by Rosie Scott
“There is no doubt in my mind that Comercio will eventually be attacked by Sirius's armies to retake it,” I replied honestly. “The timing is a more contentious issue. Sirius likes to work behind the scenes while pulling the strings of his puppets, and he is slow and calculating. I prefer attacking relentlessly to force foes to the defensive and give them no time to breathe or re-evaluate. I know Sirius's ways from living with him and seeing him work. He knows my ways because I have left evidence of them across the world throughout my campaigns.
“It's possible Sirius will react quickly to defend his throne, but if he does, my tactics will force him to work out of his comfort zone. Mere weeks ago, Sera was preparing for an attack from me in the east. Because I have taken the capital first, I've forced Sirius to contend with a situation he hadn't considered. He is now king, and backed into a corner. It may be a more attractive prospect for him to hole up inside of Sera and take advantage of its many defenses. After all, Sirius's safety has always come first in his mind. He fled from my attack on Sera years ago.”
Azazel held up a finger beside me. “There is, of course, the matter of the heir. Terran Sera has proven he is more likely than his father to meet us on the battlefield. If Comercio is attacked, it is almost guaranteed it will be under Terran's directive.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “To answer your second question, then, I am taking many precautions. Maggie Roark, my chief engineer, has been building and outfitting this city's walls with defensive siege weapons. We will leave multiple units of our armies here for Comercio's defense, and that includes thousands of necromancers who can utilize those casualties on the fields we spoke about earlier. I haven't yet decided which general I'd like to leave in charge of the city's defense, but thanks to the aid of my Fremont allies, we have griffon messengers with which to hasten news of potential attack. Even if Sera attacks, Comercio will have prior warning and can summon us from Narangar.”
I took a deep inhale and summarized, “I cannot promise you that Sirius won't attack this city in my absence, but given our knowledge of our enemy's movements, history, and situation, I believe it is more likely that they will move slower than us. If this assumption is incorrect, we should still have ample warning to react and return to prevent Comercio's fall.”
Though my words were said with honesty and confidence, I could only hope they would be true.
Twenty-eight
21st of High Star, 431
When we left Comercio for Narangar in early New Moon, I kept the tens of thousands of corpses from its battle there as a defense. Other than the Twelve soldier Azazel killed in Dark Star, there had been no further messengers or scouts spotted from Sera. There was no doubt in my mind at this point that Sirius knew I'd taken Comercio, and he would have been daft not to prepare an attack of his own. Thus far, however, all was silent in the north.
I chose Zephyr as Comercio's defensive general because I felt she was best for the job. She knew the weaknesses of Comercio's gates, for she had exploited them herself. The griffon riders she oversaw could spot an approaching army from Sera during their nightly patrols, and I'd requested that she send us a messenger in the case of an impending attack. Staying in Comercio with Zephyr were Chance, Rek, Hasani's cavalry unit, and the seven remaining dragon-kin from Calder's army. Given Narangar's location in the mountain, the cavalry and dragon-kin would have been under-utilized there, but they would be necessary in Comercio if Sera attacked. Chance had been phenomenally helpful with keeping Comercio's inventory of resources well-stocked, and he'd aided me in making sense of the city's finances and how to hold them in the positive despite the strains of the war. I trusted Chance to continue his work while I was gone, and the others knew he was to be protected like any other member of my court.
I instructed Rek and the orcs to stay in Comercio because I couldn't expect them to easily differentiate between soldiers and civilians in a city with no exterior battlefield. As fantastic of a warrior as Rek was, I couldn't keep track of him in battle most of the time to direct him. If Sera's armies advanced, Rek and the orcs knew they could attack enemy soldiers coming from the north. There had been orc casualties in the Battle of Comercio, but not nearly as many as there should have been considering their smaller numbers and the way they'd isolated themselves on the field. Thus, no matter how outnumbered the orcs were in the case of an attack, they would be monumentally important to our victory.
