City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [179]
Brynd gave his unit the orders to secure helms and armour and, through the slits of his visor, he watched the men in front begin to move.
Beami stood at a window overlooking an empty street, a visual echo in her mind of the last time she had seen Lupus. In a wood-panelled room behind her, three other cultists were examining their aggregated relics, deciding how they could best be used. A fire raged in the corner, and one of the others told her to close the window to keep the warmth in. She did as she was asked, reluctantly.
What will become of Lupus? she wondered. Is he already dead?
The thought of him going to war left her quite numb, even though at the very start she had been involved in the fighting. And now it was Lupus’s turn to prove himself. Beami was so happy that they had rediscovered their love, even if only for such a short time. They had shared only the briefest of goodbyes at the Citadel gates, very aware of the other soldiers present, but in her mind it had seemed he would certainly return shortly.
Only now . . . now she wasn’t so sure.
‘Are you going to help us or what?’ one of the cultists called out to her, distracting her from gloomy thoughts.
She moved back to the table with its heap of technology, and focused her attention instead on finding a way to help the city.
*
A row of soldiers moved forward.
They watched as the Sixth Dragoons surged forward in organized lines, closing the gap quickly, then their horses went ramming into a unit of Okun positioned at the far end of the street, leaving nothing in front of the Night Guard now except cobbles and blood and snow.
Brynd looked on grimly as the ranks of Dragoons fought within the narrow urban spaces. Horses were speared, ripped open by the claws of the Okun, riders tumbling on to the ground. They rejoined the fray, on foot, only to be hacked apart again. And all the time, arrows continued raining from above, selectively picking off the enemy.
Soldier after soldier fell. The collapse of their unit was rapid, yet a small core of them burst through the opposite ranks, vanishing out of sight, and all Brynd could do was hope for their survival.
There was a brief pause, as the depleted enemy ranks drew up together. Not a single Jamur soldier stood between them and the Night Guard.
A line of rumel, garbed in dull-grey armour, hesitated at the far end of the street as if they could smell cultist trickery on the Imperial weapons. As Okun joined them, they combined into one line with an alarming symmetry, as if they were separate components from one alien entity.
Brynd wondered at the sentience that united them while the enemy staggered forward, with swords raised, every move in sync.
The Night Guard waited, then Brynd delivered some short, sharp commands, his words reverberating among the empty buildings.
They rode straight for the enemy, eating up the intervening distance, first a hundred yards, sixty, thirty, twenty, Brynd kept speeding towards them, constantly thinking Don’t look at the dead, don’t look at the dead. They barged into the enemy lines, their horses rearing up and savagely trampling the first row of rumel. Bodies crumpled under the impact; heads exploded on the cobbles, then Brynd slipped off sideways from his saddle, as his horse collapsed on the blood-slick streets. The animal struggled to its feet, skidding desperately on the ice, then bolted away to safety.
Other Night Guard had merged into the mass of bodies and relentless screams filled his ears, and then something scraped against Brynd’s arm, ripping his uniform, drawing blood. Confident in his augmentations, Brynd stepped aside and lashed out again and again, striking left and right, reacting solely on instinct, while thinking Fuck I can barely see a thing.
Okun armour split like eggshells as his blade