Chapter 90

The Audacity of This Lich

It looks like everyone has survived the underwater trip. More or less. The void knights are slightly more rusted, the wights and draugr even more bedraggled than usual, and in some cases, draped in fronds of kelp. Some of the decorative skellies have also acquired deep sea accessories; the odd starfish, an octopus scarf, and some conch shells they are blowing on like war horns.

The magically enhanced siege engines advance with delightful menace.

The corpse balls are rolling steadily over the floes, smashing aside the jagged chunks so that the siege towers can advance smoothly. The balls are now decidedly less fleshy than when they left Downing and have turned into spindly, spiky bone spheres, but that is fine. The strength is in the marrow not the skin. The decorative skeletons continue to whoop and cheer. A battle song breaks out on one of the trebuchets, and is soon picked up by scores of undead voices. I wince. Hopefully they can fire arrows better than they can hold a tune. We will soon find out.

Up in the sky, Janvier wheels his chariot around, lips tight. His dragons careen violently, nearly tipping the chariot from the sky. For a moment, the battle slows as everyone turns to watch the siege engines emerging from the icy waters.

Somewhere, in a distant rotting pit, my desiccated heart starts to sing.

Everyone moves at once.

The entire aerial battle, my troops, and Janvier’s, all wheel towards the approaching engines in mad haste. Until they can set up on the ice they are vulnerable.

“Protect the engines!” I bellow, waving my hands. “Go, go go!”

The brooms zip over my head, Janvier’s serpents hard on their heels. Elizabeth and the two other terrible lizards rush to harry the dragons, who respond with vicious plumes of blue fire. They manage to slow them a little but I cannot let my engines be destroyed before they have done some serious damage.

In a panic I call over the beastie, swapping broom for enormous chitinous tentacled monster. The beastie is swift, swifter than any other creature in the air. Thank the goddess. We rush past flying serpents and bats alike, past my draugrs and adventurers and witches, and arrive at the icy edge of the ocean before anyone else.

The beastie slams into the ice and I vault off, straightening, with my ribbons fluttering behind me in the breeze. The decorative skellies cheer.

“Ready yourselves!” bellows Sir Arkwright, saluting me with one hand, eyes on the approaching forces. Black ichor oozes gently from the joints of his armour.

The draugrs rush over. “In the beastie’s saddle bags,” I tell them. “Keep it all dry and get it loaded into the trebuchets! At once!”

They nod, and rush to do as I ask.

On the distant Fairhaven walls, Janvier’s own siege engines are swivelling towards us, wights loading them with payloads I cannot make out. Are we in range? I feel like we are about to find out.

“I’m sorry, my Lady,” Sir Arkwright is saying. “We came as quickly as we could but we were delayed by all the ships and debris at the bottom of the harbour.”

“Ships?” I say stupidly.

“Shipwrecks. Sunken ships slowed us down as we crossed the seabed into Fairhaven harbour. There are some deadly rocks out there and it seems the current sweeps them toward the estuary mouth. The harbour is very deep.”

“I see,” I say, thoughtfully.

The first Fairhaven siege engine loses its payload.

“Shields!” Sir Arkwright barks, and my rows of undead troops clank to attention.

An enormous ball of ice sails through the air in a high arch and explodes a few yards away, showering us with fragments. Gallantly, Sir Arkwrit holds up his tarnished shield to protect me from the worst of it. The shards ping off the metal. A few clumsy wights behind us lose chunks of flesh.

“Nevermind, Timothy,” I say brightly, “you are here now!”

“Yes, my lady,” he says.

“Now let’s get those trebuchets into position!”

They are already drawing up. Draugr scurry, mopping and oiling, while frowning technicians adjusting the levers. Another ball of ice crashes into the floe. This one cleaves straight through the ice to the water below, with the force of a thousand stones, like a knife through butter, leaving behind only a misting, gaping black hole.

We appear to be just out of range but still close enough to catch the debris. Although Janvier’s engineers are also adjusting their ropes. Now it is a matter of whose toys will be destroyed first. I am confident that my enhanced engines can reach the crystal walls, but first they have to withstand the dragons, and Janvier himself. Shields will not be enough.

The first dragon reaches us, raking my troops with deadly fire.

A dozen wights run, streaming flame and drop into the icy waters of the sea. They come back a few minutes later, slightly blackened and scorched but still quite functional. The flames on the catapult are harder to extinguish.

“Glacies tempestas,” I whisper.

The ice storm I conjure hits the serpent square in the jaw. It tumbles end over end into the sky, blown by the wrathful flurry. But another takes its place, this one with a void rider. And another. They are too high for the arrows to reach. They dart out of reach of my second spell. My broomriders cannot pelt them with potion bombs, they will fall onto our own troops below.

More boulder size mounds of ice fly towards us, crashing into the ground in a succession of thunderous booms. The shards are sharp as knives.

“Ready, my lady!”

I rush to the first trebuchet, slipping and sliding as the bombardment continues. Overhead the battle rages like a swarm of angry bees. Janvier is targeting my witches. The fiend.

“Go help them,” I shout at the beastie, and it takes to the sky in a flash of crackling light.

In the trebuchet’s sling, cradled on a specially designed oil skin wrap, lies the contents of the beastie’s saddle bags; large mounds of ash, grey and powder fine.

I race from one siege engine to the next.

“Vita mutatur, non tollitur, Vita mutatur, non tollitur, Vita mutatur, non tollitur…”

The ash bursts into flame, and not just any flame. This is ghost fire. Spirit fire. It burns in another world, burns so cold and so intense that it is almost impossible to put out. Especially if you are not expecting it.

