“No, he chose his fate,” Torsten said. Rand’s gaze momentarily flitted up before returning to the dirt. “I offered him everything. Every chance.”
Nesilia reached out slowly and brushed long fingernails across Rand’s cheek. “And he chose family,” she said. “Something you would never understand. You, who worshipped killers and liars simply because of the Glass they wore on their heads. Weak men. Perverted men.”
“Great men!” Torsten countered. “And they will be here with us when we destroy you.”
“Destroy me?” Her laugh bellowed like thunder, shaking the ground. Even Bliss joined her.
“Let me torch him, sister?” the possessed mystic said.
“Not yet.”
The mystic swooped forward. “Please? I remember the feel of his sword in the Webbed Woods. Oh, how I would like to make him feel the same pain.”
“I said, not yet.” Nesilia took another step forward, earning a flinch from everyone atop the ramparts, even as far away as she was. She grasped the spirit-like mystic by the back of her robes, causing them to become physical, and ripped her back.
“You dare—“
Nesilia turned, and whatever look she gave her sister, the mystic seemed to fade momentarily.
“Will Iam come to save you again?” Nesilia asked, flicking her gaze back up, toward Dellbar. Then, she closed her pure black eyes and inhaled deeply. “No, I can barely feel Him. He’s left you all to yourselves, just as He left me. Your loving God, as there for you in the end as your drunken parents were.”
“Enough games, Nesilia!” Torsten roared.
“One more game.” She looked back and snapped her finger. Some movement followed in the mass of shadows, and then, two possessed men wearing cultist robes and white masks dragged someone forward. “Let us see how deep your love for your soldiers runs.”
Torsten wished he could squint so he could see further. Still, his heart thumped against his rib cage.
“Believe nothing she says,” Dellbar whispered.
“Would you all hurry up,” Nesilia hissed. She flashed away, using her upyr speed to grab the figure. In mere seconds, she returned to her position and shoved a man to his knees.
“Lucas,” Torsten mouthed the name. The young Shieldsman looked up, his face caked with dirt and blood. He wore torn rags, loose on his now emaciated figure.
“Another Shieldsman you left behind,” Nesilia said. “Tell me, is this the Word of Iam? Abandon those you love.”
“Let him go!” Torsten yelled.
Nesilia grinned. “Happily. All you need do is walk down here and give yourself over, and young Lucas can take your place.”
“Torsten,” Lucas rasped. He could barely lift his head, but he pushed himself to do it. Even just for a second. “Don’t listen to her.”
“Come now, Torsten,” Nesilia said. “He was your friend. He saved your life.”
Torsten’s hands quaked. His throat grew dry.
“Think of his poor parents, hidden behind the worthless walls of your city,” Nesilia went on. “Don’t they deserve one last moment with their beloved child? Like Rand did, with the woman he loved before your Queen made him hang her!”
Nesilia snapped, and a gust of cold air chilled Torsten’s heart even more than it already was. Nesilia looked to Rand, and he drew his longsword.
“It’s in your hands,” Nesilia said. “You chose, Torsten Unger. Your life, or his?” She nodded Rand along.
“Do it,” Bliss demanded, swooping in front of him.
Rand stepped forward and extended the sword over the back of Lucas’ neck. Still, he looked toward the ground, his grip shaky.
“Rand, stop this!” Torsten yelled. “She’s not your sister anymore. You have to see that. You have to fight this.”
“You are blind as ever, Torsten,” Nesilia said. “I protect his sister as nobody else would. I’m giving her everything. Rand could walk away at any time, yet here he stands because he sees you all for what you truly are. Show him he’s wrong!”
Torsten pushed away from the wall, but just as he went to turn, Lucas struggled to raise his head again and cried, “Don’t.” He shook his head. “Don’t.”
Nesilia strode in front of him and cradled his head as she looked back toward Torsten. She dug a fingernail into the soft spot beneath his eye, and Lucas fought back a whimper. “Listen to how brave he is. Is he not worthy of life? Show your people that you are different, Torsten. Do it.”
“Rand, listen to me,” Torsten said, his voice cracking. “Whatever you’ve done, don’t do this. Don’t let her make you exactly what Oleander did.”
