Chapter 66

  Castreier limped into Batulan-bar on the heels of the Mountain Guard’s attack. The orcs recognized him. A few even laughed at his disfigured state. But they did not prevent him from following.

  His right hand was missing at the wrist. Most of the left side of his body was burned, fused with his doublet. In his fall from his horse, he had broken his right leg, but he pushed forward against the pain and blood, fighting to reach the heart of the city.

  One last chance, he chanted in his head. If he could do something, anything to help retake the city, perhaps Drakko would spare him.

  Most of the outskirts of the city were remarkably intact. A few buildings had been destroyed in the orcs’ initial entrance into Batulan-bar, but the brutes were being surprisingly judicious about touching the city’s infrastructure, and most of the fighting was taking place deeper in the city. Someone was still resisting. It seemed Dalex’s defenses had already collapsed, so Castreier wasn’t sure who might still be fighting.

  The devastation grew more severe as he reached the deeper parts of the city. Entire blocks had been crushed to rubble, and many homes and businesses burned out of control. It was a shame. Castreier had always thought Batulan-bar was a beautiful city, a marvel of human engineering that the beastkin had done a serviceable job in bringing to life. It would have to be totally replaced.

  Maybe Castreier could volunteer to oversee the repairs and revival. It was a lowly job for someone of his stature, but he could sell it to Drakko as a story of redemption. The dragon liked those. Castreier would be the humbled underdog, returning to power by the sweat of his brow.

  The occasional body littered the street. Strangely enough, there were more orcs than elves or beastkin among the dead. The citizens of Batulan-bar had been given plenty of warning that an attack was coming, and someone was holding the orcs back.

  Finally, Castreier saw some of the fighting. A pair of beastkin mutt hunters—both of them with the ears of a dog—were trading magical blows with a pack of six orcs. The beastkin used a collapsed two-story house as cover to avoid rock missiles and to hide their location.

  Two of the orcs charged the house while their comrades supported them with a hail of power word-thrown stones. It was odd to see the creatures work as a team, both because Castreier had not thought them intellectually capable of such tactics, and because he did not think they would need it against such meager foes.

  Castreier expected to see the two assaulting orcs enter the rubble and emerge with the decapitated heads of both beastkin. Instead, one orc was halted by a rapid series of narrow lightning strikes. The other entered alone. Clashing steel rang out from inside the remains of the house. The high voice of a male beastkin pierced the air with a scream. It was followed by a deep howl of pain from the orc, who came staggering back out of the rubble, a sword embedded in its eye socket.

  The other orcs continued to hurl words of power at the ruins of the house, careful not to approach until they could gather larger numbers. But Castreier noticed that only one of the beastkin appeared again to throw more lightning at the orcs. His friend was probably dead. Somehow, they had held on for a little while against the orcs, but it would not last. Once the orcs were wise to the defender’s true situation, they would hesitate no longer.

  And then a rain of fire bolts descended upon the remaining orcs. They scrambled back, their barriers protecting them for only a few seconds before they were shattered and the orcs began to suffer grievous wounds.

  A half-dozen gray-colored men landed on the street, carrying thick, musket-like weapons. They shot rapid fire volleys of energy into the orcs, killing two with headshots and forcing the others to retreat. A large floating boat the size of a building hovered over the street, firing bolts of energy from a nozzle on its bow.

  Dalex’s second strike. Did the man ever run out of weapons?

  Castreier was suddenly alone. No orcs surrounded him. One of the strange gray men approached him. There were no eyes on its face, but Castreier could feel the creature staring at him. Would it recognize him?

  A monotone voice came from the gray man, “Unidentified injured civilian, please proceed to the center of the city. It is safe there.”

  The gray man walked by him, looking for more orcs to kill. Castreier stood frozen for a few seconds. He had expected Dalex’s minions would be trained to recognize him. Was this some kind of trap? Or had Castreier’s wounds rendered him unrecognizable?

  Regardless, he shuffled forward, ignoring the pain in his broken leg. The Mountain Guard would not take Batulan-bar as easily as Castreier had thought, but that gave him a new chance. If he could just find some way to give Drakko the city, that would be enough to get him back into the dragon’s good graces. It would be the growth of character Drakko wanted.

