The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (66 page)

But the metal was smooth, unmarred.  And the spike in her head became a drill.

'Numbers.  Distribution,'
said a stranger's voice in her mind.  An image sprang to the fore: the view from the eiyenbridge, with her lurking agents and the metal elementals, the militiamen.

“No,” she said, closing her eyes before she could see the hole in front of her.  Something was digging at her brain, churning up the recent past: a mentalist.  She knew about them but had never been in contact with one before.  Still, she had taken steps to prepare.

'You.  Who are you?  Where is Presh?'
said the voice, and the name triggered images.  The brothel room, the man sprawled on the bed, the scars.  Surprise rang through her at the sight—not her own—then a pressure mounted in her skull. 
'You took him.  You will bring him back.'

Ardent could have laughed.  This must be the female mage, Makoura Yrsian.  Scryer, portaller, mind-rapist.  But even as the screws dug deeper, she knew no fear.

No
, she thought back.

'Bitch.'

Really?  Not that I expected much, but...

The mind compressed around hers like a hand, trying to squeeze her thoughts out, and she let one go freely.  The black chamber where Presh was being kept: just like Cayer's, no entrance or exit not born of shadow-stuff, no way out of the realm.  No light, no air that the Kheri did not provide, and nothing to power his magic.

The mentalist's grip relaxed.

So you see, not a good idea to threaten me
, she thought.

'I will find you.  I will bleed you—'

For the sake of a foreigner?  A non-believer?
  The doubt she projected was real.  Presh had approached the Empire, true, but the Empire had no reason to protect or retrieve him.  Ardent had not even considered using him as a bargaining chip until right now.

'He is mine and I will have him back.'

Would you like to make a deal?

A snarl.  A clenching in her mind, and she felt her lungs lock, no longer under her control.

That was a bit much.

She let go of the eiyets' reins, and the mass of them separated from her for an instant, alarmed, then flowed in to engulf her.  The barrier between the physical realm and Ticuo's eiyenbridge split.  She fell through and felt the drill vanish, saw the world close up behind a screen of smoke, and gasped a harsh breath as her lungs became hers again.

“Call me a bitch, bitch,” she muttered as her agents helped her up.  Pinched in her fingers, the silver hook no longer tingled.

She doubted she could step out of the shadows any time soon and not be met by that angry mind—but that was an opening of its own sort.  In the interim, she would have to leave the active work to Ticuo.  By the hard gleam in his eyes, he wouldn't complain.

*****

The corridor dead-ended in empty air, the floor beyond completely gone.  Captain Sarovy stared across the thirty-yard gap to the cluster of soldiers pinned on their ledge, threatened on all sides by spidery metal things.  From below; from the walls, crawling down from the upper floor or across from other severed corridors; and from above, where they dropped from the edges of the torn-away ceiling to rebound from the infantrymen's shields.

The men fought three of them now, struggling in the minimal space Voorkei's light had afforded them.  Swords flashed, shields flailed, and in the midst of them Sergeant Rallant seemed to be glowing.  Several of the men were only half-armored, a fact that Sarovy would scream at Lieutenant Gellart for if only Gellart could be found.  Undoubtedly they had shucked their gear to better haul out the supplies they thought they were retrieving.

It did not appear to be going well.  As instructed, the men were trying to push the elementals off the ledge, not kill them; Sarovy's memory of fighting those things told him that the infantrymen were not equipped to handle the threat.  But the three elementals—two brass or copper and one grey like iron—reshaped themselves at will, their 'feet' digging into the floor and bodies bending around the battering, then lashing out with spikes and whips.

As he watched, a fourth dropped down among the men and spread like liquid at their feet.

“Tanvolthene!” Sarovy snapped, and heard an answer from somewhere behind him.  “Make way,” he told the soldiers that crowded the hall.  A mix of specialists and archers, they pressed to the walls as best they could as the white-robed mage tried to wiggle through.

