by Paul Kidd
They had speed on the bird; speed and height. A deadly dive, a flash of spears, and vengeance would be theirs. With a trilling whoop, twelve hippogriff cavalry made sharp wing-overs and sped toward the ground.
Tekoriikii blurred his silly, stubby wings, dragging his brilliant tail across the sky. He sped scarcely a wingtip's length above the ground toward a gateway now fixed at only two feet tall. No airborne creature could possibly make the gap. The hippogriffs hurtled themselves into greater speed, long wings whipping up and down as they outstretched their deadly claws.
"Tek Tek-a-tek Tekorii-kii-kii!"
As the scout leader goggled, a small sally port opened in the portcullis. The bird folded flat its wings and shot like an arrow through the little door, which instantly slammed shut in its wake.
Hippogriff riders, moving too fast to break off their manic dives, hauled at their reins and screamed. Men collided with each other, plowed into the moat, or crashed straight into the gatehouse walls. Screaming like a frightened maid, the scout leader somehow laid his hippogriff on its side; man and mount slammed into the hard-packed road and slithered on their flanks, screaming in fear as the jagged portcullis spines ripped past-a hairsbreadth overhead.
They hit a garbage barrel, showering themselves with refuse until they came to rest buried in a pile of dung. Flapping weakly in shock and pain, the scout leader and his battle steed could do nothing but collapse as a brilliant orange figure fluttered to rest at their side.
"Glub glub!"
Tekoriikii made to sing a song of triumph over his vanquished foes, but to his extreme annoyance, both man and hippogriff screamed in fright and fainted clean away. Sniffing in injured pride, the bird scraped dust over his victims with his claws, fluffed up his tail feathers, and strutted off toward the battlefield.
From his vantage point behind the lines, Svarezi slammed his perspective glass shut. His sorcerers streamed in panic from the field, hounded by monsters summoned by enemy magicians; his entire corps of mages had been destroyed by a peasant militia crammed into wagons.
Svarezi's brooding silence was terrible to behold. He watched the enemy war wagons halting to allow their infantry to close the gaps between the vehicles and slowly begin trundling onward toward his own battle lines.
Behind him, an officer stilled his own pure silver warhorse with a pat of one armored hand.
"We disabled almost ten of them, sire."
"Ten." Svarezi's voice remained utterly without tone. "I see."
"Rock to mud spells proved fairly effective."
Svarezi swung himself up into his hippogriff's saddle, stilling the creature's brooding backward glance with a scowl. He wrapped the reins about one wrist.
"They have demolished a sorcery corps which cost almost three hundred thousand ducats to amass-and all for the cost of ten wagons bogged in the mud." Svarezi kept his cold, professional stare locked on the advancing attack. "We shall make an all-arms assault at the center of their line. Use one third of the army and match them one-to-one. Once the Lomatran forces are committed, I will personally lead the reserves on a drive to the city gates.
"The Sun Cannon will wait until we have descended the hill slopes out of line of sight, and then have it blow their wagons clean away."
Svarezi raised one black, mailed fist, then dropped his open hand to point straight at the valley floor. Behind him twenty thousand densely packed infantry, demilancers, and knights surged toward Lomatra like a vast, organic wall.
"Here they come! I think we've jerked their chains." Miliana had been sitting perched on the upper turret hatch of her war-turtle, watching Tekoriikii's antics overhead. Her reverie came to a dramatic end as catapults began firing from the ridges overhead. "Stir up the horses, and let's get moving!"
She slammed shut the hatch, flicked mistletoe onto Lorenzo's back, and heard a muffled sound of voices from outside as militia packed themselves tight behind the war-turtle's hull. The surviving vehicles scuttled on across the ground like deadly crabs, thickening out a line of the Lomatran alliance's best infantry.
Safely inside the armored hull, Miliana frowned, crammed her eyes against her periscopes, and gave a sudden curse.
"Lorenzo-you know how I said we were outnumbered about three to one?"
"What?" Lorenzo peered through his driving slits, steering the huge vehicle by a series of cranks and ratchets. "Yes?"
"I lied. There's ten to one odds out there, or I'm a garden gnome!"
"It doesn't matter!" Lorenzo let his vision slit clank shut, the hull outside rattling to a sudden rain of arrow fire. "Is Tekoriikii clear?"
