The dwarf gave the runehelm at his feet one sharp kick to make sure it was done for, and shouldered his axe. He pointed east over the moors, where Marstel and the survivors of his standard guards galloped back toward Hulburg. “Th’ sight o’ their lord and master riding for his life was no’ so good for their morale.”
“Let’s not make light of the work ahead, Master Ironthane. We’ve got a long hard day ahead of us still.” Kara glanced around, trying to get the measure of the fight. The Council Guard might be broken, but she’d still have to dig the Jannarsks, the Verunas, and the Iron Ring out of their fortified compounds, and there were the Cinderfists and the Tailings mobs to deal with too. Finally, she’d have to take Griffonwatch, although that was a job best undertaken with the sort of magic Sarth or Geran might command. “It’s not over until we’ve got control of the castle, and Marstel and his wizard are in our pockets.”
Ironthane snorted. “Well, I see no wizard at hand, but ye might catch Marstel if ye’re quick about it.”
“After them!” Kara shouted, and spurred Dancer in pursuit. Wester and Ironthane could manage the business of finishing the Council Guards who didn’t flee. Kolton, Vossen, and the rest of her small band of guards and messengers-now less than twenty strong-followed her. It wasn’t much, but it was almost all of the mounted troops she had. In fifty yards Kara and her riders broke free of the chaos and galloped onto the trail leading back to Hulburg, only a couple of hundred yards behind Marstel.
Marstel looked once over his shoulder at her; fear and fury flickered across his features, and the old lord hunched lower over his horse’s neck and spurred it on. For a half mile or more the false harmach and his guards fled before Kara. But then a company of another twenty armsmen dressed in black armor with black cloaks came up from the east, joining Marstel and his small company. The riders in black quickly surrounded Marstel and the captains remaining with him, reinforcing them.
“What in the world?” Kara murmured, drawing up her reins. The black-clad warriors rode under a dark banner-a banner on which fluttered the gray and gold insignia of Vaasa. At the head of the Vaasan company rode a tall man in plate armor with a crimson cloak and the horned helm of a Warlock Knight. She waited a few moments while Marstel spoke with the knight, her jaw clenched in frustration; as much as she wanted to go straight after Marstel, she simply didn’t have the numbers with the Vaasans taking up positions around the old lord and his surviving guards. It seemed that there was something to the reports of Vaasan aid to Marstel after all. Warlock Knights had been involved with the Bloody Skull horde somehow; was this some new plot of theirs, or were they simply taking advantage of the opportunity offered by chaos in Hulburg?
Marstel spared Kara one more glare of fury and contempt, and then he and his Vaasan escort rode off back toward Hulburg, cantering eastward along the trail leading past the old abbey.
“Should we pursue?” Sergeant Kolton asked by her side.
Kara scowled, considering the question. She needed to speak to Geran, the sooner the better; the appearance of the Warlock Knights was not something they’d expected. “Not when they’ve got more riders here than we do,” she finally answered. “We’ll send a couple of scouts to keep an eye on them and make sure they’re headed for home, and we’ll wait for more of our Shieldsworn before we press them.”
Wheeling Dancer around, she left Marstel and his Vaasan companions to their own devices, and hurried back to rejoin the fighting around the foot of the hill.
TWENTY-EIGHT
15 Ches, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)
The gray light of morning seemed to rush in on Geran from an immeasurable distance, as if he were falling through pure blackness into a tiny circle of luminescence. He glimpsed the dim shapes of great copper vats and cluttered worktables racing past him; his head whirled with a maddening sense of tremendous velocity when all his reason told him that he had to be standing still. Then, suddenly, he and Rhovann no longer tumbled through shadow, but instead stood and swayed in a diagram of silver runes that gleamed on the floor of a cluttered conjury-the old trophy hall of the Hulmasters, now filled with Rhovann’s devices and arcane apparatuses. And Rhovann’s silver hand was still locked around his throat.
“You reckless fool,” the elf wizard hissed. “Do you have any idea what you have destroyed? That stone was irreplaceable, worth more than this whole miserable hovel your family calls a castle!”
Geran opened his mouth to answer, and found he couldn’t speak. Nothing but a thin rattle of air escaped his lips. Desperately he tried to find the words for a spell to break Rhovann’s grip, but even as the magical sigils glowed and tumbled in his mind’s eye he couldn’t begin to give voice to them. His chest burned with the ache for a breath, and dark spots danced before his eyes. He felt his knees begin to give way as his struggle with the mage dragged the two of them out of the silver circle and into the nearest worktable, scattering notes and glassware to the floor.
A malicious grin crept into Rhovann’s features as the wizard sensed Geran weakening. “This is unseemly for a mage of my caliber,” the elf said between clenched teeth. “I should slay you with my spells, not strangle you like a common murderer. But there is a certain irony to dispatching you with the hand you gave me. It might be enough for me. What say you, Geran?”
Geran could manage nothing more than a thin wheeze. He struggled once again to pull his left hand free or twist out of Rhovann’s grasp, but the wizard merely followed his staggering steps before jerking him around abruptly and slamming him into another worktable. The swordmage battled with all his will, his determination, to cling to consciousness, but it was a battle he was mere heartbeats away from losing. With his right hand gone, he had no way to pull Rhovann’s hand from his neck, no way to strike back, only an aching stump under a thin, oozing bandage. The wizard bent him steadily back over the table, and Geran’s vision swam with darkness … but in one brief glimpse he spotted the red feathers of Mirya’s quarrel standing out behind Rhovann’s back.
He couldn’t strike much of a blow with his missing hand-but he didn’t need to. Flailing clumsily, he batted at the quarrel sticking out of the back of Rhovann’s shoulder. With the hard bone at the inside of his forearm, midway between wrist and elbow, he struck the wooden quarrel and jammed it cruelly in the wound.
Rhovann screamed in agony and staggered back, reaching behind his back in pure reflex. Suddenly the crushing pressure at Geran’s throat was gone, and he was able to draw breath again. He raised the shadow sword to strike-but the wizard retained enough presence of mind to seize his sword arm before he could, this time catching Geran with his silver hand. “Bastion!” the elf cried. “Help me!”
By the chamber’s door, a great gray creature in a brown cassock and hood swiveled to regard Geran with black, dead eyes. It was almost nine feet tall, taller and more thickly built than even the runehelms were, a golem of dense clay the size of an ogre. The creature reached out with one huge hand, seized a big wooden table that easily weighed a couple of hundred pounds, and flung the table out of its path as if it was nothing more than a wicker chair. Then it strode purposefully toward Geran, its eyes fixed on his face. Rhovann glanced once over his shoulder, and snarled in triumph as his towering minion drew near. “Destroy Geran!” the wizard cried.