The breaches to the southeast were the easiest to secure and defend, at least in the early going. King Hoga Hogrim and his Tydonni Longbeards held the ruined foundations of Domathuz with battleaxe and kite-shield. Red-faced and roaring, the Thanes of Nangaelsa, Numaineiri, Plaideol and more, defended positions some thirty paces beyond the black ramparts, arrayed across heaps and swales of rubble. To the north, King Coithus Narnol and his Galeoth defended the ruins of Corrunc. Unlike her sister Domathuz, Corrunc had collapsed as a whole, producing a radial flange of debris that extended almost as an oblong bastion beyond the gold-fanged circuit, providing the bellicose Northmen the footing they needed to form a traditional phalanx, and thus a proper shield wall. And so they weathered the rabid, yammering assault with disciplined equanimity.
King Hringa V?kyelt and his barbarous Thunyeri were charged with defending the most complicated, and therefore most treacherous, of the three breaches: the shell of Gwergiruh, the monstrous gatehouse of the Extrinsic Gate. Here the ruins afforded no obvious line of defense. The hindquarters of the gatehouse remained intact, with only the forward bastions battered down in differing degrees. Interior floors hung exposed. Blocks the size of hovels lay cracked. Intact sections of wall reared solitary and indefensible. Rather than deploy across the perimeter of the wreckage, the Thunyeri Believer-King elected to defend the ruined hulk instead, stationing his black-armoured Men through the very halls and chambers they had wrested from the Ursranc mere watches previous. This ad hoc deployment should have meant casualties, but the Thunyeri were weened on the blood of skinnies. By dint of upbringing and bloodthirsty temperament, they far preferred depending on their kinsmen’s axe over his shield. They knew how to shatter the Sranc stampede, how to hew into the rush in a manner that sent the creatures reeling, allowing them to reset. And so the gutted galleries of the Extrinsic Gate became a grisly abattoir.
But even their toll paled before that of the Mysunsai Schoolmen. Hanging in triunes above and about the breaches, they assailed the tormented plate of ?gorrior with the dread Nibelene Lightning of yore. They were the first to spy the Exalt-Magus approaching through the leaves of the Shroud, gesticulating wildly, singing at the very pitch of her ability, drawing combs of exploding brilliance across the Sranc masses. Despite her straits, she moved with anxious sloth, as if pacing someone who crawled. Soon the glow of Gnostic Wards appeared on the ground below her, a luminous bowl that stumbled after the wreckage of her pulping, charring song.
Those upon any height of Gwergiruh could see it …
And then it inexplicably stalled.
Anas?rimbor Serwa hung as a living light above a living gyre, a landscape that scribbled and heaved, that relentlessly surged inward no matter how violently she gouged it. She wracked the earth, unleashed whipping parabolas of razor sharp light. Whole war-bands simply slumped upon their amputations, writhed across their thrashing kin, flailing.
The Men roared in voices that could not be heard, some in triumph, but more in warning, for any fool could see she merely dug sand underwater.
And as if hearing, the girl suddenly whirled to face them across the thronging plain.
“Your Empress needs you!”
Once again it was Lord Rauchurl who seized what favour the Whore had to offer. Without the least consultation, he led his Men in precarious file along the peak of the blasted inner wall of the Gatehouse, thence down to where they could leap directly into the thronging Sranc masses. One by one, the great-shouldered Holca landed, two hundred and thirteen in all, their skin as crimson as their hair for berserker rage, their blades blurring for whirlwind savagery, breakneck violence. With grim deliberation, the High-Thane of Holca led them into the shrieking bedlam of the plain. Nine triunes of Mysunsai shadowed their advanced, scoring the tumult with brilliant white swatches of Nibelene Lightning.
Thus did they slash and burn their way through the threshing tracts, a terrestrial circle of hacking barbarians beneath a floating ring of conjured shadows, all illuminated in flickering sheaves of lightning. The mighty Holca heaving to and fro, great arms snapping, battleaxes throwing blood that glowed violet when glimpsed against discharges. For those with the luxury to watch, standing upon Gwergiruh or the adjoining parapets, it seemed as much a horror as a miracle, a scrap of divine grace that made stark the scale of their plight. For some, all the World seemed to hinge upon the lunatic transit, for despite the unnatural strength and savagery of the Holca, nothing was assured. Not a breath passed, it seemed, without some glimpse of a warrior falling, bludgeoned and cloven, blooded faces dragged howling into the ghoulish frenzy. At any instant, it seemed, the battle-circle could implode beneath the rutting fury.
But then they arrived, gained the bright beacon of the Exalt-Magus. They tarried for more than a dozen fraught heartbeats, and then began relentlessly cutting their way back to the shell of Gwergiruh, now moving even more quickly for Anas?rimbor Serwa and her astounding Metagnostic might.
Tears clotted the eyes of those Men who could see: The Blessed Empress was saved!
Sosering Rauchurl himself carried her cradled in his great arms, bore her over the blasted remnants of Evil ?bil to the safety of the Canal.
Only one hundred and eleven of his Holca had survived to follow him.
The Inc?-Holoinas.
The deeper the Anas?rimbor penetrated, the more Malowebi had the impression of sinking, as if they dove into a golden wreck at the bottom of some black sea, so viscous was his terror.
Everything was capsized, twisted so as to contradict down. But he could not, given the combination of gloom and his abject vantage, discern the limits of the space, let alone make sense of it. He knew only that they had entered a vast, golden room, one illuminated by what seemed a monstrous, upside-down brazier the size of the Healing Pools of Phembari, strung from great chains to form a ceiling of sorts above the polished obsidian floors. Pale wicks of flame roiled and twisted across its surface, blue waxing baleful orange and sparking white—only lapping downward …
Wonder had him straining at the margins of his vision to decode the flames at first, for in no way could he sense the stain of sorcery in the unnatural burning.
Avert your eyes … a presence instructed.