The Black Tower (17 page)

Morning crawled over Corinth.  The air tasted desperate, dying.  Bloody grey clouds hung like a stain across the face of the sun, and a low and dense shroud of dust kicked up by the steady cross-winds flooded the floor of the city in a gritty haze.  Kruje thought he heard voices, the phantom howls of those wiped out in Gallador’s destruction. 

The dust clouds worked to his advantage.  It was impossible to see more than a few yards out in that steady grind of particles, and though the air stung his eyes and he was constantly spitting out bits of bone and rock he knew his enemies could see no better than he could. 

Those forces in Corinth meant business.  Kruje saw a pair of war wagons, crude rectangular juggernauts of bone and iron strung together by chains and covered with portals for launching arrows and spears.  Lumbering
drad’mont
, giant scaly lizards Kruje had no fond thoughts of, dragged the vehicles behind them, and their heavy feet cracked the stone streets. 

Kruje watched from the cover of a building, his war axe in hand and a sheen slick of sweat rolling down his black skin.  He, Thaenn, Methander and three other Red Hand waited out of sight on either side of the street.  Crumbling buildings and toppled statuary hedged in the road, which was just wide enough to accommodate the war wagons and a handful of black-clad mercenaries and Tuscar soldiers armed with long blades.  The Tuscar’s grey skin was riddled with tattooes and ritual scars, bone fetishes and piercings.  They marched in rough formation, scouting ahead and sniffing the air, tensed and ready for a fight.

The first part of the plan had worked – well-placed Veilcrafted missiles drew the Black Guild’s attention
,
and they’d sent the wagon and troops into the narrow streets in pursuit.  Unfortunately they’d sent more than Kruje had anticipated, and he heard wagons rolling down a parallel road in an attempt to flush he and the others out. 

The storm was picking up, and Kruje wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that one or more of the Red Hand were responsible for the sudden gale and the resulting sandstorm.  If that was true, he wished they could figure out a way to keep the desert out of his teeth. 

The road at their backs led to the outskirts of the ruined city, a maze of cross-streets and confusing lanes, hundreds of forlorn and abandoned buildings.  Chairos and his men were out there somewhere, but they were the least of Kruje’s worries, at least for the moment.

The wagons drew to within a hundred paces.  Kruje cleared his mind and reached for the cold void of Kal-Kalled so the trance of violence could take hold of him.  His heart pounded, and his grip tightened around the axe.  His nerves were on edge, his thoughts scattered.  Worry boiled in his gut, worry for Dane, worry for what would happen if they couldn’t deal with these intruders and find a way into the Black Tower, worry for the Red Hand’s faith in his plan to lure out these soldiers in spite of his repeatedly informing them he was far from a military genius. 

The Tuscars and soldiers were just silhouettes in the dust smoke with the shadows of the massive wagons at their backs.  He watched them, breathed deep.  He tried not to think on all he had to do, on all that depended on him: he just thought of Dane, his friend who needed help, the man he knew he was supposed to kill if he was ever to reclaim what was his.  Kruje wasn’t sure if he could do that, and thoughts of the prophecy burned though him.  He heard his brother’s cruel laughter and saw his home, so far away, something he’d never touch again. 

Anger surged through him.  His mind snapped to clarity, latched onto the bitter shell of hate.  Kar-Kalled had him.

Closer.  The silhouettes were almost out of the smoke.

Kruje nodded to Thaenn.  Methander and two others waited on the other side of the street, where they hid in an alcove inside the cleft of a building that had cracked down one edge.  The giant gripped the haft of his weapon and licked his lips as rage trembled inside of him.

The first of the Tuscars emerged from the clouds of desert dust.  Grey flesh and iron weapons glinted in the half-light.  Black eyes surveyed the scene around them, and heavy boots crunched down on rubble.  They were just a few paces away. 

