A Fading Sun
Page 16
“You’ve made that very clear to me, Ceanndraoi. We evidently both feel the same way. But I do thank you for what you’ve given me.”
“And what is that?”
“Far more than Ceiteag, you’ve given me the ability to use my anamacha. That gives me hope that I can one day accomplish what I most want.”
Greum glanced in the direction of the storm clouds and smoke, now nearly invisible in the darkness. “And what is it that you most want? Simple revenge?”
Voada shook her head. “I want my children back. I want that more than anything else.”
“And if you can’t achieve that?” he asked her blandly as firelight moved over his face. “What then?”
“Then those who took them from me will pay,” she answered, and she felt her lips draw back in an unbidden snarl. She could only imagine how that must look in the red firelight, but Greum simply raised his eyebrows. “And if you consider that simple revenge, then so be it.”
“You’ll begin making them pay here,” he said. “We have to win here in Onglse first if you ever hope to return to Albann Deas and Pencraig.” His head tilted as he regarded her. “That much, at least, you owe me for what I’ve taught you.”
She didn’t answer him. She heard him take a long breath. “We will defeat them, Voada,” he told her. “That isn’t a matter of hope, only of fact. And yes, since you heard me, I know your anamacha will be of great help to us here.”
Her anamacha moved nearer to her, slipping into her enough that she heard its voice.
“Yet here is where you find yourself,” he answered. “And here you’ll be used. Now, sit down, and we’ll begin your last lesson, because tomorrow you’ll be needed.”
Voada had never seen so many Mundoan soldiers gathered together in one place. She’d not imagined that there could be that many of them. In the midday gloom of the storm clouds, their troops spilled over and around the stone walls girdling Onglse’s shore; their siege engines trundled noisily and ominously toward the fort on the battlements of which Voada stood; their war chariots raced before and around the main mass of the advance; flags and banners fluttered above them in the rain and wind as their drums beat a slow cadence; their ships were massed in the half circle of the harbor far below. Boots clashed in time on the stones of the island, the rhythm pounding like some mad god’s pulse.
The sight made her despair at the fate of the island and the ability of the Cateni to defeat the Mundoa. If this was war, then war was more chaotic, confusing, and loud than she’d ever thought it could be.
Greum had brought a hand of draoi to the summit of the fort’s tower, where they could look down and see where to cast their spells. Already, Voada could hear some of them chanting, their hands weaving the patterns of their spell-knots in the air. As they cast their spells, lightning flicked down from the clouds and exploded in the midst of the Mundoan ranks, fires burst up among them, winds tore at their ranks, and stones erupted from the earth underneath them, but there were always more men to take the place of those who fell.
The drum beaters’ cadence quickened, and now the Mundoan army moved faster. Below, in the courtyard of the hill-fort, Ceannàrd Iosa bellowed orders as the gates opened and the Cateni warriors—pitifully few, Voada thought—rushed outward toward the Mundoan front, led by Maol Iosa’s war chariot.
Most of the draoi on the tower staggered back from the battlements, their faces weary and drained. Voada felt Greum’s touch on her shoulder. “It’s our task now, Voada,” he said. “Our task …” Greum wasted no more time; Voada saw him open his arms, and his anamacha slipped into his embrace. His eyes went distant; he began to chant, and his hands wove patterns in the air. His spell finished faster than Voada thought possible, certainly far quicker than any of hers. He gestured, shouting the release word, and from the storm clouds a quartet of lightning strokes descended, leaving brilliant streaks in Voada’s eyes, and the thunder that followed immediately was so loud that Voada nearly clapped hands to ears. She ducked involuntarily, as did nearly everyone around her.
As she rose, blinking away the afterimages, a shout of triumph erupted from the Cateni troops. Voada looked down to see the front ranks of the Mundoan army torn open, four gaping holes gouged out of the wall and great boulders torn from the earth and hurled to either side as if they were no more than pebbles. Amidst the rubble were the twisted, broken remains of soldiers and the closest siege engines. Voada could hear the screams of the wounded and maimed. She could smell charred wood and flesh, and underneath, the tang of blood.
