The room they entered was medium-sized, approximately twenty feet long by maybe fifteen feet wide. Its unadorned stone walls were bare except the one furthest from the door. It had a tapestry of two warriors standing on stumps in wide stances and fighting hand-to-hand. Sam had never seen a scene like it any other place in the fortress, or anywhere else for that matter.
He didn’t give the tapestry more than a passing glance, though. What dominated his view, and the room, was a log hanging from a chain attached to the ceiling. The stump was too big around for Sam to put his arms around and still touch his fingers, and it was at least ten feet long. The single chain from the ceiling was attached to four others by a thick ring. The four chains were somehow embedded into the wood—it appeared as if the live tree had grown around the chains before it was cut down. It looked stable, but incredibly heavy.
“What is that?” Sam asked.
“That is our training tool for this lesson,” Rindu said. Nalia wore a look as if she knew what it would be used for. Sam waited for the master to continue.
“As I have described before, resonance is the situation in which a particular vibration is susceptible to being amplified by other vibrations. In other words, it is when an outside influence can increase the original vibration. Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes,” Sam said.
“Good. We have discussed it strictly as a function of the rohw and its vibrations, but in order to truly understand it, I want to show you a practical demonstration. Thus our apparatus here. Please push on the log.”
Sam did as he was told. He reached out and pushed the log, expecting it would swing easily. He was wrong. It was so heavy, he braced himself, got into a low stance, and pushed for all he was worth, and it still barely moved.
“How heavy is this thing?” he said.
“Very heavy,” Rindu answered.
The log had hardly moved and was swinging ever so slightly, just a few inches in each pass. In less time than Sam thought would be the case, it stopped altogether.
“Do you see how difficult it is to move the weight?” Rindu asked.
“Yeah, it’s so heavy, it takes a lot of strength to get it going.”
“Perhaps you should not be using strength of arms,” Rindu said, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, right,” Sam said, flushing slightly.
Nalia giggled.
Standing near the end of the log, Sam dropped into a low, powerful stance. He breathed in deeply, slowly, taking in rohw from his surroundings. As he exhaled, he moved his hands as if pushing something, projecting rohw from his palms toward the log. It swung away from him smoothly to a distance of just over a foot, and then swung back. It continued its motion like a pendulum. He looked to the monk and smiled.
“Good,” Rindu said. “Here is where the lesson begins. Using your strength at first, just the power of your arms and your body, make the log swing further than it is swinging now.”
Sam was familiar with the technique. It was the same one he used as a child to help his friends on the playground swings. The key was to time the pushes so that they would add energy to the motion already there. If he pushed at the wrong time, it would interrupt the swinging item—the log in this case but his friends on a swing when he was a child—and cause it to slow down instead of speed up. He was always good at timing his pushes, and his friends always swung very high. Nick, his best friend in school, was not as coordinated. Every time he pushed Sam, the swing would stall out or wobble, even throwing Sam off entirely a few times.
He went to work. The log was very heavy, so even timing his pushes perfectly, it was difficult to make it move much further than it already was moving. Over several minutes, though, he did succeed in increasing how far it swung. When it was moving about two feet from its center position with each swing, Rindu motioned for him to stop.
“You do that very well,” the monk said. “Your timing adds energy to the log with each swing, making its arc more powerful. Not once did I see you lessen or interrupt the movement.”
“I used to do something similar with play equipment when I was a child,” Sam said.
“I see. Now, I want you to do the same thing, but with the rohw.”
“Okay,” Sam said. He pulled in rohw, felt it warm his hands and his belly. He stood in front of one of the log’s ends in a more natural stance than earlier and timed it. He let it swing toward him and, just as it began to swing away from him, he pushed with his rohw, matching the direction of the swing. It moved a little farther than it had been swinging.
He continued this for several cycles. Finally, on the sixth swing, he misjudged the angle just slightly, causing the log to wobble and lose some of its momentum to the sideward direction.
“Aha,” Rindu said. “I was wondering if I would have to wait for hours until you made an error. I am glad I did not have to. You are very good at that. You may stop now.”
Sam breathed out. He was disappointed that he had misjudged the push, but he was also proud from Rindu’s compliment.
“Did you see what happened?” the Zouy asked him. “Did you see the effects of a slight error in the application of your rohw?”
“Yes.” Sam watched as the log settled back into its normal rhythm without the wobble, but it wasn’t swinging as far as it had been.
“This is an example of resonance. When your force is applied at a resonant frequency—that is, at a frequency that is complementary to that of the log—it increases the amplitude of the swing. It adds energy to the motion that is already there, making it more powerful.
“When, however, the force is misapplied, even slightly, it interrupts the motion of the log and takes energy away because of the conflicting forces. Does this make sense to you?”
“It does,” Sam said.
“Good. But how do we apply this theory? Is it useful only if we are attacked by large, swinging logs?”
Sam laughed. “I hope not. I don’t recall ever being attacked like that, and I don’t expect I will anytime soon.”
