Second Kiss (24 page)

Azucena, Saheli, and Tharfen

T
he
invaders charged through the gateway and the Phaerlanders met them halfway down the inner harbour where it widened out enough for a full-pitched battle. They formed a wedge across the muddy floor, with Veneetha Azucena at its tip, trying to drive the invaders back through the gateway. She slew many of them in that melee but she didn't know if it was by virtue of the spellcraft in the sword or merely her own skills, which were considerable, for she was a well-trained warrior. She used not only the sword but her feet to great effect, kicking out in all directions, straight-legged to break a knee here, bent-legged to catch a chin there. But last night's wound had reopened in her brow and she had already been wounded somewhere else, too. She hardly knew where. She only knew she was bleeding.

Imalgha the Thrall was close by, right in the thick of it, grunting and shrieking as her sword decreased the number of mercenaries with each lightning lunge into their ranks. And as always, wherever Imalgha went, Lirodello was close by. Indeed he was at her other side and proving remarkably effective with a long, hooked kitchen skewer and carving knife. The two Nains, Belphegor and his non-violent brother Tomtenisse Doombeard, were also there. Tomtenisse stood cross-armed, impassive, apparently there merely to be an observer, but Belphegor had finally found what he had been seeking for a long time — a fight he could not avoid. He wielded his pick joyously and with a ruthlessness that would have made Tiri Lighthammer blush. Indeed, he had to rush into the melee in pursuit of prey, for the mercenaries quickly learned to fear his wild, whirling pick and kept as much at a distance from him as they could.

By now, more than a hundred attackers had made their way from the ship, but Veneetha Azucena and the Phaerlanders who had joined her were fighting valiantly, holding them off. Akka Smissm fumed atop his dark horse. He had been relying on the advantage of surprise and the superiority of numbers, but most of his small fleet had been dispersed or destroyed in the previous night's storm and those who remained should have arrived earlier. They should have been through the cavern, up the tunnel, and into the heart of the city by now, just as the fool Phaerlanders were waking from their drugged slumbers. Lighthammer, though, had thwarted all that, and now the Pathan commander was in danger of failing altogether in his mission.

Fortunately though, Glittervein had been keeping a watchful eye. Quickly he let the wheel that controlled the gate at the Lion's Mouth go. It spun rapidly backward and the massive gate shuddered down into its sheath, almost killing several Thralls who were just then attempting to pass through. In this way, Azucena and seventy-five or so others were cut off in front of it, stranded on the floor of the inner harbour without the possibility of reinforcements to fight the ever-growing horde of invaders.

Inside the cavern, a long line of Phaerlanders were pressed against the gate and in great danger of being crushed to death by the weight of those behind them who were still pushing forward. Saheli, who was among them, had brought her whistle, and with it succeeded in establishing order. There was no room for despair in her now. She felt like she had lived a thousand lives last night, but was firmly in this life now. The need for action had chased all those old wisps of shame away. With the aid of some of her comrades from the camp, she quickly established enough order to send word back up the line, thus relieving the pressure on those trapped against the gate. When she had succeeded in turning her fellows around and getting them out of the tunnel and back atop Phaer Point, she quickly ascertained that the situation in the harbour had taken a turn for the worse.

The heroic actions of Veneetha Azucena and the others, including Bargest, who was wreaking havoc, was succeeding in pushing the invaders back, but a second warship was now making its way to the edge of the water and a whole horde of new mercenaries were gathered on its prow, preparing to leap out the moment it reached the shallows. Soon they would be replenishing the ranks of their fallen fellows.

But there would be no replenishment of the Phaerlander ranks stranded in front of the gate. They could continue to hold off the attackers for a while yet, but they were vastly outnumbered.

Saheli's first thought was that she had to acquire a ladder somehow, get up to the gatehouse, and slay the traitorous Glittervein so that the gate might be reopened and her comrades rescued. But looking up, she saw that someone was already climbing up toward him. The climber had wedged himself into a corner of the sea wall and was somehow, apparently by exerting extreme pressure outward against the two ramparts with his hands and feet, inching himself slowly up. He still had a distance to go, and the climbing was slow, but even from here she knew it was someone very capable of doing the job required — Vallaine. Saheli let loose another blast of the whistle and pointed toward the great chimney on the end of Uldestack promontory.

