Chapter 950: Heila’s Gambit (Part One)
Diarmuid’s mouth worked soundlessly as he tried to form words to reply to the witch who had called out to him.
It wasn’t the first time he’d encountered a demon who could speak the king’s common tongue, but it was the first time a demon had ever pleaded with him to help her save his people, and it took his mind several heartbeats to overcome his shock before he could think to reply.
"You withdraw!" Diarmuid shouted down at the diminutive witch. "Take your army back where you came from and leave us in peace! If you want to help save lives, then prove it by leaving!"
He didn’t expect that the demons would withdraw. The Crimson Knight, the woman calling herself Ian Hanrahan’s cousin, clearly had a personal grievance with the scheming Baron and Diarmuid didn’t believe for a moment that she would let this army leave... but how could he command his soldiers to lay down their weapons?
"Listen to her, Inquisitor Diarmuid," a surprisingly familiar voice called as Hugo Hanrahan strode out from the protection of the gatehouse tunnel to address the inquisitor from the cobblestone plaza below.
"Lady Heila truly means you no harm, but if this continues," he said, gesturing to the rain of luminous arrows that ravaged the ranks of the human defenders even as they charged toward the demons taking shelter beneath the icy, glittering rotunda the white-furred demon had summoned.
"Lord Hugo?" Diarmuid said, blinking several times in surprise as he inspected the figure of the hawk-nosed bastard son of Ian Hanrahan. The man had gone missing along with a pair of Blackwell Guildmasters and Sir Rain more than a week ago when the first widespread demon raids broke out, but his presence here was beyond strange.
Hugo was wearing a fur-trimmed cloak over a well-made, almost courtly doublet of fine silk and silver embroidery, hardly the sort of attire a man wore onto the battlefield. At the same time, the long-bladed knife belted on at his hip, nearly half the length of an arming sword, was clearly of demonic origin despite the sheath studded with gemstones in the pattern of the Ascended Swordsman.
Strangest of all, however, he addressed the witch by name, and in very respectful tones at that.
"You can trust her, Inquisitor," Hugo pleaded. "She’s the one who healed Sir Carwynn and his men. Please, tell them to lay down their weapons and take shelter with our soldiers. My people are dying and so are yours..."
It was that final line that pierced Diarmuid’s reluctance like one of Loman’s luminous arrows. While he was hesitating, people were dying, and it was the demons who were asking for a way to spare the lives of the common soldiers, not just for the first or second time, but for the third.
Dozens of faces flickered through the back of Diarmuid’s mind as he thought of the powerful men and arrogant lordlings he’d found waiting at the end of one of his grim quests to uncover the truth. "They’re just peasants, no one will even remember their names by next winter..." "She should have known better than to toy with my affections if she wasn’t willing to share my bed..." "Just tell me how many sovereigns you need to forget what you’ve seen. Twenty? Thirty? Name your price and we can make this all go away..."
Time and time again, he’d been called to the scene of gruesome murders, and time after time, he had held the sobbing, trembling figures of grown men or young children as he promised them that he would find the demon responsible for the carnage, only to find a man of wealth and stature at the end of his quest for truth.
Now, as he watched Loman’s rain of luminous arrows falling indiscriminately across the west gate plaza, he realized that he wasn’t witnessing the judgment of the Holy Lord of Light bestowing a miracle on his people, but something else that was far more familiar.
Even a man as dedicated to his faith as Diarmuid couldn’t deny truth when he heard it so plainly, and what was the Inquisition if not the search for truth in a world of darkness and deceit?
"Men of the Temple Guard! Lay down your weapons and take shelter!" Diarmuid shouted as he unleashed a burst of flames from his hand, hoping to catch the attention of the soldiers over the noise of the battlefield.
"Preserve your lives to fight another day," he added when he saw bitter reluctance on the faces of the soldiers. "But this battle is more than lost, and the Lord of Light would weep to see your lives spent for nothing!"
"I knew you were a good man, Diarmuid," Heila said as she stepped out from under the crystalline shelter, raising her wand high. "That’s a second debt I owe you," she added cryptically before drawing the wand from her waist and making a wide, sweeping gesture.
Heila had seen healing performed on a massive scale once before, in the Arena of High Fen City. At the time, the sorcerers from the Cauldron of Flame had inflicted hundreds of spectators, many of them children, with burns that resembled severe sunburns in a demonstration of their power. Everyone in the arena that day had marveled as Lady Ashlynn called upon the forces of nature to heal their wounds and wash away the pain.
Now, Heila faced an even greater challenge, but she refused to shrink back from it as she cast her senses wide, feeling the fields of tall grasses trapped beneath the snow beyond the walls and the roots they sank deep into the earth.
Hauke’s sorcery had made it harder to feel the life within the soil, but compared to the barren, frozen stone of the High Pass, even a long settled valley like the one surrounding the town of Hanrahan was teeming with life... She just had to stretch her senses far enough to find the pockets of strength she needed, and she hoped, to find the strength to save the lives of many soldiers, no matter which side of the battle they had fought on.