Empire of the Saviours (Chronicles of/Cosmic Warlord 1) (55 page)

‘Downright rude, holy one.’

Their way forward was blocked by dozens of men bristling with weapons. Jillan couldn’t bear to turn back and face the leering Saint. They mustn’t lose their momentum or all was lost. He began to summon the storm – it rose slowly within him at first, but the wind beyond the tunnel swirled with eagerness, like a prowling beast. Freda suddenly burst out of the ground in front of the men before them and began to lay about her. A Hero’s jaw was dislocated, while another’s chest was caved in with a mighty fist. The men fell back, but were well trained and quickly brought their weapons that had the reach to bear. A net twirled overhead. Freda stamped down, cracking the ground open and toppling more men.

Jillan raised his hands, sparks dancing around his fingertips. The stones at Freda’s neck shone and she roared with renewed strength.

‘Hold the line,’ barked Skathis from behind them. ‘Close in on them.’

A shocking blast. The sound of a sun-metal horn detonating all around them, unbalancing Jillan and his companions as well as a good number of the Heroes. Jillan’s magic was snuffed out and Freda’s eardrums burst. Cracks shot up her arms and legs and she wailed in agony, though none could hear it for the clarion call that rang and rang in the tunnel, echoing over and over and, if anything, building rather than fading away.

Jillan was on the floor. Dizzily, he looked around him. Maria was on hands and knees retching. Jedadiah staggered as if drunk, his eyes unfocused. Freda lay on her back, broken as if she was nothing more than the rubble of the tunnel floor. Heroes who had been just beyond the end of the tunnel picked their way forward, shafts of sun-metal levelled at the rock woman.

‘Leave her!’ came the Saint’s mental command. ‘I must have the boy. Nail him to the ground, quickly!’

‘You promised you would not harm him,’ Maria coughed.

‘Ha! And what did you promise, wench? You have betrayed both the Empire and yourself.’

Jillan groggily called to the taint to help them, but it had been obliterated by the sudden power of the Saint. Only scraps and remnants remained. Jillan grabbed at them frantically as he turned his eyes towards the monster he now realised had haunted his dreams his entire life. It drooled hungrily at him, its hulking back brushing the top of the tunnel. The weeping sockets where its eyes had once been stared back at him knowingly.

‘Do not fight me, Jillan,’ it crooned. ‘Give yourself to me and I will spare your parents. I offer you the blessing of the Saviours. I offer you Salvation.’

It intended to devour him. He knew it now. He scrabbled for the broken shards of his magic and drew from his core, from his own essence.

Saint Azual sensed Jillan stirring himself towards resistance and raised a sun-bright demon-horn to his lips once more, its bell the yawning mouth of a gargoyle. It was the weapon that had shattered Wayfar, and now it would decimate this defiant boy and his contemptible parents.

Freda felt things inside her snap and rupture.

You will die here
, mourned the wind,
unless you come to me now
.

But my friends!
she cried.

You have done what you can for them, given them everything you have. You could not have done more. To stay now would be an empty gesture and perhaps cowardly. It is harder to continue, I know. You want to die here with your friends, do you not?

I want to save them!

You cannot. So now what will you do? What of your promise to Norfred? What of your debt to the rock god? What of your promise to Anupal? Will you continue with these empty promises and gestures, Freda? Will you agree to an empty existence and meaningless death?

Always there was the guilt and the debt, always a demand for payment. Where did it come from? Would she never be free of it? Should she run from it, stand against it or submit to it? Did it matter what she did?

Blood bubbled up in her throat and her breathing became erratic. She was dying, she knew.

It does matter, Freda
, the wind soughed.
Why else would Jillan struggle so? Of course it matters. I know it is more painful to continue, but if you decide to take on that pain, then your existence will be more than an empty gesture or promise, and your eventual death will be more than meaningless
.

Forgive me!
she pleaded with the world and began to sink into the earth, where she would become one with the bedrock and allow it to remake her so that she might then begin the long and painful crawl up to the temple.

Jillan did not hesitate, lashing out with everything he’d been able to gather just as the horn began to sound once more. Lightning arced through the tunnel, clawing at Heroes and leaping for the despised Saint. The horn’s energy intercepted it and the air between them boiled. A Hero tottered into the space and his armour sloughed off with his skin. Hot air burned the inside of his lungs and blood came sizzling out of every part of him. His eyes popped and the jelly inside them caught fire. He then all but vaporised, only a smear of carbon left on the floor showing he’d ever been a living, breathing creature.

