“Vess!” Del, snapped to clarity by the screaming, fumbled for his own sword.
“No!” I touched his head, snapping a little charm into his mind. Del slumped, unconscious. I caught him by the hair, lowered his head gently. Only one man, only one bit of faith offered when I stepped into this dark place. I’d not let him die.
Further up the road, a squad of Vess’ knights rounded the corner at a run. No time; half a dozen Orcs were already in the street. More coming. Vess held three at bay. Another charged past him, slapped Luzon down with his spear butt and then there was only me between him and Del. The Orc grabbed my shoulder to throw me aside, spear swinging toward Del.
I shot my kir up the Orc’s arm and stabbed his prime meridian, at the neck. He dropped like a sack of flour, bouncing off Del’s sturdy table. His spear skittered away, doing no harm. My kir snapped back to me, through his flesh.
With a yell, Vess’ knights met the Orcs and slashed into them, spears clanging on shields, swords biting through iron mail. Blood splashed across the paving stones, followed by falling bodies. A knight went down, spitted. I saw one more Orc pulling himself through the drain. The monster was too big, too much a hog to simply leap through.
A chance to stop them. I ran, bent low, dodging behind Orcs; they fought for their lives, and hardly noticed me. The Orc in the drain spotted me, snarled, and hauled himself up to the waist. Caught there. I lunged to grab his ear, and he jabbed his spear one-handed. I fell on my knees, in trying to dodge it. His filthy hand clapped down on my wrist, pulling his spear back to stab me.
Foolish. I cut his meridian at the neck. His spear clattered to the paving stones. He slumped, stuck in the drain.
Grabbing my shoulders, Vess jerked me back. Then he saw the monster was dead, and frowned down at me. “Did you—?”
“Oil!” one of the knights shouted. A short man in filthy, plainspun clothes unstoppered a skin and poured oil on the corpse. Two knights grabbed spears and rammed the corpse back through the drain. From below came grunts, guttural shouting — and a whiff of stink. The filthy man kept pouring, emptying the oilskin.
“Candle!” Vess yelled. “A flame! Someone!”
My memory flickered to what my father had told me of that smell, long ago. Swamp gas. Careful, the stuff burns. “I have it!” I shouted, over Vess. I held my hand over the drain, gathering kir in my fingertips. Knotted down, squeezed, the kir ignited into a candle-sized spark. Below, I saw bodies moving, heard more piggish snarling. A grey-skinned hand grabbed the rim of the drain.
“Get back!” I shouted, and with a snap released the spark. The filthy man yelled it with me, already running. “Get back!” Ran, myself, toward the tavern windows. The knights scrambled to fall back, too, as flame roared up in the drain for a moment—
—and the earth shook, rumbling. The explosion burst through the hole. Earth flew up from the paving stones. The drain widened. Crumbled. Cracks ran between the stones and the road sank along its center line. A dying Orc, trying to crawl, was dragged down. Vess snatched me up by the waist and carried me into the tavern itself, with the huddled, shouting infirmary. Down into the square, the gash ran. The statue of the knight shifted, tipped as its ground collapsed. It settled at a wild angle in the rubble.
The wound cut the street in half. A tangle of stone and corpses half filled it, leaving a sheer drop of perhaps a yard. A ragged cheer went up, and I had to smile. “Light bless you!” Doctor Ceros patted my shoulder, with a laugh. “You’re more than you seem, aren’t you.”
“Peren!” Vess shouted, beside me, and he strode out onto the street. His officer, across the split, saluted him. “What the fuck happened?”
“We cut them off at Binder’s Street, sir, and some of them doubled back. The sewers, well —” Peren gestured to the filthy man beside him.
“That’s the main cesspit,” the man shouted, pointing at the fallen statue. “Them all must’ve come in by there. Had to! Won’t be coming up here no more, sir!”
“How many doubled back?” Vess asked. Peren gestured openly, trying not to shrug. Vess swept one arm up to summon his men together up the street. “Back to Binder’s Street, then, to hunt the bastards down — and Kate! You keep Del safe!” He swung around, pointing at me.
I saluted in return. There was work to do, still. Del’s wound still needed stitching. I found my needle and catgut I’d dropped, and called his pattern again. The muscle healed best if matched grain to grain. Luzon righted the fallen stool and collected what had fallen from my medicine bag in the confusion. He considered one of the figures of Mother Love a moment, and tossed it in.
Del breathed easy, peacefully sleeping through the rest of the stitches. I’d only knocked him lightly, as I couldn’t spare much kir, and it wouldn’t last much longer. When I knotted off the thread at last, I took my cleansing charm and held it over the wound. A squeeze with my mind, and the kir bound to the bone figurine unwound. The charm fell onto Del in a green mist, destroying any patterns that would fester into abscesses or gangrene.
That made him twitch. He groaned. His hand moved toward the wound.
“Don’t.” I nudged him away and laid a bandage on it.
His head lifted from the table, but the pain made him hiss. “Fuck, it wasn’t a dream.”
“No. But you had a little faith and you’re going to live.”
Luzon brought a pair of orderlies to help Del off the table. They’d see that he was properly bandaged. A third man stood waiting with the arm of a soldier across his shoulders, his own arm holding the man up by the waist. The soldier was wilting fast; an arrow jutted from his ribs, the blood frothing as his punctured lung leaked through it.
“Next.” I patted the table.
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Entry Point 9 - by Jenelle Leanne Schmidt
The man stood before him, a plea in his eyes that could not be ignored. His shoulders were broad and strong, but at the moment they drooped pathetically, as though he had been carrying a weight that was far too heavy for far too long.
“Please,” the man began, his tone imploring, “please, we cannot hold any longer. We beg your aid. If there are any heroes left to hear our call, they are desperately needed here at Ebulon.”
Brant awoke. He blinked, feeling disoriented. For a moment, he was unsure of what had woken him. He sat up in bed, shaking off the fog of sleep. Dylanna sat up as well. She squinted at him in the Toreth-light. He gazed at her, his eyes tracing the lines of her face and noting how the silvery beams of the Toreth glinted in his wife’s dark hair.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“A strange dream…” Brant shook his head, “it was probably nothing.”
“Me too,” she admitted.
“I was being asked for help…”
Dylanna stared at him oddly. “Was it by a man standing in the snow, dressed strangely in furs and armor, with a battered crown on his head? A… King Yadi… was that his name?”