Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 31

She'd never imagined battle this way. The histories she'd read always described neat combat, with firing lines of arrows and swordsmen holding up the front. Talla hadn't expected so much shoving. Several times already Shanata had saved her life with a brutal yank on her shoulder to keep her from falling. Death could find her here by the trampling boots of her own people.

The rocks had created a tense moment. Sensing Zhair'lo's pain, she'd wanted to run to him, but Shanata had held her back.

"Areese has it," the older woman had promised, and Talla had watched the glowing blue dome of light which had protected her man while the Fighters at the front pushed through to the rock wielders.

"What in the nine hells?" Talla had shouted.

Shanata had only smirked at her.

But things had gone worse since. As close as they'd come to the Temple, the sheer press of bodies between themselves and Sweetness's gate held them back. All the shoving in the world didn't make a difference. The only benefit from this temporary hold up came in terms of their ability to widen their front. Slowly, the crushing pressure around Zhair'lo and his entourage lessened, at least in the crosswise direction.

"Can we pick another gate?" Talla shouted.

"No," Shanata replied. "Don't you realize?"

"Realize what?"

Shanata shook her head and pointed at the Enraged between themselves and the gate. Talla looked in that direction as Shanata started to speak and that meant she caught the spectacle perfectly.

At first, a sizzling sound tore through the night, a ripping of fabric perhaps, or the snarling of a wild beast. The air filled with a threatening tingling sensation, a pregnancy of ominous promise, setting all of the hairs on Talla's body on end. With the smoky night sky filled with expectation, a brief lull in the violence of battle ensued.

Then, with an eye-searing, deafening blast, lightning struck the centre of Enraged blockade. Emblazoned on Talla's eyes, the bolt of lightning had begun among the battlements of the Temple wall to the right of the gate and directed its fury into the heart of their enemies.

Enraged flew through the air.

'Nine hells,' Talla thought, 'they're torn apart. Body parts are in the air.'

She'd never seen destruction like that, never smelled the scent of burnt human flesh that now rained down around her. The Fighters, trained and disciplined, continued to push forward. The Enraged, confused and uncertain, began throwing rocks up at the wall, turning their backs to the swords on the ground.

The explosion itself had cleared dozens of bodies out of the way, allowing the Fighters to press a wedge in, closing upon the gate.

"What in the hells?" Talla shouted at Shanata.

"A Sorceress is on the wall," Shanata replied.

"They can do that?"

Shanata raised an eyebrow, "You read the histories, did you not?"

"Well, yes, but -"

"What did you think 'Sorceress' meant?"

"But," Talla stammered. "There were also dragons in those stories. That's -"

"Clearly ridiculous, yes," Shanata answered. "Now pay attention."

Another concussion echoed across the plaza as the Sorceress detonated a pack of Enraged and worked to clear a path for the army.

"How many times can she do that?"

"Not very many," Shanata's voice showed heavy concern.

A third lightning bolt struck and the Enraged shifted as much of their attention away from the army and toward the Sorceress as they could, bombarding the battlements with broken cobblestones.

-===================-

"Mistress!" one of the guards reached out as the Sorceress collapsed to her knees, arms wrapped around her middle.

"Hold your shield!" the Sorceress hissed.

Rocks bounced off their wooden shields, which they'd arranged to give her both a wall and a bit of a roof for protection. Breathing raggedly, the Sorceress pulled herself close under their protection. They had done an excellent job so far, opening and closing gaps in their shields to let her do her part.

"How does it look?" she asked. "Can they make it?"

They shifted the shields around so one of the girls could peer through it sideways, looking toward their right and down to the gate.

"Nearly, Abundance," the girl grunted out as a cascade of projectiles struck her shield. "A block of them still holds the area nearest the gate."

The Sorceress, still curled up clutching her belly on the parapet floor, turned her gaze to the stairway where a wide eyed Ragnar stared at her.

"At the next blast," she spoke stoically, her eyes glaring at him, "Open the gates."

Ragnar, dumbfounded, continued to stare at her.

"Go, now!" the Sorceress yelled. "We're running out of time."

The Soldier jolted as if struck by lightning, and darted down the stairs.

As soon as he left her sight, the Sorceress dismissed him from her awareness. She knew he would do his job and relay her orders, as Command always did for Authority, regardless of how little experience a Sorceress of Abundance had in all things martial.

