* * *
Millie Thatcher stood on the back of Hett’s wagon, playing a steady beat on her drum. The caravan had reached high ground shortly before noon, and the Battlemaster had circled the wagons together before setting the soldiers to digging fortifications. Some of the troops seemed almost embarrassed when Hett joined the effort to clear the high ground of trees, a single swing of his axe felling full-grown timbers with an ease that almost seemed contemptuous.
The refugees were close to panic. Never before had The General actually stopped the wagons for a fight, preferring to keep them moving. Compounding their nervousness was the fact that Jacob had sent his wife Erin away, riding north with most of the Mages and plenty of horse. A minor lordling who’d lost his lands to the Deskren—Millie didn’t know his name, nor did she care—had had the gall to challenge The General, publicly questioning why the caravan’s most powerful mage and healer had been sent to safety while they prepared to fight and die.
Jacob’s casual backhand had silenced not only his complaint, but any other, his armored gauntlet crushing the man’s jaw and sending him tumbling into a wagon with enough force to splinter the side panels. A shake of his head had halted the pair of healers rushing to help the man.
“We’ll have wounded soldiers to tend to soon enough,” said the Battlemaster, his voice rough and cold. “Save your Mana for those who are about to die for you.” Without another word, he turned and walked away.
Millie didn’t have words for the feeling that was building around the encampment. Those not wounded or young had been set to work in some way: digging, lashing saplings together to set spikes in the ground facing out from the wagons, and last-minute repairs to armor. Everyone worked, and it seemed that the steady beat of her drum lent a form of order to chaos to keep the worst of the panic at bay. So she kept a steady hand, keeping an eye on the Deskren forces downslope of them.
She also couldn’t help glancing at the sky every few minutes. The morning had been clear, the day promising sun and heat just like the past few days of late summer weather. But the wind had picked up soon after the caravan stopped, and now low clouds scudded by, almost touching the treetops. Drum us up a storm, the Battlemaster had said. Millie would have been overjoyed to do so had she known how, but despite how natural her class felt, she was still new to it.
Her mother could have sung thunderheads into existence, were she still alive. The [Whisperwind Songstress] had called rains for the family farm more than once during drought, giving them a much-needed lifeline. She’d sang about, and to, different gods and spirits as much as she sang to and for any audience. More names than Millie could remember; to her mother, the important thing had been the songs and the singing more than any capricious deity. Their family hadn’t been anything close to what one could call devout, nor did they worship in service to anyone.
She knew of paladins and priests, of course. But their power came from oaths they made and service they offered. Millie served now, too, and while she didn’t fully understand what it was she served, she did feel that she couldn’t swear to anything else. She hadn’t sworn herself verbally to the Battlemaster—fear had stayed her tongue, and by the time she’d conquered it, she had no more words—but accepting his title and choosing her class had had the same effect. Most of the gods her mother had spoken of would have demanded a similar exchange of vows; those paths now stood barred to her.
But not everything she’d sung to her about struck such bargains; thus, the manner in which the songstress called rain and storm. Storms don’t make bargains, Amelia, she’d told her one day. We give gifts of song, and if they approve, they answer.
This was the hue of Millie’s thoughts as she counted three heartbeats to a strike on her drum. She had no words to sing. Her loyalty to the Battlemaster and his banner could not be swayed, no bargains could be made. I already gave my words away, she thought as she looked to the sky. I can’t sing you pretty songs. All I have is my drum. Is it enough?
The clouds had darkened the day to shadow just as the Deskren formation marched out of the lower tree line, dread Gendarmes in the lead. Standing on the wagon, Millie saw them before anyone save the Battlemaster himself, sitting tall on his charger. She raised her hand to the sky and waited, watching for the hand signal she knew was coming. Jacob Ward met her eyes and raised his hand to match hers as the winds died. The rumbles of thunder ceased, ushering in a moment of perfect silence. But the answering voice, the whisper that sounded in her mind and caused her eyes to widen in shock, was decidedly not from the Worldwalker.
