Children of Prophecy (35 page)

He saw the man, lightning flickering over his chainmail armor, slam his sword into the Chaos Mage’s chest. The Mage slipped backwards off the sword, but lightning continued to flicker across the Kingsman’s armor, and the Kingsman slowly fell backwards.

Tal rushed to the side of the man who’d quite possibly just saved his life. He knelt by the man and slowly removed his helmet. He inhaled sharply as he recognized Shel’nart.

The dying man’s eyes widened as he recognized Tal. “My lord,” he coughed out.

“Shel’nart,” Tal said softly, searching around him for a Life Mage. “Don’t talk, I’ll try to get someone.”

Shel shook his head, then coughed again, spattering blood across his armor and Tal’s robes. “Too late, my lord,” he managed to say before a spasm of coughing interrupted his speech. “I’m finished.”

“Dammit, you didn’t have to do that,” Tal said softly, but with no less heat.

“Yes,” Shel coughed, “I did.” Another spasm of coughing stopped him for a moment, and when he continued his voice was weaker. “I had to prove,” he coughed again, spraying blood again, “that I am not,” more coughing wracked the Kingsman’s body, “my father.” He seemed to relax, but his voice grew weaker with every word. “Am I redeemed?” he asked, his voice fading even as he spoke.

Tal nodded without hesitation. “You had nothing to redeem yourself for, not anymore,” he replied.

“Tell my wife I,” a horrific spasm of coughing cut off what Shel was saying, but he managed to force out “love her…”

Tal lowered the dead man’s head to the ground. He reached over and ran his hand down Shel’s face, closing the staring eyes. As his hand ran over the magically-bound scars that marked the knight’s face, they faded, leaving unmarked skin.

“I will,” he said softly. “I promise.”

Tal stood up from the ground where Shel lay and surveyed the battlefield. The Swarm had disintegrated into complete chaos, Swarmbeasts and Beastmen going every which way. Even as he watched, however, he could see an order beginning to form as the Chaos Magi took their creatures in hand.

“Fall back!” he shouted, using magic to be certain all the Kingsmen and Magi heard him. “Fall back and reform!” As he shouted, he unleashed his magic. Fire blazed from his fingertips, an interlocking web of flame that destroyed only Swarmbeasts and Beastmen.

After a few moments, the fire blanked out of existence as Tal found himself gasping for breath, exhausted. The sort of power necessary to destroy selectively drained even him. A moment later, he sent the web flashing out once more, spending his power without thought. There were Life Magi who could refresh him here now.

More Battlemagi added to the flashing flame, spending their power as profligately as Tal spent his own. They slowly formed into a line as their fire drove the Swarm back. The Swarmbeasts recoiled, either retreating or dying.

“Get ready,” he ordered the new line of Battlemagi, watching as the Kingsmen rode towards the line.

Brea followed the Kingsmen’s charge into the Swarm, constantly looking for Tal as she held her staff ready. Within moments, a Swarmbeast came leaping out of the writhing mass of monsters at her. Almost without thinking, she thrust her staff out to meet it in the air and crack the creature’s skull.

The next Swarmbeast to lunge at her was intercepted by a Kingsman, who casually chopped it in half with his saber. As she looked around, she realized that a group of them were taking up positions around her.

The captain commanding them rode up to her and saluted. “My Lady Brea’ahrn,” he greeted her, “it is good to see you again.”

She glared at Mar’tell. “I don’t recall asking for an escort,” she told him.

“No, you didn’t,” the Kingsman said cheerfully. “However, I figured that we may as well take up the duty once more. It wouldn’t do for the Black Lord’s Lady to be injured before she reached him.”

Brea glared at him for a moment more, then sighed. “Very well then,” she agreed. She looked away from the captain to realize that while they had been arguing, his men had been competently and mercilessly slaughtering a group of Swarmbeasts that had surged towards her.

