Shadows in the Smoke - Chapter 44 - Retreat

  “The Revolution saw a revival in Itrian artistry. Before, only those lucky enough to obtain nobleborn patrons could practice their craft, meaning that only art that appealed to the fads and fashions of our former overlords was produced. Now, art flourishes across the Republic with new styles appearing every year. Personally, I have a particular liking for the works of the civic revivalist school.”

  The Struggle for Freedom by Bjarne Midthun

  =====

  Just as Ester opened her mouth, the world dissolved into bright light as an impact flung her painfully to the cold, stone floor of the walls. It took a valuable second to work out what had just happened and shrug off the painful impact.

  As she pushed herself onto her elbows, she was just in time to see a ghoul pick itself up from the floor and leap at her again. Once again, light flashed momentarily blinding her and the impact, not fully absorbed by her Schema, shoved her back to the floor. This time the ghoul didn’t fall. Instead, it was left standing over her.

  Blood pounded through Ester’s veins as she stared up at the rotting, mutated corpse. Without speed from it leaping at her, her Schema would probably let it through. Her head hurt, her back hurt, all of her hurt, but she needed to kill the ghoul, or it would be on her in the next second.

  She scrabbled for the focus that she needed to impose her will on reality, forcing away her pain and fear. It felt like the world was moving in slow motion as the ghoul began to descend on her, its claws reaching out and jaw widening in anticipation of feasting on living flesh.

  Runes and light surrounded the ghoul, an array she struggled to recognise. Almost as fast as they’d appeared, they vanished. The ghoul dropped like a stone, collapsing into a boneless heap, whatever necromantic force that had been propelling it was simply gone.

  In a flash of movement, Lindholm was suddenly standing above her, looking down with her cold, blue eyes. Without a word, she leaned down and grasped Ester’s arm through her sleeve and hauled her to her feet.

  Lindholm’s hand felt like iron. There was no give in it whatsoever and she pulled Ester up with laughable ease, despite being a much smaller woman.

  “T-t-thank you, Arcanist-Colonel.” Ester could barely get her breathing under control. She’d thought she was going to die and there’d been nothing she could do to save herself.

  Lindholm stared at her for a second and then gave her a surprisingly gentle pat on the shoulder. “Good job, Mazar. You can rest now. I will handle things here.”

  With that, she sped off, accelerating from a standing start to a blur in a fraction of a second.

  Ester slowly staggered over to the edge of the wall and leaned on it, blinking as she tried to pull herself together.

  A remaining ghoul leaped at Lindholm. She didn’t even pause, just slammed straight through it as if it wasn’t even there. When she reached the nearest group of beleaguered soldiers she jinked sideways past them, so fast that it was difficult to follow, even from a distance.

  She grabbed the closest ghoul and slammed it into the wall hard enough to turn it to paste. In a series of blindingly fast movements, the woman moved around the Republican soldiers, obliterating ghouls as she went. Then, before Ester had really registered what had happened, she was standing on the parapet. Fully exposed to anything from below, or even being grabbed by a climbing ghoul. Not that any ghoul would be likely to survive grabbing Lindholm.

  She took a moment to survey the battlefield and raised her hand above her head. Magic sparked into being around her, a whirling cloud of actinic blue, sparking off runes as the spell slowly spun over her head.

  Lindholm gestured and a wave shot out from the cloud, flowing along the wall away from her, just above the struggling Republican soldiers. Where it went over a ghoul, light stabbed down, obliterating them. She held the spell for a long second as Ester watched, wide eyed, spreading her power along the wall, destroying every enemy that went under it.

  As suddenly as it had appeared, the cloud vanished. The noisy chaos of battle had vanished from the wall, to be replaced by the moans of the wounded and the sound of Republican soldiers repositioning themselves in readiness for more undead.

  Ester took a deep breath. The ghouls seemed to have stopped coming. Had Lindholm’s spell killed them all or were they just giving up? That meant she could give her attention back to the main body of the undead army.

