Riv stepped off the wall and spread her wings. She glided across the open space between the inner wall and the buildings of the lower fortress. Below her, Revenants were breaking away from the darkness, outlined and silhouetted by the beacons Byrne had ordered built.
Not a night for archery, Riv thought, cursing the wind and rain, because this was just when she could use a bow: a swarming mass of her enemy, no allies she did not want to risk harming amongst them.
The first Revenants reached the wall, leaping and snarling, claws scraping on stone as they tried to climb. It stood as high as six men; even the Revenants’ unnatural speed and strength would not be enough for them to scale those walls.
She swooped low over the invaders, lifted higher, over the first buildings. The darkness was so dense that even her sharp eyes were struggling to discern the Revenants’ movements.
Byrne asked me to track them, but they’re all heading for the gate, so I might as well go and stab a few of them.
She sped back to the walls.
Revenants were swarming the huge gates, tearing at the wood, splinters flying, great gouges, but the gates were holding.
They’re trying to eat their way in.
But the gates of Dun Seren were thick, and banded with iron.
It will take them a moon to get through.
As Riv flew closer, she saw flaming torches hurled from the wall’s battlements, arcing down to land amongst the heaving mass before the gates, trailing sparks in the dark. A Revenant caught fire, gave a hissing scream, staggering away from the wall. More torches were thrown from above, setting many of the creatures alight, but they either stumbled away or were trampled beneath the press of hundreds.
Riv drew her sword, swooping low over the mass of heaving bodies, slashed down, felt her blade bite, saw the crackle of blue flame that had come to give her so much pleasure. Then she was at the gates, hovering over the mass, which was rising as Revenants climbed on one another in their frenzy to reach their prey.
Slowly the tide climbed higher, becoming a kind of living ladder or tower made of limbs and torsos.
Riv slashed and roared, kicked one Revenant in the face as it bunched its legs and launched itself at her. Others saw her now, more propelling themselves at her.
A beating of wings and Ben-Elim were dropping from the night sky: Meical, Hadran and the others, all of them stabbing with long spears, skewering Revenants as they leaped, killing others as they clambered up the seething mound that was slowly reaching towards the battlements.
A snapping and snarling behind Riv, and she snatched a glance left and right. Black shapes were bursting from the darkness as far as she could see all along the wall, gathering in clusters, massing together to form more living ladders, knots of bodies merging, rising like a swarm of ants that Riv had once seen as they massed together to cross a stream. The Revenants surged higher at startling speed.
The noise behind her again and she spun around in the air, saw a dark knot of shapes in the shadow of a building. She strained her eyes, her wings taking her a little closer, and saw two or three score Revenants. There was something different about them. They were still, staring, watching, their attention focused towards the centre of their circle, not the walls.
Then Riv saw her, a Revenant standing half a head taller than those around her. She was broad, had long dark hair and an axe in her fist.
Arvid.
Arvid was gesturing with her axe, giving orders. Revenants were running where she directed, at the darkest points on the wall, between the reach of the bonfires. Here they were linking together, forming their organic, living ladders, rising with shocking rapidity towards the battlements; all the while, new Revenants were rushing to join them.
Riv heard shouts and screams, the sound of battle drifting down from above, marking where the Revenants had reached the top.
Glancing around, she saw Hadran and flew to him, shouting in his ear over the din of battle. Together they turned and flew straight at Arvid, Hadran’s arm pulling back, hurling his spear.
A dozen Revenants leaped into the air in front of Arvid. Hadran’s spear skewered one of them, threw it back into the wall of a building, pinning it there, a crackle of blue fire rippling through its chest.
Riv stabbed a Revenant in the mouth, cut another’s hand off, slashed another across the throat, caved another’s skull in, but where one fell, two more threw themselves at her. Hands grasped at her, talons raking her, mouths open unnaturally wide, until Riv veered upwards, flying out of reach.
Hadran hovered there, his sword in his hand, but it was not a rune-marked blade.
“Where is she?” Riv yelled.
“That way,” Hadran said, “I think. She fled with a score or more around her.”
“Come on, then,” Riv said.
Hadran looked back to the battle at the wall, where screams and the din of battle were echoing from the battlements, snatched and swirled by the wind and rain. Riv could see at least four ladders of bodies where the Revenants had coiled together and breached the wall.
He turned towards the darkness where he had seen Arvid running.
“You go back to the wall, Riv—they need your sword arm, and your rune-marked blade. I’ve lost my spear, so I’ll follow Arvid, see where she’s going. They won’t see me.”
A moment’s hesitation. With every fibre of her being, Riv wanted to kill Arvid and end this. But she could have disappeared, and the screaming from the battlements sounded desperate.
Riv nodded. “Don’t get yourself killed,” she said.
Hadran smiled at her, something she’d never seen him do before. “I’d give you the same advice,” he said, and then he was winging into the darkness.
Riv flew towards the wall. Meical and the other Ben-Elim were fighting above the gates, spread around Byrne and Ethlinn. She glimpsed Balur swinging a two-handed longsword. Revenants’ body parts were flying in myriad directions. Further along the wall, a breach to the right, the fighting looked more desperate. Two Revenant ladders were dividing and crushing a section of the wall’s defenders. Alcyon was there, with his two axes. Then she saw Drem, stern-faced, smashing his shield into a Revenant as it scaled the top of the wall.
So many to kill—where do I start?
She gave a bloodthirsty grin and headed to where she thought she’d be needed most.