Dirge for a Necromancer (25 page)

“You should be resting,” he said. His face was hard, made all the more severe by the blue light his eyes cast. The light made shadows appear in unfortunate places all over his countenance, and it made him look at least twenty years older.

“I don’t need to rest—I’m perfectly fine,” said Raettonus, and he couldn’t keep the sourness out of his voice. “You really oughtn’t to be up here. You could get injured.”

“This isn’t the first siege I’ve ever been in,” Slade said, lowering his visor. “I defended a much smaller castle when I was just a squire and managed to live through that. Between the skills I’ve picked up since then and my ability to do magic, I think I’ll be just fine. You don’t have to worry about me, Raettonus.”

Raettonus frowned. “It’s easy for you to say that,” Raettonus said. “But I’ve watched you die before. I’m not going to see you die a second time while I can still help it.”

Behind his helm and visor, Slade’s expression was hidden. He turned his face toward the battlefield. “What is this we’re fighting?” he wondered. “I asked Dohrleht and Maeleht, but they said they didn’t know. No one else speaks English…”

Raettonus shrugged half-heartedly. “They’re just monsters,” he said. “There are a lot of those here.”

The centaurs loosed another barrage of arrows, and Slade raised his hands and shot a burst of magic to accompany them. Raettonus heard the clatter of the arrows on the shields below, accompanied by a flash of light from where Slade’s projectile had landed. “We’ve been at this all night,” Sir Slade said. Inside his helmet, his voice sounded distant and rang metallically. “We’re not even wearing them down.”

“That can’t be true,” said Raettonus, coming to stand beside Slade to get a better look. “What happened to the other trebuchets?”

“Lucky shots from our catapults,” said Slade. “They spent all afternoon launching fist-sized chunks of iron down there and managed to break the arms. They ran out of iron a short while after that though.”

Lorum approached them. “Magician,” he said, touching Raettonus’ shoulder lightly. “I’m glad to see you up and about. We could use your help.”

“Certainly,” said Raettonus, turning away from Slade. “What do you need?”

“Fire, and lots of it, that’d be nice,” said the centaur. His helm had an open face aside from the nose guard, as did, Raettonus suddenly noticed, all the helms of the Tahlehson soldiers. Interspersed in the line, he saw soldiers wearing a different sort of helm that closed on the cheeks and left only eye slits; it was the kind he was used to seeing, and he assumed those soldiers to be turncoat Zylekkhans.

“I can do that,” said Raettonus. A thought struck him and he turned back to Slade. “The Captain would like you inside, in the infirmary.”

“Oh, really?” asked Slade, lifting his visor. He looked from Raettonus to Lorum. “Why’s that?”

“He didn’t say. Hold on,” responded Raettonus. He addressed the centaur. “Why aren’t you using fire arrows?”

“We tried that earlier, but it didn’t seem to have much of an effect,” said Lorum. “We decided to conserve our fuel in case we came up with a better idea for it later.”

Raettonus nodded and turned to Slade. “He says he’s concerned about the injured men and just wants to be sure they’re with a skilled healer,” Raettonus told him.

Slade looked again at Lorum and then dropped his visor. “I’ll go then,” he said. With a respectful nod to the centaur, he hurried off. Lorum watched Slade go, but didn’t comment on it.

“What would you have me do?” Raettonus asked him.

“Well, I was thinking you could aid us with some magical fire,” said Lorum.

“Captain!” shouted one of the soldiers. Lorum rotated his upper body toward the young soldier, sucking his lower lip against his teeth as he did so. “They’re getting across the trench!”

Raettonus leaned over the parapets and saw that the abassy had assembled wood and stone tunnels to cover the giant maggots, which had stretched their long bodies across the ditch. Hidden beneath the tunnels, the abassy were slowly wheeling them across the maggots as a shield. “Quickly,” shouted Lorum, rearing up. “Aim for the maggots! Loose at will! Before they finish getting that armor over them!”

A thousand arrows rained on the maggots, stuck in their slick, white flesh, and clattered on top of the armored tunnels. The maggots hissed as green blood welled up around the shafts. Raettonus followed the arrows with a blast of fire. The flames struck one of the creatures, causing it to slip with a roar into the trench and be impaled on the stakes set therein. The armored tunnel and the abassy pushing it across slid forward and crashed inside the trench. Raettonus threw a few more fireballs down at the other maggots, whose heads were unprotected, as arrows thundered down like a dangerous waterfall. And then the first of the armored tunnels was across, and the abassy were beginning to file into them, bringing ladders with them. Lorum cursed quietly and gave the call for the soldiers to start dropping boulders and pitch.

