by Chris Howard
"Clear!” shouted Kassandra, but her archers along the southwest spoke were already kicking madly to get out of the thing's way.
It caught eleven of them. The brick stopped suddenly in the water, two pale umbrella shapes firing out of each end, expanding into a semi-transparent ball fifty feet across.
Kassandra raced up, jumping from her stirrups as Nicole climbed up the length of the orca to take the reins. Put your hand against it. Andromache's command fired through her head, and she flattened her hand and fingers against the glassy smooth ball.
"Some kind of shield spell. Spherical."
The soldiers inside stabbed their spears into the barrier, a hard unbreakable transparent globe, the work of some mad neritic glazier. They clawed at the inside, screaming for help as the sea trapped inside the sphere depressurized.
"The brick in the center has wires coming out of it. What the hell is it?"
Eupheron's smooth voice slid by her. No idea. I've never seen anything like it.
Andromache's command went straight to her muscles. Back away. Now!
The brick exploded. She felt the concussion, a sharp ring of motion fired from the sphere's rigid outer shell. It contained most of the shock, liquefying everything inside.
Kassandra swam up to the globe, pressing her hands against the hot glass surface, her ears ringing. It drifted in the middle of her southwest wing, half filled with a thick slush of blood and bone.
Nicole circled around, gliding past Kassandra. “Get on. They're firing more of them.” She pointed halfway along the king's right wing. “They're coming from there."
Kassandra grabbed Nicole by the shoulders. “Get me to Ochleros."
The demon was already on his way, firing out from the center, nodding as Kassandra pointed at the source of the new weapon.
She turned and ordered her spear-bearing cavalry to counter a charge of orcamen from the king's far right, attempting to outflank them.
Eupheron's voice was like a smooth flow of water in the back of her head, describing battle details to other wearers: ” ... with a spherical shield spell that envelops a group of Rexenors, depressurizing the interior just as the explosive ignites."
Kassandra pointed to the center of her army, guiding Nicole, then stood upright, twisting to face the lines, signaling for all wings to advance.
She turned back to Tharsaleos’ army to see the whales attack Ochleros. The demon grew, arms stretching across a hundred feet of ocean, claws cutting into their thick hide, sinking into one whale, while the other whales teamed up and took his arms in their teeth. One had him by the throat, two more bit into his watery flesh and, as a group, drove Ochleros into the abyss, a twirling mass of giants, grunting, whistling, roaring like thunder.
One of the king's phalanxes broke and scattered to get out its way, a handful of them caught in the motion of the whales’ massive caudal fins, crushed in their armor, spears snapping like toothpicks.
The entire battle halted, both sides watching, fascinated, as the grappling giants fell into darkness a thousand feet below them.
Eupheron was the first speak. That's something you don't see every day.
Most impressive, added Andromache.
"He's gone,” said Kassandra finally, incredulous, staring into the darkness.
No time. There's a battle going on. More of those explosive things coming.
A flight of crossbow bolts swept across the Rexenor center, one glancing off Kassandra's helmet, knocking her head back. A stab of pain fired down her neck.
"Holy shit! Nicole!” She swam through a rain of arrows, singing a deflecting spell, grabbing Nicole around the waist just as four bolts went deep into her orca, war-barbs that ripped through the flesh, killing it.
Kassandra waved her guard over, and Gregor kicked up with one of the Rexenor mages. “Close one. Let's build a barrier across—"
He didn't finish. The whole ocean slowed, coming into Kassandra's senses in a smooth flowing crawl. She punched Nicole in the back, throwing her spinning through the water, away from her. Her father was turning around, fear just starting to reach his face.
Kassandra kicked, grabbed him by the arm, and propelled herself in front of him, catching the brick of explosive just as its shield spell deployed.
A strong flow of cold metal burst through her fingers, expanding in every direction. The globe formed, sealing her father and the mage, and twenty of her own guards, inside with her.
