CHAPTER XXXV
Sadly, more often than not the difficult thing to do is also the right thing.
AS TAMMERLAND BURNED AND THE CRIES OF HER TERRIFIED citizens rose into the night, Khristos’ lead viper looked around and smiled.
Just as the Viper Lord had planned, the surprised Minion patrols wandering the city had been no match for the thousands of Blood Vipers that came slithering up from the depths of the Sippora. Caught off guard, the winged warriors had fought well, but the vipers’ superior numbers soon ruled the night. The lead viper knew that the alarm had gone out to alert the royal palace and that the hordes of Minions camped there would soon arrive. He welcomed their coming, for the Viper Lord’s plan depended on that very thing. As the heart of the city burned, the viper in charge of the carnage slithered about, taking stock of the scene.
Hundreds of citizens and Minion warriors lay dead in the streets, their blood pooling in the gutters and their bodies lying wherever they had fallen victim to the vipers’ talons, fangs, and venom. Scores of buildings had been set afire by marauding Blood Vipers carrying torches. Winding their bodies and tails around Tammerland’s many lampposts, the seething man-serpents slithered up them to smash the glass globes and eagerly light their torches. The torches were then tossed through the windows of shops and homes and the vipers gleefully watched them burn. Anyone caught rushing from a burning building was summarily killed, and the many thatched roofs in the city provided opportune targets as the torches tossed on top of them set them ablaze straightaway. Many citizens with endowed blood were being ruthlessly gorged on while still alive, their screams ringing out into the night as the vipers-once again hungry now that they had been freed from the water-searched for fresh endowed livers on which to feed.
Despite the great destruction and bloodshed, it was not the Viper Lord’s plan to occupy the city or to kill all its inhabitants. Seeing how many weak-minded mortals could be murdered meant nothing to him, nor did the growing numbers of burning buildings. Killing Minions was advantageous, but just as the main body of warriors arrived to relieve the city, most of the Blood Vipers would slither their way back down the riverbanks to reenter the Sippora and escape unseen. This would be no cowardly retreat, but a clever tactical maneuver.
To add believability to their charade, some vipers would be ordered to stay behind and fight to the death. Their ranks would be enough to trick the Minions into believing that they needed to remain in the city and fight on, but not so great that Khristos would miss them during the next part of his plan. Viper sentries waited on many rooftops, constantly searching the southern sky. At the first sign of Minion relief troops they would wave their torches, signaling that the retreat into the Sippora should start.
As the carnage wore on, the lead viper also looked skyward. The Minions would arrive soon, he realized. Turning back to survey the battle, he smiled once more. Hopefully enough time would remain to kill the few surviving Minions and devour many livers of the endowed.
After ordering another viper to watch for their sentries’ signals, he hungrily slithered across the dewy square and used his talons to rip into a young man’s corpse.
BY THE TIME SHAILIHA AND HER FORCES ARRIVED, TAMMERLAND’Scenter was nearly destroyed, and fires were spreading outward in every direction.
From her place in the litter she gazed out aghast over a sea of flames. Dead humans and Minions lay everywhere. Vipers voraciously fed on human victims as others madly set fire to yet more buildings. Heartened by their success, the grotesque monsters writhed about each other in a sickening orgy of victory. As her litter neared the scene, the princess pulled her sword from its scabbard, gripping it so hard that her knuckles turned white.
Faegan, Abbey, and Aeolus rode with her. Flying alongside, Traax commanded the bulk of the Minions, while Duvessa led her specialized cadres of female warrior-healers. At Traax’s suggestion, only a skeleton force had been left behind to guard the palace and the Redoubt. As they neared the battle, the rising smoke choked their lungs, and terrible screaming could be heard as its chilling tenor rose into the night.
Our people are dying down there, Shailiha thought. My failure to find and kill Khristos and his forces has brought this tragedy on us. But now the fight is finally joined. Khristos’ rampage must end here and now, on this night of nights.
Shailiha signaled her troops into the fray. Their dreggans flashing, thousands of Minions swooped down to tear into the seething vipers, while Faegan and Aeolus loosed azure bolts at the monsters with everything they had. The battle was joined.
KHRISTOS WAS THE FIRST TO STEALTHILY BREAK THE SURFACEof the river. His timing was perfect and his resolve unshakable. Smiling as he looked across the water, he realized that Gracchus’ plan was proceeding perfectly.
While thousands of his vipers waited unseen in the murky depths, Khristos surveyed the area. Just as Gracchus had told him, the palace lay near the river bend. Between the river and the palace lay a great field, its dewy expanse providing the huge area needed to contain the great Minion war camp. Untold lines of shadowy war tents seemed to stretch forever into the distance, their openings flapping gently in the nighttime breeze. Just as Khristos had hoped, it seemed that every available warrior save for a few sentries had been called out to quell the mayhem raging in the heart of the city. Quietly turning around in the water, he confirmed the orange-red glow in the sky.
Looking back, he saw the royal palace standing west of the campsite, its many lit torches shining down onto its barbicaned parapets. The moat surrounding the castle looked deep and tranquil, and the drawbridge had been raised and locked into place between its twin gate towers. To an untrained observer the magnificent structure would surely appear unassailable, but on this night that perception would be wrong. Even so, the largely unprotected palace and the many treasures it housed were not Khristos’ first goals. Looking to the south, the Viper Lord smiled again as he spied the first of Gracchus’ targets.
The two magnificent Black Ships that Tristan had left behind sparkled in the moonlight as they rested in their massive wooden cradles. Khristos’ heart leapt as he realized that only a handful of Minion sentries guarded them. Without the great ships, theJin’Saiou ’s ability to hunt him down would be greatly curtailed, and she could no longer sail across the Sea of Whispers. These ships would therefore be Khristos’ targets.
Following Gracchus’ orders, he would set fire to one and steal the other, filling it with his vipers and then using it to his further purposes. Having fought and sailed alongside Failee during the Sorceresses’ War, he could empower Black Ships as well as any mystic alive. But even he could fly only one ship at a time, so the other must be made useless to theJin’Saiou here and now. These things must be done quickly, before Shailiha and her Vigors mystics realized that the battle in the square was a diversion and hurried back to the palace. The time was right, the setting was all Khristos could have hoped for, and Gracchus’ plan was ready to be executed.
Submerging again, Khristos waved his thousands of vipers forward. They would quietly climb the riverbanks, then slither silently on their bellies through the tall grass to flank both sides of the Minion camp and rush in to dispatch the remaining sentries. Soon after, the warriors guarding the ships some distance away would follow their brothers into the Afterlife. If both attacks succeeded quickly and quietly, those in the castle would perceive no threat until one Black Ship was in the air and the other was in flames.
As the magenta moonlight gently licked the waves of the Sippora, Khristos and his vipers started to surface, their huge numbers slithering up the dark riverbank like a menacing tide.
SWINGING HER SWORD IN A PERFECT ARC, SHAILIHA SLICEDits blade through the throat of another attacking
