The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  "I think we'll hold," Olivander said, as if convincing himself. "I think we'll spill too much blood for them to push through. They'll siege. Cally's been stocking up provisions for years. Will it be enough? Will the norren who still survive in the Territories push back hard enough to force the king to leave us in peace? That, I think, is how we do this."

  "A siege? You mean I'll finally get to stay in Narashtovik for longer than two weeks?"

  Olivander's trim beard quirked with a smile. "Don't get ahead of yourself. Someone will have to head the daring runs through enemy territory."

  "Here I thought there would be a silver lining to Cally's passing—that I would no longer be called upon every time we need to do something ridiculous."

  "I thought you and Blays did these things because you liked them."

  "Maybe," Dante admitted. "But even the wicked can use a vacation."

  As the sun rose, proper light scared away the ghostly land of predawn. It was already hot enough to have Dante sweating. Mourn brought the norren to the walls. They stuck together, saying little. A scout pounded up the road to the gates. The redshirts had broken camp a quarter hour ago.

  Olivander sounded the horns. Soldiers jogged from the inner ring of the city to take up positions on the outer walls. Several members of the Council joined Dante and Olivander; the others were spread out along the miles-long sweep of the Pridegate, ready to react to any enemy sorcerers.

  "What's going on?" Blays said when he appeared on the wall a few minutes later. "Boy, it looks like you guys are gearing up for a fight or something."

  "Nothing of the sort," Dante said. "We were just going to sit down with the redshirts and discuss Allandon's Transubstantiated Ethics and the Deceit of Carvahal. A war's only broken out over that twice."

  "I'm not even going to pretend to pay attention to that."

  Atop the Pridegate's twenty foot walls, which in turn stood halfway up the rising slope of the city, Dante's line of sight ran to the edge of the city with few obstructions. It was from this clear vantage that he watched the king's army enter the city.

  At first they flowed blackly from the forest, a dark, sluggish, molasses-like mass. That flow broke into separate streams as thousands of men diverted into four columns, each of which took a different one of the four main north-south roads to this flank of the Pridegate. Once this mass drew within a mile, its individual features grew more distinct. Red banners flapped above ranks of swordsmen wearing hauberks and spearmen clad in the oaky hues of boiled leather. A line of warhorses strode at the head of the main column, riders masked in plates of solid metal that glinted in the summer morning sun.

  The stomp of their steps rolled through the sticky air. Rhythmic. Maddening. A planned avalanche. Dollendun had been different. Dante had only seen the boats, not the army's main body. The gathering of so many men intent on murdering them was eerie and awesome and terrifying.

  "Is it too late to tell them the city's full of deadly ghosts?" Blays said.

  "We may get a chance to find out," Dante said. "I think I'm about to start moaning."

  Narashtovik's commanders hollered last-minute orders. To Dante's left, walltop defenders shuffled nearer the gates to meet the attackers. The king's army continued on, step by step, eating up what little distance remained between them and the walls. Close enough now to make out individual faces, to smell their miasma of travel and sweat. The front lines stepped within easy bowshot and stopped cold. The waves of men behind them rippled to a halt.

  A lone rider emerged from the front lines, his warhorse stepping as lightly as the summer rains. Some ten yards in front of his troops, he halted and turned sidelong. Instead of the king's red, he wore pine green.

  "I will now deliver the king's terms," he said. His voice was soft, almost soothing, yet it carried on the air like the streamers of morning mist that blew in from the bay and threaded through the city streets.

  It was a cold voice, but that wasn't what gave Dante goosebumps. "Son of a gods damned bitch!"

  "What?" Blays said.

  Dante pointed below. "That."

  Before the Pridegate, the man in green tilted back his head to regard the black-clad troops lining the walls. "Surrender. Lay down your arms. Swear fealty to King Moddegan of Gask. Disband the Council of the Sealed Citadel. Hand over all norren within Narashtovik to the custody of the king and his appointed executors. Turn over control of the city to me, Cassinder of Beckonridge."

  "What the hell?" Blays said. "We killed that guy!"

  "Apparently he got better," Dante said.

  "You've met Cassinder, yes?" Kav said from beside them.

  "Sure," Dante said. "In the sense we've spent the last few months trying repeatedly to kill each other."

