Manx

by Greg Curtis

  The gliders were the heart of their strategy. They had the walls, but they already knew that the spiders had a way over them. And already in the distance she could see spiderweb balloons lifting into the air. Fortunately she could also feel the wind at her back, and knew that the crakes were already countering them. Driving them back.

  That was the plan. There would be no more surprises with the spiders floating over the walls and dropping on unsuspecting people in the mist. Though she still worried that they might try burrowing or going around the sides.

  But she didn't have time to worry about that. She only had time to find her sorcerer and her glider and there were so many of both lined up and waiting for their walkers.

  Sorsha soon found Danvers and his glider waiting for her, and she was glad to see the badly dressed sorcerer. He might look like a refugee from a second hand clothes store, and his beard was ridiculous, but she trusted him. She was glad he was with them. When the truth about the spiders had been revealed, he'd decided he wanted to fight them on the border. The party could carry on without him, releasing the prisoners. They didn't have much left to worry about anymore.

  “You ready to fly?” she asked as she approached.

  “Like the wind!” He smiled at her. “Those damned spiders won't know what hit them!”

  “Then lets get started.” She hopped on to the bench beside him and immediately started casting her spell. The only spell she was going to use today, with a little luck. Her portal wall.

  This was the heart of the plan they'd created. Simplicity. Before, when things had gone wrong, they'd had everybody striking out with all their different magical gifts and a lot of the time, upsetting each other's plans. Now, as much as possible, they would all have only a single spell to cast. The crakes weren't going to be creating huge storms. That took too much strength and the storms didn't really affect the spiders under the ground. Similarly the mist had left them vulnerable. So their spell was wind. They were simply going to keep the wind blowing, and stop the balloons from crossing their walls. And that was a minor spell that they could keep up all day.

  The sorcerers, most of them anyway, were going to fly the gliders. Again, since the gliders were already enchanted, it required little effort from them. Though she feared the ride was going to be a little rough and frighteningly fast.

  Defences behind the wall would be maintained by the druids, the drakes and the taurans. They were the ones best able to prevail in combat. But hopefully they wouldn't be needed as the spiders wouldn't break through the walls.

  And the shamans would direct everyone.

  Meanwhile she would concentrate on maintaining a single portal wall. One that was a constant twenty feet in front of the glider. That was her job. Her only task. And normally it would have been nothing. But normally she was strong. Now, though thanks to the necklace she was stronger than she had been, she was still nowhere near her full strength.

  But the wall came into existence easily enough, and in short order she was able to tell her driver that they were ready.

  “Then strap yourself in,” Danvers told her with an entirely inappropriate grin for someone of mature years. “Things are about to become interesting!”

  Sorsha did as he said, glad that they'd decided to fit the gliders with belts, and no sooner had she tightened the buckle than they were off. Heading towards the portal walls at a steady clip. And then just before they reached it, they jumped twenty feet up into the air, and sailed clean over it.

  “Yes!” the sorcerer cried out with excitement as they landed on the other side.

  Sorsha would have asked him what he was so happy about, after her stomach had stopped squirming, but there was no time. Instead they joined the other gliders, and then in a heartbeat took off. Took off so fast that she was thrown back in her seat so hard she could barely breathe.

  She gasped. This was fast! Sorsha had ridden in gliders for her entire life, but never in one that was racing across the ground like this one. The wind was blasting into her face with the force of a hurricane. She could barely hear anything over the roar of it. And all the time the enemy was coming closer to them. Or they were approaching them like a bullet. And all she could do was maintain her portal wall.

  She did look behind her though, to see the ground being shaved down to the dirt in a giant track. But that was to be expected. They would catch any of the spiders that tried to burrow when they saw them coming. Not that she expected them to do that. The spiders didn't understand fear.

  Then they hit the river of green, and she had no more time. All she could do was concentrate on the green river and watch as they were literally scraped out of this world and sent to another to die in front of her. But really she couldn't even see that. Her eyes were blurring and they were moving so quickly that what was in front of her was fuzzy at best.

  Twenty seconds later their first pass was complete and she breathed a huge sigh of relief as she realised there were no more spiders in front of her. And when she looked to the sides the others were the same. Better still there was nothing left of the torrent of spiders behind them. Just a long wide trail of dirt.

  For a moment she wanted to shout for joy. But she knew they didn't have the time. Instead Danvers started wheeling the glider around and they headed back to the wall. This had only been the first strike. And a long days battle lay ahead of them. The proof of that was given to them when she saw more armies of green emerging from the distant city.

  So they headed back, at a more reasonable speed, and then lined up just on the wrong side of the wall, for their next run. Or runs. A score of gliders on each side peeled off from the main group to take care of the ones that marched wide. That was the plan. She and the rest of the main bunch were there to draw the spiders to them. To bring them to the wall and make them march through. The others were making sure that none of them tried to go around it.

