darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,12
flesh and shattered bone. She fell at my feet and faceup, her eyes somehow seeming to pierce the shadow that hid me from my foes.
“You must end Corik. He profanes the world by his very existence.” She coughed then, and red bloomed on her lips. “Do what I could not,” she whispered, and was gone. Thunder boomed again and again and again, as a mighty wind hammered the inn.
Though I had only just met Toragana, I felt her passing with a sharp pain—mourning the friendship that might have come with time. I wanted to stay and make those who had killed her pay, but she was right. The risen might fall here like autumn leaves before a northern wind, but there was no end to them, and they seemed to care nothing for the final death. If I remained longer I would die as surely as the Signet had.
A glance around the room reinforced the futility of our situation. All but one of the Hand were dead or taken, as were the inn’s staff. I couldn’t speak to Kelos, nor Siri and Faran for that matter—if they’d even come down to join the fight here instead of meeting the dead above. I couldn’t see any of them—though that would be as true if they were simply shrouded as it would if they’d fallen under the seething horde of the dead. The building itself stood on the brink of collapse after all the rocks that had ripped their way through its walls. The growing storm was already causing it to creak and sway. When it fell it would bring ruin to any who remained within.
By dint of a very controlled sort of manic flailing I cleared a brief hole in the fighting and sent up a shock of magic. Pink and orange—invisible to the mortal eye, but a bright burst for those with magesight—the colors my order traditionally used to signal one another. The flare formed itself into a blazing arrow pointing toward the side of the inn that faced the wall and the Sylvain, slipped through a hole, and then shot away, paralleling the magical wall’s top in the direction of the sea. I hoped that my companions would see it, but I couldn’t wait around to find out. I cut my way to the nearest window and vaulted through, dropping toward the wall below.
The risen were thinner here, but still present in great numbers, so it was more luck than skill that allowed me to land in a clear space. Even through the pounding rain I could see that many of the nearer buildings had their doors and windows broken in. Here and there knots of fighting had sprung up where the restless dead had met with some resistance, particularly on the empire side of the wall.
As I watched a swarm of them bring down a tall Sylvani lord in his shining crystalline armor, I revised my estimate of the scope of the battle radically upward. It wasn’t just the inn under attack, but this entire section of the city of Wall. The living were losing badly, and too many of those who weren’t torn apart or devoured would join the ranks of the enemy over the next few days as they rose from their graves in turn.
The thought of it made me sick at heart. Again, I found myself wanting desperately to stay and fight. Again, I forced myself to move on. My goddess-forged swords and their enchantments might give me an advantage against the restless dead, but even if I slew scores before I fell, hundreds would remain. There was no winning this battle. The dead were simply too many. It was hard to believe the scale of the thing. Nothing like it had happened in more than a thousand years, not since Master Corvin and Resshath Ssura ended the Necrotariat that had risen in Dan Eyre of old before the merging of my order and the worshippers of Namara.
Over the next quarter of an hour I fought and shadow-slipped my way through the horde of dead mobbing the wall. The warm rain was my ally in the latter, making my shrouded presence even more invisible than usual. I finally broke free of them a half mile or so east of the inn.
There, a small group of heavily armed and armored Sylvani nobles had taken a position on the wall with a more slapdash force of human irregulars backing them up. Facing a sharp and organized defense