Shattered Shields - eARC (16 page)
Read Shattered Shields - eARC Online
Authors: Jennifer Brozek,Bryan Thomas Schmidt
The tunnels grew darker, danker, with dripping patches of moisture on the walls. Shadowed sarcophagi revealed that they had entered the Emperor’s catacombs, a restrictive labyrinth of tunnels that housed past rulers of the kingdoms. They came at last to a more well-lit area, with regular torch sconces on the walls and crisp, newly cut masonry.
“We are beneath the Eternal Emperor’s palace,” the Eye said. “Men awaiting justice are often kept here.”
They passed another set of guards. Davothy extinguished his handfire and retreated to a wall alcove while the Eye spoke with a man at a broad, orderly desk. The man—who appeared to be some sort of warden—fetched a small set of keys and unlocked a narrow door of unspectacular construction.
Jeffran recoiled as the portal swung open. The tiny room stank of excrement. The sparse bedding had been shredded, the bed frame overturned, and jagged scratches marred the stuccoed walls. On a space of bare floor in the room’s center, chained to a metal bolt that was clearly a recent addition, lay an emaciated man who did not acknowledge their entry.
Jeffran knelt beside the chained man, horrified by the staring eyes, the gaunt lines of cheek and jawbone. The prisoner’s skin tones were those of the Holy Kingdoms, his tangled auburn hair a clear confirmation of ancestry. His clothing was in tatters, his hair snarled with fragments of broken bone. Faded remnants of war paint marked his cheeks and arms.
“Timoten?” Jeffran whispered. But the prisoner did not respond to the name.
“What is this?” Jeffran demanded, whirling to face the Eye of the Emperor. “This man is a citizen of the Holy Kingdoms. What has he done to deserve such treatment?”
“The chains are necessary,” said the Eye, who remained at the room’s entryway. “In his lucid moments, this man can be quite—”
A growl rose in the prisoner’s throat. With a sudden lurch, he snapped bleeding fingers around the collar of Jeffran’s shirt.
Jeffran yelped and jerked backward, but the prisoner forced him to the floor.
“Who are you?” the man demanded. “Why are you here? Don’t you know I have to kill you? Stupid, abhorrent ground dwellers!”
A fist struck Jeffran’s face. He floundered backward. The prisoner lunged, snarling, but snapped to a halt as the chains pulled taut. He raged, spine arching, and for a terrified instant Jeffran feared that his inhuman strength would rip the chains free of their mooring. Blood streamed down the prisoner’s wrists. Bones snapped audibly as he threw his body against the floor.
Finally the man collapsed, whimpering. “I shouldn’t have left,” he gasped, lungs heaving. “Too much dust, it’s all gone wrong. Jeffran! Help me, Jeffran!” He wept and clawed the ground.
The Eye of the Emperor said: “Jeffran. It is the only name he ever speaks. When you arrived to petition at my audience hall, your voice colored by the same highland dialect, I wondered at the coincidence.”
“How did he come here?” Jeffran asked, voice rasping.
“He was found by a patrol near the Shan-ti border. Rather, he accosted them, clinging to their legs and begging for asylum. It seems he realized that he was among countrymen, and found courage to flee from the other savages.” The Eye looked with pity on the trembling prisoner. “He claimed to have knowledge of critical importance to the Emperor, but when he was brought into the capital, he began raving. Our best physicians have been unable to ease his condition. He calls them ‘irreverent bloodsuckers’ and suggests a number of…intriguing alternate applications for their equipment.”
Despite himself, Jeffran gave a wan smile. “Timoten never did like doctors much.”
“You
do
know him, then?”
“Yes,” Jeffran said. He lowered himself, exhausted, to sit beyond reach of the prisoner’s chain. “He’s my brother.”
* * *
It took four men to hold Timoten down while the Emperor’s physicians tended his wounds. When Timoten had screamed himself hoarse and the last of the broken bones had been set, a hunched, bird-boned matriarch murmured an incantation and passed a glowing palm across his chest.
Jeffran watched with gut-wrenching anguish. He had not seen his brother in fourteen years, not since the disastrous childhood raid that had separated them. Their mother’s anguished cries had haunted Jeffran’s dreams that night, and every night thereafter.
