Elves: Once Walked With Gods (39 page)

‘Over here!’ she called, stripping sail cloth from three masts, loose rigging, barrels and crates. Grafyrre was heading towards her when he realised the singing had stopped. He skidded to a halt and ran back to the line of barrels. The rain was still falling in spears, rattling off tile and spatting high off stone, but he thought he could hear a voice.

‘Katyett, is that you?’ he shouted. ‘Katyett!’

Grafyrre edged closer. His eye was distracted by the smouldering corpse slumped in front of the doors. He definitely heard a voice this time. It sounded like a demand to know what was happening.

‘Katyett. If you can hear me. The guards are down. We have to break down the doors. Stand well back. Be ready to run. More enemies coming.’

He repeated the message three times. Turning, he saw his brothers and sisters heading his way with the mast of a coastal cutter slung between them. It was rigged for carrying with leather bands nailed to it in four places from which hung leather loops. Grafyrre ran to join them. They had the base of the mast forward.

‘Pakiir, Marack. Move back. That set of handles is too close when we hit the doors. Let’s hurry. I’ve asked those inside to stand back.’

‘Did they hear you?’ asked Merrat.

‘We’ll find out.’

Grafyrre joined Merrat at the second band. Faleen was on her own on the third with Pakiir and Marack on the last. The mast was heavy and awkward despite the carrying handles. The TaiGethen moved as smoothly as they could towards the doors. The rain had slackened a little but the alarms were still sounding their discordant summons. Time was short.

‘Straight in,’ said Grafyrre. ‘Push hard!’

They upped their pace. The mast knocked against their thighs, the leather handles bit into the palms of their hands. Ten feet of the fifty-foot length of mast was between them and the impact point. Grafyrre put his head down. Three paces later, the mast struck the doors. Timbers creaked. Lightning chased itself across the face of the doors. Splinters flew out and there was a deep dent. But no break.

‘Again!’

They backed up ten paces and ran in, slamming the mast base in as near to the original impact as possible. The splinters were bigger and the dent deeper. The flashes of lightning a shade darker.

‘Keep it going.’

The alarms all ceased as they prepared to make their third run. The silence was curious, expectant.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Pakiir.

‘Nothing good,’ said Merrat. ‘Let’s go again.’

They ran forward. The mast struck a third time. Door timbers screeched. There was a resounding crack and two of them bent sharply inwards. A splinter as tall as the doors was stripped away. The human magic embedded in the doors spat and lightning writhed around the mast base. When they withdrew, the light kept on spitting and flashing.

‘Almost there, Katyett!’ called Grafyrre. ‘Keep back.’

‘Last time?’ said Marack.

‘Let’s hope so.’

They backed up. Lights were approaching, bouncing along in the hands of men running down the sides of the warehouse. Faleen dropped her loop and reached for a sword.

‘No,’ said Marack. ‘We have to get this door open.’

‘I can defend you,’ said Faleen. ‘It’s the right thing.’

‘Stay close,’ said Marack.

The four of them ran hard, Faleen’s absence making a considerable difference to the strength and speed they could bring to bear. The mast struck the door firmly. The first men appeared from the left. Faleen ran to intercept. The mast did not break through.

‘This is going to take too long!’ called Pakiir.

Faleen chopped the sword hand from one warrior, grabbed the lantern from another and dashed it into his face. Flames leapt over the man’s face and head. Faleen turned a back flip away as swords came in from left and right. Fourteen had come around the left-hand side of the warehouse.

‘Just break it,’ said Grafyrre. ‘It’s all we have to do.’

‘How do you know?’

‘A feeling. Can’t you sense the hold of the magic on the door? It needs the door to be smooth and whole. Back up. Quickly.’

The four TaiGethen moved. Grafyrre glanced left. Faleen ran in, leapt and turned a roll over the front line of warriors, landing behind them and in front of two mages. Her swords rose and fell. Men turned. The shouts were angry and ugly.

‘Run, Faleen!’ called Merrat.

More men came from the right. Another seven. A mage stepped to one side and began to cast. The swordsmen came at the elves and their battering ram. The TaiGethen began to run again. Merrat was looking right.

‘Concentrate,’ said Grafyrre.

Merrat punched out with her right hand. A man fell. She didn’t break stride.

