Lissen Carak – Harmodius
Harmodius’s second defence was more refined than his first – a working of his own, weaker than Thorn’s but deflective rather than resisting. Thorn’s strike bent like a beam of light in a prism and blew a piece of slate the size of a small barn off the side of the ridge.
His third cover was not quite fast enough – he intended to cast a single line of power like a sword parry – but Thorn’s speed left him too late, and he tried to widen his cast, with too little power.
He still stopped most of it.
The rest fell on the curtain wall to his left. A section of wooden hoardings twenty paces long burned in a flash, and a section of the wall cracked and fell outward, killing two archers instantly and crushing the two older Lanthorn men to pulp.
Harmodius felt them die.
His failure made him angry, and anger made him lash out. His riposte was pitiful, small, weak, too late.
It was also entirely unexpected. Like a slow attack in a sword fight, his flare of anger sailed out into the dark and caught Thorn unprepared.
Pain enraged Thorn. It always had.
He struck back.
Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight
The Lower Town square was carpeted in corpses. The captain passed in the chapel doorway looking for his men-at-arms. The archers were spreading out, right and left.
‘On me,’ he said. ‘Let’s go!’ He ran across the square, and they pounded along behind him.
Parties with ladders broke off and headed east, through the rubble.
He could hear fighting to this left, and more straight ahead. Angelo di Laternum materialized out of the darkness.
‘Ser Jehannes prays your aid,’ he said formally.
‘On me,’ the captain said, and followed the squire. The captain had no time to comment that Jehannes was off course.
A vast burst of light lit the sky, like all the summer lightning ever seen combined in one single burst. The levin flash showed the captain that Squire Angelo was bleeding from the shoulders of his harness; the archers were splashed in red and black and, ahead of him, Jehannes’s men-at-arms were caught in the flash, illuminated like a manuscript illustration of knights fighting monsters.
‘Ware!’ the captain shouted. ‘Daemons!’
The terror struck him like a heavy mall. He set his teeth and pushed himself forward through the terror, and one of the things turned on him with its supernatural speed.
The captain had supernatural speed, too.
The daemon’s blade met his, so hard that sparks flew from his blade, and he yielded before the creature’s awesome strength, rotated his blade around the fulcrum of his armoured wrist, stepped inside its terror and pushed his point into its brain.
It fell away off his sword, and he was on the next. It turned its head – its beautiful eyes catching his.
The daemon’s taloned hand came up, too fast to block.
His sword came down.
The daemon stumbled away, spraying fear the way a skunk sprays scent, and the captain found himself retching. There was blood in his eyes.
My faceplate is open.
It got me.
A different fear, colder and heavier, settled on his gut.
But the daemons were not immortal; their ichor was mixed with the blood of men on the ground and they were retreating. As they began to put distance between them and their foes, the fear abated.
The captain saw there were fewer than a dozen of the things.
The archers – frozen in place – suddenly burst into action. The last daemon – the one the captain had wounded – sprouted shafts like a field growing grass.
The thing turned, its fear welled, and it fell.
Jehannes was shouting for his men.
‘Stand!’ called the captain. It sounded like a squeal. But Wilful Murder roared it from behind him. ‘Stand!’ he called.
Jehannes paused.
‘The tower!’ the captain insisted.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn’s burst of rage fell like a hammer.
Harmodius watched the strike come in, helpless to stop it, a whole heartbeat to see his death wash at him in sickly green radiance.
He felt the fortress’s Hermetic defences go back up, and knew it would never be enough.
The great works that powered the defence were brilliantly designed – they funnelled what they could, channelled some more, reflected yet more. They were so well artificed that they almost seemed intelligent. New practitioners attempted to meet force with force – skilled practitioners knew to meet force with guile, deflecting the opponent’s energy like a skilled swordsman. Most static sigils were easily overcome, but this . . .
In the moment of his annihilation, Harmodius thought Who built this?
The wards caught, turned, and covered. But there was only so much the ancient sigils could do.
And the rest burst through the great wards like a river in flood bursting through a levy.
He raised a hand.
The Abbess reached past him, and stopped the overflow of the great spell of wrath just short of their place on the wall. She flung it back down the path of the casting.
She reached out and put her left hand on his shoulder.
I know nothing of this sort of war she said. Let me in.
Through her, he could feel her sisters, singing plainchant in the chapel. Their power did not fuel the Abbess directly. It was far subtler than that.
Despite the situation, he had to pause to admire the magnificence of the structure. The fortress. The sigils. The sisters, who could maintain the power of the sigils indefinitely, regardless of their individual weakness.
He wondered, yet again, who made this?
Then he gripped her spiritual hand in his own and led her through the great bronze doors of his palace, like a bridegroom leading a bride. ‘Welcome,’ he said.
She was a much younger and less spiritual woman, in the Aethereal. Suddenly he had a frisson of memory. Of this same woman dressed for hunting, standing in his master’s chamber, tapping her whip on her hand. Trying to get his master to go out riding.
He dismissed the memory, although here it took on a visible aspect, so that she saw it and smiled. ‘He was the worst lover imaginable,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘He didn’t hunt, didn’t ride, wouldn’t dance. He was always late, and made many promises he couldn’t keep.’ She shrugged. ‘I wanted him. And look at the consequences. Some sins do not wash away.’ She spread her arms. ‘It is very nice here.’
He flushed with her praise, as if he was a much younger man. Time in the Aethereal had virtually no meaning so he had no sense of urgency. ‘Did you ever suspect? ‘ he asked carefully. ‘When he turned?’
The Abbess sat in one of his great leather armchairs. She had riding boots under her voluminous riding skirts, which she crossed over the arm of the chair. ‘You know, don’t you, that in old age, one doesn’t easily adopt positions like this,’ she said happily. ‘Ah, to be young.’ She leaned back. ‘You must have asked yourself, many times.’
‘I’ve been largely trapped in his phantasm for many years,’ Harmodius said. ‘But yes. I think of it now. All the time.’
‘I only know that in the months before Chevin he discovered something. Something terrible. I badgered him to tell me, and he would smile and tell me that I wasn’t ready to understand it.’
Harmodius grimaced. ‘He never said as much to me.’
The Abbess nodded. ‘But now you know what he knew. I know it too, now.’
There aren’t many secrets in the Aethereal.
‘Yes,’ he said.
The Abbess shook her head. ‘Any servant of the Order of Saint Thomas knows that the green and the gold are the same,’ she said. ‘Richard was a fool who saw the world entirely in shades of black and white. He still is. A staggering intellect, a tower of puissance, and no common sense whatsoever.’ She shrugged. ‘Enough chatter. My home is being blown to bits. Show me how to use our power to stop him.’