The Battle of Ebulon (21 page)

For the topmost coil, the
first to take the spear, I had to reach for my scalpel and cut away
the shredded hand’s-width of tube. Stitched one trimmed end to the
other carefully, as if it were a sleeve. My mother’s lessons,
before I’d been apprenticed to the Elect, had proven their worth
often enough.

“
Must he
suffer?” Vess asked, his voice strained. “If he’s to
die…”

I looked up at the big
man, then glanced to Del’s slack face. He skimmed the edge of
consciousness, lost in the haze of pain. Luzon turned his head, to
be sure he didn’t choke on his tongue. “He’s not dying,” I said,
taking the last few stitches and knotting my catgut off. “I’m
nearly finished.”

“
You are?”
Vess frowned at my work.

“
Do you still
think me just a fucking handmaid?”

His mouth opened, then
shut again. I cut my thread free.

Metal rattled. Vess and I
looked for it, in unison, but there was nothing that would rattle
so. The tables were all wood, and — my memory flicked to
it.

“
The street
drain.”

A second rattle, a bang,
and the grate fell to one side. It was a small one, barely wide
enough for the pig-headed Orc who sprang up. Those lightly wounded
sitting just outside the full-length windows, and the orderlies
bandaging them, tried to scramble to their feet. Shouts and screams
drowned out the infirmary bustle. Orcs popped up from the
drain.

The lead monster snarled,
whirling his spear as a staff. Its shaft cracked off two orderlies,
knocking them down. One soldier drew his sword in time to take the
spearhead through his chest.

Vess roared in fury,
yanking his sword from its sheath, and hurdled the window’s low
sill. He sliced the first Orc’s head clean off and met the second
with a crash. The monsters charged the wounded soldiers who dared
try to face them while the orderlies and nurses fled deeper into
the tavern. Spears cut the weak men down. Vess caught one by its
haft in his free hand, cut the guilty arm clean off with one sweep
of his sword. The rest turned on him, rather than chase the
helpless goodfolk.

“
Vess!” Del,
snapped to clarity by the screaming, fumbled for his own
sword.

“
No!” I
touched his head, snapping a little charm into his mind. Del
slumped, unconscious. I caught him by the hair, lowered his head
gently. Only one man, only one bit of faith offered when I stepped
into this dark place. I’d not let him die.

Further up the road, a
squad of Vess’ knights rounded the corner at a run. No time; half a
dozen Orcs were already in the street. More coming. Vess held three
at bay. Another charged past him, slapped Luzon down with his spear
butt and then there was only me between him and Del. The Orc
grabbed my shoulder to throw me aside, spear swinging toward
Del.

I shot my kir up the
Orc’s arm and stabbed his prime meridian, at the neck. He dropped
like a sack of flour, bouncing off Del’s sturdy table. His spear
skittered away, doing no harm. My kir snapped back to me, through
his flesh.

With a yell, Vess’
knights met the Orcs and slashed into them, spears clanging on
shields, swords biting through iron mail. Blood splashed across the
paving stones, followed by falling bodies. A knight went down,
spitted. I saw one more Orc pulling himself through the drain. The
monster was too big, too much a hog to simply leap
through.

A chance to stop them. I
ran, bent low, dodging behind Orcs; they fought for their lives,
and hardly noticed me. The Orc in the drain spotted me, snarled,
and hauled himself up to the waist. Caught there. I lunged to grab
his ear, and he jabbed his spear one-handed. I fell on my knees, in
trying to dodge it. His filthy hand clapped down on my wrist,
pulling his spear back to stab me.

Foolish. I cut his
meridian at the neck. His spear clattered to the paving stones. He
slumped, stuck in the drain.

Grabbing my shoulders,
Vess jerked me back. Then he saw the monster was dead, and frowned
down at me. “Did you —?”

“
Oil!” one of
the knights shouted. A short man in filthy, plainspun clothes
unstoppered a skin and poured oil on the corpse. Two knights
grabbed spears and rammed the corpse back through the drain. From
below came grunts, guttural shouting — and a whiff of stink. The
filthy man kept pouring, emptying the oilskin.

“
Candle!” Vess
yelled. “A flame! Someone!”

My memory flickered to
what my father had told me of that smell, long ago. Swamp gas.
Careful, the stuff burns. “I have it!” I shouted, over Vess. I held
my hand over the drain, gathering kir in my fingertips. Knotted
down, squeezed, the kir ignited into a candle-sized spark. Below, I
saw bodies moving, heard more piggish snarling. A grey-skinned hand
grabbed the rim of the drain.

“
Get back!” I
shouted, and with a snap released the spark. The filthy man yelled
it with me, already running. “Get back!” Ran, myself, toward the
tavern windows. The knights scrambled to fall back, too, as flame
roared up in the drain for a moment —

—
and the
earth shook, rumbling. The explosion burst through the hole. Earth
flew up from the paving stones. The drain widened. Crumbled. Cracks
ran between the stones and the road sank along its center line. A
dying Orc, trying to crawl, was dragged down. Vess snatched me up
by the waist and carried me into the tavern itself, with the
huddled, shouting infirmary. Down into the square, the gash ran.
The statue of the knight shifted, tipped as its ground collapsed.
It settled at a wild angle in the rubble.

The wound cut the street
in half. A tangle of stone and corpses half filled it, leaving a
sheer drop of perhaps a yard. A ragged cheer went up, and I had to
smile. “Light bless you!” Doctor Ceros patted my shoulder, with a
laugh. “You’re more than you seem, aren’t you.”

“
Peren!” Vess
shouted, beside me, and he strode out onto the street. His officer,
across the split, saluted him. “What the fuck happened?”

