Mickey Zucker Reichert - By Chaos Cursed (9 page)

The uppermost branches of oak caught the dawn light, silhouetting the autumn leaves red and gold against pink. Taziar frowned, and Larson understood his discomfort. Accustomed to working in near darkness, night gave the little Climber an advantage. Daylight would turn the odds even further in Bolverkr’s favor.

At length, Taziar stopped, motioning to Larson and Astryd to stand in place. Without turning to see if they had complied, Taziar went on alone. Within seconds, he had disappeared between the trees.

Wind shivered through the branches, sending the pines into a bowing dance. Larson lowered his head. In a safe position between the wards, he went deathly still. Something brushed his hand, and he glanced up at Astryd. She held a stance of defiance, yet fear glazed her eyes. Larson took her hand, squeezing encouragingly. He had faced death enough times to know that the trick to succeeding at a suicide mission was to concentrate wholly on the goal and forget the consequences. To think about a future without himself, Taziar, and Astryd, to know fear instead of certainty, even for a moment, might jeopardize the success of their attempt. So Larson pushed failure out of his mind.

But Astryd had lived her first fifteen years as a shipbuilder’s daughter and the last six protected and isolated from the world on the grounds of the Dragonrank school. She had not yet learned to accept her own death. Larson pitied her, sympathizing with her struggle against innocence, yet he knew he could do nothing except understand.

Taziar returned, dodging through the wards once again. “Bolverkr’s still pacing the curtain wall. Any suggestions?”

Larson stated the obvious strategy. “We need to hit him fast and hard, preferably from more than one side. Our only chance is to catch him by surprise and strike before he can retaliate.”

Taziar nodded in agreement. “I can get us onto the ramparts.” He patted his side to indicate a coil of rope he carried beneath his cloak.

Larson frowned, wondering why Taziar had not produced the rope when they’d been maneuvering over Bolverkr’s magical perimeter.
Apparently, he didn’t see the need. Or he didn’t think we could spare the time.
Larson found it difficult to fault a tactic that had worked.
We made it over. That’s all that matters.

Apparently recognizing Astryd’s discomfort, Taziar took her other hand. “The wards get thicker the closer we get to the keep. Pay attention. Don’t get too eager or distracted. Insane or not, Bolverkr’s not stupid. The only safe path to the wall is on the side where he’s pacing.”

Larson dropped Astryd’s hand, leaving her solace to Taziar. They all knew Bolverkr’s retribution was aimed specifically against the men who had loosed Chaos against him; if Larson and Taziar were killed, Bolverkr had no further need of Astryd. They had already discussed the contingency; if their attack failed, the Dragonrank sorceress was to use any means at her disposal to return to Silme, accepting the men’s deaths without consideration of revenge.

Alert to the urgency of time and the necessity for quiet, Taziar gave Astryd a fond but quick embrace unaccompanied by verbal explanations or platitudes. Pulling away, he knelt, seized a fallen twig amid the underbrush, and cleared a patch of dirt. Using the tip of the branch as a stylus, he drew a series of curved and tangled lines on the ground. “This is the pattern through the wards from the edge of the forest to the curtain wall. We may have to run through it. Can you do that?” He glanced up at his companions.

Larson frowned, uncertain. He had experience with obstacle courses, but none so hair-trigger deadly as a Dragonrank sorcerer’s magic.

Apparently, Taziar intended his last question to remain rhetorical, because he did not wait for an answer before pushing silently through the brush.

Astryd and Larson trailed Taziar. Branches parted before them, leaves brushing quietly against linen and leather. Larson kept his head tilted, his concentration fully on the glittering traces of sorcery, though he could see them only indirectly. Taziar’s words haunted him. The idea of racing, almost blindly, through a mine field brought memories of a corporal named Steve, severed at the waist by a V.C. trap, still breathing as his life’s blood colored the jungle clay a deeper red. A chill rushed through Larson, and it took an effort of will to keep from seizing Astryd and heading home.

The trees thinned, granting Larson distant glimpses of wall through ragged, dawn-gray holes in the brush. Taziar stopped, allowing his companions to draw up to his side as closely as the tightly bunched wards allowed. He pointed ahead.

