Blood of War (46 page)

Jurel nodded. “Any idea on how to get them out without losing any more?”

Gaven pictured the enemy's camp in his mind: the position of the sentries, the lines of horse pickets, the supply wagons. He dredged up all the knowledge he had of the Soldiers of God.

And in a flash of insight, Gaven knew how to do it. He smiled, and it was as cold as Jurel's eyes.

Chapter 38

The sounds of battle, Kurin noted, were eerie in a forest at night. Steel clashes echoed hollowly through the trees, coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once as though it was the trees themselves singing a strange song, perhaps in an attempt to mimic the tiny humans that crawled around at the bases of their trunks. Shouts of anger and cries of pain followed, just as spine-tingling, disembodied as they were.

He raised his head, his neck protesting dully, and saw the eighty-odd caged men and women of the failed assault do the same. Confused looks passed between them, darkly shadowed and oddly liquid in the flickering torchlight, though words were still taboo; there were still two dozen crossbows pointed at them, crossbows that suddenly looked sharper, more ominous, more
immediate
.

To those who glanced his way, he signaled silently to wait,
don't do anything foolish
.

In the east, blue light flickered, each followed by a dull thud that caused pebbles to shiver in the dry packed dirt of the stockade. Nearer, just the other side of the wooden teeth, shouts and stumping footsteps.

The distant clamor seemed to crescendo while at the same time, the surrounding camp went calm, as still as the eye of a hurricane. As carefully as a mouse entering a cat's den, Kurin let his mind unfurl, let his senses peak from behind his own wall of sharpened stakes he had banished them to upon his capture.

And he felt nothing. Not a trace, not a whisper. He had not spent most of his life on the road as a fugitive without learning a thing or two about detecting those who sought him. He was proficient at sniffing out the watchers. As he let his senses extend a little further, he found not a one—and had the added benefit of at least some relief from the bruises and lacerations that his hosts so graciously bestowed upon him during his days here.

In the distance, where the blue lights flickered, turned red and green, caused the earth to shiver, he felt the reverberations of the release of massive amounts of arcanum.

Now.

As though trying to get comfortable he changed position, burrowing further into the darkness where the torches did not reach. Letting only a fingernail's worth of power loose, he worked the locks of his shackles, careful to not let his expression change lest the guards see. The cuffs released with a faint
snick
and a sudden jolt in the thread of power.

Suppressing a triumphant shout, he breathed deeply, quickly thinking up ideas on what to do next. Just as quickly, for one reason or another, he rejected his ideas: a sudden call to storm the barricade would be stupid in the extreme; a blast of arcanum would destroy the wall and the sentries but a blast like that was not choosy and his own people would not fare well—not to mention every man, woman and child within a ten mile radius who had any sensitivity to arcanum would feel as though they had been struck by a hammer; a lesser, more focused attack might not take out all the guards quickly enough—a single shouted warning might be as effective as a telltale surge of arcanum.

He winced as a particularly strong blast of arcanum sent a shudder through him. In the forest, a ruddy glow sprang up. Someone had set the trees afire; the summer had seen enough rain for the crops to survive, but it had been drier than most. That fire would spread quickly. The battle was reaching its climax. It was time to act. It was time to make his move. It was time to...
some
thing.

Throw caution to the wind, his instincts told him. Good people would die, but this was war and good people were often lost in war. Hastily, he counted the guards on each side of the stockade. He shot looks at a few of those with him, officers, veterans with enough experience to decipher unspoken communications. Slight nods responded, and the officers nonchalantly blended in with the rest of the prisoners. Kurin knew there was urgent whispering going on; he hoped the guards would not notice. He hoped the guards would not notice the sudden but slow evacuation at the east side of the stockade. He hoped, most of all, that all the Gaorlan priests were too busy to investigate when Kurin acted. He would be stretched too thinly to protect any of them if the interest of even a single priest was piqued.

