I remembered the layout of the Penullin camp from my scrying, so while myself and Tatyana approached the main cluster of the soldier’s tents, the paladins swept out around us, and would attack from the other side once I had drawn their attention. My first idea had been to simply rain fire down on the camp, but Tatyana had impressed upon me the need to preserve rather than damage their equipment. They’d come up with a far more convoluted plan which I had simply refused to listen to, and in the end we settled on an improved version of my original notion seeing as the changes only affected their part..
I woke my night vision and moved up the slope until I had a clear view of the tents, then settled down and released the first construct, sending a score of sorcerous tendrils snaking through the air like serpents of smoke, each seeking the pulse of a living heart. Once they had all connected I spooled out the last component of the second construct and sent a pulse of fire along each connection, each of these just about visible to the naked eye as a streak of orange light.
It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped though. Some of the trails had touched, merging or diverting some of the streams of fire, making some weaker and others stronger, so that the flash of heat meant to burn their hearts and kill them silently set some on fire and did nothing but scald others.
Screams and cries of alarm broke the night as the surviving soldiers burst from their tents. Some were dressed, some were burnt, but all of them were armed and angry. While they lit torches and spread out I watched the paladins rise from their hiding places and run up the final stretch of the slope on their flanks.
‘Hold on tight,’ I said to Tatyana as I put my arm around her waist. I didn’t wait for her reply before releasing the wind spell, lifting us both high into the air in a spray of gravel and dust. The slope blurred under us, and as we passed the tents and milling soldiers we tipped downwards, landing close to their cooking fires. The second part of the spell woke, slowing our fall with another blast of air that scattered their pots and sent a cloud of sand and ash billowing out around us.
I released Tatyana as our feet touched the ground. She seemed to have taken the jump very well and wasted no time in opening the throat of a Penullin soldier while he was still shielding his face from the flying ash.
‘A Krandin! A Krandin!’ she shouted, and the Penullin soldiers turned on her as one, their answering shouts drowning hers out. They were streaming towards us when Leopold emerged from between the tents behind them, followed a moment later by the rest of his sword brothers. This was their part of the plan and I left them to it while I headed towards the herd of ghouls. They didn’t need to be preserved, so the fire I had been nursing within me all afternoon could finally be released.
The dead were already lurching towards the sound of the battle, and the sudden flare of the paladins releasing their light spells behind me was clearly reflected in their dull eyes. I caught a glimpse of orange robes to my right just as I heard the sound of the wizard’s spell discharging.
A bolt of kinetic force hit my side, and had it been properly focused, it may well have winded me or perhaps even cracked a rib, but he had rushed it and so weakened his spellcasting, spreading the impact until it was no worse than a man’s punch. I wanted to capture him alive if I could, and so let him run off and hide behind his ghouls, as yet unmolested.
The dead closed in, their lines bending around me at an unheard command from the wizard. I stood where I was and let my sorcery flow into the fire construct while holding it close to me. I could feel the pressure building within me, and was forced to squint as flashes of energy bled into reality around me, momentarily painting the pale corpses reaching for me in vivid reds. I closed my eyes and released the fire, flinging my hands outwards in a sympathetic gesture.
The flame roared with its own voice as it rippled outwards, transforming from red to gold to white. It was mesmerizingly beautiful, the aftermath less so. The closest of the dead were dismembered, their limbs scorched off or simply ripped away by the initial blast, while others were scoured of skin and flesh, their body fats igniting so that they burned with their own greasy flame as they flopped about on the ground, while those furthest away simply stood there, seemingly unaware that they were on fire. The wizard hadn’t escaped the blast either, and was rolling about on the ground trying to smother his burning robes, but from his wailing it did not seem to be a mortal injury.
‘Drogah’s angels have mercy on us,’ said a voice behind me. A paladin stood there, smoke curling from his beard and hair, his chest painted red with steaming gore.
‘I thought you were Drogah’s angels,’ I said, rising from my crouch.
He patted his beard and stepped back from the smouldering ghoul at his feet. ‘We are his sword, his justice made manifest,’ he mumbled, staring at me with bloodshot eyes.
Your kind killed the love of my life. I toyed with the idea of setting him alight and ascribing it an accident, but the fight with the Penullin soldiers had already come to its brutal and inevitable conclusion, and the flaming corpses had already drawn the attention of too many of the others.
Tatyana whistled softly as she and Leopold came to stand by me. ‘You’ve outdone yourself,’ she said. Leopold said nothing as he watched me.
