by Jim Butcher
The fire-javelins exploded together in a roar, each bursting into a sudden sphere of flame the size of a supply wagon. It wasn’t the white-hot fire of a Knight Ignus’s attack, but it didn’t have to be. The fire engulfed the front two ranks of the enemy and sucked so much air in to feed its short-lived flame that Ehren’s cloak was drawn up against his back and legs, snapping as if he stood with his back to a strong wind. Greasy black smoke billowed out, the smell indescribably foul, and for a few instants, the vord line was thrown into complete disarray.
Ehren cried out and slapped Lord Antillus on the shoulder. There was no need for the signal. The large, athletic man was already throwing himself forward along with the Placidas and Phrygius.
The most powerful and dangerous High Lords of Alera rose together in a sudden column of wind and plunged through the black cloud and out over the enemy force, moving almost too quickly to be seen, and vanished behind a windcrafted veil as they went. Ehren clenched his hands into fists and stared after them, trying to see through the mass of legionares in front of him. Their mission had been his idea. He bore a measure of responsibility for its outcome.
The vord recovered their momentum in seconds, those coming behind the first wave leaping over the slain and wounded. Their scythes gouged the stone of the wall, creating pitted spots that their insectlike legs could use to climb, and they swarmed fearlessly up the wall and into the swords of the Legions.
Men and vord shrieked and howled. Swords flashed in the sun. Vord scythes plunged. Blood, both red and dirty green, spattered the wall, which might have been a fallen log for all the attention the vord paid to it—but it did prevent them from employing their reach or their downward-stabbing scythes to the best effect. They came on in endless pressure, while the legionares fought on, with men forward on the wall fighting with shield and sword, their comrades behind them thrusting with longer spears. The vord would gain the wall, in places, only to be pushed back savagely by the Legions.
More and more of the creatures poured in, like a deadly, living tide, rushing in over the ground to wash against the wall. Wave after wave broke upon the low siege wall, upon Legion steel and Aleran blood. And, like an oncoming tide, the pressure only grew. The vord were climbing over one another in their eagerness to reach the legionares, and the growing number of bodies below the wall were forming ramps up to the top.
The breaking point was near. Within a few moments more, the vord would gain a foothold on the wall, somewhere, and would begin pouring over it in the thousands. The enemy sensed it as well. More and more of the vord pressed closer to the wall. Ehren could have stepped off the wall and walked a mile without touching the ground.
It was time.
He turned and nodded to the armored old Citizen on his left. “Now?”
Lord Gram had been watching the attack with his helmet off. His hair had been bright red in his youth, but was now mostly grey, with only a few lone, defiant sprigs showing a ruddy hue. He nodded and took his helmet from beneath his arm and settled it onto his head. “Aye. Pack them in any closer, and they’ll overflow the wall.”
“Should we send up the signal?” he said. Once a signal went up, it would propagate along the wall from one firecrafter to the next.
Gram grunted, scowling. “Wait for the order, boy. All we’re looking at is what’s right in front of us. That’s our job. Bernard is looking at the whole picture. That’s his job. He’ll give the order when it’s time.”
A vord gained the wall not twenty feet away, a screaming legionare skewered on one of its scythes. It batted away a second legionare like a toy, then died under the massive maul wielded by a Knight Terra who rushed to plug the breach—but three of its companions had reached the top of the wall in the time that took to happen and drove outward. More vord would join them in a few seconds.
“Lord Gram?” Ehren called. His voice cracked again.
“Wait!” Gram thundered back.
Count Calderon would wait to signal the next phase of the plan until as many of the enemy as possible were in position. Ehren knew that. He also knew that as a commander of a battle this critical, Calderon would be willing to sacrifice the lives of some of the defenders if necessary. He had to be. That was the entire reason to have battle commanders in the first place—so that one man could balance the advantages of logic and reason against the emotional, insane demands of close battle.
