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.
3
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
