Sunset of Lantonne (96 page)

“I never could pronounce your real name. Eight languages, but can’t even fumble my way through that.”

Nenophar smirked, then noticed Ilarra watching them. Instantly, he let the smile drop. “I am still answering to Nenophar. My companion is Ilarra, and I believe you will owe her an explanation about your honor markings and why you tried to take her arm off.”

Touching his face, On’esquin grumbled softly and nodded. “Bigger concerns at the moment,” he said, touching his hand to his chest and lowering his head in greeting to Ilarra the same way Therec had. “We’re losing the wall. I’ll explain myself when we get out of here alive.”

A sudden surge in the number of undead coming up over the wall pushed the defenders almost on top of Ilarra and the others. She found herself surrounded, though it put Raeln within reach as he struggled against several zombies already covered with fresh gore from others that had fallen.

“Ilarra,” Raeln shouted, kicking one of the rotted men out of reach to give himself and the soldiers closest to him a momentary break. “Get to Greth and find us a way out. We’ll be dead in under an hour otherwise.”

Ilarra patted his back to let him know she had heard, then pushed her way free of the soldiers to get to the next closest group. All across the northern section of the wall, the defenders were rapidly falling back toward where she stood, surrounded on all sides by a legion of undead. Even down below the wall, the last of those trying to hold their ground were being torn apart by undead both inside and outside the city.

To the north, she saw Nenophar’s brother was doing little better than the other defenders. A thousand or more undead crawled all over him as he flailed and tried to smash them into the ground.

Farther north, the closest of the elementals—the walking mountain of stone—moved away from the city, following a large group of retreating undead. The immense creature was attacking the undead, but it would be no help in saving the city. She had to assume the others would be equally useless.

Ilarra went to the inner side of the battlements, searching for a way to make a break for the city, in hopes of disappearing into the buildings or at least using them as cover. With more undead streaming into the streets every second, any route to flee the walls would vanish at any moment.

She started to back away from the wall and move to another vantage point, then stopped when she realized her right hand was covered with fresh blood that was not her own. Looking back, she saw Raeln’s fur had matted with blood from the bodies he was tearing into, as well as from hundreds of small wounds. His armor hid much of the blood, but it oozed out of gashes in the thick leather. He still fought hard, trying to drive the enemy back and protect those around him, but Ilarra knew he was on borrowed time. Already, she could see him struggling against exhaustion, barely able to keep his weapons raised, now that she knew what to look for. Even his breathing was labored—so very unlike how he normally would fight.

As Ilarra turned back to the wall, frantic to find a way out before Raeln could no longer fight, she came face-to-face with the vacant stare of an undead woman. The woman had crawled up the short section of wall between the battlements and the stairs from the inner courtyard. The zombie silently opened her mouth to bite at Ilarra, reaching to grab her arm at the same time.

Ilarra reacted without thinking, avoiding the zombie’s clumsy attempt to grapple her and reaching out to grab the decayed face with her left hand. As soon as she touched the zombie, she let a flicker of magic flow through her—again, by some odd instinct—and reduced the zombie to ash and bone. The remains fell away from her, crashing and shattering at the bottom of the wall.

For the briefest moment, Ilarra smiled at the ease with which she had dispatched the zombie, wondering if she might be able to hold her own against the remaining undead forces after all. Then, pain flared across her left hand, forcing her fingers to curl against her palm and shake violently. She watched helplessly as her nails cracked and fell away in small pieces, the skin darkening at the tips until it looked as if she had dipped them in ink. Try as she might, she could not make her hand open, and the whole bottom half of her arm felt as though it were being held over an open flame. Everything below the burns from On’esquin’s weapon burned.

Hugging her aching hand to her stomach, Ilarra gritted her teeth in frustration as no less than a hundred zombies continued up the stairs, closing off the last possible route away from the wall. A glance north showed the undead there had nearly reached the top of the wall and soon would overwhelm the defenders bunched up around Raeln.

“Get back!”

Ilarra had no time to find the source of the shout before strong hands threw her facedown on the ground and someone stepped over her protectively. She heard a blade tearing through flesh, and then realized large paws were positioned on either side of her. Biting back the instinct to attack the man, Ilarra slid free, intending to thank Raeln for saving her from her own inattention.

Instead, she found herself looking up at Greth, fighting for all he was worth with a sword that had its tip already broken off and a battered shield that barely protected him anymore. The suit of chain and leather he wore was torn to the point of absurdity, though he looked as though he had not had a chance to cast it aside in the heat of battle. For all his lack of grace and style like Raeln, Greth fought with a strength and ferocity that seemed boundless.

“Find a way down to the city!” Greth shouted, cleaving a zombie’s head nearly in half as he shoved two more off the wall with his shield. “We’re losing ground!”

Everywhere Ilarra looked, the wall was being filled with stumbling and groaning undead who dragged down the defenders not working together quickly enough. Men were screaming and being torn limb from limb as they were pulled into the swarming zombie horde. With each fallen soldier, the army of the dead pushed all the harder, until the last fifty men were huddled around Ilarra, back to back and shoulder to shoulder, straining to keep every inch of space.

Ilarra had no room to get off the ground without shoving a soldier into the enemy line, so she curled into a ball and clung to her hand, which continued to burn. Blood sprayed her face almost immediately, but she could not be sure if it was from one of the soldiers or the undead, and she was not even sure she wanted to find out.

