by Tom Lloyd
The king’s order to refuse battle was pronounced cautious prudence, nothing more, conceding unimportant ground. That the kingdom’s second city might actually fall to the Menin didn’t appear to have occurred to any of them, and Beyn knew if he mentioned the possibility he’d be laughed out the room.
Damn fools, Beyn thought, as uncharacteristic doubts marched through his mind. Not one person’s noticed I’m the only King’s Man here. None of the king’s best warriors or mages have been sent to join this defence. His hand clenched as a sense of helplessness unexpectedly washed over him. When the king himself doesn’t believe we can stand against them, what chance do we have?
*****
Styrax pulled back on the wyvern’s reins and brought it around into a thermal to climb higher. The beast resisted his urging for a moment, eager to be at the prey ahead, before tilting its wings in response.
Patience, Styrax thought, as much to himself as the wyvern. Let them see us and react. Let them have the small victory of driving me off.
Every fibre of his body railed at the idea, but he battered it down. He knew the flaws of his kind well enough, and he possessed every one, but there had been one guiding rule to his life: that he would choose his own path - not the Gods, not daemons, not the will of other men. And certainly not my own rage.
Just the thought of Kohrad was enough to produce a spiked knot at the back of his mind, but he gritted his teeth and fought it, letting the wyvern climb and circle above the city.
Without control I am no better than Dervek Grast, Styrax reminded himself, and that I refuse to be.
The words were like a mantra, one oft-repeated of late. Grast, the reviled former Lord of the Menin, had been a monster, made worse by his intellect. The man hadn’t been a savage, the unthinking and deranged killer most preferred to think him; there had been method, and strength of will to support his vicious delusions. For all of his forerunner’s brutality, Styrax believed Grast’s crimes would pale into insignificance next to the devastation he would wreak if he allowed grief to sway him.
If I allow myself to be ruled by grief, he thought firmly, if. There will be crimes enough without that.
He thumped a fist against the side of his helm to wake himself up. The wyvern began to strain beneath him as it continued to climb so he corrected it with a twitch of the reins and it settled immediately, wings outstretched. It could soar like this, many hundreds of feet above the city, for hours, travelling faster than any horse, and in theory a mage as powerful as Styrax could shatter a city’s walls in that time.
It wouldn’t happen, though, there must be more than a dozen mages living inside a city of that size, quite enough to call the clouds above closer. He would cause some damage certainly, but not enough to risk being plucked from the air and smashed on the rocks below. No, he would resist the temptation, just as he would the growling animal in his gut that wanted to attack, to dive screaming onto the enemy and cut them to pieces before the rest of the army even caught up.
From the city below he detected a vibration in the afternoon air: a subtle, gentle stroke of magic, soaring up like the first notes of a symphony. It was joined by others, though most lacking the finesse of the first, a few exceeding it for power, and each a variation on a common theme.
One of their mages knows what he’s about, Styrax thought approvingly, pushing briefly on the wyvern’s neck to send it into a long, shallow dive. You could have taught the Farlan boy a thing or two; the elements are to be cajoled, not compelled. A mortal makes demands at their peril.
He could almost taste the thin streams of magic rising above the city. The air whipped past his face until the wyvern banked of its own accord and the buffeting lessened. A sparkle of energy tingled over his skin, adding renewed vigour to the breeze and sending a familiar frisson down Styrax’s neck.
Styrax peered down at the defences below as a few hopeful archers fired up at him, but their arrows fell hopelessly short. Now the wyvern had carried him down, closer to the city, he could pick out where the enemy mages were located.
I could pluck out your hearts right now, burst them like overripe fruit and leave you dead on the ground as a warning to the rest, he thought grimly. From the lower plain he surveyed the staggered defences of the causeway: earthworks flanking a long stone building that was built around a central archway straddling the road. A pair of guard-towers were set behind the earthworks, but they were small, barely big enough to hold more than two squads, and the Tollkeeper’s Arch itself would prove little more of an inconvenience.
The causeway defences had been built for commerce, not war. Further back, strung between buildings, was a hastily built defensive wall - it was feeble enough to show they didn’t really believe anyone would make it that far. On either side of the road the ground was broken up by angled ditches, and at one point between the wall and arch, a small canal allowed shallow-hulled scows to pass between the lakes. Though the two bridges across the canal had been dismantled, it was small, and anyway, the Menin Army had their own bridges to hand.
It would be a slaughter ground if the artillery barges were allowed free reign, but with a little help from Aroth’s mages, those would be dealt with before the troops arrived.
Didn’t you hear? Styrax asked the distant mages below, I’ve already conquered Ilit’s chosen people. The wind is mine to command now.
He turned in a long circle, following the perimeter wall of the city and noting what he could of the defences. The bulk of their soldiers were mustered in ordered blocks in the southwest of the city, where the ground was most open. From the air Aroth looked kidney-shaped, with a mile-long jetty protruding into Lake Apatorn. From here it was impossible to make out the delineation between the part built on stilts hammered into the lakebed and where the foundations were dry ground. But soon enough that wouldn’t matter.
