Council of Blades (31 page)

Naked save for sharkskin flippers, a loincloth, and a long snorkel lashed to his head, he winced as he felt cold goosebumps creeping all across his skin. He watched the dark cloud of Svarezi's cavalry reserves begin their envelopment, checked that their path would intersect his little haven from the storm, and slipped an outlandish diving helmet into place across his head.

"I believe it's time to sink beneath the drink." The young noble slithered deeper into the water, ducking splashes as dozens of nixies rose all around him to stand high in the water on their thrashing fins, staring at the encroaching cavalry. Princess Krrrr-poka hefted a long battle trident to signal her men, and one by one the crea-tures ducked out of sight beneath the river.

The water was three feet deep, a vile smoky green, and freezing cold with snowmelt from the mountaintops. Teeth chattering with the cold, Luccio eased his tender body down into the water and concealed his snorkel tube among the reeds.

In a tree above, Tekoriikii continued happily bouncing up and down, using the whip motion of the branches to give him a clear view across the field. He watched the huge infantry lines engage; saw the war-turtles bashing their way toward the mountain passes. Finally, he saw the high roads begin streaming with cavalry. The Svarezi reserves abandoned their protective stance about the Sun Cannon and descended from the ridgeline high above, forming lines and advancing at a sharp trot to the stream. Opening his wings, the bird crossed his eyes and tried to remember his instructions, then let the air shiv-er to a great, delighted cry.

Tekoriikii the firebird ceased bouncing up and down in his tree. His feather-brain quite clearly remembered the spectacular trick he was to play. Ascending to the now safe, deserted skies, he thrashed his way off toward the Sun Cannon, where it sat all alone above the pass.

The cavalry were already quite aware that they had drawn close to the city walls, which were readily identifi-able as the tall gray stone things towering overhead. Ignoring the young officer, four thousand troopers crammed into a single eight-deep line, surged toward the tidal stream, and breasted their way into the freezing spray. In a magnificent display, the massed cavalry of Svarezi's budding empire thrust across the Trevi River to bring home his victory.

Starting from the upstream flanks, a chorus of terrible, pain-racked screams ripped out across the air.

Horses began to rear and plunge, bucking in frantic agony. Riders were catapulted into the waters, where they erupted shrieking and clawing at exposed faces and hands. Every patch of immersed skin showed long red welts and burns. The horses bolted from the water, sometimes dragging fallen riders by the stirrups as they floundered free and sped toward the hills.

Downstream, the right flank of the huge formation staggered as their comrades simply fell apart. Whole reg-iments fled, while the waters churned with agonized men. The young cornet stared as a horse archer waded past, dripping strings of clear jelly from his brow; where the archer's hands touched the jelly, savage blisters had already started to form.

"Jellyfish!"

"Get out! Get out of the water! The stream's alive with jellyfish!"

The lucky men still untouched downstream spurred their horses from the flood. Some chose to go ahead, their frightened horses lunging up out of the plague-ridden stream. Others wrenched their mounts about and retreat-ed to their own safe, familiar banks. Only a quarter of the horsemen emerged on the Lomatran side, where they milled about in confusion and alarm.

"That's better!" Dressed in battered, old-fashioned rus-set armor, Lorenzo's father slammed his visor down. "That layabout Luccio is good for something after all!"

Standing their horses before the city gates, the Lomatran heavy cavalry turned their ponderous ranks to face the enemy survivors. Lorenzo's father slapped his eldest son across the helmet and raised his heavy lance, signaling the charge. The regiment clanked off toward their demoralized opponents to sweep them from the field.

Rowing through the air, his eyes slits and his face lit with a superior little smile, Tekoriikii passed high above the raging battlefield. The hippogriff cavalry that might have stopped him had all been neutralized, leaving the bird with a clean, untroubled sky. The bird need only swoop down upon the Sun Cannon, snatch away the Sun Gem, and the threat of the evil machine would be gone.

