At seven hundred armlengths, the port forward polybolos crew opened up at a Phaelle'n skyship that made an sudden dart toward Number Three's bow, the mechanism's launch rail spewing spheres at better than twenty-five per minute. Though within the weapon's range, the agile, weaving silvery craft easily avoided the comparatively slow-moving spheres and it seemed impossible that the polybolos could score any hits. In bare seconds more, the other crews had followed suit, spewing streams of glinting tan orbs in all directions.
The cloud of projectiles pressed the nearest Phaelle'n back, but once they expended their momentum and began to fall toward the town, a final modulation triggered, transforming them once more into only scattering sand. This solution was not perfect, but at least it would prevent some of the inadvertent damage.
Before the polybolos could exhaust their ammunition hoppers to no effect, Mar accelerated again, driving Number Three pell-mell into the center of the swooping Phaelle'n skyships and using its defensive buffer to force the attackers to give way. He brought Number Three to a sudden, lurching halt above the foundations of the center tower, seizing a position that would permit him to cover the entire fort. Most of the opposing vessels managed to dodge out of the path of the infused projectiles, banking away with flashes of their underbellies and pitching up to gain altitude, but a single brave or foolish Phaelle'n banked back and wove through the speeding spheres. The skyship zoomed directly over Mar's head, rocking him with the force of its passage as it strafed down the centerline of the deck, blasting parallel lines of splintered holes. One quick acting crew at the starboard stern elevated their machine and fired into the air in front of the attacker.
Hardly before Mar could blink, the Phaelle'n craft exploded in a tremendous ball of flame, shards, and ethereal flux punctuated by repeated sphere detonations. The accompanying down blast rocked the skyship with a stunning wave of heated air and a number of the crew lost their footing and fell. The red-hot wreckage rained down, spurring everyone to dodge and crouch under any shelter they could. One piece of twirling metal passed so quickly between Mar and Chaer that they hardly had time to flinch. It took off the top of the bowsprit and a large section of the forward bulwark, leaving the front of the steerage platform open to the sky.
The polybolos crews were up again and firing, but almost immediately several of the machines began to clatter uselessly on empty hoppers. Seeing that all of the remaining Phaelle'n had climbed out of range, Mar shouted for the crews to cease fire, but immediately realized that the men would never hear him over the raucous ratcheting sounds of the machines. He floated over to where Phehlahm crouched near the stub of the starboard bulwark, grabbed the young marine's shoulder, and told him urgently to run to each crew with the order. Phehlahm bolted from the steerage platform, jumping over the rear bulwark in one leap that carried him out beyond the steps, and made the circuit to the stern and back in half a minute.
All of the machines stopped firing, but none of the crews relaxed. While the aimers and crankmen sat or stood tensely at their posts, the reloaders dropped down hatches and began to drag buckets of spheres up from below.
Fires had begun where parts of the destroyed Phaelle'n skyship had punched into the deck and the port stern polybolos and its crew had taken cylinder hits and casualties. Seeing that legionnaires were emerging from the lower deck and to attend to both -- stamping out the smaller fires, throwing sand on the larger, and tending the injured -- Mar turned his attention outward.
Not all of the sand spheres had dissipated before falling on the town below, a good number detonating among the blazing buildings of the town's outer neighborhoods and perhaps doing as much damage as had the fires.
With a grimace, he looked farther up, seeking the arrowhead shapes of the enemy skyships. At first he could not detect them, but then he heard-saw them, diving in from out of the afternoon sun. Counting five, he realized that they would be on top of Number Three in seconds. He soared over the bulwark and raced to a position above the center of the skyship, preparing to deflect the black projectiles.
Having a thought, he called down to the polybolos crews, "Don't fire continuously! Stagger your shots and fire only when you have a good target!"
The Phaelle'n formation passed over Mar at better than three hundred armlengths, traveling too fast for any of the crews to get a bead on any of the skyships, but this time no black cylinders showered down to rip through wood and flesh.
