‘For Ulthuan!’ roared Baelian, rushing along the parapet to gain a vantage over the broken section. Other archers did the same, eager not to let the spearmen down below take the brunt of the dwarf assault unaided.
Thoriol was swept along in the crush. He barely had time to snatch his quiver before he was standing on the brink, his boots grazing the edge of the precipitous drop. His companions closed by on either shoulder, all drawing their bows.
‘Aim well!’ cried Baelian.
The wall had not come down cleanly, and long slopes of detritus lay on either side of the breach, serving as a ramp for troops of both sides. Dwarfs clambered up one side, spearmen the other.
Thoriol notched his first arrow and pulled the string taut. The dwarfs were a few dozen yards below him, their attention fixed on the spearmen ahead of them. Thoriol screwed his right eye closed and lowered the point of his arrow just in front of a dwarf warrior lumbering up the steep bank of rubble. He let fly, and the dart thunked heavily into the dwarf’s chest. It was enough to send him toppling backwards and into his comrades.
More arrows fizzed down from both sides of the breach. Baelian sent a shaft into the eye-socket of a bellowing dwarf champion — a breathtaking feat of marksmanship. Other darts found their mark, pinning the dwarf advance back and giving the spearmen space to advance across the open wound and pull reinforcements up in their wake.
Thoriol’s heart pumped strongly again. Fear ran hard through his veins, though tempered with something else, something wilder and more elemental.
Excitement? Am I truly exhilarated by this?
He could smell them, they were so close. He could hear the wet shlicks of the arrows biting into flesh. At such range the elven shafts were utterly deadly, capable of stabbing through all but the very thickest plates of armour.
He notched a second arrow, then a third, watching with grim satisfaction as each found its target.
But the dwarfs were not liable to stumble blindly into a slaughter. Crossbow-wielding warriors crouched low in the rubble and aimed up at the archers on either flank. Soon the air was filled with the snap and whistle of bolts. Thoriol ducked down as one flew past him, almost snagging his trailing shoulder.
Still kneeling, he notched another arrow. Just as he lifted his bow to take aim, he heard a strangled cry. Turning to his right he saw Baelian stumble forwards, a quarrel sticking proudly from his throat. The company captain, at the forefront as always, must have presented a tempting target.
Baelian managed a final look in Thoriol’s direction. The scars on his face writhed as he struggled to breathe. Then he collapsed, falling over the edge of the parapet and down into the rock-choked breach below. His body hit the rubble hard; soon it would be under the boots of the advancing dwarfs.
For a second, Thoriol was dumbstruck. Baelian had seemed invincible, immune from the fear and filth of battle.
‘Let fly!’ came Loeth’s voice, thick with rage.
The others leapt to obey. Thoriol felt fury surge up in his breast. For the first time, he was angry rather than scared or thrilled.
Ignoring the danger, he stood up straight, drawing his bow with a savage expertise he would never have considered possible during the crossing from Lothern.
‘For Ulthuan!’ he cried, sending another arrow spinning into the line of advancing dwarfs. Even before it had found its target, he was reaching for another.
Salendor rose up to his full height at the very edge of the precipice. Below him the walls fell away in three vertiginous cliffs, each one towering over an ocean of fire and turmoil. He felt the hot wind rush across his face, laced with ashes and magic. As the sky darkened to dusk he felt power well up within him once more, swelling to the flood, ripe to burst from the tips of his calloused fingers.
The winds of magic raced around him, swirling and eddying with increasing force. Aethyr-essence crackled in the air, snarling with semi-sentient fervour. On either side of him other mages cast their battle-spells. Bolts of vivid, rubescent force shot out into the gathering dark, sweeping past the burning towers and slamming through siege towers, clusters of ladders and knots of enemy fighters.
For all its potency, the magefire was not unopposed. Salendor could feel the deadening effects of the dwarfen runesmiths countering every attempt to raise fresh magic. He could sense their dreary chanting, stilling the vital winds of magic and making them listless. In the wake of such work it was hard to pull the requisite power from the aethyr, to drag it into the world of the senses and make it do its work.
Salendor grimaced, feeling the physical pain of the summoning. His lungs ached from chanting the words, his hands bled from gripping his staff. The siege had become a gruelling test of endurance, a clash of two equally deadly and equally implacable enemies. The entire lower levels of the city were now furiously contested, the many breaches in the walls glowing like a ring of embers. Vast blankets of smoke hung over the lower city, brooding across sites of slaughter. Every so often another war engine would ignite, exploding in an angry bloom of crimson, or another watchtower would crumble under the relentless onslaught of the stone-throwers, dissolving into yet more shattered masonry.
Salendor whirled his staff around his head, using the growing momentum to add to his summoning. The winds whipped up around him, sparking and surging. Soon he had his target: a battering ram being dragged up to the main gates, covered in metalwork protection and warded by powerful runes of destruction. Though the sigils were carved in the dawi tongue Salendor could sense their malign power well enough.
‘Othial na-Telememnon fariel!’ he shouted, dragging an aethyr-mark out from behind the veil. His staff burst into blazing silver light and he loosed the fire, sending it snaking down through the burning towers. The magical beams homed in on their distant target unerringly, spiralling through the chaos before smashing into glittering shards across the battering ram’s housing. Each shard burrowed deeper into the metal plates, dissolving iron and pulverising timber.
Lit up by silver explosions, the battering ram made an appealing target for the surviving archers. First a flaming bolt hit it, then several pitch-dipped arrows impacted. With its thick outer shell compromised, the barbs tore deeper into the mechanism within.
The battering ram’s progress ground to a halt. Soon the entire structure was listing, its immense axles broken, its back aflame.
Salendor grunted with satisfaction. That would set them back.
His satisfaction did not last long. The gatehouse was relatively secure, but elsewhere the situation was deteriorating. More breaches in the outer perimeter had been inflicted. One looked particularly bad — a huge gouge in the stonework with dawi actually clambering up the ruins. He could just make out valiant clusters of archers clinging to the two ragged edges, pinning the invaders back. A bold stand, but precarious.
His fellow mages were tiring. One of them, Eialessa of Eataine, as powerful a spellcaster as he had ever seen, looked out on her feet. Several of the others had pale faces and sunken eyes.
‘Where are the damned dragons?’ Salendor asked aloud, tilting his head to the heavens. Imladrik had been gone for hours — it was becoming absurd. ‘Where is the lord of this city?’
Nothing but darkness and tattered clouds answered him. The sky was streaked with sullen red glows, interspersed with occasional sharp flashes of magelight.
But then, finally, he sensed a change on the air. Something stirred, a rush from the west, the echo of something very, very high up.
He saw nothing. The sky remained dark and mottled. The fires continued to burn, adorning Tor Alessi in a corona of sullen anger.