The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (37 page)

Most were reining up and wheeling about, as if to harry from the rear. Killangrathor let them go, continuing on until he met the foremost waves of foot soldiers in a scraping, grinding clash. Blades and cudgels hacked at him as he tore southward, a prow through tempest seas. Blood and weapons and bodies filled the air like spray and foam. Thrakkon tasted it upon his lips, and felt invigorated.

Again, however, the enemy offered little true resistance, splitting toward the flanks rather than holding strong down the center. Understandable, given Killangrathor’s monstrosity. Ten thousand or a hundred thousand, it made no matter. But based on the fight at the wall, Lorre’s troops were too bloody stubborn to realize that. Thrakkon had expected more of a fight.

He looked back, though with the Sword in hand, he knew already what he would find. Sure enough, the parted waters were flowing in at all angles. The dead filled his wake like pieces of driftwood, yet did little to block the closing tide. Lorre had commanded them to surround the beast. They thought to bury it beneath their frenetic press.

A pair of siege towers loomed ahead, stacked one behind the other. Killangrathor lowered himself and quickened his pace. The trolls who hauled the heavy carts let go of the ropes and push handles and stood their ground, their shoulder-squeezed faces expressionless. Thrakkon searched the heights for bowmen or hurlers, but found them unmanned. No trap, he decided. Merely another test of strength.

Amid a shower of splinters from the first, the second tower toppled to the moist earth.

But when Killangrathor emerged from the wreckage, he stumbled and slowed, tangled by ropes and beams and twisted bands of iron. The dragon kicked and thrashed and carried on, but the collision had clearly exacted yet another toll. Once invincible, the creature continued to show signs of wear.

The enemy crowded round, swarming like vermin, raking and scrabbling with their little teeth and claws. Incensed and bewildered, Killangrathor lashed back. A dozen here. A score there. He swept them aside, crushed their fragile shells, made them ooze and squirt and squeal in sharp-toned agony.

Still they came, hurling weapons, battle cries, and their own bodies in spectacular defiance. As one after another flung himself at the beast, only to be trampled, gouged, or thrown aside, Thrakkon marveled anew at their collective madness. How had Lorre fostered such courage and confidence within this mixed band of mortal races? Or was it some innate passion shared by all, an animal instinct to which Lorre had merely found the key?

Whatever their inspiration, whatever their reasoning or lack thereof, they continued to battle as if unaware of their own weakness, oblivious to their own mortality. They seemed to think they might win.

Killangrathor was no longer pressing forward. He spun and swiped and slashed, but stood engulfed by the swarm. Rats these were, Thrakkon decided, and as rats they would perish.

“Fire!” he bellowed. “Give them fire!”

A gout burst forth, but even that was not what it had been. A stream, rather than a river. Those nearest were set aflame, causing them to dance in their overheated armor. It should have melted them where they stood.

“Again!” Thrakkon roared. “Immolate them!”

Killangrathor tried, hacking up another fire lance he couldn’t seem to sustain. Again. And again. Small pyres arose on all sides, but most of the dragon’s strikes simply dissipated in the wind, climbing skyward in trailers of steam and curtains of heat.

The monster raised a howl to those heavens, through which cracks of sunlight continued to grow. Below, his enemies surged. Knives and spears and hand axes came flying at his face. The dragon actually shied as if stung by the
blows. Many showed as nicks and scrapes in his thick-scaled flesh.

Impossible.
Thrakkon was horrified, disgusted, aghast. What had that lightning strike done?

With unwavering hatred, Killangrathor lowered his head. Fire belched forth, but a hundred blades hacked upon his neck, stretched full-length upon the ground. An enemy giant managed to leave a gash. The giant paid for the strike with its life, its hairy body snatched up by snapping jaws that whipped around before it could free its blade. And yet, another of the brutes stood ready at its side. When Killangrathor reared back and shook the first giant to pieces with his stalactite teeth, he did so with an immense axe blade lodged in the top of his snout.

“Catapults!”

