The Warrior King (Book 4) (25 page)

“Don’t be so smug about it. You need a break too.”

“I didn’t mean to sound smug,” he said. “I’m exhausted.”

They’d come into a boulder-strewn gap between the hills, and Darik figured it was as safe a place to stop as any. He ordered the camel down. They sank from the camel and leaned back into the sand. The comet light cast long shadows on the ground.

Sofiana scratched the camel’s jaw. “I take back everything I said,” she told the beast. “You’re not so bad. You don’t lose your head in battle.”

Darik sighed and closed his eyes, knowing full well that if he kept them closed for long, he would fall asleep. The air was cool, but the sand was still comfortable and warm. After a struggle, he opened them again. “This isn’t a safe place to sleep. We should find somewhere sheltered in case those lions come sniffing around.”

He used the camel to lever himself off the ground, then he frowned and rubbed his fingers together. They were wet and sticky. Blood trickled down the camel’s neck. The soldier’s scimitar must have cut the animal when he came by to trade blows. Fortunately, it proved to be a shallow cut, and most of the bleeding stopped when Darik and Sofiana wrapped its neck with a strip torn from one of the spare robes in the saddlebag.

Sofiana found them a secure place sheltered between two boulders at the base of the first steep rise in the mountains. A short slope, not really a hill, sat about twenty feet back from the boulders and would block view of the fire to any but the closest searchers. They gathered dried and broken juniper and sagebrush, then scraped the bark into a pile and retrieved the flint and steel from the bags. Within a few minutes, Darik had a cheery fire going that lifted their spirits and heated a pot of tea. They discussed how best to keep watch until morning.

Unfortunately, either the fire or the smell of camel blood soon drew unwanted attention. The camel sensed the newcomers first, rising to its feet and letting out a bellow. A dark shape came slinking along the outer edge of the firelight. Darik heard a throaty rumble.

They pushed the camel against the boulders where it would be safe behind the fire, but fearing the beast would run off, Darik tied the rope to an outcropping of rock. They settled behind the fire, confident that no animals would attack through the flames. The only problem was the wood supply, which looked to give out before dawn.

Over the next twenty minutes, a dozen dark shapes appeared on the hill beyond the camp. One rumbled, and another let out an answering roar, which confirmed their fears. Soon, the night filled with roaring lions. A few of them stepped closer to the fire. They were broad-shouldered, enormous beasts, larger than Darik had expected. Once, when he was a boy, a band of traders from Ter had brought a troupe of captured lions into the Grand Bazaar. The lions, who performed tricks when they were whipped, had never been let off their chains and were thin, bony creatures. Darik had watched with a mix of curiosity and pity. Nothing like the magnificent terror he suffered as these lions paced back and forth, roaring their hunger.

Sofiana waved a stick back and forth over her head. “Get out of here! Go!” Her voice was shrill and frightened. “Leave us alone!”

Darik took another stick, dipped it in the fire, and joined her in dancing around, shouting.

Most of the lions retreated up the short hillside, but one of the larger lionesses stayed behind and the others rejoined her a moment later. No amount of shouting and waving the stick could convince them to back away again. They found rocks and pitched them into the crowd. One struck a lion on the shoulder, and it let out a surprised snarl.

“We need a bigger fire,” Sofiana said.

“We can’t, we’re running out of wood.”

“They’re going to come through.”

The flames had died to sputters and a pile of glowing coals, and the large lioness looked ready to jump across and come at them. They hastily fed in more sticks. The fire leaped up.

The lions had been jostling at each other, no farther than fifteen feet away, but now they roared in frustration and drew back as the flames licked higher. The wood was dry and burned too quickly. Worse, they’d used half of their remaining wood to stoke the fire. Once it died down, they could build the fire one more time, and then they’d be done. Hours to go until dawn.

“What do we do?” Sofiana asked.

Darik wondered if they should initiate the inevitable fight now, while they still had firelight. If only there weren’t so many. He didn’t see how they could possibly fight off a dozen hungry lions. Maybe if they wounded the head lioness that would dissuade the rest. It was a desperate chance, but he couldn’t see any better alternative.

“The fire is dying again,” Sofiana said in a warning voice.

There were still flames, although they weren’t as high as they had been, but the lions seemed bolder this time, less frightened by the fire. If they let it die down again to where it had been before, it would surely be too late.

Suddenly, the roaring stopped, and the lions froze in place. Heads cocked.

A deep rumble reached Darik’s ears from somewhere not too distant. Then came a bellowing call so low and powerful that it made the roaring of the lions sound like the mewling of kittens. The rumble reached deep into Darik’s bones. The lions scattered into the night. Darik and Sofiana stared at each other through wide eyes.

The camel bellowed in terror behind them and jerked its head back and forth against the rope, trying to free itself. Whatever was out there, the camel was so frightened that it would rather break free and race off into the desert after the hungry lions than face it.

A huge shadow moved through the darkness beyond the light of the fire. The roar sounded again, so loud this time that the ground trembled beneath their feet.

Chapter Twenty-three

Markal left Whelan with his signal corps and raced around the battlements to the gate tower. Behind him, the king was frantically trying to bring in Hoffman’s reserves, now shattered and disorganized, to get them in behind the advancing ravagers. Even though the initial blow of the enemy had been like an iron maul hitting a strong but brittle block of stone, the remaining pieces were large enough to force the ravagers to delay, if only he could rally them.

The wizard took out Memnet’s Orb. It was cold to his touch, like a piece of polished ice, even though the evening was warm. He cradled it in one hand and rubbed the surface in his other. Dozens of spells, conjurings, and incantations ran through his mind, the result of generations of study and practice. He had been filling the orb with magic since the battle on the Tothian Way with Chantmer and the mage from Marrabat, and there was enough power stored within to hurl the ravager company all the way to Veyre and into the sea, if only his faith and will were as strong as his knowledge. Instead, he knew that much of that power would leak out helplessly into the air as he tried to control it.

