Faerie Knight 164

164 - The Battle of Maʿīn II: The Shaking Earth

It remains a question open for debate as to which was responsible for more death: The Sun Eater, who caused a famine by stealing the light from the world; or the Plague Dancer, who spread sickness from province to province.

• The Commentaries of Aram ibn Bashear

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17th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297

Ismet lowered her center of gravity, spreading her feet to about the distance of her shoulders, and kept her sword between Valeria and her own body.  Beneath her armor, the bandages on the wound she had taken at the Eish Alsaqr Pass pulled painfully.  Next to her, Samara ibnah Arif drew a dagger and held it in a reverse grip, at an angle in front of her torso and with her other arm forward and a little higher, ready to grapple a charging opponent.

Her father, Fazil and Arkan were already riding back to their lines to begin the assault.  Above, atop the walls, Nasir al-Rashid shouted for his archers to draw, but Ismet couldn’t let herself think about that now.  She’d named her commander, and had to trust that her men would do what needed to be done to take the city, while she focused on her own fight.

“My father never wanted me to be a warrior,” Valeria admitted, stalking to Ismet’s right.  The two Exarchs of the Angelus moved to mirror their enemy, with all three women beginning to circle each other.  “He’s always thought men who dedicated themselves to war were idiots.  Soldiers and generals are pieces to be moved, and sacrificed, by the real powers in the shadows.  But I must admit,” she continued, “there has been something exceptionally satisfying about tearing my enemies apart and feasting on their power.”

“Power used for only your own sake,” Samara shot back, “is power undeserved.  The purpose of an Exarch is to serve and protect the people.”

Valeria reached up with her left hand and pulled the veil from her face, tossing it aside to flutter down to the ground.  “The words of a tool who enjoys being used,” she spat.  “Better to make my own decisions, to be free, than to be that.  But you’ve both made your choices long ago.  And neither of you can match me now.”

In a blur of motion, Valeria shot forward, her wild curls flying out behind her in the wind of her passage, and Samara, Exarch of Nāshiṭāt, cried out in pain.  Before Ismet had even been able to react, Valeria had closed the distance and plunged her own dagger into the other woman’s shoulder with enough force to drive Samara down to her knees.

Without allowing herself the slightest bit of hesitation, Ismet lunged at the two, swinging her blade down to take Valeria from behind.  At the same time, Samara swiped at the daemonic Exarch with her own, smaller blade, trying to back her opponent off.

Faster than a striking snake, Valeria was gone again, leaving only a cloud of dust beneath her feet.  Ismet spun, weapon raised to guard herself, and found Valeria pacing around the two of them again.  She narrowed her eyes, and let the vision of the Angelus come over her sight.

Valeria du Champs d'Or’s core blazed pure, brilliant blue, a tightly wrapped bundle of power as overwhelming as the Sun Eater itself.  Ismet had prepared herself for this, had known that it was likely based on how many were dead of plague, but when confronted by the woman’s raw physical power, it was enough to give her pause.

“Get back to the lines, Samara,” Ismet said, moving to mirror Valeria’s circling once again.  “Get your wound seen to.  You will be more help there.”

“I won’t let you fight her alone,” the other Exarch said, climbing to her feet with a groan.

“You will,” Ismet insisted.  “Go and guide the souls of our men.  I will handle Valeria.”

With a cry of frustration, Samara ibnah Arif backed away, leaving Ismet and her opponent alone.  “Good,” Valeria said, with a cruel grin.  “I wanted to savor this, anyway.  You ruined all my work, you stupid cow.  I put months into grooming Lionel to be mine, and you just walked in and fell into his bed.  I should have been Queen of Narvonne by now.”

“So you came to my home to pick up my table scraps, is that it?” Ismet taunted her back.  While the two women spoke, she carefully lifted a strand of yellow fire from her core and cast it back to her troops.  She brushed the thread of Epinoia’s Boon across her men, taking their weariness and fear from them, and leaving only resolve.  

Already, the clamour of battle rose around them both to either side, and Ismet could hear the calls to raise ladders against the wall.  The longer she could keep Valeria here, the more time her soldiers had to storm the walls of Maʿīn.  If Ismet could stall long enough, even without defeating Valeria, her army could retake the city, leaving the daemonic Exarch isolated and without any allies.

“Nasir makes a useful enough pawn and bed warmer,” Valeria said with a scowl.  “But after you’re dead, I’ll take Lionel from you, as well.  Perhaps I’ll keep them both in chains.  They can drink wine with me from your skull..”

“You don’t understand, do you?”  Ismet said, shaking her head.  “Lionel never took to you because he could feel the rot in your heart.  You are repulsive, no matter how fair your face might be.  Nasir only wants you because you give him power.  I would wager not even your father could love a monster like you.”

With an incoherent cry of rage, Valeria blurred forward faster than Ismet could track.  That was fine; she’d taunted the woman into coming, and there were only so many angles of attack one could take with a dagger.

Ismet leapt to the left and back, taking herself almost entirely out of the range of Valeria’s dagger swipe; at the same time, she brought her blade down in a cut aimed at the delicate flesh between the woman’s right shoulder and her head, where the neck joined the torso.  Only her enemy’s superior speed allowed her to avoid a mortal blow; instead, Valeria managed to get her dagger up in time to catch Ismet’s sword as it came down.  

