The Steward and the Sorcerer, James Peart [novels to read in english .txt] 📗

once.  This was a skill even the Steward’s helpmeet did not have.  Could it have been him?  Ultimately it did not matter.

Dawn broke over the city, faint morning light chasing toward a sunrise that lit the looming presence of Mount Atterpeak in a red-gold haze.  A grey mist shrouded the immediate surroundings of the battlefield.  Thick, motionless and impermeable, it stretched across the gardens like a death pall.  The blackness of night drew away from the fog as the golden haze of sunrise bathed the gardens in its brightening hue.  When the night had disappeared, the mist came alive; with a slothful lurch, it began to roil against the stone of the citadel walls like some murky broth stirred within its pot.  Churning quicker and quicker, it pushed up against the forms of the combatants, lending extra animation to their thrashing limbs.

A division of the Northern Army fell back against the gates, replaced by a fresh wave of soldiers that crashed down on the citizenry from the east.  Line after line of swordsmen, archers and pike bearers plunged into the enemy, swinging, drawing and spearing, their eyes scanning for openings in the mist to better see them as it churned through the gardens, along the wall, and past the citadel gates.  Row after row of citizens were cut down, men and women alike, many of them young- punctured, gashed and dying- until the fighters were standing in a bath of blood, its stench rising like hot steam to split their nostrils.  Back and forth along the Trenholm they fought, the citizens with their crudely fashioned pikes and swords and halberds driving the soldiers back against the gates.  Their superior numbers finally giving them the upper hand, there was no evidence of satisfaction on the citizens’ faces; they accepted it as even-mindedly as they had accepted the slaughter of their women and young fighters, with the passive acceptance of fate.  The soldiers withdrew once more, falling back against the gates and the city wall, yet there was no fresh division to replace them this time.  A sudden silence hung across the battlefield, a yawning stillness that seemed to stretch the length of the Trenholm.  The citizens drove forward into the swirling mist, their pikes and blades catching nothing more than air, their blank features registering surprise.

Then, without warning, a cry issued from the ranks of the soldiery, deep and resonant, as if beckoning something monstrous that had emerged from the bowels of the earth.  The mist parted to reveal a creature standing before the citadel gates where a moment ago there had been nothing.  It was a mammoth of a being, at least eight feet tall with a wide, barricading frame, its skin ridged with hard plating, red veins streaking from its neck down along its arms and legs like battle scars.  Its booming voice sounded again, curdling suddenly to a shriek that was filled with savage pleasure, blasting the eardrums of those that stood within its immediate range, rippling outward in deafening waves to the edge of the gardens and into the forested section of the Trenholm, bounding and echoing off the trees.

Iridis gazed at the creature’s menacing form.  “Tochried,” he whispered.

It glanced over the forms of the citizens, peering through the mist at where Iridis stood as if it had somehow heard the King speak.  Its brows furrowed in sudden concentration, listening to the inner voice that told him what to do, how it should react to the discovery of the Naveen King.  Then it turned back toward the citizenry, its attention focused on the surviving men and women.  The helpmeet who controlled it, thought Iridis, had decided not to confront him yet.

The Tochried lifted its arms...and with a strangling cry brought them down in a vicious arc against the flat of its upper legs.  The mist suddenly drew back in a circle around the creature, pulling further and further back, revealing soldier and citizen alike. Like a rippling typhoon, it careened into the forms of the combatants indiscriminately, expanding wider and wider, knocking them flying in its wake.  The shriek of the Tochried rose to an ear-splitting pitch and the air blanketing the gardens vibrated in a dangerous thrum, the fighters all along the length and breadth of the Trenholm lifted and thrown like ragdolls, their forms broken in mid-air, their bones splintering as they fell on the blood-soaked earth, their limbs bent and twisted, their skulls crushed and flattened by the impact.  The force produced by the creature swelled along the ranks of ally and opponent alike, destroying hundreds then thousands, curving in a wide arc to touch the edge of the battlefield then rebounding in a capacious screech as it rippled back toward the monstrous form of the demon that had summoned it.

Iridis sent his mind out to the surviving forms, instructing them to rise and stand against the creature, watching in rage as they tried to lift themselves and stand on broken bones, crumple and fall again.  He barely noticed the soldiers’ attempt to do the same, having to move clear as the undulating wave swept toward then past him, bounding into the woodland, freeing him of its lethal effect.  From the corner of his vision he saw the shattered remains of the Northern Army’s chief military adviser, lying in a pool of blood, his body flattened, the men under his command all dead.

Now the Naveen King and the Tochried faced each other across each end of the battlefield: one an absolute conqueror of worlds that occupied the physical realm, the other a thing that came from beyond ordinary understanding of a world.  Iridis could have fled right then, having witnessed the effect of the creature’s remarkable power, and he might even have survived, perhaps to the far border of the Trenholm, had the deadly swell that issued from the Tochried’s form taken that long to snare him.  Yet he stood and faced it instead.

He looked at the creature and smiled.  Inside it, he felt/sensed