Arrows rained down from the rooftops as Calen and the others retreated back along the street that led to the plaza. Calen kept his eyes forward as he ran. He didn't have the stomach to look back. He knew they had no choice, but leaving those men to die would never sit right with him – nor would he have ever wanted it to.
In front of him, Vaeril spun and dropped to one knee in a single fluid motion, loosing a flurry of arrows into the onrushing swarm of Uraks that bore down on them. Droplets lost in an ocean.
Overhead, Calen could feel Valerys swooping through the sky, circling towards the street, the wind rippling over his armoured body, the pressure building in his mind.
"Get down!" Calen called, sheathing his sword and pushing both Vaeril and Erik to the ground.
Arkana, Tarmon, and the others who had made the retreat with them all followed suit as Valerys dropped low overhead, taking advantage of the narrow street to pour a column of dragonfire down atop the Uraks. A cheer erupted from the soldiers as the beasts were consumed by orange-red fire, screaming, howling, burning. They still believed Valerys to be one of the Dragonguard.
There was a flash of light and a bolt of purple lightning shot into the sky. Calen's heart twisted in on itself, and his body went rigid as the lightning crashed into Valerys's side. The dragon unleashed an earth-shaking roar of pain as it spiralled away, falling towards a nearby rooftop. Calen let out a cry, dropping to his knees, Valerys's pain burning through his veins, piercing his mind.
Erik's hand landed on Calen's shoulder, dragging him to his feet. "Calen, we need to—"
Calen lashed out, whipping a thread of Air at Erik, knocking him to the ground. The only thoughts that echoed through Calen's mind were of Valerys. He was alive. Calen could feel the dragon's heart beating, slow and steady. But there was so much pain. The lightning had struck Valerys in the side, from below his wing up to the joint of his right hind leg.
Calen needed to get to him. He could use the buildings, move across the rooftops. Just as Calen moved for the doorway of a nearby building, a roar of defiance swept through his mind. Images of Erik, Tarmon, and Vaeril, accompanied by the same protective feeling that Valerys always held for Calen. Valerys's intention was clear: 'Protect our family'.
A wave of shame filled Calen from top to bottom for lashing out at Erik. He turned to find himself face-to-face with his friend, who was brushing the dust off his chest. "I'm sorry, I—"
"We'll talk about it later," Erik said, his expression unchanging. "Is he all right?"
"He'll live," Calen replied. "I'm sorry."
Erik simply nodded. Words were not needed.
More howls and war cries signalled that the Uraks had continued their charge, storming through the now dwindling remnants of Valerys's dragonfire. The creatures were relentless. Calen watched some of the larger ones – the Bloodmarked, Arkana had called them – emerge through the smoke and flame, their runes casting a deep red glow through the hazy night.
"We need to move," Arkana said, adjusting her robes. "We need to get into the plaza."
As Calen and the others crossed over the threshold and stepped into the open plaza, the ranks of soldiers closed behind them, forming a wall across the mouth of the street, just as they had done earlier.
Calen hadn't noticed it before, but it looked as though there were only two ways in and out of the main plaza: the street they had just come down and the one at the opposite side leading towards the port. Rows of soldiers stood firm at each entrance, fifty deep but only five wide, so narrow were the streets.
The plaza was just as it had been when they had last passed through, packed with columns of soldiers, some in heavy plate with long spears and rectangular shields, others with chainmail and leather, carrying a variety of ranged weaponry.
Three long rows of crossbowmen stood behind the rows of heavily armoured soldiers at the entrances on either side of the plaza, ready to face whatever beasts might break through the defensive lines.
Up above, lining every single rooftop that framed the plaza, were rows of archers interspersed by dark figures whose black robes flapped in the rising wind.
The only new occupants to the plaza stood at the far side, near the opposite entrance, almost two hundred soldiers astride the largest horses Calen had ever seen in his life. They had to have been eighteen, maybe even nineteen hands in size. Each horse was jet-black, with a thick, powerful neck and hooves that looked as though they could crush steel. He had only seen one once before, but he had heard the stories. "Varsundi Blackthorns."
"There are no greater warhorses in all the continent," Arkana said, her own eyes holding the same sense of recognition as Calen's.
Erik turned to her, his eyes trimming to thin lines. "The empire only steals the best." He almost spat his words, turning his gaze from Arkana's as soon as he had spoken.
