Shadowgod (47 page)

From a lifetime of combat on foot and in the saddle, Welgarak knew that timing was everything. The commander of the other infantry formation had seen what happened and had swiftly rearranged his lines to meet the new threat with spearmen ranked along the front. Unfortunately his rear and flanks were now vulnerable and as Welgarak slowed his own charge, Gordag came racing up from a snow-hidden gully to the north, at the head of a thousand riders which slammed into the enemy's left flank. A second wedge numbering 500 came thundering out of a dark, icy wood to the west and struck them in the rear.

Yet still they held, that compact array of infantry, until a bolt from one of Welgarak's crossbowmen found the commander amid his guards, punched through the heavy leather mask just above his ear, through the skull and into his brain. Welgarak could see the spears of the front line waver as word of their commander's death spread panic and he knew that it was time. With a whispered prayer to the ancient storm gods of the Mogaun, he raised his totem and called the charge. When the infantry saw that line of horsemen approaching at the gallop, with groups of Mogaun swordsmen rushing in as well, the lines broke. A few stood and fought in stubborn knots but most fled away into the snowfields west of the city.

Still on horseback, Welgarak and Gordag met on a hillock beyond the carnage. Both bore wounds but to Welgarak it seemed that Gordag was worse off. Blood from a gash on his jowly cheek had matted the fur collar of his heavy jerkin.

“You let those beetles get too close with their pig-stickers,” he said, irritation masking his concern.

“Ach! - looks worse than it is,” Gordag said. “But what about you? - where did you earn that scratch?”

Welgarak followed his pointing finger down to his right leg where the leather greave had been torn away and a half-clotted gouge in his calf wept a long red smear. Surprised, he began to feel it through the numb cold that was sinking into his flesh.

“Seems like we both have to see the binder, brother,” he said. “Before our former master makes his move.”

“Don't know as we have time f'r it.”

Hearing the grim note in Gordag's voice he quickly looked up and southwards. It was snowing more heavily now and the far side of the city and the countryside beyond were frost pale and blurred. Nearer, however, were those units of the Shadowking's army which were the most immediate threat to the Mogaun, yet there was no sign of them heading this way.

“You'll see 'em in a moment,” said Gordag.

But he heard them first, harsh rasping cries carried by a swirl in the winds overhead. It was a sound that took him back to the siege of Rauthaz over a year ago when the Acolytes of Twilight had released a swarm of eaterbeasts into the city's streets. Their cries were the sound of a bottomless hunger for blood and they struck fear into his heart, but he crushed it with his anger and need for revenge.

“We cannot fight them here,” he said.

“Agreed,” said Gordag.

“We shall have to ride swiftly and find a place….”

So saying, they rode back, bellowing orders to their men to mount up and ride north for their lives.

Dire storms woven of stars and blood,
Rage forth from the ghastly dark,
To tear at our walls,
And test our valour.

—Keldon Ghant,
Orosiada: A Masque
, Act1, Sc 2.

Atroc was labouring his way up the recessed stairs on the southern wall, glancing out over Lord's Glade, when he heard a deep, reverberating thud followed a moment later by a shudder that passed through the solid stone of the wall itself. Instantly, he knew what had happened and fear put vigour into his legs as he ran up the rest of the stairs. He had been on his way to find one of Bardow's mages, so that he could inform Yasgur that the three hundred Cabringan swords were now in Lord's Glade awaiting his command. Now, he also needed to know what was happening.

* * *

Bardow was out on his balcony, shivering despite his heavy cloak, closely watching the great wagon's slow approach to a point on the wall along from the Shield Gate and closest to the Imperial Palace. Even as it drew near he could feel the Wellsource energies building within it yet he still knew nothing of its construction due to the enormous canvas sheet which lay draped across most of its length.

