The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept (17 page)

“Out with it,” he said
. “What are you after?”

Brek blinked at him with wide, ice-blue eyes that had
unlocked more than a few bedroom doors. “Whatever do you mean, Eskaras?”

“Save your honeyed words for those
who do not know you as well. You risk punishment for us both by abandoning your patrol route to join mine.”

“Bah,” said Brek, lifting his hand from his sword hilt to give a dismissive wave
. “Our beloved sergeant favors the guard house by the northeastern corner, since it is nearest the refectory. With his great girth, he can only climb the long stairs to the wall-walk once or twice per night or risk heart failure, and he has already been up to glower at me once tonight. If he achieves the battlement again tonight, he will surely lack the wind to come within sight of your route.”

“But if he does, it
will
put him at the end of your route,” Eskaras said. “And you can scarcely afford to incur his wrath yet again, just as I would prefer not to share it for knowing you.”

“You raise an excellent point, Eskaras,” Brek said with sudden gravity
. “I am a poor friend indeed for not having considered the reflection upon you should my plans tonight go awry.”

“What plans?”
Eskaras asked as a sinking sensation developed in the pit of his stomach.

“Well, I had no wish to make you complicit in my own tangled affairs,” Brek said, lowering his voice and glancing about as if fearing to be overheard
. “There is a certain merchant’s wife, forlorn in her plump, sweaty husband’s absence only slightly more so than when he is in town…”

Eskaras rolled his eyes
. “I should have known.”

“I find I
cannot be so callous as to abandon her to her plight,” Brek said.

“To be sure,” Eskaras said, wringing sarcasm from each word.

“So I must slip away from my pointless post this evening for a time, that I might console her,” Brek continued, as if his friend had not spoken. Eskaras snorted, and the other ignored that as well.

“As I said, however, I had not considered the potential impact
on you, my closest friend, were my absence to be noted. I am resolved to take the compassionate path over treading an empty wall all night, but I could not ask you to cover for me on the lovely lady’s behalf.”

The man
lapsed into silence, furrowing his brow and chewing on his reddish beard as he sought a solution. Eskaras glared at him through narrowed eyes, but Brek was as incapable of shame as ever and continued with his pensive display, seeming unaware of his friend’s eyes boring into him as they walked. At long last they reached the point on the wall where their respective patrol routes met. Eskaras sighed and cleared his throat, shrugging aside the familiar feeling of having been maneuvered.

“
If we put aside the only sane choice, the one where you do not leave your post,” Eskaras said with a pointed look that met only an intent and innocent expression on Brek’s part, “I suppose I could walk the full eastern wall tonight. If I encounter the sergeant on your route, I can tell him that we switched routes because you owed me some obscure favor and I preferred the breeze off the sea at the northern edge of each loop.”

This last part was true,
of course, and Eskaras found himself looking forward to the salty tang of that cooling breath. Brek broke into a broad, triumphant grin.

“
I can mention that I saw you quite recently, but I will lie no further if he goes searching for you in earnest,” Eskaras warned.

“A sound plan,” Brek said, clapping him on the shoulder
. “I could ask for no more, and I thank you, Eskaras.”

Eskaras waved a hand, dismissing the man and his gratitude at once
. “Be gone, you greased eel, before I reconsider.”

His friend set off at a jog back the way they had come, heading for the southeastern stairwell
. Eskaras sighed again, watching him recede into the distance. Then he shouldered his crossbow and continued the longer route to which he had just agreed. Searching for stars in the hazy night sky, he wondered if Brek’s escapades would this time cost them both more than poor watch assignments.

A cool breeze played along his back, carrying with it a strange medley of sounds, and Eskaras
halted. He squinted along the battlement in the direction Brek had gone, but he could make out nothing except the distant glow of the lamp in the last bastion. He moved to the interior wall of the battlement and peered down into the city. Even at this late hour, the cobbled city streets in this section were well lit and people moved in miniature along them. He frowned. The wall played tricks with sound, often carrying the faintest of sounds to the heights of the wall-walk, or allowing one guard to overhear another’s words over great distance. Eskaras thought he had heard a man’s cry and the clang of metal upon stone, but he could see no sign of conflict below. It could have been some shady dealings in an alley below that was screened to his view, but he had an uneasy feeling. It had sounded like his friend Brek, and the draft that carried the sound had come from that direction, when the winds up here tended to run firmly the opposite direction. Most puzzling of all, the breeze had been almost frigid in an otherwise hot and humid night.