It was just that, at the moment, with three vord having mounted the wall and with, oh dear, one of them looking directly at him, it did not seem to Ehren like a sound approach to warfare. He also suddenly thought that it would have been a fine idea to have accepted the set of lorica he had been offered yesterday. Thirty or forty pounds of steel over his fragile flesh (which had seemed impossibly cumbersome for the use of a man who was essentially a glorified rapid-messenger boy, a few hours before) suddenly sounded splendid.
A fourth vord appeared at the top of the wall, and Ehren realized that it was too late for the Aleran counterstroke to save them, even if it happened at that instant. They had to retake the wall, and right now, or the vord would kill the men all around him—and quite likely Ehren himself. Worse, they would kill Gram, one of only a few firecrafters with the capability to craft a flame hot enough for the counterstroke. His death was unacceptable.
A block of legionares followed the Knight Terra in an attack on the first two vord to reach the top, but the third swept a legionare from the wall and into the sea of scythes below it. The man’s screams were swallowed as abruptly as if he had fallen into water. The vord’s glittering eyes locked onto Ehren, and the mantis-form warrior scuttled forward, scythes flashing.
One of the deadly weapons plunged down at Ehren, who hopped back out of reach, and shouted, “Gram, watch out!” He put a shoulder into Gram’s hip and shoved him roughly back from the oncoming warrior.
The movement cost him precious instants and inches. He did not quite evade the mantis warrior’s reach, and a darting scythe plowed a bloody furrow down one shoulder blade, skipped a bit where his body arched in instinctive pain and reaction, then bit into him again as it sliced along one buttock.
Ehren staggered and went to one knee, knowing instinctively that he could not possibly remain there and sure that he could not escape the reach of the mantis. The legionares were coming, as eager as he had been to close the breach, but they were an endless second away.
Ehren flung himself backward, toward the vord, tucking his body into a roll as he went. He felt the scythe flash down at him and miss, digging into the stone of the wall.
Ehren stopped underneath the body of the vord, which began dancing about, trying to thrust its scythes beneath it, but unable to reach him. Ehren reached out a hand toward a fallen legionare’s spear, which lay nearby. His woodcrafting was nothing to write home about, but it was more than sufficient to bend the haft of the spear a little, and when he released it, to allow its elastic spring to send it clattering into the reach of his hand.
He seized the spear, rolled to one side very quickly, and barely dodged the scythe that plunged down at him from the vord now mounting the wall beside his opponent. Scuttling like a limping crab, Ehren stayed beneath the vord warrior, grasping the spear and once more reaching out for his woodcrafting, until he had bent its shaft into a quivering bow that would have enclosed most of a circle. Then he took a second to decide where to strike and how to aim, grounded the spear’s butt against the stone of the wall, and released the woodcrafting.
The spear straightened again, with vicious energy. The sharp tip of the weapon skittered along the vord’s armored underbelly—but then the tip bit into the joint between two plates of chitin and plunged into the vord with such force that it lifted its forequarters off the ground. Dirty green-brown blood geysered from the wound, and the vord fell off on the Aleran side of the wall, thrashing in its death throes.
Ehren let out a whoop—but it turned into a scream as something that felt red-hot slammed into his lower back. There was a thumping sound,
and his body jerked, and a muscle behind his right shoulder blade went into a sudden, vicious cramp. He tried to move, but something held him fast to the ground. It might have been gravity. He felt very heavy.
He looked over his shoulder, itself an agonizing motion, and saw that the next vord up the wall had leapt onto him as its less fortunate relative fell to the ground. He couldn’t see the scythes or where they had pierced him. Thinking about it, he decided, he really didn’t want to. The pain was bad enough. He didn’t need a visual image to go with it.
He couldn’t breathe. He just wanted to take a good, deep breath. But he couldn’t inhale at all. That didn’t seem fair. He laid his cheek on the stone.
There was a bright light, and something warm passed over him, and a vord shrieked.
“Healer!” bellowed Gram.
Ehren blinked open his eyes and looked to the south. There, hovering in the air, was a single brilliant spark of bright red fire.
