Fortress Draconis (60 page)

And Malarkex, thesullanciri, came hard and sliced into the Alcidese formation with the ease of a schoolmaster scattering children with a whip. Of her he could feel little save hatred and fury, and her black mount tasted of blasphemy. Sleek though the beast was, it had been long dead before being magicked to serve her. No heart beat in its breast, no lungs pumped, but a feral and malign spirit did strengthen its limbs and speed its reactions.

About her and the circle of death her sword harvested around her he could do nothing, but he had known that forever. She was not his to destroy, but she was only part of the battle. The whole battle was the key, and all he had gone through was designed to let him win.

Adrogans reached out, splaying his fingers, letting sensation return to them long enough for him to feel the water flowing within his grasp. He willed his fingers to flow into the water, extending his reach, integrating him with the realm in which they fought. Part of him, fearful of being lost forever, resisted, but he overrode it.

What I do must be done.

His head slowly nodded, bobbing lightly. Then he set his face in a fierce grimace and tightened his hands into fists.

Twin geysers erupted on the battlefield, jetting thick columns of brown water high into the sky. One carried lead elements of the Aurolani infantry’s center into the sky; the other knocked a hoargoun reeling. The columns vaporized, leaving a rainbow behind them, and a quagmire oozed up to ensnare the Aurolani center.

Behind Alyx and her Wolves, heralds sounded a signal. The Alcidese left and center were fully engaged and could not maneuver, so the Okrans Kingsmen had no path opened for them. Then the Alcidese right pulled away, providing an avenue for the Wolves to charge, and to Alyx’s amazement, the ground hardened and dried, cracking as if baked by years of drought. Raising her sword, she dug her heels into Valor’s flanks, leading the Wolves into a charge that would catch the Aurolani heavy cavalry in the flank.

She had no idea how or why the battlefield was shifting. The flow of water smacked of magick, that much was clear, and she quickly assumed Chytrine’s forces would find a way to reverse the spells. The little lake growing up to keep the Aurolani right at bay would eventually shrivel, but that would be a problem to handle later. The hard ground beneath her horse’s hooves meant the charge could generate speed and power.

Some of the grand temeryces on the flank turned to face the charge, but it scarcely mattered. The sheer mass and weight of the charge blasted frostclaws back, sometimes spilling riders to be sliced and crushed amid prancing claws and stomping hooves. Mostly they were driven back into the flanks of their fellows, trapping the other heavy cavalry, leaving them unable to maneuver or defend themselves. Lancers on either side of her skewered beasts or riders.

The Wolves drove a spearhead into the heavy cavalry with one legion, then the other swung out wide to the right, passing in front of the mired Aurolani center to hit the infantry left in the flank. Agitare led them in that daring move, rising in his stirrups, waving his sword, and lustily shouting orders.

His Red Caps ate into the Aurolani left like a cancer.

The heavy cavalry’s cohesion evaporated as the far flank broke under pressure. The Alcidese King’s Heavy Guards pushed one company forward to bedevil the milling riders and protect Agitare’s legion’s rear. While that saved their countrymen, it still choked the lane the Okrans Kingsmen needed to engage the enemy, trading the nip of a dagger for what would have been the bite of a sword.

Shrieking in a voice that mixed the howl of a biting boreal wind with the scream of a gutted cat, Malarkex reined her mount around and leaped it into the Wolves’ formation. The temeryx’s claws laid open a horse’s flank, shredding ringmail as if it were cobweb, and carried away much of the rider’s leg. Thesullanciris saber swept around in a blow that would have chopped the rider in half, but Crow’s straight-bladed sword intercepted the blow and parried it high.

Malarkex’s temeryx turned quickly and scythed its tail through Crow’s horse’s legs. They snapped like wet twigs, rolling the horse in the air with the quick violence of the blow. Crow kicked free of the saddle, launching him away from the horse, but awkwardly so. He landed hard on his right shoulder and though he rolled to his feet, a riderless horse hit him from behind, stunning him and pitching him face first into the mud.

Thesullanciri spun her mount and leaned down for a stroke that would have opened Crow’s spine from ass to atlas. The sudden jolting of her mount to the right carried the cut wide as Lombo hit the temeryx’s left flank with a shoulder. Looking much like a bundle of burning rags, Malarkex flew from the saddle. The temeryx craned its neck around to snap at the Panqui, but quicker than its flashing teeth, Lombo grabbed its head jaw-and-crown and wrenched.

