Incarnation: Wandering Stars Volume One

by Jason Tesar

  “We’ll take care of these,” Danduel said. “You just concentrate on those corridors so they’re clear by the time we reach the entrance.”

  “Yes Fer-Rada.” Nuathel replied, then turned to his own soldiers. “Back to the gate!”

  Sariel unfurled his wings and leaped upward to join the other Iryllurym.

  * * * *

  With Danduel at the point of a tight wedge formation, the Anduarym advanced quickly upon the gate. Semjaza had formed an army from the Kahyin, the tallest and strongest of the human species. But they were no match for the Anduarym, who were approximately twice their height. The wedge concentrated the force of the Anduar strength at the center of the opposing army, dividing the humans into two groups who were now faced with a solid wall of shields. With each flank protected, the soldiers marched quickly to the wall and entered the main passage.

  Once inside, Danduel and the others at the point of the wedge pulled back and formed a line, while the flanks of the wedge pulled inward to create a column.

  Despite the efforts of the Iryllurym, humans continued to pour out of each corridor and attack the flanks of Danduel’s formation. They came forward with reckless abandon, throwing their spears which shattered harmlessly against the shields of the Anduarym. The few unfortunate souls who ran at the angels were easily turned away or knocked down.

  Within minutes, Danduel’s ground forces had driven through the passage and were now only yards from breaching the land gate of Mudena Del-Edha. As the Fer-Rada crested the hill and caught sight of the bay glittering in the moonlight, he saw Semjaza’s Anduarym waiting.

  “AMBUSH!” he yelled.

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than the stars were blotted out by shadows from above. At the same moment he recognized the enemy Iryllurym, one of the soldiers at his side fell, pierced through the neck with a spear. Danduel quickly realized that he was trapped.

  More of Semjaza’s Anduarym were arrayed along the top of the wall, casting their spears down into the mass of vulnerable angels, who were unable to protect themselves from multiple directions at once. Danduel gritted his teeth. If he pressed forward, he and his soldiers at the head of the column might be cut off from the bulk of their force still outside the passage. With the objective so close, yet unattainable, he shouted in frustration.

  Suddenly, the humans pulled back into the side corridors while Semjaza’s Anduarym advanced down the center passage, picking up speed.

  Danduel knew that at any moment, he would see them coming from the side corridors as well. And then the battle would be over. He was now faced with the painful realization of Semjaza’s strategic brilliance. There had been almost no information available on the Pri-Rada, which meant that his missions were classified. From the design of this fortress, to his deceptive strategies and efficient utilization of soldiers, Danduel could now see clearly that Semjaza was a master of battlefield tactics. Danduel was out of his league.

  “Dreg aftur! Dreg aftur!” Danduel yelled, moving his shield over his head.

  His orders were relayed along the column of Anduarym, and slowly, his army backed out of the passage, leaving behind the bodies of fallen comrades.

  The front line of enemy angels came forward, marching quicker than the retreating army.

  Danduel knew that they wouldn’t make it out of the passage in time. “Varnir, horfa!” he shouted.

  The column, responding immediately to his orders, pulled themselves into a denser formation, interlocking their shields to present themselves as an armored wall with protruding spikes. The column continued moving slowly backward, using the standard retreating front defense formation.

  Semjaza’s soldiers crashed into the front line and used the high ground advantage to push the invading force out of the gate faster than they could retreat.

  One by one, Danduel’s soldiers were thrown off balance and either trampled or impaled as soon as they fell to the ground. Danduel flinched as his left shoulder was thrown violently forward, followed by a sharp pain. Grazed by a spear from above, he now felt warm blood flowing down his arm.

  “Dreg aftur!” he shouted again.

  * * * *

  At the rear of the column, Ananel heard the command to pull back being passed from soldier to soldier. Semjaza’s Anduarym were now atop the wall, casting their weapons down upon the confused Amatru. The Iryllurym on both sides of the conflict were swarming overhead. Inside the passage at the center of the wall, a frenzy of movement was taking place. The original plan was being abandoned. Semjaza had been prepared for their coming.

