[img]http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d49/MLSpencerFiction/a%20Star%20Chapter%20eBook_zpsfrwh4mtg.jpg[/img]

The Battle of Meridan

Meridan, The Rhen

THE AIR WAS FULL OF SALT and bitter decay, just the same as yesterday. Tonight the stench seemed even more oppressive. Perhaps it was the reek of the bodies they’d stacked up in the tower on the west side of the gate. Or perhaps it was the miasma that bloomed from the Enemy encampment surrounding the walls. Whichever; it made no difference.

Stink was stink.

Neria Terrant gazed out from the ramparts of Meridan’s fortified outer wall, her stare distant. Her dark hair whipped against her face, tossed by the wind. She scowled, swiping it back behind her ear.

“We’re running out of arrows,” grumbled the hard-bitten captain standing next to her. “And we’re running out of Sentinels.”

The first problem was easier to solve than the second. Twelve mages had been lost during the first hour of the siege. Since then, it had been a slow process of attrition. Only three Sentinels remained, Neria included.

“The arrows, we can solve,” she said without looking at the captain. “The Enemy spawns in darkness. They see better than we can. But without the moon, they won’t be able to distinguish the living from the dead. Send your men to haul up as many corpses as they can carry. Perhaps the dead can serve us still.”

Garret Proctor frowned. Then an incredulous smirk jolted his lips. He shook his head, the smirk broadening into a thin rictus of appreciation.

“You want to use our own dead to collect arrows? That’s cold.”

Neria shrugged. “It’s efficient use of resources.”

The dark-haired captain grinned. “Genius is the fruit of desperation. Let me be the first to say: you have a beautiful mind when you’re desperate.”

“You can say it, but don’t dare think you’d be the first.”

Captain Proctor managed a rigid bow. He turned on heel and stalked back down the stairs in the direction of the courtyard.

Neria strolled back along the wall walk, her black cloak fluttering behind her in the wind. It was a mage’s cloak, a trophy prized by the Enemy far above any other. Out of range of their arrows, Neria let the cloak wave in the air like a taunt.

She walked over to where Gerald Lauchlin stood leaning against the protective stonework of the battlements. He was scowling down at something in his hand. A long, thin dagger with an ebony hilt.

“Careful,” Neria smiled, “your wife probably wouldn’t approve of the way you’re stroking that weapon.”

Gerald glanced up at the sound of her voice. He offered Neria a fleeting, dispirited grin. “Emelda hasn’t approved of most things I’ve done lately.”

“Neither have I,” Neria reminded him.

She never tired of flaunting her authority in his face. If not for Neria, Gerald Lauchlin would be Warden of Sentinels. But Neria overshadowed him both in power and promise. Something which had to gall him every waking moment of his life.

She turned at the sound of approaching footsteps. Scores of Proctor’s men lugged stiffened corpses up the stairs. Neria stepped over beside Gerald to give the men room to work.

They tied long lengths of rope about the legs of the deceased, looping the other ends around the merlons of the palisade.

“What am I looking at?” Gerald muttered, disgust etched into his face. His shoulder-length brown hair whipped in the wind.

“Watch and be inspired.” Neria allowed a proud smile to slip to her lips.

The soldiers heaved the corpses over the parapet, feeding the rope slowly, lowering the bodies gradually down the outside of the wall. She kept her gaze trained on Gerald’s face, watching the play of emotions evolving in his eyes.

There was a shivering whisper on the wind—the breathless flight of arrows hissing through the night.

The soldiers tugged on their ropes, raising the corpses back up and over the wall. The bodies spilled onto the walkway,  pincushioned with hundreds of dark shafts. The men immediately dropped to their knees to claim their prize, twisting and prying the arrows from the flesh of the fallen.

Neria grinned at the look of disgust on Gerald Lauchlin’s face. Clapping the Sentinel on the arm, she laughed and strode away.

♦ ♦ ♦

“They’ve breached the east tower!”

Neria’s mouth dropped open. “How?”

Already moving toward the stairs, Proctor threw a glance like a dagger in her direction. “Miners.” To his soldiers, he bellowed, “Ward the breach! The rest of you, fall back to the citadel! MOVE!”

“I’ll take the breach!” Neria shouted, already sprinting ahead.

But Proctor thrust out a hand, catching her by the shoulder of her cloak. “Let Ezras or Lauchlin take the breach. Come with me. You can tend to the wounded in the citadel.”

Neria glanced sideways at the captain, her stare narrowing. She shook her head. Not for the first time, she suspected Garret Proctor had taken an interest in her that had little to do with tactics or resource allocation. And now that interest was leading him to make decisions that ran contrary to logic. Her place was defending the walls, not tending to the wounded.

Her stomach tightened as she realized what the man was trying to do. Keep her safe, keep her close. While throwing Gerald Lauchlin to the wolves. It was a cruel and efficient plan.

Proctor was learning.

Neria turned fully toward him, straightening her back and lifting her chin. “I’m the Warden of Sentinels, not a medic. Get a Querer on it.”