He took a deep breath, marshaling his strength and his concentration. No easy thing: besides the distracting sounds of battle and the unsettling electric hum in the air, he was exhausted, ill-fed, injured. He felt weak as a kitten. Grimly, he reached into his self, summoning that familiar light that always seemed just outside his periphery. As always, it came readily, easily, and as always, it coursed through him like fine wine, left him giddy and exultant. Suddenly, he could smell the smoke of the fires as though he were on top of them, could smell that, at one, food was burning. He smelled sweat, acrid and musky with fear, and soil, and sweet late-blooming flowers. And blood. It filled his nose and coated his tongue with its metallic, coppery flavor and he suppressed a gag. He could see the individual veins on each individual leaf, he could hear footsteps and metal clashing.

The senior officer, a captain watched him gravely. They had no weapons. They would be facing armed and armored soldiers. They were starving, bereft of hope. They needed to act. No matter the cost. The captain held his eyes, nodded.

Now.

In one smooth motion, Kurin rose to his feet to face the east wall and lifted his arms over his head. He threw up an obscuring shield behind him, a shield which would make it seem to the sentries that suddenly there was no one in the stockade while at the same time, would hopefully deflect at least the majority of the missiles that were sure to come raining down.

At the same moment, he released his power in one massive surge. The stockade along that wall exploded, the eight foot wooden stakes suddenly becoming splintered projectiles. The guards that manned that wall essentially evaporated into red mists.

And, now.

The captain barked an order; prisoners stared dull-eyed for a moment, but soon enough began to move toward the opening. Slowly at first, as quiet as a funeral procession, the men and women of the Salosian army filtered through the ragged maw that gaped, but their momentum soon picked up and within seconds, they began grumbling angrily, gladly, victoriously, some few breaking into a jog. Within moments, the jog became a sprinting exodus.

Kurin felt pinches in the shield behind him; the guards were firing blindly. Some few, he knew would have enough presence of mind to call out and begin circling the perimeter. He lashed out again, another wave of pure, violent power surging back through his shield, crushing the west and north sides.

In the gap and beyond, his soldiers had begun to race across the camp, some few stooping to pick up anything they might use as a weapon: a spade, a spare lance—not particularly effective for scattered foot troops but better than nothing; Kurin even saw occasional lucky souls brandishing short swords.

He let his rage loose as he lagged behind. He launched another volley of power into the south wall, and there was, except for the dusty packed earth and Kurin's chains, suddenly no trace of the stockade left. As the prisoners disappeared into the camp, Kurin took his time, launching more attacks, raining more destruction through the camp. Supply wagons erupted in sudden flame; larger tents that he took to be command or gathering tents were shredded; a mobile smithy, complete with forge and anvil became tattered, twisted metal. The banked but still burning coals pattered on structures for a hundred paces and flickering pricks of flame licked hungrily at dry fabric and wood.

As the last of the prisoners disappeared into the darkness, Kurin reined himself in. His shield collapsed until it was a bubble surrounding just him. He could not have done so at a more fortuitous time: almost as soon as his power was shored up, something intangible hammered him to his knees. If his shield had not been in place, he would have been no more than a very messy memory. As it was, he felt a white heat eating at the left side of his face, down to his shoulder.

He rose unsteadily to his feet, took exactly two steps when everything turned white. A terrible concussion like a mountain falling blasted through the camp, followed by a wave of heat. Eyes watering, Kurin blinked, tried to clear the black spots from his vision. Sound turned into a distant thing, nearly covered by the ringing in his ears.

Turning to the source, he gasped. A wide swath of tents were gone, leaving only blackened spots to mark their departure. The fires were all out, smoking like candles extinguished by wind. Armored men poured from the remaining structures, bellowing, brandishing their great swords. Behind them strode three priests glowing with their arcane auras, their hands held high. Energy crackled; Kurin felt the hair on his body prickle up. Of the priests, Kurin recognized the one standing in the middle.

He raised his hands just as the priests of Gaorla thrust forward. Great gouts of fire erupted from their outstretched fingers, pouring forth like volcanic spew over the crusted remains of the camp. The fire shrieked and roared its way forward at stunning speed, but perhaps no more than two hand spans in front of Kurin, the fires seemed to strike an invisible barrier. Kurin grunted with the force. It felt like a punch in the gut.

