Blood Of Gods

CHAPTER 46

Veldaren opened up around them as Patrick rode along the road in the city’s southern district. Even the vividness of the early spring sun could do nothing to brighten what looked to be a depressing wasteland of drab gray. To the right appeared a stone tower with a hollowed nook at the top. Though tall and indeed threatening, it too appeared dreary. “I’m not impressed,” Patrick muttered, bouncing on his stallion. He’d seen the amazing architecture his brother-in-law Turock had erected in Drake, the precise buildings designed by Warden Boral in Lerder, and the elegant Gemcroft estate in Haven, all of which made the boxy sameness of Veldaren less than inspiring.

“Your eyes tell a different story,” said Preston.

Patrick offered him a scowl. “Shut it.”

But there was no denying the truth to the man’s words. The sheer size of the place most certainly stilled Patrick’s heart. Even Drake, with all its advancements, was a place where many people resided in shanties and tents scattered just outside the central square. Veldaren had none of that. There was no grass to be seen. The street was cobbled, the walks lining it gray slate. The plain structures were numerous, built close together, most rising at least two levels up. And that didn’t include the three massive spires that cut into the sky ahead and to the right. Those were the most imposing of all.

“I’ve never seen a city before,” Patrick said. “A true city, like those in the Wardens’ stories.”

“Of course you haven’t,” laughed Edward.

There was edginess in the youth’s laughter. He’d been like that during most of their journey to this city across the river. Most everyone was tense, from the Turncloaks to the Wardens, to Ashhur’s children. Even Ashhur seemed anxious. The only ones who showed no fear were the thousands of undead that marched around them, their numbers so great that those on the perimeter of the ring were constantly colliding with the many buildings lining the road.

As for those inside the circle, so crammed were their conditions that they rode in three slender columns. When Patrick peered over his shoulder, he couldn’t see the tail end of the convoy. They were still exiting the forest to the south.

“I don’t like that,” said Patrick. “It doesn’t look good.”

“It isn’t,” Preston replied. “Being stretched this thin, we’re easy targets.”

“But what about the undead?” asked Tristan. Though he was nervous, the young soldier had a warm smile on his face as he gazed all around him at the dingy scenery. He’s from here, Patrick recalled. This is a homecoming for him.

“The undead can protect us only so much,” said Preston. The older man jabbed his thumb behind him. “And their presence will mean nothing if the god controlling them falls.”

Tristan turned around, as did Patrick. Ashhur wavered as he walked, his gaze intent on some distant point, his arms hanging limp by his sides. He had been this way for days, ever since he had raised a provisional bridge over the Rigon once they’d reached the scorched remains of Lerder. It looked as if it took his every effort simply to stand upright. It had gotten so bad that at night, when their tents were put up and the men of Paradise gathered around their cookfires, they would express their doubts about whether Ashhur was right in bringing them east at all. Not that Patrick could blame them. He was starting to have those thoughts as well.

“Too late to turn back now,” he whispered.

“What was that?” asked Preston’s other son, Ragnar.

Patrick waved him away. “Nothing. Talking to myself.”

The force progressed down the road, the constant clomp of hooves on cobbles ringing in Patrick’s ears. Their advance was indeed noisy, but it struck him as strange that despite how much of a ruckus they made, they attracted no attention. The opened windows of every building they passed, large and small, were empty. There wasn’t even a hint of movement inside, which was strange in a place that looked like it had once housed thousands upon thousands of people.

“You think the people left?” he asked Preston.

The older man shrugged.

“Perhaps we won’t find Karak here after all,” said Patrick. He reached over his shoulder and tapped Winterbone’s now naked handle for luck.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Preston said with a frown.

The old soldier’s words proved prophetic, for a few minutes later a commotion broke out at the front of the column, half a hundred yards from where Patrick rode. The wall of undead collapsed inward a bit farther up, and Patrick heard Ahaesarus sound his warning horn. The men from Ker, who had been interspersed throughout the column, lifted their elven bows and nocked them with arrows. The horn sounded again. Words of caution were passed from the front of the column to the back.

“On the roofs! Look to the roofs!”

