Chapter 12B

Mist cowered in her wardrobe, the hollow clacking sound in her bedroom growing louder. She had a kitchen knife clutched to her body, the blade sharp against her chest.

When the wooden orb had shattered the guest room window, no one had done much about it, thinking the matter ended with a broken window. However, a moment later, her father had clutched his chest, standing in the hallway, blood gushing from a wound that appeared from nowhere. When his hands came together before him, blood had run from his fingers, as if there were an invisible and very sharp blade in his grip.

His last words had been a plea to his wife and daughters to flee and his fingers had tightened as he grunted. It seemed whatever had stabbed him was trying to recover his weapon, and her father was doing his best to protect them by trapping it within his own body.

The three had gaped for but a moment before bolting, instinctively for the security of their bedrooms. A bad move, Mist now realized as the sounds of hacking and rending cloth came to her. It was destroying her bed now, probably in hopes of her being in it. Timbers snapping told her that it was hacking at the frame.

The door was not quite closed on her wardrobe, and she did not dare try to pull it shut now. Through the sliver of vision she had, she saw a shape moving in the falling feathers from her pillows. They swirled around it and some clung to it for a moment before falling on. It seemed to be man-shaped, more or less, and had a long blade in its grip, the feathers sticking to it more than elsewhere due to her father's blood coating the weapon.

It was now as far from the door to her room as it could get without standing upon her night stand. As she watched, it knocked over the chamberpot and sent the washbasin to the floor with a sound of shattering porcelain. With a loud squeal, she threw herself out of the wardrobe and toward her open door, pulling it shut behind her. The figure shifted to watch her run, then stalked after her. She held the handle, dropping her knife as her mother came into the hall. "It's in my room!" she yelled to her mom.

Her mother had a broad-bladed short sword in her hand, the blade rusty from years spent beneath the nuptial bed, in a box. Tired eyes looked down at her fallen husband, a rictus of death on his face and his eyes wide.

Her eyes came back up, however, when the door gave a jerk in Mist's hands. "It's trying to get out," she squealed, pulling harder on the handle, the door thudded as she pulled it shut again.

Mist's mother was not a frail woman, but she was far from a match for a man in strength. She, however, seemed to make a decision as Mist looked imploringly at her. Taking three steps down the stairs, she turned. "Run to the end of the hall and yell at it, Mist," she said in a monotone that frightened Mist almost as much as the horrid thing in her room.

"What?" asked Mist, trying to crane her neck to see where her mother had gone. From the hallway, the stairs were all but invisible.

"Just do it!" shouted her mother; adopting the tone she used a million times to get her recalcitrant daughters to do her bidding without question.

The door tried to jerk free of Mist's hands again and she managed to pull it shut once more. She was sure it was only trying with one hand, and still, it nearly managed to overpower her.

With a squeal, she ran down the hallway, slamming into the end of the short corridor with her hands before turning to yell at the feather-clad figure as it stalked out of her room. Its head swiveled to her and it raised the feathery blade.

Mist wanted to cringe into the corner, else run into her sister's room, whose door was right beside her. However, the sight at the edge of her vision, of her mother clutching the short sword in both hands and hugging the wall gave her a bit of hope. She saw now the older woman's intent.

Mist now realized that the enemy must be a skeletal figure, by the way the feathers hung on ribs and settled into the eye sockets. It slowly advanced, and Mist yelled again. Mist leaped up and down and waved her arms. "I'm here, you foul thing," she screamed, though it seemed to make no difference to it.

It passed the stairs and did not look aside, so focused upon the capering Mist was it.

With a roar, a primal sound that many a hunter fears of a mother defending her cubs, Mist's middle-aged and somewhat pudgy mother threw herself at the apparition. It began a turn, its blade whipping around, but too late. The heavy-bladed short sword, wielded two handed, smashed into its skull, shattering the dome of bone and sending bone shards scattering across the wall. As they left its body they flashed into full visiblity though spotted still by the tiny feathers from Mist's pillows.

The skeleton staggered, yet did not fall, and it turned fully now, raising it's blade over its head.

Mist's mother was on her knees, the short sword fallen from her grip by the shock of the blow. She scrambled after it, but Mist knew with certainty that she would never recover the weapon in time.

With a startlingly high-pitched scream, Mist struck the skeleton's side. It tried to adjust its balance, but could not quickly enough. It tumbled over the banister and to the stone floor of the entry foyer of their house with a clatter of shattering bones. Mist almost flipped over the wooden rail after it but for a hand about her ankle, clutching her in a death's grip.

It hurt, but she knew it saved her life, or at least severe injury. Her mother panted at her feet, wrapping her arms around Mist's ankles and weeping. Mist tried to comfort her, prying a foot free and squatting beside her crying mother.

