Paladin's Fall: Kingdom's Forge Book 2 Read online

  Dain moved back against the far wall and into one of the empty horse stalls. With the door open, he could watch the ongoing battle.

  Regan fought well; Dain had seen that from his duel with Jin. He didn’t rush his attacks as young men so often did. His movements were smooth, measured, and powerful. Unlike his companion, who fought more recklessly, Regan conserved his energy by moving methodically.

  He would make a good Paladin, Dain thought. Although the way he and Jin look at each other, I may have to kill him. He smiled, wincing immediately after as a vicious crack in his lip opened where the butt of an orc’s axe had caught him.

  Verdant’s nephew.

  He and Sera could do worse for a son-in-law. Sera might not be happy with a soldier, though. Not to mention one working for Drogan. She’d never fully accepted the need for her daughter to learn the sword, and still held out hope that Jin would quit the rangers and fighting altogether.

  That’s one battle Jin will have to fight on her own.

  Regan finished his turn and took a seat near Dain, panting and sweating but unharmed. Dain’s lips twitched again, imagining Sera’s reaction to him.

  Time wore on and the defenders rotated through their shifts. Three men fell. Two more were seriously injured, unable to continue.

  Dain had just started his second turn when a scream echoed from above.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The scream came from the floor above Jin. Through the ceiling, she heard shouting, yells, and then another long, pain-filled wail. The wail cut off, and then there was only a cold silence above.

  Jin wanted to climb up; they couldn’t afford for the archers above to fail, but her first duty was to Neive. The ambassador could not defend herself. After the lower floor was breached and they had stopped heating water, the golden elf whom she had been with had gone down to join the other defenders below, leaving her and Neive alone on the second floor. Jin had put on her armor then.

  She watched Neive as the ambassador stared wide-eyed at the floor above.

  She was holding up well so far. Dain had said she was a soldier’s wife, and she’d proven it. She hadn’t complained about the heat or work nor shown so much as an ounce of fear. Neive had simply dug in and started working on anything and everything she could to improve their chances.

  Still, Jin couldn’t let her father and Regan face the danger alone. The wooden hatch was closed to the armory above. On silent feet, she climbed the stairs and pressed an ear against the wood. Nothing. She drew her sword and lifted the hatch just enough to peer through. She raised the hatch a couple of inches higher and took another step up. Silence. During the fighting she’d heard the men above cursing and running about as they carried supplies up to the defenders above. Now there was nothing. Were they all dead? How could that be? Anything attacking them would have to have come up through the kitchen, and nothing could have slipped by without her or Neive noticing.

  She lowered the hatch again.

  “What is it?” Neive whispered behind her.

  “I still hear fighting below, but it’s quiet above. Something has happened to Briel’s men up there.”

  “How could that be? Could they scale the tower?”

  “I don’t know, but we would have heard them if they had. And Briel surely would have seen them and cut them loose.”

  “Go,” Neive said calmly, but her eyes betrayed her. They were wide and full of fright. She seemed ready to fly apart at any moment.

  Another long scream came from above.

  “Go,” Neive repeated. “If we have enemies above, we’ll be overrun anyway. There will be no protecting me then.”

  “Follow after me and watch my back,” Jin said. “Grab that dagger, too. Do you know how to use it?”

  “Stick the sharp end in the enemy. Not much beyond that.”

  “Good enough. Keep it held point down and tucked in against your forearm. Let them get close before they see it.”

  Jin lifted the hatch open and, with Neive a few steps behind, crept into the armory. Empty. The torches had burned down to nubs. Their low flames threw off a dim orange light. The screams must have come from the top floor. She moved to the last set of stairs. The hatch to the top level was closed as well, and she climbed up to put her ear to it.

  If all was well she should have heard the archers above, but there was only a strange gurgling sound coming from the other side of the hatch. Motioning Neive back, she lifted the latch with her swordtip.

  Night had fallen and she could see only an inky blackness immediately in front of her. There should have been torches burning. She lowered the hatch again.

  “Light a fresh torch. It’s dark up there. Stay a bit behind me and keep it out of my eyes,” Jin said.

  Neive nodded.

  Jin lifted the hatch again with the tip of her sword, easing it fully open. She drew on the Light’s power and charged her blade. It crackled a crisp blue, and Jin felt the now-familiar shiver of power run down her spine.

  She climbed the last few steps to the top floor.

  Blood—splattered over the walls, floor, and ceiling—reflected her sword’s glow. Bodies lay strewn everywhere, some torn in half, others missing limbs, a few headless. Only the whiteness of exposed bone seemed to be free of blood. By their darker clothing, Jin recognized the remains of Regan’s two men among the fallen Golden.

  Her nose twitched. A thick, acrid odor overpowered her. Her eyes watered with it. One of the golden elves lay with his back propped up against the outer wall. His chest rose and fell and blood trickled from a wound across his chest. Jin shifted, and his face became visible in the light of her glowing sword. Briel. The tower commander held a hand to his throat.

  Jin knelt by Briel’s side. Neive followed after her, holding her hand over her mouth and coughing at the biting stench.