  She held onto the parapet for support as she turned to look out towards the enemy. The last thing she wanted to do now was to cast more spells, but she needed to do her duty. She needed to kill as many of the enemy as possible if they were going to survive this siege.

  Ester forced her mind back into the focus she needed to cast. The remains of the company of soldiers she’d obliterated were still there. No other undead forces had moved up to replace them, that meant they were further away from her, presumably waiting to see if the ghouls cleared the walls. She could still hit them. At her best anyway, it would be a strain now. The bigger question would be whether she could beat her way past the defences of whatever witches they had with them. She suspected not.

  Were there any easier targets?

  Suddenly, her eye was drawn towards movement down below. It was still difficult to see compared to daylight, but the Republicans’ special ammunition was incredibly useful. It left plenty of shadows, but anything outside them was caught in the harsh bright light.

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  There were two figures, carefully making their way through the company of soldiers Ester had blasted. They were trying to keep to shadows, but once she’d seen them, their efforts were futile.

  The question was, what did they want? It was hard to think through the fog in her head, but she couldn’t see much reason for just two of the enemy to be sneaking back towards the fort. Unless they were going to try to infiltrate it. Might they be Republican scouts trying to get home? That thought and her own exhaustion was the only thing that stopped Ester from hitting them straight away.

  It was hard to see at that distance, but Ester thought they were looking around nervously. As if they’d rather be anywhere other than where they were. She couldn’t blame them for that.

  Obviously she couldn’t let them get too close to the fort. Great Spirits only knew what they might do if they were witches. If they kept coming closer and she couldn’t work out what they were, she’d find Vegard and ask him. Assuming he’d survived. The man at least prioritised his own life over his dislike for the Empire.

  Off further down the wall, Ester felt waves of magic building. She spared a glance, just in time to see Lindholm’s spell come together in an explosion of arcane force in the middle of some of the undead troops.

  She nodded to herself at the sight. It was just as she’d expected. Lindholm was very powerful, she’d sit comfortably among Master Mages in the Empire, but no more than that. It was a pity really. Ester would have given almost anything to have an Archmage, or even Master Tabasi, here to help defend the fort.

  Her attention was drawn back in front of her by the feel of a spell being cast. It had nothing like the power of Lindholm’s and it was much harder to sense with the greater distance, but her eyes went straight back to the two figures she’d been watching.

  A faint, dark green cloud of magic had formed around them, necromantic energy blatantly running through the spell. Ester grimaced at the sight, that at least answered the question of which side they were on. She wasn’t sure that all of the Republicans would even have been able to see it at that distance, the spell didn’t have a huge amount of power behind it and she suspected they were trying to keep it subtle. Not subtle enough though.

  She focused her mind, straining to pick out the figures. But, just before she attacked, the light from the special ammunition winked out. Ester bit her bottom lip, she couldn’t just lash out in the dark. If she missed she’d just alert them that they’d been spotted. There’d be another light soon. There had to be. Anyway, whatever spell they were casting almost certainly wasn’t strong enough to do anything to the fort.

  She could still see the faint light of the spell. She didn’t need light to see magic after all, but it was a diffuse cloud covering a large area. She couldn’t hit the whole thing at once, not when she was as tired as she was.

  Another special ammunition ball burst to life above the fort, bathing the ground in front of Ester in its bright light.

  She immediately honed back in on the two figures. Then her jaw dropped. There were others with them. How had they managed to sneak more people in in the seconds of darkness?

  As Ester watched, the cloud of necromantic magic thickened over one spot, before returning to its previous diffuse state. A second later, a figure stood up in it.

  With a sick feeling in her stomach, Ester realised what she was seeing. Those were necromancers down there, raising the soldiers that she’d killed. If they had their way then the undead army wouldn’t grow any weaker because of her, they’d just replace living soldiers with undead.

  She felt bile rising in her throat at the idea. She could stop them. She had to stop them.

