by Simpson, Terry C. ; Wilson-Viola, D Kai; Ordonez Arias, Gonzalo
“Yes. That’s what I was beginning to think.”
Stefan signaled for Guthrie, Devan, Jillian, Rohan and Edwin to join them. All now appointed as Generals, they rode over and formed a small circle, misty breaths of men and mounts rising in the air, leather and armor creaking. The musky smell of dartans filled the area.
“Why would you choose to fight Matii at the Spellforge hour?” Stefan scanned the Sendethi forces.
Jillian cocked her head in that odd way of hers, the beak upon her leather helmet making her appear as aquiline as one of her pet eagles. “Maybe they have Matii of their own?”
Edwin snorted. “Where would the Sendethi acquire Matii? The Pathfinders have weeded out every single one who’s come into their power.”
“That may be true,” Guthrie stated, his paunch making him appear to lean unsteadily in the saddle. “But the question still begs to be asked. And the answer Jillian gave seems the most plausible one.”
“I say we take no chances,” Devan said, his hulking form matching his gruff voice. He rode the biggest dartan of the bunch, an animal that dwarfed the others. “Act as if they do have Matii. Prepare our Ashishin to counter rather than attack.”
Galiana nodded. “I agree. If they’d smuggled in Namazzi or Alzari we would have known. And well, the Sevnzar fight for no one but themselves.” Her cloak flapped in the breeze, and she pulled it tighter around her. “But I see the Golden Tide banners of Barson among the Sendethi forces. The Pathfinders have never penetrated their borders. I do not think now is the time to act without caution.”
“Well,” Guthrie said, “They have our ten thousand outnumbered by three to one. If our original plan can’t work, what now?”
“We split forces,” Stefan said. “Make them move their army.”
Edwin’s brow rose. “How do we do that? And why we would we split when our strength lies in our numbers.”
Stefan smiled, all teeth. “Their strength is in their numbers. Ours isn’t. Our strength is maneuverability, our Ashishin, Dagodin and what divya we’ve mustered. Our mounted divisions are groomed for speed. Their heavily armored horses are no match. Today will prove their downfall. Horse against dartan. There’s no contest.”
Everyone nodded their agreement. Galiana could see part of the plan clearly now. But where would they leave Eldanhill vulnerable?
As if seeing the question written on her face, Stefan answered. “We keep several Ashishin here. Fire the tar and oil pits. Let the battlefield burn even before they charge. Why wait? Have the Ashishin maintain the blaze. There’s no way those horses will charge through fire like dartans would. Their infantry certainly won’t. We have the river’s protection on one side of Eldanhill. Put a small force there led by Jillian in case they decide to use the river. Her eagles can keep her abreast of anything they see across the Kelvore.
“The remainder of our forces we take west to face the Greenleaf Forest. They’ll have to change positions. As they do, we spring the traps we set in the fields to that side. If they have Matii, they’ll be forced to respond then. When they do, we strike. Our Ashishin will counter their Matii as our archers pick their infantry and cavalry apart from atop the dartans. Then it will come down to infantry versus infantry. Our Dagodin versus their regiments.” Stefan drew a line across his throat with his thumb.
Galiana almost grinned. As she’d thought, even after fifty years without his active involvement in a war, Stefan hadn’t lost a step. The best General to serve under Nerian the Shadowbearer was proving his worth. The best Knight Commander ever to don the Tribunal crimson was now in his own element.
With the decision made, they ended their meeting and joined their individual cohorts. Nervous mutters abounded as new instructions were given. Galiana passed the word to the green and white clad Ashishin spread to her left and right. Once, they’d all been warriors, trained for worse battles than this, until they took on the task to be Teachers. Now, they were being drawn into what they loved the most, what their power often cried for. She nodded at the stern faces all around.
“Archers! Light!” Guthrie’s voice boomed, silencing the shift of cold feet, the clink of armor, and the restless murmurs of men and women.
All across the lines, archers dipped arrowheads into fires. The ones who needed to move did so quickly and efficiently, rejoining their rank with practiced smoothness.
