Mother of Daemons
Page 29
The mask contorted like a second skin, the ogre’s face swelling up and his mouth opening, his eyes bulging in rage – and then Waqar, screaming through the agony of the dagger-blow, placed his other hand on the scimitar hilt and wrenched sideways, cleaving the spinal cord, and the hideous masked visage spun away.
Then the agony struck him and he stared down at the dagger buried in his midriff, gnostic energy crackling as the flesh was seared. He convulsed and almost blacked out, lost his scimitar but grasped the headless torso of his foe as the draken began to plummet. Somehow he hauled the dagger out amid a jet of hot blood. He felt more than saw the draken’s lifeless claws lose their grip on Ajniha, who screamed and spun away, trying to flap damaged wings.
Together, the falling draken and the injured roc fell. The draken began to spin while Waqar tried to think through the dreadful pain in his side and find the clarity to somehow get himself out of this. Below them, the city landscape was roaring up to meet him and some part of him realised that he had to get clear or he’d hit and die – but the thoughts wouldn’t connect through the rising haze in his mind.
He tried to move, but debilitating pain shot through him, radiating from his midriff like an explosion of burning lamp-oil. It was all he could do just to cling on – then he saw something like a giant centipede emerge from the neck-stump of the dead construct. He gasped in revulsion and almost swept it away when he realised what the thing was – and instead flashed out his hand and grasped it just below the head and pulled.
What emerged was almost a foot long, coated in black and scarlet gore, pincers snapping at him impotently as it emitted a squeal and thrashed in his grip. Then the dead draken fell into a spin and Waqar was flung loose, spinning head over heels—
—and roc talons wrapped around his waist. Above him Ajniha shrieked in triumph as they shot over the rooftops of Copperleaf, barely missing towers and spires. He sensed the roc, like him, was barely holding on, but she clung onto him and sought flat ground, flashing over the battlements of Ringwald and all but crashing into the turf outside the Governor’s Mansion.
As the talons released him and he sprawled on the wet grass, Waqar felt a wall of unconsciousness rising. Desperately he wrenched the squirming centipede into the pouch at his belt, clipped it shut and clamped his hand over it, moments before the darkness rose up like an ocean wave and he was swept under . . .
*
Ramon’s team were about a minute from delivering the destructive blast to the aqueduct tower and he was readying the order for his battle-magi to pull back with him – then everything changed.
Someone in that ravening horde below clearly had a mind, because all of a sudden the nearest group of black-eyed beast-men and possessed Shihadis turned from the attack on the upper plaza of Raathaus Square and hurled themselves at the aqueduct tower.
‘Rukka, we’re seen,’ he shouted, as a wave of the enemy swarmed up the embankment, shrieking in fury. ‘Moxie?’ he called, craning his neck, ‘you done?’
The diminutive battle-mage was clinging to the underside of the stone race, checking the last of the glowing pattern of runes he’d etched into the structure to focus a mix of Fire- and Earth-gnosis. But attackers were swarming hand over fist up the stone pillars, clinging like cockroaches, barely fifty feet below and closing fast; already thrown spears were striking Moxie’s shields—
‘Just about ready,’ Moxie yelled, as Vania came to the rim and shot a bipedal wolf through the mouth with her crossbow; the quarrel exploded inside the skull.
‘Moxie, get out,’ Ramon shouted. ‘Now—’
‘Gimme a mo—’
Ramon swore and hurled fire at the lead climbers, turning them to living torches. They dropped in eerie silence onto their fellows below. ‘Melicho,’ he called, to the mage working on the upper sluice-gate, ‘release!’
‘Half a minute—’
Ramon roared, ‘Hurry—!’ and blazing more energy into the fast-approaching enemy, cried, ‘Moxie, fire it up . . .’
