The Storm's Own Son (Book 3) (18 page)

"Like this!" shouted Larikos. He hurled the axe far out from the hill, over the forested slopes and half the meadow, farther and faster than any arrow, and aimed straight for Talaos.

Talaos dodged, but the axe turned toward him with a buzzing noise as it flew. However, he called on his power in reply, and all around him now seemed to slow. The axe moved faster than anything he'd faced, but not so fast as him. He watched as it approached, spun as it veered in midair to strike him, and caught it in flight with his left hand. He felt tempted to hurl it right back, but thought better of it.

It was a very long way, but he thought he could make the shot. His eyes blazed, and he stretched out his right hand. A bolt of lightning arced far across the sky to the tower. It struck Larikos full in the chest.

Nothing happened.

In his surprise, Talaos returned to the speed of the world.

Larikos laughed again, and he taunted. "That the best ye got? Lightning don't hurt me!"

Katara, walking on Talaos's right, watched the scene with an icy glare on her face and in her gray eyes. Kyrax snarled. Vulkas made a kind of low rumble in his throat as he swung his mattock in a circle. Halmir, Larogwan, and Epos walked in silence. They were still outside the range of even long bows.

Talaos turned to his companions, “Halmir, javelin!”

The latter threw him one, even as he dropped the axe to the ground. In one sweeping motion he caught the javelin, drew back his arm, and cast.

Faster even than the axe, it flew straight at his foe

Larikos, however, leapt from the battlement with sudden and superhuman speed of his own. The children, far slower, lingered all around. The javelin passed through the spot where the warlord’s chest had been and soared harmlessly over the fortress.

In fury, Talaos called the storm. The clouds overhead roiled. Lightning from the sky struck the tower to the left of Larikos. Archers burned and died as their bodies hurled in all directions.

Again lightning, and the next tower to the left blasted with the ruin of armed men.

The archers on the other two towers began to run, dodging for cover.

Too slowly. Another strike, and another, and more archers died.

The men, women, and children that crowded the top of the central fortress wore no armor and showed no visible weapons. Talaos spared them, and many began to run, vanishing into some unseen stairs or ramp down to hidden levels below.

Now something else happened. From the snarling mouths of the bestial towers came a reverberating sound. With it thundered a transparent shockwave, radiating outward. Talaos could see its power in the air, like waves in water.

It moved fast, as fast as him and his lightning.

Trees shook on the hillsides and branches snapped, flying outward.

It struck Talaos and his companions. They went flying backwards through the air. Talaos tumbled and flipped to his feet. Even as he did, he felt something else, a power that attempted to snuff out his magic, like a breath on a candle. He braced himself as it howled against him. His aura of power, without and within, flickered but held and reignited.

He took a step forward as his friends rose armed, ready and angry.

While they'd weathered the blast, Larikos had not been idle. There now came creaking metallic noises from five spots along the base of the hilltop. Hundreds of armed men and women poured out of hidden tunnels at those spots. They carried a vast, motley array of weapons. Only a few had armor, but they charged fearlessly with wailing battle cries.

"To me!" Talaos shouted to his companions.

Behind, he heard sudden cries of pain, followed by gurgling noises and crashes to the ground. Talaos glanced behind him and saw at least fifty more enemy warriors creeping through the woods. Some of them were already dying by the hidden hands of his friends. He struck another down with lightning, then turned back to the charging mobs.

At least a thousand had now poured from the hill or emerged from other hidden places nearby. Some, mostly wild-looking, lightly armed young men, sprinted in great loping strides ahead of the others, faster and for longer than was normally possible. They howled as they ran. A few were shirtless, revealing intricate tattoos on their torsos in spiraling designs with what looked like glyphs. The tattoos were so recently made that the skin around them was still bleeding raw. They closed to attack.

He stretched his right hand in the direction of the fastest and closest of them, a lean, shaggy youth who leapt yards with each stride and spattered foam from his bloodstained mouth as he howled. Talaos unleashed lightning, and the foe's upper half incinerated.