Fifty yards away it halted and as the horses were unharnessed, a long boom was attached to the rear. Two dozen heavily-armoured and helmed troops quickly took their places, lifted the boom and began pushing and forcing the wagon into motion again. Only when it was nearly at the wall itself and attracting a barrage of rocks and arrows did a few of its toiling attendants dash forward and tug lashing free and drag the snow-caked sheet away. Bardow saw a long wooden arm as thick as a man and as long as three draught horses put nose to tail. It was hinged at the front, its axle protected by a bronze-banded wooden carapace which extended the wagon's full length. Affixed to the end of the arm was a strange element, a squat stone cylinder with a six-foot iron spike jutting from its centre. As a green nimbus began to flicker and leap around the puzzling war machine, it moved still closer until obscured by the wall despite the height of his balcony.

The next moment, there a loud thudding noise like a hammer striking an anvil. Bardow saw soldiers on the ramparts thrown off their feet as a glowing green web of jagged cracks suddenly appeared halfway up the inside of the city wall. The glowing lines faded to dark and down on the streets people were running in panic while Bardow could only stare in dread, his remaining hope resting with the shining sword which sat in its case in his chamber.

* * *

Alael was in the High Spire's fourth floor library, seated under lamplight at the great horseshoe-shaped table, poring over books of legendary tales, when she heard the impact. It was like a far-off, muffled boom, followed by a tremor that came up through the tiled floor. Suddenly she had to find a window to look out of but there were none in the library, whose many delicate documents had to be protected from dampness and sunlight. But she knew that a door on one of the library's upper floors led to an outer passage with arches that opened onto a sheltered balcony.

Quickly, Alael rose, crossed to a spiral staircase, hurried up two flights to a dark and musty-smelling floor whose shelves were crammed with leather volumes. A door at the far end led through to a bright corridor and moments later she was leaning over the balcony rail to see what was happening. The balcony was a little higher than the palace's Silver Aggor and afforded a good view of the city wall. It was snowing quite steadily now and soldiers were running away from a section of the ramparts directly before the palace while shouts came from below. Alael had noticed the dark fracture lines on the inner face of the wall and was wondering what they were when there was a thunderous crash from the other side. Dazzling light flared along the dark lines and chunks of stone fell along with great shattered sheets of mortared facing. She cried out in shock, scarcely believing that such destruction was possible. She would have to find Bardow, but she knew he was in the Vantage Chamber a full five floors up. First she would return for her notes and pens, then go and seek him out.

She dashed back along to the library door, stepped back into the quiet gloom and began to descend the stairs. Only when she reached the intermediate floor did her gaze chance to alight upon her place at the great table where all her books and neatly-piled notes now lay scattered across it and the floor. Alael halted, staring, her momentary confusion displaced by a deepening unease. Then she heard a footstep.

From the floor above.

And from below came a voice, casual and mocking.

“Ah, lady Alael, at last we can renew our acquaintance.”

A tall figure cased in brown-black mask and armour, his shoulders draped with a night-black cloak, stepped out from behind two of the shelf stacks. A mailed hand came up and tugged off the mask, revealing the colourless, pale-eyed visage of Ikarno Mazaret. Except that she knew this was one of the rivenshades, on whose armoured hands and chest she could now make out splatters of blood.

She met that chilling empty gaze and for a moment or two listened to the slow footsteps heading towards the staircase. Then she whirled and dashed over to the door which led out of the library, though where it went she knew not.

* * *

Nerek was standing on the threshold of a room full of dead guards when she heard the first impact, a deep muffled boom that reverberated throughout the immensity of the High Spire. The sound faded away and through the quiet came a sussurrus of hurrying feet and lowered voices as people sought windows to look out of. On the floor of the second floor guard room, however, the blood of eight men lay in smears and darkening pools. No alarm had been raised and Nerek knew that she had reached the room only moments after the killers had left.

Then she heard the crash of weapons and a scream from beyond an archway where a narrow side-stair led up to the third floor. As she ducked through the arch and ran up the steps, she reflected on the many passages and stairs that honeycombed the great tower, and the ease with which the enemy intruders had gained entry. But then, if the tower had not been stripped of most of its garrison to man the city wall, cornering them would been straightforward.

The stairs came up in a servants' dining room where two armoured knights lay sprawled in their own blood while a third was on the floor by the long table, propped against a chair and gasping his last. She went over to him but quickly saw from the blood he was losing that there was no helping.

