The Storm’s Fury
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, the sun hung low in the west,
but where there had been clear sky before, a storm had birthed
itself across the River Infante. Thunderheads rose high in the sky,
though these were clouds that lurked impossibly close to the
ground. Underneath them, the army of the Tehuantin was cloaked in
shadow, and the storm walked itself forward on jagged legs of
flickering lightning. The black, roiling clouds stretched off
southward along the front the Tehuantin had established. Jan’s
horse shifted uneasily under him, nostrils flaring as low thunder
growled like some great beast. There was a sharp odor in the air
that wrinkled Jan’s nostrils.
“War-storm,” one of
the chevarittai near Jan muttered. “The cowards—they won’t even
give us a chance for honorable single combat first.” Jan
nodded—he’d heard of the Tehuantin war-storms, called up by their
spellcasters: a cooperative spell. The Westlanders had used them to
great effectiveness when they’d last been here, as well as during
their battles with the Holdings in the Hellins, but Jan had never
seen one himself. He doubted he was going to enjoy the firsthand
experience.
“Alert the war-téni,”
he said, patting his horse’s neck to calm it. “We’re going to need
them. The attack’s starting.”
Jan, with several
companies of Firenzcian troops and chevarittai, was on the western
side of the River Infante just below the village of Certendi. The
bridge over the river was at their backs. On the eastern side of
the river, he could see the earthen ramparts they’d built; he had
little hope that they would be able to keep the western bank for
long. Starkkapitän ca’Damont was farther downriver, with the
remainder of the Firenzcian army; Commandant ca’Talin, with the
Holdings’ Garde Civile, at the southern end of their line, near
where the Infante joined with the A’Sele.
“Tell your men they
must hold,” Jan told the chevarittai. He yanked on his horse’s
reins, riding up and down just between the lines of infantry and
archers. “Hold!” he told them all. “We need to hold here.” As the
war-storm stalked forward, the rumbling of the great cloud growing
louder and more ominous, the war-téni came up to the front. He
gestured to the green robes. “Here’s where you begin to earn your
forgiveness,” he told them. “There—that storm must come
down.”
The storm lurched
nearer with every breath. The air smelled of the lightning strikes
but not of rain. Ahead of the troops, in what had formerly been a
field planted with wheat and grain, Jan had placed entrapments for
the Tehuantin warriors: sharpened iron spikes set in the ground,
covered pits whose bottoms were festooned with wooden stakes,
packets of black sand that Varina and her Numetodo had enchanted so
that they would explode when someone stepped near them. But the
storm was marching across the field, not yet the Westlander
warriors. The lightning strikes tore at the ground, uprooting the
stakes and exposing the pits, tossing earth everywhere and causing
the black sand packets to explode harmlessly.
Jan cursed at the
war-téni. “Now!” he shouted at them. “Now!”
The war-téni began
their chants, sending the energy of the Ilmodo surging outward
toward the false storm. With each spell that was released, the
storm began to fall apart, and underneath, they could see the
Tehuantin warriors hidden below, marching steadily toward them.
“Archers!” Jan shouted, and behind him, bows creaked under tension,
then a thin flurry of arrows arched upward, curving back down to
rain upon the Westlanders. They snapped up shields. Jan saw several
of the warriors fall despite the protection, though wherever one
fell, another took up his place. To the south, the war-storm loomed
over the ranks of the Holdings, and Jan heard cries of pain and
alarm as the lightning tore at the soldiers there. But the storm
was already falling apart—the power behind it released. Now, he
heard the guttural shouts of the Westlander spellcasters; fireballs
shrieked like angry Moitidi in their direction. The war-téni
chanted their counter-spells; Jan saw several of the fireballs
explode harmlessly above, but others came through, slamming into
the ranks and spewing their fiery, terrible destruction and gouging
holes in the lines. His horse reared in terror. “Move the lines
forward! Fill the gaps!” Jan shouted as he tried to calm his mount.
The offiziers shouted directions ; signal flags waved.
Then, with a great
shout, the warriors charged, and there was little time for thought
at all. Jan unsheathed his sword and kicked his horse forward. The
chevarittai gave a cry of fury and followed him, the gardai
infantry rising in a black-and-silver wave to meet the
Westlanders.
They crashed together
in a flurry of swords, spears, and pikes.
Jan had fought the
legions of Tennshah. These Westlanders were equally ferocious as
fighters, but they were also far more disciplined. He could hear
their own offiziers calling out crisp orders in their language, and
their spellcasters were embedded in their midst, wielding staffs
that crackled and flared with spells. He remembered that much from
the last time. Jan hacked with his sword at a sea of brown faces
painted in red and black, and wherever one fell to him, another
sprang up to take his place. They were being pushed slowly back,
and still the Westlanders kept coming. Jan realized that they
couldn’t hold here on this side of the river—if they were pushed
much closer to the river, there could be no orderly retreat; they’d
be slaughtered.
“Back!” he shouted.
“To the bridge! To the bridge!”
The offiziers took up
the cry; the flag-bearers waved their signal flags, the cornets
shrilled their call. The Firenzcian troops, disciplined and precise
as always, gave ground grudgingly and as they had been trained to
do, allowing the archers and war-téni to cover their retreat and
carrying away their wounded wherever possible.
The dead they
left.