The handsome firebird spied his prey. With a tri-umphant wig-wag of his wings, he made a spectacular dive at his target far below. Intent on measuring their chemicals and working at their valves, the Sun Cannon's crew never once looked skyward or realized their onrush-ing peril. Tekoriikii zeroed in on the gigantic, sparkling diamond fastened to the cannon's tip and, with a manic hiss, opened out his claws.

On the ridgeline below, artillery crewmen ducked as the Sun Cannon fired. A bolt of deadly light sizzled through the air, and Tekoriikii found himself blinking through dazzled eyes.

Much to his amazement, an arrow passed under his wing. Tekoriikii wrenched his neck about, trying to make sense out of the violet afterimages dancing past his eyes.

A black shadow whipped in from the left. Tekoriikii arched his back to break his speed, and suddenly a mas-sive wingtip cracked across his throat. The firebird spun out of control. He clamped his claws onto a flailing black figure, feeling the whole world spin as they clutched together in mutual fear. The bird saw the earth rushing straight at his face, beat furiously with his wings, and somehow managed to land himself and his unwilling partner smack into the turf.

Tekoriikii groaned, watching the universe spin with whirring stars. He gave a croak from his poor sore throat and scrabbled shakily to his feet.

The reason for his nice soft landing immediately became apparent; Tekoriikii had landed tail-first on a gaggle of artillery gunners. The bird stepped off the padded hillock of flesh and dazedly looked around the scene.

A terribly familiar lean black hippogriff flopped and thrashed across the ground, utterly stunned by its fall. The mare gave a pitiful squeal as she tried to move a bro-ken wing. She opened dazed eyes and fixed them on Tekoriikii as she felt the worst nightmares of a flying creature suddenly become real.

Knocked even sillier than usual, Tekoriikii blundered over to the hippogriff and tried to make a motherly little sound.

His voice stuck in his throat. Eyes bulging, the bird clapped wings across his craw and staggered drunkenly aside.

A short, heavy sword swiped through the air right where Tekoriikii's head had been. Snarling like a troll, Ugo Svarezi lurched upright, pinned beneath the hip-pogriff, and tried to hack Tekoriikii clean in two.

To the firebird, actual violence was utterly meaning-less; combat was restricted to demonstrations of supreme cleverness. Taken aback by a direct assault, the bird felt his sense of honor and propriety utterly impugned.

Svarezi lunged across his hippogriff's back, falling just short of Tekoriikii's hide. The bird tried to give an out-raged scream, but to no avail; the merest hiss escaped his throat, where once an exquisite singing voice had been. Tekoriikii paddled backward out of range of Svarezi's sword, feeling his whole world swim in a giddy daze. The human hurtled a dagger, missing the throw as Shaatra rolled over him and trilled in agony.

Pinned by his injured mount, Svarezi tried to ram the hippogriff aside. The creature croaked, unable to rise, and tried a half-hearted snap of its beak at the firebird. The prince tried to shove at his mount, but the creature screamed and fought to remain prostrate on the ground. Cursing, Svarezi snatched hold of the hippogriff's neck and whipped his sword up to split the creature's skull.

With a broken hiss, Tekoriikii vaulted up across Shaatra and grappled the human to the ground. His beak fastened on Svarezi's wrist, claws gripping at the man's armored chest as Tekoriikii tried to batter the man's weapons away.

Svarezi somehow beat the firebird clear, almost tearing off his own right hand. Tekoriikii fell, and Svarezi lunged against the weight pinning him to the ground, somehow managing to battle free. Crying out in pain, Shaatra slid downhill across the grass, rolling on her side to tangle with the dizzy firebird.

Prince Svarezi clambered atop the Sun Cannon, laugh-ing as he laid his hands on the controls. He kicked a lever, sending the spindly barrel sinking down to aim at the helpless firebird. Tekoriikii and the hippogriff both stared in horror as the Sun Gem glowed brilliant white before their eyes.

Miliana's spectacles had cracked clean across each lens, leaving her staring at an eerie, disjointed world.

The whole war-turtle shuddered to a halt, the hull ringing like a temple bell as something crashed hard against its armored shell.