‘Casting!’ shouted Pakiir.

The mage had clapped his hands together and opened them with a shout. The men had scattered. A ball of fire rushed across the space. Grafyrre could feel the heat.

‘Away!’ he shouted. ‘Pakiir. Marack!’

The back of the ram hit the ground as the two elves dived out of the path of the circle of fire, brown swept with angry red. Grafyrre and Merrat had some momentum. They ran the last three paces and shoved the ram at the door as hard as they could. It gave a little more and nothing else.

The magical flame struck the tip of the mast and chased along its length. Grafyrre turned.

‘Yniss preserve us,’ he breathed. ‘Merrat, away. Away!’

Grafyrre dropped the mast, ran two paces and threw himself full length away to the left. He saw that Faleen still evaded her enemies, leaping high, sprinting, trying to get them to follow her from the dockside. Grafyrre landed and rolled. The flame touched the doors. Magic collided with magic. The air was sucked past him. In the periphery of his vision, he saw Pakiir stand up.

‘NO! Pakiir. Down!’

The door to the warehouse exploded. Grafyrre was picked up by the force of the blast and hurled out and right. He saw Pakiir engulfed by flames. Someone else lying on the ground was immolated in a heartbeat. He prayed it was a man and not Marack.

Flames, ash and wood scoured across the dockside and high into the night sky. Fire rolled out like a wave across the sand, licking down into the sea over the harbour’s edge and setting it to steam. Grafyrre landed and rolled, barely under control. The noise of the detonation had deafened him. He drove to his feet. He was fifty yards from where the doors had once been.

And they were gone. Nothing was left of them or the entire front of the warehouse. Flames ate up the frame and were licking back thirty feet along the roof and sides already. The stone flags in front of the warehouse were a carpet of fire, white, orange and brown. Great clouds of smoke billowed out from the doors. An orange and brown glow covered the entrance.

‘Katyett,’ breathed Grafyrre.

Ignoring the pains in his shoulders, hips, elbows and knees from his landing, Grafyrre sprinted back towards the warehouse. The group of men trying to catch Faleen had been cast all over the stone of the docks. Of Faleen herself there was no sign.

On the other side of the warehouse the men had not been hit by the blast. They were grouped just away from the magical fires etching away at the dock and backing away from Merrat, who had a murderous set to her body and was advancing, her eyes only for the mage.

In front of the warehouse, Grafyrre had to stop. The heat was extraordinary. With every moment, the unquenchable fires consumed more of the building. Flames and smoke were burrowing in under the roof timbers. He could barely see the ruined ground right in front, the place where he wanted Katyett to be able to run to freedom. All she had in there were two short swords and a few jaqrui. Nothing that would trouble the walls enough to make them an emergency exit before the whole place came crashing down. She was trapped.

Grafyrre was short on options. He stood, staring at the inferno covering warehouse, stone and sky. It was two things. A clarion call to every enemy warrior and mage in the city. And it was death to all who were within it, praying to Yniss for a miracle. Grafyrre wondered if they were shouting, whether any of them could hear him. But his ears were ringing and useless and his vision was nothing but glare when he tried to see in.

Grafyrre took a deep breath, trying to calm a sudden racing in his body. The fires were not dying down on the apron, they were gathering force. It had begun to rain again but the only result was the hissing of steam as water collided with fire.

He stepped back, the sheer heat a barrier shoving at him. Part of the side of the warehouse gave way, falling in a shower of burning timbers but revealing nothing more than the gathering firestorm within. Grafyrre looked left. Nothing moved but one shape, hopping from body to body. Faleen.

Grafyrre looked right. Merrat had drawn both blades and was advancing. The enemy wouldn’t have seen it but she was favouring her right foot. There was a dark stain on her left thigh. There were four warriors in front of a mage. The latter was doing something. It was he she would target and they knew it.

And the answer, the faintest hope anyway, was right before him. Grafyrre began running and shouting, yelling for Merrat’s attention. The roar of the conflagration made a mockery of his efforts. He tore across the space, the fire licking at his feet, his pace keeping him from the worst of the pain. He didn’t bother with blades. One way or another, he wouldn’t need them.

