by Frank Morin
“Harley just exploded out of the ground! The army moving on the east bank was a diversion. It’s bad! If you can strike, do it now!”
“What’s happening?” she asked.
No response.
Jean looked at Rory, who was frowning at the noise, but Student Eighteen gave her a thumb’s up. “No one outside of this group heard that.”
“This sounds bad,” Jean said, worry making it hard to breathe. Wasn’t Hamish supposed to be helping guard the main road? He couldn’t face Harley without Connor and Kilian.
“We can’t do anything to help them from here. Best we can do is keep to the plan and break her momentum.” Rory turned to the Spitter officer. “How far?”
“Two hundred yards.”
“Perfect.” Rory raised two fingers high. The four-man strike teams accelerated into the gloom. The storm provided the perfect cover for their assault.
Jean strained her ears, listening for the sounds of fighting, for the cry of alarm to echo through the thick snow.
Nothing.
She glanced at Student Eighteen, whose brows were furrowed in concentration, and felt like a fool. Of course she wouldn’t hear anything.
Several seconds later, the first of the strike teams appeared through the gray sheets of snow, dragging the first catches of the day. Some struggled and shouted, while others hung limp in their hands. Rory had explained that often the rear flanks of the army spread out, producing stragglers, so the first few contacts should prove easy snatch-and-grab encounters. With Aifric blocking sounds of the struggle, no one would know to look back or raise the alarm.
Jean moved to meet the soldiers and their prisoners, extracting the tonic from her satchel. The unconscious prisoners, most with bruises on their scalps or bleeding head wounds, were dropped to the snowy ground, hands and feet bound. The others were held still, their mouths forced open while Jean used a small leather pressure pump to force a squirt of tonic down their throats.
“What’s that poison?” one panicked soldier exclaimed.
“It’s not poison. It will help you relax.”
“Relax, my kidney stone, wench! You filthy Grandurian Tallan-loving—”
The Boulder holding his left arm slugged the man in the side of the head hard enough that he probably cracked the poor fool’s skull. “Sorry about that, miss. Guess he don’t need the tonic after all.”
The other prisoners accepted their tonics with a lot less fuss, although they still looked terrified. She tried to soothe their worries, but she felt a bit nervous too.
The tonic should do exactly what she said, calm their nerves, settle them into a lethargic stupor for a couple hours, making them sleepy and compliant. She hated how fast she’d needed to develop it, and worried about administering it to so many different people with such different sizes, weights, and metabolisms.
There was a chance it might permanently injure or even kill some of them, but the alternative was worse. Every one of those soldiers beaten unconscious faced far greater chances of permanent damage. So she concealed her fears, spoke soothing words, and gave them the tonic she hoped might save their lives.
She quickly lost track of time as the trickle of prisoners increased to a flood. Anika arrived with one struggling, bound soldier thrown over her shoulder and dumped him into the snow in front of Jean.
“You’ll have to speed up. We just rushed an entire squad that had fallen behind the main company. An excellent little fight,” Anika said happily in Grandurian.
“Did any of our soldiers get hurt?” Jean asked.
Anika shook her head. “We haven’t hit the real resistance yet. I hope you have a lot of tonic.”
So did Jean. At the rate they were going, she’d consume her five large bottles fast. She only hoped they captured many more before the army realized what was happening and the general alarm was raised.
After she doused that prisoner, she paused and raised her mini-hub. “Ivor, what’s happening?”
“Busy,” came the short reply. “Taking prisoners on the east flank, but we’ve got trouble. Kilian’s facing a much larger force than we anticipated. Harley hit Ilse’s team. It’s bad. Hamish is fighting her in that huge armor. I’m trying to help.”
“Oh, no,” Jean gasped, her worst fears realized. The Juggernaut was a remarkable mechanical, but he couldn’t stop Harley.
Ignoring the line of prisoners waiting for their tonic doses, she reached for her mini-hub. She had to know Hamish was all right.
Rory’s large hand gripped hers, making her jump in surprise. She hadn’t noticed him approaching.
“Don’t, lass. If he’s fighting Harley, he needs to focus.”
“We have to do something,” she begged. Suddenly she hated that she’d accepted this assignment. Hamish might need her, but she was too far away.
“Aye. We do.” His expression turned grim. “We create a diversion and keep the rest of the army from storming Merkland.”
He raised his voice and bellowed, “Phase two! Hit ‘em hard. Aifric, distraction initiative.”
Soldiers who had been shepherding prisoners toward Jean simply threw them into a pile, with a few guards overseeing them.
Everyone else charged into the gray, blowing snow.
89
What Goes Up
Verena slid the Swift sideways through the air to the south, paralleling the course of the river. Kilian stood with Mattias near the southern end of the township, facing a couple hundred advancing soldiers. He’d called forth a barrier of fire, but they were still charging.
No doubt they included Spitters and Firetongues, but Verena wasn’t really worried about Kilian’s ability to stop them. Sentries worried her more. The ground was unstable enough that Sentries had been holding back, but would they still?
Her job was to identify them and hit them with overwhelming force from above. She’d try to kill them, but even just distracting them until Kilian dealt with the others would be enough.