Sing carefully. Do it right. Praxinos’ soothing voice was in her head, but she was way ahead, already into the chorus, building her own shield around the explosive force the detonator would unleash any second.
The noise inside the sphere was deafening. Her guards cursed, hammering at the shield's wall, breaking their swords against it, sobbing in anger and terror, kicking off one side of the shell and then stabbing with all their momentum at the opposite wall.
Gregor fired something like a needle of ice. It shattered against the shield. Then he and the mage discussed possible exit strategies in a rapid exchange of ideas, immediately turning to share power and try some of them.
Kassandra closed her eyes, her song coming to an end. She felt the explosive's ignition in her hands, running cold through her bones. There was a painful shudder as she almost let it go, holding it tighter, humming against her skin. Then it stopped, frozen in time, cupped between her fingers.
She opened her eyes, arching her back, sucking in water through her teeth. She jerked her chin to her sword at her hip, glaring at the nearest Rexenor guard.
"Cut us out of here."
"Milady, swords do not—"
"Please.” She closed her eyes a moment to calm herself. “Do not make me repeat myself.” Jutting her hip out further, a snort of involuntary laughter over what Andromache wanted her to tell the guard.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nicole hacking futilely at the sphere's outer skin.
The Rexenor pulled Kassandra's sword from its scabbard, kicked up some momentum and drove the blade, made by the Telkhines masters thousands of years before, right through the glass wall.
The globe burst like a bubble.
Nicole swam in, looking horrified from Gregor—the only father she had ever known—to Kassandra—the Wreath-wearer, a mix of feelings stricken in her features: incomprehension, the pain of loss, the notion that someone could kill Kassandra. The Wreath-wearer cannot die! She held it as a law in her soul, even when she knew there were a hundred generations of dead wearers inside Kassandra, four of them that talked to her.
Nicole looked as if she was coming in for a bear hug and Kassandra edged away fearfully. “Please, don't touch me. This is my first time. Not sure how delicate this thing is."
Then she noticed Gregor and the Rexenor mage circling, still discussing the nature of the explosive—and how Kassandra had contained it.
She shook her head with a strange blend of disappointment and wonder. Moments from decompression guaranteed to burst half the cells in the human body swiftly followed by fiery death, and there they were spending—no, wasting—them trying to understand how they were about die.
She echoed Andromache's thoughts in modern terms. “Damn magic geeks."
An orca slid up and halted right in front of her, the rider one of the messengers from the left flank. The man pushed up his cheek-guards. “Milady, Dardanis has engaged the king's phalanx. Grapte has led his orcas around the far right of the king's fourth flank."
She nodded as he sped off, turning to Nicole. “Signal Imeria and Damo to advance. Get me Nereus. We're going for a ride. I'll be right back."
Nicole frowned at the mention of Nereus. He was so obviously in love with the Wreath-wearer, yet Kassandra seemed to have no trouble asking him to go on the most dangerous expeditions.
Nicole waved to get her attention. “Where are you going?"
"I need to get rid of this thing.” Kassandra jutted her chin at the frozen storm of explosion between her fingers. “Then I'll be right back to ruin m
y reputation. Just get Nereus here in two minutes."
The Rexenor army watched their strategos, with her Wreath glowing like a comet, vanish halfway to the enemy line. Kassandra rocketed through the water, carefully creating enough of a wake to make Tharsaleos’ army feel it, but not enough to slow her down—or make her a target. She was into their ranks, row upon row of black-and-white killer whales blending together, and then she was through to the other side, behind the army, releasing the ball of fire. She swam away into an arc that took her miles above the battle, soaring through the ocean.
She toyed with the idea of flying away and never returning. It would be so easy. Only one of the immortals could catch her when she was inside the water, moving effortlessly, crossing oceans in minutes. Not the king. Not any other Seaborn. Only one of them.
She never slowed down, continuing in a circle that brought her right up against the Rexenor fortress walls, tightening the arc to come through the center of her army, slowing down, and looping to reclaim her momentum right in front of Nereus, sitting ready on his orca.
