“The good kind?” Elin said uncertainly.
“That’s right. The mother of victory is personally watching out for you, Elin. Nothing bad is going to happen with your babies. So stop worrying and pick a date.”
Chapter 18
Cerise and I spent the following afternoon hunting felwolves.
With her flight magic properly adjusted she was light as a feather when she wanted to be. She flew in eager loops around me during my own test flight, trying progressively more acrobatic maneuvers as she got comfortable with her new maneuverability. I’d boosted her speed with force magic while I was working on her, and the extra thrust made her as agile as a hummingbird.
I’d spent most of the morning designing and building my own flight enchantment, which required a rather different design since I had no intention of grafting a set of wings onto my back. While I could probably make functional wings using my flesh sorcery I was sure it would take days to work out all the details, and come with all sorts of inconvenient drawbacks. Replicating the complex mix of biology and magic that Cerise’s body now ran on would be even harder, and I wasn’t eager to experiment with turning myself into a demon. She had divine magic helping her manage the side effects of her transformation, but I didn’t.
So instead I copied that weight-negation trick, and did everything else with pure force magic. That required some complex adjustments of the lift field to make it handle every situation properly. Near the ground it could just work like the hover field on a skimmer, but at any significant altitude the spell would have to grab onto air around me and push it away to create thrust. The weight negation meant it could hold me up with a stiff breeze instead of a hurricane, but I still had to arrange the field so it didn’t have any annoying side effects.
I didn’t want it throwing another flier around if they got too close to me, or pushing away people or objects I was carrying. The weight negation needed to be adjustable too, to account for the possibility of cargo. Turning my force field into an automatic windscreen seemed like a sensible measure, but then I had to worry about its aerodynamics. Not to mention mine. Most shapes will tumble or spin when you push them through the air at high speeds, and I wasn’t an aerospace engineer. Although I did have perfectly vectored thrust, which would make correcting problems a lot easier than in a plane.
There were so many details to work out. I kept my first few test flights low and slow, and stopped to make adjustments every few minutes. Even so I had cause to be thankful for my safe fall enchantment a couple of times. I spent some hours working out bugs before I felt safe enough to climb to a few hundred feet and play tag with Cerise.
She evaded me with laughing ease, of course.
“You’re too slow!” She called, pulling a wingover that somehow took her under me and back up to tap me on the shoulder before I could blink. “Tag, you’re still it.”
I spun, but she was already darting away.
“Your wings bite the air better than my levitation,” I complained. “This is like skating on ice for me, when you’ve actually got traction.”
“Yeah, yeah, boring wizard talk. I’m just a better flyer than you.”
“True,” I admitted. “You’re a natural. How fast do you think you can go?”
“I dunno. Race you to the far end of the harbor!”
She was off like a shot. I went after her immediately, dumping more power into thrust than I’d dared try so far. A slight wobble built up as my airspeed rose, but the new force field shape seemed to be working.
Cerise glanced back and saw me gaining on her. With a grin she flexed her wings, and shot forward even faster. I increased my thrust until I was gaining again.
The busy harbor flew by beneath us. Sailors looked up from their work to gawk as we flashed past. Cerise dropped a hundred feet towards the water, picking up even more speed as she wove between a pair of tall sailing ships. I stayed high, pushing more energy into my spells and keeping to a straight line. If I tried any sudden turns at this speed I’d end up tumbling into the river for sure.
I shot past the far edge of the harbor doing well over a hundred miles per hour, with Cerise hot on my heels. My flight carried me past the city wall a moment later, just as I was starting to slow.
“You’re fast, but I’m faster,” I called as I drifted to a halt.
Cerise slammed into me with a giddy shriek, wrapped her long legs around my waist and kissed me fiercely. Her lips were hungry and demanding, her lean body warm and strong and so vibrantly alive. I tangled my hands in her windblown hair, and kissed her back.
Finally, she broke away.
“That was awesome!” She crowed. “I can fly even faster than my bike. But you still outran me. How do you go so fast?”
“Try folding your wings, and just push yourself as hard as you can. The tricky part is doing it without sending yourself into a tumble. If you use your wings to stabilize yourself the drag will slow you down.”
“I get it. The push part of the magic is that strong? I guess it must be, if you can fly with just that. Let me give it a shot.”
She let go of me, and darted straight up at a pretty good clip. I followed at a more leisurely pace, keeping an eye on our surroundings. There were some enemy air cavalry on patrol a couple of miles away, but they didn’t seem eager to fly over and attack us. Probably because we were still in range of the air defense guns on the island.
Cerise did a complex roll that ended with her level again, headed out across the river. Her wings extended, and flapped a few times as she got up to a good cruising speed. Then she pulled them in, and flared the force magic that I’d woven into her last night.
I followed along a few hundred yards above and behind her, keeping half an eye on our surroundings as I watched her experiment. Once again, she displayed a supernatural talent for physical skills. She spent a few minutes experimenting, folding her wings in and angling them in various ways, but unlike my own fumbling efforts she never spun out into a crash.