She wanted to call Connor, ask how his efforts to save the city was going. If he failed . . . No, she refused to consider it.
Movement farther south behind the advancing soldiers, dim and indistinct through the snow, drew her attention. She focused her long-vision front window, then gasped. Hundreds more soldiers were charging out of the confusing grayness. They were about to snap closed a trap that even Kilian might not escape.
Merkland couldn’t send aid in time.
“Kilian, you’ve got hundreds more soldiers coming.”
Without waiting for a reply, she activated Hamish’s speakstone. “Hamish, we’re in trouble. Kilian’s facing a much larger force. It’s a trap.”
His response was a grunt, accompanied by the sound of squealing metal. He panted, “No time to chat. I’m playing tag with Harley. Should have picked a different game.”
Oh no. Anger and fear boiled through Verena. They had planned so carefully to trap Harley, but she was the one who had tricked them.
Worrying and wondering were not going to help. Kilian would never retreat. Neither would Mattias. So neither would she.
Verena dove, the speedslings already spinning up on the stubby wings. She was the reinforcements, and she’d make those new soldiers wish all they had to deal with was an army out of Merkland.
She wished she could return to the second windrider she’d set in a hover above the township. It was full of additional mechanicals, but she didn’t have time for any of that.
Verena dove toward the second strike force, still a couple hundred yards behind the front company. They wouldn’t expect an attack yet. Verena forced herself to forget all her concerns. The best way to help Hamish was to defeat this other army quickly and get back over the river.
The enemy troops came clearly into view as Verena swooped below five hundred feet.
She opened the speedslings.
Hornets tore out of the four speedslings, but at that moment, the storm whipped into blizzard intensity all around her. Verena shuttered the speedslin
gs as the Swift bucked and spun halfway around before she caught it. The visibility out her windscreen fell to zero, replaced by a churning, solid mass of white.
It felt like every Spitter in Dougal’s army was attacking her at once. Cold fear set her heart racing as she flicked her hands across the control levers, trying to gain altitude, but not quite sure which way might offer safety.
Annoyed, she activated pumice. Instantly her flight smoothed out as the Swift plunged through the raging storm that couldn’t quite grasp it.
“Now show me your faces,” she whispered as she used the leveling bubble on the front dash to straighten out her flight. The blizzard still howled around her. She managed to level, but even as she increased horizontal speed, she couldn’t see anything.
She decided to rise up out of the storm, then come around for another pass. She’d have to strike from farther away next time. She applied more push thrusters and began to angle upward to ascend.
That’s when she smashed right into a giant snowball. It had to be twice as big as the Swift, and even though it exploded to powder, the impact caught Verena by surprise and brutally jarred the Swift. Verena grunted as she slammed forward against her safety harness.
Luckily the shielding over the windows held, but even before the snow from that giant snowball blew clear, she struck another one. Then a third.
“How is this possible?” Verena shouted as she tried to bank the Swift away from the unexpected barrage. Pumice was supposed to allow her to slip right through any elements being actively controlled.
“Oh, no.” She cursed herself for not realizing the catch.
Harley must have learned about pumice and trained her troops on how to circumvent it. They’d created those snowballs using their power, then simply thrown them into the path of the Swift. With no active magical control, there was nothing for pumice to shield her from.
More impacts shook the Swift, spinning it around and bouncing it violently. It seemed the Petralists had fine-tuned their attack, and they assaulted Verena without mercy. In seconds she lost all sense of which way might be up. The leveling bubble rocked so wildly and the little craft spun so hard, her instruments couldn’t help.
Verena screamed as she tried to fight the controls. She tried maxing the push thrusters to escape, but the central thruster took a direct hit and broke free. The enemy were throwing chunks of ice now. The other thrusters soon followed, robbing Verena of the power she needed to escape.
Verena fought down a growing panic as she fought to bring the Swift back to a level flight path using the smaller directional thrusters. There had to be a way to salvage the situation. She glanced at he own hair and cursed again.
It was falling up.
By the Tallan’s blessed memory, she was flying upside down.
She tried spinning the Swift back over, but more projectiles made of ice crashed into the crippled little craft. Verena caught sight of one projectile that looked like a giant sword, just before it speared into the front of the Swift with a brutal impact that dented the entire nose and seemed to knock the Swift backward in the air.
More ice smashed at her shielding windows and her armored sides. If she had been flying her original craft, she would have lost her head in a second. Verena increased the release rate on the shielding over the windows, extending the protective bubbles farther around the craft in overlapping spheres. They wouldn’t hold for long, but all she needed was a target and she could fire her weapons.
She tried not to panic, tried not to think about another brutal impact with the ground. The terror of those broken memories of her last crash set her hands shaking, and she started to pant, unable to get enough breath.
All that kept her from descending into pure panic was her faith in Kilian. He would see what was happening, would sense it, and would help.
A flash of crimson across her front window shield brought a spark of hope. Kilian had come to help.
Actually, he hadn’t.
A giant snowball exploded against the shielded sides of the Swift, releasing a burst of white-hot fire that had somehow been contained inside. They must be releasing active control only a fraction of a second before hitting her.
