Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (41 page)

The orcs threw everything they had at the dragon. Arrows glanced off her scales like fleas jumping off a dog, but a few stuck deep. A fireball blasted her hard enough to make her wobble in flight. Just as she was about to bank and snap up a wyvern in her jaws, another one swooped down and slung its tail around, stinging her with its tail-barb.

Svannostel veered away, slapping the wyvern with her own tail. It didn’t have a barb, but it was heavy as an oak tree trunk. The wyvern went straight down, tried to catch itself, and crashed in front of a charging rhino. The driver tried to turn away, but the big beast trampled the fallen wyvern.

Suddenly I was in the air, tumbling end over end until I hit something hard enough to knock out all my wind. All I could see at first was a bunch of green and yellow explosions. I felt the heat of the fireball that flipped us. I heard the horses screaming. I couldn’t figure out which way was up.

As soon as I stood, something knocked me back down again. There were feet running past me on all sides. Blinking and gasping for breath, I got to my hands and knees and crawled until I could see again.

The Red Carriage lay on its side, and so did the team, still caught in their harnesses. A little way past them, Janneke staggered to her feet. She’d lost her helm in the fall. That was becoming a habit.

Kaid’s Band were jumping down from their horses and forming a shield wall around the carriage. They covered maybe half.

The boss stood on the side of the carriage facing the sky. He pulled Illyria up through one side window while Arnisant scrambled out of the other, followed by Zora and her flag. Eando staggered around from the other side. He had two black eyes and a bloody nose. The others didn’t look much better.

“Get in formation!” Kaid yelled at Janneke.

All around us, the three orc bands regrouped. Two formed up together, while the third stood off to the side, too good for the others, or too bad. Their chief was big as an ogre—maybe he
was
an ogre—and he wore a cape of tattooed Shoanti skin.

It was too much to hope that they’d fight each other, but I prayed anyway. “Sweet Desna, I would appreciate a smile about now.”

One of Kaid’s girls—Stiletto—cut the horses loose from the carriage. The big fellows stood up and ran like hell in the direction of Ustalav. At least none of them had broken a leg, which was some kind of miracle. If Lady Luck was smiling on anybody just then, it was those horses. I hoped they ran all the way back to Elfland and got put out to stud.

The rest of us weren’t going to be so lucky.

The bigger of the two orc bands started up their war music. I could feel the drums pounding on my teeth. Their shamans shouted blessings on the troops. The chief barked out a speech, working them up into a good lather.

The boss floated down from the sky and put a few riffle scrolls into my hand.

“Use them all,” he said, before taking his own advice. We filled ourselves with strength and quickness and all the good magic we had left. Illyria busted out her own scrolls and kept a wand in one hand.

Eando had his sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. He gave me a nod and said, “I’m with you, all right?”

“All right,” I said.

“I’m with you, too,” said Zora. She’d already unfurled her flag. I saw she’d inserted a spearhead at the top. She knew this was going to be more than a Korvosan alley scuffle.

“The more the merrier.”

When they came, the orcs deafened us with horns and drums. The way they smelled, they almost suffocated us, too.

They smashed into Kaid’s mercenaries, punching holes through the line of shields. Those that broke past got arcane missiles in the face. A shaman made it through, turning his tusked head to pick a target. Before he could cast his spell, Illyria whipped a black lash of magic around his throat.

Seeing that, Eando and I got on either side of him, left our graffiti, and got away just as his guts spilled down to his ankles. Zora came in a moment too late, but that was just as well. Her face turned green at the sight of the eviscerated orc.

“Fill the gaps!” shouted Kaid. Her mercs obeyed, and the wall shrank a few feet shorter.

A berserker leaped the shield wall. He stood for a second on top of the carriage, deciding who to chop first. Like the shaman before him, he took too long. The boss put a lightning bolt through both him and the rhino charging into the wall. It fell on it side, sliding through Kaid’s women and crushing the carriage boot and rear wheels.

Shadows fell across the field around us, growing smaller as they got close. Maybe more wyverns had come our way, I thought. But looking up I saw eight big rocks falling among the bad guys. Each one crushed an orc into a puddle. The screams came from the survivors as the boulders unfolded into orc-sized earth spirits and showed them the true meaning of berserk.

