City of the Lost

17 Battle for the City

As the dragonfear passed, a heavy silence settled on the square. Everyone who still lived drew a breath, then the quiet disappeared into a cacophony of screams, shouts, cries for help, and groans of the wounded.

Falaius strode among the prostrate officers of his command and urged those who still lived to get to their feet. “War is coming!” he shouted. “Go to your posts!”

(Most clambered to their feet and obeyed. Considering the force of the explosion that shattered the tree, (surprisingly few men were dead or too badly wounded to move. Linsha pulled her arm free and rolled the watchman’s body off her stomach. She found the source of the wetness on her tunic. A large splinter from the yew had impaled the man’s chest, and much of his life’s blood had leaked out of the massive hole.

The smell of blood clogged Linsha’s nose. Dizzy and sick, she tore off her overtunic and laid it over the dead man’s face. Her linen shirt and pants were stained with blood as well, but unlike some barbarian races, she did not believe in running into battle naked. What she needed now was armor—chain mail, a breastplate, anything.

A groan in a voice light and frightened hit her senses like a bucket of cold water. Leonidas!

She found the centaur sprawled on the grass, his body pricked red by a dozen large splinters. He groaned again, more irritably this time, and struggled to an upright position.

“Hold still,” Linsha ordered. Using her dagger and a deft hand, she removed the splinters from his side and withers while he pulled out a few out of his chest.

His teeth clenched, he pulled out the last sliver of wood from his arm and tossed it aside. “I suppose I should be glad it was merely splinters and not the whole tree.”

Linsha shot a glance at the dead man who had fallen on her. Before she could say anything, Falaius approached, his seamed face reddened with rage and iron determination. “Go back to the centaurs, Leonidas. Tell them what happened. Tell your uncle I will send reinforcements if I can. But he must hold out on his own for a while.”

“Where do you want me?” Linsha asked.

The Plainsman looked at her pale face and the blood spots on her tunic. “Are you wounded?”

She shook her head then wished she hadn’t. This was one headache that would not fade anytime soon. “The blood is someone else’s.”

“Then if you are able to fight, I would be pleased to have you come with me. I could use an able lieutenant.”

An expression of disappointment passed over Leonidas’s face, but he bowed to the commander and the Lady Knight. “Fight well,” he said to Linsha, “and we will celebrate our victory together in the streets of the city.”

On impulse, she took his hand, pulled him down until she could reach his face, and kissed his cheek in both blessing and farewell.

He bowed again, turned on his heels, and cantered away to the outskirts of the city. His light form quickly disappeared in the gloom of the smoke.

Linsha went the opposite direction toward the harbor and the city gate. She followed Falaius and what men he could gather of both the Legion and the militia to reinforce the defenders already in place.

Not far from the Mayor’s Hall they passed a burning tannery—one of the many fires Thunder had started. Instead of staying to fight it, Falaius called the firefighters off the site and told them to join his force.

“Let it burn,” he ordered. “The smoke and flames will hamper the enemy as much as it hampers us.”

At the Legion Gate in the city wall, Falaius climbed the guard tower with Linsha and two other officers to view what lay ahead. The sight shook them all to silence. In the thirty minutes or so it had taken the Legionnaires to regroup and reach the wall, the harbor had come alive with small dark boats. Like so many carrion beetles, the boats clustered around the larger ships, then made their way to the ruined docks and the beaches where they disgorged their cargo of armed warriors and returned to the ships for more. Already the first wave of invaders was marching into the storm-damaged streets of Mirage and meeting the first resistance, while the second wave disembarked and formed their ranks on the little crescent beach near the foot of the hill where the Citadel sat.

“What are those?” a Legionnaire gasped.

Falaius was quiet for a moment, then he spoke in a voice filled with dismay. “They are Brutes.”

“Brutes!” another man cried. “They can’t be. I don’t see any Dark Knights. Don’t those things fight only for the Dark Knights?”

“Apparently not.”

Brutes, Linsha thought. The gods help us. The Brutes were known to the people of Ansalon as ferocious fighters who had fought as slaves or mercenaries for the Knights of Takhisis during the Chaos War. After the war and the decimation of the Knightly orders, the Brutes had faded into the background, showing up every once in a while as shock troops for a Dark Knight offensive or as mercenaries for a war lord with enough money to afford them. No one knew where they came from or who they really were, and never in anyone’s memory had so many Brutes arrived together to invade a city in Ansalon.

