“Looks like they’re making good progress,” Jack said.
Alexander looked up from his thoughts and saw a steady flow of Ithilian infantry marching through the Gate. Perry’s officers were quickly and efficiently directing the new arrivals to their respective quarters. Alexander reached out with his mind into the Keep. He could feel it filling up with people, areas coming to life again, warmth and light replacing the cold and dark that had gripped the place for so long.
Sofia and Evelyn sat outside under a hastily erected canopy with General Brand and Commander Perry. Younger officers and runners came and went with regularity, passing instructions to the arriving army.
“Ah, Alexander,” Sofia said, “we were just about to have lunch. Won’t you join us?”
“I’d love to,” he said, taking a seat at the table. “How are things coming along?”
“Well enough,” Sofia said, “though General Brand is concerned that we’re leaving Ithilian unguarded.”
“Your legion was guarding a closed and locked Gate, General. No one can open the Gates now but me. Besides, if Phane manages to get control over the Nether Gate, Ithilian won’t survive anyway.”
“Fair point,” General Brand said. “Might I ask how you intend to deploy our soldiers?”
“Phane is approaching from the south with three legions,” Alexander said. “Zuhl has that many or more in the northern wilds of the Reishi Isle. Both of them are headed for a confrontation over the Nether Gate. That will be our opportunity to strike.”
Brand nodded.
“Two legions of Rangers will be coming through on your heels,” Alexander said. “We’ll garrison the men here until Phane gets close. He’s the key. Once he makes landfall, you’ll move closer to the Nether Gate.”
“You’ll move?” Brand said. “Will you not be joining us, Lord Reishi?”
Alexander paused, holding the man with his blind eyes. “No.”
“I don’t understand, Alexander,” Sofia said. “Where will you be?”
“I have another task to attend to.”
“You can’t be serious,” Evelyn said.
“I am. It’s important.”
“Who will command our forces in your absence?” General Brand asked.
“Erik Alaric will lead the attack.”
“I still don’t see what’s so important that you have to leave right before a big battle,” Evelyn said.
“The truth is, in a large-scale engagement, I can be more useful with my magic than I can with my sword. And I don’t have to be here to bring my magic to the fight.”
“You still didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“No, I didn’t,” Alexander said with a little grin. As outspoken as Evelyn was, Alexander liked her. She was genuine to a fault, whether you liked it or not.
Lunch was served. Alexander shifted the conversation to the battle to come, discussing terrain, enemy weaknesses and strengths, strategy and objectives. He detailed everything he knew about the approaching enemy forces. General Brand was particularly interested in his report, going so far as to take notes. By the time the meal was over, he seemed a bit more at ease with the battle plan.
“Send someone to let me know when the last of your men are through,” Alexander said, excusing himself from the table with a courteous bow to Sofia and Evelyn.
“Certainly, Lord Reishi,” General Brand said.
Alexander spent the next few hours meditating, searching enemy encampments, looking at the forces arrayed before him, ferreting out details about their organization, equipment, and weapons in an effort to gain better insight into what he faced. He looked at Phane and his fleet of oversized rowboats, each manned by two dozen men—soldiers all.
He looked at Zuhl and his men in the forest to the north. They still showed almost no interest in the Keep but were moving to a number of camps just north of the Nether Gate, staging for the battle to come.
He looked at Peti, his stomach turning at the sight of many thousands of men dead, drained of blood, their bodies piled high to be burned. She continued to kill the soldiers, pouring their blood into an enormous sigil she’d drawn in the middle of her encampment. He drew back, feeling vaguely uneasy at the sight of the symbol on the ground. It held a hint of dark magic in its colors.
He shifted to the fortress city on Karth and explored its walls, fortifications, and corridors, searching for any vulnerability he might exploit, but found few. It truly was a fortress. Into the black tower he descended to the chamber deep underground where the Wraith Queen was kept. She was still contained in her triple magic circle, floating over a room filled with smaller circles, many of them containing lesser wraith, smaller, less distinct, but every bit as evil and hateful as their mother.
Moving up through the black tower, he assessed the defenses and found them to be daunting. Aside from a wide variety of magical safeguards, there were also several guardians defending the path … and then there was the door. Much like one of the Reishi Gates, it was a slab of black stone that magically opened to an identical slab in a chamber five hundred feet beneath it—the only chamber that led to Azugorath.
If Alexander was going to reach the Wraith Queen, he would have to pass through that door. He moved closer and saw an inscription atop the arch. Making a mental note of it, he left Karth and went to Whitehall on the Isle of Zuhl, searching out the interior of the sprawling white marble keep, finding the halls well guarded by soldiers and a few priests and drakini. Zuhl’s chambers were deep under the palace, fortified by stone, steel, and magic.
Inside, the ancient mage slept in an enclosed crystal sarcophagus, time itself seeming to stop within. The head of the sarcophagus merged with the curved wall opposite the entrance. To either side stood two alcoves embedded into the wall. On the left, encased in a substance that seemed at once crystalline and liquid, were two identical copies of Zuhl’s body. Those on the right contained unformed masses of tissue, glowing softly with the colors of life.
