Samual

by Greg Curtis

  Still, they had numbers. They had archers with proper weapons. And as the front lines of the rats came closer and closer, he thought they had to have a good chance.

  Then a fire ball landed somewhere in front of him and Sam was sent flying backwards, and he had to wonder about their chances even as he hit the ground. But as he got up, mostly just scratched and bruised, his armour having saved him from the worst of it, he knew he didn't have time to worry. He just had to fight.

  So that was what he did, sending blast after blast of chained fire into the enemy, while the others took a devastating toll on them with their longbows, and all of them waited for the moment when they'd have to draw their swords.

  That moment seemed to be coming closer and closer, as ever more glowing red eyes appeared in front of them. And it seemed very close when more fireballs started crashing down around them. Sam was knocked over a second time. Others were too.

  But he got up again and returned to the fight, and most of the others did too. And little by little, the tide started to turn. The numbers of machina charging their lines started to thin, and those who got close didn't get as close as before. The fireballs grew fewer. And in time what had been an army became a collection of individual steel soldiers. The steel drakes – those that were still flying – buffeted by ever stronger winds fell out of the sky and exploded when they crashed into the ground. And a storm of falling rocks from one of the war machines took the last of the steel spiders out. The rest of the steel beasts, mostly rats, were taken out by the archers as they came within range. Many simply blew up as they tried to clamber over the wall of burning steel beasts, unable to deal with the fire.

  At some point what remained were so few in number that everyone began to realise it was over. And that was when the cheering started. It started slowly at first, hesitantly, but it was a sound that slowly grew until finally it began to echo across the entire valley.

  Sam cheered too. Even as he went to the others to start helping with the wounded – and there were many who were down near him – he cheered. He didn't mean to. He didn't think about it. The sound almost seemed to come out of his mouth by itself. And he didn't regret it.

  Many were dead. Many more were injured. And there was another perhaps even tougher battle yet to come as they had to make their way into the city itself. But still, it was a victory and they had survived. An entire army of steel beasts had been destroyed. And it was simply human nature to want to celebrate that. Especially after so many of them had already suffered terrible losses in Shavarra.

  But finally it seemed the elves' Goddess and the All Father seemed to be blessing them. Maybe even Alder had favoured them. What greater mischief could there be than war after all?

  So they cheered and they screamed and they yelled their victory to the blue sky high above. And for a while they managed to put the pain of what they'd lost behind them. The fear of what lay ahead was briefly put aside. For a while.

  Chapter Thirty One

  The mood in the camp was buoyant after the battle. Even Sam was letting a little of that cheer flow through him. Drinking a little cider. Singing songs he didn't know the words to along with the others – though only quietly and while always trying to maintain a little dignity. He was a knight of Hanor after all.

  After the battle had been won, they'd claimed the field of battle and set up camp in the valley that the machina had once held. Riding on to that valley floor among the mounds of steel wreckage that had once been their enemies, had been a moving event for all of them. It brought home the realisation that despite their losses they had won through.

  When the field had been claimed, they'd started tending to the hundreds of wounded, and burying the dead. Readying themselves for the following day. Eating, resting, and preparing the weapons and tactics they would need for the next phase of the battle. Fighting underground in tunnels was going to be very different to fighting above. They couldn't use the war machines for a start. And the weather mages would be useless. But they also wouldn't be facing steel drakes, and even the steel spiders would be limited in what they could do thanks to the low ceiling heights. To launch their fire any distance they had to fire it up at an angle.

  Luckily the caverns were well ventilated and there wasn't much underground which could burn. Otherwise his magic would have been completely useless and the enemy would have had an entirely new weapon to use. He could have suffocated them simply by setting fire to everything in sight. The dwarves though had long ago realised the dangers of fire underground and designed accordingly.

  The plan was to use shields. Massive wheeled ones that the dwarves were assembling while the rest of them relaxed. These would allow them to enter the tunnels safely while the archers could shelter behind them and rain down death on the enemy.

  Mages would be vital, and they would also stand behind the shields where they would send their magic into the enemy, destroying them before they could reach their lines. The rest of the army would be pushing the massive steel shields yard by yard further into the tunnels, ploughing their way through the bodies of their fallen foes as they advanced. It was a simple plan, but Sam had faith in it. After all, that was how the dwarves fought in their own cities and they should know what worked.

  Mostly though, they hadn't been thinking about the battle ahead. They'd been celebrating. Eating, drinking and singing. There had been a lot of singing. There had been a lot of ale and cider drunk too.

  As the day had progressed they'd all discovered a sense of triumph, Sam included. Never had an army so large and so powerful been destroyed so easily and quickly. Not in living history, not in the books, not even during the fabled Dragon Wars. And this was the same enemy that had destroyed their home and driven them from Shavarra. Victory over them had been so very sweet. But it was more than that that drove them to celebrate. It was the thought of the coming battle. Elves had no love of enclosed spaces and darkness underground. They liked wide open spaces and sky. So when faced with the prospect of an underground battle ahead of them, they chose instead to celebrate. It was better than fearing the day to come.