Here, there were two
bridges crossing the Infante, a half-mile apart. The northern
bridge, along the Avi a’Nostrosei, had already been destroyed. The
one over the Avi a’Certendi still remained. The Infante could be
forded but not easily, since its current was swift and there were
deep pools that only the locals knew. The archers and war-téni were
first over the bridge as the foot troops and chevarittai held back
the Westlanders, the offiziers hurrying them across toward ramparts
that had been erected on the far side. Jan stayed with his men, his
armor blood-splattered and dented, the gray Firenzcian steel of his
sword stained with gore, until the bridge was cleared and the
archers had re-formed on the far side.
“Break away!” he
called finally when he heard the horns from the far side of the
Infante, and they rushed toward the bridge. Jan turned again there,
keeping back the warriors who pursued them, howling. The ground was
thick with bodies around him and the chevarittai. A spellcaster
gestured with his stick, and the chevaritt alongside Jan went down
with a scream and the smell of brimstone, but the spellcaster was
cut down himself in the next moment. Most of the infantry was
across. “Across!” Jan shouted. “Chevarittai, across!” They turned
their horses; they fled. The hooves of the war-steeds pounded on
the planks of the bridge, and Jan gestured to the war-téni who were
waiting on the far side. The Tehuantin pursued, too closely.
Already, the warriors were on the western end of the
bridge.
“Now!” Jan cried as
he reached ground on the far side. “Take it down!”
“Hïrzg, not before
we’re behind the ramparts,” someone said, and Jan stood up in his
stirrups, furious, and roared.
“Take it down
now!”
The war-téni chanted;
fire began to crawl the wooden support beams. The flames licked at
the paper that wrapped the black sand lashed there.
The explosions flung
pieces of the bridge high in the air, huge, rough-cut beams
tumbling end over end, the bricks and stones of the pilings slicing
through the air. Warriors and gardai alike were struck. One of the
bricks slammed into Jan, the impact unhorsing him. He heard his
horse scream as well, an awful sound. As he fell, he saw the center
of the bridge collapse, falling into the Infante with a huge
splash, taking a mass of Westlander warriors with it.
Then he hit the
ground. For a moment, everything went black around him. When he
came back to consciousness, he saw faces above him and hands.
“Hïrzg, are you hurt?”
Jan let them pull him
to his feet. His chest ached as if his horse had fallen on him, and
the armor was heavily indented where the brick had struck him. His
chest burned with every inhale; he had to sip the air as he shook
off the hands. His horse was thrashing on the ground, a plank
embedded in the creature’s side.
The bridge was down.
The sun was already sinking to the level of the trees, throwing
long shadows over the battlefield. The Westlanders had retreated
back from the water’s edge to be out of arrow range. Jan limped to
his horse. One of the stallion’s front legs was broken, and blood
gushed from the long wound along its flank. “My sword?” he asked,
and someone handed it to him. Kneeling down alongside the horse, he
patted its neck. “Rest,” he said. “You’ve served well.” Grunting
with pain, he raised the sword high and brought it down hard,
slicing deep into the neck. The horse tried to stand one last time,
then went still. The world seemed to dance around Jan, the edges of
his vision darkening again. He forced himself to stand, leaning on
the sword.
“Get the lines formed
behind the ramparts,” he said to those around him. “Tend to the
wounded and set the watches. Send the a’offiziers to me, and get
word to the Starkkapitän and the Commandant of what’s . . ..”
Happened here . . . The words were in
his mind, but they didn’t seem to come out. The darkness was moving
too fast even though the sun was still visible in the
sky.
He felt himself
falling.
There weren’t enough
nahualli with Niente to create a war-storm. Ahead of them, in the
golden light of late afternoon, they could see the Easterner troops
arrayed on the hillsides on either side of the road. Their own
numbers appeared to be significantly greater than that of the
Easterners unless they had troops hidden in reserve on the far
slope.
Tototl sniffed in
disdain.
“This is all they
bring against us?” he said, and the warriors closest to them
chuckled. “Uchben Nahual, it’s time to do as we’ve
discussed.”
Niente inclined his
head to Tototl and turned his horse, riding back to where the other
nahualli were sheltered in the midst of the warriors. He’d had them
fill their spell-staffs the night before as usual, so that they
could perform this spell at need and still be rested for the
battle. They could not create the war-storm, but they could create cloud enough to mask them. That was
what they did now, their mass chant pulling power from the X’in Ka,
the energy rising into the air and becoming visible. Wisps of cloud
began to sway in front of the warriors, from the road to nearly the
banks of the river, a fog that thickened and became dense, a wall
shaped by the nahualli so that the Easterners could no longer see
them. This wall would not need to move with the troops, nor would
it need to generate the lightnings of the war-storm. Niente
gestured when he could no longer see the Easterner troops ahead of
them nor the hills on which they stood, and the nahualli stopped
their chant.
Niente swayed on his
feet, as if he’d run from here to the river and back: the payment
for the chant and his channeling of the energy, but he forced
himself to stay upright, even though a few of the younger nahualli
collapsed, panting. Using the X’in Ka this way—creating the spell
without giving yourself time to recover from the effort—was costly;
Niente didn’t understand why the Easterner spellcasters usually
performed their magic this way, rather than storing the spells to
be released later. “Get up,” he told them. “Take up your
spell-staffs. There’s still a battle to be fought.”
With the fog-wall
shutting off sight of the Easterner troops, Tototl shouted his
orders, gesturing to the lesser warriors and the High Warriors in
charge of them. Two companies slid away to the left, toward the
river—they would outflank the Easterners and come upon them from
the side and rear. Tototl waited as the flanking arm moved away and
Niente rode back to him. “If this is all that is between us and the
city, we’ll be there by evening, Uchben Nahual,” Tototl said. “It
would seem that your son has seen well—sending us across the river
was the path to victory. They weren’t prepared for this. We will
push through their city and come upon the rest of their army from
the rear as Citlali and Nahual Atl attack them from the front. We
will crush them between us like a shelled nut between
stones.”