Thaenn tensed.  Kruje felt her Veilcraft shift the air.  More Tuscars appeared, and the grind and rumble of the wagons shook bits of stone loose from the walls and made the ground tremble.  The
drad’mont
lumbered out of the dust clouds, followed in short order by the massive wagons.  Iron beams ran ahead to either side of the great lizard, and numerous side-ports and murder-holes allowed the creatures inside the wagon to fire or jab at nearby enemies. 

The lead Tuscar’s eyes grew wide.  Kruje saw its nostrils flare as it caught their scent.  The creature drew breath as Kruje warned Thaenn, and at her command the attack began.

Methander released a jet of fire from his battle stave.  Black and red flames roared out in a curling blast.  Heat washed against Kruje’s skin, but he sealed his eyes shut and held ready. 

Tuscars were on fire.  They howled in rage and pain as they scrambled to put themselves out.  The wagon caught alight, and the crew instantly sealed the holes shut from within to keep the flames from spilling inside. 

The air filled with the scent of burning skin.  Tuscar battle cries rang out.  The
drad’mont
squealed in pain as its flesh melted. 

Kruje growled.  His vision ran red with blood as he bolted forward with the Red Hand at his back.  His blade took down burning Tuscars with ease, as they were too confused to even raise a defense.  The stink of their flaming bodies filled his nostrils as he cleaved through armor and splattered his opponent’s insides onto nearby buildings.  His flesh burned when he drew too close, but his sense of pain was distant, and what small shred of his rational mind remained knew he’d heal those injuries quickly enough, so he pressed the attack.

The Red Hand cut Tuscars down with their short blades while a few ran up and forced open the bolts on the war wagon with precise strikes from their battle staves; once the portals were opened the Bloodspeakers jammed their wands in and let loose with blasts of fire and frost, freezing and scorching Tuscars inside with murderous thaumaturgic energy. 

Kruje stepped up and decapitated the squealing
drad’mont
with a single swing.  The burning creature’s tail writhed and lashed as the giant moved towards the second wagon.

Humans and Tuscars scrambled into position.  The wagon rumbled to a halt, and soldiers pushed ahead with weapons drawn.  Blasts of flame scorched the road, roiling orange and black smoke. 

The Red Hand wound their way down the lane.  The morning sky burned over their heads, and derelict rays of bloody sunlight cut through the dark clouds.  The windstorm obscured sight, so they almost didn’t see the next squad of Tuscars until they turned a corner and came face-to-face with them. 

The road was wide and cracked down the center, like someone had cleaved through the sandstone with a great axe.  Broken buildings blocked off any escape routes, and drifts of sand had piled high over the nearby doorways.  A pair of Tuscars rode
drad’mont
shielded with studded iron barding; the other dozen of them were on foot, axes and spears in hand and banded armor covered with spikes and metal studs. 

Kruje launched his body forward with his axe held high.  A war cry spilled from his lips.  His body came down and he crushed several Tuscars beneath him.  His fists and axe cracked through breastplates and skulls.  He pushed one of the
drad’mont
aside and chopped through its neck, then reached up and punched a Tuscar so hard he smashed the poor bastard’s brainpan.  Blades came at him, but Kruje wheeled around with his axe and cleaved through two more men.  One brave Tuscar attacked with a curved blade arched to take Kruje in the stomach, but Kar-Kalled made the giant faster, and he swung up and buried his axe in the creature’s groin. 

Tuscars and men assaulted him from every direction.  A few blades bounced off his tough hide but others drew blood and slowed him.  He pushed through the field of enemies with grim motion, a behemoth of black flesh.  Blood exploded across his vision.  Kruje winced in pain as he hacked aside
shek’taar
and crusted swords and crashed through grey flesh.  His legs buckled, and he was nearly brought to the ground as a pair of the brutes tried to wrestle him down, but he cracked a skull in one hand while he brought the axe about and cleared himself some space.

A blast of cold threw the Tuscars back.  The second
drad’mont
froze in place; the drool that fell from its fanged reptilian mouth crystallized, and its skin turned to ice.  Kruje hacked through half-frozen bodies.

