by K. J. Coble
“Just keep the wards up?” he asked.
“Just that.”
He sniffed. “Won’t be a problem.” Still smiling, he straightened his back, raised both hands with the palms out, and began to mutter the words of command.
The coin in Lyssa’s fingers got a touch hotter. Good. At least his enthusiasm was accompanied by some competence. She turned her attention again to the spell of detection, murmured once, and felt out into the flow of energies around her.
The false fog was the product of at least a couple wizards, its vastness requiring their combined efforts. An Adept of the Guard could probably have handled it on their own—Lyssa certainly could have. And the spell was blatantly obvious, sensed even by the non-magical, its infernal stink. Real talent would’ve been more subtle, the mist creeping up slowly, unnoticed until learning its intent came too late. But these Xyxians scooped up the energies of the universe and flung them like dirt.
Xyxians, she thought with derision. Ha! They hardly deserved the name. The diluted nobility leading this horde out of the wastes were pale shadows of the terror that had once ruled from the ruins overlooking this valley. They were more of Cyrkanian or Ybbasid or even her own Kurshan blood, descendants of waves of conquerors and looters that’d come after the great magics had bled out of this land.
The Wizard-Pharoahs of old had led the screaming legions of the Nightmare Land across half the world. These fools spent more time on small border wars with nomads and dynastic disputes, such as the one that had drawn Bazul II into the region. And if he had his way, another wave of conquerors would place their mark on this land, this time in Scintallos’ name.
Olvan hissed with pain at Lyssa’s side. She glanced at him, saw a grimace had replaced the eager smile, eyes pinching shut as a bead of perspiration worked its way down the side of his face. The Xyxian dogs were working counter-sorcery, had sensed her intrusion, and he was beginning to feel their bite.
Lyssa raised the coin high in her left hand, opened the right, but held it at her side as she began to intone new words. “Nefer atas alu ech mahana...”
Olvan hissed again, bent a little over his saddle. His mount neighed in unease, the simple beast feeling the work of the supernatural around it.
“Keep the wards up,” Lyssa broke off her spell to command him.
The Acolyte didn’t reply, but his murmuring continued and his palms remained up.
Lyssa wanted to feel bad for him, but if he intended to survive in an Order what would willingly feed its members to demons—oh, how well she knew—he needed to understand pain. He needed to build up endurance. He needed to know how close a cousins sorcery and death really were.
“Nefer atas alu ech mahana,” Lyssa returned to her spell.
Pressure seemed to build in the air around her, press upon the flesh, pinch in the sinuses. The spell resisted its dismissal, like an animal gotten free of its cage and desperate not to return. Its casters resisted, by now knowing they faced a wizard of real power—made obvious by their snipes at Olvan, but growing more frantic as the threads of their evocation unwound.
“Nefer atas alu ech mannana...”
Cries from the Scintallan battle line were her first indication of progress. She had enough strength to look up and out over them, see the stir of the fog, the slow but obvious beginning of its retreat. Shapes became obvious in that haze, the outriders withdrawing still after their snipes, kicking their desert mounts into a gallop as the cover they’d counted on receded.
A fleck of cyan bit the corner of Lyssa’s eye and she cursed at yet another distraction. But that was Asyra again from the Spire of Zet, signaling. Lyssa let the spell of unworking fade for a moment as she took in the meaning. Through the other woman’s eyes, she saw the lurch of the Xyxian savran cavalry, breaking into a slow gallop as they pushed through the fleeing horse skirmishers, building towards a charge. The sheer mass of their armored wedge drove a spark of fear through Lyssa in a way few things of the material world could.
With Olvan engaged, she turned to one of the Church Militants. “Modyn, ride to the Emperor’s staff and inform them they need to be ready to receive enemy cavalry” she considered the image in her mind—the image from Asyra’s mind “and chariots! They’re maybe four hundred yards off now!”
“My Lady!” The armored man nodded a visored helm and spurred his horse forth.
She watched him go, unquestioning, trained and broken to the yoke of service to the White Guard. The Militants, quasi-religious, quasi-sorcerous warriors trained to protect their masters and bring the steel when magic wouldn’t do, would die serving her if so ordered. Lyssa knew. She’d seen them do it.
