Emperor Forged Read online

  Blood, laughter, and slaughter. Hish’s favorite ingredients for battle, I realized. She stood atop a horse, her axe-like sword in hand as she beheaded a knight in full plate. Another knight stabbed at her in desperation, but she deflected it. Her sword took his head off almost casually.

  In mere moments, the knights’ charge had turned into a desperate battle for survival. The few who had managed to keep their horses upright could only watch as their comrades were butchered. Dozens of oni, their bodies covered in blood and wearing trophies of black and gold from Lyria’s soldiers, carved up the downed knights with wicked grins. It must have been a vision of hell for the Empire’s knights.

  Not that I had time to admire it. I turned around from where I had landed atop the broken corpse of a soldier clad in black and brown, the colors of Aghram. The vampire rose up from where I had nearly cleaved her in two across her breastplate.

  This was Victoria, scion of Knight-General Volante, who was one of the few masters of both vampiric disciplines. She had the same regenerative powers he did. Blood coagulated and reformed into flesh in the wound, her body stitching itself back together. When I struck her, I had been curious to see for myself if she was actually who and what she seemed.

  “I will have your head,” she said a second time.

  I charged at Victoria as she bared her fangs, my blade humming with magical power and runes. Her pole-axe melted on contact with my blade, the shadows around it vanishing into nothingness. I briefly saw shock on Victoria’s face. Then my sword sliced through her head, bisecting it and her body in a single stroke. The runes left a glowing trail throughout her body, which collapsed to the ground.

  Her blood flailed about madly as the vampire desperately attempted to recombine her body. All of her attempts were prevented by the anti-regeneration magicks of my blade’s dwarven runes. New flesh was unable to grow, and the blood was unable to form anything solid. Eventually, Victoria died her true death.

  The gate exploded behind me and chunks of wood burst, clattering onto the stone. The first phase of the assault had succeeded.

  Now we needed to keep our momentum going for the rest of the night.

  Chapter 22

  I took a moment to tear a piece of cloth from Victoria’s body and clean my blade, not wanting her filth to potentially taint it. Not that it could, but I liked the symbolism. Knights poured in through the open gate behind me, oni and human alike, as I ensured a clean finish to my sword.

  “Wow, that was fast. I was sure she was some sort of evil version of you, boss,” Hish said, walking up to me and tilting her head. “Or was she like an evil version of me?”

  A vision of an evil version of Hish filled my head. It looked exactly like the woman in front of me, covered in blood and with a pair of heads on her belt. She had pinned some brown crests to her breastplate now, I noticed. A droplet of red ran down her face and onto a lip, and I saw a flick of pink as she lapped it up.

  “Something like that,” I said, looking away. In truth, Hish would never have been a match for Victoria. Vampires with regenerative powers were effectively immortal without the appropriate anti-regeneration magicks. The semiperfect dwarven rune I used to counter it was effective against even more powerful demonic regeneration that regenerated the body part whole. As I had countermeasures, Victoria never had a chance, but I did not wish to denigrate her abilities. She had been a daywalker vampire, one of the ruling class of vampires, and extremely dangerous.

  Light burst above us. I looked up and saw the blue sparkles of Yasno’s flare beginning to fade. Before they could, he replaced it, and other flares exploded nearby. Cheers filled the air along with the flares as we celebrated breaching the outer wall. With his fist in the air, Yasno stood next to me, face dour but proud. My enemies couldn’t miss this.

  They also couldn’t miss the fiery doom coming from behind. Snaps of magic from next to me were accompanied by gusts of wind as Miyasa loosed steel arrow after steel arrow along the length of the wall. The trail of light they left in the night sky burst into streams of fire that exploded along the battlements. Unlike the mages, she didn’t have a maximum range of a few hundred meters. Soon, the only magic I could feel along the walls was the subtle thrum of the barriers now that the battlemages had abandoned their posts. The Empire was in a panic. The defenders fled for their lives.

