22. N
Haldeen sat, his back against the wall that faced his courtyard, and worked to stop the bleeding.
His leg continued to hemorrhage, even through the dressing.
He removed his belt and tightened it around his thigh, just above the knee, cinching it as tightly as he could.
He had no idea if that would help … but it couldn’t hurt.
He pulled the belt tightly enough that it should hurt, but it didn’t.
His thoughts felt slow. Muzzy. It wasn’t if the problem was in his legs …
pain he should feel, but didn’t … or in hands …
too weak to pull the belt tight enough. He looked around for someone to call out to, to ask for help.
The top of the battlement had a scorched, abandoned feel.
A few elves stirred, but most appeared as shocked as Haldeen felt.
The blast had been indiscriminate. The remaining crenellations blocked his view of the forest beyond the city, but the cinders and ash that rose suggested serious damage.
Smoke blew into his eyes, carrying the smells of soot and a deeper note … burned meat.
He coughed as the stuff seared his lungs. A few elves emerged from the stone towers that overlooked the main battlements. A few of the towers had been swept away by the sere wind that had blasted across the wall after the king had used his actinic. The final weapon in their arsenal; the last resort.
Haldeen turned his head to the left, further along the wall.
Here and there soldiers rallied, but slowly, recovering from the force of the king’s will.
The weapon might have done for the monsters, but its effects on the garrison looked to be nearly as severe.
He might have blacked out then. Or not. But, he found himself looking up, at the line where the green edge of the shield failed and gave over to the blue.
His eye followed the line downward as far as he could, until the smoke and debris from the blast blurred the lines between shielded and not-shielded.
He tried to rally his thoughts. The southern part of the shield had failed, and the Monsters had attacked.
The part of the shield that lay over his home, his domain, his responsibility.
He struggled with that thought for a few moments, then realized some time had passed.
Troops swarmed up the stair from the courtyard below, dragging a cart full of firelances … bump, bump, bump … up the stair.
He heard them call out to each other. Taking the firelances … were they really the last? … to the front wall, and stopping the Monsters. Monsters? Hadn’t they been stopped? He saw the first blast of fire down into the plain. Perhaps not.
He had a hard time focusing. The shield had failed. Either it came up and the city would be safe, or it stayed down, and they were done. He tried to concentrate. Hard. The pain in his leg flared, and something cast a shadow over him.
He missed seeing it, but heard the buzz of the Skydancer as it crossed over him, headed back to the city.
Something sounded off. Damaged? Or, was it his hearing?
The world swirled then, yellows and greens and blues together, before it steadied out, and he saw the elves along the battlements firing their firelances down …
at steep angles. Whatever they shot was close, nearly to the base of the city’s wall.
He tried to gather his wits. Two elves lifted him, and started dragging him towards the stairs, one to each side. His leg burned like fire. He cried out.
“It’s all right, friend,” one said, as he shifted.
One took his leg, holding him under his knees, while the other brought his hands up under Haldeen’s armpits.
They lifted him together, then started down the stairs.
Haldeen flinched away from the agony as his injured leg clipped against the stairs. He cried out.
“We’ll get you down, lad,” the one said. “No place for your sort.”
Haldeen laughed. He had years on the two of them.
They had gotten to the bottom when a vast roar came from up and over the wall.
The two helped carry him to the bottom of the stairs, and propped him up against the inner wall, near the place where he had fallen, and just before the actinic had incinerated the further half of the courtyard.
Other elves had been dragged next to the shade.
Some moaned while others lay still. Haldeen tried to shake off the cobwebs that fogged his brain.
A woman came by, her street clothes streaked with blood.
She bent down, opened his right eye, cast a quick incantation, then shifted to his left eye.
She called out something he didn’t quite make out.
She yelled something again, then swore. He saw her look around for something, pat her pockets, and swear again.
She dipped one finger in the blood that had pooled around his leg and used it to write something on his forehead.
“Wha—?” He started to ask.
“You’ll live,” she said. “If the city does.”
He heard the sweet arrival of Machina a few minutes later, at least two clomping along somewhere on the battlements overhead.
He closed his eyes, listening to the sounds he knew so well.
The firelances first, then the whirring sounds as the shot furnaces heated and fired.
The city had gone past the point where a single shot furnace eating itself mattered …
other than its effect on the volume of fire produced.
He focused on the sounds. A second, and then a third, as they cycled and threw everything they had at whatever was coming from outside.
