Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 (31 page)

The original line of Urzarians fled over the wall, past another line of men coming up. The new group crested the pile of rubble. Their helmets gleamed silver blue with faceplates fashioned to look like snarling wolves, faceplates that turned their eyes to dark pits. They wore black tunics over their armor. The rawhide leather covering their shields was dark gray. And on the dark shields was painted the outline of a wolf’s head in white.

The war wolves of Urz.

These were men bred to be dreadmen. In Urz there were wolf studs, dreadmen with superior strength and speed. And families paid to have these men breed with their wives or daughters or slaves. For if the child was called up to the ranks of dreadmen, the family would receive not only honor, and the wealth of war, but their line would then also become a breeding line. And the sums paid to the most fearsome wolf studs were great.

The war wolves of Urz were literally a breed apart. Magnify a worm, and all you have is a slightly stronger worm. Magnify a wolf, and you had something truly terrible.

Argoth looked down his line. Most of the men with him did not even wear a candidate’s weave. Murmurs of fear rippled through the formation.

The jumbled rocks would give Argoth’s ranks of men an advantage, but not a big enough one. They would fall to the wolves.

He looked up at the battlements. Soldiers from Mokad’s army had broken through in many places and were now fighting on the wall walks. He looked at the gate. Shim and the dreadmen were being forced back. He looked toward the arches at the back of the fort, but there was no sign of Eresh.

The army was at the precipice. The lines were going to buckle. And when they broke, the slaughter would begin.

He thought of Serah and the children. A cohort of older men and boys too young to fight were with them. They would go into the south lands. They would carry the truth with them. They would keep the light of knowledge alive.

He would need to follow, to be there when Nettle entered the world of souls. He prayed to his ancestors and steeled himself.

Then the war wolves of Urz began to make their way down the pile of rubble.

“Stand your ground!” Argoth roared over the wind. “Then kill them like we did the last ones!”

* * *

High above the battle field, Talen brought all his roamlings to bear on the thrall in the skir. He bit and tore. Fire sprayed forth. But this thrall was so immense it was like eating a whale.

Talen felt the doors to a Skir Master open. Then another door to someone connected to the Skir Master. The Skir Master tried to attack him, but Talen struck out at him with one of his roamlings. The Skir Master roared and charged again, but Talen met him and stopped his attack. With the other roamlings, he continued to ravel, the fire and soul flying about him. He fought and raveled, time stretching. And then the Skir Master was gone. Not long after that, he found himself surrounded by nothing but tatters.

The urgom shuddered. It examined Talen once more, almost suffocating him, then it hurled his presence out, hurled his roamlings from its body, and slammed its doors shut.

The massive creature careened away from the fort and roared. It roared again, this time even louder. The sound was immense. It shook Talen’s roamlings until he thought they would fall apart. It shook his body of flesh, driving him to his knees.

The orange skir darting about the field seemed to wither. A few fell to the ground and lay there as if dead. The larger golden long-haired skir scattered.

The urgom roared again and seemed to shake the very earth. Then it flew at the Skir Master.

One of the other big urgom trumpeted a challenge and intercepted it, the two great creatures colliding above the battlefield.

The second urgom was protecting its master. It was still enthralled. But that could be fixed. Talen knew the thrall. Knew where it would be located. He sent two of his roamlings to the urgom protecting its master; he sent the other two to the skir flying over the fort.

29

Seafire

THE ROAR OF the massive blue urgom stole all thought from Sugar’s mind. It flattened her to the ground, cut her to the core. Another wave of pain burned along the bones of her flesh, making the soul wound she’d inflicted upon herself by using the necklace even worse.

But this was unlike anything she’d felt before. Her very bones felt like they were aflame, and she realized she needed to get back to her flesh.

This was what Withers had warned her about.

She pushed herself up onto her knees, trying to gather her strength. The collectors had fled. Above her, two of the blue urgom struggled against each other. She didn’t know what was happening, but she wasn’t going to wait for those collectors to come back. However, before she fled back to her body, she needed to help the others get as far away from that horn as possible.