The comment only made
Niente scowl. He’d tried to use the scrying bowl the night before:
everything was confusing, and powers moved on the side of the
Easterners that he could not clearly see while the Long Path eluded
him entirely. Tototl seemed to find Niente’s irritation amusing—he
laughed. “Don’t worry, Uchben Nahual,” he said. “I still have faith
in you. Is your spell-staff full?”
Niente lifted the
staff, the ebony hardwood he’d carved so carefully decades ago with
the symbols of power. His hands over the long years had polished
the knobbed end and the middle of the staff to a gleaming satiny
finish. The staff felt like part of him; he could feel the energy
within, waiting for the release words to burst forth in fury and
death. Yet even as he displayed the staff to Tototl and the
warriors and nahualli around him gave a shout of affirmation,
Niente felt little but despair.
There was no life in
this victory, if victory it was to be. No joy. Not if it were to
lead to the place he’d once glimpsed.
Tototl unsheathed his
sword. He lifted it with Niente’s staff as the shouts redoubled.
“It is time for blood!” Tototl declared. “It is time for death or
glory!” He pointed the sword toward the cloudbank. “For Sakal!” he
roared, and they shouted with him as they charged forward. Niente
was carried along with the flood, but he was silent.
They entered the
cold, gray blankness of the cloud, and emerged into sun and heat
and battle.
Brie had positioned
the troops on the two hillsides that flanked the road, with only a
single company on the road itself, and the archers in position on
either side—they would at least have the high ground to begin this
battle. The Westlanders would have to charge uphill if they wished
to engage them.
If they had
chevarittai, they could have come charging down at terrible speed,
like a gigantic spear thrusting into the Westlanders’ midst. But
they had no chevarittai and too few archers, only three of the
Numetodo—of whom Brie was rather suspicious, there being no
Numetodo in Firenzcia at all; at least none who openly showed
themselves—and no war-téni at all.
Allesandra had
arrived a turn earlier, dressed in her own armor, and Brie had
ceded field command to her, as was proper given that the Garde
Kralji was hers. The Kraljica had given her approval of Brie’s
placement of the gardai. “I see you’ve been taught well,” she said.
“I expected no less.” Brie and the Kraljica, along with Sergei and
Commandant cu’Ingres, watched the approach of the Westlander
troops, under the banner of a winged snake. Brie was sobered by the
frightening size of their force; she was even more concerned as
they watched their spellcasters—safely out of the range of the
archers they had—place a fog-wall between them to mask their
formation.
Brie had not been
able to conceal a shudder at the sight. “Kraljica, Ambassador, is
there some better and more defensible ground between here and
Sutegate? Perhaps we should try to harry them rather than stop
them? We could send smaller groups against their flanks, create a
defensive wall at the city . . .”
Allesandra had
glanced at Sergei and cu’Ingres, neither of whom spoke. “It’s too
late for that, Hïrzgin,” Allesandra said. “We must stand here, we
must hold them as long as we can, and we must make them pay for
every stride of ground they take.”
Brie clenched her
hands around the reins of her warhorse. “Then I’ll stand with you,
Kraljica, at the front.”
“No.” Allesandra
shook her head. “That’s my place and responsibility,” she said,
“and Jan would never forgive me if you were hurt here. I want you
to take the river flank with Talbot’s sparkwheelers,” she said.
“They’ll need a steady heart and commander to guide them. Talbot
can stay with you, but I need the other Numetodo here—we have too
few of them, since most went with Commandant
ca’Talin.”
Brie had wanted to
argue—to her mind, the Garde Kralji would also need strong
leadership or they would break, but she grudgingly inclined her
head. “As you say, Kraljica . . .”
Reluctantly, she rode
to the western side of the road and up the hill through the Garde
Kralji—staring at her worriedly—to the rear flank where the
sparkwheelers had been placed. She shook her head at the sight of
them: clothed in whatever they already had on their backs. They had
no armor at all, except for the few who wore scraps of rusted metal
curaisses or ripped and ill-fitting chainmail. Except for the
strange-looking devices each of them carried, they were armed only
with ancient swords, farm implements, and cudgels. They looked more
like a mob than a fighting force—a mob that a bare squadron of
Garde Brezno would have been able to rout and send screaming into
the streets.
Brie informed Talbot
of the Kraljica’s orders; he seemed as distressed by them as she
was, but Talbot had hurriedly sent his fellow Numetodo down to
where the Kraljica’s banner flew on the eastern side of the
road.
“I’m her aide,” he
said as he watched the Numetodo moving toward the Kraljica’s
banner. “I should be with her. This is madness.”
“Which is why,” Brie
said, “she has kept us both back. She knows the odds. Do these
sparkwheelers actually have a purpose?”
In answer, Talbot ran
them through their drills, forming the sparkwheelers into lines and
moving them back in sequence. Brie tried to imagine the the
sparkwheels firing, tried to imagine the corps not breaking and
fleeing in terror at the sight of the enemy. As Talbot shouted his
orders, she also watched the impossible bank of fog that blanketed
the road below, sliding off past the side of the hill on which she
stood.
The gray wall was
silent.
“What happens when
they ‘fire’?” she asked.
“The sparkwheels
discharge. They’re actually quite effective. Varina invented them.”
He cocked his head slightly at Brie. “There’s no magic involved at
all, Hïrzgin, if that’s your worry. No flaunting of ‘Cénzi’s Gift,’
as you of the Faith might term it.”
