“Yeah, good idea. I’ll have the elves and the rest of Corinna’s dryads stay with you as an escort. If you like you can have the skimmer make trips between here and the island, so you can treat wounded soldiers without having to leave again. But I’m also going to have one bring in some patients from the Conclave.”
She frowned, and looked away. “The Conclave? Well, if I must.”
I put my hand on her cheek, and gently turned her head to look at me. “Elin, it’s up to you. I’m not going to ask you to heal some asshole who used to beat you for not bowing fast enough. If they bring in someone you don’t want to help you can send them away, and I’ll back you up on that.”
“Y-you will? Thank you, Daniel. I try not to be a vindictive person, but some of the adepts… well, I’d be terribly tempted to make them heal wrong on purpose.”
“I’m sure. I don’t think it’s going to come up, though. They have healing potions for the adepts, after all. It’s mostly their retainers they need help with.”
“Very well,” she said. “But what about you? You aren’t invincible, and I don’t want a repeat of what happened to Corinna.”
“Oh, that shoe is about to be on the other foot. Alanna, if I take you back to the ambush site do you think you can track these guys down?”
“Track them, milord?” A sly look stole over the dryad’s face. “With a foot or more of snow covering the whole city? Yes, I can find them for you.”
“Good. Let me send a few orders out, and then we’re going to team up with Cerise and go hunting. Oh, and Alanna?”
I put my hands on her shoulders, and fed her power. She’d gone through quite a bit of magic during the long night, and I didn’t want her running out in the middle of a fight. Her reserves filled up in a matter of seconds, and then overflowed into some complex mechanism that seemed to feed on the excess power.
She bit her lip. Her dark eyes gleamed in the torchlight, and I felt her tremble faintly. Then her magic shifted, flowing into a different configuration that fed the incoming power into her bones and muscles. She took a deep breath, and her expression firmed.
“Warn a girl before you do that, my lord,” she chided. “A younger dryad would have passed out from such a massive gift of power.”
“I wouldn’t have given a younger dryad so much,” I said. “You looked like you could handle it. Now, let’s go hunting.”
I left the link open as we collected Cerise, curious what her magical metabolism would do with so much energy. By the time I’d explained the situation there were odd flickers of force magic running along Alanna’s skin, and a considerable amount of fire and flesh magic mingled in her muscles.
Cerise scowled when she heard what had happened to Corinna.
“We’re going to kill these fuckers, right Daniel? No one gets to hurt my sexy huntress like that.”
“Yes, we’re going after them. Alanna?”
‘This way.” She turned, and leaped to the top of one of the three-story buildings around us like it was nothing. I blinked. Dryads didn’t have super anime jumping powers, did they?
“Someone’s been boosting her pretty hard,” Cerise chuckled. “Good choice, Alanna’s the smart one of the bunch.”
She spread her wings, and took to the air. I shrugged, and followed. I could figure out the intricacies of dryad magic later. Right now I had ape men to kill.
Alanna led us on a winding path across the rooftops of the district. Sometimes the trail of footprints was obvious enough, while at other times there were so many tracks crossing back and forth that I didn’t see how she could tell where we were going. But it wasn’t long at all before we topped the peak of a high, sloped roof to find a group of ape men on the other side.
They were spread out a bit, watching the streets below like they were waiting for someone to ambush. My hand went for my revolver before I realized that the building we were on was intact, and there might still be civilians hiding inside. So instead I extended a six-foot blade of force from one index finger, and dived into them.
Alanna manifested a bow, and started loosing arrows into the group while I closed. Her arrows were tipped with force blades, and each shot went right through its target. I saw two head shots land before I reached the nearest of the enemy, and cut him in half. Not to be outdone, Cerise landed with a sweeping spin of her axe that sent severed limbs flying and dropped three enemies in a single move.
