The city's islands and bridges, so quiet before, erupted into activity. While archers harried the Monsoon's advance, including with the occasional explosive arrow, teams assembled further down the canal to dump barrels, furniture, and anything else that would float into the waters. Others poled rafts together to clog the way forward.
With the Monsoon slowed to a crawl, Arisians rushed from the south to seize the chokepoints, provoking hot spots of gruesome urban warfare. Inflicting heavy losses on the Monsoon, the defenders might have been able to hold these positions for hours, if not indefinitely—but each time the advance stalled out, shadows streaked from the Monsoon nethermancers, murdering the defenders a dozen at a time.
Each minute gained was to be celebrated, but the outcome was inevitable. With Dante and the others still four miles from the city, the Arisians withdrew their battered squadrons to the crescent of islands that marked the entrance to the peninsula.
And their last defense.
The Monsoon regrouped again, sending scouts into the islands surrounding the point of entrance. Soldiers in white uniforms gathered across from the outermost of the defended towers. Arrows jabbed back and forth. A ball of nether looped from behind a short tower and crashed into the base of the defenders' outpost. It was followed by a second. Chunks of stone spun through the air.
Arisians sallied from the tower—presumably so that they wouldn't fall to their dooms when it was knocked down—and took cover behind whatever they could find. A few flung themselves into the water, followed by a trickle of them, and then a stream. A fourth ball of nether rocked the tower, making it lean like a man trying to see the soles of his boots without lifting his feet.
The sixth sent it crashing down.
Stone blocks slammed into the water, jetting spray dozens of feet into the air. Other parts landed on the island with rattling thuds. Dust spewed inland, aloft on the coastal breeze.
As it settled, a woman emerged from the Monsoon-held island. She wore a jabat long enough to be a dress, the white cloth emblazoned with circles of two different shades of blue. She looked on her work and smiled.
Three canoes shot from around the island where the tower had fallen, fighting their way through the still-choppy waters. They loosed arrows, but the turbulence sent the missiles flying wide of the sorcerer.
She snarled and summoned two gobs of shadows to her hands. She thrust forth her palms at the oncoming boats.
Before she could deliver it, the nether dropped from her hands as if it had died. She blinked in surprise.
A man in gleaming black scale armor arose from the neighboring island. He drew a long sword, the blade crackling purple as he pointed it at the sorcerer. "Death to the defiler! Death to the servant of the Eiden Rane!"
The Monsoon's archers fired on the canoes and the revealed Knight of Odo Sein, but the defenders' boats rushed onward, joined by others. The sorcerer turned and ran. An arrow pierced her right shoulder. She dropped, struggling to get up. The Arisians made landfall, hurling spears at the nethermancer, ignoring the incoming arrows even as the soldiers around them fell bleeding. As a Monsoon soldier helped the woman to her feet, a spear lanced through her chest, slamming her to the ground.
"What," Dante said, "is the knight doing in the middle of the battle?"
"Had no choice, lord," Jona said. "You said yourself that if their sorcerers brought their might against the towers, all the city was doomed."
"Okay, extreme circumstances and all, but why is he wearing his armor? And you can see that sword from Mallon! He's too obvious a target. At least show some sense!"
"Would you like me to—"
Jona cut off mid-sentence. The ambient noise from his side was gone, too. After a moment of shock, Dante understood: absorbed by the events of the battle, he'd left the loon open all the while. It had used the last of the nether bonding the two pieces together, and was now dead for good. Swearing violently, he tore the loon from his ear and hurled it into the swamp.
He watched through the dragonfly as a pitched battle erupted between the two contested islands. The Odo Sein attempted to withdraw, but a new blast of shadows forced him to remain at the island's edge. He raised his shield, deflecting an arrow.
Dante's last dragonfly went dark, struck down by a Monsoon sorcerer, or possibly by the Odo Sein knocking down every scrap of nether in the area. He cursed again, startling a possum hanging from a tree. Acutely aware that it was chipping away at his reserve of shadows, he killed and reanimated a single passing dragonfly, sending it whirring toward the city.