"What?"
"Did Tekoriikii get rid of all their air cavalry?"
"Yes!" Miliana had to shout above the awful clatter of hooves, springal winches, and catapult wheels inside the belly of the wagon. "When should he make his run?"
"Not until all their troops have moved away from the artillery!" Lorenzo swung the war-turtle to the left, where it jounced over the ruins of a warrior-priest of Tempus's portable battle shrine. "All we need to do is get that bird to the Sun Cannon, and we can retire behind the city walls."
Suddenly the entire universe lit brighter than a bomb; searing white light glared in through the vision slits, burning paint and scorching skin that fell beneath the beams. The war-turtle shuddered as a shock wave trembled through the ground.
Wide-eyed as an owl, Miliana gazed down at Lorenzo in shock.
"What in the name of Talos's tongue was that?"
Crew commanders flung open their hatches to stare. In the center of the alliance battle line, a smoking crater still glowed with molten lava at the rims. A scorched debris of pikes and polearms showed the fate of a company of infantry.
The surrounding regiments were milling in disarray; men who had been gazing in the direction of the blast were blinded by the dazzle. Lorenzo stuck his head out into the open air, stared at the blazing destruction, and gave a bitter curse.
"Miliana! Signal the other war-turtles!"
"Was that the Sun Cannon?" The girl still seemed frozen in utter disbelief. "Was it? Was that the Sun Cannon?"
"Yes, it was the damned Sun Cannon!" Lorenzo abandoned his horses and crawled across the crossbowmen's firing platform to reach the rear of the vehicle. "Miliana! Signal the turtles to make smoke! We're abandoning the infantry!"
"Abandoning them?" The princess wrenched herself around, tangling skirts and frilly knickers as she tried to find the artist as he crawled under her. "We can't leave them all alone!"
"We have to!" A fuse sparked off a pot filled with a sulphurous black brew. "The Sun Cannon can't shoot at what it can't see! We'll leave the infantry in the smoke screen, and the turtles will draw its fire." Lorenzo set his smudge pot spewing dense clouds of smoke behind the tank and crawled clumsily over the backs of his draft horses. "The turtles will punch through the center of their battle line and head for their reserves."
"Lorenzo-we can't leave the infantry all alone against those… hordes!"
Lorenzo slipped into his seat, flipped open his vision flaps, and wrenched the vehicle over to one side.
"It's safer! Once his army closes with the infantry, the Sun Cannon can't fire at them any more!"
Once again the outside world sheeted brilliant white. This time the beam centered on a war-turtle, hit the mirror tiles sheathing the ceramic skin, and scattered wildly away. The searing light scorched soil to the turtle's front and melted the mirrors, but left the vehicle unharmed. The singed leviathan staggered but struggled on, its crew insulated from the heat by the ceramic hull.
Pulling free her spectacles to reveal a sunburned face, Miliana risked a peek at the outside world, then scowled down at Lorenzo.
"What are these damned things made out of anyway?"
"They're mirror tiles; silver sprayed over the back of clear glass."
"Really?" Miliana tried to rub the dazzle from her eyes. "Aren't they expensive?"
"Never you mind!" Lorenzo attended to his steering co
ntrols "Just make the damned signal!"
Miliana waited for the violet afterglow from the Sun Cannon to fade, then popped the upper hatch. Removing her pointy hat, she uncapped the tip and used the garment as a megaphone.
"War-turtles make smoke! All war-turtles make smoke!" Miliana's high pitched voice whirled out across the chaotic battle front like a thin bird caught in the breeze. "Form on the flagship for fast assault!"
Spewing vast billows of black smog which left the infantry coughing and frantically reaching for their sea-sponge gas masks, the war-turtles lumbered into a tighter formation. Miliana signaled the charge with her most impressive hat. Hatches clanged shut as the vehicles built up speed, rocking wildly as the horses found their footing on the solid valley floor and built up a crazy momentum. Here and there a vehicle squealed its brakes as the horses began to lose control of the runaway wagons.
A brilliant sun bolt scored the ground and clipped a war-turtle; the huge vehicle exploded like a bomb as the ray hit battle-damaged mirrors and stabbed into the hull beyond.
