Velixar’s belly filled with pride as the pendant against his chest pulsed with heat. He spun his horse around to look for Karak and saw that the deity was staring at him, eyes aglow, arms crossed. The god nodded in approval while the thousands of soldiers behind him gaped in awe. Velixar then caught Lord Commander Gregorian’s eye, raised his right hand to the sky, and pointed two fingers toward the smoking hole in the wall around Mordeina.
The Lord Commander needed no further invitation. The man yanked his horse’s reins with his good arm, urging it to the side.
“March forth!” he shouted. “Slay the worshippers of the false god!” The entirety of the first vanguard hollered their approval. The riotous thudding of clanging armor and stomping feet sounded as the soldiers began to charge across the dead field covered with the remains of the grayhorns. The second vanguard stepped up, preparing to follow.
Velixar sat and watched as the soldiers rushed past him, weapons raised, spittle flying from their lips. They would do their god proud, just as he had.
The assault on Mordeina had begun.
CHAPTER 46
The demons were upon them, swooping from the heavens, snatching women and children, slaughtering any who opposed. As Ahaesarus listened to them scream, his vision blacked out, his body searing with pain. He sensed people leaping over him as he lay on his back.
A foot connected with his side, rolling him over. He remained where he was, elbow pressing into the soft earth, while his sight slowly returned. Muffled voices shouted warnings. Something slumped to the ground beside him, and he lifted his head, not wanting to see Malodia take her final breath, but bound by honor and love to do just that.
The world came clear to him, and he saw that the body alongside him was not his dead wife’s, but rather that of a young man with curly red-blond hair. His dead eyes stared at Ahaesarus until they were covered in blood from the ugly wound on the side of his head. The Warden reached over, his every muscle aching, and felt the man’s chest. His heart was still.
The screaming and clamor of the stampede continued as Ahaesarus sat up. There were bodies everywhere, some writhing in pain, most stilled, all covered with gashes and bruises and surrounded by large chunks of heavy, jagged stone. The Warden looked up at the twin walls Ashhur had helped raise, at the wide crevasse that had been solid stone moments before. Someone crashed into him from behind, knocking him forward, and he bent painfully at the waist, his chin almost kissing his knees.
He rolled, got up on all fours, and surveyed the pandemonium all around him. The people were rushing about in a mad panic, an endless mob of them, their roughspun stained with grime, ash, and blood. His fellow Wardens tried to usher them along in an organized manner toward the manse on the hill, but the mob’s panic was too great. He watched as one of his brethren was trampled by a swarm of terrified men and women, disappearing from view. The last Ahaesarus saw of him was his hand rising above the bobbing heads in a feeble attempt to make them stop.
With the crowds moving steadily away from him, he took a moment to grab hold of his ears and rock back and forth. There was a persistent buzzing in his head that muffled all other sound, almost as if he were underwater. Confusion abounded as he tried to remember what had happened, why everything had gone so insane so quickly.
Then it came to him. He had been in Manse DuTaureau, arguing with Isabel about what his punishment should be for releasing Geris Felhorn from his prison, when her son Patrick barged in with his incendiary revelation. After that he had left Isabel to her tears and walked down the path to the gate to rejoin his regiment of Wardens and a few of Turock Escheton’s pupils. Almost as soon as he’d arrived, he was temporarily blinded and blown backward by a massive explosion. He remembered seeing Ashhur atop that wall moments before his world became a complete whiteout, and he flung his head from side to side, searching in a panic. It did not take him long to spot the western deity, sprawled out on the ground a few hundred feet away, surrounded by a congress of Wardens. Judarius was among them, a wound between his green and gold-flecked eyes leaking blood. His fellow Lordship mentor shouted out orders. Ashhur’s arms were grabbed, and the Wardens proceeded to lug him across the debris-littered ground.
A horn sounded, drawing Ahaesarus’s attention back to the gaping fissure in Mordeina’s wall. The gap was wide enough for twenty grayhorns to stride through abreast of one another. He peered through the smoke and flames, watching as a considerable number of black shapes moved ever closer to the enclosed settlement. He stood on shaky legs, stumbling over corpses and chunks of wall. It was hard to see clearly through the smoke, but he swore there was a strange sort of lightning striking the ground on the other side. What followed were inhuman howls, and the repetitious clomp-clomp-clomp of charging horses’ hooves.
Not a moment later, three men came charging through the smoking breach atop majestic black chargers. They wore full plate armor, painted black, and great helms covering their faces. Each helm was adorned with a pair of horns, like a bull’s, and the soldiers’ breastplates bore the roaring lion of Karak. The three stopped once they reached open ground, spinning about on their chargers. The one in the center lifted his helm, exposing the youthful face of a young man no older than twenty, and then brought a horn to his lips and blew it in the direction of the aperture. That done, he returned the horn to his saddlebag and drew his sword, waving it in circles above his head. Before his helm was pulled back over his face, Ahaesarus caught a glimpse of his eyes. His gaze was hard and intense for a youth, much like Wallace’s when faced with Turock’s interrogation.
The roar of a mob followed, riotous like a legion of drunkards after a night of inebriation, and a stream of armor-clad men came screaming through the breach. They ran with their weapons held out before them, madness in their eyes. Any stragglers were cut down instantly, their blood filling the air. The people shrieked, fleeing as fast as they could, only to be slaughtered by the three who had rode on horseback.
“We must fight!” he heard someone yell, and Ahaesarus spun around to see Judarius leading a cluster of Wardens toward the invading soldiers. Mennon was with him, as were Ludwig and Florio and Judah and thirty others. The soldiers kept coming, their numbers too great to count, their movements too frantic for Ahaesarus to follow.
Steel met steel with a violent clang.
He then remembered what he had told Isabel before Lady DuTaureau had sent him to Drake: “If any were to lash out at Ashhur’s children, I would strike them down or perish trying. And when Karak arrives on our doorstep, he will discover just how much I mean those words.”
It was time for that pronouncement to become a reality.
Ahaesarus swallowed his fear and charged into the melee with a roar. His fist flew, connected with the head of a helmless soldier. The young man’s head snapped to the side and he crumpled to the ground. Ahaesarus dodged the thrust of yet another soldier, slid to the ground, and lifted the sword of the man he had struck. He was not skilled with it, but what he lacked in skill he made up for with determination. He wielded the sword like he would wield his sickle back in Algrahar when it came time to trim his fields, swiping it wildly back and forth, keeping his motions low. He hacked off feet and clanged the weapon against thighs enclosed in chainmail. A blade pierced his side, but he barely felt it. Instead he looped around, catching the one who’d stabbed him with an elbow to the chin. The man fell to the side, howling, only to be replaced by another. Ahaesarus kept fighting, even though he was rapidly tiring as he became drenched in blood.