The vehicle ended on a decided list to the right. Lorenzo cut free the horses as Miliana blinked down at him from above.

"What in the name of the Abyss was that?"

"They finally got smart. They rolled rocks on us from the ridges above." Oh well-it had been a good run while it lasted. The war-turtles had done more than their inventor could possibly have dreamed. Now bogged, half buried, or broken up by catapult fire, the machines fell still as their crews abandoned them to take up the fight with crossbow, spell, and blade.

Outside the turtle, enemy infantry still swarmed like angry bugs. A sorcerer saw a chance for an easy kill and maneuvered for a shot under Lorenzo's hull. As he approached, Lorenzo gave a delighted exclamation and reached for a copper pole, which he industriously linked to the hilt of his sword.

A lightning bolt spat toward the damaged turtle. Electricity hit the vehicle's ceramic skin, blasted off mir-ror plates, then snaked over to the copper rod and poured power up into Lorenzo's sword. The sorcerer snarled in rage, disengaged his spell, and ripped out a long magic staff. Accompanied by half a dozen armored infantry, he rushed the disabled machine and began to claw his way inside.

The internal crew fought hard to keep the intruding infantry at bay. As the battle raged, a vision slit popped open, a copper rod waggled its way out of the hole and prodded itself up against the enemy sorcerer. A violent discharge of electricity ensued, sending the Svarezi troops jerking back like puppets tugged by the strings. Lorenzo popped his head out from under the war-turtle, decided that the coast was clear, and wrenched open the wide rear hatch to let the horses blunder free.

"That's it! Now make for the Sun Cannon-fast!"

Miliana popped out of her turret hatch, accidentally smacking a Colletran swordsman in the eye and sending him tumbling, unconscious, over the side.

"Has Tekoriikii neutralized the thing?"

"He must have." Lorenzo helped the girl clamber down across the slippery mirror tiles. "It hasn't fired for a while."

With an escort of Miliana's two artillerymen, the inventor and the princess took a swift bearing to the cliff top and climbed their way through the rocks above the melee.

Svarezi's infantry up above sniped and skirmished from a little rock fort they had made to command the crest. Deadly accurate fire drove a terrified Miliana into cover with an arrow quivering through her hat.

Crammed hard into a jumble of broken rocks, Lorenzo gave a sudden yelp as a crossbow bolt rebounded from a boulder mere inches from his face. "Miliana! Do some-thing! What spells did you memorize this morning?"

"Um…" Miliana bit her lip. "Feather fall. I'm getting good at it."

"Feather fall?" Lorenzo felt himself slowly going mad. "You took feather fall spells into a fight?"

"Well I can throw it twice a day now. I'm getting better."

The inventor wearily put his face in his hands. Incensed, Miliana rolled up her long sleeves, set her pointy hat to an aggressive tilt and found the largest boulder on the mountainside. She hissed out her spell, threw a puff of Tekoriikii's feathers up into the air, and hoisted the titanic rock over her head and hurtled it up into the sky.

The boulder sailed over the Svarezi position, shud-dered, and regained normal gravity once again. The enemy infantry stared at it for one long, fragile moment, then screamed and flung themselves downhill. The rock smashed their little fort to pieces and duly chased them all off toward the valley floor.

Lorenzo frowned and wiped a dirty hand across his nose.

"Have you ever had those spell scrolls of yours checked? I read up on feather fall spells-and that isn't what you're casting!"

Miliana poked a nasty tongue out at Lorenzo and made a rapid climb straight up the hill. Muttering to himself, the inventor spurred off in hot pursuit, dragging out his rapier as he climbed in her wake.

"Tekoriikii? Tekoriikii-where are you?"

Miliana topped the cliff face, searching wildly for her friend the firebird. "Tekoriikii-don't do anything stupid! Wait for me!"

The princess stopped as though she had run into a wall of rock and stared aghast at the hillcrest above.

Tekoriikii lay tangled with a skinny black hippogriff, splayed helpless before the Sun Cannon's maw. Ugo Svarezi-ragged, bloody, and half-crazed with hate-kicked the valve releases to fire the deadly light beam straight into the bird.

