Free The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy by Jack Conner Page B

enemy neared, Giorn saw that
each of the giant gaurocks wore an iron helmet with three long iron spikes on
the end.
    “They’re going to ram the walls!”
    He braced himself. All around him,
soldiers cried out in alarm. The screams of women and children echoed off the
buildings behind. Lord Hysthir’s curses filled the air.
    The gaurocks charged, shaking the
earth with their passage. Moonlight glimmered off dark green scales and on the
hunched armored figures that clung to their ridged backs. The Borchstogs
howled, eager for blood, rape and ruin. Giorn remembered the one who had ripped
off its arm to beat him with and knew they were devoted utterly to their
Master. They considered themselves mere extensions of His will.
    The Serpents lowered their heads,
and the iron spikes glinted by the light of the pyre even then roasting the
bodies of the Borchstogs slaughtered in the first battle. The spikes would
crack even the thick stone of the Hielsly wall. The gaurocks drew nearer, and
Giorn could see the red eyes of the Borchstog riders. Any second now—
    The Illiana priestesses stepped
forward. Mixed among the soldiery upon the wall, they now summoned unearthly
strength. A white glow suffused them—like angels, Giorn thought. And yet they
held no gem, no elvish artifacts. They
must be channeling power from the Stone . He spared a moment to glance over
his shoulder to the great Temple of Illiana and its central spire; as the priestesses
upon the wall began to glow, the light emanating from the Temple’s central spire waned, just slightly. He
turned back.
    The priestesses stretched out their
hands. White light burst from their palms, lances of energy that struck the
gaurocks full in the head.
    Smoke rose from the beasts’ skulls.
They shrieked—a sound that raised the hairs on the back of Giorn’s neck—and
slowed. The Borchstogs prodded them on, lashing them with whips and sticking
them with barbed lances.
    The priestesses pressed their
attack. The white beams intensified. Flames licked from the gaurocks’ heads. Several
shrieked and thrashed—dying. Giorn allowed himself to hope that Hielsly might
yet be saved. In their death throes, the Serpents’ dark green coils roiled and
heaved, crushing the Borchstogs that rode them like vermin. The ground shook
and dust obscured the stars.
    One got through. Huge, monstrous,
the gaurock actually blasted through the mountainous bonfire that was roasting the
bodies of a thousand Borchstogs, spraying fire and burning corpses everywhere. A
flaming Borchstog sailed right over Giorn’s head, and he had to duck. Even so
he felt the heat of its passing.
    The gaurock rammed the wall with
such force that its iron spikes broke from the impact.
    The wall heaved. Fifty yards away,
Giorn was pitched off his feet by the concussion. Stumbling, cursing, he
climbed back up, as did the Baron and the soldiers around them.
    “Hells!” snapped Lord Hysthir.
    The dust from the impact was just
clearing, but even so Giorn could see what Hysthir meant.
    “The wall,” he said. “It’s
breached.”
    The Baron turned to him with eyes
dull and glazed, the eyes of a dead man. “And so ends Hielsly.”

 
     

 
    Giorn and Lord Hysthir summoned soldiers from their
respective companies and raced to meet again at the breach. The great Serpent
lay stunned from the impact, and already its head bristled with spears flung by
Hielsly troops. Blood ran in foul-smelling seas down its glistening scales, and
its movements were sluggish and moribund.
    The Borchstogs took no heed. Howling,
they surged around the massive body of the leviathan and poured through the
breach.
    Mounting his horse, Giorn noticed
the Borchstog standard bearer bore a lance with a human arm impaled on its tip;
it was covered in tar. Surely not, Giorn thought. Surely that can’t be the
Baron’s arm. It must have rotted long ago, he told himself. Had the
Borchstogs’ arts truly kept it from decay just so that they could torment