‘Like this,’ he said. ‘But it will be more efficient if you pass me power and I cast.’
In a heartbeat – in no time at all, because in the Aethereal, time had so little meaning – they stood on a balcony of his great palace, looking out over the world of solidity.
In his vision, Thorn stood out like a beacon tagged in green. Harmodius pointed her hand at the thing that had been her lover.
She flooded Harmodius with power.
He made fire.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
For the first time, Thorn paused to raise a shield. His burst of temper was over, and Harmodius’s response had been respectable. No more, but no less.
And the fortress’s defences were back. He had landed some good blows. But now he was risking himself for nothing. He raised a second shield.
Harmodius’ mighty blow rolled away like a child’s stick on a knight’s armour.
Thorn grunted.
It might have been a laugh.
Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight
Tom’s unconscious body took six men to carry and the captain was unwilling to lose the horses that had been left for the Lower Town garrison, so a party of archers cleared the town’s upper gate and opened it. The garrison escaped behind the horses, and the sortie went over the walls via ladders.
It was all going very well, until the daemons struck back.
His rearguard was slow in forming – understandable, in the conditions – and suddenly three of them were down, dead, and a gleaming monster stood over them with a pair of wickedly curved axes gleaming in the soft spring moonlight. Marcus – Jehannes’s valet – and Ser Willem Greville, his armour opened as if he was wearing leather. A third man was face down beside them.
The fear was like a waft of foul air.
There were more daemons behind it – fluid and horrible, arresting and beautiful in their movements. And below them, a legion of boglins, irks and men poured into the town they were leaving.
Just like that, the captain was alone.
‘Run, little man,’ the daemon whispered.
The captain reached inside and found Prudentia.
The working was already aligned.
He opened the door before she could protest – he was so much faster than he had been.
The green whistled through the crack, a tempest-
‘He can reach you!’
‘He’s otherwise engaged,’ the captain told his tutor.
‘I need to tell you so many things,’ she said.
He smiled and was back in the dark.
His sword arm was bathed in silver.
The daemon rotated its two axes, one over each wrist and golden-green light joined the two.
‘You!’ said the daemon. ‘Ahh, how I have longed to meet you.’
The captain got his blade up into guard, and cast.
The beam of silver-white light rose into the night like a beacon. And then fell to earth in the centre of the town.
‘Missed,’ hissed the daemon.
The captain backed away, rapidly.
Above him on the trail, a crossbow loosed with a snap.
The daemon grunted as the bolt struck.
Let loose his own spell.
The captain caught it – marvelling at the ease with which he fielded the blow. In the Aethereal, his adversary’s blow was like the cut of a sword, and he caught it and parried it with a sword of his own power, flicking it away. And he was back in the solid, because the daemon followed his phantasm immediately with a heavy cut from his right axe.
He could remember the first time he’d stopped such an attack by Hywel. Had been hit in the next instant because of the sheer pleasure of having accomplished it. Now, as then, he almost died through admiring his own cleverness.
He passed forward into the attack, his sword at eye level, the Guard of the Window, and the axe fell away harmlessly like rain off a roof.
He began to cut overhand, his left foot powering forward, and he caught the growth of his opponent’s power and he turned the blow even as it was rising from his adversary’s talons.
In the solid the attack came in, and he drove the power into the stones of the road between them.
The road exploded, knocking him flat.
With a high scream the daemon leaped the crater and swung both axes at once.
He saw Michael step over him and he caught both blows – one on his buckler, one on his long sword. The squire staggered, but the blows fell away.
The captain was backpedalling from between his squire’s knees; using his elbows, steel sabatons scraping the road, he got himself back.
He rolled to the left, almost falling off the elevated road. The daemon captain was pounding Michael with blow after blow, and the lad was standing his ground, pushing his sword and his buckler up into the blows, deflecting them, using the daemon’s strength against it as best he could.
The other daemons were trying to get around the fight.
The captain got his feet under him and he cut at the daemon from the side – but the thing parried his blow high with an axe blade – a horrifying display of skill – and flicked his weapon forward. It was all the captain could do to bat the blow aside.
Both men fell back as the daemon hammered blow after blow, one axe then the other, in an endless rhythm. It might have been predictable, except that it was so fast.
And then, during the moment that the captain had one axe turned on his long sword, and Michael had the other – just for a heartbeat – safely on his buckler-
Jehannes punched his pole-axe between them.
The daemon fell away, folding over the blow. But its armour – or its eldritch skin, or its sigils of power – held.
The captain stumbled back, and he felt Michael at his shoulder.
‘Let me in,’ Jehannes shouted.
Michael slumped and Jehannes stepped past him.
Two daemons leaped past their leader, who was just gaining his feet.
Far above them on the fortress, the trebuchet loosed.
Thump-snack
The ballista on the north tower loosed.
Whack.
The war engines on the towers of the Bridge Castle loosed.
Crack!
Crack!
High above them, Harmodius leaned out over the wall, hand in hand with the Abbess like lovers, and spread his fingers.
‘Fiat lux,’ he said.
The Lower Town seemed to explode as a hail of fire fell, a hand of fate that struck buildings flat.
The daemons were silhouetted in fire. At the back of their company, daemons turned to see what had happened.
The captain had to fight the vainglorious urge to charge them. He backed another step.
The two things came at them, and their fear . . .
Wasn’t as strong as it had been. Somewhere deep inside, or perhaps above, the fight, the captain had time to smile at the irony. He had lived his entire childhood in fear. He was afraid of so many things.
Familiarity breeds contempt. He was used to acting while he was afraid.
The terror projected by the daemons wasn’t having any effect on him.
Despite which, it was all he could do to stand his ground, because they remained big, fast and dangerous.
Jehannes had a pole-axe. He cut two handed into a blade attack, and his axe-hammer broke the daemon’s sword arm. It stumbled back, and he got his haft between the other’s legs, and as it stumbled, the captain had all the time he needed to step forward and cut overhand from the garde of the long tail, the sword flashing up, powered by his hips, his arms, his shoulders as he levelled the blow, right to left.