859th cycle of God, 12th day of
Genasfall
'Keep your heads down and your eyes front!' bawled Davarov. 'I don't want a single one of you dying on me, is that clear?'
Davarov's words were carried along the crest of the Jewelled Barrier and relayed to those mustered beneath the great wall. Pitch fires burned along its length. Catapult arms were drawn back. Bows were strung. Arrowheads and stones were ready for dipping and painting in flame. The powder Jhered assured Davarov would cause great destruction was in metal flasks set among nets of stones that would be set on fire and shot over the walls. Crates of flasks were roped below the battlements on the fort roof.
The answering calls, the flags and the punching of the air spoke that the message was clear.
'The dead come to fight us but they will not climb this wall. Do not let them have clear sight of you. For every one of you that falls brings more strength to our enemy. Look to your friends, your brothers. You know what you must do. And do not look back into Neratharn. For there, the greatest powers known to man are ranged against our enemy. I believe in the Ascendants. I have seen them work. And they will not let the dead take our people from us.'
Davarov stopped and looked out over the Atreskan plains from his position on the gate walls. Issuing across the last mile, they came, leaving a trail of darkness behind them. Advancing in a line that stretched for over three miles, the dead. Thousands upon thousands of them. Fear blew in on the breeze mixed with the stink of decay. And silence rolled before them. The frames of artillery moved on the horizon.
'You cannot give in to your nightmares. The sun shines upon us. The Omniscient will bless us this day. The Lords of Sky and Stars look down upon you. Today the world will be placed back in balance. The dead will lie beneath the ground and only the living will walk the surface. You will play your part, all of you.
'For Atreska, for Neratharn, for Estorea and for me!'
Davarov held his sword high, the heavy long blade catching the sun. How odd it felt in his hand. How ungainly. But he had practised enough. The sarissa bladesmen too, the axe-wielders and the hammer infantry. So little time in reality to prepare for a war unlike any they had fought before.
'Reap this crop for me,' he said quietly as the roars of his legionaries flowed across him. 'Slash and burn.'
'A fine speech,' said Roberto.
Davarov smiled. 'Well, I listened to you enough times, something was bound to rub off.' 'Brevity at least.'
'You're going to stand with me?' Davarov's smile faded, seeing the haunted look in Roberto's eyes. 'You don't think you should be across the other side?'
Roberto shook his head. 'I cannot go there. I cannot watch them. Jhered will see it through, him and your field commanders. Dammit, Davarov, you know part of me almost wants them to fail. To be swept away and killed, leaving the victory for the legions as it should be. A world without the blight of this magic'
'But it's what we have,' said Davarov. 'And without them, there will be no victory, you know that.'
'I'm not so sure.'
'Yes you are, Roberto.'
'They aren't here on these walls, are they? And do you think the dead will make a breach?' Davarov scoffed. 'Hardly.' 'Well, then.'
'But there is no wall behind us besides the one they build with their Works. You have to want them to succeed.'
'I want the Conquord to succeed. Not quite the same thing.'
Davarov shrugged. 'Have it your own way, Roberto.'
The sky above was a peerless blue. But over the Gaws and the foothills above Lake lyre, clouds were building. Black and ominous, tall and churning. The wind picked up pace, swirling around them. Quiet fell across the barrier and all that could be heard above the beginning of the Ascendant Work was the crying, wailing and shouting of tens of thousands of displaced citizens, trapped by the dead and by their own fear.
'Well,' said Davarov. 'Here we go.'
Mirron could see them through the trails in the air, through the ground and in the starkness against the living landscape. The dead were like holes in the elements. A shifting greyness that fed through the ground, turning the slow energy of earth and the quick shapes of animal and vegetation to nothing.
They were coming on two different fronts. Gorian must have known the Ascendants were going to attack the open side and his forces moved several miles apart. Jhered, on Arducius's advice, moved the artillery to cover one force, leaving the Ascendants to contain and destroy the other. Both enemy forces if they could.
'You'd better be right about this,' said Jhered. 'Big open spaces behind us if you get it wrong.'
'We won't,' said Mirron.
Jhered chuckled. 'I bet you won't at that.'
Arducius was already deep into the first section of the Work. He was building deep
, tall thunderheads above Lake I
yre and the Gaws, drawing on the geographical features to boost their density and size. A barrel of water had been brought to stand beside him and he used it in conjunction with the lively genastro growth energies to catalyse his efforts.
'Mirron, I need you,' he said, voice distant and showing strain. 'What do you need?'
'Strengthen the energy lines to the cloud bases. I think ...' he trailed away for a moment. 'Ossie, he's found the construct. Keep him back.'
Mirron blew hard as she joined Arducius in his Work, lending him her strength and the well of her ability. She channelled quickly, drawing in water from the barrel, feeling it flow over her body, projecting out the fast blue lines into Arducius's thick trunk construct, flowing north and south.
She could feel Gorian there. He was attacking the periphery of the trunks. Spears of cold rushed under the earth, frost burst through the topsoil. Mirron shivered as the freezing energy flowed over her. The water surrounding her crackled.
'Ossie,' snapped Ardu. 'Quick.'
'I'm here,' said Ossacer.
Mirron felt his warmth as though he had thrown a blanket around her shoulders. The water and the earth warmed. Mirron could see Ossacer's effect. A sheath of health covering the trunks, keeping back the cold. Mirron opened an eye. Ossacer was shaking, his hands buried deep in the ground. Breath clouded in the air around him. Moisture condensed from the air, gathering in a mist about his body.
'Ossie,' she said. 'Don't use yourself.'
'Only way,' whispered Ossie. 'Can't draw on your sources and the ground around us is dying.'
