Nightlord: Sunset (70 page)

“Sir?”

“Now, sergeant.”  We looked at each other for three heartbeats.  I had an idea and I was in charge, right?  I could see him wondering if he wanted to demand an explanation.  I don’t think he had a lot of confidence in the one remaining officer.

Firebrand glared at him.  The sergeant felt it.  His expression was a study in changes.

He saluted and gave the orders.  I settled down to sit and rest.

The sun was about two hours from setting.  With a little luck, we wouldn’t have to hold them off long.  Because
after
sunset, I would feel a lot better.  Then we’d see just how Horatius did it. 

Once the materials arrived, I started several of the wounded on making Molotov cocktails.  A clay jug full of kerosene with a rag tied around the neck is all they were.  It wouldn’t do anybody it landed on any good, and no one who wears fur, long hair, and a beard wants to run through a flaming puddle.

We ran out of jars before we ran out of oil.  I had the rest of the flammable oil poured into one of the grease cauldrons.  The oil they normally used in the cauldrons was just boiling-hot and sticky; mixed with kerosene, it would make a reasonably good napalm.

All this took time.  Time they were willing to give us.  Maybe the wizards were encouraging caution.  I don’t know, but I bet the sting from my counterspell lasted for hours.

We were halfway to the sunset line when the viksagi finally started their offensive.  We watched them form up, an open mob of guys shouting and gesturing at us, at least until they attacked.  Men came charging across the bridge, round shields held over their heads, and we shot as fast as we could.  They didn’t wear armor, aside from hides, and they didn’t form a very good shield-wall; the shields were used more like umbrellas than overlapping scales.  Men went down before they even reached the bridge.  They came on, pressing forward at a lumbering dogtrot as they funneled their numbers into the narrow strait of the stonework.  From the way they moved, and glimpses through the waving shields, I could see they had ladders held low, carried by half a dozen men at a time.

Hanging back were slingers and archers, hailing dangerous missiles at us; their weapons had much less range than ours, but they depended on the threat of the advancing horde to draw our fire.  It was not nearly as dangerous as it could have been; the builders of the keep had given the defenders a wall both high and thick, with good defenses on the battlements.  We suffered a few minor wounds from their missiles, but nothing more than that.  Had the top of the wall been packed with defenders, I daresay it would have hurt us more.

Below, more dead and wounded hit the stones, some howling, others gasping, a few dropping silently.  They tangled the feet of those behind a little, but not enough to matter.  We shot and we shot and we shot, but they reached the gates.  The scaling ladders they carried tilted up to rest against the battlements over the great bronze gates.

I gave the signal, and Pent tilted the hot oil out onto the causeway.  Many screamed and many more fell in the slick mess, but others started up the ladders.

We shot or cut apart those who came up anyway rather than burn, and then shot the ones who were running away from the conflagration at our gate.

During the respite, the ladders burned away and fell in flames.  The respite wasn’t long; fresh troops were bringing up the ram to the edge of arrow range.  Oxen couldn’t pull it closer; we would just shoot them.  But the ram was almost a wheeled building.  It had a heavy wooden framework with a sturdy roof; it was already covered in snow, but they threw more on top while they unhitched the oxen.  I could see one end of a tree, banded over and around with iron, poking out through a hole in the front.  Once they unhitched the oxen from the front, brawny men got under the roof and started pushing.

It rolled slowly forward and there wasn’t much to be done about it, at least not with what we had on hand.  We fired flaming arrows at it, but the roof was covered in wet hides under the snow.  We shot anyway.  When they came close enough, we threw the firebombs; the roof caught and began to burn.  The viksagi reversed their approach in a hurry and worked like mad to put their ram out.

Shortly afterward, they rolled forward again.  We threw more firebombs, but they flicked to the sides before they hit, only to fall into the river.  A magical shield protected the ram.  There had to be a wizard under that canopy with the troops.

