Wrath of the Risen God: Arcane Renaissance Book Three

by Tim Paulson

  How was it possible to absorb so much force?

  The cannons were being pulled away from the lines, retreating back, pulled by two goliaths each, as the Ganex lines closed in their ranks.

  Red glowing Axes and swords were raised, shields were thumped, all along the line, as a third horn sounded and the Ganex charged.

  Narael smiled. “Now... destroy them,” he said quietly.

  It was as if his voice, no matter how low he spoke, were being broadcast into the head of every one of his great golden soldiers. They all raised their shining swords and charged as one.

  The clash between the two sides, seas of massive goliaths, one side red like blood, the other gold like the morning sun that shone upon them all, was incredible and horrifying. Weapons clanged as they rebounded from one another. Stone limbs were severed, heads smashed, hearts cored, but all were red.

  Narael's goliaths were cutting a swathe through their enemies. At first, Aaron wasn't sure why that was. Though he stood at head height, the line had moved ahead of them so he now viewed mostly the stone backs of the golden-eyed warriors as they slashed into the goliaths before them. But he saw them take hits. A mace would connect with a head, an axe chop an arm, a sword jab a torso, but the weapons would rebound as if they'd been deflected by an expert parry. Aaron was no dueling expert, despite Marcus Halett's multiple attempts to teach him, but even he could see what was happening. Even veil weapons could not damage them.

  Then he saw one go down.

  A huge Ganex goliath carrying two axes had thrown a shoulder into his golden-eyed foe, knocking him back into one of his brethren. Then the axe-wielding goliath had pummeled the enemy with multiple blows, hammering at his head, until one of the blades finally pierced the defenses and chopped the goliath's head into two clean halves. It then dropped backward, collapsing into a heap.

  Though outwardly his stone body stood coldly, unmoving as the light snow accumulated on his forehead and shoulders, inside Aaron exulted... until Narael reached out with a hand and squeezed his fingers like a claw.

  The once triumphant axe-wielding goliath cracked in half like it had been struck down by the hand of God himself.

  Narael then crushed three more who'd been moving to take his place and push through the momentary hole in the line. Three more goliaths collapsed, instantly crushed into rubble. And Narael's line filled in as if there had never been a hole.

  Aaron looked down as they advanced and saw the golden eyed warrior with the destroyed head now sitting up, it's head reforming, the stone coming back together.

  Good God, Aaron thought. What can they possibly do to stop them?

  That was when it happened. Fire erupted along the line.

  Blue fire.

  Mia?

  Not in just one place either, several. Blue flames had appeared all over. Swords, Axes, Hammers, Maces... They burned with the blue fire that Aaron had only seen once before. When he'd tried to kill Mia, his adopted sister, and she'd cut him down, piece by piece.

  Thank God for that, he thought.

  To be forced to Kill Mia, or Giselle... or Greta... He could not live with such a thing. He could not even imagine that pain. It would be unendurable.

  He hoped that now, she could do that to Narael's soldiers.

  Aaron was not disappointed.

  Narael seemed uninterested in the flames at first. If he cared, he didn't show it.

  Until one of his goliaths went down on their right. Not hurt, not bowled over, but cut to pieces, by a flaming weapon. It fell and it did not get up.

  Even Buckley seemed interested.

  “Oh... what's this?” he asked. “Have the Ganex found a weakness in your toys?”

  Narael looked back, hate flaring on his face. “Be silent!” he said.

  Buckley grimaced, terrified and retreated to his couch, but he did not stop watching.

  Moments later another golden soldier died. This one was farther out on the right. Blue flame cut it apart, starting with a leg, and finishing with a stab to the heart. Aaron thought he saw the goliath behind it. A sleek, newer design. Perhaps a Willen Valkyrie? Maybe an Arden Fulcrum but those were incredibly new. He'd only heard of its manufacture because he'd been in Buckley's office, standing in his usual location when a senior technician had reported on it.

  Narael was sitting up now, taking notice, but the offending goliath would kill and then disappear behind his own lines, like a ghost. It was too fast for Narael to respond.