A crossbow bolt struck the archway by Sarovy's head.  He leaned further into the corridor and glared at the mage.

“I know, I know, I should have been at your heels,” said Tanvolthene as he extricated himself from the crowd, hands raised, “but I wanted to check on Voorkei, make sure he could maintain the portal.  It should hold for now, but—  My, this looks inconvenient.”

“Bridge it,” said Sarovy.

Tanvolthene raised his brows.  “What?  Just like that?”

“You're a mage.  Use magic.”

“Yes, a mage, not a tactical engineer.  I can't—“

Sparks flew from the mage's chest, making Sarovy start.  A crossbow bolt dropped to the floor between them.  In his fading corona of white light, Tanvolthene made an irritated noise.

“Your wards,” said Sarovy.  “They stay active after being hit?”

“I'm a Warder, of course they—“

“Make a bridge with them.”

The mage sputtered, then squinted past him at the ravaged chamber beyond.  “I couldn't stretch one all the way to them,” he mused, “but there are enough support columns still standing that I could do it pane-by-pane.  They won't hold much...”

“Try.  And a ward over this entry—permeable from this side.  Can you do that?”

“Easy,” said Tanvolthene, and drew runes in the air.  The archway shimmered as if with heat-haze.

As the mage crouched to contemplate the bridge, Sarovy looked back at the crowd.  “Keep against the walls.  Anyone who can't get an armspan of space, go back through the portal and tell the others to stay there.  Calenthane, Nachirovydry, come forward.”

The soldiers shifted accordingly, allowing two archers to squeeze to the fore.  Both were Trivestean, the first a mustachioed corporal, the second easily the most aggravating of his countrymen that Sarovy had ever met.  With the sides of his head shaved, his remaining short hair slicked back and his eyes lined in kohl, Nachirovydry affected the old warrior style, complete with a disdain for the lives of others.  Unfortunately, he was Blaze Company's best archer.

“The crossbowmen.  Kill them,” said Sarovy, and made space.

Nachirovydry smirked, then he and Calenthane took up back-to-back stances with the better archer quickly switching his horn ring to his left thumb.  A bolt spanged against the archway ward, spitting sparks, and Nachirovydry retaliated before Calenthane could begin to draw.

“One to zero,” he said as someone screeched in the distance.  Calenthane scowled and took aim, careful of Tanvolthene's work.

For a time, all Sarovy heard was the flick of arrows and the archers' low count, plus Rallant's swearing over the earhook.  He could not see with the archers in the way, so instead he tried to reconstruct the battleground in his mind.  How would he win this?

What did the Shadow Cult want?

Blood, obviously, and they had gotten it.  From a glance, he could tell that a section and a half of his first Shield platoon was gone—fifteen men or more, including a lieutenant.  Retaliation for the crushing of their headquarters, no doubt, and with the metal elementals all riled up.

What next?  Goblins?  And what about the rest of this hateful city?

Should send most of the men back.  Concentrate on guarding the mages, extracting Rallant's group.  Send scouts later to investigate.  Put all on alert, demand answers from the city council.

'Sir,'
came Scryer Mako's voice in his head,
'we had an eavesdropper.  A cultist.  They have Presh and they're watching you right now.  Not sure how many.  Her thoughts weren't clear.'

“Thank you, Scryer,” he murmured.  “I suppose they don't have Presh nearby.”

'In the Shadow Realm.  She offered to make a deal.'

“Not the time for it.”

'I know.  But will we?'

Sarovy stayed silent.  Money was an issue these days, and if the cult wanted any concessions, he couldn't give them.  Wouldn't.

'Sir?'

“We'll discuss it.  Right now we need extraction.  Rallant,” he said, cueing the earhook as he saw the first pane of ward-light stretch out to a support-column, “be prepared to send your men to us, one or two at a time.  We'll do what we can to cover them.”

'Captain, you are insane,'
came the response.

“Prepare yourself.”