We crossed both the river and the forest on the south bank, leaving Kozalin behind. Her speed rose in fits and starts as she got used to this new method of flying, but it wasn’t long before I was struggling to keep up. Then she suddenly hit her stride, and rocketed away from me at a speed I didn’t dare try to emulate. I was already pushing two hundred miles per hour, and the way she was pulling away from me she had to be well over two fifty.
I slowed down a little, and watched her go. The sky was overcast, and I was a little concerned about losing sight of her. Once again I was reminded that I really needed to come up with a magical substitute for radios. Not that I had any real concerns about her ability to take care of herself out here, but Avilla would worry herself sick if either of us returned home alone.
Fortunately Cerise realized the problem before she got more than a couple of miles away. She made a long, lazy turn above the snow-covered plains, and looped back to join me. I went into a hover as she approached.
“What’s wrong, slowpoke? Can’t keep up?” She called.
“That thing you just did where you figured out how to perfectly manage your wings at every speed in a couple of minutes? I’m going to need the rest of the day to do that.”
“What, really? But it’s easy.”
“Only for you,” I told her. “Hey, be glad I’m not a normal wizard. At least my sorcery lets me adjust my flight enchantment in a few minutes instead of days.”
“Months,” she corrected. “A normal wizard would have to use a big gold amulet with runes etched into it to shape the enchantment, and it would take months to build something that complicated with normal techniques. Then they’d have to melt it down and start all over every time they had to make a change. Having enough power to just burn magic into the metal like you do is an incredible shortcut.”
“Well, try to remember that what you do with physical skills is just as incredible. Mind playing lookout for me while I do some more test runs? I don’t have to get everything perfect today, but I wan
t to get to where I’m confident I can outrun anything I might meet up here.”
She smiled. “Sure, I can watch your clumsy butt wander all over the sky. Just try not to crash again or I’m going to laugh at you.”
She did, too.
My safe fall enchantment made an excellent defense against crashing, so I wasn’t actually hurt by my mishaps. But I was glad Avilla wasn’t out here to see me flailing around. She’d probably have a heart attack.
Half a dozen crashes later I’d worked out a scheme involving vectored thrust and little fins on my force field that seemed to work well. Unlike my first try, which had sent me spinning violently. Or my second, which had seemed perfect until I tried to turn and suddenly spun out of control. Or my third, or fourth, or… ugh. At least I was getting better at handling vertigo. Sometimes I even managed to recover from a tumble before I hit the ground.
I wearily pulled myself out of the smashed remains of a tree, and realized I’d actually gotten a couple of bruises this time. I’d been steadily edging up to progressively higher speeds, but if I was reaching the limits of my crash protection it was probably time to call it quits for the day.
Cerise flitted down to hover over me with a huge smile on her face. “You alright there, old man? Ready for a break?”
“Yeah, I think I’m about done with flight experiments for the day. I’ll just have to concede the aerial speed demon title to you.”
“Well, I am the only demon here. But if you’re up for a little hunting, I saw some tracks a minute ago that might be felwolves.”
That surprised me. “Really? I wasn’t expecting to find one this close to Kozalin.”
She rolled her eyes. “Daniel, we’ve been working our way south this whole time. Kozalin is probably a hundred miles behind us. Didn’t you notice that we’re getting into hill country here?”
“I was a little preoccupied,” I admitted. I rose into the air, and looked around. Sure enough, we’d made our way into a region of rolling hills quite different from the flat plains around Kozalin. I was going to have to be more careful about that. Fast flight was a convenient way to travel, but it would be easy to get completely lost if I didn’t pay attention.
“Have you had a chance to enchant that tool you were talking about?” I asked.
Cerise pulled a long, pointed blade from behind her back. “My little sample sticker? Got it right here. Thanks for sharing those secrets of fast enchanting, by the way. Even with unlimited power it would have taken me a week to make this the old way.”
“How long did it actually take you?” I asked, curious.
“Oh, I just whipped it up this morning while you were making your flight ring,” she replied, trying to sound casual. The gleam in her eye gave her away, though, and she couldn’t hold up the facade. “It’s so fucking cool to be able to do shit like that. I’ve got all kinds of neat implements in the works now. I’m getting so strong it’s scary.”
“Our enemies should be scared,” I agreed. “I’m glad things are coming together for you, love. Well, sure, let’s see if we can find ourselves a felwolf. I’ve heard that spotting things from the air can be surprisingly hard, but considering how big those things are you’d think they’d be bad at hiding.”
“Don’t worry, boss. I’ll find them.”
We kept our altitude down to a few hundred feet as we backtracked to where Cerise had spotted the tracks, moving slowly and pausing now and then to look over each valley we crossed. There were a lot of wooded patches on the slopes of the hills, but it looked to me like most of the flatter areas had been farmland.
Had been.
There were little villages everywhere, but they were just ruins now. The burned-out husks of wooden buildings, blanketed in deep snow. Rows of broken wagons along the roads. A country inn at a crossroads, with one whole side of the main building caved in. Everywhere we went we found nothing but devastation. There was no sign of any surviving humans, just one destroyed settlement after another.