  Blue weapons flitted back and forth all over the Ganex lines. The blue flames were easy to see for all the other weapons wielded by the Ganex were red, but there were many.

  When another of his goliaths died right in front of them, the point of a flaming blue blade projecting from the center of its back, Narael stood from his throne. He stared out in front of them, looking for a target. Yet there was none. The goliath had already gone.

  Get them, Mia, Aaron thought. Get them all!

  Chapter 25

  “Considered extremely dangerous and unpredictable, all citizens should report sightings of leothan females in provinces of the republic.”

  -Excerpt from the Dierlijt Recognition Guide, revised edition, distributed by Republican Publishing, 1620

  Thira ducked down as yet another cannonball flew just over her head, having torn a hole in two sails.

  “HARD TO STARBOARD!” Robert yelled. “READY STARBOARD GUNS!”

  From the hatch Cemu's head popped up. “STARBOARD READY AYE!”

  The ship turned, just enough to put the oncoming republican ship in the center of her starboard side.

  “FIRE!” Robert yelled.

  Thira put her hands over her ears. The wadding that Liam had given her had helped some, but still, when a whole broadside went off...

  All twelve cannons on the starboard side, hammering the distant ship with twenty-four pound chunks of hot cast iron. Thira's ears rang with intense pain from the sound. As much as she hated veil pistols, cannons were a hundred times worse, but when you fired twelve of them together. It was pure hell.

  “Back to port!” Robert said, spinning the wheel around again. “Drop the fourth line!” he yelled forward to the crewmen, including Liam who'd pitched in. They pushed a readied string of bombs off the side of the ship and into the waves some ten feet below.

  Robert had been very clear, they needed to drop the bombs before they took too much damage, because if any of them went off on the ship it'd “blow a hole so big a whale could swim through it while they were on their way to the bottom.” Thira did not particularly enjoy that analogy. It meant she'd get wet and she hated getting wet.

  Things had gone well so far though. Three of the enemy fleet had been sunk by the bombs Robert had laid behind them. The others had broken ranks, spreading out so fewer of them were likely to get hit. Robert had expected that too, which was why their ships had split off as well. The Queen had gone starboard while the two leothan ships had taken the center and left. Those on the ends were to curl around the enemy formation, dropping bomb lines as they went. For the enemy it made for a very treacherous patch of ocean, for their three ships, it made for some wild sailing.

  A lot of screaming caught Thira's attention. Not so much the noise of it, as her ears were still ringing, but the strained faces and waving hands.

  Liam was gone.

  Had the boy fallen overboard?

  Thira vaulted the railing and landed hard on the still pitching lower deck. When she reached the edge a crewman was pointing down below on the side of the ship where Liam was hanging on by the tips of his fingers. He'd apparently gotten his boot catch hooked on the rope that tied the bombs together. Anyone else would already have disappeared beneath the waves but Liam had somehow snatched the side of the ship and held the entire weight with quickly whitening fingertips.

  Cemu was at her side. “We need to cut the line free!” he yelled to her, over the sound of distant cannon fire. “It'll slow the ship and make us an easy target.”

  T
hira pursed her lips. “Give me that tie line,” she said, sighing. “I really hate water.”

  Cemu handed her the line, which was one of two that was used to tie the ship to a dock.

  “What are you going to do?” Cemu asked.

  “Give me ten seconds, then cut the bomb line,” Thira said. Then she tied it around her waist and jumped over the side, swinging freely along the side of the ship.

  Using her claws to drag along the wood, she ended up right next to Liam. A quick flick of a claw was enough to detach his boot from the line. Then she grabbed him with an arm. The boy was heavy. Not quite Wilhelm's weight, but close. There was muscle on him. No wonder he'd been able to hold on.

  The bomb line slid past with a loud hiss. The bombs themselves appeared to be made of clay studded with steel nubs. An interesting design. They seemed to work though, she thought as she pulled herself and Liam up the rope. Cemu was there with two deckhands to pull them over the rail.