With Blays and Volo paddling as hard as they could, Dante recapped everything he'd seen, briefing them on what they could hope to expect. "It will be our job to neutralize any remaining nethermancers. If they're removed from the picture, the Arisians are more than capable of holding off the soldiers. Volo, is there another way into the city besides the front gates?"
She shook her head, black hair swaying. "Nope. Not that they ever told me."
"The Monsoon's still got a reserve force outside the gates. We'll need a disguise to get past them."
Gladdic made a murmuring noise. "And if they see through it?"
"Then we'll need a crew of frighteningly effective murderers. Does anyone know where we can find such a thing?"
Blays blinked sweat from his eyes. "Sure, we could disguise ourselves as fellow Monsooners who just happened to fall behind, and who totally shouldn't need to answer any questions about that and definitely shouldn't be punished for it. Or you could just open a hole in the wall for us to sail through."
"I have a better idea: we do exactly what you just said."
Volo corrected course to bring them toward the western arm of the wall closest to where the battle for the peninsula was unfolding. Dante's dragonfly arrived at the city two minutes later. He sent it hundreds of feet into the air, too high to draw notice from enemy nethermancers or get caught up in the Odo Sein's sphere of negation.
The western wall was quiet, but a massive brawl was ongoing at the entrance to the peninsula. There, a second tower had fallen into the canal, forming an uneven bridge between two islands. Arrows zipped about, though less heavily than before; both sides were running low, resulting in clashes of spearmen battling for control of the bridge of rubble. On the water, squadrons of canoes hurtled toward each other, soldiers stabbing out as their boats clipped past each other. Nether flickered on the eastern fringe, slaying a team of Arisian archers who'd been punishing any Monsoon canoe that tried to enter the canal there.
To the west and center, there was no sign of sorcery. At that very moment, the Knight of Odo Sein, obvious in his demonic black armor, charged toward the eastern flank.
Before their canoe, the trees thinned, then vanished. They were spat into the brackish waters surrounding Aris Osis. Three Monsoon canoes were stationed near the wall a half mile to the north, but if they took any notice of Volo's canoe, they didn't show it.
They skimmed toward the looming wall. A pair of Arisian sentries stood from their posts, drawing bows. "Stay back or be fired upon!"
"We're friends!" Blays hollered. "Trust me, you'll really like us!"
"I said stay where you are!"
Volo glanced at Dante in confusion, still paddling. On the wall, the sentries sighted down their arrows. Gladdic flicked his left hand. White light shot toward the wall. Both men fell from sight.
Blays gawked. "Did you just kill them?"
"They were about to attempt to do the same to us," Gladdic said. "However, as a man of superior morals, I did not stoop to their level. I merely disabled them."
They rushed toward the wall, the wind whooshing over their faces. As they neared, Dante nicked his arm, then reached into the stone barrier. He softened it and drew it back, opening a hole there—one that, in the interest of preserving shadows, only ran a foot below the waterline, and was a mere three feet in width and height.
"Floating shit!" Volo squeaked. "We'll be smashed!"
She pulled in her paddle. E
veryone ducked. They shot through the passage without a scrape. Volo laughed wildly, paddling hard. Dante guided her east, keeping two rows of islands between themselves and the fighting. Bodies bobbed everywhere, along with splintered wood, obliging Volo to weave through the flotsam like a shuttle on the loom.
Dante lowered his dragonfly closer to the eastern fighting. It was such a mess of tussling bodies that his search felt hopeless, yet he spotted Naran and Jona in moments, their foreign dress and features standing out from the Tanarians like a stain on a clean shirt. They stood on the southern face of an island connected to its northern neighbor by an arched stone bridge. At that moment, the Knight of Odo Sein stood on the southern foot of the bridge, rallying the defenders to retake control from the Monsoon. At a glance, five hundred soldiers were involved in the melee for the two islands, with reinforcements pouring in from both sides.
Volo slipped into a canal only to find the approach to the southern island blocked by an irregular line of stone rubble and shattered rafts. She craned her neck, hunting for a way around it.