Comercio's recruitment had gone so well that we could take most our remaining army with us, leaving many of the new recruits under Zephyr's lead. There were also thousands of civilians who had learned elemental magic but hadn't agreed to join the army. If the city's walls were breached, I expected many of them to defend their homes. Calder had left a few thousand of his soldiers in Comercio to boost their numbers as well, for the corpses surrounding the city needed many necromancers to raise them all. The reinforcements he'd sent for after the Battle of Comercio hadn't arrived yet, but we expected them to in High Star.
Calder abided by Azazel's request and sent a messenger to Quellden many weeks before our departure from Comercio asking for a small army to meet us at the entrance of Narangar in early-High Star. If all went as planned, the Alderi would interrupt any ambushes from above with one of their own. I only hoped they could work together long enough to succeed.
Our army passed by Comercio's Alderi reinforcements halfway through our trek, and we stopped only long enough to exchange information with them. They informed us that Calder's last messenger had made it to the underground tunnel when they'd passed her, so that gave us reason to believe she delivered the last directive.
West Caravaneer Road curved south the farther we traveled, heading straight toward the center of the Golden Peaks which jutted out of the horizon like pointed teeth. It was amazing to think that I'd been on the other side of that mountain range fighting on the seas nine years ago, for the comparison made it feel like I'd traveled the world twice over.
New Moon turned to High Star as our army finally entered the valley between mountains that Holter scouted the previous year. The Golden Peaks were just as I remembered them, large towering pyramids of gray rock that existed amid perpetual snowfall. Patches of trees sprinkled some mountains like nature wished to conquer stone but was too lazy to give much of an effort. It was the most beautiful time of year for the location, for the vast flat grasslands of the valley bowed to the splendor of the mountains in the evenings by falling into their shadow, keeping our men cool despite the sun's dominance. Setting up for camp was easy and quick in such spacious flat land, and Azazel and the other guardsmen were better able to listen for threats when the hug of the surrounding mountains echoed most noises into the valley.
Caravaneer Road stayed the same width during our entire trek which only made the narrowing of the valley ever more obvious as the path curved up to the northwest. The city of Narangar was just ahead, but it hid behind two massive closed doors fitted in the mountain at the end of the road. The doors were built out of solid stone and carved with ornate designs that depicted groups of dwarves walking on some invisible path into the heavens where artistic renditions of gods awaited. The doors had no handles, for handles were useless on a gate dozens of stories tall.
They built Narangar's main entrance in a cove of its own mountain that had been chipped out over decades of work with pickaxes. Jagged gray rock stood tall on either side of the entrance like walls, stretching out from the doors for a while before curving outward and meeting with the natural slopes of the mountain far away on both sides. Though I couldn't see the paths above the road and doors that Holter had scouted, I believed they were there. The rock ledge was wide enough to hold groups of soldiers for an ambush, and the upper walkways seemed to connect from one side of the entrance to the other from above the massive doors.
There were two problems I found with our situation as my allies and I assessed Narangar's entrance with tens of thousands of men waiting for our decision. One: the small Alderi army Calder requested wasn'
t here, for we expected it to come from the path to the entrance's left, and there wasn't a soul in sight. Two: even if they had come, there were no enemies for them to fight, no set-up of an ambush we had so anticipated. There was no one here.
Azazel frowned as he scanned his superior eyes over the ledges before he slowly moved them back in the other direction. A gust of evening wind whistled through the valley and over our soldiers, only compounding the fact that the area felt so empty and lifeless. It seemed Narangar was abandoned and had seen no life in years.
“What do you see?” I asked Azazel.
“Nothing,” he replied.
“What do you hear?” I inquired next.
“...nothing.” It was the scariest thing he could have said. Of all the things in the world I trusted, I could always rely on Azazel's senses.
Cyrus looked over the area from a few feet away and shook his head. “Something's off. There's something there.”
Azazel lifted a hand and sought life. Though no energy materialized over his palm, he said, “There is. I feel it. We are being watched.”