Another of the howling, feral-looking men closed on Katara. She spun and cleaved his right arm from his body in a spatter of blood. He turned with a snarl, picked up his fallen sword in his left hand, and leapt at her. The whites of his eyes were heavily bloodshot with red.

A third man, with red eyes and bared yellow teeth, reached Vulkas, but the giant brought his mattock around in an arc that sent the man flying twenty feet backward. He crashed into the grass with a shattered hip and ribs. He tried to rise like a broken insect, snarled, and shambled forward a few steps in a very unnatural looking way. Then he fell to the ground again. Blood poured from his mouth, but he continued to try to crawl forward with a look of fury in his red-shot eyes.

"Bleeding bloody pigfucker!" shouted Kyrax as he skewered another of the red-eyed men, only to see the enemy leap backward off the blade and charge again to the attack. Kyrax blocked him with his shield, spun, and cut the enemy's head off. That stopped him.

Katara cut the head from her one-armed foe, then turned and cleaved the head of another in half. He dropped, but a third man leapt at her with a raised axe. The enemy was interrupted by Epos's spear, but pressed forward, pushing along the spear and still howling. His howling was at last stopped by Larogwan's axe through his face.

Larogwan himself then would have faced a spear through his throat, but Katara cut the spear with a leap and downward slice of her sword. Then together, they cut down the spear’s wielder, a howling woman with bloodshot eyes and matted, tangled hair. Halmir had turned the other way, fighting the men who had crept through the woods. These advanced in silence under cloaks of mottled browns and greens, and they fought and died like normal men.

Imvan and Sorya emerged from hiding. Imvan fought with leaps and stabs of his short sword. Sorya struck a foe through the throat with her dagger, then vaulted up a tree as three others closed on her. She threw a dagger into the eye of one. A second suddenly fell with a blast of green-white lightning as Firio and his daggers appeared seemingly from nowhere. Then Sorya leapt from her perch like a striking cat to cut the throat of the third.

As they fought, Talaos blasted one foe after another, He raked lightning in a line and cut down twenty foes at once, but many more were now recklessly upon them. He drew his swords, whirled and spun. The blades arced with lightning, cutting down foes on all sides. Even so, the numbers and ferocity of their attackers began to tell. Talaos and his companions fell back, surrounded as the enemy closed on them. He thought to himself that it would be a good time for Hadrastus to arrive.

He was not disappointed.

With a mighty shout, the half-Jotunheimer giant charged from the belt of woods, and after him five hundred mighty soldiers, heavily armed and armored. With them were Talaos's Wolves, who made howls of their own. They smashed their way through Larikos's howling mobs. Talaos and his companions cut down the last of the feral, red-eyed vanguard, in some cases having to hack them almost to pieces before they stopped.

Together, they forced the enemy back, step by blood-soaked step, toward the hill.

Talaos sheathed his swords and kindled the lightning in his hands. He glanced at the tower and saw that Larikos stood on the battlement once more, though now without his children close by. Even at this distance, Talaos could see the man’s eyes were blood red. Larikos hefted a spear and hurled it far beyond normal range. It skewered one of Hadrastus's soldiers.

In wrath, Talaos sent a brilliant blue-white arc of lightning into the crumbling stone at Larikos's feet. Rock shattered in the blast and flew in all directions. Larikos leapt straight back with superhuman speed and agility as the spot where he'd stood collapsed outward and stones fell a hundred feet to the hillsides below. He let loose another screeching laugh.

The enemy fled in full retreat toward the base of the hilltop. The entrances to the tunnels there had been skillfully concealed with branches and vegetation under the shade of dense trees, yet the heavy iron gates inside were of crude and recent-looking construction. They were still wide open to receive the fleeing warriors. Talaos again called lightning from the darkened sky. It struck in the path of the fleeing foe. They panicked, turning this way and that, and were smashed, ground into the earth, by Hadrastus's force of mighty ones. Smashed as if struck with a hammer.