Voada gaped. She’d not realized just how powerful Ceanndraoi Greum was. He was looking at her now, and if what he’d just done had taken any toll on him, she could not see it. “Well, woman?” he asked, pointing down. “There’s your enemy. There are the people who stole your family and your home from you. Show them what I’ve taught you.”
The screaming of the Mundoan wounded continued. Ceannàrd Iosa had halted his own assault for the moment, waving his spear in salute toward the tower where the draoi stood. “Look out there—there’s Savas himself,” Greum said. He pointed farther down the line of Mundoa to where the rest of the siege engines had halted. A war chariot moved there, and behind the driver was a man in shining krug, the mirrored armor of the officers, and a plumed headpiece. She couldn’t see his face, but the banner of three yellow stars on a blue field fluttering from the chariot said that yes, it was Savas. “The coward stays far enough back that our spells can’t reach him.” Greum spat over the side of the tower. “What are you waiting for?” he asked Voada. “There are still Mundoa within reach, even for you.”
Well out along the ridge, soldiers were milling around the ballistae, and Savas’ chariot was nearby. She saw the ballistae being loaded and men turning the cranks. With a wave of Savas’ hand, they released as one, loosing a hand of boulders toward the tower. She felt the wooden floor shudder underneath her as the massive stones struck the tower’s base, gouging out huge chunks of masonry and stone as the draoi staggered back from the battlement. Now it was the Mundoa who shouted and cheered as the tower swayed. Voada steadied herself, opening her arms and calling the anamacha to her. She plunged into their dark world, quickly finding Iomhar’s presence and taking his energy into herself. She let it burn and sear inside her as she formed a spell-net larger than any she’d made before, taking in more and more of the power that Iomhar continued to feed her. She faintly heard Greum shouting at her—“What are you doing, Voada? Release the spell!”—and ignored him, letting the power pound at her, throbbing in her skull until she thought it might burst.
Her vision was blurred. She could see Savas, could see the wooden structures of the ballistae and other siege engines.
She could reach Commander Savas. She felt that. In her doubled vision, he looked closer, close enough that she could see his face and know it was him, close enough that she saw him peering upward toward the tower and herself. She recognized that face, and she remembered how he’d scolded Voice Kadir for his treatment of the Cateni and the kindness he’d shown Meir after the dinner.
She held the power to kill him.
“Not all Cateni are our enemies, Voice Kadir, and we shouldn’t speak so strongly against them all …” She remembered Savas’ words at the Voice’s banquet in Pencraig, remembered how he’d not allowed Meir to walk back to the house but had instead driven them in his chariot.
Voada spoke the release word and flung her arms outward, a ball of glowing lava rushing away from her. The brilliance dripped liquid fire as it rushed ov
er the Cateni, past the front ranks of the Mundoan troops, and flashed over the head of Commander Savas to plow into the earth and explode in the midst of the ballistae as their slings were being reloaded. Molten lava cascaded over the wooden beams and over the men but spared Commander Savas.
Voada could hear their screams and their terror even as she reeled backward from having cast the spell and releasing her anamacha. Greum was peering over the stones; below, Voada could hear Maol Iosa’s bellow of triumph. “I could not have thrown a spell that large that far,” Greum said. “But you missed your friend Savas.”
“The engines were more important than the commander,” Voada told him. The words were hard to speak; most of her concentration was going toward keeping her on her feet. She badly wanted to sleep.
Greum was staring at her, his gaze dark and appraising. “Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps your aim isn’t all I would have hoped for.”
16
Victory and Defeat
SAVAS GAPED AT THE ruins of the ballistae smoking behind him. The rain hissed against the high flames. The fireball had soared a bare arm’s length over him, the heat palpable through his armor, and his new warhorses had reared up in fear as it passed. His banner was scorched with its drippings, and what it had done to the ballistae and the men assigned to them …
Four of the six ballistae were shattered, and most of the men with them were dead. The ones who weren’t dead were worse, writhing and screaming on the ground with blackened, charred skin. The flames continued to lick at their flesh even as the rain poured over them. One was crumpled near the chariot, a blackened claw of a hand reaching toward him; Altan ripped a spear from its holder and plunged it into the man’s chest to end the poor soldier’s agony.
