Warrior (The Key to Magic) (36 page)

After the junior officers had dispersed, Lord Hhrahld suggested, "Wilhm and I could forge ahead.  At a dead run, the two of us could reach the bridge in under fifteen minutes."

Mhiskva frowned, shaking his head.  "No, I think it would be an error to separate.  As you said, the three of us must remain together."

"You sense this now as well?"

"No, but I do know that dividing our forces in the face of the enemy is risky."

"True, but we have no idea what waits ahead of us.  We should perhaps scout before we lead these armsmen into a difficult situation."

"That is my intention, but I want to wait until we are within a third of a league of the river.  That way, the marines and legionnaires will not be left too far adrift."

Lord Hhrahld bobbed his head.  "They are our responsibility, I suppose."

For all their caution, they saw no more of the enemy skyships and the tramp to the highway was uneventful.  A few of the inhabitants watched them from farm yards, plowed fields, or sheepfolds, but most simply went about their normal business.  It would have been surprising if the news of the Phaelle'n attack had reached these rural farmers and herdsmen in only a couple of days.   

It was closer to two and a half hours before they reached the highway and Mhiskva put the war band to rest while he stepped clear of the forest to survey the grazed right of way.  No refugees cluttered the straight and level roadway, but a few discarded items littering the shoulders indicated that it had not been long since a good number of people had passed.

"With war at Lhinstord, I had thought that the highway would be clogged," Lord Hhrahld mused.  "Perhaps the siege closed quickly and trapped most of the people of the city."

Mhiskva looked east.  The long dead Imperial engineers had cut through the clay hills to keep the highway running straight as much as possible and he could see almost half a league before the roadway turned a bit to the south in a gradual curve.

"These were from the lands between the river and Lhinstord," he said.

"An army marching through would not normally have dislodged yeoman and tennants," Lord Hhrahld countered.  "They would have just stayed out of its way."

"But the sight of Lhinstord burning would have."

Lord Hhrahld looked bleak.  "Aye, that is true."

Mhiskva chose his own line of march along the south shoulder of the highway, a position from which he could see both the marines across the roadway and the legionnaires nearby on his right.

Automatically, Lord Hhrahld and Wilhm moved without comment to follow a similar path on the north shoulder.

Within moments, the first sounds of distant explosions reached them.  Mhiskva heard and then saw Shrikes diving from the clouds ahead at a point that must be above the river.  He called out orders to make a fast pace and began to trot, restraining his long strides so that he would not outrun the marines and legionnaires.

The armsmen ran two-thirds of a league in half an hour and Mhiskva ordered a halt when he gained the top of a rise whose forward slope led down into the sparsely wooded floodplain.

Smoke and flame were visible on the far bank and on the bridge itself a fire ball rose up as he watched.

Lord Hhrahld and Wilhm sprinted across the highway to rejoin him.

"Someone is holding the bridge against an assault." the Prince-Protector declared.

"It's the Quaestor," Wilhm said.

"You can see him?" Mhiskva asked.

"Yes.  The king is there too, but he isn't doing much."

Mhiskva waved at the nearby legionnaires and the marines across the way.  "Take cover! Hold the line of the ridge!"

Then he began running down the center of the highway.  Lord Hhrahld and Wilhm matched his speed exactly.

He reached the approach to the bridge in seconds, and without slowing saw the king, missing his artificial legs and covered in his own blood, behind the north pillar of an arch the rose in the center of the bridge.  One of the legionnaires from Number One, D’hem’nh’siahshm, and the boy Aelwyrd stood with him, apparently trying to shield the king with their own bodies from the fire from the Shrikes that continued to rain down.  Beyond the three, Quaestor Eishtren stood, shooting at a blazing speed at both the enemy skyships and the armored conveyances that were pushing across from the eastern side.  Though several of the crashed conveyances littered the roadway, the oncoming vehicles were undeterred and would reach the archer in no more than seconds.

Mhiskva was under the arch in another second and slowed just long enough to order D’hem’nh’siahshm, "Get the king to the western bank!"

