War of Wizards (15 page)

Then the two armies clashed, one side shouting, calling orders, crying in pain, the other a mindless, wailing force, flailing and biting like so many hundreds of wild, cornered animals.

“Boy!” Chantmer said to Darik. “Your sleeping spell. Cast it now. Cast it wide.”

It was one of the last spells tattooed onto Darik’s skin, and the one that Chantmer had disparaged earlier. Darik gathered his will. The words came to his lips.

“
Somnus gravis requiescet in humeris vestris.”
 

The tattoo on his right shoulder burned. He had been gaining confidence throughout the battle, and for the first time tonight, didn’t inadvertently waste most of his strength. The magic fell from him like buckets of sand, carried on the wind to drift over the undead army. Some faltered and collapsed. Others seemed to lose all energy or purpose.

The glowing, magically endowed weapons cut through the wights and sent them flying from the battlefield as so many wisps of smoke. For several long minutes, the city defenders hacked and destroyed, but the swords and spears gradually lost their glow.

Rouhani called a retreat, and Ethan moved his cavalry into position to guard their return to the safety of the city. But the main thrust of the enemy force had now retreated nearly to the Tothian Way. Archers cheered from atop the walls, and Darik found himself shouting his own triumph. They had apparently won another night’s reprieve, and with no more effort from Chantmer than his strutting about giving orders.

Darik was still relishing the victory when trumpets sounded a warning from the western side of the city. Chantmer sprinted along the walls, shouting for the others to follow him. Darik joined Roghan and the mages in racing after him. They ran around the city walls, shouting for men to step aside and let them pass.

Darik was strong from months of marching, riding, and fighting, but he struggled to keep up with Chantmer and his mages, who seemed magically fleet of foot. When he reached the west tower overlooking the Gate of the Dead several minutes later, the others were already setting up their defenses. An army of wights poured out of the Tombs of the Kings.

Darik had spotted them moving into the tombs at dusk, but the ferocity of the initial attack had fooled him into thinking that the entire army had hurled itself at the Great Gates. A substantial reserve had apparently remained here, and now it came at the Gate of the Dead and the surrounding walls. The enemy was tightly packed, a continuous stream of glowing blue. There must have been thousands of them.

Chantmer threw back his sleeves. A single, enormous tattoo wrapped itself around his arm from his wrist to his shoulder, then seemed to pass over his collarbone to come down his other arm. It was glowing softly, the red ink like smoldering embers, as the wizard gathered his will.

The tattoo was nothing that Darik recognized, and he couldn’t understand the words that Chantmer began to speak. The ground heaved and groaned beneath the wights. Obelisks in the tombs crumbled and collapsed. A mausoleum exploded and rained stone down on its surroundings. Fissures opened like mouths in the earth, and wights disappeared into them.

The watchmen on the walls seemed as disturbed by the destruction of the ancient tombs as by the undead coming toward them. One man covered his face, while others made warding signs and pleaded with the Brothers not to curse them. Men shouted at Chantmer. For a moment, Darik thought they’d turn their arrows on him. The wizard paid them no mind.

“Hurry,” Chantmer urged Darik. “Your fire!”

Darik had already cast one fireball, and a second typically wasn’t as effective. What did that say, when the first had been so weak? What’s more, he would need to blacken one of his hands to do it, as he had no more tattoos. He looked over both hands. His left was strongest, having been injured fighting the bandits among the tombs yesterday morning and mostly healed since then. He held out his hand and called up the spell.

Moments later, he slammed a fireball into the front of the wights. It wasn’t as powerful as last night’s, but it was better than he’d managed earlier in the evening. The enemy faltered, but Darik didn’t have a chance to see the full effect. He bent over, clutching his wrist in pain.

It’s my pain, though. Mine. Not some poor child’s.
 

He rose, scarcely daring to hope. The heaving ground and the fireball had done significant damage, but there were so many wights that hundreds still reached the wall. They attacked the stone, tore at the iron ribs of the door. More continued to arrive, including, Darik suspected, remnants of the army that they’d battled at the gates earlier in the night. Chantmer hurled spell after spell, with other mages aiding when they could. Some time later, Rouhani and Ethan arrived on the streets below with their tired forces, and the conjurers arrived while the soldiers were forming ranks. The gate opened, and the soldiers marched out in sloppy rows.

