than a dozen times. He had only enough constitution to move them so far at a time, and each effort was all the more taxing. He had seen what the demon horde left behind in Locar and Dreen. His assessment of the enemy left him anything but optimistic, and he wanted to converse with the High King anyway, before this battle became all- consuming.
King Mikahl had sworn him to the duty of protecting Pavreal’s bloodline, no matter the cost. If things grew dire, he wouldn’t hesitate to take Ironspike and Rosa and sail to Harthgar, or seek protection in Afdeon. He felt the High King should be aware of these things. Even though it would take all the strength left in him to find his king, he nodded his understanding to Queen Willa and then disappeared from the room with a crackling pop.
Outside Xwarda’s western-facing gate, the setting sun’s rays painted the horizon beautiful shades of pastel blue and peach. The wingless faction of the demon horde engaged the ranks of defenders in a violent clash. It was a disheartening sight for the High King to look upon. The relatively white field of trampled snow turned quickly into a steaming mush of gore. Mikahl decided that defeating this army with swords, axes, and bows might prove impossible. Already, streaking bolts of lightning and scarlet blasts of hellborn magic were scattering body parts. Mikahl held his position and continued his search for the vaguely human form baring those familiar Skyler eyes. It was all he could do to keep from drawing Ironspike and raging mindlessly into the fray. He might clear a path through the enemy’s ranks, or kill a handful of the monstrous creatures, but that would serve no real purpose.
To the south he could see the flying beasts going high over the wall, out of the archers’ range. They were coming down in the crowded streets now. A Choska demon was flapping wildly like a kite in a gale. Its vain attempt to get away from the barbed tether one of the breed giants had stuck into it was futile. It would die as soon as they could reel the line in, but it was only one of a thousand foes swarming the sky.
“Mikahl! High King Mikahl,” Sholt’s voice called weakly from the roof below and behind the High King’s position. Mikahl barely heard him over the shouts of the archers and the roar of the beasts. He turned and nodded to the wizard, but quickly put his attention back on the enemy. “You made it,” he said simply.
“We must speak,” said Sholt, but he was so exhausted that the words barely made a sound as they came out of his mouth. Sholt closed his eyes and summoned what was left inside him. “My lord,” he said a little more loudly. Seeing that Mikahl had heard him, the wizard continued. “The bloodline must be protected.”
Mikahl assumed that Sholt meant that he shouldn’t enter the battle and risk dying. As far as he knew, he was the last of Pavreal’s kin. “I’ll only fight the Hell Master himself, wizard,” he snapped his response. “Now leave me,” he commanded as he saw a gout of flame shooting skyward, reflected in the wizard’s eyes. He turned to find the source of it, hoping it was the beast Hyden’s brother had become. “Do not return until you have rested.”
Before Sholt could respond Mikahl leapt to the next merlon, then the next.
Sholt found that he was so tired he could barely move, yet he screamed out, “My Lord, listen to me! Queen Rosa is…”
“Dead!” Mikahl finished for him as Ironspike came out of its scabbard with a rasping metallic ring. The normally passive blue radiance the sword emitted was white hot with Mikahl’s rage and was nearly as bright as the sun. Sholt was temporarily blinded by it, and by the time he could see again, King Mikahl was gone.
The over-fatigued wizard could barely make out the bright horse as it went streaking madly toward a distant eruption of flame. Ironspike lit the carnage immediately below the High King as if it were midday.
Sholt managed to get to his feet, and the amount of bloody death he could see in the field was sickening. He started to cast one last spell before consciousness left him, but he was yanked off the wall by the claws of a swooping hellcat. He didn’t have the strength to fight back, and the creature wasn’t strong enough to carry him far. Both of them went sinking toward the battle below, until the hellcat dropped him right into a knot of swarming demon kin and banked away.
Chapter 56
At the west gate, the wingless horde outnumbered the soldiers so greatly that some of the Dark Lord’s force broke away from the battle and circled the wall toward the city’s little-used northern gate. It was called the forest gate because it opened onto the southern edge of the Evermore Forest. It was guarded, but not nearly as much as the other gates. Queen Willa’s rangers used the horse door and the barracks there. With their constant presence it had never needed guarding before.
The demon spawn were surprised when, about two-thirds of the way around, an entanglement of thorny growth sprouted around them. It engulfing most of the front of their charge. They were even more surprised when scores of elven archers began loosing arrows at them from afar. The entangled demons were easy targets as they struggled to tear themselves free.
Phen was leading Telgra and the elven group toward a hidden tunnel entrance he knew of. It was still a good way east. The elves had waited until after sunset. They and the great wolves could see well enough in the dark to follow Phen’s direction. Yet, oddly, it was Phen’s human senses that picked up the demons first. He felt more than saw or heard them. His thorny growth spell was cast in the best place it could have been. Most of the dark things leading the pack were caught up. Those following didn’t have a chance to slow as they ran into the stuff. The elves engaged them freely.
Under Phen, Arf growled and shivered, waiting desperately to have a go at the evil creatures that were offending his senses. Phen wouldn’t allow it. He spoke soothingly to the great wolf, though, trying to calm him. “You’ll get your chance, pup, I promise.”
Torches flared on the walls above them, followed by the shouts of the forest gate guards. Dostin let Yip charge into the fray and used his staff in the torchlight with deft ferocity. He had an intense look, narrow-browed and scowling, with his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth. The heavyset monk whacked and jabbed everything around him. Crack! Crack! A heartbeat of pause. Crack! again. Then a flurry of chak-chak-chaks as he spun the heavy wooden pole. Yip snarled and growled, then bit into a hell boar’s flank. A piece of the beast tore free and Dostin clobbered it as it turned to attack.
“Leave them!” Queen Mother Telgra yelled to her fighters.
Phen cast an orb light into being and sent it to hover over the dark host. Already some of the Xwardian rangers were gathering archers on the wall and loosing into the group. It was all the elves could do to break free before a kettle of boiling oil was poured over the wall. A moment later, a flaming arrow streaked down and the whoomping sound of the oil igniting thundered through the night. With only a handful of hellspawn on their heels, the elves followed Phen and his great wolf mount away from the blaze and back into the darkness.
Inside the wall, almost a dozen hellcats had landed and taken to the streets. Innocent folk, farmers, seamstresses, and leathermen were thrashed by tooth and claw. Women and children were torn to shreds, and refugees trampled by their own townsfolk trying to get away.
But there was no place to go.
A series of streaking blasts sent a wagon full of chicken cages spinning over into a small, roped-in herd of sheep. The herd broke loose. A piece of the blazing wagon set a young girl’s hair on fire. She flailed and screamed in terror and pain. Her mother ran to help but both were mangled to bloody chunks by the more powerful kinetic blast of a Choska demon that was perched atop a chapel nearby.
A huge, smoldering hole was left in the street were the woman and girl had just been. A blackened leg, smaller than a man’s arm, with a shiny red shoe on its foot, twitched once, then again. People screamed and still tried to flee, only to find a pair of wyverns slinging acidic slobber over the crowd like rain.
A bat-like Choska glided down over the crowd and snatched a fat, shrieking farm wife.
A block over, an angry young plow boy swung a dirt rake into one of the wyverns. The tines caught in the beast’s black, scaly hide and the boy pulled it out of the air. A half-dozen men with hoes and shovels beat the thing to a pulp only to find their feet and lower legs sizzling and dissolving from the wyvern’s acid blood.
While the Choska sat on its perch busying itself by tearing apart the huge meal it had caught, a young mage attacked. The boy sent a thin little crackle of lightning at the Choska from the rooftop of a nearby inn. The bolt