It was all over in moments.  The bloody chunks of petrified enemies were strewn all across the ground, and the giant’s flesh smoked with frost.  Methander replaced his wand and nodded at Kruje, and they carried on.

More Tuscars and soldiers approached fast, reinforcements who pushed down the broken side streets and battered alleys.  The air was full with clanging metal and redolent war-cries. 

The giant and the Red Hand followed a route that would take them back to the hollow buildings near the east end of the city; they moved fast but stayed spread out far enough that they wouldn’t be easily cornered.  Dark sunlight streamed through bleeding clouds as the windstorm gradually subsided. 

Kruje pictured himself as the others must have seen him, war axe in hand, running around in nothing but loose leather armor, his torn skin reknitting, black blood trailing behind him…he must have looked every bit the savage warrior.  If Zan could see him he would have laughed.  Kruje had never competed in the games as a child, always afraid of being ridiculed. 

How things change.

The street twisted around a bend and ran between a pair of tall and leaning structures which looked to be on the verge of collapse.  A Tuscar squad waited for them, led by a pair of
drad’mont
riders.  The horned saddles were tied to spiked chains which dragged in the dirt, and this time the riders were equipped with barbed lances.  The beasts stamped their clawed feet as they readied for the charge.

We’re running low on power for the staves
, Thaenn told him telepathically.

Then don’t take bad shots
, he thought, and he gripped his weapon and ran forward. 

The Red Hand split and hid themselves just off the road as the Tuscars advanced.  Methander released twin jets of acid and flame which threw the grey humanoids back, but the
drad’mont
riders leapt through the barrage and clawed up loose chunks of rock and stone as they thundered forward. 

Kruje stepped in and took off the first
drad’mont’s
head with a clean strike.  The lance missed his chest by scant inches, and as the Tuscar rider crashed against his body Kruje tossed the creature aside so it fell in the other lizard’s path, where it was trampled to a bloody pulp. 

More Tuscars came once the clouds of flame settled.  Kruje held his ground, swinging his great blade back and forth.  He smashed skulls and cleaved torsos in two.  Blood soaked his face and arms, and his rageful cries sounded like some brutal song.  His muscles ached, his skin was scalded raw from cuts, but he fought on until none of his enemies were left standing. 

The Red Hand pressed on through the ruins and continued to chip away at the horde of Black Guild soldiers, one squad at a time.

The wagons burned. 

Vellexa held out her hand and cooled the flames by bringing the temperature down as far as she could.  Manifesting such physical power wasn’t something Bloodspeakers were accustomed to, and the effort was taxing.  She pined for one of those Red Hand war wands, and she’d offered a reward to any Tuscar or Guild man who brought one back from the Bloodspeakers there in the city.

The Iron Count’s Black Army was close, but not close enough.  He’d dispatched some men to help secure control of Corinth, but according to what she’d been told the Count intended to battle a large Jlantrian force to the south.  A few dozen men were all the help she was going to get to help her deal with the Phage mercenaries and the Red Hand, who, with the aid of a giant and their war wands, had proved to be resourceful and deadly opponents. 

Another blast of fire erupted from one of the buildings.  She doubted there were more than thirteen Red Hand present in the city – that was the customary number for their war bands – but they might as well have been an army with all of the firepower they commanded, and their hit and run attacks and ability to avoid being cornered were rapidly taking their toll on Vellexa’s makeshift force. 

We need to deal with these bastards quickly
, she thought.  She had no doubts the Phage would return with more men, and the last thing she needed was to face two enemies at once in those confusing ruins.  Corinth was a veritable maze of crumbling walls, unstable buildings and dead-end roads. 
If we could just pin them down we could take them out easily. 
The Red Hand had other plans.