“The blood pact must be fulfilled,” Nesilia cackled. “Rand knows that. It’s you, Torsten, only you, who can take young Lucas’ place. You can save him, as you failed to save Pi. As you failed to save your Queen and your King. As you failed to stop my return. Every step of your pathetic life has been a failure. But here I am, offering you a chance at redemption. Be the propitiation for your peoples’ many sins.”
With all that he was, Torsten wanted to walk down and do as she asked, to give Lucas that chance at survival he so deserved. And yet, he remained still, frozen atop the walls.
“Our people need you, not me,” Lucas rasped. “Not me.”
Torsten could hardly control his breathing. He knew Nesilia’s game. It was the same one they were trying to pull on her, to bait her by taking one she cared about. All she wanted was for Torsten to walk out there and die in front of all his people, to fill their hearts with dread, because that was what she fed on.
“She’ll kill you both,” Dellbar said. “You know that.”
“Do I?” Torsten asked.
“You rejected her. And here, in the shadow of Mount Lister, where she was buried, all who betrayed or rejected her are her enemies.”
“Make your choice, Torsten Unger,” Nesilia said. “Make your choice. As Iam did.”
“Rand,” Torsten pled. “You took the same oaths he did. You stood, upon that mountain, and swore to shield this city. You swore it!”
Rand remained silent and fixed.
“I knew you were a coward,” Nesilia said. “So eager to cast everything away for a few more measly seconds of breath. Let all of you see the heart of your leader, so flawlessly sculpted in the reflection of Iam. Very well. Rand, my dear. Show our friend that there is a price for cowardice.”
Rand’s grip tightened on his sword as he raised it high above his head. Still, he looked at nothing but the ground. His hands betrayed the slightest tremble.
“Thank you, Sir Unger…” Lucas said weakly. “For the honor of serving.”
“Do it,” Nesilia said.
Rand’s sword twitched, but it didn’t fall.
“Be with me, Lucas,” Torsten said. “You’re in Dockside, at your parents’ shop. Your mom just baked your favorite pie. Your father sold all his stock to a noble family for Dawning morning.”
“Would you do it already, boy!” Bliss barked.
Still, Rand hesitated.
“They see you coming home, and they smile,” Torsten went on. “They’re proud of the man their son has grown to be.”
Lucas closed his eyes and smiled.
At the same time, Nesilia shouted, “The Shield is dead!” and whipped around, slicing her hand across the air. Torsten momentarily lost his view behind her, and then he saw Rand. His blade had fallen, Lucas’ head with it. And the traitor stood, looking shocked, staring at his hands, as if he couldn’t believe the blood that was on them.
Torsten turned away, offering a feeble prayer under his breath. Dellbar did the same. But Nesilia’s malice had the intended effect on the rest of Torsten’s army atop the walls. They unleashed no gasps nor cries. They were just drowned in a deepened layer of dread and silence.
Nesilia calmly strode over Lucas’ body, away from the wall. She looked up at Bliss.
“Okay, sister,” she said. “Now, you may have your fun.” Then, her gaze moved across the rabid ranks of her h
orde. “All of you, the time has come. Tear Iam’s Kingdom down to dust and ash, and from the rubble, a new age shall rise!”
With that, the silence ended.
Drav Cra horns sounded from the north. Shesaitju drums beat in the west. And straight ahead of Torsten, Nesilia’s monsters unleashed a cacophony of terrible cries as they began to charge, loud as an avalanche.
Nesilia stopped beside Rand and whispered something in his ear as he remained, staring at his own weapon. Only then did he finally lift his head and regard Torsten.
Torsten didn’t give him the satisfaction of returning the gaze. Turning to Dellbar, seething, he said, “That man is truly lost.”
“So were you when we met,” Dellbar replied.
“And now, I am found.” Torsten drew Salvation, turned to face over the wall and down to the city square, and lifted his blade. “Soldiers of Yarrington, stand with me!” he shouted. “Let us send Nesilia back where she belongs!”
