Archeologist Warlord: Book 2

by E. M. Hardy

  Where the martial artists drew their power from the chi that every living thing gave off, the newly-formed sahir corps drew their magics from the Invisible World via the jinn they bonded with. Sun and sand defined the capabilities of the jinn, though Martin realized this meant manipulating earth and light. And in this case, the sahir corps threw up particles of fine sand and dirt in the air, spraying them at the incoming arrows. These shotgun-like sprays knocked the shafts off-course, shredding the fletching that kept them flying straight and true. Not only that, but the sahir also sucked the light away from the immediate area to create a line of shadows between the Imperial and Shogunate formations.

  This, combined with the waves of force coming from Imperial martial artists, limited the damage caused by the volley. No officers, martial artists, or sahir suffered casualties from the wave of arrows. The regular arrows simply glanced off the light leather armor of the Imperial regulars, occasionally pinging off the shields raised up above the heads of the men and women of the Imperial army.

  The errant blood arrows, however, were a different story.

  The blooded arrowheads still contained enough power to cause significant damage even if they just glanced off an unintended target. Men and women in the Imperial lines screamed as blood arrows landed haphazardly on their formations. Shields shattered on impact, armor exploded, bodies bounced down to the ground—all leading to a dozen dead with twice that injured. Ten thousand arrows in a massive wave, probably a thousand blood arrows mixed in, and only forty-odd casualties? The cold, calculating numbers of war told Martin that this was good even while he blocked out the screams of the injured and the dying.

  The Imperials wasted no time and responded with an arrow volley of their own. A series of passed-down orders signaled the archers to nock their arrows while the sahir readied themselves to drop their magics. One trumpet blast later, and the sahir released the veil of shadows right before the Imperial archers loosed their own volley.

  The samurai were untouched, of course, as their blades flashed and cut up the falling arrows before picking up their bows to resume firing. The ashigaru, however, did not enjoy the same protection. The regular arrows fell upon the archers arrayed in front of the Shogunate army, the accompanying shield-bearers doing all they could to protect their brethren. It wasn’t enough. Thousands upon thousands of Imperial arrows rained down upon the archers—killing and wounding hundreds in the initial volley.

  Shogunate archers prepared to respond despite their casualties, nocking their arrows and loosing as a wave with their samurai counterparts. The sahir, however, repeated their earlier tactic of blowing away arrows with whirling sand and dropping a veil of shadows to block the samurai’s line of sight. The Shogunates weren’t stupid, and they soon adjusted tactics. Instead of firing in a single concentrated wave, the Shogunate archers began peppering the Imperials with a steady stream of arrows. The steady barrage made it easier for the sahir and martial artists to fend them off, especially when the sahir maintained a veil of shadows to foul up the aim of ashigaru and samurai alike.

  Martin watched as souls began floating out of their fallen shells, their bright ethereal glow hovering around in confusion. Had Martin been his old self, he would have greedily lapped up those entities to empower himself. His newly modified core, however, could no longer trap souls and feed upon their suffering as he tormented them for eternity. All he could do was offer peace to the fallen souls, Imperial and Shogunate alike, and invite them to release their fears and worries through the endlessly repeating patterns of the mandala. With luck, there would be no angry, vengeful souls to join the ranks of shayateen.

  And that’s when the first series of Shogunate trumpet blasts pierced through the battlefield.

  “Care.” Martin spoke through about a hundred walkers giving battlefield updates not just to the generals, but also to the captains controlling their respective companies. “The Shogun’s heavy foot are advancing under the cover of their archers. They’re going to push right through, rely on their blooded spears and pikes to force a melee.”

  The General of the Azure Dragon Bai Yu pinched his face in worry. “Sixty thousand footmen, all armed with blood-bound spears… those would do a lot of damage even in the hands of the greenest conscript.” Martin was surprised to learn he was in his late thirties. The man’s gray hair, wrinkled face, and haggard complexion all made him look a lot older than he actually was. The stresses of constant retreats under the Shogunate onslaught must have weighed down on him a lot more than he let on.