She started to
retort, then . . .
“Talbot . . .” She
pointed down the hill.
It began with a
muffled roar from behind the cloud: the sound of clashing armor and
shouting warriors. From out of the fog, the Tehuantin came rushing
toward them, wave upon wave of them, filling the road as well as
the fields to either side. Brie, from her vantage point, heard
Allesandra call for the archers to fire, and the Numetodo sent
fireballs and lightnings crackling toward them. The spells and the
arrows cut brief holes in the line that were immediately filled,
and now the Westlander spellcasters raised their spell-staffs and
sent their own lightnings hurtling toward Allesandra and the
troops. There were explosions along both hills, and
screams.
The clamor grew
louder; the lines came close . . .
. . . and collided
with a clash of metal. From the heights where the sparkwheelers
were set, Brie could see the battle laid out before her, the two
armies swarming like a plague of insects over the landscape. Some
of the sparkwheelers were visibly frightened by what they saw and
some of them stepped backward up the hill—northward, toward the
city. Talbot and Brie both shouted at them to hold, and Brie turned
her horse to cut them off, like a sheepdog with its herd. “Retreat,
and I will cut you down,” Brie shouted at them, her sword held
high, her warhorse stamping its feet in response to her
agitation.
“Talbot, let’s move
them down so we can . . .” she began, but suddenly clamped her
mouth shut.
The battle was
already failing below—she could see it. The front line of the Garde
Kralji had already buckled, and Allesandra’s banner was moving
north along the road, giving ground. The Westlanders were no longer
issuing from the fog-wall, and despite their numbers, there seemed
to be fewer of them than Brie remembered. Brie looked to Talbot,
worried and suddenly suspicious.
“Stay here,” she
said. She urged her horse up the slope of the hill toward the
ridge, staying in the cover of the trees. When she reached the
summit, she peered down. She could see the gray fog-wall arrowing
off toward the ribbon of the river. And out in front of it . .
.
“Oh, no . . .” She
breathed a curse.
Below her, already
ascending the slope below, was the remainder of the Westlander
army.
The war-storm was
both terrifying and deadly, but it was only a chimera: a ghost from
the Second World. Even as Varina tore at it with the Scáth
Cumhacht, she still had to admire its power, its precision, and its
making. She could feel the many individual threads of the storm,
how it was woven from the spells of many spellcasters and formed by
a single one of them: a particularly strong presence, and one who
was close to her.
This was nothing that
the téni of the Faith could do, nor the Numetodo—another skill that
those of the Eastern world didn’t have. Even as she shredded the
clouds and dissipated the spell-threads that held it together,
Varina found herself thinking of how she would put together a spell
like this herself.
If you live, this is something you should work on, so the
Numetodo learn to do it as well.
If you live . . .
That, she was afraid,
was no certainty.
She was with
Commandant ca’Talin’s Garde Civile at the southern terminus of the
front, in the narrowing triangle between the River Infante and the
River A’Sele. Here, the Infante broke into two arms as it joined
the A’Sele, and the Avi a’Sele arched over it with two bridges. As
with Starkkapitän ca’Damont’s command just to the north, and with
Hïrzg Jan’s command at the northern end of the front, they had
placed themselves on the western side of the Infante. The Tehuantin
were set in a long, curving front that stretched from the Avi
a’Sele to the Avi a’Nostrosei, somewhat over two miles
long.
The war-storm, from
what she could see, may have covered their entire
length.
The other Numetodo
were also ripping into the war-storm with her. The lightning was
fading, the black cloud rent and shredded. They could see men
moving behind it, charging forward. “Back, back!” Commandant
ca’Talin was shouting at her and the others. “Stay behind the line.
Archers, fire!” Flags waved; cornets blasted the air, and all along
the line flights of arrows rose to meet the war-storm. Varina could
see the shields of the warriors flick up, saw the arrows fall
mostly to embed themselves in the shields. Swords hacked at the
arrows stuck on the shields, shearing them off, and an answering
hail of arrows came from the Tehuantin. Varina heard Mason cry out
near her and go down, an arrow fletched with gray feathers in his
chest. Another arrow thudded into the ground at her feet. “Back!”
ca’Talin shouted again, and this time they obeyed, Johannes and
Niels dragging Mason with them.
Varina could see
little of the battle other than the bodies jostling around her, but
she could hear it: the clash of steel against steel, the cries from
the soldiers on both sides, the shrill calls of the horns. She
could smell it as well: the smoke from the spell-fires, the scent
of blood, the nosewrinkling stench of brimstone. But ahead of her
there was only a writhing mass of soldiers. Ca’Talin, on his horse,
surrounded by chevarittai, went hurtling into that chaos, and for a
moment Varina and the others were alone. They sent fire-spells
arcing over their gardai into the Tehuantin lines beyond; they used
counter-spells to blast away the fire hurled at them by the
Westlander spellcasters. Black sand exploded to Varina’s right,
sending dirt and body parts hurtling through the air and
half-deafening her.
Varina could feel the
terrible exhaustion of using the Scáth Cumhacht this way. All the
spells she’d stored the night before were gone, and her mind was
too tired and confused to create new spells easily. She was done;
she was empty.
If you live . . .
She was less certain
of that now than ever.
The cornets had
altered their call. Varina saw the Commandant and chevarittai
emerge from the smoke and confusion of the battle. Behind them,
gardai were turning and fleeing eastward. “To the bridges!”
ca’Talin shouted as he passed them. “To the bridges!”