Merrat attacked and Grafyrre knew the course it would take. The men, of course, did not. She ran for the centre of the quartet, letting them assume she intended to take them head on. Dutifully, they prepared and shifted their positions to strike. A pace before they could land a blow, she fell to the left, rolling around her lower back and hips.

In the same movement she rose to the left of the rightmost soldier, taking the other three out of the game. Merrat backhanded her right-hand blade into the neck of her target. She was already spinning right and her left blade slammed round and down into the shoulder of the next man. Two down.

The others had barely registered her change of angle. The first blocked her straight kick with an arm but it sent him wildly off balance. Her left blade pierced his heart. The fourth and last faced her full on. She dropped to the ground, swept his feet from under him, crabbed forward and buried her right blade in his gut, her left in his chest.

Merrat rose and turned to the mage, who had ceased creating whatever casting had been in his mind. He backed off.

Grafyrre upped his pace. He was screaming Merrat’s name but she wasn’t hearing him. The word sounded loud inside his own deafened skull, booming and reverberating.

Merrat advanced. She took two quick steps. Grafyrre knew what was coming. Merrat cocked her left-hand blade at her waist and her right-hand blade at her neck. She took the final pace. Grafyrre took off. He stretched out his arms, his right fingers snagging Merrat’s jerkin. His left hand caught her waist and spun her. One of her blades still struck out and he heard the mage yelp and grab at his head.

The two TaiGethen tumbled away right in a heap. Merrat was the quicker to react. She balanced on one knee and had a sword ready to strike through his throat until she saw who it was.

‘Graf!’ she shouted, the word indistinct. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Trust me,’ shouted Grafyrre. ‘We need him.’

Merrat scowled. The mage had realised he had been reprieved. He was staring at them, one hand clamped to the side of his face. It looked as if his ear was gone. He was backing away. Merrat pounced on him, bearing him to the ground. Behind them, the roar of the flames intensified. Another part of the warehouse collapsed. Grafyrre could hear screams behind him now. He got to his feet and scrambled over to the mage. The heat was stifling, sucking the air from the sky.

‘Put it out,’ he shouted into the mage’s face. ‘Put the fire out.’

The mage stared at him, his face blank and terrified. Grafyrre and Merrat hauled the mage to his feet.

‘I know you can understand me. Put this fire out. And I promise I will spare your life.’

‘Graf . . .’

‘Not now, Merrat. Too much to lose.’

‘You will slaughter me like a pig,’ said the mage.

‘I promise that I will if you don’t put this fire out now.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You use fire,’ said Grafyrre. ‘Use ice. Try.’

The mage looked past him to the inferno. ‘It will not work.’

‘Try and I will spare you,’ said Grafyrre. ‘Don’t try and you will burn in your own fire.’

‘I—’

‘No time. My friends are dying within. Is this why you are here? To supervise the murder of thousands of helpless elves? Are their crimes worthy of this death? You have a soul as do they. Study it. But do it quickly.’ Grafyrre held the mage’s gaze. ‘I am TaiGethen. You can trust my word. I will spare your life.’

The mage was alone. He might have more help coming but it would not arrive in time. He shook off the elves’ hands and stepped forward.

‘I will do my best.’

Grafyrre and Merrat stood very close behind him while he prepared. Merrat made a small hand gesture. Grafyrre nodded and Merrat drew a knife and kept it a hair’s breadth from the mage’s back. The man breathed deeply and held his palms together in front of his face. He whispered a word and opened his palms, fingers pointing down towards the fire.

Just like on the bridge, the air froze. Grafyrre felt the air rushing by him. The mage channelled it out over the fire in front of the warehouse. Ice met fire. A dense fog erupted into the air. Within it, brown and orange sputtered and died. But the warehouse still burned, its timbers still fell and its slates cracked and tumbled.

The mage held his arms out, pushing the freezing wind over the stone apron. Grafyrre twitched his hand. Merrat put her knife away. The fog tattered and dispersed on the breeze and under the pressure of the rainfall. In places, the fire roared back to life but at least there was a path. Grafyrre touched the mage on the shoulder, breaking his concentration.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Others will not share my mercy.’

The mage took off. Grafyrre ran towards the warehouse.

‘Katyett! Come on. Bring them out now. The warehouse won’t last!’ He ran into the mouth of the ruin. ‘Katyett!’