Skulduggery 10: Building a Criminal Empire Read online

  But now, the streets were littered with the discolored bodies of both day and night elves. Some of them had ripped out clumps of their own hair in their agony, while others had actually torn off their own skin to try to ease the fire of the poison inside their bodies. But everywhere I looked, there were elves with only blood where their eyes used to be, and scraps of tattered flesh where their cheeks were before they clawed them down to the very bone.

  When we were only two streets away from the garrison itself, we turned the corner and came face to face with three dozen elven guards. From what I could tell right away, there were at least six elves who could cast magic, but all the rest of them stood in two neat rows that stretched out across the whole road to block our path forward.

  Even when I saw the elves all across the road, I didn’t slow down. I charged forward with my sword and shield at the ready, and the moment that Clodia unleashed a huge ball of blue fire at the wall of elven soldiers, I focused on it and on every single fighter on the street.

  Everything froze in place all at once, from each elven soldier to each human guard and even to my friends. It was a lot to freeze at one time, so I wouldn’t be able to hold it for long, but it was just long enough for me to bend all of my focus onto Clodia’s blue fireball. As I concentrated all my thoughts on it, I let my attention go to the very center of the sphere of energy.

  Just as everything resumed motion on the street, I blew the fireball outward into a huge swirling wave of blue energy that was easily three times bigger than the one that Clodia had actually thrown. It collided against four soldiers at once, and as their faces began to melt off in the magic heat, the two forces of humans and elves met each other.

  I had never felt my magic so strongly before, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the royal crown or armor that I wore, or maybe even with the sword and shield of the last human king. Then again, maybe it was just that I finally had a chance to use it as much as I wanted to, without limits and without the worry that someone might see a human who could use magic.

  Now I wanted to make sure that every last elf could see my magic, so there would be no question about who was the rightful ruler of this whole goddamn empire.

  As our two forces crashed into each other, the human guards did amazingly well against the trained elven soldiers. The elves were better-funded, just like they had years of experience when compared to the humans, but I hadn’t trained my side to fight like elves.

  I had trained them to fight like humans.

  Sure, the elves might be bigger and stronger, but the humans had been taught to fight quicker, to pair up in groups of twos or threes so they could take down elves in teams instead of trying to take on one each themselves. Even Penny and Dar acted as a team to drop one elf after the other, but occasionally, one of them would pair off with a human guard in need of help, while the other one dropped back to help me with whatever elf I currently faced.

  But still, even though the humans fought like battle-hardened warriors, the elves slowly began to inflict as much damage on us as we did on them. More elven soldiers had come to join the fight here, and there were a few magic casters that were hidden inside the buildings around us, but they moved so quickly from one window to another that it was impossible to pinpoint their location long enough to take them out.

  I had no doubt that Ava was on top of it, and between her and Clodia, the magic casters would be cooked in a matter of minutes, but I wanted to make sure that the majority of my forces lasted until then.

  I carved my sword into another elven soldier, and after it sank through the armor in his upper thigh and then kept going straight down to the bone, I pulled my weapon back and watched the soldier collapse into a puddle of his own blue blood. I didn’t know if it was the crown or the sword, but I felt like every part of me was alive with magic, and maybe that was why I could now slice through the armor of the elves as smoothly as if I swung my sword through a stream of water.

  The rest of my human forces didn’t have the advantage of magic weapons or crowns, but I tried to keep freezing as many elves as I could, so my guards would gain a few seconds’ advantage over their opponents. The elves kept coming, Clodia kept casting, and everywhere I looked, I saw Ava’s arrows or throwing daggers buried into dead elves left and right.

  But as I continued to fight, I saw that more elves poured toward us to reinforce the other soldiers, and I wondered if this meant that the human guards had failed in their assault on the garrison, or if the captain of the elven soldiers had just decided to send his troops out here on a final charge, rather than stay behind the walls and try to defend their positions from inside.

  I got my answer soon enough.

  A wall of human guards suddenly appeared at the end of the street behind the elven soldiers. They ran toward us like someone had lit a fire underneath their asses, but even as they raced forward to cut off any chance of elven escape, I saw that they weren’t alone.

  An entire horde of human civilians streamed out behind the human guards, and they all looked like they had armed themselves with whatever they had found at their houses. They had fire pokers, butter knives, pitchforks, and even brooms, and they all raised them up high with a shout when they saw the fighting all around me.

  “To the king!” one of the human guards shouted, and immediately, all the guards and civilians rushed toward us to attack the elven soldiers from the back.

  I grinned as I swung my sword forward again, and I followed it up with a crash of my shield into an elven soldier’s chest. The wall of humans behind the elves finally met them in a loud clash, and I knew that there was no way we could lose now.

  Even the humans who weren’t part of my guard units had seen what was happening, and they hadn’t wasted a second before they decided to rise up against their oppressors and join us with whatever weapons they could find.

