The Silver Tower (The Age of Dawn Book 3) (23 page)

The thundering gates and snapping of bows slowed, muffled shouts and screams remaining. The catapult had relented, perhaps they were looking for more stones, or maybe there weren’t any more at all, a pleasant thought that brought a welcome smile to his lips.

Walter dragged himself up to the parapet, seeing Nyset peering over the wall. Her hair was matted against her cheeks, the normally white looking brownish in the sweat. Baylan was at the other end of the wall, tending to a man with an arrow sticking out of his gut.

“They’re retreating, I think,” she said breathlessly, shoulders heaving, fingers spread over stone fragments. The black column was dispersing to the cliffs before the bridge, tongues of fire lapping at the remains of the village. “Nice work guys, impressive.”

“Thanks Ny, you too. Doesn’t seem right,” Juzo said beside him.

Some men whooped and cheered, others grinning like the battle was done. Walter didn’t feel like any celebrations were in order. He scowled at the horde stretching to the cliffs, their strange squawks echoing up the wall. It had been short and bloody, the next wave was likely not going to be over so quickly and likely there would be a lot more blood. He allowed his hands to relax, fingernails white from the pressure, tried to take a breath to keep his arms from shaking.

“They’re not retreating,” Walter muttered. His throat felt dry as sand, itching, and cracking open with each word. “They’re preparing for the next attack, this one didn’t work.”

T
hey at least
had the decency to wait until after sunrise before resuming the assault. Most were able to at least get a few winks of sleep. Sleep was like a lot of things in life, taken for granted until they were gone. He managed a few hours under Nyset’s protective watch, her presence a comfort. He had slept crouched in a ball against the back of the parapet, half an ear listening for the snap of a catapult or the screech of a Shattered Wing.

Walter trudged down from the wall, across the market square, if you could still call it that. Armsmen and wizards sat in groups around burning remnants of merchant’s carts, eating and murmuring, sharpening weapons. Those who had been on guard the night before were wrapped in blankets, having a try at sleep.

He walked by goats in a pen, a great deal less than there had been yesterday. He passed the blackened faces of men working the forge, repairing weapons and armor. A woman pouring molten iron into a mold for arrow heads gave him a grim nod. He nodded back, carrying on, sucking in the cold morning air, shivers trailing down his neck.

He circled around, made his way back up the parapet and up to Grimbald peering out into the distance. “This would’ve been a beautiful morning if they weren’t here to ruin it. What are they waiting for?” Grimbald asked.

“I don’t think you’ll have to wait much longer.” The horde was slithering their way back along the bridge, enveloping the light in darkness, skittering like beetles. Walter popped the cork out of his water skin with his teeth and sloshed it around in his mouth before swallowing.

“How do you think the wall is holding?”

“Think it’ll be alright, just as long as they don’t bring… ladders.” Grimbald frowned.

When the horns bellowed from the tops of spires, men and woman clambered up, their blankets tossed aside and swords unsheathed.

“Shit,” Walter breathed.

They moved fast, rolling up towards the gates before Walter’s eyes, a few bends in the bridge away. Grimbald stomped down the steps two at a time. “Circle up!” He ordered. The Falcon were mostly already there. An armsman heaved a barrel full of newly crafted arrows onto the wall. The sun was rising high, a few clouds still strewn in shadow. Steel sparkled under the morning light, glittering like the jewels of King Ezra’s hall.

Walter could hear them now, wild screams, whooping, bizarre animalistic gibbering. There were so many, it was as if all the fighting from yesterday had made no difference. He swore he could feel the fear pressing down on the defenders again, doubt spreading its insidious fingers. Men hefted blades, rapt on shields, bit lips and cleared throats. Wizards sparked shields and popped fire, reminding themselves that their powers were still there.

Walter came up beside Nyset, Juzo, and Baylan, huddled together and looking out. “How many do you guys think?”

Baylan shrugged, fingering the silver dagger on his hip.

“Eight thousand?” Juzo wagered.

“Looks about right,” Nyset said, pushing a white coil behind her ear. “But I have no idea, really.”

“A lot more than we have,” Baylan said, smiling with genuine humor. “Battles are not always won by who has the more formidable numbers.”

“Right. We have a good position here, long as the gates hold,” Walter said, licking his lips. “The gates will hold,” he reassured himself.

A heavy quiet fell across the defenders. The kind that seemed to only happen before a battle. The smith’s hammers clanged behind them, a hollow ringing. A wizard whispered something somewhere. Walter took a deep pull on the air, calming his heart, finding peace in the comfort of his mind. Seeing his smiling parents at dinner, gathering elixir cherries, practicing Sid-Ho. It felt like a life he’d once imagined.