Mar whipped his head around to follow their path and then back again in shock as five objects falling from above entered his awareness. Instinctively, he tried to twist the ether to thrust the objects away, but found he had no power to affect their trajectories in any way.
The five objects -- which he identified an instant before they struck as solid metal cubes driven only by the pull of the earth -- bashed into and through the deck of Number Three, smashing heavy planks and main balks as if they were straw. Three of the cubes made a tight, irregular pattern of huge holes at the cabin end of the upper deck, one collapsed the entrance to the corridor, and the fifth landed on the starboard center polybolos, disintegrating the machine and horrifically crushing most of its crew right in front of Mar.
He felt the flux draining from the skyship, saw the deck slope sharply, and then concentrated in a desperate effort to keep the wounded craft aflight. One of the cubes had severed her keel and the sudden loss of structural support made the vessel try to tear herself apart. Number Three gave a great shudder, throwing a number of the marines and legionnaires from their feet, and Mar grew afraid that he could not keep her in one piece.
Phaelle'n cylinders chewed through the bow of the skyship as a pair passed over and zipped away. Tardily, several of the polybolos fired impotently at their diminishing forms.
Mar saw another pair closing over the sternpost and diverted his attention long enough to try to shield the skyship from their attack, but in doing so he let slip his containment efforts and more of the lifting flux bled away. The enemy skyships raked Number Three from stern to bow, but he succeeded in keeping her from taking any more hits. Suddenly, the deck dropped away beneath him and he caught the skyship only seconds before it plummeted out his range, forced to flood her few sound timbers with an overload of the rhythmic brown modulation.
While he tried to divide his attention between keeping Number Three aloft and watching for another attack, someone amidships shouted, "Six and Eight are coming in!"
Those were the two best other pilots, Ulor and Wloblh, and their vessels had the most mounted polybolos after Number Three, five and four, respectively. Mar rotated to his left and looked east across the town to find them. The skyships were still over a thousand armlengths out, but coming on at a good clip.
Hearing two of the starboard side machines clatter up to speed, he turned in time to see the unlucky fifth Phaelle'n detonate a sphere with a glancing blow, shredding a section of its metal skin and blasting away part of the understructure. The remaining chunk made a sharp dip from its previous path and corkscrewed through the hull of Number Three under the aft cabin section. The wreckage blasted out the opposite side, trailing a flood of abused flux but no smoke or flame, and spun into the ground just beyond the grassy outer ditch of the fort, smashing several buildings and throwing up an outblast of debris and earth.
The enemy had been going so fast that there was hardly a lurch from Number Three and many of the crew on the upper deck did not appear to know what happened, few showing any reaction.
Then, with a loud squeal of fracturing timbers, Number Three broke in half. Frantic marines and legionnaires leapt to grab on as the halves pitched in opposite directions and started to fall away.
Swooping to follow the descending pieces, Mar raced to weave flux, managed to arrest their fall, juggled them briefly to find a balance that he could maintain, then held them together and compelled the shattered skyship to rise back to its former altitude. The marines and legionnaires watched him from their crouched and braced positions, some showing fea
r on their faces but none showing panic. He would have to bring what was left of Number Three down soon, but for now, he needed height to give any still functioning polybolos a chance to return fire. Without the shielding sand spheres, the surviving crew would be helpless.
Before he could order the men to try to reload and aim their machines, he saw two of the Phaelle'n approaching from the west and lining up to attack. Almost certain that he could not both keep the bits of Number Three flying and deflect the black cylinders, he just waited as the enemy skyships grew large.
Moving at top speed, Number Eight cut across his view to starboard, throwing up a curtain of leaping spheres. Without much ado, both enemy skyships ran into the curtain and exploded.
Number Seven came in to port, likewise flaring a defensive screen of infused spheres and a third approaching Phaelle'n skyship that Mar had not been aware of met its end, blossoming into a bright globe of multicolored ethereal fire.
