Chapter One Hundred and Seven
Hail of Stone
On the wall-segment to the right of the main gate, thorny vines twisted and tore through the wooden ladders, sending them splintered and tumbling down into the moat, along with entire units of flailing Obthraie.
Rose transformed her wand into a bow-staff and quickly ducked beneath a whistling spear. She sprinted between Legacies, yelling orders and firing hand-crossbows every moment she could spare.
“Magnus! Left end, now!”
The blood-eyed Paladin sprinted along the battlements to wherever was about to be overrun, using his hideous Arcancy to fill the blank-faced Soiltorn with overwhelming, spontaneous agony. Anytime a many-armed soldier came close to the battlement he was manning, they found themselves writhing with such pain that most tended to use the moat to escape his torment. For those that made it to the platform before anyone could stop them, Magnus’ scythe became an obsidian hurricane and blew through all six arms before they had a chance to raise one.
Rose and Magnus’ force had started off with a little over thirty soldiers. That number was already beginning to dwindle, and Rose had been driving her Arcancy so hard to keep her people out of harm's way that every muscle in her body was convulsing at random.
From the rooftop of the keep, spears rippling in golden energy occasionally rained down like the falling stars. Flinn dripped with sweat as he cranked back the ballista string and hefted another bolt in place, scarcely with time to think before firing it into the most pressing crowd of foes.
Rose said a prayer and a thanks every time a bolt of golden lightning fell. But early in the fight she began noticing singular arrows striking down important targets. Soldiers about the jump the battlements. Wolves about to outflank the archers. Steel, flamed longbow arrows would find them.
Standing beside Flinn atop the keep, Klaryah was stringing arrows and striking down anyone who managed to find their way into a blind-spot. Flinn nearly found himself distracted as he watched her draw, string and loose arrows so fast that blinking meant missing a step in the process. And despite this, she struck the invaders down through the eye socket from an impossible distance each and every time.
Flinn drove his elbows into a bolt that wouldn’t load into the ballista’s catchment, mumbling, “You know, hitting them in the chest is probably fine too. You might be working too hard.”
“I don’t tend to fuck around with ‘maybe’s when a sure thing is so…” she drew another arrow as she yawned, “…easy.” It sailed and shattered the skull of a Soiltorn who’d barely touched the ramparts.
Flinn fought off the urge to shiver. It wasn’t sport, or surgery, it was downright dismissive. “How on Draendica did you manage to not kill Michael?” Flinn wheeled the ballista around and blasted it through a row of Shade Wolves all line up on a ladder.
Klaryah sucked in a sweet breath. “That was nice- oh because everything Amekot touches turns to shit. I’d try to think of another example, but I don’t think its necessary.”
Down on the battlements, Rose watched an armoured Legacy hurl an Obthraie soldier off of the defences, sending them smashing into the fortress’ ground below. The Legacy went back to the fight, and Rose looked down after.
The stone soldier glued back together, got to its feet and began tearing toward the forum.
Rose levelled her bowstaff at the sprinting creature, closed her eyes, and light bled behind the lids. In an instant, a dozen tendrils of knotted grass burst up from the soil, grabbing the monster by their legs and arms, ripping it down. As soon as it was caught, she grabbed a crossbow and shot it through the back with a flamed arrow.
“If you’re going to throw the bastards, make sure it’s this way!” Rose then smashed her bowstaff across the jaw of a Shade Hound, sending it spinning over the wall and into the moat. “The topsoil isn’t enchanted so its not going to keep them down!”
Further down the defences, Willem was detaching the wooden teeth that held the ladders in place. The tips of his fingers began radiating heat. His skin glowed so fiercely that his bone could be seen through the flesh. He clamped his hands around the monstrously strong timber and at his touch it began to smoke and char. The veins in the boy’s hands ran up his arms and crawled amongst his neck, flushed with raw Arcancy, crimson as bonfire flame.
The young man’s eyes were red and puffy from tears, and his heart had hardened. His grief had turned brittle, and a cold, unbending anger lay in his hands. Willem tensed his arms and ripped the hooks off with a gargled roar. Wrought then cast a look over the battlements to see a Shade Hound tearing up the ladder toward him, followed by half a dozen foot-soldiers. He focused his emotion and pain and poured it all into his power as the muscles in his back went hard as steel.
