“Fire spells!” Tavrin called, conjuring a tongue of flame in his hand. Several of the other elves did the same, and I noticed a couple of them handing out flamers to the elves we’d just rescued. Funny, I hadn’t even noticed them carrying the weapons. In a moment our group was ringed in fire, and the temperature rose to a more tolerable level.
“Sefwin, how long did you summon that Deathlord for?” Tavrin asked gravely.
“Until either it or the dwarves that were in the hall are dead,” she replied. “Please keep healing me, Daniel. The drain gets worse as it takes damage, and it draws on my life to keep its hold on this plane.”
“I’ve got you, Sefwin,” I assured her. “I can feel the blood drain, but I can keep up with it. Can you dismiss it?”
She shook her head. “I only had time for the most basic summoning. Sorry, but we’ll have to let it run its course. Are we returning to the ship, Daniel, or do you have some other way for us to leave?”
“Whatever we’re going to do, we need to move quickly,” Tavrin said. “We need to be long gone before they can organize a pursuit.”
“We’ll have to use the ship somehow,” I said. “But I’ll have to repair it first, and getting it ready to move in this kind of weather is going to take time. I think I need to get us some more breathing room.”
“Oh, boy,” Cerise said. “That’s the look you got just before you unleashed the mortars for the first time. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to kill all of the dwarves, and destroy the waygate,” I said. “Tavrin, can you get everyone back to the ship?”
“Certainly.”
“Do that, then. Sefwin, you stay here so I can keep you healed, and once we’re done you can use that tracking spell to lead us back to the ship. There’s no way I’d be able to find it in this weather. I’d probably just wander in circles until I froze solid.”
“Thawing out would suck,” Cerise commented. “Do you need me to stay here? If there’s going to be a show I don’t want to miss it, but I kind of want to check on Elin.”
“Go ahead. There won’t be anything interesting to see up here.”
Tavrin got the party moving. He turned back as he stepped off the disk.
“Take good care of my daughter, Daniel.”
“I will,” I told him. “I promise.”
“Father! You sound like you’re giving me away as a bride,” Sefwin complained.
“Well, depending on how you read the portents…”
“Don’t be absurd! How would that even work? Besides, I’ve only saved him once and even that was arguable. He’s clearly my Destined Mentor.”
“The Norns delight in confounding those who presume to read the threads of fate,” Tavrin replied serenely.
He turned, and vanished into the blowing snow without another word. I tried to focus on healing the slender elf-girl in my arms, and ignore how good she felt there. Why the heck was Tavrin suddenly joking about something like that, anyway?
“He can be so difficult,” Sefwin said. “I’m sure he’s only teasing me as revenge for making him worry, but it’s impossible to read him when he gets like that.”
“I figured,” I told her. “But I have to ask, what do you mean, ‘how would that work?’”
“Oh. Um. That’s a bit embarrassing. I have an obligation to produce at least two children, to continue the clan. Preferably more. It’s so hard for us to have children in this world, and our lives are a lot more dangerous than we’d prefer.”
“Oh? I suppose that makes sense, but I still don’t get it.”
She huffed. “I don’t know what fanciful tales you’ve been reading, Daniel, but there’s no such thing as a half-elf. I need to marry a proper elven man someday if I’m ever to have children. Most women of my clan marry early in their second century, just so they can start trying for a family as soon as possible. Although now that I think about it, I suppose humans don’t live long enough for that to be an issue.”
“I will,” I said hurriedly, before she could talk herself into anything. “I can heal old age as easily as anything else.”
“Oh? Well, good. We can’t have you dying on us before the clan is properly reestablished.”
We stood there in silence for a moment.
“You know, I’m pretty sure I can fix that fertility problem,” I said.
Her breath caught. “You can get an elf with child?”
“What? No, I… well, yeah, I could probably do that too. But what I meant was, I could make it easier for all the women in your clan to have children, so you wouldn’t have to worry about it so much.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t just a matter of fertility magic. The ambient mana in this world is so weak we can barely survive here, and…”
She stopped.
“And?” I prompted.
“This stone has enough power to create a place that’s like Svartalfheim,” she breathed. “You’re right, that could change everything. But can it maintain such a taxing spell? And if it can, would you really gift us such a priceless treasure?”
“Yes, to both. It’ll last a couple of centuries under that kind of load, and I can make another one in an hour. I’d be a pretty shitty lord if I didn’t do something that important for you, when it’s so easy for me.”
She didn’t reply at first. I went back to healing her, and waiting for her summoning to run its course. At least, until my body sense informed me that there were tears running down her cheeks.
“Sefwin?”
“T-thank you!”
“Hey, thank me when it’s actually done and we know it works.”
She shook her head. “I know better than to doubt. You’ll do it, and it will work, and my people will finally have a home again after two thousand years of exile. Thank you, my lord. I swear to you, you will not have cause to regret taking us in.”
“Well, that’s good-”
“Oh!” Her sudden cry interrupted me. Something about her felt different, suddenly. What? Wait, her arm was healing now.
“The fight ended?” I asked.
