'No, young pup. I'm tired.' He managed a brief smile. 'I will leave it to younger men. I was . . . I was really only waiting until you came to say goodbye.'
Ranyl's voice was fading such that Dystran had to lean closer and closer. His words chilled the Lord of the Mount. He gripped the old man's hand, shaking it.
'No, Master Ranyl,' said Dystran. 'I need you to guide me. There is no one else I can trust.'
'You have been such a friend,' said Ranyl. 'And you are a great leader. You need no one.'
'No, Ranyl. Hold on. This pain will pass. You'll soon feel stronger. '
But the words weren't true, he knew that. He could see it in the pallor of Ranyl's complexion, ghostly in the gloom. And he could smell it in the air.
Ranyl coughed weakly. 'Mourn me, but don't miss me.'
Dystran nodded, accepting. He smiled and placed a hand on Ranyl's cold forehead. 'Everything I have achieved is because of you. I will be in your debt for eternity.'
Ranyl chuckled. 'A fitting epitaph,' he said, his eyes brightening just briefly.
And then he was gone.
Dystran walked to the balcony shutters and opened them, admitting the cool air of night. He saw fires towards the walls and could hear the sounds of battle and of panic beginning to grip the streets. He even fancied he could taste blood in the air.
Mostly, he felt isolation. Only one man could save Xetesk now. Unfortunately, it was him. For a time he let the tears fall, his mind focusing on the tortured screams of Ranyl's familiar as it faded to death after its master.
The prize was so close Tessaya could almost touch it. Men were bred tough in the Heartlands and he felt proud to fight next to them. The Xeteskians were falling back before him and his heart sang victory.
He had led his warriors in a hard drive right along the battlements. His axe ran red and his arms and chest were cut by his enemies. But now the turret was theirs. In front of him a warrior fell, skull crushed by a mace. Tessaya grabbed his collar as he went down, dragging him back. He strode into the space, axe carving through an upward arc left to right across his body. Its blade caught his enemy under the chin. His helmet flew off, his jaw shattered and his head snapped back, taking his body with it and striking those behind him.
Warriors surged forward, the noise intensifying in the enclosed space.
'Hold the far door,' ordered Tessaya, pushing men at it. 'The rest of you, let's take these stairs.'
Handicapped by the direction of the spiral, the Xeteskians were forced back quickly. Tessaya led his warriors down, taking the inside himself. His axe was in his right hand, sweeping in front of him.
As Tessaya knew it would, the Xeteskian retreat stopped at a landing. Orders were shouted up the stairs. In front of him, the terrified boys, for that was all they were, squared up. Outside, he heard the rare impact of a spell. He snarled and stepped away from the centre of the thread and gripped his axe in both hands. A warrior stood to his right, the pair of them filling the stairwell. Behind and above, the fighting continued on the battlements. He heard his warriors chanting as they drove onwards, their voices echoing down to lift his spirits even as they crushed those of whom he faced.
'You will die, boy, if you lift that blade against me,' said Tessaya into the impasse. He pitched his voice to carry further than the whelp he addressed; a quivering youth whose helm sat too large on his dirt-streaked face. 'But at least you will know more courage in death than those who command you. Where do they stand, eh?'
'Who . . . ?' The Xeteskian didn't know whether to ask or not, caught between fear and awe.
'I am Tessaya, Lord of the Paleon tribes and ruler of the Wesmen, ' he replied. 'And what a prize should you beat me. The time has come. Lay down your blade and be spared. Or die dreaming of being a hero.'
Tessaya didn't think the boy even had the courage to lift his sword in attack and in that at least he was mistaken. But in everything else, he was not. Deflecting the ill-learned strike and chopping downwards through the poorly armoured shoulder, he muttered a prayer that the boy be respected by the Spirits.
He stepped across the body, a chant erupting from his lips and taken up by the men around him. Invoking the Spirits of strength, of true aim and keen edge, it was a guttural sound, its rhythm in time with the strokes of his axe.
Tessaya paced forward, chopping up through the defence of one Xeteskian, sweeping left to eviscerate a second and back right and down to hack into the arm of a third. The warrior next to him, voice booming in song, moved in closer, forcing his enemy's guard down and butting him on the bridge of the nose. The Xeteskian sprawled backwards, flailing his arms, more of a danger to his comrades than the Wesmen.
Tessaya saw the fear in their eyes and the tremble of their limbs. Blood slicked the walls, the floor was covered in gore and the bodies of fallen Xeteskians and the air stank and steamed. The Lord of the Wesmen licked his lips and drove on, breaking them further with every step.
Chapter 3.
