‘Slow,’ he pulsed to the Koli. ‘Slow.’
They ignored him, powering on and adjusting to fly by the two emissaries for peace. Yasal angled away too, Sha letting him go and continuing on his trajectory to bring him into formation with them rather than bar their passage.
‘Falon-Koli, you will stop and you will talk. You cannot reach them.’
‘Do not try and stop me, Sha-Kaan,’ pulsed Falon. ‘This is not your concern.’
‘Every conflict is my concern at this time,’ said Sha, letting irritation enter his tone. ‘We work for all our futures.’
‘I have no future!’ roared Falon. ‘The Skoor have attacked our Broodlands. We are destroyed. We are all that is left.’
Another pulse flooded Sha.
‘We trusted you, Sha-Kaan, and we have been betrayed. You fight for your future. All we have left is revenge.’
‘No,’ said Yasal, his pulse angry. ‘You must not attack. You must not risk all that we are building.’
‘You build nothing,’ spat Falon-Koli. ‘Alliance based on lies and rumours. Where is your threat, Sha-Kaan? I will tell you. It is the Skoor. And they have used you to destroy us. We will die but we will exact revenge. It is all we have.’
‘One more time. Slow. Please.’
Sha-Kaan was cruising in a high arc above them now. Closing fast. Yasal bored up from below on intercept.
‘Stop us and feel our flame.’
At a signal, the seven Koli split. Sha-Kaan bellowed his frustration. He pulsed his brood as Yasal would be doing. Skoor scattered from their cloud base. One hundred and seventy-five of them; completely overwhelming for the Koli.
‘Flame take you, Caval-Skoor,’ he pulsed. ‘What have you done?’
‘What we had to,’ came the calm reply. ‘And now the task will be completed and you will have my attention.’
Caval had broadcast to all that might hear. A flood of enraged responses filled the psyche. They would not fly with the Skoor; they had put aside their disputes; they would side with the Koli to drive the Skoor from the skies.
Naik and Kaan dragons begged for calm while they aligned themselves for defence. Sha-Kaan, his heart thundering in the centre of his body, felt the hope drain from him. He roared again, blasting flame into the empty sky. Koli and Skoor closed on one another, calls of hate, taunts of death sounding loud. Broods across the sky formed into attack and defence formations. Stara and Gost packed together. The smaller broods gathered, some already flew in the slipstream of the few Koli. The first flames struck, the first jaws clamped on.
‘Yasal, break away. Don’t put yourself into this. Kaan, to the heights.’
The Broods Kaan and Naik spiralled upwards. Sha-Kaan heard the screeches of burned dragons and he closed his eyes.
‘Please,’ he pulsed to any that would listen. ‘Pull away. Tanis-Veret, Koln-Stara, Eram-Gost. All of you who would save our dimension pull away. Join us in the heights.’
But the deafening roars of battle below tolled at him that they were lost.
Chapter 29
The Raven had been aware the elven-led Julatsan force was approaching long before they could see it. Auum had brought them slightly south of Triverne Lake to a hidden position overlooking the route of the wagons.
It was largely a psychological cover point. True, the crag formation gave them a sight and attack barrier from everywhere but head-on; but The Raven had a signature that the demons craved and they would sense it long before they needed their eyes. The risk was a calculated one. Denser considered the density of mage souls would be enough to deflect their attention for long enough to allow a clear run in.
For some time, they had been watching the demons tracking the train, swarming and swooping to attack in their hundreds. Spells had flared and bludgeoned in response. The low roar of order, combat and movement had been a constant companion. But only now was the picture complete.
Coming into view on the crest of a long, shallow rise, the first wagons were picked out in late-afternoon silhouette. They were no more than a mile away. Hirad could see elves shadowing each wagon as well as those that rode canvas roofs and running plates.
Demons clustered in the sky above and battled inside the ColdRoom shell as the train made its ponderous progress towards Xetesk, pace governed by the fragile concentration of the casters within the wagons. The mages without whom the allies would be overwhelmed.