  Kav smiled ruefully. "Then perhaps you'd like to deliver our response."

  Down in the street, Cassinder pulled off his steel helmet. One of his eyes drooped. A mass of pale scars surrounded the socket.

  Dante straightened and advanced to the edge of the wall. "I am afraid to inform you that we are unable to accept your terms on the grounds that the only man in Narashtovik with the authority to accept them has been killed. As you ordered. As the king authorized." Dante did his best to look pained. "It is with great sorrow, then, that I am left with a single response: fuck you and the horse you rode in on!"

  Cassinder bobbed his head. "Very well."

  He wheeled his horse. As he returned to the ranks, he flung both hands above his head, open-palmed. Ether streaked from six points within the redshirts' ranks, glaring, as hot and white and angry as liquid steel. Dante didn't have time to shout. The ether crashed into the walls. The doors of the Pridegate came tumbling down.

  28

  Stone roared and groaned and crackled and burst. When Dante moved soil and stone, it was smooth, silent, graceful. The ethermancers' attack was not. Instead, it was a hammer-blow of pure force, the combined power of Setteven's strongest sorcerers blasting the gates and the surrounding stonework straight to the ground.

  Dante fell with them.

  Men shrieked. Nether whipped from Narashtovik's priests, too late to stop the attack, but perhaps in time to punish those who had made it. The floor disappeared beneath Dante. He tumbled through the open air, dust and pebbles pinging his face. As soon as he understood what was happening, he hit the ground.

  His spine jarred. His elbow cracked. His head whiplashed into the cobblestones. Fist-sized stones rained down around him, bouncing from the street. It was very quiet. The shouts, the screams, were they coming from another world? It was so gauzy, too. The dust. The dust was part of it. He could taste it, gritty and slightly bitter. But the gauze was more than the dust. Things were fuzzy. Soft and smeary at the edges. He tried to rise and flopped back down. His elbow hurt. Dimly, foggily, but it hurt. So did his head. So did his back.

  "Mourn!" he heard Blays call. "Take the norren and hold the gap! We have to hold them off while our men retreat!"

  Olivander's baritone barked across the screams. Black-clad soldiers ran uphill deeper into the city. To the Ingate? Already? Why would they fall back so fast? Dante gritted his teeth and swung himself to a sitting position. Towering norren thundered past him, swords and shields in hand. Bellowing. Finally, Dante saw the hole in the wall. The very large hole where there had once been gates. And the tide of redshirts swirling in through it.

  The norren met them head-on. Steel clashed. The screams changed pitch. Became shriller. Pained. Men died, cut down by the norren's pounding blades. Blood slicked the still-settling dust.

  "Come on." Someone hooked a hand into his armpit. Blays grimaced down at him, face coated with dust and sweat. Someone else took his other arm. Lira. Together, they hauled him to his feet, which were perplexingly reticent to follow his demands. Narashtovik's soldiers continued the retreat to the safety of the Ingate. Supported on both sides, Dante stumbled along behind them.

  The sounds of battle faded, replaced by the thump of scores of boots and the heavy breathing of
men in full stride. The retreat was orderly enough. As orderly, at any rate, as could be hoped for in a movement involving thousands of men with swords running away from thousands of enemy men with swords. It was good they'd practiced the maneuver. Otherwise the battle might already be over.

  They maintained their orderliness at the Ingate, where soldiers waited to pass through its narrow gates. Heads popped up along the walls. Men took up bows, nocking arrows. Pain throbbed in Dante's elbow and head. That was good. He was stepping out of the fog.

  "I think I can walk on my own now," he said. Blays and Lira exchanged a look, then gradually lessened their hold on him until they were certain his feet were ready to fend for themselves. The three of them joined the crowd of soldiers in the wide plaza waiting to pass through the gates. Dante glanced downhill. "Did what I think just happened really just happened?"

  "You mean the part where they blew down the wall like an angry god?" Blays said. "I thought it was you priesty boys' job to stop the enemy wizards from ruining our day."

  "They were too fast. Normally these battles have a lot of preliminary pageantry. Speeches and the waving of flags and whatnot. They hit us the same way we hit the fort at Borrull."

  "Those assholes!"

