Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

Sickened, Jade could only watch.

And it didn’t stop – red eyes brighter than the glow of the setting sun, it reached its claws for the next target, seized him as he turned, and tried to shove his spear crosswise over its chest and push it back. Heat reddened his face. Beside him, the rank was cringing away from a scorching, tearing death – they edged sideways, staggering, frightened, spear-points in every direction as the sides of the formation crumbled.

As the second man went down, Jade saw one of them throw up.

At the centre of the wall, the fighters rallied. Someone was shouting. They were stamping forwards, in hard time, one pace after another, shields slamming as they went. He saw one creature fall back, then another.

Hope sparked – but it was brief. Fire and smoke were rising into the dusk, visibility failing now. A shield rim caught alight. The fighter threw it from her, yelling in shock. Another scream, another man down.

The fallen man’s hand stretched for a moment, begging for help, before he was trampled into the churn of mud below.

The creatures were tearing into the side of the unit, ripping their way towards the centre. Fighter after fighter saw the friend next to them shredded, ground down, burned and screaming. They were turning to defend themselves, their friends, tangling spear shafts. One punched his shield rim with a slam into a stone thing’s face – it hesitated. He hit it again, and again, and again, screaming terror and defiance as it rocked, cracked, and crumbled.

He let out a ragged cheer, echoed by those round him.

Beside him, a horsewoman shouted, “Hit them in the back! Now!”

It was all happening so fast. Jade shook himself, raised the banner, waved the order. Beside him, his mounted drummer hammered out the rhythm, throbbing through the smoke.

It was like a tavern-saga, unreal.

As the horses moved, the foot-fighters were being seized, flesh blackening under burning hands, their bones broken and torn from their sockets like meat at a banqueting table. They were people he knew, people whose greetings and families were familiar to him.

Denial screamed loud in the CityWarden’s head.

Ears back, his mare broke into an unsteady canter, then a run. Around her, a thunder of hooves, a rising of dust – a raw shout of defiance. The curve of Jade’s kite shield bounced at his knee. The drummer continued to pound out the rhythm – it sounded like bravery. Spears were couched. He found his voice and added his cry to the roar. A courageous sound, a futile one.

But they raced for the creatures ripping into the shield wall.

He caught a glimpse of the beasts that had got round behind it. They were skirmishing now, harried by lone fighters, arrow shafts bouncing back from their grinding, shifting stone. Smoke rose round them like shadows. Their reactions were startlingly swift. One lone spearwoman jabbed inexpertly, saw her spear tip shatter – and the thing was on her, bearing her to the ground in pitted grey silence.

Jade saw it for only an instant: it raised a stone fist over her, she struggled to push it away, her hands crisping. She shrieked in fury, a sky-ripping, emasculating sound. The thing punched clean through the front of her skull.

Got up, looked for another kill.

And the wall of horsemen hit.

In the dust, in the heat, in the smoke, in the stench and noise of fear, he kept his seat by sheer reflex. The mare was barging, haunches into stone – he could smell the burning of her hide. His spearpoint was useless. He hung grimly onto his pommel and reins with one hand, used the other to keep the banner aloft, a beacon of green and white. One foot lashed out at a creature. He jarred his ankle and it turned to eye him balefully from skull sockets full of fire.

He heard himself shouting, “For Roviarath! For the Varchinde!”

Chaos swirled round him.

But several creatures had reached the edge of the Fayre.

Jade’s hands were numb, his arms pricking with tension. Disbelief surged through him as the first uprights caught. This couldn’t happen to him, to his city, to his friends...

The Fayre went up round them like matchwood, blazing fierce and immediate. Flames caught and danced with the dusk breeze, smoke poured upwards into the darkening sky. His archers fell back, coughing.

Through the thumping of hooves, drums and heart, he thought he could hear the commander shouting to rally, but the sound was desperate under the spreading, flaring bonfire that was Roviarath’s wealth.

Then a voice, “My Lord! ‘Ware!”

In the smoke, there was a creature suddenly right on top of him, stone claws reaching for his mare, gouging at the flesh of her neck. She whinnied like a scream, teeth bared, danced crosswise nearly costing him his seat. Around him, the thunder of hooves was interspersed with shouts, snorts, the sharp sounds of terhnwood shattering on stone, the cries and slams of the shield wall.

He heard another horse scream – really scream. He heard the crash as it went over, the harsh clatter of its tack as it hit the ground. He heard it struggle, heard it grunt, repeatedly. He heard the rider bellowing swear words.

The spearmen fought on, shields slamming and feet stamping. Their commander was hoarse, his voice a rasp of coughing as he tried to hold the line together.

The drum thundered.

Before him, was the voiceless, faceless thing, the only awareness the vicious glow of red in its skull-socket eyes. Heat poured from its skin.

He had the oddest feeling it knew who he was.

Another horse went down. Somewhere in the smoke beside him, he saw the shape fold sideways. Get up , he willed it, get up! Through the wheeling, stamping chaos, he could see the woman who’d shouted, turning her mount in frantic circles. There were three of them round her – they’d had enough wit to separate her from her tan.

The beast in front of him paused, watching. Red eyes like twin flares of hate.

“You know me, don’t you?” It was a whisper. “You know who I am.”

Then he remembered something – something from his tutor, long ago.

And in a rush, he realised what he should do.

* * *

On the wall, the archer commander fell back, visibility almost nil.

The smoke whorled and eddied – he could see the fires, spreading through the Fayre, see the spearmen falling back from skirmishing as the heat overcame them. The handful of beasts that were loose in the bared woodwork of the market were wreaking devastation – and there was nothing to touch them.

Almost nothing.

Upon the wall were stockpiled water barrels – a contingency that’d made his troops groan with the necessity of pulley-hauling them, hand over hand, to lay them in rows on the top of the bank.

He could see Jade’s green-and-white banner, fluttering, flashing, a flare of hope in the wreathing grey, the dancing sparks. He thought he heard the Lord shout, a bugle call of defiance.

He raised a shout of his own.

“Cohn, to me!”

The hefty shape of Cohn dropped his bow and lent his strength to the barrel. With a straining of muscle, a cording of tendons, an almighty heave that bit pain into their fingers, they hefted the thing onto the top of the defences.

And threw it as far out as they could.

* * *

“Yes, you know me!” Jade was shouting now, his idea bright in the front of his imagination. He could see the map old Master Atheus had laid out for him – the city, the docks, the walls, the Fayre – the three tributaries of the Great Cemothen River that fed into her vast, wide wash.

“Come on then! I’m Larred Jade, Lord of Roviarath. You want me? I’m here!”

The thing came forwards. From the corner of his eye he saw the horsewoman – he must learn her name – turn as the creatures surrounding her lumbered towards him. Several more sets of eyes burned through the smoke.