by Paul Kidd
Tekoriikii groaned, watching the universe spin with whirring stars. He gave a croak from his poor sore throat and scrabbled shakily to his feet.
The reason for his nice soft landing immediately became apparent; Tekoriikii had landed tail-first on a gaggle of artillery gunners. The bird stepped off the padded hillock of flesh and dazedly looked around the scene.
A terribly familiar lean black hippogriff flopped and thrashed across the ground, utterly stunned by its fall. The mare gave a pitiful squeal as she tried to move a broken wing. She opened dazed eyes and fixed them on Tekoriikii as she felt the worst nightmares of a flying creature suddenly become real.
Knocked even sillier than usual, Tekoriikii blundered over to the hippogriff and tried to make a motherly little sound.
His voice stuck in his throat. Eyes bulging, the bird clapped wings across his craw and staggered drunkenly aside.
A short, heavy sword swiped through the air right where Tekoriikii's head had been. Snarling like a troll, Ugo Svarezi lurched upright, pinned beneath the hippogriff, and tried to hack Tekoriikii clean in two.
To the firebird, actual violence was utterly meaningless; combat was restricted to demonstrations of supreme cleverness. Taken aback by a direct assault, the bird felt his sense of honor and propriety utterly impugned.
Svarezi lunged across his hippogriff's back, falling just short of Tekoriikii's hide. The bird tried to give an outraged scream, but to no avail; the merest hiss escaped his throat, where once an exquisite singing voice had been. Tekoriikii paddled backward out of range of Svarezi's sword, feeling his whole world swim in a giddy daze. The human hurtled a dagger, missing the throw as Shaatra rolled over him and trilled in agony.
Pinned by his injured mount, Svarezi tried to ram the hippogriff aside. The creature croaked, unable to rise, and tried a half-hearted snap of its beak at the firebird. The prince tried to shove at his mount, but the creature screamed and fought to remain prostrate on the ground. Cursing, Svarezi snatched hold of the hippogriff's neck and whipped his sword up to split the creature's skull.
With a broken hiss, Tekoriikii vaulted up across Shaatra and grappled the human to the ground. His beak fastened on Svarezi's wrist, claws gripping at the man's armored chest as Tekoriikii tried to batter the man's weapons away.
Svarezi somehow beat the firebird clear, almost tearing off his own right hand. Tekoriikii fell, and Svarezi lunged against the weight pinning him to the ground, somehow managing to battle free. Crying out in pain, Shaatra slid downhill across the grass, rolling on her side to tangle with the dizzy firebird.
Prince Svarezi clambered atop the Sun Cannon, laughing as he laid his hands on the controls. He kicked a lever, sending the spindly barrel sinking down to aim at the helpless firebird. Tekoriikii and the hippogriff both stared in horror as the Sun Gem glowed brilliant white before their eyes.
"Damn it!"
Miliana's spectacles had cracked clean across each lens, leaving her staring at an eerie, disjointed world. The whole war-turtle shuddered to a halt, the hull ringing like a temple bell as something crashed hard against its armored shell.
The vehicle ended on a decided list to the right. Lorenzo cut free the horses as Miliana blinked down at him from above.
"What in the name of the Abyss was that?"
"They finally got smart. They rolled rocks on us from the ridges above." Oh well-it had been a good run while it lasted. The war-turtles had done more than their inventor could possibly have dreamed. Now bogged, half buried, or broken up by catapult fire, the machines fell still as their crews abandoned them to take up the fight with crossbow, spell, and blade.
Outside the turtle, enemy infantry still swarmed like angry bugs. A sorcerer saw a chance for an easy kill and maneuvered for a shot under Lorenzo's hull. As he approached, Lorenzo gave a delighted exclamation and reached for a copper pole, which he industriously linked to the hilt of his sword.
A lightning bolt spat toward the damaged turtle. Electricity hit the vehicle's ceramic skin, blasted off mirror plates, then snaked over to the copper rod and poured power up into Lorenzo's sword. The sorcerer snarled in rage, disengaged his spell, and ripped out a long magic staff. Accompanied by half a dozen armored infantry, he rushed the disabled machine and began to claw his way inside.