“Up….” he whispered. Blood was weeping from between the finger he had clamped to his throat. His other hand tremblingly pointed across the room to a plain arched doorway. She nodded, strode to the archway and another flight of stone steps which she took two at a time. She was half way up when the boom of the second impact reached her ears, along with a tremor that she could feel underfoot. But she did not pause at all.

* * *

Yasgur's hopes had gone from ashen grimness to sudden elation when the Mogaun Host charged in from the north and scattered Byrnak's careful formations across the snowbound fields. Then the elation collapsed back into ashes when a strange darkness poured out from behind a wooded rise almost half a mile to the west and seemed to race across the ground. His suspicions were too terrible to put into words but the Nightrook had no such reservations.

“Ah – eaterbeasts,” she said casually. “Such a savage weapon, effective and terrifying but also a little...unpredictable.”

Eaterbeasts were bred from the twisted, malformed seed of predators long-since extinct from these lands. No two were completely alike, yet they all had a lust for pursuit and slaughter which the tinemasters played upon with confinement and starvation. As Yasgur watched, the great mass of creatures swarmed across fields and hillocks, darkening the whiteness, guided by a few riders on the edges. The Mogaun horsemen had seen the onrushing menace and were already galloping away from the scene of their surprise attack, heading northwest. Some eaterbeasts on the easterly edge of their horde must have caught a whiff of the blood from the carnage there for a long limb of them split away and raced off to glut their bottomless hunger. The rest followed the Mogaun.

Then the first hammerblow fell, a deep resonant crash that Yasgur felt in the pit of his stomach. He whirled round and grabbed hold of one of the tower roof supports as he leaned out and stared along the outside of the western section of the city wall. Byrnak's war machine had reached the wall and its massive arm with its spiked stone head was being wound back on taut hawsers by some unseen means hidden beneath a long wooden shell.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. The Nightrook.

“Zanser says that the enemy is charging to attack the south wall once more.”

As expected
, he thought. “He is to tell the wall captain that reinforcements will be sent but he must hold the rampart.”

She only nodded and turned away, just as a group of panicky runners arrived with messages. Yasgur swiftly despatched them with orders moving units from the seaward defenses along the wall to take the place of others being sent round to the southern stretch. And all the time he was trying to keep an eye on the war machine while wondering if his disguised team had survived the fleeing infantry and the swarming eaterbeasts. But ultimately the wall, twenty paces thick and built from huge blocks of Arengian granite, was impregnable in the face of a solitary sledgehammer, even one as prodigious as this…

The spiked arm swung up and struck for the second time, and this time Yasgur was watching. This time he saw the flash of dazzling green an instant before the deep crack sound reached his ears. He saw dust and fragments spraying from the point of impact, and pieces of stone and mortar tumbling from the inner face of the wall and down into the street below.

Suddenly the impossible seemed possible and utter ruin loomed closer, like an onrushing threshold of darkness.

* * *

Byrnak's fury at the treachery of the Mogaun, followed by the rout of his leaderless infantry, demolished his composure and left him ranting and raging for long, incomprehensible moments. Then fearful self-awareness reasserted itself as he felt a long-dormant darkness stir within.

Fool
. That inner voice was quieter and calmer than before but no less menacing.
You seek to control too many…

Angry at himself for losing control, Byrnak drew on the Wellsource to shut the presence away behind a barrier in his mind. Then he extended his being along the web of soul-binding to the tinemasters who were tending the vast eaterbeast herd in a dale to the west. Into the mind of the chief tinemaster he placed a brief but specific set of orders then quickly returned to his own senses in time to see the Shadowclaw, as he had named it, hammer into the wall of Besh-Darok for the first time. He also saw it with the eyes of the commander who had steered the warwagon through the snow, and laughed out loud, feeling a thrill of pleasure as the strengthened flare-iron spike, drenched in Sourcefire, buried the first third of its length in the wall, splitting one of the granite blocks. Byrnak's exultation spread to those around him as well as the soul-bound who were scattered across the field of battle.