Christopher Paolini - Inheritance

By the edge of the street, Nar Garzhvog knocked down six men with a single blow of his club. The soldiers started to climb back to their feet, ignoring injuries that would have crippled them had they been able to feel pain, and Garzhvog struck again, pounding them to a pulp.

Roran was aware of nothing but the men in front of him, the weight of his hammer in his hand, and the slipperiness of the blood-coated cobblestones under his feet. He broke and he battered; he ducked and he shoved; he growled and he shouted and he killed and he killed and he killed-until, to his surprise, he swung his hammer and found nothing but empty air before him. His weapon bounced against the ground, striking sparks from the cobblestones, and a painful jolt ran up his arm.

Roran shook his head, his battle rage clearing; he had fought his way completely through the mass of soldiers.

Spinning around, he saw that most of his warriors were still engaged with soldiers to his right and left. Loosing another howl, he dove back into the fray.

Three soldiers closed in on him: two with spears, one with a sword. Roran lunged at the man with the sword, but his foot slipped beneath him as he stepped on something soft and wet. Even as he fell, he swung his hammer at the ankles of the nearest man. The soldier danced back and was about to bring his sword down on Roran when an elf leaped forward and, with two quick strokes, beheaded all three soldiers.

It was the same elf woman he had spoken to outside the city walls, only now splattered with stripes of gore. Before he could thank her, she darted past, her sword a blur as she cut down more of the soldiers.

After watching them in action, Roran decided that each elf was worth at least five men, not even counting their ability to cast spells. As for the Urgals, he just did his best to stay out of their way, especially the Kull. They seemed to make little distinction between friend and foe once roused, and the Kull were so big, it was easy for them to kill someone without meaning to. He saw one of them crush a soldier between his leg and the side of a building and not even notice. Another time, he saw a Kull behead a soldier with an inadvertent swipe of a shield while turning about.

The fighting continued for another few minutes, whereupon the only soldiers remaining in the area were dead soldiers.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, Roran glanced up and down the street. Farther into the city, he saw remnants of the force they had destroyed disappearing between the houses as the men ran to join another part of Galbatorix’s army. He considered pursuing them, but the main battle lay closer to the edge of the city, and he wanted to fall upon the rear of the attacking soldiers and disrupt their lines.

“This way!” he shouted, raising his hammer and starting down the street.

An arrow buried itself in the edge of his shield, and he looked up to see the silhouette of a man sliding below the peak of a nearby roof.

When Roran emerged from between the close-set buildings into the open area before the remnants of Uru’baen’s front gate, he found a scene of such confusion that he hesitated, unsure of what to do.

The two armies had mingled together until it was impossible to determine lines or ranks or even where the front of the battle was. The crimson tunics of the soldiers were scattered throughout the square, sometimes singly, sometimes in large clusters, and the fighting had spilled into all of the nearby streets, the armies spreading outward like a stain. Among the combatants Roran expected to see, he also spotted scores of cats-ordinary cats, not werecats-attacking the soldiers, as savage and frightening a sight as he had ever beheld. The cats, he knew, followed the direction of the werecats.

And in the center of the square, sitting upon his gray charger, was Lord Barst, his large round breastplate gleaming with the light of the fires burning in nearby houses. He swung his mace again and again, faster than any human ought to have been able to, and with every blow he slew at least one of the Varden. Arrows fired at him vanished in puffs of sickly orange flame, swords and spears bounced off him as if he were made of stone, and even the strength of a charging Kull was not enough to knock him off his steed. Roran watched with astonishment as, with a casual swipe of his mace, the armor-clad man brained an attacking Kull, breaking his horns and skull as easily as an eggshell.

Roran frowned. How can he be so strong and fast? Magic was the obvious answer, but that magic had to have a source. There were no gems upon Barst’s mace or armor, nor could Roran believe that Galbatorix would be feeding energy to Barst from a distance. Roran remembered his conversation with Eragon the night before they rescued Katrina from Helgrind. Eragon had told him that it was basically impossible to alter a human’s body to have the speed and strength of an elf, even if the human was a Rider-which made what the dragons had done to Eragon during the Blood-oath Celebration all the more amazing. It seemed unlikely that Galbatorix could have managed a similar transformation with Barst, which again made Roran wonder, where was the source of Barst’s unnatural might?

Barst pulled on the reins of his steed, turning the horse around. The light moving across the surface of his swollen breastplate caught Roran’s attention.

Roran’s mouth went dry, and he felt a sense of despair. From what he knew, Barst was not the sort of man to have a belly. He would not let himself go soft, nor would Galbatorix have chosen such a man to defend Uru’baen. The only explanation that made sense, then, was that Barst had an Eldunari strapped to his body underneath his oddly shaped breastplate.

Then the street shook and split, and a dark crevice appeared beneath Barst and his charger. The hole would have swallowed them both, with room to spare, but the horse remained standing upon thin air, as if its hooves were still planted firmly upon the ground. A wreath of different colors flickered around Barst, like a nimbus of tattered rainbows. Alternating waves of heat and cold emanated from his location, and Roran saw tendrils of ice crawling up from the ground, seeking to wrap themselves around the horse’s legs and hold them in place. But the ice could not grip the horse, nor did any of the magic seem to have an effect on either the man or the animal.

Barst pulled on the reins again, then spurred his horse toward a group of elves who stood beside a nearby house, chanting in the ancient language. It was they, Roran assumed, who had been casting the spells against Barst.

Lifting his mace above his head, Barst charged into the midst of the elves. They scattered, seeking to defend themselves, but to no avail, for Barst split their shields and broke their swords, and when he struck, the mace crushed the elves as if their bones were as thin and hollow as those of birds.

Why didn’t their wards protect them? Roran wondered. Why can’t they stop him with their minds? He’s only one man, and there’s only one Eldunari with him .

A few yards away, a large round stone crashed into the sea of struggling bodies, leaving behind a bright red smear, and bounced into the front of a building, where it shattered the statues above the doorframe.

Roran ducked and cursed as he looked for where the stone had come from. Halfway across the city, he saw that Galbatorix’s soldiers had retaken the catapults and other war machines mounted on the curtain wall. They’re firing into their own city , he thought. They’re firing at their own men!

With a growl of disgust, he turned away from the square, so that he was facing the interior of the city. “We can’t help here!” he shouted to the battalion. “Leave Barst to the others. Take the street over there!” He pointed to his left. “We’ll fight our way to the wall and make our stand there!”