  The General of the White Tiger Shen Feng nodded grimly in reply. “That’s what I fear most. Our new sahir and their jinn allies have acquitted themselves well in this battle, but I’m not so sure we can hold off the Shogunate footmen if they manage to close ranks. Our regular troops can draw upon chi to strengthen themselves, react a little bit more quickly, but they won’t last long with blooded pikes cutting them up.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Martin said, finally deciding that now was the time to reveal his hand.

  Up on a tall hill more than a mile and a half away from the fighting, where not even the samurai and their blood-bound arrows could reach, stood a force of three thousand walkers. A relatively small number compared to the swarm of soldiers currently fielded on the battlefield, but it was all that Martin deemed necessary for the task at hand. He spread the rest of his walkers out along the front of the Imperial lines, ready to receive the first spears and spare as many Imperials as he could from the worst of the ashigaru charge.

  He hoped that the Shogun would have been more cautious, would have learned from his previous encounter. Maybe the Shogun would reconsider his attack when he remembered how Martin’s walkers so thoroughly trounced his men before. Unfortunately for Martin’s plans, Shogun Inagaki was neither timid nor stupid. Martin had pulled his walkers away from a battle they were winning, and the Shogun realized that something must have gone wrong on his end—especially since Martin’s walkers were not charging recklessly ahead, cutting apart the ashigaru with the lethal capabilities they once displayed.

  Which was right on the mark, since Martin’s walkers were no longer as invincible as they once were. The walkers on the front lines held their ground, protecting the Imperials, while those on the hill simply stood back. No, those walkers on the hill weren’t supposed to join the thick of the fighting. They were there to guard something else—something that could shift the tide of this battle. The Imperial archers were doing a lot of damage at the moment, but the lines of spears protecting them would crumble once the ashigaru arrived with thousands of blooded weapons.

  The walkers moved aside, giving room for a thousand dog-sized scarabs to get into position. They spread out, trying to find the best positions to get a straight bead on their targets. The mandala patterns carved on their backs glowed with stored energy as they found their marks, shifting their crystals in preparation for the barrage.

  “Now,” Martin silently instructed to the scarabs. One thousand mandala patterns burned brightly, pouring all their stored chi into one thousand crystals mounted on one thousand beetle-like heads. The mandala patterns could sustain fire for only four seconds, each scarab bathing its chosen target in a wide luminous beam. By the time the spots in human eyes cleared, smoking piles of charred meat were all that remained of the advancing ashigaru lines. Five hundred souls floated away from the battlefield, still screaming from the memory of being burned alive. Everyone caught in the sweeping lines of light burned to death in those four seconds, the soldiers beside them running away in a scream as clouds of superheated steam swept over them.

  The ashigaru advance faltered, the adrenaline of their charge stopped cold by the smell of scorched meat and the sight of singed appendages. The Imperials froze up as well, refusing to believe what just happened. Everyone just stopped, looked at the smoldering piles of meat, and then up to the hill where the lights of death had come from.

  Martin found himself recovering from the bla
st as well. One thousand scarabs blasting away for four seconds pushed the very edge of his limits. It wasn’t his only option, though. If forced, Martin could sweep the lasers across a much wider area for only a quarter of a second each. These pulsing sweeps would deal enough damage to mutilate his human enemies by boiling their eyes and searing the skin off their flesh. It would have been the most efficient way to neutralize the Shogunates, injuring and disabling thousands before the scarabs ran out of stored juice. Such a fate, however, was something Martin wouldn’t wish upon anyone, not even the Shogunates willing to slaughter innocents for their blood. He had grown sick of torturing others for his own gain, and things weren’t desperate enough for him to warrant such a course of action. No, he would much rather kill his enemies outright instead of making them suffer more than they needed to. This was what separated men from monsters when deadly violence was called for.