In pain, she climbed to her feet, saw a soul spear lying not too far away, and picked it up. All about her the souls of Shim’s men were rising and shaking themselves.

Over by the Skir Masters, the howlers barked like Regret himself was among them. Each of the Walkers was holding the leash to a number of the spiked howlers that strained to be released.

“Shimsmen!” she shouted. “Find your weapons!”

Men finally began to move.

“Here!” she called. “To me!”

The two behemoth skir locked in battle overhead roared and careened toward her. Such mass would surely crush her soul. She dove to the ground, sure that her soul would be squashed. But the skir passed an arm’s length over her head, clacking and groaning, then thundered into the ground beyond.

Sugar and those around her looked for an escape. The struggling skir blocked the way to the plain. The Skir Masters and Walkers were coming from the river. The fort and cliff were behind them. “Up the canyon!” she cried.

A wave of pain washed through her, and she sagged against the spear. She waved the souls coming to her on, and they rushed past her toward the canyon.

“Are you all right?”

She looked up. A soul holding one of the Walker’s red blades stood before her. She recognized him. The men had given him the nickname of Charge because he was always jumping the battle lines. In life, he’d been a wiry man with a face scarred by acne. Here his hair was waist-long, his eyes dark and shining. His soul glorious.

Swan walked up, wearing some of the spiked crab-like armor and carrying a soul spear. A third soul without any tattoo at all joined her as well.

“There are going to be more dead,” Charge said. “And we’ve got mainlander Mokaddians with us.”

Sugar nodded. “We’re all humans here. Send everyone up the canyon. We need to get them as far away from the horn as possible while we have the chance.”

Charge nodded and yelled to the souls.

Then the barking of the howlers rose to an unholy racket.

Sugar turned and saw the Walkers unleashing them, the dark beasts shooting forth.

“Gods,” Charge said in horror.

“Here!” Sugar yelled to the souls. “This way!”

But the souls weren’t fast enough. A howler ran down a soul and tore into him. Two more took down another man and went at him with their wicked mouths.

More souls fled past Sugar and the others with her, but the howlers caught up to those in the back, tearing and ravaging them.

“They die like anything else,” she said to Charge and the others around her. Then she raised her spear and ran at the two closest howlers, screaming her war cry.

Charge and the other armed souls yelled and followed.

* * *

Black Knee hesitated, his muscles bunching and straining at the drawn bow.

Shoot him!
The voice commanded.

“Commander!” Black Knee yelled. “Come down!”

Eresh looked at him, but continued to haul up the bundle of six-foot poles. “What are you doing?”

“Flax said to beware the Famished. They’re on the other side.”

“Flax?” Eresh asked. “Flax is a traitor. I saw it with my own eyes.”

The Famished already has him
, the voice said.

Confusion, melancholy, grief all roiled in Black Knee’s mind.

“Commander!” he called.

He’s possessed!
The voice said.
Look at that mad eye, milked over with evil. Look at the anger
.

And indeed Commander Eresh’s face was full of wrath.

“Put the bow down,” Eresh called, still hauling up on the rope.

“It’s taken him,” Black Knee said to Russet and Fish. “Ancestors save us.” Then he loosed the arrow.

It flew straight and true, but Eresh hauled hard on the rope. The poles flew upward. And then he was holding them in front of his chest, and the arrowed thocked into the wood.

“Get him!” Eresh cried.

Black Knee snatched up another arrow, nocked it, bent his bow, but a number of Burundians were charging him.

Russet and Fish stepped out to block their way, weapons drawn.

Black Knee turned back to target Eresh, but Commander Eresh was not on the wall. He’d jumped and was running straight for Black Knee, his one good eye burning with fury.

Black Knee loosed his shaft, but Commander Eresh ducked, rolled, and then he was into Black Knee, slamming him back against the rock.

Black Knee struck the commander, tried to draw his knife, but Eresh threw him to the ground.

The Burundians knocked Russet out with a pole and closed in on Fish.