There was nothing Calen could, or would, say. He despised working with the empire just as much as Erik did. The very idea of it turned his blood to ice. But every time it did, Calen repeated Tarmon's words in his head. 'Tonight, those men and women are not empire soldiers. They are just people. People who don't want to die. And they need us. They need you. They need a Draleid'.
"Hold!"
Calen turned his head towards the call. The Uraks had reached the soldiers who held the street, crashing into them like a landslide. Above them, arrows rained down, slicing into the onrushing horde below.
"What is your plan?" Tarmon asked Arkana, rolling his shoulders, easing the weight of the greatsword in his hands.
"We stand, and we fight." Calen felt Arkana reaching for the Spark as she spoke, wreathing herself in threads of Air.
"That's your plan?" Erik gasped, glaring at Arkana. "We're all going to die."
"Do you have a better one, oh wise warrior?" Arkana lifted a single eyebrow. "I did not think so. My Battlemages on the rooftops, along with the archers, should thin their lines. When they break through into the plaza, the crossbowmen will fire a volley, then we"—Arkana gestured towards Vaeril and Calen—"will push them back with the Spark, giving the spears time to reform the line. If too many get through, the Blackthorns will run them down."
"How long can we maintain that?"
"I don't know," Arkana admitted. "They will break through eventually, but we need to thin them as much as we can. Can the dragon—"
"I'm not risking him in the open like that again," Calen cut across, his voice firm. He reached out to Valerys, grimacing at the pain that burned through the dragon's side. Valerys lay on a rooftop to the west. Stay there.
A defiant rumble answered him, sending a tremor through his mind.
"Very well. But you will not be able to keep him out of this fight indefinitely, and the longer he stays away, the greater the chance we will all die."
Calen didn't respond. He simply stood there, holding Arkana's gaze.
A blood-chilling scream rang out, and Calen didn't even have time to turn before a man's body plummeted from the nearby rooftops, bones snapping and bursting through his skin as he hit the ground, blood and gore splattering across the stone. Still in shock, Calen pulled his hand up to his face, his fingers wiping away a thick mixture of blood and bone fragments from his cheek. Looking down, it would not have been possible to tell that the mashed pile of gore, bone, and leather had once been a man. He had to catch the vomit in his mouth.
Another scream rang out, then another, as more soldiers dropped from the rooftops above, crashing down into the plaza. It was not only the soldiers. A woman in a black cloak cracked against the stone beside Tarmon, impaled through the gut by an enormous black spear with a glowing red gem set into its blade.
Calen could feel the panic breaking out, rippling through the soldiers like a stone dropped in a lake. It would not take much for them to break.
"They're jumping!" one of the soldiers cried out, his hand pointing up towards the roof of a nearby building.
At first, Calen wasn't sure what the man meant, surely the men weren't jumping from the rooves; no one could survive that fall. But then his eyes caught sight of an enormous Bloodmarked standing at the parapet of the building, its red runes glimmering. With an almighty leap, the creature threw itself from the roof. The beast crushed two soldiers beneath its feet as it landed, smashing their bones as though they were twigs. Spreading its muscular arms out wide, the enormous creature unleashed a guttural howl, spraying spittle into the air. Its eyes burning with fury, the beast charged at the line of crossbowmen standing before it. More Bloodmarked followed suit, leaping down from the buildings above, tearing through soldiers as though they were nothing.
Then, the men broke.
The horde of Uraks streamed into the plaza, cutting down the Lorian soldiers as they ran. Shouts and cries echoed through the plaza, only surpassed by the howls of the Uraks as they ran down their prey.
"To Calen!" Tarmon called, swinging his greatsword through the air, cleaving an Urak in half across the navel. Within a matter of moments, Tarmon, Erik, and Vaeril were tight by Calen's side. It was only when Calen sensed Arkana reaching for threads of Earth, Spirit, and Air that he realised the Battlemage stood with them. She had not fled or left them to die. Calen still despised her, and all her kind, but at the least, he respected her.
The tide of Uraks was almost upon them.
Twenty feet.
Calen reached out to Valerys. The dragon was already in the air, fighting the agony that seared through his side. Through Valerys's eyes, Calen could see the true enormity of what they faced. The Urak army stretched the whole way back through the long street, out into the courtyard that lay before the gates, and further still, swarming across the rest of the city. There had to be thousands of them, tens of thousands. Calen clenched his jaw. He could not even begin to count the number of times he had thought his life over. But now, as he stood with those he called friends, it truly felt as though this was the end. There was no way out. He would finally get to see his family again. He would finally get to see Haem.
