Eva didn’t answer. She was already moving as fast as only a knight could. Finally the walls loomed above us and she skidded to a stop in a spray of stone cobbles and sparks. She put me down and I cut the lashes holding her war hammer in place. She gripped it in both hands, ready to wreak havoc. I could feel the eyes on us from above, the people on the walls squinting down, curious to see two insane warriors out in the open facing the advancing horde.
I held Dissever tight, but everything going well Eva would see to my safety and it wouldn’t see much use. One more knife, however deadly, could achieve little here. It disagreed and demanded I create an ocean of blood.
The ground before the walls was already littered with corpses, blown apart by magical or physical missiles. Green and yellow tatters of the Free Towns, Skallgrim fallen shields, and horrific daemons. A single halrúna lay sprawled on the earth. His magical charms and horned stag-mask hadn’t preventing the crossbow bolt from puncturing his heart.
They must’ve been the first wave sent to take measure of Setharis’ defences. The enemy tide came on, apparently unimpressed. Even from this distance Abrax-Masud’s power was at work on the city’s defenders, a diffuse miasma sapping strength and sowing despair. Soon he would begin taking minds and then the gates to the city would swing open to welcome him in.
Skirmishers swarmed ahead of the orderly shield wall of Skallgrim, who beat their axes and spears against wood as they advanced with the spearmen of the Free Towns Alliance behind them.
Fewer bone vultures and giant flying lizards filled the air than in the Clanholds. Countless smaller daemons loped and crawled and scuttled towards us, a bewildering array of everything I had ever seen in Arcanum scrolls. Those annoyingly swift dog-daemons, glinting shard beasts scuttling on legs made of crystal knives, snake-men, tusked boaram, and in the lead his two ravak, each ten foot high and twenty long, bearing dark crowns and long jagged swords a match to Dissever. One alone had managed to severely injure Elder Shadea before she had dispatched it.
Dissever pulsed in my hand, hungry and happy. Oh what fun! Shall we play with them, you and I?
I patted its hilt and chuckled nervously. “Won’t that be a fun surprise for them.”
They have used my spawn for years beyond number. No more will these so-called lords of the flesh rule the great devourers. I have consumed the rest of the infected left behind in my realm, and these are the last of the enslaved. Prepare the way, my pet.
“Pfft. You are my pet,” I muttered, much to its scorn-filled amusement.
Cillian stepped up onto the battlements in her blue robe, golden wards glimmering and curly hair billowing like a mane. She pointed and her voice boomed out proclaiming for all to hear, “There stands Evangeline of House Avernus and the tyrant Edrin Walker, slayers of the Magash Mora, the destroyers of the traitor god Nathair, the Thief of Life.”
Hope swelled, and the combined will of the people erupted like an inferno in my mind’s eye, temporarily burning away Abrax-Masud’s despair. More and more strands of his magic focused on me, all crushing power and devious will.
Distance be thanked, I held him off and bent over the corpse of the Skallgrim halrúna. I had paid careful attention to my grandmother’s runes as she opened the ways through the Shroud to send me tumbling into the realms. I had a very different use in mind.
With the two ravak speeding ahead of the horde, I carefully set my pack down and then pricked a finger on Dissever’s barbs, drawing blood to trace those same runes on the splayed corpse of the shaman. No one on the walls was close enough to see me practicing blood sorcery.
If the Scarrabus wanted to play with ravak, then so would I, and mine was bigger and badder and madder. The magic-rich blood of the shaman would provide enough power to pierce the Shroud and summon Dissever here. Angharad had correctly foreseen the need for a daemon ally here in the flesh to prevail – she’d just got the wrong daemon and the wrong flesh.
It was yet another thing the Arcanum wouldn’t forgive. A tyrant and blood sorcerer? Even if we survived, I would burn for this. The city would never tolerate yet another monster sticking around to plague their sleep.
As I readied myself to activate the ritual, a grey, masked figure flung a length of rope from the wall and slid down, walking towards me with knives out and ready.
I glared at Layla in her nightfang assassin garb. I was about to order her back to safety when the rope was cut from above and it piled up in a heap behind her. Nobody was willing to risk that left dangling. It was too late. Lynas and Charra’s daughter was exactly where she wanted to be.
“I know what comes for us all,” she said. “You are the only hope we have. I am here to watch your back, Uncle.”
Eva had been moving to block her but I waved her off. She looked at me curiously. “Uncle?”
I nodded. “Uncle through friendship not blood,” I said. “Eva.
Layla. Great, now we’re all acquainted.” I removed the wooden box of wards from my pack and tossed the rest to Layla. “There’s a letter in there for you if this all goes to the pigs. Keep it safe will you?”
She nodded and set it down next to the wall. “Hey Eva,” I said, grinning evilly at Dissever. “You were asking about how I got this back? Well, here we go. Try not to piss yourself.”
I reached out to warn those whose minds I had touched before, Cillian, Layla and her guard Nevin, the leader of the Smilers gang, Rosha bone-face, and a hundred other scum across the city. I didn’t want them panicking and attacking us. I said the only thing that could possibly give them hope after feeling the despairing touch of the enemy: Tell all that can hear you that Edrin Walker has returned. The tyrant of Setharis fights with you! And he has brought the biggest and baddest fucking daemon they will ever see to fight the enemy.
The two ravak would be here in a hundred heartbeats. I shed my blood in a circle around the corpse and pushed magic into it. I reached out to that spiritual part of Dissever that always lurked in the back of my mind: come! At my feet the body twitched. Its belly burst to reveal six-clawed scaly hands and an ornate black crown rising on sinuous coils far too large to be contained by a mere human corpse.
Eva and Layla backed away in a hurry. People stared from the city walls, overwhelmed by awe and terror as it kept coming.
Over twenty foot high and forty long, Dissever was a monster even among daemons. And I was patting its tail like a proud parent. I couldn’t exactly reach much else.
I waved my jagged knife at them. “This here in my hand is only a little part of Dissever, and this is the rest.”
“Sweet Lady Night,” Eva and Layla said together. “It’s huge.” An enormous black blade slid from Dissever’s flesh and settled into its hands. “Mine is much larger that this fool’s weapon, and I know how to use it.”
Before I could process that Dissever was making a distinctively human dirty joke, the enemy began to charge.
With Dissever at my side, at least we now stood a chance.
Chapter 35
Abrax-Masud began forcing his will upon the populace. Every human mind was different and it was an astonishing display of skill and power for the elder tyrant to split his attention in thousands of directions all at once. Atop the city walls, bows drooped and eyes glazed over. He would take them and turn them upon the Setharii gods, intent on storming the pit where the Scarrabus’ god-beast was chained. He was willingly dooming this world, and their damnable queen even had him convinced that this whole thing was his idea. It had turned his overblown pride into chains that he could never escape, not without admitting that he had been entirely wrong for well over a thousand years – and if I knew one thing about magi it was that as we got older and more powerful, so did our arrogance. There would be no last-minute change of heart.