Finding Destiny

by Jean Johnson

  “If it were up to me, I’d take out the cannons or immobilize them as fast as possible, while luring the motormen and the hexalegs to the bombardment zone, and save dealing with the troops they carry for last. It’s keeping those motorhorses from pulling fast-and-loose skirmishing, disrupting our own formations, that worries me the most. Your side doesn’t have very many by comparison, and it’d be very hard to corral them in one place. In fact, they’re more likely to overwhelm us.”

  Her words gave Zeilas an idea. “Milady Consul, how many horses would you say are within, oh, half an hour’s ride of Heiastowne and the palace?”

  She looked up at him with one of her bemused half smiles and guessed. “A good ... two or three hundred?”

  Sir Catrine’s eyes widened. “Of course, the Stampede spell! They may be machines, but they still have to move more or less like a real horse. All we need are a score of horses apiece to anchor the magics, multiply that by the Stampede spell to two hundred or more, and then we just charge in and force them to go with the flow, wherever we want them to go. Brilliant! The hexalegs, giant motormen, and cannons won’t be forced to go where we want them to by this method, but the motorhorse cavalry will have no choice, unless they want to risk being knocked down and trampled to death. General Stalos, if we can get their forces within a mile or so of each of the three possible battle sites, where do you want the enemy’s motorhorses to end up?”

  “Ah ... here, and here, if they only get as far as Heiastowne,” he quickly asserted, touching the map. “And anywhere along here, obviously, for the bombardment zone ... and here and here for the palace—by preference, any place that allows us to channel them between the town and the palace compound.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Zeilas promised.

  Someone pushed up to the edge of the table on Marta’s other side. The ash blond woman was a disheveled-looking Gabria, her hair not even contained under a cap, let alone wrapped up in a coronet of braids. Her eyes looked a little bleary, and she still had a reddish crease along one cheek from her pillow, though it looked like it was fading. “The guild has managed to break through their anti-scrying wards, General,” she reported. “They have roughly six thousand troops, dispersed among four giant motormen, two hundred megamen, ten mobile megacannons, twenty-eight chariot cannons, twelve hexalegs with munitions turrets, about five hundred chariot turrets, and almost a thousand motorhorses—practically every single motorhorse from here to the River Castar, I’d guess.

  “Most of the large machinery and all of the cannonry has had some magical wardings integrated into them, but they looked a bit crude compared to what we can now do,” she added, glancing at Sir Catrine. “Defensively, I think they’ll be vulnerable. I don’t know what they’ll bring to bear offensively, though.”

  “Thank you, sub-Consul,” Stalos praised. “You know these wardings. Do you think you can penetrate them, yourself?”

  She nodded briskly. “I scryed them in tandem with Allee; two of us had more luck penetrating their cloaking wards. It’ll be tricky for some, but I’m pretty sure I can remove or at least weaken most of them. They only seemed to have three types of protection spells.”

  “Good. Milady Chief, I believe you’re her mount engineer, correct?” Stalos asked.

  Marta nodded. “I’ll get her there, wherever they are.”

  Zeilas gave her a sharp, disconcerted look, but Stalos had moved on, outlining their best battle plan. He squeezed her fingers, making her glance up from the map. Catching sight of his concern, she gave him a half smile and leaned in close, whispering into his ear.

  “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “Sir Catrine augmented my motorhorse with the toughest defensive wards she knew, once she realized it was my horse. Gabria has since added a few of her own. We could probably survive a direct blow from a megaman or a midsized munition. We’ve also trained together for something like this ... and I need to lead by example.” Lifting her right thumb, the one that had been pricked to sign her name in blood against the depredations of their former False God, she smiled. “No more thinking we’re helpless. No more. Not when we can all do something about it.”

  She squeezed his fingers in reassurance, though his anxiety didn’t exactly ease. After nearly four months in Guildara, Zeilas knew better than to ask her to stay back and stay safe. She did lead by example, getting her hands dirty, working hard, and being fearless in the face of difficulty. That willingness to be at the forefront made him fear for her safety.

  It was, he realized, the same reason why he loved her.

