Inheritance (96 page)

He shook the sweat from his eyes, then moved around the body and the pile of scattered bricks, hopping from one patch of open ground to the next, much as he used to hop along the stones by the Anora River.

The battle was going badly. That much was obvious. He and his warriors had remained close to the outer wall for at least a quarter of an hour, fighting off the advancing waves of soldiers, but then they had allowed the soldiers to lure them back among the buildings. In retrospect, that had been a mistake. Fighting in the streets was desperate and bloody and confusing. His battalion had become spread out, and only a small number of his warriors remained close by—men from Carvahall, mostly, along with four elves and several Urgals. The rest were scattered among the nearby streets, fighting on their own, without direction.

Worse, for some reason that the elves and other spellcasters could not explain, magic no longer seemed to be working as it should. They had discovered this when one of the elves had tried to kill a soldier with a spell, only to have a Varden warrior fall down dead instead, consumed by the swarm of beetles the elf had summoned forth. His death had sickened Roran; it was a horrible, senseless way to die, and it might have happened to any of them.

Off to their right, closer to the main gate, Lord Barst was still rampaging through the main body of the Varden’s army. Roran had caught sight of him several times: on foot now, striding among the
humans, elves, and dwarves and dashing them aside like so many ninepins with his huge black mace. No one had been able to stop the hulking man, much less wound him, and those around him scrambled to stay out of reach of his fearsome weapon.

Roran had also seen King Orik and a group of dwarves hewing their way through a group of soldiers. Orik’s jeweled helm flashed in the light as he swung his mighty war hammer, Volund. Behind him, his warriors shouted, “Vor Orikz korda!”

Fifty feet past Orik, Roran had glimpsed Queen Islanzadí whirling through the battle, her red cape flying and her shining armor as bright as a star amid the dark mass of bodies. About her head had flitted the white raven that was her companion. What little Roran saw of Islanzadí impressed him with her skill, ferocity, and bravery. She reminded him of Arya, but he thought that the queen might be the greater warrior.

A cluster of five soldiers charged around the corner of a house and nearly ran into Roran. Shouting, they leveled their spears and did their best to skewer him like a roast chicken. He ducked and dodged and, with his own spear, caught one of the men in the throat. The soldier remained on his feet for a minute more, but he could not breathe properly and soon he fell to the ground, tangling the legs of his companions.

Roran seized the opportunity, stabbing and cutting with abandon. One of the soldiers managed to land a blow on Roran’s right shoulder, and Roran felt the familiar decrease in his strength as his wards deflected the blade.

He was surprised that the wards protected him. Only a few moments before, they had failed to stop the rim of a shield from tearing open the skin on his left cheek. He wished that whatever was happening with the magic would resolve itself one way or another. As it was, he dared not risk leaving himself open for even the slightest blow.

Roran advanced toward the last two soldiers, but before he reached them, there was a blur of steel, and then their heads dropped
to the cobblestones, surprised expressions on their faces. The bodies collapsed, and behind them Roran saw the herbalist Angela, garbed in her green and black armor and carrying her sword-staff. Close by her side were a pair of werecats, one in the shape of a brindle-haired girl with sharp, bloodstained teeth and a long dagger, the other in the shape of an animal. He thought it might have been Solembum, but he was not sure.

“Roran! How nice to see you,” said the herbalist with a smile that seemed altogether too cheery considering the circumstances. “Imagine meeting here!”

“Better here than in the grave!” he shouted, picking up an extra spear and heaving it at a man farther down the street.

“Well said!”

“I thought you went with Eragon?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t ask me, and I wouldn’t have gone if he had. I’m no match for Galbatorix. Besides, Eragon has the Eldunarí to help him.”

“You know?” he asked, shocked.

She winked at him from under the lip of her helm. “I know lots of things.”

He grunted and tucked his shoulder behind his shield as he rammed into another group of soldiers. The herbalist and the werecats joined him, as did Horst, Mandel, and several others.

“Where’s your hammer?” shouted Angela as she spun her bladed staff, blocking and cutting at the same time.

“Lost! I dropped it.”