Dante shook his head. "Faster for us to continue on foot. Volo, stay here with the canoe."
She tipped back her chin. "But I can help you."
"If the flank collapses, we'll need to get out of here in a hurry. Watch the boat and stay ready to go."
Sparing no more time for her arguments, he climbed out onto the broken rock of a fallen tower. Blays jogged behind him, not yet drawing his Odo Sein swords. Gladdic brought up the rear. Spotting them, Jona lifted his hand.
Dante ran to meet them. Naran grinned, clasping his hand. "I wasn't sure that I would see you again." His gaze moved to Gladdic. "In your case, I hoped that I wouldn't."
"We can resume internal hostilities after we've finished the external ones," Dante said. "Right now, our job is to get the Odo Sein off the front lines!"
Naran drew him close and lowered his voice. "The man in the armor is not the same man who earned it. He's merely a decoy. And a highly effective one at that. The Monsoon is throwing away countless lives in their effort to kill him."
"You dressed a soldier in the knight's armor? What happens when a nethermancer comes for him and he can't stop them?"
"The true Odo Sein remains close enough to neutralize their sorcery."
"That," Dante said, "is extraordinarily clever."
He took a moment to absorb the scene. The false knight was providing a rallying point for the defenders, but he was also hanging behind the front lines. If a nethermancer came at him, it would be at grave personal risk. Dante was tempted to wade in and start blasting the Monsoon to shreds, but with their nethermancers neutralized, they seemed to be doing a pretty good job shredding themselves against the city's defenders.
"I say we watch and wait," he said. "There might not be any call to reveal ourselves today. For now, our single priority is to keep the real knight safe. Where is he?"
"Secure on the previous island we seized." Naran turned to the west and nodded to the glob of land on the other side of the rubble they'd crossed on the way in. His eyes flew wide. "Mother of storms!"
"That island?" Blays pointed. "The one in the process of being completely overrun by the Monsoon?"
Naran nodded, stone-faced. On the southwest shore of the island, which was separated from them a couple hundred feet of open water and most of the island itself, a horde of white-uniformed Monsoon were cutting their way through the Arisians, pushing toward a pillar of a man dressed in lacquer armor and laying about himself with a stout spear and a tall, rectangular shield. Cut off from the shore, the Knight of Odo Sein bellowed for aid.
"To him!" Dante took off at a run. "To the knight!"
He sprinted toward the debris, calling the nether to his hands. Before he could release it, the power of the Odo Sein clamped down on him. Hopping onto the broken rubble, he yelled to the knight, but the man was fighting for his life, lost in the helter-skelter of weapons and armor colliding and soldiers screaming in rage and pain.
Dante retreated past the spot where the power had afflicted him, but the nether remained inert. Gladdic cursed, the cords of his neck straining against his wrinkled skin as he fought to bring either the shadows or light to bear.
Blays ran ahead of them toward the canoe, skidding to a halt on the pebble-strewn rubble, staring at the spot where they'd left Volo. The canoe was gone. Almost halfway to the other island, Volo paddled with everything she had. Meaning to snatch the Odo Sein up and ferry him away to safety.
Dante made his way to the edge of the debris field, standing on a column of broken tower. Naran waved his hands over his head and yelled to a friendly canoe past the southern end of the rubble, convincing them to swing about.
On the western island, most of the Odo Sein's fellow soldiers had been knocked to the ground to bleed away their last. Catching a glimpse of Volo's canoe streaming toward him, the knight lashed about with redoubled vigor, fighting his way toward the shoreline. Volo cruised onward, reaching the shallows where reeds and grass grew.
Around and behind her, dark shapes broke the surface of the water. At first, their rounded tops resembled the backs of an army of turtles, but they continued to rise, the shapes flaring out like hideous pale mushrooms. Shoulders and arms emerged from the depths. With their upper bodies freed from the water, the Blighted stampeded toward the island.
