Veiled Empire (18 page)

The barrage arced over Yandumar’s head, launched from bowmen hidden on the rooftops of the buildings just outside the walls of the park. The darkwatch formations, just forming tight ranks against the threat of ground assault, withered under the volley of more than four hundred arrows. Men fell, screaming.

Yandumar felt his pulse rising as he rushed towards the nearest group of guards.

G
ILSHAMED
UN
FURLED
. H
IS
wings glowed. He launched himself skyward, the sun blazing at his back down into the eyes of his enemy below. Eyes that smoldered with hatred as they locked on him.

That’s right. Focus on me. I can take it.

Gilshamed cast a barrage of fireballs. They moved slowly, spreading out to strike near the location of each carriage. Each hit a barrier a few paces overhead. Three sets of red eyes glared as the mierothi erased their hasty shields and launched counterattacks. The daeloth joined them.

Gilshamed shaped his power into a bubble-like shield of his own. Over a dozen attacks struck him within two beats, battering at his protection.

It held.

He had no strength remaining to strike back, though, so he kept up his shield, continuing to float over the battlefield. He had their attention. And with it, bought the time his allies needed.

Hurry, my friends. Hurry.

M
EVON
S
HOOK
HIS
head, holding on to consciousness. His whole body burned as his blessings worked to heal his injuries. He sucked in a breath. The storm had vanished as soon as he had been hit, and Mevon stoked his fury into retrieving it.

Hezraas stalked towards him.

“So it’s true,” the mierothi said. “You
did
turn traitor.”

Mevon coughed, spitting blood onto the grass. He staggered halfway up. “To betray you,” he replied, wheezing, “would require that I first owed you loyalty. By the shed blood of my mother, brother, and sister, I owe you NOTHING!”

Talking, he now saw, was a mistake; he had not fully caught his breath. Though only a handful of beats, the wasted time had also allowed a flood of darkwatch to converge upon his position.

Mevon cartwheeled backwards, avoiding the first falling blades. The mob descended on him like a pack of ravenous wolves. They had heard the prefect’s words: TRAITOR! Mevon could tell that they lusted for his blood, frenzy and fury twin glints in their eyes.

Unfortunately for them, Mevon found the storm again.

He danced back, spinning, not bothering to parry. Though sharp and held by strong, skilled hands, the weapons could not pierce his armor, too fast and fluid were his movements. The
Andun
in his hands came alive. Each arm that extended a weapon toward him was caught and severed by the twirling blades.

Still he retreated, leaving a dozen injured men writhing on the ground, clutching their bleeding stumps. The mob had thinned, but they still clamored for him. Deciding to take them off guard, he suddenly reversed direction, charging headlong right into the thick of them. His weapon swung out in deadly arcs again and again. They had pressed too close together in their pursuit and now had no room to dodge or deflect his strikes. For his efforts, Mevon received half a dozen shallow cuts, but ten of the darkwatch fell, never to rise again. Their dying bodies crashed into those behind them, and Mevon stood, for one fleeting moment, in a serene bubble of perfect stillness, perfect solitude.

His eyes quickly scanned.
Only fifteen left.

They came, heedless of the danger as they flung themselves at him. The bodies already piled at his feet made a coordinated assault impossible. They didn’t seem to care, coming instead in ones and twos and threes.

Fools.

Mevon channeled his rage into Justice, assailing any that came near with a savagery few had ever seen, and none had lived to tell about. If they tried to parry, he poured in his strength, breaking through their defenses and cutting them down. If they tried to dodge, he slowed and altered the blow, catching their twisting bodies and cutting them down. If they tried to rush as a group, he would swing wide and long, cutting them down. Again and again they rushed at him, striking without regard for their own safety, and Mevon would step forward, over and over, plunging his bloody blades into their bodies.

At last, the final darkwatch lunged recklessly. Mevon stepped to the side and swung upwards through the man’s abdomen. Red mist filled the air. The two halves of the body tumbled down to join the tangle of corpses already strewn in an assortment of grotesque positions.

