The Black Prism

Chapter 89

Gavin’s intuition was wrong.

On arriving at the Hag’s Gate, he’d become like a man trying to plug a leaky hull with his fingers and toes. He could only reach so far. He and the Blackguards had held the Hag’s Gate alone, with no other support, against thousands of soldiers, for ten minutes now. At this point he could hold it by simply standing here behind the bullet shield his Blackguards had drafted in front of him.

They weren’t fighting him. Everywhere he went, the army facing him withdrew. If the city had only had one gate, that might have been helpful. But with three gates and a crumbling three-quarters circle for a wall, it was hopeless. No one would face him. They simply sent men around the sides and waited. If he held these men up for long, the armies would simply enter through the other gates. By this time surely all the gates had fallen.

So his enemy was canny. He wasn’t wasting his men throwing them against Gavin. Time would deliver the victory into his hands, so he was preserving his strength. No need to rush the victory. Send the men around Gavin and advance everywhere but where Gavin was. Then Gavin would either be rendered totally ineffectual, dashing from one place to another fighting men who melted away, or he would become separated from the main body of his army—at which point Lord Omnichrome would throw away as many lives as he needed to to kill him. Or capture him.

The campaigner in Gavin was furious. During the war, he would have gone for the throat. They wanted to melt in front of him? He would have gone for the king and killed him and let the chips fall where they may. Doing such a thing would put him in the most peril possible, but he wouldn’t have cared. Which is why fortune favors the young. He snorted. If he got killed, the refugees wouldn’t make it two leagues out of the harbor.

Cursing, Gavin drafted the retreat flares and shot them high into the sky.

“Any news from the docks?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

Gavin hadn’t expected any messengers to be able to find him, but it still would have been nice. “Let’s go.”

A red Blackguard laid down a thick carpet of red luxin across the broken opening of the gate and set fire to it as Gavin turned and started jogging. They’d lost their horses earlier, and hadn’t grabbed any replacements. Horses that weren’t trained to musket fire and magic were often as dangerous to their riders as they were useful. Being mounted also made you a nicer target for muskets and drafters. The city wasn’t that big, they’d run.

Odd, running through an empty city. Almost everyone was simply gone, and there wasn’t yet that air of abandonment and layer of dust that settled over cities soon after their inhabitants had left. Garriston was the kind of empty that happened when people left food burning on the fire and simply ran. The burnt smell hadn’t even dissipated yet. In fact, they were lucky no one had burned the city down. Empty alleys. Empty homes. Little potted flowers abandoned in windowsills and not yet withered.

Death will come for you too, little flower.

They made it to one of the bridges when the ambush was sprung. Two dozen drafters and several color wights popped up from the roofs and began hurling magic. No hesitation, no warning. Of course. They’d circled Gavin to cut off the most obvious route out. The flat roofs gave them an excellent platform from which to attack, and the open area of the bridge made a perfect killing field.

But the Blackguards were Blackguards. Every one of them knew his task and how the tasks would shift depending on which of them were killed. They practiced for this. This is what they were. Shields of green luxin, blue luxin, and more green luxin, three layers thick, enfolded Gavin. He knew exactly where they would land, and each shield had holes in it, so that he could fight too.

He stuck a hand outside of his shield and pointed at every one of the attackers he could see. He shot narrow tendrils of superviolet luxin at them, sticking it to each drafter, leaving dangling ropes of superviolet. Two of the Blackguards were superviolet/blue bichromes. Their first action was to shield Gavin, second to shield themselves, and third—if possible—this. They could see Gavin’s superviolet threads, and they drafted blue along those shining paths as they pulled grenadoes from their bandoliers. They hurled the grenadoes, which followed the arcing superviolet tracks unerringly. One, two, three, four, five, six. They had even bolstered the arcs of luxin so they followed a natural throwing path.

But the ambushers were moving too. Three Blackguards went down in the first wave of fire missiles. In defending Gavin first, they couldn’t fix their own shields in time. A gout of red luxin jetted in from four sides, trying to drench the entire bridge so they could set it alight. Blue and green Blackguards threw up shields to divert the flows off the sides of the bridge while a yellow threw light-burst grenadoes at everyone she could see.

Gavin looked forward and saw that the ambushers weren’t blocking the way across the bridge. There was only one reason for that. They wanted Gavin and the Blackguard to flee headlong into something worse.

