Liende stepped back as Brill approached.
“The dark ones have begun their attack.” The sorcerer’s eyes rested on the clouds. “Soon we’ll see firebolts, stronger than normal lightning.”
“How long before we see anyone?” Anna glanced back to the empty road, and the seemingly empty ridges to the east.
“The storm comes first, with lightnings, then archers, and more lightnings …” He spread his hands. “That is what I understand, in any case.”
“You don’t know?”
The faintest breeze picked up, carrying more sandy dust out of the pass. Anna’s nose itched, and she rubbed it gently. Her eyes itched, too.
“That is what the dark ones did when they took over Ebra. That was more than ten years ago.” Brill did not look at her.
“You mean that for ten years they haven’t done anything?” asked Anna.
“They have trained a mass of darksingers, and they have spent the last year pushing the Whispering Sands and the Sand Hills south into Ranuak, enough to give them a clear road to the Sand Pass.”
Anna shook her head. “I don’t think I understand.”
Brill glanced back at his players, standing with their instruments, waiting, and then at the clouds. The sunlight began to dim as the first edges of gray-and-black clouds touched the edge of the sun. “Ebra was isolated. That was why no one could help Ketansa when the Evult and his darksingers came out of the depths of the Ostfels. The mountains are too rugged in the north and west, and the ocean and the rocky cliffs bar entrance to most of Ebra, except for Elahwa, and the channel is narrow there. So the dark ones could raise storms against the ships. The sands in the south had drifted northward over the years, blocking the Sand Pass and most passage south to Ranuak, except for the hardiest of travelers. Besides, the Ranuans look unfavorably on strangers, especially Ebrans, and they discouraged maintaining the roads when Ketansa repudiated the cult of the Matriarch.”
As the gloom fell across the fort, Brill paused.
“Go on.”
The sorcerer studied the road and the hills, then continued. “In the old times, Ebra and Ranuak were one. That was before the winds changed and the Whispering Sands grew and joined the Sand Hills and blocked the Sand Pass to Defalk. They say that deep under the high dunes in the midst of the Whispering Sands, there is a temple. That was where Wahren cast the mighty spell to dry the highland swamps of Ebranu. They say he trained his players for a season, and that it took him more than a year to build the spell.”
Brill shrugged. “Others say that Wahren was only a myth, that the sands have been there forever. I don’t know. What we all know is that a little more than a year ago, the sands began to move, and mighty storms were raised, and that the dark ones reopened trade with Sturinn, and most of that trade was for weapons.”
A distant rumble of thunder rolled out of the east.
“We need to make ready, Lady Anna.” The sorcerer turned, his eyebrows lifted as if questioning.
“The dark ones will have to get closer for anything I do to work.” Of that Anna was convinced. Neither the mandolin nor her voice would carry that far.
“As you wish.” The balding sorcerer turned and walked several steps back to where the players waited. His eyes focused on them, one by one. “Sit down. The wall will shelter you.”
Anna glanced to the northwest, her eyes seeking Brill’s lake, wondering when or how he would employ it—if he could.
“Form up! Wall details!”
“Third mounted—to the gates.”
Below Anna, the courtyard swirled with activity. Armsmen scrambled up along the walls. The western gates opened, and nearly threescore men rode out, most bearing bows and quivers. Once they were across the bridge, the timbers were slid back inside the fort and the gates closed, while the riders split into two groups—one circling north, the other south.
“Woman!”
Anna turned, and the armsman swallowed.
“I beg your pardon, sorceress.”
Anna eased herself back beside the base of the tower. “This is all the space I need now.” The walled corner doubtless offered more safety against arrows, but who knew about sorcery?
The young armsman swallowed, then stationed himself to the left and back of the archer who had strung his bow and set his quiver on a projecting brick shelf. The armsman’s fingers gripped the hilt of the long blade, but he did not draw it.
The clouds were darker now, and the day darkened as they slid across the face of the sun, a sun that seemed somehow to Anna rather more red than the sun she knew—but that could have been from the dust that never settled.
From where the road seemed to vanish over a crest leading up to the pass itself came a trickle of darkness. Then Anna realized that the darkness was composed of dark-clad armsmen, with the occasional flash of indirect light on metal—swords or burnished shields.
Recalling the comments about archers, her eyes turned to the hill ridge to the north of the fort, and she watched. Was that an Ebran archer? Then more figures darted from rocks to rocks to the few gnarled trees, moving south, toward the point nearest the fort. Anna inhaled, then exhaled, as she realized she was holding her breath. That wouldn’t help singing, not at all, but she’d never been called upon to do a concert—even a single song—in the middle of a battle where people were getting killed.
The Ebran forces seemed to pour down the road toward the fort, darkening the road as the clouds continued to darken the sky.
A single sword of lightning crashed into the hill ridge to the south of the fort.
“Storm song! Now!” demanded Brill, his voice almost shrill.
The cracking roll of thunder underscored his command.
The players began, and Anna wanted to wince. The stress definitely had an impact on their tunefulness, either that or their playing from a sitting position. She checked the tuning of the mandolin, crouching into the brick-walled corner to shut off the outside noises as much as she could.
