Beyond the Mists of Katura

Chapter 24

By the time they reached the lower slopes of the mountains they had put a good distance between themselves and the chasing pack but the race was not yet won. Auum looked at what lay before them and took a deep breath.

The incline of flat granite they were moving up grew steadily steeper over the course of about three hundred yards before rearing into the sky, a wall of bleak stone broken by cracks, outcrops and occasional narrow ledges. Clumps of vegetation clung on here and there and gliding birds climbed tall thermal updraughts, their cries echoing on the wind blowing across the base of the climb.

Grafyrre, Merrat, Merke and Marack were in a group pointing out potential routes up the wall. Auum sighed, awed by the sheer scale of it. Comparing this rock face to the cliffs at Verendii Tual was like comparing a banyan to a balsa tree.

Stein and the elven mage had lain Tilman against the mountainside and the elf was assessing his injury and preparing a casting. Auum trotted up with Ulysan to crouch beside him.

‘Still with us?’

Tilman managed a vague smile. His face was covered in sweat and his colour was a sick-looking grey.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘You may be a fool, but you are a courageous fool,’ said Auum. ‘What can you do for him?’

The elven mage laid his hands on Tilman’s ankle and cast. Tilman relaxed and his breathing became more regular, some colour returning to his cheeks.

‘I can take the pain away,’ said the mage. ‘But until we have time to probe the extent of the damage, I don’t know. It’s not horrible in there, but without magical assistance he isn’t going to be walking for fifteen to twenty days.’

‘We’re about to climb a mountain,’ said Auum. ‘And we aren’t leaving him here.’

‘We’ll take him up,’ said Stein. ‘Look, Auum, what you did for him. . a human. . it means a huge amount, and, um. .’

‘I think he’s trying to ask you why you risked your life to save a mere human rather than leave him to become cinders and an archery target,’ said Ulysan.

‘Thanks, Ulysan. Where would I be without your insight?’

‘Lost and alone, skipper.’

‘Sometimes an attractive prospect,’ said Auum. He turned to Stein. ‘I would do the same for anyone who would lay down his life for an elf. It’s the TaiGethen way.’

Oryaal was running up the slope towards them, the veteran warrior indicating behind him.

‘They’re on to us. Spotter mages have got close enough to identify our position, and the mages and archers are moving up. There’s a good ambush point-’

‘No more fighting,’ said Auum. ‘How long before they are in range?’

‘They’re moving slowly because they know we’ve stopped, and that makes them nervous, but they can be on us in a quarter-hour or less once they know we’re climbing.’

Auum hissed a breath over his teeth. With this many elves unused to climbing that was too short a time.

‘Then we’ve rested here for too long. Ulysan, let’s get our best climbers on the face now. We need six routes, if we can find them. I’ll speak to the Il-Aryn. All Julatsan elves should be in the air, helping the climbers. Stein, you have your first charge already. Have your mages try and identify the likely fallers and help them however you can. How high is the first rest point?’

Stein grimaced. ‘A long way. Three hundred yards at least, but once we’re there the incline is dramatically shallower and we’ll be able to walk. It’s a narrow edge but doable, taking us far past the snow line.’

‘All right. We’ve got a few little ledges on the way up if we’re desperate. Let’s go.’

Ulysan moved off, calling for Merrat, Grafyrre, Merke, Marack, Thrynn and Hohan. Auum trotted to the gathered and nervous-looking Il-Aryn.

‘None of you will fall,’ said Auum when he had their attention, ‘because the TaiGethen will not let you. Follow your leader. Use the same hand- and footholds they do. Be afraid because that will make you careful. Stretch your bodies when you must and grip hard; jam your feet into those cracks hard. Know you can do this. You are all fit and strong because that is the way Takaar made you.

‘If you are struggling, cry out and we will help. The Julatsan elves will be around you. Have faith in Yniss, faith in yourselves and faith in all of us. I believe in you, or you wouldn’t be here now. Let’s go. Ulysan will assign you to your teams of TaiGethen.’

Auum watched them go and prayed to Yniss that none of them slipped. And so the climb began. Marack and Merke moved smoothly up the first thirty feet or so to a point where they could assess the next segment. The going was a little harder for Grafyrre and Merrat, who were climbing to either side of the first pair. Hohan and Thrynn were to Merrat’s right and moving well enough.

There was now space on the wall and Ulysan cajoled the first Il-Aryn to start. He bit his lip and looked behind him, seeing Oryaal back at the lookout point. Up in the sky the Xeteskian mages couldn’t fail to see what was happening.

‘We need to move faster,’ said Auum, coming to Ulysan’s side.

