Song of the Risen God

by R. A. Salvatore

  As he pitched from the wall, the cochcal flipped the rest of the way around, fell down low, under the thrust of a spear coming from her right, then came up under it, stabbing the tip of her macana under the chin of this second human soldier. The man’s head snapped back and, in the moment it took him to look back and reorient, Tuolonatl’s follow-up swing came in high and wide to his right, behind his defenses, to slam against the side of his head.

  He, too, fell away.

  More mundunugu scaled the wall to join her, the riders avoiding the huge breach in the wall, leaving it open for the macana foot soldiers to crash into the city.

  From up high, the mundunugu swept the wall and hurled their spears down into the city behind that major breach, where the shocked human defenders were trying to organize some resistance.

  Tuolonatl had been in enough battles to understand that the outcome of the fight was already decided. Unless these humans had some magic or war machines she could not anticipate, the city would soon fall.

  In through the wall poured the xoconai warriors, swarming onto the streets, and soon more humans were running away than were trying to stop them.

  * * *

  “A dragon! They have a dragon!” Abbot Ohwan wailed when he caught up to King Midalis, who was surrounded by attendants helping him to don his armor in the entry hall of the castle.

  Midalis knew as well as any man alive the power of such a beast. He thought of Brynn Dharielle of To-gai and the great fire-breathing dragon she had ridden into battle against King Aydrian. The king blew a sigh. Aydrian had returned a few days earlier, and now a dragon?

  Coincidence?

  Or, more likely, exactly as Aydrian and the others had warned.

  He didn’t know what to think. The ground had been shaking fiercely and the thunderous sounds of catastrophe had swept into the castle, though muted by the thick walls. He looked to the abbot and only then noticed that the man was covered in thick dust.

  “Abbot, what happened?” he asked, shocked.

  “Saint Honce has fallen.”

  “Saint Honce? How is that possible?” Midalis shoved the hands of one attendant aside, then reached out the other way to grab his helmet from the man there. He rushed out of the castle, the abbot in tow, and stood staring in disbelief at the huge ruin beside him.

  He knew the answer, or at least he thought he knew the answer.

  The enemy had a dragon.

  “My wife and children to the deep tunnels,” King Midalis ordered the few Allhearts around him.

  “They are already on their way to the secure rooms,” answered an Allheart.

  “No. They have a dragon. To the boat and away!”

  “Saint-Mere-Abelle,” one of the other knights agreed, nodding and rushing off.

  “Yes, all the way to the monastery,” Abbot Ohwan said.

  “No,” said Midalis, to shocked expressions. “No,” he said again, improvising here, thinking it through. “Out of Honce altogether until we can truly determine the power of this unknown enemy.”

  “Vanguard?’ one knight asked.

  “Pireth Dancard,” the king ordered. The others nodded, except for the scowling Abbot Ohwan.

  “There is no greater fortress in all the world than Saint-Mere-Abelle,” the abbot said. “Surely they would be safe.”

  “Like Ursal? Like Saint Honce?” the king replied somberly.

  “Pireth Dancard is a tiny hovel next to Saint-Mere-Abelle,” said the abbot, truthfully. “It has none of the comforts the royal family desires.”

  “This is no time for comfort.”

  “It hasn’t the magical power of Saint-Mere-Abelle! A thousand brothers armed with the most powerful of gemstones. You, above all others, should understand the might.”

  “I do. And yes, my friend, Pireth Dancard is but a small collection of towers and castles on a patch of rocky islands. But it is in the middle of the mouth of the Gulf of Corona, surrounded by naught but water, and with all the positions protected by high cliffs so formidable that even the powries take pains to avoid the place. They can’t conquer it, and they know it from bitter experience.”

  “Nor could they take Ursal,” the abbot said dryly.

  “But these enemies won’t find it,” said the king. He held up his hand to silence the abbot, then delivered the orders again to the knights: that his wife and two children should be out posthaste, up the river to the gulf, and across the gulf to the small fortress of Pireth Dancard.