The prefect, flashing his pointed teeth, sauntered towards Mevon. He stepped absently over his dead and dying guardsmen and drew a pair of twisted daggers.

T
HE
OPPOSING
LINES
slammed into each other. The sound of the impact throbbed in Yandumar’s ears. Sweat and spit flew, and men screamed in rage and fear and pain.

The darkwatch lines held. Despite being heavily outnumbered, they were showing why they had the honor of guarding the lords of the continent.

Yandumar barreled forward anyway, his shield knocking over the two darkwatch in front of him.

Into the gap formed by Yandumar’s fallen opponents flew Slick Ren and Derthon. Her knives snicked about, finding throats and hamstrings and groins and major arteries. Derthon—
My God that man can fight!
—became a whirlwind of death. Around him, heads and limbs flew in a shower of blood.

The gap widened, and Yandumar led the charge through. He grabbed hold of one of his commanders. “Take your men east!” Yandumar said, pointing.

“Aye!” said the old veteran.

“The rest of you, with me!”

Yandumar guided the men around. They drove deep to the west before slamming into the exposed flanks of the darkwatch formations. In a dozen beats, the battle lines blurred into a score of isolated skirmishes. The enemy fell. But for each one killed, five or six of his allies did as well.

They had the numbers, but victory would be costly.

And yet Yandumar drove farther west, pulled by something he could not explain.

J
ASS
IDE
SHUDDERED
AS
another snapped into harmony.

Thirty. Almost there. . .

T
H
E
ATTACKS
ABATED
. Gilshamed allowed himself a breath, thankful for the reprieve. The mierothi were relentless, blasting him with a hundred varieties of sorcerous destruction. He had managed to hold back their attacks, but only barely, and he could feel his energy reserves draining rapidly.

He looked down, wondering why they had stopped.

A chill ran up his spine as he realized what they were doing.

Each of the three mierothi had paused to harmonize with the four daeloth nearest them. His defenses were already strained. With the added power . . .

He pooled what energy he could in a beat and cast a beam of light down at their positions. His enemy thus blinded, Gilshamed made his retreat. He cast light bending on himself and glided, invisible, to the ground.

Jasside . . . Orbrahn . . . hurry. It’s your time, now. Show me that my faith in you has not been misplaced.

Blood covered Mevon. The substance, warm and sticky, matted his hair, soaked his armor, dripped from his limbs, squished between his clenching fingers. It pooled on the ground, still oozing from the circle of bodies. The men of the darkwatch had given their lives to protect their master.

And judging by the look on the prefect’s face, their sacrifice had meant nothing to him.

Hezraas continued advancing, his gaze boring into Mevon, his mouth twisted in scorn. The blades in his hands twirled with a flourish.

“Impressive, I must say,” the prefect said. “I’ve never seen such wanton slaughter from a single man, even among those of your station. I can see now, looking into your eyes, that you enjoy all this killing, these lives snuffed out by your hand.”

“I am nothing but what your kind made me,” Mevon said. He rammed his
Andun
into the ground. Stepping forward, he drew his ivory-hilted daggers.

“Yes, such a good dog you have been. So well trained and obedient.” Hezraas paused to snicker. “But, as everyone knows, when a pet becomes rabid and begins snapping out at his masters . . . well, I’m afraid the beast must be put down.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

The prefect grunted. “There will be no trying, traitor. I will end you quickly, then aid my brethren in exterminating the rest of your pitiful allies. Your rebellion is finished.”

Mevon raised his daggers into a fighting stance. “Enough words.” He pounced forward.

Sneering, the prefect launched himself towards Mevon. Four blades met in midair. The twisted metal of Hezraas’s knives flashed up with such speed, such strength as to knock Mevon’s daggers out of his hands. The prefect’s face filled with confidence and bloodthirsty glee . . . which was exactly how Mevon
wanted
him to feel.

Scaled hands darted forward. Mevon twisted at the last moment, but the knives still pierced through the armor and into his flesh.

Pain blazed into his right buttocks and left abdomen a hand above his waist.

Mevon smiled.

The pain was slight, tolerable. Surface pain. Not the deep throbbing of a mortal wound.