Varina was swept up
with them, helpless. The retreat was a rout, a confusion. She found
herself pushed, stumbling and nearly falling. All around her,
people were shoving and she couldn’t stand. It would be easy, she
thought, to just lay down here, to let it end. She felt herself
starting to fall once again.
A hand went around
her waist. “Here, pull yourself up.” Ca’Talin had returned, and he
pulled her up onto his warhorse, her arms and shoulders aching. She
could see the bridges ahead, clotted with gardai fleeing toward the
earthern ramparts on the far side.
“We’ve lost here,”
ca’Talin half-shouted to her as they plunged into the press of men.
“The Westlanders have this side of the river, all the way north.
May Cénzi preserve us for tomorrow.”
Seeing the Tehuantin
advancing up the far side of the hill toward them, Brie turned her
steed and rode hard down to the sparkwheelers, the horse sending
rocks and pebbles cascading down ahead of them.
“Talbot! This way,”
she cried. “Bring your people and follow me!” Once she saw Talbot’s
acknowledgment, saw him begin to shout orders and shove at the
sparkwheelers nearest him, she headed up the slope again until she
was on the ridge. The Tehuantin were still ascending the hill, with
the obvious intention of flanking the main battle and coming on the
Garde Kralji from the side and rear while they were intent on the
main assault from along the road. The hill’s summit was flat and
mostly treeless; the Westlanders were advancing through a meadow.
She’d been seen by them, also; she heard an arrow hiss past her
head, and she moved downslope slightly.
Talbot and the
sparkwheelers were nearly to the top; she quickly told Talbot what
she’d seen. They arranged the lines just below the summit, the
sparkwheelers checking their weapons again to make certain they
were loaded, and opening the leather pouches they wore that held,
Brie had been told, the tiny packets of black sand to reload the
weapons. She’d seen the packets; they were hardly impressive—they’d
only added to her doubts as to the efficiency of the sparkwheel as
a weapon.
But she had no other
choice. She had to hope that what Talbot had told her wasn’t an
elaborate lie. “All right,” she said. “On my command, we’ll move up
to the ridge. Talbot, be ready to fire as soon as you’re there—they
have archers, so you’re going to be under attack yourselves.” She
saw some of the men blanch at that. “You have the high ground and
the advantage. Hit them hard, and the archers will be useless,” she
told them, though she didn’t believe that at all. She thought their
archers would make a wall of bodies on the summit from the
sparkwheelers. “Now—forward!”
Almost grudgingly,
the men trudged up to the ridgeline, Brie and Talbot alongside
them. She heard the calls in the strange Westlander tongue as they
appeared, but Talbot was already shouting out the cadence before
the first arrows came. “First line, kneel! First line,
fire!”
The racket that
ensured made Brie’s horse rear up in terror. White, acrid smoke
bloomed along the line, and down the hill . . . Brie could scarcely
believe what she saw: Westlanders went down as if a divine blade
had scythed through their ranks. She gave a cry of surprise, almost
a laugh. “Second line kneel! Second line, fire!”
Again, the reports
from the sparkwheels echoed; again, more Westlanders fell, their
bodies tumbling back down the hill or crumpling where they stood. A
few arrows were slicing into the sparkwheelers now as well, and she
saw three or four of the men go down. “Damn it, stand, you
bastardos!” Talbot shouted as the lines wavered and started to
dissolve. Brie rode behind them as the line in the rear faltered
and tried to break rather than reload their weapons.
“No!” she told them.
“Stay and fight, or you’ll face my blade! Stay!”
“Third line, kneel.
Third line, fire!” Talbot cried, and this time the volley was a
stutter rather than a concerted explosion, but still more Tehuantin
were falling. Brie could see the enemy wavering. “Again!” she
shouted to Talbot. “Hurry!”
“First line, kneel!
First line, fire!” Another stuttering, and some of the men could
not fire at all, still clumsily trying to load their pieces with
trembling hands. But yet more of the Tehuantin were down and the
arrow fire had stopped entirely. Down the hill, injured and dying
warriors were screaming in their language, and other painted
warriors were shouting in return. “Second line, kneel. Second line,
fire!”
Again the sparkwheels
gave their roar, and as more warriors fell, the Tehuantin finally
broke. The warriors turned and began running back down the hill
despite the efforts of their offiziers to hold them, and it was
suddenly a panicked retreat. The sparkwheeler corps gave a shout of
triumph, and a few, without orders from Talbot, fired their
sparkwheels at the retreating backs. At the top of the hill, fists
punched the air in triumph.
Brie shouted a huzzah
with them, but then she looked behind and the joy died in her
throat. Well below, on the road, the Garde Kralji was in full
flight. She could see Allesandra’s banner waving and hear the
cornets calling retreat. Behind them, the Tehuantin warriors were
pursuing: a black wave of them that overspread the road along both
hills, a wave that would overwhelm their cadre of sparkwheelers if
they stayed. “Talbot!” Brie shouted. “To the Kraljica! We can’t
stay here.”
They may have won a
small victory in their skirmish, but there would be no greater
victory here. She led Talbot and the sparkwheelers down the hill to
join the Kraljica in her flight.
Niente had thought
that Tototl would chase the Easterners straight back into their
city, or even overrun their retreat and slay them here. He might
have done exactly that, except one of the High Warriors came
gasping back to them raving of a massacre: the group that had been
sent to the western flank had been nearly destroyed. Tototl called
a halt to the advance, sending only a few squadrons to to pursue
the fleeing Easterners. Tototl and Niente had followed the High
Warrior around to the far side of the hill. Now Niente was looking
up on a terrible carnage on the hillside before him—though he’d
seen worse in his long deades of warfare, certainly. He’d witnessed
men hacked to pieces, had viewed corpses piled on corpses. But
this: there was an eerie quiet here, and the bodies were strangely
whole. There was too little blood.