  “My king, perhaps you too should go,” said Abbot Ohwan, when Midalis had barely finished.

  Midalis glared at the man, angry at first but then understanding. Ohwan was only suggesting this because he wanted to be on that departing ship.

  And, really, who could blame him?

  Before Midalis could respond, a loud noise echoed down the street to the west, a cacophony of screams, and the king and abbot stared in surprise at a throng of people running desperately, shrieking and crying, with panicked soldiers among them.

  An Allheart Knight came into view, too, riding among the crowd, weaving and trying hard not to trample anyone. He rode up to King Midalis and leaped from his horse.

  “The western wall has fallen!” he cried. “The enemy, the … I do not know what to call them! I have never seen such beasts. They are not goblins … their faces…” He shook his head.

  “The sidhe,” King Midalis said, and in his thoughts he recalled the other name, the strange name. “Xoconai.”

  “Thousands,” said the knight. “Tens of thousands. I have never seen such a force!”

  “Throw wide the castle doors!” Midalis yelled. “Get them in, all of them, any of them!”

  “My king, we cannot,” said Ohwan.

  “Shut up,” Midalis told him. He turned for the stairs leading back into the castle.

  “If Saint Honce crumbled so easily, do you think the castle will fare any better?” Ohwan shouted after him.

  “Get your brothers to do their jobs and perhaps our odds will improve!” Midalis shouted back at him. He didn’t miss the pained look that came over the man, and it made Midalis look to the side again, to the rubble that only moments before had been the beautiful monastery of St. Honce.

  “I had called an audience,” Abbot Ohwan said quietly. “To prepare.”

  “How many were lost?”

  The abbot shook his head helplessly.

  “Find all you can and get them inside,” Midalis told him, but his voice trailed off when another Allheart Knight came into view, this one leading a horse—a horse with yet another knight lying across the saddle—and limping badly. He, too, made his way to the castle and the king.

  Midalis stared at him, at Julian of the Evergreen, in disbelief. The man carried a broken piece of a javelin sticking from his knee, his leg covered in blood. His head was bleeding, too, and blood showed around the edges of his mouth. His left arm hung limply, his shield unstrapped but still there, and it took Midalis a moment to realize that, among the broken javelins stuck in that shield, one had driven right through the buckler and through Julian’s arm. That spear alone was the reason the man hadn’t dropped the shield.

  The other knights pulled the body from the horse, removing her helm, and King Midalis knew that he had lost perhaps his finest Allheart of all, Dame Koreen.

  More and more soldiers appeared among the fleeing throng, terrified and showing no signs of forming any defense, and now the sounds of the fighting grew closer.

  On a nearby rooftop appeared a sidhe, riding a large green lizard and lifting a spear.

  King Midalis had lost Koreen.

  King Midalis had lost Ursal.

  * * *

  Though the battle in the walled city was going well, the fight at the river was proving far more difficult. Tuolonatl’s forces had made some initial gains, cuetzpali and their riders swimming out to take the first boats by surprise.

  But there were larger ships moored off of Ursal harbor, and they were crewed by veteran sailors, most from
the Mantis Arm far to the east, who had spent years battling ferocious powries and were expert at defending their precious ships.

  When she came upon the scene soon after the main force had driven into the city, the cochcal recalled her forces and instead set a line of macana warriors along the bank, with stacks of javelins. She had the city’s docks under her control, so she would concede the waterway for now, but she wasn’t about to let those crews come ashore.

  For all their gains this morning, Tuolonatl did not like this moment because she couldn’t control it—this was exactly why she had called for patience in attacking so powerful a target. Tuolonatl valued the lives of her forces too much for such uncertainty.

  The fighting was minimal now, small pockets of dug-in humans battling fiercely. But the city itself was almost fully under control, save the one large and secure building, the castle.