He bowed his head. Blood hung like a cloud around him, probably his own as well as others'. “My lady, what would you have me do?"
She knew he would do anything she asked.
She circled under his orca and came up feet first, wheeling to lock them in the archer's stirrups.
She smacked him on the shoulder playfully. “Let's go kill the one who commands Tharsaleos’ army."
Without flinching, Nereus nodded. “Point him out and it will be done, milady."
The storm of the explosion Kassandra had first contained and then freed finally broke from the bond she had created around it, releasing all the energy on the far side of Tharsaleos’ army. There was a fierce bolt of light, then a shockwave. A ring of rapidly expanding fire lit the sea for miles, waves of rainbow color, and the entire army of the Seaborn king turned in confusion, wide-eyed, expecting a surprise attack from the south.
Kassandra didn't wait for the shockwave to wash over them. One hand still gripping Nereus’ shoulder, she turned to Nicole and four of her messengers. “It is time. Send the command along. Helios!” She shouted the signal for putting on the sunglasses, a pair passed out to every Rexenor, thousands of them plundered from a shipping container that—as luck would have it—fell off the deck of an Atlantic freighter a month before right into Rexenor hands.
"This is my turn,” said Kassandra and Andromache completely withdrew from her body and mind.
Then the Rexenor ranks heard the command and slid their sunglasses over their eyes, darkness complete.
Kassandra swam past Nereus, tossing her helmet to him as she went by, stopping a hundred feet in front of her army, outside the shade.
The king's army recovered from the explosion, formed up, and readied to charge. The final charge that would destroy House Rexenor forever was at hand.
Kassandra sang long flowing notes at a high pitch while a low growling noise accompanied it from the depths of her throat. Her fists tightened, and a deep volcanic rumble made miles of Atlantic Ocean shiver as it rolled up from the abyss.
An orange glow danced off her armor, silvery scales turned to jets of reflected flame. A ball of fire, rippling tongues of scarlet leaping out of it, floated up from a deep seam in the earth's crust. Then they all knew—all of Rexenor and all of the Seaborn host—that the Wreath-wearer had doomed her soul, delving into fire magic that never failed to consume the mage.
Kassandra floated between the two armies like Phaeton at the reins of a newborn star.
The armies only had a few moments to ponder her fate before the cold orange skin cracked open and white-hot light blazed in the space between her hands, the birth of a star in the depths of the ocean, fists of liquid light punching into the water around it, and anyone inside two miles not wearing sunglasses threw their hands over their eyes, or turned away, twisting in the water like stunned animals.
Kassandra somersaulted, waved her guard to her right, and signaled a hundred more to fall in behind them. She slowed just enough to catch her helmet from Menophon's son, and then shot out in front, leading the charge straight up. She flew through the water in front of Nereus’ orca, her sword out, the blade tucked along her thigh.
High above the blinded armies, she flipped on her back and headed down, her guards wearing sunglasses, riding a blur of five-ton orcas in her wake.
She slipped back under Nereus’ killer whale, rolling up into the archer's stirrups as they reached and ripped through the top of the king's army, punching through one phalanx, broken spears and men scattering before them. The charge caught a House Dosianax regiment of orcamen broadside, cutting it in half.
They crossed open sea between the orcas and a mass of soldiers with very long spears, forming up into a deep layered wall facing the charge. Kassandra kicked over Nereus’ head, shot out in front, gathering a song behind her teeth, let it flow into her fist. She punched the water and the shock wave hit the phalanx head on, scattering it with a sheet of light off their spears, like silver schooling fish darting away from a predator. A hole opened in the center of the fleeing spear brigade, ringed in a fringe of kicking legs, and Nereus led the charge right through it.
In seconds, they hit the vanguard at the army's center where a tall commanding figure stood on the saddle of his orca, blinking and trying to see through the blaze of white light.
Blinded, he could still cast his explosives at Rexenor and released a long sour note that sent a grayish brick from his hands across the mile-wide gap between the armies.