  "Are you sure you're all right?" Lira said. "Heads shouldn't bleed. Yours is."

  Dante touched the throbbing at the back of his skull. His fingers probed warm, matted hair. He twiddled them in front of his face. "Well, I don't see any brains."

  "Not a surprise," Blays said.

  Lira nodded to the Ingate and the black-clad soldiers passing through it. "Why won't they just blow up this wall, too?"

  "They'll try," Dante said. "But they've already spent a lot of their power. And if you're alert, it's easy enough to stop. We'll have to post our people around the wall. Be vigilant."

  Within two minutes, the last of the troops were filing through to the other side. The three of them milled at the rear. Back in the direction of the Pridegate, the norren ran into view, long legs carrying them ahead of whatever pursued them.

  "Looks like our cue to get inside," Blays said.

  They crossed beneath the shadow of the gates. Dante lingered, scanning the approaching norren for Mourn. The warriors reached the plaza. Hoofbeats thundered to Dante's left.

  "Oh shit."

  "What?" Blays said.

  Dante rushed into the square. Cavalry galloped down the cross street toward the plaza. They'd be on the norren in seconds. Mourn and his men would be slaughtered.

  Dante sprinted straight for the horsemen. He dropped to his knees, skidding across the cobblestones, and slapped his hand against the ground.

  The earth shook. A trench leapt apart just feet in front of the cavalry. With no time to react, the first line of riders fell headlong into the narrow pit. Horses' eyes went white and wild. The second row of riders tried to jump or turn but fell instead, ensnaring those behind them in a tangle of reins and legs. Dante raced back toward the gates. The norren beat him there, funneling through. Horses screamed. Men, too. Down the road, redshirt infantry jogged into view, bound for the Ingate.

  The gates creaked, shuddering as they began to close. Dante hurried through. The portcullis clanked down behind him. The norren stood inside, hands on knees as they caught their breath. Dante found Mourn among them. A bright gash trickled blood down his left arm.

  Mourn jerked his head in the direction of the felled horses. "That was nice of you."

  "You're too useful to lose this early in the day." Dante glanced among the clan warriors. "Lose many?"

  "How many is 'many'? A clan's-worth. Most days, that is many. Today, I think it will be a blade of grass on the plain."

  "That's a poetic way to put it." Up on the walls, bows twanged. Enemy arrows sailed overhead and clattered in the square inside the Ingate. Dante pointed to a tent across the square where men in robes came and went. "Take your wounded to the monks. And thank you, Mourn."

  Mourn nodded and grunted at his troops. They headed for the tent, some leaning on the shoulders of their clan-brothers and sisters. In the shadow of the wall, Blays and Lira hugged briefly. Dante climbed the stairs to the top, keeping his head low, and hunkered behind the safety of a merlon. Around him, men stood, fired, ducked, and repeated.

  Dante risked a look through a crenel. Redshirts busily pushed broad wooden barriers into firing range, setting up beachheads for their archers while the bulk of their troops stayed clear of the no man's land in front of the gates. Dante stilled his mind, wary for the first flicker of ether, but none came. Either the enemy sorcerers were biding their time, or they'd snuck off to find an unmanned section of the wall to attack next. Did they city have enough priests, monks, and minor talents to protect the Ingate against attack? How could they possibly keep watch over every foot of the wall?

  The warmth of morning became the heat of day. Dante drank a full flask of water and wiped his mouth, gasping. The king's men continued to build their makeshift barricades and exchange arrows with the defenders. Their assault was not particularly effective. It struck Dante as more of an effort to keep Narashtovik's soldiers occupied than to pose any serious threat.

  Dante healed the split on the back of his scalp, stopping as soon as he stopped the bleeding—this day, he'd need every scrap of nether he could command. Two cassocked monks tromped up the steps. He assigned them to keep both eyes on the battlefield below, then jogged along the westward curve of the wall in a low crouch.

  After traveling just a couple hundred yards, he could almost forget a battle for the city was raging behind him. Down one street, the bodies of a dozen un-uniformed civilians lay among a handful of dead redshirts. Further along, men jogged down the street at a cant, buckets of well water sploshing their knees as they hurried to a house smoldering down the block. Dante stretched his mind as far as it would go, letting his other senses fade. Away from the arrows of the enemy, he straighted to his full height and strolled past scattered soldiers on watch for sudden attacks.

