Blood in the Valley Page 6

  Lonadiel, who’d paused at Groon’s side rather than follow his mistress into the wyvern’s circle of death, hid a grimace of disgust as he stepped forth to join Satayebeb at the monster’s flank. A plume of gore speckled the dirt as the wyvern let the goblin’s severed lower half drop, Lonadiel sidestepping it to kneel before Satayebeb and cup his hands together for her. She offered him a smile that promised further, horrific pleasures and stepped into the stirrup of his fingers, hoisting herself onto the wyvern’s back.

  “Warlord Blood-drinker,” Satayebeb called to the hobgoblin, who was eyeing the torn goblin carcass with a mixture of sadistic glee and vague fear, “the command is given. You may assault.”

  The warlord’s eyes widened, sentience vanishing behind a flare of primal fury as he drew his sword and held it high, bellowing. His voice was lost in the roar of thousands and the storm of horns and drums.

  “Shall we?” Satayebeb called down from the wyvern’s back as the creature rose from its snack. It unfolded its wings, careless as they struck away howling sprays of goblins stampeding by to the attack. She held out her hand.

  Lonadiel accepted it, dragging himself up onto the beast behind her. A moment later, the massive wings smote the air with a crackle of loosening joints and tightening skin, birthed a wave-front of churned dust to further cloud the humidity- and smoke-choked air. With another beat, they were off the ground and rising towards the walls of Candolum.

  The bells in the cupola of the Temple of Reniburn rang, deep and ominous as the men of the town scurried to their defenses. Beyond their scant wall, the goblinoid mass boiled forth from its camps and washed across the fields in their jeering thousands. Lonadiel experienced a moment of pity for the people of Candolum.

  Satayebeb released her grip on the wyvern’s back as it began to gain altitude, spreading her arms to either side and beginning a chant deep in her throat that Lonadiel could sense, even over the roar of the wind in his face. Cyan witch-fire glimmering about her fingernails, spread into orbs of building power about her hands as her voice rose from controlled stanzas into a shriek like souls face-kicked into the chasm of hell.

  Pity faded from Lonadiel as he clenched his arms around his unholy mistress’ waist and held on at that chasm’s edge.

  OPLEXU HELD ON TO THE window sill with fingers gone numb from the ferocity of his grip. The stone of the spire of Saint Reniburn shook to the crash of the bell above, its dreary note shivering down to the foundations of the temple and rattling his nerves to jelly. At his side, Mannatus held clenched fists together before his chest, his chin to the sternum and lips mouthing prayers into interlocked knuckles.

  In the courtyard below, heavily-armed members of Oplexu’s personal guard waved a last woman trailing children through the temple entrance, then bolted the massive, twin oak slabs shut. Glimmers in the windows below Oplexu’s perch gave away men-at-arms and crossbowmen waiting at every opening. A feeble breeze gave pennants atop the temple’s spires a sluggish twitch.

  The temple bell tolled again. Behind its reverberation came a sound like a rising gale, a clattering, clamoring, screaming tide of hate and evil. Through mist and dust beyond the city wall vomited a mass like a ground-hanging thunderhead, shot through with the lightning of naked steel, slavering fang, hoisted torch, and frenzy-brimming eyes. And rising lazily above the storm, spreading its winged blot of darkness, flew the wyvern with its twin riders.

  “Saint Reniburn, protect us,” Oplexu whispered, stepping back from the window reflexively. Mannatus did not interrupt his prayers for comment or agreement.

  Knots slowed amongst the approaching horde, barely visible amongst the tossing tide as archers. Their arrow-clouds blurred in low arches for the town battlements, most falling short. Behind the crenels of the wall, Candolum men plied their longbows in answer, steel-tipped hornets’ swarms descended on the leading edge of the attack to kill. Clots of goblinoids crumpled, disrupting the wave behind, staggering others in a tangle of confusion and brief in-fighting as disparate groups battled one another to take the lead to plunder and slaughter.

  Oplexu returned to the window with an inhalation tasting of renewed hope. The horde slowed, slogging their way into the marshy low ground beneath the walls where late-winter rains and overflow from the Aleil and Icing rivers left much of the flood plain water-logged through mid-spring. Candolum arrows continued to spread their rash of death, goblinoids piling amongst the browned tatters of last year’s crops and staining shallow pools of water black with their gore.

