Shane Porteous - The Battle of Ebulon - A Shared Anthology

Foolish. I cut his meridian at the neck. His spear clattered to the paving stones. He slumped, stuck in the drain.

Grabbing my shoulders, Vess jerked me back. Then he saw the monster was dead, and frowned down at me. “Did you—?”

“Oil!” one of the knights shouted. A short man in filthy, plainspun clothes unstoppered a skin and poured oil on the corpse. Two knights grabbed spears and rammed the corpse back through the drain. From below came grunts, guttural shouting — and a whiff of stink. The filthy man kept pouring, emptying the oilskin.

“Candle!” Vess yelled. “A flame! Someone!”

My memory flickered to what my father had told me of that smell, long ago. Swamp gas. Careful, the stuff burns. “I have it!” I shouted, over Vess. I held my hand over the drain, gathering kir in my fingertips. Knotted down, squeezed, the kir ignited into a candle-sized spark. Below, I saw bodies moving, heard more piggish snarling. A grey-skinned hand grabbed the rim of the drain.

“Get back!” I shouted, and with a snap released the spark. The filthy man yelled it with me, already running. “Get back!” Ran, myself, toward the tavern windows. The knights scrambled to fall back, too, as flame roared up in the drain for a moment—

—and the earth shook, rumbling. The explosion burst through the hole. Earth flew up from the paving stones. The drain widened. Crumbled. Cracks ran between the stones and the road sank along its center line. A dying Orc, trying to crawl, was dragged down. Vess snatched me up by the waist and carried me into the tavern itself, with the huddled, shouting infirmary. Down into the square, the gash ran. The statue of the knight shifted, tipped as its ground collapsed. It settled at a wild angle in the rubble.

The wound cut the street in half. A tangle of stone and corpses half filled it, leaving a sheer drop of perhaps a yard. A ragged cheer went up, and I had to smile. “Light bless you!” Doctor Ceros patted my shoulder, with a laugh. “You’re more than you seem, aren’t you.”

“Peren!” Vess shouted, beside me, and he strode out onto the street. His officer, across the split, saluted him. “What the fuck happened?”

“We cut them off at Binder’s Street, sir, and some of them doubled back. The sewers, well —” Peren gestured to the filthy man beside him.

“That’s the main cesspit,” the man shouted, pointing at the fallen statue. “Them all must’ve come in by there. Had to! Won’t be coming up here no more, sir!”

“How many doubled back?” Vess asked. Peren gestured openly, trying not to shrug. Vess swept one arm up to summon his men together up the street. “Back to Binder’s Street, then, to hunt the bastards down — and Kate! You keep Del safe!” He swung around, pointing at me.

I saluted in return. There was work to do, still. Del’s wound still needed stitching. I found my needle and catgut I’d dropped, and called his pattern again. The muscle healed best if matched grain to grain. Luzon righted the fallen stool and collected what had fallen from my medicine bag in the confusion. He considered one of the figures of Mother Love a moment, and tossed it in.

Del breathed easy, peacefully sleeping through the rest of the stitches. I’d only knocked him lightly, as I couldn’t spare much kir, and it wouldn’t last much longer. When I knotted off the thread at last, I took my cleansing charm and held it over the wound. A squeeze with my mind, and the kir bound to the bone figurine unwound. The charm fell onto Del in a green mist, destroying any patterns that would fester into abscesses or gangrene.

That made him twitch. He groaned. His hand moved toward the wound.

“Don’t.” I nudged him away and laid a bandage on it.

His head lifted from the table, but the pain made him hiss. “Fuck, it wasn’t a dream.”

“No. But you had a little faith and you’re going to live.”

Luzon brought a pair of orderlies to help Del off the table. They’d see that he was properly bandaged. A third man stood waiting with the arm of a soldier across his shoulders, his own arm holding the man up by the waist. The soldier was wilting fast; an arrow jutted from his ribs, the blood frothing as his punctured lung leaked through it.

“Next.” I patted the table.

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The man stood before him, a plea in his eyes that could not be ignored. His shoulders were broad and strong, but at the moment they drooped pathetically, as though he had been carrying a weight that was far too heavy for far too long.

“Please,” the man began, his tone imploring, “please, we cannot hold any longer. We beg your aid. If there are any heroes left to hear our call, they are desperately needed here at Ebulon.”

Brant awoke. He blinked, feeling disoriented. For a moment, he was unsure of what had woken him. He sat up in bed, shaking off the fog of sleep. Dylanna sat up as well. She squinted at him in the Toreth-light. He gazed at her, his eyes tracing the lines of her face and noting how the silvery beams of the Toreth glinted in his wife’s dark hair.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“A strange dream…” Brant shook his head, “it was probably nothing.”

“Me too,” she admitted.

“I was being asked for help…”

Dylanna stared at him oddly. “Was it by a man standing in the snow, dressed strangely in furs and armor, with a battered crown on his head? A… King Yadi… was that his name?”

He stared at her. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Was he in a place called Ebulon ?”

Brant nodded slowly. “It wasn’t just a dream, was it?”

They dressed quickly, adorning themselves by unspoken agreement in warm clothes and battle-armor. They spared but a moment to retrieve their weapons. Brant always kept the Fang Blade sharp, and he buckled it to his waist now as Dylanna strapped a simple knife to her wrist and slung a bow and quiver over her shoulder. He hoped she wouldn’t need either; magic was her primary weapon.

They raced through the halls of the palace, to the secret tunnels leading to the depths of the slumbering volcano beside which the castle was built. In the center of the concealed chasm rested the greatest gift of magic their world had ever seen. Brant and Dylanna stood before it, hesitating.

“Send out the call,” Dylanna urged. “Even now we may be too late.”

“We don’t even know where we’re going,” Brant replied. “What if…?”

He felt the cry reverberate once more inside his head. It was desperate, pleading. Whoever this King Yadi was, he sounded sincere. As he reached out to touch Yorien’s Hand once more, information poured into his mind. Ebulon. The last human kingdom in its world. Besieged by a monstrous army of creatures… Orcs… whatever those were. The city was on the brink of falling. If nobody came…

Shaking these dark thoughts from his mind, Brant grasped hold of the fallen star more tightly. Yorien’s Hand blazed with a brilliant, blinding light as Brant transmitted the cry for help across his kingdom. He knew, without understanding how, that the star would take them to Ebulon, as well as any others who answered the call. He poured his will into the star and felt a strange freezing sensation wash over him. The sensation passed, though the chill in the air remained.