Then she tried a vocalise, gently, hoping the dust hadn’t dried her cords too much, that she could clear her voice without too much effort. Her voice cracked, and she stopped and took a long swallow from the water bottle at her belt before resuming her warm-up.
The clouds dropped lower, thickening, darkening, until Anna thought she could almost stretch and touch them.
Crack! Another blast of lightning smashed down, and the entire fort shook.
“Aeeiii …”
“Stand firm! Stand firm!”
“Lightnings …”
Anna turned. The top of the southwest watchtower was gone, leaving nothing but a mass of brick and dust.
To her right, Brill sang, trying to project his voice over other voices and the rumblings of the storm that swept down out of the Ostfels.
“ … mighty fortress is our song …
… stands against all nature’s powers strong … .”
Spang! An arrow smashed against the edge of the parapet, then dropped onto the bricks less than a yard from Anna’s feet. The arrowhead itself was a triangular, serrated, ugly chuck of metal, tough enough that it was barely deformed by its impact against the hard bricks of the fort.
Flattening herself against the watchtower where the archers from the north could not see or hit her, she shivered momentarily, thinking that one of those had gone through her shoulder.
Crack! Another flash of lightning slammed down, this time not far from where the eastern road ended at the dry moat, and the fort shook.
“Again!” demanded Brill. “It’s working!”
Arrows began dropping over the north wall and sleeting into the courtyard.
“Shields up!”
“Under the overhangs!”
The violinist beside Palian, whose name Anna didn’t know, crumpled with an arrow through his chest. “Keep playing!” ordered Brill, as yet another lightning bolt seemed to bend away from the fort. He began to repeat his spell.
Anna lifted her head and studied the eastern ro
ad, but the Ebran soldiers appeared to be still more than a dek away, and the rumbling of the storm would probably limit how far she could project.
“Why aren’t you doing anything?” hissed the young armsman.
“They have to get closer!” Anna hissed back. Belatedly, trying to hold on to her concentration, she started a second vocalise.
The rain of arrows seemed to slow, then stop, and Anna shifted her position enough to look northward where she saw a handful of mounted archers, wearing the purple of Defalk, on the ridge.
As she watched, several Defalkan archers went down, and more of the dark-clad archers began moving down the ridge from higher ground toward the position taken by the mounted Defalkans.
A few drops of rain darkened the dusty bricks of the fort, then, suddenly, the few drops became a heavy rain, and then almost a wall of water, under which the melodies of Brill’s players half dwindled, half squeaked to a stop.
Crack! Another lightning bolt slammed down into the wall right above the closed eastern gates, and bricks cascaded everywhere.
Whatever the lightnings were, they weren’t just electrical energy, and Anna wished she’d read the Donnermusik book, but vain wishing wouldn’t change the past.
Another wall of water, like a line squall, washed over the fort.
Within moments of the rain’s passage, the hail of arrows resumed—and the bass hornist went drown.
Anna looked up the eastern road. Under the cover of the storm, the Ebran forces had almost reached the dry moat.
“Under the wall there!” Brill ordered the players. “Now!” The sorcerer scurried up beside Anna and peered toward the dry moat. Below and to the east, under the hanging dark clouds, the Ebrans were fitting together siege ladders.
Yet another lightning bolt smashed into the fort, right at the eastern gates—and then another. Anna grabbed the wall to steady herself as the entire fort shook.
“Archers! Fire!”
The Defalkan bowmen began to release arrows into the massed Ebran troops, who immediately lifted heavy round shields.
Some arrows deflected into the air; some imbedded in shields, some in Ebran soldiers, and within a handful of moments dozens of dark-clad bodies lay on the far side of the dry moat.
Crack!
“Down!” Brill almost flung Anna around the side of the watchtower, following her and jamming them into the shielded corner formed by the north wall and the watchtower wall.
Crack! Crack! Lines of lightning flashed across the entire eastern wall, slamming the fort with jolts hard enough to jerk Anna back and forth across the bricks, raising dust everywhere, despite the fort’s earlier drenching. Then another line squall, another instant wall of water, crashed across the Defalkan fort.
Anna scrambled back into a sitting position and glanced down the wall, catching sight of Palian, Daffyd, and Liende crouching next to the wall. Dozens of still figures lay in the courtyard below, and the eastern wall was riddled with fissures.
In the light rain, Brill scrambled back to the edge of the eastern wall, and Anna followed more slowly.
Her stomach turned as she saw the blackened body that had to have been the young armsman who had asked why she hadn’t done anything.
One of the gates had fallen forward into the dry moat, and hundreds of the Ebrans, if not thousands, swarmed forward into the brick-lined depression.
Farther up the road, well out of bowshot, a dark-clad group appeared, and Anna could hear a low chanting of some sort. The darksingers?
Brill stood behind the parapet that was now only kneehigh, and began to sing.
Anna looked back to his players, but they held on to instruments and crouched under the protection of the northern wall as more arrows sleeted into the fort, mainly from the north.
“ … sweep forth in power and might!” concluded Brill.
A dull rumbling began, accompanied with a whistling sound.