  Boulder-shouldered ogres stomped their way to the fore only to stumble and thrash at the air as if men infuriated by insect swarms. One of the brutes staggered and went to one knee, curly-haired torso streaked with blood streaming from a pincushion of arrow wounds. The giant tried to rise with a bass roar that thrummed in the bones, only to stiffen, its head jerking back as more arrows slapped into bloodied eye sockets. With a groan of endless death rattle, the ogre pitched forward, rocking the earth as its mass cratered soggy ground and splattered goblins unable to escape its path beneath it.

  “By the Gods and the Saints,” Oplexu said, slapping hands to the window sill again, “we just might do—”

  A shaft of cyan leapt from the circling wyvern to touch the wall. Masonry leapt skyward in a filthy cloud with a crash like a lightning-strike to the skull. A grunt escaped through Oplexu’s gritted teeth as the force of the blast rushed through the window, jolted him backwards a step. He had hardly a moment to recover before a second bolt blazed from the upraised hands of one of the wyvern’s riders, sliced the sky and hammered the same spot as the first, birthing another geyser of debris, dust, and shimmering, unnatural flames. Men screamed in the settling haze.

  The wyvern banked into a dive. At the battlements, defenders hunched low, forgetting their weapons, their duty, and the kinfolk depending on them as the winged shadow rushed over. Supernatural lightning blazed in its wake, witch-fire jolting across the wall in evenly-spaced flashes that shattered stonework and flesh.

  Further blasts walked into the heart of town, splashing thatched roofs into clouds of flame and embers that drifted onto other rooftops, to the wood of merchant kiosks in the market square, to bales of hay left out for horse feed. The hard bite of lightning’s ozone warred with heavier stink of fired pitch and flaming wood as syrupy columns of black smoke billowed from the spreading inferno.

  Shrieks and jittering catcalls drew Oplexu’s dazed attention to the bridge across the Aleil. A tide of goblins rushed across its span, not bothering to raise shields that would be useless against longbows at so short a range, churning towards the barricade on the city-side of the river, constructed of baskets of stones and loaded carts. Candolum archers poured a stream of arrows into the goblins’ faces, murdering them until their charge faltered at the halfway point where they slipped on stones gone slick with the gore of their slaughtered kin.

  The wyvern came in low over the barricade and gave its wings a stroke that slowed its descent, buffeted it nearly upright in midair as its sorcery-wielding rider raised both hands aglow with hellfire. The monster’s shadow over them, some of the barricade defenders turned, jostling one another in horror, a few scattering as instincts older than courage seized them. An armored figure that might have been Glastrom smacked at them with the flat of his sword to stem their panic. Oplexu, again frozen at the window sill, opened his mouth fir a vain cry of warning.

  A torrent of witch-fire lashed into the barricade. Carts leapt away as if kicked by a giant. A globe of fire expanded, carrying an intact body squirming at its roiling periphery.

  Through the haze of flame and death surged the goblins.

  Oplexu hammered the window sill in misery and terror, his voice degenerating into a hoarse bawl like a wounded animal’s. Below him, his town burned and died, the bridge barricade overrun, the wall breached and further torrents of goblin-kind pouring through to massacre stunned and isolated defenders. They spread like a killer stain into the streets, kicking in the door
s of homes as the screams of town folk rose, shrill and desperate. Mannatus’ prayers sped to near-babble behind Oplexu.

  The wyvern banked again and reversed its slow curve over the city, came swooping back towards the Temple. It beat its wings, sent foul-reeking air gusting forth as it reared again and gave a clear view of the riders in gaudy armor, the first obvious now as a woman aglitter in sorcery, a hand up to cast a pulsing globe of living light.

  Oplexu froze, teeth borne in a moment of outrageous defiance.

  Magic ravaged towards the spires of Reniburn. Oplexu would have welcomed death at that moment, but the cyan bolt came apart, shattering into a million scintillas of brilliance against an unseen barrier. The crash of the strike sent Opelxu spinning away, shielding dazzled eyes with a curse. Mannatus flew backwards, as if horse-kicked, and slammed into a desk.