“No, you idiot, don’t pull them out of him,” Gram snarled at someone. “He’ll bleed out right here.”
“But they’ve got him spiked to the bloody wall,” protested someone with a deep, resonant voice.
“Use your head for something besides finding things to smash with that maul, Frederick,” Gram answered. “Earthcraft the wall enough to get them loose.”
“Oh. Right. Just a second…”
Gram was leaning over him, and there were legionares back on the wall around them. They must have closed the breach. That was good. Ehren lifted his hand. It shook more than it should have, he thought. “Gram,” he gasped, pointing. “Signal.”
The old Lord looked back over his shoulder, growled, then rose. He looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, then lifted his hand and sent what looked like a small blue star blazing into the air.
All up and down the wall, other stars answered.
A second star pulsed out from the command post, this one burning white-hot, almost painful to look at even in broad daylight.
Up and down the wall, Ehren knew, firecrafters were doing precisely what Gram was. The old Lord had his eyes focused on the ground in front of the wall, and a pair of legionares was covering him from any enemy attack. He concentrated for a moment, then pointed a finger down at the ground below and spoke a single harsh, quiet word. “Burn.”
A sphere of white fire leapt from Gram’s fingertip to the ground below.
For a long minute, nothing happened.
Ehren closed his eyes and pictured it in his mind. Bringing siege walls up from the earth required the moving of quality, heavy stone. But that wasn’t the only thing that could be moved. The earth was full of all sorts of interesting minerals. Gold. Silver. Gems.
And coal.
And oil.
Over the past months, the entire plain before the first wall had been seeded with the latter two. Coal had been raised to within inches of the surface—and the much more easily manipulated oil had been brought up to the surface layers of earth, until the ground fairly squelched with it. It was hardly noticeable, given how soft and damp the regular rains had left the ground in the past few days, except for the smell. And the vord did not appear to be bright enough to recognize it.
Oil-filled tubes had been crafted throughout the coal undersurface, with air holes made in them every so often. Then the crafters upon the Aleran walls dropped the fire directly down and into the mouths of those tubes, flames rapidly licking down them.
Thirty seconds later, there was a roar of sound, as the fire fed upon the oil and the air expanded dangerously, rupturing the earth and shattering the flaky sheets of coal into gravel.
Fire screamed and rose, and somewhere above there was the howl of wind, wind, wind. The four Citizens who had taken off were providing the fire with enough air to be born—a veritable cyclone, really.
When it finally did leap up, it was in a roar, and a small cloud of earth and coal and blazing droplets of oil flew up so high into the air that, even lying down, Ehren could see the highest crown of it.
“Bloody crows!” cried a legionare, half in terror and half in joy.
Ehren could see it reflected in the young man’s eyes. A vast curtain of flame was being drawn across the entire width of the Calderon Valley. Vord were screaming. Vord were dying—hundreds of thousands of them, who had so willingly packed as closely into the wall as possible.
Ehren thought sundown had come remarkably early. Somewhere nearby, a horn was sounding the retreat.
They had never intended to hold the first wall. It was simply too long to mount an effective defense. But the sacrifice and courage of the men who had bled and died at the first wall had let the Alerans cut a gaping wound into the vord’s advantage of numbers. Brave young legionares. The poor idiots. Thank goodness Ehren would never have passed muster for a Legion, between his size and his lack of useful furycraft. He’d been able to avoid all that nonsense. And he’d helped get some good work done today.
A little voice told him that the vord could afford the losses. Though many had just died, in numbers greater than those of all the Legions of Alera that remained, the vord still had an overwhelming advantage.
Which was why, he mused, there were more surprises waiting for them as they progressed into the Valley. Count Calderon was more than ready to welcome them. He might not be able to stop them—it was possible that no one could. But, by the furies, from listening to the man, they would pay for every breath they took of the Count of Calderon’s air before it was over.
Ehren found himself smiling. Then someone was moving him. He smelled the pungent aroma of a gargant. People talked, but he paid them little attention. He was too tired. He thought to himself that if he went to sleep, he might die.