  As Ananel looked around at the other Myndarym huddled within the protective lines of Anduar soldiers, another idea came to mind—one for which Semjaza would surely not be prepared. He could now see Danduel exiting the passage with his shield over his head.

  “Step aside,” he shouted. “I have to speak with the Fer-Rada!”

  CHAPTER 27

  MUDENA DEL-EDHA

  The sky began to lighten in the east, while shouts of retreat could be heard across the battlefield. Having fought for hours to break through the angelic force holding the land entrance to Semjaza’s fortress, Danduel’s soldiers had sustained much damage. Though they originally outnumbered Semjaza’s forces two-to-one, the high ground and arrangement of the passage gave a considerable advantage to the enemy. Danduel’s numbers had been steadily whittled down to roughly sixty Anduarym and he was no longer able to maintain the attack. His Iryllurym had sustained even greater casualties.

  “Horfa! Horfa!” he commanded.

  As his soldiers backed away from the wall, cheers rose up among the enemy force. The ground forces raised their spears and shields high in the air, while the humans laughed and made crude gestures. The winged angels hovered in the air above the gate, while the holy Iryllurym backed away, covering the retreat of their counterparts on the ground.

  Danduel shook his head in frustration, then turned to lead his army down the road, away from the gate. Trying to maintain some semblance of order, his Anduarym lined up and began marching. Within minutes, the retreat was in full force. The Fer-Rada quickly made his way to the head of the retreat and led them around a sharp bend.

  A smile came to his lips as he saw Ananel standing to the side of the road, waving to him. Danduel marched toward the newly formed hole in the side of the eastern-facing cliff.

  “Are you ready?” he asked the Myndarym as he approached.

  “They’ll punch through as soon as you’re in position.”

  Danduel nodded, then ducked into the cave. Without anything to light the way, he held his shield in front of him and marched as quickly as his legs would carry him. Luckily, the tunnel was level and smooth, having been shaped by the Myndarym. If it had been dug by any other method, the debris alone would have made it impassable.

  Semjaza will never be expecting this!

  “Fer-Rada?” came a voice from the darkness.

  “I’m here. Just wait until the tunnel is full,” Danduel replied, coming to a stop. He felt another presence behind him as his soldiers packed themselves into the passage beneath the mountain. “Come in and make room for the others,” he commanded.

  Though completely dark, he could nevertheless hear a change in the way sound traveled through the tunnel. After waiting patiently for several minutes, he heard the message being relayed from the back of the line.

  “We’re ready,” the soldier behind him stated.

  “Go ahead,” Danduel told the Myndarym. “Make it as fast and wide as you can.”

  After a moment’s pause, a low note sounded, accompanied by another, then another harmony. The music filled the tiny space until the very rock seemed to resonate with it. As each harmony was layered onto the growing force of sound, Danduel had to cover his ears to keep from losing his balance. His head began to ache and his hands shook.

  A sharp pulsing sound threatened to burst his eardrums and he wondered how an angel could produce such a noise. The pulsing resonance increase
d in volume and tempo until the very earth beneath them rumbled. Finally, the rhythm merged into a single note and the Myndarym shouted with a violent burst.

  Instantly, morning sunlight flooded into the passage as the rock in front of Danduel seemed to flee in fear. Large boulders, dirt, and small rocks alike, flew away from the Shapers with such force that the air was filled with a cloud of debris. Danduel removed his hands from his ears, and stared out in fascination. He could now see the whole of Semjaza’s city at a glance. A great tower stabbed upward from the surface of the water. Its height was beyond anything Danduel had ever seen, and was clearly a monument to Semjaza’s pride. A road traversed the descending terrain before him. One direction led west along the bay toward Semjaza’s fortress. The other led east to the back side of the entrance that they had unsuccessfully attempted to infiltrate.

  Danduel rushed forward.

  The Anduarym followed, emptying from the tunnel beneath the mountains as a chaotic mass.

  “Ad a tarn! Delas! Foran aras! Aftan varnir!” he yelled to his soldiers.