Patrick shouted the same warning to those behind him, then raised his eyes to the tops of the surrounding buildings. Hundreds of people appeared, their hair long and grimy, their clothes tattered. To Patrick it looked as if they had ridden into a den of feral women. The women held various objects in their hands, from rocks to sharpened lengths of wood to the type of iron cookware-pots and ladles and fire pokers-that Patrick had seen used in Haven. There were some wielding bows and arrows as well. Seemingly at once, the women raised their makeshift weapons above their heads.

“Shields up!” Patrick shouted, unhitching from his saddle his borrowed shield-which still bore Karak’s sigil-just as the women released their wares.

Those that had shields lifted them; those that didn’t tried to get close to those who did. Heavy objects rained down on them, pounding against the solid wood and metal of the shields. Men shouted down below while women sounded a primal war cry from above. Patrick braced himself, a heavy chunk of iron striking his shield, cracking it, and bathing his eyes with splinters. A spike of pain jolted through his forearm on impact. An arrow struck his mailed thigh, but not hard enough to pierce it. He glanced down as yet another heavy object thudded against his shield and saw that the arrow was crudely made, simply a sharpened stick with feathers attached to the shaft with twine. He plucked it from the ring it was stuck in and tossed it aside.

The Kerrians fired arrows back at those attacking from the rooftops, their aim truer, their bolts more deadly. Many of the women fell back, disappearing over the other side of the slanted roofs; others caught arrows in the chest and tumbled twenty feet to the ground, only to stand up a moment later and join the undead horde.

A horse galloped along the edge of the convoy. It was Master Warden Ahaesarus, inhumanly tall in his saddle. He shouted at the Kerrians as he passed them by. “Get to the center! Do not waste arrows on the citizens! Save them for the real soldiers!”

A few stubborn Kerrians still loosed arrows, but most men followed orders, pressing their horses into the column to find someone with a large enough shield to hide beneath. Still the rain of debris continued. Patrick lifted his shield slightly and peered at Ashhur. The god had remained silent, even as he was pelted with heavy objects. Each time one struck him, he would wince, but he kept on walking, determined.

At last, the god spoke. “To the right!” he bellowed loudly enough for those still a half-mile away to hear. “We head for the castle.”

Up ahead, the procession turned. Patrick remained beneath his shield, though his stallion was taking a beating. It whinnied every time it was struck, and once a large chunk of stone hit the stallion in the flank, almost breaking its leg. “Easy,” Patrick said, doing his best to soothe the beast. “You have it. You can do it.” The stallion remained true. Others weren’t so lucky. Edward’s horse was taken down by a crude spear; Big Flick lost his when a large iron tub crushed the poor thing’s skull. The numbers of those who carried on by foot grew by the second. The dead men rose to join the undead army while the horses formed obstructions the rest of the convoy had to maneuver their way around. If Patrick thought the road had been a cluttered mess before, it was nothing compared to now.

There were urgent shouts coming from up ahead. As Patrick took the turn onto the adjoining road, guided by the crush of bodies around him, he could see why. Human forms charged from the structures lining both sides of the road and crashed into the wall of undead, hacking and slashing with daggers, spears, small swords, and hatchets. There were hundreds of them, all feminine in shape, yet they were covered head to toe in what looked to be off-white bandages. Patrick watched them battle the undead, slowly cutting through their thick mass. He then peeked around his shield, still held above his head, and saw that the barrage from the rooftops had ceased.

“Small victories,” he muttered.

Then he glanced forward, saw the three giant spires they had been marching toward, rising above a thirty-foot wall, and realized just how small that victory truly was.

The convoy was more packed together now, a writhing mass of bodies rather than three distinct columns. Those on the outside moved hastily toward their undead protectors, hands shaking as they held their weapons at the ready. Not a good sign. The strange, wrapped women seemed to fight without fear, as if driven by some otherworldly force. The barely trained defenders of Paradise, though more numerous, would be cut through in moments. Patrick exchanged a glance with Preston. The old soldier gritted his teeth and leaned forward in his saddle.

“Turncloaks, ride!” he shouted.

