‘Another wave!’ Jacinth called from the entrance where the heavy iron doors hung warped and askew, blasted from their hinges.
‘Brace yourselves!’ Skinner bellowed.
Mara turned: Another wave this high?
The dressed granite stones beneath her feet juddered and shook at the approach of something immense. A landslide roaring tore the air. Jacinth backed away from the gaping entrance. ‘Burn protect us,’ she breathed, awed.
Mara glimpsed a solid wall of water choking the opening then something slammed her into a wall and held her there, crushed and pressed so hard that she could not draw breath — even if there were air to breathe. A terrible heart-stopped cold clawed at her. It pulled her strength and her life from her as water might douse a flame. Her slashed side stung as if burned.
The pressure relented and she fell from the wall to her hands and knees, coughing, gasping for air. Fighting surrounded her. She straightened, pushed aside her hair. Several Disavowed were down, run through by lethal ice-shards that stood from them like spears, hissing and steaming. Skinner had a Stormrider by the arm, and as Mara watched he lifted the entity and brought it down over his knee. A loud wet crack sounded and the creature spasmed. Skinner straightened, allowing the corpse to slide off his coat of mail to splash into the water that foamed about their knees.
New war shouts sounded and Korelri came charging down the stairs and from halls leading further back into the tower. They faced the Disavowed with spears levelled and broad shields raised. The shields held their sigiclass="underline" a stylized tower or wall standing against swirling waters.
One of them pushed his way forward. He was old, his hair as white as snow, but he was still slim and straight. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘You’re welcome,’ Skinner answered.
The man glanced past them to the entrance and the overcast murk beyond where the surf boomed loud and echoing. ‘Well,’ he allowed, ‘our thanks — but we are holding.’ He studied them now, narrowly. ‘Where are you from?’
‘What matters that?’ Skinner answered. ‘We are come to your aid.’
‘You are not allowed-’
‘Another!’ a Stormguard called from up the stairs.
The man’s jaws worked as he swallowed all further argument or objections. ‘Very well,’ he snapped. To his men, he continued, ‘As before. Allow the surge to fade then counter-attack!’
The Chosen clashed their spears to the floor. ‘Aye, Marshal!’ They retreated to their posts.
Mara came to Skinner’s side. ‘We are weakening,’ she whispered. ‘We can’t endure much more of this.’
He nodded his understanding. He raised a hand in a sign: ambush.
The Disavowed eyed one another in silent understanding.
A wave was building; she could feel it in the pregnant charged atmosphere. A wind of displaced air preceded it: the howling came surging through the entrance, ruffled her hair and chilled her further, then went on its way up the stairs and through the tower rooms. The avalanche roar returned, surging, until, paradoxically, she could hear nothing at all. This time she would be ready: she raised her Warren and created a sphere of outward pressure about her. She concentrated upon it with all her might.
Darkness obscured the entrance: a murky olive green.
Here it comes!
A solid wall of icy water came exploding in. It struck the circumference of her protective sphere and could not penetrate. But the blow shocked her backwards into the wall once again, knocking the wind from her. Shapes moved past through the water and flowed up the stairs, glimmering a phosphorescent emerald and sapphire. One shape seemed to pause, wavering, before her. A lance shot through the wall of water. She flinched her head aside and it yanked on her hair as it slammed into the wall and burst into a thousand fragments of ice.
Snarling, her face slashed, she sent force to strike the shape and slam it spinning backwards.
The water churned, losing its forward urgency. It pulled now, escaping. Grateful, Mara eased her concentration; she didn’t think she could’ve lasted much longer.
The Korelri emerged again. They pushed back the last few remaining Riders, who fought to the end, silent, yielding nothing. An ages-old unrelenting enmity here, Mara knew. This war was the stuff of songs and epic poems all round the world.
When the last fell, the marshal approached Skinner. ‘Thank you for your aid, but we are holding. I must ask that you leave now during this lull.’
‘Your numbers appear to be much diminished.’ Skinner said. ‘I do not believe you will hold.’
‘That is our concern. We will defend to the end, in any case. You are an outsider. I ask again that you leave.’
Skinner’s scaled armour scraped and slithered as he held out his arms. ‘I understand. We will go. I just have one request.’
The marshal raised his pale white brows. ‘Oh? Yes?’
Skinner’s hand snapped out to clench the man’s throat. The Disavowed lunged forward, thrusting and slashing to push back his fellows. ‘Where is the shard!’ Skinner yelled.
A strong wind pushed against Mara’s back and she glanced behind. The light outside had dimmed to a near subsurface dark green. So soon? Oh, shit …
She was behind the melee line of Disavowed engaging Korelri defenders. The priest, she noted, was somehow still with them, hopping and waving his fists, appearing even more demented.
‘Wave!’ she called, and raised her Warren, bracing herself.
The water slammed her to a wall once more. Through the swirling webbed green she saw shapes writhing and thrusting in a chaotic struggle of all against all. She could not even be certain which shapes were which. A blade thrust through the wall of water, narrowly missing her. She moved to answer the threat but found that her hands were now numb clubs, the nails dark blue.
Gods! It’s almost too late!
When the water receded the Disavowed were the majority standing. They fell upon the remaining Korelri. Skinner rose to his feet, water pouring from him: he still held the marshal by the throat, but the man had been thrust through the back and Mara doubted he still lived.
Skinner shook him. ‘The shard!’
The old man just bared his blood-smeared teeth in defiance, and shook his head. Cursing, Skinner threw him aside. ‘Mara!’ he called.
She pushed forward through the swirling water. ‘Yes?’
Skinner pointed to the set and dressed stones of the floor. Mara sagged inwardly. ‘I am nearly spent,’ she gasped. Her words were jagged as she stuttered with cold.
‘Red!’ No answer. Skinner and Mara peered about. ‘Red?’
‘Aye,’ came a weak response. The man straightened. He cradled an arm gashed open. Blood streamed from his fingertips, darkening the water round him. ‘Make it quick,’ he said, smiling bleakly.
‘Warm Mara.’
The old man nodded. ‘Then I’ll have me a nap — if you don’t mind.’
‘Farese!’ Skinner called. ‘See to his arm.’
The small Talian swordsman jogged to Red. Mara waited, shivering uncontrollably, while the mage summoned his strange form of elder magic — a kind of animism still retained in some backward regions. Mara couldn’t understand the first of it; unlike the clarity of the Warrens, it seemed to lack logic or order. Farese knelt at Red’s side and tore strips from his ratty sodden blanket.
Welcome sensual warmth infused Mara, yet it came on too strongly and too quickly. She felt her flesh tingling with the onset of burning. Steam rose from her. She felt faint and dizzy.
‘Now!’ Skinner demanded.
She nodded, barely able to see. She focused her Warren and gathered her energy. She collected it, guarded it, allowed it to swell until she was on the verge of losing the control that kept it from consuming her flesh entirely.
‘Back off!’ she heard Skinner yelling, distantly, through a thundering roar in her ears.