I used alteration magic myself, moving my hand over the doorway, its overhead ledges, and then the surrounding land. The only time red energy appeared was when it detected my own soldiers. But I felt the same way the others did; even though I could not see my enemy, they were well-aware of me.
I spun and walked through my army, commanding soldiers to prepare alteration and life magic shields. Though Narangar was a mostly dwarven city, I also expected mages and gods to be here, so we needed to be prepared for anything. I had a feeling Narangar and its defenders were being protected by some kind of magic I'd never come into contact with before, and it had to be powerful. If I weren't mistaken, we were already dealing with a god.
We set our armies up in blocks before the gates of Narangar, with Fremont's troops in a unit to the left and my army to its right. Behind Fremont was Calder's army, and behind mine were the Naharans. Thus, as I reached their men, I called out to Calder and Hasani to prepare for battle with transforming and shields. Though Narangar didn't appear to be much of a threat, something was coming.
By the time I returned to the front of our armies, Marcus had the metal battering ram resting beside him that he'd made to prepare for this battle. He glanced down at Cyrus and asked, “So...hold off on the gate, then?”
“Yes,” his king replied. “We don't understand what we're dealing with yet.”
“Holter,” Azazel turned to the younger man and requested, “build a golem.” The earth vibrated as Holter ordered the land in front of his boots to create a monstrosity out of dirt and clay. When the golem was standing before us covered in fur made of long grasses, Azazel pointed forward at the remaining road to Narangar that was open to an ambush. “Send it in.”
Holter directed the golem forward, and it shambled forth without fear, its heavy footsteps echoing off of the nearby stone walls. It continued on the road to Narangar until it went by the edges of the claustrophobic pass.
Then, it vanished. It wasn't dispelled; it disappeared. An entire mass of earth was now thin air, and the pounding of its footsteps was no longer heard.
“What?” Holter frowned.
“Direct it back,” I told him.
Holter did so. In seconds, the golem reappeared at the edge of the pass, following its master's orders to return. Confused, Holter sent it back in, and it disappeared just where it had before.
“It's a...” Holter trailed off.
“Mirage,” Azazel finished, his eyes once more scanning over the cliff ledges ahead. “Kai, we're dealing with a goddess. Malachi's logbook. Remember?”
“Yes.” I flicked my eyes over to Cyrus and explained, “Mirage, the goddess of illusion. According to Malachi, she gets herself into trouble before getting away due to her ability to simply disappear. It is said that not even alteration magic can detect her. If she is alive, she is here.”
“If this is an illusion, there's a purpose to it,” Cyrus replied, motioning to the pass. “If a goddess is here, it's not just herself she's protecting. There is an ambush here. We just can't see it.”
“Then we will dismantle it before it becomes a problem,” I said, stepping forward. “Generat le funel.”
The evening skies darkened, covering up the light pink of an early sunset with ropes of moody gray. As the spell coaxed the new clouds to pull together into a funnel, the ground below our feet gave way.
It started off like a spell pushed through the ground in the northeast, just below the towering mountainside and within the protection of the mirage. The dry grasslands under my army devolved quickly into sopping, thick mud, and the power of the unknown spell rapidly spread its nasty fingers through the earth, reaching toward the armies of Calder and Hasani at our flanks. All at once, it rendered still our tens of thousands of men, their boots unwilling release from the mud's embrace. Soldiers everywhere desperately pulled up their feet with the sounds of squelches, but few of them could move.
As if our situation couldn't get any worse, the earth trembled. With the overbearing echoes of crackling rock, the land split just east of my army as a summoned wall made of solid stone rose from underground. Soldiers rattled and fell into the mud as the wall grew over our heads and continued ever farther, towering above our army at fifty feet. The wall started near the cliff edge and went all the way back to Hasani's army, blocking our soldiers from seeing or moving east.