The hand dropped to the ground.
“Get those fires out!” Savas shouted. “Move the other ballistae away quickly! Find the survivors, and get them to the archiaters! Go! Move!” The men around him were shaken out of their shock by his voice and scurried to their tasks as Altan looked back at the tower of the fort ahead. He’d glimpsed the draoi who had cast the spell: a woman, not young but not yet old, with long auburn hair. Many Cateni women would look much the same from that distance, but this one …
There was something about her that nagged at him, though he couldn’t place the memory. Had he seen her before? Where?
There was no time to think about that. He’d also seen Ceannàrd Iosa lead the Cateni warriors from the hill-fort gates. The sooner he engaged them, the sooner the cursed draoi would be unable to cast their spells for fear of killing their own. “You men!” he shouted, pointing to the two untouched ballistae. “I want that tower down before we reach it!”
He didn’t wait for their answer. “And you!” he said to the nearest soldier. “Run and tell the drum captains to call the advance.” Finally, he leaned forward toward his new driver, Tolga, a young soldier whom Musa had recommended as being an excellent charioteer. “Take me to Ilkur,” he told the man, and Tolga shouted to the warhorses as he slapped the reins down on their muscled backs and climbed forward on the yoke.
“Go, Bora! Go, Jika!” They moved forward alongside the ranked men as the drums began to pound out the call to advance and the entire army surged forward with a massed, wordless cry. Altan gripped the rail of the chariot, cursing his stiff and splinted leg. Once he’d ridden the chariot easily, balanced and shifting his weight without thought as it jounced over uneven ground. Now he rode like an old man, holding on desperately in order to remain upright. Still, the men cheered as he passed, and he lifted a spear to them in response, pointing the tip toward the fort before them. The air smelled of smoke and fire as they approached the front, and they passed craters with dead men in Mundoan armor scattered around them: the work of the draoi. Tolga took him up the slope of the ridgeline, then—more slowly—up the tumbled stone of the wall until they stood atop it. He stopped there, where they could look down and see the battle in front of the hill-fort just ahead of them.
The first ranks of the Mundoa had already struck the Cateni with a clash and roar and a swirl of chariots, along with the discordant blatting of the tall bronze trumpets the Cateni called carnyx, which they used to signal during battle the same way the Mundoan armies used their drums. The Cateni’s chariots were also thrashing into the melee, scythe-bladed wheels cutting their way through the ordered ranks of the Mundoa.
Altan saw Ilkur’s banner in the midst, swaying above the fray. He saw Maol Iosa’s banner close by as well; the Cateni champion wielded his sword in the midst of a clot of Mundoan soldiers, then jumped back onto his chariot as his driver whipped the horses into a gallop. That was the Cateni tactic with chariots: drive them madly into the front ranks of the enemy, knocking men aside, tearing at them with the blades attached to their wheels, or running them over as the rider threw javelins and spears or loosed arrows. Then, when the spears and javelins were exhausted, the rider would jump from the carriage and into the midst of the battle with his sword, only to be picked up again and moved quickly elsewhere.
It was a tactic that the Mundoa had adopted after their first contact with the Cateni, with some modifications. Most Mundoa used their chariots more like swiftly moving platforms for archers, though Altan had fully emulated the Cateni tactics with Lucian—a dangerous tendency for a commander, but one that had won him grudging respect from the Cateni. He knew it was the reason that Maol Iosa had thought to challenge him directly.
Altan could see Ilkur’s banner as his sub-commander led a wave of chariots forward to release arrows at the Cateni warriors, cutting them down like wheat being scythed in a field. They were answered by arrows from the hill-fort, but even as the first volley fell, the remaining Mundoan ballistae returned to action, one boulder striking the tower halfway up, another chunking into the base. Splintered rock and shattered mortar flew as the tower visibly shuddered; Altan saw the draoi gathered on the roof vanish as Greum Red-Hand ordered them down and out of the tower. Altan allowed himself a smile: good, not being able to easily see the battle to place their spells would cripple the draoi. That was especially important, given how that accursed woman draoi had taken out so many of the siege engines as well as the engineers working them. Keeping her and Greum Red-Hand out of the battle as much as possible was paramount.