Yellow light washed out from just behind the crest of the hill. Demons screeched and scattered. Some fell, spiralling helplessly, others dived on the casters.
‘How are they doing that?’ asked Hirad.
‘Rebraal must have spaced the ColdRooms,’ said Erienne. ‘Created mana-rich areas.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Denser. ‘If you consider that mana is channelled over the outsides of the shells, it’ll create areas of real density if the spacing is right.’
Hirad looked across at him. ‘We really must talk about it some more. I’d so love to learn.’
‘You are such a heathen, Coldheart,’ said Denser. ‘It’s a very clever idea. Nothing you’d ever dream up.’
‘Risky, isn’t it?’ said Darrick.
‘Only if they hang around once they’ve cast,’ said Erienne.
Hirad watched the fighting inside the shell and couldn’t help but smile. From this distance it was impossible to identify facial features but it hardly mattered. A demon attack went in. A swarm of tiny demons Auum identified as strike-strain, and that Hirad recognised only too well, were backed by the man-size reavers.
The strike-strain were there to cause confusion where they could and they plunged straight for the wagon drivers. And there they met the defence. The elves, deliberate, graceful and always on the offensive. And their human companions, those that had survived this far, frenzied, panicked and forever on the back foot. That was why Rebraal needed The Raven. To give the humans focus and belief.
‘How many wagons set out?’ he asked.
‘Fifteen,’ said Auum.
‘Dear Gods burning,’ said Hirad.
The end of the train was in sight. Eight wagons remained.
‘They’ll be here in less than half an hour,’ said Denser.
‘Know that for a fact, do you?’ said Hirad.
‘Educated guess.’
‘Hardly matters. We need to get in there and get involved. We’ve done enough hanging around. We’ve—’
‘Hirad, are you all right?’ Erienne’s hand was on his neck.
‘I—’
The full force of the rage hit him then. He knew he was falling but he was helpless to save himself. His body was suffused with the strength of Sha-Kaan’s fury and he had no option but to let it wash him away.
‘Sha-Kaan,’ he managed. ‘I can’t—’
The Great Kaan was close to losing control. The frustrations and anger thudded around Hirad’s skull, rendering him helpless. He was dimly aware of his friends speaking to him, touching him, but he had no way of responding. He gathered the vestiges of his consciousness to him and did the only thing he could.
‘Sha-Kaan, stop. You’re killing me.’
Abruptly, the hammering of emotion within him ceased but did not allow him to return to consciousness.
‘Skies take them, they are destroying all our hopes.’ Sha-Kaan’s words flooded his senses. Hirad felt his despair and impotence.
‘Who?’ he asked into the void.
Sha-Kaan sighed, a sonorous exhalation laced with sorrow. ‘It would take so long to explain. Since you’re unexpectedly at rest, I will grant you this. See through my eyes. Feel what I feel.’
Hirad experienced an acute sensation of falling. He felt the ground disappear and a sense of vastness take its place. Cold air channelled across his body and every nerve and fibre was suffused with ancient pain and longing.
He heard the beat of wings, felt their resistance against the air, their driving power. His nostrils caught the harsh scents of wood and oil, the smell of wrecked, burned flesh. He
could taste something acrid and sour in his mouth. His mind reeled under the weight of emotion pressing from every direction. And finally, he opened his eyes and drank in the skies of Beshara.
What he saw chilled his bones. Beneath him, as Sha-Kaan’s head swept around to give him the panorama, the sky was a mixture of flashing scales, blinding yellow flame and dark smoke, torn by the winds of the upper skies. The battering roar of mouths disgorging fire swept up to him on a tide of fury so intense it shuddered him.
Hirad couldn’t begin to count the dragons intent on destruction below. He recalled the sight he had seen in these same skies at the time of the Noonshade rip but it was a mere skirmish compared to this.
‘Almost a thousand dragons chase a petty squabble and damage us all such that we may never recover,’ toned Sha-Kaan. ‘And outside our dimension, the Arakhe will be sensing it all. Fire this intense and the temptation of dragons to switch out of the battle and move into inter-dimensional space to escape could open the door to them.’