Guiding the wyvern lower Styrax placed his unarmoured hand against the Crystal Skull in the centre of his cuirass, the one named Destruction. He’d found the differences between them were small, like the minuscule flaws that made each of a dozen gems unique.
Styrax could name each of his Crystal Skulls solely by the way it caught the light, but from his experiments he believed the only one markedly different was the last; Ruling. That one would be a handful to use in battle, he suspected, but the rest had only slight tendencies towards certain magics - tendencies that made Destruction less effort to use now.
He drew energy into a ball around the Skull and heard the thump of his heart echo through the magic. The bloody stains underneath his fingernails seemed to lighten and come alive as a smooth lattice of red-tinted light formed around the magic-scarred hand. Even as his heartbeat quickened, Styrax felt a calmness descend as the magic washed all emotion from his mind.
Up above the clouds rolled in, coiling like a threatened snake above his head. He felt his ears pop as the pressure started to fall and the wind streaming past turned cool. Styrax looked down to gauge the distance to the yellow mud-brick walls of Aroth below. Still out of bowshot, he reined the wyvern back a little and it arced neatly up, head stretched out and watching the scuttling food beneath.
At the end of the wall was the nearer tower, an enormous construction that, with its mate on the larger lake, dominated the entire city. The tower was round, and two hundred feet high, with wooden platforms attached to the outside and a mess of timber on top that at first glance looked like a collapsed roof.
Styrax leaned out from his saddle, twitching the reins to correct the wyvern’s flight as it adjusted to the shift in weight. The energy around his fist was coalescing and growing hotter with every moment, tiny licks of flame beginning to drift from one strand of the skein to another. Styrax grimaced as the heat stung his more sensitive hand, the ragged swirls of scar becoming dark shadows against the white before it was obscured entirely by the magic.
They reached the tower and Styrax wrenched the wyvern over, tilting it to glide with one wing pointing at the wall below. At the same time he to
re his hand away from the Skull and released the strands of magic engulfing it. He watched them leap away like a net cast behind a boat. Holding tight to his saddle with his right hand, Styrax guided the wyvern around in a tight spiral, swinging dangerously low over the city to avoid its slender tail catching on the trail of magic.
As they passed, the net of magic snagged on the tower’s wall and latched on. The remaining energies unravelling from his hand were violently jerked clear and the unfolding net dropped down over the contraption on the tower roof. It caught two thirds of the entire roof surface, a close-knit blanket of fire that sagged off the weapon’s protruding edges and ran like molten iron down its sides.
This close he saw the faces of the gunners manning the fire-thrower, staring up in horror at the descending threads of light. The quickest few ducked under the wooden arm of the thrower, but the threads burst into flame as soon as they touched wood or flesh. As the first started screaming, Styrax pulled the wyvern up into a climb. He had no need to hear the cries of pain as the threads cut through flesh and bone. He knew none would survive. The trailing threads had caught it squarely enough to set the entire tower alight.
The wyvern flapped heavily in the suddenly close, heavy air, struggling for a moment to climb before rising above the handful of artillery boats stationed on the Hound Lake and pushing on to the Menin Army beyond. Styrax turned and sensed the calls to the sky renewed with fearful vigour, the magic becoming ragged with haste. Before his eyes the clouds darkened and turned threatening.
‘Most obliging of you,’ he murmured. He looked towards his own army and saw the troops had begun to advance to the edge of the artillery barges’ range. ‘Now see how the winds come to your aid,’ he shouted.
Beyn charged up the wooden stair, his boots drumming a hollow tattoo that warned those in his way to move. The Tollhouse was an odd-shaped building, the guard platforms at the top a mere afterthought of construction. He ducked his head through the doorway and blinked away the gloom of inside, heading straight towards General Aladorn, who stood at the thin horizontal window on the eastern wall.
‘General, the fire-thrower’s almost entirely destroyed,’ Beyn blurted out, not bothering with formality now. ‘It’s inoperable, even if we could replace the gunners quickly.’
‘But why,’ asked the general, still squinting out of the window, though Beyn knew the old man’s eyes were not good enough to see the enemy. ‘Why destroy that one in particular?’
‘Because he intends to attack that flank,’ blurted out Suzerain Etharain, standing next to the general. He was the ruler of the region west of Aroth, and second chair of the Honour Council, but he was an inexperienced soldier.
‘Bah, too obvious for this one. Beyn, any reports of the other legions moving?’
The King’s Man shook his head. ‘They’re holding position beyond artillery range.’
The Menin Army had split into three groups to surround the city, each digging defensive encampments to ward off Narkang sorties. Worryingly, one of the armies was composed mainly of Chetse legions, which suggested the invasion force had increased in size since crossing the Waste.
‘Daily runs?’ Aladorn said, cocking his head at Beyn. ‘He waits for the weather to clear and takes out the next - before long his troops have a free run at the walls, eh?’
‘It gives us time to repair,’ Beyn pointed out. ‘The sky looks ugly now, might take days to clear, and the man’s in a hurry — sooner he takes Aroth, the less time he gives the king to prepare.’