"Bastard!"

Miliana snatched up a rock and hurtled the makeshift weapon with all her might. Her broken spectacles made her miss Svarezi by a country mile. The would-be emperor flicked a glance in her direction, gave an ill-tempered snarl, and kicked the Sun Cannon's firing controls.

His eyes had left his two helpless feathery victims for only the merest beat of a heart. Moving with viper's speed, Shaatra snapped up from the ground, lunged beneath the Sun Cannon's barrel and rammed her back against the firing tube. The weapon raised, and an instant later the deadly light beam stabbed into the grass a dozen feet behind Tekoriikii's tail. Scorched and wound-ed by the barrel's heat, the hippogriff fell down to its belly and began to weakly try to drag herself away.

With a start, Tekoriikii realized that his tail had caught on fire; the bird frantically beat his backside against the grass and gave a frightened wail of dismay.

Seeing Miliana, Svarezi's eyes lit up in recognition. He sprang down from the Sun Cannon's firing platform and stalked toward her.

"So. My little Sumbrian bride." The warlord flexed black gauntlets like a vulture testing its claws. "It seems we can share a wedding bower at last…"

Miliana stared, felt a thrill of fear, and tried to back herself away, falling over backward as the rubble tripped her heels. Svarezi moved forward, only to check as a slim figure emerged from the rocks at his side.

Lorenzo held a bared rapier in his hand as he placed himself between Miliana and their enemy. Svarezi gave the boy a contemptuous glance, then ripped his short cat-gutter sword from its sheath.

"You want to fight me, boy, with your toy sword?" The Colletran tyrant made a swift arc of his brutal blade to free any stiffness in his wrist. "You want to fight me for your scrawny princess?"

Lorenzo flickered forward in a short, sharp fencer's step.

"Miliana! Get up and run!"

"No! Stay!" Svarezi began an arrogant, graceless advance upon the boy. "Stay and watch your sweetheart's guts spill to the ground!"

Without a word, Lorenzo skipped forward, launching across an impossible distance to spear at Svarezi with his blade. The Colletran grunted a vicious oath of shock and somehow swatted the rapier point aside.

A blinding spark leapt between the blades-the last dregs of Lorenzo's lightning bottle. Svarezi reeled, stunned and blinking as he fought away the shock. Furiously stumbling back, Svarezi blindly beat aside a frenzy of attacks; he snarled as Lorenzo's point scored a strip of velvet from his helm, lodged against his mail gauntlet without piercing home, and whipped, blurring, past his mouth to rip a cut across his skin.

Svarezi shook his head, trying to regain his wits; the lightning charge had left lights dancing past his eyes.

Bleeding from a facial wound, the warlord roared and hammered Lorenzo's sword aside, missed a brutal cut with his blade, and crashed his hilt into Lorenzo's chest with all the power at his command. The slim inventor was flung back by the blow, clawing desperately to his feet to present his blade and keep the circling enemy at bay.

Lorenzo risked a brief glance across the cliff summit and felt one source of panic fly away; Miliana had scrab-bled clear and hidden herself behind one wheel of the Sun Cannon. The girl crept closer to Tekoriikii and the fallen hippogriff and stared in terror at Svarezi's blade.

"Lorenzo, run! Run back down the hill!"

"I can't! He still has reserves." Lorenzo's breath shud-dered with fatigue; he used one ripped sleeve to wipe sweat back from his eyes. "He can lead them around the army and crush us like an egg!"

On the roadside nearby, Svarezi lifted the back of his hand to his mouth, flicking a glance down at the result-ing smear of blood.

"He's right, girl! Did you hear him? At the base of this hill, there lies enough manpower to grind Lomatra to a pulp." The black-armored nobleman rubbed his own blood between his fingertips. "Once we've killed this Lomatran puppy, we'll see to the destruction of your sad adopted home!"

He lunged forward, trying to crash past Lorenzo's guard and rip him open with an upward thrust of the short, brutal sword. The blade point scythed a line past Lorenzo's waist, bringing a flicker of blood across his shirt.