The fire split on Kurin's shield, the two halves circling the edge of the unseen barrier, leaving behind a streaking trail of ghostly blue light, and splashed to the ground igniting everything they touched.

Kurin responded. Drawing in as much arcanum as he could hold, enough that he felt his eyes would melt, that his teeth would shatter, that he would blow apart at the seams, he thrust his arms wide. In front of the onrushing horde of Soldiers, a wall of blue-white light burst from the ground, so bright that it made the previous blast seem like the dead of night, so hot that even he felt the waves of heat, streaked skyward and stretched from one edge of the devastation to the other.

For the Soldiers who could not halt their momentum, there was no escape. As soon as they touched the wall, arcs of electric light surged into them. Not able to do more than emit one final shriek, those men blew apart. Shreds of meat, and shards of shrapnel sliced into the men behind, causing more to drop.

Not satisfied, Kurin pushed his wall and it began to inch its way forward. There was a pressure from the other side, a heat, a pulsing stitch of agony that lanced straight into his skull as the priests desperately tried to counter his spell by pushing it back at him. For a moment, he thought they would. The pain crescendoed into a blasting furnace that consumed him from head to toe, and icicle stabs seemed to penetrate him in a thousand places at once.

The pressure increased but his wall lurched forward inch by agonizing inch.

But the priests of Gaorla were not beaten yet. He felt it as a crushing weight on his chest and he gasped. Sparkles of blackness darted across his vision as he tried frantically to claw a breath into his burning lungs. For what had to be an eternity, nothing seemed to change except the ever-increasing pressure. The sparkles of black expanded and they were joined by raven feathers that crept in to obscure his peripheral vision.

There was a sensation of snapping. Almost audible, like a bone cracking. He cried out. The pressure abated and he was finally able to draw a great gulping breath. From across the arcane wall, he heard a squeal as if a pig had been stabbed. In shock, he realized that the snapping he had heard, felt, was not him. It was one of the Gaorlans.

“I got you now,” he rasped and he narrowed his eyes, concentrating.

His wall intensified in heat and brightness, and it surged forward suddenly. He groaned with the immensity of his efforts. A second squeal broke through the roar of the wall. Then a third.

The pressure collapsed. The wall collapsed. And somehow, when Kurin opened his eyes, he found he had collapsed too. He stared upward into Mikal's grizzled face and he smiled, too exhausted, in too much shock to wonder at that. Probably his imagination, some part of his mind whispered.

“You done showing off now?” Mikal growled.

Too weak to answer, he moved his head in what he hoped would be understood as a nod.

“Then I guess you'll be expecting me to carry you out of here.”

Nodding again was just too much effort. Instead, he closed his eyes, and let a sweet darkness enfold him. And from somewhere above him, just as the last light vanished, he felt strong hands grip him, and he thought he heard Mikal mutter something. Something like,
“You crazy old bugger.”

Chapter 39

Even in the light of day, the forest was gloomy, forbidding. The cool wind that rustled the browning leaves brought a musky, musty scent of decay. The boles pressed close; low hanging branches and tall shrubs reached out with wooden fingers to snag garment and flesh alike. The sounds of boots tramping and pained grunts were the only ones to be heard.

Exhaustion lay like a pall on Gaven's shoulders. He and the rest continued their quick march through the forest. No one had slept since their daring—and maybe foolish—raid on the Soldier's of God two days before. Food was scarce and what there was, was eaten as they marched.

The success of the raid, Gaven thought through the torpid haze, was the only thing that kept any of them going. Two had been lost in the raid, but they had saved nearly a hundred, including Kurin. Six more had been lost as they traveled south; too injured or too exhausted to continue those few had been, by necessity, left behind. That did not count Jurel who, after seeing them safely away, had vanished as suddenly as he had arrived—and that was something Gaven did not want to think about. Even so, the combined total of the battle's survivors amounted to nearly a hundred and seventy-five.