An image of a jagged Cerumal arrow passing through his father’s neck. Red spurts of blood jetting around his useless fingers trying to keep his dad’s blood in…

The Phoenix enveloped him in its protective embrace, washing away the images of the past. The Dragon pulsed in his veins. He opened his eyes, exhaling, filled with a dire eagerness to kill.

The crunching of boots on broken stone and rattling gear drew closer. They swarmed up to the gate, like angry bees spilling from a kicked nest, a mass of blades, claws, shrieking and squawking, hauling up ladders.

“Fucking bastards!” someone screamed.

“Fire!” screamed Bezda from the middle of the wall. Walter hadn’t noticed her, unsure of how he could have missed her, glimmering in ornate armor. Bows creaked and snapped, raining down upon the Death Spawn. They pushed through the hail of shafts, stomping over their fallen and wounded. Tongues hung out of their dirty mouths, their black teeth dull in the sun.

Walter gritted his teeth, his jaw tinged with pain. He stared down, eyes wide with hate. He spread his fingers, willing the force of the Dragon into the air surrounding the lot of them.

At the bottom of the wall, a cloud of fire scorched the air in a cluster of Cerumal, just as they were raising a siege ladder. Heat shimmered from below, burning monsters like a nightmarish painting. There were other ladders, endless rows of hewed trees, trailing to the cliffs beyond the bridge. The stench of burning meat intermingled with the rotting corpses and igniting wood. The beasts screeched, cooking in their own armor or plunging over the bridge, drowning in the roaring waters. Not the best of options, Walter thought. That armor would sink you like a rock, he should know after spending weeks in it.

His hands were warm now as wave after wave of flames jetted out from them. He picked the most fearsome of targets, conserving energy. His legs, arms, and torso ached with exhaustion, straining for more rest. True rest only came for the dead. The remaining wizards had to work twice as hard, at least a third of their number in a heap in the middle of the practice yard.

The skeletons stood before the ladder carrying Cerumal, massive tower shields raised up to protect them. It should have been a fruitless effort with burning stone underfoot, but their bony feet didn’t seem to mind. Nyset blasted a shield with a gout of fire, igniting it with flames dripping like honey, air filling with fuming smoke. Two Black Wynches darted out from behind it, milling around a ladder and trying to help it find footing. Defenders that had run out of arrows were throwing hunks of stone upon them. The catapult roared, stone soaring and blasting a gaping hole through the Falcon’s barracks, a once immaculate construction.

Juzo ran over beside a young girl dressed in red, trying to push a ladder from the top. He gave it a mighty kick, grunting, the ladder flopping over into the pit beyond. Cerumal and Black Wynches had made it half-way up, leaping back onto the bridge. Ladders sprung up all around, oaken and dense, men groaning and trying to push them over.

A Cerumal reached the top beside Walter, clambering over the edge, a wide dagger held in its mouth. Walter smashed his boot into the blade, slicing through its cheeks and hammering the blade between its jaw. It snarled, eyes rolling back in its head, reaching a limp arm towards Walter as it fell onto the embankment, spitted on a discarded spear. The dagger fell out of its mouth, filled with blood.

Another hand slapped down on top of the parapet, talons like daggers scraping on the stone. Walter watched through slitted eyes as the other arm came after, the arm bending like it had four joints, tufts of white hair speckled up and down. Next came the oversized helm of the Black Wynch, a hulking block of iron on its head. Its mouth spread apart at seeing him, unleashing its ear-splitting shriek. Walter roared back, Stormcaller burning bright, splitting its head down through its jaw.

He saw two armsmen plunge gleaming spears through a Skin Flayer. Saw Juzo bash a Cerumal in the back of the head with his pommel. Nyset sent a burning disc through a beast’s neck, its blood flowing in dark streaks. Baylan knocked a Cerumal under the helmet with a Phoenix shield just as it reach the top of the wall, falling and grasping at the empty air.

Strings zinged in his ears and crossbow bolts thunked into hissing Death Spawn crawling up another raised ladder. Rocks tumbled down the wall, crushing bones and denting skulls. More ladders were raised and Death Spawn were left squealing, their bleeding limbs grasping at rungs.

A flat faced Cerumal reached the top of a ladder and something felt off. Wrong. Walter pushed a fireball from his fingertips, but none came. He tried again. Still nothing. The beast slashed at Walter’s outstretched fingers, but he stumbled back, just in time before losing them. An odd crystal hung from the monster’s neck, twinkling in the light. Jewelry? It was an Equalizer crystal, he realized, and his skin prickled.

The Cerumal slipped over the wall, its black spittle hanging from its lips. It lunged at him with its twisted blade. Walter slipped to the side, encircling its arm with his and slid his arm back, pressing its wrist into his chest to control the blade. It punched him in the jaw, its hand wrapped in metal, and pain exploded in his head.