  Tuolonatl could afford to take her time with that structure. Scathmizzane had flown to the west and was nowhere to be found. As with the boats on the river, Tuolonatl ordered her forces not to engage the castle but to hold a solid perimeter and allow no breakout.

  The mundunugu swept the fields south and east of the city.

  Tuolonatl tightened her noose.

  With Ataquixt beside her, she rode hard back to the divine throwers and High Priest Pixquicauh. She slowed as she neared the gathering, her mouth hanging open, and she and her companion realized then that their victory hadn’t been quite as overwhelming as they had previously believed.

  Before them, Pixquicauh strolled about, waving his arms and extolling the beauty of Glorious Gold. The soldiers guarding the area all cheered at that, of course, but few of the augurs joined in. Many sat on the ground, heads hanging low, their condoral pulled up high or removed altogether, faces pale, hands trembling. Those few walking, other than Pixquicauh, had macana escorts helping them, while others lay on the ground, very still.

  Tuolonatl rode to the high priest and dismounted. She looked all about, arms up high, silently asking what had happened.

  “The unbridled power of Glorious Gold flowed through us,” Pixquicauh replied, and his tone was light, giddy even. “Only I was pure enough to accept it and not resist. You see now why I am the voice of Scathmizzane, why he has entrusted me above all others.”

  Tuolonatl gave a slight nod, more to shut the man up on this subject than to agree.

  “Are they dead?” she asked, motioning to a line of four prone augurs.

  “Did you see the barrage?” Pixquicauh answered, and Tuolonatl had her answer in his poor attempt at a diversion.

  “All of the augurs here will be replaced as we move on,” Pixquicauh added. “The number of dead this day far exceeds all of the previous battles combined. Glorious Gold will grow stronger. The God Crystal will await our call!”

  Tuolonatl narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Pixquicauh laughed at her and twirled away, calling again for cheers and prayers to the mighty Scathmizzane.

  The legendary mundunugu looked to Ataquixt, who merely shrugged, obviously at a loss.

  “How long?” Tuolonatl called to Pixquicauh.

  “How long?”

  “How long before I can use the divine throwers again?”

  Pixquicauh held up his hands. “Finish your task here and let Scathmizzane and Pixquicauh prepare.”

  “There is a castle within the city, and ships on the river,” she started to argue.

  “The city is ours,” was all that Pixquicauh would reply.

  Tuolonatl looked to the now silent magical cannons, their platforms empty of stones. She was being asked to command the battlefield and a vast army with only half of the information. Her gaze went to the augurs, who now seemed all but useless.

  These were the xoconai healers, and Tuolonatl had many wounded mundunugu and macana warriors.

  Tuolonatl had seen what battlefield wounds could do when they weren’t treated. She had seen the pus and smelled the pus and heard the pitiful cries of dying warriors.

  A great pity, she thought, that Pixquicauh wasn’t among the dead on the field.

  * * *

  The castle of Ursal was built near the southern reaches of the city, on higher ground. Beneath its supporting catacombs were tunnels, natural passages worked and stepped, leading down fifty feet and more to secret docks at the river level, far beneath the castle.

  There weren’t many floating wharves here, and not many ships—certainly nothing to match the three-masted ocean vessels out on the river. These were altered Alpinadoran longships, vessels that could be rowed as well as sailed, with folding masts to support a single square sail.

  On one of these, a small one, the queen and her two children had been escorted away as the catastrophe above had begun to unfold.

  “We can ferry the peasants to the eastern bank, then,” King Midalis argued with his assembled Allheart Knights and officers and the few masters of St. Honce who had found their way into the castle to join with Abbot Ohwan. “Far enough to the north to at least give them a chance to outrun the pursuit.”

  “There are more than a thousand souls in the rooms and halls of Castle Ursal,” Abbot Ohwan solemnly replied. “The vessels in here could not get more than one in ten out, and that is if we could find competent oarsmen and pilots.”

  “You would have me leave them?” King Midalis asked.

