The Unseen Tempest (Lords of Arcadia) (30 page)

Oberon’s aide waited until they had word each squad was ready and then signaled the king.

“Tell them to attack,” he ordered.

So began the siege of the ice castle.

The tigers brought their squad of bears and stags up the front while their eagles soared overhead, looking for troops. As they neared the clearing, their advanced scouts of squirrels came back and reported there were no scents of men or beasts ahead.

“Did they really leave it unguarded?” the first asked the other.

“They ran,” the second said. “This is a waste of time.”

“I agree, but we have orders.” He growled to the troops, and they knew it was time to charge.

The Dark advanced on their flank slowly. Half a dozen gnolls’ hyena-like eyes moved slowly ahead of the army to sense an ambush. Their sensitive noses uncovered only the smells of ice and water and cold and that no humans lay in wait. The minotaurs didn’t trust the silence; they had been promised blood and expected to find it. Instead, all they got was an empty stretch of land that led to the castle.

“If they wish to hide in their castle, let them die there,” the minotaur said as he blew the horn for the troops to charge.

The rear squad came up on a snowdrift that had collected behind the castle. It had to be three feet of freshly fallen snow. There was no sign of any troops or traps. The lead guard put his hand up to halt the squad behind him. They had all been trained by Oberon and were the best his army had to offer. They were ready to die for their leader. There was nothing they weren’t ready to do for him.

He opened his hand and readied the troops to surge forward.

The animals went first.

The big cats and stags charged across the clearing with the bears and wild boars on their heels. The first stag hit a magical barrier, his horns crumbling as he collided at full speed against the field. The cats were barely able to slide to a halt, but it was too late as gems came shooting out of the snow and attacked.

Three Days Earlier

“S
O
HERE
is my plan,” Kane began to explain to Ruber and his sister. “Oberon is going to expect us to have actual troops out there defending our flank. Instead, your people are going to be there. Is there a way you guys can just shut down? Be completely undetected by magic?”

Ruber explained to him the process of withdrawing their energies into themselves, making them little more than actual gemstones to the outside.

“Awesome,” Kane said excitedly. “Can we have, like, a trigger? They get so close, and boom, you guys all wake up?”

“Easily done,” Ruber confirmed.

“Perfect. Now I need you to teach me how to turn off their mages once they get here.”

They spent the next few days doing just that, among other things.

A
S
SOON
as the minotaur’s horn blasted, the chimera charged out into the clearing, leading the way in. It traveled two steps before an overly cheerful male voice began to speak. The chimera froze.

“Hello there! You’ve just stepped on a Tinker and Jones Press-o-matic pressure plate. Thank you for agreeing to participate in this combat demonstration of the brand new Shivaluxor 6000, the latest in hand-to-hand combat, new this season from Tinker and Jones.”

The chimera looked back to the minotaur for guidance, since it didn’t have any idea what the disembodied voice was saying beyond “combat demonstration” and wasn’t sure if it should proceed or not.

“
Go!
” the minotaur roared back at him.

The chimera raised his paw, and a blur of silver burst out of the snow. The clockwork creature was in the form of an eight-foot-tall woman with six arms. Each of those arms ended with a hand whose fingers were talons, and each hand held a razor-sharp blade. The torso leaned forward until it was parallel to the ground, and its arms clicked out straight from its sides. Slowly at first, and within ten seconds at vision-blurring speed, the arms spun around the torso as it advanced on the Dark.

Three days earlier

“T
HE
INFURIATING
part was that I planned on taking a position on that same embankment when the fighting started,” Ferra admitted.

Kane shook his head. “Nope, I have something else for you two to do.” He looked over to Ater. “In fact, all three of you have a mission.”

Ferra eagerly said, “Anything.”

Kane gave her a grim smile. “Listen to my plan first. Molly, do you think there is anything back in the workshop we could use?”

“I am sure there is, but how can we get it back here?” she asked.

“Caerus knows where the workshop is; she can make a gateway back here. The problem is that no one knows how to make those things work. You will need to set them up for battle.”

