The Red Sea

by Edward W. Robertson

  He reached the next platform, continuing immediately to the next. Directly across from it, Tauren soldiers made their way down the trail. Dante reached out to the dirt and rock within it. Before he could shift a single pebble, a light-haired woman on the top of the cliff splayed out her hand, knocking away his grasp.

  He tried again, testing her. Again, she dislodged him. Her attacks didn't feel especially refined. More like she was swinging a mallet around. She was probably drawing on the shaden. Pointless to exhaust himself against that. Besides, even if he were able to kill a few of them on the switchback, ruining it in the process, they'd simply go harvest another way down. He could only watch as the Tauren descended to the valley floor.

  There, the Tauren hacked their way forward with machetes, clearing a path. Niles' archers crowded onto the island with Dante, along with the platform beside it.

  Blays squinted. "It can't be this easy, can it? They're like cows leading themselves into the slaughtering pen."

  With the exception of some tall brush, they'd have a clear shot down on the enemy. Slowed by their work, they'd be easy marks for the archers' arrows. Even as Dante thought this, runners moved along the cliffs, carrying broad, curved shields. These were clearly lightweight, but they had no doubt been harvested for impenetrability. Dante lobbed a bolt of nether at the lead runner. Again, the light-haired woman deflected it.

  With the shields delivered to the valley floor, soldiers took them to the front of the path and fanned out to hold them over the machete-carriers' heads. Two minutes later, Niles gave the order to fire.

  Forty archers unleashed a volley. The arrows soared through a low arc, striking the shields in a cluster of sharp raps. But there were a pair of screams, too. A shield faltered. The archers nocked a second round. As they drew back their strings, the female sorcerer unleashed a blast of shadows toward the bowmen. Dante sucked in breath, slamming nether into the incoming strike. Black dust exploded from the contact, twinkling into the open air and fading away.

  Under steady fire from the archers, the path-cutters veered to their right, working their way around the back of a plateau across from the Kandeans. The woman on the cliffs gestured. Dante saw no result, but he could guess what she was doing: harvesting a ladder up the back of the plateau. His suspicion was confirmed when a line of soldiers jogged down the cliff, followed the trail, and reappeared on the platform. Taking cover in the trees there, they opened fire on the Kandeans, driving Niles' archers back into the cover of the vegetation.

  Which allowed the trail-cutters to push forward under minimal fire. A few dropped to the Kandeans' arrows, but the path advanced steadily. The female nethermancer attempted the occasional attack on the archers, but she, like Dante, appeared to be conserving her strength.

  A second group of enemy soldiers descended the bluff and made their way up the plateau next to the one they'd already claimed. Now fired on from two angles, the Kandeans were reduced to erratic sniping. Niles called for a withdrawal. The harried archers retreated across the ropes to the platform behind them. Dante was among the last to leave. This process repeated across the Kandean lines until all four groupings had retreated.

  The Tauren's strategy was sound. Rather than advancing more quickly across the platforms, where a mistake or a Kandean gambit might cripple their entire army, they were taking the safe route through the ravines. It would be slow going, and they'd concede a trickle of casualties for the lengthy duration of the advance. But they had more than enough troops to sustain those losses.

  And it granted them zero risk of an unfavorable outcome. Soon enough, they'd cross the valley. And there would be nothing left to stand between them and the Kandeans.

  Blays found his way next to Dante. "This is less like a battle and more like a life-sized game of Nulladoon. The only thing missing is the mad king ordering us around. Unless that's you."

  "You know how these things go."

  "Do I? Because I don't remember ever swinging from platform to platform, outnumbered ten to one, while all the other guys are doing the work."

  "We're feeling each other out. I doubt there'll be a major engagement before the north cliffs. If there is, then either they've made a major mistake, or we have."

  Over the next several minutes, the Tauren pushed them back another row of islands, and then a third. Only half the Tauren were actively engaged in the assault. The other half, including Vordon and most of his court, remained on the southern cliffs, which were now several hundred yards away. The only sorcerer on the front lines was the light-haired woman.