A scream behind Ilarra made her flinch. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Raeln fall as the line broke. Men and women were being knocked down under the force of the undead charge, and Raeln was not moving. Blood covered his face and chest, and a pair of zombies grabbed at his legs to drag him away from the group.

Somewhere nearby, Ilarra heard Greth scream for someone to help Raeln. No one she saw had any hope of getting to him in time. They had far greater concerns as the zombies overwhelmed them.

Ilarra gritted her teeth and pushed the soldiers away as she stood. There was little choice left to her. She had to do something or everyone there would die, possibly even her. More importantly, the only two people she still considered family were about to die.

“Stop!” she shouted, her voice breaking as she tried to make herself heard over the noise of battle. The man in front of her screamed as he was torn apart by emotionless corpses. “Undead, I said, stop!”

This time, Ilarra felt the magic roil within her, empowering her demand against the undead bound to serve the Turessians. As soon as she felt that, the battle went silent. Hundreds of broken, bloodied, rotten faces stared straight ahead, standing motionless, some with their fingers only inches from trembling defenders. One even froze with its broken teeth less than an inch from a man’s neck.

The soldiers were equally still, looking around wide-eyed and waiting for the undead to rush in again.

Farther out from the ring of barely moving defenders and frozen zombies, more of the undead continued to search for new targets to attack, though none appeared interested in moving any closer to Ilarra and the others. Out past the walls, she could see the sun setting behind the mountains, and with the darkness spreading across the area, Ilarra could feel more creatures of death approaching, ones that would not brave the daylight. If and when those arrived, the zombies would be hardly a concern.

The first person to break the stalemate was Greth, shouldering his way through the remaining soldiers to practically dive over top of Raeln. He ripped pieces off his clothing and tied off several badly bleeding wounds, keeping his palm pressed firmly against another.

“How is he?” asked Ilarra, her voice trembling. Her left arm had gone numb to the shoulder. “Greth…tell me something.”

The wildling shook his head, his eyes frantically darting between different bleeding cuts all over Raeln. Despite dozens of spots on his own armor where blood seeped through, he looked very nearly ready to weep as he struggled to stop all of Raeln’s blood loss. “The oaf barely has a heartbeat,” Greth told her after checking Raeln’s neck. “I might be able to save him, but if he loses another drop of blood, he’s probably gone. We need to go. Now. If you don’t find us a way out, I’m running with him, even if it gets me killed.”

Ilarra bit back a whimper as she limped out of the tight-knit group, her leg still unstable and her left arm so numb that there were no longer even prickles of pain. She used the unmoving zombies as supports with her right, making her way around the group slowly.

Out of hundreds of soldiers that had been around at the start of battle, the few that remained were mostly untrained civilians. She saw no more than five that looked even remotely comfortable with their weapons, and all of those were badly bloodied. With Greth and Raeln out of the fight, if the undead began attacking again, it would be a very short battle before they were all dead.

Ilarra searched farther down the wall, trying to spot Nenophar or On’esquin. More than sixty feet away, beyond the frozen undead, she saw the two people tearing through the zombies with flashes of light and flames. Around them, dozens of bodies lay strewn about, smoking. On’esquin fought tirelessly, with Nenophar assisting from time to time, looking nearly ready to collapse. Neither man seemed to notice her or the other defenders.

“Nenophar!” Ilarra shouted, but neither he nor On’esquin reacted. She screamed again, with no better luck.

InsteadNenophar, someone else heard her. Far out past the wall, Ilarra saw the dragon—Nenophar’s brother, she had to remind herself—raise its head, searching the walls until its slitted eyes locked on her and narrowed. He continued to watch her, even as he swept aside a dozen zombies tugging at his legs.

The dragon looked away briefly, baring teeth larger than Ilarra as he stared off toward the farther reaches of the plains, where she could faintly see a large group of semi-transparent shapes racing toward the city. Whatever was coming was enough that even a dragon looked concerned, making Ilarra feel even more afraid for the people around her. When the dragon’s head came around again, he seemed to be waiting for Ilarra to tell him what she needed his brother for, barely even reacting as hundreds of undead continued to claw at him.

Ilarra glanced back at the defenders and saw broken men and women. Many openly wept, unable to even attack the helpless undead waiting for Ilarra’s next command. Others inched their way through the undead to check on bodies of lost friends or family scattered all across the battlements. She was not even sure a single person in that group could or would put up a fight when the next charge came. They likely would be unable to even fight through a handful of undead in an attempt to get out of the city. She had to get them a clear path or more deaths would haunt her.

Looking back to the dragon, Ilarra started to raise her left hand to gesture, but as she did, she saw that the last two fingers had broken off at the first knuckle and the rest of her hand was burned and cracked. Quickly, she tucked the hand back to her stomach, and using her other hand, pointed at Nenophar, then herself, then the group of defenders, and finally gave a broad sweep of her arm south. The dragon seemed to understand and spread his wings, shaking like a wet dog to cast off the undead that continued to try and drag him down.

A faint whisper in Ilarra’s mind said simply,
Hold your ground
.

The dragon launched off of the ground with an explosion of kicked-up dirt, sending dozens of undead humanoids tumbling away. Every living soul on the wall turned to look, including Nenophar and On’esquin. The creature was majestic, clearing the wide swath of land beyond the outer city in a single flap as it turned toward the wall to save the survivors.