That was all the surprise we got. Two guys with axes made of blood immediately laid into me, and a javelin carrying some kind of dispel enchantment blew a big hole in my force field’s energy reserve. A swarm of insects appeared out of nowhere to engulf Cerise, and several javelins arced towards Alanna’s position.
But they were completely out of their league. I blew half my opponents off the roof with a blast of force magic, at the same time that a swirling cloud of solid shadows rose up to crush the insect swarm around Cerise and grapple her opponents. Alanna dodged one javelin, and another just bounced off her armor while her arrows cut down the ape men who’d thrown them.
I cut another axe wielder in half, and sent out a gout of flame that engulfed a couple of mages and disrupted their casting. Cerise’s axe moved continuously, in a series of sweeping arcs that sent severed heads and limbs flying in all directions. Alanna wasn’t quite as destructive, but every arrow she loosed killed another enemy. None of their attacks could hurt me, or even hit Cerise.
A few moments later we ran out of enemies.
“Ha! These guys weren’t so tough,” Cerise crowed. “We should go find some of their leaders to kill.”
“That might not be a bad idea,” I conceded. “Alanna, how are you doing?”
She bounced down the steep roof, and slid to a stop beside me. There was a thin line of red along her left forearm, but it was healing so fast it would be gone in a few more seconds.
“I’m ready to fight, master!” She chirped, practically vibrating with excitement. “Can we kill some more of these things?”
“Yeah. The garrison is getting enough reinforcements that they shouldn’t need us to babysit them anymore. Let’s see what kind of damage we can do.”
Chapter 20
The fighting dragged on for most of the night. An endless succession of attacks and ambushes, counterattacks and pursuits. Here and there the enemy would gather for a big push, and Cerise and I would smash them. But mostly they fought in small groups, using guerilla tactics to relentlessly bleed our forces while they methodically exterminated the civilians in the areas they held.
Fortunately local construction practices favored thick stone and brick, with heavy wooden doors and window shutters that all bolted securely shut. Not like the glass and particle board boxes back home, that an ape man could have gotten into with a couple of casual blows from a mace. Here it took real work to break into a home, and every squad that was battering down doors was one that wasn’t fighting the garrison.
Even so, we found thousands of bodies as we worked our way north across the district. Homes with their doors smashed open, and families who’d been dragged out into the street and slaughtered. Collapsed buildings, brought down by the earthquake or the rampaging dinosaurs that followed. The heaped corpses of citizen militias, whose desperate last stands had failed to stop the enemy.
At first it had only been a few buildings here and there, and surviving citizens would peek out their windows as the troops marched past. But by the time we reached the city wall every building we passed was a broken wreck, and the streets were choked with corpses.
I alighted atop a surviving stretch of wall, and gazed out at the enemy camps with my hands clenched into fists.
“We can’t keep fighting like this,” I said. “It’s going to get everyone killed.”
“Want to keep going, and take out their leader?” Cerise asked.
The first light of dawn was beginning to show on the horizon to the east. Across the snow-covered fields I could vaguely make out activity in the enemy camps, and movement on
the road. More reinforcements marching in? They normally didn’t arrive until afternoon.
“No,” I decided. “They wouldn’t stop them, and they’re probably ready for it anyway. We need something unexpected. Something bigger than just a new tactic for the siege. With the resources they have to draw on they’ll find a counter of some kind for anything we do, and as long as they can keep inflicting losses on us they’re winning.”
“Perhaps you could brew up a pestilence to strike them all down, master?” Alanna said diffidently. “Mistress Pelagia has knowledge of such things, and I can feel that your magic is potent in power over life.”
“Maybe. I need to think about this, and talk to everyone about it. If Gaea has really spent millennia getting ready for this war you’d think she’d have a plan for everything people have actually done before.”
I looked back at the city, and frowned. “One thing seems out of place here. Why weren’t there more fires? There’s too much snow blanketing everything for a blaze to spread much, but they could have burned out a lot of the sturdier buildings if they’d just brought torches.”
