Chapter 28: The Stand

Chapter 28

The Stand

When Roen woke up, just for a moment, he lay on his back in the dark of his room. He could feel the Aether note under the floor as it had gone up another half tone in the night. South of the inn, the haze had thickened along with it, but he didn’t need to look out the window to know that.

He got up quickly, as he did for most battles during his life. He had learned long ago that lying in bed never made a battle kinder. The clothes he had laid out the night before were on the chair by the door. Dark trousers, a dark shirt, the leather jerkin he hadn’t worn in months. He didn’t bother with armour. Whatever was coming up out of the ground south of town would not care much for leather or steel. The clothes were there to keep his arms free, nothing more.

He went downstairs.

Brenner was already in the common room, fully dressed, sword on his hip, light leather pads covering the most vulnerable parts of his body, his pack organised and set by the door. He was at the bar drinking something with both hands around the cup.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” he asked as Roen was comming down.

“No.”

“Coffee? I have a few beans left.”

“Tea.” Brenner replied, gesturing with his chin to the cup.

Brenner had already made it. He poured a second cup and slid it across the bar. They drank standing up in the half-dark, not speaking, the kettle ticking down behind them while the windows greyed slowly with the beginning of dawn.

After a while Brenner said: “What is your plan for the perimeter?”

“Kael at the centre with the wall behind him. Kel running messages between his position and the inn, she can manage the smaller things if they get in the way. Two part-timers on the west flank where the road comes in. You and the farmer with the bow on the east.”

“East is the open side.”

“East is the open side. You’ll see anything that comes around the line before anyone else does, which is why I want you there.”

Brenner nodded. He had expected something close to that, and the fact that he had been put on the most exposed position didn’t seem to bother him so much as confirm a suspicion he had already formed about the kind of fighter Roen thought he was.

“What about the smaller monsters…the Wisps?” Brenner asked.

“Corruption beings, not monsters, they are not really alive. If they get past me, cut for the core. Aim, don’t slash wildly. They die in one strike if you find the centre core. Swing wide and you tire out in three exchanges, and the next one through takes you.”

“And the big lumps… the Hollows?”

“The Hollows are mine. If one breaks the line, fall back to the inn. Don’t engage.”

“Understood.”

After they finished their tea, Roen walked in the kitchen, closing the door behind him and took the sword he had left there yesterday. The hilt was warm under his hand from the kitchen air, which was a small absurdity that left him pleased as he noticed it.

He closed his eyes, let out a sharp breath and laid a thin weave of Aether along the surface of the steel, an enchantment he made mandatory when he became the Archmage, for all mages to do to their blades before going into battle. To anyone watching it would look like an heirloom, a blade by the most talented blacksmith, but in truth it made a mundane blade into something a mage could use to fight even if they had almost nothing left in their tank.

The blade settled into its weave with a high hum that lasted half a second and then went still. He slid it through the loop on his belt. He came back, looked at Brenner and said:

“Ready?”

“Ready,” Brenner answered.

They went out into the square.

• • •

Dawn had come grey and heavy.

The haze that had been on the southern horizon for two days had moved closer in the night. It now occupied the treeline entirely, a thick viscous fog with a taste of copper in it that you could feel at the back of the tongue before you could smell it in the air. The birds had fled. They had read the pressure hours before sunrise and made for the north, and the absence of their morning sound was louder than any noise could have been.

Even the wind had died. The world stood in an unnatural stillness, the type that comes before a storm, except there was no storm coming, only the stillness itself, sustained and waiting.

Roen and Brenner crossed the square to the perimeter wall. Kael was already there, on a barrel behind the low stones, his leg straight out in front of him with a horn at his belt and Kel beside him. The two part-timers were in position on the west flank, both of them looking very young in the grey light. The farmer with the hunting bow had taken his spot on the east, where Brenner would join him.

And Garren was at the wall too, leaning on his cane, his old sword across his back, looking south.

He had not been ordered to be there.

“I told you not to come south,” Roen said.

“You told me not to come south of the line, and the line is here. I am behind it. Don’t make me move.”

“Garren.”

“My town. We do not have this conversation.”

Roen looked at him for a long moment. There was no time for the argument, and Garren had used the timing exactly right, and the man’s eyes held a resolve Roen could not beat.

“Stay behind the wall.”

“I will stay behind the wall.”

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“If anything breaks through, you signal Sera and you do not engage. You signal.”

Garren nodded.

Roen turned to Kael. “Three blasts on the horn when you see them coming. One blast if something comes around the line. Long blast if you have to fall back.”

“One. Three. Long.”

“Kel, you stay with Kael. If he tells you to run to the inn, run. If you see anything coming around the line before Brenner does, blow the horn yourself. Don’t wait for permission.”

“Yes.”

Brenner was already moving to his position. He didn’t look back at the inn as he went. The farmer beside him did, briefly, but Brenner kept his eyes on the south, and after a moment the farmer did too.

He could see, in the distance, that Sera was standing at the door of the Compass with Milo. He had refused to go with the rest of the town, claiming that if this was happening because of him, to him, he might be dangerous to them. The boy had Nyx on his shoulder and Nyx’s eyes were already in their bright state, the same as they were the other night.

He did not go to them. He did not raise his hand. He turned south, drew the sword, and walked toward the dead zone.

The lower note rose to meet him.

• • •

The Wisps came first.

They drifted out of the haze in twos and threes, pale sickly lanterns moving on no wind, drawn by whatever signal had drawn the half-formed Hollows up out of the earth in the first place. Roen didn’t wait for them at the perimeter. He stepped past the line and went to meet them on their own ground, because the perimeter behind him was for what he failed to stop, and he did not intend to fail.

The first Wisp came from his right. Roen stepped inside its reach and put the sword through its core before its light had fully bent toward him. It shattered around the blade. Pale ash drifted off and dissolved before it touched the ground.

A second one came from the left while the first was still dying. He angled the blade the other way without looking. Same result.