Blood Of Gods (Book 3) (53 page)

The deity snapped his fingers, and the nine hanging from the gallows burst into flame. It raced over their flesh, making it bubble. Still they writhed, flaming bits of them falling off their bodies and scorching the wooden planks below. Their screams pierced the night, the air smelled of burning flesh. A few of the soldiers standing close by the gallows vomited. The massive crowd wailed and moaned. The smell of fear wafting off the thousands, once pungent, became overwhelming.

The golden glow of Karak’s eyes brightened.

It took the blasphemers nearly ten minutes to die. When they finally fell silent, their charred remains smoked and crackled. Karak stared at the corpses, smiling, and turned back to his children.

“Ashhur is near,” he bellowed. “My brother will arrive with the rising sun. He will be vicious, and so shall we. Now go, my children, all of you. Use whatever you can to bring Ashhur’s irreverent faithful to their knees. When the undead march into this city, when those who wish to enslave you in the name of justice batter down your doors, you will cry out my name, and you will fight.”

“Karak,” came a wavering voice from the mob.

“Karak,” said another.

Soon the night was filled with human voices shouting the deity’s name. It began somberly at first, but then grew louder and more certain. Male voices joined in with the female throng. The
soldiers
banged the swords and spears against their shields, creating a cadence. Even the Ekreissar joined in, Aerland Shen slamming his swords together as he guided his rangers in calling out the God of Order’s name.
“KARAK, KARAK, KARAK!”
went the refrain.
“KARAK, KARAK, KARAK!”

The crowd began to disperse, still chanting, still pumping their fists. It was then that Karak went down on a knee before Velixar, staring him right in the eyes.

“What you did,” said the prophet, “was . . . inspiring.”

The deity nodded. “Now is your time, Velixar. It is you I am counting on.”

Velixar’s eyes opened wide as he bowed. “I am your humble servant, my Lord.”

“You are more than that. You are the swallower of demons. You are power incarnate. It is through you that this battle will finally end. When I left your side, I went back to the mountains for a short while and thought of my clash with the giant. He might have sent me back to the heavens—
would
have—had you not intervened. Although my brother and I are too evenly matched to kill one another, a righteous follower can.” The god’s smile widened. “You have the power within you, High Prophet. You have the strength to overwhelm a god. I can see it as plainly as I can see the order in chaos. You are the salvation of Neldar, my son. You are the most perfect of all the gods’ creations.”

Velixar felt short of breath as he listened to his chosen god’s words. Even so, a grain of doubt tickled his thoughts. He clenched his hands before him and dropped to his knees.

“I will remain strong, my Lord. I will pour my entire soul into destroying Ashhur. However, I must ask . . . what if I fail? What if my strength proves not great enough?”

Karak reached out and touched Velixar’s forehead with his massive index finger. “Just as with faith, there is more than one way to obtain order. I will show you.”

Images assaulted Velixar’s mind. Fire filled his vision, horrifying and purifying, wondrous and terrible, all at once. Velixar fell back, holding his hand before him, watching everything around him burn in his mind’s eye.

“So . . . beautiful . . . ”

C
HAPTER

46

V
eldaren opened up around them as Patrick rode along the road in the city’s southern district. Even the vividness of the early spring sun could do nothing to brighten what looked to be a depressing wasteland of drab gray. To the right appeared a stone tower with a hollowed nook at the top. Though tall and indeed threatening, it too appeared dreary. “I’m not impressed,” Patrick muttered, bouncing on his stallion. He’d seen the amazing architecture his brother-in-law Turock had erected in Drake, the precise buildings designed by Warden Boral in Lerder, and the elegant Gemcroft estate in Haven, all of which made the boxy sameness of Veldaren less than inspiring.

“Your eyes tell a different story,” said Preston.

Patrick offered him a scowl. “Shut it.”

But there was no denying the truth to the man’s words. The sheer size of the place most certainly stilled Patrick’s heart. Even Drake, with all its advancements, was a place where many people resided in shanties and tents scattered just outside the central square. Veldaren had none of that. There was no grass to be seen. The street was cobbled, the walks lining it gray slate. The plain structures were numerous, built close together, most rising at least two levels up. And that didn’t include the three massive spires that cut into the sky ahead and to the right. Those were the most imposing of all.

“I’ve never seen a city before,” Patrick said. “A
true
city, like those in the Wardens’ stories.”

“Of course you haven’t,” laughed Edward.

There was edginess in the youth’s laughter. He’d been like that during most of their journey to this city across the river. Most everyone was tense, from the Turncloaks to the Wardens, to Ashhur’s children. Even Ashhur seemed anxious. The only ones who showed no fear were the thousands of undead that marched around them, their numbers so great that those on the perimeter of the ring were constantly colliding with the many buildings lining the road.

As for those inside the circle, so crammed were their conditions that they rode in three slender columns. When Patrick peered over his shoulder, he couldn’t see the tail end of the convoy. They were still exiting the forest to the south.

“I don’t like that,” said Patrick. “It doesn’t look good.”

“It isn’t,” Preston replied. “Being stretched this thin, we’re easy targets.”