“The andregi are Gaea’s pure children, master,” Alanna said. “I doubt they can comprehend the mystery of fire. That’s a chancy thing even for us dryads, who have dealt with humans for long ages. To them, it would likely be as alien and terrifying as commerce.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. “Commerce is terrifying?”
She smiled faintly. “Well, I suppose most of my sisters would only find it confusing. But civilization is a frightful thing to the creatures of wood and water, master. I can’t begin to imagine what dark art allows humans to create whole towns full of bewildering things so quickly. But I’ve been told that this mystery called commerce is at the heart of it.”
Huh. Did dryads not have the same social instincts as humans? Well, maybe there was a reason they all seemed to be innumerate. I’d wondered how someone as otherwise intelligent as Alanna could be stumped by such a simple thing.
“I think she’s right about the ape men,” Cerise put in. “I’ve been talking to the elves about them, and they don’t use metals or glass or anything else you need fire to make. They think anything too civilized is a sin against Gaea or something.”
“Interesting. I wonder if there’s a way to use that?”
My musings were interrupted by a runner summoning me to another council of war. Brand had called a gathering just a few blocks down the wall from where I was, so I took Cerise and Alanna as my escorts and went straight there instead of making a detour back to the island.
I found Brand, Prince Caspar, High Adept Steelbinder and a handful of nobles gathered on a tower roof, observing the enemy.
“This wall is indefensible,” the prince was saying. “Five major breeches, eight collapsed towers and at least one more that’s liable to go if anyone sneezes on it? It’s a lost cause. It’s going to be hard enough to hold the Military District. Why didn’t the city wards protect us from the earthquake?
”Our wards can only dampen the most minor of earthquakes, Caspar,” Steelbinder replied. “This one was far too powerful to suppress completely, although they did weaken it a bit.”
The prince shook his head in disgust. “Always an excuse. Can you at least repair the wall?”
“Wars are not won by standing on the defensive,” Brand said. “We need to throw the apes off balance. Attack their camps, maybe kill their commander. That will give the mages enough breathing room to repair the wall.”
“How does punching a mortar barrage through their wards sound?” I suggested.
Prince Caspar finally noticed my presence. He clearly wasn’t pleased to see me, but when his gaze fell on Cerise he started and took a sudden step back. That was when I realized she still had her horns out.
Brand chuckled. “Your minions keep getting stranger, Daniel. Now you’ve claimed a dryad, and plied her with empowerment rituals? You must have the stamina of a Viking.”
Steelbinder was all business. “Are you sure you can get through? They’ve invested a considerable amount of power in those wards. There are multiple layers of dispelling, missile redirection and object destruction to deal with.”
“It sounds like you’ve gotten a better look at them than I have,” I said. “Think they can stand up to repeated explosions like the ones I used on Hel’s ships, going off just outside the wards?”
“Not for long. It will shrug off the first few, but if you can keep them coming the physical wards will quickly come undone. They might be able to reinforce them with sacrifices, though.”
“Buy me two days to prepare, and I’ll be able to drop extended barrages on them at will,” I said. “They’ll have to retreat, and rebuild their camps outside my range.”
One of the nobles I didn’t know blanched. “So quickly? When did wizards gain such power?”
I shrugged. “This is Ragnarok. I brought my A game.”
“That’s the spirit,” Brand said. “Get it done, Daniel. Lukas, what can your people do about the wall? Traps, summoned monsters, something like that? Give me something to stop the next assault, and the garrison will hold until Daniel’s attack is ready.”
Steelbinder eyed the wall consideringly for a minute. Then he nodded.
“We have a suitable forbiddance prepared. My adepts can lay out the boundaries for it this morning, while they repair the ward anchors. When we trigger it the whole front will be covered by a fog bank that will eat anyone foolish enough to enter, and we can maintain it for up to twelve hours. It won’t reach the top of the wall, so troops stationed there will be safe.”
