Demonbane (Book 4) (32 page)

“It’s sweet of you to worry, Joseph,” Kara said with a smile. “But I’m coming. You’re short-handed enough as it is.” She lifted her bow. “You could use the cover fire.”

Kendril nodded. “She’s right.”

Joseph threw the Ghostwalker a nasty glare.

“If you’re right about this Void gate,” Hamis said in his deep, rumbling voice, “it won’t much matter where the lass is, will it?”

Joseph wiped a sleeve across his brow. “I suppose not.”

Gradine looked quizzically from Hamis to Kendril. “What’s he talking about?”

Kendril stared out the window. “One step at a time, Lieutenant. First, we have to get across that bridge.”

The sounds of screaming could be heard, along with occasional gunshots. And underneath it all, like a low buzz that seemed only to grow in intensity, came the sound of some kind of chanting or singing to the east.

The gendarmes and militiamen were spread out alongside the sides of the building on either side of the street. They stayed in the shadows, speaking in barely audible whispers. Just twenty feet away was the foot of the stone bridge spanning the Inersa.

“We go across,” said Kendril hoarsely, trying to keep his voice down. “No shooting until we get to the other side, not unless they shoot first. Go quickly, and go quietly, understand?”

A few heads bobbed in the darkness.

“Pass it down.” Kendril turned and drew both his swords. He turned to Hamis. “Last chance to sit this one out.”

The muscled Ghostwalker lifted his greatsword. “You kidding? I’ve been itching for a chance to kill some cultists all night.”

Kendril smiled. He looked back at the men.

The gendarmes were crouched against the building, swords out and ready. The militia had an assortment of blades and axes.

Kendril waved a hand forward, then turned towards the bridge.

He dashed across the open space between the street and the bridge, expecting to hear gunfire any second.

There was nothing.

He ducked down low and dashed onto the frozen stones of the bridge. To either side of him stretched the white snake of the Inersa, flowing sluggishly underneath them.

It was quiet, far too quiet. Kendril could hear his breath in his own ears, loud and strained. Beside him came Joseph, his rapier at the ready. At his other side jogged Gradine. Hamis had already fallen behind, his limp slowing him down.

The bridge arced slightly in the center, bowing upwards. Kendril kept running. He neared the top of the arc.

Behind him he could hear a man curse as he slipped on the ice. A sword clinked loudly as it hit the stone of the bridge. In the silence it sounded as loud as a gunshot.

Kendril winced. Surely the enemy heard that? He came up and over the center of the bridge.

The line of buildings on the far bank was dark. The glow-globes here were all out, too. Blackness hung over the street like a thick blanket. There could be five hundred men or none down there, hiding in the stores and shops that lined the bank. There was no way to tell.

Kendril kept running. He could hear distant sounds of fighting to the left and the right. Ahead of him the sound of screaming and the low buzz of chanting grew louder. The skyline glowed red in all directions.

He made it to the bottom of the bridge. The clank of weapons and the heavy footfalls of men sounded behind him.

Eru, he hoped the cultists didn’t have a cannon…

There was a shout from the upper window of a house to the right.

Kendril kept running.

Another shout.

A gunshot banged out from the left. The flash lit the street for a moment.

Another figure stepped out from an alleyway and lifted a smoking matchlock musket.

There was twang and a hiss.

The cultist fell back against the street, an arrow protruding from his chest.

Kendril grinned. Vow or no vow, he could have kissed Kara right then.

And then he was on the enemy.

They were confused, disorganized. One had a bottle in his hand and reeked of
razvodit
. He stumbled out of a side door.

Kendril cut him down before he even had a chance to unsheathe his sword.

Another man emerged, wearing a hooded robe. He fumbled with a halberd.

Kendril ran him through with one of his short swords.

The cultist gave a gurgling cry and crumpled to the ground.

There were screams and shouts all around now. Shots blasted off in the darkness. Officers yelled. The gendarmes and militiamen were piling into the surprised cultists defending the bridge, cutting and slashing.