Then again, as tired as he felt, if death was like sleep, how bad could it be?
Perhaps he’d try it for a little wh—
CHAPTER 37
Amara watched the vord’s first assault go up in flames.
It had all worked more or less according to plan. When the firecrafters had lit the oil-lined little tunnels, the flame had rapidly spread down them, out to a distance of about half a mile, creating a steady source of flame. Black smoke had begun oozing up through the air holes.
Then, when the concealed High Lords sent a vast gale of wind sweeping across the plain, they had exploded. The ground erupted with fire and gouts of shattered coal in long lines spaced about twenty yards apart. Oil had splattered everywhere, along with the coal, and within moments the whole plain had been devoured by fire.
Beside her, Bernard peered through the sightcrafting she held between her outstretched hands. He grunted with satisfaction. “Tavi did this at the Elinarch, only backward,” he told High Lord Riva.
“How’s that?” Riva asked.
“At the Elinarch,” Amara said, to spare her husband’s jaw, “he heated the paving stones first, to drive assaulting Canim off them and into the town’s buildings. Then he set the buildings on fire.”
Riva stared out at the plain of fire before them and shuddered. “Ruthless.”
“Indeed,” Amara said.
“The boy finishes what he begins,” Bernard said. His mouth quirked up at one corner. “His Highness, the boy.”
Riva turned to look at the two of them thoughtfully, frowning. “Do you think he’s really on the way?”
“Said he was,” Bernard said.
“But he has so few men.”
Bernard snorted. “Boy didn’t have anyone but an unarmed slave with him when he stopped the Marat at Second Calderon.” He turned to face Riva and met his eyes. “He says he’s coming to fight, believe him.”
Lord Riva stared back at Bernard, his eyes thoughtful. Out on the plain, the fires had begun to die down—leaving half a mile of red-hot coals underfoot. The air over the plain wavered madly in the heat. Burning vord chitin smelled utterly hideous, she noted. There was a dull roar of windstreams overhead as the High Lords, their task completed, returned to friendly lines.
“Bernar
d,” Amara said quietly.
Her husband glanced out at the plain and nodded. He turned to Giraldi, and said, “Sound the retreat. We fall back to the next wall.”
Giraldi saluted and passed the order along to the trumpeter. Soon, the signal was echoing up and down the length of the wall. Centurions began barking orders. Men began to withdraw down the stairs leading from the walls and form into their units. Marat gargants had rolled up a few moments before, their long, slow steps covering ground rapidly. The wounded were being loaded onto beasts whose saddlecloths had been prepared to carry hurt men safely.
“Count Calderon,” Riva said, his voice becoming somewhat stilted and formal, “I realize that our relationship has been… a distant one. And that you have doubtless already worked very hard to prepare the valley’s defenses. Nonetheless, I should like to volunteer my skills and those of my engineers to do whatever we can to help.”
Bernard eyed him again.
“I’m not a very good soldier, Your Excellency,” Riva said. “But I know about building. And some of the finest architects and engineers in the Realm ply their trade in my city.”
Bernard glanced at Amara, who smiled very faintly and pretended to be watching for the enemy.
“Be honored, Your Grace,” Bernard said. “Giraldi, here, will show you to Pentius Pluvus. He’s kept books and schedules for us on this project. He’ll know where you and your folks can help the most.”
Riva offered Bernard his hand. They clasped forearms briefly, and Riva smiled. “Good luck to you, Count.”
Bernard answered him with small, sad smile. “To all of us.”
Riva and Giraldi departed. Bernard gave orders to the rest of the command staff to begin the retreat to the tower. Amara moved to stand beside her husband and twined her fingers with his. Bernard stared out at the fields of glowing coals. Grass fires had begun at the edges of the burning coal, where the heat had leached the water from the land nearby.
Beyond the curtains of wavering heat, the vord were massing, moving, flowing like a single being with a million limbs. It was impossible to make out any details, beyond the fact that they were there—and that more and more of them kept coming.