Projectiles were sparking and whining off his shields, grenadoes’ explosions were rocking the rooftops, and huge blue knives like icicles were being fired by two of the color wights behind them. The Blackguards were compressed tight around Gavin, using their shields and, if that failed, their bodies to keep him safe.

“Let’s move! Cross the bridge!” the commander said. She was young. Orholam, had they lost so many that this young woman was in charge?

All this was according to the Blackguard training, too. Protect, secure, decide, act. No hesitation.

“No!” Gavin shouted. He pointed off the side of the bridge and drafted a new walkway in green from the middle span to a point thirty paces down.

“Flash!” one of the Blackguards yelled. She was a yellow. She launched a flash bomb a mere ten paces into the air. Gavin and the Blackguards covered their faces as it exploded with so much force that Gavin could feel it rock his shields.

Then they ran across the new green bridge, even as the bridge behind them, no longer protected from the red luxin streams, went up in flame.

One of the blue wights dropped into the street in front of them as they made it back to land, determined to steer them back into the secondary ambush. A dozen Blackguard hands went up and the beast was riddled with luxin bullets and cudgeled aside instantly.

A Blackguard fell, though Gavin hadn’t seen what cut him down. “No! No! No!” the man was yelling. His partner split away from them. The Blackguard who had fallen rolled over onto his back. His partner, a woman near forty, Laya, Gavin thought her name was, stood over him.

“I’m sorry,” the fallen Blackguard said. “Too much. Too much.”

Laya pulled an eyelid up to get a good look at the fallen Blackguard’s halo. She whispered something, kissed her fingers, touched them to the fallen man’s eyes, mouth, and heart. Then she cut his throat. The rest of the Blackguards didn’t wait.

They ran past an alley and found themselves looking at the backs of dozens of musketeers, all in formation, muskets up, pointed the other way where the ambush had originally tried to steer Gavin. The men were so intent on waiting for their quarry to appear in front of them that they didn’t see Gavin behind them. As they ran past, Laya slopped red luxin over them. A lot of red. The whoosh of flame was so intense as she set it alight that Gavin saw shadows half a block away—which meant the flames had leapt for a moment above the rooftops. The screams followed. Men burning to death.

One more river crossing. This time, Gavin led the Blackguards to a blank section and drafted his own green span across. No need to risk another ambush.

They made it to the docks and found hundreds of soldiers there, muskets loaded, facing out. The boats were still being boarded, mountains of luggage pushed aside, left behind, now gathered for use as barriers. There was a stream of boats already heading out, a line disappearing into the distance, going through the Guardian’s legs as she stood guard. Every ship in the entire harbor had been used. And most were already gone. Two huge barges crafted of blue and green luxin and wood had been constructed and were already heading out too. That left one luxin barge that was rapidly filling even now, with far too many men to fit in it.

The soldiers here were locals mostly—where the hell had all the Ruthgari soldiers gone? Boarded earlier ships no doubt. Someone would pay for that, but not now. The soldiers who remained looked resolute, and their countenances lifted as they saw Gavin. These were men who thought they were going to die to give their families a chance to get away. Men who were willing to pay that price.

“Who’s in charge?” Gavin asked.

“I am, sir. Lord Prism. Sir.” A mousy Ruthgari with oddly kinky hair for his pale complexion and a look in his eyes like he was scared to death stepped forward. In another time, Gavin would have laughed to see the awkward little man. “We’ve got almost all the ships we have loaded. Men gathered who will fight. We need room for another three hundred, if no one else comes from the city.”

“Any sign of General Danavis or Commander Ironfist?” Gavin asked.

“No, sir. Lord Prism. Sir.”

“Sir is fine,” Gavin said. “Blackguards, any of you who can draft without breaking the halo, help me. We’ll make one more barge while we wait.”

“Wait, sir?” a Blackguard asked.

“General Danavis is coming. We finish one more barge. Then we go. He’ll be here by then.”

A trumpet sounded. The pale Ruthgari shouted, “Enemies coming! Ready!”

“Can you hold while we make a barge?” Gavin asked.

The man was still small, still mousy, but his face was resolute, and anything comical about his appearance was gone. “We’ll hold, sir. To the last man.”