War horns were echoing all across the citadel, in the halls and the courtyard and on the battlements. Arrows and hot oil came rushing out of the arrow slits along the fortress’ face. Raettonus sent a few more fireballs down to light the pitch, which left him feeling lightheaded and drained. Then he turned and retreated inside to find Brecan.

The hallways along the exterior walls were crowded with soldiers, their bows aimed outward. Braziers were set up, heating oil. Raettonus hurried past them wordlessly. Deeper into the fort, messengers galloped with intelligence and commands from higher-ups on different sides of Kaebha, or carried supplies back and forth with great haste. Dohrleht stopped Raettonus outside the doors of the infirmary, now bustling with movement and full of the pained voices of injured men.

“Tell them to let me fight,” said the centaur.

“What, this again? Get out of my way,” said Raettonus, starting around him. Dohrleht caught him by the arm.

“It’s not going to be enough. We’re going to need more soldiers,” said Dohrleht. “If I don’t fight—”

“You’re only one boy—not even a man,” said Raettonus coldly. “You think you’re going to turn the tide of battle when you can’t even run? This isn’t the sort of thing you can discreetly poison your way to victory in. Let go of me. I need to get out there. Unlike you, I’m actually worth something in a war.”

Dohrleht furrowed his brow. “At least I didn’t bring Death’s very own army to our fucking doorstep,” he said, tightening his grip. His hand was partially over a wound, and Raettonus winced and gritted his teeth as the injury reopened. “You said you can’t actually bring someone back from the dead. Is this why? Gods, did you know this would happen, and you brought him back anyway?”

“I don’t have time for this,” Raettonus said. “And I don’t think you have room to act superior. At least I never murdered my own father because some captain made bedroom eyes at me.”

The young centaur glared at Raettonus for a several long minutes. Somewhere beyond the stone walls, barely audible beneath the babble of war, a clock was ticking.

“I did what I did for the good of this fort,” said the young centaur, hissing the words out through his teeth. “I did what I did for the sake of my father’s men. It was one life or a hundred and Kurok strike me dead this instant if I made the wrong choice.”

“So you murdered your own father in cold blood for the greater good, then.” Raettonus sneered. “Bravo. Does it help you sleep at night when you tell yourself that? Or does it help you sleep at night when your beloved, lying, scheming Daeblau is railing you? Does he whisper that greater good line into your ear when he does it?”

Dohrleht narrowed his eyes and looked as though he might punch Raettonus. After a moment, however, he merely let go of the magician and silently skulked back into the infirmary. Without a second thought, Raettonus continued looking for Brecan.

In the courtyard, he found Deggho and Diahsis talking beside a gryphon who had been loaned some armor that didn’t quite fit him. As Diahsis mounted, Deggho begged him not to go fight, but the general wasn’t having any of it. He spotted Raettonus and spurred his gryphon steed across the yard to speak with him. “I suppose this’ll be done by tomorrow, this war,” he said.

“Have you seen Brecan?” asked Raettonus.

Diahsis unsheathed his gladius and a dagger. He was wearing an ornate, gilded breastplate that Raettonus didn’t find particularly suited to the situation, as well as a decorative helm of steel and dragon bone, the visor of which was carved into the fearsome face of a snarling wolf. “When I thought about how I’d die, I never imagined it’d be like this,” he continued as if Raettonus hadn’t spoken at all. “I mean, I always thought it’d be in war, certainly. Even before I was let into the army, I thought to myself, ‘Diah, some day a soldier’s going to kill you.’ Well, that’s just the sort of thing you think when you’re an elf. I didn’t think the soldier would be in the employ of Cykkus himself, however. It’s…it’s kind of an honor in a strange way. Well, hell, it’s a huge honor.”

“So you’re lurking here in the courtyard waiting to be killed?”

The general smiled wearily. “I was only getting ready and saying my farewells,” he said. “I’m going to go out like a hero should—fighting. I’m going to meet Cykkus’ army myself, ahead of the rest of my men. I don’t mind sharing the glory of the last stand with you though, Magician, if you’re headed out there as well. There are worse men to die beside, I think.”