Your drum has pleased Quinus, Harbinger of the Storm! The Harbinger arrives in the silence between the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder!
You have earned the Aspect of the Harbinger! May the Storm answer thy call!
The Battlemaster’s hand dropped with a sharp chopping motion, and Millie felt a tingling in her upraised hand. Sparks buzzed around the metal tip of her baton, arcing down to her gauntlet to dance along the outside of her chainmail, jumping from there to the iron bolts and metal bands on the wagon. Hett’s axe seemed to thrum as the old man broke into laughter.
“Soldiers,” said the Battlemaster in a tone that was almost jovial now that the wait was over. “We hold this line.” His voice carried across the rise without the man needing to raise his voice. “It’s time to stack bodies.”
Millie’s hand dropped as he nodded to her with the last words.
And thunder came with it.
Chapter 36: Thunder and Mud
Calvin Descroix looked through a spyglass at the refugee encampment. Practically a fort already, he thought, despite less than a quarter of a day to dig in. Angled trenches marred the direct upslope approach, the only one workable for his forces. Splitting to either side of the fortifications would expose them to withering fire from the Battlemaster’s mages and archers. Worse, the clearer terrain and broad, comparatively shallow slope would make an excellent killing field for his corps of lancers.
Even from this distance, the steady pounding of drums drifted from the center of the compound, their source a small, childlike figure standing on the largest wagon. As far away as Calvin was, he couldn’t make out more than outlines, but the outline beating its drum was too small to be one of the soldiers. Several days ago, the fleeing refugees had suddenly began marching much faster, and with the bard in sight, the reason was clear. She’s so young , he thought, closing his eyes against the sudden twinge in his chest. But I can’t change the Empire, and she’ll be collared with the rest of the survivors… A heartbeat later, he opened his eyes again. That is, if she survives. Mercy wasn’t a virtue often afforded to the Empire’s commanders, but in the chaos of a pitched battle, perhaps an “accident” could be arranged to spare the child a much grimmer fate in the breeding pens of Nouveau Deskra. Bards were rare enough as it was; one with added military skills would be put to use in attempts to create more.
Moreover, this bard appeared to have skills beyond even the military; with every beat of her drum, the clouds overhead darkened. The air began to cool, and shadows deepened all along the rise where the refugees had dug their defenses.
He shook himself out of his thoughts, watching in silence as nearly two thousand Luparan Gendarmes entered formation at the bottom of the distant slope. He turned to the hulking Panthren awaiting orders next to him, the massive leonine form of the Shackled beast-man standing almost as tall as Calvin’s horse. “I don’t see another way around it, Commandant Golthen. We need your battalion to break their lines before we can commit the Hoplites.”
The beast-man rolled his shoulders, the golden glint around his neck just peeking out when the curls of his light brown mane shifted. “That’s why we were sent.” The words were almost a snarl, bitten off around oversized canines, with only half-human lips to refine the shape of the sound
“The one on the wagon seems to be calling up this storm,” he said as thunder rumbled ominously above. “Some form of bard or mage. Take them out, and it s
hould be a demoralizing blow, Commandant. As soon as your Gendarmes clear a path, the Hoplites will follow. You know better than I just how bloody this will be…”
“By the emperor’s command,” replied the half-lion with a savage grin, seemingly eager for the bloodshed. Golthen loped forward to join his soldiers, tightening his heavy, clawed gauntlets before securing his helm. As if by unspoken agreement, the rains began just as the Gendarmes began their charge.
* * *
Millie Thatcher struck her drum, and the blast of thunder stilled the wind and caused every soldier and civilian on the rise to freeze for one single moment. The growing storm above had cast dark shadows across their position, but as the lightning flared, stark white light momentarily drove them back. The lightning dimmed, but stayed, dancing around her chainmail and gauntlet in jagged blue-white arcs, and buzzing around the metal pieces of the wagon and the gleaming head of Hett’s axe. Her baton beat a stuttering tremolo against the stretched hide of the drum, a rapid, flickering drumroll, before she slid the metal baton along the iron rim. The sparks stretched out between the baton and the edge of the instrument when her hand withdrew, and similar tracings of energy began to arc along the armor and weapons of every soldier under the Battlemaster’s banner.