She, on the other hand, had one more job to do. Looking down at her belly, red and blistered, she wondered if her body had anything left to give.

"We must clear the space in front of the gate," she told her guards.

"Mistress," one answered, shifting her shield to peer down, "I don't see how. There isn't a place to stand. If there were a turret -"

"If there were a turret," Abundance replied. "This wouldn't be a Temple."

Firing a lightning bolt from a shielded turret, or any such structure sticking slightly out of the Temple's wall, would have made her job a lot easier. But the shape of a Temple, Dictated hundreds of years previous, precluded such structures. Anything outside the Temple's triangle could not be part of the Temple, and a Sorceress could not leave that triangle. Pretty as a turret might have looked, it would have availed its High Officers of nothing.

"How will you strike in front of the gate?"

"You will hold me," she said. "You only need hold on until I loose my bolt. I can't survive past the edge long anyway, so if you can not hold afterwards, so be it."

"Mistress, we'll -"

"So. Be. It."

Surviving this battle would come as a surprise to her, but she had decided bells ago that she preferred this to the way her Queen had gone. Even if the death came out painful, as the burning ache in her belly foreshadowed, she vastly preferred this legacy to the alternative.

Besides, even if she stopped now, she probably wouldn't live through the damage she'd already done to her body.

It took only a moment for the four guards, all Form women well acquainted with the martial uses of their bodies, to explain to her how best to carry out her intentions. Two of them held their shields, small succour against the rain of rocks falling upon them, while she and two others crouched under their protection.

"When you give the order, Mistress," one of the guards clasping her wrist offered.

The Sorceress nodded, took a deep breath, and waited for a gap in the relentless beat of the rocks upon her guards shields.

"Now!" she shouted, gathering all her energy.

The two girls in front of her parted their shields just enough for her body to slide through sideways. The other two gripped tightly upon her right forearm and wrist as she braced one leather-booted foot on the very edge of the Temple's parapet and stretched her body out into the open space outside the Temple. Quickly, a light headed dizziness began to overtake her, the constraining force of the Temple's magic upon its High Officers, and she knew she only had only a heartbeat to strike.

The rocks had already begun to strike her body, with only her head guarded by her left arm curled up to protect it.

The Sorceress summoned all of her energy, compressed it into her belly, and hurled the burning force of it into the centre of the mob. She felt her stomach churn and ache as she pushed herself well past the point of pain into agony. She had long accepted that she would die here, defending this wall and this gate, and resolved to cause as much grief and devastation to her enemies as she could before her life came to an end.

She had the satisfaction, before the darkness took her, of seeing a wide, blood-drenched space open up in front of the gate.

-===================-

That last explosion had rattled Talla's ears far more loudly than any previous. Worse than the ear-ringing, though, blood had splattered from exploded bodies over a dozen ranks backward. No one in her field of vision, no matter her duty, remained clean.

"Madra Zen!" Talla swept blood out of her eyes.

"The Sorceress is done," Shanata noted, pointing toward the battlements.

"Are you sure?"

"I saw them pull her back."

The army, meanwhile, pushed forward through the blood soaked cobblestones, as those on the inside pushed the gates open toward them. They knew they had to seize the space in front of the gate before the Enraged moved back in. Unlike the Enraged however, the Fighters had discipline on their side. Their front line pushed forward, over the remains of their enemies and, once they reached the door, began pushing outward to spread their territory out along the wall. Those on the inside kicked and dragged bodies out of the way to allow the gate to open properly.

"Will these idiots ever give up?" Talla shouted.

"No," Shanata said. "They direct their fury toward our Conduit."

"What?"

"Do you not see it?"

Talla would have put her hands on her hips if she hadn't held a notched bow.

"I can't see anything from down here."

"Ah."

The gate began to creak open as space opened up, Fighters working to clear bodies while Enraged hurled rocks at their backs.

"Move," Gillian shouted, standing almost at Talla's back. "Clear! Clear!"

The left half of the blood covered gate had jammed only a few degrees open, but it had unlocked the right half, which people on the inside shoved at in great heaves of shuddering motion.

Amid the clanging of swords, the sound of metal slicing through flesh and the general ruckus of battle, the squeal of the door opening rattled inside Talla's skull. Gern's engineers had favoured trellises for their external gates. Talla wondered, if Beshenna's women had made the same decision, would this battle would have ended earlier? But perhaps not. There remained the matter of closing the gate. How would a trellis compare to a gate when the Enraged were jamming their corpses into the breach?

