Arcane Mercenaries: Insurrection, page 19
“We’ve come to ask for the same,” Prince Dominick said. “His army is defeated, and my forces advance in this direction. I’d hate to have to tear down this wonderful palace.”
The servant lowered his head, staring at his feet as if they would reveal his next thoughts.
“He was certain you would refuse.”
Grant reached forward and pulled Dominick back toward the group. The man didn’t have an Ismorian accent, and Grant swore he saw the glint of mail poking under the jacket.
The Duke wasn’t here, but a group of mercenaries was.
34
FALLEN
Grant sensed Catrin’s and Ez’s power flare moments after he summoned his abilities. Energy coursed through his veins, dulling his vision but revealing blue gravity vectors around them. Lines appeared at the battlements above as the jingle of armor joined the rattle of weapons.
“To arms, my friends,” Dominick yelled, tearing his blade from his sheath.
Mounted soldiers wheeled toward the drawbridge to secure an escape. The remainder surrounded the young prince. The mercenary pretending to be the steward disappeared into the palace before someone cut him down.
A crashing sound thundered behind Grant, but he didn’t look away from the heights overlooking the inner courtyard. He knew the interlaced steel bars of the portcullis fell from the gatehouse heights, the spikes locking into place in the holes in the ground.
The only way out was to capture a gatehouse and seize the mechanisms to raise the steel entrapment. If Grant was close enough, he might have enough magic to allow several soldiers to lift the steel walls. But the soldiers above would have ample time to rain projectiles down on the small group.
The first shots from ready crossbows slammed down from above. Grant sensed the bolts when they tore free from the taught steel springs and nudged them away from the clustered soldiers around the prince.
Ez brought her wooden stock to her shoulder and fired. The lead round tore through a helmet and threw the soldier back from the edge. Grant grabbed the empty weapon and went through the manual of arms to reload the musket as Ez used her second weapon and found a new target above.
The next musket slammed into her shoulder as it spat flames and billowed smoke. Grant’s power sensed another fallen target as Ez poured her magic into the fight.
Dominick had a dozen archers with him, and they leaned into their bows to get strings fitted to the powerful lengths of yew. They grunted as they secured the ends and reached for quivers full of arrows. Inspired by Ez’s accuracy, they looked high to hunt targets.
This was no place for volley fire or area targets. Ez and the archers fought with precision and aim. The archers were skilled hunters, but shooting a bow into covered positions several floors up was difficult. Arrows whizzed through the air towards targets obscured by stone fortifications, some missing their mark and clattering off the walls. Those that did land found their mark with deadly accuracy.
Grant’s power surged as the guards above fought back. The ambushers’ tactics were sound and had ample skills to thin Dominick’s group. They didn’t plan on three StarTouched soldiers in the mix who could strike back against these impossible odds.
Grant handed the first musket back to Ez and spun toward the gatehouse across the courtyard. Steel barrels appeared from above after the crash of the portcullis sealed their fate. Grant wished Jafran was by his side to snuff out the sparks from the muskets before they launched a deadly volley. Alone, Grant couldn’t protect their group from every direction.
The duke’s soldiers fired on command, and the upper wall of the gatehouse billowed with ash-grey clouds as the muskets sent their deadly load toward their small group. Grant couldn’t stop all the rounds as crossbow bolts came from the opposite direction.
Prince Dominick’s soldiers fell in the barrage. Grant kept a solid shield around the young prince and the closest bodyguards, but he’d tire soon from the effort. He needed a plan.
They wouldn’t last long enough to pick off each soldier at the top of the defenses. Ez could shoot only as fast as someone handed her a fresh musket, and she would run out of powder soon.
The firing stopped.
“Grant, talk some sense into the prince. I told the soldiers you couldn’t stop everything.” A voice in accented Ismorian bounced off the walls. Ez swept the line of the battlements with her loaded musket, daring someone to peek over the edge.