“Aim in front of it!” I shouted.  “Put your bombs on the bridge!  Build a fire in front of it!”  A second later, we had a nice blaze going.  Nobody under the ram wanted to march through that.

They ground to a halt; the ram darn near blocked the entire width of the bridge.  They waited.  The fire was only kerosene, after all, and the bridge was stone.  It would burn out shortly.

Brynon came over and watched the ram with me.

“I don’t suppose you’re up to a cavalry charge, my lord?”

“I’m feeling better, but not that much better,” I countered.  “What I wouldn’t give for two dozen men in armor.”

“And two dozen more of those things you ride,” he added, eyeing the ram.  It was just a matter of time before we ran out of oil, and the viksagi could afford to wait all night.

“A point.  But even if I had the statues to enchant, the riders wouldn’t stand up to the…”

He looked at me as I trailed off.  I’d just had another meteorite impact in the forebrain.

“My lo—” he began as I turned away.

“
Bronze!
” I shouted.  I felt much better; my voice echoed in the courtyard.  Seconds later, she emerged into the sunlight.  If we survived, I’d apologize to the stablemaster for the stable doors.  To Brynon, I said, “Prepare to open the gate!”  I turned back to Bronze as he ran down to untimber the doors.  “I’m not up to a ride,” I called, “but I hope you’re up for a war.”

She tossed her head and let out a steam-whistle scream.  Smoke started to wisp from her nostrils.

I took it for a “Yes, that would be lovely.”

“When the gate comes open,
kill that ram!
”

With six men cranking at the winches, the gates creaked and groaned and shuddered open just as the flames started burning down.  Viksagi reinforcements charged forward when they saw the gates start to move; I think they were expecting cavalry.  They jammed up behind the ram, trying to flow around it, but the best they could do was a shuffling, single-file line on each side of it.

They weren’t expecting Bronze.

Bronze rang like a bell with every hoofbeat, charging hell-for-leather across the stonework.  She reached the ram and went right through the front of it.  I heard shrieks.

I missed seeing her attack a manor house.  I didn’t miss a second of this.

She was perfect.  I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud.  Men hacked at her with axes, which bounced off or shattered.  Hooves flashed like glints of sunlight.  Flames shot from her nostrils to ignite the underpinnings of the ram.  Men shouted and hammered and hacked and threw themselves on her or out of her way.  The attackers gave her a few dents and dings, but that merely attracted her attention.  But, attacking or fleeing… either way, it did them no good. 

If there was a wizard under that siege engine, he ran or he died.  The spell protecting it failed and I was quick to encourage the flames already there.  I saw spells building, dangerous, damaging ones of lightning and ice, to melt or freeze my horse.  The wizards were taking a hand in things.  But my vision is better than a mortal man’s.  I saw them building and I struck them, grounding out their power and wasting it.  It was difficult, and it was tiring, but that’s my horse they were trying to kill.  I won’t stand for it.

“That’s it!” I called to her.  “Time to come back!  Back!” I shouted.

Bronze didn’t listen, or didn’t hear.  She stayed in there, slashing with her hooves, kicking madly, breathing fire and bellowing smoke.  Anything still moving was a target, and she buried metal in flesh time and again.  Finally, nothing moved except the roaring flames of the ram.  I shouted at her a few more times until she tossed her head at me, as if to say, “I hear you.  Stop shouting.”  I gave up and just kept an eye out for magical unpleasantness.

The viksagi ran like hell.  Or, to be technical and proper, Bronze fought them back to the end of the bridge and they elected to break off the attack.  Bronze snorted a blast of flame after them—contemptuously, I thought.  She turned and walked through the flaming ruins, back across the bridge.  Walked, despite hurled missiles—which merely bounced off with little more than a scratch to show for it.  It was her insult to the whole army, with her tail flicking as though to swat away flies.  She left behind a bonfire of logs and hides where once there had been a siege engine.

