The Spear of Stars by Edward W Robertson

Author:Edward W Robertson [Robertson, Edward W]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2018-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

18

Curdled yellow light oozed across the land.

Thousands of bodies were strewn across the reaches, as if a titan had walked across the ground with a basket full of them, casting them about to sow a field of the dead. Most were Blighted: perhaps three or four thousand in all, though they were piled so deeply around the ramparts that it was impossible to estimate well.

But there were many bodies of defenders left where they'd fallen, too, especially on both sides of the fourth ring of fortifications, where they hadn't dared to venture forth to retrieve their dead. These included Mallish, Narashtovik, and Tanarian alike. Birds were already seeing to them while shunning the Blighted, hopping among the copious remains without the slightest sense of urgency.

The entire eastern stretch of the fourth ring had been dismantled. The gouged earth was damp and dark brown, like the viscous blood of the city itself. The tree trunks that had formed the palisades were downed and shattered, cast about like the wracks of a once-great fleet on a now-dried sea.

The space between the fourth ring and the third was trampled by feet and cratered by magics. The turf that had carpeted it was now completely demolished, churned into bare dirt. Yet if it were left undisturbed, it would only take a few weeks or months before the grass grew back, and all signs of the violence of the night before would vanish from sight, lost to time like so many other struggles and wars.

Dante still hadn't decided whether this element of time was a mercy or a cruelty.

"What are they up to?" Blays wandered beside him, puffy-eyed and deeply annoyed at the arrival of the sun, which had spelled the end of his sleep. "Still worshipping the trees?"

After the long night, Dante's throat was dry, forcing him to clear it. "Yep. He's still Blighting the captives."

"After he does that, he gets kind of tired or something for a while, right?"

"He seems to need to recover from it. This isn't a very big session for him, but I doubt we'll see another attack for at least a couple of hours."

"Then I'm going to spend those next couple hours in the nearest hammock."

Blays wandered off. It had been a long night, but he seemed more worn out than after battles of years past. Dante wondered if the Odo Sein blades had all but exhausted his trace, leaving him sluggish.

Either that, or they just weren't as young as they had once been.

After the retreat and their destruction of the fourth ring, the Eiden Rane had withdrawn his troops to the forest across the clearing. They had stayed there through the night. Perhaps he and his lesser liches had been in counsel, chewing over the realities of what they were up against, or maybe they just needed to rest and regain their strength as well. Dante couldn't know. Any spy he'd tried to send closer than a quarter mile to the enemy had been grabbed up by the White Lich, requiring him to drop his connection to it like it was about to burn him alive.

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