The defenders pushed back the wights a second time, but this time, the enemy seemed more determined, slower to break ranks. The wights regrouped and hurled themselves forward again. Darik scanned the battlefield. Someone must be there, forcing the army to attack. A leader.

Where are you? Show yourself.
 

Another attack. The defenders grew desperate. Chantmer exhausted his tattoos, then blackened both hands, one after the other. Darik used his last tattoo and called forth the limited power remaining in his right hand. Rouhani and Ethan marched out a third time, then a fourth. By the end, their men were fighting with weapons unaided by any magic, and falling by the dozen.

The battle lasted most of the night before the attack collapsed. Hundreds of wights went fleeing in all directions just ahead of dawn’s first light, and when the sun finally rose, Darik looked over the plain with bleary eyes and couldn’t see a single enemy. More cheers sounded along the walls as the news spread. They were ragged cheers this time, with little joy.

Darik found Chantmer standing alone and pale faced apart from his mages. The stone battlement was blackened and cracked from where he’d lost control of one of his spells in his final, exhausted efforts.

“We’ll be attacked again, won’t we?” Darik asked.

“Yes. As soon as it is dark.”

“Who is leading them?”

Chantmer eyed him through bloodshot eyes, but didn’t speak.

“Chantmer, you have to tell me. By the Brothers, who or what is driving them?”

“Who do you think? King Toth. It was Toth who destroyed Aristonia, and Toth who compels its dead to fight for him now.”

It made sense. What had the dark wizard been himself, if not a wight, the most powerful spirit of all? Toth had kept himself from the Harvester for all these centuries until he had gained the strength to steal another man’s body.

“Every day, the dark wizard sends his magic from the Dark Citadel,” Chantmer continued. “It rolls across the khalifates from Veyre to Balsalom. It imbues his wights with power, it keeps them from fleeing. Can’t you feel it?”

“No,” Darik admitted. “But supposing you’re right—”

“There’s no supposing,” Chantmer said. He reared to his full height. “This is the fact of the matter, and only a fool would dispute it.”

“Yes, but even so, wouldn’t there be someone
here
, in the midst of the army, who can act as the dark wizard’s general? Someone living?”

“Markal has given you a bit of knowledge, and now you think you are wise. Stop thinking, stop guessing. Go to the palace and renew your strength. There will be another battle, maybe many battles, before this enemy is defeated. The dark wizard has tortured and killed hundreds to raise his army, and we’ll need to call our own reserves to defeat it.”

“There is one good thing in a protracted battle with the wights,” Darik said, thinking.

“Is there? I fail to see it.”

“The longer we hold this army at Balsalom, the more time we give Whelan to breach the walls of Veyre and end the war.”

Chantmer raised an eyebrow and looked down at him loftily. “What makes you think there is only
one
army of wights?”

And with that final pronouncement, Chantmer gathered his robes and turned away, his distant gaze showing that his thoughts had turned elsewhere.

Chapter Thirteen

Daria was striding through camp on the morning of the second day since leading her army out of the mountains, when one of her scouts came plummeting out of the sky to land on the rocky hillside beside her. They’d crossed the Desolation yesterday, flown above the still-smoldering ruins of Ter, and taken refuge in the stony hills east of the city. The camp wasn’t high enough above the plains to suit her people, but the terrain was too rugged for flatlanders, and there were plenty of deer and desert sheep in the brush-filled canyons. Both riders and griffins had eaten well last night.

The young man slid from the back of his stomping, squawking griffin. “Flockheart!” he said. “Well met.”

“What is it, Poul?”

“A large force of dragon wasps and their riders. Fifteen miles to the east.”

Poul sounded more eager than alarmed. He was a strong-jawed young man whose father had died in the Battle of Arvada. Poul was already a skilled griffin trainer, and fearless in battle. Daria’s mother had slyly hinted that he would make a good mate.

“Did they spot you?” Daria asked.