'I have injured.  They'll need to be carried.'

“Send them first.”

Unbidden, Nachirovydry stepped out through the hazy ward onto the bridge-section Tanvolthene had just set.  “Nachi!” Sarovy snapped at his back, but he wasn't listening; he turned almost casually to face a corner he hadn't been able to reach and started shooting, several arrows pinched between his fingers to keep from having to draw from his quiver.  With a snarl, Calenthane followed, loosing on the opposite corner.

“Push the ward out,” Sarovy told Tanvolthene, who muttered something about suicidal idiots and started drawing runes.

A metal hand smacked it from above just as it bulged out to cover the archers.  Sparks flew.  Sarovy drew his heirloom sword and stabbed up at the copper fingers as they spread like filaments over the ward, and they recoiled, to be replaced by spikes on whip-like appendages.

Tanvolthene swore as the elemental started battering the barrier.  Calenthane tried to shoot it but his arrow shattered on impact, scattering splinters and making Nachirovydry turn on him with a snarl.

“
Shoot the enemy
,” Sarovy shouted in his ear before he could lunge at his comrade.

Nachirovydry snorted but obeyed, and Sarovy joined him on the warded pane to better hack at the invading elemental.

There were more on the walls now, scuttling like lizards toward both Blaze groups, and a great roar of fear went up from the trapped men as one of the support-columns beneath them suddenly gave.  Part of the floor subsided at an angle, dropping two men down and leaving another pair flattened to the tilted portion, clinging by their fingertips.  Down below, militiamen with mallets scurried out to attack the fallen.

Nachirovydry put an arrow through the first militiaman's neck; Calenthane did the same for the next.  Then a pair of metal elementals rose from the debris and the dropped soldiers scrambled away in desperation.

Sarovy started to call out orders, but a crash came from the corridor behind him, followed by a chorus of shouts.  Still fending off the copper elemental, he glanced back to see men coming up the hallway past the ones plastered to the walls, Voorkei among them.

“Report!” he shouted even as he struck for the elemental again.  It tried to rip the heirloom sword from his hand but he yanked in return, and his grip proved stronger—cutting through several of the elemental's fingers, which pattered off the ward.

“I can't work under these conditions!” said Tanvolthene by his feet.

“Ceiling collafsed,” hollered Voorkei through the crowd.  “Fhortal vuried, route cut off!”

Piking pikes
, Sarovy thought, then laughed under his breath as he realized the Shadow Cult might be trying to crush them like they had done to it.

“New plan,” he said.  “Tanvolthene, make the bridge a ramp.  Specialists, hit the basement and destroy anything that isn't us.”

Rough chuckles and barks of approval met his words.  Tanvolthene sputtered, but Nachirovydry stepped off the bridge and dropped to the lower floor as light as you please, Calenthane following with less grace.  Sarovy pressed to the wall as the ruengriin specialists shoved forward, and with a sound of disgust, Tanvolthene bent his bridge into a slide.

The first ruengriin hit it like a child taking on a snowy hill, speeding down with a whoop then skidding his plated backside across the floor for half its length before gaining his feet.  The next few followed, but the fifth dropped off the side where Nachirovydry had gone, and Sarovy heard a grunt of impact, then the immediate clang of metal on metal.

Then Voorkei was there, grabbing Tanvolthene by the collar and swinging him out onto the slide.  Tanvolthene squawked and flailed as he went, and Voorkei flashed Sarovy a grin before following in a blur of orange robes.

Sarovy stared after them, but both rose with all their pieces attached, Voorkei grabbing the newcomer again to steer him toward Rallant's crew.  Several hulking ruengriin formed around them defensively.

“Everyone down.  Go, go!” Sarovy shouted, waving the rest forward.  A quick headcount gave him twenty-eight men joining Rallant's eighteen, the rest either returned through the portal or lost.  A single light bobbed at the rear of the column, illuminating their collapsed back-trail.

Sarovy followed it down into the pit.