Larson shifted until he found a gap wide enough to accord him an unobstructed view of what had once been a farming village called Wilsberg. Shattered stone littered land that rose gradually to a central hill, the carnage interspersed with an occasional jutting foundation of a cottage or fountain. Magics of varying hues reflected the twilight in wild patterns, their otherworldliness enhanced by the need to view them from the corners of his vision. It seemed only natural to Larson to glean details by direct focusing, and the disappearance of the wards whenever he tried to study them drove him into fits of silent but vicious swearing.

On the summit of the hill, Bolverkr’s ten foot curtain wall rose squarely around a crumbled ruin of a keep. A man marched along the closest rampart. Though tall and slender, Bolverkr walked with a stomping gait, his fists clenched, his white hair streaming behind him in a snarled mane. He seemed to take no notice of the three hidden spies in his forest, to Larson’s intense relief. He traced Bolverkr’s straight path across the top of the wall to its farthest corner. There, the sorcerer paused. His hands snapped to chest level, and light blossomed into a ball between his fingers.

“Now,” Taziar whispered. He sprinted toward the wall, dodging through the narrow ribbon of safe pathway surrounded by Bolverkr’s wards.

Astryd chased Taziar.

Riveted on the sorcerer, Larson all but missed the signal. He raced after Astryd, taking the first several steps by mimicking the location of her footfalls before he remembered the method to seeing wards. The procedure required him to lose sight of the enemy above him, a lapse that sent his survival instinct jangling and wound his nerves to knots.

Larson heard an explosive crash, followed by a woody crack that reverberated from the forest canopy. He stumbled, dropping flat to the ground from habit, his head jerking toward the noise. His left arm scraped a ward, and the magic burned a slash from wrist to elbow. Pain drove a scream from his lungs. He choked it back into a gasp, aware that drawing Bolverkr’s attention would be sure suicide, gaining strength from the memory of a young private with his chest flayed by a grenade who had managed to bite back the moans of agony that would have revealed his companions.
I’m not hurt that badly.

Taziar stood with his back pressed tightly to the base of the curtain wall, directly beneath Bolverkr’s line of vision. Even through dawn’s copper-pink and gray, Larson could see the concerned expression on the Climber’s face. Astryd had nearly reached Taziar. Bolverkr still stood at the farthest end of his walkway, his back toward Larson. On the ground before him, an oak lay beside its smoking, splintered stump. Leaves whipped and tumbled in a multicolored wash. Bolverkr started to turn.

Larson scrambled to his feet, aware he had to cover the three yards to Taziar and Astryd before Bolverkr completed his about-face.
Shit!
Larson sprang for safety.

Astryd gasped.

Larson jerked his head toward her, and a ward appeared in vivid relief, directly before him at waist level. He jolted backward in midair, all but grazing it as he landed.

Taziar cringed, gaze whipping to Bolverkr.

No time to get fancy.
Larson hurled himself over the ward. Landing on his shoulder, he rolled to Taziar’s feet, then scuttled in a wild crawl to the base of the curtain wall. He rose and pressed against the wall. The granite felt cold and solid through the sweat-dampened fabric of his tunic. His heart hammered, and his skin itched with a sense of imminent peril. He could almost feel the tear of Bolverkr’s magic through his flesh. His injured arm dangled, throbbing without mercy, and he drew some solace from the realization that the injury from Bolverkr’s sorcery could have proved far more critical.
It could have killed me. I was lucky. It was weak or old, or perhaps I only grazed it.

Beside Larson, Astryd stood still as a statue, her back crushed to the wall. Overhead, Bolverkr’s footfalls grew louder as he approached.

Larson held his breath, praying to any god who might listen that Bolverkr had not seen him.

The footsteps stopped for several moments, directly overhead. Larson suppressed the urge to look up. If Bolverkr had seen him, it was already too late; movement could only draw the Dragonrank sorcerer’s attention.

The silence dragged into an eternity. Larson’s lungs ached, and his muscles cramped. Each second seemed too long, and he forced himself through every one individually, trying not to contemplate the next.

Bolverkr’s pacing resumed.

Cued by the sorcerer’s footfalls, Taziar began a hunched run, his spine just shy of the curtain wall, drawing himself into as narrow a target as possible. Astryd sidled after him.

Gaze off-centered on the wards, Larson understood the Climber’s caution. The wards closed in on the wall, hopelessly intertwined, leaving them only a narrow lane around the granite to maneuver.