The Deskren Gendarmes, uncowed by the dramatic display, rolled up the slope, the wolfmen surging forward in an unstoppable tide of tooth and claw. Rains lashed against the encampment as the storm broke free, but the defenders were unmoved. The soldiers set down their tools and took up their weapons, waiting for orders. Millie kept her drumbeats light and steady, though her cadence had quickened: still three heartbeats to a strike, but that heartbeat had started to race.
When less than a third of the distance between the attackers and the first row of spiked trees remained, the Battlemaster spoke, and at his word, Millie struck the drum once more, then held the baton against the head, arm quivering.
“Now.”
Over a hundred Deskren crossbows let go with one collective snap , and the front line of Gendarmes crumpled just a hundred paces shy of the defenses. Taken when the lancers had surprised an enemy supply convoy, The General had insisted all of the soldiers practice with the weapons, regardless of class or existing skills. Now that insistence paid off; very few of the projectiles missed. As the bolts struck the wolfmen, they exploded in lightning and thudding rumbles of thunder borrowed from Millie’s drum. The first line of Gendarmes fell and died, and those behind howled in a fury that drove back the rain. Then they reached the makeshift barricades and trenches, and the battle devolved into a grand melee of shield, spear, axe, and sword.
* * *
Jenna Tillersen stood up and wiped the sweat from her brow, back aching from stooping down at her age. As a [Water Witch], she’d never gone adventuring, spending her years helping the villages in the southern region of Weldtir. Between finding water, drawing it up, and a few healing skills, she always had worthwhile work to do. She even helped with delivering babies from time to time. All those things, together with the fact that she’d never really felt the urge to fight, had yielded a life filled mostly with peace and comfort—until the Deskren came. She’d certainly never thought she’d be running from a war, let alone actually fighting in one. Yet here she was, another page turned in her Story, as she did her part in the preparations for unleashing destruction on a scale that turned her stomach.
“That’s the last section, Miss Erin,” she said, turning to glance at the Worldwalker. “Davin and the others have set the Earthbreaker Runes, and when they go off, my magic will freeze the water that seeps in.”
The General’s Wife looked out over the levee that held back the River Weldt, a weary expression on her face. Jenna and every other able body with a speck of magical talent who could be spared had been sent, and even then the [Hand of Solace] had been obliged to refresh their magical reserves in order to engrave so many hundreds of runes across the base of the levee. She led them back to high ground, then turned to face them.
“Now we wait for the signal.”
“It won’t matter,” a smooth and shadowy voice said. A man on horseback melted out of the tree line, flanked by dozens of Luparan Gendarmes. From the distant encampment, thunder rolled across the shallow valley, where storm clouds had darkened a section of the horizon to near pitch blackness. The man spoke again as lightning flashed from within. “Whatever his game was, it ends here.”
“You’re free to think that,” the Worldwalker said, raising her hand to stop Jenna and the other mages from readying their magic. She could feel Erin’s Mana rise to the surface, but only in a small current, too weak for her to discern her intent, beyond that it was Life magic.
“I’m Excruciator Selunj,” rasped the thin man with the harsh face. “I’m going to break you personally, then share you with my Gendarmes. Once you’ve learned true obedience, I’ll send you after your own husband. If he survives the battle.” He laughed, a dark, cruel sound.
Erin’s face didn’t even flicker at the man’s pronouncement, even delivered as it was with all the certainty of the headsman’s ax. “Hm. It’s lucky for you, then, that I’m far more merciful than he.”
Suddenly Selunj made a choking noise. Jenna gasped as the [Hand of Solace]’s magic flared, and she ripped the life out of almost a hundred foes at once without changing expression. Blood poured from the Gendarmes’ snouts, and as one, they collapsed, weapons thumping to the dirt after falling from nerveless hands. There on the ground, the bodies looked almost pristine and untouched, save for the reddened ground beneath them.
“Wha—”the Deskren overseer gasped before sliding off his horse with blood pouring from his nose and down his face.