The world felt dim. He raised his fingers, pressed them to his throat, feeling for his pulse. He felt a wave of fear then. He had lost a lot of blood. He looked around for someone in medical smocks. Someone who could help. No luck. He croaked out a call for help.
“Haldeen? Is that you?” A shadow fell across his eyes and he squinted up.
“Moragen? Is that you?”
“Haldeen? Ye gods, one eyebrow and half your hair are burned away!”
the younger noble replied. He bent down and helped Haldeen sit up.
“Was looking for sewer leaks, when all this happened. Looks like everything has gone to shit.”
He paused for a moment, to see if Haldeen would react to the joke. “What happened?”
Haldeen gestured towards his leg. “Piece of metal, a spike I think, came through the wall. Got me in the leg.”
Moragen had bent down, examining the dressing, and Haldeen’s makeshift tourniquet. “This is going to hurt.” He put a foot on Haldeen’s thigh, took the bloody belt in both hands … and pulled. Haldeen screamed and passed out.
He awoke to Moragen breaking something caustic under his nose.
“Better?” he asked Haldeen.
Haldeen took stock of his hurts and bruises. “Better. It hurts, but I can think again. What did you do?”
“Found a Healer. They’re spread thin, but I used rank. You need a lot more than they can give right now. But one quick spell for a few answers seemed a fair trade. It’s a general restorative. Won’t last long. Now tell me … what in the nineteen hells happened?”
Haldeen felt his wits desert him. “I … I don’t know. I was in my lab … and came out, and everything had fallen apart.”
He closed his eyes and tried to cast his mind back.
“It was … it’s hard to describe. Things started guttering out, like a lamp that’s running out of oil. Mage-lights went first, then the shield. And the Predators started coming in over the wall.”
“No, Haldeen … what happened? Your Source … that powers the Shield here. It’s not working! What happened!”
Haldeen looked up at Moragen, completely at a loss. “I don’t know. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Your Source, Haldeen. Where is it?” Moragen snapped. “Did it die? Where is it?”
Haldeen shook his head, still working to clear the fog.
He knew he had lost a lot of blood, and struck his head at least once.
“Stables. It’s in the stables, close to the service gates in the back. Downslope. Once in, down two levels, then a quick left. Be careful, because ….”
He stopped, and felt his mouth make a perfect “O.”
Fear flared in his belly as he made connections. “That bitch.”
“What, what?” Moragen repeated. “Service deck. Two down. Stables. Is it there?”
Haldeen could only nod.
A shadow of something with wings flashed over the wall and into the city. The Monsters appeared to be recovering. The garrison hadn’t. Too many precious elves had died in the initial attack, and in the actinic blast that followed. Haldeen looked into Moragen’s eyes and saw the naked fear.
“Haldeen. Tell me everything. Now. It may be too late already, but I need to know.”
Haldeen closed his eyes. His voice sounded like a stranger’s whisper to his ears.
“I got a Gate working. Used it to fish where we sent the exiles. Caught one. A woman. Noble. Stupid and weak, useless even for food production. Put it in with the Beast, because the minder was dead. Figured she’d be dead now. I think this is her doing.”
Moragen rocked back on his heels, as though Haldeen had struck him. “You did what?” He looked up at the wedge of blue sky. “If she hurt the Source, then you may have killed us all.” He went silent for a moment, shaking his head. “What were you thinking?”
Haldeen shook his head, unable to meet his eyes. I was given a key to a new world, a key to wealth and power. You would have done the same. He said nothing.
Moragen sprinted away then, yelling for guards, overseers, anyone in authority to aid him, to follow him to the stables for the sake of the city. Few could follow. Fewer did.
Something came leaping down into the courtyard …
a creature of chitin, all hard shells and long, spearing claws.
The few guards in the courtyard, all lightly injured, charged it with raised shields and swords.
One died at once as the thing speared him in the leg and dragged him towards it.
The elf screamed, leaving a trail of blood, before a second and third piercing strike silenced him.
Other guards, terrified … but fighting anyway, engaged it, working to keep it busy.
Once cast a strong spear thrust that simply glanced off of its shell.
They could do no more than keep it busy until someone showed up with something heavier.
He needed to get out of this courtyard, and away from this killing madness.
Haldeen called out to one of his servants, but the elf ran past, unheeding.
I don’t look like a Great Lord. He levered himself up, then paused, dizzy and nauseated.