“I beg to differ,” said Raettonus. He caught sight of Brecan across the yard, coming toward them. Raettonus waved him over.

“Oh, I was just coming to see how you were,” said Brecan. “You really shouldn’t be up—”

“I’m going out to fight,” said Raettonus. “Come over here. I’m going to need someone to ride into battle, and of course it’s going to be you.”

There was the slightest hesitation before the unicorn said, “Okay, Raet.” He knelt down for Raettonus to get on.

Once Raettonus was astride the unicorn, they started for the broken wall with Diahsis riding beside them. If his tight-mouthed gryphon was nervous about the fight, he didn’t show it. By the time they reached the fissure in the citadel wall, maggots and rats were climbing up through the break, barely held off by the soldiers there. Raettonus’ heart beat wildly at the sight of the rats as he and Diahsis flew over them through the empty air, and his vision began to blur.

And then they were rising into the sky, high above the squirming army below. “Rats, of all the things it could’ve been,” he mumbled to Brecan.

They banked hard to the side as abassy arrows came flying at them, Diahsis and his gryphon banking with them in perfect coordination. In the firelight and the pulsing blue glow of the mountains, Diahsis’ dragon bone helm flashed queerly. He flew close to Raettonus and said something with a grin, but his voice was lost to wind and battle. Maggots were crawling against the fortress walls, their stunted legs cracking the stones as they dug into them, their spit frothing out of their mouths. Where the noxious secretions touched the wall, the stone bubbled and began to dissolve. Diahsis dug his knees into the gryphon’s sides, and they split from Raettonus and Brecan, heading toward the maggots. Raettonus wheeled Brecan around to follow, drawing his rapier.

They came in low at one of the maggots, magician following general. Diahsis slashed it across the back, drawing its attention. Blood welled up onto its slimy flesh as it turned with a screech toward Diahsis. Raettonus followed after, directing a blast of fire toward it. It screeched again and fell, crushing several abassy on the ground beneath.

Another wave of arrows came at them. The gryphon broke upward while Brecan spun into a dive. He came down close on the abassy soldiers, and they struck upward with spears and lances. With an unrivaled grace, Brecan wheeled and turned in the air and weaved around their attacks. He kicked a couple of them in the head before turning upward. His long tail snapped behind him like a lash, breaking the wooden shafts of a few spears.

Miasmic arrows filled the air all around them, as did the normal arrows from the soldiers in the fortress beside them. Brecan dipped and swung, avoiding them neatly. He was like a dancer whose stage was war.

In the air above them, Diahsis’ steed let out an agonized cry and plummeted, flapping one tattered wing uselessly. It crashed down hard, the general rolling from its back. He was on his feet in a moment, dagger and gladius at the ready. The gryphon twitched and tried to get up, but something was broken in it, and it could only flounder and make a few gargling screeches in a language Raettonus didn’t know as it expired slowly. An abassy rushed at Diahsis, but he parried its lance with his dagger and chopped out its throat with his gladius before wheeling around to catch another one in the joint of its leg so hard the chain mail it wore broke.

“Christ,” said Raettonus as the abassy crowded around Diahsis. “Get me down there. He’s going to be up to his neck in those metal-mouths any second.”

“Got it, Raet,” Brecan chirped, looping through the air to avoid an arrow. Raettonus couldn’t see whether it was one of the abassy’s or the centaurs’, and he didn’t suppose it much mattered.

Brecan roared fiercely as he came at the abassy around Diahsis, diverting their attention for a moment. The general immediately took advantage of the distraction to slit a couple of his enemies’ unprotected throats in quick succession. As soon as Brecan’s cloven hooves touched the ground, Raettonus sprang off his back. Fire danced spontaneously to life across the blade of his rapier as he placed his back against Diahsis’.

“Magician!” said Diahsis in the same tone one might use to greet an old friend they hadn’t expected to see at a pub. “You came down to help me! I’m touched!”

“Yeah, well, it’s not going to do all that much good,” said Raettonus. “We need to get back into the air.”

“I don’t think your unicorn can hold us both.”

“He’s stronger than he looks,” said Raettonus.

An abassy lunged at them, and Raettonus put his sword through its eye. At his back, Diahsis caught another one under the chin with his dagger. Brecan was separated from them by the writhing mass of abassy and was fiercely kicking and biting at the creatures. And then more of the abassy filled in the gap between Raettonus and Brecan, and the magician lost all sight of the unicorn.