“Me?” Molly exclaimed, making the idea sound insane. “I don’t know a thing about combat. I’m useless in a fight. I may be able to construct them, but I can’t program them to do anything but serve tea.”

Kane looked like he was going to argue, but Ferra held a hand up to stop him. “Give us a second.”

“Don’t go far,” Kane said. “I have a task for you too.”

She nodded and led Molly away. Once out of earshot of everyone, she turned to face Molly, never letting go of the clockwork’s hand.

“You can do this,” Ferra said to the companion.

“I am not a combat unit!” she protested. “What can I possibly do?”

Ferra took a deep breath. “Molly, back in the workshop, you saved us.” The brass girl tilted her head a bit and stared at the warrior, obviously not believing her. “I’m not sure what happened, but you took out those machines with ridiculous ease. You didn’t remember it, but it was you.”

Molly shook her head.

“I know you don’t think so, but you’re more than just a companion. I have faith in you. I know you can do this.”

“You have faith in me?” Molly asked, awed by the admission from the normally stoic barbarian.

“Complete and utter.”

“I thought you only had faith in Logos.”

Ferra smiled. “I do, and he brought you into my life. And now, you’re going to save us all.”

They embraced, knowing together they could do it.

T
HE
GUARD
opened his hand and began to move it forward to give the order to charge when an ice spear pierced through his palm. He screamed as two dozen ice barbarians jumped out of the snowbank and began throwing their spears, Ferra in the lead as she formed another weapon in her hand.

Three days earlier

“O
KAY
,” F
ERRA
said, walking back to Kane. “She can do it.”

Kane looked at Ater, and the dark elf nodded and returned to the castle. Kane watched him go, knowing he was stalling. Finally, however, he turned to the warrior and said, “Ferra, this is going to be rough, and I understand if you don’t want to do it, but I—”

Ferra cut him off. “You want me to go back to my people and ask them to fight as our ally.”

Kane closed his mouth and nodded.

“That witch of a queen notwithstanding, this is the place where our savior went. If we expect him to return, then we must fight to keep it and him safe. I can convince them to fight. Count on it.”

Kane paused for a moment. “Are you sure? They said to never return.”

Ferra gave him a smile. “People say a lot of things. We can’t be expected to remember them all.”

“I will convince Olim to open a gate for you. Can you handle the rear?”

Ferra scoffed at him. “You’ve never seen my people fight. The rear will be the least of your worries.”

Kane nodded. “Then we have ourselves a fight.”

“A
LL
FORCES
indicate contact,” one of Olim’s guards informed Hawk, Kane, Adamas, and the ice queen as they watched the battle unfold inside the throne room. Olim had conjured a magical sheet of ice that showed different sections of the battlefield.

“Where did you find constructs from Tinker and Jones?” Olim asked as the first machine slashed the Dark army to ribbons a dozen at a time. Anyone who got near the whirling blades was cut down in a splash of blood and gore. Most of the troops ran as it advanced, creating even more confusion in the units behind them.

“Molly knows a guy,” Kane replied, watching Ferra’s people charge at the Arcadian troops, cutting them down in the name of Logos.

Told you this was a good idea
, Kane sent to Hawk through the link. Hawk would have never thought of returning to the workshop, and his mind expressed admiration, while his smile expressed something else altogether.

So far it is
, Hawk thought back.
But this is just the first wave.

And the prince was right; Oberon pressed his attack on all fronts.

The Dark were finally able to take the crazed machine down only by throwing a stone giant into the blades, slowing it long enough for them to attack it. Though the gems were able to keep the larger animals at bay, the smaller ones raced past the barriers and were able to infiltrate the castle walls, attacking the archers on the ramparts, clearing the air for a bombing run.

