“Point taken,” I said. “What do you suggest, then?”
“The safest course would be to remain on the defensive and wait for Brand to organize a counterattack. Then you take Cerise and an escort of elves and dryads, and join the Conclave’s forces. That will minimize both our losses and the Conclave’s.”
“The Trade District is the most populous part of the city,” I objected. “Including refugees there are probably a hundred thousand people there, and most of them are going to die if we give the enemy time to kill them.”
He shrugged. “They aren’t our people, my lord, and I don’t think we have the forces to save them.”
“As long as the rest of the city doesn’t fall, it will actually be to our benefit,” Pelagia put in. “The survivors will be that much more desperate for safety. Not that I don’t have some sympathy for their plight, but what else can we do?”
Damn, these people were cold blooded. I suppose they had a point, too. I’d been trying to build myself a favorable reputation here, but it didn’t seem to have gotten me anything. Maybe I should try being a little more selfish?
A hundred thousand people.
No, I couldn’t do it.
“Our survival depends on the goodwill of Kozalin’s rulers,” I said. “I don’t want our people to overextend themselves and get mobbed by enemies, but we’re going to do what we can. Go ahead and organize the switch out in troops, I agree with you about the risk there. Tavrin, I want your people to take a hundred or so flamers with them to hand out wherever it looks like they’re needed.”
“Certainly,” he said.
“While you’re doing that, I’m going to throw up some quick defensive works where the wall between the Trade District and the Temple District has collapsed. I can turn the rubble into a low wall in half an hour, and that will firm up the defense quite a bit. I’ll want one of Corinna’s girls to watch my back while I work, and the rest can go hunting with Cerise.”
“They’ll enjoy that,” Pelagia said. “Perhaps you should keep Hela at your side as well, so you can receive messages?”
“Good idea. Have her join me at the front when Captain Rain’s group withdraws. Tavrin, did the Intrepid make it back while I was out this afternoon?”
“Yes, we just finished unloading her cargo an hour ago.”
“Alright, then we’re going to use her for fire support. Have Irithil position her near what’s left of the city wall, and harass the enemy reinforcements with bombs and machine gun fire as they trickle in. Have the mortars lay down barrages at odd intervals too, just to keep the enemy from feeling safe out there. If we can slow them down a bit there will be that many fewer of them ready to resist the counterattack when it comes, and the civilians will have more time to get out of the line of fire.”
“We can give it a try,” Demetrios said. “Although if the enemy is clever, using the mortars so casually will reveal that it doesn’t cost us anything to make their ammunition.”
“There’s no point in having a capability if we don’t use it when we need it,” I replied. “I’m not worried about the enemy learning too much about us, considering the rate we’re deploying new stuff. Any other suggestions?”
There weren’t, and fifteen minutes later I was back in the city. Alanna had volunteered to go with me, so I flew out with the dryad huntress in my arms.
I noticed as I set her down that her wooden armor seemed different than before. It covered her from head to toe, leaving only her face exposed to the cold night air. Shadows chased each other across the surface of the armor, pooling in her hair and around the tip of her spear. The magic had a familiar taste, and not one I associated with nature spirits.
“Has Cerise been giving you guys upgrades?” I asked.
“The High Priestess has given us all generous gifts of her power,” she confirmed. “She makes us stronger, and keeps the cold from touching us.”
“Interesting. Well, keep a sharp eye out. I’m going to be pretty distracted here.”
The garrison troops were relieved to see a wizard at work, and turning the mound of rubble they were trying to defend into a ten-foot wall with a simple parapet along the top was a fast project. I worked my way down the wall making repairs, and fending off the occasional minor attack by bands of ape men. But once again they quickly began avoiding me, while I kept hearing battles in the distance in every direction.
Cerise arrived with Corinna’s little war band, and the group ventured out to make a sweep through the streets just beyond the defenses I was building. They returned half an hour later, bloody and triumphant but with several of the dryads in need of minor healing.
“This sucks,” Cerise complained. “These guys are everywhere, but never more than a few dozen at once. We keep finding them breaking into houses to kill people.”
A few refugees had started trickling past as I worked, but not very many.
“Do what you can,” I said. “We can’t save everyone, but we aren’t the only ones fighting. How are the refugee shelters holding up?”
There were a couple dozen big iron buildings spread around the city, that I’d thrown up to house the refugees that had clogged the city’s streets when I first arrived. A couple of them were nearby, and considering the number of people they held I’d wanted to know if they were still holding out.
“Those big iron doors you put on them are keeping the apes out just fine,” she assured me. “They’ll need battering rams to break into them, or a bunch of mages conjuring that metal-eating fog they like. I think most of them will hold out just fine.”
“That’s something, at least.”
Hela came running up just then, clutching a warmth cloak around herself. “Lord wizard! There’s word from the Conclave. Their golems are preparing to advance into the Trade District, along with the prince and his knights. The garrison troops in the Temple District are supposed to advance once the wizards are engaged, and Brand wants you to move up and support them.”
“Alright, pass the word that I’ll be doing that. Let me find a sergeant, and see if he can tell us who’s in command here and where they’re set up.”