“Did Thunder organize this?” Linsha said in amazement. She thought she knew the huge blue from Iyesta’s stories and from tales she heard from Thunder’s realm. Never would she have imagined that the hungry, malevolent, territorial blue would have the imagination, the audacity, the courage, and the funds to arrange, plan, and set in motion a massive invasion of Iyesta’s realm. Apparently, she’d been wrong. Not only had Thunder organized his own mercenary forces, he had also hired the Brutes, found a way to slay Iyesta, and devised a two-pronged attack that caught the city in a vise-like trap. She would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen the evidence landing on the beaches and setting fires to the few merchant ships trapped in the harbor. How in the name of the gods were they going to fight an enemy force this big? She scanned the sky over Mirage to find Thunder, but for the moment he was out of sight.

“You might as well wait, Iyesta,” Linsha said to herself. “It appears we might be joining you soon.”

If Falaius had similar thoughts or regrets, he did not show them. He left a detachment behind to strengthen the guard on the gates, then he led the remainder of his forces toward the Legion headquarters. They heard the sounds of battle even before they reached the white, stuccoed building that served as home to the Legion cell.

Falaius moved into a jog, his fist clenched around the hilt of his great sword. He glanced down once at Linsha by his side and noticed for the first time she carried only a short sword and a rusty dagger. They were moving down a street parallel to the street in front the headquarters, and as the troop moved closer to the building, the commander jabbed his weapon toward the back door.

“There are weapons and armor within,” he shouted to Linsha over the uproar of fighting in the streets ahead. “Get what you need. We will meet you around front.”

From the shouts and clash of weapons, the battle was in the Legion’s front yard. Waving her thanks, Linsha dashed across the weedy yard behind the Legion house and barged in the back door.

Someone nearly nailed her to the door. She heard the peculiar twang of a crossbow and felt a swish of air by her neck as a bolt slammed into the wood of the door. “Don’t do that!” she cried, her voice furious. “I’m with Falaius!”

Distracted though she was by the battle out front, a part of her mind made note that for the second time in a few short days someone had just missed her with a crossbow. If only her luck would hold for the rest of the day!

“Lady Linsha?” cried an incredulous voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Just passing through,” she replied dryly. “I need weapons.”

The Legionnaire with the crossbow was a young man who had recently arrived from Port Balifor. Linsha knew him only vaguely. He pointed to a door in the hallway behind him and without apology, he retrieved his bolt and began to crank his crossbow into firing position.

Linsha hurried. Although most of the Legionnaires had already drawn their weapons and armor in preparation for the expected invasion, there was still enough left to give Linsha a choice. Swords of several lengths, axes, battle stars, helmets, shields, breastplates, greaves, crossbows, spears, lances, and heaps of chain mail lay in haphazard piles. She did not take the time to pick and choose. Her own armor, made and measured specially for her, lay in her room in the Citadel but might as well have been a thousand miles away. All she wanted was a corselet of chain mail, a shield, a better dagger, and a helmet. She found them all in less than two minutes, threw on the corselet and the helmet, and for good measure, stuck a battle star in her belt. The Knights of Solamnia had trained her well, and now she was as ready as she ever would be to face the enemy.

From outside came the sounds of intense fighting. Those few Legionnaires still in the building dashed outside to join their commander. There wasn’t much sense staying to guard the interior of a building if the enemy was at your front door. Linsha swiftly followed across the covered porch and into the street crowded with fighting men and women and the towering forms of the attacking Brutes.

While she was tall for a woman, most of these warriors stood at least seven feet tall, with long arms and a reach that far outstripped hers. As graceful as elves, they were also as muscular as humans, and they fought nearly naked to show off their powerful limbs. They painted their skin blue and plaited their long hair with feathers. For weapons they carried both a short sword and a long sword, and many of them scorned shields.

The Legionnaires and Iyesta’s militia fought with everything they had. Teeth bared, their faces white with fear or red with rage, they hacked and slashed and punched. Sword to abdomen, shield to head, blade to throat, axe to knees. They thrust and danced away and came back roaring. They fought with the courage and tenacity of people defending their homes. The Brutes who faced them fought with equal ferocity. They were the invaders, the seekers of slaves, the plunderers, and the gods knew what else, and they fought with the fury of men who loved war.