  “I would have us, and those important for the defense of Honce, escape this unwinnable situation,” Abbot Ohwan replied. “I would have King Midalis survive, so that the people who have not yet met the fury of the sidhe will know some hope, at least.”

  “It feels like cowardice,” Midalis muttered. “I have never run from a fight.”

  “Of course you have,” answered the abbot, and all around him gasped. “In the war with King Aydrian, you ran from Ursal, wisely so, and collected your army to win a glorious victory. This is the same thing, my king, my friend.”

  “We cannot hope to break out of the castle and retake the city,” an Allheart Knight added, drawing a scowl from Midalis.

  “You ask me to take the knights and the brothers of Saint Honce and flee to the north?” King Midalis asked, spitting every word with obvious disgust. “Who is left to defend the children and the infirm and the wounded among us?”

  “No one can defend them now, my king,” Abbot Ohwan said quietly.

  Such anger filled King Midalis that he felt his ears burning. How had this happened? So quickly!

  “The river is still open,” came another voice, and Midalis turned, recognizing the speaker as Julian of the Evergreen. “It may not be so in the light of dawn. Our enemies are not stupid goblins, that much we have seen. They will close the river tomorrow, surely.”

  “That is why many of the ships have pulled anchor and sailed north,” Abbot Ohwan added.

  “It feels like cowardice,” Midalis spat again.

  “It is prudence,” said Ohwan. “From the high towers, those overlooking the city have seen many taken as prisoner. The common folk in here have a better chance of surviving captivity than the fight our presence will bring. Let us be gone, with all the soldiers we can carry, and bid the rest to surrender when the call for it comes.”

  Midalis looked to Julian, the young man he had come to admire and trust, and one, he knew, who would lead with his heart and not out of any fear for his body. His severe wounds, the story of how he had turned to retrieve the body of Koreen, only confirmed that.

  Julian glanced at Abbot Ohwan and reluctantly nodded.

  In the dark of night, King Midalis, Abbot Ohwan, and the remaining Allheart Knights and brothers of St. Honce slipped out of Ursal through the concealed waterways, broke into the rivers through hidden doors suddenly opened, and were away along the Masur Delaval too swiftly for any serious response from the enemies in the city or those along the western bank.

  The queen, the prince, and the princess were well on their way to a distant island, so they believed, but King Midalis would not go that far.


  “Palmaris,” he ordered, “we know our enemy better now and know what to expect. With the large garrison there, the many fighting ships harbored there, and the brothers of mighty Saint Precious, we will turn the sidhe around and chase them all the way back to and through Ursal.”

  “They have a dragon,” Abbot Ohwan mumbled under his breath, but King Midalis heard him, and silenced him with a scowl.

  14

  ALL THE WORLD IS OURS

  Redshanks wandered the avenues of Appleby-in-Wilderland, his mood darker than on any day since the fall of the town itself.

  He had seen Khotai that morning, crawling to the one well where the people of the town were allowed to draw water. Water had splashed everywhere.

  The poor woman was in the mud.

  They had taken her belt and separated her from Talmadge and the others. They had taken everything.

  “Xatatl,” Redshanks said, approaching a group of sidhe—of xoconai, they had corrected him, quite emphatically (and painfully).

  A pair of warriors that the bright-faced invaders called macana turned and scowled at him, then began accosting him in their language, which he did not know anywhere near well enough to decipher. He understood their message loud and clear, however, particularly when Xatatl, the appointed sovereign of Appleby and usually the most reasonable of the lot, stared at him hard and shook his head.

  Redshanks held up his hands and backed away, lowering his eyes and going silent as the three finished their conversation.

  The two macana walked past him, one very near, and a shoulder butt sent the old frontiersman stumbling to the side.

  “Fine day to yerself, too,” Redshanks said to the departing warrior woman.

  “You should better know your place,” Xatatl said, motioning for Redshanks to approach.

  “I’ve done all that you’ve asked.”