Night guild 3, p.13
Night Guild 3, page 13
“You know these Crimson Knights,” Eric said. “You know what drives them, how they fight, how many of them there are. You know the layout of the castle and the weaknesses of their order. You can help us.”
“And,” Ronan added, “you might find that you can fight better than you think. Here.”
He handed the frightened librarian a short dagger. The man looked at it in horror.
“Just stay out of the way,” Ronan said with a smile. “We’ll look out for you as much as we can. Now, tell me, will they destroy this library with us in it?”
“Certainly,” the librarian said, nodding. “They care nothing for knowledge, only for power. They do not wish for understanding, they only want others to have none. They have for years collected these papers, but the Silent Brotherhood would come and study them, taking the knowledge and copies of the documents back to their temple in Ghennet. Every now and then, the brotherhood would give the knights a task — go here, kill these people, and get their egg — but the knights themselves never knew what the overall story was. Now that the temple is destroyed, the knights will gladly destroy all this knowledge to stop anyone else from getting it.”
“Then we must not let that happen,” Ronan said. “And that means getting out there and preventing them from burning the library. This knowledge is too valuable to be destroyed. We must protect it at all costs.”
They made their plans quickly. Much as they would have liked to take advantage of the narrow spaces inside the library, they could not afford to let the knights get inside to set fire to the building.
They would have to take the fight to their enemy.
“They’re preparing fire arrows,” Eric said, looking out of the window.
“Let’s go,” Ronan said.
Moving together, the three assassins grabbed their grappling hooks and unpacked them. The black grapples snapped into place, and Ronan stepped to the window. He pushed and it swung open, then he dropped his hook into place.
“Grab ahold of my back,” he said to the librarian. “Don’t argue, just get on.” The librarian, much to Ronan’s relief, did not argue. He did as he was told, climbing onto Ronan’s back and holding on for dear life.
“Go!” Ronan said tersely to the others, then he swung out of the window on his rope and slid down the side of the tower.
The tower was right at the top of the ornate library, and the three assassins slid swiftly down their ropes to the ground. Ronan felt the friction between his gloves and the rope, also feeling the natural cooling properties of the wonderful shadow fabric that his costume was made from kicking in. His palms were cold as he landed, the coolness countering the heat of the friction that came from sliding straight down the rope at speed.
He landed more heavily than he would have liked, and the librarian jumped from his back.
“Stay low, and stay back,” Ronan told the man. “That’s it. Just stay out of the way, and we’ll keep you safe.”
The man nodded, dropping into a crouch, his dagger held inexpertly in his shaking hand.
Ronan spoke to Diana, who had unhitched her bow. “Take out the torchbearers,” he said. “And keep an eye on the librarian if you can. Eric, you and I will flank the group and attack from the side. Stealth fields, go.”
Eric’s stealth field shimmered into place, and Ronan put his own in place, too. Though they would not convince the Crimson Knights that the assassins were not there, they would help to baffle the eyes of the enemies and make it harder to land their blows.
Ronan moved to the right and Eric to the left. To Ronan’s eye, Eric seemed like a flickering blur in the pale moonlight. Ronan hoped that to the eyes of the enemies, they both looked as unclear. A moment later, he had his confirmation. An arrow flew in his general direction, but it skittered off the stones some twelve feet away. No archer worth the name could miss at this distance if he had a clear target. The stealth field was playing its part, masking the presence of the assassins.
“Don’t waste your arrows,” the leader of the knights barked. “Concentrate on the tower. Fire arrows! Set it alight!”
The archers raised their arrows, and the torchbearers hurried along the line, lighting the packed bundles of gleaming, oil-soaked rags that were attached to the front portion of the arrows. The flames of the arrows flared brightly in the pale light of the moon, and the men raised their bows in the air to let off their first flurry. Eric and Ronan attacked at the same time as Diana loosed a volley of arrows into the front of the advancing knights.
Ronan went for the captain first, following the principle that taking out the leaders as quickly as possible sowed discord in any force. He blinked, realizing that this came not from his Night Guild training but from the training at the fighter guild that he’d absorbed from Diana.
He slipped forward, covered by his stealth field. The captain did not see him until he was right there. The man’s eyes went wide as Ronan’s knife passed through his throat, opening his jugular for maximum effect. The blood squirted out of the man, flooding onto the ground and steaming in the cold air.
At the same time, Eric slammed into the opposite flank of the archers. Ronan saw a confused blur where his friend was and saw the fire arrows of the archers going awry. There were ten archers, then there were only seven. Three of their arrows went wild, flying harmlessly off into the courtyard. The other seven flew into the air and found their mark.
Ronan slipped back away from the startled foot soldiers and moved toward the archers. The remaining archers, unfazed, reloaded their bows and let off another volley. This time, several found their mark. Ronan came into view of those at the far end of the row, and they fell, dying, to the ground. Five more arrows flew, some of them skittering off the stone walls, but some flying through windows with a tinkling of glass.
Ronan moved forward again, taking out another two archers, and met Eric in the middle. They glanced at each other. There were no archers left.
“Torchbearers, forward!”
