Page 125 of Sword & Sacrifice

Penn grimaced and held up the potion bottle. Thank the gods Adelaide has quality supplies. It had survived the chaos without even a chip in the glass. “Kill the mage controlling them.”

Mahler’s eyes flicked to the bottle, then back to the stone creature as it slowly got to its feet. “Do you know where the mage is?”

The gold collar weighed heavy against Penn’s neck. “I can figure it out.”

Mahler nodded. “Go, we’ll hold them off.”

Penn didn’t need to be told twice. He followed the pull of the collar, higher and higher up the mountain. Nausea filled his stomach as his gaze rose to the mountain peak, where he could barely make out a single figure.

Why do you need to be at the top of the mountain, Alistair?

Even from a distance, Archer knew Casselarn was under attack. The dark night could obscure the fight, but it couldn’t hide the distressed shouts, the ring of steel. He drew his sword and rode Scout straight into the middle of a scrimmage, breaking up the fight. But Scout was not Hugo. He was a messenger’s horse, not a warrior’s. The moment a sword flashed in his periphery, he reared and neighed shrilly.

As soon as Scout settled, Archer hopped off and smacked the horse’s rear. Scout took it as permission to abandon the battlefield and ran straight toward the castle, where he would find familiar faces ready to shelter him until they found his rider again.

Archer turned toward the assailant, sword already raised to block an attack. He recognized Noah Harland, could see traces of Lord Garan’s smug expression in his son’s face. This was the traitor who had led the charge to free Varro after Griselda removed him from the army.

“You’re like a fucking cockroach,” Noah snarled, withdrawing just enough to slash at Archer again. “But you always looked down on us, as if we were the insects. It’ll be a joy to crush the Warrior King under my boot.”

Archer drowned out the traitor’s taunts, focusing on the clash of blades. The mountain rumbled underneath him and both fighters almost lost their footing. Archer recovered first and stabbed his sword through Noah’s middle.

Noah choked in surprise and looked down at his stomach, at the blood already spreading across his shirt.

Archer withdrew his blade and kicked Noah aside, striding away without another glance back. The Bellacostan traitors were a nuisance, but they weren’t the cause of the chaos.

Every time the mountain rumbled, the nearby houses shifted and shuddered. A scream tore through the night as one collapsed to Archer’s left. He ran toward the wreckage, grabbing rocks to try to unbury the family inside.

A hand reached out and clasped his, and Archer pulled them up. Their weight and the strain on his muscles surprised him. Are they caught on something? But as he pulled, he noticed the cold, rough texture of their skin.

A face poked out of the rubble. Another face flashed through Archer’s memory, an ice sculpture leering at him from the riverbed as it held Silas underwater. But that had been a frozen statute. It could only cling to Silas as Archer and Griselda dragged him out of the water. It couldn’t fight back.

This was a freely moving creature, one shaped from the stone wreckage of the cottage.

Archer released the hand and stepped backwards, holding his sword at the ready.

The creature crawled forward, stones rattling as they gathered around it, drawn in like a magnet. Once it had absorbed enough, it rose to its feet and lunged at Archer.

He raised his sword to block, then gritted his teeth at the force of the blow. His arm painfully jolted under the strain. He inhaled, bracing himself, and pushed back until the creature stumbled away. He slashed at it, but the edge of his blade glanced off a clump of stone.

The creature didn’t react to his counterattack. It simply shrugged off his sword and reached for him, intending to wrap its stone hands around his neck and crush his throat.

Archer dodged and changed tactics. If a sword wouldn’t cut through it, he’d find another way to break the thing. He dropped his weapon and picked up a huge, broken hunk of stone. He raised it high over his head and slammed it down on top of the creature.

The creature shattered beneath the force of the blow, tumbling into a pile of dirt and rocks.

Archer tossed the stone to the side and continued digging through the rubble until he found the hatch to a cellar door. Sighing in relief, he cleared the stones from on top of it and flung the door open. Three dirty faces peered up at him, a parent with their children.

“Your Majesty,” the father said, relief washing away his fear.

In times of danger, the citizens would normally evacuate to Castle Arn. With the mountain crumbling down around them, Archer didn’t know how much longer the castle would stand. “Go down the mountain,” Archer ordered. “Get as far away from here as you can.”

A heavy weight slammed against Archer’s back. He stumbled forward and caught himself on a mostly intact wall. He turned around to find that the creature had already reformed. And there, right in its center, was the stone Archer had previously used to bash it apart.

If Griselda were here, she would have been cursing magicians and their bullshit magic. Archer was tempted to say a few curses himself but didn’t bother wasting the breath.

He eyed the creature, noticing its slow, jerky movements. Archer took several long strides away from it. The creature lumbered after, dragging its feet across the ground with the low scrape of rocks colliding against each other.

A crossbow bolt pierced its chest. Stone and dirt crumbled to the ground as the creature lost half of its structure on its left side.