She gestured for the captain to proceed her, and they moved forward into the Swarm. Mar’tell’s men formed a flying wedge around her horse, slashing their way through the Swarmbeasts and Beastmen with equal lack of compunction.

All around her, she could hear the battle cry of the Kingsmen, a mighty shout of “Ahrn!” that seemed to shake the very earth with its fury. Some of the voices taking it up were clearly Battlemagi using magic to enhance their shouts. Nothing human could be quite
that
loud.

Brea twisted in her saddle, trying to find Tal. She didn’t see Tal, but she saw the great banner of the House of Ahrn. Saw it wave in the sky… and saw it fall as the man carrying it was cut down by Beastmen as a force of the near-men charged towards the banner.

“Mar’tell!” she snapped. “To the banner!”

The Kings-Captain looked where she gestured, then waved his men forward, their deadly wedge turning towards where the banner rose up again. Brea spurred her horse after the soldiers. She could see the man raising the banner now – Earl Yet’won, the senior general who’d accompanied her father. If a general held the banner… there were far too few men standing around her father.

The headlong surge of Mar’tell’s company began to slow around her, as the Kingsmen ran into stiffening resistance from a half-formed unit of Beastmen. For a moment, their motion towards the banner stopped, as the knights’ sabers flashed down, hacking the Beastmen away from her and out of their path.

Brea added what she could to the fight, lending strength to both horses and men, and smashing down those Beastmen that came within reach of her staff. The skirmish lasted only moments, but when she looked up, Yet’won was falling, a black sword through his chest.

The banner fell as her escort charged towards it, but was swept up again by another man. A moment later, she realized it was her father. She could see perhaps six soldiers, battling to defend her father – their king.

She said nothing, grimly focusing on doing her part of keeping her little escort going. Even as they drew nearer, she saw the soldiers with her father die one by one, to sword and ax and arrow, until her father stood alone.

She saw him hold the banner high as he lashed out with sword, driving the Beastmen back, and gave in. “Faster, Mar’tell,” she snapped. “Faster!”

Brea saw the captain glance at her, but he said nothing, merely turning back to his men as they drove forward as fast as they could. Their hacking steel had become little more than a blur of bright and dull flashes to Brea, her eyes focused on the solitary figure of her father.

She saw him cut down Beastman after Beastman as they swarmed him. He couldn’t kill them fast enough, and she saw blades go home, driving through his armor. Her heart was in her throat as she saw her father stumble.

More blades stabbed through, driving the High King to his knees. Brea watched in horror as the Beastmen surged in… and the banner of Ahrn fell. She twisted to snap at Mar’tell, but he’d clearly seen it already, as he was raising himself in his saddle.

“To the King!” he bellowed. “Ahrn!”

His men took up the cry as they put their spurs to their horses’ flanks and charged forward. “Ahrn! Ahrn! Ahrn!”

Brea followed, watching as the Kingsmen rode the Beastmen down. Their sabers, dulled with the blood of the dozens they had killed, slashed down the Beastmen who had dared assault their king. They slaughtered their way to the fallen banner and the fallen King.

She swung down from her horse, kneeling by her father’s side. “Father,” she said softly. The brutally still body of her father made no reply. Kelt’ahrn, High King of Vishni, was dead.

With trembling hands she picked up his sword from where it had and laid it in his hands. Then she took the crown from his head, lifting it in her hands, gazing at it in fear.

“The King is dead,” she heard Mar’tell say softly behind her. She looked up to find that the Kingsmen had formed a circle around her. The Kings-Captain stepped up to her and took the crown from her hands where she knelt.

Louder, he repeated. “The King is dead!” Brea found him meeting her eyes, and he inclined his head to her… and placed the crown upon her head. “Long live the Queen!”

Brea watched Mar’tell sink to one knee as his men echoed the cry, “Long live the Queen!”

“No…” she said softly.

“There is no other, milady,” Mar’tell told her. “You are our Queen.”