Two firedrakes and a hippogriff swept from well outside the battle zone to drop magical charges onto the troops. Archers on the castle’s ramparts brought the hippogriff to earth, mortally wounded, but the firedrakes’ scales thwarted the arrows that hit their target. Annoyed, the drakes swept across the castle ramparts and wreaked havoc on the archers before returning to the battle, using flame as their weapon and distracting the ice giants from the battle on the ground by forcing them to defend themselves from airborne destruction.

Encouraged by the sight, Oberon’s troops cut down the ice barriers. Slowly, that part of Oberon’s armies slogged closer to the castle….

Much wiser and more cautious following their run-in with the first weapon, the Dark got halfway to the castle when the next machine Molly had brought activated.

“Hello again! We thank you for continuing your involvement in our live combat testing. You are now officially beta testing the new and improved Reaper-o-Death, our first foray into weapons of mass destruction.”

One of the hobgoblins looked over to his ally, a soldier in Oberon’s army. “That doesn’t sound good.”

A brass sphere hurtled out of the snow and hovered for a moment, motionless, ten feet off the ground.

“So what’s it supposed to do?” one of the troops asked. The soldier in line next to him snapped, “Down!” and hit the ground.

The sphere began to spin, firing hundreds of spikes into the army.

As the creatures were impaled, the voice asked, “How would you rate the effectiveness of this weapon? The louder you scream, the greater the level of effectiveness the weapon will be given.”

The weapon scored Very Effective.

The Arcadian troops recovered, finding cover behind a rock face and mounting some kind of defense against the barbarians. Using their snipers, armed with heavy crossbows, they began to pick off the barbarians as they tried to cover the distance to them.

“We need assistance!” Ferra yelled as another one of her people went down.

A trio of voices called out behind her as one. “In Logos’s name, we grant you life.” The elders held their hands up high, and a wave of power issued out from them.

“Kill those old men,” the fairy commander ordered, seeing the air distort under the effect of the magic.

The snipers would never get the chance. The rock they were using as cover began to shake and move. They staggered back as the rock stood up, unsure of where it was. Seconds ago it had been nothing; now it was alive.

“Kill it!” the guards screamed and swung toward it with their weapons.

And now the rock was angry.

“We need to stop those bombs!” Ruber called out as he and the ambers fought with gigantic grizzly bears.

Caerus was doing her best to lock down the mongoose spellcasters the tigers had brought with them, to little effect. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“Change of venue,” the ruby decided and concentrated on his surroundings.

The gemlings felt his magic the instant he began to cast.

“Ready yourselves,” one the ambers called as the ground beneath the fighting began to glow. The animals paused, feeling the unnatural vibration around them.

And then the ground fell out from under them.

The entire battle vanished from Olim’s realm and fell downward through Ruber’s dimensional wormhole. The gems were well used to this trip and calmly waited for the effect to pass. The animals, who had no idea what just happened, panicked.

An aide came rushing into Oberon’s tent. “Sir, there is a problem on the Wolflands flank.”

Oberon looked over, annoyed. “What problem?”

“Um, it’s not there anymore, sir?”

Kane cheered as the entire western flank went silent. “Still think we’re outmatched?” he asked Olim.

She concentrated her energies, making sure her troops had adequate magical powers for the fight. “Yes. Your ruby may have taken his foes out, but he also removed the defending force. Oberon will just send troops to expose the weakness. Do you have an answer for that?”

Kane looked over at Hawk and realized his partner had nothing.

“I’ll do it,” Kane said, grabbing a winter cloak from several hanging on hooks on the wall and heading toward the ramparts.

Hawk grabbed his elbow. “You can’t be serious.”

“Serious as NPR,” he answered, pulling his arm back. “She’s right; Ruber just left a huge opening in our defenses.”

“And you will what?” Hawk asked, worried as he had ever been since meeting Kane.

Kane smiled back at him. “Wing it.”

W
ING
IT
?
Seriously, I sound like I’m stuck in
Top Gun
or something. What am I going to do? I’m going to stare down a part of Oberon’s army and try not to piss myself. After all, I’m pretty sure voiding one’s bowels on the battlefield is a show of weakness no one ever recovers from.