Chapter 26 Choosers of the Fallen #2
She looked at Lorelei and her team, and Cath and hers, and Breage and the nurses, and the Haelan gathered in anxious clusters upon the battlements, all of whom had worked themselves to exhaustion for sick children, had suffered their Costs, had found fresh courage and reserves of strength and depleted both, week after week—and still it wasn’t enough.
The threat was at their doorstep. None of them was trained for this.
They walked the Bright Path. They were pacifists.
They were pacifists, but.
The goddess Frīa stood behind Aurienne with her arms stretched to the skies. On either side of her, enormous and majestic, winged the Aer in flight. Upon the swans’ breasts, worn away by rain, were engraved runes: Choosers of the fallen.
“Those who try to kill an Aer suffer immediate death,” said Aurienne. Her voice rang through the silent courtyard. “We are under attack by the Dreor.” She held up her right palm. “Let’s remind them why the Haelan Order bears this tācn.”
The Haelan around her unfurled tense fists and looked at the Aer upon their palms.
“Tonight, we make the myth real,” said Aurienne. “Tonight…”
She hesitated. The grave faces of her colleagues surrounded her. What she was about to say was a sort of blasphemy. Haelan should never express such things.
Saophal, still perched on her shoulder, nudged her cheek.
“Tonight, we do not Harm to none,” said Aurienne. “We harm as many Dreor as possible. Keep the Wardens healed. And if, gods forbid, a Dreor comes within range of your tācn, you send it to Hel.”
First there was no sound, no movement. A shiver ran from the Haelan nearest Aurienne, across the flagstones, up the swan-carved walls, and to the top of the ramparts.
“Make them regret,” said someone.
“Make them suffer,” said someone else.
“Make cadavers for the anatomy lab,” came Cath’s voice.
There was laughter and a cheer.
“Well done,” said Saophal in Aurienne’s ear.
Hundreds of Haelan held up their tācn. Tonight, the white glow did not promise healing. It promised pain.
“Right,” said Verity. “Only those with tācn should remain outside. Everyone else, into the fortress. Barricade every door and window.”
Quincey, trembling yet hoisting a sword he had found somewhere, tried to take up a position near a door. Aurienne sent him inside. “You stay safe. Someone needs to tell me where to go for my next meeting after—after this.”
The portcullis was drawn down. The eight Wardens divided themselves into pairs along the top of each of Swanstone’s four walls.
Aurienne, Cath, and three other Haelan took their place along the fortress’s east wall, behind Verity and Haven.
Ataraxia and Solace took the west; Nym, Tenet, and Echo the north; while Corinne and two of the newest Warden arrivals, brothers named Hraith and Beorgan, took the south wall.
Swanstone was connected to the mainland by a long bridge, which was presumably where attackers would cross.
From Aurienne’s vantage, she could see the rocky beach behind the fortress.
It was so dark that the sea was indistinguishable from the sky.
A cloud passed over the moon, blackening the rocky shore further.
The cloud passed.
What Aurienne thought had been shadow blackening the shore wasn’t shadow.
It was Dreor wightlings.
Haven spat, “Woden.”
Everyone on the ramparts took a shocked step back. “So many of them.”
The wightlings clambered across the beach with their peculiar shuffling gait.
The Wardens on the ramparts pulled their helmets closed.
Verity and Haven pressed their tācn to each other’s in what Aurienne thought was a gesture of encouragement—until they pulled their hands apart, and a thick glowing line of seith spread between them.
With a sharp gesture, they whipped the ward out and down the ramparts, past the moat, towards the wightlings.
Blue-white cords of seith flattened themselves upon the ground and wound their way up ankles and calves.
A line of ten wightlings was caught in it.
Verity and Haven tugged their tācn. The entire line of wightlings was yanked apart in an explosion of offal.
The watching Haelan gasped and cheered.
There was more movement. A hundred more wightlings were approaching the fortress from all sides.
Upon each wall, pairs of Wardens pushed their tācn together and whipped the dismembering ward into the wightlings.
Again they exploded into piles of bone and entrails.
The wightlings didn’t flinch as they died, and those behind them advanced carelessly upon the remains of their brethren.
Feet churned black blood and mud. This time, the Haelan did not cheer.
The wightlings weren’t armed or armoured. There was something horrific in their advance, their brainlessness, their absolute lack of self-preservation. What was the purpose of this? Dashing themselves upon the wards they knew would be here? What was the strategy?
“Some of them are strapped with something,” came Ataraxia’s voice from the west wall. “Watch out.”