None of Chandyr's experience had prepared him for this. He had fought Wesmen before but of course there had been the backing of mages able to break lines and obliterate enemies at will. And in combat with enemy colleges, the balance of spell power gave the warfare a symmetry that he could understand.
But here tonight, hand-to-hand and face-to-face, he was seeing ferocity that was simply awesome. The Wesmen were indefatigable. They were skilful. And they were cutting through his men like paper.
On his horse outside the lost turret, he saw men spill outwards, regroup and push in again. He heard the turret captain yelling for order and getting precious little. The faces of those few around him were lined with fear. Either side, high up on the battlements, the Wesmen taunted his toothless forces. He had so few mages and the spells cast recently had been wasted. Now the chastened casters awaited his order in an arc around the turret. They wouldn't be kept long.
Chandyr had thought about riding back to the college again. But the mood was fragile and he couldn't afford to be seen leaving the battlefront. Instead he dismounted and turned the reins of his horse over to the nearest messenger.
Before he spoke, he took in the fires burning on the walls and those buildings onto which the Wesmen had managed to cast torches. He saw more and more join those already behind their makeshift wooden barricade on the battlements. And he didn't have to imagine the number who waited outside for the gate to be taken.
In the streets around him, the confidence of many city folk had given way to panic. People thronged the main roads, heading for the north gate and the college, no doubt to demand escape or sanctuary. Dystran would not give them the latter. But by the Gods burning, he could buy them time to achieve the former.
His messenger waited expectantly, wincing as roars of triumph sounded from the Wesmen advancing towards the south gate tower along the battlements.
'Ride back to the college,' said Chandyr, handing the messenger his badge of command. 'Use my authority and speak only to Dystran himself. Tell him this: 'If he is to cast his spells it must be now. We are losing the battle for control of the south gate. He must give us more mage support or they'll be at the college before dawn. Got all that?'
'Yes, sir.'
Chandyr grabbed the messenger's arm. 'One more thing. Tell him he does not need to cast his dimensional spells. We can hold on without them, at least. Go.'
Chandyr watched him mount up and ride away before turning to add his strength to the fight for Xetesk.
Spring nights could be chill and the hours before dawn were the coldest. But Sharyr hadn't known how lonely they could be until now, particularly not in the company of so many friends and enemies.
Of course it wasn't just this that set him alone. It was the awesome expectation placed upon him to succeed and the enormity of the risk he was being forced to take to achieve that success.
He and the dimensional team of twenty - hardly enough anyway - had rested in shifts while they made their calculations. They were looking for any edge they could give themselves. Something to provide focus yet minimise exposure to the power with which they toyed. By the time Dystran ordered them to the walls, they had found precious little. Hardly surprising. So little time had passed.
The urgency of the orders had frightened him and he'd led the team at a run from the catacombs. Much of the rest had been a blur of impressions. Voices clamouring. Armour clanking and grinding as soldiers ran beside them. The glare of fires against dark buildings. People running towards them, pushed aside to speed their progress. The smell of wood smoke. The cobbles beneath his feet. The extraordinary din of battle that grew with every pace they took nearer the walls.
The college guard brought them to the roof of a building with clear line of sight up to the embattled walls. Commander Chandyr had joined them almost immediately. Sharyr missed his first words, transfixed by what he saw in front of him. A mass of warriors on the battlements, bodies choking the street below. Fires in two guard turrets. And desperate defence on the ground. Xetesk under threat.
'. . . are not who I wanted here. Why are you here?'
'My Lord Dystran ordered us here in response to your messenger. '
'I don't want your dimensional spells, Sharyr. You know my feelings.'
'Commander, Ranyl has died. Dystran wants to make a statement. We're all you have and we have instructions about which spells we will use.'
Chandyr nodded. 'Fine. Then do so carefully. Take out that turret. Destroy the stairway.'
'Commander, that kind of focus is not possible. The minimum strike area will cover left and right for twenty yards. And that assumes we can keep it tight. The dimensional alignment is not right.'
Chandyr regarded him blankly. 'You're talking to me as if I should care or understand. Fifty yards either side is Wesmen. Take them down too.' He shrugged. 'I asked for mage support and here you are so do what you have to do. But don't hurt a single Xeteskian.'
'Have your mages shield our forces,' said Sharyr. 'It's the only way to keep them safe.'
Chandyr spun round at a renewed roar from the turret. Xeteskians spilled into the street once again but this time could not drive back in. The first Wesmen set foot on Xetesk's soil.
'And you'd better do it quickly,' said Chandyr. 'Or they'll be up here too. Don't let me down.'
Sharyr watched Chandyr stride from the rooftop then turned to his team.