  "Good news." Dante smiled. "They've made a mistake."

  The Tauren were presently occupying three adjacent plateaus and the two behind those, overlooking and defending the advance of their soldiers through the thickets below. The enemy nethermancer was on the frontmost central platform. Across from her, Dante flung shadows at the archers sharing her position. She clubbed aside each strike, as aggressive as always. Drawing on one of his shaden, Dante sent a second salvo at the archers. While the light-haired woman contended with these, he moved into the tree above her. Branches stabbed down at her head and shoulders. She shouted a curse, sending the nether into them, bending them aside.

  Giving Dante the opportunity to split the earth she stood upon.

  With an ear-piercing crack, the rim of the plateau cleaved beneath her. She turned, jumping toward solid ground, but Dante rooted her feet in place, sticking her to the falling rock. The woman's scream punched through the clatter of stones. The shorn-off rim slammed into the ravine below, rattling the ground beneath Dante's feet. A hemisphere of dust erupted from the impact.

  And with no friendly nethermancers within range, the archers were now painfully acquainted with Dante's wrath.

  Shadows whipped across the divide, felling one Tauren soldier after another. They broke from cover, rushing for the ropes at the rear of the platform. Dante homed in on a knot of five men, picking them off one by one. After he'd slain the first four of them, the lone survivor swerved to the edge of the rocky island and leaped out into open space.

  In less than a minute, he'd killed some thirty men, draining one shell and starting in on another in the process. A contingent of replacements was scurrying along the ropes from the southern cliffs. As when he'd lifted the land bridge to Spearpoint, the quick use of the shaden left Dante's nerves feeling frayed, implying he couldn't keep it up all day.

  Still, with no one close enough to resist him, he went after the archers on the plateau next to the one he'd destroyed, slaying just enough of them to flush them from cover, exposing them to Kandean fire. Together, he and the warriors shredded their way through another thirty of the enemy before the first black bolts raced to intercept his.

  Vordon had arrived, his helm gleaming in the afternoon sun. Backed by two men and a woman—nethermancers, certainly—he stomped to the edge of the outcrop, pointing at Dante.

  "You think you're so strong?" he bellowed. "My men fight clean, and you kill them like ants?"

  Dante moved from behind a tree, keeping the nether at hand. "For years, you've used your armies to squeeze the life out of these people. But you've never faced someone like me. As long as you hide in the rear, your people will die."

  Vordon clenched his hands into fists. He drew a knife and slashed it across the skin of his bare stomach, feeding his blood to the nether. He lashed across the gap, hammering Dante with a barrage of blows, any one of which would have torn his flesh to the bone. Dante drew hard on his second shaden, barely keeping up his defense.

  "Don't just stand there!" Blays yelled at the warriors. "Shoot him!"

  The awestruck archers nocked arrows, firing on Vordon. He danced back, harvesting a wall of shrubs in front of him.

  His three nethermancers dispersed across the nearby platforms, attacking any archer who rose to take aim. Dante was so busy battling them off he had no time to strike back. Winden assisted him, along with her two Harvesters, but they were modestly talented. In rapid succession,
the Kandeans were forced back three rows of plateaus, struggling to regroup. With each retreat, Vordon and his sorcerers hurried along the ropes to the newly-vacated platforms, pressing the attack.

  Throughout this, Blays kept busy giving orders to one of the divisions of archers. During a lull, he crossed over to Dante's platform, sweaty and dirt-streaked.

  "Well," he said, "if your mission was to make Vordon fall in hate-love with you, you've succeeded wildly. Which has given me an idea."

  Dante kept both eyes out for any sign of incoming shadows. "Which is?"

  "Next time we retreat, I take a stroll into the nether. And stay right here. Until Vordon delivers himself to me."

  "Which will leave you surrounded by Tauren soldiers. And probably at least one other nethermancer."

  "I'll be cutting his throat, not making him dinner. I'll be invisible again within two seconds."

