“I don’t know how the Clans do it, but we usually treat enemies like they’re enemies,” snapped Kiera. She flipped up her visor, and glanced back across the field. The rain of Clan arrows had stopped.
Elina was waiting on her mount on a crest behind the center of the army.
“Well done, Kiera!” she shouted. “Well fought!”
“They’re not attacking,” said Kiera, pointing at the motionless line of Clan warriors.
“They have no reason to,” said Varomar. “You cannot hit them from here with your crossbows, and your magic will have no effect against their jade.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Elina, in a tone that suggested she clearly was not that grateful for the advice. “Guards, take the prisoner back to the camp.”
“He did yield,” said Kiera.
“Wonderful. He’s Chief Olene’s brother, isn’t he? Errah says he’s dangerous. I don’t want to be worrying about him.”
Kiera thought to argue, but now was not the time. She held her tongue.
“We’ve got to them to attack,” said Elina. “Signal your wildmen, Lady Kiera.”
Kiera looked out to the van, where Tau was sitting atop Courage, the spear points of his conscripts waving in a shaky rank and file. He glanced behind him and she waved, gesturing forward. Tau gave her a wave, then shouted something to the soldiers in front of him.
The Canians came bursting out of the ranks of conscripts, hidden from sight in the squares of spearmen, breaking first from the center of the line where Tau was, then rippling out to the flanks until they formed a short line about a man deep.
There was an echoing, vibrating call that pierced over the din of the tens of thousands of soldiers.
“They’re fucking howling,” said Elina, shaking her head.
A volley of arrows broke from behind the Clans’ lines, but only the slowest of the Canians became caught in it, quickly getting too close for the bows to shoot over their comrades.
Just within spear throwing range, the Canians drew to a halt. Each one carried two short spears on their person. Now they took one in each hand, and began tapping the shafts together in unison, still howling, the clacking of the spears echoing across the battlefield. In unison, the Canians began to turn, a sort of shaking dance that turned their howl into a staccato chant. They appeared to retreat a few paces, then advanced again to their previous position.
The Clans were roaring their indignation at the Canians, the sound practically drowning out all other noise, the Canians’ chanting and spear-clacking fading into a slow undercurrent.
On the next retreat, however, the Canians came rushing forward, the clacking dying as each one hefted their spear behind their shoulder. When they reached their original position, a rain of spears went into the first rows of the Clans and the roaring shuddered as the heavy spears sowed death and confusion in the front of the ranks.
The Canians were still chanting, although a few Clan warriors had finally broken their discipline and were racing as fast as they could to them.
The second volley of spears went flying through the air, leaving the Canians more or less defenseless. With one more howl, they turned heel and fled.
And the Clans came streaming after them.
“Archers, at the ready!” cried Elina. The ranks of bowmen arranged behind the second line of Vashili steadied themselves, picking their arcs. A rain of arrows shooting up from behind the Clans.
Tau shouted something, and the first line of conscripts lowered their spears. The Canians shifted their retreat to slip between each square. The volley of arrows from the Clans arched high into the air.
“They’re not shooting at the Canians. Sorcerers, prepare to block missiles!” cried Kiera.
She couldn’t see it, but judging by how Pol and Heldi reached for the air, they must have made their barrier.
“Archers, draw!” cried Elina. She watched the Canians desperately trying to beat their Clan pursuers in a footrace to the other side of the field.
“Hold!”
The first Canian crossed through the gap between Tau’s spear squares.
The Dragon Clan volley came falling down towards the Sorcerers' barriers.
There was a cry of “jade!” and arrows pincushioned the ground around Kiera, long shafts with bright cock feathers to guide their flight. When Kiera pulled the nearest one out of the earth, it was carrying a jade tip.
There was a shout, and Kiera looked over to see Elina looking vaguely surprised by the two feet of arrow sticking out of her chest.
She collapsed to her knees just as Kiera caught her.
“Archers,” she gasped, staring into Kiera’s face.
“Archers, fire!” screamed Kiera, her voice breaking as she cradled her friend in her lap.
