Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [67]
“Don’t be foolish. Their archers have already broken the war protocols. Their Knight-General will want to know the details of the breach.”
Their leotau mounts slowed. Mubin had grasped the reins of Rafiq’s steed.
“What are you doing?” demanded Rafiq.
At that moment, the hawk aven scout flew over them, going in the wrong direction. It led a mass of scaly flying creatures. The aven fired a treasonous crossbow bolt down at the two knights, narrowly missing Mubin.
“What in Asha’s name?” cried Rafiq.
“Witchery,” said Mubin. “We’re up against dark things, Knight-General.”
The aven screeched as it flew toward the rest of Asha’s Army. Behind it, they heard other screeches.
The enemy force was composed of a variety of alien flyers: reptilian things with wings and back legs like a bird, but sharp, jutting scales like a metallic snake; ugly, dog-faced, animated gargoyles whose skin resembled white marble; strange contrivances with wings that flapped on improbable pulleys and wheels. And all of them contained delicate filigree structures of a gleaming metal, fused right into their anatomies in ways that looked like they should have been disabling or lethal. The wind was full of their strange cries as they flew overhead, and a whistling caused by their filigree speeding through the air. Not one engaged the two knights, but instead they flew on, heading for the front lines of the Bant army.
Behind the flyers, the storm approached. In the center of it flew a thin, bald woman with blue-gray skin, riding on the back of an enormous, stone-faced gargoyle. Her forearms were made of the filigree metal, and her robes billowed with the winds. She raised her arms, and the thunderhead bulged outward, threatening to sweep the knights up in its gales.
“That’s not their champion,” said Mubin.
“Let’s go,” Rafiq agreed.
They wheeled their steeds and whistled shrilly. The leotau steeds dug their hooves deep into the turf of Jhess, and launched into a gallop back to the front lines.
Behind them, the otherworldly mage recited a spell, her words lost in the winds. Mubin moaned in pain and clutched his head.
GRIXIS
Levac took up his sword and headed back down the stairs, shouting for his son.
“Vali! Vali!”
He pushed through the other soldiers, shoving them aside in his haste but accosting every face he recognized.
“Clairan, have you seen Vali? Hargrove? Hey, Malunis? Seen Vali? Anyone? Has anyone seen my son?”
“Daddy …” came a faint voice.
Levac looked out the doorway. Up in the guard tower he saw little Vali waving at him. The tower’s ladder was pulled up, but zombies and skeletons crawled spiderlike up the outside of the tower. They would be on him in a matter of moments.
Levac swept past the soldiers and went straight for the statue that stood out in the front room of the stronghold, the so-called Lady of the Scythe. He stood up on its base and grabbed its scythe with both hands, and yanked. It pulled free easily—as he had always suspected it would. Her hands had always been outstretched in a gesture of forgiveness, not force. Her outstretched wings and gentle eyes expressed a kindness that had never befitted Grixis, as if she were a relic from a gentler time long past.
Levac hefted the scythe into his own arms, and in doing so clumsily grazed a zombie who was attacking one of the soldiers. The scythe’s blade sliced clean through the creature’s thigh, and it dropped squirming in two pieces on the floor.
“What the hell, Levac? Do that again!” said the soldier.
Levac blinked. He swung the scythe awkwardly forward and sliced through two more zombie minions. The scythe sang with a strange harmonic as black gore dripped from the blade. Levac pushed forward through the doorway, into the fray. The scythe swerved back and forth easily, almost hungrily, and with every swing, Levac bisected several undead.
“Daddy!” screamed Vali from the top of the guard tower.
Rage took hold. Levac swung the scythe wildly, cutting a swathe through the undead, heading straight for the tower. Undead fell every which way, forming a gory pathway