Ronan suddenly saw the remaining knights – ten torchbearers and nearly thirty foot soldiers — surging forward.
They had taken up a formation with the torchbearers holding flames in the middle of a square of sword-armed men. The whole mass surged forward into a run, charging toward the entrance of the library. Ronan looked up and saw flames already showing in several of the library’s many windows.
Arrows flew from the shadows at the base of the tower knocking out the Crimson Knights as they charged, but the men seemed prepared for this. They closed ranks, protecting the torchbearers.
That’s all it will take, Ronan realized suddenly. Only one torchbearer getting into the main entrance of the library, and he will be able to start a fire we cannot stop.
He ran forward and found that the men at the back of the press were ready for him. They moved out smartly from the rest of the group, swinging their swords rhythmically from left to right in swift slashing motions. For a moment Ronan wondered what they were doing, but then he realized. It was a tactic to fight an enemy you could not see. These knights were aware of the existence of a stealth field-like power and were mitigating it.
Ronan tried to step in but was forced to leap back from the blindly slashing blades of the Crimson Knights. He glanced at Eric, who was facing a similar group of five that had detached themselves from the left-hand side of the formation.
We can’t get through this, Eric said to him through the mind link. We have to come up with another tactic.
Ronan leaped back again. He reached to his belt and pulled out a throwing knife, hurling it through the press to hit one of the torchbearers in the neck. At the same time, Diana managed to get an arrow through from the other side. Two down, eight to go. There was no way they could succeed at this rate.
Eric, Ronan said. I need a distraction. Do something to buy me a few moments.
He fell back a little as Eric dived out of the way of a swinging blade, clawing at his own equipment belt. Ronan saw something arc through the air from Eric’s hand. A smoke bomb. It landed in the midst of the formation, making a loud flash and a bang and producing a thick cloud of black smoke. In the moment of confusion it bought him, Ronan leaped back and pulled power from the shadows, pouring his focus into the creation of shadow men.
He pulled one, two, three up from the black pools of inky shadow that gathered in the bright, moonlit courtyard. He poured power and force of will into them and was rewarded by the sight of three dark figures leaping from the shadows and rushing across the courtyard toward the formation.
The Crimson Knights were getting close now. Ronan saw the torchbearers pressing forward, and the foot soldiers moved out, pressing toward the library door.
“Move in,” the captain of the Crimson Knights roared. “Fire the library! Destroy it at all costs!”
There were seven torchbearers left — Diana had managed to take another out with her bow — but nearly all of the Crimson Knight foot soldiers remained. Ronan fell back, covering himself in his stealth field and driving more power to it, even as he controlled the shadows back to the attack.
The shadow men flowed forward — silent shadows of flowing death — and ran into the middle of the torchbearers. Men fell swiftly then, and the foot soldiers were unable to see where the threat came from. Now, they fell back, looking around and calling out to each other. Ronan turned the shadow men on the Crimson Knights then for an attack, taking out three of them, then another three.
Each time a man died, Ronan felt his life force flowing into the shadow. With a moment of shock, he realized that the life force of the men killed by the shadows could be used to power the spell.
He wavered for a moment, then took the plunge.
Each life gave a powerful boost, and he directed these floods of energy back into the spell, pushing the power into the force of the shadow men.
The shadow men grew larger, rising up to nine feet tall and becoming as broad as two normal men each. Then the Crimson Knight foot soldiers saw them for sure, and they cried out in alarm.
Even as they wavered, one of them roared out in anger. “They’re trying to distract us from the main goal. Cleave to the torchbearers! Fire the library!”
An arrow slipped through the press from the front, Diana’s bow singing airborne death. One of the torchbearers fell. Three remained. Ronan turned the shadow men on the remaining bearers, but in that moment one of them broke free of the press, running forward with his head down toward the door.
“For Mala!” he cried as he charged.
The shadowmen fell on the remaining torchbearers, the life force of the humans flowing into the shadow spell as they died. An arrow from Diana's bow whizzed past the head of the running torchbearer but missed. The man sprinted on, gaining the steps.
“No!” Ronan heard Eric roar. The flames in the upper levels of the library were raging, but there was still a chance the assassins could get inside and put them out. If the lower levels were on fire, that chance was greatly reduced.
Ronan saw the Crimson Knights reform in ranks to face the shadow men but only from the corner of his eye.
The torchbearer leaped up the steps to the main door and disappeared inside.
Then he reappeared.
He flew backward, falling back down the steps and dropping his torch. There was a man gripping him around the waist, then the figure was stabbing the torchbearer in the chest with a flashing moonlit dagger.
It was the little librarian! The man must have retreated to the entranceway, and now he acted as the last defense for the door. Ronan darted around the press of Crimson Knights, who were now fighting the ten-foot-tall shadow men and coming off much the worse in the encounter.
Ronan grabbed up the torch that rolled on the ground away from the man’s hand.
He lifted it and hurled it away from the library, aiming for the outer wall of the courtyard, which was only twenty feet away. The flame spun into the void beyond and plunged out of sight.
The shadow men suddenly wavered as Ronan’s concentration faltered. He was trying to do too many things at once, keeping control of three immensely powered shadow men, while also keeping his stealth field in place and keeping a lookout for Eric and Diana.