"Drawing its fire?" Clutching to her seat as the charge bounded wildly over broken ground, Miliana stared agog at the ruins of their fellow battle wagon. "Lorenzo!"
"I didn't say we'd survive!" The inventor whipped the horses into greater speed. "I just said it was best for everybody else!"
"Oh, wonderful!" Miliana lurched, frantically grabbing for handholds as the turtle sped toward the vast wall of enemy infantry. "Aren't you going to slow down?"
"No!"
"I thought not." The princess settled her spectacles grimly on her eyes. "Load explosive!"
"Explosive loaded-weapon up!"
"Shoot!" Miliana scarcely felt the twang as a pot-load of priceless smoke powder was lobbed into the enemy ahead."… and then hold on tight!"
Nineteen gigantic battle wagons, all careening along at breakneck speed, smashed into a titanic formation of Svarezi pikemen. Useless spears bowed and snapped like twigs, rattling off mirror plates and shattering apart. Soldiers flew to every side like broken puppets as the vehicles impacted on the tight-packed mobs of men. Miliana retched as she felt the wheels judder across a surface that felt like corduroy paving, but came accompanied by a demented peal of screams.
A whip cracked, urging the horses on as they bogged down against the outside mass; a bucket of darts was upended over the whirring flywheel, spraying shot into the outside world. Bombs exploded, and Miliana's artillery crew fired unbidden, hammering lethal clouds of darts into the mob beyond.
Infantry scattered in terror, and the battle vehicles lurched on; a storm of crossbow fire flicked like hail from the hulls as a new line of troops compacted in front of the monsters and prepared to resist the assault.
With a sudden cry, a swarm of swordsmen raced out from behind the lines, crashing into the wagons and trying to tip them over with their hands.
Lorenzo felt the vehicle rocking and frowned at the blades and spear shafts jabbing under the hull. The enemy crammed themselves against the vehicles' fronts and jammed in their heels, braking the ponderous wagons to a halt, trying to lever the war-turtles over on their backs.
All of which allowed the choking clouds from the turtles' burning smudge pots to envelop the valley floor. Pressure eased as Svarezi's infantry scattered away to every side, fighting desperately for air.
"Don't pursue! Get in among the enemy lines so the Sun Cannon can't fire!"
Blocked from firing at the Lomatran infantry or vehicles, the Sun Cannon vented its fury on the city walls. Whole lengths of battlements were sliced like wedding cake, slumping into molten heaps of slag.
Watching the battle wagons charge, Ugo Svarezi curbed his hissing hippogriff and nodded to his heralds. The young men stood in their stirrups and raised trumpets to their lips, signaling the reserves to concentrate in readiness for the coup de grace.
The Lomatran forces were engaged, and all that was needed for a victory was a simple envelopment-a sharp dash to cut the enemy's route back into the city, then a charge to take their militia in the rear. The expensive loss of troops against the war wagons could be forgotten, and the lives of foreign mercenaries scarcely mattered to Svarezi's schemes. He would raise more foreign regiments on the loot from this one campaign, and the Blade Kingdoms would prove the stepping stone to empire. With a slash of his hand, he sent four thousand horsemen sweeping wide around the enemy, heading toward the Trevi River, which emptied past the walls into the sea. The stream stood low, the path to victory lay open, and in minutes the Lomatran alliance would be no more.
Beneath a tree beside the river, Luccio Irozzi lounged idly in the water watching the battle on the plains. Naked save for sharkskin flippers, a loincloth, and a long snorkel lashed to his head, he winced as he felt cold goosebumps creeping all across his skin. He watched the dark cloud of Svarezi's cavalry reserves begin their envelopment, checked that their path would intersect his little haven from the storm, and slipped an outlandish diving helmet into place across his head.
"I believe it's time to sink beneath the drink." The young noble slithered deeper into the water, ducking splashes as dozens of nixies rose all around him to stand high in the water on their thrashing fins, staring at the encroaching cavalry. Princess Krrrr-poka hefted a long battle trident to signal her men, and one by one the creatures ducked out of sight beneath the river.
The water was three feet deep, a vile smoky green, and freezing cold with snowmelt from the mountaintops. Teeth chattering with the cold, Luccio eased his tender body down into the water and concealed his snorkel tube among the reeds.