  The Anduarym quickly assembled into a formation with half the soldiers facing forward and half facing to the rear. Then, they moved as one to the west, heading for the peninsula leading out to Semjaza’s fortress. A feeling of excitement came over the Fer-Rada as he saw his objective in such close proximity. Somewhere inside the tower, cowering in fear was the disgraced Pri-Rada. No doubt he realized that the odds had just shifted.

  To the east, Semjaza’s Anduarym were just realizing what had happened and were abandoning the gate, while the Iryllurym were advancing quickly along the road in Danduel’s direction.

  As their dark silhouettes moved closer, Danduel brought his shield up high and held his vandrekt tight. “Iryllurym!” he yelled to his soldiers.

  Semjaza’s defense was playing out just as he wanted. Looking now to the still waters of the cove, he could already see the smooth surface being disrupted. A loose grouping of triangular waves was coming quickly from around the peninsula. His Vidirym were already inside the cove and moving into position to cover the rear of his advancing formation.

  This time, he allowed himself to smile.

  The water continued to swirl and the wakes grew in depth. But gradually, they changed direction and began to come straight at his soldiers on the shore. Danduel’s momentary feeling of superiority evaporated as he realized what was happening.

  “Varnir! Halda! Snua rett!” he commanded.

  The sixty Anduarym quickly stopped their forward movement and morphed their frontal attack formation to a defensive posture, aimed toward the water. The right side of the column now became the front line, interweaving their shields to form a barrier along the shore line, while the rear lines held their shields overhead.

  The first wave of Iryllurym arrived. With a flurry of wings, the airborne enemy dove and rammed into the shields of the two rear lines. One of Danduel’s soldiers went down, while another lost his shield.

  As soon as the formation passed overhead, the water along the shore bulged upward as massive shapes came from the depths. Instead of Danduel’s underwater soldiers, it was Semjaza’s Vidirym who broke through the once tranquil surface. Their sleek, aquamarine bodies glistened in the morning light, as the water slid from their skin. The angels’ upper bodies rose above the surface, supported and propelled by the long appendages still under the water. They were all armed with vanspyd at their sides, which they quickly transferred into an overhanded grip. In one fluid motion, they loosed their spears and sent them flying through the air with deadly accuracy.

  “Vidirym!” came a cry from the rear of his forces.

  At the left side of the front line, Danduel was nearly pushed over by the force of a spear hitting his shield. His arm twisted violently, trying to maintain his grip on the protective barrier. Three of his Anduarym went down—two from the same spear which had gone clean through the first soldier. The third fell forward out of formation when the Vidir pulled on the cord that attached his barbed vanspyd to the metal gauntlet on his forearm.

  Danduel had never seen this use of the famous Vidirym weapon and struggled to think clearly in the chaos of the moment.

  “Varnir! Skyv vinstri!” he yelled.

  His soldiers maintained their formation, but began side-stepping along the road to the west. As Semjaza’s sea and air forces took turns at the invading army, Danduel’s company pressed on, slowly losing one soldier after another. By the time they reached the peninsula, his force of sixty had been reduced to forty-three. And now that he faced a narrow strip of land with water on each side, his optimism was all but depleted. It was a gauntlet and the casualties were sure to be severe. His own Vidirym were nowhere to be found, and he knew he would need additional numbers to reach the fortress alive. Looking up to the southern cliffs, he thrust his spear into the air and gave the signal for half of the Iryllurym to join the fight.

  Semjaza’s winged soldiers must have seen the signal, because the next attack came not in unison, but as random individual assaults. The soldiers of the water quickly followed this change in strategy, and now it was impossible to predict where the next attack would come from.

  Suddenly, the soldier next to Danduel lost his shield to a diving Iryllur who carried it away, nearly ripping the Anduar’s arms off. In the next instant, a long spear punched through the soldier’s chest. The Anduar turned to his Fer-Rada and grasped at him, with a pleading look on his face. Then he was violently wrenched out of formation as the enemy retracted his weapon.

  Danduel pulled his own shield tight to his body and simply watched, helpless while the soldier was dragged into the water.

