David Dalglish - Wrath of Lions

“Hemorrhage,” he whispered, power flowing out of him. The air seemed to ripple as a bolt of something invisible and deadly traveled between the Warden’s eyes. Instants later, blood violently erupted from his eyes, ears, and mouth. The elegant creature collapsed and fell still.

Velixar never drew Lionsbane. He never even stopped walking.

He entered through one of the gaps in the wall, stepping over spilled sacks of sand, shattered logs, crumbling stone, and horse dung. The town of Lerder opened up before him: the wide road, the seven widely spaced tall buildings with innumerable cottages nestled in between. There were Wardens everywhere, perhaps a hundred of them clashing with the foot soldiers and horsemen. The beings Celestia and the brother gods had rescued from a dying world fought valiantly, holding their ground. Their stand would not last long. Velixar moved aside, allowing a second phalanx to storm into the town. The air was alive with pounding footfalls, clattering mail, and raised voices. He lowered his head, the glow of his eyes intensifying. Holding his arms out to his sides, he watched electricity dance across his flesh. A few of the Wardens at the front of the battle went to rush him, but they never reached their target. The phalanx swallowed them in a swarm of armored bodies and sharpened steel.

The battle lasted for much of that dark, moonless night, and when it was over, Velixar toppled the rest of the wall with a word, using the power within him to help his men shove aside the detritus. He felt strangely ill at ease as he walked the perimeter, looking on as his soldiers pried the surviving Wardens from their shelter within the Second Breath Inn. His next destination was the central town courtyard, where the bodies of the deceased were being carted and lined up on the grass. He went down the line, counting one hundred and seventy-seven dead Wardens.

All Wardens. No humans. And no weapons other than crude stone. This was far too simple.

He grunted, relieved yet slightly disappointed by the way the night had unfolded. He’d expected at least a few of Lerder’s citizens to stay behind and make a stand, but other than his own men, there were no humans in the town. They were here. I saw them. It had been the sight of Azariah and Roland, two figures of importance in the life of Jacob Eveningstar, which had stoked his initial excitement. How he wished they were here now, kneeling with their hands bound behind their backs like the remaining Wardens.

It is no matter, he told himself. They will not get far. And when I catch them…

A shout brought his head around, and he glanced away from the sunrise to see Captain Wellington and two young soldiers marching toward him. All three dropped to their knees. One of the soldiers, he noted, was the wild beast with the teardrop scar.

“What news, Captain?” he asked.

Standing, Wellington went to speak but hesitated, leaning from one foot to another. His platemail creaked, in need of oil after days of marching in the rain. There was a gash on his temple and a stripe of dried blood streaking over his ear and down the side of his jaw, but otherwise he was unharmed. Even his armor had nary a dent or scratch.

“Out with it,” Velixar demanded.

The captain cleared his throat. “We found corpses on the other side of the western wall, High Prophet.”

Velixar raised an eyebrow. “How many, and what side?”

“Thirty. Twenty-three of ours, seven Wardens. And the wounds on ours are too clean and sharp.”

“Swords and knives?” Velixar asked.

The captain nodded.

It made sense. The Wardens who’d defended the city had brandished spears, hand-fashioned bows and whittled arrows, and stone axes. The weapons that Lerder’s master steward kept stowed beneath Ashhur’s temple had never made an appearance.

“I gather,” said Velixar, “that when our men search the town’s armory chamber they will find it bare.”

“We already have, and it is indeed empty.”

Velixar looked to the west, imagining the frightened people in flight.

“The townsfolk took the weapons with them when they fled,” he said.

“Does this worry you?”

Velixar laughed. “Not in the slightest. What they did was folly. By fleeing with the steel weaponry, they doomed the Wardens to a quicker death. We will still catch them.”

Wellington seemed to accept that answer, but then he fidgeted again, his gaze dropping to the ground.

“What is it?” asked Velixar. “Spit it out.”

“I searched the rookery, High Prophet,” the captain said. “It is empty.”

Velixar let out a sigh.

“Of course it’s empty,” said the young soldier with the scar below his eye. “Did you not hear the birds take flight when we first arrived? Did you think no one would bother to alert the rest of Ashhur’s kingdom of what happened?”

Wellington glowered at the soldier, who hastily kneeled before him.

Many apologies, Captain,” he said. “I spoke out of turn. I must still be on edge from the battle.”

The captain raised his hand to strike the young soldier, anger burning in his eyes, but he seemed to think twice when he noticed that Velixar was staring at him. Wellington slowly lowered his hand.

Velixar couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Ashhur has known of our plans for months now. The news will not surprise him in the least.”

“And he will have prepared his defenses, am I right, High Prophet?” the young soldier asked.

“What is your name, soldier?” Velixar asked, more and more intrigued by this youth with each passing moment.

Straightening up, the soldier jutted out his chin. “Boris Marchant.”

“Well, young Boris, look around you.” Velixar gestured toward the destroyed rubble of the wall. “What defenses? The God of Justice knew this town was one of two places we might cross, given the narrow width of the river here, and yet he left his children to die. Those same children abandoned the Wardens, refusing to even leave them with true weaponry to fight us. Ashhur’s children are frightened and confused-little more than beasts pissing themselves as they cower before an angered master. Of course Ashhur has prepared defenses, but we’ll tear them down, every brick, every stone.”

Boris and Captain Wellington both bowed; then the captain excused the trio to oversee the scout parties that were combing through the town in search of provisions they might take. He struck Boris in the side of the head as they walked away. It was a just punishment for publicly scolding his superior, but Velixar understood Boris’s response. Combined with the soldier’s actions on the battlefield, it made the young man rather interesting. He promised himself to seek the soldier out later.

Disappointment struck Velixar again. The town had fallen in six hours. Six hours. Lerder was the hub of trade in the west, the only town in all of Paradise that had even the slightest chance of protecting its borders. The cache of steel weapons from the elves, combined with the huge population, should have been sufficient enough to provide a fight. With a properly built wall, a little training, and a decent harvest, the citizens could have held out for a month, perhaps longer. Instead, less than a hundred of Karak’s soldiers had perished while taking the town.

“Do you even care?” Velixar wondered, thinking of Ashhur’s face from his distant past. “Or have you foreseen your defeat and chosen not to fight it?”

As the sun climbed the sky over the next few hours, Velixar ordered his soldiers to set down sturdier ramps on the Rigon’s high western bank, to allow the rest of their ranks passage onto flat land. The slow procession began in earnest as two hundred horses, five hundred archers, four thousand soldiers, and sixty supply wagons crossed the newly constructed bridge. Once across, they maneuvered up the ramps and over the dismantled remnants of the wall, trundling through the heart of the crumbling town. Not a board or even a pebble came loose from the bridge during the march, the result of a god’s magic combined with well-trained craftsmanship. It remained so until Karak himself crossed just past midday. When the god stepped onto the moist bank, he turned and lifted his hand. The bridge immediately shuddered and collapsed, countless tons of rock and wood falling into the river. The boulders sunk while the current quickly carried the planks downstream.