  Something glimmered as briefly as a wisp of sunlight reflected from a rippling stream. Dante got down on hands and knees and crawled along behind the merlons. The glimmer repeated in his mind with the ethereal glow of the shifting spots he saw whenever he closed his eyes. He stalked on. The lights in his head increased in frequency and intensity. He peeked past the wall. Not fifty feet away, a woman hunkered against the base of the Ingate's wall. She was dressed plainly. No red, no uniform of any kind. But a steady stream of ether pulsed from her to the wall. Pebbles clattered against the ground.

  Dante drew on the nether waiting in his drying blood and fired it toward the center of her head. Engaged in her sabotage, she didn't notice until the last second. Ether flashed wildly. Enough to knock his strike off course. Not enough to make it fizzle away. Instead of piercing her skull, the nether slashed into the side of her ribs.

  She dropped hard to the ground. Blood poured into the cracks between cobbles. She clamped her hands to the wound. Ether glittered. Dante snuffed it out with a wave of his hand. She gasped for breath, blinking back frustrated tears. He watched her die, then waited there another ten minutes, mind open to any sparks of ether. None came.

  A boom rolled across the city from the gates he'd left nearly an hour before. Dante backtracked at a jog. The plaza swung into view. A watermelon-sized stone hung in the air high above the no man's land; an instant later, it smashed into the walls. Stone splintered, vomiting shards across fleeing soldiers.

  "Oh, there you are." Blays pushed away form the merlon he'd been cowering behind, brushing dust from his doublet. "Go off to take a nap?"

  "The usual. Just off saving all our lives."

  "Well, in case you haven't noticed, they have trebuchets."

  "So?" Dante said.

  "So trebuchets are to walls what wild dogs are to unattended children."

  Dante shook his head and edged past a protective merlon. An arrow whisked past his head. He tried again. Far up the street feeding into the square,
three trebuchets stood in various postures of readiness. At one, soldiers strained against the long lever holding the sling, raising the counterweight back into position. Dante reached out with the nether and snapped one of the struts connecting the counterweight to the lever. Wood groaned and cracked. The counterweight gave way, booming against the ground. With the weight removed from the other end of the lever, the team of straining men sat down hard.

  Blays laughed through his nose. "You're really not fair, you know that?"

  "I'm going to find some monks to take care of the others," Dante said. "Don't want to wear myself out too soon."

  The two monks he'd seen earlier were just past the hole the trebuchet had smashed through the wall's deck. Dante edge along the wreckage and directed the monks to focus on the two remaining siege engines' most vulnerable parts. Nether winged across the plaza—only to disperse in a sizzle of black and white sparks.

  "I didn't do that," one of the monks said.

  The other rolled his eyes. "They stopped it, you dolt. Haven't you ever fought another sorcerer before?"

  "Have you?"

  "No, but Tobin has, and he told me—"

  "Quiet down and try again," Dante said. "Every spark of ether they use to nullify you is one less spark they have to throw against the walls."

  The monks turned back to the plaza, chagrined. Across the way, a man pulled the pin from a loaded trebuchet. Its firing lever whipped through the air, driven by the massive counterweight, slinging another head-sized rock through the air. The monks destroyed the device's lever while it was still vibrating. The rock landed short, whacking into the cobblestones twenty feet in front of the walls and ricocheting straight into their base with a sickly thwack.

  The monks' next attack on the siege engines was stymied by a sorcerer hidden somewhere in the buildings at the opposite end of the square. So was the one that followed. The remaining trebuchet got off one more shot before the monks knocked it into splinters.

  This back-and-forth continued through the next hour, resulting in little more than a few chunks taken out of the walls, several piles of kindling where trebuchets had once sat, and seven exhausted monks. Archers fired back and forth. Shouts rang out across the city. The bells tolled two o'clock. Dante and a large fraction of the soldiers on the wall switched places with the reserves below. Along with Lira and Blays, he went to one of the square's public houses coopted by the defenders. It felt good to be out of the sun. He sat, sore in his back and his elbow, and sipped an assortment of water, beer, and tea.