The blacksmith grabbed both ladder struts and screamed out his rage, and the first five feet of the ladder burst into white-hot flame, immediately causing the wood to creak and pop.
The wolf continued to barrel toward him as the Obthraie attempted to retreat. It stormed right toward the flames.
Willem let go of the beams and drew out one of his iron forging hammers, looking the barrelling beast hard in the eye. His hammer held passion that his face, and with one sharp crack, he smashed the left pole into flaming charcoal, causing the entire ladder to twist by its remaining strut, tossing the enemies still on it to the sludge below before falling loose.
Willem turned and saw Rose and Magnus both still doing everything they could to keep the new ladders off of the battlements, when a sharp Gong-gong! Gong-gong! Gong-gong! rang out across the fortress. Willem tore across the battlements, darting around Legacies, firing hand-crossbows as he ran.
Both him and Magnus slid to a panting stop beside Rose as she forced black, thorny vines around the poles of a ladder and tightened them like coiling snakes until the rungs in-between snapped.
As the ladder tumbled and scraped down the wall she collapsed against the ramparts and shakily held herself up. Magnus and Willem leant in to help when she suddenly twisted over and spat out a mouthful of blood. It dripped off her lips and teeth.
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“Oh no,” Rose murmured beneath her breath.
“Hawthorne?” Magnus nudged.
Rose sat back up and gestured vaguely to the sound. “Nikereus’ is putting more pressure on the main gate. We need to send soldiers to reinforce it.”
Magnus aimed a hand-crossbow over Rose’s shoulder, shooting a pole-support before they could hook their devices to a set of rungs. “We can’t spare any.”
“We have to. Sidney’s running that sector, she wouldn’t ask unless it was life or death. The main gate is still the weakest position. We can lose ten.”
Willem’s hands danced frantically, signing, The weakest part of the fortress will be here if we send ten soldiers away.
Rose looked at the two paladins and turned her bowstaff back into a wand with a taut glare. “Oh I’m sorry, are you tired, boys?”
Willem rolled his eyes and Magnus’ dark sneer edged into a smile. “Nope.”
“Good. Because this section will become the weakest part of the fortress when I’m dead and fuckin’ rotten, and not one moment sooner. Is that understood?”
Willem shook his head in disbelief. I’m glad you’re on our side, you lunatic.
Magnus and Willem took off down the battlements, loading weapons and shouting orders.
Rose grinned and wiped the blood from her mouth as her hand twitched. “Mal! Samson! Frey! Head to the main gate, now!” she shouted as loudly as her throat could manage. “Take your units!”
Paladin and Archangels ran past her as Willem and Magnus dismissed their own troops, leaving only a dozen and half soldiers remaining. For a moment they looked meagre, but they burned with rage and Arcancy and were decorated in dry streams of blood like war tattoos. No one was tired yet.
Rose fought back to her feet and surveyed their situation. As she tried to make a plan she saw a ladder hoisted up before her. She summoned her Arcancy and a sharp, biting pain snapped at the pit of her stomach and the taste of metal filled her mouth more so than ever before. She persisted, demanding seedlings on the enemy-side of the moat the sprout and ensnare the ladder and its bearers, dragging it back down in an explosion of soil and stone.
Rose leant hard on the battlement. She wanted to look but the layers of armour were too difficult to undress. But she could feel it. Something inside her was bleeding.
Then a breath of fresh air found her lungs. Rose blinked and momentarily panicked. The pain was leaving. She grabbed at the armour, fearful she was bleeding and going numb, when she caught Magnus’ eye across the defences.
His hand was lifting and sweeping in a subtle gestures. He almost looked like he was composing. His veins twinkled with white light. It took her a moment but Rose realised he was playing her pain away.
“Bombardment!”
Rose didn’t bother checking. She dove to the floor and an instant later, stone shards smashed into the defences at a steep angle, forcing her to roll flat against the ramparts as spears arched in the air and impaled the floor she’d been standing on. Rose glanced up to see Willem too was pressed heavily against the wall, panting, and Magnus was already back on his feet, nocking an arrow to a bow he’d snatched up.