A trickle of cheers sounded throughout the city. Not the eruption Torsten hoped for. Nesilia had driven her talons of fear in deep. At least, until Dellbar leaned over, clasped his hands over Torsten’s, and whispered something.
Pure, white light shot through Torsten’s sword. It was warm, but Dellbar held him steady as the light rose and bloomed like a beacon on the darkest nights, leading sailors home.
“Iam stands with us,” a soldier blurted.
“His light is with Torsten!”
“He will shield us.”
More murmuring and cheers echoed from throughout the defenses. And somehow, even though the light allowed a clearer view of the hellish monsters bearing down on the city, seeing them for what they were made it less terrifying.
The surge of energy was palpable. Whether it was fight or flight taking hold, or true faith, it didn’t matter.
“The Buried Goddess tries to prey on your fear,” Torsten shouted, “but only because it is she who is afraid! Because she knows, in her black heart, that we are the light of this world! Iam is in each of you, my friends. His strength, it is yours now!”
Now the explosion of cheers came. Fists pounded on armor. Spears and shields banged against the stone.
“Archers, nock!” Torsten commanded.
Other former Shieldsmen at intervals throughout the army relayed his orders. All down the fortifications and in the square, archers drew arrows from full quivers. Some were barely trained, taking many attempts to set their bowstrings. Many had shaky hands, a few accidentally misfired into nothing. Others were proper soldiers of the Glass, still as statues.
All aimed together upon the same wave of evil.
The very earth quaked as Nesilia’s army neared.
Light from Torsten’s blade waned, but now, the enemy was close enough. There were no siege engines of any sort to help break through or mount the walls, only a mass of hate. Possessed people sprinted at full speed—cultists, Glassmen, Panpingese—anyone caught in Yaolin when Nesilia made her move. Black-eyed dire wolves nipped at them. Goblins shrieked, hurling rocks from slings at the wall. They fell harmlessly, but the patter sounded like violent hail, and Torsten could only imagine what those down in the square thought as they heard it.
“On my mark!” Torsten called out. He leveled his blade toward the two nearest ex-Shieldsmen commanders on his left and right. They nodded. “Loose!” he screamed as loud as he could manage, letting his blade fall. “Loose!”
The thrum of his army’s arrows being fired was like wind through the Jarein Gorge. They zipped down from the walls. Arced up from behind. Catapults whooshed as their ropes were released, launching massive chunks of stone.
Just then, Bliss appeared. She hovered high over the horde, beyond the reach of the arrows, her hands stretched toward the sky. Dark clouds swirled above her, crackling with arms of lightning that flashed down toward her until she, herself, was wreathed within the storm.
The horde ran straight toward the blanket of arrows without fear, but Torsten kept his sights on the mystic-goddess. A quick break in the storm revealed a sneer. Then, the wind settled, followed by a prevailing silence.
“Dellbar, watch out!” Torsten tackled the High Priest as a bolt of lightning exploded from her fingertips. A swathe of arrows was reduced to ash by the violent lighting before they could reach the horde, others were blown off course, sent straight back into the stone. The bolt exploded into one of the rocks launched by a catapult, right where Torsten and Dellbar had been, sending bits flying every direction like tiny knives.
Torsten’s ears rang as he rolled himself off the High Priest.
“Sir Unger, I’ve got you!” a soldier said, hoisting him up by the shoulder. Seconds later, something smashed across the man’s chest, and he flipped back and over the wall.
He looked up at a wave of grimaurs, blotting out the moons as even the arrows couldn’t do. Their screeches deafened him to the thrum of more arrows and catapults being fired, though now, their organization broke as men fired toward the sky in a panic. Only, the grimaurs didn’t dive on this first pass. Instead, they dropped more objects like that which had hit the soldier. Some hit with a clank atop shields in the square, but others squished like popping egg sacs when they struck stone. They were heads. Gruesome, decapitated, human heads from across Pantego, some so rotten they nearly evaporated on impact. The stink was almost worse than the sight.
Torsten swallowed back the contents of his stomach and rushed to his post, crossing the corpses left courtesy of Bliss’ lightning strike.
