Meek

Chapter 68: Every Shield

"The children," Lara said, pointing with a trembling finger.

"They're right there," Payde snarled to Fishhook. "Why haven't you attacked?"

"We have," Swan told him. "Look at my people down there. Every time we lose a man, she gains one."

The Bloodwitch must've noticed the new voices, because every single risen tilted their head upward at once. Dozens of dead eyes watching.

"You've brought me fresh blood," the witch called, in a musical voice that utterly belied her appearance. "To welcome to the ranks of the risen. They are--"

An arrow pierced her chest, then another took her in the forehead. Eli had been so focused on the horror that he hadn't noticed Riadn drawing her bow.

The Bloodwitch shivered. Her blood flowed from her wounds and coated the arrows and drew them fully inside her body.

Then she continued: "They are risen. Yet I, too, will rise, will burst from this mortal shell. What awaits me at the top of the Reach? Divinity. For twelve years I've built my ladders, I've suffered the shriek of the Reach in my mind, and it has refined me like an alembic, I am not the meagre animal you see before you I am more than you can possibly imagine." She took another bite of meat. "I am watching you through a hundred eyes and seeing not merely the present but the future. I see you dying here and being reborn and--"

She fell abruptly silent and oil-lamps flared to life on a few of the altars, casting the quarry in a sickly yellow light.

Then four of her risen leaped at the children. Eli tensed to throw himself forward--he felt Payde doing the same beside him--but Swan grabbed his arm and said, "Wait!"

The risen smacked into the shield he hadn't seen. A shield dome protecting the children from the witch and her creatures, enclosing them completely.

Oh, of course. The three-fold mage, Elsavet, was protecting the kids. That's why she looked so exhausted. From holding a shield that large for however long. And that's why the kids were still alive.

"I would like," a woman's whispered behind Eli, "a word."

His spark showed him Lady Brazinka pulling blankets down from her head with one hand, while the other still touched Elsavet's ankle. Blood from her mouth smeared her chin and blood from her nose smeared her mouth. Tears stained her cheeks. Her breath came in gasps and her skin was an unhealthy pallid pale.

She looked about as a dead as a risen.

"Please," she whispered, and beckoned faintly.

Riadn stepped toward her and ducked her head. "My lady."

"All of you."

"I see you dying and being reborn," the witch repeated, as the four risen slammed themselves into the shield again. "That will come to pass. Unless you leave. If you retreat now, I cannot follow. There is no way to save these calves. You know this. They are already mine. But if you leave, oh, then perhaps you will survive and return, and I will ..." She wiped a last trace of blood from her forehead and tasted it. "Or perhaps you should remain. I taste your shield weakening."

She fell silent again as waves of her creatures battered themselves against Elsavet's mage shield.

"How long's she been holding that?" Payde asked Swan.

"Three days."

"What? No. Impossible. No. Three days?"

"Almost four now."

Payde gazed with awe at Elsavet. "I've never heard of ... outside of the masters ... that's not ... by the Angel's unholy choir, that's ... "

"Almost at an end," Lady Brazinka said, with a tragic smile. "In thirty-five minutes. She'll drop the shield."

"If you kill the witch the risen will stop," Swan told them.

"You sure about that?" Payde said.

"I am," Brazinka said.

"I just tried killing her," Riadn said, her voice tight. "Didin't work."

"We need to take her head?" Payde asked.

"Yes," Lady Brazinka said.

"There's fifty risen down there," Eli said. "And pets."

"And more coming." Lara nodded toward the shadows of a boulevard that emptied into the quarry. "The ones we saw earlier."

"You need to retreat, my lady," Swan said.

"No," Lady Brazinka whispered.

"We can't help those children. There's nothing we can do."

"As I've told you before," the lady said, only slightly stronger. "You may retreat."

"We won't abandon our client on--"

"I release you from the contract."

"We're not going anywhere without you."

"We need to bloody retreat," Dorgo said. "Or pretty soon we'll be fighting for the Bloodwitch instead of against her."

Swan shot him a look.

"Begging your pardon for the language," he continued.

"He's right, though," Swan told the lady. "There is only one way this ends."

Lady Brazinka closed her exhausted eyes briefly. "Take your troops. Leave."

"No, m'lady."

"That's an order. As your client."

"Then tell your mage to leave."

"Elsavet will do anything I ask, except that."