Heldi was kneeling next to her, looking at the wound.
“Lady Elina, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” tried Elina.
“It’s in your right lung. Lady Kiera, can you turn her so I can see her back?”
Kiera followed the direction without thinking, shocked at Heldi’s detached calm.
“Lady Elina, the arrow has pierced the front of your chestplate, but it has stopped in your lung. These arrows are barbed, so I can’t pull it out the way it came, and your chestplate would make that difficult regardless. Lady Kiera and I are going to remove your back plate and push the arrow through. It is going to hurt.”
“Don’t tell me,” coughed Elina. “Just do it.”
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” said Pol, staring.
“Sorcerer Pol,” Heldi snapped at him. “Return to your post. You were not summoned here!”
Pol gave Kiera a glance, but Heldi’s snarl cowed him and he withdrew.
“We’re going to roll you onto your side, Lady Elina.”
“Oh, Vash, is this some sort of torture for dying women?”
“That’s the spirit, Lady Elina.”
Together, Heldi and Kiera placed Elina on her shoulder. A number of messengers from the other sides of the battle were arriving at the command post, most of them gawking just as Pol had done. Heldi borrowed a knife from Kiera, cutting the straps of Elina’s cuirass, pulling the back plate off. She made a distraught messenger, tears streaming down his face, hold Elina’s chestplate in place.
“Why can’t you magic the arrow out of her?” asked Kiera.
“The jade tip will absorb it, just as they broke the barrier. I can’t heal her until it’s out without disintegrating it.”
“But if it disintegrates, you’ll be able to heal her.”
“I will, but the jade dust will stay in her body. It will poison her in a matter of minutes. If I ground up a rock and poured it into your veins, it would kill you just as well as if I’d hurled the rock at your head.”
Heldi cut Elina’s gambeson and then her undershirt apart with the knife, until her bare back was exposed, the morning glory tattoo that ran down her spine looking oddly out of place.
“You’re doing wonderful, Lady Elina. We’re going to break the end of the shaft, then push it through. This is going to hurt a bit, then hurt a lot.”
“Great,” whispered Elina.
“It’s a very fine tattoo you have. When did you get it?” asked Heldi.
“When I was 16. In the marketplace at the Wilder’s Square.”
“I’ll bet it hurt.”
“Only to star—”
Heldi snapped the feathers off the end of the shaft and Elina screamed as the arrow shifted inside her chest. Heldi pushed forward on the shaft, and Kiera watched as the head passed through, followed by the blood-coated wood of the shaft. At Heldi’s urging, she grabbed the arrow, pulling it the rest of the way through. Elina screamed the whole time before losing consciousness the moment it was done, and the messenger who’d been holding her chestplate took the first opportunity to go be sick in the grass.
“I can take it from here,” said Heldi, pressing her hands to the wound.
“What should I do?” asked Kiera.
>
Elina convulsed under Heldi’s palms and the Sorcerer took her hands away to examine the wound, which Kiera could see was already closing. Heldi gestured at the battle.
“Lead,” she offered.
Kiera looked out over the battlefield. Tau’s conscripts had become engaged with the Dragon Clan, blunting the Clan’s charge, but she could see they were beginning to flag, clearly not prepared for the bloody reality of war.
Kiera looked up into another hail of arrows that raked the allies’ lines, punctuated only by the Sorcerers’ odd attempts at holding them off with magic. Fireballs rained out from behind the walls of Tia Joi, and Kiera realized it must have Jorga, firing at them while they were distracted by their arrows. The messengers were looking at her expectantly, but she didn’t know what to say.
“Sound the retreat for the front lines,” said her father, softly. She hadn’t noticed him approach, but the second she did, she wrenched the nearest shield out of its holder’s grasp and raised it over Ked’s head. He smiled, leaning on his cane.
“Kiera! Forget about me. Call Tau back.”
Kiera paused, listening to him for once.
“The van is to fall back!” she cried, and a trumpet sounded.
The conscripts crumpled, retreating back to the lines behind them. The Clan came on.