Thrakkon turned toward the shout, the Sword enabling him to draw focus amid the otherwise senseless din. He recognized Lorre at once, commanding from a nearby rise. The warlord was unmistakable in his black plate and cruel visor. Torin had failed to kill the man when given the chance. Thrakkon would not make the same mistake.

But then the rocks came sailing in, a battering hailstorm that peppered Killangrathor and those around him. Thrakkon had to twist savagely to avoid being hit. The engines were almost directly on top of them. Ballistae strikes followed hard upon, while the catapult arms were drawn back. Spears riddled the dragon’s face and chest and shoulders. The beast swatted them away, but as many or more stuck.

“Up!” Thrakkon urged, raging against the straps that held him. He spurred the creature and gnashed his teeth. “Fly!”

Killangrathor could not. Instead, he roared and shook and plucked at the quills that had found their mark, his entire body rippling with a terrible frenzy. Lorre’s men hemmed him all about, though the ranged strikes had claimed the limbs and lives of their comrades, and a second wave threatened to do the same to them. The dragon could be harmed, overwhelmed, made to fall. The race was on to deliver the killing blow.

Thrakkon considered delivering it himself after a second volley of boulders cracked two of Killangrathor’s ribs, deeply bruised the creature’s right leg, and snapped one of the finger bones in its left wing. Instead, he gazed upon the thousands of enemies still clambering toward him, and turned the Sword upon the leather bindings of his own harness. He paused, waiting for his giants and goblins to slice and claw free of theirs. He then leapt from his perch, tumbling and skidding his way down the shifting slope of Killangrathor’s body, into the fray.

He landed in a sprawl, facedown in the muck, but was on his feet before the first enemy could reach him. He cut that one in half, and the next that followed, before ducking instinctively. The dragon’s tail swept overhead, bloodied spikes missing his skull by a hairsbreadth. Its flaming eyes glared back at him.

Cast it
,
worm. Your lot against mine…

The beast turned away. Those siege engines had become its first concern, and it slithered south to deal with them.

Thrakkon spun north, his Illychar fanning out amid the enemy like wolves through sheep. Most of Lorre’s troops remained focused on the dragon, paying little heed as its riders slipped by. Thrakkon might have stood there and killed every one of them, so intense was his rage and denial. But he knew also that there were too many to deal with just now. A score against twenty thousand. Killangrathor was to have made all the difference. Killangrathor—

After punching through the northern edge of Lorre’s throng, Thrakkon looked back. The dragon continued to wade through the hacking waves of enemies, tearing them to froth. But its roars had become part whine. A mangled wing protruded from its side, while dozens of bloody shafts jutted from its skin. Fast and fluid no longer, it now limped and shambled, dragging its injured bulk. Thrakkon could not recall a more wretched sight.

He jogged on, his pair of giants at his side. Few of Lorre’s soldiers noticed; fewer still bothered to give chase. Those who did were intercepted by the goblins that encircled him. He was still their master, he assured himself. He was still Itz lar Thrakkon, lord of the Illysp, the Boundless One.

The catapults were firing again. Thrakkon could not help but look. Killangrathor was upon them. The first projectile—a spiked iron ball—sailed past his head, to roll and crush its way through a pursuing wall of Lorre’s men. Killangrathor overturned the second with a furious heave. It toppled against the third, causing yet another misfire. A giant stood by to reload, but Killangrathor crushed the creature underfoot, its bowels erupting through a ruptured torso.

One left. Killangrathor lunged toward its drawn arm, jaws wide with raging contempt.

Its fell strike could not have been delivered at closer range. The spiked ball launched from the catapult’s nest simply pulverized the roof of the dragon’s mouth, shattering teeth and cartilage and bone. A shower of blood and marrow splattered inward, outward, everywhere.

Killangrathor reeled, then tottered, then forgot how to stand. Though he pitched to the earth, he refused to succumb, flopping and convulsing in sickening fashion as the armies of Neak-Thur swarmed in.

Thrakkon turned and ran, leaving him to his throes.

O
NLY THE
B
ASTION COULD STOP
him.

A small force awaited him at its base. Threescore, four, it was difficult to know. The living, the wounded, the dead—all were interspersed, working to sort themselves, one from the other.