Alexander withdrew from Whitehall into the firmament. He spent over an hour simply spread out over the whole of creation, listening, hoping for some inspiration to strike, some idea that would get him closer to contacting Siduri. Nothing came to him, but his meditation did leave him feeling more centered and more confident in his plan.
Before returning to his body, he went to the Gate on Ruatha and found that almost a full regiment had arrived. Erik and Duane were still a ways out, but they would arrive by nightfall.
He got up and headed for the Gate, smiling when he saw a runner coming toward him with a confused look on his face.
“I was coming to tell you that the legion is through, Lord Reishi,” the man said, somewhat breathlessly.
“Thank you,” Alexander said without stopping. He went to the Gate, closed it to Ithilian and opened it to Ruatha.
Chapter 32
He woke early the following morning, grabbed a bag of dried fruit and nuts and headed for the Gate. He’d left it open during the night and arrived to find Duane sharing breakfast with General Brand.
Duane got up and gave Alexander a salute when he saw him coming. Alexander gave his brother-in-law a hug.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, stepping back.
“You too. I got here late last night. Erik should be along in a few hours.”
“Good. Has General Brand briefed you?”
Duane nodded, chewing on his lip for a moment. “Do you think Isabel will be with Phane?” he finally asked.
“I’m certain of it,” Alexander said. “She’s on her way here right now.”
Duane nodded, hope flaring in his colors, determination glittering in his eyes.
“You’ll have your chance, Duane. Just don’t take your shot until you’re sure you have one.”
“I hear you’re leaving,” Duane said.
“I am, just as soon as your army gets through and the wizards arrive.”
Duane took a bite and chewed slowly, looking off in the distance for nearly a minut
e.
“You’re going after that demon that has her, aren’t you?”
Alexander nodded firmly, putting a finger to his lips.
Duane took another bite. Brand sat back, seeming to reappraise Alexander.
“How long before the Rangers are through?”
“I’m hoping by dark,” Duane said around a mouthful. “We were pretty spread out when the call came.”
“Any word on the wizards?”
“Only that the few Sky Knights we have left on Ruatha went to go get them yesterday. Apparently, Mage Gamaliel was delayed because he was busy creating a few more weapons for the fight.”
“If he’s flying, he should be along sometime today,” Alexander said. “Have a runner come tell me when he arrives.”
“Of course,” Duane said.
Alexander returned to his command tent, opened his Wizard’s Den and went to his circle. He’d scouted Anatoly’s enemy the night before and saw that they were preparing for a morning attack. He wanted to lend whatever assistance he could to the fight.
He arrived over the battlefield just as the enemy was moving toward Anatoly’s line. The lead soldiers carried shields and oversized quivers filled with javelins. Those farther back carried a wide variety of weapons and wore light armor.
Anatoly had cleared the battlefield up to his berm wall, piling enemy bodies in two huge rows stretching across the gap. The advancing soldiers would have to climb over those who had gone before them to get to the berm. The field behind his front line was stained with blood and littered with broken arrows and weapons.
A hundred feet farther into the gap, at the narrows, was his secondary line, as before. Reserves, cavalry, and row upon row of archers waited behind that line. The bulk of his legion was over an hour’s march down the mountain. He’d lost men during the initial attack, but not nearly as many as Zuhl had.
Alexander appeared next to Anatoly in his command tower.
“Looks like you’re just in time,” Anatoly said.
Enemy soldiers began to round the corner into Fool’s Gap, spreading out to form a turtle shell, tightly packed together, all shields up. They were just out of arrow range. Behind them, the rest of the army held in a long train stretching down the switchbacks all the way to their main camp.
The turtle began to move, slowly and ponderously, but steadily toward Anatoly’s line. The soldiers behind them formed into a tightly packed column fifty abreast and eight hundred deep. Anatoly faced five legions. This was the strategy that worried Alexander the most.
He sent his sight to Shoalhaven, soaring toward the city on the coast, scanning the verdant countryside along the way. As he neared, he saw a train of soldiers escorting the refugees of Fellenden City—bedraggled, dirty, exhausted, hungry people displaced from their homes by the enemy preparing to breach Fool’s Gap. He looked out to sea and saw a fleet of ships in the harbor, longboats sliding across the water by the hundreds. He returned to Anatoly.
“You’ve succeeded,” he said quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“The people, they’ve made it to Shoalhaven, and Torin has arrived with his army.”
Anatoly smiled, nodding to himself. “Thank you, Alexander.”
He seemed at peace, at ease with the situation in a way that made Alexander a bit nervous. Even his colors were calm, which was unusual for Anatoly before a battle. He made a habit of cultivating a strong feeling of anger before a fight—said it gave him an edge. Today he seemed like a man who’d made an accounting of his life and was satisfied with the results. He was quiet for a while, just watching the enemy’s slow advance.
“Helping to raise you and Darius and Abigail was the greatest privilege of my life,” he said without looking over at Alexander. “I love you.”
“Anatoly, you’re scaring me,” Alexander said.
The big man-at-arms looked sideways at him with a smile and a hard glint in his eye. He gestured to the advancing army.
