The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  The battle had begun in earnest.

  Strange, then, to be on its less exciting flank. As clanging metal and the screams of the dying filtered from the main scrum a couple miles away, the scene by the river was quiet, punctuated by the sough of oars and the occasional order barked from the ships' captains. Orders which played out exactly as Dante hoped. Forced to rush their landing, the galleys could no longer sail up or downriver to form a beachhead away from the norren defenders. Instead, the fleet rushed straight in, carried just a few hundred yards downriver by the currents. Two foundered well before bow range. As the remaining ten slogged on, the norren jogged down the shore, set up wooden planks above their heads to act as shields, and readied their bows.

  The exchange of arrows was thin at first, both sides probing range. As the galleys closed, thick swarms flew back and forth, thunking into the wood of the shields and hulls alike. Dante hung back out of range. He wasn't much with bows. Besides, he had better plans for the day than dying of an arrow through the throat.

  Men and norren fell and screamed. Dante helped establish a triage center, attending to the wounded warriors with the perfectly mundane methods of bandages, stitches, and liquor. The norren archers forced the redshirts belowdecks until the galleys ground into the shore. As rope ladders tumbled over the boats' sides, the archers reemerged, covering debarking soldiers with a punishing hail of arrows.

  Norren arrows slaughtered the first wave of redshirts, leaving corpses bobbing in the shallows. Scores of living soldiers leapt into the water and splashed for dry land. Norren warriors rose, bellowed from the depths of their lungs, and charged. Blays flashed Dante a tense grin and ran to join them.

  Dante followed, reaching for his sword with one hand and the nether with the other. The two sides collided in a burst of blood and steel. Blades slashed through the sunlight. Blays ducked an arrow, swearing. Norren swords hammered the human soldiers into the waves. The redshirts' advance halted just below the waterline. As a norren fell, gut-stabbed, Blays darted in to stab the attacker's neck while his sword was still engaged. Lira flowed into the gap created by the falling man, flicking her sword into the ribs of another who hadn't yet responded to the sudden collapse of his flank.

  Dante splashed in to support Blays' left. His heart beat like an ancient dance. He was all right with a sword. Skilled enough to hold his own. He didn't want to burn through all his nether just yet, though, which left him playing a risky game: hesitate with it, and he could wind up wounded or worse; spend too freely, and he might have nothing left when the battle needed it most.

  A redshirted soldier stumbled through the knee-deep water. Dante thrust out his sword, piercing the man's chest. An arrow whisked past his ear. He flinched, putting him in range of a probing spear. He bashed down its point, flung out his hand, and sent a needle of nether winging through the spearman's eye.

  Red flowed through the foam. Coppery blood and sour guts mingled with the scent of mud and freshwater. Dante stabbed at a turned back. A black bolt of nether sped past his shoulder, slamming an incoming soldier into the water.

  Dante whirled to find the source of the shadows. Wint splashed up beside him with a smirk and a wink.

  "Morning," the other councilman said. "I won't pretend it's a good one."

  Ahead, the norren pushed the redshirts back to the sides of the boat and cut them down. To Dante's right, Blays crossed his swords against a thrust, rolled his right arm to flick the trapped sword away, then jabbed his lefthand sword through the opening in the man's defenses.

  The remaining redshirts surrendered within minutes. Not that there were many left. Many had died in the initial explosions. A few had drowned with their ships. Hundreds had died on the shore, feathered by arrows and hacked by swords, bobbing between the motionless boats. Far fewer of the giants floated down the river. Dante doubted the norren had lost a hundred men.

  He left the warriors to round up the prisoners and haul them off the boats. He pulsed Mourn through his loon and got no response. Neither Blays nor Lira had taken more than scratches and bruises during the lopsided battle. Wint looked no worse for wear, either.

  "We should do that more often." Blays slicked blood and water from his blades. "Why use these when we can let explosions do the fighting for us?"

  "Yes, it's all peaches and cream over here. Now let's just go take care of the remaining ten thousand men and we'll call it a day."

  "Give me a minute to catch my breath. Anyway, maybe we should wait to venture toward those ten thousand men until our troops here are ready to go with us."