The hammer of Hadrastus, thought Talaos, even as he called down the lightning.

It occurred to him that Larikos, or someone under him would size up the situation soon and prepare for siege He shouted to his men, "To the gates! Now!"

Firio ran far ahead of both friend and foe, racing so swiftly he appeared more a blur than a solid form. The gates began to lower. Firio raced through the closest one. From within came sudden sounds of commotion. Talaos drew his long blade as he sprinted after Firio.

Then blood sprayed from underneath the almost-closed gate.

The gate stopped, and then began to rise again. The others were all shut. Such enemies as hadn't escaped through them now attempted to retreat uphill to the base of the walls, or ran in panic toward the far side of the hilltop.

"Ignore them!" thundered Talaos. "Get inside that fortress!"

Inside, he could see Firio fighting against a growing number of enemies. From his left hand, he sent a long arc of lightning inside. It filled the tunnel with light and noise as a foe's charred, headless corpse fell to the ground.

As he approached the tunnel, arcing with such power that lines of lightning crackled several yards out from his body, the defenders at last panicked and fled to the darkness further inside. Talaos calmed his lightning, as he preferred Firio alive, but did not slow down. He reached the tunnel mouth.

"That was well done!" he shouted. "Now we wait for the rest."

Firio grinned.

They did not wait long. The Madmen arrived next, and their eyes flashed with lightning. Not far behind them were the Wolves. The rest, lacking gifts of power from Talaos, trailed more slowly after.

"Follow me and take this place!" roared Talaos, and together they advanced into the depths under the hill. They found no opposition. He saw many side passages, but only one clear, straight main way. It ran inward until it opened into a vast, domed and vaulted chamber carved out of the rock at the very center of the hill. Stairs up alternated with tunnels – the one they'd used, and four others like it.

Archers waited on the steps all five sets of stairs. They fired with haphazard lack of coordination at Talaos. The arrows glanced off his armor. He struck them down one stairway at a time with searing gouts of lightning. Charred corpses flew in all directions. By the time he turned to the next to last, the survivors fled up the stairs instead.

Talaos followed them silently, but with eyes blazing blue-white in pitiless fury. Behind him came his Madmen, Wolves, Sorya, and Katara.  Hadrastus with his mighty ones spread throughout the place. They poured up the stairwells, and such few foes as were foolish enough to turn and fight were cut down without mercy.

At the top they found another level centered on a low-ceilinged, round chamber lit by torches. Numerous doorways opened to side passages, and those passages were full of cowering women, children, and elderly. Only one set of stairs led up.

"Madmen and Wolves, with me!" shouted Talaos, "Others, take prisoners!"

He charged up the stairs, arcing lightning. Ten more men and women with red eyes and maddened expressions came leaping down, swinging clubs, axes, and swords. Talaos blasted them with lightning again and again. They stopped only when their bodies were burned or shattered to the point of destruction.

The stairs opened into what looked like a guard room, and then a final flight went to the surface. Talaos charged up, rounded and faced what was to be seen. At the top he found many signs of the destruction he’d wrought with his lightning. There was also something else. A vast circular platform of wood and pitch sat in the center, and from it flames began to rise. Around it gathered the white-robed women and a motley collection of people of various ages. Most of the adults were tall. Even the children had red-shot eyes and tattoos.

The women in white robes held knives, dripping red with gore, and what had looked at a distance like patterns on their robes were now seen to be spatters of dried blood. There were corpses piled near the tower with the gallows. Some were in military uniforms of various cities, and others in the simple clothes of followers of the Prophet.

Atop the smoldering wood at the center stood Larikos.

The crowd around the fire glared with bloodshot eyes at Talaos and his companions. Though few looked like warriors, they had a variety of weapons. Talaos noticed that the adults resembled Larikos to a degree rare except among close kin, and the children under about age seven, all of them, looked eerily like him. Some in the crowd crouched, with feral expressions, as if to attack.