  I watched a few of the elves sneer at the sight of all the humans armed with brooms and butter knives, but their smug expressions didn’t last long. I saw Clodia throw a sphere of blue energy into the middle of the elven forces to distract them just long enough to give the new human arrivals the upper hand, and then the humans’ homemade weapons began to inflict some damage.

  Butter knives stabbed into the eye sockets of the elven soldiers, while broom handles knocked the wind out of the elves’ lungs or else bashed their heads just about hard enough that the human guards could come in and finish the job. The angry mob of humans roared at every elf they killed, and I didn’t blame them. After centuries of oppression, it felt good to finally strike back against our elven overlords.

  As the fighting grew thicker all around me, Dar and Penny didn’t leave my side, so the three of us began to fight as one unit. Every time I started a kill, Dar or Penny finished them off, and whenever one of them made the first blow against an elf, they shoved them onto me to carry out the final death stroke.

  Even as the elves continued to throw magic against our troops, we made steady progress against them, and I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before we overwhelmed them and then charged on toward the garrison.

  I had assumed that the human civilians were our last batch of reinforcements, but as the humans all started to press forward against the elven forces, I heard what sounded like the steady beat of drums from somewhere close by. Since elves only used horns in battle and little flutes to go along with their poetry festivals, I knew that the drums didn’t belong to them, but I didn’t know who else they could belong to.

  I glanced at Dar, and my halfling friend just grinned at me.

  “That’ll be the dwarves,” Dar called out, “and if you wait for it…”

  Sure enough, just a few seconds later, the unmistakable sound of halfling bagpipes joined in on top of the drumbeat. I was so surprised that I almost missed an elven spear aimed at my face, but I raised my shield to block it at the same time that one of Ava’s arrows flew down from above and buried itself into the elf’s open mouth.

  “I thought
it might be a nice surprise,” Dar said with a grin, “but I made friends with a few musicians, and I thought they might bring us a little good luck.”

  “Are those dwarven war drums?” I demanded.

  “And halfling war pipes!” Dar said as he ducked to avoid an elven spear thrown at his head.

  “But what does that have to do with anything?” Penny called out as she sliced her two daggers across an injured elven soldier’s throat. “It’s not like there’s a dwarven army or--”

  Right on cue, more civilians began to stream out of the side streets and buildings all around us. As the drums and the bagpipes grew louder, dwarves and halflings poured out of every corner in the City of Slaves to come help us, as if the only thing that had held them back all these centuries was the fact that no one had played their instruments of war.

  The halflings didn’t have much in the way of weapons, but they had armed themselves like the human civilians had, so they used whatever they could to strike back against the elves. But as the drums and bagpipes grew louder and louder, I quickly saw that the dwarven civilians were more well-armed than the halflings or the human civilians.

  As they streamed into the fight against the elves, the dwarven citizens hefted pikes and axes up into the air that they must have kept hidden for who knew how long, while they just waited for the right opportunity to strike back against their overlords. And now that they finally had a chance to fight for themselves, the dwarves didn’t waste a single second before they began to carve up elven soldiers left and right.

  “Holy shit!” Penny gasped.

  “I thought it might bring back some memories for people,” Dar said with a smirk.

  “You’re brilliant, my friend!” I grinned and then slammed my shield into the face of an elf who dove toward Dar to try to take him out.

  Once the entire city rose up against the elven soldiers, it was less than a matter of minutes before the long-eared bastards broke ranks and began to flee back in the direction of the garrison. It looked like they would make their last stand there after all, so I raised up my sword and pointed forward.

  “To the garrison!” I shouted, and instantly, my command was repeated to every corner of the street.

  The remaining elven casters tried to clear a path forward for the soldiers, but I knew that it wouldn’t matter whether or not they were able to get away. Even if the soldiers made it all the way back to the garrison, we would just fight them there instead, and we would still bring them to their knees before the morning even turned to afternoon.

  As soon as the garrison came into sight, a row of elven archers appeared at the top of the wall and unleashed a wave of arrows down onto us. While we all took cover as best we could, the elven soldiers retreated back inside the garrison, but there were simply too many of us to keep down long.

  Instead, before the archers could even notch a second round of arrows, we poured toward the garrison gates like the unstoppable force of the tide. Clodia unleashed one energy ball after another onto the closed doors, while I threw up one hand to keep the archers frozen just long enough for the guild master to break down the gates to the garrison.

  The moment that Clodia splintered open the doors, I led the charge forward into the last stronghold of the elves inside this city. There were hardly any elves inside, other than the ones that we had fought out in the streets, so I knew that if we conquered them here, then the City of Slaves would be ours.

  I charged forward with Penny and Dar right on my heels and with the wave of human guards right behind them. The elven archers panicked as they realized that we were already inside the garrison, but by the time they swung their bows around to aim at the courtyard, the fighting was too thick for them to strike us and not hit their fellow elven soldiers by accident.

  Archer after archer started to tumble down from the walls, as either Ava or Clodia found their targets, while my human guards began to churn out so much blood from our enemies that it looked like we were making elven wine inside the garrison.