Pasha Ismail’s enemy army was still plugged up between the hills and surrounded on all sides, and this seemed to give Whelan the confidence to bring up Lord Denys’s force from where it had remained throughout the battle protecting the caravan. They numbered several hundred more men, and surely, together with Hoffan, could hold these ravagers at bay. There couldn’t be more than fifty undead knights in total.

But Markal no longer had faith in their ability to stop the ravagers. During the Tothian Wars, a single ravager champion had cut through eleven of the finest warriors in Aristonia to attack and murder Memnet the Great in his gardens. Indeed, as Hoffan struggled valiantly to halt the ravager charge at the castle, he threw everything he had at them, only to see his forces driven back again and again, men and horse bloodied and dying.

The ravager captain shouted something in a deep, guttural voice that carried over the clash of steel. Markal knew the voice. It was Roderick, Whelan’s own brother and former captain of the Knights Temperate, who had fallen in the battle on the Old Road a few weeks ago. A small company of Roderick’s former knights were now mounting horses in the bailey, prepared to ride out and give battle in protection of their king. Did they have any idea who they were about to face?

Under Roderick’s command, ten of the ravagers fell back to give battle to Hoffan’s riders still harassing them from the rear. Soon, every one of them was surrounded by opponents stabbing and jostling, trying to knock them from their horses. Some of them would surely be cut down. Even a ravager could have his limbs severed, his head cut from his shoulders.

But as the ten fell under heavy attack, Roderick and his remaining force broke free for the final time and came charging up the hillside toward the ruined castle gates. Roderick rode at the front, a powerful warrior high in the saddle, his sword outstretched.

The orb turned hot in Markal’s hand. “
Motum retardit laboramum et.
”

A pulse of magical power surged from the heart of the sphere. It made the air in front of the castle shimmer, thickening like water, and the ravagers slowed, every movement of horse and man a struggle. Coming uphill into that thick mist would have tired a living army, forced them to collapse in exhaustion or fall back in retreat. But the ravagers kept pushing on. They slashed and hacked at the air, trying to cut away whatever was delaying them. Soon, the spell began to fall apart. The enemy forced its way through.

Incredibly, the few ravagers left behind were still carrying on a fight with the mass of horsemen, but Hoffan had at least managed to get some thirty or forty of his men around them, and those were coming up the road in pursuit of Roderick. They might succeed in bottling the enemy within the castle long enough for Whelan’s army to surround the castle and destroy them through sheer force of numbers. But the king would be trapped inside as well.

The ravagers came within the outer range of the bowmen on the walls. Their pace seemed to quicken.

Whelan drew Soultrup and pointed it down at the enemy. “Fire!”

A hail of arrows soared through the air and struck the lead riders. Some fell short or missed, and some deflected off breastplates or helms, but others found chinks in the armor of horse and rider. The force of the blows rocked the men back in the saddles, but none fell.

Calmly, the bowmen fitted new arrows to their bows. They had time for another good shot before the ravagers reached the castle. Whelan ordered a second volley. Bowstrings twanged, and a second wave of arrows launched. When they were airborn, Markal drew another rope of magic from the orb.

As the arrows crossed the distance, they flared with a bright, blue light. Arrows struck the ravagers with much greater accuracy this time, and when they did, they burst into blue flame. It engulfed clothing, armor, horse, and man, and a wave of heat rolled up the outer walls of the castle. The grass and brush along the hillside burst into flames, sending smoke curling in the air.

The effect was brief, but powerful, and would have killed any living man. But moments later, the ravagers came riding through the ball of fire as it fell apart. They were blackened and smelled of charred flesh, even their armor and swords scorched. But as Markal watched in dismay, their flesh was already healing itself.

Whelan had abandoned the wall to his archers and signalers. These latter dropped their flags and trumpets and drew swords to run after the king, who was scrambling down the stone staircase to join his men within the bailey.

“No!” Markal cried. “Stay on the walls.”

Whelan looked up at him. “I must fight my brother.”

“I have a plan. Stay up top. Keep your men from the gates.”

For a moment, the king looked torn, turning toward the twenty or so knights in the bailey and then up to Markal on the wall. It seemed as though he would ignore the command and instead rush down to join his men in a brutal fight to the death against the undead knights. Markal silently begged him to stay out of the fight. Whelan may be the greatest warrior in the land, but his value today was as a king and general. If he died, his army would fall apart, be forced to retreat while the dark wizard gathered his strength. Toth would win the war.

This had been the enemy’s entire motive for starting the battle. As rich a prize as the supply caravans presented, the king himself was a greater prize still. Toth would throw away his greatest general and the bulk of his strongest army simply to murder the warrior king.

And the sword. Roderick comes for Soultrup too.

Markal blanched at the thought of the undead knight in possession of that powerful weapon, the malignant soul of Pasha Malik contained in its heart, giving it strength. Markal must succeed now or all would be lost.

“I beg you!” he cried at Whelan. “Please trust me, my king.”

To his relief, Whelan nodded and came back up the stairs to the castle walls.

Markal turned back to the action outside the castle gates, watching from near the gate tower as the ravagers closed the last few yards to the castle. Roderick was at the lead, and the man looked up at him, his eyes wide behind skin that was burned and oozing pus. His mouth stretched into a grin, and Markal could sense the dark, evil intelligence behind that stare. The man who had once been so righteous in his obedience to the rules of the Brotherhood and the Knights Temperate was gone, replaced by this monster. The champion of King Toth.