“Kazyah!” yelled Zora. She kept her flag moving, slapping arrows out of the air, snatching spells before they could hit us, and sometimes spearing an orc in the eye.

Once more in the form of an earth spirit, Kazyah waded into the orcs. She was bigger than all of the elementals she’d hurled at them combined. She snatched up orcs and crushed them in her stony fingers. The orcs sank spears in her. They hacked at her with axes and hammers. She started to chip away.

I yelled, “She needs help!”

“Stay within the shield wall,” said the boss.

It didn’t matter that he was right. I didn’t like leaving Kazyah out there by herself.

Another orc made it over the shield wall. Somebody perforated him with arcane missiles. Eando cut him across the chest. I put the big knife in his spleen. He went down, but killing him made me tired, especially after the fight in the Cenotaph. It was taking an awful lot of work to make one dead orc. If we had to do that much for every one of them, we were never going to make it.

Kazyah kept harrying the orcs outside our lines. Svannostel swept past now and then to drop lightning or bad magic on them. We killed dozens. It felt like hundreds.

More kept coming.

I was out of scrolls. Eando was down to blades. Illyria was down to her wands. Zora did what she could to support us, while another of Kaid’s Band fell every time the orcs hit the shield wall. The boss used his sword more and more. He threw away a spent riffle scroll with a look like it was his last one.

Kazyah walked into the air above the orcs like she was climbing an invisible stair. Seeing her that way reminded me of her story at the Seraph’s Stair: the old man and the granddaughter, the one growing old too fast. She let go of the elemental shape, becoming flesh and blood.

The orc spellcasters threw fire and frost at her. The archers covered her in arrows. Some flicked away as if they’d hit stone. Others sank deep into her. She threw back spells of her own, but when she looked our way she caught my eye.

For a second I saw her the way she looked before her son was born. Then I caught a glimpse of the old woman she ought to be. She looked at me and said something. I read the words off her lips:

Until our skulls are gathered.

I caught a glimpse of her skin turning to stone as she fell back into the sea of orcs. I like to think she sank into the earth and flowed through the ground somewhere far away. That’s what I like to think.

Anyway, that was the last I saw of Kazyah the Night Bear.

“I can’t believe we’re going to die fighting orcs,” said Illyria. “We survived the crypt of Zutha. This isn’t the least bit romantic!”

“Goddamned orcs,” said Eando.

“Goddamned orcs,” I agreed.

A sound of thunder rose from the south. Lightning flashed across the sky.

“Go!” said the boss. He’d just finished casting the last of his flying spells on Illyria.

“Come with me!” She reached for him. Amaranthine curled around her upper arm.

“Go now,” he said. I could tell by the way his body moved that his own spell was still working. He could have gone with her, but he stayed with us.

Illyria flew up to join Svannostel. They could fight from the sky. When the rest of us were dead, they could fly away.

The bronze dragon flew close overhead, blowing Illyria off course. Just as she righted herself, another bronze dragon followed the first.

“Am I seeing double?” said Zora.

The orcs’ cheers changed to screams of panic. The thunder kept growing louder. The front lines fell back. Kaid’s women lowered their shields, and we saw what distracted them.

An honest-to-Iomedaea cavalry charged through their rear lines. I recognized the sword and sun on their tabards. They were knights of Lastwall, dedicated to keeping the orcs bottled up in Belkzen and watching over Gallowspire, on the other side of their country. What they were doing here I couldn’t figure. For a second I thought somebody had cast an illusion, but then I remembered that Svannostel had a brother.

Who lived in Vigil.

“We’re saved!” shouted Eando.

“Don’t get cocky,” I said. “That’s when you get killed.”

He sobered up. We stuck near the boss and Zora, protecting each other’s backs as a few desperate orcs ran our way instead of toward the ranks of knights. Bloody lances plowed furrows through the orc mob.

It was still hard work, fighting off the orcs until they ran. But soon it became short work.

