving bodies on the field of war. “They’re flanking, heading to the west side with a large number of undead and soldiers. They’re out of the range of the bows, and they’ll be moving towards where the tracks are. The wall will be weaker there.”
Mal looked at the wall and agreed. “Yeah. Not good. Have you figured out anything yet? How this room has anything to do with weapons? All I see is another giant wall with a moving map on it, and a bunch of colored shapes on a black table. This is maddening.”
“You just got here. Imagine my plight. I died yesterday, and I sat here all night trying to make sense of it. What time is it, anyway?”
Aleksi pointed to a spot on the wall with numbers on it. They ticked higher and higher. “That’s a form of numeric clock. We’ve deciphered that. It says 11:52:49. Almost high noon. The numbers over noon count beyond twelve until they reach 24, then it starts over again at zero. Takes a little getting used to, but there’s your answer.”
“Shit,” Umaryn said. “What do the numbers beside that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Aleksi said.
Chelsea appeared at Malwynn’s side. “So what do we do? Sit here and watch a battle that we can’t affect? Do you have any idea how depressing and traumatic that will be?”
“Do you have any idea how impossible it will be for me to leave here? What if Mal was down there?” Umaryn asked her.
Chelsea sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Help me. Push more buttons. Help me find patterns. I’ve figured a few things out while you were sleeping.”
“Just tell us what to do,” Malwynn said.
Yefim did the unthinkable; he put his hard earned purple robe on the body of a dead man. The thought of taking it off in public riled him up more than he could say, but he squelched that. He knew if he wore it as they approached the hidden gate of Ockham’s Fringe, he’d be filled with arrows before the clay jar could fulfill its purpose. He arranged the robe just so, and ensured the hood was up so the face of the zombie couldn’t be seen.
Now that he trudged along, face down under a different hood, wearing a thick steel helmet, he was thankful for the decision. He had pushed the undead with his robe to the forefront of the mass, and through the slit in the visor he could see a dozen arrows piercing the rich fabric. Were he wearing that robe…
The two towers closest to the false gate rained projectiles into the engorged huddle of undead he hid inside. With each step he gauged the distance, and the strength of his throwing arm.
An arrow hit his helmet and rocked his skull back. The blow managed to stagger him severely, and he dropped to a knee, his vision inside the tight line of the helmet swimming. He blinked repeatedly as the undead marched forward, descending into the moat in front of the hidden gate, and reaching ever closer. Inspiration struck.
Yefim got low, clutching the jar of foulness to his chest, and he crawled, hiding inside the mass of undead flesh as a turtle hid within its shell. He willed the undead to part slightly for his passing, making his movement easier as he crawled into the dug ditch that protected the village from a massed assault. He laughed. The moat didn’t stop it; all it did was slow it down. Yefim threw back the hood, no longer worried about the gleam of sunlight on the polished purple steel of the helmet. He tossed that aside too when he couldn’t see how close he was.
Then, as he reached the top of the moat’s inner edge he saw the wooden barrier between the legs of his army of the dead.
Yefim stopped and sat cross legged on the damp, trampled earth as the undead continued forward. The words for the spell came to his lips, and he had to fight away a smile that came with them.
Newly minted Corporal Aubrey Leaf had been reassigned to the tower at the extreme western side of the city. At first she’d been angry, but as she packed up her multiple quivers and her water skin and food, she saw how the Empire marched. She saw how they slipped far north, and she knew where they headed.
Marcus’ command to leave the front line made sense.
She ran. She ran as fast as she could, and as she went she grabbed two more handfuls of freshly feathered arrows from an old man who sat on the dirt street in front of the home he refused to leave. She thanked him, and he thanked her.
She’d climbed the tower Marcus asked her to one hand over the other, burdened by a sense of urgency and a hundred or more arrows stuck in leather cases. Her bow rode over her chest.
Now, half an hour later, she shot arrow after arrow into the crowd of undead below, focusing on the few specks of purple she could see. But something was wrong. She’d hit the lead robe wearer no less than ten times already, and he trudged forward inexorably, unflinching.
He should’ve fallen. He should be dead.
She abandoned firing at the cloak and started to fire at the far too-close undead. The mass smelled now, raw and putrid, like vomit and entrails, and they kept getting closer. She sent arrow after arrow into the heads of undead, dropping them, but she wouldn’t be enough to stop them. She had but a hundred arrows, and they numbered in the thousands.
As she grabbed another arrow, something appeared just twenty feet from the wall. A cylinder, no larger than an infant, the color of a bleached tooth. A hand held it high with purpose and intelligence, and cocked it back, and threw it at the door.
