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

still coming from behind it as Zoltan’s men piled furniture into the entryway... sounds interrupted by hoarse shouts of terror as the shades simply phased through the barricade and fell on the men inside. I leaned on the Spear, eyes screwed shut in concentration, and gripped it to steady myself as my awareness traveled with the shadows into the keep. I sensed them pursuing the fleeing soldiers, cutting down just enough of them to make a point—and more importantly, to clear the hall so that we could bust in the door.

“Hector!” Karalti ran up to me, panting and streaked with gore. She was still clutching her borrowed rifle. “Things are crazy in the Lower Ward! The Orphans are doing well, but I don’t know how long that’ll last. The guards are starting to organize, and there’s a lot of them.”

“We’re about to fix that.” I stared ahead at the Keep as screams tore through the air. “We need to bolster our troops in the lower ward, and then we need to bust in that door.”

“Just as well that I’m the best at breaking things!” Karalti took several bounding steps back from me, unequipped her gear, and spread her arms wide. She swirled up into a coil of blue-black plunging the courtyard into shade as she extended her wings, inflated her throat, and bellowed a long, deep, guttural roar of challenge toward the Keep.

“Head up onto the wall. We need to keep a low profile: no flying around the outside of the towers. They’ve got their cannons pointed out toward the city, not in toward the keep.” I vaulted up to Karalti’s back, landing in a crouch on the saddle. “Let’s try your Queensong to back up our troops, and then you and I are breaking up Zoltan’s slumber party.”

Karalti replied by climbing up onto the ramparts, keeping her wings spread to reduce her weight and not crush the bricks into powder. The battle below raged like a storm: in the nexus of the whirling steel and screams was Suri, a flow of pure violence as she cut down men with her axes. Kitti and her men were guarding her back, the young Berserker dueling a cluster of pikemen trying to break through Letho and Gruna’s crossbow barrage. Not far from them, I saw Taethawn fighting with all four limbs—the scimitars in his hands and the bonded metal claw sheaths on his feet—as sword blows glanced off a gleaming blue barrier of magical energy that surrounded his armor. A rebel rushed him, only to have his throat torn out as the commander spun into a graceful capoeira-like kick. He flung the body into the next man over before landing and rushed him, plunging both swords into his chest from either side. Karalti was right: we were mowing down the first wave of soldiers, the ones who’d stumbled out unprepared and half-witted, but their deaths were allowing the second wave to ready themselves—and they were circling around the outside, getting ready to pin our troops with shields and spears.

Karalti leaned out over the edge of the wall and roared again. The effect was immediate: half a dozen less experienced rebels fell beneath swords and claws as the sight of the dragon distracted them. But she was just warming up. I felt her draw a deep breath, arming some deep inner power.

[Karalti uses Queensong!]

The dragon’s jaws gaped as a dark nimbus formed around us both, crackling with bright seams of color... and then she emitted a primordial, bone-shuddering bass rumble. It sounded like a stampede of horses, getting louder and louder until suddenly the muscles of her neck squeezed and a clear, high, tone of pure soprano pierced the bass and drowned out almost every other sound in the castle. It spread from her like a shockwave, and as it washed over the stunned, brawling mob, Zoltan’s troops crumbled. A full hundred of his men stumbled to their knees, vomiting helplessly onto the flagstones, while others tried to flee in terror and impaled themselves on the waiting sabers of the Orphans Company.

“RRRRRHHHHOOOOOOOO!” Tail and wings vibrating, Karalti built into her throat singing like an earthquake, the upper note now as clear and pure as glass. I was rooted to the spot on her back, barely able to breathe as waves of what could only be raw magic passed over me. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, Karalti relaxed her throat, and the overnote faded back into a deep rolling growl, like the rattling of a huge raven.

“Holy tits.” I gasped, clutching to the saddle like a life raft. As the last wave of resonance passed over me, it left me with fresh energy, a sense of vigor so powerful I felt manic. “WOO!”

“Yeah! Take that!” Karalti spat a gout of fire into a unit of spearmen, scattering them, then turned around and used her wings to climb back down into the Upper Ward. “Need me to break open that door?”

“No one looks like they’re surrendering.” I thumped the top of my helmet with a fist. “Let’s get some!”

Karalti tossed her head, then stood up and broke into a lumbering charge toward the keep. She bought her shoulders down and compressed her neck into a straight line, and then rammed the bony plate at the base of her horns right into the entryway. Wood splintered and groaned, but the doors held.

“OOF! Ow!” Karalti backed up, shaking her head and snorting.

“This asshole isn’t worth breaking your neck over. Just torch the damn thing.” I knelt up again, watching the windows and arrow slits. The sound of fighting was still coming from inside: when I checked the Mass Combat menu, I saw that I’d lost thirty of the fifty-four shadow units I’d animated. Someone was using magic.

“No, we can’t risk setting the keep on fire! Use your freezy-jumpy move on it!” Karalti backed up for another charge.