Three TaiGethen were moving up after the first six Il-Aryn. The routes were close enough to be bridged by expert climbers, meaning each TaiGethen could shadow two Il-Aryn, but it still looked thin.

‘Do you want another route?’ asked Ulysan. ‘Next six, on the climb. Follow your friends — you’ll have arrows at your back in no time. Up you go.’

‘No, just push them harder. We’re spread thin enough as it is.’

‘If they can get close enough for castings then we’re helpless.’

‘I know,’ said Auum. He looked up. ‘Marack, move on up. All of you, careful and quick.’

Auum’s heart was beating hard. There was a human expression Stein had used once, something about a rock and a hard place. It made perfect sense now. He couldn’t get the image from his head: of them all spread across the mountainside while the Xeteskians fired spell after spell at their backs, sending burning corpses down to disintegrate on impact. He shook his head. Someone was calling his name.

‘They’re advancing!’ shouted Oryaal. ‘You’ve got to climb faster.’

Auum looked back at the wall. Less than half his people were on it and none of them was out of spell range yet. They’d missed something, they must have done. .

‘Stein!’ yelled Auum, hearing the name rattle off the mountainside. ‘Stein!’

Stein heard his name called and flew back down from his vantage point on a small ledge where Tilman sat a few hundred feet above Hohan. Elves were swarming up the rock face but so many were still on the ground waiting to start the climb. He could see the Xeteskians running up the last shallow slopes before the mountain proper.

For a while Stein couldn’t see Auum. In his browns and dark greens and with his painted face, he was difficult to spot, but eventually he saw him waving and flew down to him.

‘They’re very close,’ he said.

‘We have to delay them, slow them somehow,’ said Auum. ‘We need an arc of wards, maybe two arcs if you have time, placed to keep them back out of casting range.’

‘The spotters will see us doing it — there’ll be no surprise.’

‘I don’t care; I just need them cautious. Dead is a bonus.’

‘Got it,’ said Stein.

He flashed back up into the sky, cursing himself for not thinking of this before. He moved fast among his adepts, calling them to him and leading them back to the ground, where he ordered the placing of wards — alarms, fire and smoke, anything quick but hard to divine placed in an arc two hundred or so yards distant from the wall and its increasingly desperate climbers.

All the while he had half an eye on where Auum stood with another TaiGethen watching the humans advance. As soon as the mages had finished one casting, Stein had them move forward ten paces and lay another. He’d love to have laid three arcs but time was pressing and their stamina finite. They’d need all their strength for flight.

Halfway through the second arc, Auum and the other ducked as arrows flicked off rocks nearby to scatter and skip across the stone.

‘Keep your heads down and finish your castings!’ called Stein. ‘Back in the air when you’re done.’

Stein knelt on the ground and invested the space before him with a wall of flame, small in stature but effective enough. He set the modulating shape half in and half out of the stone, seeing the flashes of white amid the yellow of the spikes and sphere. Not perfect, but it would last more than long enough before it dissipated naturally.

Calling wings to his back, he rose into the sky, waving at a nearby Xeteskian spotter mage being prevented from disrupting their castings by the threat of three TaiGethen patrolling the casters, jaqruis in hands.

‘Should keep you busy,’ called Stein.

‘You’re all dead, Julatsan. Either on the walls or up in the cold. Where on earth do you think you’re going?’

‘What is it to you, traitor? You know the Wytch Lords normally incinerate those with whom they reach agreements. I’ll be able to hear your screams from the top of the mountain.’

A quick glance down showed him Auum and. . Oryaal, that was it, gathered in the arms of two mages each and carried over the arcs of wards before being dropped and haring back towards the rock wall. More than two thirds were now on the climb. He rose a little higher and saw the trail-finders making good progress, but their charges, unsurprisingly, were far slower.

His mages were beginning to gather near the slowest, helping them find their holds and urging them to greater effort. None had slipped so far but it was surely only a matter of time. On the ground Auum was waving more Il-Aryn on to the wall interspersed with TaiGethen, forcing them into ever closer formation. They made a broad target.

Stein swung about. The Xeteskians were on the approach to the mountain. They had slowed just as Auum had hoped and their spotter mages were hovering above the arcs of wards. He calculated how long it would take them to identify and mark each ward, then find a path through the trigger points, and for a blissful moment he thought that they might escape unmolested.

But the enemy were not done. They had upwards of eighty mages at their disposal, and while half at least fell to divining and marking wards, the rest took wing and flew for the wall. Stein swore and filled his lungs.

‘Incoming!’ he roared. ‘Defend the wall! Here they come.’

Stein flitted up, yelling his message again. His mages began to turn and the enemy were on them, targeting those highest up the rock face. The air was full of wings and men. Elven mages screeched and attacked, their native ferocity lending them strength.

