Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

dueling Karalti. He died without a sound, freeing her up to run to the far stairwell. I ran to the closer of the two, slamming the gate closed and locking the bolt across. As I did, a larger claxon rang out—from the guard tower in the Lower Ward.

The doors of the Great Hall behind us burst open, letting out a flood of sleepy, startled warriors. They were caught completely flat-footed as five, ten, twenty Yanik descended from the sky on top of them. Cast-off parachutes draped over the shouting, confused rebels, covering them like funeral shrouds as the Yanik turned on them with blade and bow and hacked them to pieces. The alarm rang continuously from below—the sound of the castle bell joined by the hellish air-raid siren battle cries of a hundred pissed off giant cats.

“Form up! Form-HHRRGH!” I heard someone in Zoltan’s ranks shout, then gurgle as Yanik steel found his belly.

The great hall was a makeshift barracks for at least a hundred men. Rebels spilled out of the building in knots and ran straight into the silk-draped corpses of their friends, tripping over them in the dark as Zlazlo shouted at his men to line up and pull their bows. Arrows clattered off wood and steel and sunk into flesh as the Rangers drew and fired, drew and fired, raining wood and steel on the terrified, half-dressed brigands. Men screamed as they fell, or snarled curses as they turned and fled, stumbling back toward the building where the enemy was hastily lining up with bows and rifles. I shadow danced through the hail of missiles and jumped straight up. Shards of brilliant black energy gathered around me like a forest of spears, then shot down at the enemy archers. The line of twelve at the front danced jerkily as the shards impaled them, rematerialized in the air, and rained down on the increasingly panicked, desperate ranks behind them.

“I am your Voivode, Count Dragozin! The House of Hussar is assuming control of this castle!” I shouted. “Surrender and live, or fight and die!”

“It’s the Dragonlord! Surrender! For the Nine’s sake, brothers!” Cries started to ring through the hall. The fifty or so remaining soldiers, most of them still half-dressed, dropped their weapons and went to their knees.

The Yanik advanced behind me, arrows nocked to their bowstrings. Zlazlo held up a warding hand to them as he jogged forward. He’d been slashed across the face, blood pouring down his cheek and throat into the collar of his armor.

“Got a potion for that?” I asked him, jerking my chin toward him. “That’s a nasty cut.”

“Keh?” Zlaslo, slightly dazed from his combat high, hadn’t even felt the injury.  He touched his face, then grunted. “Oh, this. Is fine. I will treat it later. What are your orders?”

“We secure these idiots and move on to the Keep.” I squeezed his shoulder and turned back to our new captives. “Who’s in charge here?!”

“Me! I am!” A burly, grizzled older man spoke up from the ground about twenty feet from me. He had one hand raised, the other holding up his half-laced breeches.

“Name and rank!” I barked.

He winced at the sound of my voice. “Captain! Captain Horna!”

“Captain Horna, barricade this door and remain inside. Treat your wounded as you can. We’re here for Zoltan. If anyone in here steps outside this hall, we’ll kill you and burn this place to the ground with dragonfire. Am I understood?”

“Yes! Yes, Voivode.” He scrambled up, casting a look back at his shocked and bloody men. “All of you hear that? If I see any hands on weapons, I’m throwing you out of here to meet the Maker!”

We waited as the surrendered soldiers poured back into their barracks and dropped the crossbar with an audible ‘thump’. A handful of Rangers whooped victoriously, letting out the roars, shrieks, and barking cries of their totemic dinosaurs as they jammed a bundle of spears into the handles of the doors to bar them from the outside.

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “Zlaslo, get your men to the wall and provide ranged support for Taethawn.”

“Sir!” Zlaslo whirled around and swept his arms up and forward. “Kel hammangiz!”

The Yanik ran back, covering me in formation as I sprinted back outside. The fighting in the upper ward was already over, the ground littered with the bodies of the dead and dying. “Karalti! Where are you?”

“I’m fine! I’m on the wall!” She replied. “I’ve got a rifle and I’m shooting people trying to come up the stairs!”

“Come back down. I need you.” I opened my group PM with Suri and Rin. “Suri, what’s your status?”

She replied after a couple seconds. “Holding steady. It’s a real brawl down here.”

“Stay safe.” I cut the message, and turned my attention to the keep.

Every interior light was ablaze, the windows full of scurrying shadows. Zoltan faced three options in this situation: try and escape, surrender, or turtle up and attempt to fight us to the death. He’d apparently chosen option three. If my troops tried to take the Keep now, it would be room-to-room fighting. Room-to-room and house-to-house were literally the fucking worst, but fortunately for us, there were about sixty dead rebels strewn all over the courtyard. And I was a motherfucking Shadowlord.

I drove the butt end of the spear against the ground, drew a deep breath, and focused on the brooding spark of magic in my chest. “Sond, Karalt’, Bi’nah!”

One by one, the shadows of Zoltan’s dead men peeled themselves up from their corpses, until a field of no fewer than thirty simmering pillars of shadow stood in the courtyard, weapons in their hands.

“Into the Keep, all of you!” I took the Spear and gestured toward the building. “Minimize casualties, maximize chaos! Spare non-combatants! Kill any hostile mages!”

The shadow soldiers turned and poured toward the barricaded door. Thumps were