Patrick ripped Winterbone off his back and led the way, inching his stallion through the press of struggling bodies until he reached the edge of the undead wall. One of the wrapped women sliced the head off a deceased Warden and shoved her way past the reaching, now-headless corpse. Patrick was there to greet her, hacking down from atop his stallion, clipping the woman on the side of the head. She fell back shrieking, blood spurting from where the wrappings had been sliced on her cheek, until the undead horde swallowed her whole. Patrick felt his stomach clench as he watched the walking corpses tear her apart.

Then Ashhur screamed, and everything went to shit.

Patrick veered around, looking on as his god grabbed the sides of his head and fell to his knees. The undead he commanded stopped in their tracks, swaying in place, looking like indecisive simpletons who couldn’t decide which way to go.

“Uh, Patrick?” he heard Preston say.

“Yeah, this isn’t good,” Patrick replied.

They retreated back toward the center as the wrapped women barreled over the suddenly motionless undead. They made no sound as they charged, but it didn’t matter, for whatever noise they might have made would’ve been swallowed by the war cry of Karak’s soldiers. They stampeded down the road in front of Ashhur’s brave warriors, a massive wave of flesh, armor, and sharpened steel, while another division simultaneously assailed the rear of the convoy, which was still wrapped around the corner on the main road. The clash of steel and the screams of dying men overtook all else. Patrick, his heart beating a mile a minute, snapped his head around, staring at the wall and towers of Veldaren’s castle. Only two hundred yards at most separated them, but it could not have seemed farther away.

All the while, Ashhur remained on his knees and hunched over, screaming in pain.

Patrick glanced at Preston. “Forward!” he shouted, holding Winterbone out before him. “Never stop moving! Head for the castle!”

The Turncloaks, as well as a small group of Ashhur’s children and Wardens, heeded his call. Twelve horses and thirty men on foot fell in behind Patrick as he urged his stallion through the road’s cramped confines. All around him was commotion as the wrapped women leapt and stabbed and hewed, sending geysers of blood into the air. Fortunately for those from Paradise, given how tightly they were bunched and the borrowed armor they wore, more attackers fell than defenders.

That close proximity and armor would mean nothing once Karak’s soldiers met their ranks, however. And they were approaching fast, the whole screaming lot of them. Patrick finally reached the front of the line to find Ahaesarus, no longer on horseback, trying to organize the terrified men who formed the front line. Half of them had no shields. There were undead here too, standing still, wavering, and useless for anything but a simple obstruction.

Patrick tossed his shield to one of the men without one. “All of you, do the same!” he shouted to his ever-growing squad. One by one they handed over their shields to the men forming the barricade. “And any of you who wish for a good death this day, follow us!” A few chose to line up behind him, but most simply knelt there, shivering behind their shields. A couple of them even tried to scurry back away from the front. Patrick turned away quickly before he snapped at them. The Master Warden could handle the cravens. He had better work to do.

“Onward!” he shouted, kicking at his stallion. He took off at a gallop, knocking aside bunches of stagnant undead and charging straight for the onrushing soldiers. The Turncloaks fanned out to either side of him. Pikes and shields were raised, but that didn’t slow either party’s advance.

Patrick crashed into the first row of soldiers, barely turning his body to the side fast enough to miss a lunging pike. His stallion hollered in pain as the animal was battered by a soldier’s hardened steel, but it pressed onward, urged on by his commands. From atop the beast Patrick brought Winterbone down again and again, cleaving through armor, batting aside enemy blades, slamming those who tried to yank him from the saddle with his elbows. And still he kept yelling, “Hyah!” to keep his stallion pushing forward.

The unified cry of a thousand souls broke above the din of battle, and Patrick kicked a man in the face and turned around. It seemed Ahaesarus had decided a new strategy was necessary. Instead of waiting to be run through by the enemy, the massive throng of Paradise’s defenders had followed Patrick’s lead, hurtling past the dormant undead and into Karak’s soldiers. Bodies collided, steel crashed. It was absolute pandemonium.