The matriarch finished her work and sat back, crooning to herself. Bone-knitting was intense magic, heavy on souldust and intellectually disastrous for those who practiced it. Timoten would not ordinarily have qualified for such attention, but the savage refugee—like a prized warhorse—could not be relied on to leave the injury undisturbed.
“Thank you,” Jeffran said as he helped the old woman to her feet. “Your sacrifice honors us.”
“That’s all right, lovey.” She patted his arm, eyes failing to focus on his face. “I’m bound for the grave. Didn’t the golden birds tell you? No need for wits on the other side.” She broke into an old sky shanty, rocking back and forth with the chorus.
Timoten, who had grown visibly more agitated at the old woman’s arrival, at last ceased his screaming. He sank to the flagstones, hair falling in matted hunks around his face. “Too much dust,” he mumbled. “Dust, dust, ashes and dust. He burns it like fire along my bones.”
Jeffran leaned forward. “Who, Timoten? Who burns the dust?”
“He’s always near. Behind the lines, whenever the rafts come down. Far enough to stay unbloodied. Near enough to dominate.”
Jeffran leaned forward, urgent. “When the Emperor’s soldiers found you, you said you knew something important. What was it, Timoten? What did you come here to tell us?”
Timoten wailed and yanked his hair. Eerie streaks of light pulsed along his skin. “It’s no use,” he cried. “There’s too much of it. I can’t break free. Jeffran! Where are you, Jeffran?”
“Timoten! It’s me.
I’m
Jeffran.”
“Dust, dust, ashes and dust…”
Jeffran paused. The Eye said Timoten had become incoherent when the Emperor’s soldiers brought him to the capital. And his agitation had increased visibly when the ancient matriarch used souldust to heal him.
“You!” Jeffran said, whirling to address the warden. “Take the old woman outside.”
The warden eyed Timoten uncertainly. “All right. I’ll send a pair of guards to—”
“Don’t send anyone. You city dwellers are all tainted with souldust.”
“Souldust,” the old woman said as the warden escorted her from the room. “Oh yes, the dust seeps into your soul. I had a patient once who…no. That was my husband. Is he dead? I think he died.” Her voice trailed away down the hallway.
The glowing lines on Timoten’s skin faded. The madness left his eyes. “Jeffran?” he asked, his gaze at last locking on his brother’s. “Jeffran. Praise the kingdoms I found you. They’re coming.”
“The savages?”
“They mean to attack the capital.”
“They’d be fools to try. They’re no match for the Emperor’s sorcerers.”
“No, you don’t see. You
must see
, Jeffran. The souldust. It strengthens his hold on us. You must warn the Emperor. If his soldiers loose magic against the savages—”
A signal horn blew, long and low, from the ramparts atop the Emperor’s palace. Timoten’s eyes rolled upward. He dropped in a trembling fit, spittle foaming from his mouth. Jeffran’s blood froze. There was only one reason the horns would be blowing that particular signal, with quite that sense of urgency.
The deadfall savages were attacking.
* * *
Jeffran reached the ramparts as the first rafts were dropping, his patroller’s insignia granting him access to the heights. A line of hard-eyed sorcerers stood ready to rebuff the attack. Their upraised fists glowed with souldust.
“Stop!” Jeffran shouted, but his words were lost in the throng of jostling soldiers. Brawny savages leapt from the descending rafts, dropping like scattered pebbles. Most were impaled on spears held by nervous soldiers. Others struck the ramparts and collapsed, bones snapping.
The sorcerers sent their first volley upward.
Flames erupted from outstretched fists, dazzling Jeffran’s eyes and licking along the undersides of rafts. Savages pulled back from the edges, skin flaming. But, a moment later, the savages were jumping again, and this time something was different. They…glowed. A flaring network of lines lit their skin, brightest along their skulls. Moments before, overeager savages had broken bones when they jumped from the rafts. Now they landed in feral crouches, unharmed. They lashed out with cudgels and battle-axes.
A woman dropped onto the shield of a nearby soldier. She lunged toward Jeffran, snarling. He caught her club with both hands, intending to toss her aside, but she was unnaturally strong. She braced her legs against his cuirass and leapt from his chest, twisting mid-air to strike at the Emperor’s sorcerers. Within seconds, she had razed the entire line, snapping bones and sending men tumbling to their deaths.
