The Arcanist (14 page)

Chapter Ten

“What now?”

Edouard was beginning to wonder as he heard the alarm bell ringing, if he was ever going to get any sleep again. If it wasn't one thing it seemed to be another of late. But still, all his grumbling didn't keep him from pulling on his robe and slippers and heading out to the upstairs landing where everyone had gathered. And more importantly to where he could see the crystals shining in their frame above the front door that told him what was happening. The system of trip wires and bells had been installed centuries before when the fort was still in use, and the only change he'd made was to add in a few enchanted fire crystals so that he could see the alarm in the dark.

“Fire?” Mara asked the obvious question.

“Perimeter alarm,” Edouard corrected her. “Someone's approaching the holding through the wilds.” And that could only mean trouble. Brigands maybe. But at least if the ground wasn't shaking and he couldn't hear whistling, he knew it didn't mean stampeding mammoths. He doubted that the fort would hold against them even half as long as the city had.

“So what do we do?” Mara asked, but he didn't have time to explain. Instead he quickly led them back along the upstairs hallway to the small round sitting room in the middle where a hooked pole was hanging from the wall. He used that to grab the handle of the ceiling hatch and pull it down, letting the collapsible staircase open up. After that it was a short climb to the bottom of the tower, and the handful of heavy muskets he kept hanging from the walls. His weapons of course; not the light weight weapons they gave to guards.

He grabbed a couple for himself – surprised as always by their weight, but four barrels weighed more than one – and got the women to grab another one each. He also picked up a brace of pistols, just in case. Then they began climbing up the circular staircase to the tower's parapet. It was a long walk but necessary. From there they could look out over the surrounding countryside to see who was approaching.

It was a hurried climb, not least because he had no idea who would approach from the wildlands behind the fort. It was an inhospitable land, full of scrub and rock and deep holes, and he'd been intending for years to level it and plant it with grass. Perhaps he would one day, and then run a couple of mountain sheep on it. He'd just never got around to it. Like so many things it was simply on his list of things to do. But maybe it should be bumped a few places up. There was a security matter involved. The wilds were not the direction from which visitors would come. But it was the direction from which assassins and thieves in the night might, which was why the system had been installed in the first place. And knocking down the scrub would make it easier to spot unwelcome visitors heading through it.

“I can't see anything.”

Of course being night time, simply standing in the lookout tower wasn't going to tell them who was approaching. But Edouard had that under control as well despite the handmaiden's worries. A single spark sent into the gas of the central lamp caused it to give off a fierce white light that would have blinded them had he not directed them to cover their eyes. But when he used the chains to lift the lamp up into its mirrored housing high above their heads, that light was focused into a beam that could be directed at the surroundings. A light that would quickly find their intruders. Some days there were advantages to being an arcanist.

He began playing the beam of light over the surrounding scrub and bush behind the fort, trying to find out who was approaching. At first though it seemed futile. He couldn't see anyone nearby. Just a bunch of small twisted trees, their black forms silhouetted against the circle of greenery behind them. Then the trees moved and he suddenly understood as the blood drained from his body that they weren't trees at all.

“Sprigs!”

A chill ran down Edouard's spine at the word. He couldn't actually believe it, even when it was one of the handmaidens who was the one to actually name them. Sprigs were almost mythical creatures from easily two thousand leagues to the west. And while he didn’t want to believe it could really be them the creatures were unmistakeable. Made entirely of branches the creatures had too many limbs to be anything else. Each shoulder or hip had up to three or four branch like limbs growing from it, and somehow they moved across one another in an awkward, jerky sort of movement that reminded him of spiders. They were also headless. It was that that truly frightened him. Every living creature had a head. But not sprigs. They had no eyes, no ears and no mouths. Not that they seemed to care.

Sprigs were deadly. They looked awkward and moved slowly, in strange jerking movements, and their many ‘limbs’ bent and twisted, making their enemies imagine they were crippled in some way. But that would be a mistake. Despite their peculiar gait they were a formidable foe. They were tough to kill, only really stopping when their bodies or trunks were broken in half. They could climb walls without the need for ladders, and break down doors. And they were armed. Well armed. The tip of each stick like limb was sharpened and fire hardened. If they got too close to a man, those pointed spears they had for arms and legs would strike out and punch right through toughened steel plate and then of course through the soft flesh within. A man in armour with a sword could not stand toe to toe with them and win.

Swinging the lantern around to shine the light on them, he guessed that there had to be at least twenty of the creatures advancing on them. A raiding party.

Worse than that, the front gate was open. He seldom closed it and never locked it. It was just lucky that the sprigs had made their approach from the wilds and so hadn't seen it. But even so if one of them even thought to go around to the front, they could walk right in. He couldn't let that happen.

It was just a pity he couldn't use his magic on them – though that had been his first thought. A good hot fireball would have taken them all. But they wouldn't have burnt quickly enough. They would have burnt slowly like logs in the fire, and the last thing he needed was a bunch of sprigs burning brightly, crawling over the walls and setting his home on fire. This would have to be done the more mundane way.

Quickly he slotted the first huge four barrel muskets into the tripod he'd designed to hold its weight, and took aim at the nearest. Then with a whispered word and a touch of magic, he pulled the first trigger.