“We can get to the harbour floor if we jump down from the footpath along there,” she shouted to them. “Then we can cut in from the flank.” With that she pushed through and set off at a run.

Tharfen, having left her brother sleeping at the infirmary, arrived at the road along Phaer Point too late to join Saheli. The group Saheli was leading was already halfway down the Uldestack promontory and would soon be entering the fray. Tharfen ran to the rail along the sea wall and scanned the carnage below searching for Xemion. Seeing a stone, she reached automatically for the leather headband she had always worn about her brow and used as a sling. Then, remembering it was no longer there, she ran her fingers nervously through her red curls. She wished her pirate father would come sailing in here with his crew and his catapults full of boiling pitch and burn these barbarians to ashes. But that wasn't going to happen. And yes, she could sense that Xemion was down there somewhere, farther along the point. And that he was suffering. She ran along the point until she noticed the wheelbarrow that had been left against the sea wall earlier that morning by Ewin Gilder. When she got to it and saw that it was full of broken chunks of statuary and masonry, she smiled and quickly took off the red sash she wore around her narrow waist.

Five Cyclopes

X
emion
had been drinking from the bottle of ambrosia and a strange energy vibrated in him like thunder waiting in the air to break. But there was nothing he could do to harness it. He shook the bars and screamed with rage. He hollered and tugged at them. He pried and beat them but they would not be so easily overcome. Like a madman, he strode back and forth, bellowing for Bargest, but Bargest was in the clang and the clamour and the shrieking of the battle, deaf to Xemion's cries. It was at this time that Xemion, gazing desperately out of his window, saw the contingent of Phaerlanders across the bay, making their way down the steep slope that led from the end of the Uldestack promontory to the sea. They were too far off for him to distinguish any particular set of features, but he knew by the rhythm and sway of her body as she hurried down the narrow footpath that the figure at the front was Saheli. And he could see her plan. Once they reached the gate where the dog had made his leap earlier that morning they would jump down to the harbour floor and deploy across the bay so that they could fight a flank action against that second ship full of invaders. But when Xemion looked out to sea he saw what they could not. Beyond the mouth of the bay, coming up out of the rising sun, their masts shimmering in it like frail stick shadows, three, four, maybe more warships were approaching.

It was taking enormous effort for Vallaine to climb the walls. He was not used to such fatigue. Hundreds of years of lives had not yet made him used to it. And once he made it to the top,
if
he made it to the top, he would still have a long way to crawl along the top of the wall right out in the open before he got to the gatehouse and Glittervein. And all the while there was this deep spinning in his abdomen that he had not felt for fifty years. Something slow and ponderous was turning. Something more than just the Great Kone.

Panting, exhausted, he at last reached the top of the wall. Here, in the tiny crook where it curved up to the gatehouse, he rested a moment. He could sense the magic rising incrementally in the air and hoped it was making him stronger, but when he had awoken this morning the red of his hand had faded to a rust-like tint and it had not yet grown one jot redder. Slowly but deftly, keeping low, he began to creep along the long, slanted wall toward the gatehouse. His new robe cascaded over his back, long and black like the wings of a raven. But as it settled down over both sides of the wall it matched perfectly the sleek grey of the stone. He began to crawl along the top of the wall. Once he got Glittervein out of the way he would raise the gate to the cavern just enough to let the defenders get in and then lower it again, shutting most of the invaders out.

He was soon so close he could see Glittervein's shadow cast over the two wheels behind him by the rising sun. Billowing smoke drifted over his head as the cruel Nain had a celebratory puff. He was leaning on the edge of the parapet, watching the battle below. Vallaine wished he could draw him more toward the centre of the gatehouse. His own strength was weakest at the edges of things. But there was no time for that now. As carefully as he had inched up the wall, he now crept a step closer. But Glittervein had not survived this long in the world because he was a man insensitive to danger. As soon as Vallaine moved, he felt it, and he turned. In an instant the two were at each other, their swords clanging with incredible ferocity.

Glittervein was clearly in no need of ruthlessness training. Unlike most Nains, he had made his own sword long ago, and with it he had slain the very dragon that had scarred his face for life. Since then, he had slain many more dragons, as well as men, Thralls, women, and even children. With all the strength of fifty years of hammering he drove Vallaine back against the waist-high balustrade that rimmed the seawall. On a good day Vallaine would surely have beaten him, but today he was weak and his senses kept spinning away from him. The last thing he saw before the Nain's sword came in under his ribs toward his heart was the tower on the end of the Lion's Arms where he knew Xemion awaited him. He had been in and out of a million middle worlds. He had been a midwife, a medium, a carrier, a lighter of fuses, a book reader. He'd been a messenger. He'd been a crosser of seas, a spell-taker. He had carried the charge many times. Many times he had been wounded and sickened even unto death, but he had never died before. Today, which was not a good day, would change all that. Today he would die.

