Rojer swallowed the lump in his throat, knowing she was right. They kept on, skirting around the piles of wood and rock that might soon be hurtling at Newhaven. At last, they peeked around a giant mound of dirt and saw the demons at work.
The land had been cleared, and huge trenches were being dug by wood and rock demons, as well as some other breeds Rojer could not recognize. The trenches were twenty feet wide and over ten deep, but the demons swept the dirt away with their great claws as if it were nothing more than dry leaves. When they came to a large stone, it was torn free of the ground and carried to one of the many piles.
‘What are they doing?’ Gared asked, looking at the seemingly random series of trenches. ‘Building a defensive perimeter? That don’t sound like demons.’
‘These are smart demons,’ Renna reminded him. ‘There’s a mind, or more than one, nearby directing them.’
‘Still don’t make sense,’ Gared said. ‘Demons flee with the sun. What’s the point of taking and holding ground?’
Rojer looked, his eyes running over the precise shapes forming in the ground, and felt his face go cold, suddenly putting a name to the feeling of repulsion he had been feeling steadily increase as they approached.
‘They’re building a greatward.’
Gared and Renna both snapped their gazes at him, and Rojer felt a sudden pressure in his bladder. Creator, I’m about to piss myself.
Wordlessly, he ran back around the great pile of dirt, throwing open his cloak and yanking the drawstrings of his motley trousers. He barely had his member in hand before the stream came pouring out.
‘Ahhh,’ he gasped, but his relief was short-lived as a low growl sounded a few feet away. Rojer looked up and saw a field demon tamping its feet to spring.
He fell back with a cry as it launched itself at him, getting tangled in his still-undone trousers and landing heavily on his back. He fumbled, trying to free a knife, but could not flick his arm properly from the prone position.
But then Gared was there, roaring as he swung his heavy axe with two hands. Warded by Arlen himself, the blade split the demon’s head from the tip of its snout to the base of its neck, covering Rojer in a spray of ichor.
The demon still kicked as Gared bore it to the ground, tearing at his cloak in its death throes. Rojer was up in an instant, retying his trousers and readying his fiddle and bow just as a reap of field demons appeared, surrounding them. Renna had her long, sharp knife in hand and was growling like a demon herself. She looked hungry for the fight, though they had little hope against so many.
This one’s nuttier than Arlen, Rojer thought, and that’s saying something.
‘No one move,’ he said, putting bow to string. He played a few sharp notes to surprise the demons and drive them back, then wove in a melody to mesmerize them before he caused the distraction that would allow them to disappear.
But the demons were not mesmerized. They had leapt back from his first shrieking notes, but it didn’t last. One darted in to snap at Renna, but a quick slash of her knife drove it back. They began to circle hungrily, growling and clawing at the soil, searching for an opening.
Uh-oh, Rojer thought.
‘We can’t stay here,’ Renna said. ‘If they’re under the control of a mind, half the Core will be on us in a minute.’
Rojer glanced at Gared’s torn cloak, and his own, covered in coreling ichor. There was no escape there, and fighting was madness. He gritted his teeth and deepened the melody, adding layer after layer of complexity. There was a telltale drooping in the demons’ eyelids, but still they circled.
‘I need a distraction,’ Rojer said. ‘Renna, your cloak is intact. Can you draw them off for a moment?’
‘Ay,’ Renna said, ‘but they won’t all follow me.’
‘I can make them,’ Rojer said.
‘Spit on that plan,’ Gared said. ‘I ent running and letting you …’ But before he could finish the sentence, Renna leapt at the ring, tackling one of the field demons and stabbing it repeatedly as they rolled across the ground. She sprang to her feet unharmed, while the demon laboured for breath on the ground. Already it was healing.
‘Run!’ Rojer called to her, and she did, dashing barefoot to one of the piles of rocks, leaping nimbly from stone to stone until she made the top.
Rojer changed his music accordingly. She’s getting away, it said, chase her! There are plenty to take the others!
With that command, the demons all leapt after Renna, claws scrabbling on the hard stone as they climbed after her. A few paused, looking back with something that went beyond their normal instinct, but the distraction had done its job as Rojer herded Gared to another spot and laid down layer after layer of confusion. He brought more and more of the enchanted fiddle to bear, increasing the volume until the music thrummed in the air, making himself and Gared impossible to pinpoint.
Renna waited atop the pile of stones as long as she could, delivering warded kicks that sent demons flying off the pile with explosions of magic. They landed hard, but quickly rolled back to their feet, shaking off the blows and attempting to regain their wits.
When she saw them safe, Renna crouched and sprang, leaping an amazing thirty feet to land atop one of the massive dirt mounds the rock demons had created with their digging. She sank slightly into the loose soil on impact, but seemed none the worse for wear.
But before she could cloak herself once more, a wind demon gave a shriek, plummeting out of the sky at her. Renna turned to face it, tensed and ready, but the demon did something Rojer had never seen. It threw open its wings against the dive, pulling up short, and spat a bolt of lightning at her.
The night lit up with the blinding flash. Rojer snapped his eyes shut, but not fast enough to prevent himself from being dizzied. He struggled to keep playing as bright flashes of colour danced across the inside of his eyelids. When he opened them again, he saw Renna lying on the ground, having fallen more than a dozen feet. There was smoke drifting from her, and the air smelled of burned flesh and ozone. Amazingly, she was struggling to her feet, growing steadier as she did. Her glow was still bright to his warded eyes, and he imagined she was healing in the same way demons had.
Got to learn that trick, he thought.
Two field demons pounced on Renna before she could recover fully. Gared gave a roar, charging to her aid. Once he was more than a few feet from Rojer and his fiddle, the demons took note of him, but not in time to avoid his first deadly swings. Axe in one hand and machete in the other, he batted the demons away from the fallen woman, leaving deep gashes in their scaled flesh. He was standing protectively over her in an instant, carving out room for her to get her feet under her.
Already the demons Gared had struck were back on their feet, healing quickly, much as Renna had. More came running, but these kept safely out of the range of Gared and Renna’s weapons. More and more field demons arrived, the reap encircling the two. Soon the entire area swarmed with them, a mass of writhing, scaled flesh, glowing bright with magic.
But even with these overwhelming odds, the demons did not attack. They kept in constant motion, forcing Gared and Renna to stand back-to-back, weapons at the ready, waiting for an assault that never came.
Trapped.
But trapped for what? Rojer looked around. Winged demons circled overhead, but did not seem inclined to dive. The rock and wood demons continued to dig, oblivious.