He rotated slowly, seeking the final enemy craft, and found it when it popped up abruptly from below his eye line, jinking from side to side as it threaded the four sand sphere streams pumped out by Number Eight.
Appearing to be aimed directly at Mar, it was not firing. The Phaelle'n pilot's intent seemed clear -- to ram his skyship directly into Number Three, sacrificing himself in an attempt to kill all on board. For an instant, it looked as if he would achieve his goal and pass through the broadside unscathed, hurdling Number Eight's steerage by a space of no more than armlengths.
Only one polybolos remained undamaged on the starboard side of Number Three. When its crew began cranking it up to speed, it jammed with a splintering sound.
Mar braced himself. He would not abandon the skyship or its crew. The sour thought sped through his mind that the magic of the Moon Pool had proved grievously inaccurate.
Then, astoundingly, the bow of Number Eight breached upward, catching the enemy skyship full on. No explosion ensued, but the collision carried away the entire forward end of Wloblh's skyship in a huge outburst of wood and debris. The orphaned stern and midships hung limply for a few seconds, then pivoted downward, taking on a wobbling spin as it fell, and crashed into a rubble strewn outlying field on the western side of the fort. On impact, it disintegrated, flashing spasmodically with incidental flux detonations.
After a moment or two, Mar shook off his shock and stalked the fractured length of the pieces of Number Three, scattering flux to stifle persistent fires and push smoke away, and came across his aide in the shattered cabin section helping to raise a crossbeam from a trapped marine's leg.
Mar infused the beam to assist, and once the injured man's comrades had pulled him free, asked Phehlahm, "Where's Chaer? I need to send an order to Number Seven."
The young marine's expression turned dark. "Chaer is dead, my lord king. He took a black slug in the chest right at the beginning."
NINETEEN
17th Year of the Phaelle’n Ascension, 140th Day of Glorious Work
Year One, Day Ten of the New Age of Magic
(Twelfthday, Waxing, 2nd Autumnmoon, 1644 After the Founding of the Empire)
The Citadel
"The kinetic cubes have proven effective."
The far talking disks came in a limited set of basic forms and a variety of primary colors, not all of which Traeleon had seen. The one sitting on a small wooden stand on his desk happened to be a flat, palm-sized, glossy black oval that broadcast Flight Commander Kehmrehl's voice with occasional static and infrequent skips.
A young Archivist working for Abbot Jzeoosl had come up with the idea to place a disk operator in the control compartment of a parked Shrike and to slave his disk to its communications magic in order to permit the Conclave to monitor the battle in real time without needing to be physically next to the flying ship. Traeleon had judged the allocation of the disk in this manner suitable for the limited time that it would be required and had rewarded the Archivist with an immediate promotion and public congratulations. The Archdeacon had also made arrangements to have the archivist closely watched; men who tended to have ideas most often proved disruptive to the proper order.
As the disk required his constant input to function, the operator, a magically talented but otherwise sub-par novitiate, sat on a stool just in front of Traeleon's desk, but had been cautioned that he would be considered non-existent and should behave accordingly. To allow all of the members of the Full Conclave and their assistants and scribes to hear clearly, the volume of the disk had been adjusted to its highest setting.
For this, the first of many military operations to be planned and directed solely by him, Traeleon had taken the rare step, at least during his tenure, of assembling the entire membership of the advisory body. It had been his plan that the Firsts of all ten ancillary Colleges, summoned from their distant communities, would give first hand testimony of his immaculate victory when they returned home. He had been elected to the archdeaconate by virtue of political maneuvering, but had intended that this day would demonstrate his eminent fitness for command.
He had conceived the battle for the barely defended town of Elboern as a straightforward frontal assault by Lazssri's legions supported by the six Shrikes and the Forward Scouts. As Bhrucherra's reports stated that the defenders numbered no more than four hundred and fifty, he had determined that no larger force was required. The swift capture and sack of the town had seemed assured.
