Authors: Angus Wells
Of all the folk in Durbrecht not of the warband, we were the best trained in combat. Even the militias, for all they were equipped with armor and the uniforms of war, were largely untrained citizens or aging soldiers, reinforced with
officers from Trevid’s squadrons. There was neither sufficient time nor gear to armor us, but we were given what weapons were available—bows, swords, axes, even knives from the kitchens. Keran was our commander, his motley troops divided into squads, each ordered by one of the younger tutors. We numbered no more than a century and one half, but we were avid for our duty. I forgot all my musings, all my talk of parleys and cycles of war, as Keran gathered us in the quadrangle. I was a child of my times. The blood of my Dhar ancestors ran in my veins (and should, I hoped, remain there), and it was that called me now. The Sky Lords came! They threatened my homeland! Against that weight of time’s and blood’s memory, my philosophical musings faded.
Keran sprang to the plinth of a statue that he might look down on us. He wore black leather that shone dull in the sun, as if it had seen much service. It reminded me of Andyrt’s gear. He wore a long sword and his face was grave as he addressed us.
“The Sky Lords approach,” he cried, shouting over the tumult that rose from the streets outside. “They come in numbers greater than any since the last Coming, and Durbrecht’s need of us. We are called to fight for our city and all Dharbek. How shall we answer?”
“We fight!” we roared.
Swords were flourished, bows waved aloft; sunlight glinted off axeheads and spears. We were patriotic, vigorous in our courage, our outrage hot. Keran told us off into companies, and I found myself under Martus’s command. He carried a long-hafted axe and from somewhere had found a dented helmet. His pleasant face was grim as we formed a ragged column and made for the gates.
Keran led us at a trot to the south wall. The streets were emptying as the inhabitants sought the refuge of their homes or took up weapons and straggled after officers of the militia. The bazaars, all the emporiums, were closed, save for those of the herbalists, the apothecaries, and the chirurgeons. I thought they would likely have work enough before too long.
We reached the wall and found ourselves deployed along a length between two of the bolt-throwing engines. It was early in the afternoon and the stone was warm from the
sun’s caress. The sky was blue, streaked with high cloud blown out like the manes of running horses. It was a day when larks and swallows should have darted about the ramparts and the fields beyond, but there were none. I looked to the east, where farmland stretched away from the city, and saw folk hurrying for the safety of Durbrecht. To my right, the wide expanse of the Treppanek glittered silvery blue, empty of vessels. I licked my lips and spat; fingered my borrowed sword. I thought of those days—ages past, it seemed now—when I had voiced childhood’s bravery to Andyrt and thought there could be no better life than to be a soldier. He had told me that was largely waiting, and that the waiting was the hardest part. He had been right. I felt a great desire to relieve myself; and a greater fear of embarrassment. I looked to Cleton, who grinned as if he had not a care in the world. Past him, I saw Pyrdon. His freckled face was pale and his eyes were narrowed as he stared at the empty sky. Then it was empty no longer.
It was as though a storm swept toward us from the east. The horizon was dark, as if a great bank of nimbus advanced. I heard Pyrdon muttering and turned my eyes briefly sideways, seeing him make the God’s sign as he prayed. He was not alone. I heard Keran shout, “Courage! Stand firm!” I thought Cleton’s tan a shade lighter. I forgot my need to urinate.
The darkness came on, and through it I saw the spark and flash of magic as the keeps along the Treppanek flung sorcery at the airboats that were the fundament of the shadow.
Someone cried, “So many! How can we defeat them?”
Martus answered, loud so that all his troop should hear it, “With courage. We’ve magic of our own, and stout hearts.”
Darkness and light approached in unison. I saw airboats fall flaming from the solidity of the armada, great balls of awful fire that drifted almost leisurely to the land, or the water. Along the wall, from by a war-engine, a jennym shouted, “They’re not so many. See? They use the darkness like night-come thieves!”
Surely they used the darkness, or it was manifestation of Kho’rabi wizardry, for it came as always before them, and where it fell there was a numbing cold, a horrid sensation of
dread that crept into our souls and slowed our blood. I could see now that the jennym spoke true—what had first seemed to be a fleet that filled all the sky was, in fact, only a wave of airboats, perhaps twenty of them. But twenty, their magic said, was ample. How should we stand against so many? Twenty was too many. The sky-borne craft would land their fylie of Kho’rabi knights and those warriors would slaughter us. I stared, a rabbit transfixed by a stoat’s rabid gaze.