Beside him Vania’s crossbow was humming, picking off the leading climbers with quarrels lit with livid energy, but still the possessed creatures kept coming. Ramon raised his hands to send another blast into the horde—
—but just then his gnostic perceptions, the mage’s early warning system, screamed a warning and he abandoned the spell and pushed all his energy into strengthening his shields.
An instant later, something like a dust-cloud of screaming darkness came from lower down the race and blasted over them – only to fizzle on his protections. He turned in time to see a lavishly attired Easterner on a white horse riding up the dry race – and then the air between them tore open and shadows poured through.
‘Ware!’ he shouted, backing against Vania and hurling up a blazing ball of light, because despite the suddenness of the strike, he recognised the spell: Jelaska had taught him how to counter it, during the Third Crusade.
Vania clung to him as the darkness surged around them, crackling against his light-globe. She fired a bolt blindly into the shadows, seeking that rider, but it exploded harmlessly somewhere in the race. Moments later the wave of darkness was burned away, leaving them standing back to back, ready to face the next attack.
But Postyn, hovering behind the lower sluice-gate, hadn’t been so fortunate: he wailed as human-shaped shreds of darkness engulfed him, ripping at him as he flailed on the floor of the race. Then from below came Moxie’s voice, a horrified wail that became a receding shriek, overwhelmed by a hungry roar from below. Only Melicho, on the wall above, and Vania, shielded by Ramon’s wards, came through.
Cursing in anguish, Ramon dashed to Postyn’s side, blasting at the dark shadow-shapes with raw energy until they withered. He went to the rim and saw that the rider below was building to a gallop, even though it was a thirty-foot leap to where they stood.
He wore a Lantric mask of a helmed Rondian knight.
He’s a Mask . . . Rukka, he’ll make that jump . . .
But Moxie’s enchantment hadn’t been triggered and without it, the men defending the upper plaza were rukked. Ramon threw a glance left and right, yelled, ‘Melicho – release – Vania, get out—’ before grabbing the rim one-handed and swinging himself over the edge of the race, right into the face of the horde clambering up the tower.
*
Xoredh dug in his spurs – quite unnecessarily, when the beast he rode was possessed, but it felt good – and sent his pale stallion hurtling towards the sluice-gate fifteen feet above. His necromancy spell had winked out unexpectedly early, but he had heard at least two men cry out, so it hadn’t been entirely wasted and his slaves were almost at the top of the support pillars, with the rest of his army about to break into the upper plaza, where they would begin the massacre . . .
Hooves crunching on stone, striking sparks as they powered up the slope, he gathered the reins, pulsing his intent into the mind of the daemon-horse, then once again rammed his ornate spurs into the stallion’s side and the beast powered into a soaring leap . . .
. . . when a bony-faced, long-jawed woman with tangled black hair suddenly appeared at the top of the sluice, a crossbow in her hands, and discharged a glowing bolt. Xoredh slammed his shields forward with an Ascendant-strength pulse of kinesis that shattered the quarrel in a brilliant scarlet burst, right in front of his mount’s chest.
The wave of kinesis knocked the woman off her feet – but it also broke his steed’s momentum mid-leap; instead of sailing over the barrier, it slammed into the sluice-gate at breakneck speed. He heard the sickening crunch of bone shattering an instant before he himself was hurled against the wall. His face smashed into the stone and he felt his nose shatter and his mask crumple, but his personal shielding held. He reeled in the saddle as his beast bounced and flopped over backwards, and then they crashed back into the dry race with the horse landing on top of him. In a blinding burst of pain, both hip bones and one thigh shattered.
He scr
eamed, clawed for energy, for life, for strength . . . as the crossbow-woman reappeared at the rim. She cocked her crossbow, peering warily – then, calling something over her shoulder, she raised her weapon.
Her bolt flew . . .
*
Hanging one-armed from the rim, Ramon pasted his hand to the stonework with Earth-gnosis and swung out, blasting kinesis downwards at the closest attackers, who were already crawling along the outside of the race towards him. Below, he could see a dozen or more black-eyed men ripping Moxie to shreds, but there was no time to dwell on that.
