Honor and Blood

by James Galloway

  "What does that mean?" she asked fearfully.

  "It means, love, that now we'll have to race everyone to get there first." He reached down and picked up Jula, his bond-daughter, and looked down at her. She really was a pretty young thing, her wary expression softened by her slumber. His mind was racing, but he kept enough about himself to assign priorities. If he didn't have to stay in the courtyard anymore, he could go help. But he couldn't leave the Tower grounds, so if he saw any more fighting, it would have to come to him. Before he worried about that, though, he wanted to get Jula into a warm bed, and make sense out of the two major events that had just happened.

  Why couldn't these things ever come at him one at a time, when he had time to digest them before the next big shock came along?

  "You realize that there was a direction in that," Miranda told him. "We're going to have company."

  "You felt it too?" he asked, then he remembered what Miranda was.

  "Who wouldn't have felt that?" she asked. "I thought my blood was going to freeze."

  He didn't answer that. If he told her that it came through the Weave, and she shouldn't have felt it, it would leave open all sorts of questions he wasn't quite sure for which she was prepared to accept the answers. "I know," he answered her original question. "But they won't know exactly where they're going, only a general sense of it."

  "That's still enough to make it a crowded journey."

  "It's a big ocean, Miranda."

  "Not that big."

  "I can't argue with that. I'm sure they'll find some way to get in our way."

  Things weren't quite so peaceful for Allia, Keritanima, Jenna, and their group of Sorcerers. They had paused at that strange event, but were again locked in battle. The ki'zadun had established quite a foothold in the city, and had pushed most of the defenders off the walls around the east gate. Savage fighting was taking place on the walls, accented by the spells of the minor Wizards not important enough to join in the main battle of magic that had been won by the Sorcerers earlier. These were war mages, assigned to the front lines to use magic to support their troops directly. It was against these that the Sorcerers now battled, breaking the large Circle and forming a large number of smaller Circles among the katzh-dashi that were defending the walls, to spread their magic around for best effect. The Wizards could help their Goblinoid troops to overwhelm the Sulasians, but they found themselves vulnerable when a company of Wikuni musketeers opened fire on them, or the Were-kin hidden among the Wikuni soldiers made its presence known by tearing through the Goblinoids struggling to take the walls and rob the defenders of the high positions to kill the invaders with missle weapons.

  The screams of the dying and the wounded were drowned out by the sharp cracks of Wikuni muskets, their deadly weapons withering the advancing Goblinoids along the walls. One brave Were-kin had turned one of the massive cannons, fully loaded, and set it off in the face of a large group of Trolls that had just ripped through a phalanx of Sulasian regulars. The courageous Were-bear then waded into their ranks with his huge claws flailing, felling those not killed by the cannon's discharge. Keritanima led a Circle of four, with Dar and Ahiyira in her host, and they moved along the walls, targeting and killing any Wizard they spotted even as they used their magic to kill Goblinoids by the score. She spotted Jenna on the ground below with her Circle of seven, which included the Keeper and Koran Dar. The sister of Tarrin was still fresh, still impressive, weaving spells that quickly made any who had recognized her and her group flee in terror at the sight of her, for few survived long enough to escape once she noticed them. Allia was in the host of a Circle on the other wall across from the east gate, led by Dolanna, but the Selani was too busy killing Goblinoids with her short swords to worry about granting her power to Dolanna. All the Circles had formidable protection to isolate them from harm. Szath, her massive bodyguard, and Azakar were just two of a host of assorted Vendari, Knights, and Ungardt that had been assigned to defend the Sorcerers, and they did so with a ferocious efficiency that even made Trolls wary to try to get through them to reach the magicians behind. There were ten defenders protecting Keritanima's Circle, and though all of them were a little battered, bloody, and bruised, their weapons were drenched in the blood of their enemies. Szath and Azakar had entered something of a competetion to see who could kill the most enemies, and they led a squad of ten frightfully nasty warriors that were just as dangerous as they were. With them to protect the Sorcerers, no enemy had gotten within spear's length of Keritanima.