“But what about the undead?” asked Tristan. Though he was nervous, the young soldier had a warm smile on his face as he gazed all around him at the dingy scenery.
He’s from here,
Patrick recalled.
This is a homecoming for him.

“The undead can protect us only so much,” said Preston. The older man jabbed his thumb behind him. “And their presence will mean nothing if the god controlling them falls.”

Tristan turned around, as did Patrick. Ashhur wavered as he walked, his gaze intent on some distant point, his arms hanging limp by his sides. He had been this way for days, ever since he had raised a provisional bridge over the Rigon once they’d reached the scorched remains of Lerder. It looked as if it took his every effort simply to stand upright. It had gotten so bad that at night, when their tents were put up and the men of Paradise gathered around their cookfires, they would express their doubts about whether
Ashhur
was right in bringing them east at all. Not that Patrick could blame them. He was starting to have those thoughts as well.

“Too late to turn back now,” he whispered.

“What was that?” asked Preston’s other son, Ragnar.

Patrick waved him away. “Nothing. Talking to myself.”

The force progressed down the road, the constant clomp of hooves on cobbles ringing in Patrick’s ears. Their advance was indeed noisy, but it struck him as strange that despite how much of a ruckus they made, they attracted no attention. The opened windows of every building they passed, large and small, were empty. There wasn’t even a hint of movement inside, which was strange in a place that looked like it had once housed thousands upon thousands of people.

“You think the people left?” he asked Preston.

The older man shrugged.

“Perhaps we won’t find Karak here after all,” said Patrick. He reached over his shoulder and tapped Winterbone’s now naked handle for luck.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Preston said with a frown.

The old soldier’s words proved prophetic, for a few minutes later a commotion broke out at the front of the column, half a hundred yards from where Patrick rode. The wall of undead collapsed inward a bit farther up, and Patrick heard Ahaesarus sound his warning horn. The men from Ker, who had been interspersed throughout the column, lifted their elven bows and nocked them with arrows. The horn sounded again. Words of caution were passed from the front of the column to the back.

“On the roofs! Look to the roofs!”

Patrick shouted the same warning to those behind him, then raised his eyes to the tops of the surrounding buildings. Hundreds of people appeared, their hair long and grimy, their clothes tattered. To Patrick it looked as if they had ridden into a den of feral women. The women held various objects in their hands, from rocks to sharpened lengths of wood to the type of iron cookware—pots and ladles and fire pokers—that Patrick had seen used in Haven. There were some wielding bows and arrows as well. Seemingly at once, the women raised their makeshift weapons above their heads.

“Shields up!” Patrick shouted, unhitching from his saddle his borrowed shield—which still bore Karak’s sigil—just as the women released their wares.

Those that had shields lifted them; those that didn’t tried to get close to those who did. Heavy objects rained down on them, pounding against the solid wood and metal of the shields. Men shouted down below while women sounded a primal war cry from above. Patrick braced himself, a heavy chunk of iron striking his shield, cracking it, and bathing his eyes with splinters. A spike of pain jolted through his forearm on impact. An arrow struck his mailed thigh, but not hard enough to pierce it. He glanced down as yet another heavy object thudded against his shield and saw that the arrow was crudely made, simply a sharpened stick with feathers attached to the shaft with twine. He plucked it from the ring it was stuck in and tossed it aside.

The Kerrians fired arrows back at those attacking from the rooftops, their aim truer, their bolts more deadly. Many of the women fell back, disappearing over the other side of the slanted roofs; others caught arrows in the chest and tumbled twenty feet to the ground, only to stand up a moment later and join the undead horde.

A horse galloped along the edge of the convoy. It was Master Warden Ahaesarus, inhumanly tall in his saddle. He shouted at the Kerrians as he passed them by. “Get to the center! Do not waste arrows on the citizens! Save them for the real soldiers!”

A few stubborn Kerrians still loosed arrows, but most men followed orders, pressing their horses into the column to find someone with a large enough shield to hide beneath. Still the rain of debris continued. Patrick lifted his shield slightly and peered at Ashhur. The god had remained silent, even as he was pelted with heavy objects. Each time one struck him, he would wince, but he kept on walking, determined.

At last, the god spoke. “To the right!” he bellowed loudly enough for those still a half-mile away to hear. “We head for the castle.”

Up ahead, the procession turned. Patrick remained beneath his shield, though his stallion was taking a beating. It whinnied every time it was struck, and once a large chunk of stone hit the stallion in the flank, almost breaking its leg. “Easy,” Patrick said, doing his best to soothe the beast. “You have it. You can do it.” The stallion remained true. Others weren’t so lucky. Edward’s horse was taken down by a crude spear; Big Flick lost his when a large iron tub crushed the poor thing’s skull. The numbers of those who carried on by foot grew by the second. The dead men rose to join the undead army while the horses formed obstructions the rest of the convoy had to maneuver their way around. If Patrick thought the road had been a cluttered mess before, it was nothing compared to now.

