by Frank Morin
The Tower of Terror, which had already been adopted as his nickname by the rest of the army, tried to speak, but only a high-pitched squeak came out, so he nodded instead. The move set his chubby features jiggling. Connor cringed.
They would be so grouted if they ever planned to fight fair.
"You'll do fine," Connor assured him. "Stick to the plan and ignore everything else."
"This is going to hurt," Shona muttered from the far side of Declan.
Connor ignored her and turned to Catriona. "Your lines must hold, Princess."
"They will, General," she assured him with a crisp salute before moving downslope to take her place in the center of the front lines.
Despite the daunting challenge they faced, knowing Catriona would willingly suffer for him warmed his heart. If she knew his true identity, she'd probably rip out the rest of her hair.
Directly across the lake from Connor's position stood Ivor's army, with Padraigin to Connor's left on the north side of the lake, and Redmund directly across from her on the right. The arrangement made sense since the Dawnus powers balanced out and assured that no two generals with identical affinities could fight each other immediately.
Rory probably expected the contest to begin as two battles on opposite sides of the lake. That would make it harder for any one force to launch a surprise attack on the rear of another or slip past them and capture their standard, which would spell defeat.
With the lake in the center, the Sentries couldn't just take control over the middle ground like they would wish in most battles, creating an unusual balancing act for tertiary affinities. Connor planned to leverage that fact to the fullest.
He could not allow anything about the contest to be typical. He needed chaos and surprise, and he planned to unleash as much of both as possible.
Four columns of earth, spaced evenly around the lake, rose high into the air, lifting Rory and his observers above the battlefield. The trumpet would sound any second, triggering the match.
Declan licked his lips and said in a hoarse whisper, "General, did you ever notice the ground beneath the plain is solid bedrock?"
"That's what I've heard." Somehow the false ceiling over the hidden city included a unique kind of shielding that prevented Sentries from delving into the secrets concealed in what should have been their realm. Making the ground feel like bedrock would turn the Sentries' interest without piquing their curiosity.
Declan and the others might not know the truth, but Connor did, and that concealed secret would play a crucial role in his plan. Some day he needed to learn the trick to that shielding. Not even Evander could shield the plain every hour of every day.
The blast of the starting bugle rang across the plain.
"Stand fast and we will win the day!" Connor bellowed. His army settled into battle-ready stances, with many of the front-line Boulders hefting heavy shields.
It wouldn't do them any good.
As Connor expected, both Padraigin's and Redmund's armies wheeled toward his and began advancing, even though the moves left them defenseless against Ivor. But Ivor was not one to miss out on a party. He had made such a point of trying to convince Connor to secretly support him, that he couldn't allow the others to defeat Connor without him.
What Connor hadn't expected was the sudden geysers of water on the lake, and the shaking of the ground on that side.
"Are the Sentries attacking already?" he asked, worried they had already broken the timing he'd planned on.
Declan shook his head. "It's something around the lake."
"Raise the wall anyway."
The little Sentry closed his eyes and his face twisted into an expression of utmost concentration. Sweat popped out on his brow, and with a slow moaning rumble, the earth several feet in front of Catriona began hesitantly climbing upward. It stopped at eight feet, then began expanding to the north.
Connor resisted the urge to tell Declan to hurry. The Boulders could almost build a wall by hand faster. Instead, he tapped soapstone and thrust out fingers of thought toward the lake where he was surprised to sense only one other presence.
Ivor.
The Dawnus pulled the waters in the center of the lake aside as his Sentries extended a land bridge right across the lake. Ivor drove the waters up and over that bridge with a rushing roar of crashing waves, and hardened them into a glittering ice arch that reflected rainbow light across the new construct. It was an amazing feat of water mastery. It seemed Ivor was trying to prove he could make his own wonders any time he chose.
Too bad this one was going to help Connor defeat him.
"They're coming too fast," Shona cried.
"Makes it easier to trap them all together," Connor said.
Declan suddenly gasped and dropped to one knee. The wall he had been painstakingly erecting began shaking, and chunks of it sank back into the earth. "Sentries."
"Make a show of resisting," Connor directed. "Don't make it too easy for them."
"Yes, sir."
Almost before he spoke, the entire wall crashed down with a resounding boom, nearly landing on Catriona and the front ranks, who stumbled back from the danger. They didn't make it far because the ground under their legs rippled and softened and they began to sink, their very stone-hard weight driving them down faster.
"My turn," Connor said.
He grabbed for the waters of the lake. Ivor held sway there, but he was distracted with his new ice bridge and Connor grabbed enough water around the fringes of Ivor's control for his purposes. He threw sheets of hail in wide arcs out toward Padraigin's and Redmund's armies. He didn't bother trying to crack Ivor's ice arch through which his army was already pouring. He needed Ivor's army close, but he needed the water elsewhere.
The Spitters in the other two armies were ready for him, and they blocked his unfocused hail attack. He fought them for control, and water rippled back and forth across the open ground between the armies, leaving random sheets of ice clinging to the ground.