Olvan, shivering with effort and pain at her side, no longer eager, would die as well, if the Order commanded.
So would Lyssa.
Perhaps this day.
“WHIMPERING DOG OF HELL!” Strayden taunted and pointed his sword. “Get your pretty ass down off that saddle and let’s do this!”
The Xyxian noble was shouting something back at him, probably matching insults in his native tongue. His warhorse pawed the waste dust and snorted as its rider shook his mace in fury. There was no denying the finery of his panoply, and the shine of it sent dueling tides of greed and fear through Strayden. It’d be a pile of coin he could get for the cuirass, alone, but punching through it was going to be no mean feat.
Now, if he could just lure the bastard down onto foot, where that lovingly-crafted armor would slow him...
“Come on!” Strayden roared and swung his blade with exaggerated strength. “Bet you’ve never faced Vothan steel before! And mine is thirsty!” It also wasn’t really Vothan. Most of his kinsmen preferred the axes of their homeland, anyway, but he’d taken a liking to the Scintallan fabricae-issue broadsword, of late.
This Xyxian prig wouldn’t know that, though. But he seemed clever enough to keep his destrier prancing just out of reach, all while he continued to unload a stream of incomprehensible curses and brandished his weapon. If Strayden could even get his hands on that mace, this might be worth it, ivory-handled, jeweled-pommel, and head of steel with the knobs fashioned to little skulls. Nasty. But Strayden noted the long, heavy lance strapped diagonally across the rider’s back, easily pivoted into a two-handed grip.
If the Xyxian went for that, Strayden would have to rush him before he could bring it to bear.
“Come!” he shrieked, frustration and a touch of anxiety getting out. He stutter-stepped at the horse, kicking up dust before him and causing the mount to jump and skip back, unbalancing its infuriated rider for a moment. Strayden spat before him as the Xyxian guided the mount just out of reach once more.
The Vothans roared their approval. Strayden held sword and shield out to either side, practically offering his chest to the Xyxian in a show of bravado. But fear had begun a steady leak into his guts. He was trapped out here now, by his own theatrics as much as by the proximity of the killer before him. Retreat meant a spear in the spine if he was lucky; a ruined reputation, if he wasn’t.
And the sun was having its way with him, throbbing down in its brassy waves of light. Skin itched and burned with dirt, eyes the same. Ashy palate screamed for water and his skull throbbed from wine that hadn’t quite emptied from his guts when he’d puked. More nausea coiled and his steps grew less certain.
Gonna have to charge him...
“Watch that!”
Durrak’s bellow reached Strayden at almost the same moment he saw the shadow flitter from the dust in his peripheral vision. Instinctively, he turned and there the bastard was—a second rider, one of the berbers come back with a tulwar drawn and flashing in the sun like a crescent of fire. Oh, the Xyxian noble had played Strayden good, while his dog slipped around behind him!
Strayden turned to face the new threat, had no choice really, even as the armored noble side-stepped his mount to charge, should the raider miss. With shield up, Strayden hunched low and readied his sword for a gutting thrust at the horse’s flank that
would either wound and panic the beast or catch the rider’s thigh and do the say to him. He felt the pummel of the horse’s hooves in his heels. He saw the spittle flecks as the raider opened his teeth wide in a cry of anticipation.
And he heard the snick of an arrow striking home.
The raider twitched and flopped from the saddle, landed in the dust at Strayden’s feet. The horse streaked by on his left, tossing and whinnying in confusion. The man sprawled on his back, still alive for a few seconds as he looked dumbfoundedly at the fletching still aquiver in his chest. The expression of shock remained as his head sagged back, lifeless.
Vothans roared from the shield wall. A glance showed Aelren, bow in one fist, shaking the other in triumph while comrades clapped him on the shoulders. But the note of their acclamation changed instantly to alarm and the youth was now pointing frantically. A shadow loomed over Strayden’s back.