Someone howled with pain behind him. As soon as he dared, Roran looked back and saw Baldor clutching the stump of his right arm. On the ground, his hand lay twitching.

Roran ran back to him, leaping over several corpses along the way. Horst was already by his son’s side, fending off the soldier who had severed Baldor’s hand.

Drawing his dagger, Roran cut a strip of cloth from the tunic of
a fallen soldier, then said, “Here!” and tied it around the stump of Baldor’s arm, stanching the bleeding.

The herbalist knelt next to them, and Roran said, “Can you help him?”

She shook her head. “Not here. If I use magic, it might end up killing him. If you can get him out of the city, though, the elves can probably save his hand.”

Roran hesitated. He was not sure he dared spare anyone to escort Baldor safely out of Urû’baen. However, without a hand, Baldor would face a hard life, and Roran had no desire to condemn him to that.

“If you won’t take him, I will,” bellowed Horst.

Roran ducked as a stone the size of a hog flew past overhead and glanced off the front of a house, scattering pieces of masonry through the air. Inside the building, someone screamed.

“No. We need you.” Turning, Roran whistled and picked two warriors: the old cobbler Loring and an Urgal. “Get him to the elves’ healers as fast as you can,” he said, pushing Baldor toward them. As he went, Baldor picked up his hand and tucked it under his hauberk.

The Urgal snarled and said in a thick accent that Roran barely understood, “No! I stay. I fight!” He struck his sword against his shield.

Roran stepped over, grabbed one of the creature’s horns, and pulled on it until he had twisted the Urgal’s head halfway around. “You’ll do as I say,” Roran growled. “Besides, it’s not an easy task. Protect him and you’ll win much glory for you and your tribe.”

The Urgal’s eyes seemed to brighten. “Much glory?” he said, mashing the words between his heavy teeth.

“Much glory!” Roran confirmed.

“I do it, Stronghammer!”

With a sense of relief, Roran watched the three of them depart, heading toward the outer wall, so that they might skirt most of the
fighting. He was also pleased to see the human-shaped werecat follow after them, the feral, brindle-haired girl swinging her head from side to side as she scented the air.

Then another group of soldiers attacked, and all thoughts of Baldor left Roran’s mind. He hated fighting with a spear instead of a hammer, but he made do, and after a time, the street again grew calm. He knew the respite would be short.

He took the opportunity to sit on the front doorstep of a house and try to regain his breath. The soldiers seemed as fresh as ever, but he could feel exhaustion dragging on his limbs. He doubted he could keep going for much longer without making a fatal mistake.

As he sat panting, he listened to the shouts and screams coming from the direction of Urû’baen’s ruined front gate. It was difficult to tell what was happening from the general clamor, but he suspected the Varden were getting pushed back, for the noise seemed to be receding slightly. Amid the commotion, he could hear the regular
crack
of Lord Barst’s mace striking warrior after warrior, and then the increase in cries that invariably followed.

Roran made himself stand. If he sat for much longer, his muscles would start to stiffen. A moment after he moved away from the doorstep, the contents of a chamber pot splashed across the spot where he had just been.

“Murderers!” shouted a woman above him, and then a pair of shutters banged shut.

Roran snorted and picked his way around bodies as he led his remaining warriors over to the nearest cross street.

They paused, wary, when a soldier raced past, panic upon his face. Close behind, a pack of yowling housecats chased after him, blood dripping from the fur around their mouths.

Roran smiled and started forward again.

He stopped a second later when a group of dwarves with red beards ran toward them from deeper within the city. “Ready yourself!” one shouted. “We have a whole pack of soldiers nipping at our heels, a few hundred of them, at least.”

Roran looked back up the empty cross street. “Perhaps you lost—” he began to say, and then stopped when a line of crimson tunics appeared around the corner of a building a few hundred feet away. More and more soldiers followed, pouring into the street like a swarm of red ants.

“Back!” Roran shouted. “Back!”
We have to find somewhere defensible
. The outer wall was too far away, and none of the houses were large enough to have enclosed courtyards.

As Roran ran down the street with his warriors, a dozen or so arrows landed around them.

Roran stumbled and fell, writhing, as a bolt of pain shot up his spine from the small of his back. It felt as if someone had jabbed him with a large iron bar.