Jeffran whirled, intending to cut off the woman during her second pass, and found himself face to face with Timoten. His brother’s face was contorted, his eyes blazing with mindless fury. Broken chains trailed from his forearms.
Jeffran backed away, hoping to avoid a confrontation. Timoten advanced, swinging the chains in a broad arc. Jeffran ducked, rolled to one knee, and scanned desperately for some avenue of escape. His eye caught on something unusual: a raft.
It hovered near the edge of the ramparts, the only raft that had not joined the battle. A massive figure stood at the center, with light blazing along its cranium.
He’s always near
. Timoten’s words rang in Jeffran’s memory.
Behind the lines. Far enough to stay unbloodied. Near enough to dominate.
Jeffran didn’t stop to think. He pushed himself upright, lunged to avoid Timoten’s next attack, scooped up an abandoned shield, and charged toward the edge of the roof.
He honestly didn’t know if he’d make the jump. Air whizzed beneath his boots, and the shield preceding him caught the edge of several blades. Then his feet struck the roughly lashed logs of the raft. He stumbled forward. Savages swung at him. He snapped a cudgel from the nearest belt and swung, eyes focused on the glowing skull of the savages’ leader.
The cudgel
whizzed
through the air, snapping with crushing power. At the last moment, Jeffran’s target raised an arm in self-defense. The cudgel descended, not on the unprotected cranium, but on the metal bracer strapped to his opponent’s forearm. The bulky savage grunted, and the blinding patterns along his scalp dimmed slightly.
The other savages, who’d been moving to intercept Jeffran, halted mid-stride. They seemed disoriented. The glowing lines along their skin faded.
Looking more irritated than angry, the savage leader swatted Jeffran to the ground. Jeffran rolled, swinging at the savage’s leg. Bone crunched beneath his cudgel. The savage roared and reached down to lift Jeffran by the neck. Jeffran struggled, throat collapsing beneath crushing fingers. His lungs burned. He could not draw air. The world began to go black.
Then something heavy thudded into the savage from the side.
Jeffran dropped, gasping. He struggled to his feet and saw Timoten crouching atop the fallen savage, severed chains trailing from both wrists. Timoten snarled and drew back an arm to strike, but the savage heaved sideways, knocking him aside. Timoten spun in air, chains flaring. Metal struck unarmored flesh. The savage grunted. He raised his head and stared at Timoten, light flaring with renewed brilliance along his scalp. Timoten faltered, hands grasping the sides of his head. He crumpled.
The savage leader smiled.
Then his expression froze, rigid, as Jeffran’s cudgel shattered the bones of his skull.
Jeffran struck again, this time in the chest. He jumped away as his massive adversary toppled, but misjudged his direction. The savage’s weight, now displaced from the center of the raft, set the entire surface rocking precariously. Jeffran’s foot slipped off the edge.
Jeffran reeled, tumbling, catching a terrifying glimpse of the cobbles far, far below. He reached for the edge of the raft, but the distance was too great. His flailing hand swung through empty air…
And latched, palm to wrist, on to Timoten’s outstretched arm.
* * *
“What will happen to them?” Timoten asked. He and Jeffran stood on the chaotic rooftop, still breathing heavily from the battle. Harried commanders paced and shouted, organizing the disarmament of the perplexed and occasionally weeping savages.
“They’ll be returned home,” Jeffran said, looking with pity on the sudden refugees. “Assuming no new savage leader arises to distort their minds.”
“None will. The man you slew was soul-hungry, a demented sorcerer able to feed on others’ souldust. There is not another like him on the islands.”
“Emperor be praised. But Timoten, how did you remain free of the trance? By the time that monster was choking me, his influence on the savages had returned. How were you able to attack him?”
“I’d already jumped.” Timoten shrugged and smiled wryly. “Hard to abandon a target mid-leap. You’d distracted him with your first attack. I broke free of his grip long enough to spring to your aid. Then, when I hit him, his concentration faltered again.”
“Fair enough.” Jeffran stretched his weary muscles and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Come. The sooner I report back to the Eye, the sooner we may return to the highlands.”
Timoten hesitated. “I’ll remain here, I think. I’m…not quite ready to take up normal life again. There are things…memories.” He shuddered.