It sounded like a reasonable plan, but by the time the counterattack was actually in motion there must have been ten thousand andregi rampaging through the district. We had to advance on a broad line to cover all the major streets, which meant Cerise and I could only cover a small part of the front. Everywhere else it was just ordinary men backed by a few knights, and that was a disaster.
The enemy cavalry would charge right through our lines whenever the garrison encountered them. Clumps of enemy troops set up defensive positions on the narrower streets, while other groups advanced across the rooftops to drop down behind our lines. Enemy archers and mages launched ambushes from the upper floors of buildings they’d captured. The garrison troops kept getting stalled, locked in close-quarters combat with enemies that were tougher than they were.
Cerise and I moved constantly back and forth across the line of advance, crushing enemy positions and killing off their leaders. Even so they broke through our lines repeatedly, and the garrison commanders kept throwing in more and more reserves in an effort to keep the advance moving.
Corinna’s dryads proved considerably tougher than most of the enemy, and the raiding party Tavrin had sent out was lethally effective. But by the time the garrison ran out of reserves both groups were getting tired, and the elves were low on ammunition. I pulled the teams off the front line, and had them regroup near the garrison’s command post.
“Hela, send word that I want Elin to take a squad of bodyguards and set up a healing station here,” I said. “See if we can get fresh arrows sent up for the elves, too.”
The elven commander had taken a nasty gut wound, and I couldn’t spare fifteen minutes to properly heal him right now. I stabilized him, and then combined the dryads and elves into a single team and put Corinna in charge.
“Take a break until Elin gets here,” I told her. “Then I want you backing up
the eastern side of the garrison’s line. When the enemy breaks through you get out there and kick their teeth in, then hold things together until the human troops regroup. Don’t get drawn into attacking enemy positions, and don’t spend any longer in the fight than you need to. This is going to be a long night, so we need to pace ourselves.”
“I understand, my lord. We won’t fail you.”
Fortunately the force marching in from the Wizard’s Quarter had a lot more firepower than the one I was supporting. An hour later the western end of our line linked up with a squadron of golems, and then a couple of wizards I hadn’t met before made their way around to our command post and joined me in supporting the advance. After that I was no longer worried that the whole line was going to break up and collapse if I stopped fighting for more than five minutes.
Even so, the battle dragged on for hours. For every band of enemy troops we killed another one filtered in through the gaps in the city wall. Their resistance stiffened as we fought our way block by block across the city, and no matter how I wracked my brain I couldn’t think of a way to clear them out faster. Not without blowing a hole in the city and killing thousands of civilians, at any rate. My magic just wasn’t discriminating enough for an environment like this.
Sometime around midnight I ran into High Adept Steelbinder leading a squad of heavy war golems through the streets. He threw a storm of animated steel shards into a troop of ape men blocking his path, and then did a double take when he spotted me descending from the rooftops.
“Daniel!” He called. “I see the rumors that you’ve mastered flight are true. How bad are things on your end?”
He was sitting on the back of a golem, so I went into a hover nearby.
“Bad,” I said. “The garrison has lost at least two thousand men on this front, and they’ve stripped the Harbor District bare to keep the attack going. Cerise and I have been running back and forth all night trying to bolster the line.”
“That’s about what I expected,” he replied. “I’d advise you to keep an eye on your apprentice, though. I’ve lost two adepts to ambushes tonight, and one of those was a suicide attack. They’re pushing hard to thin our ranks.”
“Thanks for the warning. We haven’t seen anything like that on this front yet, but I’ve been wondering if they’d try it. Any new orders?”
“Just push on through, and retake the city wall. I don’t know where we’ll find the men to hold it by the time we’ve paid the butcher’s bill, but Brand doesn’t seem to care about that. It’s all more souls for Valhalla to him. I understand you’ve managed to heal Elin? What would it cost the Conclave to retain her services for a day or two?”
I scowled. “Your Wisdom, I’m not going to tell her she has to heal the people who voted to throw her out in the snow.”
“You’d prefer she go on living in a fortress made of cold iron?” He said mildly. “She seems to be blossoming beyond our walls, Daniel. I hear she’s become quite adept with her glamour.”
Huh. Alright, maybe I should remember I was talking to a wizard. Who was also a politician. There was no telling what he’d been setting up before I got involved in Elin’s life.
I sighed. “I’m not going to charge for healing when we’re fighting for survival. But I can’t spare her for that long. As soon as the situation here looks stable I’ll detail a skimmer to transport the wounded, and you can send them to the island for healing.”
“That will do,” he conceded. “I’ll call in a reserve company immediately to bolster the line, if you can send that transport quickly. I have several critically wounded golem commanders, and an adept who barely survived a mage killing arrow. We can’t afford to lose skilled resources like that.”
So he had extra troops he hadn’t committed to the battle earlier? I had mixed feelings about that. A couple more squads of golems would have saved the garrison hundreds of casualties, but I didn’t know how secure the Iron Citadel was. I couldn’t be too critical when I was keeping most of my own troops in reserve as well.