We cranked the gates shut and let the flames block the bridge.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12
TH

A
s sunset approached, the remains of the ram were still burning brightly; it promised to be a good fire for most of the night.  I went inside to visit the toilet; it’s a good spot to be alone.  Not only did I wait out the sunset there, I also cast a few spells.  Most of them were personal defenses, but I also wrapped a spell across my eyes to shift infrared up into the visible range—invisible IR goggles—and I tried, carefully, to summon up a fog.

Bronze went on a sortie against the ram; with her help, I was going on a sortie against the wizards.

Once I was dead and cleaned up, Hellas helped me into my armor; I now understand why knights have squires.  Inconvenient stuff, armor.  But tonight, at least, I was glad to have it.  It made me feel a little better.  I headed out to the courtyard and climbed aboard Bronze.

“Gentlemen!” I shouted.  “Open the gate.”

“No!” Hellas cried, seizing my boot.  “My lord, you mustn’t!”

“You can not, sir!” Brynon agreed.  “You can’t abandon the keep!  Let me ride out.”

Firebrand glowed for a second, maybe as a warning, then burst into flame.  I had nothing to do with it, but I appreciated the theatrics.

“Oh, but I can and I must,” I replied, shouting up to the sergeant.  “I’m not abandoning the keep; I’m defending it.  If we wait, we lose!”

He frowned thunderously but held his tongue.  A moment later, he clapped a couple of men on the shoulders and sent them down to the courtyard and the gate.

I smiled down at
Hellas.  “You’ve been a great help to me, and I thank you for it.  If I open a school, as I hope someday I may, it will be my pleasure to have you for an assistant and a pupil.  But for now, you must let me go.”

She did, reluctantly, and they cranked open the gate.  I told Firebrand to damp it down until we got to the wizards.  It seemed irritated, but obeyed.

I’m getting better at bravado.  I wasn’t sure in the least I would make it to the wizards.

The idea, for me, was to nail the wizards.  They didn’t know I was the only wizard in the keep, otherwise they could have done any number of unpleasant things to the remaining defenders.  All they knew was their earlier seeing-spell was hammered like a glass nail.  Prudence is a good quality in a wizard.

And, being prudent, they would be working on a way to neutralize Bronze.  I can’t have that.

One good thing about my sortie was the potential to rout a whole army.  If the wizards went down, the rest of the army would be much easier to deal with.  Hidden in a fog, they would be uncoordinated and uncertain.  This would act in my favor and allow me to kill anyone nearby without worrying about masses of slings and spears.  With Bronze to provide mobility on the battlefield, I thought I could whip tendrils through a lot of people, kill some, terrify the rest, send most of them running, and kill anyone who stayed to fight.

Nice plan.  What bothered me was the old maxim:  “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

I was afraid.  It would be my first war.

I galloped out through the opening gate.  Everyone on the wall stood up and saluted with whatever blade was handy; Verril held an arrow, point up, in his fist.  That, at least, made me feel a little better.

We thundered ringingly over the fog-shrouded bridge and hurdled the bonfire on the far side in one great leap.  We paused in the darkness and fog beyond to get bearings.  I looked through the fog with thermal vision, trying to spot the wizards’ campfire.  Things looked a bit strange through my spell; everything was a pearly gray mist beyond fifty feet or so, with an overlay of colored figures.  The people were human-shaped blobs of dull red and orange; the campfires were bright yellow.

Something out there was five times the size of a man and blazed white.  I tried to remember anything besides the bonfire that could look like that.  I didn’t really remember anything in that area, though.  Whatever it was, I’d get to it later.  First things first.

Bronze changed gaits, stepping as delicately as she could to minimize the noise.  Firebrand stayed unlit, but I could see the yellow-white glow of heat in my thermal sight.  I guided Bronze toward the campfire I’d picked out from the wall; I was fairly sure it was the one the wizards were clustered around.