A series of side steps brought Taziar, Astryd, and Larson around the first corner of the curtain wall. Now, Larson released his pent up breath, allowing himself several deep inhalations of damp, autumn air. It seemed impossible that a sorcerer of Bolverkr’s power had not seen the intruders near his citadel. Yet magic often seemed illogical to Larson. Spells he would have considered simple, like disguises or locating people and objects, often proved difficult; thought readings and illusions were impossible. Others that seemed grandiose, like Astryd’s dragon summonings and wards that burned flesh, required far less life energy.

As Larson inched around the surrounding wall, following in Astryd’s footsteps, he viewed the town from varying angles. Dawn light reflected from scattered and jagged stone in bloody highlights. Strands of thatch fluttered from between wedged granite. All other evidence that these structures had once been cottages had dispersed to the winds. Over the carnage, spells glinted in tortuous bands, like the webs of a thousand spiders, adding madness to the art of Chaos’ destruction.

Larson turned the second corner. Now against the south wall and directly opposite Bolverkr, Taziar drew halfway along its length before stopping. He turned, studying the granite for some time with his head cocked at varying angles. Apparently satisfied, he jammed his fingers between stones that looked seamless to Larson’s untrained eyes and clambered to the top. From there, Taziar gazed into the courtyard for a time before scrambling down the far side of the wall and out of Larson’s sight.

Uncertain of Taziar’s motive, Larson looked to Astryd, who shrugged her ignorance. Kensei Gaelinar had often claimed that a warrior decided his strategies in the instant between sword strokes, but Larson had still not grown accustomed to fighting enemies without making a coherent plan in advance.

Shortly, Taziar reappeared at the top of the wall and tossed the end of a rope over the side. He gestured at his companions to join him.

Now Taziar’s intentions became clear to Larson.
He must have secured the other end to something stable in the courtyard.
Larson watched Astryd brace her feet against the granite. Using the rope for support, she clambered to the top of the wall. Larson waited until Taziar helped her to the ramparts before following.

Once the three companions were perched safely on the ramparts, Taziar whispered. “You go that way.” He indicated the clockwise direction. “Astryd and I will come around the other. We’ll try to surprise Bolverkr from both sides.” Taziar trotted off in the opposite direction without pausing for a reply or sign of agreement.

Astryd followed.

Turning on his heel, Larson started around the other way. Alone except for the almost inaudible scrape of his boots against granite, he felt like a child playing army on a real battlefield.
Surely Bolverkr won’t fall prey to a simple flanking maneuver.
Yet Larson failed to find a flaw in Tazi-ar’s plan.
Often the simplest tactic works the best, and Bolverkr seems ignorant of our presence so far.
The idea that the Dragonrank sorcerer might know they were there and not care seized Larson with frightening abruptness. His step faltered. Concerned the hesitation might throw off his timing from Astryd’s and Taziar’s, Larson dragged onward, forcing the thought aside.
If our presence means that little to Bolverkr, there’s no sense worrying about it. We’ve just got to do the best we can.

Larson rounded the first corner and started along the western wall. Bolverkr’s single, fully standing tower blocked Larson’s view of the north wall completely. Ignorance of Bolverkr’s position made him wary, though he gained solace from the realization that the tower would obstruct Bolverkr’s view of his own approach as well. He continued on, straining his hearing for some evidence that the Chaos-racked sorcerer still paced his curtain wall.

As the final corner came into sight, Larson drew Gaelinar’s katana from its scabbard. The haft filled his grip, already warm from an unconscious series of touches to its hilt. A sense of calmness accompanied the unsheathing. Time seemed to strip away. For a moment, Kensei Gaelinar crouched beside his only student, his every movement crisply precise, each sword stroke flawless in its arc and timing. Competence radiated from him like physical light. His casual confidence remained, a reassuring constant in Larson’s mind. He could still hear the Kensei’s guttural voice suggesting that they travel to Hel to retrieve Silme’s soul, speaking of the impossible as if it were trivial, suggesting Larson defy Vidarr because the Silent One was, “after all, just another god.” A weight lifted from Larson’s shoulders. The battle with Bolverkr seemed like just another task, scarcely different than the ones before. With Gaelinar at his side, he could do anything.