He was right. Gorian's riposte was taking the life from the earth. Deep below and rising, snuffing out root and insect, beginning to claw at the shallow-rooted plants.
'Push back,' said Arducius. 'Hold him away.'
Mirron could feel the pressure Gorian was exerting. How he was doing it escaped her. Thousands of dead were marching on them and even with the Gor-Karkulas and her son as amplifiers, he surely couldn't keep this up for long. Too much drawing on his mind.
She could feel the thrumming of feet as the army of the dead approached, dragging their artillery with them. They were closing at a double march, Gorian hoping to be upon them before Arducius was ready. She could see them as an amorphous grey mass against the sky and the trees that filled in behind them. The sickness they wore like armour was a thick mat in the air, shrouding the useful energies, dampening them, denying them to the Ascendants.
'Quickly, Ardu,' said Ossacer.
Mirron refocused on the trunks of Ardu's Work. They were humming with barely suppressed energy, dragging in more and more of her and him, exhausting the water in the barrel. But the circuit was complete. The clouds, a mass of spitting yellow and red energy more like fire than anything else, were billowing across the sky, bringing a premature dimness to the day. Inside them, thunder growled and lightning sheared. They spiralled thousands of feet up, spreading faster almost than the eye could see.
'Nearly there, Ossie. Hold on.'
Mirron hoped he could. Gorian's attack on her brother was fierce and relentless. Like he knew it was Ossacer holding him at bay. The cold was deep and abiding, like the harshest dusas on the highest Karku peak. Ossacer was fighting it with everything he had. He poured health and healing energies into a shield about him. Gorian's construct had changed. Where there had been spears of cold, now it was a solid cloak, pounding at Ossacer, driving the strength from him.
'Ardu,' he gasped and Mirron saw the blue on his lips.
Somewhere in the distance could be heard the thud of catapults. Arducius had to hurry. The dead were on them and the living trapped in the camps behind them were beginning to scream.
'Release!'
Davarov chopped his hand down and his flag and hornsmen relayed the command. Along the line of the walls and from the space behind, a hundred catapults sang. Onagers, ballistae and scorpions. Arms slinging forwards, thudding into stays. Great bows projecting thick bolts or fist-sized stones.
From the onagers, stones smeared in pitch flamed away into the air, trailing smoke and ash. Davarov followed their trajectory out over the plain, crashing down three hundred yards into Atreska and on to the mass of the enemy. It was all he could do not to turn away. Ballistae rounds punched holes in walking dead, picking them up and casting them back into the midst of the march. Onager stones plunged down, battering great rents in the lines, rolling on through body after body, scattering pitch in their wake. The earth was churned to mud as other stones ploughed in short or sailed long, sending up huge divots and spatters, muddying the sky.
The march did not stutter. Flaming corpses lay on the ground. Men with arms and legs torn from their bodies tried to claw and haul themselves on, driven on by the shout in their heads that would not let them rest. The sounds of windlasses cranking filled the air.
Davarov could see a wagon drawn up well out of range. It was surrounded by dead and sat about a hundred yards in front of the Tsardon forces who showed no signs of attacking. Their few pieces of artillery were moving forwards. But while they were not attacking the Conquord yet, they were not attacking the dead either.
'Chancers,' muttered Davarov.
‘I
knew we couldn't trust you.'
Onagers were primed. Powder flask and stone nets were loaded into ten of them. The ballistae and scorpions sang again. Dead were skewered but rose and came on. Gesternan and Atreskan legionaries with rotting faces, torn clothing, rusting armour and massive wounds pulled themselves to their feet and moved on. Davarov shuddered.
Even at this distance, holes the size of his head could be seen in men's chests and stomachs. Entrails were dragged behind stumbling, sliding bodies.
The powder catapults fired.
Every eye followed the trajectory. Every other action ceased. Davarov held his breath. The dead came on. Three hundred yards and closing. The first of the nets came down towards the rear of the lines. The dead dropped like corn under a mighty scythe. Fragments of stone scattered from the impact zone. Bodies were shredded, torn to pieces, utterly destroyed. Fifty, a hundred, more. It was impossible to tell. A heartbeat later the sound of the detonation. Davarov ducked reflexively. Stone chips rattled on the Jewelled Barrier.
Net after net fell. Only one missed its target. The remaining eight struck home. The battlefield was covered in smoke, ash, flame and dust. Blood smeared the ground. The dead, dismembered, lay scattered. Debris was everywhere over an area of four hundred yards. None walked there bar the odd staggering corpse, injured beyond recognition as a man. One moved though the whole side of his body had been torn away from shoulder to hip.
In the centre of the devastation and spreading out, a keening, haunting wail filled the air. Screams of men aflame. Dead men, knowing their fate at the end. Bodies thrashed on the earth. Parts of men, rendered flesh, had scattered hundreds of yards in every direction.
And yet, to the south towards the Gaws and to the north away towards the lake, still they came. Without fear and without pause. Davarov cursed.
'You cannot break their will,' said Roberto. 'You can only destroy them one by bloody one.' Davarov nodded.
'Turn the catapults! Track the incoming. Fire at will.'
Dead were walking with bow, ladder and spear in hand. Soon, the former would be within range of the walls. And that could not be allowed to happen.
Kessian sat in the sunshine in a quiet part of the glade. He could feel all of those men under his command. His soldiers. His father's people, that his father had entrusted to him. And he would not let Gorian down, not like he almost had the time before. Then he had panicked, he knew that now. And the things he had wanted his men to do, they hadn't. Many had fallen and some artillery too. Father had been very angry and taken command. He had won that fight.