Konstantins Crusade English version by E W (different e readers txt) 📖

did not improve the already abysmal visibility and Cyrus could do little more than try and find his way between the burning buildings. Bullets whistled through the air, some seemed to come out of the windows of the towers, others from scattered groups of guards, engaged in small firefights with the defenders. The smoke obstructed their view down here in the streets, but from the crude mud and brick towers, they could easily be spotted and attacked.

 It made Cyrus uneasy how far these people went to defend their homeland. The Emperor would accept it if they bent their knees and joined the Empire. On the other hand ... what right had he to judge them for it. That was what the Clans of the Gejarn had avoided for centuries.  

The dead lay everywhere, but the omnipresent dust had already made it almost impossible to say whether they belonged to the guard or to the inhabitants of the city. Even their blood was not the usual glowing red, but ran to reddish-brown mud that stuck to boots and feet.

 Only once did Cyrus clearly see the blue uniform and bright, golden ornaments of an imperial guardsman. The man lay half in a doorway, felled by a knife in his back. It wasn’t a weapon, but a tool.  How they must fear us, Cyrus thought further. Even the common people preferred to fight them instead of hiding or trying to escape. Messengers ran through the chaos, delivering orders to divisions that had long since fallen apart, their officers buried dead under rubble.

A single magician in the robe of the order walked confidently through the chaos. Bullets burst at a magical shield he had set up in front of the figure. A group of men with obsidian swords and bows ran toward him. Two flew through the air, but went up in flames at a gesture of the wizard.

The roar of mighty guns faded out everything else  for a moment, then the first cannonballs struck and crushed houses and towers into splintered wood and straw.  Now that the walls had a fallen the cannons could safely be brought within reach of the city and the bombing began.

Their opponents, in turn, returned the shelling of from within the city.  Massive stone cuboids, probably thrown from other anima and stone structures of X of Xihuitzin that crushed everything and everyone that did not dodge in time.

The tiled streets broke open as a block of stone the size of a house hit the ground only a few feet before Cyrus. Where the Order magician had been, nothing was left. Only empty air. Cyrus felt something run down his face. Blood. Not his. The magician was gone. Anselm stood before him, one hand raised. Shrapnel pattered down around them, some with enough force to rip a man in half. Cyrus closed his eyes, waiting for death. Soon, he thought, there will be only ruins left. That’s what we fight for. Ruins. But nothing hit them. Anselm held his hand outstretched, and Cyrus saw a projectile, almost as big as the one that had killed the other wizard, crash into an invisible barrier in the air. Shimmering, for a moment, a semicircle of energy erupted around them, and Anselm winced from the strain. But the shield held. Only when the shrapnel fell, the young magician relaxed a bit and dropped his hand. The iridescent barrier collapsed.

Cyrus just looked at him too stunned to say anything for a moment. His eyes were watering and his nose was burning through the smoke. Blood and mud caked his clothes and Anselm looked worse, if anything. But they were still alive.

 "You ... thank you," he finally managed. That attack could easily have killed both of them.

Anselm merely nodded. Sweat stood on his forehead, but unlike the order's mage, his barrier had held.

"I actually thought you ended up with the scribblers because you cannot do magic."

"How did you figure that out?" Anselm's breathing was still strained, but he seemed to recover slowly. There seemed to be a line of grey hair in his hair where there hadn’t been moments before.

"Well, I thought ..."

"Maybe you should refrain from making rash judgments about someone in the future."

Now it was Cyrus turn to simply nod. . He deserved that, he thought. For the second time that day, he had to admit that he had misjudged Anselm.

He had thought he was a coward. He was not. Then he had thought him useless ... But he was not. And yet that only raised more questions.  Why did not he fight if he was even clearly as powerfull as the orders combat mages? But those were questions he could ask him if they survived today.

"We should see that we get out of here." Anselm nodded. "Let's hope that was the last nasty surprise today."

"As long as you follow me like a good dog, everything should be fine. I'll take care of you then. "Cyrus winked.

"You are the dog here," Anselm replied.

"That's right, and that's why I'm surviving where they die." More Golem constructs broke away from the dust and marched, undeterred by the guards' fire. Many of the creatures looked ancient, overgrown with vines and moss, and their size ranged from giant guardians to living figures made of rock. Stonefists broke bones and shattered people into bloody pulp that dripped from their fingers. Others actually carried weapons. Terrible, crude scythes and swords of shiny obsidian, and though they were slow, they didnt have to move fast to inspire dread. Bullets simply bounced off their stony skin. Orders were shouted and men brought in hand cannons, large metal pipes that had to be carried and aligned by three men at the same time. A fourth wore a torch and lit the weapon.

