The Red Sea

by Edward W. Robertson

  28

  After being held in place all through the night, the freed lava rushed across the square in rivers of molten rock. Trees erupted into flame. Men wailed, the noise unearthly and paralyzing, cut short as the fires stole the breath from their lungs. They sank into the lava, their flesh combusting as they melted away.

  Heat wafted through the temple entrance, carrying the smell of roasted pork and rotten eggs. The Kandeans gasped. Some retched. Out in the plaza, the patches of solid ground shrank between rivulets of orange-red rock. Dante poured shadows into the earth, opening the lava tubes wider.

  Near the left edge of the field, his nether went dead. Someone was arresting his work. Through the steam, flames, and smoke, he couldn't identify a soul, but he could feel the hand behind the shadows. Vordon.

  But it wasn't enough to stop the flow. The rock had a mind of its own, beyond anyone's control.

  Panicked Tauren fled away from the lava and toward the temple. The archers in the windows shot them all down. At the right edge of the chaos, two men stood on a dwindling island of rock, separated from escape by a fiery stream. One of the men backed up, then ran to the right, leaping as far as he could. His feet landed in the lava and sank to the shin. He screamed, toppling face-first and bursting into flame.

  A few of the Tauren on the fringes slipped away from the flaming rivulets, but some three hundred soldiers had burned away like a morning mist. Around the perimeter, men screamed senselessly. Troops began to break from the main force, running off into town, portions of which were burning as wildly as the plaza. The trickle of deserters became a flood.

  "We've done it!" Niles thrust his fists in the air. "We've broken them!"

  Blays grimaced at the scene. "Along with every law of the gods."

  Vordon's voice rang out from the clamor. Dante homed in on a smoke-hazed figure on the periphery of the square who was gesturing furiously at the temple. The stream of deserters ceased. Vordon motioned sweepingly, as if he were ushering something along. His lines recohered.

  "Son of a bitch," Dante said. "Are they that scared of him? I'm the one who just melted a quarter of their army."

  "And a few dozen more ran off." Niles set his jaw. "Let them come for us. See how long their mettle lasts when they're dying at our walls."

  "If the lava wasn't enough to shatter their spirits, I don't think a pitched defense will be enough to do the job."

  Blays wandered toward the entrance. "I don't think he's urging them on. I think he's telling them the lava's about to do their job for them."

  Dante stared into the red-hot rock. It was still flowing out of the ground, making its ultimate path difficult to gauge. Yet his blood ran cold. When he'd been preparing the ground the night before, it had looked and felt level—but the lava was oozing toward the temple.

  He drove his focus into the molten rock, attempting to shape it, but it was like trying to shape the earth in the midst of the Currents. Every time he tried to give it form, the heat of the surrounding rock melted away his work. After the third failure, he shifted his mind to the earth between the magma and the temple, raising a three-foot-high wall between them.

  He wasn't nearly familiar enough with the properties of melted rock to know whether the dam would hold. But it didn't matter. Vordon was already leading his people to the left of the square, circling around on the temple.

  "He's smart enough not to attack us directly," Dante said. "He'll hem us in and let the lava do the rest."

  "You can't boss that stuff around?" Blays said.

  "It's much harder than with cool stone. If I'm busy preventing our fiery demise, Vordon can hit us from the rear."

  "A siege is bad enough without a field of red-hot stone creeping up your backside. We need to get out of this place and we need to do it now."

  Niles spread out his hand. "Then what? Fight them in the open field?"

  "We'll take to the jungle. You know this place far better than they do. You can elude them until they run out of food and have to go home."

  "Our citizens are out there, too. If the Tauren find them, it'll be a slaughter."

  Dante peered through a gap in a window on the left side. "They'll have us surrounded in another five minutes. If we can't run away, our only choice is to charge them."

  Niles rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. "They still outnumber us three times over."

  "Meaning they've lost a hell of a lot of people today. One more blow could break them."

  The older man laughed. "I'm starting to regret ever inviting you here. But you're right. It's a bad play—but it's the best one we've got."