Whirling back around, Patrick continued onward, determined to reach the castle walls. He fought the urge to check on the location of his mates; that would only slow him down. He kept bringing his sword down again and again, the muscles in his powerful arm singing with strength. Men died by the score, their flesh torn asunder, their armor no match for Winterbone’s gleaming edge. He sat high above it all, dishing out death in the name of Ashhur.

“DuTaureau!” he heard Preston’s voice call out from somewhere amid the chaos. “Horsemen!”

Patrick lifted his head and saw at least two hundred men on horseback appear from a pair of alleys on the right side of the road. They galloped toward him just as arrows began to fly from above, descending into the mass of humanity far behind him. He glanced up at the rooftops, only instead of disheveled women, he saw tall, elegant beings up there, launching arrow after arrow with quickness he had never seen before. Elves, he thought. Great. Patrick turned away from the sight of them, slashed through the helm of a soldier wielding a giant hammer, and charged toward the horsemen.

He never reached them.

A solid blow took his stallion out from under him, and the animal screeched as it toppled sideways, crushing two soldiers. Patrick fell from the saddle, landing solidly on a group of men, armor clanking. He rolled, avoiding stomping boots and plunging blades, before swiftly getting to his feet and pitching backward. A soldier’s face was crunched by his armored hump, and he snarled as two more soldiers turned to face him. He went to lift his sword, but it was snagged behind him somehow. One of them got in a good swing, his sword catching Patrick on the vambrace and sending a shudder through him that rocked his shoulder, but the other one didn’t attack. Instead, his eyes bugged out of his skull as the pointy end of a spear ejected from his neck. His blood splattered against Patrick, who freed his sword and ran it through the first man. He felt someone closing in from behind and whirled around, Winterbone leading. His blade met Preston’s with a resounding clang.

The old Turncloak grinned. “Not today, my friend.”

Patrick nodded. The two of them swiveled at once, their swords unlocking, and began scything their way through the soldiers. Sharp edges found gaps in his armor, opening what felt to be a hundred tiny cuts all over him, but he didn’t care. He noticed many others wearing the white-painted armor of Ashhur’s legion behind him, including most of the Turncloaks, and grinned. His people were with him. He could ignore his pain so long as that was the case.

When the horsemen entered the fray, crashing through their own brethren as if they didn’t care about their lives, Patrick went back to work. He sliced at the horses’ legs and sides, severing tendons and spilling intestines. His men followed his lead. Many of the horses toppled over, tipping their riders into the melee. After felling yet another horse, nearly severing the beast’s head with one massive hew, Patrick spun around and was almost run down. He fell straight backward, slashing out to the side with Winterbone at the same time. The blade cut through the horse’s front leg, snapping the bone and separating it just above the ankle. The horse crashed head over heels. Bones crunched, and more men screamed.

Someone helped him back to his feet, and then he felt himself being shoved from behind, carried along by his men’s rush. He bounced off soldiers, punching and stabbing at them, until finally he fell forward into open space. He tumbled, smacking his cheek on bloody cobbles, jarring his neck in the process. But there was no time to wallow in his pain. He shot to his feet, ready to face his next challenge, only to see that he now stood a mere twenty feet in front of the castle walls. There was nothing but the slate walk between it and him-no soldiers, no horses, no wrapped women, nothing.

He’d made it.

Before he could turn around and defend against the dangers behind him, he glanced up the full height of the wall. The top of the wall shimmered in the sunlight, drawing his eye to its horrors. He wanted to look away but couldn’t. Tristan had told him about the corpses that hung here, and though he knew the boy hadn’t been lying, a part of him still hadn’t wanted to believe him.

Yet there they were, bodies dangling from the wall, at least fifty of them. Some were fresher than others; those to his far left looked like they had been recently hung. Patrick stared at their faces, rotted and drooping, holding very little resemblance to the humans they had once been. The slate walk beneath them was stained black and a wretched shade of green. Patrick couldn’t help but gape at each and every one of them, men and women alike, not stopping until he found the one he was searching for.

Patrick’s heart shattered. He fell to his knees.

