CHAPTER 53 Torj
Torj
‘A Warsword guards the midrealms with a vigilance that knows no bounds’
– A History of Thezmarr
TORJ WATCHED AS Wren’s lightning tore apart the sky on the horizon, and something within him both soared and sank.
Pride at her power, terror for her safety.
Through their bond, he could feel Wren’s determination, her focus.
But then, suddenly, a spike of fear that wasn’t his own shot through his chest and he started.
‘Something’s wrong,’ he muttered, gripping the pommel of his saddle until his knuckles whitened.
Thea reached across and slapped his arm.
‘Wren can take care of herself. She’s trusting us to do this part for her.
Look there.’ She pointed to where riders were emerging from the perimeter of Dorinth.
‘It’s working. They’re sending out a force.
And the guards are abandoning their posts – just as Kipp predicted. ’
Torj could see them now, like ants spilling from a nest. The enemy was emerging from its stronghold among the ruins, revealing not only their numbers, but their defence formations as well.
A war camp had been built around the broken pillars and rubble.
In the moonlight, the flag that Silas had hoisted above the remaining walls for all to see danced in the wind, taunting them.
‘We need to attack now, while their numbers are lowered and the less experienced guards are likely on the watch posts,’ Thea said. ‘Wren created this opening for us, and we need to take it.’
‘But not all our allies have arrived,’ Zavier argued quietly. ‘Our numbers aren’t at their strongest.’
‘Nor are Silas’s,’ Torj countered. ‘If we sit here waiting for Leiko and Reyna to arrive, we’ll lose the element of surprise.
Silas’s scouts will spot us and call for reinforcements.
We need to ride while the capital is missing the bulk of its army.
’ He addressed his fellow Warswords and commanders, ignoring the tug of worry in his heart.
‘Rally the forces from Harenth, the Devereux bannermen and the Thezmarrians. We lay siege to Dorinth now.’
Astride his stallion at the head of their army, Torj tipped back a double dose of Dessa and Zavier’s strengthening potion. It coursed through him in a rush of ice, visible as it moved beneath his skin, his veins briefly filling with white light as his strength came back to him.
He strapped his gauntlets over his forearms, covering up the evidence. When Wren stood in the makings of the Delmirian throne room, he would tell her, but until then . . .
Dawn had not yet broken, but before them the ruins of Dorinth were silhouettes against the gradually lightening sky. Morning mist curled low on the ground between the fragmented pillars and walls, while dew gleamed across broken stone.
When their forces were in position, Torj turned to address his fellow Warswords and the commanders of their joint army.
‘We need to split our efforts into four specialized groups,’ he told them.
‘One for the main assault on the capital, one to protect the field of silvertide and another two to infiltrate from the flanks.’
‘This isn’t my first battle,’ Vernich bit out, gripping his mace eagerly.
‘Maybe not, Bloodletter, but it is for some,’ Torj countered with a glare before turning to the Master of Warfare. ‘What can we expect from the alchemists of Drevenor?’
Master Crawford looked as at home in the saddle as he did in the poisons dungeon of the academy, and there was a gleam in his eye that made him appear quite unhinged. But he spoke in the same calm, calculated way he always had, as though the army before him were merely a classroom full of students.
‘My colleagues and I have come up with several concoctions to help incapacitate the enemy, including compounds that will amplify their fear responses and powders that will cause them to hallucinate. We treated the water back at the camp with a subtle draft that neutralizes the harmful effects in our own forces. You will be immune, but if you see the enemy screaming for no reason, leave them to their nightmares. I assure you, they’re far worse than whatever you could inflict with a blade.
All paths lead to the underworld, my friends. ’
Torj suppressed a shudder, though he was glad to see the expressions across their forces suitably impressed and scared.
With that, he doled out his orders. ‘We need to move quickly now. Vernich and Graves, you take a unit either side of the stronghold and attack from the flanks at my signal. Hawthorne, Thea, you’re with me.
We’ll take the main assault to the front of the city, leading the Harenth and Devereux forces.
We’ll leave a unit of Thezmarrians to guard the field perimeter. ’
With the help of his fellow Warswords, their numbers were split as instructed, and soon enough he turned to address his own company of warriors – ready to fight, ready to die, if duty demanded it.
Torj had given dozens of speeches like these over the years; he was well versed in the language of war, but somehow this felt different .
. . After all these years of running from the shadows, he now stood before the warriors not just as their leader, but as someone who had finally made peace with his own scars.
The brave men and women before him were willing to face the enemy, and he owed them nothing less than to give them his all.
‘A great wrong has been done here,’ he told them.
‘This wrong has not only been committed against one of our rulers, but against the midrealms as a people. Barely recovered from one war, we find ourselves thrust into the bloody maw of another, with yet another tyrant threatening us with darkness . . . I don’t intend to let that threat come to pass. Do you?’
His soldiers shook their heads, rage shining in their eyes, knuckles white as they gripped their weapons.
‘Then we take the bastards by surprise,’ Torj said. ‘We take them like a knife between their ribs, and we show them what we learned during our time in the shadows.’
‘Ready when you are, Bear Slayer,’ Wilder said, jumping down from his horse and handing the reins to one of the soldiers.
‘Be careful,’ Torj replied, giving him and Thea a nod.
‘You worried about us, Elderbrock?’ Wilder teased.
‘Just concerned you can’t keep up with Thea,’ Torj muttered.
Wilder snorted. ‘Piss off.’
‘If you two are done flirting, can we make a move?’ Thea palmed two of her throwing stars.
‘They’re all yours,’ Torj told her.
Thea’s answering grin was wicked. She flicked her braid over her shoulder and started towards the remaining outer walls of Dorinth, melting into the landscape with Wilder on her tail.
Torj watched as the Shadow of Death moved through the rubble of her ancestors’ home, fluid as a dancer, swift as the wind.
There was a blur of silver, and Thea’s throwing stars went flying through the crisp morning air and into the throats of the enemy guards on patrol.
In her wake, Wilder caught the men as they fell, clapping his large hands over their mouths to muffle their dying cries.
He laid each body down soundlessly before extracting the weapons and moving on to repeat the motion with his wife’s next victim.
They worked seamlessly, as they always had, and when the last guard fell, Thea raised her hand in signal to Torj.
In turn, he motioned for the Thezmarrians to surround the perimeter of the rose field, while he followed the outskirts of the roses, advancing towards the would-be city gates on horseback with his unit.
As they rode in silence towards their target, Torj scanned the broken walls for archers, but Thea and Wilder had left no man alive.
Their approach remained unknown to anyone still within the stronghold.
As Torj closed the distance between him and the enemy compound among the ruins, the smell of stone and damp grew stronger, and the unit at his back became uneasy.
When he reached the threshold, he signalled for them to stop, looking up to where Wilder and Thea were scouting from the ramparts.
Silently, the couple descended the rubble and remounted their horses either side of Torj.
‘As we suspected,’ Thea said quietly. ‘Their base is in the remains of the old throne room; it’s a skeleton force, though there’s no telling what alchemy supplies they have in their arsenal.’
Torj turned to the unit behind him and pulled his mask up into place over his mouth and nose, motioning for them to do the same. They did as they were ordered.
When all their forces were in position, Torj took a deep breath and reached for his war hammer strapped to his back.
He raised it above his head, and the air filled with the metallic song of a hundred swords being drawn in answer.
With a roar that tore from his throat, he surged forwards and bellowed, ‘Attack!’