Her blood ran cold. She had no idea what was inside the jar, or what would happen when it hit the wall and the hidden door, but her gut and the way it hardened told her it would not be good. She had time enough for a single shot. A perfect shot. One chance.
She aimed at the jar, and let fly.
Marcus had his best with him, twenty paces inside the secret door that was no longer a secret. He had arranged a line of pike men, and behind that a row of twice as many archers. To his left he had the Guild rail station platform, and to his right the main street of Ockham’s Fringe. He had to hold the intersection.
If t
he Empire made it into the village, rooting them out would be near impossible.
“Ready yourselves! They are nigh!” He yelled, holding his sword high, feeling better after a night of rest and more restorative magics.
An arm’s reach away stood the diminutive Samrale Overfist, and scattered about in what spaces they could find were his remaining waymancers. They had come to fight, and the fight was here. “Do not fear them!” Samrale said in a voice that seemed far more powerful than he should’ve been able to muster. “They know not what freedom is. They know only tyranny, and death. They have no idea what a free people can achieve. What we fight for. Why we fight. We CHOOSE to fight. We CHOOSE to stand up for our brethren! And today, we CHOOSE to send them back to Graben bloody and beaten!”
Marcus grinned as his soldiers cheered and screamed in excitement. He watched as Samrale turned to him and winked. The old man had much up his sleeve. Then, his face went flat, and lost the twinkle of a smile it had.
“What?” Marcus asked him.
“The Way,” Samrale said with terrified eyes.
The wall exploded.
“We have to hurry, dammit. Whatever that explosion was it destroyed the gate. They’re getting inside the walls and now their cavalry is charging!” Umaryn pleaded with her brother. She pressed colored shapes on the smooth black table she sat it indiscriminately, trying to elicit some form of response and failing.
“The Way,” Malwynn said as he slowly walked up and down the rows of tables, his eyes flickering from the wall that displayed the gruesome carnage of a grand melee and the different shapes and colors. He sought out patterns, secrets, anything. Absently, his long, thin fingers manipulated the black key-thing, bouncing it around his knuckles over and over. “I’m looking Umaryn. I don’t know what I’m looking for, though.”
“You’re smart, think faster,” his sister said.
From the corner of the room Chelsea and Aleksi sat near one another. Aleksi had the second key in his hand, and like Malwynn, he fidgeted with it. Chelsea extended a hand to the vampire, and he gave her the key. She began to fidget with it as well, examining it. Something caught her eye in the room, and her brain suddenly kicked into gear. “Hey Umaryn.”
The freshly minted vampire didn’t look at Chelsea, but responded anyway. “What Chelsea?”
“Hey, do you remember when James returned to us with the box that had the key in it? After Weston killed Alisanne? Our key, it had that weird zero-one on it, right?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Aleksi’s key has a zero-two on it.”
“So? They’re numbered, what of it?” she became more irritated at the soldier’s disruption.
“The table you’re sitting at has the exact same symbol on it. The zero-one. The one Mal is at right now has the zero-two,” Chelsea held the little black object up, showing the artificer the numbers.
Aleksi laughed. “Ha, she’s right. Had we not sat on the floor like this, we’d have never seen it.”
Umaryn turned to Mal. He’d already thrown his key to her. He held his hands up, and Chelsea threw Aleksi’s key to him. Umaryn stood, and started walking the length of the table, holding the key over the glassy black top. When she reached a spot near the far end, the symbols on the table suddenly changed. New words flashed amongst new shapes and colors, and the wall’s image changed. A message flashed in the center of the carnage of Ockham’s Fringe.
FIRE CONTROL ONE READY
“Mal, find your spot on your table. I think we can make fire appear there,” Umaryn had lost her anger. She’d found excitement instead.
Mal slowly walked the length of the further back black table until his images changed as well. The twins laughed together, and the wall added new lines of text in that same green colored Lish.
FIRE CONTROL TWO READY
RAILGUN SYSTEM ARMED
Everyone cheered as a large cross appeared on the center of the wall, hovering directly above the grand melee.
“Now how do make it work?” Malwynn asked.
The explosion caused massive damage and mayhem. Marcus’ disciplined line of pike men were half knocked to the ground and a tenth killed outright by pieces of exploded wall and the force of the bomb itself. Marcus too had been knocked to his back in the dirt from the concussive blast.
He shook his head and rolled to his feet, searching for the waymancer. Somehow the old man still stood, and from the pockets of his long brown jacket, he produced small bits of things. He started to speak words to conjure spells, and Marcus got to his feet.
“Defend the village!” Marcus bellowed, trying to rally his men and women. In the distance, he heard the sound of hooves trampling earth. “Pikemen! Pikemen reform! Archers, take down the undead, give them something to trip on. Brace yourselves soldiers, this is what we do!”