  Behind them came our ladders and our rams. The remaining gates shattered. My knights scrambled over the walls, through the openings, and into the city proper. Amid the chaos, we took the wall in minutes.

  I could picture Otwin screaming into his magetalk device back in the citadel. The officers who should be on the other side had long since fled, leaving his yells to echo uselessly within walls that now lay empty.

  The city wasn’t taken yet, I reminded myself with a shake of my head. Around me stood three oni officers who looked to me for the next steps.

  “One wall down, two to go. Your orders, Bulwark?” Yasno said, a fist over his breastplate. With the outer wall now breached and blue flares exploding all along the outer wall, his phase as commander had finished. It was down to me to—

  No, it wasn’t. I pulled back my thoughts and looked at Miyasa. That was the whole point, I reminded myself.

  “Miya, this next part is yours,” I said, looking her in the eyes. Her horns still glowed, although now her entire face did, too, after I had called her by her nickname. I made a mental note to get her accustomed to the name. Everybody else called her Miya, so I was going to start.

  “Yes, Mykah,” she said, staring back at me without doing anything for several moments. Then, as if suddenly remembering where she was, she sprung to attention. Her left hand slammed into her breastplate in a salute, perhaps a little too hard, given how much it moved and kept moving.

  Miya licked her lips and gave me a broad smile. “I will ensure the next wall falls. Take this for later,” she said, handing me one of two small disks from her hip. “I’ll remain here and work with Ilsa and her mages. Get to the gate and await my signal to strike.”

  The disk was a portable magetalk device. It had a range of less than a mile, but it was necessary for the next phase of the plan. I clipped it onto the back of my own belt, confident I wouldn’t lose it now that I wasn’t leaping over any more walls.

  I saluted. It lasted a moment, as Miya then grabbed my hand and kissed me on the cheek. Before I could respond, she leaped upward. The shouts above broke the spell, and I felt her magic as she made short work of the enemies who had been cowering on the wall above and were too scared to come down as we charged through the gatehouse.

  “Here I thought she’d be braver,” Yasno muttered, his face still unmoving when I gave him a look. “Shall we, Bulwark?”

  Yasno’s hand was outstretched toward the inner wall and the bright lights of the rest of the city, from where I could already hear the screams and yells of pitched battle. Boulders were beginning to fly overhead, signaling the next phase of the assault. Ilsa had begun her bombardment of the inner wall.

  Chapter 23

  Shields clanged off each other as we slammed into the enemy. I thrust my sword through a gap in the enemy’s shield wall and pulled the poor bastard I had stabbed to one side, hurling three other men with him. The onis’ hammers were striking down the other shields or caving in helmets and breastplates.

  Heat washed over me suddenly, licks of flame visible from the gaps between the shields above me. I pushed forward into the melee, gesturing behind me for another knight to step forward. Whirling around with my sword, I replaced the grunts of the enemy with screams of terror. I ignored them, looking up and around for the enemy mages who were attacking us. An axe bounced off my arm. I snapped out with my elbow and heard somebody’s nose crunch. He went down. More enemies stepped forward over the bleeding corpses of their comrades. My sword hummed.

  More boulders flew overhead of this shit fight of a brawl. Imperial archers and mages had started skirmishing from the windows and rooftops, their foot soldiers
forming up ranks in the streets. While we technically had the numbers in the assault, we mostly relied on our elite knights.

  By contrast, what we were cutting down was fodder. Idiots screamed “for the Empire and rebirth” as they flanked us, surrounded us, looked down on us—only to be ground down by warriors who could simply swing a hammer and send five of them flying down the street like dolls. To these fools, it must have felt like a battle for the survival of their city. Seeing barbarians with glowing horns and inhuman strength invade their city left them no choice but to behave like cornered rats. We were getting bogged down in the very city fighting I had hoped to avoid.