Kassandra leaped over Nereus, a bullet fired at the king's general. She tucked her head down, flipping over, slowing down at the same time. She spread her legs and caught him around the middle, gripping him with her thighs, knocking him off his saddle.
The two of them tumbled, end over end, down through another blinded Dosianax orca regiment, followed by Nereus and the rest of the charging Rexenors.
Kassandra felt lightheaded, her rage like white hot threads running through her body, tensing her muscles. One swift sword sweep and she was holding his gold name bracelet. His severed hand, fingers in the middle of a cast, flew over her shoulder, snapped up by one of the orcas in her wake.
The enemy commander stared, his face a mask of frozen shock as she slid the dull side of the blade along his shoulder, angling it enough to cut through his helmet strap. The helmet flew off his head.
Then she leaned forward and grabbed a fistful of hair, pulling his face close, locking eyes with him.
"Who are you?” She growled.
Kassandra looked deeper, digging into the pits of the man's eyes, stunned to discover that he was an Alkimides, a loyal soldier, one of the king's oktoloi.
An Alkimides.
A thick oily fear slipped over her. I'm about to kill one of my own house. She was in his soul and out the back of it in a moment. He was ... thin, and she had just started to roll some explanations into place when she saw the eyes staring back at her.
It was King Tharsaleos, controlling this man's physical form. She saw him watching her with his burning grayish yellow eyes, hollow cheeks, a carnivorous smile. He spoke to her. “You are about to kill one of your own, granddaughter. Is it not a sign of the end of your line, Wreath-wearer, when Alkimides kills Alkimides, and the one who craves my throne is a bitch with fire magic burning in her soul?"
Do it, or let me do it for you, Kassandra.
Kassandra jerked in shock at Andromache's command. “I thought this was you!"
Take his head now!
She threw her head back in anguish and screamed the Alkimides war cry. She let the bracelet go, catching it in her teeth, and shoved the general's head back, exposing his throat. Her sword was a dark blur, a strong controlled arc, and just like her push into his hollowed-out soul, the blade was into his neck and through the other side in a moment, his blood washing through her mouth, her braids, her armor.
She spat out his bracelet and it fell, heavy in the water.
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She was still vomiting when the charge returned to the Rexenor line, her stomach empty and heaving, her sword shaking in her hand.
She had nothing more to lose when Dardanis’ messenger rode up on his orca, frantically waving his helmet. “Milady, Dardanis pleads for help. We have lost half our hundred riders. An army of the dead has come from the south, a new Olethren are upon us!"
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Chapter Thirty-Five
The Inner Ocean
Hekate Einodia, Trioditis, lovely dame, of earthly, watery, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander through the shade; Perseis, solitary goddess, hail! The world's key-bearer, never doomed to fail; in stags rejoicing, huntress, nightly seen, and drawn by bulls, unconquerable queen; Leader, Nymphe, nurse, on mountains wandering, hear the suppliants who with holy rites thy power revere, and to the herdsman with a favoring mind draw near.
—Orphic Hymn 1 to Hekate
* * * *
The pale woman's back.” Kassandra pushed the words through her teeth, lifting the cheek-guards on her helmet.
"Who now leads the king's army?” Gregor pointed at the troop movements.
Kassandra—with Praxinos guiding her—cast several combinations of sighting spells. “Whoever it is, is weighing down his right and bottom wings."
Her blinding star burned in the space between Rexenor and the king's army. Her four wings of orcamen and phalanxes had engaged four of the king's. The remaining two wings of Tharsaleos’ army did not wrap around the Rexenor lines, seastar-on-a-scallop, as she had anticipated, but folded back, directed to the bottom and right.
Kassandra pointed, squinting through the glare. “They're engaging Aleximor's dead army there."
Gregor finished a song that did something to his vision, kicking forward, using her shoulder as leverage. “The ostologos has brought his army against both of us?"
One of the Rexenor abyss mages spoke up. “Perhaps with the dead against the living it is unavoidable."