There she was, a decomposed husk of the vibrant girl she’d once been, now not much more than a skeleton covered with a thin sheen of gray, peeling flesh. The mane of curly hair, its bright red faded to a dull auburn, coiled around the eyeless skull and fell over the shoulders. Patrick leaned back, staring up at Nessa’s corpse. Her death hadn’t been real before; it had been a message from another-more rumor than fact, even if he’d believed it completely. But now, to see the proof directly in front of him. . something within him snapped. He threw his head back and howled at the sky, then scampered to his feet, breathing heavily as tears streamed down his cheeks. The din of conflict going on all around him seemed far away.

“Where are you!” he bellowed. “I know you’re here!”

When he turned, he saw that the entire square in front of the castle had become one giant battleground. Soldiers of Karak and Ashhur clashed with a frenzy, while elves, those strange wrapped women, and the Wardens were intermixed as well, killing and dying just as easily as everyone else. Ashhur, his beloved deity, was nowhere to be seen, swallowed by the horde, his undead swaying uselessly between pockets of combat.

That only served to further enrage Patrick, and he focused on that rage. When one of Karak’s soldiers ran at him, he drove his sword through the man’s face, kicked the corpse off the blade, and continued to rumble along the castle wall like a bull seeking a target to spear with his horns. There was one man that mattered, the one that had haunted his dreams with visions of his dead sister, the one he now blamed for everything that had gone wrong.

And then he found him: Jacob Eveningstar, the First Man who had betrayed Ashhur and cast all of Dezrel into war. He stood in front of the castle portcullis, flanked on either side by onyx lion statues, his eyes glowing bright crimson. A ring of soldiers in black armor protected him. His cloak billowed as if he was caught in a harsh wind, and his body was surrounded by swirling shadow. The man chanted, his hands in constant motion, fingers twisting into odd shapes, a look of pain on his face. Patrick never thought twice. His instinct was to let out a scream, one that contained all the rage and heartbreak he had ever felt, but he snapped his lips shut and simply charged.

One of the soldiers in front noticed his approach and turned. He wore a massive helm topped with a pair of horns, and stepped toward him. The soldier held before him a sword as hefty as Winterbone, with a curled black handle. Patrick snarled, kept his feet moving, lifted his own sword above his head, and chopped down as hard as he could when he was within reach.

The soldier easily parried the clumsy strike, kicking Patrick away in the process. Patrick hit the ground and rolled, falling directly on Winterbone. The sharp blade sliced through his armored left shoulder and cut deep into the flesh beneath. Patrick let out a cry of fury and pain and rolled back over, clutching at his gushing wound. The same soldier then yelled something Patrick couldn’t hear.

As Patrick got to his feet, an ear-splitting roar sounded. From above the castle wall leapt two lions, a male and a female, far too huge to be normal. They soared over his head and landed amid the chaos, their jaws snapping and claws swiping. Men were shredded from both sides. One of the Wardens, Sabael, lost his head in an instant.

“You have lost, blasphemer!” someone called out. Patrick turned back around to see that the soldier who had thwarted his attack had lifted the visor of his great helm. Scars ran down half his face, and one of his eyes was milky white. The scarred man took a step forward, pointing a mailed finger in Patrick’s direction.

“You will fall next,” he said.

Patrick took a defensive posture, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, waiting for the man to attack. Behind him, swords clashed, and he heard a youthful voice-either Tristan or Joffrey-screaming his name. He ignored it.

But the helmed soldier didn’t rush him. Jacob Eveningstar didn’t hurl a ball of shadow in his direction. Instead, from out of the portcullis swarmed fifteen elves, moving effortlessly around Jacob and the guarding soldiers, forming a secondary layer of protection for the First Man. Their copper skin glistened in the sunlight, and their pointed ears twitched. The elf in the center stepped forward. He was a massive beast of a thing, square headed and thick shouldered. His armor was black and rutted, like scales. From behind his back he drew a pair of gleaming swords just as black as his armor. The elf leaned forward and scowled at Patrick, clanging his swords together in front of him, causing sparks to shower to the cobbles.

Patrick heard rapid footfalls approaching from behind and threw an elbow, cracking the jaw of a rushing soldier, then stood sideways and faced the giant elf.

Perhaps this is the one to prove me mortal?

“Who cares?” he growled. The ageless Patrick DuTaureau charged.