Fifteen feet.
The mass of leathery brown and grey skin hissed as it moved, red eyes and jagged yellow teeth, blackened blades and spears. Mixed amongst the horde were the Bloodmarked, standing at least two feet taller than the rest, red light and smoke drifting from the runes carved into their skin.
Ten feet.
The blood in Calen's veins shivered its way through his body.
The sound of hooves hammering against stone filled Calen's ears, the repetitive thumps drowning out everything else.
"For Loria! For the empire!" came the cry as the regiment of Blackthorn cavalry hammered into the side of the charging Uraks, their formation akin to an arrowhead. Even the Uraks couldn't stand against the enormous black warhorses, their hooves crushing bone and the curved swords of their riders slicing through leathery hide.
The cavalry charge completely collapsed the left flank of the charging beasts, pushing deeper into the centre. But unless they were given relief, the cavalry would be trapped within the encroaching mass.
Overhead, Valerys's white scales shimmered in the moonlight as the dragon dropped low, his lips pulling back, his body ready. Calen could feel the fury that surged through Valerys, seeping into his own mind, igniting the fury of their shared soul. With a roar that caused the dust on the ground to shake, Valerys crashed into the mass of Uraks, crushing bone beneath his talons, cleaving limbs and rending blackened steel.
Then, with a whip of his spearhead tail and a crack of his wings, Valerys lifted himself into the air once more, snatching a Bloodmarked in his jaws as he did. Thrashing his head left to right, the dragon ripped the beast in half, spraying blood down over the fighting below.
Another bolt of purple lightning streaked from somewhere in the mass of Uraks, but Valerys wheeled out of the way at the last second, leaving the lightning to crash into the side of a building, shattering the stone.
As Valerys rose higher into the sky and the soldiers cheered him, Calen weaved the threads of Air and Spirit into his voice, raising it above everything else, Valerys's energy rippling through his body. "To me, warriors of Epheria! Forward!"
Every hair on Calen's body stood on end as he roared his rallying cry. He wasn't brave. Fear thrummed through him with every beat of his heart. But if this was going to be the day he died, he would not go quietly.
As though of their own volition, his legs carried him forward, charging towards the Uraks. He did not have to look to know the others were beside him. Calen clenched his fingers around the hilt of his blade and leaned into the charge, pulling on threads of Air and Earth as he did, feeling Valerys's power pulse through him.
Beside him, Arkana reached out with threads of Earth, pushing them into the jagged steel breastplates worn by a number of the Uraks, forcing them to collapse inward, crushing bones and organs in a series of vicious snaps. The creatures crumpled to the ground, engulfed by the charging horde behind them.
Vaeril stayed tight to Calen's side, weaving threads of Air around them, whipping spears out of the air whenever they got too close.
Holding his breath for a just a moment as he ran, Calen spread his threads of Earth through the fragments of shattered stone that littered the ground in front of him, splitting them into smaller shards, sharp and strong. Lifting the shards from the ground with threads of Air, Calen launched them towards the Uraks like a hundred crossbow bolts. The beasts howled as they dropped. With Valerys's strength flowing through him, Calen could only just feel the drain sapping at the edge of his consciousness, a trickle from an ocean.
Calen's heart stopped for a fraction of a second before he crashed into the thick of the fighting. Without a thought, he dropped into Striking Dragon, letting the forms of the svidarya flow through him. He was the svidarya; he was the burning winds.
Erik, Vaeril, and Tarmon moved by his side, slicing their way through the Uraks, carving a path to the Blackthorn riders. Imperial soldiers rallied around them, bolstered by their charge, shouting war cries as they moved.
A few of the majestic horses had fallen, torn to pieces by the monstrosities around them, but most still stood, their sheer size and their riders' blades keeping the Uraks at bay.
The head of a black spear sliced across the outside of Calen's left arm. It was only a graze, but the pain burned. Stepping back, he lifted his blade through the air and opened the Urak's throat, watching as the beast fell, spluttering, to the ground. He followed through, his swing carrying him forward. He dragged his sword across the next Urak's chest, then brought it up in two hands to block the downward swing of another, driving his blade through the creature's ribs, burying it to the hilt.