“Deal in what is, Alexander. Their commander understands that the only way through us is to overwhelm us. That’s his plan, and he has the troops to do it.”
“You held them last time,” Alexander said.
“If that assault legion hadn’t been overrun by a mob of less disciplined soldiers from behind, it would’ve turned out differently. The good news is, we’ve already killed most of their best soldiers.”
Rocks started to pelt the sides of the slowly advancing turtle formation from the defenders lining the cliffs to each side.
“Signal Corina,” Anatoly said.
Blake gave the order and a whistler went up. Anatoly’s colors began to shift, revealing a coiled anger growing within him. Alexander started to feel a bit better.
Echoes of war drums beating in the distance reverberated up the narrow canyon. A few moments after the drums began, the entire four legions behind the assault legion began to chant in time with the beat. The air filled with tension, colors flared, fear on Anatoly’s side, bloodlust on the barbarians’ side.
The assault legion stopped near the first low wall of corpses. Slingers along the berm wall threw stones, as did those on the cliffs to either side, but most bounced harmlessly off the barbarians’ shields. They began to move forward again, taking increased casualties as they negotiated the first wall of corpses. Those that reached the other side formed up into a shield wall, providing some cover to the soldiers clambering over the carnage behind them.
Within a few minutes, they had filled the space between the two low corpse walls, covering the entire area with raised shields. The rain of stones slowed. A horn blew. As one, the barbarians lowered their shields and hurled javelins at the soldiers manning the berm wall. Many of Anatoly’s men fell.
The slingshots all seemed to loose at once, filling the sky with a cloud of swarming bullets, hailing down on the turtle shell of raised shields. Again a horn blew and they lowered shields, hurling javelins almost in the same motion, then raising their shields once again. More of Anatoly’s line fell.
Two columns of twelve wyverns each came in over the battlefield, flying straight down Fool’s Gap, beginning their attack run, spilling stones into the sky by the wagon load over the heads of the assault legion and carrying their attack into the legions of infantry assembled in the rear.
Stones crashed into the shields, breaking, denting and rending them asunder in a storm of swirling chaos, rocks hitting, bouncing, and rolling throughout their formation, men dying with sudden violence that they never saw coming.
Within moments, the bombardment was over, the Sky Knights had passed the front line and continued on, raining death down into the rear ranks until they were out of rocks. The damage was staggering, thousands dead, even more wounded.
The enemy horn sounded again, three short bursts, and the remains of the assault legion charged with a thunderous battle cry, toppling the closer of the two corpse walls and flooding through toward the berm wall. Stones hailed into their ranks, dropping men in midstep with each hit.
They closed quickly, raising shields against the onslaught, charging with abandon like a wave toward Anatoly’s front line. They seemed to reach the berm all at once, stopping to re-form their shield wall several paces before the trench running in front of the berm. More filled in behind them and locked shields as well, presenting a unified defense that was nearly impervious to stones.
Once the unit was reassembled, they threw another volley of javelins, this one at close range, targeting the shields in the front line, penetrating most, and hitting many of the men holding the line. The horn blew again, long and loud.
The assault legion charged the berm wall, sliding down into the trench, before clawing their way up the steep, muddy slope and into Anatoly’s pikemen.
“Light it,” Anatoly said over his shoulder.
Blake blew a horn. Flaming arrows darted down from the cliffs, igniting the oil-soaked straw filling the trench with a whoosh. Men caught on fire, screaming, scrambling desperately to escape the flames
, but the steep slope of the berm wall was like a trap—the more a man struggled, the more he slid … and the more he burned. Fire erupted out of the trench, roaring upward, hot and angry, reaching fifteen feet into the sky, killing or maiming scores of barbarians.
“Sound the retreat,” Anatoly said.
Blake blew a series of blasts on his horn, more elaborate than the enemy’s, almost like the chords of a song.
The front-line soldiers manning the berm wall turned and ran for the secondary line, leaving the enemy to wait for the wall of flames to subside.
“So far, so good,” Alexander said.
“So far,” Anatoly agreed.
Under the cover of fire, Anatoly’s front line was able to retreat without incident, slipping safely through the secondary line at the narrows before the men on the new front line locked and set their shields.
Another two squads of Sky Knights coasted overhead, well out of arrow range. Black rain, heavy and deadly, fell from their bellies far in the distance over the main column of soldiers, the most concentrated cluster of enemy on the battlefield. Screams and death wails echoed in the gap.
The remains of the assault legion breached the berm wall in three places simultaneously, men pouring through and assembling in formation, shields up and weapons at the ready, merging into a single turtle-shelled bulwark.
A seemingly endless flow of men moved through the breach points, filling in the assault legion’s back ranks and then some … and then even more as the well-protected front slowly advanced toward Anatoly’s shield wall at the narrows. Each step forward represented another rank of enemy soldiers falling in behind the advancing force.
Alexander watched with Anatoly in his makeshift tower constructed of wagons ingeniously stacked and chained together. Off to the side, near one wall of the gap and several dozen feet behind the narrows line, the tower rose only ten or twelve feet, but it was enough to afford a clear view of the battlefield.
Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept Page 38