Lord Hhrahld and Wilhm did not pause, flashing by Quaestor Eishtren and leaping onto the roof of the leading vehicle.  Longer than a manheight, the greatswords of the two began to rip through steel and timbers as if through paper and twigs.  Both Lord Hhrahld's jewel and silver bedecked masterpiece and Wilhm's utilitarian blade flashed with an unnatural golden light.

Raising his axe in guard, Mhiskva took a stand in front of Eishtren and then, with an agility that he had never before possessed, began to deflect the projectiles spitting from the front of the war machines.

The first conveyance fell to pieces around its slaughtered occupants and the pair of giants sprang onto the following and proceeded to rend it as well.

A diving Shrike screeched and a line of dust and rock splinters puffed across the roadway and tracked over Wilhm.  Pierced in a score of places, the young giant staggered and fell, sliding off the machine to the roadway.

Lord Hhrahld roared in grief and anger and hurled himself at the next conveyance.  Another machine rushed alongside and fire poured from broadside portholes.  Huge gouts of flesh and blood burst from the old pirate's body, but still his sword did not slow.  He leapt onto the attacking machine and destroyed it, the charged another.  One after another, he smashed the armored conveyances as they came within reach, sweeping some carelessly over the guard walls into the river.  The rest piled up around him.  Some of the monks escaped, running back from wrecks or diving into the river, but not many.   Five of the conveyances were destroyed, then eight, then ten, then more but finally the magic of the white-maned pirate's rage bled away and he collapsed to his knees, his sword falling from his lifeless hands, and after a moment Lord Hhrahld finally toppled.

At least a score of the steel beasts lay smashed, but still dozens more were speeding up the ramp with unswerving determination, knocking aside the corpses of their fellows.

Mhiskva looked back once.

Aelwyrd had rushed to Quaestor Eishtren's side but D’hem’nh’siahshm, sporting a new wound in his thigh, had pulled the king just a few paces away from the arch.  Though his right arm and abbreviated left hung limp, Mar's eyes were open and staring straight at Mhiskva.

For the barest of instants, Mhiskva saw himself race back across the bridge, catching up Eishtren, Aelwyrd, D’hem’nh’siahshm, and the king, and fleeing into the hills, but that was not how this should end.

Mhiskva turned back, raised his great axe high, and charged.

FIFTY-SEVEN

When the concentrated fire from the steel beetles finally killed Mhiskva, Mar knew that there was no hope.

Somehow, he had always thought in the depths of his being that the giants could not be killed.

Now they, along with Ulor, Truhsg, and all the rest, were gone.

Dhem, bleeding from a leg wound that he had somehow acquired, tried to drag him on, but Mar used the magic of his brigandine to hold himself in place.

"Let me be, legionnaire," he commanded harshly.  Staggering, Dhem did so in shocked silence, and then sat heavily.

Mar knew that the Phaelle'n had to be stopped here and now or they would rampage unchecked to Mhajhkaei and beyond.  The world would be theirs.

He cast a spell to carry his voice clearly across the twenty paces that separated him from Quaestor Eishtren and told him what to do.

FIFTY-EIGHT

143rd Year of the Reign of the City

Tenthday, Waning, 3rd Springmoon, 1645 After the Founding of the Empire

Bridge over the Sand River

Awarded a respite by the wondrous and horrible charge of the Gaaelfharenii, Eishtren found that he could not fire fast enough after the three giants perished.

He walked to the right, set his feet to get a better stance, and put two shots through the slit at the front of the lead vehicle, aiming for the men that he could perceive but not actually see there.  Straightaway, the war machine slewed to the right, crashed into the guard wall, and lodged in place.  Projectiles continued to burst from the near side, but the angle was wrong and none came near Eishtren.

The steel beetles continued to charge onto the bridge.

Shrikes screamed in, ripping the roadbed and the wrecks with black cylinders, and he had to shift his aim from the following vehicle to this new danger.  Fire flashed at the front of the steel beetle and he heard an odd sound as he twisted to the left to loose at a Shrike blazing toward the archway from the northwest.  The skyship blew apart and the pieces whirled overhead a few armlengths above the top of the archway, shedding smoke and sparks as they crashed into the riverbank a hundred paces to his right.

"Aelwyrd, retreat to the other side," he ordered, turning to draw once more upon the second beetle.