  “Saig gan cuvlug.” Ester spoke the words for a fireball. It materialised in front of her and blasted straight towards them. It was long range, but she released the spell as soon as it was cast. It would still reach them, albeit harmlessly.

  “Gr?nn nvatn ai’diwaien ai’saig vlidsich jel’ai’saarde.” As she intoned her next spell, she had time to see the figures look up at her rapidly fading fireball.

  A moment later, disjunction pulled the fireball apart, but it was too late for them. Lightning flashed down from the sky. Once, twice, it unerringly speared into the two figures without giving them time to react.

  The two figures vanished and the others, the newly risen undead, collapsed as if they were puppets whose strings had been cut.

  Ester breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t think she had the energy left to fight a duel with two witches. Her head was pounding from the effort again and all she really wanted to do was to lie down and go to sleep. Even sitting down on the cold stone floor would be an improvement, but she forced herself to stay standing, keeping watch for any more attacks on her section of wall.

  Elsewhere cannons were barking and magic was being flung down at the enemy, but directly in front of her at least things seemed relatively quiet now. Thank the Throne.

  She leaned against the wall and took deep breaths as she tried to tamp down on the pain in her head.

  By the time the pounding in her skull had faded to a dull ache, the battle seemed to be petering out. Cannons were still firing and spells were being cast, but less and less frequently.

  A series of horn blasts rang out from the undead lines and a spell shot into the air to explode in a stream of red sparkles. Did it mean another attack? Ester peered out at the enemy troops, her stomach climbing its way up to her throat in worry.

  Then, slowly but surely, the enemy formations started to retreat, marching steadily away from the fort, still harried by the occasional spell.

  Was it over? Had they won? Ester sagged with relief, only the parapet keeping her upright.

  =====

  As the undead army marched away, out of range of the Republic’s cannon and Arcanists, the soldiers started to move, bustling around, helping their wounded, moving corpses and generally making themselves busy.

  Ester stood there, leaning against the wall in a daze as she stared out into the darkness. She’d survived. She felt like she should be celebrating, but all she wanted to do was to lie down and sleep. She couldn’t though. What if it was a trick and the undead came back?

  The Republican soldiers didn’t seem to want to look at her, just moving around her as they worked. Captain Lovas came by and ignored her too. Ester didn’t even bother to try to speak to him. It was a pity the man had survived as far as she was concerned.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, but eventually a man clearing his throat behind her made her turn around.

  “Uh, Mage Mazar, you can go now. The battle’s over.” She wasn’t sure why Cantrist-Sergeant Vegard looked so nervous.

  “Oh.” She blinked a couple of times and then realised she should probably say more. “Uh, thank you, Cantrist-Sergeant, but shouldn’t Captain Lovas decide?” Lindholm had told her to help the man after all.

  Vegard glanced left and right and then spat. “Fuck him. Incompetent prick’s barely a soldier. He probably hid during the attack.”

  Ester’s eyes widened at the contempt in his voice as her mind caught up with what he’d just said. “Isn’t he your commander?” She winced as she realised she’d dropped back into the less formal speech of her youth.

  “Sure and I’m a good soldier, I obey my commanders, but I know the difference between a leader and a gilded prick. Now, you do what you want. I don’t really care, but you’re obviously exhausted and you’re a crown-licker not one of his soldiers, so take advantage of that and ignore him.”

  “What makes y—” Ester cut herself off. Why did she care if he called her a crown-licker? As far as the Republic was concerned that was what every loyal subject of Her Eternal Majesty was. She should be proud of that. “You’re right. Thank you, Cantrist-Sergeant.” She didn’t need to obey Captain Lovas.

  Without another word she turned to leave the walls. If the man couldn’t treat her with a modicum of respect then he could do without her.

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  Dramatis personae:

  Ester Mazar - Chartered Mage, sleeeep.

  Vegard - Cantrist-Sergeant, already feeling braver now that the battle's over.

  Sigrid Lindholm- Arcanist-Colonel and war hero, did someone say reinforcements?