“Neria—”

She turned away, still glaring at him over her shoulder. Then she sprinted for the tower.

As she crossed the courtyard, the sounds of combat accosted her ears. Below, Proctor’s men had engaged the Enemy, struggling to defend the tower breach. By the look of things, the fight was not going in their favor.

Seeing Gerald, Neria angled toward him. She nodded in the direction of the tower. “What’s the problem?”

She ducked as a spear streaked past her ear.

“They have a Battlemage,” Gerald said.

“Truly?” Neria was stunned. Never before had they encountered an Enemy mage. That explained a great deal.

Beneath her, the entire structure of the wall started to vibrate.

Black-armored bodies spilled through the breach as Proctor’s men were forced to retreat. Fighting erupted right below them in the courtyard as reinforcements arrived. Soon, clots of soldiers covered the length of the yard. Men were screaming, flailing, dying, stumbling over the remains of the fallen.

A wall shuddered and gave way, raining stone and mortar into the breach.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Neria gasped, whirling to confront Gerald. “You did that! What are you thinking! You could have killed those men!”

The Sentinel shrugged, looking at her with calm defiance in his eyes. “So, what if I did?”

Neria gazed at him blinking, mouth open. “Did you speak with your wife?”

“I did.”

“And...what did she say?”

Gerald Lauchlin lowered his gaze. “She refused me. I guess her precious Oath means more to our Prime Warden than the life of her own husband. The Sentinels are to remain Bound.”

Neria narrowed her eyes, her ire swelling. She agreed with Emelda’s decision, even though she despised the woman.

Turning to Gerald, she kissed him full on the lips.

“Then we remain Bound,” Neria acknowledged, pulling back. “Start acting like it.”

“Always to heal and never to harm,” he whispered softly, quoting the Mage’s Oath under his breath.

Neria started to turn away. On second thought, she kissed him again. Never in her life had the constraints of the Oath chaffed so badly.

Below, the Enemy had taken control of the courtyard.

Ezras Nordric was struggling desperately to ward the gate alongside a small contingent of Proctor’s men. Ezras’s body glowed in the dim evening light, ribboned with blue energies. He had saturated himself with the magic field, filling his body to capacity. He was using that vast well of power to stabilize Meridan’s town gate. From her vantage, Neria could see that Ezra’s best wouldn’t be enough. Already, the wood of the portcullis was splitting.

She started toward him, but Gerald held her back. Looking up, she saw that Enemy soldiers were splitting off from the main host, circling back around at the sight of them.

“There’s too many!” he cried. He raised his arm, throwing up a shield between them and their pursuers.

From the other side of the wall came the rolling thunder of hundreds of kettle drums.

“Get back!”

Gerald’s hand caught her shoulder, shoving Neria fiercely back behind the cover of a merlon. At the same time, a hurling stone ruptured with violence against the battlements, showering fragments of rock all around them with explosive force.

Neria threw up a shield of her own and cringed against the fortifications as a rain of arrows hailed down from the sky. Men fell all around her, slumping backward and dropping from the wall.

Then another wave of arrows came, turning the skies black with whistling terror.

Still, the siege engines of the Enemy continued their bombardment, answered by the city’s own catapults. Stones exploded against the ramparts with terrible force, chips of rock flying in all directions. A shard grazed the side of Neria’s face, and she threw herself backward with a cry.

As she did, a massive stone smashed into the wall in the place where she had just been standing. A section of the battlements sheered off and fell away, exposing her position. Enemy archers seized upon the opportunity, launching a deadly hail of arrows up into the gap.

Neria took cover beneath piles of fallen blocks and shattered bodies as she closed her eyes. Her ears filled with the screams of dying men and the savage blasts of pulverizing stone. Gaping around, she struggled to find Gerald. He was nowhere; she had no idea if her lover even lived.

All she knew was that she couldn’t stay there if she wanted to survive.

She forced herself to move, edging forward on her stomach. The going was cruelly slow. She was forced to shimmy around chunks of stone, dragging her body over large blocks and shards of debris littered with fallen arrows.  Fragments of rock cut her hands, and twice she felt the painful spear of an arrow deflect off the chain of her mail coat.

More arrows peppered down all around her. Neria almost lost the resolve to keep moving, the paralyzing fear she felt making her want to do nothing more than just cringe back between the rocks and pray she wouldn’t die. But she knew that her only chance was to keep going. She had to gain the cover of unbroken wall. It was somewhere there ahead of her, even though she didn’t dare glance up to see how far. So she bit her lip and kept crawling, worming her way forward inch by desperate inch.

A hand reached out and caught the collar of her cloak, dragging her roughly forward over the last few feet of debris.

“I thought you were dead,” Proctor growled, then hugged her hard. Letting go, he raised his shield over both their heads to deflect a fresh volley of arrows. “At least you have the sense to duck.” The captain waited until there was a break in the torrent, then jerked Neria against the wall.

She leaned back against the stone’s hard surface, closing her eyes as she tried to stop her body from shaking. She felt something pressed into her fingers and, peering down, saw she gripped a flask of water. She lifted the flask with trembling hands, swallowing some of the liquid and spilling the rest down the front of her ruined shirt.