Alyx reined Valor around and drove at the risingsullanciri. The Aurolani leader ducked the cut, then slashed at Valor, laying the horse’s belly open. Alyx leaped from the dying beast and managed to keep her feet. The shadowy warrior drifted toward her, blood-vapor rising from her blade, then slashed, but Alyx parried the blow low, then cranked her armored elbow around to smash Malarkex in the face.

Her elbow passed straight through thesullanciri’s head, sending a shock through Alyx as if she’d just plunged full on into an icy river. Alyx stumbled a step past, then whirled just as Malarkex reversed her direction. Thesullanciri did not so much spin as turn inside-out, her faint and hate-filled face suddenly appearing where the back of her hooded head had been.

Again Alyx parried a cut, then slashed back, but got nothing but black mist and a wave of cold traveling up her sword in return. She backed away from her foe, realizing the enthusiastic slash had left her open, but thesullanciri did not press her advantage quite yet. Drifting forward, like a wind-driven cloud, Malarkex moved toward Crow’s still form, forcing Alyx to intercept her.

Over and over they traded blows, with Alyx’s strikes rending vapor and reaping cold. Frost formed on her blade and already her fingers felt numb, but she kept fighting, kept moving. She knew she was a better swordsman than thesullanciri, but it mattered little when her blade couldn’t draw blood. Any of a number of her cuts would have put a normal foe down, and fleetingly she wondered if she would join her father in having died at the hands of asullanciri.

Malarkex feinted with a low slash, then came up high and from the right. Alyx raised her sword to block, but this blow came in harder and heavier than any before. Thesullancirfs sword notched hers and, worse yet, blasted it from her grasp. Alyx tried to dance back, knowing the next cut would open her armor and flesh, but her heels caught on something and she toppled back.

Thesullancirfs blow whistled harmlessly past.

Alyx rolled to the right, away from any return cut, and found the hilt of a sword with her left hand. She came up and around, wrapped both hands around the hilt. The straight blade had an opalescent gem set in it at the forte. Shaped like a keystone, the gem pulsed once, fiercely, and warmth filled her right hand anew.

She stepped forward, straddling Crow’s body, for it had been his shoulders that caught her heels, and brought his sword up in a guard. She caught Malarkex’s low slash easily, turning it aside, then lunged forward and arced Tsamoc skyward. On a normal foe the tip would have been located between the knees, and the upward cut clove shadow where it would have sliced groin.

Malarkex screamed and the shadow gushed down into an inky puddle beneath her. Another cut, frightfully weak, threatened to slash Alyx at the left hip, but Tsamoc parried it high and around, then chopped down into thesullancirfs back at the right flank. The shadow figure wavered for a heartbeat, then its dark essence poured out onto the ground, with only the stain and the bouncing saber to mark where it had stood and fought.

Alyx stared at the sword with the pulsing gem in it.Magickal sword, indeed!

The battle rolled around Alyx, with temeryces snapping, men screaming, howling gibberers charging at her. She refused to give ground, standing there over Crow, spattered with mud and blood. Some gibberers made it to her, but only after threading a gauntlet of lances and swords, or the blurred backhand flick of a Panqui paw. More than one gibberer had its bones pulverized by those swats, and yet more would have save that Lombo seemed to take a singular delight in pouncing upon riderless frostclaws and crushing their skulls between his fists.

Trumpets sounded behind her lines, and she could hear the Alcidese infantry rallying to advance. More trumpets answered, but from the north, which surprised her, but she had little attention to spare in puzzling out why. The lead elements of the Aurolani center had just struggled from the swamp when the water drained from that basin. She braced herself for their onslaught, hoping to sell herself dearly, when trumpets blared again, and the thunder of hooves overrode the frenzied pounding of Aurolani war drums.

From the north, three legions of Jeranese light cavalry crashed into the Aurolani rear. On the right the little lake separating the Alcidese King’s Heavy Guards from the Aurolani flank vanished as Jeranese heavy infantry marched in from the northeast. Already flanked, the Aurolani left pulled back, crowding the center, making both crumble.