He whirled left without thought, the shield still partially up from facing the other direction and now flung the rest of the way into position. Impact crashed into the elmwood face, boards crackling as the Xyxian mace splintered them. The blast flung Strayden backwards several stuttering steps, but he kept to his feet, barely, staggering, pain slivering the length of his arm. He had a quick glimpse of the nobleman’s armored flank flying by atop his horse—
—and spun, slashing after it.
Scintallan-forged steel struck Xyxian lamellar scales, swung off-handed but with the strength of fear. Its edge bit, crunching though metal and tasting flesh. A spurt of ruby droplets spumed into the sunlight and a grunt escaped from the noble’s masked mouth. He bowed away from the blow in the saddle and wobbled, dropped the mace that had nearly punched through Strayden’s shield into his face. Panicked by blood-smell, the horse tossed. But the savran got the beast back under control and wheeled it about to face Strayden once more.
Eyes fluttered terribly through the stylized visor of the noble’s helm, shock and pain warring with outrage as he glared. The man cupped his empty weapon hand to his crimson-slathering side, raised it away to regard the reddened palm in disbelief. He spat something unintelligible, voice going shrill.
“Thought you’d stab me in the back, did ya?” Strayden snarled and kicked dust over the slain desert raider. “Maybe you’d like another go?”
The Xyxian seemed to consider, bloodied hand snaking towards the lance.
Horns blatted from the Scintallan line, their call spreading from one end of it to the other. Strayden had never bothered to learn any of them. The Vothan way was to simply go where the fight was. But more horns seemed to answer them from beyond the waste fog, now purling away from the pair of them in tatters, these different voices, different instruments.
The nobleman’s eyes widened and, with a screech of frustration he took up the reins of his mount in both hands to wheel it once more to kick it into a lurching gallop. Strayden had to fling up his shield to cover his face from dust clot kicked back at him by the fleeing horse’s hooves.
Lowering the rim, Strayden howled after the retreating man, “Is that the best the Nightmare Land has got?”
The words dried to ash, though, as the last of them left his mouth.
The weird fumes that’d shrouded the morning were, indeed, unraveling at last. They peeled away, left natural dust still stirred into a false overcast over the wasteland horizon. But out of this glittered a line of man, horse, and metal, rolling across the sandy space like a wave of molten steel.
The fleeing noble disappeared into that, hardly a droplet in the flood. The rest came on, lowering lances, howling. Details sprang into focus and the sudden nearness of the oncoming host stole Strayden’s breath. The pummel of their hundreds of sets of hooves shivered the ground beneath him. The snorting breaths of the horses reached him. They couldn’t be more than a few hundred yards distant—and these their strides devoured in seconds.
Oh shit.
Cries from the shield wall summoned him back. But he was already sprinting—again, running, dammit! Aelren and Durrak had opened a space for him. He stretched out each stride, ignored the slither of pain left from his brief contest. They seemed so far and the thunder of the cavalry charge at his back so near.
And now the air above again thrummed with the rising cloud of Scintallan archery. With flesh prickling, he saw the arrow cloud darken the sky and begin to fall. Breath tearing in his ears, Strayden flung himself the last couple steps. His comrades stumbled to get out of the way. He crashed through, between shields, glanced off someone, hit the ground and was left spitting sand.
Laughter enveloped him. But the hands reaching down to peel his bulk from the dirt had urgency. He stumbled again, shoved someone back, and pushed his way to the fore. Shields parted, made way for his, and rims clanked together once more, the Vothan line unbroken.
“Didn’t know you could move that fast,” Durrak quipped from his left.
“Shut up.”
“I particularly liked the fall at the end,” Aelren said from the other side, rushing to shoulder his bow and ready his shield.
“Shut up!” Strayden raised his voice to a roar. “Fifth Cohort, hold the line!”
They didn’t need to be told.
Scintallan arrows sleeted down into the metal tide. The center of the savran wedge blunted as the biting cloud reached it, horses slowing as though trudging into a river. Their heavy carapace armor could fend off a single shot, or even dozens, but this was thousands. It only took one mount tumbling to set off a chain reaction of collision and catastrophe—and far more than one fell. The razor edge of the charge crumpled into disorder and carnage, men thrown and trampled, horses rolling over them, more crashing into one another.