Within moments of the opening trumpet, both armies had closed to a hundred yards and their Boulders broke into a charge, clearly planning to beat down Connor's disabled front ranks. Scores of Striders flanked them, ready to take out stragglers. All in all, it was a solid, coordinated strategy that appeared guaranteed to route Connor's army in record time.
Fearghas said, "Excuse me, General, but we're just about out of time."
Connor grinned. "They're making it almost too easy, aren't they?" He looked to Declan. "Keep them back from the inner circle. I'm almost ready."
Declan saluted, and Connor returned to the fight for the waters. He decided it would work best if all three armies advanced in unison, but Ivor's was a little too far behind, despite their excellent land bridge. So he tapped more soapstone and surprised the Spitters with a far more focused attack.
Water boiled out of the lake, spitting huge boulders of ice that rained down over the advancing armies. Disconnected from the main water source, and with Connor actively fighting against them, the Spitters struggled to connect with the airborne ice and deflect it. The unexpected barrage crashed into the charging Boulders and toppled them like pins in a game of Tumble-Tosser.
His army cheered as the charge faltered on both sides, but the victory was short-lived. As Ivor's army began pouring onto the western shores of the lake, Connor withdrew his influence and the Spitters regained control. They showed excellent mastery over the water, and had they trained in working together instead of only focusing on individual tactics, he never could have gained even that temporary advantage.
Connor studied the battlefield, the advancing armies, the patchwork sheets of ice on the ground, and his own bogged-down Boulders.
Everything was set up perfectly.
As the armies all resumed their charges Shona cried, "Con--come on, General. They're about to overrun us."
"Remember the plan!" He turned to Declan, who was panting, one hand driven into the ground to enhance his connection to the earth. "Now, Decla
n."
As the Sentry bent to his task, Connor turned to the two Solas hovering nearby. "As soon as they rise, light 'em up."
"Yes, sir," they said in unison, eager anticipation on their faces. Solas almost never got to play important roles in battle tactics other than lighting a nighttime engagement, so Connor's plan thrilled them.
Out on the plain, just below the front ranks of Connor's lines and in front of each of the advancing armies, the ground began cascading upward to reveal the trump cards Connor had procured the night before, then concealed with Declan's assistance. The enemy Sentries could have stopped them, but they were expecting a different tactic and the move caught them by surprise.
Into the air rose three of Frazier's ingenious prism lanterns from the original Rhidorroch. Those three had been the only ones salvaged from the devastated area and had been stored for safekeeping in a warehouse where Connor found them the night before.
Frazier was going to kill Connor after the battle, and Connor counted on the fear of the maze lord for the tactic to work. No one dared strike down the rising lanterns, and that gave Connor all the advantage.
Fearghas bellowed, "Eyes!"
As the army clapped hands in unison over their lowered eyes, the Solas blazed into battle. Lights erupted like miniature suns between the lanterns, and those incredible magnifying prisms transformed the lanterns into starbursts so bright Connor had to turn partially away, despite already shielding closed eyes.
For the advancing armies, most of whom were already staring at the prism lanterns with wide-eyed surprise, the unmatched brilliance proved disastrous. Rank after rank of soldiers cried out, clutching at their blinded eyes. Striders at full sprint fell to the ground and tumbled like dice across a rough board.
Ivor's army, many still caught on the land bridge under the brilliant arch of ice, suffered the most. That very arch, Ivor's monument to his dominance of the waters, reflected the brilliant light back down upon his army, magnifying it.
In that one instant, the Solas disabled three entire armies.
"Shutter!" Connor shouted.
As the intense light faded away, Connor grinned.
Time to win a battle.
Chapter 33
Waving his arms mightily, Connor shouted, "Go, go, go!"
Declan immediately began launching missiles of hardened earth at all three armies. The Sentries might have felt the initial pulsing of the ground, but once those boulder-like projectiles broke into the air, the Sentries lacked the ability of the Spitters to sense their approach. The blinded armies stood helpless before the barrage, which proved to be far more substantial than Connor expected. Maybe Declan had some talent buried somewhere in that pudgy frame after all.
Even blind, the Sentries reacted to the cries of alarm and screams of pain. They erected walls around their forces, which helped shield against some of the barrage while the blinded armies slowly regained their sight, but also served to hem them in and prevent them from blocking Connor's special strike forces.
"Papil," Connor shouted. "Make it rain!"
In unison, Papil and the other Pathfinders bent their will to walking with air. The three girls, looking vulnerable and small, despite their glowing eyes, flung hands out and unleashed the fury of the air.
Wind howled across the plain, ripping water from the lake and toppling student soldiers. Catriona led a dozen boulders who, thrown by companions, snapped open wings of canvas that caught the air and drove them across the battlefield like sparrows before a storm.
The wind was blowing out of the north, so the flying Boulders rained down over Redmund's still-blinded army and attacked with overwhelming fury. Connor had warned them to not speak so as to not make it easy for the Sentries to pinpoint them, so they smashed opponents to the ground in freakish silence.
Connor grinned. Redmund's army was in tatters. Time to spread the joy.