Eldritch fire poured along floor and ceiling from where Jillan stood, setting light to a handful of Heroes and driving the others back. The flame licked around the Saint, but the energy coming off him kept it back. Jillan’s wild magic howled and spiralled, whipping the roiling energy in the middle of the tunnel into a maelstrom, lines of power flying out in all directions, striking rock, burning holes through torsos and turning the place into an oven. The sound of the horn was drowned out and then an explosion tore out of both ends of the tunnel, flattening everyone and everything inside.

Concussion waves. Silence. Jillan realised he’d lost his hearing. He’d landed on top of his father, who’d instinctively been sheltering Maria with his frame. Jillan looked down at his glowing, smouldering armour and realised it had saved them from much of the damage. Others had not been so lucky, judging by the charred and smoking remains covering the floor. Saint Azual was holding up the arm which had held the terrible horn. The sun-metal instrument had melted in the crucible of their confrontation and engulfed the Saint’s hand. The metal appeared to be eating into his wrist, and now his forearm. He might have been screaming, or shouting orders, but Jillan couldn’t hear a thing, not even the taint. A burned Captain Skathis ignored his own pain, stumbled over to his master and sliced through the holy lower limb, the soldier’s sun-metal blade instantly sealing the wound.

Saint Azual actually smiled. He gesticulated with his stump towards Jillan.

Jillan tried to move, but he was completely spent, the life energy within him flickering and stuttering alarmingly. The roof of the tunnel crashed down on him, and then he realised he was being lifted. His father – just like the time he had found him in Godsend. His mother was under his father’s other arm. Jillan wanted to sob in relief, but lacked the strength even for that.

His head jolted up and down as if he were a rag doll. Had he blacked out for a second? They were outside the tunnel. Heroes were running up the slope towards them from all directions. The sky was a sheet of steel above them, the grey wall of Hyvan’s Cross the entire horizon. They were still trapped.

Jillan was weaker than a newborn babe, but he realised something of his hearing had returned, for he could hear the unsteady crunch of his father’s steps and the shouts of the soldiers charging towards them.

Jedadiah put down his wife and son, stepped forward and squared his shoulders.

‘Samnir’s sword,’ Jillan whispered, the wind whisking the words to his father’s ears.

Jedadiah spun back, grabbed the hilt at Jillan’s waist and had the sword up just in time to meet the first oncoming blade. The sun-metal of Samnir’s sword sheered straight through the other weapon as if it weren’t there and took off the Hero’s head in the same stroke.

Jedadiah booted the headless corpse back into the legs of the man coming on behind. He moved right and drove his sword point forward through a shield and into another man’s chest. A Hero with sword held high came in from the left at the same time – Jedadiah knew he could not avoid him, so shifted his weight to move straight at him and then dropped his left shoulder to catch him in the stomach. With a mighty heave of his left arm, the hunter hurled the soldier over his head and back. The Hero hit the stony ground behind Jedadiah as Samnir’s sword came free of the other man. Jedadiah fell back and plunged the blade over his right shoulder and straight into the Hero’s gut.

‘Beware!’ Maria shouted as five more Heroes arrived while Jedadiah was still on the ground. She spat arcane words and inscribed patterns in the air. Three of the soldiers stopped in confusion as the air sparkled and refracted before their eyes, but the other two had come from the sides and not been caught by her cantrip.

One stabbed at Maria as she rolled. The blade sliced into her side but not deeply enough to finish her. She cried out and Jedadiah glanced in panic towards her. The soldier coming in was experienced enough to pick that precise moment to attack.

The point of Jedadiah’s blade dropped slightly as he made to lunge to save Maria. The soldier thrust in with his own sun-metal sword over the top of his enemy’s blade. Jillan’s eyes went wide with horror. He tried to stop time; willed the blade to stop moving towards his father; prayed to Wayfar to blow it from its path; and watched as it moved agonisingly closer. Every instant was a lifetime lost. Should he close his eyes?

The Hero suddenly stood straighter, as if coming to attention. His hand came up to his front, as if looking to brush something invisible away before an inspection. Then he pitched forward, an arrow sunk deep in the middle of his back. There was a whistling noise and another shaft took down the Hero attacking Maria.