“Get somewhere safe, now!” Torsten told Dellbar. Before the High Priest could protest, a host of former Shieldsmen grabbed him and marched away. Then, Torsten yelled to the archers, “Ignore the grimaurs. Focus on the ground. The ground!”
He reached the parapet and saw Nesilia’s swarm bounding toward the spiked trenches dug around the city. Hellhounds tripped and tumbled in, howling. Nimble goblins cleared it with ease and started to climb the stone with their sharp claws. And the possessed people… they didn’t even care. They fell and were skewered by spikes, but made no sounds of pain. With the trenches slowing them, arrows rained upon them. Still, even as they were pierced like pincushions, they felt nothing.
Some lost the blackness in their eyes, and the specters of their demonic possessors soared up over walls to possess their next targets. This was Nesilia’s plan. They aimed for the weakest men first, those untrained who’d never fought before. Torsten watched, awestruck, as one plunged into the heart of a conscripted archer.
The man’s eyes went black, and he wheeled around, firing an arrow over Torsten’s shoulder. He charged and slammed his fist into the man’s jaw. The body crumpled to the ground, alive but unconscious. The cackling demon whisked back into existence again, and Torsten brandished his blade.
“This is our world!” Torsten roared. He swung at it, and the blade passed directly through its spirit form, earning a fiendish laugh.
“You cannot resist us,” the demon whispered. Its voice engulfed him like a cloak. In him. Around him. Its dark specter rose, and it felt almost like his blood had stopped flowing.
Torsten noticed a young priest running up behind it. He was probably barely old enough to have traded his sight for Iam’s.
To his knees, he fell, lips trembling as much as the hands he used to grip the Eye of Iam pendant dangling from his neck. He prayed, maybe not to be brave, but that no longer mattered. He prayed because he had to, and within his hands, a light bloomed.
Torsten sensed the demon’s fear first, as if it were his own, and then, its essence drained away into the priest’s pendant. The man remained on one knee, no longer praying, but holding the light as more demons were pulled into its aura. Hundreds of the foul things soared through the air, their cries like Elsewhere itself. The color fled the priest’s dark skin. He scrunched his face and held on, more and more demons from the fallen possessed sucked in until the light burst. All that remained in its wake were ashes blowing through an empty robe.
Sp
inning, Torsten saw more priests giving themselves, as if for the first time, realizing their truest callings. They dotted the fortifications like bright white lanterns—priests snaring demons in their holy light before they could jump to possess soldiers atop the wall.
Not every evil being was caught, though. Fighting broke out as men everywhere were overtaken. Still, Dellbar’s gambit proved to be working. At least, it would, if they didn’t run out of priests before Nesilia ran out of possessed. And she had many, many thousands more. The horde, still charging down below, seemed endless.
“Hold the walls!” Torsten yelled. “In Iam’s name, hold the walls as long as you can!”
The possessed were relentless. Their bodies filled the spiked trenches, forming bridges of skin and flesh. Hundreds crossed and smashed against the walls, where others climbed on top of them, creating piles of death to serve like ladders.
At the deeper pit of spikes before the city gates, Bliss summoned dark magic and shifted the earth to fold over. As she did, the large spikes were launched at the outer portcullis with the force of fully manned battering rams.
A grimaur zipped down, and Torsten hopped back just before clipping its wing. Another sank its talons into a nearby archer and launched him off the wall into the fangs of hungry dire wolf hellhounds. His screaming ended when they ripped him in half.
Torsten nodded toward a commander in the eastern watchtower. Bells tolled. Buckets of boiling oil were dumped from it, and the other lookouts, torches along with them. Fire flared like veins of iron down the walls, singeing goblins climbing the stone and laying waste to piles of dead being used as ladders.
“S-s-spiders!” a voice squeaked from down in the markets.
Torsten could hardly keep up. It was true. Down in the square, massive, many-legged servants of Bliss burrowed from the ground. It was the Webbed Woods all over again. The biggest came first, then smaller ones flooded through as if the streets themselves had come alive.
One sprang onto the arm of a catapult, and as it attempted to launch, the weight caused the rock to fall too early and smash into the interior of the city gates, crushing a portion of the reinforcement.
Word of Truth Page 50
