The next moment gem mines were forgotten as they clattered across the bridge and into the castle. Askam shouted orders to his captains, then he and Caelum dismounted.
“It’s too quiet,” Caelum said, looking about. “Even with this enchantment someone should have noticed something… bumped into one of us, for Stars’ sake! Askam… shouldn’t there be more guards about?”
Before Askam could answer, one of their men ran from the stables. “StarSon! The stables are empty!”
An awful premonition gripped Caelum. What should he do? No horses… did that mean…?
“Check the barracks!” he called, and reached for his horse again. Should he mount? What should he order? What would his father have done?
There was a faint shout from atop the walls. “Dummies, StarSon! There are no men up here!”
Caelum shot Askam a wild look. What…?
“The barracks are empty, StarSon!”
“They’ve gone!” Askam cried, unnecessarily.
“Well, at least you have your castle back,” Caelum murmured, trying to think it through. Should they secure the castle or ride after Zared? But which way had he gone? How long had he been gone? Caelum cursed. Why hadn’t he brought any Icarü with him? Axis would never have made this mistake.
“Perhaps -” he began, and then the world exploded about them.
For minutes all he knew was a dreadful shock. He was blown off his feet, his horse beside him. About him were screams and grunts, choking smoke, shrapnel flying through the air, a stifling heat that went on and on and on, and the smell of charcoal and burned flesh.
Caelum rolled onto his side and gagged. The stench of burning meat filled his entire body and he couldn’t get it out. Screams cut through his mind, tore into his soul. Gods! What was going on? Why wouldn’t the screamers shut up?
A hand grasped his shoulder and rolled him over. “StarSon? Are you alright? Oh, praise the StarMan, you live! Get up, my Lord, you have to get up…”
Caelum allowed himself to be dragged to his feet. Every muscle felt torn, every bone broken, but he found he could walk easily enough. Perhaps he wasn’t close to death, after all.
The hand dragged him forward. Caelum hoped that whoever the hand belonged to knew where he was going, because Caelum could not see a pace in front of him in this red, smoke-filled hell. He bent over and choked again, and found his eyes not a handspan from a corpse that had literally been blown apart. There was red flesh and white bone fragments, but nothing else recognisable.
His stomach roiled again, and the hand now grasped his hair and hauled him forward.
They stumbled through the gate – or what was left of it – and fell head-first into the moat.
The bridge had gone.
The icy shock of the water brought Caelum to his senses as nothing else could have done. He spluttered and fought his way to the surface, blinking the water out of his eyes. Beside him a foot soldier likewise spluttered – it must have been this man who dragged him out of the inferno -and Caelum looked back to the castle.
What he saw appalled him. The castle had been blown apart. The outer walls had great holes rent in them through which smoke and flames now poured. The Keep no longer existed – there was only blackness where once that had stood. Men and horses, some of them on fire, careened out of the smoke and flames and fell into the water.
“Stars!” Caelum whispered, unable to come to terms with what he saw. “Oh… Stars!”
Eight hundred paces away on a small hill, Theod stared, appalled, at the carnage. How had Caelum ridden into the castle with his entire force without been seen?
Enchantment, no doubt.
But why hadn’t he sent in forward scouts first? Every war leader was trained to do that. No-one rode blindly with their full force into an unknown situation.
The charges had been rigged so that they would be set off when the first scout reached the cellars. Yes, a few men would be killed, but the main object had been to destroy the castle and all river boats moored beside it. Caelum would be delayed several days until he could get more boats.
But the man had taken his entire force inside!
Neither Theod nor Zared had foreseen – even imagined – such stupidity. Or such carnage.
How many dead? Theod sat behind his covering bush and gaped, trying to come to terms with the disaster.
His man-at-arms finally found his voice. “Gods, my Lord! What… what did you pack into those cellars?”
Theod swallowed and managed to speak. “Wood, nails, pottery, fire powder, eighty-five barrels of resin cracked and left to spread… and sixty-nine fat pigs. It was the pork fat that gave the explosion such potency.”
“But,” the man stumbled, “why did Caelum lead his entire force in? Why didn’t he send scouts in first?”
“As any competent captain would have done,” Theod said grimly. “Come on, man. We’ve got to get out of here. Zared needs to know what’s happened.”
He grabbed the man’s sleeve, and they both ran for their horses.
Caelum eventually found the strength to swim for the shore, where for an hour he sat shivering and watching the sun rise over the devastation. Survivors slowly stumbled from the castle, fell into the moat, and swam to shore. A few score, perhaps, no more. There had been five hundred men still outside the castle when it had exploded. Some of those had died from rocks and shrapnel catapulted out of the inferno, but most had survived. That left him, what? Six hundred out of the five thousand he’d brought sailing down here. Six hundred.
His first military action, and he had lost ninety per cent of his command.
And not one kill for it.
Even Gorgrael and his enchantments, even the Gryphon falling out of the sky, had not been able to inflict such calamity on Axis.
And yet Caelum had lost ninety per cent of his command to a meagre force of humans!
He rose unsteadily to his feet and walked slowly among the groups of men lying on the grass. Most were injured to some degree, some horrendously so, and Caelum knew they would not live. Here and there he stopped and stared, the men he looked at staring back, but he said nothing and eventually he walked on.
Damn Zared to eternal fire!
At one group he stopped, then dropped to his knees. “Askam? Askam?”
His friend lay unconscious in a pool of blood. One of his men sat by him.
“He lives, StarSon. Just.”
Caelum nodded dumbly. That Askam lived at all amazed him. His left arm had been blown completely off.
Ik Enemy He lay in bed, trying to find his courage. The Questors had used him for two leaps, each more painful than the last, if that were possible. And today, another one.
Why did they cause him so much pain? StarLaughter murmured in her sleep by his side, and turned over. Drago glanced at her. She slept peacefully enough, but she did not have to endure…
Although StarLaughter had, she assured him last night. She and all the children WolfStar had cast to their deaths had been used in this way.
“Me more than most,” she’d murmured comfortingly to Drago last night, “for I was more powerful and more highly trained than any of the children.”
“But they stopped using you…”
“A long time ago, my love.”
“Why?”
“Eventually our life force lost its potency. You are so useful because your life force is still so strong. You are only recently come through the Star Gate.”
Drago thought briefly about the baby. He was surely evidence that one’s life force ebbed considerably after four thousand years beyond the Star Gate.
“The Questors find it so easy to follow your trail back,” StarLaughter said, and then she paused and smiled at him. “We are so close, my love. Three or four more leaps and we shall be at the threshold of the Star Gate.”
Three or four more leaps. “Will you survive?” Raspu had asked. Drago didn’t know. He didn’t know if he could endure the pain.
“They’re draining me of all my power,” Drago said. “Is all my potential as an Enchanter being burned up? Am ,’ being burned up?”
“Hush, lover,” StarLaughter whispered, holding him tight. “They will not drain you completely. They use only a small portion of your potential. When we tumble back through the Star Gate, your blood order will be reversed and you will come into your full potential as an Icarü Enchanter. The Questors have promised, and they will hold by that promise.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very sure. Why would the Questors lie to you?”
“I don’t know,” Drago said slowly.
“Then trust them.”
The Questors were waiting for them in their circular chamber. Outside shone a world of pure gold, the Hawkchilds spinning about the trees in an agitated cloud, whispering, whispering, whispering.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105