Cerise stopped over the remains of a small castle built atop a hill, and studied it thoughtfully.
“Looks like a giant attack,” she said. “See how that whole tower is collapsed, and the wall around it? Trolls couldn’t do that, and a dragon would have burned everything.”
I nodded. “I think you’re right. This is recent, too. The snow in the courtyard is only a few inches deep.”
The courtyard must have been crammed with refugees. Now there was only a tangle of ripped canvas and broken tent poles covered in a thin layer of snow. And bodies. Dozens of lumps that were obviously bodies, lying still beneath the snow.
There should have been hundreds, for a place this size. But the felwolves would have been hungry.
“I’m really starting to hate monsters,” I said quietly.
“Yeah. Daniel? Can I borrow Grinder?”
“Sure.” I took the weapon from my belt, and handed it to her. “What for?”
She pointed, across the hill and down the valley on the other side. There was a rocky slope there, between two stands of trees.
“I think I see their camp.”
I looked again, and realized that what I’d mistaken for boulders were actually tents. Huge, round things that stood almost as tall as the trees.
I looked again at the ruined castle, and felt a grim smile settle onto my face.
“Let’s go pay them a visit, shall we?”
The first time I’d fought a giant in this world I’d almost died, and Cerise had barely been able to distract one of the felwolves it had been using like hunting dogs. But we’d come a long way since then. I drew my revolver as we flew towards the camp, counting tents. Nine of them, it looked like, and a half-dozen shaggy lumps that were definitely felwolves lying around them. Only one giant was visible, standing motionless near the top of a steep slope where he’d have a clear view of the valley below.
Were the rest of them off somewhere? No, they’d have taken the felwolves with them. Probably sleeping, then. That would make sense if they were making their attacks at night.
The guard didn’t seem to be looking up. Convenient. Shouting might draw his attention, but we didn’t need an elaborate plan for this. I pointed at Cerise, and then at a group of felwolves sleeping in a pile.
She nodded, and drew that long blade again. I took up a position directly above the camp, and waited. Cerise gave me a savage little grin, and folded her wings.
She hit hard, slamming her blade into a sleeping felwolf’s eye with all the momentum of her dive behind it. The monster let out a howl of shocked agony, but before its fellows could do more than open their eyes I heard Grinder ignite with a shriek of tortured air.
I shot the sentry in the back with an explosive round.
The explosion shredded the back of his chainmail hauberk, and sent lumps of superheated metal tearing through his body. He staggered forward one step, and then collapsed with a scream. I shot him again to make sure he wasn’t getting up, and then turned my attention to the tents.
Lacking any specific targets I just held the trigger down, and walked my fire back and forth over the shelters. The explosions blew them apart easily. Burning fragments of wood and leather flew through the air, and shouts of alarm rose all over the camp. In moments the tents were all down and on fire, except for the area where Cerise was fighting.
She didn’t need my help. She tore through the felwolves with savage glee, hacking and stabbing at their massive bodies with Grinder. Her enemies were the size of elephants, but she was too fast for them. She dodged around their blows, carving off paws and cutting great wounds into faces.
A giant throwing axe smashed into my shield. With my original amulet such a concentrated blow would have gone right through the barrier, and probably cut me in half. But the shield I was using now was designed with giants in mind, and it handled the stress just fine. The axe bounced off the invisible wall, expending barely five percent of the energy reserve behind it.
I laid down another barrage of expl
osive rounds.
A giant dove out of one of the burning tents to roll in the snow, extinguishing his flaming cloak. Then he stood and began bellowing orders to the other survivors.
I shot him in the face. His head blew apart in a spray of gore and blue blood, showering down on the nearest giants. His headless body stood there for a moment, and slowly crumpled to the ground.
That was too much for them. Giants fled in all directions, leaving most of their gear behind. But they were too big to vanish into the woods very easily. I gunned down three more of them from behind, and then turned my attention back to Cerise.
Half the wolves were dead or dying, and the survivors were trying to run. It wasn’t doing them any good, though. Most of them were already injured, and Cerise was too fast to escape. She finished off a pair that had tried to flee together, while I turned and shot one that was limping off in the opposite direction.
The whole fight had barely lasted a minute. I took one last look around, and holstered my revolver. Grinder’s howl died, and Cerise flew up to me.
“Didn’t I see a couple more giants run off?” She asked. “We should hunt them down before they get away.”
“No, I want them to escape. Let them carry word of this attack back to their buddies. For the rest of the war they’ll all be keeping an eye on the sky, wondering if they’re next.”
“Oh. Yeah, good idea. Teach these bastards what it’s like to be afraid. I like it.”
She flew up to hand Grinder back to me. “I’ve really improved a lot, haven’t I? A month ago I would have been useless in this fight, and now look at me.”
I wanted to hug her, but she was covered in blood. Why did she look so damned sexy with splashes of red all over her face and horns?
I settled for a smile. “Yeah, look at you, kicking felwolves around like puppies. Now we just need to get you a force field, so you don’t end up taking a bath in your enemies.”
Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Page 28