The internal crew fought hard to keep the intruding infantry at bay. As the battle raged, a vision slit popped open, a copper rod waggled its way out of the hole and prodded itself up against the enemy sorcerer. A violent discharge of electricity ensued, sending the Svarezi troops jerking back like puppets tugged by the strings. Lorenzo popped his head out from under the war-turtle, decided that the coast was clear, and wrenched open the wide rear hatch to let the horses blunder free.
"That's it! Now make for the Sun Cannon-fast!"
Miliana popped out of her turret hatch, accidentally smacking a Colletran swordsman in the eye and sending him tumbling, unconscious, over the side.
"Has Tekoriikii neutralized the thing?"
"He must have." Lorenzo helped the girl clamber down across the slippery mirror tiles. "It hasn't fired for a while."
With an escort of Miliana's two artillerymen, the inventor and the princess took a swift bearing to the cliff top and climbed their way through the rocks above the melee.
Svarezi's infantry up above sniped and skirmished from a little rock fort they had made to command the crest. Deadly accurate fire drove a terrified Miliana into cover with an arrow quivering through her hat.
Crammed hard into a jumble of broken rocks, Lorenzo gave a sudden yelp as a crossbow bolt rebounded from a boulder mere inches from his face. "Miliana! Do something! What spells did you memorize this morning?"
"Um…" Miliana bit her lip. "Feather fall. I'm getting good at it."
"Feather fall?" Lorenzo felt himself slowly going mad. "You took feather fall spells into a fight?"
"Well I can throw it twice a day now. I'm getting better."
The inventor wearily put his face in his hands. Incensed, Miliana rolled up her long sleeves, set her pointy hat to an aggressive tilt and found the largest boulder on the mountainside. She hissed out her spell, threw a puff of Tekoriikii's feathers up into the air, and hoisted the titanic rock over her head and hurtled it up into the sky.
The boulder sailed over the Svarezi position, shuddered, and regained normal gravity once again. The enemy infantry stared at it for one long, fragile moment, then screamed and flung themselves downhill. The rock smashed their little fort to pieces and duly chased them all off toward the valley floor.
Lorenzo frowned and wiped a dirty hand across his nose.
"Have you ever had those spell scrolls of yours checked? I read up on feather fall spells-and that isn't what you're casting!"
Miliana poked a nasty tongue out at Lorenzo and made a rapid climb straight up the hill. Muttering to himself, the inventor spurred off in hot pursuit, dragging out his rapier as he climbed in her wake.
"Tekoriikii? Tekoriikii-where are you?"
Miliana topped the cliff face, searching wildly for her friend the firebird. "Tekoriikii-don't do anything stupid! Wait for me!"
The princess stopped as though she had run into a wall of rock and stared aghast at the hillcrest above.
Tekoriikii lay tangled with a skinny black hippogriff, splayed helpless before the Sun Cannon's maw. Ugo Svarezi-ragged, bloody, and half-crazed with hate-kicked the valve releases to fire the deadly light beam straight into the bird.
"Bastard!"
Miliana snatched up a rock and hurtled the makeshift weapon with all her might. Her broken spectacles made her miss Svarezi by a country mile. The would-be emperor flicked a glance in her direction, gave an ill-tempered snarl, and kicked the Sun Cannon's firing controls.
His eyes had left his two helpless feathery victims for only the merest beat of a heart. Moving with viper's speed, Shaatra snapped up from the ground, lunged beneath the Sun Cannon's barrel and rammed her back against the firing tube. The weapon raised, a
nd an instant later the deadly light beam stabbed into the grass a dozen feet behind Tekoriikii's tail. Scorched and wounded by the barrel's heat, the hippogriff fell down to its belly and began to weakly try to drag herself away.
With a start, Tekoriikii realized that his tail had caught on fire; the bird frantically beat his backside against the grass and gave a frightened wail of dismay.
Seeing Miliana, Svarezi's eyes lit up in recognition. He sprang down from the Sun Cannon's firing platform and stalked toward her.
"So. My little Sumbrian bride." The warlord flexed black gauntlets like a vulture testing its claws. "It seems we can share a wedding bower at last…"
Miliana stared, felt a thrill of fear, and tried to back herself away, falling over backward as the rubble tripped her heels. Svarezi moved forward, only to check as a slim figure emerged from the rocks at his side.
Lorenzo held a bared rapier in his hand as he placed himself between Miliana and their enemy. Svarezi gave the boy a contemptuous glance, then ripped his short cat-gutter sword from its sheath.
