by Jim Butcher
From the hole above them came a screech of fury of such pure malice and scorn and raw, seething hatred that Isana had to flinch away from its intensity. The scream made her feel as though someone with long, dirty fingernails had shoved them beneath the skin of her back and drawn them slowly, spitefully over her spine.
Isana became aware that the men around her had gone very still, staring up toward the origin of that hideous sound.
“Where do you think?” Araris asked quietly, his voice still buzzing with that metallic edge. The swordsman indicated the ceiling with a flick of his sword’s tip, and said, “He’s fighting that.”
CHAPTER 54
Tavi rolled to his right on pure instinct, and an instant later the Queen’s sword sliced through the empty space he had occupied. Her windstream was enormous, violent, and the vicious turbulence that followed her was nearly enough to send him spinning from the sky.
By the time he regained his balance, the Queen was not in sight. The Canim-wrought mist had long since cloaked the ground from view, and at the speeds they were traveling, they would only be visible to one another for a flashing instant through the haze. But Tavi could hear her, or at least her presence. The dull, empty howl of her overpowered windstream was rendered directionless by the mist and seemed to come from everywhere. But Tavi knew she was out there, somewhere, circling him.
Excellent.
Tavi drew himself into a steady hover, reached out a hand, and summoned three fire-spheres in rapid order. They appeared with a disproportionately loud boom and were followed by the hiss of mist being turned to steam. They never came anywhere close to the vord Queen. They weren’t supposed to.
The vord Queen let out another spine-shuddering shriek of hostility and rage—which grew louder as it went on. She was coming straight at him. Tavi swept his sword in a couple of swift circles and checked his pocket to be sure he was ready.
The Queen appeared: a sudden blur of white hair, glittering black eyes, and windblown cloak spreading like dark wings. She accelerated toward him with astonishing rapidity, and Tavi lifted his sword as though he meant to meet her blade to blade.
At the last second, he threw a firecrafting at her—even as she did exactly the same thing. The two craftings intercepted one another, and there was a deafening explosion of red and green flame. The vord Queen came plunging through it, the vanishing remnants of the explosion setting the edges of her cloak on fire in both colors. Her blade swept at his throat, but Tavi’s sword intercepted the strike neatly. A red, blue, and vord green explosion of sparks the size of a city market flew out from the impact, and the vord Queen shrieked again in furious disappointment as she shot past him and banked immediately, coming around to rush him again.
From somewhere below, Tavi heard the weird, ululating howl of a Cane, and the bloodstone in his pocket suddenly felt almost warm enough to blister his skin. Marok had heard his signal.
The mist all around them thickened, congealed, and dark shapes stirred within. Long, twining tendrils of reddish flesh lashed out from a dozen different directions, and Tavi’s heart lurched into his throat. No less than three of the Canim-called horrors had appeared all around him, and their questing tentacles slithered toward him, dripping a slime Tavi knew to be deadly acidic and poisonous to boot. He found himself all but holding his breath as the tendrils snaked all around him for several endless seconds . . . and abruptly withdrew. The protective power of the bloodstone talisman he carried had been enough to turn the beasts away—or at least enough to make them seek other prey.
The vord Queen had been swarmed by a dozen of the things.
Tentacles lashed out at her, flailing and grabbing. She eluded most of them but not all, and she shrieked in pain and anger as half a dozen dripping limbs left mild burn marks upon her seemingly vulnerable skin. The Queen spun madly in place, and her sword burst into flame as she began cutting her way free of the mist beasts.
Tavi didn’t give her a chance to get loose. He focused his concentration upon her and crafted the hottest and most violent fire-sphere he’d ever attempted. It burst upon the vord Queen in a brilliant flash of light and a deafening roar of thunder.
Tavi wasn’t trying to conform to the standards of a duel. He certainly had nothing to prove to anyone. And he’d seen too many battles to have any illusions about an honorable struggle; if he had his way, he would never engage in a fair fight ever again.