“The human body—any living body, really—is an amazing thing,” said Erin Ward, lowering her hand as the excruciator gasped his last breath. “We can survive terrible trauma, lose an entire limb and recover, or we can die from something as simple as a nosebleed, if it’s bad enough.”
“You call that merciful?” Jenna asked, as a bright light rose over the distant trees, a flare to illuminate the countryside for miles.
“Indeed, it was merciful. Had Jacob heard what he said, the man would have been days in the dying. Ask my husband about Vlad Tepes sometime when he isn’t busy.” The Worldwalker looked up at the signal flare with a smile, then turned and, with a pulse of power, activated the runes on the levee.
“Vlad Tepes? Is that a place? Or a name?” the [Water Witch] responded as magic surged and the bottom of the levee began to crack apart, flash-frozen water ruthlessly widening the gaps opened by the Earth magic.
A new thunder rose. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble, with larger chunks of stone tumbling down, pushed out from the wall by the incomprehensible pressures locked behind them. The runes did their work, and as the entire structure gave way to unleash a wall of water over ten feet high and almost a mile wide, the Worldwalker smiled.
“He was a man. A much kinder one than Jacob, should he ever find reason to be truly angry.”
* * *
Millie Thatcher beat her drum with all her might, heart pounding with fear-tinged exhilaration. This was a new kind of fear, however—before, she would have huddled in the wagons and only fought when bandits tried to climb inside. Now, this fear galvanized her, steadying her mind and arm as she called down thunderbolts with every strike.
The first line of sharpened pikes in the ground had merely slowed the Gendarmes, and they’d learned quickly that it was the girl on the wagon calling down the lightning instead of mages in the back lines. The Battlemaster had swung around with a dozen lancers and trampled one group of wolf-men who had broken through and charged her position. The reprieve was brief, for a massive Panthren Lion had taken a small number of beastkin lucky enough to survive the initial assault right through their lines. The lion-man roared, pushing her storm back long enough for the wolves to close.
Their advance met its end at the head of old man Hett’s axe, the man cackl
ing with sadistic glee as the broad, cruelly sharp blade flashed down, splitting one wolf from helm to groin. The mules, eager to prove themselves, pulled their weight, bucking the Gendarmes away. With an equine scream of rage, one even took hold of an unfortunate Gendarme by the shoulder, shaking it like a bulldog would a rabbit, its strained howls tapering off to squeals and barely audible whimpers as it died.
One Gendarme rose over the side of the wagon, finding his feet before advancing on her, a triumphant gleam in his eye as he raised his weapon. Without thinking or even missing a beat, Millie struck her drum and, on the backstroke, lashed out to strike the oncoming foe’s chestplate. At the moment of contact, Millie felt her Mana reserves drain precipitously, but she certainly couldn’t argue with the effect: immediately the wolfman seemed to liquefy, blowing out the gaps in his chestplate. A pair of armored legs toppled away from the wagon, joined by his very messy upper half.
She actually did miss a beat after that, unprepared for the awe-inspiring nature of her attack and its disgusting results. After the wolf’s remains fell to the ground, she felt something new :
You have gained the Skill [Battle Beats]! Shock and awe, and force unrelenting! Devastate your enemies with the solid waves of sound itself!
Still somewhat shaken, she glanced down at Hett, still laughing as he corralled his mules. Smiling, the Battle-Bard started playing again as the brassy note of Deskren war horns sounded the charge of the Hoplite reserves. The captain of the Gendarmes, seeing his troops fail, roared once more and charged the wagon.
His charge met its end at the tip of the Battlemaster’s lance. After his earlier sally, he’d picked up a lance from somewhere and circled back on the wagon, the blackened, blunted end making devastating contact with the Panthren’s chestplate. The lance shattered under the force, and both the captain and Battlemaster fell away. Suddenly absent its rider, his charger committed itself to the fray as Jacob rose to his feet. Millie redoubled her efforts, fighting down a sudden wave of panic: his sword was still attached to his saddle, now a world away.
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