  Martin didn’t sit idle, though. He was already draining the chi around the obelisk on the hill, storing it in the mandala patterns of the scarabs while he gave himself enough time to recover from the drain on his generators. He coordinated with Generals Shen Feng and Bai Yu. They had stationed the army far enough from the obelisk to prevent their forces from being affected by Martin’s chi-draining aura, but still close enough for his scarabs to provide fire support. Five more minutes for the obelisk to charge the mandalas, allow his generators to refill his reserves, and the scarabs would be able to fire off another four-second blast to wipe more Shogunates away from the board.

  Martin expected the ashigaru to continue their advance. They had ‘only’ lost a thousand in the blast, but they still had the numbers to press the attack. Tens of thousands more men, in fact. His scarabs would not be able to fire into the melee once the Shogunate lines crashed into the Imperial lines. At least, not without the risk of frying his Imperial allies. He also expected the ashigaru to uphold the Shogunate ideal of ‘death before dishonor,’ to charge into certain doom until ordered otherwise. His eyeballs could already see samurai mounting up to charge his hill, attempting to break whatever weapon inflicted such terrible losses upon their forces.

  Martin did not, however, expect the ashigaru at the front to break formations and start running away from the battlefield in every which way. Some were even running toward the Imperials, throwing aside their precious blood-spears and raising their hands in surrender.

  “What’s going on?” Martin asked General Shen Feng, using the walker positioned near the leadership’s tent. “Why are they breaking so quickly?”

  Both generals, Shen Feng and Bai Yu, looked at Martin’s walker with pale faces, mouths wide open.

  “While I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth,” growled Shen Feng, torn between relief and terror. “I have to say that you may have understated the capabilities of these scarabs of yours.”

  Martin would have blinked if he could at the general’s reaction. “No, seriously, Shen Feng. Why is the light and heavy foot breaking so quickly? The Shogunate army has taken many, many more casualties than this in the past and they continued fighting down to the last man.”

  Shen’s face morphed from one of terrified relief to genuine incredulity before settling down to dogged determination. “Those must be peasant conscripts pulled from the Taiyo Isles, sacrificial lambs to provoke us into revealing our plans.”

  The realization struck Martin, and he decided to risk sending an eyeball down low to get a better look. The armor on the breaking line of men was painted and oiled well, but closer examination with the telescoped lens of the eyeball revealed rusted links, cracked leather, and thick cloth painted to look like leather. Worse still was that the fleeing men didn’t actually possess blood weapons. No red veins pulsing with power, just regular shafts with red lines painted all over them.

  They were nothing more than frightened farmers and shopkeepers—a sacrifice meant to trip up whatever trap the Imperials had set up for the Shogunate. It made tactical sense to send fodder out, let them die instead of your veteran warriors and their valuable equipment… but it did not sit well with Martin’s conscience. He could only be thankful that he had clay walkers to die for him, for he was not quite sure if he had the stomach to do the same with untrained, ill-equipped, and terrified civilians.

  “Ponder on this later, Martin Fuller. Right now, just keep lighting up the Shogunates with those scarabs of yours. The second wave is coming in.”

  Perplexed, Martin turned his full attention back to overseeing the battle. The line of ashiguru—or rather, the line of decoys—may have fled, but the other lines behind it kept marching right on. Officers barked out orders and pulled the fleeing men back into formation. Shogunate archers continued pouring arrows into the Imperial lines, a steady stream of arrows forcing the sahir and martial artists into a defensive stance.

  Martin could not react to this just yet, as another force threatened his walkers and scarabs.

  He swiveled his attention to the two thousand mounted samurai riding for his scarabs atop their hill. They were already a few hundred yards away, almost within striking distance of his small army. Unlike the ashigaru massed tightly on the open plains below the hill, the mounted samurai charged in a staggered formation, presenting a difficult target for massed arrow fire. It didn’t matter much, however, since lasers slam into their targets almost instantly; the samurai learned this painful lesson as their advancing elements ate the initial barrage.

  And then there was the second, third, and fourth barrage of lasers.

