The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (36 page)

No! Not Urus! He'll beat whatever they throw at him!

"You would do well not to underestimate that boy, sigilord," said Anderis. "If he ruins our plans, I will—"

"You will what?" Autar said, standing.
 

There wasn't anything particularly imposing about his shape, but Cailix had seen a few people who intimidated simply by being in the room. Autar was such a man. He had the look of someone who brought death with him wherever he went.
 

"We will only get one chance at this," Anderis said. He held up a finger, his eyes glinting. "If they escaped Almoryll, they would have taken a returning rod with them!"

"They did not," said Autar. "As I explained, it's a pair of children and former slaves. They have no idea what they have stepped into."

"You still need to be more careful," Anderis said. "You should have killed them immediately. We cannot afford to let anything threaten our plan."

"What makes you think this is not part of my plan?" Autar said. "We are going to need bodies, and lots of them, in a confined space. This city isn't going to muster its entire garrison and arm every able-bodied man and boy to attack this island without good reason."

"The soldiers on the street with the sigilords," Anderis said, his eyes widening.

"Indeed," said Autar. "My general will let enough of them live to flee and tell the city of the horrors that infect this island. The Urjicans will want to purge this place of evil, as will the soldiers. Nothing unites a people like a common enemy."

"And when they do send the entire garrison?" Anderis asked.

"They will contribute their corpses to our cause. Then it will be time for your part of this plan."

"Do not forget about the reward you promised me," Anderis said. "I pay a steep price for this."

"Worry not, blood mage," answered Autar. "I will let you keep
some
of your blood."

Chapter Twenty-Four

"We can't stay out here in the open like this," Aegaz warned.
 

They stood in a clearing surrounded on all sides by tall buildings. The early morning fog had started to lift but still obscured visibility at a distance. They wouldn't stand a chance on the ground, where they couldn't see the enemy approach.

"Where is the attack coming from, Goodwyn?" Urus asked.
 

"Everywhere," he said, still lost in his visions.

Urus scanned the area for something that might be useful in an ambush. There were a few small bulwarks made of rubble and furniture, but those only blocked a single direction, and did a poor job at that.
 

Most of the buildings in the area seemed to be standing only by good fortune or random chance, cracks splitting walls from ground to roof, vines choking the stone. One building, however, stood out. Rotted and stained shutters barely clung to the openings, but the stone was intact. It was easily twice as wide as all the other surrounding buildings and four stories tall.

"There," Urus said, pointing. "We can take a stand up on that roof."

"Good choice," Aegaz commented. "Captain Jols, how many men do you have?"

"Twenty," Jols replied. "Ten with bows."

"Let's go," Urus said, wondering why they had not simply gone ahead.
Why are they waiting for me?

The radixes went first, fanning out around the base of the structure, then entering all four doors at once. A few moments later one of them appeared in a doorway, waving an "all clear" signal.

Urus and Luse stepped into the building, his hopes sinking when he saw that nothing remained of any of the staircases except the cutouts in the stone walls that used to support the wooden planks. Free climbing up the walls using nothing but the holes would be treacherous in the best of conditions.

"My knee," Urus signed. "I won't make that climb. Neither will those kids with Goodwyn."

Lu nudged him. "Time and space," she signed with a smile and a wink.

Urus had seen the roof from the outside and could visualize where they needed to go now that he had seen the underside of the roof. He took a deep breath to calm himself then etched the travel sigil in the air before him, drawing gasps and wide-eyed looks from everyone assembled.

"Close your eyes," Urus instructed before pressing his palm against the sigil.

He blinked, opening his eyes to the rooftop of the building. Double-checking to make sure everyone had made it up to the roof in one piece, he saw Goodwyn turn and dry heave. Some of Jols's men had similar trouble keeping their balance after the trip.

Another wave of fatigue hit him and he stumbled, but this time he was able to fall with purpose, as if he was checking out the street below. He glanced down just in time to see a pool of glowing blue ooze melt through the surface of the street, leaving an enormous pothole in its wake.

"My sigils are still too dangerous," Urus signed, showing Luse the damage. "What if next time that stuff leaks onto a person?"

"It won't," Luse said. "You'll get better. I promise."

"Secure that opening," Jols commanded, indicating the rectangular cutout in the roof where the stairs used to be. "Archers, spread out. I want two on each corner."

"It would help if we knew what was coming," Aegaz said.

"Wolves," said Goodwyn. "Horrible creatures like the ones Therren and I saw last time we were here. And…and there's…" he trailed off.

"The bile wolves will have handlers," said Murin. "Vaguely human looking, but they have the same acidic skin as the beasts."

Goodwyn nodded. "That's what I see. Murin, the city is still going to burn. We haven't changed anything."

"Let's just focus on surviving the ambush," Urus said.

"How do we even know there's one coming?" asked one of Jols's men, drawing a sharp glower from the captain.

"There," said Goodwyn, pointing to the north, in the direction of the island's large central tower.

Everyone rushed to the north edge of the roof. The shock of the host approaching them from the street hit Urus immediately. He counted five of the nightmare creatures, massive wolflike things with teeth as big as their heads, their mouths and tentacles dripping the dark ooze he had seen dissolving the stone outside Autar's place.

"There're five of those things," Jols said, his face grim.

"Other groups are advancing from the south, east, and southwest," Goodwyn said. "They'll be here any moment now."

"Five bile wolves is more than enough challenge for this group," said Murin. "Twenty…twenty is just unthinkable. I have never seen more than five wolves gathered in a single location…not once."

"Urus, I can't fight up on this rooftop," Goodwyn said. "I need space or my suzur will kill everyone up here."