With an ever widening space around the Conduit's entourage, they managed to open the gates even amidst the falling cobblestones. Talla didn't need to watch Zhair'lo's squad going through, because she could clearly feel his relief. Shanata grabbed Talla by the shoulder and yanked her through shortly after.

"Where's Master Kendrick?" she heard Gillian demand as she crammed herself through after them.

With the gate only opened wide enough for two to pass through abreast, that space had acquired a hard premium. Once through, even Shanata found herself being shoved roughly aside to make way for those rushing through after.

The heavy brass doors muted the sounds of battle. Passing through those gates, they had traded the uncontrollable fires of the blazing haystacks for the tender torchlight of wall sconces.

A wild-faced man in Fighter's leathers approached them, his eyes scanning the ground around Talla and the others coming through the gate.

"Where is he?" the man demanded. "Where is your Conduit? Where is your caisson?"

"I'm right gods damned here," Zhair'lo shouted back. "Who are you?"

"Wa - walking?" the man took only a moment to drop his dumbfoundedness and find his tongue. "I - I'm Ragnar. I'm to escort you to the Queen of ... to the Goddess Ascending."

"Then let's go," Zhair'lo told him, then waved back toward the gate. "We don't have much time here."

Gillian stepped in front of Zhair'lo, jarring Ragnar once more, "Who has Command here?"

"The Sorceress ... she -"

"Died, probably, yes," Gillian interrupted harshly. "Who has Command. now?"

The man, Ragnar, jumped as if she'd slapped him across the face.

"I don't know," he stammered before straightening up. "There are so few left and too many gates to guard. With a Sorceress here ... they didn't send anyone else with rank."

Talla watched, feeling Gillian's frustration.

"Janine!" she shouted outed. "Andrea!"

"Mistress?" the second in command stepped up beside their Beshennan guide.

"Janine, take Command of the forces here," Gillian didn't even look at the woman as she spoke. "Heed Andrea's advice; this is her city. Listen to Master Kendrick's guidance as well when he comes through. I will proceed with Soldier Ragnar to the Goddess's Domain."

"Yes, Mistress."

"Let's move!"

As one, the squads that had rested at the core of the army for the last three days separated from their sisters and brothers and marched toward the centre of the Temple. Zhair'lo's squad took the lead, surrounding their charge, while Gillian's group, including Shanata, Talla and the two surviving Seconds, followed on. In a few heartbeats, a third squad outpaced Zhair'lo's and Talla saw a large man with a double bladed axe leading fifteen others to take point.

"Who's the guy with the axe?" Talla whispered.

"Chief Cameron," Shanata yanked Talla backward.

"What?"

"You're starting to glow again," the older woman looked around to see if other had noticed.

"But we're at least ten metres back."

"Then we'll stay twelve," Shanata declared. "At least until the rain gets heavier."

"Rain?" Talla asked and, at that moment, realized a light mist of water had coated her exposed skin.

"Be cautious with your footing."

Talla twitched at the warning, looking at the damp cobblestones under her feet, and tried to understand why her superior's words struck her so strangely. With a lurch of her heart, she realized her confusion related to the lack of corpses underfoot. In their departure from the intense crush of the battle in the plaza to deadened quiet inside the gates, she hadn't had time to notice how easy walking had become without dismembered trip hazards every step of the way.

"Yes, Mistress," she shivered.

'You still there?' a voice penetrated her mind.

'Twelve paces back, covered in blood.'

'Yeah, shit. Did you know Sorceresses could do that?'

'No.'

She waited out a short pause in which Zhair'lo's mind faded and returned.

'It's in the board games, though, isn't it?'

Talla thought about that: the games with their wooden pieces; High Officers standing on the walls and damaging pieces far away. The inventors of those games had damn well known, but somehow it didn't get talked about.

'Yeah,' she acknowledged. 'You feeling like a pawn, now?'

Zhair'lo had no answer.

The long, straight avenue through which they marched ended at the torch lit gates of the Goddess's Domain. Talla spared a glance over her shoulder and estimated they'd come about half way when a strangled male voice cried out.

"Halt!"

The small army ground to a halt, swords and arrows pointed outwards even as every woman and man wondered who had taken Command.