So he hammered the Queen with another fire-sphere. And another and another, as swiftly as he could throw them. The sound of her furious shriek provided a melody to the brutal percussion of the firecrafting.
He had her dead to rights for perhaps three or four seconds—but it couldn’t last. His firecraftings might have been scorching the Queen, but they were wreaking havoc on the mist beasts, burning away the tentacles that held the Queen in place. The second she was free of them, the Queen dropped her windcrafting and plummeted into the mist. Tavi had a quick glimpse of a naked body, white hair burned away, half-covered by black scorch marks, like a steak left too long over the fire. Then she vanished.
Tavi turned and streaked after her. He could not afford to let her escape.
Fire rose from nowhere as he dived, and he realized with a start that the Queen had veiled herself and slowed her fall. He lifted his sword as the flame enveloped him, drawing the heat into the blade and away from his flesh, igniting the sword once more. Then the Queen was diving toward the ground beside him, an apparition half-hidden behind a veil, only the green fire of her sword truly visible. Their weapons flashed and chimed a dozen times, and suddenly the ground was rushing toward them.
Tavi pulled up first, terrified for a second that he was already too near the ground to manage it, but he was able to turn his motion from vertical to horizontal, just above a stretch of open field. Tall weeds and bits of the previous year’s bracken scratched and hissed upon his armor, and he looked over his shoulder to see the vord Queen in pursuit, apparently none the slower for the damage wrought upon her flesh.
Crows. He’d been sure the Queen would be worse off than that after tangling with the Canim’s pet horrors. Still, it had to have taken something out of her. She wasn’t closing the distance on him nearly as quickly as he’d expected her to.
How many times had he been in this position, in front of someone much stronger than he was, knowing that only his wits would keep his skin in one piece. As a child in the Valley, and one who had never learned the knack of fading into the background, it had happened frequently with his playmates. But he had also dealt with thanadents and snow cats—crows, even the bloody sheep had been a great deal larger and stronger than he was, and the flocks’ rams had frequently chased him up trees. And all of that before he’d left the Calderon Valley.
He found himself grinning.
Though worry and terror and rage all burned away at his guts, Gaius Octavian was smiling.
This was a game he knew how to play.
He altered his course abruptly, shooting straight up into the air. The Queen came after him, her windstream a howling, cyclonic roar.
It took him only a moment to clear the ritualists’ mist, and he climbed out of it to find the sun coming up red on the eastern horizon under a heavily clouded sky, painting the Calderon Valley in the colors of blood. To his right, the Canim cavalry was engaged in wholesale slaughter of the sleeping vord, though Varg and the infantry were loping swiftly toward the vast bank of mist that hid the two Legions. Awakened vord ran amok by the thousands, and the comparatively small Aleran cavalry force was hitting any group of vord who thought they might attack the Canim infantry from the flanks while they marched. The sound of battle and the hollow coughs of medium-sized firecraftings drifted up to him, oddly attenuated by the mist.
The Queen emerged below him after several seconds. The unblackened part of her body sported fresh black-edged acid marks, and her speed seemed to have dropped even more, but her eyes glittered coldly, focused on Tavi and Tavi alone.
Tavi felt the g
rin spreading wider across his face. “All right. If you want the Calderon Valley so badly, the least I can do is give you the tour.”
He poured all his concentration and will into his windstream and shot off to the northwest, toward the thunderstorm-shrouded peak of Garados.
CHAPTER 55
Fidelias struggled to pull some semblance of order out of the battle’s chaos. Granted, battles were never orderly, tidy, or easily managed—but this one was worse than most.
With only minutes to prepare, and his army broken into separate elements, each of them too small to challenge the main body of the vord alone, he had done the only thing he could do. He’d marched the First Aleran out of the ruined steadholt and deployed them in an arching line around the steadholt’s exterior, while ordering the healers, wounded, and medical personnel into the relative safety of the steadholt’s great hall. He’d placed the Free Alerans on the steadholt’s flanks, intending to let his veteran troops take the brunt of the coming assault, while the less-experienced freemen handled any stragglers or enemy probes. While he was screaming those orders and getting his legionares into position—at times laying about him with his fists rather than a baton—the Windwolves had nonchalantly swept down with their wind coaches as if this was simply another day in Alera Imperia.