Once again I discerned those half-seen elemental things that sported about the airboats, thought I heard their weird, wild singing. I realized abruptly the skycraft were almost on us. There was a ghastly familiarity to the scene as the shifting sigils that decorated the bloodred cylinders grew clear, the black baskets that hung beneath began to show the pale blurs of faces. I stared, paralyzed, convinced of our defeat.
Then hope sprang bright and burning from where a group of sorcerers stood. It flew, magic’s unleashed arrow, into the sky—a searing blast of light that struck the foremost airboat as spark to tinder. The darkness was exiled, replaced with honest fire. The airboat did not burn and drift to earth, but exploded, incandescent, thunder roiling above the ramparts, echoed by a great surging cheer as ragged, flaming fragments of vessel and men dropped all helter-skelter down onto the fields.
To right and left I heard a deep twanging sound and saw vast bolts of wood tipped with sharp metal hurtle upward. The war-engines had loosed their shafts! I cheered as those missiles struck, tearing through baskets that broke apart to spill Kho’rabi like dark-armored raindrops. I saw a bolt pierce the supporting cylinder, which emitted a shrieking whistle, expelling fetid gas, its structure collapsing. It deflated like a drained wineskin, crumpling, losing height. A second missile and then a third drove in, and the airboat, like a broken-winged bird, began a rapid descent.
I waved my sword, defying the Sky Lords, challenging them to set foot in
my
city, my spirits risen anew. I cheered as the airboat fell—then staggered as it struck the wall directly below my position.
The stone shuddered beneath me, the impact greater than any structure so flimsy as that emptying sack should impart. There was a gout of sulphurous flame in which it seemed weirdling creatures were borne aloft, their ethereal
features contorted in rage, their mouths loosing a horrid howling. I could not be sure. I was flung against the ramparts and felt heat sear my face. Cleton snatched me back. His fair hair was dark with soot, dirt streaked his face, and he was smiling ferociously. He stooped to retrieve my sword, which I had not known I dropped, and set my hand about the hilt. I found no comfort there; I was afraid. I thought it should perhaps be easier to face a Kho’rabi in honest fight than suffer this onslaught of untouchable magic. I realized we stood in shadow that was no longer that nimbus produced by the Ahn wizards but the physical penumbra of a sky occluded by their vessels.
Whatever occult wind transported them from their distant land to ours had ceased: they hung as if at anchor above us. Arrows, javelins, balls of spiked metal rained down. Then worse—shining glass globes fell, and where they struck, they splashed liquid fire that ran and flamed and could not be doused. A commur of the warband came running down our line, bellowing over the tumult that all save those wearing armor should quit the wall for the surer refuge of the avenue below. Martus shouted for us to go, and we darted for the stairs.
I felt a plucking at my sleeve and saw a black-fletched arrow driven through the leather. I snapped it off and flung it from me as if it were a serpent. Cleton was at my back as we reached the stair, and I saw Pyrdon ahead. He waited for the crowded steps to clear, and as he did, I glanced up. Whether I saw the globe that fell, or somehow sensed it, I cannot say, only that I shouted and flung myself back against Cleton, knocking him into the men behind so that we all fell down and thus were saved.
The globe struck Pyrdon’s left shoulder, and he became on the instant a column of flame. I am not sure he screamed, even, so swift was it. I scrabbled back, horrified, as his clothing and then the skin beneath blackened and was devoured. The spear he held was a brand that dropped to the street below, soon followed by Pyrdon himself, a human torch. Where he had stood, flames licked as if in search of some fresh victim.
I
clambered to my feet, staring aghast at that unholy fire. Then Martus’s hand was on my shoulder, and he urged me forward. I held my breath and lunged through the
flames, plunging down to the street. I saw Pyrdon there, or what was left of him, and promptly emptied my stomach.
Keran appeared, rallying us, advising us that we were to be a flying squad, to go where commanded. I thought that we should not be enough, that all the city’s warband, all the levies of militia, should not be enough. Yet there were now only some dozen of the Sky Lords’ craft left above us, the rest downed by magic and war-engines, and of those remaining some burned and fell even as I stared.