“Cheaters!” she cried as fire and ice smashed her little Swift relentlessly on every side, tearing at the wings and spearing into the craft. If they found a way inside, they’d incinerate her.
“Kilian! Can you hear me?” she shouted.
Abruptly the snow and fire snuffed out. Verena peered through the sudden stillness and screamed again. She was plunging at a steep angle toward the snowy ground, barely fifty feet below her.
Verena tried desperately to activate any thrusters she had left, but none of them responded. They’d all been ripped out. She hadn’t even noticed when the smaller ones were destroyed.
A second before the Swift plowed into the ground, Verena threw wide the release rate on all of the shielding stones. Then she held tight as the Swift smashed nose first into the ground.
She slammed against her safety harnesses, crying out in pain and fear as the Swift tumbled and bounced madly a dozen times before coming to a rest on its side.
The Swift was dead. The main body was broken, the wings gone, every outside surface smoking. She flicked her Builder senses across it. Most of the amazing mechanicals she’d felt such confidence in were shattered or simply gone.
Fighting back tears and groaning as every muscle protested the abuse, Verena snatched up two of the shielding stones, deactivated the others, grabbed her satchel and her sword, and crawled out of the wreckage.
She looked around, and her heart sank.
At least three dozen soldiers were racing in her direction, weapons drawn, shouting with victory. She saw no indication that they intended anything but to hack her to pieces.
They’d driven the Swift across the front line of their ranks and crashed it at the eastern outskirts of the township. Two houses stood less than a hundred feet to her left, and a long warehouse squatted like a distant shadow through the storm to her right, but they were too far to offer any real shelter.
Kilian and Mattias were somewhere on the far side of town, and by the flames exploding high into the sky from that direction, they had joined in battle. The truth struck her with absolute clarity.
She was completely alone. Her Swift was destroyed, and those dozens of troops no doubt included many Petralists.
So she felt no pity for them.
Verena pulled out of her satchel a small piece of sculpted obsidian. She wrenched open the invisible crack of its power with her Builder senses and focused on it, losing herself in the stone.
The enthusiastic shouts of the fast-approaching soldiers faded away, as did the aching of her muscles from the brutal landing, and her own fears. Everything vanished as she threw her Builder senses into the sculpted stone and linked to the pieces of activated obsidian floating high over Merkland.
More than a thousand feet above her, beyond the attention of any of the Petralists, she connected with the windrider packed with weapons. Through obsidian, Verena touched a series of quartzite veins set in leather. She activated a sightstone in the link and viewed the chaotic scene below through its prism lens.
She also activated a series of thrusters, pushing the windrider toward the township and turning it, then tilting it slightly upward at the front. Seconds were ticking away dangerously fast, but she made sure everything was aligned properly.
Then she activated every single weapon.
Verena started a mental countdown as she returned to herself. She looked around and bit back a cry of fear. A pair of Striders were closing with superhuman speed, short swords already raised to deliver killing blows.
Verena activated the two shieldstones in her hand and crouched low so the two domes of protective air sealed her off completely.
The first Strider never saw the double-thick dome. Shouting with victory, no doubt thrilled that he would be the one to take the Builder’s head to High Lord Dougal, he struck
the domed shield at full speed. Bones shattered and he tumbled with a scream right over Verena. She lost sight of him as he rolled out into the snowstorm.
The second Strider, half a heartbeat behind the first, managed to leap and spring off the top of the dome. He soared a hundred feet before landing and sprinting around in a tight turn, kicking up sprays of snow. He shouted a warning cry to the other soldiers, and they slowed to a cautious advance.
Several soldiers moved to the front. Fire erupted around the hands of two of them, while a pair of women who looked so much alike they must have been sisters, started gathering snow between themselves and condensing it into water.
A grizzled veteran, with the huge muscles and overlapping leather plates of a Boulder drew a little closer. “You can’t hope to escape. If you surrender, I can promise a quick execution. If not . . .” He glanced at the soldiers to either side of him. “If not, I can guarantee my men will make you wish you had.”
His words sounded a bit distorted through the shielding, so Verena spoke loudly to make sure he understood her. “You realize Builders can fly, right?”
He shrugged. “You crash too.”
“Do you think I don’t have reinforcements?”
The countdown in her head reached zero, so Verena pressed herself flat, covered her head with her arms, and maxed the double-thick shielding protecting her.
Two heartbeats later, ten thousand hornets tore down out of the sky without warning, shredding the entire area around Verena. One soldier started to scream, but the cry cut off almost immediately. Deadly hornets ricocheted off the shields protecting Verena, punching so hard into them that if they hadn’t been layered over each other, they would have failed.
One in a hundred hornets were tipped with diorite. A quick succession of powerful little explosions tore across the entire area with fire and destruction.
Two seconds later, twelve much larger diorite-tipped missiles struck all around Verena, vaporizing the snow and blasting huge craters in the ground. She’d aimed them to miss her shield, but there was still a chance one might stray off course and strike her directly. That would have obliterated her along with everyone else.