Hezraas’s eyes widened. His self-blessing had indeed given him both strength and speed beyond that of Mevon, but it could do nothing to change his mass.

And Mevon weighed a lot more than the prefect.

They collided. Mevon continued barreling forward, falling atop Hezraas, grasping for his throat. The prefect abandoned his now-ineffectual knives and darted out his clawed hands to intercept Mevon’s.

Their hands clenched together, Mevon’s massive heft pressing down upon the dark figure. Like this they remained for several beats, straining, grinding their jaws. Slowly, slightly, Mevon felt himself rising, his grip being pressed back by the mierothi, his wrists bending.

“You mentioned the blood of your mother and siblings, traitor,” Hezraas said through clenched teeth. “What of your father? Did his death mean so little to you?”

Mevon, now red-faced with exertion, glanced up. What he saw filled him with hope. “You must not have known, then. The empire’s assassins were not quite as thorough with him. I’m afraid that little oversight”—Mevon ceased pressing, instead pulling the Mierothi up into a standing position—“will be the death of you.”

The tip of that now-familiar bastard sword plunged through the prefect’s chest, exploding out the front in a gush of dark blood.

Hezraas cried out with inhuman, guttural shrieks. Yandumar swept his other sword horizontally, removing the source of the dissonant screams.

“Ya’ looked like you could use a hand, son,” Yandumar said.

Mevon smiled. “Thank you . . . father.”

T
HE
LAST
CASTER
came into parallel with her, and Jasside quivered in ecstasy. Though she only held a fraction of their power, it was still more than she had ever controlled, more than she had ever dreamed of holding.

She stepped up, gaining a full view of the battlefield. The chaos and death that greeted her nearly drove the joy from her. But her experiences over the last several months had forced her to grow more than the first two decades of her life combined. She surveyed the carnage, and with forced serenity, found her targets.

Pulling from the energy sources of the forty-one casters behind her, Jasside filled herself with all she could hold.

She groaned, leaning against the parapets. “My God,” she whispered.

She shook herself and formed a spell. The first mierothi was dead ahead.

For you, mother. And for you, Brefand.
“And now . . . my redemption begins.”

The bolt of lightning that struck from the sky darkened the entire park for one brief moment. The crack that sounded left her deafened. Where the mierothi had been standing was . . . nothing. Just an ashen smear for a score of paces in any direction.

Three beats later, a maelstrom of dark energy consumed the spot another mierothi had been. Orbrahn. Jasside allowed herself a smile that she had struck before him.

She turned her gaze to the last mierothi, positioned in the very center of the park. Pulling half her energy, she casted, pushing the ground up beneath his feet. The mierothi and his daeloth flew skyward fifty paces in a jumble of dirt and stone.

With the other half of her current pool, she formed hundreds of razor-sharp discs of pure, volatile energy. She sent them forward. They chopped through the bodies of her airborne enemies, slicing them into countless bloody chunks.

She watched the shower of flesh fall for four beats. Slowly, the din of battle began sounding as her hearing returned. Clusters of darkwatch still fought her allies, killing them in droves.

She had ended the mierothi threat here. Now Jasside narrowed her focus and set to work ending the battle.

G
ILSHAMED
SURVEYED
THE
handiwork of his followers. The effectiveness of the linked caster groups was, he admitted to himself, quite impressive. Jasside and Orbrahn, after annihilating the mierothi, had used a surgical application of sorcery to end the remaining groups of darkwatch. Those two were now lying on the ground. A linkage of that magnitude, he knew, would leave them drained for days.

Mevon and Yandumar stood talking beneath the hanging boughs of a willow tree. Their animated gesticulations indicated they were replaying the battle, congratulating each other on their kills. There had been a barrier between them—understandable, given the circumstances—but it was obviously gone. Truly, the two were now father and son. A new bond formed in the heat of bloodshed. He hoped it would be enough to ensure . . . cooperation.

The troops had suffered worst, but Gilshamed had expected that. Of the five hundred committed to the ground assault, less than a hundred remained. They had bled for their cause. They would not have had it any other way.