The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [217]
Broken glass crunched under her boots as she took a step forward. She held a gun in her hands.
“Hello there, Travis,” Jace Windom said, and pointed the gun at his chest.
49.
Fires burned in the distance.
Durge stood atop the wall, peering through the gloom that filled Shadowsdeep, trying to see what they were doing. It had been twelve hours since the Pale King's army had withdrawn from the wall, and they were gathering themselves again for another assault, he was sure of it.
A league out into Shadowsdeep, a column of green flame rose up to the clouds. It blazed for a moment, rending the shadows, then went out. They were formulating some new deviltry, only what could it be? Never had there been so long a pause between their attacks on the keep. Yet as sure as water flowed and stone cracked, they would come again.
Five times the army of the Pale King had thrown itself against the high wall of Gravenfist Keep, and five times Queen Grace and her men had turned them back.
Durge had lost count of the hours—or was it days?—that had passed since the Rune Gate had opened and trumpets had sounded, calling the men of Gravenfist to arms. Clouds filled the sky, black as ink, blotting out sun and stars, so there was no way to know whether it was day or night, and acrid smoke hung on the air, burning lungs and making eyes water, casting a perpetual gloom over the world. While torches burned inside the keep, behind curtained windows, they could not light torches atop the wall, lest they make easy targets for the enemy.
Not that the arrows of the opposing forces could reach so high, but they had other darts at their disposal: balls of red sparks propelled by magic. The balls wove back and forth through the air until they struck a man. Once they did, they burned into his flesh, and the only way to stop them from digging deeper was to cut them out.
In the second wave of attacks, one of the fiery balls had struck a Calavaner who stood atop the wall near Durge. It had hit the man in the foot and had quickly burned its way upward. Durge had swung his greatsword, lopping the man's leg off at the knee to stop it. Only then another one of the orbs had struck him in the face. Durge had never heard a man scream like that before. He had clawed at his eyes as sparks shot out of them, then his writhing carried him to the edge of the wall. Durge had tried to grab for him, but he slipped in the blood from the stump of the man's leg. The Calavaner had fallen over the edge, his screams merging with the jabbering of the horde below.
It was Master Graedin who discovered, during the third assault, that the fiery orbs were attracted to motion, and that if one stood still the things would fly past. Once the balls flew over the wall, the runespeakers were able to speak the rune of breaking, directing the force of the magic at the orbs so that they burst apart and vanished.
Where the balls of sparks came from was still a mystery, but while it was difficult to get a good look in the gloom, Durge had seen more than feydrim among the Pale King's army. There were men among them as well. No doubt many of them were ironhearts, and some had to be wizards. Logic dictated that if the runespeakers could dispel the fiery orbs, then it was rune magic that had created them.
That there were men in the Pale King's army was a startling and horrible realization. They must have dwelled in Imbrifale for a thousand years, since the last ride of the Pale King. Durge could not help wondering what had happened to them in the centuries since. Were any of them still truly alive? Or were they given new hearts, tiny lumps of iron, the moment they emerged from the womb?
Another gout of green fire leaped up toward the black sky, then died back down. Durge pressed a hand to his chest. The pain was constant now, jabbing between his lungs,