There were urgent shouts coming from up ahead. As Patrick took the turn onto the adjoining road, guided by the crush of bodies around him, he could see why. Human forms charged from the structures lining both sides of the road and crashed into the wall of undead, hacking and slashing with daggers, spears, small swords, and hatchets. There were hundreds of them, all feminine in shape, yet they were covered head to toe in what looked to be off-white bandages. Patrick watched them battle the undead, slowly cutting through their thick mass. He then peeked around his shield, still held above his head, and saw that the barrage from the rooftops had ceased.

“Small victories,” he muttered.

Then he glanced forward, saw the three giant spires they had been marching toward, rising above a thirty-foot wall, and realized just how small that victory truly was.

The convoy was more packed together now, a writhing mass of bodies rather than three distinct columns. Those on the outside moved hastily toward their undead protectors, hands shaking as they held their weapons at the ready. Not a good sign. The strange, wrapped women seemed to fight without fear, as if driven by some otherworldly force. The barely trained defenders of
Paradise
, though more numerous, would be cut through in moments. Patrick exchanged a glance with Preston. The old soldier gritted his teeth and leaned forward in his saddle.

“Turncloaks, ride!” he shouted.

Patrick ripped Winterbone off his back and led the way, inching his stallion through the press of struggling bodies until he reached the edge of the undead wall. One of the wrapped women sliced the head off a deceased Warden and shoved her way past the reaching, now-headless corpse. Patrick was there to greet her, hacking down from atop his stallion, clipping the woman on the side of the head. She fell back shrieking, blood spurting from where the wrappings had been sliced on her cheek, until the undead horde swallowed her whole. Patrick felt his stomach clench as he watched the walking corpses tear her apart.

Then Ashhur screamed, and everything went to shit.

Patrick veered around, looking on as his god grabbed the sides of his head and fell to his knees. The undead he commanded stopped in their tracks, swaying in place, looking like indecisive simpletons who couldn’t decide which way to go.

“Uh, Patrick?” he heard Preston say.

“Yeah, this isn’t good,” Patrick replied.

They retreated back toward the center as the wrapped women barreled over the suddenly motionless undead. They made no sound as they charged, but it didn’t matter, for whatever noise they might have made would’ve been swallowed by the war cry of Karak’s
soldiers
. They stampeded down the road in front of
Ashhur’s
brave warriors, a massive wave of flesh, armor, and
sharpened
steel, while another division simultaneously assailed the rear of the convoy, which was still wrapped around the corner on the main road. The clash of steel and the screams of dying men overtook all else.
Patrick
, his heart beating a mile a minute, snapped his head around, staring at the wall and towers of Veldaren’s castle. Only two hundred yards at most separated them, but it could not have seemed farther away.

All the while, Ashhur remained on his knees and hunched over, screaming in pain.

Patrick glanced at Preston. “Forward!” he shouted, holding
Winterbone
out before him. “Never stop moving! Head for the castle!”

The Turncloaks, as well as a small group of Ashhur’s children and Wardens, heeded his call. Twelve horses and thirty men on foot fell in behind Patrick as he urged his stallion through the road’s cramped confines. All around him was commotion as the wrapped women leapt and stabbed and hewed, sending geysers of blood into the air. Fortunately for those from Paradise, given how tightly they were bunched and the borrowed armor they wore, more attackers fell than defenders.

That close proximity and armor would mean nothing once Karak’s soldiers met their ranks, however. And they were approaching fast, the whole screaming lot of them. Patrick finally reached the front of the line to find Ahaesarus, no longer on horseback, trying to organize the terrified men who formed the front line. Half of them had no shields. There were undead here too, standing still, wavering, and useless for anything but a simple obstruction.

Patrick tossed his shield to one of the men without one. “All of you, do the same!” he shouted to his ever-growing squad. One by one they handed over their shields to the men forming the barricade. “And any of you who wish for a good death this day, follow us!” A few chose to line up behind him, but most simply knelt there, shivering behind their shields. A couple of them even tried to scurry back away from the front. Patrick turned away quickly before he snapped at them. The Master Warden could handle the cravens. He had better work to do.

“Onward!” he shouted, kicking at his stallion. He took off at a gallop, knocking aside bunches of stagnant undead and charging straight for the onrushing soldiers. The Turncloaks fanned out to either side of him. Pikes and shields were raised, but that didn’t slow either party’s advance.

Patrick crashed into the first row of soldiers, barely turning his body to the side fast enough to miss a lunging pike. His stallion hollered in pain as the animal was battered by a soldier’s hardened steel, but it pressed onward, urged on by his commands. From atop the beast Patrick brought Winterbone down again and again, cleaving through armor, batting aside enemy blades, slamming those who tried to yank him from the saddle with his elbows. And still he kept yelling,
“Hyah!”
to keep his stallion pushing forward.

The unified cry of a thousand souls broke above the din of battle, and Patrick kicked a man in the face and turned around. It seemed Ahaesarus had decided a new strategy was necessary. Instead of waiting to be run through by the enemy, the massive throng of Paradise’s defenders had followed Patrick’s lead, hurtling past the dormant undead and into Karak’s soldiers. Bodies collided, steel crashed. It was absolute pandemonium.