He staggered back a step, and one of the shadow men went out. Then, suddenly, something changed. Ronan felt the Night God’s presence in the square, without a doubt. The deity was suddenly there, with him, a dark presence radiating urgency and sudden doubt.
“Ronan,” the deity boomed. “We have been deceived. Stick to your path, my disciple. Stick to your path, and remember that you are more than a mage! The skills of the Night Guild are in the hand and in your heart, as well as in the realm of magic. Hold to your course, my disciple. Hold to your course!”
And then, to Ronan’s horror, the Night God was gone.
“What happened?” he heard Diana yelling, and then Eric’s incoherent roar of pain echoed through the courtyard.
“Now, we have you!” shouted one of the Crimson Knights.
There were fifteen of the knights left and only three assassins. The little librarian, clutching his bloody knife, stared on helplessly as Ronan and his friends staggered back from the fight.
Ronan felt suddenly deafened and blinded. All his extra senses were gone. There was no awareness of the press of life in the courtyard, no sign of the shadow men, and nothing remaining of the stealth field either of himself or of his friends.
Eric was plain to see, moving rapidly backward as the Crimson Knights pressed forward against him. Ronan himself understood in a flash that, somehow, all his powers were gone.
But the god had spoken.
“The skills of the night guild are in the hand and in the heart, as well as in the realm of magic. Hold to your course.”
Ronan would do as the god had advised. He would stay the course.
He was fit, lithe, and quick. He had the skills that had come from his training, and the skills that had been absorbed from Tanya. Nothing had left him but his Night Guild magic.
He caught up a longsword from the ground and charged the rear of the Crimson Knights, letting his absorbed fighter guild training take over. He swung once, taking out a soldier with a blow to the neck, then another on the backswing before the rest could turn to face him.
A volley of arrows came from Diana’s side of the courtyard, and out of the corner of his eye, Ronan saw the librarian dashing back up the stairs and inside. Eric was fighting on the other side of the press, but the knights were reforming again, and they were heavily armored and ready to die if it meant one of their number could get in a killing blow.
Then Ronan saw something up above them.
A sudden crackling light blazed out in the middle of the air, about ten feet from the ground and off to the left.
Ronan deflected a blow from a Crimson Knight, then felt sudden pain coursing through his left thigh. He took out the man in front of him, then whirled to meet a killing blow and barge through the man who had attacked him from behind, putting empty space at his back.
Above him, the crackling blue light increased in size, first becoming a sphere, then with a dark space opening up in the middle.
Something was emerging from the space.
Something huge.
The head came first, blazing eyes whirling and monstrous jaws like the mouth of some fantastically oversized crocodile, roaring out a battle cry. Then came the head and the neck, then the wings and the rest of the huge, writhing body.
It was a dragon — a blue and yellow dragon.
It was Fury.
He had come back to them at last.
Chapter 9
The dragon had grown to an unbelievable size during his absence. Now, he leaped from the crackling blue portal and landed on the ground with a crash like thunder. He seemed disorientated, and he glared around, flickers of blindingly bright white flame lapping around his mighty jaws.
The fire was so bright that Ronan could barely look at his face, but he yelled out as loud as he could, “Fury!”
The dragon wheeled his massive head around, the great eyes focused, then lifted his head and trumpeted in recognition.
“By all the gods!” one of the Crimson Knights shouted. “A dragon! All is lost!”
At that same moment, there was a yell from the other side of the courtyard. Ronan turned his head and saw two figures emerging from the entrance to the main body of the castle.
It was Tanya and Emelia.
The fighter guild woman held her straight sword in her hand and rushed forward without hesitation toward the Crimson Knights. Emelia was carrying a knife, but she looked dazed and unsure of herself.
Of course, Ronan thought. She, too, has relied on the Night God’s magic for so long, and now it’s been withdrawn.
How long had she used the Night God’s magic to supplement her own senses? Probably much longer than he had. She would need to be cared for, probably. She would be even more disoriented than Ronan and his fellow Night Guild members were.
The remaining Crimson Knights were utterly dismayed by the appearance of the dragon, but Tanya showed them no mercy. She moved between them, swinging her straight sword in deadly arcs. The knights, heavily armored and much slower than she was, staggered backward and then turned to flee from her.
She took out one more, but the remaining five seemed determined to get away. They had given up the fight and fled wildly toward the exit.
“Take care, little human!” Fury roared, his voice coming out like rolling thunder and avalanches. “These last cowards are mine!”
A blinding flash of searing white light erupted from the dragon’s jaws, and Ronan caught a glimpse of the five Crimson Knights silhouetted within the light. One moment they were there, then Ronan caught a glimpse of the shape of skeletons, black against the light. The fire of the dragon had vaporized the knights. There was nothing left.
Ronan looked up. Above the battlefield, a cluster of ghosts hung. So, at least he could still see the spirits of the dead. That power was one that had not gone.
As he watched, the ghosts, shaking their heads as if to distance themselves from the whole sorry business, floated into the air and dispersed like steam into the moonlight.