  The bright side was that almost everybody we were fighting was just a glorified city guard. Some wore the uniforms of the Imperial military, but most were essentially levies of the province, paid directly by the ruler of the province rather than by the Empire itself. Unlike Taranth, Aghram had always been a peaceful province. The Imperial military fought the demons to the west, so the local soldiers were as green as they came. It showed. Most of them didn’t even know to aim the pointy bit at the parts between plates of armor.

  I spotted the mages on the rooftop. They readied another spell, the tips of their staves glittering with prismatic light. I leaped up and removed one from service before I even landed. The other two barely had time to scream before I cut them down. A woman cowered up here with them, no weapon in hand and no feel of magic about her. The open door into the house nearby told me who she was. I left her alone and stepped off the rooftop.

  I saw Yasno finishing off the wounded as I landed. I didn’t like killing defenseless soldiers but I liked taking casualties even less. It was messy, but we put down those still able to resist. Leaving enemy wounded risked exposing our rear to attack. Hish was a street over and doing the same.

  “Wish they had the same attitude toward us as your folk,” Yasno said as he finished. “That way they might surrender.”

  “War breeds familiarity,” I said.

  Another set of boulders flew overhead, and I frowned. Our progress was too slow. I was worried about Miya.

  “Speaking of familiarity, what’s your plan for Miya when we shack up in the citadel? Big bunch of flowers, largest bed in the place, sword for symbolism?” Yasno asked, his face as dour as usual despite his words. I made a mental note to not play cards against him.

  I kept silent as we trod up the street behind Yasno’s men, my shield up. The walls were looming overhead already, their bulk making me nervous. There was no killing field this time, presumably due to the expense of demolishing so many expensive buildings in the middle of the city.

  “You really should act on it, whatever is going on with you and Ilsa. Or at least clear it up. See, we don’t really do monogamy,” Yasno continued. I cocked an eyebrow but continued to listen. “I’m serious. Oni are about fidelity, but it’s an individual thing. The mothers have as many partners as they need. The heralds have usually been the same, although Miya and the last one were different. Power brings with it the expectation that others are faithful to you in actions and you are faithful to them in the ideal.”

  “Can’t say I quite get that,” I muttered, spotting Hish over at the next street. She waved at us, along with the other oni, and I saw her begin to walk over. “Not sure it’s the time, either.”

  Yasno chuckled. “I think you do get it. At least you’re showing that you do right now in your actions. You’re the Bulwark.” Somehow, the way he said it sounded much more serious than when he simply used it as my name, as if he had imparted power into it.

  I looked sideways at the oni marching beside me, thinking about what had happened over the past few months. Unlike Hish, I got the sense that Yasno had an intelligence and wisdom that went beyond what he had been taught as an oni military officer. Truthfully, none of the single-horned oni seemed to have been taught all that much. It was who and what they were as people that made them valuable subordinates. I needed to speak with Miya about that after this, I realized.

  I held up my hand, not to silence Yasno but because we had arrived. I wasn’t going to complain about the timing, however. Creeping up beside us, Hish joined in the planning session.

  Hundreds of heavily armored Imperial soldiers stood in formation outside the gatehouse. Above them bristled a small armory of weapons and mages on the battlements. I could see and feel the defenders repulsing probing attacks elsewhere in the city. My companies fired flares into the air to signal they were at the wall. We didn’t fire off a flare.

  “Do you feel a signal?” I asked Hish and Yasno. They both shook their heads. Unfortunate. I had hoped they could sense it better than I could.

  Looking back at the gate to where Miya was, I watched another volley of boulders fly overhead. They slammed into the barriers of the inner wall and burst into pieces, having no apparent effect. It was unsurprising.

  Magical siege engines had become a vital part of warfare over the past several centuries. Magic could support many facets of a trebuchet, but it had limits. Despite the name, magic was ultimately about creating a real effect using magical energy—creating heat or light, conjuring a sword, halting regeneration. Physical objects could only hold so much magical energy, however. In a trebuchet, the more magic that was used to support one aspect, the less that could be used for others.