  He called out orders to his people. Naran did the same, but his face looked as brittle as badly cast glass. By contrast, Dess looked furious, as though she couldn't believe Kaval could favor them with the Star Tree only to let them fall to their foes.

  Warriors tore down the boards and rubble they'd used to block up the rear doors. Soldiers spilled onto the temple's shaded back porch. Ash blew about in gray eddies. A wide road or small plaza separated them from the next row of buildings the Tauren were presently moving behind.

  "Do we have a plan?" Dante said. "Anything else we can throw at them?"

  Blays wiped the sweat from his eyebrows. "Every time we've met them, we've dumped a bag of tricks on their heads. I say we rush straight at Vordon and do our best to take him out. This time, the trick will be that there is no trick."

  "You and I will lead a column around to meet them head on. Niles, you drive straight forward, into their side. Take Dess in case they've got a sorcerer."

  "My crew will go with you," Naran said. "The Tauren seem hesitant to fight us."

  "Most of you are Mallish. They're probably afraid of offending the people they do business with." Dante inhaled deeply. "Go at Vordon with everything you've got. Don't give up an inch. If he falls, we'll break their back. But if he holds? Then everything is lost."

  Niles assigned him half the remaining troops. Dante cut left from the rear of the temple, heading for the buildings there. Cries arose from the Tauren, who halted. Arrows streaked between the shops and houses. They were answered by the archers still posted in the temple's upper windows. Dante reached the first row of buildings. Down the street to his right, a smattering of Tauren scouted ahead; the bulk of the troops were to the right of them, blocked from sight by a mix of stone and wood edifices. Dante slashed nether at the scouts, felling three of them. The others sprinted around the corner to rejoin their vanguard.

  Dante jogged onward, Blays, Naran, and crew to one side, the Kandean warriors to the other. The Tauren yelled to their archers to form up.

  "Shield crews!" Dante said. "Take the lead. Drive straight at them. We'll be right behind you."

  Most of the repurposed canoe shields had been lost in the retreat, but they'd retained enough for a single rank. At the corner, they formed up, then pivoted out into the street beyond. A Tauren officer bawled an order. Arrows flew down the street in a flat arc, pummeling the shields. Yet their bearers ran toward the hundreds of soldiers awaiting them.

  The side of the Tauren formation rippled—Niles and company were approaching from the flank. Dante ran with the shield-bearers, searching for the glint of Vordon's shiny helmet.

  Shadows darkened around a figure thirty feet behind the Tauren lines. Vordon was bare-headed. Red skin and bubbly blisters traced where his helmet had been; it must have been heated during the fires, burning him. If he felt the pain of it, though, he didn't show it, striding back and forth among his men and launching a bolt of nether toward the center of the shield-bearers.

  Dante battered the bolt aside, answering with a slew of his own. There was no more need to hold back. Any strength he tried to save would only wind up wasted.

  Seeing him coming for them—or perhaps it was Naran's foreign crew of many lands, or simply the fearlessness of the charging Kandeans—the Tauren front lines hesitated. The oncoming wall of shields plowed into them with a hollow bang, driving the enemy back
six feet before the scrum grew too fierce to press forward. Swords and spears jabbed back and forth. The shields were dropped or wrestled away.

  Dante fired raw nether at Vordon's head, then reached for the ground beneath his feet, softening it in preparation to swallow him up. Vordon deflected the obvious strike. Beside him, a thin, short woman moved into the shadows within the earth, disrupting those as well.

  Blays hit the front lines, swords whirling in perpetual arcs that only arrested when one of the blades was parried or met an opponent's flesh. As bodies piled around him, the Tauren shrank back, creating a void in their ranks. Naran's sailors and the Kandean warriors rushed into the gap.

  For a moment, it looked like they might break through and kill their way to Vordon and his fellow sorcerer. But as Vordon drew back, fresh soldiers moved up to support the bowing line. Inch by inch, the Kandeans were shoved back.

  Blays cried out in pain, staggering back from the melee, clutching at his chest. Dante saw no blood. Blays winked, then fell. Before he hit the ground, he vanished.