Then, to her own left, more horses came charging hard. The Okrans Kingsmen, unable to come through the Heavy Guards, had ridden around and come from the west, rolling up that flank and grinding the Aurolani right wing between themselves and Agitare’s legion. Hoargoun, stuck with spears and bleeding black, wavered and toppled as lances pierced their thighs and sabers whittled away at their shins.

Mad, milling gibberers ran every which way, with a few flowing toward Alyx just by pure chance. Tsamoc made short work of some, and Resolute’s arrival made shorter work of others. The one grand temeryx that leaped toward her would have been a horror to deal with, but a geyser of steam caught it in mid-flight, parboiling it. Though not quite dead when it landed, it could do little but mew and hiss, so Alyx beheaded it with a stroke.

Resolute caught the reins of a riderless horse and motioned to Alyx. “General, ride.”

“No.”

“Yes, you must.” Resolute nodded quickly at her. “I’ll see to Crow. And you’ll see to him when you return Tsamoc. Now, General. It will finish things.”

Alyx nodded and mounted. As she raised her sword, the Alcidese host gave a great shout, which the Kingsmen echoed. From further back the rest of the siege force cried out and cheered. The Heavy Guards tightened their formations and surged forward, sweeping past Crow’s body, constricting and crushing the Aurolani force.

From horseback Alyx gained perspective and realized what had happened. Somehow, from somewhere, Adrogans had conjured up a full battalion of light cavalry and a whole regiment of heavy infantry. Both were from Jerana and clearly had been lurking in the hills. The mist rising with the water on the field had screened the Aurolani from the threat to their rear and flank until too late.

Things began to fall into place for her. The excessive requisitions for food had not been extravagance on Adrogans’ part; he was feeding another whole army on the leavings of the expedition. He’d kept their existence hidden from her, from everyone, meaning he feared a spy in the midst of the rulers. She began to wonder if all his battle reports had been manipulated to read poorly, to make it seem as if he won by luck instead of skill or cunning. And she wondered if they had been so written to deceive Chytrine.

I’m not sure I owe Adrogans an apology yet, but he has earned a lot more trust.

The heavy infantry, both Jeranese and Alcidese, linked up and drove west. The Kingsmen and the Jeranese light horse preceded them, nipping at the flanks of the Aurolani formation that had come down the road and had been stopped by the Stonehearts. The Aurolani legions began to withdraw, but the Stonehearts advanced. The Aurolani legions broke and the cavalry slaughtered them as they ran for the hills.

Jt surprised Alyx to see Crow bare-chested and sitting in a chair in the shadow of the Vilwanese warmage pavilion. He raised his left hand in greeting and she noted with some satisfaction that the glow from the little brazier near his booted feet didn’t show any new wounds on his body. His right shoulder was discolored, and she was thankful the evening’s wan light didn’t let her see the true colors there. That he held his arm close and tight to his ribs, half hiding a trio of scars on that side of his chest, did not surprise her at all.

She frowned at him. “Should you be … ?”

Crow smiled easily and pointed at an empty chair beside him. “Please, Highness, sit. I cannot thank you enough for risking your life to protect me. Resolute told me what you did. Lombo, too—you impressed him mightily.”

Alyx laughed. “It’s mutual. The way he kept the gibberers back, and the temeryces … you wouldn’t believe.”

The man nodded. “He regrets it, you know, of robbing you of those kills. He thinks he was selfish.”

“So I live to forgive him.” She smiled. “How do you fare?”

Crow shrugged, at least with his left shoulder. “While you were off leading the reconnaissance of the Aurolani camp, Lombo carried me back here. Kerrigan was going to magick me back to health, but I told him just to see how much damage had been done first. Bumps and bruises, knot on my head. I told him to see to others. I’ll be fine.”

“Why are you still here, then?”

He pointed a finger at the tent. “Will’s in there. He was with Adrogans, watching the battle, when he fainted. Will’s resting. He came around but doesn’t remember anything since last night, which puts us in the same position. I don’t remember much past talking to you.”

“You had a long night out there with Resolute and Dranae. How are they?”

“Doing very well. Resolute has some scratches. Dranae has the bite pattern of a frostclaw on his right thigh, but it never got much through his mail or skin before he killed it.” Crow nodded toward the battlefield. “They’re out there, helping the wounded, finishing the gibberers. Resolute will have enough longknives to make a galaxy of bladestars. I guess the Vilwanese are looking for some folks to becomemeckanshü. I’d be lucky to be among them if not for you.”