“Torben?” Grant shouted toward the palace.
Torben Anderson knew Grant and Ez’s powers all too well. He wouldn’t make a fatal mistake with the trapped party in the courtyard. Torben was a mercenary captain who led a skilled group with and against the Arcane Mercenaries. His most recent assignment was under Grant’s command at Krosno where he led thousands of mercenaries, including Grant’s beloved company.
“Take the offer, Grant. My orders are dead or alive for the prince, and no one cares about the rest of you.”
That was definitely Torben. His voice came from the highest peak of the circular tower across from him. Ez tracked her muzzle to where Grant was looking, and her powers surged. Torben wisely stayed out of sight rather than risk an arcane-guided shot to his forehead.
Grant glanced at Dominick, who stayed crouched behind his shield. The young prince didn’t know what to do. If he fought, they would likely all die. No one thought Torben or the duke would treat them with honor if Dominick surrendered. The Icy Queen did not earn her name for mercy.
Dominick’s bodyguards crouched behind their interlocked shields. That might work against a hunting bow, but a heavy crossbow would tear through their meager defenses and punch through flesh. Firearms would deal catastrophic damage.
The bodyguards stood firm. They still had three StarTouched wizards on their side.
But Grant couldn’t figure a way out of their mess.
“Think faster, Grant,” Ez said. She lowered her weapon to a ready position but continued to look for possible targets.
“Catrin?” Grant asked. The woman stayed near Dominick’s side and looked frustrated, not scared, at their predicament. Why hadn’t her “inclinations” warned him of this ambush?
Maybe the duke was here, hidden someplace in the palace. They were in the right place—just terrible circumstances.
Dominick said nothing, and Catrin shook her head.
No help there.
“Tell you what, Torben. How about we make a trade?” Grant shouted. He stood up, faced the high tower, and placed his body in front of the prince.
“We’re not negotiating, Grant. It’s an unconditional surrender.”
“You give us Duke Ardwick, and we’ll let you and your forces see the next morning. I can’t offer much else if we continue down this path.”
“I don’t follow the logic, Grant,” Torben shouted.
Every time he spoke, Grant had a better idea of where the man hid on that upper floor. Grant watched for each movement and the associated vectors of gravity that would give away the man’s position. He didn’t want to hurt a mercenary who earned his respect across the Mage Wars, but he wasn’t about to turn Dominick over to the duke for a victory parade to the queen.
“I warned you, mercenary. We’ve tried it your way. Now it is time to wipe out the cursed abominations. Kill them all. Save the prince if you can.” The new voice boomed with strong commands, like a preacher delivering their sermon from on high. This voice came from the upper reaches of the palace, and Ez turned and fired a single shot.
The boom echoed across the courtyard, and she didn’t miss. A body slumped forward against the battlements, and Grant spied a priest’s cassock before a nearby soldier pulled the corpse away from the defenses.
The ambushers answered Ez’s shot with a volley of projectiles. Catrin summoned whipping wind to tear along the battlements, and mist surged from the ground in thick tendrils. Grant pushed aside every missile he could track, but screams in the courtyard marked his failure.
He couldn’t stop all of them.
The church was here, and they had Gornick’s weapons. Fear coursed through Grant’s veins, and he risked a glance at Ez. She went through the reloading process with typical efficiency, but her face twitched as she glanced at Grant.
“Kill the son and daughters of darkness!” A new voice took up the call to arms against the StarTouched, and the door to a nearby square tower flung open. Ten soldiers rushed forward wearing white tunics over steel cuirasses and mail armor.
Catrin made a sound like a gurgle, and Grant spun toward her. She tried to press blood-soaked hands to her stomach to stem the flow as the end of a crossbow bolt poked between her fingers. Dominick kneeled to catch her as she collapsed from the shock of her wound.
Dominick’s archers didn’t need orders as they turned as a group to a threat they could handle. They drew back their weapons and launched a volley into the advancing soldiers. The church soldier’s beliefs were not enough to deflect the powerful shots delivered into their ranks, and half fell without making a sound.