“Yes, you are correct,” Rindu said. “We must take the concept and apply it to a situation you may face. Nalia, if you would assist me in this?”
“Of course, Father.” She stepped up next to him.
“I would like to demonstrate to Sam the way resonance can be used for physical attacks. Please strike me, at a speed that will allow him to see what is happening.”
Without hesitation, Nalia’s hand sped toward her father’s head. Face completely emotionless, he threw his own hand up toward the strike, but not in a block or even a classic parry. It matched the trajectory of Nalia’s fist and merged with it. For the briefest of moments, both combatants’ arms were moving in perfect unison, as if they were dancing.
Then, Rindu took a half step back, rotated his hips while grasping Nalia’s arm with his own hand, and made a motion that looked like nothing more than a flick of his wrist.
Nalia flew ten feet in the air, turned a somersault, and landed safely on the other side of the room.
“Again,” Rindu said, and she charged in to try to strike him again.
This time, she thrust her foot out in a front kick. Her father barely moved his hand to deflect the kick, slightly match its trajectory and velocity, and then add a little power of his own. The result was Nalia’s leg shooting toward the ceiling, causing her to complete a back flip. She landed lightly on her feet and dropped into a fighting stance.
“Good,” Rindu said. “Thank you.”
Turning to Sam, Rindu raised an eyebrow and put his hands in the opposite sleeves of his robe. “What did you see, Sam?”
“I didn’t see you use any rohw for those movements,” Sam said.
“You are correct. They were purely physical. Tell me not what you did not see but what you saw.”
“I saw you redirect her energy and use it against her. It’s like Aikido on Telani. That art does a lot of redirection.”
“What you say is correct,” Rindu said. “But that is not all. If I
was simply redirecting the force Nalia was using for the strike, I would not have been able to cause the effects I did. She did not punch with enough force to make her entire body fly through the air like that. So, then, what happened?”
“I think,” Sam answered, “that you added some of your own energy to cause those effects.”
“You are correct,” the monk said. “As with the log earlier, a little of my own force—physical and not the rohw—added to what Nalia had already provided, added up to much more than was originally intended. But my addition had to be precise and correct. It had to be applied exactly where and to what extent was necessary. It had to be resonant with her motions.”
Sam was silent, considering.
“Do you see the importance of knowing the qualities of the motion against which you are defending?” Rindu asked.
“Yes, I can see it. Just like with me and the log, if you had been slightly off on your angle, your motions would have been a parry, maybe slight redirection, but nothing so spectacular as being able to throw her like that.”
“That is the truth,” Rindu said. “So then, the important lesson is to ascertain the precise qualities of the attack and to channel your own force into it in such a way that you not only avoid being struck, but that you add power to counterattack your foe.”
“I need to practice that,” Sam said. “It sounds very useful.”
“It is indeed,” the monk said. “Even more so with the rohw. For energy attacks, the same principle applies, but the determination of the resonant defense is more difficult. This, too, we must practice.”
And so they did. For almost two hours, Rindu and Nalia took turns attacking Sam and demonstrating to him how to use what Sam began to think of as “resonant defense.” It was difficult, and he was tired and slightly beat up by the time they finished, but he felt as if he had learned a valuable new skill.
“Thank you for the training,” he said as he saluted Rindu and then Nalia. “I will think on what I learned and practice it.”
They left the room, chatting as they walked through the halls. As they turned at an intersection of corridors, a breathless messenger almost ran into them.
“Master Rindu, Sam Sharp, Nalia Wroun,” he said. “We are being attacked. Danaba Kemp sent me to find you. He’s out on the wall.”
The three began running for the door to the keep.
Chapter 31
The commander on watch briefed Danaba Kemp on the situation. It had started like the other attacks, a testing of the response of the defenders. No one really thought there was a chance of a wall breach, with the cliffs and the walls and the only accessible entry point being up the switchbacks, over the draw bridge—which was up—and through the gates and portcullises. There was no practical way for the enemy to even mass together to challenge those behind the walls. Because of this, when large groups of mutants and soldiers made their way up the winding path, the guards didn’t think there was much of a risk. Still, they sent for the general.
When he arrived, Danaba Kemp scratched his head. “What are they up to?” he mused aloud.
The milling crowd of enemies, several hundred—possibly more than a thousand—strong, jostled each other on the upper part of the roadway, as if waiting for something. An occasional flight of arrows was loosed, forcing the mob to back out of bowshot range, but the entire thing had the air of a casual dance, not the deadly serious business of war.
Finally, as darkness descended, all of the enemy forces raised their weapons and began chanting. It was eerie, the sounds of human voices mixed with some of the mutants’. They continued this for several minutes, the tempo increasing, building on the anticipation that something would happen.
Suddenly, a group of about twenty mutated creatures broke free from the crowd, running at full speed toward the chasm in front of the gate house. Danaba called for the archers to take them down as they galloped on all fours like animals toward them.
Some of the arrows struck the creatures, but surprisingly few. They were moving fast and their gait was erratic, which made targeting difficult. Kemp watched in fascination as, one by one, the mutants leapt the thirty feet of empty air.