“The commander!” Black Knee shouted. “He’s being ridden by the Famished!”

But the men ignored his pleas.

Black Knee roared and tried to surge to his knees, but the commander was too strong, and then two more of the Burundians were there, holding Black Knee, lashing his arms and feet.

“On the other side!” Black Knee said. “They’re there!”

When the Burundians had tied him, Eresh examined Black Knee’s wrists, felt up his arms. He pulled back Black Knee’s tunic to reveal the arm ring Berosus had given him.

“Here’s the poison,” Eresh said, then yanked the thing off his arm.

The warning voice in Black Knee’s mind was suddenly silenced. But the foreboding lingered. “Commander?” he said.

Eresh snarled and struck Black Knee in the face. “What did we tell you about accepting weaves from any but us!”

“Flax was a terrorman.”

“He wasn’t me. He wasn’t Argoth. He wasn’t Shim.”

But Flax had been one of them.

Then another soldier came running into the crevice pathway.

“Commander!” he cried.

Eresh drew his sword and turned to face him.

“Lord,” the man said, then saw the sword and pulled up short in alarm.

“Did Flax send you too?” Eresh asked.

“Lord Shim sent me,” the man said. “The lines are breaking. We’re being overrun.”

Eresh motioned at Black Knee. “Don’t let him out of those knots. And get the scaffold finished. And post a rotted watch!” Then he dash down the path to the door leading to the chambers at the back of the fort.

* * *

The black-clad Urzarian war wolves advanced slowly down the rubble toward Argoth and his men, keeping their lines together, holding their dark shields painted with the wolf heads before them. Underneath their black surcoats embroidered with the white stars of Urz, they wore mail hauberks that ended just above the knee. They were experienced men. Hard men with eyes full of grim murder. Their line was twenty men across. Argoth’s line was longer and could overlap them on the ends, but the war wolves coming behind came forward to extend the length of their line.

Argoth prepared himself to receive their charge. His left leg was forward a bit, shield raised, sword ready to thrust. Fire raged through him. The war wolves were dreadmen, but he was a loreman. He wasn’t limited by the weave.

But, holy Creators, the men down his line had nothing.

“Hold the line!” Argoth shouted, but he knew his men couldn’t. How could they hold their positions against men with three times their strength and speed? They’d fall, and even if Argoth stood, he would soon be surrounded.

“We’re going to gut you like pigs!” one of the war wolves shouted. He pointed his sword at a man in front of him. “You. You’ll be first. And when your idiot friend tries to hit me with his axe, I’m going to take his arm.”

The men to the sides of Argoth hunkered down.

“Look at them cower,” one of the war wolves laughed.

“Big words from men who dribbled out the back end of a cow!” a woman shouted from behind. Then the ranks to the right of Argoth stirred, allowing Matiga and her fist of fell-maidens to push to the front line, stepping in to alternate every other position with the men.

Matiga’s fell-maidens wore helmets and coats of plates over padded jackets. The fell-maidens were still candidates, although he knew Matiga had been teaching them more despite Eresh’s views. They would not be as strong as the war wolves. But they were fast. And wore lighter armor. And multiplied, they would be even faster.

“Come meet your doom, you ox-brained whoresons!” Matiga yelled.

The leader of the war wolves, a man with a horse hair plume rising out of his helmet, laughed. “Women!” he said in disbelief. “There’s your loot, men!”

Matiga’s fell-maidens readied themselves.

“We’re going to plow you with our swords,” the leader said above the wind.

“You’re going to die,” Argoth roared.

The leader shouted, “Mark that one. Be sure to rip his guts.”

They advanced another step. They were only a few paces away, their wolf’s head banner held high. Across from Argoth was a huge man with a monstrous beard and an even larger war axe. The man next to him had a sword. Argoth figured the big man would try to knock Argoth’s shield down with that axe, giving his neighbor a chance to stab Argoth in the face with his sword.

The war wolves advanced. Another step and they’d charge.

