Suddenly a thought came to him. ‘And take that miniature ballista with you.’ He pointed to where the portal ballista rested in the wagon that had carried it down from LaMut. ‘Aim it where you think you can do the most damage to the Keshians if they try to seize that emplacement. I have a feeling,’ he added in lower tones, ‘that they’re going to try to ferry men across and hit us from the east as they assault this gate.’
‘Sir!’ said Ruther. ‘May I suggest that we might do well with some oil, sir?’
‘Take what you need, but if you use it, try not to burn the place …’ Martin stopped. For a long moment he was silent. Then he said, ‘No. Take as much oil as you need, and if it comes to it, burn that fortification to the ground. If we lose it, we’ll deny the Keshians its use.’
Martin glanced at his brother and the sergeant, and then turned his gaze back to the harbour and sea beyond. ‘Kesh won’t try to land troops in small boats if they can’t gain a foothold. If we place archers in the trees on the hills above the harbour, there’s no safe place for them to muster for an assault. More than half would be dead before they got to the road.’ He nodded.
‘Well done, sir,’ said Ruther with obvious approval. He turned and ran off.
As flames leapt skyward and the entire foulborough became consumed, Brendan said, ‘What do we do next?’
Martin glanced west, then towards the fire, and then eastward, as if trying to see something in the distance that might be approaching from any side of the city. Finally he rested against the stones, already feeling the heat from the fire behind and looked northward. ‘We wait, and hope the night holds no more surprises for us.’
CHAPTER THREE
Miranda pointed towards the smoke in the sky.
‘Fires,’ said the being once known as Child.
Belog, who now called himself Nakor, nodded. ‘Big ones.’
They were riding in a wagon towards the north gate of Ylith, having discovered in LaMut the single most frustrating fact of their new identities: they might have had Miranda and Nakor’s memories imposed over their own, but they didn’t possess their abilities.
Two days of trying to reassert their human abilities, one aggravating attempt after another, had left them both exasperated and at a loss. It was as if they knew the language, yet when they spoke only gibberish emerged. They still possessed their demonic abilities, despite their human appearances, but no hint of the prodigious power that Miranda once possessed now remained. Even in her human guise she was physically more powerful than the strongest human warrior many times over, as well as being faster than the swiftest elf. Her magic was what it had been in the demon realm: an ability to inflict destruction at an astonishing rate. But even the most meagre of Miranda’s human magic remained beyond her reach.
Her first thought had been to find Miranda’s husband, Pug, for while she knew she was not really his late wife, she still possessed all of Miranda’s memories and emotions. For the very first time, a demon appreciated the concept of love as mortals understood it, and felt the pain of separation from her husband and sons; or rather Miranda’s husband and sons.
The demon in Miranda’s form knew the memories had been grafted on to its own, and how: another ploy by the Trickster God, Kalkin. Yet they were so vivid, both the good and the bad, that it was impossible to remain objective about the life imprinted over her own. Child possessed mere days of memory, while Miranda’s stretched well beyond a century. Her false human identity overwhelmed her true demon consciousness. The same held true for Nakor, as the demon known as Belog now thought of himself, although his demon memories were years longer than Child’s. But while Nakor had possessed abilities, Belog had only possessed knowledge, so his inability to access Nakor’s ‘tricks’ was not a particular source of frustration to the demon-turned-human.
He found it amusing that Nakor was by nature far more patient and content to accept things as they were than Miranda; if a woman over a century old could be called ‘youthfully impetuous’ it was Miranda.
One thing became truer by the day: their human consciousnesses were slowly displacing the demonic, and both had begun to feel as if they had somehow simply died human and reawakened in these new bodies. If anything had eased Nakor’s annoyance at his changed status, it had been the wry amusement he felt watching Miranda’s complete frustration over hers.
Lacking the ability to transport themselves to Sorcerer’s Isle magically, they had been forced to seek another means of conveyance. So a ride on a supply wagon had been purchased, allowing the former demons to discuss their situation as they slowly wended their way southward. To the others travelling in this tiny caravan they looked like nothing out of the ordinary, no more unusual than any pairing of an attractive middle-aged woman with an odd-looking old man, Keshian by his garb and complexion. With the war underway, there were many people on the road, some moving northward, away from the pending Keshian assault, others south, towards potential riches.
Nakor and Miranda had both lived a very long time, and had known many wars, and so neither was surprised by the flow of people towards the coming bloody conflict. There was always a direct relationship between risk and reward in wartime.
Over the years both of them had witnessed wars fought by armies outnumbered by their camp followers: prostitutes, gamblers, weapons sellers, armour makers, tailors, skinners, bowyers, food suppliers, all willing to risk harm, even death, in exchange for a possible windfall of gold. Miranda’s memory even recalled one bold and enterprising farmer who had rushed his small herd of cattle to an invading army’s quartermaster and sold it for gold, mere hours before the commander ordered his riders out to forage for food; he had managed to sell what they would have pillaged anyway. Miranda had always wondered what had become of that farmer.
Despite the odd musings created by memories that were at once familiar yet new, the attention of the two demons-turned-human was drawn to the south, where the afternoon sky was thick with smoke clouds above the city.
The wagon slowed and the driver turned and said, ‘Looks like Ylith has fallen.’
Miranda said, ‘There may be fires, but that doesn’t mean it’s fallen. If the gates had been breached, we’d see a flood of retreating people streaming past us now.’
‘Well, I’m going to wait and see. No risk in pausing,’ said the old teamster, ‘but a lot of risk in blundering forward.’
Miranda jumped down from the back of the wagon and saw that the other teams in the small caravan had also pulled over to the verge of the road. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said the demon in human form. ‘We’ll wander down and take a look and if we don’t come back …’ She saw the face of Nakor grinning. ‘Assume the worst.’
They set off down the road at quick pace and when they were out of earshot, Nakor laughed loudly. ‘Assume the worst?’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to tell him we weren’t coming back, and if he wants to sit there waiting for someone to blow the all-clear, he’s picked the wrong trade.’
They moved rapidly, their demonic strength and endurance extant under their human appearance. Miranda and Nakor, as they now thought of themselves, had no idea why they were here, even if they knew Kalkin was behind their existence. But they trusted that it was for a reason and an important one, and they knew that to uncover that reason, the most logical place to begin was where the most powerful practitioners of magic resided: Sorcerer’s Isle.
Moreover, though she said nothing to Nakor, Miranda ached to see her family. In her memory she had just withstood a brutal demon attack on her home and had successfully driven them off with her husband, son, and the other magicians when a wounded demon had leapt from feigned death and ripped out half of her neck, causing almost instantaneous death. The shock of the attack had made the details vague and since Nakor had died before the invasion, she had no witness with whom to speak. She didn’t know if her husband had survived, though she counted it likely, nor how her children fared. She needed to know, and it was slowly becoming an overwhelming urge.
Within minutes of leaving the woodlands, they started down a gentle sloping road and could clearly see the
