Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (71 page)

*
* * * * * * *

With the dragon’s withdrawal, the goblins pressed the
attack, no longer fearing the collateral carnage their deity was wont to
inflict. Brannis had seen Jadefire fly up to the glacier and had noticed Rashan
follow shortly thereafter.

When did
he
arrive? And what is he scheming at?
Brannis wondered when no sign of fighting broke out between the bloodthirsty
demon and the green-scaled force of nature.
I do not know how he got the
dragon to stop attacking, but I like our chances better against the army of
goblins than against that beast.

“Fall back! Reform ranks!” Brannis shouted.

With the dragon out of the calculation, the battle
could be fought on Kadrin terms, no longer dodging around buildings to keep out
of the path of the dragonfire that had claimed all too many of Duke Pellaton’s
men already.

“Sir Garen, take command of the north half and have
them fall back to the castle. I shall hold the main gate to the undercity.”

The fighting was chaotic. The goblins were still
equipped with climbing claws from their initial ascent of the mountainside. Now
that the battle was being fought in the streets, the goblin soldiers were
taking advantage of the urban terrain and scaling the walls of buildings to
gain advantage on the Kadrins, who were staying at ground level.

A spear clanged against the side of Brannis’s helmet.
The wards on the armor prevented him from even feeling the blow.

How many times over would I have died today had I been
armored as my knights? The soldiers wear just mail, and the militia just what
they have for sturdy clothes.

Brannis saw the goblin whose spear had sought him, on
the third-story balcony of a nearby house. Brannis dug Avalanche into the
ground and gave a flick of his wrist. The irresistible blade uprooted paving
stones and flung them skyward in a spray in the direction of the spear-thrower,
who ducked back inside the building. Brannis paid it no mind and turned his
attentions back to the organization of his forces.

The Kadrins were reforming, but slowly. The goblins
outnumbered them badly and were taking their toll on the scattered human
fighters, sealing off many pockets of defenders and hedging them in, cutting
them down. There were enough, though, that two fronts could both make a
disciplined retreats back to the castle and undercity gates, respectively.

Brannis stood at the fore of the retreat, keeping a
wide swath around him clear of invaders. The goblins were no fools and made
every effort to avoid the gold-armored purveyor of death, covered in much blood
of their kind. Spear-and-shield was a slow fighting style, easy to defend with
and wearying to push back. Numbers. It was all down to numbers, as the Kadrin
soldiers could only hold out so long against exhaustion and the cold.

Cold was one ally, however, that Brannis could not
afford to underestimate. The goblins were a thin, wiry people, with little
insulating their bodies. They wore heavy—for them, at least—clothing, but they
just did not generate the kind of body heat to keep apace with the Raynesdark
nightfall. They fought like crazed animals knowing this; it kept their bodies
warm, and it drove the humans farther and farther toward the warm security of
the sheltering undercity. Once the goblins took the fighting underground, the
cold would no longer hamper the scrawny invaders.

Yet minute by minute, the goblins advanced, despite
Brannis’s best efforts to hold them back. Brannis moved up and down the line of
spearmen, forcing the goblins back anywhere he found a spot weakening against
the onslaught. He had lost all track of time once the sun had set. Fires burned
here and there still from the dragon’s attacks, but the battle was being fought
largely by moonlight. The endless horde of goblins seemed to pour out of the
dark nothingness beyond his vision. A score would die at his feet, and from
down side streets and around corners came more. Brannis knew rationally that
there was an end to them somewhere, but he doubted whether they would see it.

Kthooom!

Brannis and two men behind him were thrown clear of
the front lines by cannon fire. The artillery had arrived.

*
* * * * * * *

Iridan vomited all down his chin and chest. With his
arms trapped at his sides beneath the dirt and held upright, he could hardly
manage otherwise. He saw nothing of his torso and just a gruesome half-man left
buried in the soil just beneath his head. He ached throughout, especially the
parts that were not there anymore.

“It is not real. Pull yourself together,” Faolen spoke
quietly, yet harshly. The illusionist wiped away the tableau of gore and blood
he had painted over the stricken Iridan. “It fooled that Megrenn at least. Now
let us get you out of there.” Faolen looked pale and moved stiffly, but seemed
alert and in command of his power.

Iridan tried to turn to see his fellow sorcerer but
could not turn anything below his neck. Faolen saw his struggle and moved to
Iridan’s front. He looked down at the trapped apprentice warlock and smiled
reassuringly. He poked Iridan in the chest, clothed again in a black tunic,
trimmed in red and gold, and entirely
there
.

“I promise. You are not dead.”

Iridan shook his head to clear it. The world sounded a
little fuzzy and muted. Faolen sounded a long way off.

“Ears,” he mumbled.

Faolen took Iridan’s head in his hands and turned his
ear toward the half moon for better light.

“There is some blood. You shall likely feel worse for
this, but you have lived through it,” Faolen assured him. Iridan only believed
the part about feeling worse. “I do not have much for spells to undo this sort
of thing. If you have any strength left to lend aid, start moving earth.”

Through a series of small telekinesis, the two began
to un-plant Iridan from the soil.

*
* * * * * * *

Juliana cried out in shock. She had heard the cannon
fire and saw Brannis disappear from view—she had been watching him the whole
time—but did not see where he ended up. The fight was drawing closer to the
gate, and she resisted the urge to rush out to his aid to see if he had
survived. She suspected he had, wearing that fabulously enchanted armor Warlock
Rashan had outfitted him with, but there were limits to all magic, and she
hoped that Liead’s armor had not found its own.

 
Kthooom!