While a few of the monsters landed on the ground beside the massive upraised drawbridge, most went straight for the wooden mass. Loud thunks sounded as they hit the hardened wood, making a sound like a hail on planking. It was difficult to see on the other side of the drawbridge, but Danaba was sure he caught glimpses of some of the creatures—stunned from their collision with the wood—falling to their deaths into the void.
The defenders waited, tense and expectant. The chanting had continued its fevered pace, and the attackers waved their weapons in the air, cheering on their fellows.
Then the first clawed hand appeared over the top of the bridge. It was soon joined by another, then another, and in no time, no less than a dozen of the hairy, deformed bodies were coming up over the drawbridge and jumping down the other side.
Still Danaba didn’t know what their purpose was. The creatures had made it to the plateau, true, but what would they do? There were still the gates and the portcullises to circumvent.
“Fire at will,” he said to the archers on the walls. “Pick them off one by one. I’m not sure what they’re doing, but let’s just take them out to be safe.” The archers complied and riddled a few of the leapers with arrows.
The creatures were long and sinewy, built for speed, reminding Danaba of pantor he had seen. Their bodies were covered with fur, and their faces, a cruel mixture of human and animal, did seem to have hints of the big cats of Gythe. Many of the arrows bounced harmlessly off them. The ones that stuck were either ignored or brushed away with clawed hands. Only those that struck vital areas—eyes or throat or the occasional lucky angle into the heart around the sternum and through the ribs—stopped the monsters. They advanced relentlessly.
Danaba was surprised when the first one took to the wall itself. The form of its claws seemed able to grasp onto the tiniest crack or bump in the wall and use it as a hold. The ten remaining mutants started climbing, slowly but inexorably, up toward the defenders.
The angle at which the archers had to fire became too great for them to hit the climbers, so Danaba ordered the special winches to be used.
“Get the harnesses on and the winches ready,” he barked.
The men and women jumped to obey.
The special archer squadron had trained for such a contingency. Comprised of the best bow-users in the army, there were always several members in any guard detail on duty. There were seven such archers present.
The special archers were already wearing leather harnesses strapped tightly to their bodies. Bronze rings were attached securely to the straps, positioned exactly in the center of the wearer’s back. Winches were set on the edge of the walls, their arms going out more than half a dozen feet from the edge. The ropes on the winch had two self-closing hooks—a design suggested by Sam and approved by Dr. Walt—and these snapped onto the rings on the harness. In this way, the archers could be lowered out over the edge to face directly downward.
Three of the special archers were already out, taking their time and firing as accurately as possible directly down onto the climbers. One of the attackers had already been killed. An arrow through its face caused it to peel off the wall, bounce once on the area in front of the gatehouse, and then careen off the cliff walls as it made its way down the two hundred feet to the ground below.
Danaba looked out over the milling mass of enemy soldiers on the pathway across the chasm. They still chanted, still looked expectant. What were they thinking? Surely they didn’t believe that any of the climbing mutants would make it over the walls alive to do anything significant. It bothered him. He was afraid they were seeing something he was not.
Movement on the rampart fifty feet from him caught his eye. He saw off-white robes swirling as Rindu came up the stairs, Sam and Nalia following him.
“Ho there, Danaba Kemp,” Rindu said. “We
hear there is trouble on the walls. We offer our service, if it is necessary.”
Danaba had almost forgotten that he had a standing order for a messenger to be dispatched immediately when any attack commenced. If Sam, Nalia, or Rindu were in the keep, they were to be informed of the attack so they could take part in the defense, if needed. The three had requested that it be done. He shook his head, remembering. Apparently they had never experienced sleepless nights from notifications like these. They would soon figure it out.
The general greeted the newcomers and quickly explained their situation. As he did so, two more of the climbers were killed, leaving seven to continue their progress upward.
As he was explaining, a shadow passed over the walkway just in front of Danaba Kemp. He looked up in time to see a number of winged creatures clearing the wall. They must have come from a direction other than the front gate. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the climbers and the enemies gathered just below them.
He watched the first creature, humanoid but with great leathery wings, like those of a bat, soar down toward the ground level, inside the walls. Scanning the sky, he saw five more doing the same thing.
“They’re going for the drawbridge controls!” he yelled. “Take those flying things out.”
The archers who were not in the harnesses swiveled to fire at the mutants, but the creatures were too fast. Their movements were just like the bats Danaba used to watch when he was a child, moving instantly in acrobatic ways to catch insects. One or two arrows grazed the creatures, one even going through the membrane of a wing, but for the most part they were ineffective.
Sam and the others were already moving, running down the stairs at breakneck speed. The first bat mutant had already landed at the door to the little room housing the controls for the drawbridge. Another touched down next to the building housing the portcullis controls. A third was trying to remove the crossbar on the thick double doors.
If something was not done quickly, the walls would actually be breached. If that happened, the force waiting on the pathway might be sufficient on its own to overwhelm the defenders.
Resonance: Harmonic Magic Book 3 Page 26