“Shield wall!” commanded Kiera.
The Vashili axemen in front of her raised their square shields, locking them over each other, so that the entire front of the line was presented as a turtle of wood. Their axes wouldn’t be much use against swords and spears after a moment, but it’d save them the initial struggle in the charge. The Clans came running in, roaring as they did.
“Sorcerers!” she shouted. “Now!”
* * * * *
Pol heard the command, and he reached forward for the earth beyond the front line. They’d practiced this for nearly a week, and it had felt like an age.
Now, though, with the hundred men in front of him holding their shields up against the bone-breaking charge bearing down on them and the screaming of the Clan warriors themselves in the charge, it didn't seem nearly long enough.
Pol pushed the thoughts out of his head. He wasn’t to concern himself with people dying, he was to concern himself with earth. He reached down and dug his fingers into the loam.
The shield wall shook a bit as tremors rippled through the ground, but the men held steady, as per their orders. If you fought on the side of Sorcerers, you’d better be prepared for strange things, Pol supposed.
There was a soft, muffled creaking sound and the grass just beyond the farthest footman began to roil and roll. The ground began to shift, rolling up like a swelling wave. The wave pushed through the Dragon Clan charge, slowing it slightly as they stumbled on the changing terrain.
The other Sorcerers along the line were doing the same, and Pol could see the waves ripple out from the allies’ lines, making the Clan shake in concern. Some more clever warriors broke the spells by throwing their swords or jewelry into the earth, killing the waves before they had time to fade, but it was no matter to the Sorcerers. Disrupting the Clans’ charge with simple waves had not been the goal. The spell took a certain amount of fine tuning to figure out the distance and force necessary to achieve the desired effect.
Finally, Pol decided that he had it. He pressed the dirt between his fingers tighter and concentrated, feeling his body numb as the magic coursed through it.
The ground shook and a massive wave of earth pulsed through the ground at the command post, lifting Pol up nearly ten feet before returning him down. It rolled through the ranks of Vashili shields, and crested, a tremendous rolling roar emanating out of the ground as the dirt split its previous home to rise into the air.
It stopped dead in mid-crest.
To Pol’s eye, it was as though the Dragon Clan charge had simply disappeared. Of course, they were still there. Through the work of Pol and the Guild, a massive ramp of earth had been constructed, so that the Clan was faced with a crude wall of dirt about two men high, while the allies were able to stand on top and stab down on the Clan as it tried to overcome the freshmade earthworks.
Now the battle became all about the breakages, the parts of the line where the dirt walls were joined and shorter, or where a Sorcerer had fallen under the onslaught of jade-tipped arrows and left a gap. There was a press of bodies at each gap, a boiling, screaming, bloody mess of soldiers and Dragon Clan warriors, hacking at each other close up. Fireballs still rained down from Jorga, stationed somewhere in the city, and the Clans’ archers had not exhausted their quivers, though the Guild sorcerers were doing everything they could to keep the projectiles from hitting the allies’ lines.
Pol’s magic failed as he unleashed his own fire against the first visible Dragon Clan warrior he could see, the man’s jade shielding him until it disintegrated. Pol tried to solidify the air around him, but one of his fellows pushed through, his jade absorbing the spell.
The battle was not going as well as he might have hoped, the line seeming to pulse and shake. It was particularly bad on the right, by the river, and when Pol looked at the snaking waters, he was sure he saw red on the surface.
A square of Vashili axemen, lead by a screaming Marga vai Banda, went marching forward, attempting to plug the hole to Pol’s left. The reserves were being committed to shore up the line, most to the right. There just weren’t enough men to hold the earthworks there—the Clan had begun to tear up the earth, digging it into a ramp. The advantage was still to the allies, but only just. If anyone was prepared to fight an entire battle uphill, it was the Dragon Clans.
“Pol,” shouted Garen, riding up on a horse. Guild Sorcerers ran past him. “Head to the right, and pass the word to all the Sorcerers you can find.”
“What about the left?” Pol screamed over the din of battle.