Juliana saw that the goblins had discovered grapeshot,
when crushed paving stone clattered against her shielding spell. The spell
held, but the soldiers nearby had not been so well protected by their armor.
Juliana saw that the men who had hung by the gate along with her were largely
gone, bleeding their last upon the stone roadway that led down into the bowels
of the city.

Time to end this vigil and shut the gate.

“Get inside!” Juliana shouted. “I am dropping the
portcullis!”

A short way from the gateway, there was a heavy wooden
door, from whence the guards controlled the workings of the portcullis. She
rushed inside and saw there was no one within.

Must have been among those killed while watching the
battle
, she assumed.

There was a crank like a ship’s wheel, with handholds
all around, and beside it a lever. If she were to pull the lever, it would
release the catch that kept back the weight of the portcullis. The whole thing
would crash down, and any who were caught on the wrong side would be trapped at
the mercy of the goblin army.

Back to the doorway, she poked her head out and
watched as the Kadrins withdrew to the safety of the undercity side of the gate.
They did not flee, but gave ground and kept back the goblins from following
them in, at least as well as they could. When she saw that the line held right
at the entrance, she went in and gave the lever a great heave. It took all her
weight on it to move the handle, but it was enough, and outside she could hear
the great iron grate crash down into place, separating the two armies. She
collapsed against the doorway in relief, watching to see the Kadrin defenders
and goblin invaders jabbing through the bars at each other with their spears.

Suddenly the goblins pulled back and scattered. The
Kadrin defenders did not react in time, but Juliana dove back within the gate
control room.

 
Kthooom! Kthooom! Kthooom! Kthooom!

Metal shrieked and groaned, screams of iron and men
mingled, and a light rain of rock fell from the ceiling of the passageway.
Juliana peered outside and saw that there was a hole in the portcullis large
enough for the goblins to run through three abreast. She quickly pulled the
door closed behind her and barred it before they got around to doing so.

There was a second door within the control room, on
the far side from the one she had entered from. She opened in and rushed
through. She caught herself immediately, though, grabbing the doorjamb before
she slammed into the next wall, not a full running pace away. The door had led
her to nothing more than a garderobe, put in place for the soldiers stationed
at the gate.

Juliana could hear the goblins pouring through the
ruins of the gate, driving the surviving human defenders before them. She ran
back across to the outside door—still barred and as yet disregarded by the
goblins—and pulled out one of her daggers. Frantically she carved the runes of
a protective ward on the wood of the door.

*
* * * * * * *

“Hmm, it seems your army is retreating underground,
demon,” Nihaxtukali observed, chuckling—a deep bass that was felt through the
warlock’s whole body.

Why, yes, I had noticed, you great reptilian town
crier.

The dragon’s eyes were far better than his own, but
Rashan wagered that his aether-vision was stronger. He used it nearly
constantly and saw what befell in the gateway and just before it, where the
dragon’s eyesight was blocked by rock and snow. Nihaxtukali most certainly
could see the aether too, but through so much dead earth, he doubted she could
watch what he saw.

“Those toys your tinkers made have done admirably,”
Rashan commented sweetly, trying to keep the contempt out of his voice.

He had not found a weakness to exploit, and the battle
was going toward the sewers, both literally and figuratively. His eyes played
along the scales and curves of the dragon’s form, watching the interplay of
muscle and sinew from her fidgeting and deducing the anatomy beneath.

“Why do you keep looking at me, demon?” Nihaxtukali
demanded, suddenly suspicious.

She brought her head down level with Rashan. The great
dragon’s nostrils were at his head height, her fangs longer than his body. It
was beginning to occur to her that the demon was
much
too small to be a
threat physically. If she could just wait until she could draw up all the
aether in the immediate area—starving him of magic—she could have her chance to
destroy him.

“I have never seen a dragon before, let alone so close
up. Pardon me if I cannot help myself marveling at your beauty. Would that the
ancient gods had taken so much care in crafting humans,” Rashan said.

It was commonly held that dragons were vain creatures,
and his musings on their beauty had enough truth to it that he hoped it
assuaged Nihaxtukali’s suspicions. He had not worked magic since they had taken
up their vantage on the glacier. His Source, ever industrious, had been
supplying more than his body required for that whole time. His normal habit of
siphoning that excess off into multitudes of tiny magics had been put on hold,
and his reserve of aether was growing. Soon he would either have to find his
spot for an ambush, or find a way to begin venting off that extra aether
without Nihaxtukali noticing.

*
* * * * * * *

Brannis spat blood, nauseated. It was not his own.
Whomever had fallen atop him had only done so from the collarbone up. It took
him a moment to gather himself once he realized he had been blown clear of the
immediate fighting. Fallen among the corpses, he had been ignored by the goblin
forces. It would seem that they trained their soldiers well enough that they
did not stop mid battle to plunder.

Brannis wished he was sensitive enough to tell if the
warded armor was depleted. He could barely believe the blow he had just survived,
both the initial impact and slamming into the western cliff wall of the city
afterward. He was still mashed against the rock, blood dripping all over him.
Gagging at the mess and smell, he turned onto his hands and knees.

Where is it?
Brannis wondered, not seeing his sword about. He looked to see if it had driven
itself clear into the rock, but found no hole to mark its entrance.
It must
have been knocked loose when I was hit. When … I … dropped it.

Realization dawned, and Brannis remembered the nature of
Avalanche. He looked up and found the sword hanging in the air a few paces back
the way he had flown.

Looking back that way, he saw that the portcullis had
been blasted though, and goblins poured through into the undercity. Of the
defenders at the gate, he saw none. There were cannons being wheeled through as
well, interrupting the flow of troops as their heavy carriages were maneuvered
through the ragged opening.