When the Apostate and his renegades had appeared from the north, wielding magic weapons that had allowed one of the Mhajhkaeirii flying boats to immediately destroy a Shrike, the mood of the observers, assembled around his desk in concentric arcs of chairs, had turned from relaxed joviality to near full on panic.
"My lord, I propose that the surviving Shrikes be withdrawn." Lhevatr's tentativeness had progressed to the point where it had begun to exude the raw stench of cowardice, and Traeleon had yet to fathom the cause of the change in the Brotherhood's chief military officer. The Martial Director's previous service to the Brotherhood as a legion commander had been exemplary, and he had had a deserved reputation as a daring, consistently fearless tactician and insightful strategist.
The First Archivist, Deacon Trhalsta, nodded in quick agreement. "I concur, Preeminence. The loss of more of the Holy Relics is insupportable."
Traeleon ignored both. "Skryer Paltyr, can you determine the condition of the renegades' flying boat?"
Paltyr, a spare and shaven-headed quinquagenarian, consulted his stone. "No, Preeminence. The ether is clouded and clear visions only intermittent."
The death of the Chief Skryer had left the Skryer service much diminished. None of the current senior adepts had Abilities even remotely comparable and Traeleon had found their performance lacking in every respect. He had begun to suspect that the Chief Skryer's uniquely outstanding Ability had in some wise enhanced those of his underlings. Without him, they were next to useless.
He considered his situation. Were he to accede to Lhevatr's s proposal, he would be admitting defeat before the battle was fully joined. The withdrawal of the Shrikes would subject the Salients on the ground to unfettered aerial bombardment and almost certainly result in their complete sacrifice.
And his own reputation would likewise suffer. Having widely broadcast that he had taken full personal control, there would be no way that he could avoid the stigma that would accrue to another expensive retreat in the face of the Apostate.
It had been centuries since an Archdeacon had been unseated, but it remained possible under the ordinances of the Brotherhood and even likely under certain circumstances.
It was a maxim of the Salient Order: A bold commander may survive defeat, but an incompetent one must be replaced.
No matter what the cost, he could not afford to appear inept or ineffectual.
"Brother Kehmrehl, can you hear me clearly?"
There was a barely perceptible delay. "Yes, my lord."
"Press the attack. Under no circumstances withdraw. Acknowledge."
"Order acknowledged, Preeminence."
A stir passed amongst the ancillary Firsts. A number of them were no more than bookish scholars who, like the First Archivist, possessed a fundamental and unwavering reverence for the ancient magic devices. For them, placing the Shrikes at risk was akin to sacrilege.
For a few seconds, Traeleon studied their pale faces and sedentary frames, considering which ones might be efficiently replaced with trustworthy Salients.
With an abruptness bordering on rudeness, Lhevatr rose. "Preeminence, I beg pardon, but I must attend an urgent call of nature. I believe that I ate some bad fish for supper yestereve."
Traeleon waved a hand negligently and the Martial Director glided down the dais and exited through the open doors. Hardly had Lhevatr gone out of sight, but Brother Fhsuyl entered followed by five other brethren, all wearing their hoods up to place their faces in shadow. Curious as to why the proctors at the entrance had permitted the party to enter and experiencing some anger at the interruption, Traeleon rose to award a stinging rebuke.
His Salient training, beaten into his adolescent hide by the swagger stick of a cruel Veteran until it had become an instinct, saved him. Reacting without thought to the barest unusual sound and the half-felt weight of a presence to his rear, he twisted at the hip and threw up an automatic left forearm block, deflecting Plehvis' plunging knife. Sidestepping as quickly as the viper that had been his dorm totem, Traeleon slid his block into a wrist hook, catching his secretary's arm, then pulled sharply to open up the younger man's side. He jabbed three short, lightning punches into his assistant's ribs, snapping two cleanly, then drew back and followed immediately with a whip-around, chopping the knife edge of his hand to the back of Plehvis' neck. The secretary pitched forward across the desk, stunned.
Key to Magic 04 Emperor Page 12