Galiana opened her Matersense. All around her, she felt Ashishin do the same. They seized essences of fire from the Streams and essences of air from the Flows. The orange flames at the tip of the arrows bloomed into phosphorescent spheres, sealed off and fed by air. Shadows fled before the luminescence.
“Archers! Ready!”
Longbows arched into the air as bowstrings drew taut. The creak of wood stretching whispered along the archer lines. Flames illuminated faces strained in concentration.
“Loose!”
The twang of several thousand bows reverberated through the air. Burning arrows streaked high, illuminating the heavens with its multitude of thunderclouds boiling in a dark stew. The shafts sailed over oil-filled moats, the chasm of palisades and spiked barriers between Eldanhill and the Sendethi army and down.
Galiana focused on the army, picking out movement among the cavalry. She squinted and brought her looking glass to her eye.
Hooded men stepped forward from around the Golden Tide banners. Hands raised in the air, they moved up in front the Sendethi horse.
“Ashishin!” Galiana yelled. “Shield those arrows. Now!”
A nimbus glowed around the men and women as they quickly linked for the undertaking. A dome rose up in the air above the arrows.
Thunderless lightning cracked across the sky. The bloated clouds tore open, and icy rain fell in a silvery sheet. At the same time, the wind picked up into swirling eddies, buffeting cloaks and spilling hair about the faces of those who went helmetless.
Just as sudden as it began, the storm cut off as the barrier closed above Eldanhill’s forces. The tempest, Forged by the Barsonian Matii, battered against the shield created by the Ashishin. Lightning lanced across its surface, and water flowed off, revealing the shape of the immense oval dome in streaming rivulets.
The shield held. Galiana smirked.
The fire arrows landed with a whoosh.
Flames roared up where the arrows struck oil and tar, racing across the ground in every direction until a curtain of fire, a few thousand feet thick, separated southern Eldanhill from the Sendethi forces. Heat shimmered and swelled to devour the cold that dominated only moments ago. The essences worked into the blaze gobbled up the Mater in the air, and an inferno bloomed, white-hot and eerily quiet. Eldanhill’s army cheered.
Guthrie and the others wasted no time. Orders barked out in quick succession, and their cohorts split.
“Ashishin Berg, Maurer, Jung, and Finkel,” Galiana yelled, voice carrying over the march of the departing soldiers. “Choose five more to feed the fire and maintain the barrier.” She waited as they complied. When they were ready, she nodded her approval of their choices. “The rest of you with me.” She shook her reins and headed toward Eldanhill’s west side.
As she moved, she heard someone yelling and pointing. Why was the town lit up to the west? A sinking feeling grew in the pit of her stomach.
Screams echoed from the same direction. Above those cries came frantic orders. Those on mounts gathered in formation and charged. The infantry quickened their march toward what Galiana knew now to be flames. Eldanhill’s western flank was under attack.
Slapping her reins harder, she broke into a gallop. Rain and biting wind lashed her as she left the protection of the shield. Coupled with the icy water and howling gale, the fear crawling through her stomach chilled her to the bone. She huddled in her saddle, cloak streaming behind her as her dartan dashed headlong along the slick road. Behind her, the remaining Ashishin followed toward the new threat.
Lightning continued to flicker angrily across the sky, but this time thunder bellowed
its response. Galiana ignored the tempest, knowing the Barsonian Matii couldn’t be controlling this portion of the storm. Unless they were stronger than she thought. But the elements within the weather brewing above them now was natural and not a Forging. The change was subtle, like the difference between the smoothness of wet clay and grainy texture of mud, but it was there.
She turned off the Eldan Road onto Market Row and kept pushing west. Small houses along tight alleys huddled against the streets in this section of Eldanhill. Sewage and debris spilled onto the lanes from swollen drains, clouding the air with their stench. Along with the icy sheets the freezing rain had created, this made the going much more treacherous. The occasional gust that found its way down the alleys whipped anything not heavy enough into the air.
The trip all seemed to be taking too long. Ahead, the glow from the fires increased. The cacophony of battle rose on the wind—steel clashing against steel, screams of terror, groans of the wounded, and the ripped cries and gurgles of the dying.
Above those sounds rose something terrible.
