The Horns of Ruin (5 page)

"Morgan stood at the gates of Orgentha, broken city,
broken wall. He stood in the stones and bones of the defenders; he stood before
the spears of the invader." My voice was flat and quiet, grinding like
stone in the grist. This was a new invokation for me, and I had to focus to
draw into the past and pull out the power of Morgan's story. Hard lines of
energy danced around my legs, light cutting in spirals through the train's
dusty interior. The attackers stared at me impassively with their glassy eyes.
I hurried, binding the invokation as quickly as I could. "Three days he
stood against them, alone, shield as a wall, sword as an army. The city stood.
He stood. The Wall of Orgentha."

The long, complicated length of my sword flashed, the power
springing from the floor and coalescing against the blade. I swept it down and
a brickwork of light traveled across the train, cutting the Fratriarch and
Cassandra off from the attackers. The bug-eyed men looked the wall up and down,
its light winking brightly off their lenses. When they looked back in my
direction I had moved. I stood at the rough opening that had been torn in the
car, swinging my sword in the slow circles of a balanced guard.

"Wall behind you, sword before you," I snarled
and smiled. "Nowhere to go, boys."

The fallen attacker stood slowly. He moved his arm
sparingly, and the dents around his shoulder leaked blood. He watched me
warily. Odd curls of cold fog wisped out from under his mask.

"Three to one?" I asked. Their absolute silence
was getting to me. "I am comfortable with those odds, now that I don't
have to worry about the Fratriarch." I slid from balanced guard into a
more aggressive stance. "Let us settle our differences, as warriors
do."

The air filled with the roaring drone of engines. Behind
the shimmering wall, Cassandra's eyes went wide, even around the shock. The
Fratriarch grimaced, then put a hand on the girl's shoulder and began invoking.
Reluctantly, I glanced behind me.

A dozen more, their bulbous green eyes bright as they arced
toward the train from the ground on columns of black smoke. These men wore two
barrel-wide burners on their backs, flame flickering around the turbine blades
as they whined forward. Couldn't hold off this many. I looked back at the
Fratriarch.

"Go!" he yelled. His voice was muffled behind the
wall of light.

"If I leave you, the invokation will unravel."

"Girl, I have my own tricks." He planted his
staff and leaves of metal began to tear through the ruined carpet from the car
and swirl around him like a tornado on an autumn day. The leaves slapped
together into a rough, hollow column around the Fratriarch. He drew the girl
close to him. "Morgan on the Fields of Erathis, Eva Forge. Remember."

The last metal flake fell in place, and I dropped the wall.
Light continued to flash from the column. Other invokations, other wards. The
Fratriarch was Morgan's First Sword, his greatest scion in the world, I
reminded myself. One of the framework towers that held the monotracks up over
the city was nearby, and I jumped to it from the car, leaving the old man to
take care of himself. Third mistake. That was probably the big one.

I clambered down as the flying goggle-men adjusted their
trajectories to intercept me, jumping the last twenty feet. The arcane strength
of my legs cratered the cobblestone street when I landed.

Morgan on the Fields of Erathis. A fateful thing for the
Fratriarch to say, I thought as I jogged away from the elevated tracks. There
were small crowds of injured civilians still clambering down from the train and
dispersing into the city. Trying to get away from the fighting. Lots of
screaming, lots of blood, but there were no threats among them. No hidden
assassins. It made me think briefly about the Betrayers. This was nothing like
their usual attacks, their small teams, their knives in the backs of their
enemies. No time for that now. The distant moan of emergency sirens echoed
beneath the urgent roar of the burnpacks of the attackers that were even now
descending to the ground. They landed in the streets, fire and smoke haloing
around them, scattering the already panicked civilians like leaves before a
forest fire. I ducked into an alley.

In some ways, Erathis was Morgan's greatest battle. The
Rethari horde that had been rolling through the northern provinces spread out
when it came to the unpopulated Erathisian grasslands. Morgan led a cadre of
Paladins on a monthlong campaign against the horde. They traveled on
angelwings, hitting the Rethari in unpredictable places with crippling force
and speed. Morgan led his company against the Rethari weaknesses, and also
against their strengths. Wagon trains and armored columns fell to Morgan's
blade. They even tore down a couple of the Retharis' divine clockwork
totem-men. The Rethari gods cracked under Morgan's assault.

I watched the bug-eyed men spread out, searching for me,
ignoring the civilians. The three up top called down in strange, static-laced
voices from the train above. Outnumbered but mobile, I moved, searching for a
weakness to strike. The comparison that the Fratriarch made was apt. As always,
there was wisdom in his words.

I circled away from the elevated track, lacing new
invokations into the air around me as I went. My armor tightened in memory of
Morgan's Hundred Wounds, and my blade gleamed as I bound it with the Sundering.
My step lightened as I invoked Morgan's march against the city of Ter-Trudan.
When I felt appropriately buffed, I returned to the site of the crash from a
different direction. Three of the strange men were standing in the wreckage of
the ruined building, glass grinding under their feet. One of them was carrying
some sort of heavy bullistic, awkward loops of ammunition twisted around his
waist and shoulders. The street was thick with smoke and the sharp smell of
idling burners. I came at them low to the ground, running forward in a squat,
silent, hiding in the smoke of their burners until I was upon them.