"Zhair'lo?" Gillian asked, her tone carefully devoid of accusation.

"They're near," he wondered aloud, confusion tainting his voice as he grimaced. "I don't know where."

"Inside the Temple? We'd know, Zhair'lo."

Talla observed the tense moment, feeling Zhair'lo's pain from the outside. No doubt remained in her mind, feeling his distress through their link, that Enraged lurked somewhere near. Yet she, as much as he, couldn't locate them. He focused his attention on each of the buildings near them, and came up empty of sensation.

"Alright," Zhair'lo surrendered. "Keep going, then, Mistress."

"Forward," Gillian hissed, more wary than before, and they marched.

Uneasiness gripped Talla, because she could still feel the Enraged, creeping alongside them, as if they walked invisibly in the midst of the very Soldiers who protected her. If Sorceresses really could launch bolts of lightning, could Enraged veil themselves in the night air? Would a knife suddenly appear out of the darkness and pierce her armour?

All things seemed possible on a night like this one.

They hastily approached the large bronze doors that marked the edge of the Goddess's domain, the sense of danger no less real to Talla and Zhair'lo.

'Why don't they attack?' she hissed into his mind.

'I don't know,' he gritted his teeth in dismay. 'They're right gods damn here ... but frustrated ... I don't understand.'

"Who goes there?" a male voice shouted from atop the wall of the Goddess's domain.

"I'm the Conduit from Gern," Zhair'lo shouted back.

No one, Talla noted, had ever taken Command back from him since Gillian had told him to call the Fighters to the fore.

The gates began to creak open instantly.

'We've got to warn them,' Zhair'lo beamed into her mind.

'Warn them of what, though?'

They filed through the gate, more peacefully than they had through at Sweetness, and heard the door seal clang shut behind them.

"Are we safe now?" Gillian asked.

Eyes turned to Zhair'lo, who could only shake his head and shrug.

"They're still nearby -"

Talla wondered if Zhair'lo's mind might have suffered damage. Could his senses exaggerate? What of the damage holding all this magic had done to him?

'Get to the Goddess, Zhair'lo.'

Still uncertain, he obeyed her mental missive, and moved. The guards from the Goddess's domain, mostly heavily injured women who'd taken their places in the rearmost positions while they recuperated, didn't understand the value of Zhair'lo's intuition. They sent two extra squads, an unbalanced force of ten women and six men, as additional guardians for the Conduit on the final leg of his journey.

In a way, Talla couldn't blame them. From their vantage on the wall, they could see that the three Queens' Domains held their own gates. No one had penetrated to the Goddess's Domain in all the days they'd fought the Enraged. Why in the nine hells should they take people off their wall?

The rain started to pour down as they marched past a pristine but dry fountain, Beshenna's aqueduct having long since shut down. The Temple would have taken any water available and strictly conserved it for drinking and medical emergencies.

Behind the fountain, a long, high-walled road led into the heart of the Goddess's Domain. The route, paved with rain-soaked flagstone, chilled Talla. What a terrible place, she thought, to find oneself trapped. Women stood tall on those high walls, arrows notched to their bows, the Goddess Ascending's last line of defence.

And still, chilling Talla worse than the rain, the ghosts of the Enraged floating along beside her; a courtesy, she fervently hoped, of Zhair'lo's addled imagination.

The narrow roadway opened up into a small plaza that harkened back to Gern. A two rank phalanx of armour clad women armed with spears blocked the way to a set of wide steps leading up to a large wooden door.

As they entered the plaza, the ghosts slowly drifted away, falling somewhere behind in Zhair'lo's senses. Talla wondered if they'd really gone away, or if Zhair'lo, seeing the end of his quest, let hope rule over the fear that had created the spectres in the first place.

'They're happy,' Zhair'lo told her, denying her wishes. 'And they're coming.''

"Call a halt," Gillian ordered.

"Halt!" Zhair'lo commanded. He lowered his voice to speak only to those around him. "They've got to hurry. The Enraged aren't far behind."

Gillian cast a glance backward, but the rain had reached such a fevered pitched, her eyes couldn't even see to the end of the long avenue they'd just walked. She darted forward to speak with those in the phalanx and they parted.

"Non-combatants inside," Gillian shouted as she ran back. "Zhair'lo, take your squad with you. We'll -"