Jeffran’s hands opened and closed, helpless. “How can I help?”
“You have helped already, Jeffran.” Timoten’s gaze flicked over the crowded rooftop, chaotic but peaceful. “You have helped already.”
Yael of the Strings
John R. Fultz
Among the tents where soldiers whispered of spiders and warlocks, the minstrel walked and strummed his guitarra. He stopped here and there to tell a tale or sing a song that emboldened the hearts of his listeners. Wherever he wandered, the talk turned from nervous worry to headstrong bravado. Farmers’ sons and unseasoned conscripts compared themselves with the heroes in the minstrel’s songs. They looked for his cloak of crimson and gold when he passed near, waving him to their fires and offering mulled wine for their favorite tunes.
Yael Tarasca obliged them all. Such was the duty assigned to him by the Queen of Sharoc. For seven years she had retained Yael as her court minstrel, and she cherished the power of his voice. Yet now her soldiers needed Yael’s presence far more than she did. “Such men as you are priceless in times of war,” she told him, “for your tongue encourages others to spend their lives in service to the throne. Your songs make men hungry for glory. You will go with General Anco to the Valley of Ezerel.”
So Yael had traded the comforts of palace life for a rude tent among the mud and piles of griffon dung. The Legions of Sharoc set their camp north of the valley, ten thousand tents and campfires beneath the rustling banner of the Lion and Hawk. Yael’s boots of fine Sharoci leather were stained by the muck of the encampment, and he missed the nightly company of palace courtesans. His belly remained empty when he could not bring himself to eat the miserable rations of soldiers. General Anco and his lieutenants dined on sumptuous fare in a great silken pavilion behind the lines. Yet only the griffon-tamers, Knights of the Royal House, would get the fine foods imported from royal precincts. Yael contented himself with a ready supply of wine.
“Soon,” he reminded himself while stalking from tent to tent, “the battle will be done and I’ll return to the palace.” Tonight he would get little sleep, for General Anco had ordered him to entertain the troops until dawn. Anco knew well the creeping fear, the gnawing dread that quivered in the stomachs of untested men on the night before a charge. He knew that Yael of the Strings would sing courage into his men. The minstrel counted himself lucky to bear such a duty. Most of the men he sang for tonight would die in the valley tomorrow. Far better to sing, for the queen than to
die
for her.
Across the moonlit valley assembled the invading Legions of Ghoth. Behemoth spiders moved about their ranks on segmented legs thick as tree trunks. Strapped to the broad backs of the arachnids stood wicker pagodas with peaked roofs. Warlocks also walked among the Ghothians, grim sorcerers of the pureblood caste, each bearing the Mark of the Great Mother on his forehead. Rumor had it that such men shared their very thoughts with the great spiders. When the sun rose the Griffon and the Spider would converge, and a tide of blood would flow into the valley.
Yael shivered and turned his eyes back to the strings of his guitarra. He finished a performance of “The Hero’s Blinding Blade” to cheers from nine soldiers gathered about a guttering flame. It was the sixth time he’d played the tune this night.
“Damn, but you’re a fine singer,” said a young man swathed in chain mail. He hoisted a tankard of wine and toasted the minstrel. His fellows joined the salute, and someone handed Yael a full cup. He drank the wine hungrily, and the blinking stars spun above his head.
“Do you know the “Tale of Voros the Webcutter”?” asked another lad.
“Of course,” said Yael. He was tired of that song, and the wine had loosened his tongue. “But everyone knows that tale. How about something new?”
The boy-soldiers exchanged nervous glances. “Like what?”
Yael smacked his lips and retuned the fifth string of his instrument. He launched into “The Ballad of the Summer Maiden.” His audience listened, rapt with attention. A few more soldiers wandered over to join their fellows, hanging on the song’s every word. When Yael finished there was applause, but no cheers. Half the men were weeping into their cups.
“Aye, Esmeralda, do I miss you!” sobbed a young man.
“I miss my sweet Jarethea!” moaned another.
“I might never see my wife and sons again,” a soldier said.
Yael blinked. This was not the time for romantic ballads. These lads must be inspired to vanquish their foes, not too long for their distant loves.