“Yes. Finally. I was starting to wonder if I’d have the strength to keep the mana tap going. I’ve never channeled such power before.”
I healed her arm, and restored the last of her lost blood.
“I’m sure it won’t be the last time. But let’s try to make sure you don’t need to take so many chances from now on, okay? Now, keep watch for a few minutes while I work.”
My final present to the dwarves was a chunk of solid nickel-iron the size of a bowling ball, with another set of quick and dirty enchantments. A link to the power stone. A solid force field protecting the ball, with a power reserve backing it up to ensure sudden blows wouldn’t collapse it easily. A familiar conjuration spell, on a somewhat larger scale than normal. The whole assembly wouldn’t run for more than a few hours before the spells broke down, but it wasn’t going to survive that long anyway.
I set the conjuration to start on a five-second delay, and dropped it into the hole.
“That should take care of those assholes,” I said. “Come on, let’s get back to the ship.”
A deep roar echoed up the hole, along with a bright flash of light. Sefwin stepped away from the opening, her eyes going wide.
“Daniel? What does that thing do?”
“It conjures lava. Well, molten metal from the core of the Earth, if you want to get technical. A few hundred pounds a second will generate a standing explosion powerful enough to kill anything that tries to get close, and the force field on the device will keep it from being destroyed. At least, it should survive until it ends up submerged in liquid iron and melts itself.”
She stared at me for a long moment.
“Come on, Sefwin. Let’s get back to the ship. I don’t think we have to worry about the dwarves attacking us again anytime soon.”
“No, I think they’ll be too busy dying for that. You don’t believe in half measures, do you?”
“Nope.”
My weary mind was already on the next step. Conjure more aluminum, and repair the Intrepid. Maybe use some iron here and there to speed things up, since conjuring aluminum is a slow process. Repair the controls, and make sure the dwarves didn’t sabotage anything else. Make another round of the wounded to make sure no one else was going to die.
Then what?
Flying in a blizzard was still a stupid idea, but I could modify the levitation spell so it would hold the ship at a fixed altitude and keep the wind from blowing it away. Headlights so we could see where we were driving. Maybe put a force field projecting forward to block the falling snow, so it wouldn’t obstruct our view? Something to get us through forested terrain, too, unless we could find a waterway to follow.
So many complications. This trip was just one damned thing after another. I was really looking forward to getting home.
Yeah. Home. Tina would greet me with that innocent smile of hers. Avilla would whip up some amazing meal in five minutes flat. Then I could stumble off to bed, and sleep for about a week.
Chapter 15
Kozalin was under siege.
A column of smoke in the distance had warned me that something was wrong well before we’d come within sight of the city. But we were barely a mile from the walls now, and the tiny black dots swarming in the fields outside had long since resolved into an army of ape men.
“I count forty-two thousand andregi, and perhaps three thousand thunder beasts,” Tavrin said gravely.
There were five camps spaced at intervals around the city, each protected by a dome of magic much like the one that the first army had employed. Maybe half the enemy were there, or manning the siege engines I could see lobbing rocks at the city. The rest were currently assaulting the walls of the Trade District.
Kozalin still had something like twenty thousand troops manning its defenses, and even odds are generally bad news when you’re trying to assault a fortified position. But the enemy were tougher than humans, and had a lot of magic on the field. Groups of elite ape men who climbed the wall to attack the defenders. Giant dinosaurs swathed in leather armor, that tried to batter their way through. Groups of minor mages who conjured clouds of insects or corrosive gas to sweep sections of the wall clear for their assault. They hadn’t managed to get into the city, but there was fighting on the wall in several places.
“Do we bomb them?” Cerise asked.
“Not with a hold full of refugees on board.”
The Griffon Knights were out in force today, fighting an air battle against a swarm of ape men riding giant pterodactyls. I couldn’t tell who was winning, but I had no interest in getting the Intrepid snarled up in that furball.
“There’s no need to risk our involvement,” Tavrin agreed. “The city will hold today. The attack on the wall is already beginning to lose momentum, and the air battle is a stalemate. Give it another hour, and both sides will retreat for the day to lick their wounds.”
“What about those guys?” Cerise asked, leaning over the control panel to point at another column of andregi marching up the road from the east.
“Look at how their advance parties are moving. They’re heading for the encampment nearest the road, and the sun will be down before they could lay out a campsite and reorganize for an assault. I expect they’ll be back tomorrow, though.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed. “Loop us around to the west, Cerise. We’ll stay over the river as we approach the island, and try to avoid the fighting.”
“Damn. Oh well, looks like we’ll have plenty of excitement later. One thing I don’t get, though. Why aren’t the mortars firing?”
I frowned. “Good question.”
Things looked normal enough on the island, not that we could see much from the air. The place looked eerily deserted after all the work I’d done to minimize the need for people to go outside. No traffic at the gate to the city, either. I’d have been concerned except that there also weren’t any signs of an attack.
Of course, the stonework would repair itself if it was damaged.