⚔

Veneetha Azucena saw Vallaine's body plummet and land motionless on the pile of slain and wounded in front of the Lion's Mouth. She was also now bleeding profusely. Directed by Lord Akka Smissm, who sat in full black-mask regalia astride a black gorehorse, the attackers were following Rule One in the Pathan's battle plan — cut off the head. Taking many casualties, they pincered through the sides of the wedge formation she had been the point of. And there she was now, cut off, with only the ferocious Bargest beside her, backed up against the east side of the embankment of the Lion's Arms. Blood had run over one shoulder and was pooling in the mud at her feet as she held the spelled blade in her one good hand, waiting. If ever she wished there was the power of victory in Xemion's sword, she wished it now as she panted away, her lungs burning, blood streaming down her left side. The invaders closed in on her, but for a long time none could breach her defences, and those that were not slain by her sword were brought down screaming by Bargest.

Then a trumpet sounded, and, with Veneetha Azucena and the dog at its centre, a semi-circle slowly expanded away from them. Soon she would know why. Five Cyclopean archers had finally arrived on the most recent ship. Stepping through the outer perimeter of the circle, they notched their arrows against their strings and aimed. In the second before they let their arrows fly, there was a whizzing sound and a small jagged projectile struck the largest of them hard in his one big eye. The Cyclops bent over screaming, clutching his face, his arrow careening off at an angle into the sky. Bargest ran and leapt. He sank his teeth into the throat of the Cyclops and brought him down screaming on the muddy harbour floor.

Undeterred, the others unleashed their arrows in a flurry, striking both Veneetha Azucena and Bargest, the long black shafts sinking in deep. As they were reloading, a second Cyclops was struck in the temple by a rather larger piece of broken masonry and fell, knocked out cold, at the feet of the others. One of the three remaining, spying a small figure atop the cliffs whirling what looked to be a long red sash, shouted to warn the others, but the words were hardly out of his mouth before the next piece of stone found its target in his eye. Down he went screaming like his brethren before him. The remaining two were more wary now and took care to duck any further missiles that came their way as they continued their attack, unleashing volley after volley until the fallen Veneetha Azucena and Bargest bristled with arrows. Akka Smissm instructed the remaining Cyclopes to desist. With that he signalled the battle trumpets to sound the charge and he and his men trampled over the body of Veneetha Azucena and her spell-made sword, over the still-trembling body of the dog, over the prone bodies of the fallen and wounded, and deeper into the muddy inner harbour. With bloodthirsty yells they joined their fellows, falling upon the small group of Phaerlanders pinned against the gate at the cavern's mouth.

When Akka Smissm saw the toll these few Phaerlanders were taking on his troops, he ordered the front ranks to draw back as he summoned the archers forward. The Phaerlanders interlocked whatever shields they had amongst them and those with the longest swords stood at the forefront, prepared for the onslaught. Once again the Cyclopes notched their arrows and took careful aim. Two Thrall fighters, Molga Smarayha and Ingrisina Daturtia, who were from the same village as Imalgha and her sisters, went down almost at the same time, pierced through their necks by the first volley of arrows because they had not had time to secure their helmets. An untrained Nain lad named Yastgeng Lennkin, who had come only yesterday to Ulde against the wishes of his mother, had taken three mercenary lives with nothing but a jackhammer, but now a long, black-shafted arrow pierced his heart so violently it came out the other side and continued on through the bars of the gate. By now, Tharfen, who had been unable to see the Cyclopes, had rolled the wheelbarrow with its few remaining missiles farther along Phaer Point to where she once again had good sightlines. The distance was farther now, but she had not been practicing all summer for nothing. Yastgeng Lennkin's killer jerked forward, stricken in the back of the skull by a large fragment of marble once part of a sculpture of a fawn.