“For Vorten!” Kendril yelled. His heart was pumping fast, the blood pounding through his veins. He could feel the sheer bloodthirsty energy of battle descend on him again. He slashed left and right, pummeled a face with the pommel of his sword, then slashed open another.

It was chaos, sheer bloody chaos.

Joseph blocked an attack to Kendril left, then jabbed his rapier into a man’s leg. Three yards to Kendril’s right Hamis barreled down on a crossbow-armed cultist and took the man’s head off with a massive chop of his greatsword.

Several more arrows came whizzing overhead.

Kendril glanced back behind him to see Kara standing in the middle of the bridge, firing arrow after arrow like she was at morning target practice.

One of Gradine’s gendarmes came up just behind Kendril. A gunshot tore into his chest and threw him to the ground.

Kendril looked up just in time to see a man with a smoking gun duck back into one of the second-story windows.

Another head appeared holding a pistol.

Kendril dodged off to one side.

The shot blasted off in the darkness and the bullet pinged off the cobblestones just a few feet away from his leg.

The second cultist ducked back into the upper room.

Kendril gestured to the buildings on either side of the street. “Snipers up above! Clear those buildings!”

“On it,” came Maklavir’s jovial voice. He stepped over the fallen body of a cultist, swung back his arm, then tossed a fizzing object into the upper window.

Kendril stared at him.

Maklavir shrank back against the next building, and ducked into a doorway.

Kendril scrambled away and dove around the corner.

A second later there was a ear-splitting explosion. Smoke and flame blossomed out of the upper windows. Pieces of brick sailed down into the street below.

Coughing and sputtering in the cloud of smoke and brick dust, Kendril climbed back to his feet. He glanced around the street.

Dead bodies were strewn everywhere. They looked to be mostly cultists.

Lieutenant Gradine barked a few orders, getting the gendarmes and militia back in line.

Hamis came up to Kendril, grinning like a jackal. “Olan’s wrong about you, boy. You’ve got guts after all.”

Kendril wiped the blood off one of his swords. “We’re going to see just how much.” He looked up as a pair of gendarmes exited building on the far side of the street. “Clear?”

They nodded.

Gradine turned, wiping sweat from his face. “That went better than I thought.”

Kendril looked over the street. It was true. Only a half dozen or so cultists, all dead. Only one loyalist had fallen, a few others were wounded.

It was a bargain, and a lucky one at that.

“I’ll post men here,” Gradine said as he sheathed his sword. “We can hold the bridge until—”

“Belay that,” Kendril said roughly. He stood and looked up the street. “That was the easy part. We’re not done yet.”

In the darkness ahead they could all hear shouting and screaming.

And chanting.

The street was unguarded.

The column of gendarmes and militia snaked up alongside one side, weapons out and at the ready. Bodies lay haphazardly all around. Some were just children. A fire gutted out of the windows of one small house, casting the snow-covered street in an eerie orange light. Windows were shattered out of the houses and stores all around. Furniture and articles of every description littered the street. Papers fluttered around like small white birds.

And always came the strange chanting up ahead, intermingled with the screams and pleas of women being sacrificed.

No one could understand the words. They vibrated in the air, and hurt the heads of all those who listened. Several of the soldiers vomited as they walked, overcome with a sudden nausea. The very air seemed to crackle with a hidden energy.

Gradine grabbed Kendril’s arm. “What on Zanthora is
that
?” he whispered, forgetting Kendril’s newly acquired rank.

“That is what we’ve come to
stop
,” Kendril said. He turned to the men huddled on the street just behind.

They looked exhausted, young, frightened.

“We’re going into the Central Plaza, just up ahead,” Kendril said, his voice booming out in the darkness of the street. “We have to take the plaza and kill the cultists who are there.” He motioned at Gradine. “Anyone with carbines or firearms will occupy the buildings on the western edge of the plaza, then keep up a steady rate of fire. Those who have only swords will stay with me and assault the open plaza.”

“How many enemy are there, sir?” One of the gendarmes asked.

A screamed echoed from around the corner. The chanting increased in tempo.

