Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) (34 page)

“Heh. Told you the kid would come around,” Ward said.

“In this case I’m glad you were right,” Steelbinder replied. “These devices will provide enough power for heavy enchantment work, or decent battle magic?”

I nodded. “Yes, easily. I can also limit the amount of power any particular device will deliver, in case you want someone who isn’t experienced enough to handle heavy energy flows safely to have one. Unfortunately making them weaker doesn’t actually simplify the enchantment, so it won’t make them cheaper.”

“That’s a good start,” Steelbinder said. “We can negotiate prices after the meeting.”

“Don’t be surprised if some of the junior adepts offer their souls,” Ward joked.

Steelbinder smiled thinly. “Indeed. Adept Stenberg indicated that you’re open to the idea of joining the Conclave?”

“In principle,” I said slowly. “I’d need to take a look at your bylaws, make sure there isn’t anything that conflicts with any oaths I’ve taken, that kind of thing.”

Ward laughed. “Son, at the rate you’re going you’ll make High Adept in a couple of months. We don’t play by the rules, we make them.”

“It’s a valid point,” Steelbinder objected. “It takes time to line up the proper endorsements and ensure there are no objectors, and none of us will have much time for playing politics. But adding another famous war wizard to our ranks would go a long way towards shoring up the Conclave’s credibility, not to mention filling the hole left by Thunderbolt’s death.”

“But we’re short on time, so the details of that will also have to wait. I understand you’ve been building some impressive defensive works on your island. Will your defenses hold if the invaders target you?”

I considered that for a moment. “I’d been hoping for another week before the first serious attack, so I’ll have to push to finish some preparations. But yes, they should hold off even a serious assault. I’ve melted enough of the river to serve as a moat, and I’ve got nearly two hundred men with magical weapons. Basically lots of devices for throwing chunks of iron at very high speeds. We can easily shoot holes in any boats that try to approach, and I’ve got a few heavier weapons that have the range to fire on any enemy attacking the river side of the city.”

“That will shore up the harbor defenses nicely,” Steelbinder commented. “What about personal combat? We’re expecting this goddess to show herself at some point, and there’s no telling what sort of fell beasts she’ll have with her. There aren’t any epic heroes in Kozalin and the priests will be guarding their temple, so stopping her is going to fall to us wizards. Can I count on you to help put her in the ground?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I had the same thought, so I’ve been preparing for that.”

I would have said more, but I was interrupted by a shout from the skimmer’s driver. The ponderous vehicle lurched to a stop, and something bounced off the side with a clang of metal on metal.

I leaned over to look out the skimmer’s armored windshield, and found the street ahead of us in utter chaos. Screaming people running haphazardly through the snow, pursued by dark shapes like something out of a horror movie.

The smaller ones were the size of a large dog. Quadrupeds, with long legs and huge mouths, their heads and bodies covered in plates of dark armor. Their long, sinewy tails were tipped with round knobs that they used like maces against the armored soldiers in the crowd, while their claws and teeth made short work of any civilian they could catch.

I spotted at least a dozen of those in moments, along with a few larger specimens and one giant the size of a horse. Some of the soldiers were trying to fight them, but swords and spears just glanced off the armored hides of the beasts. Then the big one turned towards the skimmer with a roar, its huge mouth gaping open.

The skimmer’s cannon fired with an ear-splitting crack, and the beast’s head blew apart in a fountain of black ichor.

“What the hell?” I gasped.

“The war room is in the middle of that,” Steelbinder said. “But what are those things? They don’t look like any breed of demon I’ve seen.”

“A devourer,” Ward breathed. “Gods preserve us, they’ve loosed a devourer on the city.”

              “It looks like a whole pack of them,” I pointed out.

              “They’re all connected,” Ward explained urgently. “Somewhere there’s a heart that births these roaming mouths. Everything they eat goes back to the heart, and gives it more substance to make monsters with. We have to kill it before it eats too many people, or it will birth an unstoppable army.”

              A couple of the smaller ones were eying the skimmer now. The Conclave’s golems formed up around us, and bolts of lightning flashed out from their riders to strike the nearest monsters. They fell back in the face of this new threat, and the street in front of us quickly cleared.

              “These creatures are too agile for golems to face,” Steelbinder decided. “They’ll quickly realize they can climb them to get at their riders, and most of our men won’t fare well in melee with demonic beasts. We’ll have to fight our way to the heart on foot. Boris, the devourers were bound in Tartarus, weren’t they? There should be more than enough etheric residue to betray the heart’s location.”

“Yes, yes, that should work,” the elderly High Adept agreed. “But I’m too old to go traipsing across a battlefield on foot. I’ll stay here, and help our escorts block the road.”

“The skimmer should make a decently secure command post for you,” I said. “Captain Rain, stay here and provide fire support with the cannon. If you get overrun you can seal the hatches and fall back to the island or the Iron Citadel. Gronir, you’re with me.”

Gronir hefted his flamer with a predatory grin. “Ready, milord.”