  "Watch it, watch it!" someone shouted, and a Sulasian used a long pole to push a ladder of Waern off the wall. Though they had breached the gate, they still tried to come over the walls to surround the defenders. Keritanima shouted for her bodyguards to get clear, and they melted out of her path immediately as the Sulasian soldiers scrambled out of the way themselves. A host of Trolls tried to surge forward as the soldiers blocking their way suddenly fled, but all they managed to do was rush headlong right into a savage blast of pure fire that lashed over the battlement at the top of the wall, frying a good fifty foot length of the wall's top and everyone atop it.

  Keritanima blew out her breath, panting. Jenna looked like she could go on forever, but Keritanima was getting tired. She had given so much of herself in the large Circle, it had taken so much to act as a link between her Circle and the larger one Jenna led. But she would not shirk off her duty! They needed her magic, and only Ahiriya in her Circle had the aptitude, ability, or experience necessary for a highly volatile situation like fighting in a battle. It required split-second reactions and decision making. Ahiriya would be a competent lead, but Keritanima wasn't going to give up quite yet. It would be better if Keritanima waited until she was too tired to lead anymore, to give Ahiriya the longest possible time to act as lead before the stress of it forced her to pass it to someone else. Hopefully, by then, they wouldn't be needed anymore.

  The soldiers closed ranks before Keritanima, the Sulasians using their pikes to push the burning Trolls back among their own burning kind, or forcing them to fall from the walls. The ones that were burning shrieked and flailed wildly, some of them impaling themselves on Sulasian pikes in a mad attempt to run in their pain. But more Goblinoids advanced over the burning bodies of their cousins, Waern and Dargu, filling in the hole she had made before they could advance to retake that section of the wall.

  That was enough! Keritanima could see that they weren't going to be able to stop the Goblinoids from taking the wall, unless they took the wall away from the Goblinoids! She looked down, where Jenna had just annihilated a large formation of undead zombies, and shouted down at her with a voice augmented by Sorcery. "Jenna, the wall!" she shouted. "Take out the wall from here back to the gate!"

  "Are you crazy, Kerri?" Jenna paused, shouting back to her. "It'll open a bigger hole for them to come through!"

  "They'll have to climb over the rubble, you'll kill a mess of them when the wall collapses on them, and it'll give you a clear shot at all those troops trying to come over the rubble!" she shouted back. "It's better to kill them before they get into the city, because we don't have to worry about killing friendly troops! And I can stop defending the wall and start killing the ones trying to come in!"

  "Good point! Alright, brace yourself!"

  Keritanima called for all of them to hold on, and grabbed hold of Szath. She felt Jenna draw up a massive amount of power, then unleashed it against the wall itself. The wall shuddered, then a good hundred foot span of it from the east gate to about twenty feet from where Keritanima was exploded outwards, showering the sieging troops in a deadly avalanche of falling stone. The Goblinoids atop the wall sank into an billowing cloud of dust as the ear-splitting sound of tearing stone drowned out their screams. The wall beneath her feet shuddered and swayed, knocking many off their feet, even making a few tumble over the side to plumme to the street below, but it stopped rocking and again became firm. "Alright, now go blow the gate and the wall on the other side!" Keritanima
shouted down to her. "If they can't come up the stairs in the gatehouse, they'll have a bloody hell of a time getting up here!"

  "I see why you're a Queen, Kerri!" Jenna shouted at her, then she collected up her Circle and the Vendari, Knights, and Ungardt defending it and moved to obey Keritanima's orders.

  Keritanima paused to catch her breath, bent over, hands on knees, feeling her joints tremble. Someone grabbed her by the shoulder gently. "Let me take the lead," Ahiriya's voice called over the din. "You're about to fall over."

  "In a few minutes," she promised. "So you have as much time as possible in the lead."

  "Now!" Ahiriya barked at her. "I can feel your hold on the Circle fading, girl! If you try to weave in a Circle if you don't have full control, you'll Consume yourself!"

  "I can handle it!" she snapped.

  "This is no time for stupid heroism!" Ahiriya snapped at her. "If you lose control while Circled, you'll put us in danger too! Now give over the lead, or I'll break the Circle!"