Then Argoth heard something: a distant roar. A wave of weakness rolled through him, sank right down to his bones. It washed over the men around him too, for he saw the shields of both the men with him and the war wolves dip. The Urzmen faltered. A number lowered their weapons a bit.

The horse hair plumed leader growled. “Rotted sleth!” he shouted, obviously thinking the line of Shim’s sleth in front of him had caused that weakness with some magic. “Kill them!”

But a howling wind suddenly screamed down out of the sky, blasting from the back of the fort, kicking up dirt and grit, blowing it into the backs of Argoth’s men and the faces and eyes of the war wolves. The wind hurtled a shield over the heads of Argoth’s warriors and into one of the war wolves, knocking him back.

The other Urzmen squinted, raised their shields to block the wind and grit from their eyes. Some staggered back. Gaps opened in their line. And Argoth saw his chance.

“Now!” Argoth roared and charged. The men and women down the line saw him and followed his lead. The wind was still raging, the war wolves still blinded by the dirt. They tried to make a defense, but the wind was against them, knocking their shields.

The line of Shimsmen and women roared and crashed into the line of Urzmen. Spears and swords thrust. Axes fell. Argoth plowed into the big bearded man in front of him, knocking him back, but lunged with his sword into the side of the man next to him. The fell-maiden next to Argoth stabbed in with a spear and took another man. The wind rose in ferocity, howling about the fort, throwing dirt into his eyes. Argoth took a solid, but wild blow from the Urzman to his right, and stabbed at the big bearded axeman.

But the wind’s violence and noise continued to rise. Dirt and dust blasted about him, making it hard to hold the shield and even see to fight. The shield was torn out of the hands of the fell-maiden next to Argoth as well as a few others down the line, and then one of the Urzmen at the top of the pile of rubble was carried aloft.

The power of the wind rose again.

“Back!” Argoth shouted, but his words were swallowed by the gale. He shoved backward, dragged on the men next to him. “Back!” he yelled. He was squinting so hard he could barely see, but he turned, shoved the men next to him away from the war wolves.

The whirlwind sounded like a cataract, like tumbling boulders. Argoth’s warriors weren’t going to be able to flee this. He suspected that any moment now a rain of stones would fall upon the men and women in his lines and brain them.

“To ground!” he called uselessly. “To ground!” Then he shoved down as many as he could about him and took cover himself.

The wind howled about them, and then suddenly it shot away to rip and tear over the wall walks and back out to the battlefield.

There was silence. The men of Urz as well as the Shimsmen and women lay stunned. Dirt filled Argoth’s nose and ears and slid under his tunic. He climbed to his feet, spat the dirt out of his mouth, and wiped the dirt from his eyes. The wind raged out across the field toward the Skir Master and was met by another wind to form a terrifying maelstrom that blasted into the Mokaddian ranks, tearing away shields and helmets, sending men to the ground, carrying helmets and shields aloft.

But at the fort, the wind was now nothing more than a breeze. And there, picking themselves off the ground were the war wolves.

Argoth had no idea what was happening with the skir; it seemed Mokad had lost control of them. But whatever was going on, he knew he had only moments to stop the dreadmen in front of him.

“Firemen!” Argoth yelled. “Lances!”

But there were no lancers ready on the walls. He spotted a firelance that had fallen back into the courtyard. Above it on the wall walk sat the barrel and pump. He shot out of the line and raced for the lance. He found the lance still in good order, picked it up, then flew up the stairway with it to the barrel. There was a skin of dust and dirt on the top of the liquid, but the barrel was still mostly full of seafire.

He hooked the lance to the pump and sank the hose through the skin of dirt into the seafire.

“The pump!” he yelled at two men on the wall who were recovering from the blast of wind. They heard him and rushed to the handles, which worked like a see-saw, and began to pump, one man pushing down, the other pulling up, and then reversing. Seafire filled the hose, then shot out the lance in a stream that Argoth pointed at the war wolves. Argoth worked the igniter. Sparks flew. He worked it again. More sparks. And then the seafire ignited, a flash of blue that streaked down the stream of black liquid followed by a raging orange and yellow flame.