“I don’t think so. I was high above them, where the air is cooler, and their patrol passed right beneath me. If they saw me, they didn’t send pursuit.”

“How many?”

“Thirty, at least. Maybe forty. It must be a good portion of their army.”

Yes, and a terrific victory if Daria could catch them before they broke camp. No doubt, the enemy was also flying east to join the battle at Veyre.

Daria’s people had spent a long day flying yesterday, crossing the entire width of the Desolation after an early start. Most of the ninety-seven riders and their mounts had never flown beyond the hills at the base of the Dragon’s Spine, and had been nervous to the point of panic by the time they finished crossing the wasteland. There had seemed no end to it, and nowhere for the tired griffins to land. Daria wished she could spend a day or two resting in the hills, but they needed to keep moving east.

And since she’d given orders to leave, the camp was up and moving already. Riders were brushing their mounts, tethering bedrolls and gear. Griffins tore at cold haunches of venison from last night’s hunt. She headed one direction through camp and sent Poul in the other, crying for any who were ready to fly to get airborne. Ten minutes later, she had forty riders in the sky, including Poul, her uncle Jhon, and her mother, Palina.

Poul led them east, down from the hills, across a stretch of burned grazing lands, along a dry stream bed, and then up into another set of hills much like the ones where the griffin riders had camped.

Poul pulled alongside Daria as they climbed the highest craggy point. He communicated with hand gestures.

Ravine. Right side. Copse of trees. Two hundred feet down.
 

She gestured back that she understood, and pulled Talon’s tether to lead him up and over. With her other hand, she hoisted her father’s horn. She waited until they reached the crown, then blew a short, sharp order to attack. Forty griffins came screaming down the other side, wings pulled back, their riders drawing slender swords and leaning forward eagerly on their mounts.

The enemy camp was exactly where Poul had indicated. It was a torn-up stretch of scrub oak, still marked by smoldering fires. Unfortunately, many of the enemy seemed to have already left. There were maybe fifteen on the ground and another ten in the air. Daria broke her flock in two. Palina led the first group, diving toward the camp to catch the enemy still on the ground. Daria led the second group herself and rushed to attack the wasp riders already in the air. They spotted her and fled east.

She dug her heals into Talon’s ribs. “Ska!”

He lurched forward in pursuit. Daria’s heart swelled in her chest. The cool air filled her lungs, and her sword felt like a long, sleek, deadly extension of her arm.

She was so intent on overtaking the wasps that she momentarily forgot about Talon’s speed. The golden griffin had outpaced his smaller, white-feathered counterparts by several hundred yards, and as the riders pulled their wasps around to face the onslaught, she faced them alone. Three wasps came in from different angles. Long, snaking heads opened to bite at Talon’s haunches. Spears thrust at Daria. Two more wasps veered to come down on her from above.

But Talon was flying so fast that Daria raced past them and through the claws, the snapping teeth, and the thrusting spears without taking a single blow. She caught one dragon a glancing strike off its hide.

It wasn’t her most skilled attack ever, and she’d been lucky that her carelessness hadn’t left her mobbed and overpowered. Even so, her charge had broken the ranks of the wasps as they swarmed about her. They were out of position when the twenty griffins slammed into them moments later.

By the time Daria came around, injured wasps were spiraling to the ground, wasp riders had been dismounted, and the remaining enemy was scattering in all directions. Daria pursued one of these survivors and caught it a few minutes later. Talon seized it from behind and simultaneously raked the wasp with his back claws while tearing its flesh with his beak. The rider thrust his spear at Daria’s throat, but she easily ducked aside and leaned out to pierce his leather armor with her sword tip. By the time Talon let go, both wasp and rider were dead.

When Daria rejoined Poul and her uncle, she was relieved to see that none of her riders or their mounts had been killed, with only one or two light wounds. Only one wasp and rider had escaped, and another wasp was fleeing riderless to the west, in the direction of Daria’s own encampment.

She ordered her riders into formation, and they returned to the hill where Daria had left her mother. The battle had taken Daria’s forces all the way out of the hills to the plains, and it took a few minutes to return to the wasp encampment. There, she discovered Palina dismounted on the ground, while others patrolled overhead.