Marcus prayed, and watched as Samrale belched out a cloud of white-orange flame that incinerated a dozen undead where they stood.
Perhaps they had a chance after all.
Dalibor Hubik’s dead mount led the charge through the ranks of undead that spilled out of the way. Those that moved too slowly, his beast speared and flung into the crowd with a massive horn. Before he and the nearly one hundred riders at his back reached the moat at the destroyed wall, both he and his Gvorn were covered in blood and gore. None of it belonged to his enemies, and that was quite alright.
Yefim’s spell had worked. His explosion blew a nearly fifteen foot wide span of wall into sticks, and he’d used what little will he had remaining to make a hundred undead lay flat in the trench in front of it. Dalibor spurred his mount on, and trampled the dead mortar that filled the gap in the earth.
He smashed his way into the village’s inner areas and held up his charge. The Varrlanders had formed a strong line of pikes, and if his riders charged into it, they would lose tremendous numbers they could ill afford to.
An arrow clanged off his helmet from above. He looked to a tower and saw a young female archer firing at him again. Dalibor wondered if that was the same archer who shot him in the shoulder the day prior. He ignored her. Her time was limited. His soldiers would be inside the gate within a minute, and they’d chop her and her damned tower down or set it on fire for her to roast alive in it.
Dalibor circled his Gvorn just beyond the set tips of the long spears of the Varrlanders and used his gargantuan two handed sword to swipe at them. With one bear-paw sized hand he brought the blade down in a massive arc, and cut the sharpened points of many off. He trotted his horse a few strides and did it again, opening a space for his riders to plow into, and leap over.
They charged in the midday sun, their armor glistening and glorious, the color of their namesake flower, the immortal Amaranth.
As they smashed into the line, an eruption of arrows came from deeper within the village. Several fell some of his knights, and he took one to the breastplate. It bounced off harmlessly. He looked to the line of bowmen and caught the gaze of a familiar face.
The Knight Major.
They locked gazes, and Dalibor spun around to leap the line. He had to kill Marcus. That was the key. This man. Dalibor Hubik screamed as his mount leapt over the Varrlander soldiers, and pierced deeper into their lines, “Marcus! Face me!”
The knight side stepped the slashing blow of an axe that came from another rider and hacked down the legs of his horse. The tall knight spun his sword around and skewered the neck of the axe-wielding foe, and he stood up, facing Dalibor.
“So be it,” Marcus said, and Dalibor charged him.
“He’s fighting someone. One to one,” Umaryn said, her eyes transfixed on a very zoomed in image of the battle on the wall.
She spoke the truth. The man Chelsea and Mal recognized to be Marcus was on foot, surrounded in a massive melee yet apart, facing off with a giant of a man wearing heavy armor, and riding an equally massive beast. They watched as the two danced a familiar dance, swinging and stepping, charging and dodging, hacking and slashing.
It too
k only a few strikes for Marcus to lose his shield. It would only take a few more for him to lose his head.
“How do we activate the fire? How do we use the weapon?” Umaryn asked, pushing her eyes downward.
“The keys activated the tables. Their presence changed the shapes and colors. I think that means the new shapes and colors are somehow the controls. Now if two keys are needed to activate two tables, then I would bet that we both need to touch some kind of combination at the same time,” Malwynn said, looking at his table.
Umaryn rested her head down on the table. The gibberish words of dead languages made her eyes hurt. She muttered quietly, her breath making fog on the black, “I wish this was all in Lish, or Ench.”
Suddenly the table in front of her flashed a new message.
CHANGE PANEL TRANSLATION? SELECT:
ENGLISH FRENCH OR GERMAN
The table heard me? She lifted her head and several pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Lish: English. Ench: French. She smiled, and lowered her mouth close to the table again. “English,” she said in the same volume as before.
The table’s indecipherable text blinked out of view and reappeared in Lish, a language she knew. Many of the words meant nothing to her, but a few did. Specifically, she saw a string of colored shapes with labels that told her exactly how to aim, and fire. Happily, she saw a single line of text above where she sat. It read, ‘Rail gun Fire Control One.’
“Mal, lean into your table, and whisper to it. It can hear us. Ask it to change languages to something called Eng-glish,” she said with a fast tongue. As Malwynn laughed and did her bidding, Chelsea and Aleksi leapt up and went to her side. They had to be closer to see this.
“By the blessed dead, you’ve done in a day what we’ve failed to do in twenty years. This… this is the will of the ancestors,” Aleksi stammered with glee.
The Echoes of Sin (The Kinless Trilogy Book 3) Page 36