His blast was enough to rip the nearest foes from their precarious perches, but the rain of arrows ripping at his shields turned them scarlet. He breathed thanks to Alaron and Ramita for the potion that had made him an Ascendant mage – any other would be dead by now – and slammed his palm into the middle of the sigils Moxie had so painstakingly inscribed, sending a burst of Fire-gnosis into the waiting enchantment.
That triggered a burst of livid red energy, streaming out in veins and turning the stonework super-hot. The men climbing towards him began to fry, hands and knees blistering, then blackening, but still the daemon-possessed attackers kept coming, even as their hands burned to stumps and they dropped into the horde below.
Ramon kicked away, propelling himself back up and over the rim, where he saw Vania taking aim at something on the lower race. Postyn was sitting up, dazed but intact, at the bottom off the race, where steam was now rising from puddles. ‘It’s triggered,’ Ramon shouted. ‘Time to go.’
‘Sure, boss,’ Vania drawled sweetly, ‘I’ll just skewer this tin-faced twat first . . .’
*
. . . just as Xoredh opened himself up to the full seething energy of Abraxas, allowing him access to every aspect of the gnosis at once. He let the immense mind of the master-daemon direct the energy flows in a dozen different ways – healing gnosis flowed to hips and thigh; kinesis hurled the dying horse aside, morphism and necromancy transcended the pain.
He rose to his feet, his body still screaming, but his hatred howling far louder. I am a Mubarak and I am unstoppable—
He shattered the woman’s next bolt in mid-air and hurled her from sight, then wasting no time, he surged on Air-gnosis to the rim of the upper sluice-gate, the royal scimitar leaping to his right hand and energy coalescing in his left as he landed.
The archer-bitch was on her back in the race, thirty feet away, looking stunned, her face a rictus of pain and her foot crooked. At Xoredh’s feet was a nondescript Yurosi with thinning hair and straggling whiskers, looking up at him in alarm.
And on his left, a small dark-haired man was straightening as if he’d just landed. Even as Xoredh moved, Abraxas recognised the dark-haired man and started raging.
Howling at the agony of motion from his still-mending hips and thigh, Xoredh obeyed, skewering the man at his feet while simultaneously blazing a mage-bolt at Sensini, powerful enough to fry a pure-blood.
The man on his blade convulsed and died – but to his shock, Sensini somehow blocked his gnostic bolt, partially through surprisingly powerful wards and also because he threw himself onto the archer-woman to protect her. She shrieked at the impact, thrashing under him.
Xoredh advanced, snarling through his own pain as he hammered more energy into Sensini, grinning as the Yurosi’s shields went scarlet and began to implode. He pushed himself forward, bursting through the smoky residue of the spells with his scimitar flashing downwards, a blow powerful enough to hack both his prey in two.
But somehow the man rose, his blade parrying firmly enough that the scimitar belled and recoiled, almost breaking Xoredh’s wrist and stopping him in his tracks.
Unbelievable . . .
*
‘GO—’ Ramon shouted to Vania and Melicho, who was still working on the sluice-gates. ‘I’ve got this prick.’ He lunged from his kneeling position, sword out-thrust and energy punching, and sent the man in the crumpled mask backwards.
He drove forward, enraged by the loss of Moxie and Postyn and terrified for Vania and Melicho. Slashing frantically, he battered at this man’s impossibly powerful shields, trying to buy time, conscious that the puddles in the race were now steaming as the stonework heated . . .
‘Ramon Sensini,’ the Easterner purred, astonishingly calm in this maelstrom, despite his clearly broken body and the black blood seeping through his broken mask. ‘I’ve been hoping we would meet.’