Walter’s hand clamped around its wide head, pressing his thumb into its eye. It shrieked, its head writhing, and blood bubbling from the socket, its eye madly blinking. It snapped its mouth out like a turtle, razors for teeth sinking into his forearm. He cried out, falling over with a crushing weight.

It was on top of him and something jabbed into his leg. Its mouth was an inch from his face, teeth snapping, spittle dribbling on his lips, its breath reeking like a fresh shit. One of his arms was pinned under the beast’s weight, elbow up and creating enough distance such that his face wasn’t its appetizer. Walter’s hand reached at his leg, feeling an arrow shaft stuck in the Cerumal. He ripped it free, both of them screaming, jabbing the arrow in and out the side of its neck. Blood spurted out of the punctures and onto his face, into his eyes and down his shirt. Walter kept stabbing and stabbing, grunting with each blow. The Cerumal grew quiet and Walter groaned, weak as a lamb against its incredible weight. The weight felt lighter, something pulling the body off him. He blinked, wiping at the blood burning in his eyes, stinking like iron in his nose.

“You okay?” Juzo asked, his hand out stretched. Walter took it, hauled to his feet by his astonishing strength. “What happened?”

“Almost buried by a Cerumal.” Walter caught himself, his foot kicking out in a pool of blood.

He ran his fingers from his forehead down to his chin, sloughing off a sheet of blood, red streaks left behind. Juzo turned, hacking into the shoulder of a Black Wynch almost at the top of the wall. Walter snatched the chain around the dead Cerumal’s neck, crushing the crystal to bits under his boot, power coursing through his body like a shattered dam.

“Nyset! They have Equalizers!” Walter yelled. He ducked under the slash of a Black Wynch, bashing into it with his shoulder then throwing it over his back and dumping it over the wall, hissing as it fell.

He glanced back at Nyset and her mouth was already slackening. She was shaking her head, her hands pressing out. A Skin Flayer leapt over the wall and faced her, unsheathing its blade in slow motion. As it pulled the blade back to chop into her, Walter leapt and caught its wrist in the crook of his arm. His other hand jerked the chain around the Flayer’s neck taught, twisting it in his fist, ever tightening it around its throat. The Flayer dropped its sword and reached for its neck as Nyset slid her short sword between its ribs. Its hands relaxed, air sucking from the hole in its chest, now hanging from the chain in Walter’s trembling hands. He let out a primal scream at the quivering creature, forearms aching from its weight.

“Equalizers, crush them,” he said, snapping the chain from its neck and dropping it to the ground. She smashed it with the pommel of her sword, black splinters fanning out across the stones. He squatted down, tearing a swathe of fabric from a dead wizard’s robe and wiped the rest of the crusting blood from his eyelids.

A woman squealed beyond them as a Black Wynch jammed its claws into her gut. Surprise was etched on her dying face as it raked lines through her neck.

Walter saw an Equalizer crystal dangled from its neck when it turned and stabbed its talons through an older apprentice’s chest. More were crawling over the walls, the god’s powers fading in and out of touch like a flickering candle in the darkness.

“Didn’t you tell Bezda about the Equalizers?” Nyset screamed in his ear. Like a bucket of water in the face, he remembered now. He remembered the white light hovering over his head, like the one he had seen over King Ezra’s. The bitch had used a Mind Eater on him. He gritted his teeth as another wizard was butchered, his arm dismembered.

Baylan levitated a massive chunk of broken wall over his head, leaned over the edge, and dropped it with a roar. It smashed into a Black Wynch’s head climbing up a ladder, dashing its helmet apart and brains plastered on the bridge. The rock split the ladder in half, logs rolling apart and stirring up the swarm below.

Some were bypassing ladders entirely, claws gouging into stone, hauling themselves higher and higher. Some were torn off by rocks, others by arrows and Dragon fire. They had discovered a section of wall thick with ivy, and a whole lot of them slithered up on that side. Death Spawn squawked and whooped as they pulled themselves over the wall, some poked off with halberds, others hacked with swords.

“Walter? Walter!” Nyset yelled.

He came back to the moment, now seeing the scorched Death Spawn staggering over to him. He hit it with a blast of air, toppling over the wall. “I did! But—”

“Didn’t you tell me what?” Bezda cut in, bumping into him before pushing off the wall and plunging her white sword through the neck of a bony Cerumal. It gurgled blood through the slit in its neck. She heaved a breath, blood spattered in her white hair and on her cheeks like freckles.

Walter shook his head, keeping his voice low. “I don’t think your assistant Tamia is who she says she is. She used a Mind Eater on us. See the crystals around their necks?”