Crack! A yelp of surprise escaped my lips as the earth split open at my feet, and then I was rising. Whoever summoned the first stone wall had built another right under me that stretched before our army in the north, meeting the front edge of the eastern barrier. Because I'd been so far ahead to summon the tornado, I was the only one affected. I fell onto my stomach on the rising stone, my fingers desperately seeking a grasp in jagged rock as I rose absurdly high in the air. My heavy, sticky boots helped to keep my place on the wall as it grew until my friends were nothing but specks in the masses below.
Everyone was screaming. The soldiers were now stuck between two stone walls that blocked their progress to the north and east, and then the world cursed me further. Multiple arrows and crossbow bolts clashed into my shield as I laid vulnerable on the wall. My eyes followed their arcs to the right side of the pass, just where we thought an ambush would be. But there was nothing there. No sounds, no movement. I didn't seek life because I knew the spell was worthless against Mirage's illusion.
The tornado I'd summoned earlier finally touched down on the eastern mountain path. Other than the storm's roar, I saw no victims and heard nothing else until a body of a dwarven soldier flew out of the illusion of the pass and splattered against the eastern blockade in a mess of gore. Rocky debris in the twister's winds became spotted with blood from hitting victims in the spin, but the enemies were still invisible.
“Air mages!” Uriel's hoarse voice echoed out from far below against the northern rock wall I was on. “Use cold wave!”
I understood Uriel's strategy. Mud was tough to combat. While earth mages could create sand to absorb its moisture, that risked weighing our soldiers down even more. Our only way to get out of this was to dry the earth to loosen its grasp.
“Kai!” Marcus's booming voice called my attention farther west, and I lifted my head up from the stone to find him. His head was only ten feet below the wall. The giant Sentinel motioned toward me. “Crawl over! I can reach you!”
Shik-shik-shik-shik!
I gritted my teeth as my shield finally broke. One dwarven crossbow bolt landed in my upper thigh, though my armor put up enough resistance it only buried in the flesh. I regenerated my protection and healed the wound before crawling toward the west a bit at a time, my heart pounding in my ears. My nervousness of heights blurred my vision. The rock wall beneath me was fifty feet tall, but it was only two to three feet wide. Open earth beckoned to me on either side, so I focused my eyes on the stone in its center.
A flash of movement in my peripheral vision pull
ed my focus to the right side of the wall. Hurrying alongside it from the northeastern battlefield was one man, newly freed from the mirage's reach. He appeared human, but when he glanced up at me, his determined eyes were the same color as mine. The god was fairly tall for resembling a human at just below six feet, and he had a head full of straggly black hair that almost kept his eyes from view. Multiple rings adorned his fingers, and a thick chain hung from his neck. This god didn't like restrictive armor, and though he was limber, his bare arms showed off muscle in bulges that glimmered in the light of the setting sun.
“God!” I screamed down to my allies. “A god is on the field!”
The god smirked at my warning as he finally reached the edge of the northern wall. His hands faced the ground, and the earth trembled once more. The god lifted both hands slowly toward the sky, and a new stone wall rose in the west to heed his request. Multiple screams pierced the air as the barrier erupted amid Calder's army, throwing many of his soldiers to the side and carrying others into the air.
Now, barriers surrounded our armies on three sides, and though Uriel's request was being heeded, the mud was drying exceptionally slowly. Our entire military was stuck on the field. I thought back to all the intel we'd gathered about this battle, and a sick feeling sunk into the pit of my stomach. Chairel was convinced Narangar would wipe out my rebellion, which meant they contained my army to prepare for total annihilation.
The roar of the tornado ceased as the spell retreated into the sky behind me. As I continued to crawl toward Marcus, I only hoped that whatever or whoever was supposed to wipe us out was already out of the equation.
“Break down the wall!” Marcus directed his soldiers. Out of all of our men, the giants were the least affected by mud, for its weight was minuscule even when it caked over their heavy armor, and they were strong enough to resist its pull. Thus, the giants quickly heeded Marcus's directive, throwing blunt weapons into the northern wall until it chipped and cracked with the pressure.