  Blinking through afterimages, Opelxu leapt back to the window. The wyvern wheeled away and he clearly heard a shriek of frustration from the magic-wielding witch. The Speaker of Candolum spun and raced to the tangle of robes underneath which Mannatus cowered. He gripped the priest and wrenched him back to his feet. Blood ran from a cut in the man’s forehead and his eyes shivered with mindless terror.

  “What did you do?” Oplexu roared over the din echoing through the window. “Curse you, how did you stop them?”

  Mannatus shook his head, babbling and struggling to cup his hands in renewed prayer.

  “Damn it, come on!” Oplexu hauled the man back to the window. “If you know how to hold them off, by the Reniburn and the Gods, man, hold them off!”

  Amid smoke and screams below, goblinoids spilled across the market square and surged towards the gates of the low wall surrounding the Temple. They hadn’t had the people to man the inner wall as well as Reniburn’s sacred shrine, had chosen to defend that which was easiest with few. Goblinoids boiled over the inner barrier in a chorus of glee, fangs and eyes flashing, their comrades battering aside the wrought-iron gate with weapons or bare hands.

  Crossbow strings clapped and death whirred forth from the temple windows, cutting goblins down from the wall, reaping them as they entered the courtyard. Shortbows answered, crudely-fashioned arrows cracking against temple stone blocks.

  Oplexu shook Mannatus by the shoulder. “Hold them off—”

  Something yanked Oplexu’s shoulder back. Annoyed, he put his hand up, cursing. Fingertips encountered blood and an arrow shaft still quivering in the meat between his shoulder and collarbone. He frowned, felt both the beginnings of nausea and confusion that he didn’t yet feel any pain. He looked at Mannatus, whose eyes went wide with horror, his prayers stilled now.

  Oplexu, starting to swoon, whispered, “Save them, Mannatus.”

  Another blow glanced off Oplexu’s chest, slammed him backwards onto the floor. Looking down, he saw a second arrow in his chest. Strangely, still no pain. Mannatus kneeled over him, babbling, tearing out his hair. Oplexu coughed, tasted choking, coppery weight in his mouth. He struggled for air, for words.

  “Save them...”

  Darkness took Al Oplexu.

  MIDDAY DRAGGED INTO afternoon on Lake Remordan, a southeasterly breeze driving the overcast that had plagued the morning into tatters through which the sun occasionally prodded its brilliance. Gentle calls amongst the crew of the Remordan Flitter broke the silence, as did the crackle of lateen sails as the galley raced ahead of shallow whitecaps for Eredynn, its oars still for now, while the wind was good.

  Jayce sat against the port gunwale, breathing deep of the lake air, savoring its crisp chill in his lungs with eyes closed. The sea of the cosmos rippled in his nerves as he finally managed a trance, sampled the unearthly currents beneath the material plane. He frowned inwardly; what should have been an ocean of placidity was instead stirred and growing choppier, as Lake Remordan would before an approaching storm.

  The creak of deck planks brought Jayce out of the shallow meditation. Near the bow of the Flitter, Illah paced, hand on the grip of her saber, face tight with anxieties she would not voice but could be sensed, crackling about her taught muscles. Jayce thought about her continued nightmares, thought about the uneasy cosmos, too.

  “Do you think she’s beautiful?”

  Jayce nearly jumped at Danelle’s voice, had been so self-absorbed he hadn’t heard his apprentice’s approach. He glanced at the girl, noted the hard glare she had fixed upon Illah. “I admire her,” he replied after a cautious pause. “I respect her dedication, endurance, and discipline.”

  “But you do think she’s pretty?”

  Jayce began to deny it, but decided his apprentice would know the lie for what it was. Allowing himself to watch the graceful curves of Illah’s form, the hard, well-trained muscles that wasted no energy, and the glimmer as the breeze tousled her auburn mane, Jayce sighed and admitted, “She is a lovely woman.”

  “A half-elf,” Danelle corrected him with a touch of the bitterness Jayce had noted before.

  “You are lovely, too, my dear,” Jayce said, meeting the girl’s gaze.

  “Maybe I should serve the gods, as she does,” Danelle murmured.

