Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 78

A ripple of dismay passed through Zimmer’s standing army as they wheeled about to face the horde of ancient soldiers that appeared on the outskirts of the city. Battle horns sounded, and a roar of voices rose like a thunderclap from Utros and his warriors.

Zimmer rallied his fighters, “We are the D’Haran army! We stand against all enemies!”

“We are more than that,” Nicci said. “We also have thousands of refugees armed and hungry for vengeance. Now they have their chance.”

Meanwhile, the Norukai raiders fought their way deeper into the streets of Tanimura, yowling like crazed beasts. They let out a resounding cheer upon seeing their allies arrive, which virtually assured their victory. They burned and ransacked whatever they touched. The two enemy armies closed in on the city like flames fanned by a stiff breeze.

Nearby, a Norukai warrior tilted his head back and laughed at the sky, twirling a club in his hand. Annoyed, Nicci burned him to ash with wizard’s fire, and his club clattered to the ground, still clutched by smoking fingers.

Spurring his warhorse, Zimmer led a charge through the chaotic Norukai, trying to get closer to Nicci. She shoved with a wall of hardened air to clear the way for him. Sweat dripped down the general’s face, and his right cheek was splattered with blood. He glanced at Utros’s enormous army outside the city, his expression grim. “Now I see the wisdom in your insistence on keeping so many troops on land. I don’t know if our entire army will be enough to stop General Utros from conquering the city.”

Out on the water, the Tanimuran navy had smashed and sunk many serpent ships, but along the waterfront dozens of Norukai vessels had plowed into the piers and disgorged more and more bloodthirsty barbarians. Meanwhile, Utros directed tens of thousands of ancient soldiers toward Tanimura from the opposite side, broken into several enormous divisions to engulf the city. Countless defenders and innocent citizens would be slaughtered in the coming hours.

Nicci didn’t underestimate the mayhem the Norukai would cause, but Utros was a conqueror. She feared him more. “I need to mount a strong defense against the ancient marching army. I leave you to stop these raiders, General. Are you capable?”

He let out a loud chuckle. “Am I capable? Lord Rahl would be ashamed of me if one of his generals couldn’t stop a crowd of ugly raiders. We will show them how we fight for D’Hara. Take the militia members with you and stop Utros.”

At Zimmer’s signal, one of his adjutants blew a war horn to signal the vengeful militia members, most of whom had only a few days of training. With her gift, Nicci amplified her voice to reach all the way to the rear ranks of people from Renda Bay, from Effren, from Larrikan Shores, from other destroyed towns. “To the hills! We have to cut off General Utros and his army.”

Yet another serpent ship slammed into the piers, and Zimmer rallied his soldiers for a forward charge. Hundreds of blades flashed as the D’Haran army ran to meet the Norukai. He called over his shoulder, “Go, Sorceress!”

Thaddeus raised his borrowed sword and called on his people from Renda Bay, while the freed slave Rendell adjusted a leather helmet that sat askew on his head and shouted to his own squad. A hundred armed refugees under his command ran along with him.

Utros’s army carried tattered pennants with Kurgan’s ancient flame emblem, as well as new flags with an even larger symbolic fire. At the forefront of the enemy ranks Nicci could identify the general by his distinctive horned helmet and a glint of gold from his mask. He seemed to regard the city below as if it were a fat calf to be slaughtered. His sorceress rode beside him, crackling with magic as she called a storm cloud above her.

Separated into broad divisions to attack the city, tens of thousands marched across the forested hills. One division curled around to the northern end of Tanimura, while General Utros and Ruva directed the bulk of the army. The division nearest Nicci and her militia entered the dark expanse of the Hagen Woods just above the flattened ruins of Halsband Island. They plodded relentlessly forward, and once through the thick woods they would trample the lowtown and outlying residential areas to overwhelm the core of Tanimura.

That was also the area Nicci knew best because of her time among the Sisters. She shouted to her fighters as she led them in that direction, “To the woods! We will use the forest to our advantage.”

The Hagen Woods had long been a sinister place. The Sisters of the Dark had performed their bloody sacrifices and horrific initiation rituals here. The place was already soaked with blood, and now she would give the soil more.

Thousands of eager militia members followed her. Rendell and Thaddeus seemed to be competing with each other, racing ahead to fight back. On their way, the fighters crossed the city district nearest the bridges to Halsband Island, where countless clothiers, food merchants, craftsmen, candlemakers, weavers, and stonecutters had once thrived by serving the Palace of the Prophets, along with taverns, gambling dens, and whorehouses that were patronized by the trainees of the Sisters. After the destruction of the palace, though, the district had fallen on hard times, and many of the homes were abandoned.

As her refugee fighters ran through the empty streets to intercept the army division, they passed a few families who huddled in their homes, mothers and fathers holding crude weapons ready to fight if the war came to them. Nicci called back a warning: “We’ll try to hold them off, but if the soldiers break through from the Hagen Woods, then you must flee. You can’t hope to stop them.”

The ancient army had already flooded into the thick forest on their way to the lowtown, but Nicci paused at the edge of the dark pines and tangled oaks. “These dense woods will work to our advantage. The enemy soldiers will have to break ranks as they move through the trees. We’ll attack them and kill them. We cannot let them reach the city.”

Exuding confidence for the benefit of her ragtag fighters, Nicci marched into the woods ready with her gift and with her dagger. The twisted branches and thick underbrush made running impossible, but her fighters worked their way closer to where they could hear the clamor of the approaching army. Disappointingly, General Utros was not with this division, but she knew she would have her moment to face him.

