Adept (The Essence Gate War, Book 1) - By Michael Arnquist Page 0,118

back, raising their weapons. The thing shot through the hole in the door, wriggling and undulating its way past the narrow aperture and under the descending portcullis like some great, hideous eel. Its legless mass struck the flagstones with a slap, and in a flash it was among the men. It thrashed about, its flailing bulk sending several men sprawling, and then it lunged forward like a striking snake and one of the men disappeared into its gaping maw. The hapless man’s scream was cut horribly short as the jagged jaws snapped shut, and the creature whirled and tucked its head back into its coils, gliding and flexing in some rapidly spinning complex knot formed of its own sinuous body.

The guards rushed forward, hacking and stabbing at the creature, and it keened in pain and fury. Whipping free of the knot it had formed, it lunged in a new direction, sliding out from under the sharp blades. Another guard vanished into its gullet, and again the vile creature convulsed into its eye-baffling knot of twisting flesh. The remaining guards converged on it with a vengeance, and in moments the creature sagged quivering to the ground beneath their attack before it could claim another victim.

High above, the spiked creatures clawed their way over the crenellations to drop among the guards like drops of ink spattering to the floor. More and more archers were forced to cast aside their bows and draw the swords at their hips to defend themselves against the slavering fiends. In turn, without the hail of missiles to suppress their advance, more and more of the bristling shadows worked their methodical way up the sheer outer surface of the wall. The men drew together into defensive islands against the encircling tide, fighting almost back to back as the creatures slunk toward them, shaking the glistening spikes on their bodies in an eerie, rattling chorus.

At the gates, huge misshapen claws tore at the ragged edges of the holes in the doors, widening them one cracking shard of wood at a time. The smaller spiked creatures poured through the fissures, crawling down the door and along the walls of the arch, their amber gazes fixed upon the men clustered beyond the iron grating.

Borric shouted an order, and his men fired hammer-nosed arrows into the barrels of oil, shattering the plank sides and spilling their viscous contents upon the flagstones just inside the door. Another shout, and several torches spun in unison between the bars of the portcullis. The oil ignited with a roar, and the resulting wall of flames licked hungrily skyward. A number of the spiked creatures were engulfed in the sudden blaze. They perished, shrieking and thrashing. The rest shrieked in frustration and clawed their way back through the gaps in the gateway doors, disappearing out into the night.

Captain Borric smiled in grim satisfaction. He ordered his men into position for the next wave that would likely burst the battered doors asunder. All together they waited with eyes wide and weapons clenched in fists slicked with sweat, but the next assault never came. The towering doors of the gate no longer shuddered under dread impact from outside.

Suspicious of the abrupt stillness, Borric tilted his head upward. The sky was beginning its slow brightening with the coming morn. He heard the faint shouts of the men high atop the wall, and he could see them waving down to him and pointing into the distance, outside the city. The enemy horde had retreated, fading back from the city as suddenly as it had come. By the time slow, pink fingers of light were reaching across the heavens, the twisted creatures had all disappeared like wraiths into the pre-dawn gloom. All that remained to give testimony to the brief, fierce struggle that had transpired were the scorched and ravaged doors of the eastern gate and the scattered bodies of the slain from both sides.

The men of the city guard gave a weary shout of victory, but their captain did not join in the cheer. Borric looked about and saw only the vestiges of an attack by an unknown, implacable enemy turned aside more by the looming approach of day than by the efforts of his men. Keldrin’s Landing would require a great deal of preparation if it was to withstand the next such assault, and nightfall would be on the heels of the coming day all too soon.

CHAPTER 16

Amric drew rein before the eastern gate of Keldrin’s Landing and studied the