  The wait was torture. Clamor sifted through the deserted streets, a background of blurry chaos interrupted by dagger-sharp screams. Dante pulsed Mourn again, got nothing. He wasn't too worried; Mourn's arm was likely too busy hacking at the king's soldiers to fiddle with his loon. Along the shore, warriors caught their breath, sat down to drink tea and beer and water. Some gnawed on flatbread and dried venison. The wounded washed up and waited for others to bind their cuts. After ten minutes of resting, with Dante preparing to rush off by himself, Mourn looned him back.

  "Come northeast up Farron Street with all you've got," Mourn said. "We're going to need it."

  "How's it going?" Dante said.

  "Bloody. Deathy. Very bad on both sides. They're attacking like there's no tomorrow, which I suppose is true for many of us, but I think we can hold on. Hurry."

  Mourn dropped the connection. Dante grabbed Blays by the elbow. "Lace up your boots. We've got to go."

  He spread word to the chieftains, who moved to rally their clans. Within a minute, five hundred men and women jogged behind Dante up Farron Street. A major boulevard, it was one of the few they'd left unobstructed. Dante's gaze darted between rooftops and doorways with every flutter of pigeons and rats and crows. For a better part of a mile the street was completely empty of people. The roar of battle grew by increments. It was a paralyzing sound, a terror-laced blend of clangs and screams and thumps, enough to root Dante's feet in place. Instead, he ran toward it.

  "Where are you?" Mourn looned him a minute later.

  "A ways up Farron," he said. "That church with the two-pointed spire is just up ahead."

  "Keep going," Mourn said. "There's an incoming cavalry charge. Slow them down or find us first, or we'll be trapped between the enemy and a canal."

  "Got it," Dante said. He turned around and jogged backwards to face the division of norren following him. They filled the street for two blocks. "Cavalry incoming! We've got to link up with our flank and help them withdraw before—"

  Down the street, a crackling bang slammed into his ears. Several of the warriors flinched. Others gaped, eyes as bright and round as the full moon. Dante whirled. Not a block away, the sky-scraping spires of the church tumbled into the street with an earth-shattering thunder.

  The clamor of the collapse hit them first, followed by a rushing cloud of dust. Dante knelt and shielded his face.

  "Did you feel that?" he shouted to Wint.

  Wint coughed, dust clinging to his black brows. "Ether. A vast spike of it. Immediately preceding the collapse."

  Dante nodded. He felt like vomiting. The road ahead was blocked by dust-choked rubble as high as a man's head. As he watched, the front of the stone church sloughed right off, piling into the debris with another smothering gray cloud.

  "What the fuck is happening?" Blays said.

  "They've blocked us off," Dante said. He batted at the dust, squinting at a stone tower on the other side of the church. "Enemy sorcerer. It's Cassinder."

  "Forget that idiot! We have to get to Mourn!"

  More thunder rumbled down the street. Dante braced himself, but this wasn't the avalanche-like clatter of a collapse. It was rhythmic. Drumming. His stomach squeezed into a fist. "It's too late."

  "Like hell!" Blays said. "We just passed that big old street a minute ago. We'll take it instead, loop around—"

  "That's them," Dante pointed. "The cavalry."

  "Then tha
t's a pretty convincing argument to stop standing around!"

  He'd felt the spike of ether that prompted the second collapse, too. Seen it winging from that stone tower. And sensed in his bones who had done it. "Lead the norren around to Mourn. I'm going after Cassinder."

  "I'm coming with you," Lira said.

  "No you're not!" Dante burst. "Do you have any idea how dangerous he is? Did you somehow miss that gods damn church he just knocked down? Do you think your spine is stronger than that spire?"

  "No. I do think you can keep me safe from Cassinder while I keep you safe from everyone else."

  Behind them, the norren flowed back down the street, seeking an alternate route. The trample of cavalry faded beyond the blockage of rubble. Frustrated anger surged through Dante's veins.

  "I don't have time for this. You want to get blasted into caseless sausage, go right ahead."