Inhuman wails, howls and shrieks that scraped along Galiana’s skin. Despite the cold and the rain, sweat beaded her forehead. She knew those sounds. Hundreds of years spent from one battle to another had etched them into her mind, into her core. They were a part of her as surely as her thoughts.
Shadelings.
She burst from an alley out onto the main avenue of the sparsely housed western outskirts of Eldanhill. And into a scene from a nightmare.
Dead bodies littered the cobbles. Blood colored the water runoff, painted the street red, and pooled in any dip or crack, its cloying scent hanging in the air, adding to the stench of shadelings.
Highlighted against the backdrop of burning homes, wraithwolves and darkwraiths fought soldiers and civilians alike. Black blades or claws and fangs ripped into the unprepared and untrained civilians with ease. Desperate townsfolk preferred to run into the blazes of their homes, creating their own funeral pyres, rather than die to the shadelings.
Dagodin fought in small groups to stave off the attackers, boots splashing through bloody pools. Advancing among the shadelings were Sendethi soldiers, mounted and on foot, laying about them with shields and swords. With every kill, the wraithwolves put their cavernous maws to the storming sky and howled.
At first, Eldanhill’s soldiers faltered. On many a face, Galiana saw fear, the kind of raw fear that paralyzes a man.
But Stefan, Guthrie, Devan and many others had seen this sort of battle before. Undaunted, Stefan barked orders and his Generals obeyed.
Dagodin formed ranks among the chaos. Sword and spear gathered in ordered lines. Galiana recognized several of Eldanhill’s Weaponmasters at the forefront of each group and behind them, several rows of archers. Guthrie shouted an order and arrows loosed, struck true and made pincushions of shadeling and Sendethi alike. Pained howls and shrieks ensued.
The response of Eldanhill’s defenders stemmed the tide of the battle for the moment. The advancing army paused.
Wraithwolves and darkwraiths by the hundreds turned to the new threat. Green eyes glowed above elongated snouts and red eyes shone from within the black depths of smoky darkwraith hoods. How could there be so many? She and Stefan had made preparations, assuming but hoping against hope the shadelings hadn’t crossed the Vallum. But now, the proof lay before her, the stench from the wraithwolves holding dominion over the smell of burnt wood, cooked flesh, offal and blood. The shrieks, howls and wails from the shadelings drowned out the crackle of the blazes, the clash of weapons, the marching feet, and the cries and moans of the wounded and dying.
How did the shade breach the Vallum of Light? And without anyone’s knowledge?
Galiana didn’t spare another moment. She leaped from the back of her dartan. When she landed, she shouted, “Ashishin, dismount! Form ranks!”
She didn’t need to look behind her to know the other Ashishin had dismounted and formed an ordered line behind her according to their strength. As in the days of old, when the shade ran rampant, they did as she commanded.
The shadeling and Sendethi forces recovered from their momentary lapse. A command bellowed out. Swords and shields rose, pointed toward the Eldanhill lines. With howling screeches, the enemy charged.
“Hold!” Stefan yelled as his dartan swept up and down the Eldanhill ranks.
In front the other cohorts, Devan, Guthrie and the Weaponmasters stood, repeating the same command.
The rumble of a thousand feet and hundreds of shadeling cries drowned out the thunder that pealed in the heavens. Boots shifted uneasily. Eyes showed uncertainty. However, not one Eldanhill defender broke formation. Not one raised a hand to wipe away the rain running down their helmets onto their faces.
Galiana’s smile tipped imperceptibly at the edge of her mouth, and she waited. Stefan and the army became as still as a venomous snake just before it struck.
Goaded by their bloodlust, the wraithwolves bounded ahead of men and darkwraith, maws spread wide, white fangs gleaming. Driven by the need to sink their black blades into living flesh, the darkwraiths sped even faster like oily, black smoke blown by a fierce wind.
The first wraithwolves Blurred, and the darkwraiths followed their lead.
“Now!” Galiana yelled. She opened her Matersense and the other Ashishin did the same.