“I don’t know.” Kendril turned to the men. “You can hear what’s going on. I don’t have to tell you that it’s bad. Those cultists are trying to open a gate to the Void. We’re going to stop them. We either succeed or die trying. Understand?”

There was deathly silence.

“You sure know how to give a rousing speech, Kendril,” Hamis grumbled.

Kendril drew his sword. “Enough talking. Let’s go.”

Dannon was covered in blood.

The knife he held had ended the lives of more women than he could count, more than he could dream. For so long he had served the gods, longed for their return, and
now
…

Now, he would finally have that chance.

Two cultists threw a woman onto the blood-drenched altar right in the middle of the square. She didn’t scream, but just whimpered, her eyes wide with fright like a sheep about to be slaughtered.

Dannon closed his eyes, murmuring the chant that was echoed from the throat of every faithful worshipper of the Seteru here in what had once been Vorten’s Central Plaza.

In mere seconds it would be the new gateway of the gods.

The very air trembled, shimmering with potential. The fabric of time and space itself wavered and flickered, distorted and thin. It needed only one push, one little prick to tear the veil between the Void and this world.

Dannon laughed. To think, he had been a nobody just yesterday, a gutter rat of Vorten, despised and dejected by the nobles.

Now he was the favored of the gods, high priest of both Chalranu and Indigoru.

He raised his knife.

There was a shout from his right, to the western side of the Plaza.

Distracted, Dannon turned his head.

Gunshots, several of them. More shouts, the clang of metal on metal.

No
, he thought feverishly.
Not now
. He was close. So close…

He closed his eyes and continued chanting.

The woman on the altar screamed.

He brought the blade down.

Kendril cut down the cultist just as the man was starting to turn around. He stepped forward with a snarl of pure animal rage and lifted a pistol in his other hand.

Another cultist ran at him with a scream. He held a club with rusted nails stuck in it.

Kendril fired.

The shot took off half the man’s face.

A group of huddled women and girls nearby got to their feet and begin to run.

Kendril stepped to one side, and drew his other sword. “Gradine!” he roared, “Get these people out of here!”

The lieutenant nodded, then turned and waved his gendarmes into the plaza just behind him. Several knelt and began firing their carbines.

Screams and gunsmoke filled the air within seconds.

Answering shots came from the other side of the plaza.

The chanting continued, relentless.

A crossbowbolt flicked past Kendril and stuck fast in wall of a building behind him.

Kara stepped up beside him, taking careful aim with her bow. She fired, and a cultist stumbled and dropped to the left of the dry fountain.

There was a roar from the plaza. A group of cultists, armed and furious, came running at the small band of loyalists.

Kendril dodged around a fleeing woman.

This wasn’t like the assault on the bridge. There were a lot of cultists here, and they were well-armed.

A gendarme fell right beside Kendril, clutching at a crossbow bolt in his leg.

Hamis stepped forward and swung his massive sword like a reaper in a cornfield. Two cultists dropped in front of him.

Kendril turned, shouting to be heard over the confusion. “Take the buildings!” he shouted at the second group of gendarmes that were just coming up. “Set up a covering fire!” He turned and pushed Kara back towards the edge of the plaza. “You too,” he yelled. “Go!”

“I’m not going to run and hide!” the redhead blurted.

A shot tore through the air between the two of them.

“You’re no good out here,” Kendril said again. He pointed with his sword at the line of shops and houses just behind them. “Find some cover and keep shooting.”

He turned, just in time to see the cultists coming right at them in a disorganized mob, screaming and chanting.

Hamis lifted his sword above his head. “For Vorten!” he roared.

“For Vorten!” the gendarmes and loyal militia replied in one voice.

Kendril smiled.

The two lines crashed together, swords sweeping and slashing while gunfire punched into their midst.

“Sir!” one of the cultists shouted. “We’re being attacked!” He pointed. “There, on the—”

“I
know
,” Dannon snarled. It was monstrous. It was unfair. He was so close, closer than he had ever been before. He looked around wildly, ignoring the battle that was happening just fifty yards away.