Sirendor hit the edge of the building and leapt into space, circling his arms and coming down for a slithered landing on the sloping tiles across the alleyway. He turned as soon as he’d stopped and stood a little to the left of Thraun.
‘Six feet maximum,’ he called. ‘We’re ready.’
‘Sorry for the jolt, Hirad. Over soon.’
Sol ran harder and faster, the dead weight of Hirad a terrible drain on balance and strength. He leaned his body forward, caught the very edge of the building and pushed off with everything he had. He tried to work his body a little more upright as he flew but time was so short. He was falling fast. Too fast.
Sol sought forward with his left leg and prayed. His foot snagged the edge of the building’s balustrade. Sirendor snaked out an arm and gripped his collar. Thraun’s arms took the weight of Hirad. Sol blew out his cheeks, steadied and stepped off the balustrade.
‘Next up, not so easy,’ said Thraun.
Sol looked behind them. The Garonin were in temporary disarray. Up in the sky, the machine was being forced higher and higher as the mana energy blasted upwards. Of the soldiers on the ground, there was nothing. Not a sign. A small mercy. A quicker, surer death was stampeding towards them.
‘We have to try. Go, go.’
Thraun carried Hirad. His younger body was stout in the arm and chest and Sol was blowing badly. They ran up the slope of the roof, over the apex and slid down the other side. The air was full of the sound of explosions and the cloying drab of dust and smoke. Heat billowed around them as intense as dragon fire.
The next roof was flat and held an ornamental garden and fish pond. The carp in the pond all floated belly up. The water was steaming. The Raven tore across it, shadowed by wolves running along the roofs of adjacent buildings. Another flat roof ended in a gap of twelve feet.
‘No way,’ said Ilkar. ‘Don’t even attempt it.’
‘What do you expect me to do, leave him here to burn?’ Sol beckoned Thraun over and held out his arms to receive his old friend.
‘No,’ snapped Ilkar. ‘I don’t know. But this is suicide. I mean, we need you to commit suicide but not here and not now.’
‘So bloody comforting,’ muttered Sol.
Explosions blew apart the roof of the building they had just left. All three ducked reflexively as splinters of stone rattled the tiles at their backs.
‘We can’t stay here,’ said Thraun. ‘I will jump.’
‘You won’t make it. None of us can make it.’ Ilkar looked around desperately. ‘We have to risk the ground.’
‘We won’t get ten yards. The wards go from here to the apron.’ Sol’s fists clenched in frustration. ‘Which way did the ClawBound go? And my wife and son?’
Thraun gestured away across the street. ‘Easy. ClawBound jumps. Ropes are fixed. People cross. ClawBound retrieves ropes.’
‘And never mind the stragglers,’ said Ilkar.
‘Well they got that bit right,’ said Sol. His sigh was lost in another detonation. Smoke billowed up from the alley they’d crossed. ‘Hirad’s last chance. Any ideas.’
There was nothing. The street was too wide to jump, the ground was covered in traps none of them could see and they had no rope, no focused mage and now no hope at all.
‘Drop him and go,’ barked a voice from directly above their heads.
‘Brynar. What are you doing here?’ asked Sol.
‘My bit,’ he said. ‘Hurry. Get down to the street and run. I’ll take Hirad.’
‘The street?’
‘Trust me, Sol. The wards are triggering out to in. I’ve been into the spectrum to see what Densyr is doing. Nothing is active ahead—’ Detonations, very close. A whoosh of flame and a grinding of stone. ‘It’s all behind you. Run. Please.’
‘Bless you, Brynar. Thraun, put Hirad down.’
‘How do we get down?’ Panic edged Ilkar’s voice.
There was a skylight in the roof. Sol jumped straight through it, covering his face. He landed on timbers about eight feet below.
‘Come on!’
The building shook to its foundations. Sol saw Ilkar at the shattered skylight, Thraun shadowing him. He turned and ran to a wide stair that led down to a second level. He leaned against the wall with the building shaking enough to cast ornaments from their stands, shudder a table across the floor below him and bring down plaster-work in lumps.
‘Up the bloody stairs, down the bloody stairs. Make up your mind, Unknown,’ grumbled Ilkar, stamping down the stairs behind him and overtaking him on the way to the final flight.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Ahead of you. If Brynar is wrong, best it’s a dead elf that catches it rather than a live king we want to make into a dead king later on.’
Sol found a smile on his face as he hurdled a low table. He felt a spear of pain through his old hip wound and took the last stairs one at a time. Thraun was right behind him, his wolves anxious to be outside.
‘And for a moment I thought your action truly selfless.’
Ilkar pulled open the front door on a scene of dust and crumbling stonework not thirty yards to their left.
‘Wrong word. I put the “elf” in selfish, old friend.’
‘That is a joke worth dying to avoid,’ said Sol.
The Raven and the three wolves ran from the door, taking a hard right turn away from the arcs of wards that were reducing Xetesk to rubble. Above them, Sol saw the shape of Brynar rise into the sky, struggling under the weight of his charge.
The heat from the countless fires raging in their wake washed over them in waves. Sol coughed, a spasm fled down his back and into his hip. He stumbled into a wall and would have fallen but for Thraun’s grasp on his arm. Sol could see the stone apron that sat in front of the college gates. It looked distant.
He set off after Ilkar. Thraun’s wolves were already way ahead, giving some comfort that Brynar had been right about the wards. But still, with every step, the thought of tripping something instantly fatal played on the mind. Behind him the noise of detonation and collapse was deafening. It rang straight through his head and set his feet vibrating in his boots.
Sol counted the paces he ran between each new set of explosions. Blue auras flashed in his vision and stark shadows played on the walls ahead and to the sides of him. Eight paces. It kept his feet one in front of the other if nothing else. A leaden fatigue was beginning to settle on him. The pain in his back was soaring with every jarring step he took. His hip protested. He was losing ground to the rest of them.
‘Stupid old man,’ he said to himself.
Six paces. The jolt through the ground took his balance and sent him sprawling. Sol turned onto his back and saw the house they’d descended through disappear, consumed by mana fire, stonework reduced to shards by God’s Eyes and EarthHammer.
Too close. Way too close. He scrambled back to his feet and pushed himself on. He was limping badly, the pain shooting into his jaw and up into his skull. Four paces. The wave of heat scorched the back of his head and his clothes began to smoulder gently.
Sol ran out of the street and into the open of the apron. Two paces. The last buildings bordering the apron teetered as EarthHammers thrust through them. Sol gave himself one last push. He was gasping for breath, could barely put his right leg down and his lower back was losing blood way too fast.
The detonations were right behind him. The borders of the stone apron exploded under the pressure of a Jalyr’s Sun that formed and burst at ground level. Sol felt the heat and the fire in the moments before the wind plucked him from his feet and hurled him across the apron. He landed, slid and thumped into the walls of the college.
The last ward arc had triggered and the sound of detonations rolled away across the city. The reverberations carried on and on. As an encore, weakened buildings tumbled, strewing stone, timber and tile.