Tototl had leaped
down from his horse, going from body to body strewn over the grassy
slope. “What magic did this?” he demanded of Niente.
Niente shook his
head. “A magic I haven’t seen before,” he said to
Tototl.
“Why didn’t you
see this?” Tototl raged, and Niente
could only continue to shake his head. His hands were trembling. He
could smell black sand in the air.
Black
sand.
This was no magic . . . The thought kept coming
back to him with the scent. The fact that black sand was not
created from the X’in Ka was something Niente had kept from the
Tecuhtli and the warriors. He wanted the warriors to believe that
black sand was something magical. He hadn’t wanted them to know
that anyone could make it if they knew
the ingredients, the measures of the formula, and the method of
preparation. He and the few nahualli he’d entrusted with the secret
kept it so—they all suspected that if the warriors could make black
sand themselves, they might decide they had no need of nahualli at
all.
This was no magic . . .
He knew this, but he
could not admit it to Tototl.
If Atl is facing this also . . . Fear ran cold
through him, and he nearly reached for the carved bird, nearly
spoke the word that would allow him to communicate with his son and
warn him. But he would be too late: that battle was undoubtedly
also underway. Too late. And while the Easterners had this deadly
skill, it still hadn’t made a difference in this battle. They had
taken out the flanking troops, but they’d still be
routed.
But Tototl was right
in one respect: he had not seen this. What
would the scrying bowl say now?
“The Easterners have
learned a spell they’ve never shown us before,” he told Tototl. The
wounded bled from deep, jagged, but nearly circular holes. The dead
were the worst—it looked as if they been struck by invisible arrows
that had—impossibly—torn through metal-and-bamboo armor to plunge
deep into the bodies, sometimes lancing entirely through them. And
on the top of the hill, where the surviving warriors had said that
the terrible barrage had come from, there were no bodies at all,
very few signs of blood, though there were a few Tehuantin arrows
on the ground. But the ground wasn’t disturbed as it would have
been had they needed to drag away bodies. The Easterners had been
able to inflict this damage on them without significant loss of
their own.
Could they have done this with the main troops? Are they
holding this back, waiting for a better place to use this
power?
It may not have been
magic, but something both awful and unbelievable had happened here.
They had used black sand in some way that Niente could not
comprehend. “I need to use the scrying bowl again,” he said to
Tototl. “Something has changed, something Axat didn’t show me
before. This is important. I worry about the Tecuhtli.”
The Long Path: could it still be there? Could
it have changed, too? Or has everything changed? Has Atl seen
this? He had to know. He had to find out. He was missing
something that was critical to understanding their situation—he
could feel it in the roiling in his gut, a burning. He felt old,
used up, useless.
“There isn’t time,”
Tototl answered. “The Tecuhtli will take care of himself, and he
has the Nahual with him. The city is open to us. All we need to do
is chase them. They’re running; I can’t give them time to
regroup.”
“Then as soon as we
can after we reach the city,” Niente told him. “Look at this! Do
you want this to happen to us or to Citlali?”
Tototl scowled. “Pour
oil on the bodies and burn them,” he ordered the warriors. “Then
rejoin us. Niente, come with me—the city awaits us.”
He spat on the
ground. Then, with a final scowl, he remounted. Niente was still
staring, still trying to make some sense of this. “Come, Uchben
Nahual,” Tototl told him. “The answers you want are running from us
as we stand here.”
In that, the warrior
was right. Niente sighed, then went to his own horse and—with the
help of one of the warriors—pulled himself back into the
saddle.
They rode away,
Tototl already calling out to resume their advance.
If the day had been
terrible, the night was hideous. Varina was huddled with the Garde
Civile, pressed between the two earthen ramparts that had been
built over the previous few days, and the night rained spark and
fire, as if hands were plucking the very stars from the heavens and
hurling them to earth. Both sides now used catapults to throw black
sand fire into each other’s ranks. The explosions thundered every
few breaths: sometimes distant, sometimes distressingly
close.
There was no rest
this night and no sleep. She watched the fireballs arc overhead to
fall westward, and cowered as the return barrage hammered at their
ramparts. She tried to blot out the sounds of screams and wails
whenever one of the Tehuantin missiles struck.
This was worse than
open combat. At least there she had a semblance of control. There
was no control in this: her life, and the lives of all of those
around her were up to the whims of fate and accident. The next
fireball could fall on her and it would be over, or it would miss
and take someone else’s life. Varina felt helpless and powerless,
cowering with her back against cold dirt and trying to recover as
much of her strength as she could so that she could replenish her
spells for the attack that would come in the morning.
It would come. They
all knew it.
The news from the
north had been disheartening. Neither Starkkapitän ca’Damont nor
Hïrzg Jan, with the Firenzcian troops, had been able to hold the
west bank of the Infante. Both had been forced to retreat across
the river. Worse, the word had come that Hïrzg Jan had been injured
during the retreat, as the a’Certendi bridge was destroyed. The
rumors were wild and varied: Varina heard that Jan was dying; she
heard that he had been carried back to the city to the healers; she
heard that he was directing the defense from his tent-bed; she
heard that he’d had himself lashed to his horse so that he would
appear unhurt to his men as he rode about encouraging them; she’d
heard that his injuries were minor and he was fine.