  Smiling, Dante redoubled his attacks on Vordon. But the small woman beside him was making no attacks of her own. Too late, Dante understood: she was a bodyguard. Her eyes darted to the space ten feet in front of Vordon. The air shimmered as she forced Blays out of the shadows.

  A hundred of the enemy were clustered between Blays and Dante. As those nearest to Blays turned, raising swords, Dante enfolded them all in a sphere of darkness. Blinded, the Tauren shouted in surprise. Vordon dismissed the sphere with a wave of his hand, but Blays was gone once again.

  Seconds later, he materialized beside Dante. "It's no good. That pet sorcerer of his is making sure nothing gets close to him."

  Dante nodded, firing off another blast of shadows; these too were dispersed by his foes. "I don't have much left. Vordon may be a violent despot, but he's a hell of a nethermancer."

  Tauren officers yelled commands. A hundred men detached from the middle of their force, moving down a side street.

  "They'll be on our backs in a minute," Blays said. "Got any last tricks?"

  To Dante's left, Naran reeled away from the lines, holding a gash across his sword arm. His crew edged back.

  "We've used everything and then some," Dante murmured. "There's only one question left."

  Blays smiled grimly. "Do we want to die here?"

  Dante nodded. Blays didn't reply. The Tauren pushed the Kandeans back another two feet. This last charge, it had been a fool's errand, hadn't it? Vordon was arrogant, but he was too canny to let himself be exposed to real danger. Standing against him—today and at the Broken Valley—it had all been hubris. Dante should have insisted the Kandeans take the fruit of the Star Tree and sail to a new homeland.

  He never should have come to the Plagued Islands in the first place. What did he care about Larsin Galand? It hadn't bothered Dante to learn his long-lost father was actually dead. His time in the Pastlands had shown him his hunt for the man was futile, a waste of focus and emotion.

  Mistakes were so easy to make. In normal times, it was simple enough to brush them off or minimize the damage.

  But when you played with strife and war, any error could be your last.

  The Kandean lines slipped back another foot. The detachment of maneuvering Tauren were almost in position to hit Dante's soldiers from the side. Furious, he sucked every shadow from the shaden he'd been using and drove them at Vordon. Vordon shuffled back, burned face hardening with concentration. The woman beside him weaved her hands in an intricate pattern, helping him to turn aside the flurry of nether.

  The space around Vordon was now empty, his soldiers fleeing the battling storms of darkness. Behind him, a warrior in patchwork armor limped into the open space, raised a spear, and slammed it into Vordon's back.

  He pitched forward, catching himself on his palms. Beside him, the female sorcerer faltered. The patchworked warrior ripped his spear loose from Vordon and shoved it into the woman's gut. The shadows on her hands flickered.

  With both sorcerers turning on the traitor, Dante sent two dark streaks above the clashing lines. One struck the woman in the temple. The other took Vordon in the back of his head.

  Blays lifted a sword and roared, slamming into the Tauren. Dante followed, lashing about with blade and nether. A massive cry of triumph arose from the Kandeans. Outraged Tauren swarmed around the traitor. But with no one to protect them from Dante's shaden-enhanced wrath, the defenders fell as quickly as Dante could shift the shadows. Blays' swords dealt death nearly as fast. A spearhead of sailors and Kandeans punched through the enemy lines and penetrated to the soldier in the patchwork armor.

  "Who are..?" Dante's question died in his throat. The traitor turned. Beneath her iron cap, Winden's eyes met his.

  Together, they pressed forward. The Tauren held fast. Dante's arms and legs were shaking; each summoning of the nether was weaker and slower than the last. Another few seconds, and he'd be no more than a man holding a sword.

  He drew forth everything he had left. A great wreath of darkness formed around him, darting and swooping like a flock of ten thousand crows. They were no more harmful than a dapple of shade—but at last, the Tauren collapsed, dashing away into the streets.

  To the right, Niles' people broke forth, aligning themselves beside Dante. Behind them, the maneuvering Tauren had been on the verge of a charge. But they no longer had the numbers. The remaining enemy drifted to a halt, then turned and dispersed through the smoky streets.

  Within moments, the Kandeans stood alone.

