David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

“Did you call Judah your sister’s name?”

“I think I did. He had her face, rotten and disfigured.”

“Have you seen her often?”

Patrick hesitated and considered lying, but it would do no good. The Master Warden would smell the untruth as soon as it left his mouth. “Yes. I’ve been seeing her all the time. In both my dreams and my waking hours.”

“That is not normal,” Ahaesarus said, clutching his knee and leaning forward. “Let me see if I cannot find someone else lurking around in there.” He gazed deep into Patrick’s eyes as if searching for something. A few seconds later the Warden shook his head and leaned back. “I see nothing. No curse, no magic-only you. How do you feel?”

“Well, better,” said Patrick. Strangely enough, he did.

“Stress can be a demon for all of us, Patrick,” said Ahaesarus. “You have been working yourself to the bone and not sleeping. It is not healthy, and we need you healthy and alert. Go back to your friends. Lie down. Drink yourself into a stupor if you must. Just get some rest . I will bring the archers what they need.”

With that, the Master Warden gave him a pat on the leg, found his bundle of arrows in the snow, knocked the white stuff off it, and headed for the wall stairs. Patrick watched him through the falling snowflakes until he disappeared into the gathered blackness at the base of the wall. He then stretched, cracked his back, and stood up, slapping his forehead. Perhaps I should do as he says, he thought, though he also realized that, oddly enough, he really did feel better than he had in quite some time. Drained maybe, and more than a little tender in his joints, but his mind was clear. And when he glanced this way and that, taking in all that went on around him, there was no sight of his red-haired haunt.

He took a step back toward the bunker, but when he felt the lack of weight on his humped back he turned around. He had to find his sword, his precious Winterbone. Dropping to his hands and knees, he searched through the snow where he fell, and then he spotted a sword-shaped indent in a drift ten yards away. A smile stretched across his face as he crawled toward it, digging into the snow and muck with his numb fingers until they wrapped around the handle. He then rose once more, bringing Winterbone up along with him, and wiped the handle with the inside of his heavily padded jerkin before stuffing the blade back in its sheath. After that he began walking once more, the dream of drunkenness and passing out taking priority in his mind.

A few seconds later arrows again began to fall, and he had to run as fast as he could to get out of their range lest he catch one in the back. As he hopped up on the bunker and then dropped down on the other side, he spotted a wraithlike figure lurking in the shadows just out of sight.

“No,” he whispered, trying his best to ignore the apparition as he walked. “Please go away. Please, just leave me alone.”

His hope for sleep abruptly left him.

The walls are thick, but they are weakening, thought Velixar with a smile as he held the dragonglass mirror. It will end soon .

He and his god stood five hundred feet from the wall in a giant crescent-two hundred shield men to the front, protecting the three hundred archers who stood behind them, with seventy of the Ekreissar arrayed fifty feet behind the human archers, launching arrows with their stronger bows and superior aim. The rules of engagement were simple, the same as every other day: Pound the walls with the catapults, fire arrows over the ramparts, and keep Ashhur’s frightened children awake and afraid. The only new wrinkle was Lord Commander Gregorian’s surprise bombardment to the north, an attack meant to make Ashhur’s people panic. Panic meant casualties and yet another strike to their morale. The soldiers uninvolved in the attacks, more than twelve thousand of them, slept in the camp a quarter-mile away. Their bodies needed to be rested if they were going to continue the hunt for the food needed to feed an army, as well as the labor required to finish building the engines necessary to end the siege.

Karak glanced at the mirror as Velixar put it away.

“Have you learned anything new?” the god asked.

“I have,” he said. “I had a breakthrough tonight. I could actually see through his waking mind. Your brother, he is making weapons, swords, and axes along with replenishing their stores of arrows. They have built a bunker, a six-hundred-foot trench running along the left of the main gate, shielded by a stone partition that faces the wall.”

“What else?”

“They have only five hundred Wardens left, who act as nursemaids, as usual. Also, the only section of the wall where they have mounted permanent defenses is right here in front of us. The rest, mile after mile of it, has been ignored.” Velixar grimaced, picturing the Lord Commander ordering boulders thrown against-and over-the wall to the north. “It might have been useful to know that earlier. But perhaps it is not all bad. They will now thin out their resources to keep the entirety of the wall guarded. When we choose to make our final push, they will be hopelessly outnumbered and unable to resist.”

“What of my brother’s children? Are they capable warriors? Is there a secondary gate into the settlement that our scouts have not yet found?”

Velixar frowned. “I do not know. I am still finding it difficult to pierce Patrick’s mind; he resists me far more than I expected and I must rely on trickery and exhaustion until he breaks. I thought him a buffoon, but he seems cannier and wiser than he lets on. In addition, I must be careful. When I was finally let in tonight, Patrick suffered a violent outburst. He almost cut down a Warden because of the visions I sent him. Should any take a closer look at him, or even worse, his sword, whatever advantage we might have would be lost.”

“Then use caution,” Karak said. “It will be some time still before we are ready to commence the final assault. Any information we can gather before then would be most welcome.” The deity grinned, looking up at the blackened, snow-dappled sky. “Once the walls fall and we are inside, there will be no limits to what we can do.”

No limits, thought Velixar, and frustration overcame him.

“My Lord,” he said, “the sun will rise in three hours. Do you have any further need of me this evening?”

Karak gazed down at him, his glowing eyes quizzical. “Do you wish to rest?”

“Not exactly, my Lord.”

“Ah,” said the deity, nodding deliberately. “I assume my High Prophet must broaden his horizons?”

“Something of the sort.”

“Very well then. Off to your pavilion. May you find the order you seek in your studies.”

“I am sure I will, my Lord. I am sure I will.”

Velixar bowed low and pivoted on his heels, marching back toward the waiting camp. The phalanx behind him parted, creating a human passageway for him to walk through. His cloak snapped in the wind and pride welled inside him. Ever since the night Karak had visited him in his pavilion, when the deity admitted his failings, their relationship had flourished. No more did Karak affront him, no more did he cast doubt on his actions. When they spoke, it was with respect, and Karak always listened intently to any counsel Velixar had to offer. Velixar had found himself in the one place he always longed to be-on equal footing with his god.

Yet that was not completely true, and he knew it. He still had his limitations, and there were aspects of the demon’s knowledge inside him that he could not quite grasp. For nearly a hundred years he had studied the legends of the beasts, had nearly every event of Darakken, Velixar, and Sluggoth’s hundred-year war with the elves imprinted on his memory. Unfortunately, the creature had not come with instructions, and his efforts to control its power were sluggish at best. He needed to find out more, and his only other recourse was to go to the source and rip that knowledge from the demon itself-or at least from the consciousness Jacob Eveningstar had cast aside.