by Kari Cordis
Thoughtfully, he fingered the Lance figurine, complete with a faux sapphire, mind dwelling on the actual one while he toyed with it. There hadn’t been so much as a twinkle out of the Sapphire, despite the fact that after five hundred years with nothing to do, you’d think Vangoth would be a little more interested in the current proceedings. Kane edged the figure first in front of the Chevron of the Stone—if they were going out, they really should do it in a glorious charge—then back behind the Steelmists Chevron, which had to be seeing the most action of the entire allied forces right now.
Kane suddenly heard the Lance Knight himself being announced, as if he’d been conjured up, and within moments Alaunus came pounding up on that powerful, flea-bitten red roan that he liked so much. It had a mane and tail and flowing fetlocks the color of dirty dishwater, was wall-eyed, and had a thick, ugly scar roiling on one flank…but then, Alaunus wasn’t much to look at either.
He dismounted stiffly, favoring his off arm, which had a thick black crust over the hand hanging off the end of it. His limp was even more pronounced, weary as he surely was from fighting through the night, but the gleam in his eye was the same.
Kane grunted at him in greeting and his old friend took a moment to glance at the sandtable.
“Kanarron’s got so many holes in his Chevron you could use it as a sieve,” the Knight finally croaked out by way of report. Even his formidable vocal cords were getting strained by the gritty air and the demands of bellowing over steelsong and screaming horses and men. He pointed a sausage-shaped, stubby finger at the Stone Chevron, the Merranic Center. “And he’s flush compared to the left.”
“How long?” Kane asked, narrowing his eyes, more to gauge the Steeds’ strength than to make any kind of plans of relief.
Alaunus met his eyes. “An hour. Maybe.”
Kane, whose reports had been indicating something along these cataclysmic lines, nodded. “We’ll need to form up for the Final Charge, then—”
“I got an idea,” Alaunus interrupted him. The shaggy reddish head swung up, eyes dancing with mischief. “Let’s retreat.”
Kane looked at him like the smoke inhalation was fogging up his brain. The eyes were sharp and shrewd as ever, though, and you didn’t wield the Sapphire Lance by being stupid. He grunted, translatable into words as, “What do you have in mind?”
“Steelmists almost has that powder ready—up there at the Prow. His Chevron will feint a retreat, back as far as we can get as fast as we can get.” The finger was back, hovering over the sandtable where the chunk of Ethammer that was representing the Prow dominated the eastern edge.
He paused and Kane said narrowly, “Even if the Enemy take the bait, we don’t have enough strength in the Stone Chevron to pinch them off or even close off their flanks.”
Alaunus had been bending over and now he straightened—with a handful of pebbles.
“Nay,” he growled rakishly, “But the Enemy will pour into that hole right around the base of the Prow, all along its sides and hopefully we’ll even get a nice surge of interest out there in front…” He dumped the pebbles over the pewter figures of the Steelmists Chevron, streaming them around the chunk of rock and meeting his King’s eye with a wolfish grin.
Kane grinned back at him, nodding slowly as the plan seeped in. “Do it.”
For a second they paused, knowing in the way of men who make battle that they’d never see each other again. They gripped elbows with enough force to crush a beer tankard, solid and fast.
Kane cleared his throat as they stepped apart, gesturing at the charred hand, which was oozing a nasty, thin blood now.
Alaunus shrugged, moving back over to his wall-eyed Steed and remounting. “One of the young Knights caught fire.” He huffed into his saddle, settling with snapping eyes and a grin behind the dirty beard. “He was finding it a bit distracting.”
Kane watched him go. He wasn’t pretty, but he had the biggest, truest heart of any man he’d ever known. Merrani would miss him.
If there was a Merrani left after the pebbles got done invading.
“Why me?” Rodge demanded. “Why ME?” The frozen earth was completely insensible to his pounding, the spade barely denting the surface. “Idiots!” he ranted. “All the minds in the Imperial Army, and they pick these for the job?”