  But how? How could he, injured as he was, with no barrier and very little mana, take a city defended by Dalex of the Expedition Seven? He didn’t need much. Always, a simple lever had been enough for him to advance. It was just a matter of finding his lever.

  And then, for the first time since entering Batulan-bar, he looked up at the sky and saw the letters hanging over the city.

  Cehesveloe arms me with the sun’s javelin.

  A thrill ran through his body. Only one person would have the gall to inflict her written words upon Gaia Eta in such a manner. No wonder the city was holding out. Castreier smiled. He had his lever; he just needed to lay his hands on her.

  ***

  The line to receive a spell from Hitasa had grown thin. Most of the elves and beastkin with the courage to fight the orcs face-to-face had already left to join the battle. The spells Hitasa handed out now were mostly meant for healing. Given that kirtevas covered most of the city now, they were powerful healing spells indeed.

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  Hitasa heard a snippet of a conversation after a dog-eared beastkin was brought into the square on a stretcher. An axe had nearly cut him in half at the waist, but two of the new publicized healers, working together, managed to magically stitch him until he was whole again. He wouldn’t be able to walk for some time, but he would live.

  Absorbed as she was in spell-writing, Hitasa could not grasp how the battle was swinging. She did not know if they were winning, losing, or if they had come to some kind of stalemate. It was clear the words of power she was distributing were having an effect. The Mountain Guard would have overrun them hours ago were that not the case. But whether it was enough to save them was yet to be determined.

  Dalex’s reinforcements had clearly helped as well, though they were obviously less effective than his machines and own abilities. According to Ring, the floating barges carried only minimal weaponry, and the eyeless gray men were fragile. One of the latter stood guard over her at that moment, its posture rigid as it faced toward the west where the fighting was fiercest.

  But the person who gave everyone the most hope was Lodge Mother Sarnai. In the square, which was situated next to the river at the bottom of the canyon, her heroics were on full display. The top of the Batulan-bar Mutt Hunters’ Lodge was clearly visible from everywhere in the city. Sarnai had chosen to take her stand there, bludgeoning every orc that came into range with one of her earthen posts or throwing boulders the size of wagons to outright crush the orcs to green paste. On three separate occasions she had summoned a shield of rock to block one of the orcs’ combined blasts of fire, saving the city from being fully burned down in one fell blaze.

  At that very moment, Sarnai was contending with at least ten orcs by herself. Hitasa looked up from her paper and watched as one of them was knocked from the roof of the lodge, plummeting down in a cloud of its own green blood. Hitasa wondered if the humans and dragons had understood just how powerful Sarnai really was, or if the lodge mother had done some extra publicizing where the dragons couldn’t see it.

  Many of the elves and beastkin in the square were talking as if the battle was already over. They seemed to think it was only a matter of time before the Mountain Guard were completely thrown back. Some cheered on Sarnai’s battle. Others quietly praised the work Hitasa had done. A few complained about the damage that had befallen the city, looking for someone to blame. So far, no one had directed that kind of accusation toward Hitasa, but she knew it was a matter of time. The people of Batulan-bar, especially the beastkin, would not be happy with the aftermath of the battle, even knowing they could have died in it.

  Hitasa let her pen pause as she looked at the line in front of her. She wondered if it would be wiser to stop handing out spells for now. If there were enough fighters and healers already deployed to the fight, she didn’t want to risk more lives by sending more people into the meat grinder. Perhaps it was best to wait until news came of the temperature of the battle.

  A shadow spread over the square like a sudden eclipse. The boisterous crowds hushed. The gray man next to Hitasa looked up, and then the shadow passed. It had only covered the square for a single second.

  Someone nearby shouted, “Did you see it?” The voice belonged to a male beastkin, and while the crowds in the square remained silent after the shadow’s passing, Hitasa heard him begin to hyperventilate. “Starless night,” he swore, “did anyone else see it?”

  Hitasa looked up, but she only saw the overcast sky and one of Dalex’s barges hovering over the square.

