Firemoon (20 page)

The captain ordered for the catapults to launch at them, and the crews began adjusting their weapons with great hurry.

Men up on the wall signalled how to face them and how much torsion was needed and then the stones flews.

Those not busy killing invaders shouted, and after a few moments Katja realized that they were cheering. It seemed one tower had taken heavy damage. Still, she started to see the other two from her position, like slow, terrible giants peeking into the city.

The catapult crews worked hard to prepare the next launches and officers on the wall lined their men up to receive the towers’ cargo. And just then Katja felt the divide between worlds tear above their heads.

She drew her sword a moment before terrible shrieks could be heard around the outer city. They clearly did not originate in this world. Animal noises were not so filled with rage and hatred, nor sound like they came from a throat made of metal. This battle had reached the next level.

Katja looked up, like most who were not fighting, and heard some kind of whoosh a moment before something large came down out of the darkness above a catapult. It was like a huge, ragged shadow and from it extended two grasping talons that each seized one man.

A large part of the shadow flapped and she realized it was a pair of wings. The monster lifted the two men up and then dropped them from the air. They screamed for a moment before hitting a roof edge, and then the street.

Flying demons!?

Katja ran towards the wall. More shrieks could be heard from above, and all who had stood near the catapult scattered.

“Monsters!” someone shouted. It was the only word she made out in the noise and chaos.

Another, or perhaps the same, winged shadow dove at the wall. Men threw themselves down on the walkway, but some still got hit with the talons. It flew back up out of sight and almost immediately another one attacked a different part of the wall.

A third one attacked another catapult about a hundred meters away from Katja. Before she could decide whether to attack it or go up on the wall, it had ripped a man to death, and flown back out of the reach of spears.

She made for the stairs.

Some pointed spears at these new foes and Katja heard arrows shoot up into the air, but it was difficult to predict their movements. And they didn’t need to destroy the defenders by themselves. They just had to frighten and distract them as the northerners made their way up.

One demon swooped close to the wall as Katja was halfway up the stairs, and she got a decent look at it in the firelight. It was like an exaggerated, man-sized raptor, except she couldn’t tell whether it had feathers or if its flesh was shaped like that. The beak had certain properties of a snout and there was something disturbingly human about the rest of the head.

Katja made it up onto the wall and quickly went over the situation.

Dead and wounded lay around and arrows still hit the battlements. The two towers inched the final meters towards the wall. The northerners, dressed in thick coats, high helmets and all with bushy moustaches, kept coming up the ladders, and in two places they had gained a foothold that made the ascent easier for their comrades. The defenders were having to both fight them and watch out for the flying demons, and officers tried to get a handle on this development and turn spears towards men and monsters alike.

In general, the defenders seemed to be losing. The raptors caused too much chaos, though the northerners seemed to fear them too.

She saw another glaive in the hands of a dead man and picked it up.

War cries echoed from within the confines of the towers. Men were preparing for the assault that was to come in a few moments. The archers had mostly stopped due to the winged demons, and those pushing the towers could work uninterrupted.

The din was deafening.

Two raptors circled above the streets and ignored the arrows hitting them. One suddenly did a sharp dive and let loose a long, powerful shriek as it flew just above the wall, talons extended. Men from both sides threw themselves down as it passed, like dominoes falling.

Katja knelt, channelled the Sentinel Flame into her weapon and held it high above her head. The blade hit the raptor’s chest as it passed over, and momentum drove it through the entire body with the burning sound that had become familiar to her.

The impact jostled her onto her side, but she saw the winged demon fall and smack into the wall before dropping onto the cobblestones. She peered over the edge to assure herself it was dead and then stood up.

Those closest to her had seen what she had done, and she met with no few stares the moment before the siege towers’ boarding-bridge dropped down on the battlements, and the north’s heavily armoured professional soldiers burst out.

Men reacted to the attack, and Katja looked about for the other demons.

She spotted two, as a fierce fight began fifteen metres away from her. They circled above the battle and shrieked angrily. They saw her, and recognized a natural enemy.

One began a dive from the north and the other circled to the south. They probably meant to come at her from opposite directions, which would probably utterly scatter the defenders’ lines.

Katja took four steps and leapt down onto the stairs from some height. She could not roll and so had to take the full force of the landing. The raptors changed direction to get at her and she readied the glaive.

Four soldiers came running up the stairs, but stopped in shock as they saw what was coming.

As the closer bird began the killing swoop Katja held her palm out and lit the Flame in the air about ten metres away. The demon had no time to turn and sped right into the worst thing that could happen to it.

Its flesh broke apart in a moment with a sound much like water meeting fire, and the demon wailed. It hit the steps almost in pieces.

Katja did not have Serdra’s nimbleness with the Flame, and as she sensed the other one coming in from behind she turned and had to slash with steel alone.

The blade hit the talons and did some damage, but the demon’s momentum knocked her off-balance and almost off the stairs. She slashed again but the demon’s wings bore it out of range for a moment, and then the beak came at her in a powerful strike. Katja had still not recovered her balance and could only save herself by dropping down.

She aimed at a shed roof and hit fairly precisely. She managed to roll enough to soften the landing, but the roof ended and she rolled off and onto the cobblestones. The glaive fell from her grip.

She turned around as quickly as her battered lungs allowed and began summoning the Sentinel Flame, but the raptor leapt down from the stairs and onto the shed.