We were dropping in to land in the courtyard beside the arcology block when I finally say movement. The big gate leading into the street level swung open, and an armored skimmer floated out to take up a position to one side. A squad of troops followed it out, and lined up on the other side of the door with their guns pointed skyward.
“Guess they’ve had some trouble,” Cerise said.
“Figures.”
She adroitly dropped the airship into the courtyard, and turned it around to back the rear doors up to the gate. That would give the guards an eyeful of our own damage, since those damned dwarves had ripped the doors off the back of the ship and run off with them during our fight. I’d had to replace them with sheets of iron, and the tail gunner’s position was still a wreck.
“Stop us outside the doors,” I said. “I want to talk to whoever’s leading the guards here for a minute.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
I climbed out the bridge hatch the moment the Intrepid stopped moving, and bounced over to the infantry squad. Sergeant Thomas took his eyes off the sky at my approach.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, milord!” He said. “The Captain was getting afeared you might not make it back.”
“Yeah, this whole trip was one damned thing after another. The ape men giving you trouble?”
He nodded. “Them flying lizard things is trouble. They’re tried us twice, dropping troops atop the walls with them, and they bombed the mortar positions with some magic crap that eats metal. Took out two of the mortars, and the Captain’s been saving the rest. Them magic folk you took in saved our asses in the second assault, milord. I never seen no one fight like Demetrios.”
“Well, he’s had a few thousand years to practice his swordsmanship. The girls are alright?”
“Yessir, we took good care of the ladies. That Miss Avilla of yours is something else, kept it together and kept everyone moving in the same direction through everything. Good to have you back, though, milord.”
“Good to be back,” I replied. I eyed the gateway, and turned back to study the Intrepid.
“Let’s get this ship under cover before the enemy decides to bomb it,” I decided. “It looks like she’ll fit through the doors if we’re careful.”
He followed my gaze. “Won’t be room to get the skimmer past it, milord. I’d better get it back inside first, then.”
Of course, the Intrepid had a regrettable lack of rear-view mirrors. I ended up having to disengage the anchor spell and push it around with my own force magic to get it lined up right, but fifteen minutes later the ship was safely parked in the street. Sergeant Thomas got his squad to close and bar the gates while Cerise and I headed back to open the ship’s cargo doors, and I conjured an iron ramp so the elves could debark more easily. Tavrin and Sefwin were just following us out into the street when a redheaded missile collided with me.
“Daniel! You’re back! You’re safe! I was so scared but I knew you were alive and you’re home now thank the goddesses and everything’s going to be alright because you’ll fix everything and I’ve missed you so much welcome home.”
I kissed her, which stopped the babbling. God, I’d missed my girls. Had it really only been a week? It seemed like so much longer.
“Hello, Tina. I’m happy to see you, too.”
She was wearing a new dress, a pretty one with a lot of ruffles that made her look young and carefree. And pregnant. She was really starting to show now, but it only made her look more radiant to my eyes.
I realized she hadn’t been the only one to approach us, and turned to find Avilla and Cerise lost in each other’s arms. Pelagia had arrived with them, and was watching the byplay with a surprisingly gentle smile on her lips.
Tina giggled. “I think they might need a room.
Oh! Welcome home, Elin.”
Tina abandoned my arms to sweep up the ramp and give Elin a warm hug. Then the witches finally came up for air, and we traded off again. These five-way greetings involved a lot of hugs and kisses, didn’t they? Not that I was objecting.
“I’m guessing this is the rest of your coven, Daniel?” Sefwin asked.
“Yeah. This is Avilla, and the cute redhead with the big smile is Tina. Girls, this is Sefwin, and that’s Tavrin. Tavrin is the head of Clan Nethwillin, and Sefwin is his heir. Avilla, where can we put up forty-odd dark elves and a hundred human retainers until I have a chance to build them a proper home?”
Avilla bit her lip, and looked at Pelagia. The elder nymph smiled easily. “We set up a temporary residence for them on the ninth floor, my lord. Nothing fancy, since you weren’t here to do the stonework. But it’s warm and safe, and I had a work party build a few walls out of those conjured bricks so it isn’t all one big room. That’s an ingenious scheme, by the way. If you can make a device that conjures doors to go along with the brickmakers we’ll be able to finish out whole floors without having to bother you.”
I shrugged. “I copied the idea from someone else, but I’m glad it’s working out. So, you’ve been helping Avilla organize things?”
She looked down, and her hand played nervously with a lock of her long hair. “Yes. I hope that’s alright?”
“Of course,” I said firmly. “I appreciate your willingness to help out. I’ve got some things I need to talk to you about later, but for right now can you help Tavrin get his people settled in?”
“I’ll be happy to take care of it, my lord.”
Tavrin shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m listening to the Mistress of Bloody Thorns call a human ‘my lord’.”
She smiled mysteriously. “Time changes all things, Tavrin. Daniel is not the first man I have acknowledged as my lord, though I doubt my youthful misadventures are recorded in your histories. Now, shall I show you what we have to work with?”
Tavrin nodded, and immediately started organizing a work party with his typical preternatural skill. I turned back to the girls, and noted that Daria and Embla had joined us.
Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Page 23