  * * * *

  Clinging to the shadowy cliffs above the southern side of the bay, Sariel watched as Danduel’s forces below were taking a beating from the air and sea. And at any moment Semjaza’s ground force would reach them, as well.

  “Change of plans,” Nuathel said, looking down at the signal from his commanding officer. “It looks like he needs half of us.”

  Sariel nodded.

  “You stay out of sight,” the Fim-Rada continued. “Wait for the signal. Then go for the tower. Fast!”

  Sariel nodded.

  “It’s time,” Nuathel announced to his soldiers. “Let’s go.”

  Half of the Iryllur force jumped from the cliffs and took to the air.

  As soon as they left the concealment of the high position, Semjaza’s Iryllurym took notice, and immediately pulled away from Danduel’s soldiers to meet the new threat.

  Sariel and the other half of the winged angels remained hidden in the quickly shrinking shadows of the cliffs. With his vaepkir ready, Sariel looked out over the battlefield. The enemy ground soldiers who left the eastern gate had now reached the right flank of Danduel’s formation. Even though the Fer-Rada no longer had to worry about an attack from the sky, he still had to protect himself from the sea and land. The odds still didn’t look good, which only put more pressure upon Sariel for what they expected from him—what he had promised.

  Without warning, an immense grinding noise blanketed the bay and surpassed all other sounds, shaking the very ground beneath their feet.

  Sariel looked down, wondering if the mountain was collapsing on the tunnel that the Myndarym had created.

  “There!” one of the Iryllurym said, pointing to the west.

  Sariel followed his outstretched arm to see the water near the sea gate surging.* The leftmost tower began to lean inward. Then, the wall between the towers sunk below the water line.

  As soon as they realized what was happening, Semjaza’s Vidirym pulled back from the water’s edge and slipped below the surface, speeding away to meet the new threat.

  “Our Vidirym have joined the battle,” he told the other angels clinging to the rocks.

  * * * *

  Fim-Rada Kai-Niquel hung back with his division of Vidirym while the Myndarym huddled near the sea floor at the base of the stone wall. He could feel the movement i
n the water before anything was visible, but it seemed sudden nonetheless. First a rumble sent vibrations through the water. Then a shudder. Then a jolt. The water began to swirl as a great surge drew them all inward, threatening to suck them into the void that the Myndarym had shaped beneath the defensive barricade.

  As sea water rushed in to fill the gap, it displaced a mass of air that exploded outward and shot toward the surface in a blinding myriad of bubbles. The upward rush of air was so extensive that it blocked all sight. It wasn’t until the vast migration of tiny air pockets all jolted to the right as one that Kai realized the wall was moving behind it.

  The center of the wall dropped first, dragging the stone on either side with it. This was followed quickly by a ripple effect as the destruction spread outward from the point of attack. Within seconds, a cloud of debris spread outward and upward, choking the water and blocking all light from the surface.

  Through the chaos, Kai sensed a safe passage over the center of the wall, and surged forward, signaling his soldiers to follow. Thrusting his fins down, he shot toward the top of the wall, then leveled out a few feet below the surface. Through the cacophony of sound vibrations moving in all directions through the water, Kai could still make out the chatter of his soldiers’ echo-location. With the large obstacles cleared from their path, nothing stood between them and the fortress.

  “Stay alert. We’re not the only ones in the water,” he told them.

  Cutting swiftly through the sea, Kai could sense the western-most turret of the fortress, rising from the floor of the bay. Farther in the distance, rounding the peninsula point, he could also sense many shapes moving through the water toward him. Fortunately, his forces outnumbered Semjaza’s two-to-one.

  “Delas! he called to his soldiers. “Foran loka! Aftan, sakra ingangur!”

  Immediately, Kai and half of his division banked slightly to the north to meet Semjaza’s sea force. When they reached a position between the western tower and the incoming Vidirym, they halted and assembled into a vertical wedge formation.

  Semjaza’s soldiers came quickly, spreading out at the last moment in an attempt to get around the defensive force.

  Kai’s formation allowed the soldiers at the top and bottom of the wedge, who were positioned farther back, to fan outward and contain the enemy maneuver.