  Keritanima glared at her, but realized that as tired as she was, she wouldn't be able to stop Ahiriya from breaking the circle against her will. Usually, those in a Circle were at the mercy of the lead, unable to leave until released. She finally nodded, then submerged herself into the Circle, giving it no one true lead. She felt Ahiriya step up into that role, and then felt the hot-tempered Fire seat take up command of her power.

  Keritanima's quick thinking turned out to be pivotal. The Goblinoids were robbed of their easy way onto the walls when Jenna destroyed the gatehouse, then destroyed the section of wall on the far side that the Goblinoids had won from the defenders. That freed up the Sulasian archers, the Wikuni musketeers, and the katzh-dashi on the walls to stop fighting for every finger of wall and turn their attention on killing the enemy troops charging towards the city. That advance turned into a withering killing field when Jenna climbed up onto the rubble and unleashed a blast of Sorcery against them that Keritanima had only seen from Tarrin, a cutting weave of pure Air that was sharper than the keenest blade. She sent that scythe of Air through the advancing Goblinoids like they were wheat, mowing them down by the hundreds as she whipped it back and forth over the land before the exposed, destroyed section of wall. Ki'zadun archers continued to try to shoot arrows at them, but they continued to be turned away by a weave that Jenna had placed earlier, a weave that was still active, a Ward that prevented any non-living thing not in the possession of a living thing from crossing from the outside to the inside. It stopped the arrows and catapult shot from coming in, but did not impede the arrows, muskets balls, and cannonballs from going out. She had set that not long after they had destroyed the main threat to their magic, the opposing Wizards and Priests with enough experience to undo Sorcery, and now those protections allowed the defenders to rain death on their attackers without fear of being fired upon in return. Jenna had wanted to weave a Ward that would have stopped any living thing from crossing it, but she couldn't spread it to cover the entire wall. Since their plans revolved around allowing a limited breach, they couldn't do something that would make the enemy attack the wall in a different location. Not when they already had a foothold in the city.

  Jenna changed tacks, raising her hands as blazing light surrounded her form. Keritanima felt the buildup of power within her, and realized she was about to do something big. The little girl, barely more than a woman, suddenly looked like some avenging Avatar at that moment, surrounded by Magelight, looking like an unstoppable force against which nothing could stand. She had bought herself enough time by killing the enemies trying to get into the city to allow herself to do something drastic, probably aimed at the reserve forces still formed up well outside the city.

  Keritanima watched with slightly blurring vision, blurring in exhaustion, as the spell was woven, diving into the earth. In a moment, a lage, lumbering hulk clawed itself out of the ground, and she realized that it was another Earth Elemental. This one was by no means as large as the one Triana made, which had reached the limits of its time here and returned to where it came from--which had totally wiped out Triana and took her out of the battle--but it was still monstrous. About thirty feet tall, looking like a two-legged barrel with stumpy arms and no head. It began lumbering out towards the reserve forces, but it was much faster than the Elemental that Triana had summoned. The soldiers rushing towards the city stopped dead in their tracks and scrambled out of the way of the surprisingly mobile Elemental, which went out of its way to step on a few of the slower ones as it stomped off to harass the enemy reserves. She saw the regimented lines of the reserve troops, mostly humans, began to waver, then back away, then flee in every direction as the huge magical creation reached where they were formed up, squashing anything it could catch and causing a total panic in the enemy reserves.

  Keritanima had to admit...she liked Jenna's style.

  The Wizards left on that side tried in vain to counter it with magic, but their spells bounced off the great Elemental or had no effect at all, and they too ended up fleeing from its advance when their attempts to destroy it did nothing more than make it notice them.