"You want to fight me, boy, with your toy sword?" The Colletran tyrant made a swift arc of his brutal blade to free any stiffness in his wrist. "You want to fight me for your scrawny princess?"
Lorenzo flickered forward in a short, sharp fencer's step.
"Miliana! Get up and run!"
"No! Stay!" Svarezi began an arrogant, graceless advance upon the boy. "Stay and watch your sweetheart's guts spill to the ground!"
Without a word, Lorenzo skipped forward, launching across an impossible distance to spear at Svarezi with his blade. The Colletran grunted a vicious oath of shock and somehow swatted the rapier point aside.
A blinding spark leapt between the blades-the last dregs of Lorenzo's lightning bottle. Svarezi reeled, stunned and blinking as he fought away the shock. Furiously stumbling back, Svarezi blindly beat aside a frenzy of attacks; he snarled as Lorenzo's point scored a strip of velvet from his helm, lodged against his mail gauntlet without piercing home, and whipped, blurring, past his mouth to rip a cut across his skin.
Svarezi shook his head, trying to regain his wits; the lightning charge had left lights dancing past his eyes. Bleeding from a facial wound, the warlord roared and hammered Lorenzo's sword aside, missed a brutal cut with his blade, and crashed his hilt into Lorenzo's chest with all the power at his command. The slim inventor was flung back by the blow, clawing desperately to his feet to present his blade and keep the circling enemy at bay.
Lorenzo risked a brief glance across the cliff summit and felt one source of panic fly away; Miliana had scrabbled clear and hidden herself behind one wheel of the Sun Cannon. The girl crept closer to Tekoriikii and the fallen hippogriff and stared in terror at Svarezi's blade.
"Lorenzo, run! Run back down the hill!"
"I can't! He still has reserves." Lorenzo's breath shuddered with fatigue; he used one ripped sleeve to wipe sweat back from his eyes. "He can lead them around the army and crush us like an egg!"
On the roadside nearby, Svarezi lifted the back of his hand to his mouth, flicking a glance down at the resulting smear of blood.
"He's right, girl! Did you hear him? At the base of this hill, there lies enough manpower to grind Lomatra to a pulp." The black-armored nobleman rubbed his own blood between his fingertips. "Once we've killed this Lomatran puppy, we'll see to the destruction of your sad adopted home!"
He lunged forward, trying to crash past Lorenzo's guard and rip him open with an upward thrust of the short, brutal sword. The blade point scythed a line past Lorenzo's waist, bringing a flicker of blood across his shirt.
"Lorenzo!"
Miliana surged forward in panic as rapier and short sword clashed. She stumbled to a halt just short of the fight, helpless to intervene as the blades howled and slithered in a blur of rage.
Moving in a nearly senseless panic, Lorenzo somehow held his own, punching his sword hilt across Svarezi's helm to drive him back away. Tekoriikii tried to thrash forward and bring his beak into the fight-exposing himself to Svarezi's blade, Miliana wrenched at the chassis of the Sun Cannon, trying to rip free a strip of wood to make a quarterstaff or club.
Tekoriikii snapped his beak; Svarezi swore, whirled, and whipped back his weapon to finish off the bird once and for all-baring his arm to a desperate, sobbing lunge from Lorenzo's sword.
The stiff rapier pierced through velvet, mail, and silk to stab clean through the inner elbow of Svarezi's weapon arm. With a roar of rage, Svarezi spun aside. Blood sheeted from his forearm, spilling to the ground. His sword hung from nerveless fingers as he staggered blindly out of range.
Lorenzo moved forward; Svarezi spun, blurred out his free hand to snatch Miliana by the hair, and dragged her shrieking to his side.
"Enough! Throw the blade away or the she-witch dies!"
Svarezi wrenched his captive tight against his chest. Even so sorely wounded, he could have snapped Miliana's neck like a stick. The girl froze as he wound tight his grip, fear bulging out her eyes.
"Stop!" Lorenzo held out his sword, his face draining white. He came a step closer to Svarezi, his eyes only on Miliana's face. "Don't hurt her! I'll drop it. Just leave the girl alone."
Miliana tried to speak, but Svarezi's hand ripped at her hair, choking her with agony. Lorenzo threw his sword far away across the road, then held out his empty hands.