  Down the way, the norren flowed into a cramped side street, hoping to cut northwest around the blockage. Dante backtracked at a dead run. Blays, Lira, and Wint followed, boots slapping cobbles. The high rowhouses on the left side of the street formed a solid block, but an alley opened between them a short ways down, overhung with wash lines and dangling vines. Inside, it jogged right, then left; Dante fought to keep oriented. He dashed into the narrow street beyond, taking a left to parallel Farron Street. The tower loomed ahead, fifty feet high and capped with a high cone roof.

  "What kind of a power can he command if he's capable of knocking down a church?" Wint said, his constant smirk long since disappeared.

  "I've fought him before," Dante said. "He's not that strong. He's either exhausted himself or he had help."

  "How are you so sure it's him? The king commands any number of ethermancers."

  "He has a signature. He wields ether the same way you'd stab someone with an icicle."

  With the tower nearing, Dante slowed, moving close to the safety of the rowhouses. The noise of the maneuvering horsemen and norren had grown distant, their feet a faraway rumble. Dante found himself in a pocket of silence. It had been a couple minutes since the collapse of the church. More than enough time for the culprit to dash down the tower steps and disappear into the streets. Dante felt suddenly foolish, a puppet of his own anger. He shouldn't be chasing phantoms through the streets. He should be with the norren, fighting off the charge designed to smash them.

  "Oh no! You're here." Cassinder's cold voice dripped from above. He stood on a stone balcony on the top floor of the tower. He smiled like a dead man. "I wanted to kill you in Narashtovik. After you've seen everyone you know die."

  Dante's anger condensed to a needle of clarity. "Why are you doing this? You're practically a prince. Why do you need norren to work your lands for nothing?"

  "Because they should."

  "Funny," Blays said, "because I think most would rather barn-dance on your brains."

  Cassinder's laugh was as dry as August chaff. "The gods don't care for their wants. Neither do I. Does that mean I'm doing the gods' work?"

  "You'll have the chance to ask them in a moment," Dante said.

  "They are norren," Cassinder said. "Not human. Inhuman. They don't think and feel as humans think and feel. They live under the skies. Homeless. What else is homeless? Dogs. Even birds build nests. Dogs are ours to train. To be forged into the tools of our will. A dog that can't be trained is a dog that must be killed."

  "I've lived with them," Dante said. "Fought and eaten and slept beside them. Been betrayed and hated by them, too. Enough to know they're human in everything but name."

  "Thank you for the conversation. It may have saved my life." From his perch in the tower, Cassinder nodded down the street, his dead man's smile still fixed on his face. Dante glanced behind him. Sixty soldiers ran straight their way, red capes flapping.

  "Hit him!" Dante hissed at Wint.

  Wint grimaced. "There's no time—"

  "Do it!"

  Wint scowled, summoned the nether, and hurled it at Cassinder's high head. Cassinder chuckled and knocked it aside with a burst of ether. Silvery sparks exploded from the meeting of forces, falling harmlessly and winking away.

  Dante delved into the nether embedded in the stone of the balcony, took hold, and yanked the entire platform six inches forward.

  Cassinder gasped. The balcony, cut away as neatly as a halved apple, plummeted toward the ground. Dante sprinted past the tower laughing like a fool. The boots of the others pounded behind him. Less than a block away, sixty soldiers pursued.

  The balcony smashed into the street. Dante risked a look back. Shattered pebbles pinged across the cobbles. A motionless leg lay draped over a broken stone. The body it was attached to was hidden from sight by the ruins.

  Dante took a left at the intersection beyond the tower, following the route the cavalry had taken a few minutes earlier. The cobbles showed fresh scrapes of horseshoes.

  "If we're running away from those guys," Blays said, pointing at the soldiers behind them, "is it smart to run toward the much larger and nastier brigade?"

  "I'm hoping it will take us to our troops, too," Dante said. "Anyway, did you see that?"

  "What, the part where you dropped Cassinder off an invisible cliff?"

  "Yeah!"

  "No, must have missed it." Blays burst into laughter. "Did you see his face? He couldn't look more surprised if the king demoted him to Chief Shit-Taster."