Volo froze, retracting her paddle from the water. The wake of the Blighted's frenzied charge rocked her side to side. They ignored her for the moment, bent on the destruction of the Odo Sein. Seeing their gnashing faces, the knight pushed his way back up the slope, enemy spears knocking against his broad shield. The first row of Blighted hauled themselves to dry ground.
Dante cupped his hands to his mouth. "Drop the Odo Sein! Drop it now! For the love of the Silent Spires!"
Unhearing, the knight tried to bull his way onward. A spear slipped around his shield and pierced his right side. He fell to one knee, planting his spear hand in the muck. Two Blighted flung themselves at him from behind, yanking at his armor to expose his back and sinking their teeth into his skin.
The nether unlocked. In the blink of an eye, Gladdic punched his hand forward. A sheet of ether streaked away from him, expanding as it went until the glare on the water was so bright Dante had to shield his eyes. The ether sliced into the backs of the rearmost Blighted, exploding more dazzlingly than the Tanarians' special arrows.
Dante blinked, clearing the spots from his eyes. Dozens of half corpses sloshed about in the water, cut across the hips, gut, or ribs, depending on how far each Blighted had managed to climb from the water before being hit by the light. There was no sign of Volo. Her canoe bumped into a torso, stopping ten feet from the island.
On the island, the Blighted lay dead. So did many of the Monsoon soldiers. But the Knight of Odo Sein stirred, pulling himself away from the remainder. His shield arm dragged behind him, broken.
"Did you kill her?" Blays said. "Did you kill Volo?"
Gladdic worked his throat. Before he could answer, nether forked from the island they'd left behind, plowing into the Arisians at the center of the bridge and toppling them into the water.
"Save the knight!" Gladdic barked at Dante. "I will wreak our hell on those who wage war on the world!"
The canoe Naran had hailed swung up to the ruins. Dante rolled over the gunwale, accompanied by Naran and Jona. The oarsman shoved off toward the western island. There, a few of the surviving Monsoon soldiers were shaking off their daze. As they moved to pick up their dropped spears, Dante brought the nether to him. The triumph of its presence felt like standing from bed after a long illness.
He drew it into killing bolts, hurling them over the water. The Monsoon soldiers converging on the wounded Odo Sein didn't so much as look up as the shadows punched through their torsos in cloudbursts of blood. Dante sent a second volley behind the first, aiming them at a squadron of Monsoon charging in from the ruins. Seeing the black missiles, the soldiers scattered, throwing themselves t
oward cover. Dante guided the nether after them, ripping through their skulls and ribs. Later, the joy of the wrath he felt at finally being able to act would be shameful. For now, it burned inside him like sweet liquor.
Behind him, men screamed. People had been screaming for some time now, but this was something new: the shrieks of people seeing a death far worse than they'd imagined would take them. On the southern of the two contested islands, a pair of Andrac loped toward the bridge, twice the height of a man, long claws extended from their sides. The Arisians scrambled away as well, tripping over rocks. Sometimes they dropped their weapons and left them behind.
The Monsoon soldiers who'd taken the bridge shook off their paralysis and turned to run. Too late. The two Andrac overtook them in great bounds, slashing them into thick slabs of meat.
Naran grabbed the gunwale. "I feel sickened."
"I possess a simple solution," Dante said. "Quit looking."
"That is my paradox. I don't want to look away. The deaths of these traitors to humanity gives me more pleasure than starting or ending a long voyage."
"If you expect me to say that such feelings don't reflect your true self, or something else meant to reassure you of your basic civility, you're going to be disappointed. We're not a very good species, Naran. We're violent and we want to see our enemies fall. In good times, we can pretend to be better than that—but good times rarely last for long."
The Andrac continued their wholesale slaughter of the Monsoon. Nether flickered from the north island, crashing into the bridge. It gave way with a groan and clack of rock, landing with thunderous gouts of water, the two demons dumped into the canal with it. Blays, a purple sword snapping in each hand, sprinted past the ruins and vaulted far over the canal separating the two islands. As he cleared the apex of his jump, he disappeared from sight. There was no splash.
The Light of Life Page 32