Aspin waved up to them and shouted ‘Come on!’ before quickly reaching to his quiver again. Heroes surrounded the mountain warrior, Ash and Thomas. Like Aspin, Ash worked with a bow, while Thomas hurled throwing knives with practised dexterity. There were archers all along the wall trying to take down Jillan’s companions, but the wind bedevilled them and made a mockery of their aim. One sudden gust even turned an arrow back on its owner and skewered him through the eye. Yet a few of the arrows were tipped with sun-metal, and these cut through the air with fearsome power and accuracy, causing the wind to scream in agony and collapse in places. It was only Ash’s perfect timing that allowed him to avoid such missiles at the last moment. Aspin and Thomas, by contrast, were forced to retreat behind the cover of the wagon, so their ability to keep back the press of the enemy was severely hampered.

More and more Heroes were arriving with every moment, all driven by the voice of their Saint, now booming across the city. ‘Kill them all, save for the boy!’ A band led by Captain Skathis emerged from the tunnel behind Jillan and his parents.

‘Look at them all. We’ll never make it!’ Maria cried as Jedadiah dispatched the three Heroes she’d bewitched.

‘Oh, but I beg to differ,’ crowed a golden youth descending from on high.

‘What is this? An angel?’ Jedadiah gasped.

‘Far from it,’ Jillan scowled. ‘But he must help us.’

‘I shall ignore such surliness, Jillan. These would be your parents, yes? I am glad to meet you at last. Jillan has told me so much about you. Well, Jillan, aren’t you going to introduce us?’

‘There’s no time!’

‘There’s always time for manners, young Jillan. Oh, very well. If you would be so good as to run, I will ensure no harm comes to you. You, there, the father! I suspect you’ll need to carry Jillan. That’s it. Jillan can take the sword again. Off we go then.’

They raced down the slope. The Peculiar glided ahead of them, his arms and hands long flat blades that allowed him to take to the air one moment and scythe down Heroes the next. When a Hero raised a weapon in defence or to strike, the Peculiar would become a mist, sink his hands inside the combatant and then solidify again so that he could tear his victim inside out. The wind seemed reluctant to blow in his favour at first, holding him up on several occasions, but then it changed tack and moved him from foe to foe with increasing speed.

A squad of six Heroes came in attack formation for the Peculiar. ‘Lay down your weapons and kneel to me!’ the golden one thrummed and they stopped, mesmerised.

‘I command here!’ boomed Saint Azual’s mental voice, reclaiming his men, creating a lull in the wind and tumbling the Peculiar to the ground so that he landed in an undignified heap.

The Peculiar took a moment to straighten his helmet, stand and rearrange the folds of his robe. ‘This really won’t do,’ he announced as the six men bore down on him once more. ‘Jillan and family, carry on without me. I will be with you momentarily.’

A blade sliced down at him and he made himself impossibly thin so that it missed. One blade came flat and low while another came flat and high. He became a winged serpent and snaked forward through the gap between them. He lashed right and left, sinking fangs and venom into the forearm of one and the thigh of another. All but instantly, capillaries around the bites showed green as lethal poison spread along limbs and into hearts. Twisting like the serpent, the men fell dead.

The Peculiar landed beyond the three remaining men, a beautiful youth once more. He spat. ‘Eugh! Salty! You men should really watch your diets.’

But then Saint Azual entered the fray, leaping out of the tunnel and straight for the Peculiar in a single bound. The Saint was joined by the fast-arriving Captain Skathis, and the Peculiar was suddenly threatened by enemies from above and below. The Peculiar somersaulted backwards, just avoiding the Saint’s taloned swipe. Captain Skathis rushed in and the Peculiar became a mist. As ghostly hands reached for the veteran’s chest, the Captain’s sword flicked up through the Peculiar’s head and thrust the helmet of sun-metal off his brow, sending the headpiece rolling away down the crag.

‘Argggggggh!’ the Peculiar cried, his tongue elongating, vomiting out and running all the way to the ground. He clutched at his temples, his hands pushing through his skull as if it were mush. His knees buckled and then slipped; his thighs thumped end-on into the ground and then split open. His elbows drooped plastically and his jaw yawned down past his waist. His eyes ran like liquid down his cheeks. ‘So many voices!’ he belched. ‘I am everyone!’