  And then an ear-splitting roar descended from above. Hitasa felt it reverberate through her body. It was almost like what she had heard in the cave when she and Dava’s hunting party had fought the mutts, but where Dava’s synthetic roar had only hurt Hitasa’s ears, this threatened to overwhelm her entire being. Many people in the square simply fell to their knees, overwrought by the sound and what they knew it meant.

  The shadow passed over the square again, and Hitasa looked up in time to see him swoop over the city, fast as a swallow and big as a mountain. His black wings spread out to engulf all of Batulan-bar. His great mouth could swallow an entire tall ship. His tail dragged the length of Current Street. His claws could rend the moon in half.

  He disappeared over the southern canyon wall, but Hitasa could feel him turning, banking through the sky to come back. And then he appeared, spreading out his wings to slow down and drift over the city. A light blossomed under his black scales. In an instant, the glow was blinding, and then Drakko opened his mouth and let loose a stream of golden fire all along the northern border of the city.

  The stream hit with enough force to crumble buildings and enough heat to ignite the leaves on trees dozens of yards away. The mutt hunters’ lodge vanished under the deluge of fire. It was impossible to tell whether Sarnai escaped or was consumed by the blaze.

  Hitasa put pen to paper again and wrote, Hitasa of the Perhethion, astregn means the crushing star. As soon as the words were down, she drew her finger across the page and spoke, “Kirtevas writes my script across the sky.”

  Astregn and its definition took their place in the sky, shining down on the population of Batulan-bar just as Drakko descended onto the northern canyon wall, flapping his wings and sending hurricane gusts through the city. He sat perched on the canyon and tucked his wings behind his back. Framed by the flames of his dragon’s breath, he overlooked his city with a reptilian frown.

  The remaining gray men and barges in the city focused fire on the dragon. Bolts of energy shot up out of the city, peppering Drakko and the cliff face around him. The fire was hit and miss.

  In response, Drakko opened his mouth again to shoot a more narrow beam of fire, boring a molten hole through one of Dalex’s floating barges and blowing it out of the sky. The dragon scanned through the city, picking off Dalex’s soldiers and the other barges. They continued shooting back at him all the while. Whatever weapons they carried seemed to irritate the dragon, but they did not cause him any significant harm.

  Drakko cut Dalex’s remaining forces apart with surgical precision. Despite his cumbersome size, he had no problem finding them and destroying them with minimal effort, all without moving from his perch on the canyon cliff.

  In the end, only the gray man next to Hitasa remained. He fired his strange musket at the dragon until the barrel melted off the front of the weapon, at which point he threw it down and stood between the dragon and Hitasa, as if his body would be enough to protect her.

  The city was quiet. No one screamed. No one cried. Everyone stared at the dragon and held their breath.

  Drakko opened his mouth, and rather than the voice of a dragon, the magically projected voice of a human came out of it. “It has been many years since I traveled through the Waterfall Portal to visit this world. I had not thought it would be necessary this time, but this city is full of surprises.”

  Hitasa stood and pointed an accusing finger at him. She opened her mouth to cast astregn, but a voice from the crowd in the square cut her off.

  “Jetflame means I pierce you with fire!”

  A solid bar of white fire struck out of the crowd and passed through the head of the gray man guarding Hitasa. The bar shot right over Hitasa, missing her head by a few inches. The gray man slumped to the ground.

  Hitasa searched the crowd and found Castreier staring back at her, a wicked gleam in his one good eye. Hitasa barely recognized him, he was so disfigured.

  Castreier was too close. Hitasa didn’t want to risk using astregn on the square itself. She shifted her finger away from the dragon on the cliff to point at him and shouted, “Ring! Shoot that human!”

  But nothing happened. Castreier’s cracked lips turned into a devilish smile. Hitasa heard a sparking noise. She looked up to see Ring floating above her, fully manifested and with a hole through its middle. A second later, it slipped to the side and fell to the ground next to the dead gray man.

  On the canyon cliff, Drakko’s head twisted to look directly at her. “If it isn’t Hitasa of the Perhethion. I’ve heard so much about you.”

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