  Thira dropped Liam to the deck. The boy looked like he'd seen a ghost.

  “Good God you're strong,” he said, panting. “Thank you.”

  Thira nodded. “Why don't you set up your muskets. If you can shoot an enemy captain I'll make sure Robert shares his rum.”

  Liam's eyes widened. “Deal,” he said and clambered up the stairs to where his guns had been tied to the rails.

  An explosion erupted from behind the ship. Yet another of the enemy ships had hit a bomb and blown a sizable hole in her starboard side.

  “How many is that now?” she yelled to Robert.

  “Five! One for us and two for each of your special friends.”

  Thira grumbled, climbing the stairs to the wheel. This time she would ignore him. That way he wouldn't get the satisfaction of a response.

  “Silence is assent they say,” Robert said to her. Then he spun the wheel hard to his left. “READY PORT GUNS!” he bellowed.

  Cemu ran to the hatch and yelled below, waiting a second for the response from the gun crews, then he looked up. “PORT READY AYE!”

  Robert kept spinning the wheel to the left, turning the ship just enough to give the gunners a bead on the nearest pursuit vessel that had just avoided their recent string of bombs.

  “They missed the bombs... but now they're right in the … perfect... FIRE!” he yelled.

  “PORT GUNS FIRE!” Cemu repeated.

  Thira's hands went to her ears, holding the wadding as tight as she could as an incredible sound erupted from her left. The twelve veil powder guns belched blue flame and black smoke across the ship's port side. Cannonballs ravaged the enemy ship, tearing enormous holes in her bow near the waterline. The bow began to dip beneath waves.

  “She's drinking captain!” Cemu shouted.

  “That's two for us!” Robert yelled.

  Shouts of exultation sounded all across the ship as the crew, men and women alike, threw up their hands, some even breaking into strange dances on the deck.

  Even mired in the ringing pain of her aching ears, Thira couldn't help but appreciate them. They felt to her less like a crew of paid individuals than the members of a tightly knit pride.

  “Well well...” Robert said. “Take a look Thira. It seems the four others have decided their numbers are no longer sufficient to continue.”

  He was right. The four remaining attack ships had turned and were heading back to the west. They'd given up.

  “Ah... not all of them,” Liam said from where he'd set up with a musket. He was currently sighting to his right.

  Thira turned around to see the picket ship from before. It was very close... too close!

  Robert turned as well, his eyes widened. “Brace for impact!” he yelled.

  The picket brigantine flying the striped purple republican flag turned hard to starboard at the last moment. Instead of smashing her bow into the starboard side of the Scarosian Queen she veered enough to scrape along their right flank.

  “Thira! Gun!” Liam yelled.

  She turned, wondering why he... and then his musket went off with a loud pop. Luckily the wadding was still in her ears and afforded some protection from the noise.

  “They're boarding us!” Robert yelled. “All hands to arms!”

  Thira's ears went back and her claws extended as ten armed men jumped from the other ship onto the upper deck. Liam had another musket up and aiming already. Robert had pulled two pistols from underneath his coat.

  A man rushed at her brandishing a rapier. Thira almost laughed at his confidence, slapping the weapon aside with one hand while she closed enough to grab his bandoleer with the other. She lifted him from his feet and threw him into two others. Another enemy boarder appeared, aiming a pistol at Thira's chest but Robert's went off first and the republican grabbed at her throat and dropped to the deck.

  Two men ran at Robert, each holding a single-edged sword Thira knew as a messer. Robert was backing away and pulling the third pistol from his coat.

  “Just one gun and two of us,” the man on the left said, laughing. “You die either way.”

  Then Thira ran forward and used the railing to push off into a vaulting backflip. The landing wasn't perfect, the ship was still moving in the ocean after all, but she was close enough to rip the head from one of the two men and toss it in the ocean.

  His companion's face fell.

  Robert smiled, pointing the pistol as the republican dropped his sword and ran back to his own ship.

  There was a bang that caused Thira to wince. The republican dropped to the deck like a stone, shot right in the forehead.