'You can see the target. You know the risks. Shut out everything. We cannot afford to slip. Are you ready?' The chorus of assent was loud but anxious. 'Then we will begin.'
Sharyr felt a charge race through his body and lodge in his gut. The mage team gathered about him. He tuned to the mana spectrum and could see through the chaotic streams the dark outline of the walls. He began to focus, constructing the shape to pierce the fabric of the Balaian dimension to access the raw energy beyond.
One by one his mage team joined him. In the stark colour contrasts that made up the Xeteskian mana spectrum the deep blue mana stream gained intensity. Power surged through every strand.
Like all base magical constructions, this one was essentially simple. The shape was a shifting octagonal column no more than ten feet wide. At its head, gossamer threads wove a complex pattern that mimicked the flows of inter-dimensional space, allowing them to lock onto the chaos outside the Balaian dimension.
The column itself acted as direction for the power they were tapping and as a seal against that power spilling out uncontrolled. Where the column attached to the dimensional fabric was entirely at Sharyr's discretion. And because this spell was statement as well as destruction, he drove it high into the night sky, issuing the command that activated the threads just beyond a layer of thin cloud.
They felt the backward surge along the column, saw the shivers in the mana light. And that was just the start. With the threads fast on the fabric, Sharyr began to feed energy into the column. Half the team followed his lead.
'Brace,' he warned, his words carrying to them across the spectrum in sound and light. 'And expand.'
They pulled. And in the fabric of Balaia was torn a hole. Immediately, they felt the rush of the forces of inter-dimensional space, apparently grabbing at the hole, trying to force it wider. It was purely a reaction as chaos and order clashed. The mages were ready for it and used it. They allowed the tear to grow to optimum size and only then stiffened the borders, feeding in mana energy and locking it tight.
'That was the easy part,' said Sharyr. 'Column team, prepare. You know this isn't going to be easy to handle. Alignment team with me, keep your concentration if you keep nothing else. Let's go looking.'
The information given Xetesk by the Al-Drechar and Sha-Kaan had allowed mages to draw a new dimensional map. They could predict with some accuracy the movement of those dimensions closest to Balaia. They also had some perception of the enormous number of dimensions crowding space. The old notion that all dimensions were somehow occupying the same small area of space had been disproved beyond reasonable doubt. Now it was about alignment. And the more dimensions aligned with Balaia at any one time, the more powerful the spell effect.
Sharyr's problem was that there was no alignment. Almost, but not quite. And while it was still possible to cast, the streams of energy would not be as focused and would be difficult to control.
Sharyr, using the combined energies of his team of nine, pushed the seeker pulse into the void, already knowing roughly what he would find. They were awaiting a four-dimension alignment. It was expected to begin the next midday. What Sharyr was presented with was a confusion of power streams, still in partial conflict though with a common broad direction given them by the partial alignment in which they were caught.
He could feel the pull of the distant dimensional shells and imagine their ponderous movement. Every heartbeat that passed brought the alignment closer but at this moment there was a problem.
The first and third shells were about in line, the latter moving slightly faster than the former. But the second shell was still way out of place though travelling quickly in relation to its peers. Currently, he couldn't sense the fourth shell at all.
'This is going to hurt,' he said. 'Brace yourselves.'
Lacking the natural focus alignment would bring, the mages would have to channel the power themselves while holding the sheath spell construct in place to avoid a casting without control. Without a certain end.
On Sharyr's command, the alignment team poured mana energy into the seeker pulse, changing its polarisation from repulsor to attractor. At once, the part-aligned streams fed into the seeker pulse. Sharyr felt the force thunder through his mind, a sudden and prolonged deluge of crudely directed energy. The seeker pulse bulged under the strain.
'Hang on!' Sharyr gasped, sensing the tension in those around him. There was a roaring in his ears, reminiscent of a distant waterfall. 'Right, let's use it.'
The alignment team shortened the seeker pulse, dragging the inter-dimensional power with it. Sharyr knew that there was too much to control safely. It raged through his mind while he struggled to hold his concentration.
With the sound of air rushing to fill a void, the inter-dimensional force met Balaian space. It coalesced into thin discs, trailing smoke in their wake. Shaped by the minds of the mages and set spinning by nature. Tens, hundreds of them, cobalt blue and travelling at extreme speed, fled down the octagonal mana corridor. They bounced hard against its surface, the collisions increasing the stress on the structure further, to emerge from its protection to slam into ground, walls and men.
The Wesmen could see the spell approaching. Those at the base of the tower had some route of escape but they were the only ones.