 When the boy did not respond, Eishtren turned further and found Aelwyrd's lifeless body sprawled a body length behind him.

Having to steady a shiver in his hands, Eishtren gritted his teeth and turned to face the assault once more.

Another war machine charged, shifting rapidly from one side of the bridge to the other to throw off his aim.  Even after he had put seven holes in its rounded forward end, the machine did not stop, veering right only at the last moment to crash into the south pillar of the archway.

More of the armored beasts rushed toward him.

Then, he heard the king's voice.  "Quaestor Eishtren, you must destroy the bridge now! 
Break your bow
."

With many regrets, Eishtren lifted his grandfather's magnificent legacy and brought it down with all the force that he could muster against his raised knee.

FIFTY-NINE

143rd Year of the Reign of the City

Tenthday, Waning, 3rd Springmoon, 1645 After the Founding of the Empire

Three leagues from the Sand River

For the most part, the army had kept up a speed better than half a league an hour, though finding fords to cross the occasional stream tended to bring progress to a halt.  The weald of the Steo Hills was a mixed forest of deciduous and evergreen, with a large number of enormous white oaks, hickory, and elm interspersed with copses of tall, long-leafed pine and impenetrable cane breaks.  Predictably, the legionnaires had tended to follow the path of least resistance and thus migrated into the trails hacked by those in front of them, so that the individual corps had concentrated into long, snaking lines rather than the wide distribution that Ghorn had planned.

These open trails did allow the mule trains to make a better speed, but it also meant that all who followed the foremost legions had to slog through churned ground and occasionally mud.

Ghorn had avoided the trails, leading Lord Buhrstaen, the junior officers of his impromptu staff, and the section of legionnaires through virgin forest a hundred armlengths north of the wide track of the IV Corps.

As the headquarters group passed through one of the rare clearings, trampling thistle and sawgrass, basal thumps reverberated from over the horizon.

Lord Buhrstaen looked up through the trees.  "A storm must be coming."

"No, that is not thunder," Ghorn countered.  "It is magic."

"How do you know?"

Ghorn stopped and pointed up at the sky.  Only a few puffy clouds shaped like balls of cotton speckled a milky blue sky.  "No thunderheads.  There is a battle not far ahead.  Dispatch the runners to your legions with orders to prepare to form ranks."

Before Ghorn could order the mounted scouts to carry the same orders to the other two corps, a brilliant light blared through the trees and everything began to burn.

SIXTY

Telriy's travail had come early.

The contraction made her entire body shiver with pain.

"Now, girl, push!" Aunt Whelsi coaxed.

Telriy clamped her teeth together, breathed out, squeezed Yhejia's hand, and pushed.

Then she felt a great jar flash through the ether and a second later the entire building wobbled for a moment.

"Earth tremor!" Yhejia gasped, throwing her head back and forth.  "We've never had one of those here!"

"It's a girl," Aunt Whelsi exulted, registering neither Yhejia's outburst nor the shaking. 

Telriy breathed and relaxed while the two other women tied off and severed the cord, cleaned of the baby, and dealt with the afterbirth.

When they laid her daughter on her breast, she began to sob, but not for joy or relief.

When the tremor had passed, the ethereal thread that connected her to Mar had vanished.

He was no longer in the world.

Then the earth made a frightening leap of great violence and the building began to collapse around them.

SIXTY-ONE

A contentious thought caused Mar to hum
The Knife Fighter's Dirge
as Eishtren, with savage hatred flaring across his face, brought his splendid bow down across his knee.

Even so, the expanding globe of highly energetic flux almost overcame Mar, appearing to halt just a few armlengths away.  Eishtren and everything within the globe had instantly ceased to exist.   So powerful was the outpouring of raw magic that when he attempted to delve it, he was struck nearly senseless with a torrent of agonizing pain.

What terrible catastrophe had he wrought?

He had believed that he had done what must be done, but now burning regret consumed him.  The bridge, the Shrikes, and the steel beetles would be incinerated and the attack stopped, but it was now frightfully clear that so would everyone else nearby.  He had no way of determining the scope of the blast but so vast a quantity of flux would not soon dissipate.  The destruction would surely be of gigantic proportions.