She and Rutjack kept the Black Guild soldiers on the move.  Each Tuscar force had become the victims of searing flames or cones of black frost, but while those brutes scoured the city for the Red Hand Vellexa kept her human mercenaries in Corinth’s central square, where they watched over the
cutgate
.  Fan’skaar led the reserve forces, and he barked out commands which were relayed via runners to his Tuscar squads in the city.  He’d lost nearly half of his fighters trying to take down the giant and the Red Hand, and the reinforcements sent by the Count were being used up fast.

I know that giant
, she thought.  It was the same Voss she’d seen in Black Sun, she was sure of it, which meant Azander Dane was also close.  With any luck Cronak would find them and deal with them once and for all, but in the meantime he stalked the city with a band of elite Tuscar warriors, a mobile strike force that would hopefully beat the Bloodspeakers at their own game.

An explosion rang out.  Orange and black flames screamed out of the darkness and engulfed a pair of tents and two more Tuscars, who fell to the ground burning.  Fan’skaar howled for his troops to return fire: spears and iron balls flew through the air, and a cloaked figure at the edge of the square was ripped from a high open window and fell to the ground in a bloody heap. 

More blasts roared out of the dark, blue fire and green lightning, scorching attacks which seared the air with the scent of ozone.  Soldiers and Tuscars fell clutching their skin as it slid from their bones.  Rutjack’s men launched arrows into a tower and drove a Bloodspeaker out, then caught up with him and hacked him to pieces after he killed two more with cold blue fire.  The Tuscars found another mage hiding in a hollow building on the far side of the square and rode him down with their
drad’mont. 

“They die easy enough,
” Fan’skaar growled.

“
Only after they take ten of ours down first,
” Vellexa replied in Tuscar. 

A Tuscar came out of the darkness, his hard body lean, his grey muscles lathered with sweat.  He carried short blades and wore no armor, and the runic markings cast on his chest and back marked him as a runner.

“
We’ve cornered the giant!”
he shouted. 

Fan’skaar’s eyes widened.  He barked orders for his warriors to follow him as he gathered his rune-marked
shek’taar
to go and destroy the Voss.  Such a prize would earn a warchief great respect among the other Tuscars.

Vellexa was about to summon Rutjack and join the hunt, but at that moment the air shimmered and sparked with matter that fell like burning blue rain.  At first she thought it was some trick of the Red Hand, but after a moment she realized a
cutgate
was being opened, a seam torn in reality.  Two figures stepped forth, humanoid but not remotely human.

One was an emaciated and withered beast, some nine-feet tall but as thin as bones.  Its body was stretched thin and its skin pulled so taut it looked like a sun-baked figure carved of clay.  Long eyes and blunted teeth stood pale against the darkness of its charcoal-grey flesh, and gangly arms hung limp to its sides.  The monster didn’t walk but floated, a paper horror suspended over the ground.

The second was a monstrosity of flesh and metal.  Spiked full-plate armor had been branded and seared to the skin of the man who wore it, and what small portion of his natural body was visible beneath the hardened exterior shell was pulpy and red and oozed fluids.  Even his helmet seemed permanently latched to his skull, and aside from some raw tissue near his neck very little of the man’s body was even visible.  Oddly curved blades and curved jags of steel riddled the armor’s limbs, and the helmet was layered with razor fans resembling the wings of some masochistic angel.  The iron body made him nearly as tall as his emaciated companion, and when he walked the earth crunched beneath the force of his boots.

He didn’t need to speak for Vellexa to know this was the Iron Count.

The Count surveyed the scene and shook his head in disapproval.  Vellexa, unsure as to how she should address him, fell to her knees and bowed, but he didn’t seem to even notice her.  She looked up at the monstrous bulk as he slowly nodded to his companion.

Creatures fell.   The emaciated humanoid’s eyes glowed red, and the air around him filled with an unnatural droning sound, the high pitched whine of a dying dog.  Screams echoed from the surrounding darkness as Red Hand were seized by some magical attack which took no physical form.  Bodies tumbled from windows or collapsed from out of hiding in the shadows.  This creature – an Arkan, she thought – was killing them without so much as lifting a finger.