Even with the strength of the daemons, a short dagger was a poor weapon with which to parry a sword, and Valeria was clearly not well trained in its use.  Instead of keeping it flat against her forearm, to brace the blade, she kept it out in a reverse grip, giving herself practically no leverage.  Ismet’s strike forced both blades down to cut the skin, drawing a line of blood, but it was only a surface cut.  Both women scrambled back again, facing each other.

“I’m stronger and faster than you,” Valeria shouted.

“And hardly trained at all,” Ismet countered.  “While I have been training with this blade since I was old enough to hold it.  Skill against raw power.  I like my odds.”

With a scream so loud it broke, raw on the woman’s throat, Valeria flung herself forward again.  This time, she did not stop after a single swing, but kept coming with furious stab after savage cut, never once pausing or giving Ismet room to counter.

 Two steps to the back avoided the first slice, and then Ismet ducked her head out of the way of the following stab.  The third move she had to counter with her sword, and that was where things began to go badly.  There should have been no way that someone armed with a dagger could match her in the bind, but the daemonic Exarch’s strength was truly overwhelming.  

With no technique whatsoever, Valeria simply pressed her blade forward, and Ismet had not the strength to resist her.  Instead, she went weak in the bind, disengaging and taking a slice at Valeria’s arm.  

The woman took it, shrugged off the blow, and stepped in, grabbing for Ismet.  A flash of near panic shot through her stomach - if she let those hands get a grip on her, the fight would be over.  Her tutors at the university had taught all the students that daemons would always hold the edge in strength, but that Exarchs of the Angelus could outlast them in a drawn out battle.

Ismet dropped and rolled across the ground, so that Valeria’s arms caught nothing but air.  She came up behind and cut at the woman’s hamstrings, but the infernal Exarch leapt straight up, like a desert hare.

Valeria rose nearly as high as the city walls, shifted her dagger to her left hand, and came down with a punch, striking the ground with her closed fist.  A thunderous crack rang out across the battlefield, and the earth shook, knocking Ismet off her feet.  Around her, she could hear soldiers and horses alive crying out as the tremor ran through the entire area, and not from her men alone, but from atop the walls as well.

Ismet grinned.

She made a show of struggling to get her legs under her, then staggering as if she was off balance.  “There we are,” Valeria crowed in satisfaction.  “All the skill in the world, all your precious years of practice, won’t help you if you can’t keep your feet.”  She lifted her leg and stomped with all the power of her daemonic Boons, causing another shockwave to ripple out.

Ismet let it throw her to the ground again, listening to the continued screams from both armies.  She feigned that the impact had made her lose her grip on her sword, and practically flung it away from herself as she cried out in exaggerated pain.  Then, once the tremor had subsided, she turned over onto her hands and knees and made a show of crawling desperately for the hilt.

“No you don’t,” Valeria taunted her, stomping for a second time.  The impact threw Ismet and her sword in opposite directions, but that was acceptable.  With a final, deafening crash, accompanied by the screams of falling men, the walls of Maʿīn came tumbling down.

“Forward!” Fazil’s voice called over the cries of wounded and dying men in the rubble.  “Into the breach!  For Maʿīn and for the Angelus!”

“What?” Valeria gasped, no longer fixated on Ismet, but on the defenses she had shattered with her own careless power.  “No!”

Ismet rolled past her sword, snatched it up, and used the momentum to get to her feet.  Taking advantage of Valeria’s moment of distraction, she lunged forward, taking the opening to cut up from below, aiming at the artery in her enemy’s inner thigh.  It would be a mortal blow if she could land it.

The motion must have caught Valeria’s eye, for the woman rounded on her, stepping forward and into the cut before it could be finished.  Ismet was too slow to get out of the way, this time, and the daemonic Exarch got a hand on her swordarm.

Ismet strained against her, trying to draw the blade back to cut deeper into the flesh of Valeria’s leg, but though the other woman cried out in pain, she did not release her grip, and Ismet could not overpower her.

Valeria dropped her dagger and reached for Ismet’s neck.  Ismet released the hilt of her sword with her left hand, the arm not trapped, and caught at Valeria’s wrist, straining to keep the other woman’s grasping, clawing fingers from her throat.

“I have you now,” Valeria hissed.  “It doesn’t matter if the walls come down.  It doesn’t matter if all my men are slaughtered.  It doesn’t even matter whether Nasir survived.  I have more than enough power to kill everyone myself.  Listen to your men now, bitch.”

A surge of power erupted from Valeria, a thousand strands reaching out in every direction pulsing a mottled, filthy blue, and the cacophony of battle changed in pitch.  Men wailed, fell, and began to cough, unable to rise as they were overwhelmed by plague.

“I’ll kill every one of them,” Valeria repeated, pressing her hand forward with overwhelming strength until at last her fingers wrapped around Ismet’s throat in a grip of iron.

Ismet couldn’t breathe, and the edges of her vision began to turn black.  She turned her eyes up to the sky, and wondered what Lionel was doing.  I’m sorry, she thought, unable to draw the air to even whisper the words.  I’m sorry I won’t see you again.

A shaft of sunlight stabbed down from the sky above, lighting up the battlefield.