Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) (46 page)

She paused. “We are going to blow them up, right?”

I made one final adjustment, and nodded. “Oh, yeah. Time to fire for effect.”

The enchantment factory made about four shells a minute, and Cerise had piled up a dozen or so of them while I made my preparations. I fired off half of them as fast as I could, and waited.

Fire blossomed around the enemy ships. The mortar wasn’t especially accurate, but those shells were enchanted to conjure fifty pounds of pressurized lava when they hit. The ordered ranks of troops around the ships dissolved into screaming confusion, and every flammable object in the area caught fire. That apparently didn’t include the ships themselves, but one of the docks they’d been using was wood.

Cerise whooped. “Oh, yeah! Burn, little bitches! Burn!”

It looked impressive, but it wasn’t getting the job done. If I’d had more ammunition maybe I could just bombard them until I got enough lucky hits to sink the ships. But I didn’t, and what if the portals survived? Undead soldiers could march underwater if they had to. Besides, if I took too long one of the enemy mages was bound to figure out what I was doing and come up with a counter.

I took the next shell off the pile, and reached into the warhead enchantment. Carefully, I poured more power into the summoning spell. A hundred pounds. Two hundred. Five hundred. There, let’s see what that does.

I dropped it into the mortar tube, and waited. A few seconds later a much larger geyser of water erupted from the river next to one of the ships. The whole vessel was slammed sideways into a stone pier, its hull smashed like kindling.

“Yes! Awesome!” Cerise leaped up, pumping her fist.

I did it again. And again. And again.

Smoke and fire wreathed the target zone, and the wooden pier was quickly reduced to flaming debris. A lucky round detonated nearly on top of a second ship, and blew it apart. Fragments of bone and metal rained down all over the district. The enemy advance began to falter, and a ragged cheer rose from my own battlements.

The last ship cast off and frantically tried to get underway, her black sails billowing in a wind that sprung up at her crew’s bidding. But they were too slow. A near miss sent the ship careening sideways to ram into a docked merchant vessel, and more shells fell around them as they struggled to untangle themselves. Four more rounds blasted the surrounding area, and then I landed one just astern of my target. The blast shattered the whole aft end of the ship, and reduced the prow and the ship it had rammed to tangled wreckage.

Narfing’s head rose from the river to regard the blasted ruins that my bombardment had made of the enemy’s beachhead. Then he turned west, and began swimming out to sea.

I turned off the enchantment factory, and fired off the last few mortar bombs. Then I turned my gaze back to the fighting on shore, and nodded in satisfaction. The bombardment had devastated the neat formations of enemy troops that had been mustering around their ships. With their flow of reinforcements cut off the enemy position was already worsening. At the west end of the harbor the Conclave forces were advancing behind a hail of magic, and their golems now outnumbered those of their opponents. To the east three or four thousand Royal troops were locked in battle with maybe half that many undead, and slowly winning.

The undead that had marched on the temple were wasting their time on a target that was already destroyed, and there couldn’t be more than two or three thousand of them. There were ten times that many troops in Kozalin at the moment, and they’d have plenty of time to contain that thrust. The outcome of the battle was no longer in doubt.

Cerise stepped up beside me, and leaned against my side. “We did it, didn’t we? We saved the city.”

“We did,” I agreed.

We stood and watched the fighting on the shore.

I knew it wasn’t over yet. In a few minutes I’d have to organize the men for another foray into the city, to help thin out the ranks of the undead. As long as we were careful not to get mobbed they were no threat to me, and every bouncer round I fired into the ranks of the enemy was a couple more soldiers who wouldn’t have to die killing them the hard way. With the enemy backed into a corner with no way to retreat they’d fight to the last man, and we’d probably be up the rest of the night finishing them off.

But tonight, Kozalin would stand.