She had no idea which
rumors were false and which true. What was apparent was that the
battle of the day before had been only a prelude. The Infante would
be forded; they all knew that. The Tehuantin would find the shallow
places and they would cross as soon as it was light.
She trembled, closing
her eyes as another fireball shrieked overhead and exploded well to
her left. Had she believed in Cénzi, she would have prayed—there
were certainly prayers being mumbled all around her. She almost
envied the comfort the soldiers might find in them.
“Varina?” Commandant
ca’Damont crouched next to her. In the noise, she hadn’t heard his
approach. She started to stand, but he shook his head and motioned
to her to stay down.
“I’m sorry,” she
said. “I was trying to rest.”
He smiled wanly.
“There’s not much rest around here. I wanted to tell you—Mason,
your Vajiki ce’Fieur: the healers say he’ll recover. They’ve going
to evacuate him back to the city.”
“Good. Thank you. I
appreciate your telling me that.”
“I want you to go
with him,” ca’Damont continued. “This is no place for
you.”
An old, frail woman . . . She could nearly hear the
unsaid comment. “No,” she told him. “You need me here. I’m A’Morce
Numetodo; this is where I belong.”
“More war-téni have
arrived,” he said. “A full double hand. And I have the other
Numetodo you brought with you. You proved yourself earlier, Varina.
No one could ask more of you. And you have a child to think
of.”
She wanted to agree.
She wanted to take his offer and go running back to the city—but
even there she wouldn’t be safe. She could flee as far as she
wanted, she could take Serafina and go east or north, but if they
lost here—and she could see no way that they could win—she would
always wonder whether she should have stayed, whether her presence
might have made a difference.
Karl would not have
fled. He would have stayed, even if he thought that the battle was
lost. She knew that for a certainty. “Most of the gardai here have
children to think of,” she told him firmly. “That’s why they’re here.”
“Still . .
.”
“I’m not leaving,”
she told him.
The Commandant
nodded. He stood and saluted her. “You’re certain?”
She gave a shuddering
laugh as another fireball howled past. Firelight bloomed and
shadows moved as it exploded. “No,” she answered. “But I’m staying,
and you’re interrupting my rest.”
They heard the low
rumble of another explosion somewhere beyond the rampart. “Rest?”
the Commandant said. “I doubt any of us will be getting that
tonight. But all right. Stay if you want. Cénzi knows that we need
all the help we can get.” He seemed to realize what he’d said,
giving a wry half-smile. “Forgive me, A’Morce.”
“Don’t apologize,”
she told him. “If your Cénzi exists, I hope He’s listening to
you.”
It wasn’t supposed to
have been this way. Sergei had prayed to Cénzi, but Cénzi hadn’t
answered—not that he expected any help from that quarter. The
Tehuantin pursued Kraljica Allesandra and the Garde Kralji all the
way back into the city. The Kraljica had tried to re-form and stand
at Sutegate, but the Tehuantin were moving across too wide a swath
now, pouring into the city’s streets from everywhere along the
southern reaches. Allesandra didn’t have troops enough to cover the
city’s entire southern border. It had become quickly obvious that
they couldn’t hold the South Bank: not with the Garde Kralji, not
even with the sparkwheelers, who had proved oddly effective during
the retreat. They’d pulled back even farther, abandoning the entire
South Bank for the Isle A’Kralji.
They could keep the Tehuantin from pouring through the
bottlenecks that were the two bridges.
Sergei had urged
Allesandra to destroy the Pontica a’Brezi Veste and Pontica a’Brezi
Nippoli entirely, to take down the spans so that the Tehuantin
couldn’t cross the southern fork of the A’Sele without ships. She
refused. “The ponticas stay up,” she said. “I will not just give up
half the city. The bridges stay up, we defend them tonight, and
tomorrow we’ll go back across them to take back our
streets.”
Sergei had argued
vehemently with her, and Commandant cu’Ingres had agreed with
Sergei; neither of their arguments convinced her to change her
mind.
And it was on the
Pontica a’Brezi Veste and the Pontica a’Brezi Nippoli that the
sparkwheelers truly excelled. With Brie and Talbot’s guidance, the
corps had controlled the small spaces. Though the Westlanders had
thrown wave after wave at them through the late afternoon and into
the dusk, they’d left both bridges full of corpses. After several
vain attempts and with the sunlight dying, the Westlanders had
finally pulled back.
From the roof of the
Kraljica’s Palais, Sergei could see fires burning in the South Bank
where once the téni had lit the lanterns along the Avi a’Parete.
The yellow flames were a mockery. To the west and north, across the
A’Sele but still outside the city, there were constant rumbles and
the flashes of explosions, as if a rainless, cloudless thunderstorm
had taken up residence there. Below, beyond the outer walls of the
courtyards and entrance to the palais, in the Avi, Brie was still
awake, on foot now. Sergei could hear her voice in the stunned
silence of the palais: setting the watches on the bridge and
exhorting the sparkwheelers to see to their weapons, get what rest
they could, but be ready to respond at need.
Hïrzgin Brie had
proved to be as valuable as her husband in this fight. Perhaps more
so.
Sergei felt
Allesandra come alongside him. She was still dressed in her armor,
though it was no longer gleaming and polished: in the moonlight, he
could see the scratches and scorch marks of the battle. Her graying
hair was matted to her head. A sextet of Garde Kralji were with
her, as well as the few remaining members of the Council of Ca’ who
had not fled the city. “Tomorrow,” she told Sergei, told the
councillors, “we will take back the South Bank.”
“We will try as best
we can,” Sergei said. His tone betrayed his feeling as to the
success they would find.