A sentry shouted at us; I have no idea what he asked, but he didn’t ask again.  Bronze dropped into her regular gait like a semi shifting gears and I took his head off with Firebrand.  We rumbled up to full speed and charged through the scattered encampment.  I spread my tendrils out, reaching as far as I could and drawing as hard as possible on anything we touched.  Bronze held a straight line for our target and went through men, equipment, and carts on the way.

Screaming started almost immediately.  People did not have time to scream at seeing us; between the night and the fog, we were invisible.  Instead, they screamed when my tendrils touched them and cut cold lines through their living spirits.

There was nothing gentle or kind about this.  I was out to cause terror.  If they ran, they would live.  If they fought, I would die.  Killing soldiers wasn’t as important as making them go away.

The wizards, on the other hand, were too dangerous.  As Brynon said, I was in charge.  The keep was my responsibility until someone superior to me in authority took over.  It was my job to make sure the men under my command survived long enough for me to be relieved.

I doubted the wizards wanted to die, but they weren’t leaving me a lot of options.  That irks me.  I don’t like killing.  But, since it was a choice between them or us…

They heard the cries and they knew something was up.  I can only assume they used some sort of magical vision as well; they attacked before I even entered the light of their fire, which resolved my moral dilemma nicely.

Lightning danced in the sky and came down, missing me to the left and the right, never quite striking; all my hair stood up from the static charge as my defensive spells deflected the bolts.  A ball of orange fire rolled grandly through the air toward me, roaring, and I pricked it like a soap bubble on Firebrand’s point; Firebrand gulped it and blazed into vivid flames.  Banshee screams assailed my ears and I was deafened; I hadn’t anticipated a sonic attack.  One spell pierced my heart with a biting coldness and I knew it froze solid in my chest.  Freezing vital organs was another thing I hadn’t anticipated, but also didn’t much mind; I’d thaw by morning.

Bronze lowered her head and dug in, racing for them; that ball of fire had cut a clear lane through the fog.  I shouted and raised Firebrand; it streamed fire like a banner in the wind of our passage.  The wizards stood and stared, dumbfounded at my survival, and I rode them down.  A fistful of tendrils lashed at them, draining whatever I could from all of them and ruining any attempts at spells.  Firebrand rose and fell, chopping and searing, while Bronze cornered like a barrel-racer to bring me to every one of my targets.  As Firebrand cut down one, it freed tendrils to lash into others.  Then another died by the sword, and a third, while the rest shuddered and swayed; a pair went to their knees, gasping.  I killed another with a cut through the neck before finishing the rest by drinking their lives.

I dismounted and took their blood, lifting bodies and drinking from their throats; I was sure there would be a lot of hacking and killing before the night was over.  It’s quicker to drink the blood of a living man; the heart pumps it for you.  One has to squeeze the blood out of a dead man, but it can be done.

Bronze kept busy, circling me for the moment and killing anyone that came too close.  The encampment was in chaos as people shouted and ran about.  I drew the mist around us, thickening it, and Firebrand dimmed; my sword was waiting and watchful, like a cat waiting for bugs to show themselves. 

Without their leaders, the mob of viksagi had no discipline, no clear chain of command to give them organization and direction.  I knew this because the wizards knew it.  They had planned this for years, this invasion of the rich, warm southlands.

I tossed aside the last husk of a wizard.  Now for an army…

I reached out with a whirlwind of dark, spell-driven tentacles, questing ever outward, like ripples spreading on a pond, touching every man I could within a considerable distance.  These I drew upon, taking what power they possessed, drinking of their spirits as a thirsty man drinks from a fountain.  I drank, and drank, and my reaching spirit swelled huge, reached even farther afield with the power drawn from many men.  Many, many men; more than a single village, more than I could easily count. They shuddered, they screamed, they fell, and they slowly died.

The viksagi have their own culture, old and rich as it is, even if they aren’t as technically or magically advanced as Rethven.  For long moments, I knew their ways as I knew my own.  They seemed to buzz and hum, frightened and confused, before they sank into silence within me.  With a spell spreading my tendrils wider than they could normally go, I took them in faster than I could assimilate them; there were seconds of time when each man was momentarily
aware
.  Then… silence.