The discs sheared into the tower, the ground surrounding it, and any flesh in their way over a sixty-foot spread. With a sound like a thousand metal spikes hammered into rock, they bit into the stone. Sparks flew, lighting up the night in garish relief. Dust was projected into the air, sections of the stonework cracked and crumbled. The tower shook under the impact.
On the ground, those Wesmen who hadn't reacted instantly were cut to pieces in moments. In front of them, the Xeteskian shield over the defenders bucked and twisted, its mages driven to their knees by the effort to keep it together.
Sharyr exhorted his mages to maintain their focus. Below them, their casting was scything the tower apart, shredding its stone, sending lethal fragments to every point of the compass. He fought the forces channelling through his mind, kept the polarity of the seeker pulse firm. It was he and his team who were responsible for reversing the flow when the time came.
But the drain on the alignment team was greater than any of them had imagined. The discs were further out of control with every heartbeat, crashing into one another and increasing their impacts on the column, which bulged under the pressure. And though the tower wasn't down, Sharyr felt he had no choice but to order the disconnection of the spell. He was the blink of an eye too late.
At the base of the column, multiple discs collided and scattered into its sides, threshing it with enough force to break the shape. Tattered in an instant, the base of the column was flayed apart. Wisps of mana clung to order for a few moments and were engulfed again in the mass. The sides of the column rippled and ripped upwards, chasing back towards the hole into space.
And spewing out unconfined, came the discs. Along a front hundreds of feet wide, they gouged into Xetesk's walls and buildings or collided in mid-air to scream away back into the city.
One plunged into his mage team, chopping two men down. The other mages lost their concentration. The column vanished completely and Sharyr clung desperately to the seeker pulse, feeling its power weaken.
'Reverse!' he shouted. 'Reverse!'
He tried to ignore everything around him. The wails of dying men on the walls and right by his side. The clouds of dust billowing into the night sky. The unfettered discs of pure cobalt brutality destroying the walls.
Dragging in everything he had left, Sharyr forced his will on the seeker pulse, switching its polarity. 'Push,' he gasped. 'Damn you, push.'
The building shook. Dimly, he heard a deep rumbling. The dust was in his nose and mouth and had forced itself into his eyes. He could feel the irritation and the tears but had to ignore them. He pushed against the tide of inter-dimensional energy, those that remained with him taking his lead. Around them, the storm continued. Next to the tower, the parapet collapsed, spilling Wesmen seventy feet to the streets. A series of detonations sounded. The discs had bulged into huge, harsh teardrops and they poured into the walls, the street, the tower and buildings all around. Only luck was keeping Sharyr and his team alive.
Sharyr gathered himself again, feeling the seeker pulse finally move under his control. 'Got you.'
Quickly, the movement gained momentum. Sharyr and the remains of his team pressed. The pulse whipped up into the night sky. Ahead of it, the teardrops lost their strength, unable to fight against the opposing force. Up to and through the hole went the pulse. And the tear itself, without the energy flowing through it and with no spell keeping it open, shut hard.
Sharyr had no strength in his legs. He sagged to his knees, staring at the point in the night sky where the tear had been. It glittered blue. He frowned.
'Someone check that,' he said, gesturing upwards. 'That isn't right.'
He became aware that the silence following the end of the spell had given way to a growing tumult of voices and action. He dragged himself back to his feet and walked unsteadily towards the edge of the building to see what he had wrought in the name of Xetesk and its Lord of the Mount.
His heart chilled at what he saw through the clouds of dust and smoke blowing all around him. Bodies lay everywhere, few moving and many burning. Around them, Xeteskian soldiers hurried to fulfil Chandyr's barked orders. In front of him, the target tower was gone, rubble was all that remained. It had taken with it the parapets to either side. Stone had fallen clear across the street to destroy other buildings.
But there was far, far worse and the reason for Chandyr's urgent shouts became all too clear. And all Sharyr could do now was watch.
Truly the Spirits kept Tessaya alive for a greater purpose. The great purpose. That much was evident now. He had been blown from his feet when the first screaming lights from the sky had struck. Catapulted out of the tower doorway to sprawl in shadow under the parapet.
He had watched the Xeteskians' spell break their own walls and kill their own men even as it took brave warriors to the glory of death in battle. But he had once again been spared.
He had heard the crack of the failing walkway above him and scrambled to safety in a doorway while chaos descended. Mute, he had seen it collapse with the deaths of so many. He had seen the tower shiver and slide to the ground. He knew he shouldn't smile as the smoke and dust cleared in front of him. Indeed Riasu was surely among those dead. But in their attempts to break the Wesmen spirit, they had sealed their own dooms.
The walls of Xetesk were breached.