In a tree above, Tekoriikii continued happily bouncing up and down, using the whip motion of the branches to give him a clear view across the field. He watched the huge infantry lines engage; saw the war-turtles bashing their way toward the mountain passes. Finally, he saw the high roads begin streaming with cavalry. The Svarezi reserves abandoned their protective stance about the Sun Cannon and descended from the ridgeline high above, forming lines and advancing at a sharp trot to the stream. Opening his wings, the bird crossed his eyes and tried to remember his instructions, then let the air shiver to a great, delighted cry.
Tekoriikii the firebird ceased bouncing up and down in his tree. His feather-brain quite clearly remembered the spectacular trick he was to play. Ascending to the now safe, deserted skies, he thrashed his way off toward the Sun Cannon, where it sat all alone above the pass.
17
"The city walls! The city walls!" A cornet of Svarezi's Sumbrian cavalry rose in his stirrups and called across the regiments with an excited cry. "Forward! On to Lomatra!"
The cavalry were already quite aware that they had drawn close to the city walls, which were readily identifiable as the tall gray stone things towering overhead. Ignoring the young officer, four thousand troopers crammed into a single eight-deep line, surged toward the tidal stream, and breasted their way into the freezing spray. In a magnificent display, the massed cavalry of Svarezi's budding empire thrust across the Trevi River to bring home his victory.
Starting from the upstream flanks, a chorus of terrible, pain-racked screams ripped out across the air. Horses began to rear and plunge, bucking in frantic agony. Riders were catapulted into the waters, where they erupted shrieking and clawing at exposed faces and hands. Every patch of immersed skin showed long red welts and burns. The horses bolted from the water, sometimes dragging fallen riders by the stirrups as they floundered free and sped toward the hills.
Downstream, the right flank of the huge formation staggered as their comrades simply fell apart. Whole regiments fled, while the waters churned with agonized men. The young cornet stared as a horse archer waded past, dripping strings of clear jelly from his brow; where the archer's hands touched the jelly, savage blisters had already started to form.
"Jellyfish!"
"Get out! Get out of the water! The stream's alive with jellyfish!"
The lucky men still untouched downstream spurred their horses from the flood. S
ome chose to go ahead, their frightened horses lunging up out of the plague-ridden stream. Others wrenched their mounts about and retreated to their own safe, familiar banks. Only a quarter of the horsemen emerged on the Lomatran side, where they milled about in confusion and alarm.
"That's better!" Dressed in battered, old-fashioned russet armor, Lorenzo's father slammed his visor down. "That layabout Luccio is good for something after all!"
Standing their horses before the city gates, the Lomatran heavy cavalry turned their ponderous ranks to face the enemy survivors. Lorenzo's father slapped his eldest son across the helmet and raised his heavy lance, signaling the charge. The regiment clanked off toward their demoralized opponents to sweep them from the field.
"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!"
Rowing through the air, his eyes slits and his face lit with a superior little smile, Tekoriikii passed high above the raging battlefield. The hippogriff cavalry that might have stopped him had all been neutralized, leaving the bird with a clean, untroubled sky. The bird need only swoop down upon the Sun Cannon, snatch away the Sun Gem, and the threat of the evil machine would be gone.
The handsome firebird spied his prey. With a triumphant wig-wag of his wings, he made a spectacular dive at his target far below. Intent on measuring their chemicals and working at their valves, the Sun Cannon's crew never once looked skyward or realized their onrushing peril. Tekoriikii zeroed in on the gigantic, sparkling diamond fastened to the cannon's tip and, with a manic hiss, opened out his claws.
On the ridgeline below, artillery crewmen ducked as the Sun Cannon fired. A bolt of deadly light sizzled through the air, and Tekoriikii found himself blinking through dazzled eyes.
Much to his amazement, an arrow passed under his wing. Tekoriikii wrenched his neck about, trying to make sense out of the violet afterimages dancing past his eyes.
A black shadow whipped in from the left. Tekoriikii arched his back to break his speed, and suddenly a massive wingtip cracked across his throat. The firebird spun out of control. He clamped his claws onto a flailing black figure, feeling the whole world spin as they clutched together in mutual fear. The bird saw the earth rushing straight at his face, beat furiously with his wings, and somehow managed to land himself and his unwilling partner smack into the turf.