When she was done, Proctor jerked the flask away with a scowl. Then he picked up a spear from a pile lying at his feet and, barely pausing to sight the shaft, flung it downward into the face of the Enemy.

“Are you going to shield us or just stand there?” The captain hefted another spear as shards of broken stone rained down all around them. “I didn’t take you for a coward.” Before the shaft left his hand, it was notched and scored with arrows. He quickly reached for another.

Neria gazed up at him, hurt and ashamed. Red-faced, she forced herself to stand on legs that refused to stop shaking.

I’m not a coward. She moved forward into a break between merlons. She fixed her gaze on the advancing soldiers below, trying not to think of the precious seconds she stood there with her body fully exposed. I’m not.

She forced her mind out on tides of air, weaving a shimmering shield above the beleaguered men.

♦ ♦ ♦

 The bombardment continued throughout the morning, the Enemy hammering the walls with stones and timber baulks as their arrows seemed to choke the light of day from the sky. They had an almost endless supply of reinforcements, so when the men at the fore grew weary they simply retreated back, more moving up from behind to take their place.

Their strategy was simple and deathly efficient. Using their siege artillery to provide cover, their soldiers moved forward with screens and engineers who set at once to work filling in the moat and digging beneath the walls. The defenders countered as best they could, flinging down spears and rocks and anything they could get their hands on at the screaming fanatics below.

Neria labored alongside Proctor’s soldiers throughout the whole of the morning. By afternoon, she was amazed but utterly grateful to still be alive. The stones and arrows of the Enemy were indiscriminate; knights and sergeants, nobles and infantry fell alike under the ceaseless assault.

And just when she thought it could not possibly get any worse, the Enemy unleashed a new and terrible weapon.

Proctor’s pile of spears had long since run out, been replaced, and run out again several times. While they waited for fresh supplies, the captain and his men had resorted to lobbing pieces of broken wall down on the heads of the miners working below. He stooped to lift a helm-size chunk with both hands, heaved it up over the battlements, then bent to pick up another.

As he did, an explosion of fire burst through the crenulations in the wall not twenty feet away.

Neria threw a shield up in front of them, flinging herself back from the intensity of the heat. She heard the sound of ghastly screams, and when she could open her eyes, saw several men writhing on the stones below, their bodies enveloped in flames.

Without thinking, she jumped down, using the power of her mind to extinguish the flames from the first man she reached. She knelt beside a soldier’s charred body, watching the convulsive spasms of the man’s dying anguish.

She tried to heal him but was a second too late.

By the time she reached him, the screams had stopped.

But the stench of charred meat lingered in the air, mixed with another, thoroughly grotesque odor. Gagging, Neria turned away from the site of the immolated men. Her stomach wrenched and twisted, spewing a stream of bile onto the stone at her feet. Still gagging, she staggered away, putting her hand out as she reeled against the far wall.

“Sit down,” Proctor ordered.

When she didn’t comply, the captain moved forward and firmly pressed her down against the stones. Neria looked up at him blearily, shaking her head in horrified confusion.

“What was that?” she gasped, not able to believe the Enemy could have contrived such a terrible weapon.

“Hell’s fire.”

Whirling, she turned to find Gerald Lauchlin standing right behind her.

She spilled into his arms, hugging him fiercely. When she pulled back, she saw that his face was pale, as grim as she’d ever seen it.

“They can launch it in casks from their Black Bulls or drench their arrows with it to make fire darts. It clings to anything it hits. Don’t ever do that again,” he admonished. “You’re lucky you didn’t go up like a torch. There’s no helping a man laced with Hell’s fire; the best you can do is stand back and watch him burn. And try not to listen to the screams.”

As he finished the sentence another explosion of fire enveloped four more soldiers by the tower, one knocked backward in flames over the wall. Neria closed her eyes and tried not to listen to the shrieks of the others who were not so fortunate.

She knew she couldn’t reach them.

They took a much longer time to die.

She raised her head and saw Gerald staring at her. “I don’t want to be Bound,” he whispered. “I don’t want to watch you die.”

Neria nodded, understanding. She gazed down at the blackened face of the nearest soldier that all of her vast amount of power had been unable to save.

Gerald Lauchlin took a step toward her.

Another explosion of fire erupted through the battlements. Neria was flung backwards against the crumbling wall. This time, it was Gerald’s scream she heard.

“No!” she cried out, reaching toward him.

But it was too late; he’d fallen from wall.

“No...” Neria sobbed.

The fall wouldn’t be enough to kill him. The Enemy fires would accomplish that. Because that’s what the Enemy did.

“Neria.”

She turned, gazing up into Garret Proctor’s face through the tears in her eyes. The expression on his face was grim. He offered out his hand.

“Go to the citadel, Neria. Trust me. You don’t want to be around for this.”

Neria glared her hatred at him even as she rose, staggering, to her feet.

“They’ll burn him,” she sobbed.

Proctor nodded. “Better him than you.”