Savage Fire (Tales from Wildhearth #2)

Chapter 40 - A World You Would Die For

A wave of shadows advanced through the Silk.

All around the throne of Wildhearth, conflict raged. Fires lit up the night, the lick of flames, the screams of kin and the clash of weapons engulfing the city. Brigades of watchguards fought to maintain order, chasing down small, suicidal groups of cultists who sold their lives to instil chaos in the city. Riots swept through swathes of the outer districts.

But Illando knew this night of madness could not sustain itself. It was like a violent flare in the dark, burning bright and hot at its zenith, but soon to collapse in on itself. While the number of Savage Fire followers had taken him by surprise, compared to the vast, seething masses of Wildhearth they were little more than a pinprick. Everything they were doing now was to draw attention from Kendris's true plan.

Everything beyond the Silk could be salvaged and rebuilt, but if Kendris seized the Conclave, Illando knew they would be dealing with something else entirely. If Wildhearth's government collapsed into the void, the city might well follow it.

And so, with a hundred battle-ready wolfkin enforcers at his back, Illando marched on the Conclave of Accord.

They advanced through the streets as subtly as lava flow. He chose a direct, deliberate route, letting the citizens of the city see how the enforcers dealt with threats to Wildhearth. Small groups of cultists scattered before them; any who were foolish enough to stand in their way were massacred without mercy.

Illando was long past taking prisoners. His club caved in the skull of another foe, leaving them to fall in a bloodied, broken mess. As they fell, he looked up to see the rising mass of the Conclave itself, tantalizingly close. Cephia was in there somewhere; he had to believe she was still alive, still in the fight. She would have made a fine enforcer if she'd ever wanted to, but she chose differently.

He ached to have her alongside him right now.

"Form up!" he barked, forcing himself to focus as he stepped over the corpse of the cultist. Other ragged figures lay dead in the street, torn up by claws and blades, or downed by armbow bolts.

Noelle moved up beside him, flicking blood from her longclaw dagger, her normally cheerful features now tight with anxiety. Even for her, the full scale of what Kendris was trying to do had been a lot to swallow. To his right Morta stalked into line, his pack spreading out along that flank. He could just make out Gensher's towering silhouette further along. Lykas's packs from the north spread out to form the opposite wing of their advance.

"Didn't wanna believe it," Noelle murmured, shaking her head grimly as she stared at the Conclave tower. Even from this distance he could see fires burning on some levels.

"We're still here," he grated. "So this isn't over."

"I'm right there with you."

"C'mon, let's put an end to this." Illando raised his club, adrenaline swelling in his blood. "Go!"

That single bark was all that was required. He chopped the club downward, and the enforcers raced out across the clearing. Dark armoured bodies spread out in the twilight, footpaws battering the slabwork as they sprinted. The wings of the advance opened out like the jaws of a great wraithbeast, slamming shut on the Conclave.

Only a small number of cultists remained outside the building, and they were obliterated by the wolfkin charge. Running at full speed, Illando almost tore the head off of one foe, catching them with a swing of his club as he ran by. In the immediate area around the main entrance dozens of designates, Conclave guards and civilian staff lay dead – taken by surprise in the first wave of the attack.

Screamed warnings were cut off; robed bodies quickly joined those they had murdered.

A pack of cultists began to cluster beyond the main door, trying to plug the gap and stop the wolfkin advance, but they might as well have tried to stop an avalanche with kindling. Illando led his soldiers in at full speed.