At his next signal, twelve pairs of Striders launched down the hill, pulling Boulders on wide planks attached to long ropes. Max-tapping basalt, with legs already fracked, the Striders sped across the muddy ground on both sides of Connor without slowing. Fearghas leaped astride one fast-moving sled to take his place leading one strike force, making the tricky maneuver look easy.
Connor reached out with soapstone to the seemingly random patches of ice scattered across the battlefield and shifted them around into long, slender pathways pointing north and south around the stalled armies. The Striders split into groups that straddled those ice paths so the planks slid along the ice, reducing the drag and allowing each trio to move at almost full speed.
To disguise their movements, Connor shouted, "Charge!"
Squads of Boulders broke free of the clinging mud and raced for the disabled armies, while Striders sprinted out to net or disable the enemy runners. Although heavily outnumbered, his enthusiastic troops suddenly posed a very real threat.
The blinded Sentries would be drawn to the thunderous advance of the main assault rather than the less-imminent threat of the special strike teams, but Connor could not leave anything to chance. He gripped Declan by the shoulder. "Disguise the strike teams!"
"I can't," an exhausted Declan cried. "Not even Gregor could shield so many running."
"I didn't say shield them, I said disguise them."
At Declan's uncomprehending look he added in a reasonable tone, "When you're walking with the earth, you sense movement like flickers against your skin, right?"
"How did you know?"
"Doesn't matter. Shielding blocks any touch on the Sentry's senses, but we can't do that."
"That's what I said."
"They can't see, so they're focused on their earth senses." He gestured at their Boulders charging the enemy lines. "We're already distracting them, but you need to overwhelm them with so much contact they can't focus on those Striders."
Declan grinned with understanding and drove his hand into the ground in a move so similar to Gregor's, that Connor felt a surge of pride. Declan really was standing against every other Sentry. The ground began to rumble and little waves radiated out in every direction.
Connor wished he could use quartzite and scan the faces of the other generals. They had to be furious, and frantic as their guaranteed victory slipped away and their dominant forces were reduced to frightened masses of confused soldiers.
With Declan committed, Connor joined the fray.
Through his soapstone senses, he could tell the blinded Spitters were seizing control of the waters of the lake and struggling over it as they all tried to fashion it into protective barriers around their armies or prepare to unleash their powers on the charging Boulders.
They could have the lake.
He had a source they knew nothing about. Focusing on the base poles of the still-blazing prism lanterns, Connor connected to channels of ice he had fastened to those bases that extended down below the range of the shielding over the plain. Once below the false roof, he could sense another underground pond, a hidden one that no one else knew about.
He seized those waters and unleashed them.
Just as the ground in front of his charging army began to ripple and shake with imminent Sentry attacks, geysers of frothing water exploded out of the ground in the center of all three opposing armies. The Spitters, focused entirely on their struggle for control of the lake, were caught completely by surprise as Connor blasted water through the center of their forces, tumbling Boulders and Striders alike in every direction.
He drove those waters through the armies, flooding the command positions. Padraigin, Redmund, and the other Sentries all formed towers of earth to rise above the flood.
That just made them easier targets.
Connor hardened some of the water into fast-spinning spheres and smashed them into those towers, tumbling the masters of the earth into water that temporarily blocked their powers.
The Spitters, along with Ivor, reacted with remarkable speed. They were probably getting their sight back, and they could feel all of the
moving waters with their soapstone senses. They fought for control, but ended up struggling against each other as much as against him. This time he did not let them have the waters, but kept slapping down as many enemy forces as he could with it, driving holes through the defensive walls ringing their armies.
Through those delaying tactics, he granted his Boulders enough time to close with the enemy armies and begin a very one sided bash fight.
Tomas would be proud.
As the battle raged in all three armies, Connor called Papil to him. "Speak to me, and use your quartzite voice."
She began to report in that lovely, rich voice, and his smile grew wider and wider.
The three strike forces had already skirted the confused armies and closed on the standards left behind and protected by small forces made up primarily of the three or four Blades in each army. All of the generals had made the same mistake in their single-minded focus on crushing Connor's army. They assumed their coordinated assault would end the battle quickly. He supposed they had made an alliance and agreed to return to their starting positions before re-engaging.
Their plan almost worked, so they were almost justified.
Almost never won anything but games of Much-A-Duck.
Shona led the strike force tasked with Ivor's distant base on the far side of the lake. Before they arrived, Fearghas and his assault team attacked Padraigin's army, while Lorcc led the third strike team against Redmund's.
Fearghas led his strike force with the grace and speed of a fully trained Blade and faced down three opponents simultaneously in a blur of steel until his Striders could net them and his Boulders beat them into submission. Lorcc launched himself at a Blade and punched the man with arms fracked and blurring with unstoppable speed, raining dozens of blows on the unfortunate Blade before he could manage to fall unconscious to the ground.
Shona faced the greatest challenge. Positioned so far from the battlefield, Ivor's Blades were not affected by the blinding prism lanterns and saw her team coming. They fought with desperate strength, but those three Blades could not stop a determined Shona backed by eight Striders and three Boulders. She took half a dozen nasty blows before the short, ugly fight ended.