I made another quick sweep down the line, taking out a group of archers on a rooftop and a cluster of cavalry getting ready for a charge as I went. Cerise was merrily hacking a group of enemy infantry to bits with that dwarven battle axe she’d picked up, but I stopped to warn her about the enemy mage hunters.
“Tell that to the Conclave guys,” she said. “If they see me they’ll just think somebody summoned a demon. We might want to do something about Elin, though.”
“Yeah, I’m sending her back to the island. Stay safe, love.”
Back at the healing station I found a cluster of dark elves and dryads on guard, and Elin crouched over Corinna’s prone form. The voluptuous nymph was covered in blood, and a one-armed dryad was kneeling in the snow next to her. I took in the bloody tourniquet around the stump of the dryad’s arm, the absence of Corinna’s wooden armor, and the huge wound in her side that Elin was struggling to close.
“Hey, m’lord,” Corinna gasped out. “Kept…. y’re elves alive. Did I… do good?”
“Don’t talk, mistress!” The dryad urged. There were frozen tears on her cheeks, but she didn’t seem to care at all about her own injuries.
I knelt next to Corinna, and put my hand on her shoulder. Damn, that was bad. An axe had cut through two ribs and into her lung, and it had been a good ten or fifteen minutes before they got her to Elin. A normal person would have been dead long since.
“You were supposed to keep yourself alive, too,” I told her.
“I’ll be… back,” she replied.
“But mistress, what if spring never comes?” The dryad sobbed. “You might never be reborn.”
“She isn’t going to die,” Elin said tightly. “Daniel, can you assist?”
Elin was pouring healing magic into Corinna’s body, causing it to regenerate at an accelerated rate. With injuries this severe that wasn’t enough to fix everything that was going wrong, though. She could keep Corinna alive on her own, but getting far enough ahead of the damage to stabilize her condition could take hours.
I joined my magic to Elin’s, and added my own healing to the mix. There were things my magic could do a lot more easily than hers. Conjuring fresh blood to replace what she’d lost. Repairing the severed artery that would have leaked it all back out onto the snow in short order, without waiting to fix everything around it at the same time. Reversing the brain damage being caused by low oxygen levels. Although Corina’s metabolism ran on magic as much as chemistry, and the damage there was almost as bad. Her natural magic had depleted itself forcing her body to stay alive, and the strain was causing a slow cascade failure.
There wasn’t time to be gentle. I fed a heavy stream of mana into her system, and reached in to help her absorb it. Metaphysical organs I didn’t have names for flickered, pulsing and swelling unsteadily. I guided the energy where it needed to go, clearing blockages and repairing broken channels along the way.
Corinna gasped, and her muscles locked up. Her body convulsed for a few seconds, before Elin wound a tendril of magic into her spine and paralyzed her. Then she went limp, and laid there panting for several long moments.
“Mistress?” The dryad said uncertainly.
“She’ll be alright,” Elin said. “Daniel had to be a little rough about replenishing her magic.”
“Oh. Thank you, my lord. I couldn’t bear to see my mistress die over my own stupid failure.”
“We’ll have her stable in another minute.” I said. “What happened?”
“It was an ambush, my lord. There was a band of andregi heroes with weapons made of blood, and mages with them. They were lying in wait for us when we came to throw back an attack that had broken through the human soldiers. One minute we were cutting them apart, and the next there were spells everywhere. Corinna ordered a retreat, and took the rearguard position. She was trusting me to protect her, but… that evil magic in their weapons sapped my strength, and I… I couldn’t hold…”
I’d thought it was k
ind of odd how the nymphs each had a dryad who turned into wooden armor for them to wear. But if that’s how it worked I could understand it. Dryads had a fair amount of magical power, and if they could use that to protect a wearer from blows they could easily provide better armor than steel.
The dryad started crying again. I patted her head with my free hand. “It’s going to be alright, girl. You did everything you could. It’s not your fault they had weapons made for killing wizards.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder. “I know, my lord. It just hurts so much to see my mistress so grievously wounded, when I was charged with her protection. You’ll see her fully healed, won’t you milord? She won’t be scarred, or, or crippled?”
“She’ll be perfectly fine,” I assured her. “We’ll heal her up good as new. But you feel like you’re about to fall over. Let me take a look at that arm.”
“There’s no need to trouble yourself, my lord,” she objected. “I can just return to my tree and reform, once my mistress is safely back in her grove.”
Alanna appeared at my side, and put an arm around the other dryad’s waist. “I’ll see that she’s taken care of, milord. May we have leave to take our fallen mistress home when the healing is done?”
“Yes, but not by yourselves. Elin, how are you holding up?”
“Well enough, Daniel. I’m a bit tired, but the amulet takes the edge off of that. This incident has me concerned, however.”
“Yeah, the Conclave has been having problems like this too. I want you to move back to the island, before the enemy decides to try taking you out.”
“Thank you, Daniel. To be honest, I was beginning to feel a bit exposed here.” She looked around at the little improvised shelter of tarps that the garrison had set up for her, and the injured men lying on pallets everywhere. I noted several elves among them.
“May I call up one of the skimmers to carry the wounded?” She asked.
Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Page 30