  Martin didn’t instruct his thousand scarabs to unleash hell all at once. No, Martin split the scarabs into multiple teams, each firing off their stored energy before another team came up to fix on another target. The charging samurai melted, literally and figuratively, as the scarabs continued pouring laser fire into their faces. By the time the riders reached the top of the hill, only less than five hundred of the two thousand samurai remained to give battle.

  And they were met by three thousand walkers, all armed with pikes and javelins. Martin knew that the samurai could easily flash their blades, cut apart any projectile aimed at them. This was why he aimed not at the samurai but at the horses they rode, thousands of hours of accumulated practice sharpening his throwing skills. The beautiful, powerful beasts of war neighed terribly as the shafts burrowed into their flesh, throwing them to the ground. The samurai leapt off their mounts, landing on the ground and continuing their uphill rush on foot. The walkers held the lines, meeting the deadly warriors with a wall of ceramic pikes as the scarabs picked off stragglers with their beams of light.

  The samurai flashed their blades, cutting pike shafts and clay limbs alike as they forced themselves into the mob of walkers. Other walkers stepped in to fill the gaps where the walkers fell, blocking the samurai with their pikes and bodies. The walkers no longer fought back with the same speed, brutality, and competence of a few weeks before. All they could do was buy time, keep the samurai away from the scarabs until they could recharge their crystals and burn away their attackers. Martin didn’t even bother arming his walkers with ceramic blades this time around. He could probably match the samurai in skill from all the practice he had, but they would simply cut faster, swing harder than his walkers could. They were simply outmatched in power and speed. The only reason they could even hold some measure of ground was because of the mandalas contributing some power to help boost their capabilities. Without those mandalas augmenting his walkers with stored chi, they would have immediately succumbed to the flashing blades of the samurai in mere moments.

  The walkers succeeded at their task, despite losing hundreds of their own in a matter of minutes to the blinding speed and relentless onslaught of the samurai.

  A few minutes later, and the attacking samurai were reduced to nothing but slabs of charred flesh. A few dozen walkers couldn’t avoid getting caught in the crossfire, with some heated enough that cracks began forming on their bodies. Only a single swordsman remained, kneeling on the ground an
d sobbing in frustration as his entire cohort lay burning around him. The man was so lost in despair he didn’t even have the energy to pick up his blood blade to continue the fight or turn it upon himself. He just knelt there, shoulders shaking violently as he shed hot tears of regret and despair. Martin sort of recognized this man; he was the same samurai he spared before—the one talking about his love-related regrets in the face of death.

  He didn’t know what to do here. Kill him? Spare him? Disarm him and tie him up? Martin elected to leave the man to mourn his third chance at life. He pulled his walkers back to guard the scarabs as they recharged their crystals while he turned his attention to the battle.

  The charging samurai may not have achieved their objectives, but they bought enough time for the lines of ashigaru to crash into the Imperial lines. Martin sagged, for it was as Bai Yu and Shen Feng feared. Martin’s thinly-spread walkers crumbled under the initial charge, taking the brunt of the assault for a few moments. But they were not enough to hold back the Shogunate wave as rows of Imperial pikes stumbled back, the empowered spears of the ashigaru cutting a bloody swathe through their ranks. The blood-infused weapons granted their bearers great strength and speed, not to mention making the spears sharp enough to cut through the unenchanted wooden shafts of Imperial pikes like a hot knife through butter.

  Only the focused efforts of the martial artists prevented the ashigaru from completely breaking through in the initial charge. Teams of four and five artists came up at the gaps, holding off the ashigaru long enough to allow other Imperial pikemen to come in and buttress the lines. Masters of exerting force would knock back footmen with waves of force. Those who wielded staves and mauls blew apart entire formations of ashigaru away while blade dancers guarded their flanks, jabbing and slicing at the hands of spearmen attempting to skewer their powerful comrades. Experts at healing stepped in to bind the wounds of the injured, bring those on the brink of death back to the fight.