  And that’s going to complicate matters, he acknowledged with a silent groan. I love her, and I want to keep her safe, but I don’t want to stifle who she is ... and I have no right to demand that she, the leader of her people, not lead them anywhere.

  Herd mare makes good mate, Fireleaf interjected. Strong mare, good herd, good foals. The stallion could follow his Knight’s thoughts whenever he wished, but rarely did so. Unless he thought—in his Steedish way—that the topic was important enough to comment upon, the judging criteria for which rarely matched the ones Zeilas would have used.

  Yes, he acknowledged, sending the thought back to his Goddess-wrought mount. A herd mare does make a good mate. I’m just not sure how I can keep my job if we do.

  SIX

  “Why isn’t it going down?” Gabria yelled in Marta’s ear. Marta stomped on the galloper pedal and leaned left, then right, dodging the huge mechanical arm swiping at them with a rush of displaced air. It smacked into several of the horses galloping around them, but luckily only the illusionary ones—they went flying, but landed on their hooves with thuds and kept cantering.

  “I don’t know!” Marta shouted back. They were close to the bombardment zone, so awfully close, and yet so far from turning this nightmarish chaos into a victory. Durn’s forces kept skirmishing just a quarter mile short of both sets of cannons, just beyond the range of the walled city as well as the palace compound. The other three giant-class motormen had crashed with devastating impact early in the dawn confrontation, squashing ranks of motorhorse operators. Mostly their own ranks, luckily.

  She dodged a clump of sorrel mares, then leaned harder to the right, darting between them and the next cluster. That put them out in the open, just ahead of a swinging foot which clanged as it thumped into several horses and caused one of them to whinny sharply in pain. As soon as the cluster of victims landed, nineteen of the massive herd winked out, vanishing with the death of their anchor point. Marta winced.

  “Damn, we lost another—fence!”

  Her sharp scream jolted her partner into action. Flinging out her hand, Gabria shouted a word, creating a glittering ramp almost under the nose of their mechanical mount. They thumped into the meadow grass on the far side, thighs clinging and teeth gritting against the impact. Behind them, some of the horses swerved their way, either clattering up the ramp or leaping the stone fence.

  The thoom-thoom-thoom of the giant motorman swerved, too, heading her way when she dared to glance back. As she did so, she saw munitions exploding around its head and shoulders, concussing it with what should have been enough force and timing between steps to have knocked it off balance, like its three companions had been knocked. It staggered a little but didn’t falter as it gave chase.

  She also thought she saw a flash of light like a curving shield, protecting the metal skull encasing its operator. “Adaptive magics!” Marta swore, bearing around to the right again. “They’re crafting new magics to adapt!”

  “That was the one we hit last!” Gabria agreed, hugging her close as she went into her turn. “The others didn’t have time to react before they fell and were mine-bombed, but this one might have a spellcrafter on board! I have an idea! Get around behind it, right behind its heels, and stay back there!”

  “Easier said than done!” the Consul-in-Chief snapped, dodging back to the fence line as a host of enemy motorsteeds headed their way. Enemies, for they weren’t clad in the black-and-gray of her
own side. Runes inlaid along the neck of her own mechanical Steed glowed, making the air shimmer and warp as the foremost rank of Durn’s brown-clad followers fired their hand-cannons from their second-place seats on the motorhorses bearing their way. Sir Catrine’s carefully crafted magics deflected the force of most of the lead pellets, but some of them smacked into their leather coats, and one tore a gash on her cheek.

  Flinching, Marta ramped up over the stone hedge wall on another of Gabria’s ramps. A whole mob of horses swung around, following the two women as they dodged and drove in a big circle, trying to get behind the motorman kicking and swiping its way through their forces.

  “Duck!” Gabria screamed. Marta tipped their mount almost all the way over, sliding it across the dew-damp grass. A low-flying munition case whistled past. Righting the engine, she stomped on the galloper, taking off in a spray of turf clods even as the case struck into the heart of the enemy motorsteeds pursuing them. The metal runes glowed a second time, protecting them from the backlash of the explosions—multiple, for the munitions charge set off the fuel stomachs in each of its metal victims—though not from the sight of torn, bleeding, smoldering, human limbs mixed in with the chunks of metal and leather raining down around them.