Pulling on threads of Air, Calen pushed the Urak free from his blade, sending its body crashing into more of its companions. To his left, Tarmon moved through the creatures like a pendulum of death, his greatsword swinging in mighty sweeps, cleaving flesh and bone.
As Calen turned, one of the Uraks crashed into him, sending him sprawling to the ground. As he scrambled backwards, trying desperately to get himself to his feet, the creature lunged forward, swinging its blackened blade in a downward arc. Whoosh.
An arrow sliced through the air, plunging into the Urak's eye. Calen watched as Vaeril leapt past him, dropping his bow to the ground. The elf slid behind the creature, pulling his sword from its sheath, shearing the Urak's hamstrings in one sweep of his blade. Screaming and flailing its arms in a half-blind rage, the Urak fell to its knees, blood cascading down its face, coating its jagged yellow teeth. Then it went limp as Vaeril drove his blade through its back and out its chest before pulling the sword free and letting the creature drop to the ground.
"We've spoken before about you trying to get yourself killed, haven't we?" Erik stood over Calen, his hand extended.
Calen attempted a half-smile as he took Erik's hand, but he didn't have his friend's ability to smile while those around him were sheared from the world. Part of him envied Erik's ability to detach himself, but an equal part of him never wanted to attain such a skill.
Calen gathered himself, dragging the air back into his lungs. Looking around, he could see that most of the Blackthorns had managed to pull themselves free of the mass and were readying a second charge. Twice more the Blackthorns charged, and twice more they shattered the Urak lines. Calen had never seen such powerful horses and such disciplined riders. No matter how many times they charged towards the Uraks, their courage never faltered.
But as the cavalry manoeuvred to charge once more, Calen saw something he had hoped he would never see again. The world around him grew dimmer, and a chill ran up his spine. Before he could think to shout a warning – not that it would have done any good either way – a shockwave rippled through the air, slamming into the horses' flanks, lifting them off their feet. Some of the Blackthorns escaped the brunt of the blow, but more than half lay crippled on the ground, bones broken and twisted, their riders dead or pinned beneath them.
There, standing at the source of the shockwave, were two figures in black cloaks. The cloaks were not adorned with the same blue spirals as the creature Calen had fought in Belduar, but he did not need to lift their hoods to know what lay underneath: pale skin; thin, brittle lips, icy and cold; dark wells for eyes that drank in the light.
An involuntary shiver ran the length of Calen's body, his throat went dry, and he had to fight hard to keep the feeling of hopelessness at bay. Just one of those creatures had nearly killed them all. They didn't stand a chance against two. Not without Aeson and the others.
A darkness pulsated in one of the Fade's hands, as though the shadows coalesced at its fingertips. Then, within moments, it held a blade of wispy black fire in its grasp. The same weapon the Fade in Belduar had held – a níthral. Soulblade.
"I thought they fought for the empire?" Erik said, a tremble in his voice.
"Fades fight for no nation," Arkana hissed, her eyes narrowing at the creatures. "They serve Efilatír. No one else. They are his heralds. Though this is the first time I have seen them outwardly opposing the empire."
As Arkana spoke, another creature stepped free from the raging battle around them. An Urak, of sorts. A long, sleeveless robe of grey and silver was draped over its leathery skin. Short, barbed horns grew from its head, and its eyes gleamed crimson. In its right hand, the creature held a long wooden staff, a glowing red gemstone set into its top, held there by twisting branches of wood. A blackened blade was fixed to the bottom of the staff, wicked and slick with blood.
For a few moments, the creature stood there, its eyes fixed on Calen and the others, its stare unblinking. Then, it did something Calen would not have expected in a thousand years. It spoke.
"You… dare… bring… another…" The Urak's words lifted above the din of battle, sifting through the chaos, amplified by some unseen force. Its voice was harsh and broken, each word dragging as though it tasted bitter on the creature's tongue. Pausing, it took a long breath, then spoke again, its lip curling at the corner of its mouth, exposing a row of jagged, yellow teeth. "I… will… bleed… you… all."
Without waiting for a response, the Urak thrust its staff into the air, unleashing a deep, primal roar that scratched at Calen's ears. The gemstone set into the Urak's staff shimmered, its red light growing deeper, more vibrant. As the stone glowed, it poured forth strands of fire that snaked their way around the staff, flickering in the wind. Then the Urak charged, the Fades moving like vipers at its side.