  Behind him, one boot up on the rail, was the captain of the other ship. She had a patch over one eye and a smoking veil pistol that she was stabbing into her belt to draw a long rapier.

  “Coward,” she said.

  Behind them, Liam's musket went off with a crack.

  The musket ball tore the republican captain's hat with its white and purple feathers right from her head, revealing a gruesome burn along the side of her head.

  Liam cursed. “Damn ship never stops moving.”

  The other captain laughed, jumping down from the railing onto the Scarosian Queen's deck.

  “You won't get away so easily. I'm no craven like the others,” she said.

  “You thought you had us trapped,” Robert replied. “Only it was I who trapped you.”

  The other captain spit on the deck. “Too bad you won't live to brag about it.”

  That was when Thira launched herself at her. She put both sets of claws deeply into the very surprised woman's coat and whirled around before launching her back onto her own ship like a shot put. The rest of her crew were retreating now as well.

  “Here, do that again with this!” Cemu said. He was carrying one of the bombs. It was the one that got hung up before.

  “Gladly,” Thira said.

  Liam frowned. “Will that work? I thought it was the seawater that made them explode?”

  “It will,” Robert said. “There's a vial of blood in the center of each as well. You'll see.”

  Thira shrugged and threw the metal-studded clay bomb onto the deck of the picket ship. It landed right near the bottom of the mainmast and exploded, shredding the mast and much of the ship's upper deck.

  “You were right!” Liam exclaimed.

  Robert nodded. “I always make it a point to know my bombs boy.” He turned back to his wheel. “That's it... We've won. Now we just have to catch up with those barges!”

  * * *

  Behind the Ganex lines Marian ran along, reminded by Mia to stay low to hide the fact that her weapon was a different color than those around her. The pale blue stuck out like a lantern, even when it wasn't aflame with azure light. Luckily the snow had increased as the day wore on, obscuring their movements just a tiny bit more. Every bit had helped.

  Up ahead, Greta's goliath was waving her forward. There had been another breach in the line here and Mia and Marian were the plug. As she approached a golden sword swung from the left, carving the rig
ht arm from a heavy Albtraum. To the knight's credit, however, they didn't flee. Instead, they kept to the plan, bashing their shield into the golden-eyed head, trying to knock it back and buy just a few more seconds.

  Marian arrived too late, however, just as the golden sword was jammed through the center of the red goliath. It fell to the snow, next to scores of its brethren. Greta attacked him with her own flaming sword, chopping at the golden enemy over and over but doing little if any damage. Like the other leaders along the line, Greta's veil blade had been doused in Garwhale oil.

  That was a product of Varnak from the whale hunting city of Flottby. It used to be the lamp oil of choice in the northern countries before veil lamps took over fifty years ago. The fact that both the oil and veil powder burned a bright blue was... helpful. Just the fact that Mia knew that ought to have tipped her off earlier that she was older than she thought.

  Mia shook her head. She was tired, her mind was beginning to wander. That was dangerous anywhere, but on a battlefield it was suicide.

  Unfortunately, there was no time to stop, she thought as Marian expertly parried the golden blade of their adversary and buried the flaming estoc to the hilt in its head. Marian and Greta's goliath paused for a quick bumping of elbows before Mia turned to retreat behind the lines again.

  It had been an excellent plan. Pop up here and there, kill one or two, run. It had worked in more ways than one as well. Not only had she counted seventeen enemies destroyed, but they'd slowed their advance. The golden eyes were taking their time, worrying about the flaming weapons around them. Exactly as Claus and Werner had hoped. Combined with a slow retreat of the Ganex lines, the battle had been drawn out for the entire day.

  The hope was that if they made it to nightfall perhaps the sorcerer would pause again and they could regroup.

  Not that there were many goliaths left to group. Sure the left and right flanks were doing relatively well, they were fighting republican troops and though tired were at least holding their own. The middle had been hit hard. Hundreds were down, dismembered, or destroyed. Horrors ran through the snow everywhere, attacking anyone unlucky enough to be caught on the field without protection.