"Lorenzo!"

Miliana surged forward in panic as rapier and short sword clashed. She stumbled to a halt just short of the fight, helpless to intervene as the blades howled and slithered in a blur of rage.

Moving in a nearly senseless panic, Lorenzo somehow held his own, punching his sword hilt across Svarezi's helm to drive him back away. Tekoriikii tried to thrash forward and bring his beak into the fight-exposing him-self to Svarezi's blade, Miliana wrenched at the chassis of the Sun Cannon, trying to rip free a strip of wood to make a quarterstaff or club.

Tekoriikii snapped his beak; Svarezi swore, whirled, and whipped back his weapon to finish off the bird once and for all-baring his arm to a desperate, sobbing lunge from Lorenzo's sword.

The stiff rapier pierced through velvet, mail, and silk to stab clean through the inner elbow of Svarezi's weapon arm. With a roar of rage, Svarezi spun aside. Blood sheet-ed from his forearm, spilling to the ground. His sword hung from nerveless fingers as he staggered blindly out of range.

Lorenzo moved forward; Svarezi spun, blurred out his free hand to snatch Miliana by the hair, and dragged her shrieking to his side.

"Enough! Throw the blade away or the she-witch dies!"

Svarezi wrenched his captive tight against his chest. Even so sorely wounded, he could have snapped Miliana's neck like a stick. The girl froze as he wound tight his grip, fear bulging out her eyes.

"Stop!" Lorenzo held out his sword, his face draining white. He came a step closer to Svarezi, his eyes only on Miliana's face. "Don't hurt her! I'll drop it. Just leave the girl alone."

Miliana tried to speak, but Svarezi's hand ripped at her hair, choking her with agony. Lorenzo threw his sword far away across the road, then held out his empty hands.

"It's gone! Now let the girl go free!"

Beside the Sun Cannon, the warlord gave a derisive laugh.

Miliana managed to croak out a few words in fear.

"He-he'll ransom me! He's rich!"

Lorenzo blinked, stared at Miliana, then swiftly reached a hand to his belt.

"Here! Here… yes, I'll ransom her! See? A thousand ducats in gems!"

He tugged, threw his purse, and Svarezi laughed and loosened his grip on the girl. She fell to the ground as Svarezi snatched the heavy purse out of the air.

"A thousand ducats' prize and a princess for my bride! A fitting crown for my victory."

A wisp of smoke disappeared up the fuse that led into Lorenzo's patent anti-theft purse. Miliana lunged wildly aside, diving through the grass. The prince spared a quick glance at the heavy purse and opened his mouth to give a terrified cry.

The blast shuddered the entire hillside. Lying flat on his belly behind a score of rocks, Lorenzo felt debris shower all around. He lifted his head and wildly searched for Miliana as the smoke blew in wisps along the road.

"Miliana? Miliana!"

"I'm over here!" Legs clad in frilly petticoats waggled as the girl struggled up from the dirt. "Is he gone?"

"Um… best not to ask."

Struggling erect, Miliana knelt on the grass and instantly began searching the rubble with her fingertips.

Wiping sweat and scorch marks from his brow, Lorenzo came over to kneel in puzzlement at her side.

"What on Toril are you doing?"

"My spectacles are gone! This war is costing me a for-tune in ground glass!" Blind, scorched, and annoyed, the girl gave up on her search. "Is Tekoriikii alright?"

"The hippogriff's beating out the fire."

"Oh, good." Blinking like a newborn kitten, Miliana faced in the general direction of the din of battle.

"Can you see the fight? Who's winning?"

"We're pushing his battle lines back. But Svarezi's reserves are still massed down at the bottom of the road." The young inventor stood up on tiptoes to stare ashen-faced downhill. "There must be ten thousand men down there!"

"Damn." The princess blundered over to the Sun Cannon and leaned against its hull. "We have to do some-thing!"

Miliana froze; blinking her rather pretty eyes, she began wrinkling her nose like a rabbit and exploring the air.

"Um-Lorenzo?"

"Yes?"