Read Darkened Blade: A Fallen Blade Novel for Free Online Page B

many of the nearer buildings had their doors and windows broken in. Here and there knots of fighting had sprung up where the restless dead had met with some resistance, particularly on the empire side of the wall.
    As I watched a swarm of them bring down a tall Sylvani lord in his shining crystalline armor, I revised my estimate of the scope of the battle radically upward. It wasn’t just the inn under attack, but this entire section of the city of Wall. The living were losing badly, and too many of those who weren’t torn apart or devoured would join the ranks of the enemy over the next few days as they rose from their graves in turn.
    The thought of it made me sick at heart. Again, I found myself wanting desperately to stay and fight. Again, I forced myself to move on. My goddess-forged swords and their enchantments might give me an advantage against the restless dead, but even if I slew scores before I fell, hundredswould remain. There was no winning this battle. The dead were simply too many. It was hard to believe the scale of the thing. Nothing like it had happened in more than a thousand years, not since Master Corvin and Resshath Ssura ended the Necrotariat that had risen in Dan Eyre of old before the merging of my order and the worshippers of Namara.
    Over the next quarter of an hour I fought and shadow-slipped my way through the horde of dead mobbing the wall. The warm rain was my ally in the latter, making my shrouded presence even more invisible than usual. I finally broke free of them a half mile or so east of the inn.
    There, a small group of heavily armed and armored Sylvani nobles had taken a position on the wall with a more slapdash force of human irregulars backing them up. Facing a sharp and organized defense heavy with magic and enchanted weapons, this ragged edge of the army of the dead was faring badly. I pressed myself into the shadow of a broken door and took a momentary rest while the dead focused on the Sylvani and their human allies.
    The Sylvani all stood at least a head taller than their human auxiliaries, with one or two taller yet—close to the seven feet and change of my friend Ash. The Sylvani had donned full armor and close-faced helms against the threat of the risen, all in varying hues and shades of crystal. As I watched, one of the risen struck their leader in the center of her breast plate with the terrible strength of the dead. The point of impact flared and sparked, sending light crazing away from the spot like cracks running through a dropped mug, refracting the force of the blow by a sort of elemental light magic.
    The Sylvani struck back, whipping a slender dueling blade up and around with inhuman speed to stab the risen in the eye. A bright spark of light flashed down the length of the crystalline blade from the hand that wielded it toward the point of the sword. It vanished for a moment when it passed the point where sword met rotting flesh, but the risen’s head started to glow from within a moment later, like a bright lamp glimpsed through paper walls. The glowspread down and out, filling the risen with light. Then, there was a bright flare—viciously so to my borrowed darksight—and the risen collapsed in on itself.
    The sudden brightness had come as a painful surprise, leaving me blind for several long beats of my heart. I hadn’t realized that the Sylvani could perform magic atop the warding wall as well as within its boundaries. The gods had created the thing to bind the power of the older race among other things—preventing them from using their magic in the lands beyond its bounds.
    As the battle intensified, I saw my chance. Sheathing my swords, I climbed up the nearest building to the rooftop, and slipped past the barricade along the chimney road. I finally released my hold over Triss once we were well and truly beyond the fighting, though I kept moving. He rose at once from the dreams where he’d retreated to allow me finer control over both shroud and