The surveyors had surveyed, the engineers had taken notes, calculated, and dug the hole—and then the imbecile in charge had decided to hold off until the Enemy got closer. Then he decided to fill the hole with powder, the approaching masses of Sheelmen finally qualifying as a threat; then he decided they weren’t quite a threat, and held off again. Then he’d gotten killed, the powder had gotten wet from the ground sweating under the sheet that had been thrown over it to protect it, and the long rope leading to it was frozen solid. Now, of course, the Enemy were a real threat. Loren had woken him this morning with urgent pleas; they were about to be overrun, the powder wasn’t working, there were no dry ropes for fifty leagues, and apparently he was the only one in the Empire capable of doing anything about it.
Loren came panting up. “Hurry, Rodge!” he begged. He was keeping watch with the small task force Banion had sent with them. “I think they’ve found a way up here!”
“Dig this!” Rodge pointed at the ground, disgusted with the whole disordered mess. He was about tired of all this chaotic warring, of Sheelmen popping into his dreams at night and the memory of the smells and the sounds of the Hall of Sacrifices accosting him at odd moments through the day.
Loren began flaying the ground with the spade with much better results. Slightly appeased, Rodge got his powder and the lone dry rope for fifty leagues readied for action. They both looked up sharply, though, at a rumbling from the trail from below. Fortunately, as they weren’t set up to fend off an attack force, it was only Banion and a few of his Knights.
Although, the Knight of the Steelmists, seated on a destrier the size of a tent, was no little thing. The warsteeds were enormous; Rodge could literally barely see over their withers. Their hoof prints were as big as dinner plates. Banion’s was no exception, a steel grey monster that came clopping up to them like an equine thunderstorm. The whole ledge shook under his hooves.
“How’s it coming?” Banion inquired solicitously. None of the Merranics seemed disturbed that, statistically, they were doomed. Rodge looked up at him dourly. “Oh, it’s great. Are you certain nobody else in the entire allied forces could dig a hole and pour powder into it?”
“I wanted only the best,” Banion rumbled soothingly. He’d been bladed, steel having slipped through the seams of his armored legs, and there was rusty-looking blood all over that side of him. The Knights hadn’t slept all night, being busy with Enemy, but Rodge figured all those days dozing in the saddle on their journey with Ari had stocked him up. He certainly didn’t look tired.
There was shouting from the small force keeping watch, and Loren dropped the shovel like it was a hot potato and sprinted over to them. Banion urged his huge horse after him, and Rodge, happy to be away from all the drippy, smelly, looming horse flesh, carefully started pouring powder. There was lots of shouting, but by now he was pretty good at ignoring it. Merranics were an excitable bunch, especially when it came to Tarq.
But he did look up when the warsteed thundered back over, mostly because it was impossible to ignore.
“Now!” Banion shouted at him. He had his sword out and looked absolutely terrifying, running up on him like that. The horse came to a shuddering, jolting halt barely a yard or so away, half-pivoting as Banion yanked at the reins. “They’ve found a way up!” he bellowed. “Right under this ledge! Now’s the time, my boy!” He was obviously having a splendid time, but Rodge, looking past him, saw Tarq appearing warily at the far edge of the ledge. LOTS of them.
He rose awkwardly to his feet, knees half frozen from the ground. And then Rodge, who eight months ago had fainted at the sight of a mysterious stranger collapsing in his dorm room, looked irritably at the hordes of Enemy massing
not twenty-five yards away. “I can’t work like this, Banion. People will be all over this place in a few seconds, disturbing the rope, bleeding all over the powder—I think we better forget it.”
“Nay, we’ll hold them off!” the Jarl bellowed encouragingly, insistently cheerful.
“There’s like 800 billion of them,” Rodge told him bracingly. “You’re not going to be able—”
“Aye, but they’ve all got to come through that little opening, a couple dozen at a time,” Banion said, dropping his voice to one of guttural glee, gesturing with his sword, and winking outrageously. “We can give you as long as you need.”
“All right,” Rodge sighed. “You go. Hold them off.”