River, Mist's sister, spoke from behind the door of her room. "It is over?" she asked in her pre-adolescent soprano.

"Yes, River, you can come out," said Mist, even as her mother lifted her head to say the same.

When the nine-year old girl had gotten close enough, Mist's mother rose and grabbed both her children in arms that felt stronger than steel, weeping now into their bodies as she nuzzled the two. Mist and River hugged her in return, trying to comfort the grief that bubbled forth.

Tears streamed down both girls' faces and River's expression was one of horror as she saw the staring, glazed eyes of her father. "He died protecting us," said Mist in a reverential tone, turning her little sister's eyes from the corpse of their father. "He clung past death to save us." She stroked her mother's graying hair. "Mom saved us."

Lord Tornadin stood upon the high tower of his manor house and watched the fires rage near the docks and palace. His arm slipped over the shoulder of Tatyana, who nuzzled close to him and pulled her satin cloak tight about her shoulders. "I grow worried at this," he said softly.

"I can see that, Tornadin," she said, resting her head on his shoulder and giving him a small smile. "It frightens me, as well."

His house guard, almost a hundred men were formed into ranks before the manor, the captain moving between them prior to marching them out and to the defense of the city. It was but half the number of troops he had in his hand, but he would not be left with none on the estate.

"I think of leading them myself," he said, as if speaking to the night, rather than looking toward Tatyana.

The slim woman blinked up at him, the cold wind nearly eliciting a tear from her eyes. The wind carried the sent of burning wood and the smell of pitch. "You should not take such a risk, lover," she said. "The nobles of Tressen are needed to organize the defense of the city, and to hold the people together come the morrow."

"You are wiser than a slave aught be, Tatyana," said the young lord. Looking down at her and lifting her small chin with a finger. He kissed her softly, not with the passion he had first taken her with a few hours before, but with a tender affection.

This confused the young Tornadin. He had taken many a slave before this night and never felt softened by the experience. Tatyana had been little different in the bedchamber, more willing than most had been, to be sure, but not all that unusual.

He had tried to make her balk, attempting one depraved ploy after another, descending through his rich imagination of sexual activities. She not only accepted them of him, her feigned desire for him never slipping, but she then encouraged him more, coaxing him to try another act, then another. Finally he had stopped trying and simply made love to the woman who would not let him best her in carnality.

In the end, they had lain side by side upon the disheveled bed, their arms and legs intertwined. She had stroked his hair and murmured softly to him as he drank in her feminine scent and luxuriated in the softness of her body against his cheek and forehead.

For her part, Tatyana cringed deep inside at recollecting some of the acts she had just performed for this man. Her willingness to be his plaything had worked, though, and he had broken first. When the kiss ended she turned and kissed his hand upon her shoulder. "My lover," she murmured, making her possession of him as blatant as she dared.

"I fear I may just be yours," he said in a distant tone, his eyes still regarding the flickering flames in the city. "I swear you must be a witch, Tatyana."

"I know no such arts," she said, stroking his hand idly, then returned to the soft murmuring she had been reciting beneath her breath. She looked up at him and watched the hair thin wisps of mana floating from her fingertips to surround his body, then to take up a tight swirling pattern about his head. "I've never even met a sorceress."

Tatyana was not strong in wizardry, her repertoire of spells small and very specialized. This spell, though, she knew very well, indeed. It had kept her from harm for many years, and had even protected Siska from many a man's predations through her life. It worked best if one behaved as if they were in love with the target, making a return of the affection almost automatic.

Tornadin had planned to hurt her, she was sure of that. A dagger beneath the pillow had been bared during their early love play and Tornadin had regarded it with interest before throwing it to the floor to proceed with the carnal menu. Tatyana was not certain why he might wish to hurt a slave he had recently bought, though she supposed there were illnesses of the mind aplenty that would give a man self-justification to do murder.

The chill of the night was getting to the man, clad only in a cloak. He sighed again as the small company he had organized marched out of his estate and toward the distant sounds of fighting. "I should go with them, it is my place," he said, stepping forward, as if to simply walk toward them from the tower, some fifty paces above the lawns of his estate's grounds.

"Your place is with me, lover," said Tatyana with a wide, inviting smile and taking his hand to pull him toward the door that let onto the tight stairwell down the tower then to his spacious bedchamber. "Your place is within me. Part of Tressen will burn, but it will not fall this night." Her voice had a tiny lilt to it that he found intriguing, and he liked it when she added it to her normally throaty tones. It sounded to him like a freshly baked cake with ginger in it smelled - sweet with a hidden bite of spice.

He smiled at her as he followed willingly. "Is it?" asked the young nobleman. "Well, I must surely keep to my place, then, eh?"