  Every time I took a step forward, blue blood splashed up onto those closest to me, and every time my sword separated another elf’s head from his shoulders, the crowd of civilians behind me shouted in triumph and pressed forward with new energy.

  The attack happened so fast that the elves hadn’t even been able to blow their battle horns to try to rally themselves. Instead, the only noise that could be heard above the fighting was the constant beat of the dwarven war drums and the deep hum of the halfling bagpipes.

  I had never been prouder of my friends.

  After we had been inside the garrison for only a few minutes, I saw that only a handful of elven soldiers remained, so I glanced around to try to find their captain. If he surrendered, we would spare the rest of them, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that he was even still alive.

  Just as I had started to think that he must have died already, a white flag suddenly unfurled from the top of the garrison and fluttered open in the wind. At first, I just kept fighting because until I saw the elf who led the surrender, I thought it might just be an elven trick, especially since the few remaining elves just kept fighting, too.

  But then a single elven horn blasted through the sounds of the fighting below, and the elven soldiers instantly threw down their weapons and raised their hands up in surrender.

  “Cease fighting!” I shouted.

  The human guards immediately obeyed my orders, but a few of the more enthusiastic civilians continued to swing their homemade weapons at the unarmed elves. Before they could do any damage, I held up my hand and forced their weapons to freeze in place, so when the civilians dropped them in surprise, the objects just hovered above the ground for a few seconds and then dropped when I released them.

  After that, everyone fell silent.

  “We surrender!” an elven voice called from somewhere in front of me.

  The crowd parted to let a fair-haired day elf through. He was unarmed and had his helmet tucked underneath his arm, but I instantly spotted the insignia in the collar of his cloak that told me he was captain of the guard. As soon as he reached me, he knelt and bowed his head.

  “Whoever you are, please,” the elven captain of the guard said. “Spare the lives of me and my men who remain. We are your prisoners.”

  “I am Wade, and I am the new king,” I said as I sheathed my sword so I could offer him my hand. “I accept your surrender.”

  Whispers erupted through the crowd behind me, but the moment I raised the captain of the guard to his feet, I held up my hand, and everyone fell silent again.

  “Hear me now, or suffer the consequences in the future!” I shouted to the crowd. “We will not kill anyone who surrenders! We will accept their surrender and treat our prisoners with respect and dignity!”

  Penny and Dar moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with me, as they surveyed the crowd for any signs of disagreement.

  “We are not like the elves,” I called out. “We will not slaughter innocent people, because that is not the world I wish to create.”

  Clodia moved forward through the crowd to join me then, and I saw Ava suddenly leap into the middle of the remaining archers on top of the garrison wall. They almost jumped off the wall in surprise, but she just nodded at them all and then smiled down at me.

  “My new kingdom will be a better place for everyone, not just for humans,” I said, “so that means that you will not murder, you will not loot, and you will treat everyone with mercy if they ask for it. Do you understand?”

  “We hear you, and we understand!” the human guards shouted, and their chant was quickly taken up by the civilians all around me, too.

  “Then long live King Wade!” Dar shouted as he threw up his hands.

  “Long live King Wade!” the crowd cheered.

  “Long live King Wade,” the captain of the elven guard murmured, and then he knelt once more in front of me, so that all his remaining troops could follow his example.

  Suddenly, from somewhere outside the
garrison, I heard the sound of marching feet and low grunts that matched the rhythm of each step. It sounded exactly like a well-disciplined fighting unit, so when a force of human soldiers all dressed in black marched right through the garrison gates, there was no mistaking who they were.

  They were the Elite, and they were led by the former gladiator Leif. They filed into the courtyard like a unit of assassins, and the only color visible on their black clothes was the blue blood of their enemies and the red blood of their own wounds.

  Their presence here could only mean that they had conquered my hometown, the human Capital, and so they had now finally come to join up with their king.

  Chapter 2 - Twila

  I offered a drink of water to the next human guard that I saw on his back, and as soon as I had helped him swallow a little, I eased him back down to the ground and waved Ashlin over.

  “Do you still have bandages?” I called over.

  The brunette dancer just waved a stack of bandages in response and then picked her way through the wounded to come join me.

  “How bad is it?” Ashlin asked when she reached me.

  I glanced at the human guard at my feet, but his eyes were already closed again, so he couldn’t see me when I shook my head at the other woman.

  “Oh, just a little flesh wound,” I said, but then I leaned forward to whisper into her ear so the man wouldn’t hear me. “It’s too late. Just give him enough bandages to make him feel better, but don’t waste them.”

  Ashlin’s hand flew to her mouth, but she instantly dropped it and nodded. She understood that half of our job today was just to make it easier for the injured human guards to pass over to the afterlife, since not everyone who had been wounded would make it. We would help patch up those who stood a chance, but all we could do for the others was to make them feel better and try to ease their pain as much as possible.

  Still, there weren’t nearly as many badly injured as I had thought there might be. When the fighting initially ended, I had expected the streets to be filled with dead human guards and elven soldiers, as well as corpses of all the other races who had been caught in the crossfire between the two forces.