Fidelias directed Aldrick ex Gladius to the hive and left him to get the First Lady and company out of this disaster before the vord swallowed them whole. He had just returned to the improvised command post on the roof of the great stone barn, when someone screamed, “Vord!”
They came rushing along the ground and buzzing through the sky, all of them moving with an unsettling, sinuous sort of rhythm.
Fidelias immediately appropriated every single Knight Aeris from the Free Aleran—all three of them—with instructions to, “Keep those bloody bug men off my roof.” The Legions, without the defenses to which they were accustomed when fighting against such odds, locked shields in tight formation and waited to receive the mantises’ charge. The vord flung themselves forward, filling the air with their whistling shrieks.
Men started dying.
The vord all but climbed over one another in a desperate need to attack the Aleran forces and showed none of the hesitance they generally did before attacking a shieldwall. They simply rushed forward, one vord paying the price to break the cohesion of the lines while two others took advantage of the disruption to strike. The First Aleran was giving at least as well as it got, Fidelias thought, but that was a ruinous rate of exchange in the current market.
Footsteps made him look over his shoulder, and he found the First Lady approaching with an escort of hard-bitten types wearing mail and the black sashes of the Windwolves. Aldrick ex Gladius, a large, brawny man with cold eyes and a black beard, walked on Isana’s left, opposite the gleaming figure of Araris Valerian. Aldrick’s madwoman, Odiana, trailed along behind him with one finger hooked into the back of his belt. She was beaming at the battle all around them.
“My lady,” Fidelias said, scowling, “you need to leave the area at once. I insist that you take to your wind coaches now.”
“We cannot,” Isana replied steadily. “There are too many enemy fliers overhead. They’d swarm the coach before it could pick up speed if we tried to leave.”
Fidelias glanced up at the sky above. It was filled with vordknights, more of them than he could easily count. For the most part, they seemed willing to hover overhead, though a few score were harassing the infantry, streaking down to rake at them with their scythe-limbs when they thought they had an advantage. At least two dozen kept trying to sweep down onto the rooftop, but the Free Aleran Knights Aeris were handily swatting them off target with blasts of wind, working with excellent coordination.
He considered the idea of passing them over to the First Lady to cover her escape but dismissed it. The Windwolves already had more than enough Knights Aeris to manage that trick. Men blasting away with wind from solid ground was one thing. Hurling extraneous windstreams around while Knights Aeris were trying to keep a wind coach aloft was something else entirely.
“How can I help?” Isana asked.
Fidelias grimaced and looked from her to her two immediate escorts. Aldrick ex Gladius looked completely unconcerned. The big swordsman was one of the most unreadable individuals he’d ever met, and it was entirely possible that the man wasn’t sane. He might actually not feel any genuine anxiety about today’s outcome. Araris, though, was scowling and eyeing Fidelias as though he expected him to Do Something About That Woman.
On the ground below, the vord broke open an enormous hole in the shieldwall, and only the efforts of the First Aleran’s Knights Terra managed to close it again. Crows, but he didn’t need another problem to solve. “You can get out alive, and take my wounded Citizens with you. They might be needed.”
“I told you . . . Marcus, isn’t it? There are simply too many vord in the air.”
“Take Antillus Crassus,” Fidelias said. “He can probably veil the whole lot of you, if you flew in close enough formation. He can’t walk, but he can sit in a coach. Antillar Maximus and Ambassador Kitai are down there, too, unconscious.”
“First Spear,” Isana said. “You need such talents here. Or better yet, helping my son.”
“They were helping your son,” Fidelias growled. “That’s how all of them wound up in healing tubs in the first place.”
A trio of vordknights came zipping in from one side, with the risen sun behind them, and the Knights Aeris on the roof didn’t redirect their windstreams in time. Fidelias moved on pure instinct, grabbing the First Lady and taking her down to the stone of the roof with as much speed and as little harm as possible. He stayed there, shielding her body, as the swords of Araris, Aldrick, and half a dozen Windwolves leapt clear of their scabbards.