When it started to look clear for us, the boss flew up to join Illyria. Their hair floated in the static left behind by the dragon’s breath. They looked like the heroes in one of Illyria’s romances, soaring above the field. Beneath them, covered in dust and blood, the rest of us bundled up the wounded and closed the eyes of the dead.

Epilogue

Vigil

Varian

In the great hall of Castle Overwatch, we paid our respects at the Shattered Shield of Arnisant. Once known as the Shield of Aroden, blessed by the now-dead god of humanity, its broken remains offered mute testimony of the sacrifice demanded of those who dared oppose the Whispering Tyrant.

“Your namesake bore that escutcheon, Arnisant.” The hound looked up at me when he heard his name. I scratched his curly gray head. He had lost some of his plumpness during our recent ordeals, but I restrained myself from offering him a treat before suppertime. “He too was a very good boy.”

Arnisant looked at the shield as if he understood my words. The gesture seemed so human that even Svannostel turned her head in a querulous gesture. Her comely elven form still seemed strange to me after having fought her as a dragon in her lair. She carried the
Black Book
in a leather pack slung across her shoulders. She had assured me the book would remain secure even after she transformed back into her draconic form.

Beside her stood her brother Xostromo, whose timely arrival with the cavalry of Lastwall had spared us from making our own version of Arnisant’s sacrifice. Xostromo assumed a more natural human form than his sister’s metallic elf. He stood exactly my height, a man of Chelish features with sun-bronzed skin and silver-white hair. He wore the simple but fine garb of a monk of Iomedae, complete with its linen satchel, in which he had secured the
Bone Grimoire
.

As we emerged from the castle into bright sunlight, Xostromo turned to me. “I am pleased to meet a lord of Cheliax who honors the great general.”

“Despite the current regime, the people of Cheliax have never forgotten that Iomedae was one of us before her ascent to godhood. Nor shall we forget the sacrifice of Arnisant.”

“May your travels bring you to Vythded Monastery one day.” He offered me a martial bow. “But if they do, please do not bring the
Codex
.”

I patted my own satchel. Until we could find a reliable manner in which to destroy them, we had agreed to hide the three parts of the
Gluttonous Tome
. “While the monastery may be defensible, please consider hiding the
Grimoire
elsewhere. No, do not tell me where. Do not tell your sister, either. It is better no one else can track them as easily as I did.”

“We understand, Count,” said Svannostel. “Remember, we have some experience in this matter.”

“My apologies,” I said. “I am perhaps too accustomed to giving commands both in war and afterward.”

Xostromo said, “Will you accept Veena Heliu’s offer to teach at the War College?”

“While flattering, the Precentor Marshal’s offer was a mere courtesy.”

“I think not,” said Xostromo. “The tales of your actions in the Worldwound campaign have spread. It is only a matter of time before your part in thwarting the rise of Zutha is also known.”

On the latter point, I feared he was correct. The best I could hope was to manage the narrative before it escaped Vigil. If I could trust Eando Kline, that effort was already underway.

One after the other, the dragons clasped my hand, transformed into their true forms, and took to the air. Svannostel flew west, along the River Esk toward her lair beneath the Sleeper. Xostromo went north, toward the Hungry Mountains and his brothers and sisters in Vythded Monastery.

After watching the bronze dragons depart, Arnisant and I went to the fabled stables of Castle Overwatch. Janneke emerged as we approached. Her new black-and-red armor stood out from the bronze-and-white uniforms of the castle guard. It would match the livery of my servants perfectly.

“Your Excellency,” she said with a Chelish salute. She had been practicing the gesture ever since we agreed on her continuing service. “Your horses are fit and frisky. The hostler says there’s been another offer to buy them.”

“What did you reply?”

“Not at any price.”

“And the carriage?”

“The wainwrights repaired the wheels, but they say the damage to the body appears to be repairing itself. Is that … normal?”

“No, but it is expected.” The carriage’s creator was a druid of great power—perhaps even more powerful than Kazyah the Night Bear. Even several years since its last repair, I had barely begun to discover all of its magical attributes. “Very good, Janneke. You may have the rest of the day to yourself.”

“Have you spoken with Radovan?” she said. “That is, if I see him, should I tell him—?”