A second later, the herbalist was by his side. She tugged at something behind him, and Roran screamed. Then the pain decreased, and he found himself able to see clearly again.

The herbalist showed him an arrow with a bloody tip before throwing it away. “Your mail stopped most of it,” she said as she helped him to his feet.

Gritting his teeth, Roran ran with her to rejoin their group. Every step pained him now, and if he bent at the waist too far, his back spasmed and he found it almost impossible to move.

He saw no good places to make a stand, and the soldiers were getting closer, so at last he shouted, “Stop! Form up! Elves to the sides! Urgals front and center!”

Roran took his place near the front, along with Darmmen, Albriech, the Urgals, and one of the red-bearded dwarves.

“So you are the one they call Stronghammer,” said the dwarf as they watched the advance of the soldiers. “I fought alongside your hearth-brother in Farthen Dûr. It is mine honor to fight with you as well.”

Roran grunted. He just hoped he could stay on his feet.

Then the soldiers crashed into them, shoving them back through sheer weight. Roran set his shoulder against his shield and pushed
with all his might. Swords and spears stuck through the gaps in the wall of overlapping shields; he felt one scrape against his side, but his hauberk protected him.

The elves and the Urgals proved invaluable. They broke the soldiers’ lines and earned Roran and the other warriors room to swing their weapons. At the edge of his vision, Roran saw the dwarf stabbing the soldiers in the legs, feet, and groin, causing many to fall.

The supply of soldiers seemed endless, however, and Roran found himself forced backward step by step. Not even the elves could stem the tide of men, try though they might. Othíara, the elf woman Roran had spoken to outside the city wall, died from an arrow in the neck, and the remaining elves received many wounds.

Roran was injured several more times himself: a cut on the upper part of his right calf, which would have hamstrung him if it had been a little bit higher; another cut on the thigh of the same leg, where a sword had slipped under the edge of his hauberk; a nasty scrape on his neck, where he hit himself with his own shield; a stab wound on the inner part of his right leg that fortunately missed the major arteries; and more bruises than he could count. He felt as if every part of himself had been beaten soundly with a wooden mallet and then a pair of clumsy men had used him as a target for knife throwing.

He dropped back from the front line a few times to rest his arms and catch his breath, but he always rejoined the fight soon afterward.

Then the buildings opened up around them, and Roran realized that the soldiers had succeeded in driving them into the square before Urû’baen’s broken gate, and that there were now enemies behind them as well as before them.

He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the elves and the Varden retreating before Barst and his soldiers.

“Right!” shouted Roran. “Right! Up against the buildings!” He pointed with his bloody spear.

With some difficulty, the warriors packed behind him edged to
the side and onto the steps of a huge stone building fronted with a double row of pillars as tall as any of the trees in the Spine. Between the pillars, Roran glimpsed the dark, yawning shape of an open archway big enough to accommodate Saphira, if not Shruikan.

“Up! Up!” Roran shouted, and the men, dwarves, elves, and Urgals ran with him to the top of the stairs. There they set themselves among the pillars and repelled the wave of soldiers that charged after them. From their vantage point, which was perhaps twenty feet above the level of the streets, Roran saw that the Empire had nearly forced the Varden and the elves back out the gaping hole in the outer wall.

We’re going to lose
, he thought with sudden desperation.

The soldiers charged up the steps once again. Roran dodged a spear and kicked its owner in the belly, knocking the soldier and two other men down the stairs.

From one of the ballistae on a nearby wall tower, a javelin streaked down toward Lord Barst. When it was still a few yards from him, the javelin burst into flames, then crumbled into dust, as did every arrow shot at the armored man.

We have to kill him
, thought Roran. If Barst fell, then the soldiers would likely break and lose confidence. But given that both the elves and the Kull had failed to stop him, it seemed doubtful that anyone other than Eragon could.

Even as he continued to fight, Roran kept glancing at the large, armored figure, hoping to see something that might provide a way to defeat him. He noticed that Barst walked with a slight hitch in his stride, as if he had once injured his left knee or hip. And the man seemed a hair slower than before.