The noise from below was truly extraordinary. A flight of Skoor, twenty strong and glittering sand-yellow, curved in a tight arc and drove through the left flank of their enemies where they pressured fellow Skoor. Massed in a roughly spherical formation, they tore into their targets. Flame scoured every point of the compass around them. Forward, the lead dragons collided with those in their path.
It was a devastating tactic and one being mimicked across the fight. Dragons bellowed and squealed, their wings, bellies and backs scorched and bubbling. Smoke trails criss-crossed. Fangs ripped into necks. Dragons by the dozen fell from the sky. Yet still the Skoor were losing the battle. Outnumbered five to one, their moves couldn’t hope to counter the enemy strength for ever. But their pride kept them fighting. The attrition rate was awful.
‘On a day when we should have been working to secure all our futures, one brood has been rendered extinct and others will be so depleted they cannot hope to survive.’
Hirad felt the ocean-deep grief as if it were his own.
‘In our pride we used to think it was other species so blind that they would fight each other over nothing though their mutual extinction was the only sure result. And yet we are worse. Our failure could extinguish so many lives because we have chosen to touch them without offering them the choice to refuse us.
‘Tell me you are close to Xetesk.’
‘Less than a day, Great Kaan. But there’s one hell of a fight coming to get in there. The demons aren’t exactly going to usher us in, are they?’
Sha-Kaan paused. Below, the centre of the fight exploded in appalling flame, engulfing fifty, a hundred even. ‘When is the fight?’
‘It’s already begun. Julatsans and the Al-Arynaar are under attack as they approach Xetesk. We’re joining them and we’ll all enter the city early tomorrow morning.’
‘I will bring the Kaan to you.’
‘No,’ said Hirad. ‘We shouldn’t declare our hand and announce all our allies. Save your strength, save as many as you can and be ready when I call.’
Sha-Kaan rumbled. ‘You could fail at the gates.’
‘We won’t fail,’ said Hirad. ‘We’re—’
‘Don’t,’ said Sha-Kaan. ‘Don’t say it.’ Embryonic humour flared, gone in a wing beat. ‘Time to go, Hirad Coldheart. I must pick through the ashes and rebuild what I can.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Skies keep you, my friend.’
Hirad opened his eyes, pain already a fading pulse in his head. Above him, a ring of anxious faces. Thraun’s cracked a smile.
‘Sha-Kaan?’ he said and held out a hand.
Hirad grasped it and pulled himself up.
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘More trouble, I’m afraid. Look, we need to get a move on when we get into Xetesk. I’ll tell you on the way but it seems to me that every day we delay, fewer dragons will be alive to shield us.’
The cacophony surrounding the wagon train was so complete Rebraal could barely make himself heard. The demon attacks were incessant now and since the disastrous loss of two ColdRoom mage teams the previous night, the pressure on the Al-Arynaar warriors was acute. The humans were panicked now, losing their heads and then their souls when their discipline failed. Five of the eight wagons had elven drivers now and so few humans actually remained that Rebraal contemplated placing them all in wagons. Through his irritation at their failings, though, he couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer doggedness that they showed. And every time their numbers fell, they still found time to joke. The Al-Arynaar couldn’t understand laughter in such dire circumstance but Rebraal had seen it all before with The Raven.
Right now, though, he was more concerned with the horses. All of them were tired and the accumulated stress was evident in trembling limbs and eyes that spoke of their confusion. His elves still spoke soothing words to them but eventually that would not be enough.
Above him, the demons were massing again. He didn’t have much time. Rebraal ran down the line of surviving wagons. His limp was becoming more pronounced. The cloth tight around his thigh could do only so much. The claws of the cursyrd had raked deep during the last attack and of course he hadn’t been able to rest and so the blood still flowed. The wound felt frozen, his muscle damaged, but he could not afford to stop. Not until Auum and The Raven reached them.
But where were they?