And yet, as I crouched in the poor safety of the ravaged wall, I felt neither comfort nor confidence. I knew fear; oh, yes, in full measure. I knew, also, anger—that this city I now thought of as my own should be so threatened, that friends and fellow-soldiers should die, that the Sky Lords should dare this affront. For all my fear I knew that did a target for my rage present itself, I should attack.
Meanwhile, however, I saw the sky dark with the foul shapes of the Sky Lords’ boats, the flash and blast of magicks. I saw a war-engine consumed and topple, blazing, into the street. I saw airboats fall in flames over Durbrecht. I wondered if the city should survive.
Then orders came, and half our number was sent racing through the streets. I saw the object of our pursuit some time before we reached it: a stricken airboat descended toward the center of the city. It was pierced with bolts, tongues of flame darting about its flanks, brighter and cleaner than the bloody red of its canopy. The carrier basket beneath had been struck—I could make out the holes—but still it held its lethal cargo and would deliver those Kho’rabi knights into the very streets of Durbrecht.
It was lost to sight after a while, but the reeking smoke it trailed served for a marker and we ran toward that. A company of foot soldiers joined us, led by a commur to whom Keran deferred, and a troop of militia. I hoped there would be more. Then we emerged on a plaza filled with the wreckage of the burning airboat. Some thirty Kho’rabi had survived the landing and now stood ready to fight. At the head of our column, Keran raised his sword, halting us. The commur roared orders—that we should avoid close combat if possible, use bows and spears, that if we faced the Kho’rabi knights it should be only in numbers, that we should better employ cunning than courage. Then he waved us to attack.
I had never seen a Kho’rabi knight before. They were the stuff of nightmares, of a mother’s threat. Now they stood before me, dread given flesh. They were armored all in black so that they seemed like great beetles, carapaced and armed with sharp steel. There seemed not a soft part on them, nothing vulnerable, but all—chests and legs and arms and heads—encompassed in that glossy armor. They had no faces, for they had locked chin- and cheek-pieces in place, so that only savage eyes glared out at us. And somehow worse, they shouted no battle cries but faced us in silence, which gave them an air of dreadful implacability, as if they were not human but automatons, killing machines.
I feared my courage would fail me then and threw myself forward before I should turn and flee. Cleton was at my side, Martus a pace ahead. I heard Cleton shout, “For Madbry! For Dharbek!” I do not know if I shouted. It is quite likely I whimpered.
Confusion reigned as we students, the foot soldiers, and the militiamen joined in battle with the invaders. Those students given bows loosed a volley, and I saw the black armor was not impenetrable. Several of the Kho’rabi fell. Better, they screamed, which rendered them more human in my eyes—and therefore capable of defeat. I saw one stagger, three arrows jutting from his chest, two from his swordarm. A spearman thrust at his midriff, and Martus delivered him a blow that cracked his helmet and split the skull beneath. I vaulted the body and found myself suddenly confronted with a warrior whose eyes blazed furiously from within the shadow of his helm. I ducked, flinging myself clear as his long blade swung like a scythe intent on cropping my head. Martus brought his axe hard against the Kho’rabi’s side; Cleton parried the returning stroke; a soldier hammered at the jet helm. I saw that the black armor was not all of one piece, but segmented over the thighs and groin, joined to the cuirass with rings of black metal. I thrust my blade in there, trusting to Cleton and Martus to hold off the warrior’s riposte as I drove all my weight forward.
It is a strange and ugly sensation to feel your steel pierce flesh. A memory of gutted fish flashed brief across my mind. I turned my blade as Keran had taught me and saw the angry eyes flicker wide, the light within them going out, so that even though the orbs still reflected sunlight and flame, they
grew abruptly dull as the life fled. I dragged my sword back as Martus sent his axe thudding against the dead man’s helmet. I did not know how I felt in that instant when I first slew a man, only that I wanted very badly to live.
I turned, finding chaos all about me. The archers had ceased firing for fear of hitting friends. Close by four students armed with spears drove a silent Kho’rabi slowly back toward the wreckage of the airboat. I saw men fall; heard shouts; the screaming of wounded men. The air stank of sweat and blood and sulphur; there was the sharp reek of urine. I swung my blade double-handed against a black-armored back. Martus hacked the legs. Cleton thrust his sword under the sweeping wings of the helmet, into the neck. He shouted, “Madbry!” as he did it, and his eyes were very cold, his lips spread wide in a terrible smile.