Although Linsha had been trained with every weapon available to the Knights of Solamnia, she was intelligent enough to realize that as a woman, she had certain disadvantages in a pitched battle against men. Those disadvantages became even more pronounced when she faced the Brutes. In the first five minutes of vicious fighting, she realized she could not beat these blue barbarians sword to sword. She would have to use her agility, her superb balance, and her sense of timing. Dropping her cumbersome shield, she used her sword and battle star in a primitive dance of thrust and hack and stab. Weaving and swaying, she wove her way around her opponent’s swords until she could make a quick killing thrust and slide out of the way. It was a dangerous dance that left her trembling, pale, and gasping for air, but she fought on, keeping the big form of Falaius in the corner of her vision.

Despite their courage the Legionnaires and the militia were falling back. The second wave of Brutes had arrived, and they swept through the waterfront and the roads closest to the water, overwhelming the roadblocks and pushing the defenders inexorably back toward the city wall. The Legion had to abandon its headquarters, and soon the entire street fell to the marauders. Refugees fled toward the inner city.

Falaius had fought enough battles to know when to retreat. The streets of Mirage were swiftly filling with Brutes, and there was nowhere the outnumbered Legion and its allies could regroup. They would have to fall back on the city gates. He knew all too well that the wall itself was not a final defense. There were gaps in the ancient stonework and places on the north side of the city where entire sections of it had vanished over the centuries, but the gates were strong and the wall would give his fighters a chance to recover their breath.

“Fall back!” he bellowed. “Fall back to the gates!”

The word passed from group to group. Slowly but steadily the defenders disengaged from the fighting, grabbed what wounded they could, and retreated to the towering walls of the Legion Gate. Unconcerned, the Brutes let them go.

Falaius, Linsha, and several Legionnaires were the last to enter the gates. They staggered inside and watched as the gates were swung shut and barred. Linsha listened to the solid thud as the gates closed and the bar fell into place, and she closed her eyes sadly. It seemed to her the final knell for the Knights of Solamnia had been sounded. Even if they wanted to, they could no longer fight their way into the city to help the Legion. They would have to stay within their Citadel or find a way to escape north and join the forces of the militia.

Weary to the bone, Linsha wiped her sword blade clean and pushed it back into the scabbard. A young girl with a pitcher of water offered her a ladle. She drank two full ladles and dumped a third over her head before she regretfully passed it on to someone else. Her head hurt abominably and the soreness returned to her back, yet she felt too tired to do anything about it. She just wanted to lie down and sleep. She cast a look at the sky, hoping it would be dark soon, and was dismayed to see the day had barely passed midafternoon.

“Lord Falaius!” called a sentry from the wall. “Come see this. The Knights are about to join in the battle whether they like it or not.”

Linsha was ahead of Falaius and shot up the stone steps to the battlements like a catapult. She pushed into a crenel and stared out at the fortress on the hill above Mirage. It looked so invulnerable on top of its hill, its defenses strong and its pennants flying defiantly above the towers.

She could see another large group of Brutes had climbed the road to the Citadel and were standing out of arrow range while they looked over the castle.

“Do these Brutes know siege tactics?” Linsha asked the Legion commander as he came to stand beside her.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Other people crowded up onto the walkway that looked out over Mirage, the harbor, and the distant hill. They watched as the Brutes began to spread out across the practice fields and around the crown of the hill to surround the Citadel. They saw the raiders break into the outbuildings and set fire to the stable—although Linsha knew from Sir Remmik’s constant training that the horses had already been released or removed to the safety of the bailey. They spotted the dark showers of arrows that fell from the walls and the larger missiles that were flung from the high towers, forcing the Brutes to keep their distance.

“They have enough supplies and weapons to hole up in there for months,” Linsha heard someone remark.

“That’s all well enough for them, but it doesn’t help us much,” another voice grumbled.

“It won’t help them much either if Thunder—”

A shadow dark and prophetic swept over their heads, and the wind of the dragon’s passing choked the words in Linsha’s throat.

Wordlessly the observers on the wall watched the huge blue sweep over the harbor and make a lazy circle above the Solamnic Citadel.

Linsha’s throat went dry. The Citadel had been her home for over a year. While the Missing City wasn’t the best assignment she’d ever had, she had grown to appreciate the castle’s amenities and its strengths, and she had come to know many of the Knights and servants who worked within its walls. She even liked a few of them. Neither they nor the fortress deserved what was about to happen next.