Dust plumed even thicker than the false fog that’d preceded it, hid some of the worst of the ruin. But the sound carried to the Vothans clearly, screech of wounded animals, louder screech of broken men, and the ongoing clamor as arrows slashed down through armor and meat. Strayden saw a savran knight leap his horse over a pile of the dead and dying only to tumble from the saddle, himself, pin-cushioned with Scinatallan shafts. He saw a second fumble clear of the jam and try to wrestle his cumbersome lance about just as his horse tripped. The fall impaled the unfortunate Xyxian on his own weapon.
The Vothans cheered their enemies’ misfortune, lustily, with taunts and laughter. Stradyen didn’t join them; not because he pitied the bastards—every one of those high-bred worms in armor would gladly skin him alive for sport—but because they were still coming. While horror gripped the center of the formation, the rest of the wedge wrapped around it, came back together.
And now they came on at a full gallop, with a blood-curdling roar heard even over the thunder of their steeds’ approach. Lances levelled, held two-handed at each man’s right hip, heavy, eight-foot shafts flaring at the ends with another foot of barbed, razor-edged steel. These whisked as they shivered and cut the air ahead of each horse’s lowered head and Strayden’s guts liquified. He’d heard the tales of savran knights impaling two or three men at a charge with the damned things.
But he’d also heard a disciplined line would hold, if it survived the initial shock.
“They’re just pansies on horses, shield brothers!” Strayden shouted. “No slack-jawed pretty-boys ever broke a Vothan line!’
The lads of the Fifth Cohort growled around him and he could hear similar exhortations echoing up and down the whole of the Guard’s line. But voices shook. The air stank of sweat and piss and Strayden knew even the bravest sometimes shit themselves. He clenched every muscle behind his shield, not just to brace, but to keep that from happening. He fixed his eyes upon the rider bearing down upon him—no one else, but so damned close now—took in the details of chain mail, shuddering lance, and ornate, full facemask with a winged helmet.
“Blood for Gruzh!” he screamed.
“Skulls for Gruzh!” the Fifth Cohort roared back in answer.
The charge struck an instant later.
The savran lance glanced of
f the iron boss of Strayden’s shield and punched through the elmwood, sent splinters flying as the long, thick blade slashed across his left bicep. Chain mail parted before the force but the leather jerkin beneath kept the thrust from cutting deep. Its passage rocked Strayden sideways from the left and kept going, crunching into the shield of the man behind him, who whoofed with the impact and crumpled.
Snarling, Strayden grabbed for the lance with his left hand, despite it being tangled up in the wreckage of his shield. Getting a grip, he yanked. The motion dragged him up more than pulled the attacker down, brought him into the stinking heat and froth of the Xyxian’s panting horse. But he got a glimpse of the bronzed facemask beyond the beast, saw a glint of fear through its eye holes. He worked his sword up and free and stabbed overhand, past the tossing horse’s neck.
The grate of steel into mail sent a thrill of satisfaction through Strayden; the wheeze of the rider as he folded over the blow, even more so. He’d never know if he’d pierced or not, though, as the rider released the lance and Strayden tripped backwards without the tension. The horse reared and lashed out with its hooves. Only the splinters of Strayden’s shield saved his face from being caved in, and still the flurry knocked him the rest of the way onto his back.
The ground was a terrifying place of pummeling boots, shins, and the blood of the fallen. A man could get trapped and trampled to death in seconds down there. Someone writhed underneath Strayden, gurgling and pawing for him. A heel struck him in the temple, dashed sparks across his vision. He rolled to try to get to all fours to get up and caused someone to tumble over his back. He flung them off savagely, the claustrophobia driving him to near panic.
He regained his feet again, sobbing for breath and finding no respite.
War raged all around. The savran had smashed a dozen dents into the Vothan line. Lances plunged and stabbed over arrayed shields into snarling faces. Vothan throwing axes spun back. Horses toppled and thrashed, doing more damage than weaponry. Metal rang and men squealed. Butchery roared.