  The carnage did give them the opening they needed, for the motorman diverted to go after one of the few mobile Guildaran cannonry that had made it out to this war field. The herd of solid but still mostly illusionary horses swerved to follow the two women on the mechanical horse. Reaching around Marta, forcing her to lean forward a little, Gabria opened up the talker box panel, churned the crank, grabbed the talker horn, and pulled it back to her ear. That forced Marta even lower, for the cord connecting horn to talker wasn’t all that long.

  “Relay to the cannons on the ... northwest flank!” she shouted into the device while Marta swayed their engine back and forth behind the massive legs of the motorman, bouncing them up and down across the ruts and gouges left by its equally massive feet. “All concussive fire to the giant’s head in one minute—That’s right, all concussive fire in one shot to the giant’s head. Only the northwest cannonry!”

  She fumbled the horn back into place, but couldn’t get the hatch closed again as they bumped through a deeper rut, only to have to dodge around piles of broken machines and bloodied men on the other side. Marta swerved to join the stream of illusionary horses on her right; that gave her enough time to shove the cord back into its compartment, resecure the horn, and slap the hatch shut. Shoving on the stopper pedals, she scrunched backward into her friend as the front wheel skidded and the back wheel lifted up off the ground a few inches, then slammed her foot back onto the galloper, narrowly avoiding an armor-clad rider on a sorrel-and-cream real horse, one whose withers stood a full arm’s length taller than their own mount.

  Darting away from Sir Zeilas—though it warmed her fast-beating heart to know he was still alive—Marta swerved to avoid another swiping blow from the motorman’s arm, and daringly dodged between its feet before swerving to the left to avoid horses from their side and machines from the enemy. Gabria squeezed Marta’s waist on her right side, signaling which way to go.

  “Get behind it now, right past its feet! We have twenty seconds—ramp! Cushoga!” This time, Gabria cast her ramp-building spell over a fallen chunk of hexaleg limb. As soon as they slammed down on the far side, Marta swerved them to the right. That brought them racing past the motorman’s heels. Gabria flung out her arm, her skills crude but her magic potent. “Aputoma! Aputoma!”

  The soles of the giant, Marta realized upon a quick backward glance, now glowed an odd shade of yellowish green.

  Gabria thumped her on the shoulder. “Back again! Go back! Now, now, now!”

  Skidding them into a turn required a complex touch of the stopper, galloper, and steering posts. It also kicked up clods in the face of the swerving, returning herd. Once again, Sir Zeilas was using his mob of illusion-expanded horses to give them cover, though the two women were at the head of the pack this time, not buried in its midst.

  Just as they came within stomping range of the metal giant, the northwest cannons opened fire in a single, near-simultaneous boom that rattled the air. Gabria screamed something, flinging out both arms to their left at the motorman’s feet. Mindful of their terrain, Marta still looked back, wanting to see what her friend had done. High up in the air, the head jolted from the smoky, fiery impact of all those munitions ... and at the base of those massive heels, Gabria’s spell impacted with a blast of purple white light. The new spell-shield sheltered it from damage, but that wasn’t what her friend meant for it to do.

  Instead, the chartreuse glow on the soles of the giant’s feet flared—and both shot up and out from under it, as surely and swiftly as if they had been heavily greased. Marta looked ahead and quickly slowed their mount, swerving to avoid the downed hexaleg transport they had ramped over moments ago. Several of the horses from the herd caught up with them, parting on either side to go around the hexaleg remnants. At the same moment, two other things happened. The giant-class motorman slammed into the ground, shaking them, forcing her to stop and steady the two-man engine for balance ... and the majority of the horses flanking them abruptly vanished.

  No ... Oh, Gods ... no! The whistle of incoming munitions warned her. Hitting the galloper, she tore forward, joined by the now neighing and whinnying, frightened remnants of Zeilas’ stampede-enspelled herd. They scattered, scampering off in whatever direction looked safest to their now unguided equine minds.