Shade lay in thick blankets around the Sendethi, wraithwolves, and darkwraiths. Galiana ignored the Sendethi for now. The shadelings posed the real threat. Picking out the telltale trails of the Blurs, she split her Forge into several hundred different strands, loosing light and fire essences. The strands flew like incandescent arrows. When they connected, the trails blazed.
At the same time, the Ashishin behind her took a hold of the storms above. They linked the lightning with Galiana’s Forging. Several others pulled fire essences from the flames around them and added those.
When the shadelings emerged from their Blurs, sheets of lightning and balls of fire greeted them. The blazing trails coalesced amongst the creatures with loud booms. The concussions from the blasts rocked the beasts and any nearby structures, blowing holes in limbs, wood and stone alike.
The carnage didn’t deter the remainder of the shadelings or the Sendethi. If anything, it incensed them. They surged forward, screaming curses, eyes aglow with hate. Unflinching, Galiana’s Ashishin continued to tear into the shadelings. Masses of acrid smoke billowed up into the air.
The black beasts that managed to reach the first wave of Dagodin were met by silversteel divya weapons. In unison, as if a part of a synchronized dance, spears stabbed. Any shadeling that cleared the spears were met by swords.
But the creatures moved with an uncanny speed many were unprepared for. Soldiers fought to find purchase on the slippery ground as they tried to fend off the attacks. Exploiting the weakness they didn’t share with Eldanhill’s defenders, the shadelings remained in perpetual motion. As many shadelings killed, twice the number in Dagodin and soldiers died, gutted by claws, throats ripped by fangs or sliced to shred by black blades. The darkwraiths moved like greasy death among the Eldanhill forces, side stepping attacks to slice into a soldier or Dagodin who was too slow to defend.
The Sendethi soldiers reached the Eldanhill lines, engaging with wild abandon.
“Single target attacks only,” Galiana yelled. She dared not use the same Forges this close to their own forces now. The results would be catastrophic for all.
Single firebolts or balls and streams of light shot forth from the Ashishin into individual targets. Each strike sent a shadeling or an enemy soldier crumpling to the ground. Galiana concentrated on helping the trainees and lightly garbed defenders.
Stefan, his Generals, and the Weaponmasters were at the forefront of the battle. They protected any small pockets the shadelings and Sendethi came close to overwhelming. Stefan’s sword darted and sliced faster than her eyes could follow as he danced between the enemy, taking arms or spilling guts with deadly efficiency.
A darkwraith flowed toward Stefan, and the graying man turned to meet the creature. His silver armor glinted with the flames, the green insignia on his breast standing out.
Black, Hydae-forged ebonsteel lashed out as the shadeling struck. Stefan parried the attack, his divya sword flashing up. Sparks cascaded into the air.
The darkwraith circled Stefan, its movements as quick and elusive as its sword rose and fell, stabbed and sliced. Stefan was a picture of concentration and calm. He slid between the attacks, parrying each with not much more than a step or a shift of his body. The darkwraith howled in frustration.
Attacking faster and faster, its black arms a blur, its iridescent black blade near invisible at times, the darkwraith drove forward. Stefan’s defensive speed increased to match.
Then, as if the creature wasn’t pushing him back, Stefan shifted his stance, positioning his front foot forward. At the same time, he stepped to the left. The darkwraith, still in all-out attack, couldn’t compensate. Its sword flashed by where Stefan’s body once was. Stefan’s sword swung above the blow and took the creature’s head. Stefan whirled around looking for his next target.
A roar and thundering boots on cobbles sounded behind Galiana. She turned to see the heart of the Eldanhill infantry led by old man Rohan, in golden armor chased with silver, charging between the homes and alleys. They joined the fray, beating back the attackers.
But the damage had been done. More than a third of the Dagodin lay dead or wounded.
A trumpet sounded from the dark out toward the open fields. The Sendethi stopped and turned to flee. A few of Eldanhill’s defenders gave chase before the Generals yelled for them to stay their ground. What remained of the shadelings were nothing more than piles of wet ash. By now, the rain had abated and the remaining fires petered out. Blackened frames and timber filled the spaces where homes once stood. The retreating soldiers ran or limped to meet the main Sendethi army gathering in the fields.