His own ranks had been lessened as well. Both of his giants remained, but only ten of his goblins—less than half. The rest were carving blood trails of their own through Lorre’s force as it scrambled to finish off the dragon. Some had been overtaken by the natural bloodlust of their host creature, and refused to flee. Others had suffered wounds during the battle, and were more easily trapped. In either case, few were likely to cut clear of the thousands who pressed them.

So be it. They would serve as cover. And those few who accompanied him would be more than enough.

Killangrathor himself remained the largest distraction—still fighting, clinging stubbornly to his unnatural life. Lorre’s men blanketed his thrashing form like a belligerent swarm of ants, each trying to take its little piece, working together to make sure the monster did not rise. Every time Thrakkon cast a backward glance, his jaw clenched.

By now, the remnants of Gilden’s company had spied his approach. An alarm went up. Soldiers set their wounded comrades aside and took up their blades and cudgels once more. Despite their evident weariness, despite their catastrophic losses, they formed their lines as best they could amid the mounds of dead—all under common shroud beneath the wall’s shadow. With bold shouts and reckless sneers, they urged Thrakkon in his charge.

Those who crossed his path fell aside in a flash of crimson fire and spurting blood. Iron and steel, wood and leather, flesh and bone—one and the same to the Sword of Asahiel. Its aura shone brightly as it sheared through shields and weapons and the limbs and torsos of those who held them. Its edge never dulled; its stroke never wavered. It allowed him to sense his foes’ routines almost before they did, to anticipate and thwart their feeble maneuvers.

In less than a moment, he was beyond the front line, and hacking his way through a reserve wall of those who could barely stand. Thrakkon killed them all the same. He knew no pity. Those who stepped or crawled or reached out before him died.

The ground itself was a sucking, slurping mire, littered with human compost. He slipped more than once, and tripped a time or two as he made his way through a rubble of bodies and weapons and crumbled blocks of stone.
But none of that proved more than a temporary inconvenience. He would let nothing and no one stand in his way.

By the time he reached the gatehouse, he had outdistanced most of his brood. Only two goblins were on his heels, with another just now freeing itself to follow. Savage as his kind were, none but he wielded a divine talisman. Nor would Gilden’s dregs be daunted by a mere giant or even a handful of goblins—not after the horror they had faced in Killangrathor.

Of Gilden himself, he saw no sign. Dead, he hoped. Better still, alive, only shattered, paralyzed, choking on lungfuls of blood while riddled with a thousand searing pains…

While cherishing that thought, he did spy another he knew.
Bardik.
Another of General Chamaar’s turncoats. He recalled, as Torin, that Lorre had promised to deal unfavorably with any captives who refused his rule. Might Chamaar himself have gone over to the warlord’s side?

He cared not except that these were men Torin had known, men he had grown fond of—and therefore men Thrakkon would have taken special pleasure in killing. He would have finished Bardik then and there, but the former Wylddean wedge commander was a good thirty paces off, leading a counter against one of his giants. Just now, Thrakkon had other, more critical aims.

He plunged ahead, into the gateway tunnel, where a sizable flock of wounded had been gathered—tended to in part by folk caught out on the highway upon Killangrathor’s sudden arrival. A knot of healthy soldiers stood ready to defend both. Thrakkon took heads and arms from all, passing through in a hacking, spinning, blazing blur. He tossed the Sword from hand to hand, then held it again in both—whatever was required to bring it to bear at the desired angle. More blood, more screams.

The portcullis was lowered. Its rust-flecked iron bars were spiked and studded and as thick around as his arm.

He chopped through them as if cutting twine.

A soldier made a charge at him. Thrakkon yanked the ruined grate from its seating and flung it in the man’s path. When his foe pitched forward, the Boundless One punched the full length of the Sword up through his chin.

He drew it out through the front of the man’s face. Brains splattered at his feet like boiled oats. No others came. His goblins were shredding Lorre’s men, one scourgelike slash at a time. Blood sprayed against the damp stones lining the Bastion’s gullet. Feral shrieks echoed from its throat.