Voada saw Greum preparing a new spell when another round of ballista-flung boulders slammed into the tower. The building lurched under her feet with a groan, sending Voada and some of the others on the roof off their feet and ruining Greum’s spell preparations as his incantation faltered and his hand movements went awry. She could feel the structure sway, the wooden floor of the roof no longer level. “Down!” she heard Greum shout. “Down to the courtyard!”
She pushed herself up and joined the others hurrying toward the stairs. The stairs were also damaged, creaking under their weight, and the interior of the hill-fort’s tower was filled with choking dust. Voada could hear the sounds of the battle, too close now. She felt vulnerable and frightened, but she couldn’t stop her flight downward; Greum was directly behind her, the last of the draoi to leave. The descent of four floors seemed interminable. It seemed that the archers and other tower-defenders were also abandoning the unsafe structure. More people crowded the stairwell, and the stones underneath them when they reached the second floor were cracked and broken, making their footing treacherous. More than once, Voada nearly fell.
Then, somehow, they were outside in the open courtyard of the fort, rain pouring down on them from the spell-induced storm above and the clamor of the battle outside the walls echoing around them. The courtyard was largely empty except for the injured, and a few of the fort’s servant staff, though a few archers remained on the surrounding walls. “Voada!” Greum called. “Another spell—what you did last time.”
“I can’t see to aim the spell,” Voada protested, pointing to the wall and the tower in front of them.
“Just send it.”
“But …”
“Do it!�
��
Before Voada could even start the spell, they heard the impact of more boulders against the tower, which groaned like a dying animal, leaned over and collapsed. The wreckage spilled mostly outside the walls, though stones also bounded into the courtyard as everyone scrambled away.
“Voada! Now!” Greum shouted.
The Cateni, Altan had to admit, were incredible hand-to-hand fighters, fierce and dangerous, but he could see that the Mundoan numbers would eventually overwhelm the Cateni. They had taken this hill-fort, and Volkan was leading the attack on the other to the west, which meant the Mundoa had cracked the first perimeter wide open and established a hold and supply line that would allow them to move into the interior of the island.
Altan began to hope that they might be able to accomplish what Emperor Beris’ army had never been able to manage: defeating the draoi’s stronghold and beginning to secure the land north of the River Meadham.
Already the landscape of the battle was shifting. The Cateni were being pressed backward by the disciplined ranks of the Mundoan infantry. The ballistae opened up again, both striking near the base of the tower, which groaned, leaned to the right, and collapsed entirely, smashing into the rearmost Cateni troops and taking a portion of the fort’s wall with it. A shout went up from the Mundoa forces, and Altan plucked his banner from its holder, waving it side to side: the signal for a full-out assault on the fort. The Mundoan army surged forward as Maol Iosa leapt into his chariot and retreated back to the fort, those around him following. Tolga grinned at Altan over his muscular shoulder. “We’ve beaten them, Commander,” he said.
“Not yet,” Altan reminded him. “Take us forward, Tolga.”
“Sir!” Tolga answered. He crouched on the yoke and slapped the reins down on the horses. “Go!” They snorted, reared up, and leapt forward.
The chariot lurched down the slope as Tolga picked his way through and over the rubble at a breakneck pace, Altan holding on to keep himself upright. They reached the smoother cleared area in front of the fort, now littered with bodies, Mundoan and Cateni alike. From the storm above, lightning flared again from cloud to earth, and thunder barked: draoi spells. Altan heard men crying out from near the tower’s rubble but couldn’t see what had happened. More light: another fireball went careening over the remnants of the fort wall and exploded a few dozen strides in front of Altan’s chariot, scattering bodies and gouts of thick lava. He could feel the heat, and the impact of the concussion tilted the chariot. Tolga pulled back on the reins momentarily as the horses reacted, nostrils flaring and eyes wide. Then he yanked the reins hard to the left, taking them around the flames. Soldiers scattered in front of them, scurrying out of the way. “To the fort!” Altan shouted to his troops. “Now!”