  Part of Marta grieved. The rest of her ignored the tears stinging her eyes, seeking instead to get as far away as possible from the magnetic mine-bombs being lobbed at the downed motorman. They clanged into its painted metal body, clamping onto its hide. Somewhere back there, if the operator crew were conscious after such a hard, concussive fall, they would be scrambling to get free of the machine and its impending blast zone. Most likely, they wouldn’t make it. Not when enough bombs were being lobbed its way by the two remaining hexaleg transports, heavily mage-shielded, on Guildara’s side of the battle.

  The horses ... Sir Catrine swore the horses wouldn’t vanish . . . unless something happened to the Knight controlling their illusions! Zeilas! Damn you, Durn, you bastard! Skidding to a stop by a pile of twisted metal, Marta grabbed and yanked out a chunk of pipe, what looked like a piece of iron hydraulics tubing from one of the limbs of the fallen hexaleg platform.

  She shoved the length of metal back at Gabria with a terse command. “Sharpen it!” As soon as the other woman had it in her grip, Marta sent their ride roaring forward again. “Get ready to cast a really big ramp!”

  It didn’t take long for Gabria to realize what she meant to do. “You can’t attack Durn!” she shouted. “That’s the most heavily shielded platform he has left!”

  “No more!” Marta growled, glaring at the trashed fields and meadows and pastures, once green with early spring grass and now charred and fouled with mangled machines and murdered men. Off to her left were the bulk of the remaining forces, swirling and smoking, banging and bellowing in the chaos of combat. Off to the right, yet more fields damaged by the enemy’s munitions, with Heiastowne in the distance. “By the pricking of my thumb, no ... what in the Netherhells?”

  She slowed the motorhorse, startled by the sight of horses leaping down out of the air. Leaping in twos and threes out of thin air, no less. Out of at least ten patches of thin air, forming a shallow curve as long as a giant motorman would have been, felled end to end. The foremost of these cantered forward by a dozen yards, left hands raised and voices chanting, making the air glow in a wall in front of them.

  “Mirror-Gates,” Gabria stated, awe coloring her voice. “They’re invading us with mirror-Gates! They’re ... wait, those aren’t Durn’s colors! Everyone in Durn’s forces is wearing brown! Those are ...”

  “Those are the livery colors of the Aurulans!” Marta finished, equally astonished. Before she could voice the question of why they were even
here, if it was an invasion or what, several riders carrying long poles leaped through the mirror-Gate portals. As soon as they gained level ground, they lifted the poles and tugged on ribbons, releasing the banners wrapped around the wooden shafts. What little Marta knew of mirror-Gates suggested that brushing up against the edges of the gate ran the risk of breaking the transportive link between its originating mirror and the location it was focused upon, so the ribbon-wrapped banners made sense.

  What didn’t make sense were the banners themselves. On the left was a purple background sporting the Eye of Ruul mounted within a golden crown, symbol of the Aurulan kingdom. On the right side, the black length of cloth bore the bright yellow gear wheel of Guildara.

  The mage-warriors at the forefront advanced, pushing their shield-wall past Marta and Gabria. A final man, clad in purple, gilt-edged armor, leaped through the centermost ripple responsible for this unanticipated army, and then no more appeared. He was more than enough, though. It only took him a moment, despite the distractions of the ongoing chaos and confusion behind them, to focus on the two women. Trotting his horse up to the two of them, he bowed over the animal’s armor-draped neck.

  “Your Highness.” Pulling a ribbon-wrapped scroll from beneath the baldric strap of his sheathed sword, he nudged his Steed closer and held it out. “It was foretold that I would meet Marta Grenspun, Consul-in-Chief and ruler of Guildara, right here and now. Is this correct?”

  “Ah ... that would be me,” she offered, stunned further by his accuracy. Too much had happened, between the horrors of battle, the loss of her Knight, and now this Manifestation. Marta struggled to regain her wits. “You are ... ?”

  “Mage-Captain Ellett of the Royal Guard. I bring you a signed peace treaty straight from His Majesty’s hands, countersigned by the Prime Minister, and sealed by the Will of Ruul. Contingent, of course ...” He had to pause as something exploded and fell in a noisy mess of shredded metal off in the distance, then continued as soon as he could be heard. “... That we are permitted to escort Gabria Springreaver to His Majesty at the end of this matter.”