Katja rolled away and rose dazedly with the sword in her hand as the monster jumped down at her and approached with the beak wide open.

A soldier came running with a desperate cry and drove a spear into the monster’s side with a strong thrust. It shrieked and turned the beak on him, which allowed Katja to slash it in the neck. The wound was deep but the head stayed on and turned back to her.

Three other men came from another direction with swords and struck at the monster. It spread its wings out and stopped all but one, who stabbed it in the torso.

Another shudder went through the badly injured raptor and Katja was able to put the Flame into the sword and swing.

The head hit the ground.

“They can be killed!” she shouted with all her strength, in the hope she would be heard over the noise.

She ran back to the stairs before anyone could speak or get in her way. Jormundur was by the gate and was giving orders and fighting to re-establish order. Men ran up every available ladder and set of stairs to fill the gaps left by the fallen and the wounded.

Battle, battle, battle!
Katja’s nerves and veins thought in rhythm with her heartbeat. Men screamed in pain, the sick aura of sorcery filled the air, danger was all around, the future of the city and the Inner Sea was in terrible peril and she was frightened. But she
enjoyed
it.

The narrow stairs were quite crowded and Katja wasn’t quite wild enough to shove men off them to get up sooner. She glimpsed fire on top of the wall and knew people were trying to set the towers ablaze. She also both felt and saw the fourth raptor dive towards her before she’d taken four steps.

“Spears, spears, it is coming, spears!” someone shouted, and he was heeded. The men around Katja hurriedly raised their spears as the screeching nightmare came at them at great speed.

Again Katja was reminded that she wasn’t Serdra. Casting the Sentinel Flame so far out to destroy the second monster had drained her. So she clutched the sword and waited a moment to see if that power would really be needed.

Every man pointed his spear directly at the demon as it came snapping and clawing, and it took a sharp turn away from the wall to avoid the tips.

Katja saw an opportunity and seized it. She rushed up eight steps in three strides, bumping hard into several men, and then leapt after the monster with the sword glowing red.

The Flame sheared through the left wing and severed it almost completely. The beast shrieked and fell and Katja landed on two men. All three of them hit the ground and the demonic raptor landed on its head close by. Katja had no sooner risen than men rushed at the maimed monster with spears, axes and glaives.

It lashed out and bit and a few men were knocked about, but surrounded and wounded it stood little chance. They slashed and stabbed it to death and Katja left the scene.

She looked about, wondering what to do next, and then spotted Omar. He was pressing himself up against a cart so as not to be born along the flow of people, and stared at her with terrified eyes.

She strode briskly towards him and motioned for him to meet her. Evidently he had indeed followed her about. The boy had pluck.

“Tell the captain that the last one has left!” she said. The final demon’s aura had vanished from the city. “The last raptor is gone!”

She pushed him on his way and then joined with the flow heading up onto the wall. The demon’s carcass was crumbling apart and so the men had finally stopped hacking at it and were heading up. It was slow, crowded going and once up there didn’t seem to be much for her to do.

The order that had been established had done it. Most of the ladders had been felled by breaking apart the hooks, both of the towers were on fire and the archers were back at the battlements. The losses outside of the wall had to be terrible.

Those northerners who had not been able to flee into the towers were cornered and waged a desperate dying stand with war cries on their lips.

Spears and glaives decided the range at which the fighting was done, and she saw no way to get her sword involved. But it seemed she didn’t need to.

She abandoned the final fighting as well as the crush on the walkway allowed and tried to apply her sensitivity through all the distractions. She still did not sense the demon. If it was still in this world it had fled within the overpowering aura of the camp.

The assault seemed to have ceased for now. And as the final northerners died and officers established ever more order, she began to feel it safe to make herself scarce.

Several men gawked at her as she passed them on her way to a narrow wooden ladder, but there was still too much going on for anyone to be able to speak to her. So she made it down without being accosted, and once there getting away from the crowds was a relatively minor matter.

She found herself a dark alley, leaned up against a wall and sighed. For the moment the danger had passed. But the Brotherhood would now know that a Redcloak was in the city.  She would just have to hope they had no more hidden agents.

What might they try next?

The northerners had suffered considerable casualties, but from what she understood, this assault had mostly been the ghost battalion. The real soldiers would be more present in the next fight.

A certain spark lit in her mind.

The ghost battalion?

She gasped, abandoned her spot in the alley and ran back to the wall. The archers had stopped, the towers burned ever brighter, and the noise wasn’t nearly so deafening. Men were mostly moving bodies down from the wall and tending to the wounded.

Finding Jormundur was easy. She just had to spot the largest cluster of officers and head that way. She circled to find a way through it and headed briskly at him. A bodyguard intercepted her, but the captain pushed him aside as he saw her coming.

She stepped up to Jormundur and leaned in.

“The corpses must be beheaded.”

“What?” the man said, appalled.

“The corpses must be beheaded,” she repeated. “Before Peter Savaren sends evil spirits into them. I have seen such a thing done, and it would be a canny trick to play, now that we think the battle is over.”

“That is a funeral for criminals and traitors,” Jormundur said with a sour taste in his mouth. “Not for the honoured dead. We can have incense burned and...”

“It does no good against such things,” she asserted. “And the bodies must be fresh, so in his shoes I would perform the spell soon.”