“The Sea Clan is on the left. They’ve started their turn. We need the right to hold!”
Pol sprinted down the field, line after line of archers firing over his head at the rear of the Clans, trying to pin them down without harming the soldiers at the top of the earthworks.
The right was even worse than it looked from the center. The Clans had forded the shallows, trying to slip around the sides, and the allies' line had begun to curl up on itself as it confronted the threat from the water.
“Where’s Lord-General Halvyn?” Pol screamed at the nearest man-at-arms who went past him, grabbing the man by the sleeve.
“Who the fuck knows? I hope he’s dead!” the Coulanian screamed back. “We shouldn’t be here. This is your fight!”
He shrugged Pol off, pushing the Sorcerer out of the way and breaking for the cover of the trees.
Pol’s fellow Sorcerers were doing their best to put some steel back into the spine of the Coulanians, but the line was clearly faltering.
Lord-General Halvyn materialized, cursing his fleeing soldiers for cowards. His hauberk was stained with blood and he’d lost the feathered helmet he’d worn so ostentatiously on his arrival.
“Are you okay, my lord?” asked Pol.
“Ah, Sorcerer Pol, a pleasure to see you again if not the circumstances,” said Halvyn. An arrow landed at his feet and he kicked it out of the way. “Not my blood.”
“That’s good, sir. Master Garen sent us to you. What do you need?”
“Can you magic up soldiers, Sorcerer Pol? I have everything I could ask for save for men.”
“I’m afraid not, sir!” said Pol.
“Well, the Sky Dragon take us then! Better stick to fireballs,” said Halvyn. “We’ll have to hope my men show more mettle than they have so far!”
Another retreating Coulanian man-at-arms caught his attention and he seized the man, spinning him around and sending the hapless soldier back the way he’d came.
Pol looked out at the thinning lines. More men. The Vashili reserve had been all that could be offered, but the blue-armored Guard pressed into service for this task was no match for thousands of Cl
an warriors hardened by constant battle.
More men.
The earthworks were crumbling as the Clan warriors hacked at them with their weapons and poked them apart with spears and dug at them with shields. Another few moments and the wall the Sorcerers had erected would be little more than a soft mound of dirt.
More men.
Pol stretched out his hands and felt the numbness of his magic course through him. It felt like he was disappearing—even the beating of his heart seemed to fade.
A clay hand burst from the ground, grabbing a Clan warrior by the leg. Jade touched the hand, causing it to collapse back into formless dirt, but the warrior went stumbling to the ground and was quickly introduced to the business end of a Coulanian’s spear.
More hands were splitting out of the ground, and finally heads began to appear, arms and shoulders following along.
A clay man climbed out of the dirt. The Clan warriors around the summoned creature stepped back in fear, and the clay soldier reached out for them. A warrior swung her sword, the blade turning into dust as it contacted the clay soldier’s hand, the soldier losing form instantly.
Another clay soldier, then another, stepped out of the ground. One grabbed a warrior, falling apart as it touched the jade, but the warrior’s entire set of jewelry disintegrated. The second clay soldier grabbed the disarmed warrior and enveloped him in a bear hug. The warrior screamed, falling away as the clay warrior dragged him down into the dirt.
Far to Pol’s left, he could hear the battle changing, the cries shifting from anguish and threats and commands to jubilation and cheering. The Sea Clan had combined forces, driving the Clans before them as the Vashili proved assistance.
Pol concentrated, more clay soldiers rising out of the ground or pulling themselves from the makeshift walls of dirt. There was a gap in the line and Pol formed them into an unsteady rank-and-file square.
The Clan began to break. He could see the warriors in the rear turning away, running back to the gates of Tia Joi.
The phalanx of clay soldiers marched forward. Clan warriors still tried to fight them, their weapons shattering to bits even as their clay opponents crumbled to dust. Then the Vashili, Coulainian, Canian, and Sea Clan warriors overwhelmed them. When the battle pushed on, Pol simply raised the fallen clay back into soldiers, driving them forward.
Dragon Jade Chronicle: The Warlock And The Warrior Page 46