The wagon train was passing to the south-east of Triverne Lake now. Before long, they could expect concerted attack from the Xetesk cursyrd, adding to the legions that had dogged them from Julatsa.
Two days of constant noise, repeated attacks and movement broken only to change horses was taking quick toll. They were all tired: the mages in the wagons with paper-thin concentration; the warriors running beside them with muscles burning and fatigued; attack mages with barely time to cast the simplest spell in the mana holes before the cursyrd were upon them.
In every face he passed, human or elven, he saw exhaustion growing. In humans, he saw belief wavering. He shouted encouragement, clenched his fists and demanded strength. He invoked Yniss and Tual. He muttered under his breath for Shorth to be ready to accept them all.
Over five hundred had left Julatsa, man and elf. They had lost over a hundred and the survivors needed fresh hope. The Raven would provide it. The Raven never joined the losing side.
He reached the head of the column. Elves drove the leading pair of wagons now. Tired horses flagged but he was loath to stop. He glanced up for the thousandth time. The sky was darkening with cursyrd, their voices clamoured ever louder.
‘Ready!’ he called.
The word was passed down the line. Elves rode wagons, clustered by their sides, defended mages running close to mana holes. All felt their hearts quicken.
‘Dila’heth!’
The lead elven mage answered him. She was out of sight on the other side of the wagon. He jogged round to her where she talked with Pheone. The Julatsan leader was still strong, hanging onto the threads of human courage.
‘Gyal’s tears, Rebraal, you should be resting.’
Rebraal grinned fiercely. ‘You know I can’t.’
‘Where are they?’ asked Dila. She like him was shouting to make herself heard above the din of the cursyrd above.
‘Close,’ he said. ‘They have to be.’ He caught Pheone’s eye. ‘They’ll be here.’
She smiled. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Where’s your position?’ asked Dila.
‘I’ll be with the second pair of wagons. Keep the horses straight. Try that move outside the shell if you get the chance. Anything to disrupt them.’
She nodded. ‘They are so many. And think of the hundreds we have already killed.’
‘No, don’t think that way. Think only that Xetesk will be in sight before dark and that we will be inside before noon tomorrow. They’ll be expecting us.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Yniss watches over us.’
‘He needs to do more than that.’
‘I he
ar you, Dila. Run strong.’
He turned to Pheone. ‘Get on the wagon.’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I need to be seen.’
‘You need to live,’ said Rebraal. ‘There are greater fights to come. Please. I don’t want to have to put you on there myself.’
Pheone bit her lip but nodded. ‘I guess you’re right.’
Rebraal inclined his head and jogged away back towards the second pair of wagons. He could barely see the horses for the elven escort. The human drivers though, he could, and they were terrified, eyes up not ahead. He breasted through the flanking guards, shouting his confidence and hearing it reflected back. He leapt onto the kicking board of the left-hand cart.
‘We go forwards, not upwards,’ he said, his hand on the shoulder of the driver.
‘Yeah, but death comes from upwards not forwards,’ growled the middle-aged man, Brynn. He had a face latticed by the cuts of the strike-strain, a bandaged head and a belligerent belief in his right to survive. Rebraal liked him. He was Hirad, ten years hence.
‘Let me watch the sky, Brynn. Just keep these animals in a straight line.’
‘They know better than to deviate with me behind them,’ said Brynn, face softening by a degree. ‘Ride with me this time, eh? See what it’s like from up here.’
‘I intend to,’ said Rebraal.
And the sky fell in.
Strike-strain poured into the back of the line, reavers to the front. It was a tactic they had worked before, attempting to drive the train at different speeds front and back, creating a chaotic middle ground.
‘Keep your form!’ called Rebraal into the din, his words carried up and down the line. ‘Hold your pace! Hold your pace!’
Like the locusts that plagued the southern dry plains of Calaius, the strike-strain flooded the rear wagons. For a few moments, Rebraal watched the clamouring cloud descend. Blades flickered in the sudden half-light. An IceWind howled a tear in the enemy and the wagons were obscured from view.
The Raven Collection Page 293