"It's gone! Now let the girl go free!"
Beside the Sun Cannon, the warlord gave a derisive laugh.
Miliana managed to croak out a few words in fear.
"He-he'll ransom me! He's rich!"
Lorenzo blinked, stared at Miliana, then swiftly reached a hand to his belt.
"Here! Here… yes, I'll ransom her! See? A thousand ducats in gems!"
He tugged, threw his purse, and Svarezi laughed and loosened his grip on the girl. She fell to the ground as Svarezi snatched the heavy purse out of the air.
"A thousand ducats' prize and a princess for my bride! A fitting crown for my victory."
A wisp of smoke disappeared up the fuse that led into Lorenzo's patent anti-theft purse. Miliana lunged wildly aside, diving through the grass. The prince spared a quick glance at the heavy purse and opened his mouth to give a terrified cry.
The blast shuddered the entire hillside. Lying flat on his belly behind a score of rocks, Lorenzo felt debris shower all around. He lifted his head and wildly searched for Miliana as the smoke blew in wisps along the road.
"Miliana? Miliana!"
"I'm over here!" Legs clad in frilly petticoats waggled as the girl struggled up from the dirt. "Is he gone?"
"Um… best not to ask."
Struggling erect, Miliana knelt on the grass and instantly began searching the rubble with her fingertips. Wiping sweat and scorch marks from his brow, Lorenzo came over to kneel in puzzlement at her side.
"What on Toril are you doing?"
"My spectacles are gone! This war is costing me a fortune in ground glass!" Blind, scorched, and annoyed, the girl gave up on her search. "Is Tekoriikii alright?"
"The hippogriff's beating out the fire."
"Oh, good." Blinking like a newborn kitten, Miliana faced in the general direction of the din of battle. "Can you see the fight? Who's winning?"
"We're pushing his battle lines back. But Svarezi's reserves are still massed down at the bottom of the road." The young inventor stood up on tiptoes to stare ashen-faced downhill. "There must be ten thousand men down there!"
"Damn." The princess blundered over to the Sun Cannon and leaned against its hull. "We have to do something!"
Miliana froze; blinking her rather pretty eyes, she began wrinkling her nose like a rabbit and exploring the air.
"Um-Lorenzo?"
"Yes?"
"Should I be able to smell cherries?"
The two humans both turned to look up at the gigantic chemical vats looming overhead. Shaatra the hippogriff and Tekoriikii both caught the sudden aura of fear and joined them in staring at the we
apon in alarm.
A hissing cloud of pink steam escaped from the armored pipes and valves, and Lorenzo instinctively backed away.
"The explosion must have cracked the vats…"
"You mean those chemicals are going to mix?"
"Ummm…"
Miliana peered through a cloud of cherry-scented death.
"How big a bang will the damned thing make?"
"Um, well, a bench model the size of your hat blew up my old room at your father's palace."
"That's what I thought." The new, improved model weighed ten thousand times more. "Can we stop it from going off?"
"Um… no!" Lorenzo frenziedly sought the best route for escape. "Miliana-we have to run!"
"The hippogriff can't move!" Miliana pulled chocks from under the Sun Cannon's wheels. "Come on!"
"Miliana!"
"She saved Tekoriikii! We can't let her get blown to H'Catha!" Miliana planted her skinny shoulder blades against the back of the giant armored wagon. "Push! Come on, it'll roll downhill if we can get it moving. Tekoriikii-give a hand!"
The bird floundered up from where he had been contemplating his newly ruined tail. Ineffectually leaping and hopping up into the air, he tried to throw his weight behind the wagon. The injured hippogriff looked on in wonder as all three friends ignored the growing hiss of chemicals and tried to shove the gun downhill.
"It's too heavy!" Lorenzo searched about for a lever or a pulley. "I can't get it to move!"
Miliana stepped back, rolled up her sleeves, and sang out her last and only spell; the feather fall effect rippled the Sun Cannon with a gleaming purple skin, temporarily reducing the weapon's mass to nil.
"Now shove!"
A mighty heave sent the wagon on its way. Fifty feet long and three man-heights high, the juggernaut rolled down onto the road, picked up speed, and careened down toward the valley floor. The rearmost unit of Svarezi infantry looked back in alarm, then screamed as one as the wagon heeled slowly over and crashed down onto its side.