“We’ll have to man barricades across the breaches, or the enemy will know it’s a trap,” Caspar said.
“The fog won’t enter buildings, so they can withdraw to safely quickly enough from most of the positions. I can also provide illusions to cover the garrison’s movements for a few minutes during the assault.”
Caspar frowned again, but Brand clapped him on the shoulder. “I’d heard your wizards were impressive, Prince. We’ll go with that.”
The meeting broke up quickly. Cerise and I took off for the short flight home, our movements a bit sluggish despite the fatigue-banishing effects of our amulets. Alanna snuggled happily into my arms, a reminder of yet another problem.
“Alright, time to tell me what I’ve done,” I said to her as I flew.
She cocked her head. “What do you mean, master?”
“I mean you’re suddenly calling me master, and Brand thinks I’ve bound you or something. Obviously there’s some dryad lore I should have learned before I started sharing power with you.”
Her laugh was a clear, high sound, full of innocent joy despite the carnage she’d wrought through the night.
“So there are things you don’t know, after all? Well, this mystery holds no fangs for you, master. He thinks you’ve bound me because that’s normally the only way for a wizard to empower one of my kind, and even then it would take weeks of intimate rituals for the endeavor to bear any great fruit. For the rest, well, I am what I eat, and you fed me a thousand banquets at once without giving me time to digest them. Your power so fills me that it completely dominates my own, leaving me a living extension of your magic. Like a familiar spirit, almost.”
“An extension of my magic? What does that mean, exactly?”
She smiled. “You don’t want a slave, and so I retain my own will. But even so, I can feel your desires move within me. Command me as you do your talisman and you shall find me leaping to obey quite willingly.”
She paused, and bit her lip. “It’s a heady feeling, holding such power within me. I know you’re going to take it back, at least for now. But I do hope you’ll do this with me again sometime. It would be fascinating to explore what I can become with enough power.”
“It’s an interesting thought,” I admitted. “I suppose that if the power wasn’t coming from me it would just make you a stronger dryad, instead of giving you an echo of my sorceries?”
“I think so. Perhaps we could experiment?”
“Oh, Daniel loves experimenting,” Cerise commented. “Just wait till he gets you back to the lab.”
She did a wingover, and swooped down to land atop the arcology block.
Alanna shook her head. “She’s such a flirt. Don’t worry, master, I’m not going to be following you around trying to seduce you. You’ve enough women doing that, and not nearly enough time to indulge them all.”
I settled in for a landing. Alanna tensed, getting ready to jump out of my arms as soon as we were on the ground. But I had to give this a try. I reached out with my magic, looking for that connection she’d alluded to.
Oh. Damn, how had I missed that? It was so obvious. Just a thought, and she stilled. Settled back into my arms, perfectly content to stay there as long as I wanted her to. I could wiggle her fingers. I could close her eyes. I could feel the magic in her responding to my attention, eager to do anything I wanted it to.
I could feel her heart. Open, unguarded and completely trusting, in a way I couldn’t imagine any human matching. It was disturbing, but also kind of neat. If this was what having a familiar was like, I could see why mages would want one. Another thing to think about when I had time.
Right now I didn’t. I set her down, and gently disengaged the mana feed. She pouted a little, but didn’t argue.
“Thank you for an amazing experience, my lord,” she said. “I have enjoyed many a hunt, but never one like that.”
“You’re welcome, Alanna. Why don’t you go see how Corinna is doing?”
She gave me a little almost-bow. “I shall, my lord. And I shall return to give that accounting once your influence has faded, but I expect it will take several days.”
Cerise watched her go with a quizzical look. “Accounting? What was she talking about, Daniel?”
“I guess the mental connection thing works both ways. I was thinking I should check back with her once that wears off, and see how she really feels about it. I’m afraid there might be some kind of accidental mind control thing going on.”
Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Page 31