She’d expected the jolt to rip off her arms. Instead the Knight Eternal seemed to explode, as if she’d just hit a sack filled with dust. Bits of desiccated flesh and dry bones rained down all around her, messing her hair and getting grit in her eyes.
The remains of the creature landed in a heap not ten yards away, then went rolling and rolling until its corpse lay leaning with one wing dangling over the wall.
Fallion was on the ground. He moaned a bit, then rolled over. Rhianna saw fresh blood smearing his robes.
“Sword broke,” he said, his face white with shock. He was patting his robe, as if to find the source of the blood. The blade of his own rusty sword was lodged just below his rib cage, somewhere between his right kidney and a lung. The point stuck out from him, as if he’d been run through. Rhianna realized that the blade must have been driven back and struck him when the sword shattered. He pulled it free. The last three inches of blade was bloody.
Not a deep cut, but it was three inches wide, and given its proximity to vital targets, it could be a deadly wound.
“Fallion,” Rhianna cried, then knelt over him. She held her hand over the wound, fingers clasped tightly, trying to staunch the flow. Warm blood boiled out. She cast her eyes around, looking for someone to help, but the young soldiers on the wall had all run down into the fray, where they engaged the wyrmling troops.
Rhianna saw something flash past her-a second Knight Eternal diving into battle.
It swooped over the oncoming troops, diving through the cloud of fireflies that shone like a million dancing stars.
There its blade found the head of the Wizard Sisel, and nearly set it free.
One moment, the wizard was striding toward the city gates leading the charge, and the next instant he tried to duck beneath the Knight Eternal’s blow. The sword glanced off Sisel’s leather helm, and he slumped onto the cobblestones.
Cries of grief and despair rose from the human hosts as the Knight Eternal climbed back into the sky. A few black war darts followed in his wake, then fell pitifully in a deadly rain among the crowd.
Warriors swarmed around the wounded wizard, creating a shield wall. Sisel struggled to his feet, took a step, and fell in a swoon.
Rhianna stared blankly at the devastation. That steel gate was meant to hold off wyrmling attackers. The men below had no siege towers, no way to breach the city’s defenses. Without Sisel to save them, they were trapped.
King Urstone’s young warriors had thrown themselves into battle, and just as quickly they were dying beneath the swords and axes of the enemy.
Down at the lower gates, the giant graaks were lifting off, ferrying more troops to hold the upper wall. Kezziards were racing into battle with troops upon their backs, and the whole wyrmling horde now charged through the streets, wading into the human defenders.
Farther back, walking hills moved through the forest, crushing trees. Thousands of wyrmling troops rode upon their backs, and Rhianna could not guess what horrors these creatures held in store.
Fallion gave a wan chuckle. He was looking toward the dead knight, trying to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. “You killed him? You killed a Knight Eternal?” Rhianna nodded silently. “Then, you’ve won your own pair of wings.”
Fallion passed out. The blood was still pumping from him, and Rhianna could not stop the flow. She reached under her tunic and ripped off a strip of cotton undershirt, then lay down atop Fallion, feigning death, and hoped that she could staunch the flow of blood.
She saw High King Urstone leap into the air, angrily brandishing an ax, hot on the tail of the Knight Eternal that had struck down Sisel. Urstone’s flying skills were no match for those of his immortal enemy. He flapped clumsily, straining to catch up.
Seeing that the race was lost, King Urstone suddenly swooped and dove back among the troops in the market. He grasped the fallen wizard and flapped his wings in a frenzy, lugging Sisel into the air, well above the crowd, making for an open door high up on the mountain.
The defenders that had stood over the fallen wizard raised a cheer as he was carried to safety. But the cheer turned to cries of dismay as the wyrmlings charged into their midst.
In astonishment, Rhianna gaped at the battle raging below, a few thousand human warriors pitted against the might of the wyrmling horde. The wyrmlings were led by harvesters, boosted with extracts from the glands of fallen enemies. They raced through warrior clan’s troops, chopping men down as if they were saplings.
In moments the battle would be over.
Rhianna realized, We are all as good as dead.
AT THE BRINK OF RUIN
It is when a man is confronted with eminent ruin that despair grows within him. And when overwhelmed by despair, he becomes pliant, and can be made a tool to fit your hand.
Through the streets of Luciare, the Death Lord rode atop a walking hill, surrounded by his wyrmling captains. The great hill was the product of some strange world that he had never seen. Its back was armored with chitin, like a giant snail. It had thousands of strange tendrils hanging from its front, each like an elephant’s trunk, and with these it harvested anything in its path-grass, trees, or wyrmlings, and shoved them up into one of its maws as it continued to trundle forward upon thousands of marching feet.
The walking hills were supposed to act as archers’ towers, to help the wyrmlings breach the castle walls, but the walking hills would not be needed on this trip.
Up ahead, the wyrmling troops were slaughtering the last of the human defenders, who had found themselves trapped between the upper and lower walls.
Streets that once had been teeming with life now were filled with the dying and the dead.
The Death Lord reached out his hand and pulled the life from those human defenders who still gripped it so tenaciously, and then sent it to his own troops, lending them greater vigor, making them drunk on bloodlust.
“Take off their heads!” the Death Lord cried. “There are still wounded among our enemy, and some feign death. Turn their lies into truth. Leave their glands for the harvesters!”
His troops raced through the small shops and houses, engaging any defenders that tried to hide. There were occasional shouts as a human was found alive and offered a last desperate battle.
His walking hill climbed the streets to the upper gate, but there could go no farther. The upper wall was too steep for the creature to climb.
The last of the human warriors were being slaughtered as his hill came to a halt, and now the guards began to raise the upper gate.
The Death Lord took a great leap, and went fluttering from the hill to the wall, a jump of some twenty yards. It was no great feat for the Death Lord. He was mostly spirit now, and only the weight of his robes dragged him earthward.
Here in the courtyard he halted at the gates to the warrens. A few pitiful humans guarded the warrens still. They had closed the huge iron battle doors in one last attempt to fend off death.
But I have come for them anyway, the Death Lord thought. I will take them this night, ridding the world of the warrior clans.
The lights of Luciare still burned blindingly bright to the Death Lord, there in the braziers to each side of the iron doors. The spirits were dancing, flickering emerald and blinding white, then dying down to dazzling blue.
The Death Lord could not kill such creatures, for their lives had been taken. But even spirits had enemies.