Anna glanced around, but while the clouds threatened, for the moment nothing fell from them but light rain. Should she use her spell? The wind gusted around her, and blew the brim of her hat down across her eyes. She ripped it off and stuffed it into her belt.
The Ebrans in the dry moat started to run, and Anna looked down to see a brown-colored wave rumble out of the north side of the moat toward the invaders. Within seconds, the moat was filled with threshing figures.
Anna swallowed. Most wore armor, and few could swim. A handful struggled out on the east or south sides, but before long the brown water was mostly still, where a few items floated, and one or two bodies were buoyed by air trapped in their garments.
The ground shook again.
Brill straightened and scurried back to the north wall.
Anna’s mouth opened. Another wall of soldiers marched around the dark-clad monks toward the fort.
The ground shook again, and more bricks fell from the walls.
“Power song … the power song,” gasped Brill.
Somehow, some way, a melody began, and Daffyd’s viola dominated the intertwined melodies.
Anna shook herself. The world was coming apart around her, and she’d done nothing. Nothing!
She gripped the mandolin. If she didn’t use her spellsong now, there wouldn’t be anything left to use it for.
The tower and the fort lurched again, and she steadied herself against the tower one-handed, as massive cracks appeared in the ground beyond the fort.
With a gulping, guzzling sound, the moat began to drain—and the thousands of new Ebran soldiers began to march forward.
Anna hummed, wishing she’d done more vocalises, but there wasn’t time, and she’d been too disoriented. She faced the darksingers and the oncoming troops and began.
“I have sung the glory of the thunder of the sky,
I am bringing forth the voltage so the bolts of death can fly
I have loosed the fateful lightning so the darkling ones will die,
My songs will strike them dead … .”
Even by the end of the first verse, the dark clouds were twisting back, and the lightnings turned, and white bolts flashed toward the dark singers.
Anna forced herself to keep singing.
Behind her, Brill sang something else, and beneath them the ground buckled and heaved as Brill’s spell and that of the darksingers meshed in dissonance.
When Anna finished her second verse, she looked up.
Only smoldering flames remained of the darksingers, but the Ebran soldiers were untouched, although they had halted, if momentarily, still more than a dek from the shattered Defalkan fort.
Anna turned. The western gates were being opened, and armsmen began to pour out, scrambling through the moat that was dry again, except in places, scurrying around limp bodies. Two bridge extensions dropped into place, and the horsemen followed, heading back west, as if retreating.
Why?
Anna looked back at the eastern side of the fort, a mass of fallen masonry, gaping holes filled with bodies and loose bricks. Someone led another set of horses from the stables on the north side, relatively unscathed compared to the devastation below and to the south of Anna. She shook her head, and was rewarded with a sharp throbbing.
A handful of arrows whistled past, and she flattened herself against the watchtower, the sole intact section of the fort’s upper walls.
“Lady Anna!”
At Daffyd’s voice she turned, seeing Brill standing with a heavy arrow through his chest.
Her legs like lead, she half walked, half ran, crouching, to where the sorcerer sagged onto the bricks. His eyes were almost blank as she knelt by him.
“Liende … promised …”
Anna looked around. Liende was still lying on the corner of the rampart, where Palian struggled to bind or splint the clarinetist’s leg, broken by one of the lightning-thrown stones. Daffyd crouched between the two groups, keeping his head down as arrows flew over the northern wall intermittently.
“Liende …”
“She’s right o
ver there,” Anna said, taking the sorcerer’s hand.
“ … promised … all I can do …”
Anna bent to catch the words, but could hear only fragments.
“ … always golden, always young,
spells always cleanly sung,
from my death, bring her life,
… through all strife …”
“No—” she protested, even as Brill slumped back on the damp bricks of the fortress that he had built and that was falling with him.
Yet, with his words, her body tingled—that was the only term for it. What had he done? Why? But had it been for her? He’d called for Liende.
His hand went limp in hers, and his eyes stared sightlessly skyward.
More arrows whispered overhead, and a trumpet call sounded from the east.
Anna scuttled back to the holed and sundered eastern rampart and looked out. Although no darksingers remained, the dark-clad Ebran soldiers were hurrying forward, ignoring the sodden bodies in the moat, where only scattered puddles remained, and stepping around the cracks in the brickwork and ground.
Overhead, the dark clouds had already begun to thin, and patches of blue showed to the south, but the Ebrans kept moving westward.
Didn’t anything stop the devils?
She looked across the broken Defalkan ramparts, but nothing moved. When she glanced back to where Brill had lain, she saw nothing but clothes and an arrow. From where he was helping splint Liende’s leg, Daffyd’s mouth opened. So did Palian’s.
Anna wanted to shake her head, but she did not, trying to ignore the tingling that had raced through her body and had begun to subside.
The courtyard below was deserted, except for two armsmen, one struggling to help the other through the open western gate. Anna could see, farther to the west, scattered puffs of dust from fleeing soldiers, and one organized group, under a blue banner, slowly marching to the northwest.
Daffyd and Palian eased Liende toward the steps, but the other players had vanished, except for the dead violinist and bass hornist. Anna shook her head. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion … so slowly.
The Soprano Sorceress: The First Book of the Spellsong Cycle Page 19