Eskaras braced his crossbow, drawing the string back and fitting a bolt into the channel
. He held the weapon ready as he stalked back along the battlement in the direction Brek had gone and from whence the sound had seemed to emanate. If it was another of Brek’s pranks and he received a bolt in the leg for his efforts, it would serve him right.

The evening hung still and stifling once more
. The sound did not repeat, and Eskaras began to think he had imagined it all. Then, as he approached the nearest lamp-lit bastion, the air grew colder with each step, and he noticed a blue tinge mingling with the amber glow spilling through the doorway. Through that arch he saw a crossbow lying in the middle of the floor on its back, as if cast aside. Eskaras hesitated, his breath hanging in a mist before him, when a gurgling moan from ahead galvanized him into action. Uttering a cry meant as much to bolster his own courage as to startle whatever he found within, he plunged through the entry and into the bastion.

Inside was a sight that froze the blood in his veins.

Brek was lying supine in a corner, his sword in one outstretched hand while his other arm was flung up before his averted face, trying in vain to fend off his attacker. He must have been trying to reach the alarm bell, Eskaras thought, as he was but a few feet from it.

Hunched a
top Brek was a creature out of nightmare. It was larger than a man but translucent, and its blue radiance filled the small room. It seemed to waver before his eyes, and its lack of definition made it challenging to ascertain its true features, but Eskaras had the impression of a skeletal form swathed in some billowing, gossamer substance. He could not tell if it crouched or floated over the thrashing guard. Its elongated head hung low between bony shoulders, leering close to Brek, and tapered talons seemed to sink into the man’s flesh without drawing blood.

At Eskaras’s cry, the monstrosity swung its head to face him, and he found himself staring into bottomless eye sockets above a
wide, gaping grin that bristled with crooked fangs. It showed no concern at his presence, but instead regarded him with a savage anticipation that made his flesh crawl.
It’s a coldwraith
, he thought in shock. His grandmother had scared him with tales of such things when he was a lad, and he had always thought her daft.

Eskaras
leveled his crossbow and fired. He felt a surge of satisfaction as the bolt flew true to strike the coldwraith between the eyes, but then he quailed as it passed harmlessly through to shatter on the stone wall beyond. He recalled his grandmother’s assertion that iron would discomfit a coldwraith, but only a magical weapon could slay one.

The
creature’s eyes––or rather the depthless hollows where its eyes should have been––narrowed in anger, and it whirled and swept toward him in one fluid motion. He stumbled back from it as a gaunt arm lashed out at him, trailing that swirling, diaphanous material. He tried to block the strike with his raised arms, but the talons passed through leather, chain and flesh alike without leaving a mark, and left a biting cold behind. His crossbow tumbled from nerveless fingers, his unwilling muscles convulsing as he fell back. The creature flowed over him to perch weightless upon his chest, and its horrid face filled his vision. The aching cold pierced him like daggers of ice, and he went rigid in agony. The wraith inhaled deeply as if savoring the scent of a rich meal. Eskaras’s limbs grew heavier, and he watched in horror as the life force was drawn from his body in vaporous strands and wafted into the toothy maw above him.

From the corner of his rolling eyes, Eskaras saw an unsteady Brek regain his feet, his sword still in knotted fist
.
Run, you thick-headed lummox
, Eskaras thought fiercely, but he could not force a word past his clenched jaws. Brek lurched forward and sent his sword in a whistling arc through the creature, but as with the crossbow bolt, it passed through without resistance. Eskaras felt the flow of life from him cease as the thing turned its head toward the other man. Brek spun on his heel and left the bastion at an awkward run.