Urus stared back at his friend, awaiting an explanation for why Goodwyn was telling him this.

"Well?" Goodwyn asked.

"Well what?"
 

"What's the plan?" Goodwyn pleaded.

Urus gaped. He surveyed the people gathered on the rooftop—the radixes who all insisted on calling him "my lord," Jols and his local soldiers, three kids who could have belonged to Noah's thieves' guild back in Waldron, and Luse. They all had a strange look in their eyes as they returned his glance. They weren't looking at him the way the Kestians did, or the way the arbiters did. This was something else, something he had never seen in anyone's eyes. It was
respect
.

"Choein," Urus said.

"Yes, m'lord," replied the radix commander.
 

"Can your men spare a few avatar knights?"

Choein nodded. "Yes, but they'll need to be nearby so they can influence them. What are you thinking?"

"Send a few down to the street to fight alongside Goodwyn," Urus said. "His blade will pass right through them and we can cover him from up here."

"Yes, m'lord," Choein said. "Once summoned, they should last long enough to kill that group of wolves."

"Then we stagger the knights," Urus said. "Only summon them in small groups, and only when the next wave of attackers is upon us. We don't want to summon them to stay idle up here on the roof."

"You and I have a lot of catching up to do," Goodwyn signed to Urus, then removed the suzur from his belt.

Urus just returned an awkward smile, unsure what to say. Finally, he managed to sign, "Good luck."

Goodwyn returned the smile, then walked over to the opening being guarded by Jols's soldiers. With a wave, he jumped into the hole and vanished.

"Shouldn't you have traveled him down?" Luse signed.

Urus grinned. "Goodwyn can climb anything, up or down. Sometimes he uses the suzur like a grappler."

With far more effort than he would have liked, Urus knelt behind the low parapet on the top of the roof. Luse took up a position to his right, Aegaz to his left. Jols and Choein worked out where each of the remaining soldiers should be positioned.

Goodwyn appeared on the street below, unfazed by descending four stories with no stairs and nothing but his weapon to aid in the climb. He whirled the suzur overhead and ran forward just as two green avatar knights appeared next to him, drawing swords of pure sigil energy.

From down the street, the wolves charged. As they grew closer, Urus gained a new appreciation for their size—easily twice as large as any wolf he had ever seen, and certainly nothing like any of the specimens in the preserved menagerie back in Kest.

Their tentacles swirled and flapped, as though driven by a mind of their own. Black ooze dripped from the wolves' mouths and splattered to the side as they ran. The alpha wolf of the pack leapt, reaching an unbelievable height before the mace end of Goodwyn's suzur smashed into its face.

Arrows sailed overhead, arcing over the street and piercing the backs of the wolves still running toward Goodwyn. Urus watched as his childhood friend unleashed a frenzy of spinning and thrusting attacks—a solo performance that might have taken first place at the Kestian graduation festival, only this time Urus wasn't being culled, and real lives were at stake.

The first few strikes of the suzur bounced harmlessly off the lead wolf's thick skin. It took Goodwyn only a moment to adjust his attacks, leaping to one side as the chain wrapped itself around the beast's neck. With a brutal pull, Goodwyn removed the wolf's head and readied himself for the next target.

The melee lasted only a few minutes. The wolves struck harmlessly at the avatar knights while the glowing soldiers plunged their swords deep into the creatures, tearing them apart until the street was littered with small chunks of the bile wolves.

"That was too easy," Luse signed.

"Winning fights is always easy for Goodwyn," Urus replied.

She is right
, came Murin's thoughts directly into Urus's mind. He had almost forgotten how annoying that was.

"They are probing us," Murin said aloud, approaching the parapet. "Testing us for weakness. And we have yet to see the wolves' handlers. Do not use your sigilcraft, at least not yet."

Goodwyn wasted no time. With his two phosphorescent companions, he made his way to the east side of their stronghold and engaged the wolves there. These wolves spread out, giving the suzur a wide enough berth so that Goodwyn could only attack one at a time. They eventually succumbed to the combination of the avatar knights, a hail of arrows, and Goodwyn's skill. But by the time Goodwyn had set fire to the corpses and made his way to the southwest corner to engage the last of the wolves in this wave, Urus could see that he was tiring.

Their energy spent, the avatar knights faded as Goodwyn finished off the remaining bile wolves, slashing and smashing through them as easily as he had through the flying bags of color during the culling ceremony.

"He can't keep this up," Urus said. "We need to get him back up here and ready for the next wave."

"Lord Urus!" Jols waved his hand to get Urus's attention.

 
People need to stop talking to me like that
, Urus thought.
 

"If the gray man is right," Jols said, "and this is just the first of many waves, then I need to warn my people. I need to get word back to the garrison."

"We can spare another avatar knight, my lord," said Choein, chiming into the conversation. "It could cut a path for a few of his men to make it to the harbor."

"Make it happen," Urus said.
 

Jols called two of his men over, the most seasoned veterans of the group by the look of them. "I need you to get back to the garrison. Call up every man you can find. I don't care how old or young they are; if they can hold a sword give them one."

"Yes, sir," the man said and gave a salute.

"As soon as you're off the island, close the storm walls," Jols added. "Nothing gets into the city by water. Nothing."

"But sir," the man pleaded. "That will include all of you."

"I suspect our magic companions can find a way for us to make it to the other side of the walls," said Jols. "Now get going before you're cut off by another wave of those creatures."

"I know this may sound like a silly question," said Owl, forcing her way between two soldiers to join the group. "But why aren't we all going? If there's a break between attacks, why are we not just running away?"