The remaining two Cyclopes, urged on by Akka Smissm, continued to shoot. One by one, as the arrows flew, more of the stranded Phaerlanders fell until there was only a small group left, including the Nain brothers, Belphegor and Tomtenisse Doombeard, and Imalgha and Lirodello. And all the while vexed seabirds flew about, shrieking at the clanging and the screaming, some of them with breasts all red where they had set down in the carnage.

From inside the tower, Xemion had been desperately watching Saheli's progress. She and about a hundred others had made it halfway across the harbour, just in time to meet the new horde of thugs and blood Thralls streaming off the ships with swords, axes and spears in hand. He watched helplessly as the valiant fight ensued. Ushyia Asaycha the Thrall, Suanen Booldia, a worker in stone, and Inniada Holom were slain almost immediately. The group gathered closer together and fought back-to-back as the attackers streamed about them, but they were vastly outnumbered and soon three more of the defenders fell. Saheli and the group that remained were good, skilled fighters, and she particularly exacted a heavy toll upon the invaders, but one by one her fellow warriors fell around her until they were whittled down to a small core of some two-dozen fighters.

There they stood, encircled, back-to-back, fighting heroically on all sides, but surely doomed to die — or worse, doomed to a life of slavery. This thought had barely burst into Xemion's consciousness before he saw the flag of Arthenow rippling atop the mast of one particularly large ship that had just arrived. Debarking from it and approaching the shore, several ghoulish-looking blood Thralls shepherded wheeled cages, which they obviously intended to fill. Xemion screamed. He tried to envision again the burning letters of the spell book in his mind. Surely there was a spell to burst open doors! Nothing. Magic had nothing for him! He cursed and kicked at the bars savagely. At least, he thought, he still had the natural power of his body. He would sooner spend his last energies crashing himself again and again into the cell door in an attempt to break it open than waiting here helplessly while she was captured and dragged away. But even as he gathered himself for this, the whole tower shook as though some giant had beaten it with a great stone hammer. There came another mighty blow, and another, and then a loud crash followed by an explosion of bright, yellow sunshine into the stairwell. Someone, something had battered that door open. He didn't have to wait too long to find out what manner of creature it was. There was some hoarse panting, a click-clack of something like claws slowly coming down the stone steps. Xemion backed into the corner of his cell and waited. A large black shadow crawled out of the stairwell.

“Bargest!” The collisions with the door had left a deep split in the dog's brow and his thick hide still bristled with arrows that caught at the sides of the doorway as he entered. Panting heavily, the huge dog dragged himself across the floor. He had retrieved something from the battle but Xemion couldn't quite make it out as he squinted in the sudden brightness. Bargest crawled forward and lay the item on the stone floor beside the bars, as close to Xemion's feet as he could get it. Wide-eyed, Xemion's hand shot out from under the cage and grabbed it. His sword! His spell-made sword. “Good boy! Good boy!” he shouted. There was no hesitation in him now. No worries about cross-spells that might or might not lie in it. He didn't care now if he was a warrior, a mage, or both because another powerful force was flowing. It was the most powerful force in the universe, he thought. It couldn't be bound by oaths or stopped by a trillion cross-spells at once. Love. He loved her and he wasn't going to let her die or be dragged off to be some blood Thrall in Arthenow.

With complete faith, Xemion swung the sword at the metal bars. Two mighty hacks cut them through and he was free. Bargest panted heavily, pressed flat to the ground, his eyelids nearly closed. Xemion bent down, gently stroked the massive head, and whispered, “You will always be my dog, Bargest.”

Bargest roared, “Go!”

“Thank you, Bargest,” he called as he flew up the steps and out the door of the tower.

“Go!” the dog commanded for the second time. There was no begging left in him.

⚔

Xemion burst into the sunlight, sure of the sword's power in his hand. And with a great scream he ran down the embankment, headlong into the streaming throng. Immediately, he fell upon one huge Kagan with such strength he cut him diagonally in half from his shoulders to his hips. And with his next stroke another died at a different angle. Criss and cross, just as he had played as a child. But when next he thrust the sword point-first at the breast of a battle Thrall in full armour and the blade did not pierce it, he knew something was wrong. The sword was not quite whole. A piece was missing. Xemion gasped and ducked and stood back up, warding off a blow that would have killed him if it had connected. He could feel the Great Kone turning. Spells tugging at spells. Everything entangled and at odds with everything else, as though the whole world was caught up in some mass cross-spell. But he was not crooked or crossed. Nor was his love for her.