  "Unless one of their sorcerers shoves you out of the shadows. Like the Minister did back in Spiren."

  Blays waved a hand. "Then I guess you'll just have to keep the others off of me."

  Dante glanced across the platforms. So far, their own losses had been extremely light. But other than his unfettered assault on the Tauren following the death of their nethermancer, the enemy hadn't lost more than a few dozen men.

  "Killing Vordon might crack them," he said. "But it might not. They'll still outnumber us many times over. I'm not sure I see them retreating."

  "If they're that much stronger than us, then the only way we can win is by rolling the dice. They're playing too conservatively to exploit. By the time they push us out of the valley, I don't think we'll have reduced their numbers sufficiently for the candlefruit scheme to be a death blow."

  Dante swore. "I've been thinking the same thing. Take your shot. But if anything goes wrong, you run away like your feet are on fire."

  Blays grinned, loosening his swords in their sheaths. As the trail-cutters advanced below them, the Tauren archers intensified their fire. The Kandeans began crossing to the next plateaus. Blays tucked himself into the growth on the middle of the island. And disappeared. Dante pulled himself along the ropes to the next island, sticking to its southern side to keep close to the action.

  A few Tauren shock troops were the first to cross to the vacated platform. They made a fast search, securing it, then beckoned to Vordon, who waited behind. Vordon lashed himself to the ropes and pulled himself along beneath them. Once he was a quarter of the way across, a gangly nethermancer Dante had seen earlier followed after him.

  Dante's eyes skipped between the two climbers. Would Blays have the sense to take out Vordon, then light out for safety? Or would he try to take out two birds with one stone? If so—

  Halfway along the ropes, Vordon came to a stop. Dante was hundreds of feet away. Much too far to make out the specifics of what the man was doing. What he wasn't doing, however, was clear: moving onto the platform.

  Dante cupped his hands to his mouth. In Mallish, he yelled, "Blays! Blays, he knows!"

  With no trees above Vordon, he hung in broad daylight. And there was no mistaking the flock of darkness forming around his hands.

  At the far end of the plateau, a figure shimmered into being. Blays swung his sword at the ropes with all his might, severing them. Vordon and the long-limbed nethermancer dropped into the canyon below. The shadows sizzled from Vordon's hands: not toward Blays, but at the upcoming ground.

  Tauren soldiers charged toward Blays, firing arrows. He blinked away. Dante lobbed nether at the soldiers' backs, but only two bolts made it through the defenses of the two sorcerers watching from the platform where Vordon had fallen. With no idea where Blays had gone to, Dante could only watch helplessly as Vordon's two Harvesters grew vines to replace the cut rope. Tauren soldiers stormed across, slashing swords and spears through every square inch of grass and brush.

  At the edge where Blays had disappeared, one of the Tauren shouted. Others clustered there. A great cheer went up from their people. The crowd parted. A man strode forward, sunlight glinting from his steely helmet.

  "Is that all you have?" Vordon yelled. "This snake of yours, he's dead. And now I come for you."

  He followed this with a brutal assault of shadows, occupying every whit of Dante's attention. As Vordon's troops moved onto the other platforms, the Kandeans withdrew once again. Dante held position as long as he could. With arrows and nether flashing past him, he turned and ran for the ropes. Halfway across, he paused, seized by the sudden urge to let go and let the fall take care of the rest. He'd see Blays again soon enough in the Mists.

  But nearly two hundred Kandeans were watching him, yelling for him to cross over. Back home, tens of thousands awaited his return to Narashtovik. There were many times in life, especially one as turbid as his, when it would be easier to let go. For all his loss, though, and all his pain, he couldn't. Too many people needed him. To keep them safe. To carve out a small slice of the world and make it better.

  And he needed revenge.

  Fast as he could, he swung along the rope, drawing himself to the other side and dropping to the ground amidst the defenders. As he took a long breath, Blays walked out from the trees. He was scratched up and grimier than ever, but wholly intact.

  Dante laughed out loud. "Lyle's balls, he said you were dead!"