The bodies of the wightlings piled up. Upon some of their chests was a large white rectangle, chalky-looking. Neither the Haelan nor the Wardens on the wall recognised the substance.
“Where’s the Ingenaut?” asked Verity.
Felicette came running. She peered over the edge of the ramparts. “That looks like unrefined Slihtrock. Oh no—the moat—”
“What?” asked Verity. “What’s the matter with the moat?”
“When Slihtrock comes into contact with water, there’s a violent exothermic—”
A wightling tumbled into the moat. A detonation shook the ramparts.
“—reaction,” finished Felicette.
The next wave of wightlings pushed the corpses of their fallen into the moat.
The Wardens did their utmost to stop them, but they had piled the wightling corpses along the moat, and all it took was one nudge, and three Slihtrock-bound bodies fell into the water, and there was another explosion directly at the foot of Swanstone’s mighty walls.
“North wall is breached,” rang Tenet’s voice.
So that had been the strategy.
The wightlings swarmed the breach.
“Tenet, Haven, Solace, with me on the ground,” called Verity. “The rest of you defend the walls.”
The four Wardens pressed their tācn together and separated, drawing a brilliant blue line of warding across the breached wall. Again and again they drew the line, and again and again wightlings crossed it, were reduced to a black-red slurry, and crossed it again.
This level of seith output wasn’t sustainable.
Aurienne called Corinne and Nym to her side and descended into the courtyard.
Verity made eye contact with her and nodded.
In turn, each of the four Wardens at the breach fell back to the three Haelan, pulled off their gorgets, and had their seith topped off.
The Wardens still on the ramparts, now reduced to one per wall, held off wightlings attempting to climb them.
Another wave of wightlings descended through the V-shaped breach and into the courtyard.
“So bloody many,” said Haven.
“They emptied their garrisons,” said Tenet.
“We’re wasting seith on these wretches,” said Verity. “The worst is yet to come—”
She cut herself off with a gasp. A line of white rose behind the wightlings pouring into the breach. It descended quietly behind the mass that heaved towards the courtyard.
Haelan tācn touched wightling flesh. A shiver of seith passed over the courtyard—seith that wasn’t, for once, carefully doled out, wasn’t administered per clinical practice guidelines.
Wightling brains splattered out of noses and ears before they could turn around.
Eyes were rendered into gelatinous discharge. Hearts were pulped. Joints were blown.
So it went until the line of white met the line of blue. By the time the wightlings turned to face what had come upon them from behind, they were a semisolid mess.
“Well done,” said Verity to the Haelan who neared, now covered in filth.
Abercorn’s puffin deofol, winging above the fortress, said, “Look sharp. Incoming.”
The breached wall darkened again with forms stepping over broken stone and wightlings.
This time, the figures were larger. Armoured in black plate and horned helmets. They stepped with certainty instead of a brainless shuffle. Upon their backs hung enormous scythes. Like the Wardens, their gauntlets had a removable partition. Black death’s head tācn grinned from left palms.
“Dreor,” spat Haven.
Yes—these were fully fledged Dreor. Real Dreor. Death-knights.
They filled Aurienne with dread.
Not so with the Wardens. The four in the courtyard closed ranks. In their eyes there was nothing but fury.
Wardens hated Dreor as much as Haelan hated Fyren.
“Be careful,” said Aurienne. “Their haemokinesis—”
Blue-white light burst through the chinks in the Wardens’ armour. “Light shields,” said Haven to Aurienne. “As long as we’ve got these up, their foul seith can’t touch us. All Haelan—get back.”
Tenet was less smug. “Light shields deplete seith quickly.”
Verity, fearless, tall, her spear at her side, stepped towards the advancing Dreor. “The cowards finally join us,” she called.
“We wanted to warm you up,” replied the lead Dreor. It was a woman’s voice, hoarse through the helmet.
“Where are our little ones?” asked another Dreor. “Where are our sick, precious babies?”
“They aren’t yours,” said Verity.
“They are, and we will be taking them back.”
The lead Dreor spoke to Verity. “You decide how many at Swanstone die today, Warden. If you step aside, it needn’t be everyone.”
“Do you really think you can defend Swanstone, with only eight of you here?” asked another Dreor with a teasing lilt. “Where are your spear-sisters, Warden?”
“Eight of us and how many of you?” asked Verity.
More Dreor climbed over the breach in answer. Forty? Fifty? Aurienne pressed her hands to her mouth. The numbers were not in the Wardens’ favour.
“All of us,” said the lead Dreor. “We’ve come to reclaim our family.”
“Frīa,” whispered Corinne to Aurienne, “they sent the whole Order.”