Rose’s hands had stopped quivering. The pain wasn’t subdued like an animal. It was gone, like it had no reason to be there in the first place. She watched three more ladders get thrown up toward her section of the wall. Rose grabbed a steel shortsword off a fallen Legacy.
The first of the ladders landed with a crash and Rose sprinted to it, immediately hacking at its supports like a mad forester while another Legacy ran to the other. As she smashed chips of wood from the beams, Rose cursed and wheezed, sweat running into her eyes and longbow arrows whistled down from the keep, knocking approaching Obthraie off into the moat. With a moment to breathe, Rose smashed through the pole and sent the ladder spinning before she turned and yelled, “Thank you!” to Klaryah with barely enough strength to enunciate the words.
Rose looked back down the wall to see Magnus ducking beneath stone spears, and beyond him Willem was still tucked into cover, sitting in a harsh slouch.
Rose glanced over her section and the sea of Soiltorn seemed to be moving toward the front of the fortress. The intensity of the attack on her side slowed. She raised her bowstaff, trying to sense the flora beneath the striding armies, wondering who she could rend down into oblivion.
Her Arcancy roared and her earing muffled as blood ran from her ears. “Maybe I’ll save the crossbow bolts and just let you fuckers trample each other.” She tensed her arm and a barrage of roots leapt up at the moving companies of Soiltorn. They shrieked as they were grabbed and ripped into the ground. Her anger pushed her through the newfound pain.
A dark feeling curled in a faraway corner of her mind. Part of her wanted to carry on. To do more. To see what she could do if she just let the venom out.
Rose realised what was happening and shut off the magic. She was stood still for haunting moment. It had been that easy. So, so simple. Wanting to inflict pain. She could feel it, like a new weight to her soul.
Rose glanced back across the way.
Willem was sat in the same spot. His hands were awkwardly held and he trembled from head to toe in his armour.
Rose wasn’t even aware she was running by the time she slid to a stop beside him, dropping to her knees. “Will! Are you good? Can you hear me?”
The paladin glanced up, and his dark skin was so pale Rose silenced a gasp in her throat. He blinked slowly and let his hands fall away from his torso, revealing a short spine of rock sitting high in his stomach. The boy’s breathing was ragged as he looked down over the mess and then slowly to Rose.
Rose reached out toward the wound, but her hands froze. “Tell me what to do, Willem.”
Tears rolled from his eyes and he shook his head. Its okay.
“No.” Rose shook her head, the rage trembling in her hands.
Go, do your job, he signed firmly, grabbing her hands as the blood began pooling on the stone beneath him. His fierce eyes begged her, and he squeezed her fingers before he let go. Lying beside him were his steel hammers, disregarded and stained with bloodied handprints. Every breath seemed to whistle with effort as it left his bone-pale lips.
The other Legacies tore passed Rose and Will, but the mage stayed by him despite the soldiers’ yelling, and despite the roar of stampeding Soiltorn and rolling thunder. When finally she looked up again, Raeken was swooping down overhead, spraying acid across the remaining bridges, melting most and slamming into any that miraculously stayed suspended. The sight took a small weight from her shoulders, but the weight in her heart stayed.
Magnus fell to his knees beside her and handed her the shortsword she’d let fall and nodded to the last unit of Soiltorn to make it atop the battlements. “The rest of the army is regrouping at the main gate. We have to handle the stragglers. Oh. Is he dead?”
There was a dozen or more, but upon the thin, fortress battlements, that was no blessing to them, and the closer they came, the tight space became clearer.
Rose watched Willem as he drew tearful, tight breaths. She took Willem’s hands and pressed them hard to the wound. “You keep pressure on this, understand?”
He looked for a long moment like he wanted to sign back, but Rose kept his hands pinned.
She looked into his eyes like she could see every measure of his agony. And spoke with the weight of iron. “You are my soldier. That is an order. You. Keep. Pressure. Now, nod.”
Willem blinked a tear as he nodded softly and she let him go.
Rose glanced darkly at the oncoming assailants, clenching her wand tight. “We need to get him to Lillian.”
“Quickest way is through them.” Magnus sharply stretched his neck with a crack.
Rose stood, flexing her sword hand and rolled the fingers on her mage hand. “Time to put some leagues on my soul, I think,” and her eyes turned poison green.