  “You alright?” She yelled at Danvers as they waited for the command.

  “Girlie, this is more fun than a night in the dens of iniquity!” he replied excitedly. His face was red and his beard fluttering in the wind, and he looked like he was about to burst into song at any moment.

  Sorsha didn't want to ask which particular dens he was referring to. She was just glad that they were alive and he was in good spirits. Then the signal was given and they began their second run and there was no more time to talk. Only to keep their eyes on the spiders ahead and then watch as they vanished in front of them.

  It was like running into a wall of grass at top speed and then watching the grass being smashed down in front of you. Though grass couldn't kill and eat you. But still every run they made she thought they destroyed thousands of spiders. So did all the other gliders. And even with the incalculable numbers of spiders there were, that had to hurt.

  But what mattered most was that only one of the spider cities was involved in the battle. They could defeat one city she thought. And as the time wore on and the spiders kept coming out of their underground labyrinth and marching for the spell-casters, she began to believe that they were doing just that.

  Sorsha even began to sense victory. And that made her bold. Bold enough to start cheering wildly with each run.

  She should have known better.

  The spider's counter attack caught her completely by surprise. It caught everyone by surprise. And in fact at first she didn't even know that there was one. But then she heard Danvers grunt with pain as they raced away from another successful run, looked around and saw a brown stain on his jerkin. One that was spreading, eating into the leather and into his shoulder. And instantly she understood.

  This was what the party had reported in the prisons. The slime that had been on the locks of the prison doors. The acid that had eaten its way through them. The spiders could spit the stuff. And it wasn't just Danvers who'd been hit. She looked around and saw other gliders flying erratically over the grass and knew why.

  “Fall back!” She bellowed with all the strength she had. But o
ver the rush of the wind she doubted anyone heard her. But maybe the shamans did, because others immediately started doing as she said. Streaking back as fast as they could for the main portal wall.

  And while they did that she managed to get out of her own jerkin and start wiping away at the brown stain on Danvers' shoulder, trying to get it off his skin.

  Not all were so lucky though. Not all were hit in the shoulder. One sorcerer at least took a lump of the spider spit to the face, and the screams he let out were so loud they could even be heard over the wind rushing by. He quickly lost control of his glider and a heartbeat later they were bouncing and tumbling across the grass, bits and pieces of glider flying in all directions. Bits and pieces of people too.

  A couple of the other gliders rushed over to see if they could rescue the survivors, but she knew even before she saw them shake their heads, that there weren't any. Not much survived hitting the ground that fast.

  One glider down. Two dead. And many more injured. Just as the sun was finally rising and the day's battle was about to begin. As they raced the last of the way to the portal wall and then jumped over it, she knew they were in trouble. Because the spiders were still coming.

  On the ground she let the healers tend to Danvers and the others, and told the sorcerers to start work on their back up spells. Meanwhile she turned her attention to her other spell. Hell-hounds. Lots and lots of hell-hounds. And it was good that she was stronger, she thought. Because there was an entire army of acid spitting spiders heading for them.

  Then a wyvern appeared in the sky above them and she knew they had hope. One of the grand druids had obviously summoned the beast, and she watched with pleasure as it flew over the green army and laid down a river of fire on them.

  Praise the gods for the necklaces! Because without them the grand druid would never have been able to call such a beast. But even with them and the minor amount of recovery they'd allowed him or her to enjoy, she doubted he would be able to call a second.

  Still, for the moment, they were still in the fight.

  But half an hour later as the sun was finally rising over the distant hills and the first of the spiders were marching into the portal wall, she knew they were in trouble. By then the land on the other side of the wall was a mass of fire and blackened earth for as far as the eye could see. The smoke was everywhere, filling the sky and making it difficult to breathe. And she was already struggling as she summoned one more fire breathing hound after another and sent them into battle. They'd turned a part of the world into a hell. But still she had hope. And then the call came.

  “Another city's joined the fight!”

  Sorsha's hopes died when she heard that. Two cities! They couldn't withstand the assault from two cities at once! But there was nothing to do except fight on. So she muttered a few prayers between gritted teeth and did just that, wondering if she would have any of her raven black hair left in the morning – assuming she survived until then.

  Time marched on, and so did the spiders. The battle raged, and she watched as the trickle that had reached the portal slowly became a flood. Two raging rivers of green spiders charging at them and rushing headlong to their doom. And by the grace of the gods none of them came around the sides of the wall. None started digging.

  But not so thankfully, they spat their acid venom at them, and some of it flew over the portal wall. Every now and then she heard another scream and knew someone else had been hit. But she couldn't take the time to look around and see who it was. She just had to keep fighting. They all did.