  She turned her attention woodenly to an undulating cry below, and saw a pack of Selani chasing a group of Trolls with eager enthusiasm. The Selani and the Centaurs had run wild over the invading forces. They were both impossibly fast, able to attack and the melt away before the invaders had any idea what had just happened. They moved from street to street, block to block, house to house, attacking and destroying the invaders that had, at first, been seeking refuge from the withering missle fire coming from the walls. Those slashing tactics became a grim line of defense when the walls began to be taken over, the Selani proving that they were among the best warriors in the world by devastating any who came against them. Only the animated, undead creations in the enemy army, which had no fear, proved any kind of match for the Selani, who relied on crippling blows to fell an enemy and allowing them to finish it off at their leisure. The skeletons and zombies couldn't be killed by anything other than decapitation, and the Selani had to learn that in a costly manner, counted in the number of casualties they and the Centaurs suffered before the trick of it was discovered. But after the weakness was exploited, the defending lines were stabilized, then began to push back when an element of the Knights and a large reserve force of Arakite Legions were dispatched to help the Selani and Centaurs hold the line. The Arakites, masters of various defensive tactics, formed a shield wall and held the mixed host of undead, Fae-da'Kii, and Goblinoids off long enough for the Selani and Centaurs to regroup and rejoin the fighting. That shield wall parted as the mounted Knights and Centaurs crashed into the lines with their lances leading, trampling a wide swath through their opponents, and then the hole they created was quickly filled in by the Arakites and Selani, who, Keritanima had realized, were probably fighting side by side for the first time in their histories. The Knights and Centaurs curled around and separated into two groups, then engaged the enemies from behind while the Arakites and Selani assaulted their disorganized and demoralized front ranks. When the invaders' lines were split, the two halves were quickly swarmed under by the less numerous yet much more highly trained Arakites, Knights, and Selani.

  Keritanima felt the strain of leading the Circle fade from her as Ahiriya took the lead, but she was still completely exhausted, and every time Ahiriya's demands for power reached her, she found it harder and harder to answer them. Her legs began to tremble, and she nearly fell as Ahiriya moved the Circle near the shattered edge of the destroyed wall, then began to attack the battling enemies below with magic, who had tried to circle around behind Jenna and her Circle as the young lady created the Elemental that was still causing chaos in the reserves of their enemies. Keritanima felt light-headed, and found herself clinging to Azakar for support as Ahiriyra drew more and more out of her, power that she wasn't sure she was capable of supplying. "Zak," she said weakly, in a quavering voice, "Zak, have Ahiriya drop me from the circle," she asked. "I, I don't feel well."r />
  "Kerri? Kerri, are you alright?" he asked in sudden concern, putting an arm around her shoulder.

  Ahiriya began to weave again, and it put a demand on Keritanima that was just too much. She felt something inside her give, and then a sudden eruption of power snapped out of the Weave and assaulted her. In sudden panic, Keritanima let go of Azakar, falling to the floor of the wall, as she realized that the power of the Weave was flooding into her unchecked. She was too weary, too exhausted, to struggle against it, and Ahiriya's demands on her had overwhelmed her attempts to stop it from happening. The sudden inundation of power into the Circle caused all of them in it to shudder and recoil. Ahiriya gave out a strangled cry and tried to break the Circle, but the power flooding into the Circle resisted any attempt to break it. In desperation, she turned that power against itself, using it to try to forcibly sever the ties binding the Sorcerers together.

  The attempt worked, at least in a way. The Circle broke violently, causing a huge backlash, and the other three Sorcerers joined to it were thrown from their feet by the power of its disruption, causing a blast of wind to issue forth from the middle of them and a shockwave of pain to lash through them. All the power that had been flowing into the Circle fed back into Keritanima, filling her beyond her capacity, dropping her into a sea of fire that burned at her insides. She let out a ragged scream and rose up on her knees, hands over her face and muzzle as Azakar and Szath scrambled to her. "Get out of here!" Ahiriya barked in fear, staring at Keritanima.

  "What's going on?" Dar demanded.

  "She hid how tired she was from me!" Ahiriya snapped angrily. "The damn fool! She's lost control! She's going to be Consumed!" She looked at Dar with steady eyes. "Now if you value your life, then run!"

  But Dar did not run, as the others in their group did so. He joined Azakar and Szath as they tried to do something, anything, to make Keritanima stop shrieking in agony. He put his hand on his friend's shoulder and touched the Weave, trying to think of some way to stop what every teacher he'd ever had told him could not be stopped once it began.