  The scuffs of the horses were easy to follow even over the bare stone. After a right turn through more rowhouses, the street continued for a couple blocks before terminating against a canal. Those two blocks were littered with scores of dead norren. Horses writhed and brayed among the dead, legs broken, spears and arrows jutting from their forequarters. A handful of redshirts glanced up from the wounded comrades they'd been tending to.

  "Oh shit," Blays said.

  Dozens more norren bobbed lifelessly in the canal. Easily three hundred dead on their side alone, possibly more. The scent of blood baked in the warm sun. Dante could taste it, too. He'd bitten his cheek.

  Behind them, the pursuing soldiers rushed around the corner, pinning them against the canal just as the cavalry had pinned the norren. Dante whirled and ran straight for them. Nether streamed to his hands, fed by the blood in his mouth. He sent it slashing toward the front line in an indiscriminate blade. It scythed through the front rank. Torsos fell from legs. The second rank screamed, skidding on their heels. Before they could decide to press on, Wint lashed out with precise bolts of his own, spraying blood over the third rank. With ten men dead in the span of seconds, the others turned to run back the way they'd come.

  "Showoff," Blays said.

  "We need to get out of here before they come back to test whether I dislike swords as much as everyone else." Dante jerked his chin south in the direction of their main camp. "Let's get back to the plaza. See where the battle's gone."

  "To hell, I'd say."

  "That was just one skirmish." Dante didn't look back at the dead. "It doesn't mean the day is lost."

  The words were sunnier than he felt. There was no time to search for Mourn among the dead. As they jogged back toward the plaza near the piers, taking back alleys and shortcuts wherever they could, Dante's stomach felt increasingly hollow. Mourn wasn't replying to his loon. Cally's produced that soundless sound that meant it was already in use. Bodies scattered the streets. As many norren as human. That wasn't good. Not when they'd started the day down two to one.

  They returned to the barricaded plaza without incident. Hundreds of clan warriors waited behind palisades and debris. As they threaded between smashed furniture, Hopp stood from behind an overturned table, a tired smile touching his branded face.

  "Has your day been any better than ours?"

  "Started off pretty good," Dante said. "Since then, it's been thoroughly not-good."

  "I've got a question for you, Chief," Blays said. "What the hell happened to holding the ramparts?"

  Hopp's smile faded. "What can you do again
st so many? Their archers fired on the ramparts while the foot soldiers swept around to hit us from behind. They paid for that, but we had to withdraw to the city. One of our divisions got separated. Cavalry hit them. Cut them into strips of grass."

  "Mourn was with them. Do you know if he got out?"

  Hopp shook his head. "I haven't heard."

  "So what's the plan from here?" Dante said.

  "We've both lost a lot of people. I think the Gaskans are regrouping somewhere in the eastern part of town. The chiefs know to rally here. I think we'll have enough to make a second stand."

  They took up place beside him on the barricade. Battered clans and individual warriors flowed in over the course of the next hour. Dante saw no sign of Mourn. He recognized one member of the Nine Pines, but the woman had been separated earlier in the day and knew nothing of the fate of her clan. He was deeply heartened, at least, to see the return of Nak and Ulev, along with most of the monks.

  "What about Varla?" Dante said, picturing the graying councilwoman silently slinging nether from atop the rampart.

  Ulev shook his head. "Some towheaded, blue-blooded son of a bitch struck her down with a smile. Varla was whippin' 'em into black pudding right up till then."

  Dante nodded. He hadn't known the woman too well. She'd been so quiet he wondered whether anyone had truly gotten to know her. But with that silence had come a stolid rationality the Council would miss dearly. He thought about trying to reach Cally again, but the black news of her death could wait. He couldn't risk running Cally's loon dry before the day was done.

  There were too many norren to guess their exact number. Fewer than the start of the day, that much was clear. By at least a quarter. Maybe as much as half. Dante hoped most of the missing were still making their way through the city. On their way to the hills, even. Better to run away than to be left dead in the streets of a foreign town.

  The survivors dug in behind the blockades. Archers arranged themselves for clear firing lanes on the two roads into the north side of the plaza—the remaining streets had been choked with rubble and garbage. Scouts were sent out in pairs to catch any probes or sudden attacks.