  Then some of it landed on her, and she screamed. Terror started running out of control as she felt the burning. It was all she could do not to run screaming. Luckily it landed on her arm and her sleeve caught most of it. She had her jerkin off before it could do serious damage. But still her wrist got burned before she could wipe it down and she could see angry red blisters forming on the back of her hand. The damned stuff hurt! But of more concern was just how fast the stuff ate through the heavy material of her jerkin. It might not be true armour, but it was tough. Just not against the spider spit.

  And yet she knew even as she stared at the redness on her hand and wrist and panicked as she imagined the acid burning all the rest of the way through, that she had to fight. So somehow she put the pain to one side, stopped staring at her injury, and continued summoning.

  It wasn't the last acid splash she took. Thankfully most of them were only minor, and even more thankfully, the healers had started delivering jugs of water to everyone so they could wash themselves off. But each time the burning pain and the fear threatened to overwhelm her. She just wasn't a soldier. She didn't want to be one. And yet she had no choice. If she didn't fight, if the others didn't fight, they would be eaten by spiders.

  The battle raged on as her jerkin slowly dissolved into a puddle of something foul smelling on the ground beside her, and she pushed through the tiredness, the burning and the aching in her bones as she fought. But at least there was no doubt that she was stronger than she had been. Because otherwise she would be on the ground.

  So was everyone else. The crakes were certainly stronger as they maintained the wind, and she was grateful for that. The wind didn't just stop the spiders on their spiderweb balloons from reaching them, it also drove back the smoke and the acrid smell of the burning. Still there was so much smoke that it was hard to make out much of the battlefield on the other side of the wall. It was only through breaks in it that she could see anything. And what she could see was mostly green. A living carpet of green death.

  Hours passed like that. At least it seemed like hours, but all she really knew was that the sun rose higher in the sky. And that the spiders kept marching to their doom in their thousands. Maybe in their millions. Some stood back and spat acid at them, but most just marched straight for them and directly into the portal. And they never seemed to realise it was there. Praise the gods!

  As the sun rose higher the smoke started to clear. Not because there was less fire being sprayed everywhere, but simply because there was less left to burn. The foothills in front of them were now nothing but a wasteland of ash and scorched earth through which endless rivers of green flowed. But while the spiders kept coming with no end in sight, she realised they were holding their own. Mostly.

  But how long could they keep going? By the time the sun had reached its zenith, she was almost falling down with exhaustion. She was hurting, in every way. And with each cast she made she kept thinking it had to be her last. There was simply nothing left.

  And there were a lot of people down she noticed when she had a chance to look around. Being tended to by the healers. And some of them looked like they weren't going to get up again. That acid was a truly horrible weapon.

  Then a shadow flew over her and she forgot about the pain of her burns as she looked up, dreading what new horror she might see.

  But it wasn't the spiders. It was the skyships. A full score of them, floating serenely above it all, watching the battle unfold beneath them.

  Where in all the hells had they come from? Why were they here? She just hoped they weren't going to drop more of that gas. It hadn't been much use the last time. In fact it had just annoyed the spiders and made them attack. Then again she had to wonder, could they actually make things any worse? Somehow she doubted it as she saw the torrent of horrifying green marching for her.

  Still there was nothing she could do except shout to the crakes to make certain they kept the wind blowing away from them, and carry on. And in time she almost forgot about the great ships of the sky.

  Until the nearest of the cities exploded.

  “Balls!” Sorsha cried out as she saw the distant city turn into a ball of fire which lifted up into the sky. And then she cried out some more as she felt the ground shake under her feet and had to steady herself.

  By all the gods! What was that?! She'd never seen anything like it! It was like a cannon blast that lingered. A volley of them. And the ball of fire and smoke that ros
e into the sky was like the fury of the gods unleashed, and that on a land that was already a hell.

  And then there was a second one, and the other city turned into an inferno of fire and smoke while she stared in disbelief.

  But that wasn't the end of it. The sky ships sailed over the crest of the distant hills and more explosions followed. One after the other. And each time, despite the fact that they were leagues away, the ground shook in terror beneath her feet.

  When the explosions finally ended though, one thing had changed. The spiders no longer kept coming from the cities. She looked and looked, but for the life of her she could see no more emerging from their underground cities. The rivers of green tailed off in the distance.

  Twenty minutes later, the battle itself ended. There was no announcement. No sight of the spiders fleeing the battlefield. There were just no more spiders emerging from the cities and beginning the long march to them. And those that had made it all the way to them, had stepped into the portal wall and died, or else been burnt to death.

  All that was left was a vista of rolling hills of ash and scorch marks. An empty vista. Because try as she might, she couldn't see any green.