Aladorn shook his head. ‘Only a fool would plan it so - to try and win the war at a stroke is to forget to win the battle. Let them try to take the city in a day; I would welcome it!’ The old man had a defiant look in his eyes, as though daring Beyn to argue.
The King’s Man looked away, realising he wasn’t going to win any arguments here. Before the silence could stretch out further the first fat raindrops began to fall on the flat tarred roof of the guardroom. Etharain raised an eyebrow as the rain increased rapidly in the next few moments and a rumble of thunder echoed from the heavens. In less than a minute the rain had developed into a deluge.
‘The mages know their work,’ he commented. The suzerain was a fit-looking man of forty-odd winters. His father had been a trusted captain of General Aladorn’s during the conquest of the Three Cities and he had made sure his son knew how to use the sword he carried, but like so many of Narkang’s soldiers he’d never been tested in battle. ‘Gods, look at it out there. The ground’ll be hard going for anyone marching on our walls.’
‘Don’t rejoice yet,’ Beyn said, looking out. The suzerain was right, the mages had done well and a furious rainstorm now battered the city. ‘It cuts our visibility, makes life tough for our artillery - Karkarn’s iron balls, I reckon they’ve overshot this time!’
Deafening peals of thunder crashed out across the plain. A great gust of wind flung a curtain of rain across their view, briefly obscuring everything apart from the dull yellow of the Tollkeeper’s Arch ahead. The wind continued to strengthen, becoming a great fist of rain sweeping across the Land. Beyn could just make out the inelegant shapes of the artillery barges, lurching on the lakes.
‘Hastars?’ General Aladorn snapped, turning to glare at the mage behind him. ‘Order them to desist!’
The mage blanched at Aladorn’s wrinkled face, despite the fact he was more than a foot taller than the general, bigger even than Beyn. ‘This is not the work of the coterie,’ Hastars yelped in protest. ‘They broke off before he returned!’ he added, pointing at Beyn.
‘This isn’t natural,’ Beyn said, advancing towards the mage. ‘Look at it.’
Hastars closed his eyes, mouthing a few words then pausing, as though listening to a voice inside his head. The man was modestly gifted, but he was knowledgeable, and able at least to communicate from afar with the two dozen others sitting with linked hands in a nearby warehouse. There were only two battle-mages, but this coterie in unison would most likely serve a more useful purpose against the Menin’s overwhelming strength anyway.
Hastars gasped and staggered back, hands clutching his head. A grizzled marshal grabbed him before he fell, but Hastars still looked dazed when he opened his eyes. ‘Gods preserve us!’ he moaned, ‘the storm is being fuelled — The Menin, they are pouring energies into the sky!’
The mage sank to his knees, gulping down air. ‘Such power, such power! I barely reached out and . . .’ he tailed off, shaking uncontrollably.
Beyn scowled as the rest of the room fluttered round the mage, returning to the view with a growing sense of trepidation. Outside the weather was worsening, grey trails dancing and whirling through the air with increasing fury. Two bursts of thunder boomed out in quick succession, then another as a lance of lightning flashed down to strike the Tollkeeper’s Arch.
Oh Gods.
On the surface of the lake something rose up from the water. Though they were indistinct, the grey-blue shapes were far from human. Beyn felt his guts turn ice-cold as the figures reached up to the heavens and began to grow, drifting over the water to form a circle. All around them the storm slashed at the lake and ripped furrows through the surface, churning and spinning into ever-tightening spirals. The figures twisted and danced, writhing with frenetic energy as the lake became increasingly choppy.
‘Oh Gods,’ came a distant voice, muted against the howl of the wind through the gaps in the wooden walls. Beyn found Suzerain Etharain beside him, face white with horror as he too realised what was happening.
The artillery barges and their attendant boats were rocking violently; Beyn caught sight of one smaller craft just as it was smashed against a massive catapult platform. A great spinning column of water heaved up from the surface on the furthest part of Lake Apatorn, and a terrible, unnatural shriek pierced the air.
Around the tower’s base danced half a dozen water elementals, the spirits of the lake, whipped into a frenzy of power, while the wind heaved and thrashed around them. Malviebrat were
known for their savage, remorseless nature, and now they were being fed power by a grief-stricken white-eye.
The clouds reached down to embrace the huge waterspout, enveloping it with dark, nebulous hands. Thunder continued to crash all around as the storm surged. A sheet of water washed across the narrow window and Beyn and Etharain both flinched back. The King’s Man realised he was digging his fingernails into the wooden sill. With a great groan the waterspout lurched abruptly forward and Etharain moaned with dismay as it started for the barges.
The smaller craft started away from its terrible path, only to be hunted down by the tornado’s savage outriders. Standing tall on the water, twice the height of any man, the water elementals smashed and pummelled at men and boats alike, battering both into broken pieces while the waterspout roared on. With one final lurch it caught the first of the artillery barges and ripped the arm from its catapult.
The great wooden beam was tossed high in the air, discarded like a broken match. The rest of the weapon soon followed, then the entire barge was flipped on its side with careless ease and hurled end-over-end to carve a path of destruction through the remaining scows.