“
We cut them
off at Binder’s Street, sir, and some of them doubled back. The
sewers, well —” Peren gestured to the filthy man beside
him.

“
That’s the
main cesspit,” the man shouted, pointing at the fallen statue.
“Them all must’ve come in by there. Had to! Won’t be coming up here
no more, sir!”

“
How many
doubled back?” Vess asked. Peren gestured openly, trying not to
shrug. Vess swept one arm up to summon his men together up the
street. “Back to Binder’s Street, then, to hunt the bastards down —
and Kate! You keep Del safe!” He swung around, pointing at
me.

I saluted in return.
There was work to do, still. Del’s wound still needed stitching. I
found my needle and catgut I’d dropped, and called his pattern
again. The muscle healed best if matched grain to grain. Luzon
righted the fallen stool and collected what had fallen from my
medicine bag in the confusion. He considered one of the figures of
Mother Love a moment, and tossed it in.

Del breathed easy,
peacefully sleeping through the rest of the stitches. I’d only
knocked him lightly, as I couldn’t spare much kir, and it wouldn’t
last much longer. When I knotted off the thread at last, I took my
cleansing charm and held it over the wound. A squeeze with my mind,
and the kir bound to the bone figurine unwound. The charm fell onto
Del in a green mist, destroying any patterns that would fester into
abscesses or gangrene.

That made him twitch. He
groaned. His hand moved toward the wound.

“
Don’t.” I
nudged him away and laid a bandage on it.

His head lifted from the
table, but the pain made him hiss. “Fuck, it wasn’t a
dream.”

“
No. But you
had a little faith and you’re going to live.”

Luzon brought a pair of
orderlies to help Del off the table. They’d see that he was
properly bandaged. A third man stood waiting with the arm of a
soldier across his shoulders, his own arm holding the man up by the
waist. The soldier was wilting fast; an arrow jutted from his ribs,
the blood frothing as his punctured lung leaked through
it.

“
Next.” I
patted the table.

<<<<>>>>

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Entry Point 9
- by Jenelle Leanne Schmidt

The man stood
before him, a plea in his eyes that could not be ignored. His
shoulders were broad and strong, but at the moment they drooped
pathetically, as though he had been carrying a weight that was far
too heavy for far too long.

“Please,” the
man began, his tone imploring, “please, we cannot hold any longer.
We beg your aid. If there are any heroes left to hear our call,
they are desperately needed here at Ebulon.”

Brant awoke. He blinked,
feeling disoriented. For a moment, he was unsure of what had woken
him. He sat up in bed, shaking off the fog of sleep. Dylanna sat up
as well. She squinted at him in the Toreth-light. He gazed at her,
his eyes tracing the lines of her face and noting how the silvery
beams of the Toreth glinted in his wife’s dark hair.

“Are you okay?” she
asked.

“A strange dream...”
Brant shook his head, “it was probably nothing.”

“Me too,” she
admitted.

“I was being asked for
help...”

Dylanna stared at him
oddly. “Was it by a man standing in the snow, dressed strangely in
furs and armor, with a battered crown on his head? A... King
Yadi... was that his name?”

He stared at her. “How
could you possibly know that?”

“Was he in a
place called
Ebulon
?”

Brant nodded slowly. “It
wasn’t just a dream, was it?”

They dressed quickly,
adorning themselves by unspoken agreement in warm clothes and
battle-armor. They spared but a moment to retrieve their weapons.
Brant always kept the Fang Blade sharp, and he buckled it to his
waist now as Dylanna strapped a simple knife to her wrist and slung
a bow and quiver over her shoulder. He hoped she wouldn’t need
either; magic was her primary weapon.

They raced through the
halls of the palace, to the secret tunnels leading to the depths of
the slumbering volcano beside which the castle was built. In the
center of the concealed chasm rested the greatest gift of magic
their world had ever seen. Brant and Dylanna stood before it,
hesitating.

“Send out the call,”
Dylanna urged. “Even now we may be too late.”

“We don’t even know where
we’re going,” Brant replied. “What if...?”

He felt the cry
reverberate once more inside his head. It was desperate, pleading.
Whoever this King Yadi was, he sounded sincere. As he reached out
to touch Yorien’s Hand once more, information poured into his mind.
Ebulon. The last human kingdom in its world. Besieged by a
monstrous army of creatures... Orcs... whatever those were. The
city was on the brink of falling. If nobody came...

Shaking these dark
thoughts from his mind, Brant grasped hold of the fallen star more
tightly. Yorien’s Hand blazed with a brilliant, blinding light as
Brant transmitted the cry for help across his kingdom. He knew,
without understanding how, that the star would take them to Ebulon,
as well as any others who answered the call. He poured his will
into the star and felt a strange freezing sensation wash over him.
The sensation passed, though the chill in the air
remained.

When Brant opened his
eyes he found himself beneath a forest blanketed deep in snow.
Though it had been nighttime in their realm, it was a cloudy,
overcast dawn here. The forest was dark, but hints of morning
peeked at them from the distant horizon. Dylanna stood next to him.
Brant breathed a sigh of relief that Yorien’s Hand had brought them
here safely.

“Are you all right?” he
asked.

She was silent for a
moment, a look of deep concentration creasing her forehead. After a
moment, she nodded. “Perfectly. My magic is still available to
me.”

The barren branches of
the forest above them creaked in the wind. Brant breathed in
deeply; the others would be here soon. He knew his people; they
would answer the call. A soft noise made him spin around, sword
drawn in one fluid motion. A man stepped out from the shadows. As
his face came into view Brant lowered his blade, eyes wide in
stunned disbelief.

“Ky?”

The man’s face softened.
“It’s me, little brother. Answering the call.”