Thrakkon ducked through the hole in the portcullis. The doors beyond had been closed and barred. Ironbound granitewood, so thick and heavy that a capstan was required to work them open and shut. Carving his way through required as much effort as a butcher’s knife taking wedges from a wheel of cheese.

His body was sweating when he emerged, though his strength was undiminished. His lungs filled and emptied reflexively. A sickly sweet carnage packed his nostrils, so that, for once, the breath of the sea was not so overwhelming. He looked to the west, glaring upon it: endless waves grinding
against a rutted shore. Farther out, beyond the spires and rock nests and gushing tidewaters, the mighty ocean shone like rippled steel.

He gave it his back and left the highway, cutting north and west toward the mountains. The road was no good. Too easy to run him down by horse. He needed the forest, the trees. There, he would be safe. He could run longer, faster, farther than any pursuit Lorre might muster. He could run forever.

The notion burned as hot and bright as the Sword’s fires. He should not be running at all. How had this happened? Not even the Sword could soothe his dizziness at this inconceivable turn. Killangrathor felled, his Illychar brood slaughtered, scattered—waylaid at the very least. And Itz lar Thrakkon, lord of the Illysp, wielder of the Crimson Sword, sent from battle in full retreat.

The din of that ongoing struggle spurred his flight over hummocks and hollows of sand and grass, and around ponds and sinkholes of every size and shape. Rays of sun peeked here and there through the shifting clouds, as if to shed light on his position. A few stalwarts appeared atop the Bastion, and with their bows spawned a rain of arrows that fell mostly in his wake. Thrakkon dodged the remaining shafts easily enough, before quickly outpacing them.

He checked the distant gatehouse continually for any who might follow—be they friend or foe. Thus far, the Bastion held tight-lipped, refusing to spit any forth.

Overanxious he had been, and overconfident. He should have waited at Aefengaard. He should have paused to think matters through. That extra host might have made all the difference.

Or would it? He could still hear Killangrathor’s wretched calls of fury and confusion, echoing upon each gust of wind. Thrakkon was similarly mystified. A sorcery, perhaps. But whose? How?

Questions bespoke helplessness, and so he thrust them from his mind. Reaching the fringe of trees that sprouted at the base of the Dragontails, he took another look back at the Bastion. Cries of death and pain and Illychar frenzy still wailed from the gap in its mouth, but nothing physical emerged. A sally port to the east, at the base of the joint between Bastion and city wall, was similarly silent. Thrakkon studied that one for a moment, taking time to peer up at the tower above—the one struck by lightning. Seeing nothing upon its heights that he hadn’t before, he sheathed the Sword and buckled its scabbard to his back.

He clambered up an eroded bank, pulling himself up by the tails of protruding roots. At the top, a mesh of rain-washed brush awaited. Arising beyond, dirt and fungus and trees. A final look west availed him nothing.

Alone, he entered the woods.

Spittle and curses fell from his lips as he scraped and clawed his way through the netting tangle. Gloom surrounded him, within and without. Aged trees loomed overhead in silent superiority, judging. He could have felled them all and carved them to splinters. Give them a taste of his wrath, and see
what became of their pride then. But the raging clangor he had left behind still filtered through their trunks and boughs, along with the muffled roar of a billowing surf. He could not escape either fast enough.

Ahead, the forest was still and silent, its denizens fled far and fast from the unfathomable horror of Killangrathor’s assault.
His
assault. He had brought death and worse to this faraway land. He had brought Illysp. After all that he had endured—centuries of patience, of deprivation…He had achieved so much so quickly, and somehow squandered it all in a blink.

A branch slapped at him, so he tore it from its bole. Ivy snagged his boots, so he kicked and scraped and ripped it up by the roots. A bitter laugh escaped him. With the dragon, he’d been able to slay hundreds at a stroke. Without? Reduced to snapping tree limbs and rending ground cover. Lord of foliage. Bane of beetles and deadwood. That ought to make every living creature throughout the world tremble.