Tornadin vaguely remembered that he had wished to kill this woman. No, that was not precisely right, he had needed to kill her. Why would that be so? She was beautiful, and she loved him, he could plainly see that. He wondered if he, somehow, loved her in return. He was discomfited at the thought of loving someone, it was a new sensation. He did not even entirely trust himself feeling it, though it did feel good. A horrid thought struck him as they walked into the warm and dimly lit bedchamber. What if he had been so afraid of love that he had needed to kill her?

Two hundred black-clad marines jogged up the thoroughfare at a brisk pace, causing the few people on the streets to scuttle for cover and slaying the few who failed to find it. Sergeant Gevaks led them, mounted on a gray horse that pranced when he stood still. The sorcerers were likewise mounted; two were gaunt men with shaven heads and dark, sunken eyes deep in the cowls of their dun brown robes. The other two, as different as night and day, wore ivory silken gowns that fluttered in the winds as their mounts moved. Pale, smooth flesh flashed from exposed bodies beneath the gowns and the women made no move to cover themselves.

The marines needed no instruction to not ogle the scantily clad sorceresses. Their fear was not that the sorceresses would take upset at any lecherous gazes that might land on their revealed bodies, but that they would grant the request. Such a request they would happily and eagerly fulfill for any man. It would be a measure of the man's achievement if he left the sorceress' bed the following day or needed six men to carry his remains.

They all drew to a stop at the sergeant's raised hand. The sounds of galloping from ahead of them were growing louder and the riders would be emerging from a side street in a very brief moment. The horses pranced skittishly and there was much creaking of leather straps amid the armored marines, along with some faint rattling sounds from armor pieces striking one another in the milling mass.

"Brace for cavalry charge!" he called out.

The marines with spears set them, forming into tight rows, two deep. The others fell back, drawing their swords. The sorcerers moved up alongside the sergeant to receive their instructions. The front of the street-wide formation bristled like a razor-tipped thicket.

"Something isn't right," he said, listening to the charging horses. The sound had not grown closer, it still rang out from the same place it had been a moment before. He began signaling for a scout to move forward to look around the edge of the three story building, with its chipped white stucco when the ground heaved beneath him, hurling him from his saddle and high into the air.

In an instant, there was the sound of horses, many horses, behind them. Fireballs arced from the mass of blue clad men, wizards all, on the mounts, nearly fifty of them. Marines were thrown about like rag dolls, smashing into the walls of the surrounding buildings. A goodly portion of one building's facade broke loose of its house, falling upon near a score of the men in one collapse.

The marines, though, were disciplined. As Gevaks struggled to his feet, they were wheeling the spearmen about and the swordsmen were already springing to attack. Their numbers were reduced but all was not yet lost. "Take them!" he screamed up to the one sorceress still seated in a saddle. The other lay in a broken tumble beneath her fallen horse, neither she nor the beast moving. The two sorcerers were helping one another from the ground, and seemed intent on settling their robes about themselves before taking other action.

She brought her mount about expertly, using only her knees and holding forth both hands, fingers splayed. Sorceresses needed not these gestures, but it seemed to comfort them to make them. To Gevaks, it was like a lense formed between himself and the distant wizards. That lense made them seem even more distant in the middle of its expanding arc, closer toward its edges. It made him a bit dizzy, like peering through a cheaply fashioned spyglass.

Once the lense formed, it moved forward, gaining speed as it moved. By the time it reached the mounted wizards, it was moving quickly and they seemed to at last notice its approach. Two hastily tried to erect magical wardings, but too late. The lense struck the horsemen and flung them and their mounts back, tumbling them over the cobbles for nigh fifty feet before coming to rest. The lense evaporated like a heat mirage, leaving over a dozen of the wizards amid their mounts, some did not move at all. Those few that did moved slowly, trying to regain their feet, despite broken limbs and battered bodies. Few of the horses moved.

She smiled at the results of her effort and began to lift her hands again. Gevaks smiled, too, and decided he would order two of his men to take to her tent this night, should they emerge victorious.

He needed not worry for that outcome, however. The gore of her destruction covered him a second later as a lattice of hair-fine mesh flew from one of the wizards, unfurling as it flew. She tried a mana shield, a standard defense against spells. However, the spell had ended when the lattice had left the man's hand. It was not a purely magical thing that flew toward her. Infinitely fine strands of steel, laid out in a grid no more than two fingers between strands. When it struck her and her horse, they simply turned into a soup of fine chunks and fluids.

Gevaks wiped his eyes clean of her and glared toward the heretics. It had always amazed him how resourceful the damned could be with the Dark One's guidance. He had never seen the likes of that magic before and from the sound of retching beside him, neither had the two male sorcerers.

"Damn your hides!" he cursed, grabbing one of the skinny men by a shoulder. "Kill them, kill them now!"

More marines fell to hail of fireballs and magical darts, he had lost almost half his command, and the marines were still ten paces from the nearest of the blue clad wizards.