With a roar that made Rodge jump about a foot in the air, the Knight whirled his steed, charging headlong across the short space separating him from his quarry. His countrymen were already engaged and shouts and cries and clashing swords formed the background music to Rodge’s deft final arrangements. Carefully, he ran the rope out, laying down flat at the far end of it and bringing out his flint with numb fingers. He blew on them urgently, just to get them warm enough to hold the fire-making materials. Finally, a spark caught the frayed ends of the rope. Rodge took a quick check to make sure everyone was still on the far side of the ledge, then focused on the rope, blowing gently, encouraging the tender flame like a mother with a child. He murmured soothingly, fighting the urge to get up and walk with it along its path. Banion had coated the fibers with something he called ‘enflamer’ but it still wasn’t moving very fast. Anxiously, Rodge watched the flame’s desultory progress, eyes shifting between it and the action at the edge of his vision. Loren, healed up from his nasty cut at the Sheelshard, now thought he was one of the Heroes and was ground-fighting in with all the Merranics. Rodge rolled his eyes, continuing the motion back to the rope. Agonizingly, the flame crawled across the open space, finally but a yard away. Then mere inches. It had gone in to the powder…
Rodge held his breath as time seemed to congeal. Nothing was happening. Was it wet? Had the flame gone out? Not enough oxygen—
It blew.
The next several minutes were gone forever. He never could remember them; he just knew that when he came to, it was absolutely silent. Blearily, he raised his head, focusing first on his hands. They’d been showered with dirt and pegged so hard with debris that there were several spots of blood on them. The ledge in front of him was gone. Empty air where yards and yards of dirt had once stoutly lain. There was still a heavy cloud of dust out there, but not thick enough to have just occurred. He’d been out for a while.
Groggily, he looked around, and then jerkily clambered to his feet. Where the fighting had been off to his side was quiet, too, and completely changed. There was no more scrubby brush, no more Tarq, no more Merranics. The ledge had been sheared off and part of the cliff face had come down. He moved as quickly as he could, alarmed but too unbalanced to move faster. Something was off with his equilibrium.
He stopped anxiously at the eastern edge, scanning the huge slope of pure rubble stretching away before him toward the sea. It was massive, the occasional bodies sticking out of it looking like toys. Horrified, he ran his eyes over everyone he could find, wishing he’d kept Banion’s spyglass, wishing he’d known there’d been fault lines extending half-way round the mountain, wishing a dozen things in retrospect that were too late to change now.
There was Loren! Relief flooded over him like the wave motion of blue light. Signaling like an overdramatic idiot, he was yards and yards and yards down the slope, laboriously making his way back up. How he had survived being thrown all the way down there, Rodge could only chalk up to pure, dumb luck.
He suddenly remembered Banion and began to search again, shading his eyes against the glare of the weak sun that was finally burning through some of the clouds. He couldn’t believe it when a sound, a groan, caught his ear, and he turned to see Banion lying not five yards away!
Hurriedly, he clambered over to him. He was half-buried under rocks, and there was a horrid dent the size of Rodge’s head in his chest armor, but he was alive!
“Banion! Banion!” Rodge shook him excitedly, and with a louder groan, the Knight came to, slowly opening his eyes. He looked terrible, face white under his beard, lips bloodless, but he focused on Rodge.
“We did it!” Rodge crowed at him, knowing that would invigorate him. “It worked!”
A faint smile appeared through the beard. “Did we?” he said, very softly. “Did it get the Tarq below?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t check.” He wasn’t very excited, Rodge thought, for the size of their accomplishment.
“Go check,” Banion breathed. His brows dipped, face contorting for a minute. He was being really subdued for a Merranic, but then, Rodge figured, he had a boulder the size of his horse resting on his lower legs. How in the world were they going to dig him out? Rodge scrambled away over the rocks, his coordination improving so that by the time he reached flat ground he could manage a trot. The edge was close, and he approached it warily. Who knew how fragile this fresh bit was. Leaning carefully over, he saw with glee that the avalanche of rock had collapsed onto an area bigger than he’d ever dreamed! For leagues out into the battlefield, once swarming with Tarq, there was now only rock and rubble. Nothing moved, only dust drifting hazily through the cold air. Off to his right, he could see battle paused far down the line to the west, shocking, thrilling acres buried under mounds of rubble in that direction, too. Any movements there were small and scarce—the men were probably stunned from the blast.