"The Warrior stands!" I shrieked as I rose from the
smoke behind them. I had one in half before he could raise his blades. The
second offered feeble resistance, batting away my attack with his bladed
gauntlets before he succumbed to a trio of armor-crumpling strikes across his
chest.

Thunder rolled between the buildings as the backpedaling
gunner slewed his bully around and let tear. Smoke vortexed out in whipping
tendrils as the slugs ripped toward me. The hardened air of the armor
invokation shuddered, knocking the breath from my lungs. Each shot hammered a
little closer, the shell of my protections shimmering in protest. The metal of
the noetic armor gleamed with heat as the friction of the attack sluiced off of
them, the runes entangled within them failing one by one.

I went to one knee and rolled, buying seconds as the gunner
corrected the stream of fire, his shots skimming off the edge of my protective
shell. He dug up cobbles, shards of stone cutting my legs as I focused my
defense on the impossible torrent of lead and fire. I braced my heels and sprang
forward. Slugs hammered across my blade, nearly knocking it from my hands. Only
the blessing of Morgan made me strong enough to hold on. The tip of the blade
nicked the barrel of the gun and his aim faltered, stitching a line into the
building behind me. I brought the sword around, and the backswing struck the
firing chamber. The gun exploded, washing away the last of my protective
invokation in a wall of fire. The gunner staggered back, windmilling the
shredded rags of his arms. I stepped forward and struck him cleanly through the
chest.

"Damn unnatural weapons," I spat. My hands and
legs were shaking, and curls of smoke wisped up from the tired runes of my
pauldrons. I went to one knee. There was blood and ash in my mouth. The air
around was a ruin of smoke. The static voices of the fallen man's comrades
began to drift from the surrounding alleyways. I struggled up. My chest felt
like a trampled wicker basket.

Morgan, on the Fields of Erathis. His greatest victory. The
hordes of Rethari undone, the grasslands fed with their dark blood, their gods
shattered into wreckage, their armor broken. The Fraterdom saved, all by the
hand of Morgan.

But also by the body of Morgan. The Fields of Erathis,
where treacherous Amon crept through the night, among the smoke and the
confusion and the bloodletting. As Morgan slept, he came. Jealous Amon, the
Betrayer, the assassin. Morgan on the Fields of Erathis, murdered by his
brother.

I blinked sweat and fear from my eyes and slipped away.
More of the strange men came into the square. More bullistic weapons, more
bladed gauntlets. More than I could handle on my own. I looked up at the mono
car, where the Fratriarch still waited, bound by his wards, shielded. For now.

Morgan on the Fields of Erathis. An apt description.

hey were beginning to panic.
You could see it in the way they clustered under the tracks of the elevated
train, hear it in the strange squealing language of their voxorators. The
sirens were getting closer, the emergency response teams rushing to rescue the
injured from the monotrain accident. Several of the strange men had set off to
intercept the sirens. That would bring an armed response, and they knew it.
Time was running out.

Nothing they had was going to cut through the Fratriarch's
wards. And it was clear that he was their target, from the way they kept close
to the train, the way so many of them kept climbing up and arguing and then
climbing down. The way they looked up nervously to the car dangling from the
ruined tracks, flaring light and dull explosions marking their failed attempts
to get inside Barnabas's shields. No way they were going to do it. No way I
could let them do it.

When I stumbled out of the square, there was no immediate
pursuit. They clustered under the train and regrouped. I did the same in a
quiet alleyway, weaving invokations into armor and strength, flaring power
along the length of my blade, cursing myself for letting the Fratriarch out of
the monastery without a full guard. For letting him outside at all. I would get
one chance to make it right, I knew. One chance to go in and cut them down
before the old man's wards failed. Balancing act between recouping my arcane
reserve and guessing how long Barnabas could last. Lots of unknowns in that
equation, so I played it dangerous and went back in before I was fully invoked.
No use being at full strength if they got away with the Fratriarch while I was
buffing up in some corner.

I crawled to the edge of the roadway behind some wreckage
from the mono derailment to see how my strange little friends were progressing.
The goggle-faced crew was under the tracks, talking and pointing. As I watched,
a couple of them shrugged their burnpacks more firmly on their backs and walked
to the center of the square. The wide, loud turbines began to cycle up. Hot,
stinging air washed off them in oily waves.

Going to get help. Going to get bigger explosives, or
cutting torches, or ... Brothers knew what else. Going to get one of their
renegade Amonites, probably, to Unmake the whole damn car until they could pry
the old man out by his teeth. I couldn't let them go. If I was going to stop
them, it had to happen now, or not at all. Now.

I had already incanted the Rite of the Stag Hunt for speed,
Morgan's Journey and the Long Stand to keep the fatigue far enough away, and,
finally, the Walls of Alteraic. I didn't have the words that the Fratriarch
could manage, or the more complicated invokations of the bullistic revolver
that came with devotion to other paths, but I sparked up what I knew, and came
in burning like a flare. The sword is my path, the sword my fire and my
strength.

I came out of cover at a blind sprint, the wide, flat steel
of my sword held up over my head. They were facing away from me, the
barrel-like engines of their burnpacks blocking my approach from their view.
Halfway across the courtyard, my legs hammering the cobbles like iron pistons,
I began to yell the invokation of the Mortal Blade. It doesn't last long, and
you have to wait until the last second to flare it or it runs out before you run
out of enemies. Plus it's nice for the intimidation.