David Farland - Worldbinder

But now, once the defenders in the city had been handled, the wyrmlings would be able to stroll through the warrens wiping out the women, the children, the elderly and the babes.

“Fell-ion!” a deep voice cried above the tumult. “Fell-ion!”

Rhianna whirled, saw King Urstone not a hundred feet away. He pointed toward the upper gate, gave a silent nod, then leapt into the air, flying rapidly.

Fallion just stood, his face a blank. He was still in shock.

“Fallion,” Rhianna cried, “we have to win back the gate! Carry me up there!”

Rhianna pointed up. It was a short flight, but a steep climb. The guards from the outposts along the upper wall were all racing to the gate, but these weren’t the city’s grandest fighters. Most of them were mere boys, and they would be fighting runelords.

Fallion seemed to snap out of his daze. He grasped Rhianna around the lower belly and leapt into the air, flapping his wings for all that he was worth.

Rhianna peered down. Beneath them, the wyrmlings had breached the lower wall in twenty places; kezziards were climbing over it. The gate to the lower levels had come down, and the wyrmling hordes were rushing through. There seemed to be no end of them. A few human hosts, realizing the danger, had turned to meet them, but there wouldn’t be enough of them.

Up ahead of her, the monstrous graaks leapt into the air and dove back toward the markets.

They’re going to pick up reinforcements for the gate, Rhianna realized.

One monster winged straight toward them, as if it would attack. Rhianna let out a little cry of despair, and adjusted her sweaty grip on her staff and bow.

Fallion strained, flapping hard, and then went into a dive, veering beneath the oncoming monster. He struggled to pull out of the dive, then suddenly went swooping up like an owl.

Fallion didn’t have a wyrmling’s bulk, and his wings were made to fit the giants. Rhianna figured that together they weighed about as much as a single wyrmling. The wings could carry them, but sweat was streaming from Fallion’s brow by the time they reached the upper wall.

As soon as he landed, he stopped and knelt, gasping for breath. Below them the thunder drums were deafening, and the cries of the warriors was like the roar of the sea.

“Fallion,” Rhianna cried. “We have to clear the gates!”

There were at least a hundred wyrmling troops at the gate to their east, fierce creatures in black capes, with huge strange swords and battle-axes that glinted like molten metal in the torchlight.

King Urstone had landed on the far side of the gate, and now he gathered some young warriors around him, shouting battle orders. But there were not a hundred humans manning the entire upper wall.

Down in the lower markets, the human warriors were charging the gate to the upper portion of the city. The Wizard Sisel led the charge, striding boldly forward, his staff held high. Thousands of warriors marched at his back. A great cloud of fireflies swarmed among the human hosts, lighting the way.

Rhianna did not doubt that the wizard was preparing some spell to bring down the gate.

Fallion glanced up into the sky, as if afraid that one of the Knights Eternal would swoop down on him, but for the moment the skies were clear.

He reached out with his left hand, as if endlessly straining to grasp something in the valley below, something almost beyond his reach. Fires burned in the valley, hundreds of torches in their sconces, dozens of small brushfires.

Suddenly, nearly every torch and burning bush winked out.

Their energy came whirling toward Fallion in a fiery tornado, ropes of burning red flames that twisted in the air and then landed in his hand, forming a white ball that blazed like the sun.

He hurled the energy down among the wyrmling troops that bristled just inside the gates. A fiery ball whooshed into their midst and burst, incinerating a dozen wyrmlings, searing and setting fire to perhaps fifty more.

King Urstone shouted, and his young warriors leapt into battle. Some of them simply hurled themselves over the wall, down to the gate, leaping sixty feet to land atop wyrmling warriors.

It was suicide, but Rhianna saw big wyrmling runelords devastated by the assault, bones crushed by the weight of their attackers.

Fallion reached out again toward the few fires that had flickered back to life. The fires blacked out, and coils of burning energy shot toward his outstretched palm.

Just as suddenly, the coils arced up into the sky, like a fiery tornado that was upside down.

A Knight Eternal grabbed the energy, and came swooping toward them at astonishing speed, holding a glowing ball of molten fire.

“Watch out!” Fallion shouted, stepping in front of Rhianna, using his body as a shield.

Rhianna cowered, afraid that the fireball would take her.

But the Knight Eternal hurled the ball away at the last instant, sent it roiling into the castle’s defenders. Young soldiers let out a wail of pain as they died.

The knight stooped from the sky and dove straight at Fallion, who only now drew his sword.

The knight’s own black blade was in his hand. He winged toward Fallion at a falcon’s blinding speed, his blade held forward.

Rhianna had wondered why Talon had called these creatures “knights.” Now she saw: it was racing toward them like a lancer, but instead of a war-horse, it rode upon the wind.

“Damn you!” Fallion roared, “this is for my brother!” He leapt toward the knight, twisting his blade as they met.

There was a spark and a clang as metal struck metal, then the unmistakable snick of a breaking sword.

The knight blurred past Fallion in a thunder of wings-just as Rhianna leapt up and smashed the creature with her staff.

She’d expected the jolt to rip off her arms. Instead the Knight Eternal seemed to explode, as if she’d just hit a sack filled with dust. Bits of desiccated flesh and dry bones rained down all around her, messing her hair and getting grit in her eyes.

The remains of the creature landed in a heap not ten yards away, then went rolling and rolling until its corpse lay leaning with one wing dangling over the wall.

Fallion was on the ground. He moaned a bit, then rolled over. Rhianna saw fresh blood smearing his robes.

“Sword broke,” he said, his face white with shock. He was patting his robe, as if to find the source of the blood. The blade of his own rusty sword was lodged just below his rib cage, somewhere between his right kidney and a lung. The point stuck out from him, as if he’d been run through. Rhianna realized that the blade must have been driven back and struck him when the sword shattered. He pulled it free. The last three inches of blade was bloody.

Not a deep cut, but it was three inches wide, and given its proximity to vital targets, it could be a deadly wound.

“Fallion,” Rhianna cried, then knelt over him. She held her hand over the wound, fingers clasped tightly, trying to staunch the flow. Warm blood boiled out. She cast her eyes around, looking for someone to help, but the young soldiers on the wall had all run down into the fray, where they engaged the wyrmling troops.

Rhianna saw something flash past her-a second Knight Eternal diving into battle.

It swooped over the oncoming troops, diving through the cloud of fireflies that shone like a million dancing stars.

There its blade found the head of the Wizard Sisel, and nearly set it free.

One moment, the wizard was striding toward the city gates leading the charge, and the next instant he tried to duck beneath the Knight Eternal’s blow. The sword glanced off Sisel’s leather helm, and he slumped onto the cobblestones.

Cries of grief and despair rose from the human hosts as the Knight Eternal climbed back into the sky. A few black war darts followed in his wake, then fell pitifully in a deadly rain among the crowd.