I accepted the compliment with an awkward nod. ‘They are predictable.’
‘What about him?’ She pointed her sword at the wizard I’d now dragged closer.
‘He’s mine.’
‘He is a necromancer,’ said Leopold. ‘Our laws demand his death.’
‘He is mine,’ I said, showing him a few more teeth.
‘Easy,’ said Tatyana, stepping between us. She looked up at me. ‘Are you, you know, going to do the thing?’
‘The thing?’
‘You know.’ She took a step closer and whispered ‘With his brain.’
‘Ah. Yes, I am.’
‘Right. I suggest you go do it somewhere out of sight.’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Leopold.
‘I’m going to ea—’
‘Interrogate him with magic,’ Tatyana said, rudely interrupting me.
Leopold looked at her, then me again. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Just be quick about it. We need to be away before dawn.’
‘Yes,’ said Tatyana. She glanced back at me. ‘Make it quick.’
Since the bulge in my back wouldn’t let me sling the still blubbering wizard over my shoulder, I took a handful of his robes and dragged him along next to me instead, leaving the paladins to start stripping the prisoners and the dead. I stopped a short way down the slope and squatted down next to the groaning wizard.
‘Can you talk?’ I asked, jabbing a nail into his blistered cheek to make sure I had his attention. He coughed and spluttered but eventually said yes.
He gave a short and incoherent scream when he finally saw me and made a quite pathetic attempt to escape, one that I foiled by catching his leg and dragging him back towards me, my nails sliding into the soft meat and making him thrash about.
‘Where is Navar?’ I shifted to the side, hoping that what breeze there was would blow the distracting smell of his seared flesh away from me.
‘Who?’
‘Your master. The Worm Lord. Carries a staff carved like a man’s spine.’
‘I don’t know. How would I know?’ He groaned and cradled his nicely burned right arm, the source of the aroma that was troubling me.
‘You’re one of his. Now talk before I start cutting you.’
‘Oh fuck, it hurts!’
‘Imagine how it will hurt if I burn the rest of you.’ That got his attention.
‘I’m just an orange robe,’ he all but shouted. ‘All I do is make lanterns and herd the dead! I’ve never even seen him.’
‘So he has not implanted strange enchantments in your head?’
‘What? No? I swear.’
‘Excellent.’ I grabbed him by the throat and pulled his face to mine, ignoring the feeble blows he landed. I woke my sorcery, the fiery glow of my eyes lighting his face with a soft glow. I felt his throat working under my hand, but neither protest nor scream could escape my grip.
I plunged into his mind, knifing through the fear and panic of our attack, beyond the tedium of herding ghouls for mile upon mile, constantly coaxing and forcing them into movement, their every touch making him gag despite his training. I pushed too strenuously and Aknak flew past me, forcing me to pull myself back through his memories, back along a column of soldiers and downtrodden prisoners, back past burned villages where bodies hung from trees like strange fruit, until finally the city loomed large before me again.
There are hundreds of prisoners at work all around us, hauling rock and brick to repair the walls broken in the first siege. I see how those that are too weak to continue are tossed or carried into ditches where they are left to die, either of exhaustion or suffocation as more bodies are thrown on top of them. Disgust and terror fill me, but I keep my face impassive and agree to everything, never questioning and never disobeying. Something worse than death happens to those who turn against him. The soldiers don’t like me. They don’t like any of us, but they obey out of fear of what happens to those who rebel. I keep saying sorry, but that just makes them laugh.
I push a little deeper into the memories and faces and voices blur past me. It is night, and the inner city is glowing with silver light that dances along anything metallic, jumping from man to man. The great spell has begun; the Gateway is opening and the dead are restless. I’m working hard to keep them together but the light draws them, as if they know what lies beyond it. I’m utterly spent by the morning, and for once I am glad to be going on a patrol. Eight more nights of that would burn the magic out of me forever.
I pulled myself from his mind, untangling my thoughts from his and blinked as the world came back into focus around me. The wizard was a limp, dead weight in my hand and I let his body fall back. A cursory check confirmed that his heart had stopped beating, which was perhaps the easiest death I could have offered him. A quick search of his body yielded little except a small purse of gold and silver coins which I tied to my own belt, more out of habit than any real need.
I left his body to what vermin remained in these blasted lands and made my way back to the camp which, to my surprise, was brightly lit with both torches and golden light emanating from the paladins.