The roar of the weapon was staggering in the still night, and the stream of fire that sprayed from its barrel for a good ten or twelve feet lit up the darkness. But he'd expected that, and didn't pay it much attention even though the handmaidens jumped back in alarm. What he did pay attention to was the distant sprig he'd shot at. He'd hit it directly and the bullet had torn its trunk – he wasn't completely sure what the appropriate term was – completely in half. Blood or sap or some other dark fluid leaked from the broken ends of the wound as it fell to the ground and he congratulated himself on the shot. The sprig was down and unlikely to get up again any time soon. But there were still a score or more of them approaching, coming closer with every heartbeat.

“What was that?”

The handmaiden sounded shocked even through the ringing in his ears. But Edouard didn't have time to answer his guests as he took sight on the next sprig and squeezed the trigger again. This time his aim was not quite as good and the shot ripped through what would have been a shoulder in a man, ripping off some of its arms. The impact knocked the creature back, and if it had been a man the loss of so much tissue would have killed it outright. But it didn't, and little by little the sprig started crawling its way back up to its feet. It was off balance and even more awkward than before with three missing arms, but still deadly.

His third shot tore another of the creatures in half, and he knew a moment of satisfaction as he watched the creature fall down in pieces and stop moving. It might not be dead – only incinerating them in the morning would make certain of that – but it wasn't a threat any longer.

The weapons he'd built were powerful even before he added his spark to the shots. The steel balls could crack stone at a hundred paces, and a man in even the heaviest plate might as well be naked.

The fourth shot was another flesh wound – if the sprigs could be said to have flesh. But at least the creature was knocked back a step or two, and when it tried to move again it limped badly with some of its legs missing.

“Reload.” Edouard yelled the order at the others even as he handed Mara the empty gun and reached for the next. He didn't even know if the women knew how to reload such a weapon. They weren't exactly single shot pistols which most people were familiar with. Still, Kyriel took the gun from her sister and pulled the rod from its clip, and he had to hope. For his part he just had to keep shooting.

Four more shots hit the sprigs with varying degrees of success. He didn't miss, his aim was better than that, but finding a vital target on a creature made out of twigs and branches was guesswork at best.

“Reload.”

The moment he'd finished with it he handed the next gun to the handmaidens and picked up the third. He was conscious that there wasn't a lot of time. Because of the design of the old fort, even the slow moving sprigs could reach safety if he wasn't quick enough. All they had to do was reach the fort's walls and they would be out of his sight. And they were getting closer all the time. Soon they would be protected by the same walls that were supposed to protect the inhabitants. Until they climbed them. That was one of the reasons the old fort had been abandoned centuries before. A central tower was strategically a poorer choice than towers built into the walls themselves. But it hadn't really been built for defence. It was a lookout tower from which the occupants could survey the surrounding land.

The next two weapons and eight shots went by in the blink of an eye. At least it seemed that way to him. And when he handed the last weapon to the handmaidens for reloading it was with a sense of dread. If they hadn't reloaded the next gun he would be down to pistols, and they were much less accurate. Fortunately when he handed the weapon to Mara, Kyriel instantly handed him another loaded musket and he could start firing again.

And so it went on. There were a score of sprigs attacking them, and some of them took several shots to bring down. But at least by the time they reached the safety of the walls there were only three left by his count. For that mercy he was grateful. Until he heard the crunch as their spear like fists smashed into the stone, and he knew they were beginning their climb.

After that it was a waiting game. He had to stand there with his weapon loaded and Mara swinging the light around to shine its beam over the battlements, hunting for the first sign of one of them clambering over the top. It may have only taken a matter of seconds, but with his heart pounding away in his chest and sweat trickling down his forehead, it felt like an eternity.

“There!”

Kyriel made the call and pointed, Mara swung the light in the creature's direction, and he took aim and fired in the blink of an eye. Thankfully it was a good shot, the ball smashing straight through the middle of the creature's woody centre, and the sprig's front half fell down on to the ramparts. The back half tumbled off the wall to fall somewhere in the darkness behind it. If it wasn't dead he didn't know what he would need to do to kill it.

“There!”

This time it was Mara who made the call as the next one clambered over the wall, but other than that everything was the same. The shot smashed into the sprig and tore large parts of it off. The remains of the creature fell to the ramparts where it twitched a little, but didn't get up again. Still, he put another shot into its twitching remains just to be sure.

Two down and only one to go. At least by his count. But in the darkness who could be certain? And the last one only added to his nerves by refusing to appear at the top of the wall.

Mara kept swinging the light around, playing it over every part of the wall while they watched where the light fell intently. But no matter how they hunted for it the sprig refused to appear. That made Edouard nervous, and with every beat of his heart he worried that the creature was creeping up on them. Getting closer and closer. Soon one of its spears would strike from out of nowhere and one or all of them would be stabbed to death.

“Anything?” Time was stretching out as Kyriel whispered the question, and Edouard could only shake his head in answer as he kept aiming the musket at whatever the light revealed.

“Maybe you got them all?” But Edouard shook his head again. He knew he hadn't. Three, at least three, had made it all the way to the wall but only two had scrambled up and over that he had seen. One was still out there. Somewhere. Stalking them. Maybe more than one.