I noticed that he’d tied the hilt of a force blade to the end of the barrel, and had to grin back. It was one of the newer type that didn’t have a physical blade, just a hilt with a switch that turned the force blade on and off. So effectively he’d added a magical bayonet to the flamethrower. I’d have to remember to add that feature to the next batch I made.

Steelbinder hesitated for a moment, but nodded. “Very well. I’ll take point, you and Leo can guard our flanks while your man brings up the rear. Elof, you stay on bodyguard detail. Don’t take any chances here, the Conclave can’t afford more losses. Let’s go.”

It felt a little odd, not being in charge of the situation for once. But Steelbinder seemed to know what he was doing, so I wasn’t going to argue with him. We disembarked into the blowing snow, and fell into a rough diamond formation as we started down the street.

It was an eerie scene. Mangled bodies littered the street, their blood still steaming in the snow. Some were partially eaten, missing limbs or faces, their bodies ripped open to expose organs and viscera. There was a weak moan from somewhere nearby, and I realized that some of the victims weren’t dead yet.

I was debating whether there was time to stop and save them when a fresh pack of monsters came around a corner ahead of us and charged. At the same time more of them descended from the rooftops on our flanks, howling for our blood.

I threw a flurry of force blades at the monsters descending on my flank, and drew Grinder. The first few monsters fell onto the blades and were cut to pieces, coming apart in a shower of gore and severed body parts that bounced off my shield. The others landed around us as Grinder’s shriek filled the air, and I swept a jet of violet flame across them.

I couldn’t hit all the monsters at once, but those that evaded Grinder’s plasma jet just clawed uselessly at my shield. I carved through them with wide sweeps of Grinder’s blade, interspersed with jets of plasma at the ones that were smart enough to dodge instead of trying to parry. Well now, these guys weren’t so tough.

Gronir’s flamer roared. I glanced back to see that Leo was cutting his opponents apart with a sword covered in dull purple runes, that seemed to disintegrate anything it touched. A few of the monsters had apparently decided Gronir was an easier target, but he’d lit them up with the flamer and was gleefully carving up the ones that weren’t dead from the flames yet.

I glanced back towards our front, but High Adept Steelbinder had things well in hand there. Gleaming steel shapes danced through the ranks of the onrushing horde, moving so fast I could barely tell what they were. They constantly changed their shape, sprouting blades and barbed spikes and vicious-looking hooks, buzzing through the mob to strike again and again. They didn’t penetrate the armored hides of the monsters as easily as my own force blades, but they got the job done well enough.

When they ran out of monsters to dice the objects reformed into spheres the size of baseballs, and flew back to orbit over Steelbinder’s head. The wizard fished a small object out of a pouch, and consulted it briefly.

“That way,” he pointed, and set out again.

A moment later we turned the corner, and came out into the plaza in front of Kozalin’s city hall. It was a rather grand building, with marble steps out front leading up to an ornate entryway decorated with statues of heroes. The windows overlooking the plaza had actually been glass instead of just wooden shutters, and a tower with a massive clock face near the top rose from one corner of the building. But it had seen better days.

Pools of half-frozen blood stained the thin layer of snow on the plaza, along with piles of rags and the occasional bit of metal gear. But there were no bodies. Several of the building’s windows were broken, and the ornately carved doors of the grand entryway had been ripped off their hinges and thrown down across the steps. The corner opposite the clock tower seemed to be on fire, and there were faint roars and screams rising from somewhere deep inside.

“These things work fast,” I noted.

Steelbinder checked his device again. “Indeed. It seems the beast is in one of the basements. Can you give us a direct route?”

“Not a problem.”

He pointed, and I ripped through the cobblestone of the plaza to open a sloping tunnel in that direction. I took the lead as we went in, trying to look ahead with my earth sense to make sure I didn’t tunnel into a sewer line. Sure enough there were several buried pipes in our path, but I was able to go under them easily enough. Once we got a few feet down there didn’t seem to be any more of them, and I got us across the plaza almost as quickly as we could have walked on the surface.

Then I broke out into a hollow space, and something with far too many teeth lunged for my face. My shield failed in a shower of blue sparks, torn apart by some kind of spell-destruction effect the thing radiated, and I barely got an arm up in time to intercept its mouth.

Teeth the size of daggers closed on my arm, but failed to penetrate the sleeve of my enchanted coat. Gronir’s flamer stabbed over my shoulder, but his improvised force bayonet made only a shallow gash before the blade unravelled. I fumbled under my coat, my hands closing on the hilt of my gun.

“Step back, man,” Leo shouted. “Let me get my sword into it!”

The monster growled and clawed at my chest, its jaws worrying at my arm. But it still couldn’t get through, and it was impossible to miss at this range. I held down the trigger, and walked a line of bullets up its belly. The big 0.50 slugs tore huge holes in the beast’s hide, spraying the room behind it with black ichor and fragments of broken bones.

It released my arm, falling back on its hind legs, and I put three more rounds into its head just to be sure.

“What the hell?” Gronir said.