Grinning, he backed carefully away, then jumped up and made his way back to the Knight.
“Massive destruction!” he crowed in delight as he drew nearer. “Fell right on thousands of ‘em, all over the plains!” There was no answer, and Rodge paused as he jumped the last little bit down to the Knight’s side.
“Banion?” Rodge’s grin faded. He wasn’t moving. Had he passed out again?
“Banion!” he cried, loud and stimulating, reaching out to smack the bearded face to bring him around. His eyes looked funny. They weren’t moving at all under the half-closed lids. Not only did he not respond to the slap, but his big hand, which had been resting on his caved-in chest armor, slipped quietly off and landed with a soft thud in the dirt.
Rodge stared at that hand for a long minute, and then suddenly he was screaming, “Banion! Banion!” and pounding on the huge arm next to him and shaking the enormous shoulders and slapping the still face. But there was nothing. And when Loren reached him, he was still yelling the Knight’s name, over and over and over.
Kai danced easily, blades spinning without thought like extensions of his hands. Life and death met and parted at the ends of them in endless waves of numbers. It wasn’t the life a wise man would choose, but it was the one that had been given to him and he was very good at it.
A bloodhawk’s incoming scream rent the air and he ducked swiftly. They were also good at what they did, but they weren’t real careful about their targets when the battle fury was on them. The Tarq behind him, of slower reflexes, took the full brunt of the creature’s onslaught. His shrieks of terror and pain distracted some of Kai’s foes, and he narrowed his eyes as the dance quickened in the face of their laxity.
They did not fight as Tarq. It was a hundred small details like the reaction to the bloodhawk that had him noticing it. The Tarq of old were pretty immune to pain and fear. It was partly their mindless intensity that had been so chilling, as if nothing could affect them, as if their numbers would go on forever and they would never stop until the whole world was ablaze. They would stand and be run through if the arm holding their blade was taken. Now they would scream, horror in their eyes. He’d even seen some turn and pick up discarded spears or axes in desperation—swordsmen, who knew no other weapon but firearrows. There was craftiness in their brilliant eyes now, where before they’d shone dully with only blank certainty.
They fought better than ever,
but it was not as unnerving.
The battlefield had changed in the wake of the dragon deaths. Kai had sensed it as soon as the great beasts had sunk defensively to their bellies. He’d been deep in the field and had been pushing both Northerners and Drae hard to take advantage of the Tarqs’ distraction—it was as if the Enemy were waiting for the outcome of the dragon advance. And he felt it keenly when desperation had settled over them as their fire devils stalled out…when those enormous bulks had finally keeled over, to be settled on almost instantly by hundreds of carrion eaters happy to get a good meal in the middle of winter.
The Sheelmen, who had previously fought so thoughtlessly, so uncaring of strategy…now swung their steel with renewed fervor, striving with the impassioned desperation of those whose plan had failed…almost as if they had thought the dragons had been their best chance to breach the North.
A sudden longing swept over him, as sometimes happened when the constant tide of death seemed to wash up against the soul, the dreary need to defend, to constantly fight the never-ending, tireless forces of the Destroyer. It was for the Empire that he longed, the Empire and all her devoted ring of Border Realms…that she might be claimed by Light, that there might be dominion over her by mercy and peace and by love. What did the Destroyer want with her but to ruin her industry and her innovation and her bright, lively beauty?
Keep her, he prayed. Keep her from the rapine of darkness and despair.
Then, abruptly, like a curtain lifting, he realized what lay behind the anxious determination of this strange new Enemy. The dead, relentless, mindless assaulting that was their trademark was completely gone. They knew they were going to lose; they saw now, with eyes cleared of Raemon’s fog, that the resolve of the north was greater than their own.