Then he came at Ramon in a deadly whirl of steel, his gleaming scimitar a blur as it hammered so hard at Ramon’s guard that all he could do was block and keep his own blade from shattering, all the while trying to withstand an unseen assault of mesmerism. The air around his assailant came alive with frigid blasts of necromancy: his very aura grew raking tentacles of shadow that lashed at Ramon’s shields.
He’s got too many weapons . . .
Then a kinesis-grip caught him and he was jerked off his feet and thrown a dozen feet backwards. He tried to turn that momentum into a leap, but instead hammered into the stone wall behind him, beneath the sluice-gate. His head spinning, he glimpsed Vania beside him, lying against the wall with a dislocated foot at the very least and nowhere to go. Black-eyed men and constructs were swarming up over the edge of the race, then the masked daemon was looming over him, swinging his blade—
—as the race they stood on came apart in a livid burst of Fire- and Earth-energy.
The spells Moxie had drawn and Ramon had triggered had finally done their job and now Melicho completed the task, for the sluice-gates above smashed open and water came roaring over the top.
Ramon twisted away from the Mask’s blade – even as the bottom of the race collapsed at his feet and the first rush of water poured down from above, slamming into the Mask just after his blade cleaved the concrete where Ramon had been an instant before.
Ramon, knowing what was coming, had managed to grab the rim and haul himself sideways, kicking aside the possessed man in his way, but the pillar beneath him was wobbling. He gathered himself to leap – but Vania screamed, some unknown woman shouted, then the pillar collapsed and Ramon began to drop into the ravening horde below – until something wrapped round him, the air shrieked and he was ripped away into the skies.
*
Xoredh roared in utter fury as a wall of water smashed into him, sweeping him down the collapsing race. The world became a bewildering swirl spinning him in every direction. He shielded, but he was being battered from every side, then flung out into the air . . .
. . . only to crash down to the ground, where the torrent grabbed him again, breaking his barely healed hip and thighs once more.
At last Sensini’s flood lost its force and he was able to crawl away from the filthy pool of sludge he’d ended up in. All round him, his soldiers were doing the same. They didn’t need air to breathe any longer, and except for those whose skulls had been crushed as they were swept along, most of the battering they’d taken had made little difference.
He rose to his feet, weapon-less. His broken bones were grinding inside him, as was his seething rage. The pain was shocking despite his gnosis: it took him ten minutes to hobble the two or three hundred yards back to the Copperleaf gates, where he could see the extent of this setback.
His own forces were now separated from the enemy by the lower plaza, which was now a flowing tide of water and mud and debris in which bodies floated. Water was still pouring in from the broken aqueduct and now he could see that the river, held at bay all winter, had been released into the city. But the upper tier of the plaza, the level the Shihadi remnants were defending, was clear, standing above the water-level. Their retreat into Copperleaf was already underway again.
Damn them to the Pit . . .
In moments the daemon’s thousand-eyed hive-mind was assessing the situation. The river, normally channelled away from the city, was being pushed through the upper reaches of the aqueduct and into Lowertown, w
hich was largely flat and already flooded.
It won’t last . . . even that river isn’t infinite, and there are elevated roads to the inner walls . . . but it will take days to reorganise and renew the assault . . .
He reached for Cadearvo and found that link utterly silent.
Abraxas showed him why.
So the Master’s favourite is dead . . . Xoredh licked his lips, and then slowly smiled, despite the pain in his broken body. Now it’s just me in control here. We’ll attack again, as soon as we’ve regrouped. They can’t hold out much longer – they must be short of rations even without two divided armies, and they will have civilians to house and feed too . . .
Glowering about him, he stalked into the shadows and grasped his periapt.
A few seconds later, the gem pulsed and Naxius’ face in his youthful guise, perfectly symmetrical features and mane of red hair, bloomed in the darkness.
There was no point in gilding the truth.
Naxius snarled.
But not mine, Xoredh knew: he could shut the Master out, and had been doing so. So presumably had Cadearvo.
Naxius sneered.
Cursing his mistake, Xoredh hurriedly answered,