She pulled in front of the others, intending to keep them safe. Not far ahead, she heard thousands of enemy soldiers crashing through the woods. She saw the first line of warriors shoving aside branches and underbrush, and they spotted her at the same time. Even though she wore a dark dress, her pale skin and blond hair made her visible in the gloom of the Hagen Woods.

But thousands of them came yelling through the forest, eager to wipe out the refugee militia. The ancient warriors were flesh and blood again, but they were gaunt, hollow-eyed, their cracked lips drawn back. Desperation clung to them like a tight garment.

As ten bloodthirsty men rushed to cut her down, Nicci extended her gift, found two large trees near the clump of soldiers. As she had done before, she heated the sap and flash-boiled the moisture inside the thick trunks. The liquid expanded, exploded, and the shattered trees hurled sharp wooden stakes in all directions. Just in time, she raised a shield to protect her own fighters, but the flying splinters killed dozens of the enemy in an instant. The shattered tree collapsed and toppled onto even more ancient soldiers.

Nicci detonated another towering oak, which wiped out another group of opponents, while additional ranks of the enemy division collided with her militia. Minimally trained but full of angry energy, the refugee fighters engaged in battle under the dark branches.

Nicci flung out walls of air like battering rams to flatten lines of armored warriors. She burst the hearts of some, when she could focus her pinpoint concentration, she struck out with wizard’s fire, and when all else failed, she used her dagger to cut throats and stab hearts.

The ancient soldiers kept coming, plowing into the woods and driving back the outnumbered militia. The enemy sacrificed themselves without even counting their losses. General Utros had given them orders to push forward and sweep into the city, and they would not be deterred.

Overwhelmed, Nicci’s refugees began to falter. Rendell had a deep gash in his arm, and his leather helmet had been knocked off. Thaddeus pulled him to safety as two attackers closed in on him.

Even Nicci couldn’t stop them all, and she felt the tide turning. “Hold the line! We can’t let them get through to Tanimura.” She lashed out with every trick she could think of, but her gift wasn’t infinite. The militia began to stumble back.

But as her fighters faltered and retreated, a tan panther bounded in and mauled one of the ancient soldiers. Mrra flattened the man and tore out his throat. With a roar, the big cat turned her bloody muzzle toward Nicci and thrashed her tail. Nicci felt a surge of delight. “My sister panther!”

More big cats dashed through the thick trees, dozens of them hidden by the forest shadows. As they struck, the ancient soldiers recoiled in primal fear evoked by the feline predators. Mrra’s new pride of cats was not large enough to thwart that many soldiers, but the terrified reaction was effective enough to make them waver for a moment. Mrra bounded close enough to brush against Nicci, and then she sprang away to attack more victims.

Nicci held her ground. Parts of the Hagen Woods were burning after her wizard’s fire, and many trees had fallen, shattered from within. The militia stiffened their resistance and fought harder.

Then more forms flowed through the thick forest like human shadows, a large fighting force of figures cloaked in gray. They attacked the ancient army from its flank, causing a sudden uproar as Utros’s soldiers found themselves fighting on two fronts. The gray-robed people fell upon the enemy division, using antique swords to hack leather and chain mail, severing arms and heads, thrusting through ribs. The unexpected support gave Nicci’s militia another surge of enthusiasm, and they pressed back, regaining the ground they had lost.

Nicci recognized the unexpected reinforcements—the Hidden People! As they fought in a shadowy blur, she saw a young woman with thin hair tied in a ponytail. Her gray hood had fallen back. “Asha! How did you all get here?”

“We came to fight for you, Nicci.” The girl slashed with her sword, catching an enemy soldier in the back. “You freed us from the zhiss, and now it is only fair that we help you.”

Nicci was amazed. When the sliph had whisked her away from Orogang, General Utros’s expeditionary force had filled the square, an overwhelming army. She had thought sure the Hidden People would be massacred. “How did you escape from the soldiers in Orogang?”

Asha laughed. “Escape? We killed them all. We have far more people than you guessed! And we knew where you were going, since you showed us Tanimura on the relief map in the speaking chamber. We knew all the mountain passes, the rivers, and the cities, and we decided we had to come here. We followed your sand panther.”

Nicci felt an optimism that would have made even Bannon proud. “Good. Now we can eradicate this division.”

They fought with redoubled fury and decimated the invaders. Nicci was sad to see how many brave refugees also died in the forest, but over the next few hours they succeeded in wiping out the entire division.

Nicci stood exhausted, her black dress stained and tattered from countless slashes. The forest was a blood-soaked bog, and dead bodies lay piled several deep. Her surviving militia members rallied around her, proud that they had managed to hold the Hagen Woods, but an even larger battle was still taking place in the main city.

Suddenly the branches in the nearby trees whipped about, leaves crackled, and a shimmering feminine form appeared in the air, the green-haloed outline of Ava. She looked outraged. “Utros will send you to the Keeper!”

Nicci summoned the remnants of her gift to tear at the wavering spirit. “I killed you once already.”

The spirit recoalesced from the onslaught and swooped among Nicci’s militia, causing fear but little harm. “Our army is many times stronger! Our forces will crush you all.”

Nicci said smugly, “And yet you will still be dead.”

Screaming with frustration, Ava rattled the trees again. Nicci shoved with her gift, and the spirit swirled away. “I will tell General Utros where you are. He wants to be the one to kill you.”

After Ava vanished, Nicci looked into the empty air. Her defenders muttered in fear, but she scoffed. “Let him try.”