  Blays shrugged. "You know all these people are liars. I had to do a bit of running and a lot of climbing, but strenuous though it was, I wouldn't claim it was a fate on par with death."

  "Did you see how Vordon survived?"

  "Grew a giant mattress of grass beneath him. Looked like he might have broken a leg in the fall, but he appeared to have dealt with that."

  "What about the gangly man?"

  Blays chuckled. "Our tall friend made a very long splatter."

  "So at least some good came of your little adventure. No sense in trying it again. Vordon's wise to your tricks."

  "That's about the only area he's wise. I mean, have you seen his hat?"

  The battle quieted to a steady pattern. Each time the Kandeans retreated from a platform, Tauren archers claimed it, allowing them to cover the termite-like advance of the troops down on the ground. As these closed on a Kandean plateau, the archers there were able to pick off a few of the enemy, but not nearly enough to make a difference in the overall numbers.

  By early afternoon, the Kandeans had been pushed halfway across the valley. They might have kept on in this way all day, slowly whittling down the Tauren, but they were having increasingly large difficulties removing their own wounded from the scene. Their stock of arrows wasn't getting any larger, either. They hastened the retreat, falling back two or three platforms at once, offering token resistance, then moving back again. In less than two hours, they stood on the last plateaus clustered along the northern cliffs.

  There, Niles found Dante. "The warriors are getting tired. I don't think there's much sense in trying to hold this position."

  "Agreed. We should save our strength for our stand on the cliffs. Let's go get dug in as fast as we can."

  Niles bellowed the orders. Kandeans streamed across the ropes, found their footing, and shuffled off toward the ramparts. The warriors moved sluggishly, sweating freely. Dante regretted not having grown a few shade trees along the fortifications, but it was far too late for that now.

  Besides, they wouldn't be out in the direct sun for long. The plan was to "break" after the briefest of encounters—to spring the trap.

  Archers lined up along the raised arm of land. Spearmen planted themselves in front, supported by skirmishers equipped with a variety of clubs, swords, hatchets, and slings. Over in the valley, the Tauren seized the closest platforms. The trail-cutters angled toward the eastern edge of the cliffs, where their ascent would be out of range of the fortified archers. Reaching the base of the cliffs took the enemy a good half hour, allowing the Kandeans some much-needed rest.

  While this was going on, Dante tracked down Winden. She was as dirty and sweaty as
everyone else, but showed no major wounds.

  "How are you doing?" he said. "Got any arrows left in the quiver? Nether-wise, I mean. Not real ones."

  She tipped her head from side to side. "Less than I'd like. The shaden, I can use one more, maybe two. Any more, and I'll be burned."

  "Don't be afraid to use almost all of it. Save a bit for some final emergency, sure. But if we can't break them here, I don't think we ever will."

  "I've never seen anything like this. So many dead. And it's only begun, hasn't it?"

  "I'm afraid so." He put a hand on her shoulder. "If it's any comfort, we're doing this so your children never have to face something like this themselves."

  "Do you think so? The years are cruel to memory. They erode it like the Currents of Spearpoint. The new generation forgets. And fights new wars of their own."

  He withdrew to the ramparts to discuss final tactics with Niles. The first of the Tauren scaled the cliffs to the left, hastily digging in, supported by the archers on the plateaus behind them.

  "If I were them," Niles said, "I'd wait to blow the horns until my whole army was up here. They do that, and we'll have to be as precise as the stars. Too many of them get past the candlefruit, and we won't be able to resist them."

  "But if we let in too few, we might not kill enough to drive back the rest." Dante sighed, swabbing sweat from his face. "I suppose we'll have to play it by ear."

  "Play it by ear?" Niles laughed. "Is that how you conduct all your wars?"

  "Eventually, yes. If you have a problem with that, feel free to go find your own war."

  "Is something the matter? Normally when you say something like that to me, it's spoken like an insult. That, though? That sounded like a joke."

  Dante chuckled. "I must be tired."