  Briel’s eyes jerked from hers across the room toward one of the windows. He tried to speak, but only managed a hoarse croak.

  Jin followed his eyes. At first she saw only shadows and the fallen bodies of several men. There’s nothing here. What is he…? Then she noticed a darkness where one shouldn’t have been. She moved her sword up to throw more light at the dense patch of shadow.

  The shadow screamed and launched itself at Jin.

  It struck the blade’s edge and the Light in her sword flared bright and raging hot. For a moment she caught sight of the creature’s hideous face. It was covered in wet, leathery scales and its eyes were dull and black, like a doll’s. Hundreds of triangular teeth lined its mouth. From legend, she recognized it for what it was.

  Merciful Creator. A demon.

  She shifted her sword and the demon struck again, howling. Jin felt the Light respond to the demon’s touch. Like a river of fire, it surged into her anew. She forced more of its strength into her sword and it shone steady and bright, driving the room’s shadows into retreat.

  The demon raised a forearm, shielding its eyes.

  “Get behind me and stay there,” Jin bit out. “The dagger will do you little good here.”

  At her words, the demon struck forward again and Jin parried it. A powerful claw raked over her armor, tearing at the steel.

  Jin swung her sword. The blade flared, and she felt the edge bite into stringy flesh. The demon howled in pain. In that brief flash of Light, she saw that its body was shaped like a huge dog’s. Jin slashed again and found nothing but air.

  The demon made a rasping sound, almost like laughter.

  Neive pitched her torch forward and it rolled against the wall behind the creature, framing it in firelight. Jin wasted no time and thrust her sword. The blade flared again as she stabbed it into the center of the demon’s face.

  The demon screamed. Its hands clawed for Jin’s and she fought to hold onto her weapon. Its sweeping tail lashed out and s
truck her across the leg, and Jin retreated with a curse. Her wrists stung and her thigh ached as well. It felt like she’d been scalded by a hot iron. She kept Neive behind her and crept back until they were against the wall.

  There has to be a way to kill this thing, Jin thought. Her breath was coming hard and she could hear her heartbeat hammering in her ears. She tried to remember the little that Dain or her mother had told her about demons. Nothing seemed to help.

  The Light hurt it. She knew that much. Forcing herself to concentrate, Jin drew deeper on the Light, and instead of focusing all the power into her sword, she charged the warmth into her armor instead. Faintly, it began to glow. The room grew brighter—bright enough to reveal her enemy clearly again.

  As before, it held an arm in front of its eyes, and she saw it turn to glance from her to a nearby window. The demon seemed torn between fleeing and renewing its assault on her and Neive.

  Jin took the decision out of its hands. In two quick steps she was almost on top of it, and she slashed at the demon with a quick, hard stroke.

  She’d expected resistance; there had been earlier, but the sword seemed to burn through the demon almost instantly. It howled in pain, an ugly wound across the forearm, its cries echoing in Jin’s mind until she too was screaming. The demon struck at her and screeched louder when its claws brushed over her Light-charged armor.

  Jin struck for the demon’s head, connected, and the blade penetrated. The screams fell blessedly silent. The flesh pressing against her sword popped and sputtered like a piece of fatty meat over a fire. The demon collapsed, and she felt her sword slide through its head until the tip struck the tower’s wooden floor. She leaned on the blade, resting for a moment, breathing heavy. The Light drained out of her and suddenly she felt like she’d run a hundred miles. The Light took with it the singed feeling from where the demon had touched her.

  Finally, she withdrew the blade and wiped it clean with the hem of her cloak.

  “Thank the Light,” Neive said, hand to her heaving chest. “What was that thing?”

  “A demon, I think,” Jin said.

  A gurgling came from Commander Briel, and Jin wheeled and knelt by him once more. He didn’t have long. He needs healing, and quickly. She prayed to the Light despite her exhaustion, and a sphere of blue energy pulsed to life in her open palm. Without hesitation, she drove it into Briel’s chest.

  The Light filled him. It flashed out from his body in all directions, engulfing the tower’s fourth floor completely.

  Unable even to stand, Jin slumped against the wall beside Briel. She struggled to catch her breath and heard him doing the same. Neive dropped to her knees beside him and felt at his neck.

  “He’s alive. Unconscious, but alive,” she said.

  “Help me up. I want to see outside,” Jin said. “There may be more of them out there.” She reached for Neive’s hand and drew herself up.

  Arm in arm, they staggered to peer over the outer wall. Jin’s legs felt stiff and unwieldy beneath her. Her breath caught again as she looked out. It was well after midnight now.

  Dawn can’t be more than a few hours away. How soon did Briel say help could arrive?

  Several hundred orcs remained, all clamping down on the doorway below like the angry jaws of some huge, seething vise. There were three fires burning some distance away that threw their dancing orange light on the tower. Several orcs were dragging their dead free and piling them up in great mounds of gore at the tower’s sides. The top of the mounds almost reached the second level.

  “The defenders still live,” Neive said. They could hear the clash of swords from below. Another orc staggered back, bleeding from a split skull. He fell, and shortly afterward his body joined the other dead on the pile.