“Watch my back?” Grant said toward Ez and faced upwards to the wall.
“No,” Ez said. “I’m coming with you.” She held the weapon close to her chest and flexed her legs.
Grant shifted the powers of gravity and flung himself upwards to the top of the palace. A nudge was all he needed to land on the other side of the battlement, and his blade flashed to take out the first soldier with a crossbow.
A dozen church soldiers with Gornick-powered weapons designed to hurt and kill the StarTouched stood in awe as Grant landed among them. They scrambled when Ez shot one of them in the chest, threw the musket to the side, and fired again when she hit another.
Grant fought through the survivors like a butcher. The zealots didn’t ask for mercy, and Grant offered no quarter. Ez was at his side after emptying two weapons, and she snarled as she swung at each soldier.
None would survive as Ez and Grant finished their gruesome work, and the archers finished their handiwork on the advancing soldiers below.
Before Torben could launch a full-out offensive on the remaining bodyguards, Grant launched himself from the top of the palace to the highest tower. It was a stupid maneuver to allow himself to hang in the air for so long, but no one thought to look for an assault from above when they occupied the highest building.
He landed by Torben and threw two of his mercenaries off the roof with a thought. His blade flashed twice, cutting down two more before Torben realized death was stalking his forces in the tower.
Grant held his sword to Torben’s throat, leaving no doubt about what he planned to do if the mercenary didn’t answer honestly.
“Where’s the duke?” Grant asked.
35
DISCOVERY
“He’s not here,” Torben whispered, not even daring to swallow as Grant’s blade nicked his throat.
“Why is the church trying to kill us?” Killing the StarTouched was expected, but the church participating in battles against rival nobility was new.
Grant held his blade in place. He’d cut Torben open if he flinched.
Ez raised her musket and fired from the palace rooftop, and one of Torben’s mercenaries on an adjacent tower lurched backward from the impact. The others ducked below the crenelations, but Grant didn’t flinch.
“Duke Ardwick wants Dominick paraded before the queen as his prisoner. The church offered help when I told them you’d be here.”
“Not much help when they ran out the tower door. What did they promise?” Grant asked. He’d used so much power to protect Dominick that his limbs felt like dead weights.
Catrin might be dying in the courtyard.
Focus.
“They said they could kill StarTouched. No one can stop you and Ez,” Torben said. Tears welled up in his eyes as a trickle of blood soaked the top of his undershirt.
“I should throw you over the side,” Grant said.
His bloodlust screamed to do it—throw Torben and the rest of his cursed archers off the roof. One pull of gravity smashing them into the cobblestones. It would be an excessive display of power, but it would solve nothing.
If Grant killed every mercenary in the castle, the duke would rebuild his army with support from the queen. The Kingmaker had too many resources.
Grant couldn’t kill his way out of this one.
“Surrender your command, Torben. I’m only asking once,” Grant said.
“I surrender.” Torben knew a hopeless cause, and Grant’s blade at his throat was ample encouragement. He dropped his blade with a clang on the flagstones and held his hands over his head without moving his neck.
“Your contract?” Grant asked, lowering his sword.
“Null and void.” Torben rubbed his throat and looked at the blood on his hands.
Grant prided himself on strict adherence to honor. Grant’s group fought with distinction and valor when someone hired the Arcane Mercenaries, and they protected their reputation for loyalty. That was a rarity across the mercenary companies, and Torben was known to change sides for the best bid or better cause.
“Order your troops to lay down their arms and march into the courtyard,” Grant said.
“Your troops look eager for revenge. Assurances?” Torben looked over the battlement at the assembled archers and ready soldiers. Dominick had a dozen wounded and several dead from the early exchanges of fire.
“On my honor,” Grant said. That would have to do. “Do it, or I order the execution of your soldiers.”