Stein plunged on a Xeteskian mage diving to pluck an Il-Aryn from the wall. He feathered his wings against his body and careered down, crashing into the mage’s legs just as he laid a hand on the Il-Aryn’s shoulder. The Xeteskian spun away from the wall but he’d snagged the adept’s clothes, and the unfortunate elf scrabbled futilely for grip before dropping screaming to the ground seventy feet down.

Stein roared his frustration and pounced on the struggling mage again, feet first into the centre of his back. The Xeteskian’s wings, already guttering, flickered and died. He fell close to his victim. Stein turned away and looked for another target. The mountainside echoed with cries and warnings, screams and pleading.

TaiGethen climbers were getting as close to their charges as they could and hung out at extraordinary angles, blade in hand, fighting to keep the enemy back. He spotted a figure climbing hard on the periphery, moving as if he was climbing a ladder, so swiftly did he ascend: Auum. And the one behind him had to be Ulysan.

Stein saw one of his mages spiralling up in a perverse embrace with a Xeteskian. Each looked for the punch that would break the other’s concentration. The elf threw back her head and plunged her bared teeth into the neck of the human. Blood spurted out, the man shrieked and tried to drag her head off him. She raked her fingers down his face and through his eyes and he dropped, still shrieking, from the sky. The elf spat out a mouthful of flesh, exulted and searched for another target.

Stein heard a flurry behind him and shot up sharply. A Xeteskian mage grabbed for him, missing him by a hair, and carried on, aiming for the wall, which was dotted with the colours of man and elf, like some frenzied flocking of birds. Stein flew a tight spiral down, chasing him in as the mage flew straight at a TaiGethen fencing off another attacker and leaving her flank undefended.

‘Your right! Incoming,’ called Stein, flying in harder, knowing he couldn’t get there in time.

The TaiGethen kicked out at her first target, forcing him to back away hard on wings that flickered and steadied. Belatedly she sensed the threat and began to turn. The mage surged in, his hands outstretched. A shape tight to the rock face flashed past Stein and dropped onto the mage. There was a flash of steel and the mage’s wings vanished.

The human dropped and the TaiGethen used his corpse to push himself back against the wall. He scrabbled for purchase, seeking a handhold, but there was none. Stein flew down hard and flattened him against the wall, arresting his descent as much as he could. The elf found a handhold and gripped it hard with his fingertips.

‘You hadn’t thought that last part through, had you?’ said Stein.

‘No,’ admitted Auum. ‘Though I don’t think the fall would have actually killed me. You can let go now, I’m safe.’

Stein boomed a laugh and shot back up into the sky, seeking his next target. It presented itself immediately. Six Xeteskians flying in a tight formation blew through a line of Julatsans, sending one down wingless and the others to spiral away while they fought to maintain their castings. They rushed the wall, colliding with Il-Aryn and TaiGethen alike, dislodging three or four.

Stein called any to him that could hear him and flew in hard behind them. The enemy pushed off from the wall and turned for another attack. Il-Aryn were screaming, one hung from the hand of a TaiGethen warrior herself hanging from a precarious fingerhold. They were more than eighty feet from the ground and the Il-Aryn was crying for aid fit to burst his lungs.

Stein stormed in, seeing another two Julatsan elves on the way. The Xeteskians barrelled in. Stein got between them and the helpless climbers. He kicked out and flailed his fists, trying to connect with anything and finding precious little there. His momentum took him past so he stood on the air, angled his wings acutely and turned back in.

The two elves arrowed in feet first, driving three of the enemy back. Stein got among the others, a fist connecting satisfyingly with a jaw. He took a blow to his side and twisted over, the sick feeling of his wings passing through another’s casting crossing his mind.

Then arms were about him, clogging his wings with a stream of mana. Stein felt his casting begin to fail. He kicked back, attempted to get his own counter-stream going and writhed in the grip of his enemy, trying to turn. From the left, towards the wall, he heard a mourning sound.

The mage’s grip relaxed and Stein pushed away and turned, his wings strengthening. The Xeteskian was pawing at a jaqrui jutting from the back of his head. He whimpered and then plunged to the ground. Stain looked to the wall. Auum was leaning out from a crack into which his hand was jammed.

Stein nodded and headed up. He could hear Auum shouting, his orders travelling up and down the wall.

‘Get them moving. We’re out of time.’

Stein turned yet again and saw he was right. The Xeteskian mages had all but finished their work on the ground. The enemy were peeling away from the fight in the air, heading out to prepare on the ground. He spun one more time, seeing the Il-Aryn begin to move, but it was horribly slow. Half of them were barely twenty feet from the ground and had no hope of getting high enough.

But he could save them, some of them anyway.