Bits and pieces of vordknight, divided in perfectly neat lines, scattered to the roof around them.
Fidelias lowered his voice for Isana’s ears alone, and said, “My lady. We cannot hold the position. We do not have much time. Do you understand?”
Isana’s eyes were a little wide, but her expression was controlled. She took in a deep breath as Fidelias rose and Araris helped her up.
“Captain Aldrick,” she said.
Aldrick gave a slight bow of his head, “My lady?”
“This Legion is short of their company of Knights. I wish you to deploy your men to support them.”
Aldrick said nothing for a moment. His eyes shifted, left and right, toward the waiting wind coaches and the vord outside the steadholt, respectively.
The fingers of his right hand, his sword hand, flexed slowly, as though being loosened up for action. Fidelias had a flash of insight. Though Aldrick might be a mercenary, he wasn’t inhuman. None of them were. And no Aleran could look at the vord destroying their world without realizing that there was no way to remain safely out of this fight. You could only decide whether to make a stand beside your fellow Alerans—or delay the moment of reckoning until you faced the vord alone.
“Say yes,” Odiana said, her lovely eyes eerily bright. “Oh, say yes, my lord. I’ve been waiting ever so long to see you kill vord.”
The mercenary glanced over his shoulder at Odiana, then turned to Isana with a second bow of his head. “Aye, my lady,” Aldrick growled.
Wolfish smiles spread through the men behind him, along with growled words of agreement.
Aldrick stepped forward to overlook the battle below, and Araris went with him.
Aldrick grunted. “Earthworks?”
Araris nodded. “Little elevation will make a big difference.”
“Odiana,” Aldrick said.
She was still hanging on to his belt. “Who?”
“Antillar and his brother. We need them.”
The woman turned and hurried from the roof.
“Where is she going?” Fidelias asked.
“Wake up your sleepers,” Aldrick replied.
Fidelias shook his head. “You can’t watercraft
someone back to consciousness.”
“She can.”
Isana stepped forward. “It is possible. But it’s somewhat insane.”
Aldrick almost smiled. “Sanity. Huh.”
Isana frowned after Odiana. “It’s dangerous. For patient and healer alike.”
Aldrick shrugged. “Dangerous for the vord to run those scythes through you a few times while you’re lying there unconscious, too.”
Isana’s mouth compressed, and she nodded once. “I’ll go with her.”
Fidelias touched her arm as she began to turn. “Lady,” he said quietly, “you need not do this.”
She blinked at him as if surprised. “Of course I must. Excuse me, First Spear.”
She left the rooftop to follow Odiana, and Fidelias turned to Aldrick. “The Antillan brothers could get us a ditch around this place—it’s mostly soil here. I assume that’s what you had in mind?”
Aldrick nodded. “Get your best seven or eight engineers, too. We’ll give them each a Knight Ferrous escort to cover them.”
Araris nodded. “It would be best if there was some way your Knights could drive them back for a moment,” he added. “Buy the earthcrafters a few seconds in the clear.”
Fidelias nodded slowly. Then he turned to the courier stationed on the roof near him, and said, “Ask Master Marok if he would please come speak to me.”
In the five minutes it took to line up the desperate plan, the First Aleran suffered more losses than it had during the entire campaign in the Vale and Canea combined. Men screamed and were dragged back to badly overworked healers. Men fell and were dragged out into the horde. Swords shattered. Shields were rent asunder. Vord died by the hundreds but never relented.
On the flanks, the Free Aleran fared little better, for all that they were in what amounted to a backwater, in terms of enemy presence. Perhaps a double tithe of the vord in the battle wrapped around to the sides of the beleaguered Legions, but the Free Alerans’ inexperience meant that they were hard-pressed. The only thing that kept some of the cohorts from bolting was the certain knowledge that there was no escape. Only victory—or death.