I moved to snatch up a body, sank fangs in the neck, and drained him quickly.  Hot blood, still driven by a heart unaware of death, poured down my throat and made me strong.  Let them see now.  Let them know what they face, now that I have power.  Now they can see, now they can run.  I tossed the husk aside and summoned a wind to disperse the fog.  Let them
see
. 

As I fanged another throat, there was a profound, snarling roar.  I lifted my head, unmindful of the blood that trailed down my chin.

The second siege engine, or what I had taken to be a wagon full of it, shuddered and exploded; the blaze of heat and light was visible like a sunrise through the remains of the fog.  The wave of heat dispersed much of the concealing mist and I had a good look at what caused it.

The thing was some forty feet long, serpentine, and covered in scales.  It had four legs and walked like a cat, for all it looked more like an armored snake.  The legs were very short, little longer than my own, but tipped with hand-like claws and piercing talons.  Wings, great leathery things, unfolded and folded again, stretching.  Flames dripped from its mouth like liquid and left spots of brightness like burning paint.

I looked hard at it, and I could faintly see the fading remains of bindings the wizards had once laid upon it.

They had bound a dragon.  Now it was loose.  And
angry.

It looked around; the survivors were fleeing as though their lives depended on it, which was not far wrong.  Then it centered its gaze on me.  I wasn’t running; instead, I mounted Bronze.

“
You will die,
” it said to me.  Its voice was a deep, snarling hiss.

“I just freed you from your bondage,” I countered.  “You owe me.”

“
I owe you nothing, little human, and I will gladly devour you
.”

I wished I knew how far it could spit flames.  I rode forward anyway.  If I ran, it might catch me—and it was certainly going  to kill something.  Screaming hordes of terrified troops scattering over the landscape might be worthwhile to it, but I didn’t want to risk it might decide to take up residence in the keep.

Although, that
would
tend to keep everyone on their own side of the river.

Still, attacking it probably wasn’t very smart.  All I can say is I drank a lot that night and I was feeling it.  I can see now I should have thrown spells at it, grabbed it with tendrils, run like hell, almost
anything
else.  Nevertheless, a knight riding into the teeth of a fire-breathing dragon appeals to the romantic in my soul.

Okay, and sometimes I’m stupid.

It watched us come and reared up, wings spread.  It gaped that tooth-filled maw open and blasted a white-hot lance of fire at us.  I had Firebrand out in front of me and the flames engulfed only the blade.  Firebrand drank the flames like I drank living spirits.

This startled the dragon rather badly.  Well, I didn’t blame it for a second; it was damn surprising the first time I saw anything like that happen, too.

Then I hit it, striking hard and fast in passing, and scored it deeply along its chest.  Thick ichor welled out, sizzling as it hit the ground, and it screamed loud enough to crack the clay pots around the campfires.  It turned its head away from us, spinning, before we had a chance to do more than pass it with that first cut; the tail whiplashed out and swept me from Bronze’s back.  I landed with a heavy thud, and the beast threw itself on me, snarling rage and animal fury, to claw and bite, rend and tear.

Too bad I had Firebrand, and hard lessons delivered over months.  That deadly point found lodging against and within that scaly chest as the dragon threw itself down on me.

The claws found me, of course; they tore through my armor, dug deep, and opened my flesh; but I’ve been carved open before.  Even with a mortal wound, the dragon might manage to shred me, but I was fairly sure I’d be better by morning—there was a lot of blood yet to be had on this battlefield. 

It lowered its head to bite me, but I twisted Firebrand and it threw its head back in a ringing scream.  The claws still held me, still moved, trying to rip me apart, and I daresay they would have had I been mortal.  But it was weakening already, and I could feel Firebrand doing something—something very much like swallowing the flames of a burning building.  Inside a dragon?  Consuming its inner fires, perhaps?