So he launched into “The Tale of Voros the Webcutter,” and the mood of the company improved immediately. He finished the song to another round of applause but refused another cup of wine. Despite the protests against his leaving, he made his way toward another group of soldiers gathered about another flame. There he gave a new performance, staying only long enough to banish the black moods of those who listened, then moving on to the next row of tents, the next fire, the next cup of wine.
The men of Sharoc listened to the minstrel’s songs while oiling their blades, honing the heads of pikes, and tightening the straps of shields. Yael played, walked, played again. “The Lay of the Laughing Prince.” “The Conquest of Altarro.” “The Valiant Legions.” Many more songs, and many of them two or three times apiece. Every tale he knew that quickened the blood, fired the spirit, and banished fear. He turned frowns into grins, worried looks to determined scowls, and unskilled boys into valorous warriors.
As he performed Yael watched the full moon glide across the sky. When the bulk of the night was behind him, his fingers sore from plucking, his voice hoarse from singing, he came to one last fire. The men were busy slipping into breastplates and greaves, but he played “Swords of the Righteous” for them the best he could. His weariness crept into the song, but still they seemed to enjoy it. Anything to take their minds off the slaughter to come.
Someone offered him a piece of greasy flatbread as breakfast. He paused in his playing and accepted the tasteless fare. Sunrise was less than an hour away. A dim violet glow replaced the darkness along the eastern horizon. The clanking of metal and the shouts of captains rang across the encampment. Every man must now rise and make himself ready for the charge at dawn. Every man but the weary minstrel, who would remain among the tents and try to sleep while the blood tide rushed into the valley. His long night was over.
As Yael swallowed the last of his meal, a shadow fell across the encampment. Then the howling began, and the panicked screams of men rose into the darkness. The soldiers began twitching, falling, smacking at their legs and arms, as if a sudden madness had fallen upon them. Now Yael saw the masses of hairy spiders moving across the ground, each one big as a man’s fist. They crawled up his tall boots toward his crotch. He leaped atop the wooden crate that had served him as a chair, scraping spiders from his boots with the flat side of his guitarra.
They came in a suffocating wave, an ocean of tarantulas invading the camps, seeking soft flesh with poison fangs. Yael stamped upon the crate, dislodging more of the deadly creatures. A few had already bitten deep into his boot leather. He slapped the remaining spiders from his legs, but more of them crawled up the sides of the crate.
The legions wailed and screamed as they drowned beneath the wave of venomous arachnids. Only Yael’s elevated position on the crate and his well-made boots had saved him from the tiny monsters. The men around him were all dead or dying, their young faces purple and bloated by the killing venom. They fell to the earth clutching swollen necks, and they disappeared beneath a carpet of black spiders.
Yael kicked and stomped at the spiders streaming onto his crate. He would have smashed them with the guitarra, but he could not risk losing the instrument. It was made by the finest artisans in Sharoc, a gift to him from the queen herself. His boots crushed the tarantulas two at a time. If anyone had been watching they might have laughed at his absurd dance. Yet everyone was too busy smashing spiders, or dying, to notice that Yael of the Strings was dancing for his life.
Someone rushed by with a torch and swept it across the smothered crate. The spider-flesh ignited along with the crate itself. Yael stood as long as he dared on the flaming box while men rushed about him with torches, clearing out the spiders. They were knights in scalloped steel armor, more resistant to the fangs of their tiny foes.
“Goddess curse the Ghothian warlocks!” someone shouted as Yael leaped to the ground. The minstrel took a flaming brand from the campfire and quickly learned to maintain a spider-free zone about himself while the extermination of the crawling horde continued. Countless dead men littered the ridge, many of the tents were in flames, and the smell of roasting spiders filled the air like a cloying jasmine.
The sun rose full in the east, shedding flame across the sky. Yael glanced southward and saw the legions of Ghothian pikemen marching into the valley. After them came the ranks of gargantuan spiders. He could not see the Ghothian warlocks who had sent the plague of tarantulas, but he imagined them sitting in the pagodas rising from the backs of the eight-legged giants.
The knights had succeeded in burning and dispersing the swarm of tarantulas, but the losses among the footmen were great. The sneak attack had not been meant to damage the griffon riders. It had been aimed squarely at the masses of pikemen, most of whom weren’t even strapped into their leather corselets yet. The spider plague had all but crippled the Sharoci infantry.