The fighting came to the edge of the square.  Tuscars collapsed in bloody heaps.  Jets of frost and flame licked the ground.  Vellexa saw the giant heft his great axe and issue a blood-curdling war cry as he charged through the Black Guild ranks.  Those men who weren’t ripped down by ribbons of deadly magic were trampled or hacked to pieces by the black brute. 

The Voss pointed at the Count, and he and his Red Hand cohorts fought their way across the open city square.  Rutjack and Fan’skaar shouted out orders.  Black Guild mercenaries and Tuscars tried to converge on the attackers but found themselves repelled by streams of blue fire.  The giant and his companions were a dozen yards away, maybe less.

Fear froze her insides as the Iron Count took hold of Vellexa’s arm – his grip was a vise – and drew her aside.  A chill of death spread through her body, and she thought of Kyver and accepted the very real possibility that she’d never seen him again.  Cold sweat glazed down her face.

“
I need your help, Vellexa,”
the Count said.  She was shaking so badly she could barely stand. 

“Wh...what?” she managed.

The Count turned and regarded the Arkan as the creature floated higher into the air.  It’s mangled and twisted limbs smoked with grey frost.

The advancing Bloodspeakers cried out in pain.  Several of the mages collapsed as if they’d suddenly been speared by some invisible force.  They clutched their heads and spasmed, and even from a distance she saw them cough up blood.  Those still on their feet moved slower, taken by some internal injuries. 

“
Jaendrel!”
the Count shouted.  “
Stop playing with them, just kill them!”

The glow in the Arkan’s eyes intensified, and the remaining Red Hand fell.  Only the Voss stayed on its feet, but even he was clearly struggling.

Rutjack and Fan’skaar’s troops closed in on the dying attackers and slaughtered them.  Fan’skaar swung his blade through the giant’s midsection and sprayed dark blood across the ground.  The Bloodspeakers tried in vain to raise their wands and defend themselves but whatever the Arkan had done to them was too much.  Flesh ripped beneath axes and
shek’taars
, and cries of pain echoed into the dawn sky.  The Iron Count’s laugh was hollow and metal.

“
The cutgate
?”
the Count demanded, still addressing the Arkan.  Explosions rang in the distance, acid bursts of magic. 

The Arkan floated closer, and it wasn’t until the gangly creature had drawn to within a few feet that Vellexa realized it was watching
her,
that its dull black gaze was locked on her face.  She saw her own frightened visage in its dark and terrible eyes.  Intense pain spread all through her body. 

Vellexa shook as if taken by a seizure.  She felt something wet on her skin, and realized she was drooling blood.

The Count held her tight.  She wanted to collapse, wanted to fall in on herself, but his iron grip held her up.

The fighting continued at the edge of the square – there were still more Red Hand, and they unleashed a vicious barrage of burning magic on the Black Guild.  Tuscars fell, and Rutjack’s men screamed as they were enveloped by acid fog. 

The Iron Count paid the battle no heed.  Metal fingers tightened around Vellexa’s throat, and she felt her lungs swell.  Something cracked, and her tongue painfully pushed out of her mouth.  She wanted to gag but the pressure was too tight. 

“
I’m sorry, Vellexa,
” he said with a cruel iron smile.  “
I need you to die now.  The gates to Chul Gaerog require a Bloodspeaker’s sacrifice to open.”

Tuscars howled as they closed in on the Bloodspeakers at the edge of the square.  Magic sprayed in gouts of black and gold fire.  She smelled burning and fear.

Darkness crept in at her.  Fear flooded her insides like freezing water.  She thought of Kyver.  She wanted so badly to see him again.

“
You served me well
,” the Count said. 
“Consider this a reward.”

She could barely hear him.  Fat clouds of black ink spread across her vision.  She gasped and struggled, and her vision faded.