  “This is wrong. The orcs shouldn’t be acting like this,” Jin said. “It isn’t their way. They won’t take losses like this for a simple tower. Not unless…something else is driving them on. Something they’re afraid of.”

  “What could frighten an orc?” Neive asked.

  Jin glanced at the demon lying dead on the floor.

  “Something they fear more than death,” she answered. Neive stared at her with wide eyes. The silence between the two women stretched. “There is little more we can do here, and Briel will recover,” Jin said at last. “Let’s join the men downstairs.”

  A horn sounded in the distance. Not the same deep, rumbling note as an orc’s horn; this one rang clear and pure. Soon, others joined it.

  The orcs turned to face the noise. They formed up into rows and columns, and Jin saw the flash of a fireblast, then a waving banner—a roaring lion’s head over a field of crimson—and finally a line of elven cavalry crashing into the orcs.

  “The messengers got through. Help has arrived,” she told Neive, allowing herself a smile.

  “Thank the Creator,” Neive answered, voice thin but glad.

  “We need to tell the others.”

  “What about Briel?”

  “He’s as safe here as anywhere we could leave him,” Jin said. “If another demon comes, it would kill him here or follow us down and kill him on one of the lower levels. We have to let them know help is coming, and we can only do that by leaving him here.”

  Neive sighed and nodded.

  They worked their way down the spiraling stairs through the tower’s levels. The bottom level was shrouded in smoke and thick with the coppery stench of blood. Pools of slippery red coated the floor.

  Alone, Regan fought at the door. Most of the other men were down, too wounded to fight or dead already. Low moans came from several.

  “Next!” Regan rasped. A golden elf moved to fight in his place. Regan drew back, panting and covered in sweat and blood.

  Jin turned and saw Dain kneeling over a dying ranger. He closed the man’s eyes with the palm of his hand.

  “Father!” Jin called. She ran forward to embrace him and stopped as she noticed the deep wound in his side.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Got careless. Guess I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  “It’s hardly nothing,” Jin said. “I will heal you.”

  “No,” he said, stopping her with a hand on her wrist. “Not me. Healed or no, I’m out of the fight; I’ve nothing left to give. Heal Regan and then Hexen. We need the two of them to carry the load.”

  “Help is coming, Father. There are elven cavalry outside.” She moved to Hexen then, healing his twisted sword arm as swiftly as she was able, and then moved on to Regan. His wounds were less severe but numerous, and she had to concentrate hard through the haze of exhaustion threatening to consume her in order to make sure she’d done the job properly.

  “You’ve sprung more leaks than an old wineskin,” she said to Regan when she’d finished. “I think you’ll be well enough now, though.”

  “Thank you,” he responded, grimacing and sitting up from his slouch against a wooden post. He looked at her then. “If only wine flowed through my veins instead of blood. Then we’d at least be having more fun.” He smiled at her through the grit and dried blood on his face. Jin snorted and turned back to her father.

  “We just need to hold them off for a while longer,” Dain said, taking a full measure of her for the first time since she’d descended from the tower. His eyes lingered over the demon’s blood splattered across her armor. “What happened up there?”

  “Dead. They are all dead. All but Briel. A demon, something not of this world, killed them,” Jin said.

  Dain nodded grimly. “I felt it. Something that twisted the Light. I was distracted, trying to figure out what I felt, and that’s when the damned orc slipped past my blade.”

  “Hexen and Regan are healed. I’ll take care of you next,” Jin said. “Lie still, and no arguing.” She prayed, and the warm Light pulsed to life as a tiny,
sputtering spark. It wasn’t much; she didn’t have much strength left, but he wouldn’t bleed to death waiting on help. She placed the spark on her father’s injured side. He gasped and fell back.

  “Lift me up,” he croaked. “Get me to my feet and I’ll help Regan and the others.”

  “No, Father,” Jin said. “Lie still and sleep. I will keep you safe.” She put her hand on his chest forcefully and held him down. He complied with a grunt, his eyes already falling shut.

  Hexen was fighting again, and she moved to join him. She took up position on his left and her sword sang with fury. She tried not to think as she fought, moving on pure instinct instead. She focused on merely stopping their blades first, then answering their attacks with her own.

  Parry, block, thrust, slash.

  The motions were mechanical and precise, and her sword flowed from form to form with ease.

  “They are broken,” Regan called out at last, exhaustion and triumph mingling in his voice.

  Jin looked over at him, unaware of when he’d taken Hexen’s place. The gentle light of dawn colored the sky outside. Elven cavalry streamed past them in a storm of hooves and polished steel. The remaining orcs fled toward the river, and the elves sliced them down without mercy.

  Though they were orcs and the aggressors in this engagement, part of Jin wanted to cry at the slaughter; she had seen enough death today, but she knew it served a greater purpose. Better if the raid is killed to a man. Better to have them think us monsters that swallow their warriors whole.

  Gashan pulled up his horse in front of her. He hopped down and soon had a ring of guardsmen around the tower.

  “Princess,” he saluted. “Are you injured? Are you hurt?”

  She was taken aback by his eyes. There was true concern there. Concern for her, a mixed-blood elf.