  Still, Sam kept telling himself the odds had to be in their favour. The enemy had to be hurting badly, and his last few thousand or so rats wouldn't last long against the magically enhanced bows of the elves and the hillmen, while their lines would break on the shields. They had the numbers and the plan.

  Sam should have remembered however, that pride was ever a mistake. He rediscovered that that afternoon. The first he knew though was when men started shouting in alarm. Sam looked to the men and then to where they were pointing and his blood ran cold as he saw the enemy.

  Huge steel beasts were unearthing themselves from the ground in the distance all around them and he understood then that they were in the teeth of a trap. They'd claimed the field of battle, never realising that in doing so they'd wandered right over the enemy' defensive lines. Suddenly they were surrounded. Surrounded and in trouble.

  Horns blew frantically as men began reaching for their weapons. Arrows started to fly at the nearest of the machina. But these creatures were big. Very big. Even the arrows with their hardened heads bounced off their thick steel hides.

  It seemed that the enemy had discovered a whole new form of shock troop. It was some sort of burrowing termite the size of a mammoth, and they were rapidly rising out of the valley floor all around them, pushing aside mountains of dirt and the remains of their steel comrades as they formed a new, more powerful army. Worse still, these termites could spit fire like the spiders, and Sam watched them fly high into the air before beginning their deadly descent. More than a few men fall to them. Fortunately, high above them the dwarves were still with their war machines. And they had seen the same. Quickly they began arming the remaining trebuchets and the sounds of them firing were soon heard once more.

  The second army quickly began dying as Sam and the rest began a panicked retreat for the mouth of the city, picking their way carefully over the destroyed machina in the
ir way. It was the safest place even though they had their backs to the enemy inside the underground city. They needed as much distance between them and the enemy as possible for the dwarves above to be sure of hitting the enemy and not them. And they also needed to come together as an army once more. To form lines and start acting in concert – as an army instead of a rabble.

  But even as he ran, as vulnerable to the fire falling on their heads as everyone else, Sam kept thinking that they'd underestimated their enemy – again!

  Despite the shock of the ambush, only a few hundred of their troops were killed by the termites in the initial volley, mainly because they were quick on their feet. But that was still hundreds more than should have been killed, and as he listened to the sound of more men screaming and dying he knew it could quickly become so much worse. The enemy had foolishly struck too soon, not waiting for them to move fully into his trap. But that was his only mistake. If he'd been smarter he would have waited until nightfall when they would have been sleeping. And luckily the range the termites could spit fire was limited. By retreating to the centre of the battle field they were increasing the distance the termites had to fire. Those mistakes Sam promised himself when he finally reached what he hoped was safety and began launching fireballs at the steel termites, would be his downfall.

  The main problem the dwarves faced was that they'd squandered most of their ammunition already. Each catapult had had only forty or fifty rocks to fire, and most of those were already gone. Also, they had only a dozen of the war machines left and none had full crews as many of the dwarves were down in the valley with everyone else. The trebuchets were slow to fire. Worse still, these new creatures were as tough as the spiders and drakes themselves, and the explosions of fire that streaked out from each impact weren't as deadly. To destroy a termite each one had to take a direct hit, and war machines weren't known for their accuracy. Even Sam's fire balls weren't completely effective. These things had massive steel hides, and often he had to hit each one two or three times to cause it to explode. If he'd had more time to draw his fire – but that was the point of an ambush. But what protected the enemy most of all was that they were spaced widely apart. When one of the massive steel termites detonated, it died alone. Where the rats had exploded in their hundreds each time, these died only in their ones and twos. That left many hundreds still to destroy when the catapults began to fall silent.

  The Dragon was also more more wary with the termites than he had been with their rat cousins. Once it had become clear to their master that they were being attacked once more from the air, while still having no clue where the enemy was, he had them start burrowing once more, seeking the safety of the protective earth above. The catapults were soon falling silent not only because of reduced ammunition, but also because as their prey disappeared from sight.

  But that was a tactic that also worked in the elves' favour. The enemy had no idea they were low on stones, and so while the termites kept burrowing after each new assault, their master presumably thinking he was protecting his army, he was really failing them as it actually gave them time to start preparing a new attack. He should have pressed his attack. He would pay for that mistake Sam promised himself as he drew more fire and prepared for the next round.

  Sam's worry though was that while the termites didn't move above the ground – obviously they were too large for that – he did wonder if they could burrow under it and sooner or later appear beneath their feet.

  The silence after the termites had reburied themselves stretched and stretched, and so did the tension as they all waited for the next attack. But it gave Sam the chance he needed to finally start drawing some fire.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, the first of the termites began emerging once more from the earth. This time though they didn't emerge fully but stopped half way. That wasn't like before.