The cannons shattered the upper bodies of half a dozen Stone Warriors, who then collapsed and buried more buildings below. Those who did not dodge in time were buried as well. A field surgeon in an open blue coat and a heavy bag dove in to help the injured, where help was still possible.

"By all the gods." Anselm looked around in disbelief at the chaos Cyrus led him through. The Gejarn grittet his teeth and held the rifle at the ready, but at least on their way they had encountered little resistance so far. Lord Macon and his men had long advanced ahead of them.
"And do you still consider it a good idea to have changed to the scribblers, Sir Magician?", Cyrus asked.

"Next time, when someone asks me how I intend to serve the Order, I volunteer to cleanse the stables in the Orders Fortress."

"Just take me with you."

Together they continued on their way into the city. The air slowly became clearer and the fires rarer and more isolated. After all, the whole debacle with the Golden guard had something good, thought the wolf. Lord Macon's men had cleared a path in front of them, giving them at least relative safety. Now they just had to somehow survive the day, hoping that their luck would last. They turned around a street corner and that led to an intersection between two other lanes. The houses here, like those at the wall, were mostly made of clay and straw, but piled up so high that they partially concealed the sun. At one end, Cyrus saw a group of men in the Guards' uniform working to build one of the heavy repeater guns. The thirteen-barreled weapon was too big for a single man to serve, usualy having a crew of thee or four. One carried the metal barrel of the weapon on its back, while two more built the wooden buck. But that was not what prompted Cyrus to drag Anselm around the corner. It was what came up to the repeaters crew. A group of men armed with obsidian blades and bows and a handful of muskets, firing them at the guardsmen without much aim. A bullet brushed one of the crew on the leg, and an arrow pierced the wooden shield of the weapon.

"Stay in cover!," Cyrus instructed Anselm, who now also spotted the oncoming group of warriors. “They are…”

The rest of his sentence was lost as the repeater gun began firing. A deep, steady roar that made Anselm clocer his ears with his hands. Where the projectiles hit the walls of the house, straw and clay splashed up. And where they found their targets…

The entire attack collapsed within a single heartbeat. Men tripped over each other, their bodies torn apart by dozens of bullets thathit them simultaniously. It only took a few moments, but when the streets fell silent again, the little road looked like a battlefield. Blood. Destroyed house walls and the bodies of the dead and dying that had fallen in such rapid succession that they just lay on top of each other. Only one of the men was still standing. Blood dripped from a wound on his shoulder, but while the guardsmen had used up their ammunition with their repeater gun, the man pulled a single, thin glass ampoule from a padded bag and rushed forward. One of the guards still tried to confront him with the bayonet. The man did not even pay attention to the knife that pierced his body and dropped the ampoule. Fire enveloped the gun position, racing across the ground, devouring men and equipment.

Cyrus shielded his eyes with his hand as the inferno reached a climax. The clay of the house walls began to burn, then it was over. All that remained was ash falling to the ground.

" I am starting to understand how you could survive here." , said Anselm, his voice barely more than a whisper.

"I am very careful."

"And you do not have many friends."

"No."

 

 

Chapter 12

 

 

 

"You! Over here! "Cyrus had certainly never been so happy to see someone as in this moment. Lord Macon once again wore the golden death mask he'd noticed before, but now he was able to look at it for the first time in detail. He doubted the material was really gold, but where he and Anselm were dirt-caked, the Hetmans armor was still flawless. Several other members of the Golden Guard crouched in a hollow in the pavement, presumably a crater left by an artillery shell. And around them were at least three dozen dead defenders of the city. Cyrus could make out several of the Shadow Guard. Macon himself was pulling the blade out of a fallen body while telling them to hurry

Cyrus and Anselm had followed the tangled streets to this open space. At one end the Imperial Guard had dug in, along with Macon's men. On the other side ... something loomed that made Cyrus blood freeze even after all the time he spent fighting the Xihuitzin stone warriors. The place was big enough to accommodate thousands of people and probably formed one of the main hubs of the city. Cyrus could see ways everywhere, from which roads led out into the open city-space. The buildings that bounded the square were mostly made of better materials, stone and bricks, than the mud huts further out at the wall. Cyrus took that as a sign that they were making progress. The city seemed to stretch endlessly in