  “You serve them by being what you are,” Jayce replied. “And what you are is a fine pupil who will one day make a superb wizard.”

  “You mean a freak,” she spat and looked away.

  Jayce frowned, sensing a crest in her bitter wave and wearying of it. “Danelle, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re lying. Don’t think I haven’t seen your anger. Why do you brood so?”

  “Is it wrong to want to be a girl—not a wizard’s apprentice; just a girl?” she asked, turning green, flashing eyes back upon him, astir with frustration and a hurt Jayce didn’t totally understand. “Is it wrong to want a life without the dark knowledge, the visions of the things we have encountered, the things we know are hiding in the shadows? A life that is just mine?”

  Jayce thought of a similar argument with his father, ages past in Verrax, when he was Osepu Zerro’Isutep, a young, scared boy about to enter the Temple of the Sun, not return again into the warm light of the world for six years. He sighed, hoped his words would comfort more than his father’s had. “No, it isn’t wrong, my dear.” He touched her arm and looked into her eyes. “But we are what we are.”

  With a snarl, Danelle yanked her arm free. “You don’t know what I am!” She spun and stomped aft along the galley walkway, between the oarsman’s pits.

  Jayce watched her go with an ache in his chest. Well...at least I still have time, he thought. He had marched into the Sun Temple with only bitter words for his sire. When he emerged from the shadows of that place, then an Acolyte of the Sun, full of the pride of his talents and seasoned with the knowledge that there are more important things than a young man’s hurt, his father was dead and with him went Jayce’s hopes for healing.

  “Problems?” Illah asked, coming up from the bow.

  Jayce turned to her. A shaft of sunlight momentarily lit her smiling face and he recalled his admission to Danelle. She is lovely. He cleared his throat to hide the thoughts. “Umm...no. Just a young girl’s moods, I think.”

  “Don’t be too hard on her,” Illah said, patting his arm. She’d been doing that a lot more of late, some of the ivory Yntuil statue she had been when they first met softening into a woman he could know and call friend. “She’s been asked to face a lot, these last couple months.”

  “I have had to be both father and master to her,” Jayce said. “I fear I am more Master than father, most of the time.”

  Illah smiled and touched his arm again. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

  Calls came down from the Flitter’s crow’s nest. Jayce and Illah turned to see the buildings of Eredynn swelling into view, a jagged mismatching of stone walls and spires crowding their hilltop perch. The galley foreman barked orders and men scrambled to the oars while others worked to haul down the sails. A kettle drum thudded once then settled into the cadence that would govern the
oars’ stroke. The galley picked up speed, gathering itself for the last dash into the city.

  As the craft drew near the Eredynn docks, Jayce’s brows knit. Ships crowded the piers, flying the banners of settlements as near as Threshold and as distant as Farawn. But it was not the dizzying variety of craft nor their number that set Jayce’s heat to an uneasy thumping; it was the mobs harrying each vessel’s loading ramp, voices raised with a tone of desperation while hands offered up riches as bribes, even held out squalling children to thaw merchants’ professional cool.

  “Something’s wrong,” Illah said.

  Jayce didn’t comment, watching the scene around them as the Flitter jockeyed for a berth. It exchanged places with a shallow-drafted barge out of Threshold, its deck packed not with the crates and barrels of goods bartered for in Eredynn, but with clots of families, many finely-clad, affluent citizens clutching their loved ones to them as they cast hard glances up at the walls of their city. The air felt tight with their tension, with something that bordered on panic.

  “It’s an exodus,” Jayce said at last. The thump of his heart accelerated, pumping sick unease into his stomach. He exchanged a glance with Illah. “We must get news immediately.”

  With maddening delay, the galley crew got their ship moored to the docks. Already the crowds were at its ramp as it was extended to the pier. Merchants in gaudy colors that belied the fear in their eyes shook bags of coins or filled the air with their competing promises of bribes.

  Jayce shouldered his knapsack, made certain Danelle was following, and tromped down the ramp. He spied a man nearby, a well-to-do moneylender he recognized from that night weeks ago in the Loving Imp, and made his way through the throng to him.

  “Master Barzen, isn’t it?” Jayce asked the man.