  For a long time Sam didn't understand quite what was happening, as he watched the termites rise halfway out of the ground, and then stop. Was it some new and even stranger enemy ploy? Had the creatures simply broken down? But then he saw the earth wizards with their arms extended as they shaped their powerful magics and he felt the magic flowing from them and understood. The mages had trapped the creatures in the ground, turning the soft earth into solid rock around them, preventing them moving and leaving them as perfect sitting targets. But for what? He had the feeling as he launched fireball after fireball at them, that it wasn't for him. Nor for the war machines.

  Someone had a plan.

  Even as he and the others stood there wondering, Sam felt the first delicate touch of a breeze and was surprised. Until then it had been a perfectly still day, which was strange considering that the sky above was filled with thunder clouds and rain. But then that was magic. The remnants of the squall they'd created earlier on to blind the enemy. Then again he slowly realised as he saw the first dust motes rising out of the ground in front of them, so was this. Weather magic. True to their nature the weather mages were whipping up a storm. In this case though, it was several storms and they were like nothing he had seen before.

  Four miniature hurricanes, each only a hundred feet high or so, could be seen coalescing in the distance, their nature revealed by the dust and dirt they were rapidly funnelling upwards. Each of them was darkening as it strengthened and more and more dirt was added to the funnel. Still, the hurricanes didn't seem to grow as they should. Instead of becoming funnels reaching high into the clouds, they remained tiny twisters, mere shadows of what they should be, but for all that terribly powerful. In fact they just seemed to become more solid and angry as they spun faster and faster.

  In a surprisingly short time, the sound of the whistling of the winds could be heard across the entire valley. The sound of the wind funnels wasn't the deep continuous thunder he would have expected from a full sized hurricane or typhoon, but then these weren't normal. Instead, being so much more compact and spinning so much faster than a normal hurricane, they sounded like the shrieking of angry hawks; lots of them. And the sound only kept growing until it hurt their ears, as far away as they were. Yet still there was nothing more than a gentle breeze playing across his skin.

  Some sort of signal must have been given soon after, just as everyone was holding their hands firmly over their ears because of the noise, and all four hurricanes abruptly took off as though they were wild animals suddenly released. But if they were, then at the same time they were also perfectly controlled. This was no panicked stampede. He knew that because he watched the four tiny twisters suddenly form a giant circle and then start spinning around one another like children dancing around a maypole. But these were no children and this was no dance he'd ever seen before.

  The circling twisters headed directly for the trapped steel termites, bearing down on them like hunters. And when they hit he knew, there would be war. The only question on Sam's mind though was whether they would be capable of destroying the beasts. It was the question on everyone's mind. Wind against steel. It didn't seem like a fair match, though the shear ferocity of the wind suggested otherwise.

  Sam and the others though needn't have worried. The first hurricane only had to touch the first termite and instantly it was destroyed in a glorious explosion of fire that itself was blown away by the furious wind. For a moment though the twister itself was a column of fire. Sam's spirits lifted at the glorious sight. They lifted some more when the twister moved on to the next termite, leaving only bare earth in its wake. No doubt the steel termite's metal innards had joined the whirling mass of air and soil above it, the better to batter its brethren to death, because that was the secret of the twisters' devastating power. The mass of spinning air was bad, but the rocks and dirt held aloft in those spinning columns were what was really tearing the metal beasts apart.

  Like a quartet of drunken dancers the twisters began a dance of death as they started circling the valley, sweeping from one termite to the next. They quickly turned the steel termites and anything else that happened to get in
their way into a collection of airborne flotsam, while their very bases became a continuing explosion of orange fire that covered the valley floor, scouring it clean. Meanwhile the music to their deadly dance was provided by the Dragon himself who Sam could hear in his head, screaming in rage.

  It didn't take very long for the termites to be destroyed. The dancing hurricanes simply scoured the valley from one end to the other, destroying everything in their path, until very soon, the valley was completely devoid of them. In fact it was devoid of most things. Such was the savagery of the dancing twisters. All that remained was bare dirt, and the occasional broken tree stump or patch of battered grass.

  That was the last time Sam quickly decided, that he would ever dare doubt the effectiveness of weather mages in combat. Those twisters had destroyed an army far more effectively than even his own fire ring could, though in fairness he told himself, like his own fire shape they too would have also destroyed a forest had there been one around. Besides, there were four weather mages and only one of him.

  Still, he knew as he finally started breathing again, they had been lucky. The Dragon had out thought and out planned them. And they had been over-confident. They should have checked the battlefield before advancing on to it. And they should never have started celebrating before the final battle was one. In the end the thing that had saved them was the Dragon's impatience as he struck too early, and his poor tactics as he tried to protect his soldiers instead of pressing his advantage.