“
I will draw it off!” Brek shouted over his shoulder. “Ring the bell, sound the alarm!”

The
coldwraith glided after his friend, sinuous and swift, its unnatural grace a mockery of the cold-stiffened movements of its prey. The creature’s eerie blue glow went with it, and some of the chill faded from the room. Shivering, Eskaras rolled over and pushed himself to his hands and knees. He tried to rise, but his jerking muscles betrayed him and he fell to the flagstones again. He heaved himself up with curse. He braced himself against the bastion’s doorway, and by the time he reached a standing position, he was mastering his wayward limbs once more.

Too long
, he thought, frantic.
It is taking much too long!
And, as he raised his eyes, his fears were confirmed.

The coldwraith returned,
flowing into the bastion and blocking his path to the alarm bell. A quick glance out onto the battlement showed Brek, fallen not half a dozen paces past the arch, lifeless eyes staring in mute apology.

Eskaras drew his sword and faced the creature
. He had seen the awful speed of the thing firsthand; if he tried to escape, it would run him down as it had Brek, and he could not bypass it to reach the bell in this confined space. He set his jaw and tightened his grip on his weapon. It was time to prove Brek wrong about his aim for the second time tonight. In a sudden movement, he twisted and then uncoiled, hurling the sword with all his strength. It spun through the creature without contact and without altering its trajectory, whirling through the air, the polished steel flashing blue and gold fire in turn. The weapon flew true, and it struck the brass bell with a resounding clang, setting up further clamor as the bell rocked and the clapper inside rang against its sides.

Distant shouts erupted from below, and Eskaras smiled in grim satisfaction; it had worked better than he dared hope
. His fellow guards would come, and the thing would not be free to make its way into the city.

The coldwraith’s
eye pits narrowed, as if it understood what he had done. Perhaps it did, he thought. Perhaps there was intelligence behind its relentless malice. He had no way of knowing.

It rushed at him
. He tried to spit in its face as it came, but the cold was upon him again, and his jaws were clenched so hard he feared his teeth would shatter. Something struck him hard in the back, and he realized the world had tilted without him realizing, and the floor had risen to meet him. Pain and exhaustion swept over and cut through him, and everything disappeared beneath a tide of darkness.

They attacked as night fell. Amric and Valkarr waited on the slope of the crag, standing just far enough apart that nothing could pass between them without coming within range of their dual blades. Amric breathed, slow and even, his mind clear and his senses extending to embrace this latest battleground. Further up the slope, at the foot of the sheer forward face of the crag, he could hear the snorts and stamping hooves of the frightened horses, and Halthak murmuring low words to soothe them as he held tight to their reins. Of Bellimar he could hear nothing, but he felt the old man’s presence up there as well, as still as the rock about him.

He and Valkarr had recognized the bloodbeasts the moment they broke from the trees, having fought their ilk before back home
. They would fall before mundane weapons more readily than the infernal black things of the morning, but there were also more of them. They fought in a pack, and were deadly for entirely different reasons. Amric hoped the healer and the old man would prove able to restrain the horses during the impending battle, for the creatures that were coming would not ignore them as the black things had done, and these could rip a defenseless steed to shreds in a matter of moments.

Scrabbling for purchase, the
mass of wiry, twisting bodies swarmed up the rocky slope, seeking to crash over the two warriors like a wave clawing at the sand. Confident their quarry was now cornered, the creatures abandoned the wraith-like silence of the hunt and gave voice to snarls and eager mewling. As always, he could not decide if their movements were more reminiscent of a wolf or a great cat, for they had attributes of each and seemed some wretched combination of both. As they neared, he saw their glistening, blood-slicked forms, as if mortal predators had somehow shed their outer hides. By their grisly appearance, they should have left scarlet droplets and paw prints with every step, but none of the moisture, their sustenance, escaped them. The telltale shimmering in the night air above their backs marked the slender tentacles lashing there, sharp at the edges and wickedly efficient at drawing the blood of their prey. Amric waited, head held low and forward to protect his face and eyes.