Torben better order the surrender. Grant’s legs ached, and his head throbbed from the arcane exertion. He was struggling to keep his eyes focused and his head clear. He wasn’t sure if he could fight Torben’s remaining soldiers.
“Please help me, Grant.” Prince Dominick shouted from the courtyard below.
Blood pooled around the Mage of the Mists, her body convulsing in pain. Dominick held her head in his lap, trying to keep her still and stem the blood flow from the bolt sticking out of her gut. He stared up at Grant as if looking toward the heavens and begging for help.
“Where’s your surgeon?” Grant shouted at Torben.
“I… um. I—” Torben stuttered as anger emanated in waves from Grant’s body.
Grant grabbed the mercenary captain by the throat and lifted him off his feet with the faintest tug of gravity. Torben banged him on the chest as Grant stood like a statue, choking the life of the man he once respected.
“In the palace,” Torben gagged between Grant’s crushing fingers.
Grant threw him to the ground, and exhaustion crippled his limbs. He couldn’t keep up this show of power for much longer.
“Grant, please.” Dominick was desperate.
Grant pushed himself. The power in his veins drained his remnants of energy. If Torben’s forces launched a counterattack now, he’d be sore-pressed to stop anything but a thrown rock.
He stepped out over the side of the tower and landed on the ground with enough force to drop him to his knees. Pain coursed through his back and a twisted ankle, but he held in his bark of agony. He couldn’t show weakness now but limped toward the fallen wizard.
As his body healed his injuries, he hurried to the young man’s side. Blood dripped from the corners of Catrin’s mouth, and her forehead creased with the pain. She moaned and shifted her head from side to side. The gut wound had to be painful, and her body couldn’t heal the Gornick bolt.
“Take it out,” Catrain whispered and gagged on her blood.
“We’re getting a surgeon. You have to be still,” Grant said. He wasn’t a doctor, but he’d seen countless battlefield wounds. If they pulled out that bolt, she’d bleed out in moments.
“What do we do?” Dominick lost all pretenses of nobility. The woman who stood by his side from the earliest moments of his rise to power was about to die in his lap.
Someone emerged from the palace’s main entrance and hurried toward the group huddled around the fallen mage. The woman looked too young to have completed her apprenticeship as a surgeon, but Grant made room as she took on a clinical look and probed Catrin’s wounds.
The mage gasped with the faintest touch, and blood pooled around the shaft of the crossbow bolt with each breath.
The doctor looked at Grant and shook her head. “I can make her comfortable.”
“Not good enough, doctor,” Grant said. “She’s Touched and can heal this. There’s something on the bolt that is stopping her powers. We get it out, clean it up, and let her body do its thing. All the pieces have to come out.”
“We’re wasting time,” the doctor said. She took her hands off Catrin and moved to rise.
Grant clutched her arm and fought down his rage. “You have something better to do than save this woman?”
She couldn’t pull away from Grant, and her lips trembled as he clamped his grip tighter around her forearm. She regained her composure and rechecked the Mage of the Mists.
“We get her inside the main hall. I need two of your soldiers to get water from the well and boil it. By the bucketful. Order the servants to bring clean laundry, lots of it.”
“Save her,” Dominick begged.
The doctor said nothing as she got up and moved back inside. Grant lightened gravity around the wounded mage as Dominick and another bodyguard carefully lifted the woman and carried her inside.
Grant stared at the pool of blood she left behind and counted the bodies of Dominick’s loyal soldiers. He kicked at the crossbow bolts stuck into the grass, but his senses could track their movement. Grant sensed the gravity acting on everything around him, but his means of filtering through all the vectors of the downward force also meant he couldn’t find these weapons.
What had Gornick invented? Grant imagined the scientist working in a well-funded laboratory, not caring about the results of his work. How many more weapons did the church have at its disposal?
“Grant, you have to see this,” Ez said from the upper floor. She leaned over the side to shout at him, but her tone wasn’t a warning.
