Ecko Rising

Jade saw it for only an instant: it raised a stone fist over her, she struggled to push it away, her hands crisping. She shrieked in fury, a sky-ripping, emasculating sound. The thing punched clean through the front of her skull.

Got up, looked for another kill.

And the wall of horsemen hit.

In the dust, in the heat, in the smoke, in the stench and noise of fear, he kept his seat by sheer reflex. The mare was barging, haunches into stone – he could smell the burning of her hide. His spearpoint was useless. He hung grimly onto his pommel and reins with one hand, used the other to keep the banner aloft, a beacon of green and white. One foot lashed out at a creature. He jarred his ankle and it turned to eye him balefully from skull sockets full of fire.

He heard himself shouting, “For Roviarath! For the Varchinde!”

Chaos swirled round him.

But several creatures had reached the edge of the Fayre.

Jade’s hands were numb, his arms pricking with tension. Disbelief surged through him as the first uprights caught. This couldn’t happen to him, to his city, to his friends...

The Fayre went up round them like matchwood, blazing fierce and immediate. Flames caught and danced with the dusk breeze, smoke poured upwards into the darkening sky. His archers fell back, coughing.

Through the thumping of hooves, drums and heart, he thought he could hear the commander shouting to rally, but the sound was desperate under the spreading, flaring bonfire that was Roviarath’s wealth.

Then a voice, “My Lord! ‘Ware!”

In the smoke, there was a creature suddenly right on top of him, stone claws reaching for his mare, gouging at the flesh of her neck. She whinnied like a scream, teeth bared, danced crosswise nearly costing him his seat. Around him, the thunder of hooves was interspersed with shouts, snorts, the sharp sounds of terhnwood shattering on stone, the cries and slams of the shield wall.

He heard another horse scream – really scream. He heard the crash as it went over, the harsh clatter of its tack as it hit the ground. He heard it struggle, heard it grunt, repeatedly. He heard the rider bellowing swear words.

The spearmen fought on, shields slamming and feet stamping. Their commander was hoarse, his voice a rasp of coughing as he tried to hold the line together.

The drum thundered.

Before him, was the voiceless, faceless thing, the only awareness the vicious glow of red in its skull-socket eyes. Heat poured from its skin.

He had the oddest feeling it knew who he was.

Another horse went down. Somewhere in the smoke beside him, he saw the shape fold sideways. Get up, he willed it, get up! Through the wheeling, stamping chaos, he could see the woman who’d shouted, turning her mount in frantic circles. There were three of them round her – they’d had enough wit to separate her from her tan.

The beast in front of him paused, watching. Red eyes like twin flares of hate.

“You know me, don’t you?” It was a whisper. “You know who I am.”

Then he remembered something – something from his tutor, long ago.

And in a rush, he realised what he should do.

* * *

On the wall, the archer commander fell back, visibility almost nil.

The smoke whorled and eddied – he could see the fires, spreading through the Fayre, see the spearmen falling back from skirmishing as the heat overcame them. The handful of beasts that were loose in the bared woodwork of the market were wreaking devastation – and there was nothing to touch them.

Almost nothing.

Upon the wall were stockpiled water barrels – a contingency that’d made his troops groan with the necessity of pulley-hauling them, hand over hand, to lay them in rows on the top of the bank.

He could see Jade’s green-and-white banner, fluttering, flashing, a flare of hope in the wreathing grey, the dancing sparks. He thought he heard the Lord shout, a bugle call of defiance.

He raised a shout of his own.

“Cohn, to me!”

The hefty shape of Cohn dropped his bow and lent his strength to the barrel. With a straining of muscle, a cording of tendons, an almighty heave that bit pain into their fingers, they hefted the thing onto the top of the defences.

And threw it as far out as they could.

* * *

“Yes, you know me!” Jade was shouting now, his idea bright in the front of his imagination. He could see the map old Master Atheus had laid out for him – the city, the docks, the walls, the Fayre – the three tributaries of the Great Cemothen River that fed into her vast, wide wash.

“Come on then! I’m Larred Jade, Lord of Roviarath. You want me? I’m here!”

The thing came forwards. From the corner of his eye he saw the horsewoman – he must learn her name – turn as the creatures surrounding her lumbered towards him. Several more sets of eyes burned through the smoke.

He raised the banner, waved it high and clear.

“I’m here, you stone bastards. You see me? Right here! You know who I am!”

They closed on him, smoke rising, the air shimmering, the heat making his mare sweat under him. He counted three, four, five of them – six – that was enough.

With a jab of his heels, he jumped the animal through the closest gap and ran her for the river.

And they came after him, needing to tear him down.

* * *

With a splintering crash, the barrel exploded, shattering like ribs upon the hard ground.

A wave of water hissed over burning uprights, wooden stalls, spread out through the packed-hard mud. Steam plumed into the air. One of stone creatures was caught by the outwash. It paused, as though confused, rocked back and forth on the spot for a moment, then tried to come for them.

One step, two – and there were cracks in the stone. The red light limning its muscles had faded, steam poured from the joints – and the supercooling rock cracked, split.

A third step and it crumbled, shapeless grey stones lost in the blackened mud.

Whooping like an idiot, the archer commander ran for the next barrel.

* * *

They were fast!

Waving the banner like a madman, he was upright in his stirrups, shouting at them – daring them to chase him down and tear his city from his very flesh. And they came on, driven, the fight around them forgotten – they were fixated by him, and they were going to rip him apart.

He broke out of the smoke, suddenly he was blinking in the dusk light. Ahead of him, the river sparkled, it ran wide and swift, fed by waters from Irahlau, Vanskraat, Blinn, Aldarien, the very Kartiah themselves.

The map in his mind was so clear.

“Come on then,” he said to himself. “Don’t falter now.”

The city walls flashed by to his side – amazingly, there were spectators standing there – pointing at him and nudging their companions. Were they damned insane? He didn’t have time to think about it. Below the decorated stone, the empty skeleton of the Great Fayre tessellated slowly into the harbour – river boats bobbed, abandoned. Birds wheeled over them, crying mournfully at the smoke and the noise.

The scent of water filled the air – sweet, fresh.

Deep.

They were almost on him now – claws reaching for the mare’s rump. She jumped, flicked her heels at them. He fell forwards sharply, winding himself on the saddle pommel.

Reminding himself he wasn’t Banned, he sat back down.

“Come on then!” Waving the banner across the morning, back and forth, back and forth, he was shouting still.