The trebuchets are angled towards the ice city.

Grinning wickedly, I open my mouth to order the fire. There is a gust of wind, and instinct makes me duck. A talon rakes the air over my head and I look up into Janvier’s sneering face.

“What’s this?” he taunts. “Fire? My dear lady. Stop and think for just a moment. Engage the part between your ears. You are in my domain now, surrounded by snow. You are talking to the king of winter!” He tuts and shakes his head.

“Fire!” I shout, jumping up and down, brandishing my axe like a brand.

Levers are pulled simultaneously on every trebuchets.

The payloads flash through the sky like comets.

Janvier wrenches his chariot out of the way just in time, more’s the pity. The ghost fire burns bright and colourless, as it speeds towards the ice of the city wall. With a succession of ear shattering booms, the eastern wall explodes into flames. Chunks of ice slide from the whole, crashing into dust at the base. Wights go tumbling, several catapults fall into the abyss, others catch alight. Where it has landed, the ghost fire burns, and continues to burn, soundless and terrifying.

Where it has landed the ice begins to melt, not slowly but in torrents. Rivers of melt water gush from the walls and fragments peel off to crash below. The ghost fire burns as the wights scream and their flesh sizzles on their bones.

Translucent smoke rises, the survivors rushing backward and forwards like shooting stars. They will find no respite. They will burn till their souls are released to the Whisperer. Even then the fires will continue to burn, marking their gravesites with the memory of flame for eternity. Unless I call it back to me. I won’t though. Janvier needs reminding of his own mortality.

“Fire!” I shout. “Reload! And keep firing!”

Once he realises the destructive potency of the ghost fire Janvier will use all his energy to destroy the siege engines. I must use every moment I can.

Shot after shot streaks across the sky, splashing against the walls, wreaking havoc on the enemy catapults. One goes wide, landing in the water. It sinks deep, continuing to blaze, a flickering unearthly glow that lights up the depths to an eerie green. Ghost fire cannot be summoned from wet ashes, but once it ignites it has little care for the elements of the physical realm.

Another shot collides with an ice boulder and the battlefield is sprayed with a deadly mess, injuring everyone in the vicinity.

Where is the beastie?

I look up, sifting through the chaos. I find it easily enough, its tentacles wrapped eagerly around Janvier’s chariot. He is chopping at its tendrils, and I hiss in distress as tarnished silver cuts through eldritch flesh. The beastie is not without cunning however. Two of the dragons hang dead and dismembered, still attached to the reins and dragging the contraption earthwards. Eyes blazing, Janvier blasts the beastie with ‘Glacies tempestas’.

The beastie drops like a frozen stone.

I scream as it plummets down, down, hitting the ice with a horrific crack before vanishing into the deep sea below with one last sizzling crackle.

Janvier leaps from the falling chariot, onto the back of the last remaining dragon, slashing at the reins with his great sword. Freed from the wreckage they soar upwards, as the chariot, and the dead dragons, smash into the plain.

He wheels around, sword raised high, searching the battlefield for something. Searching for me. Our eyes lock and he grins, raising the silver weapon in mock salute.

I fully expect him to come speeding towards me, but instead he turns away.

Towards the edge of the city. What is he up to now? My grip tightens on my axe.

Janvier’s dragon thumps down hard, on a seemingly innocent patch of ice. They pull up, then descend, with force. Up once more. Again, the dragon crashes down. Again. The ice cracks. Again. Again. What is in there?

Sir Arkwright is also watching. “Reposition the trebuchets!” he roars. “Towards the lich lord!”

My void knight’s instincts are good.

The ice shatters, spider fine cracks splintering into canyons, revealing the underbelly of a cavern, a canyon packed with abominations. The undead horde pours out of the ground in a cacophonous tide. There are thousands of them. Thousands. Janvier must have infected every human for miles around and gathered them there.

“Load the holy water!” I shout. “Load it! Quickly!”

The draugr rush to obey, but the abominations are sprinting, rotten limbs pumping, slathering faces angry, eyes crazed. They are fast. They will be here any moment.

“Fire!” roars Sir Arkwright to the skellies, to the armed wights and draugr troops. “Make every arrow count! Defend the engines!”

The void knights form a shield wall, supported by the draugr and wights. The line is thin and strung out. So painfully thin in the face of that oncoming wave. Whooping and screaming the decorative skellies shoot overhead into the mass. Some of them stumble and fall, but not enough.

“Fire when ready!” shouts Sir Arkwight, to the engineers. “Do not wait for the command! Fire when ready!”

Three trebuchets lose, the liquid contents of the payload spraying holy water over the speeding abominations. Where it splashes the abominations drop, dead bodies lying still, to be trampled by their fellows. Cold meat, lifeless on the ice. Nothing more.

“Decipula alma,” I whisper, but their souls are too far away.

Another trebuchet loses its payload of holy water. Two score abominations drop but it is not enough. It is like tossing pebbles against a current.

The stamp of their frenzied feet crescendos to a roar. I run to the front, pushing my hand through the line of knights.

“Glacies tempestas.”

The vanguard freezes solid, arms outstretched, palms grasping towards us, mad eyes wild. But to left and right abominations surge forward without breaking stride. I have bought us only seconds.

“I believe that in serving you,” says Sir Arkwright, not taking his eyes off the approaching dead, “I still served the Bright One. In the end. Goodbye Lady Maud.”

“No-” I say sharply, “No! That’s-” but my words are washed away in the roar of battle as the abominations tear through the line.