  Ilsa’s trebuchets were all the way outside the city. No mundane siege engine could ever hope to strike a wall this far inside the city. Every ounce of her mages’ magic was spent on hurling stone slabs far enough to hit these walls. If we had the time, we would come into the city and set up inside it, empowering the projectiles to penetrate the barriers and reinforced stone. Time was something we lacked.

  I tapped my fingers on the side of my breastplate, wondering for a moment if I should make the call. The magetalk disk sat on my belt. It wasn’t necessary yet. Ilsa and Miya would accomplish this, I told myself, just as we had pushed through the city.

  Taking a deep breath, I looked over at the mass of knights in front of the gate. At the very least, clearing them out and erecting a shield wall was a priority. We needed them gone. I raised my fist.

  “Sorry I’m late,” a woman shouted.

  I looked back down the street. Ilsa jogged toward me, her ponytail bouncing around with each step. Dozens of mages, wearing the uniforms of ordinary soldiers, trudged along behind her. The sole reason I knew they were mages was because I was their commander.

  “Actually, you’re early,” I said. “I still need to clear out some trash for you first.”

  Chapter 24

  “Don’t rush,” Ilsa admonished me. “I’m pretty sure Miya isn’t ready yet. Holding the barrier open won’t really be possible, so we’ll only have one shot at this. Can’t you sense her?”

  “Not a thing,” I said, looking back at the gatehouse in the outer wall. Besides an ominous red glow above the gatehouse, there was nothing for me to sense.

  Ilsa made a noise, looking concerned. “Say that next time. Miya’s summoning energy in the astral plane, but there’s a ripple effect in the magical plane. I thought that you would be able to sense that.”

  If I wasn’t terrible at it, then I could. The look on Ilsa’s face was so much like Terra’s all those decades ago that I couldn’t bear to face her. I looked away and saw Hish’s grin. Somehow, that was worse.

  “Don’t make that face. The two of you have no excuses for not being able to sense Miya,” I said, lightly knocking Hish on the head. She continued to grin up at me, although now it looked a little lopsided.

  The battle continued to rage around us. The mages were resting, accepting flasks from the knights who exchanged knowing looks. It might be a good idea to give the mage units some more exercise if they were this exhausted from trying to play catch-up from the rear. The mages might have been casting rituals earlier, but only one half of this force had seen battle, and it was while wearing heavy armor.

  Ilsa seemed to be concentrating. Despite my lack of talent, I still knew
the theory behind what she was doing. The local astral and magical planes were close enough that energy in one affected the other. It was a relatively simple principle that was usually demonstrated and observed in mage towers using equipment. Even large energy sources generated relatively small movements in energy, and separating regular magical effects from a spiritual one was even harder. Actively reading the flow of magic in real time, including from astral energy, was almost solely the domain of inhuman beings who were hooked into the world itself.

  A pure earth elemental such as Terra was such a being. She could sense the magical equivalents of pin drops in the astral plane. Fighting her was like battling somebody who could see the future simply because I had magic in my body and equipment. She read every move I made as soon as I thought about making it. Then she would counter it, hard. I genuinely did not know how I would battle her, as I knew she was still active within the Empire. The same could be said for all the other pure elementals. At some point, avoiding them would no longer be possible.

  A matter for the future, I decided.

  “How does this work?” Hish asked me. “I thought this wall was too big to blow up with magic. If the catapults can’t knock it down, how can the mages beefing up the catapults do it alone?”

  “We covered this back in your room,” I said, earning a sharp look from Yasno for some reason. “What happens when a large volume of unstable magical energy is pulled into this world but then suddenly let go?”

  There was a long pause as Hish held a finger to her lips and tilted her head to one side. Then she grinned. “Oh, it explodes!”