Falaius rubbed a hand over his sweating face. “Does Remmik have defenses against dragons?”

Linsha did not take her eyes off the fortress or the dragon. She simply gave a dry laugh that held no humor. “He had one of our sorcerer Knights concoct some spells to protect the walls and the gate. Those might hold since they are a few years old. But magic has been failing all over Ansalon. The Knights have nothing new, and no weapons that will fight a wyrm that big.”

“What was Remmik thinking to build a fortress like that?”

“When he designed it, he never imagined that Iyesta would be dead or that magic would be so unpredictable,” Linsha said.

She didn’t know why she was trying to defend the Solamnic commander. She had often asked the same questions herself. But what Sir Remmik had done was the same thing he had done in other parts of Ansalon—organize a circle, build defenses, and train young Knights into a fighting unit. The only difference here was he had had more authority, more time, and more resources to create his vision of a perfect Solamnic Circle. The problem was he had not taken into account some extraordinary circumstances, and now one of those circumstances was circling overhead and eyeing the fortress with utter malice. Linsha wondered what Sir Remmik was thinking at that moment.

In the blink of an eye, lightning crackled from the dragon’s jaws and exploded on the cap of one of the Solamnic gate towers. The boom rolled across the Missing City. A second bolt of lightning from the dragon struck the tower again, and pieces flew off the tall structure. Smoke wafted from the interior. A third strike curled around a stone column, pulverizing mortar and weakening the structure even more. Without waiting to see the results of his breath attack on the first tower, Thunder concentrated three more bolts of lightning on the second gate tower, then he moved around the walls, systematically attacking each tower until the defenders were dead and the stonework was scorched black. Thick clouds of smoke rose from the interior where fires consumed the buildings, the fodder, and the stores.

The massive dragon slowly came to ground in front of the gates and tucked his wings close to his body. The Brutes watched impassively. For one brief moment, Linsha wondered if the dragon was going to allow the survivors of the fortress to surrender, but that fragile hope shriveled a heartbeat later as Thunder swung his blunt, heavy tail into the base of the gate. The two towers guarding the gateway shattered like cheap pottery. They collapsed with a rumble and sent a cloud of dust and mortar billowing over the Citadel.

The big blue roared with pleasure. Using his front legs, he clawed a hole through the wall where the gate had stood and shoved his massive forequarters into the fortress. More towers on the outer wall fell to ruin; more lightning seared the carefully built stonework of the outer wall. Soon he brought down the entire front section of the outer wall and began to concentrate his cruel will on the inner gateway. There seemed to be no sign that the surviving Knights were fighting back.

“Is there any way for them to get out of there?” Falaius said softly.

Linsha had to swallow hard to get enough moisture into her mouth to answer. “I don’t know. I heard some time ago that Sir Morrec had talked to Sir Remmik about building an escape tunnel, but if it was ever done, no one told me.” She gave a bitter laugh. “It would be like Remmik to have workmen construct a small tunnel from the other end so no one knew about it, then in a crisis he could reveal his planning and forethought and look like a hero once again.”

The faint rumble of a distant crash drew them both back to the destruction of the Solamnic Citadel. They watched as Thunder demolished the inner gateway, doing the damage it would take a human siege party weeks to accomplish. Dust, smoke, and ash whirled around his blue hide. Lightning from his powerful jaws smashed into the barracks and the main hall. Like a creature maddened, he roared and stamped and swung his heavy tail into the walls and the towers until they cracked, shattered, and came tumbling down.

In less than twenty minutes, Sir Remmik’s pride and joy became little more than a pile of rubble. No building remained standing, no tower stood above the heap of broken masonry. Like a victor swollen with triumph, the blue dragon scraped the mounds of rock and smoldering debris into a large rough platform, then he leaped to the top to survey the Missing City from this new height. The Brutes cheered.

“I guess this makes you the new Solamnic commander,” Falaius said. There was no levity in his voice.

Linsha remembered Lanther’s words to her only two nights ago, that her sentence would be erased if the entire garrison were wiped out. The entire garrison. Seventy-two men and women. Sir Hugh, young Sir Pieter, all the Knights she had come to know the past year. Perhaps they had let Sir Remmik have his way too often, but they were good men, and she never wanted their blood to buy her freedom.

She turned her head away without answering and slid down the stone until she was sitting with her back to the cool wall. She rested her aching head in her hands. The new Solamnic Commander… of a ghost garrison.