She bowed her head in despair and loss, tears running down her cheeks onto the blood-soaked ground. “Take up the banner,” she ordered him softly. She stood, watching the captain as he obeyed her. “You are indeed correct, King’s… no….
Queen’s-
Captain Mar’tell. While I live, my House has not yet fallen.”

Even as she stood, a cry was heard over the battlefield, “Fall back! Fall back and reform!”

“Tal?” she said softly.

Mar’tell looked up. “Must be, milady,” he agreed. The captain looked around. “Milady, we are far too deep within the Swarm. We must go now.”

Brea nodded, and walked to her horse. “The banner comes with us,” she said firmly.

Mar’tell hefted it in his hand. “It could be no other way, my Queen.”

Tal looked up at the blood-red sun as the Swarm finally began to advance again, its creatures swarming over the fallen bodies of too many of the knights that had ridden here. Between the Battlemagi and the Kingsmen’s insane charge, the numbers of the Swarm had been cut nearly in half.

With the Life Magi here to support the Battlemagi, it might even be enough. Might. He watched as the last remnants of the Kingsmen and the various Magi filtered through the line of Magi. The Kingsmen fell back to where Life Magi treated the wounded and their comrades prepared for one more charge. A charge that would likely kill them all. Tal
knew
that if the Kingsmen charged out again, too few, if any, of them would come back.

He stood in front of the line of Magi, watching, looking, searching for Brea’ahrn among the last survivors. He felt Shej’mahi step up to his shoulder.

“If she was coming, my lord, we’d have seen her by now,” the old Mage said. “I’m sorry, but she isn’t coming. We
have
to shield ourselves.”

Tal nodded and raised his sword. “Now!” he ordered, his voice heavy with grief and rage. She shouldn’t have been here
to
die. It should never have been necessary for this battle to be fought.

At his order, a flickering silver line of death appeared before the Magi. With the Life Magi woven into the spell, it was vastly more powerful, even with nearly half of the Battlemagi dead, than it had been before. He could
feel
its power.

He faced the Swarm, willing them to attack. Willing them to die, to let him avenge all those who had died today. All those who shouldn’t have had to
fight
, let alone die.

This is your fate,
Shar’tell spoke in his head.
This had to be
.

You doomed us to this
, Tal replied.
You and your brother. You set this all in motion. You damned us all, you arrogant
bastards
.

The Four set it in motion. We merely shaped the form,
the mind of the ancient Mage replied. Then, suddenly, with a surge of emotion that was suddenly and clearly from Car’raen and not the gestalt,
Look!

Tal opened his eyes from his communion with the amulet and saw what the gestalt spoke of. A group of Kingsmen had broken free of the Swarm, riding under the banner of the House of Ahrn.

At the center of the wedge of knights was a single figure in the green robes of a Life Mage. He didn’t even need to focus in on her face with his magic to know it was Brea’ahrn.

“Milady,” he said softly.

“Milord, we
can’t
lower the shield,” Shej said. “We
can’t
.”

“Then I’ll go for them myself,” Tal spat at the old Mage. Before the Battle Lord could reply at all, he’d Shifted and the black hawk was winging his way across the blood-red sky to the east. He looked down, watching as Brea’s party pulled further away from the Swarm, then, slowly, began to fall back towards the massive horde as their horses tired.

With a shriek, he plummeted towards the ground, managing to land without breaking anything. He shifted back to human and faced Brea. “My lady,” he said softly.

“My lord,” she replied, inclining her head. He strode forward and took her hands in his own.

“You should not have come,” he told her.

“I could not have stayed,” she replied. “You would have died.”

Tal continued to hold her hand as he turned to look at the rapidly approaching Swarm. For a moment he said nothing. Then he sighed and nodded gently. “I love you,” he said softly.

“I love you too,” she replied. He felt her grip his hand more tightly as they faced the oncoming hordes of their enemy.