“It’s making new minions designed to kill us,” Steelbinder said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That one was breaking active spell effects, but not enchantments. Let’s not give it a chance to find an attack that works on us.”

My shield reformed, and I pulled it in so it would be inside the curse barrier one of my rings projected. Hopefully that would block the spell-breaking effect, or at least slow it down for a few seconds.

“Indeed. Leo, take point. It can’t be more than a few rooms away.”

“Yes, sir!” The armored wizard pulled a small object out of a pouch, and strode across the hall we’d tunneled into to slap it against the far wall. Cracks immediately began to spread from the impact point, spreading and growing exponentially, and in seconds the stone crumbled away to reveal a dimly-lit cellar on the far side.

A sea of monsters filled the room from wall to wall.

I could hear sounds of battle from somewhere nearby. Shouts, the clang of steel, the screams of injured men. But there was no time to make sense of that. A walking mouth the size of a bear was waiting for Leo, and immediately lunged through the opening to attack him. A swarm of dog-sized monsters flooded out around it, and dozens of little flying things came swooping in from above.

Gronir roasted quite a few of the flyers with his flamer, but Leo went down with the big thing on top of him. Half of Steelbinder’s flying blades went to work on the smaller monsters, while the rest turned into floating steel disks that moved to block anything from getting too close to him.

Well, I’d have to assume Leo could handle himself. I spun the cylinder on my gun, and started firing bouncer rounds over the melee into the crowded room.

They worked beautifully. The first one punched through a dog-monster’s hindquarters and went tumbling across the room, its spinning blades leaving a trail of gore and severed body parts behind. The second one encountered another beast with a spell-breaking aura halfway across the room, but the impact of the bullet still killed the thing. There didn’t seem to be very many of those, and my next few shots carved more bloody swathes through the horde.

An endless stream of reinforcements poured in through a doorway on the far side of the room, but the monsters were dying faster than they could be replaced. Steelbinder gathered a ball of lightning in his hand and threw it into the room, where it unleashed a flurry of miniature lightning bolts that threw the horde into confusion. The giant beast fell aside with a thump, and Leo started to crawl out from under it. We were winning.

Then I felt a sharp pain in my foot. I jerked back, and looked down to find that a tentacle with a mouth on the end had emerged from the floor to latch onto my foot. Another one curled around my ankle before I could pull free, and more were emerging from a widening hole in the floor.

“Burrowers!” I shouted, and sliced through the tentacles with a force blade. I took to the air on a levitation field like the one I’d developed for my skimmers, but the pain in my foot was still getting worse.

The tentacles wrapped around my leg were still alive, growing mouths that tore apart my boot and burrowed into my flesh. My body sense informed me that dozens of tendrils were digging into me like roots, eating and growing as they spread.

Yeah, fuck that. I called up my flesh sorcery, reached into the alien biology of those burrowing invaders, and killed them. The magic that animated them fought me, resisting my magic and trying to force dead cells back to life. But I was stronger than it was, and that wasn’t my only sorcery. I fought back against its magic too, dispelling the protections it raised and disrupting its regeneration power. For a few seconds I focused the whole power output of my amulet on the task.

Finally, it died.

I spent a few more seconds making sure it hadn’t left some further trick ready to hit me when I was distracted, and then turned my attention back to my surroundings.

Steelbinder was standing on a floating disk of steel now, surrounded by a crackling web of lighting that incinerated anything that got close to him. Leo had been forced away from the opening, and was hacking away furiously at the monsters that were still trying to get at him while a mass of severed tentacles wrapped around his legs seeking a way through his armor. Gronir had backed well up, and was hosing down the opening with his flamer. But that wouldn’t discourage them for long.

“Gronir, pull back!”

I laid down a thick sheet of nickel-iron to cover the floor, leaving holes where Gronir and Leo were standing. Leo jumped onto the iron almost as soon as it formed, and a wave of crawling black lights danced across his armor turning the vine monsters to dust. I closed the hole where he’d been standing, and drew Grinder again.

“Maximum destruction, everyone,” Steelbinder called. “Daniel, take point and cut a path through these things.”

I nodded. “You got it. Gronir, stay out here.”

A fresh wave of monsters lunged towards us, smaller ones with grey-white hides that ignored the wash of fire from Gronir’s flamer. But that was just normal flame. I lit Grinder, and directed a jet of plasma into the middle of the swarm.

They died with high-pitched chittering shrieks, their bodies flashing to vapor in the face of a fire hotter than the sun. Grinder’s violet flame had to be somewhere well north of ten thousand degrees, and thermal energy transfer is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature difference. I left the beam on, and floated forward with a savage grin.

The heat was like walking into a blast furnace. In a few seconds the air was too hot to breathe, and the stone floor of the larger chamber began to glow red as it melted. Even with the fire protection I’d enchanted onto my coat I could feel the radiant heat trying to burn my skin, only for the healing of my amulet to repair the damage as fast as it happened. I floated quickly across the room, flash-frying everything in my path.

A thought struck me, and I glanced up. The roof was vaulted stone. Good thing, because wooden beams wouldn’t have survived this.