Even now the last tarantulas were scuttling into the weeds or tunneling into the earth itself. The advance of the Ghothians had begun, and now the Legions of Sharoc must rush to meet them or lose the valley in a single hour. Captains and generals shouted commands. Surviving soldiers forgot their dead comrades and continued their hasty preparations. Men took up pikes and short swords and pointed helms. They strapped on leather breastplates and formed into ranks as they were ordered. There were half as many in those ranks as there were yesterday. Dead men lay everywhere, their bodies swollen, their skin gone purple as grapes.
Yael stumbled through the chaos toward his private tent at the rear of the lines. A knight rode by him on a griffon, its wings still folded against the glistening coat of its leonine body. The griffon’s claws sent mud spraying behind it, and its hawk-like head crowed with excitement. A long red plume rose from the knight’s helmet. He raised a silver sword high as he shouted commands. The griffon-mount’s passing almost knocked Yael over, but he stumbled onward in the opposite direction of every other man.
A war horn sounded somewhere, followed by two more. Men’s voices raised in cries of anger, defiance, and raw bravado. At last Yael reached his modest tent. He collapsed on the cot, still clutching the guitarra to his chest. The thunder of griffons’ wings filled the sky. The knights were launching. The charge had begun.
Yael clutched his instrument and thanked the Goddess that he was no soldier.
The flap of his tent opened. An armored knight without a helmet stalked inside. His iron-gray beard and long mustache were unmistakable. He was Sir Carracan, General Anco’s first officer. He carried a footman’s pike and a muddy broadsword in his hands, yet these weapons were not his own. They were far too crude for a rider of griffons, a commander of the queen’s legions.
“Minstrel!” Carracan bellowed. “Up with your lazy ass!”
He tossed the pike and broadsword to the ground beside Yael’s cot. He turned and exited the tent.
Yael sat on the edge of the cot. He stared at the rusted scabbard of the sword and the long pole with its razory iron head. His hands clutched the guitarra as if it would defend him from any enemy.
Sir Carracan returned a moment later with a bronze shield. On its pocked face were the images of Lion and Hawk. “Up, damn you!” shouted the knight. “You’re fighting with us today!”
Yael shook his head, stood up to face the knight without realizing it. “Impossible,” he said. “I’m not a soldier. I am, as you have said, only a tired minstrel.”
Carracan snatched the guitarra from Yael with gauntleted fists. He raised the instrument high above his head so that it raked the canvas of the tent. Yael’s breath stopped. The knight brought the guitarra down across his armored knee, shattering it into a hundred pieces. Its silvery strings, made from the best sheep’s gut money could buy, snapped like the tender wood of its body.
“Today you’re a soldier,” said Carracan. “We’ve lost too many pikemen to those damn spiders. Every squire, cook, and boy who can lift a pike is joining the charge.”
Yael could not have been more stunned if the knight had slapped him across the face. No words came into his mind. Only dread, and fear, and a terrible irony that crept like an arachnid across the back of his skull.
Carracan grabbed him by the shoulders and bellowed into his face. “Serve your queen, boy! Or I’ll run you through right here.” The knight placed a hand on the hilt of his silver sword. “Make your choice, warbler. Serve or die.”
Yael bent and picked up the pike. It was longer than he was tall. He had studied fencing at the palace, as the upper classes were wont to do. But he had never fought for his life. Had never taken a life.
“I know not the use of this weapon,” he said.
The knight showed Yael how to brace the pike for a charge. “Hold it like this. Run toward the enemy. And stick him with this end!”
Yael nodded. Carracan picked up the round shield. “And don’t forget this. The spider-lovers will be trying to stick you, too.”
Yael strapped the broadsword to his waist as Carracan gave him a last piece of advice.
“When the ranks have joined, the battle will turn to close-quarters fighting. You won’t have room to use the pike anymore. That’s when the sword comes in handy. Do not hesitate to kill these Ghothians, or they will kill you first. Do you understand?”
Yael nodded, his head swimming. Sir Carracan marched him out of the tent and sent him toward a group of pikemen jogging for the front line. Up ahead griffons filled the sky above the valley, already swooping to engage the great spiders. Yael joined the ranks of marching footmen. The smells of sweat and shit and fear suffocated him. The heat of the day rose with the sound of blaring horns, and the downward march began.
