“Perhaps you should have told Mother that we still have all that money,” Ned observed.
Will nodded morosely. “Perhaps I should. But you know what she’s like with gold…I didn’t want to put temptation in her way.”
The snow fell faster, silting up in the creases of Will’s cloak. Ned put both hands inside his rabbit-fur muff.
“So how are we going to get in there?”
“You’re not,” Will said. He surveyed the crimson velvet gown and grinned. “You’re going to freeze your ass off in the snow, waiting to see if I make it, and if I don’t, you’re going to come in and rescue me. Right, brother Ned?”
Ned Brandiman groaned. “Right, brother Will. All right. I’ll try that again. How are you going to get into the Visible College?”
Will brushed down his cloak, taking advantage of the movement to unobtrusively check the position of throwing-knives, daggers, concealed poison needles, and blackjacks. There were bulges at his belt. He straightened his shoulders and stared through the falling snow at the steps and colonnade and guards outside the Visible College.
“In cases like these,” he said, “I always find that the judicious application of enormous amounts of money works wonders. Excuse me.”
Careful of the ice, he strode across the road and up the steps towards the mercenaries, taking out from under his fashionable cloak a bag of gold as large as a troll’s fist.
“Here.” He clapped it into the mercenary captain’s hand. About to bellow, she first hefted the bag thoughtfully, opened it, and her eyebrows then attempted to climb through her hairline.
“That’s for you,” Will said, “with another one when I come out. I wish to speak to the director of the Visible College, with a view to making some purchases—a large quantity, wholesale.”
“I must no longer let myself be distracted by their devilish engines!”
The Paladin-Mage stood silhouetted against the racing black clouds that hid the peaks of the Demonfest Mountains. A fierce cold wind flapped the white surcoat he wore over his armour to signify the purity of his intent, and seared into his dark, aquiline face. Amarynth did not so much as blink.
“Lady,” he prayed, “now send me Grace!”
He stared up the Nin-Edin pass at the squat, dark fortress, silhouetted with old snow, bristling with guns and flags on the keep and inner walls, and (on the outer, lower walls which Amarynth now faced) crowded with jeering orcs.
A brown orc leaned between the crenellations, starting a chant:
Amarynth lifted both his dark hands and spoke a word.
“You c—”
The orcs ceased to chant. In the sudden silence, a whispering noise sounded. It might have been the wind. It became louder, a rushing roaring and pouring.
Mortar turned to powder and leaked out between the stones of Nin-Edin’s outer wall.
Lichen and iron-rot darted up the dank walls. Nitre spidered across the cracking masonry. Within the space of three heartbeats, the stone aged.
Aged, crumbled, and fell into ruin.
The outermost of the main gate’s towers slid two yards down the hill, tilted, and the masonry blocks showered out into the air, falling down the slops, and fading, before they hit dirt, into the dust of aeons.
The cold, snow-laden wind blew down the pass. Orcs, running, fell with the dissolving walls, tumbling into shale and earth and a rising cloud of putrefaction, as the entire outer wall of the ancient Nin-Edin fort collapsed within the space of thirty heartbeats.
The clouds broke.
Spiked and cusped armour encased Amarynth, each plate bright with pierced gold borders. As the Powers of the Air bowed to his command, the sun struck down through the pass, and he raised his arm, and his gauntlet took white flame.
“Amarynth Firehand!” one of the elvish warriors cried, and the name was taken up through the massed ranks of the Light encampment. A silver trumpet rang out, high and clear, echoing from rockface to rockface, until it seemed a thousand armies stirred in the mountains. Amarynth vaulted, fully armoured, into the saddle of his caparisoned war-unicorn.
“My part is done!” he cried. “Warriors of the Light, the next glory is yours!”
He walked his horned mount over the broken outer defences, with the charging elves, dwarves, and Men. Evil witch-fires blazed and stuttered from the keep and the inner walls of Nin-Edin. Harsh orcish voices shrieked commands.
The Paladin ignored them, staring down.
Among the rubble lay twitching bundles. He dismounted and knelt by one. The orc soldier dribbled feebly and gazed up with eyes upon which cataracts had already formed. Age withered the bulging muscles, made the palsied claws shake. The mouth drooled, attempting to form words.
“Her Grace did come upon me,” Amarynth said, satisfied.
He remounted and rode on a few paces, picking his way through the rubble and the dozens of orcs dead of old age.
“Die, motherfucker!”
Sword in hand, Amarynth leaned down. An orc lay pinned under a masonry block. Obviously too far from the epicentre of magic to be affected, this orc was yet young. It spat through broken tusks and hurled a rock with its unbroken arm.
“Poor creature!” The elf dismounted and, carefully keeping clear of the orc’s fangs, laid a gauntleted hand on its sweating brow. “Do you repent of your sins?”
The uniformed orc coughed. It stared around at the hundreds of elf, dwarf, and Men warriors tramping up the hill, their bright swords dripping with the blood of the aged orcs caught in the outer walls’ wreckage.
“Hell, yes! I repent, man. I repent! Take me prisoner—”
A great pity welled up in Amarynth’s heart. He thrust his swordblade deep into the orc’s throat. The creature’s startled eyes dulled as it dribbled green blood.
“I have saved your soul by sending you to a better world while you were in a state of grace. Who knows but that as a prisoner you might have fallen back into evil ways?”
Masonry shards whipped through the air. Amarynth cast a casual fail-weapons spell at the prone, firing orcs farther up the hill. The orcs—he was close enough now to see their snarling, ugly features, their hunched bodies, and vile clothing—cursed and threw down their useless weapons.
An authoritative orc voice shrieked. “Fall back by fire and movement!”
The odd incantation meant nothing to Amarynth, skilled though he was in arcane lore. He watched the orcs run, led by a smaller orc in black, who limped.
“Now,” he cried. “They run! Now, for the Light!”
The Man infantry cheered, pounding their green-stained blades against their painted shields. Beams of sun shone on their mail-shirts and cloaks as they swarmed up the slope.
Some orcs hid in cover and fired while other bands of orcs retreated; the retreating orcs would then stop in turn and begin to fire. Incomprehensible. The Paladin-Mage Amarynth cast fail-weapons spells to his left and right as he rode up the hill, head bare to the chill of the day.
A skinny orc danced on the battlements of the inner walls. He frothed at the mouth as Amarynth stared up, the feathers and chains that ornamented him shaking and jangling.
The red-bearded dwarf Kazra appeared suddenly from the rear of Nin-Edin, stomping through the bloody slush. “Lord Commander, they won’t take the bait. They won’t leave the inner walls and come out and fight us!”