"Same with us," Swan said. "The Cygnets don't sell our swords, we sell our loyalty. It's time to leave. All of us. There's nothing you can do for those kids, my lady. My friend. You've kept then alive this long, Brazie. There's nothing you can do."

"They're already dead," Drogo said.

"There's something we can do," Brazinka whispered. "We can stay with them."

"For three days," Payde snapped at. "You've sat here for three days without a strategy, without a plan, without a hope? Just to give them the pleasure of watching you get hacked to death a minute before they are?"

"Peace, Payde," Fishhook told him. "We had a plan. We carved our way to the witch, but that was before we knew we needed to take her head. And we took too many losses."

"I'm sorry," Lady Brazinka said, her breath shuddering. "I thought ... I trusted myself too well. I'm sorry but I can't leave them behind. I ... cannot."

"Three days." Riadn frowned at Brazink. "You're a mage. You follow the Path of Stillness. You're what's keeping her together."

"I helped a little. I'm spent now, though I cannot ..." She suddenly tilted her head, like she'd had a thought. "The new mage. Please. Come closer."

"I'm right here," Payde said.

"The other one."

"Meek," Riadn said, gesturing for Eli to approach.

He stepped forward. "M'lady?'"

"You're here," she said, closing her eyes.

"Uh ... yes, m'lady."

She coughed blood instead of speaking. Swan knelt to clean her face with a damp cloth, and the lady didn't speak again, or open her eyes.

"We're out of time, Commander," Dorgo told Swan.

"We hold until the shield breaks," Swan said.

"You're giving away a thirty minute lead. For what?"

"You knew the job when you took it."

"Yes, mir," Dorgo grumbled.

Payde asked Fishhook about the number of mercenaries still strong enough to fight, about the layout of the quarry--which he called 'the bowl'--and for details about their first, failed assault. Then he said, "How did a lost mage turn into this?"

"You felt the Reach's power?" Fishhook asked him. "Mir Elsavet said that everyone with magical sensitivity does."

"Yeah, at first," Payde said. "It stopped."

"Because you're on a Path. After a time, the magic flows around you or ... or something. Into your Path, and drains away? Mage Elsavet said that the Bloodwitch, she's not even off a Path. She's something else entirely. How'd she turn into this? Either she harnessed the Reach's power, or it harnessed her."

Eli thought about that for a moment, then crossed to Lara, who was staring into the quarry. Well, staring at the children. He stood beside her and thought some more.

She took his hand and said something in dryn like, "The woman is right. We can't leave."

"You heard who she talked?" he asked in dryn. "Now recent?"

"I heard what she just said about ..." She used a few words he didn't know. "Yes."

"About saddle," he said, because that was the closest word he knew to 'harnessing.'

"Yes," she said.

"I saddle," he said.

"They're children," she said.

He nodded, feeling the power of the Reach pressing down on him. He didn't know how to harness that great throb of force, though. Might as well try saddling a storm. Still, Lara was right that they couldn't leave. She, because she needed to redeem herself before returning home. And he because ... she was right about something else, too.

This was what he was for. He'd still spit in the eye of anyone who'd caused this. He'd cut the Angel's throat if She'd manipulated him into that cell, that mountain, this life. He wasn't a puppet. Treat him as one at your peril.

But he wasn't a child, either. For whatever reason, this was his life now. This was him now. And if mages and mercenaries couldn't kill the witch, well ... he wasn't like them.

He was like her.

Twisted soul and all. Except not quite, because he'd been reborn as a protector, not a destroyer. Even if ... even if the line sometimes blurred.

He didn't know if he could save these kids. He didn't see how he could. Still, every fiber of his being, from the dull memories of his old life to the sharp realities of his new one, told him one thing: he needed to try.

He needed to walk into the storm and harness the power before it tore him apart.

"We're going in," he said aloud.

The conversation quieted behind him. When he turned, he saw a wild smile on Payde face, and Swan rubbing her bridge of her nose wearily.

"So are we," Riadn told him.

"That's excellent," Dorgo grumbled. "Do we have a strategy, or shall we just march in and join the witch's army?"

"We need to divide them," Eli told him, "to get a shot at her."

"They don't split," Dorgo said. "They're under her control."

"So we'll threaten the only thing she cares about." He looked to Swan. "Bring every sword. Leave a skeleton crew to protect the rear. We'll need every shield."