His own kind would be mocking him, if they could. The Illysp still clinging to his mind would heckle his failure aloud had they voice with which to do so. And the rest, those hovering thicker than flies upon Neak-Thur’s battlefield, knew him now to be vulnerable. None that arose as Illychar would be as quick to fear and obey him as before.

He crested a ridge and started down into a deeply shaded dell. Perhaps it was time to confront this minion of the watery deep. Even Killangrathor was but a flea in comparison. Tame that one, and all else would be forgotten. If not…well then, he would be sure to awaken its full fury, and learn what the beast was truly capable of.

He would dominate this world yet, or see it destroyed.

But he could not savor the vision. Its taste was stale and hollow, fouled by the rancid taint of defeat. Killangrathor was gone, and without the dragon, Thrakkon was marooned, shackled to this wilderness land, a victim of his own far-reaching greed.

A large deadfall crossed his path. Rather than climb over, he stopped, striking it with both fists, his entire body rigid with denial. Its rotten flesh cracked and peeled away, falling to the ground in sodden, slivered chunks. He hit it again, and again, his fists scarcely making a dent. The trunk was four feet thick. A thousand naked blows would not clear it from his path. He reached over his shoulder for the Sword—

And hesitated, opening his eyes to the truth. Years, decades it might take for the bones of this ancient giant to crumble away. Without the Sword…

The notion gave him pause. Beneath, a sapling had taken root, and was feeding upon the dust of its forebear. And another beside it. And more, all around, covered in mulch. Thrakkon looked again at the fallen tree, and a vicious grin crept slowly across his face.

The dragon was slain perhaps, though he could not grasp how. But destroyed? Never. Fire would not char its bones. And Lorre’s vermin could dull their teeth for weeks while trying to gnaw through its limbs. Three days. In three days, Killangrathor would rise again.

An Illysp had failed him, nothing more. That frail spirit had perished as it should. The next would prove stronger. Or the next. Or the next.

And the Finlorians. He would have them as well. Strike south with them, and he would have his revenge—with those he had despised most now fighting at his side.

The realization finally helped to settle him. He had lost nothing that could not be regained. Neak-Thur would still fall. Cities and creatures and lands beyond would suffer his terrible retribution. He had wasted time, was all. He had plenty enough of that.

He left the Sword in its scabbard, and vaulted atop the downed log. A patch of ferns lay on the other side, at the edge of a stream that cut along the hollow’s floor. Its waters glistened darkly, filled with sharp, slick stones and overgrown with leafy brush. He couldn’t quite tell where the ferns ended and the water began.

In the moment it took him to decide where to safely drop to his feet, there came a flash of light, and a shock of energy like a hammer blow in the small of his back. For an instant, the world around him vanished.

It came rushing back as he hurled forward, almost clear across the stream. His legs splashed heavily. His right knee smashed against an underwater rock. The taste of leaf and vine and soil filled his mouth, while his breath fled in a single, shocking blast.

His veins were afire, swelling, billowing, until he felt they must rupture. His entire body. Even his eyes bulged. He closed them tight lest they burst from his skull.

He snarled and tried to push himself off the ground. But his right arm folded awkwardly, painfully, at the shoulder, unable to hold his weight. Torn from its socket, he realized. The fall had not done that. It was the blow itself, the energy…

Thrakkon rolled to his left and sat up, opening his eyes to a blaze of white. Every tiny piece of him was dancing, like countless needles threading through the flesh beneath his skin. When he opened his mouth, he retched in his own lap, a gush of vile fluids that must have been festering for weeks in Torin’s belly.

When it was finished, however, he could see. Lights swam like a swarm of bees, but he was able to make out the log, the slope down which he had trailed, the dell’s rim above—

And a shadow. A human figure with hands upraised, holding an object of light that pulsed like a midnight star.

He made a grab for his weapon, only to wince with the realization that his sword arm would not function well enough to draw it. He grasped the right arm with the left and gave it a shove, trying vainly to wrench it back into place. Pain flared, but nowhere near as bright as the shadow-person’s light as it lanced toward him. He knew he must dodge, but the forked streamer flew faster than thought, and caught him full in the chest.