  29

  Smoke rose from the cinders that had once been homes. The wounded lay within the temple by the dozens. Scores of the dead were being dragged down to the shore. Exhausted to the core, Dante could do no more than witness the damage. As night fell on Kandak, Niles found him and told him the Tauren had continued to retreat.

  "They still have the numbers," Dante said. "If they rally, they could launch another strike."

  Niles grinned, his teeth bright in the darkness. "They won't have enough to take the town. Not with Vordon and so many of his Harvesters lost."

  "What about when they get back to Deladi?"

  "Many of the High Tower's tolaka have no interest in Vordon's conquest of the island. Or in his dealings with the Mallish. Now that he's dead, the alliance he built will crack like a nut." He nodded to the contingent of Boat-Growers stoking their camp fires on the beach. "And ours will grow."

  All those who weren't out on watch or tending to the wounded began a slow migration to the Boat-Growers' fires. Inevitably, a feast broke out. It wasn't much of a meal—san paste, dried fish, and fresh fruit plucked from the surrounding jungle—but people passed around stoppered gourds filled with fermented fruit juice. Others sang songs and told stories about what had happened that day or during wars long past.

  Dante joined them, glad for the reprieve from responsibility. As he listened to them sing and tell stories, he heard someone call a name he'd all but forgotten: Nassea.

  A young woman turned, dark hair spilling down her back. Dante crossed the sand to her, waiting as she concluded her conversation with the woman who'd called to her.

  "Excuse me," Dante said. "You're Nassea?"

  The young woman nodded, folding her hands in front of you. "I knew your father. He was fair to everyone."

  "That's what brings me here. We have an acquaintance in common. Juleson, of the Sword of the South."

  Nassea's eyes seemed to shrink. "Juleson, he's your friend?"

  "I wouldn't go that far. But I owe him a favor. He wanted me to tell you hello. And that the offer he made you—it still stands."

  "And what am I supposed to do with that?"

  Dante shrugged. "Nothing, if nothing's what you want. But he fought in the battle. If you want to speak to him, he's here."

  Nassea glanced over his shoulder, as if Juleson might be lurking right behind him, then nodded. "Thank you for telling me."

  She smiled tightly and walked off.
As she departed, Winden limped up beside him. Between scouting, triage, and assessing the state of the lava (which had threatened to absorb the temple, but was now cooling and purple-black), he'd hardly seen her since the Tauren retreat.

  "You know Nassea?" she said.

  "Just passing along a message." Dante jerked his chin in the direction of the temple plaza. "Neat trick back there. I was sure you were dead."

  "I almost was." She took a swig of fruit-based spirits. "But I saw my people falling back. I ran into the jungle. Snarled the way so the Tauren couldn't follow. While I was there, do you know what I saw?"

  "Trees?"

  "A fox ant. Most ants form great colonies, but fox ants live alone—unless they are threatened, or they want to steal the grub of other ants. Then, they walk into a swarm just like they belong there. Fox ants don't look that much like the other ants, but they must be close enough to fool the swarms, because they come and go as they please. Even when they are carrying off the colony's young."

  "So rather than rejoining us, you thought it was wiser to try to sneak into the middle of an enemy swarm?"

  She shrugged, waving one hand. "Your grand maneuvers, none of them were working. Neither was our magic. I thought I would try something simpler."

  "Well, try not to get a big head about this," Dante said. "But you and your fox ant won us the war."

  "Don't be stupid. If you hadn't been attacking them on two sides, I never would have been able to get close. If not for the Boat-Growers and your sailing friends, we wouldn't have been able to counterattack in the first place." She gestured toward the trees down the shore. "Those trees, do you think the trunk is all that matters? They need their leaves, too. Their roots. Their branches. Their fruit. All of these things work together. Take one away, and soon enough, the trees will die."

  "Are you always this philosophical?"

  "Only on days when I've almost died five times."

  "Ah, so now you understand why I'm always so opinionated."

  Winden smiled. Smoke blew past them, but it had the welcoming smell of a cook fire, not the acridity of painted planks. "He fought for years for this. Dedicated his life to it. He would have been proud of us."