“We will,” Allesandra answered sternly. The councillors
looked frightened, and Sergei knew that they all believed that as
unlikely as he did. A flash, and—belatedly—another rumble came from
the west. He could feel the building trembling under his feet with
the sound. The councillors looked around as if searching for
shelter; the gardai shuffled nervously, clenching their pikes. “A
runner’s come from the North Bank,” Allesandra said. “The Tehuantin
have the west side of the Infante, and the Garde Civile has pulled
back to the earthworks. They’re safe for now. They’ll try to ford
the river tomorrow and we will push them back. Let the Infante and
then the A’Sele take their bodies back to the sea.”
“We will try, I’m
sure,” Sergei answered again. “Have you heard further news of the
Hïrzg?”
Her face tightened.
“I’m told that Hïrzg Jan has refused to return to the city. How
badly he’s been injured . . .” She shrugged. “No one is saying.
He’s my son, and he’s a soldier. He will continue to fight as long
as he can.”
Sergei glanced down
again to where Brie was patrolling. “Does she know?”
“I told Brie myself.
I offered to let her go to him while she can. She said her place
was here for now, and that Cénzi could keep Jan safe better than
she could.” Allesandra almost smiled. “I think she’s learned to
have a fondness for these sparkwheelers.”
Sergei grunted. “I
hope she’s right,” he said. “We can’t hold back the Tehuantin,
Kraljica. Soon, they’re going to start bombarding us with black
sand until we can’t station the sparkwheelers at the bridgeheads
any longer, and once the sparkwheelers have pulled back they’ll
come across. We need to take down the ponticas to the South Bank
and cut them off. Let them throw what they want at us, but they
won’t be able to cross—not until they build boats.”
Alesandra drew back.
Her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed. “You’ve said all this too many
times already, Sergei. I won’t give up the South Bank. I
will not abandon my city. Not while I
can draw breath. No.” She took in a breath through her nose, loud
in the night. “I’ve asked Commandant ca’Talin or Starkkapitän
ca’Damont to send us a company or two of gardai to
help.”
“Kraljica, they can’t
spare them. Not with the Tehuantin force they’re facing. You can’t
ask that of them.”
“The message has
already been sent,” she told him. “I said that they needed to make
their best judgment as to whether they could spare the troops or
not. They’ll send them,” she said firmly.
It was obvious that
he wasn’t going to change her mind. He was also certain that
whether they had an additional company of gardai or not, the Garde
Kralji weren’t going to be sufficient to take back the South Bank.
If the bridges continued to stand, they would not even be
sufficient to hold the Isle, even with the help of the
sparkwheelers. He tapped the tip of his cane on the roof tiles
uneasily. In the west, there were more flashes. “If you’ll excuse
me, Kraljica, I need to find Talbot . . .”
He left Allesandra
still on the roof with the gardai and the councillors. He found
Talbot on the ground floor of the palais, looking frazzled and
angry as he snapped orders to a quartet of the palais staff. They
scurried off as Sergei approached. “I don’t have enough staff
here,” Talbot said. “Thee quarters of them evidently fled the city
as soon we left here yesterday.”
“You can’t blame
them, my friend. Anyone with more sense than loyalty would
leave.”
“I know, but how am I
supposed to run the palais without people?” He ran his fingers
through his hair. “Listen to me. I’ve just been chased halfway
across Nessantico by the Tehuantin; I’ve managed to survive spells
and arrows and swords, and I’m worrying about whether the beds are
made and meals are served.”
“It’s your
job.”
“It doesn’t feel
important, given the circumstances. By Cénzi, I’m
exhausted.”
“You can sleep later.
We can both sleep later. Come with me.”
“Where?”
Sergei rubbed at his
nose. “You know where the black sand for the Garde Kralji is kept?
You have the keys to that storeroom?”
“Yes, but . .
.”
“Then come
along.”
A turn of the glass
later, he and Talbot approached the Pontica a’Brezi Veste with
several bundles of black sand carried by gardai. Brie greeted them;
she glanced at their burdens, and she cocked her head. “I thought
that the Kraljica said that the ponticas were to be left intact,”
she said.
Sergei glanced up at
the roof of the palais, at the balconies studding the southern
wall. No one was there. “I’ve managed to convince the Kraljica that
we may need to take the bridges down if our attack tomorrow doesn’t
go well. We’re to set the black sand on the supports around this
side, so that we can set them off at need. That’s
all.”
Brie nodded. “Sounds
like a good plan to me. I’ll get the sparkwheelers to help,” she
said.
Another turn of the
glass, and Sergei and Talbot, with the rest of the black sand, came
to the Pontica a’Brezi Nippoli. Sergei gave the offizier in charge
of the Garde Kralji there the same tale that he’d given Brie. As
he’d done at the previous bridge, he supervised the placement of
the black sand packets, making certain that they were linked
together with black sand-infused oiled cotton ropes so that
touching off the length of fuse would cause all the packets to
explode at once.
Sergei held the fuse,
hefting it in his hand; a lantern burned at his feet in the grass
of the riverbank. “We’re done here,” he told Talbot. “Now—go tell
everyone to stand back.”
Sergei could not see
Talbot’s face as he stood farther up the embankment, the moon
almost directly behind him. “Stand back? Sergei, have you gone
insane? The Kraljica gave specific orders—”
Sergei leaned down.
He tucked his cane under his arm, picked up the lantern and opened
the glass front, holding the fuse cord in his other hand. “When a
tooth goes bad, you don’t have a choice but to pluck it out,” he
said to Talbot. “If you leave it in, it just causes you more pain
and misery, and eventually rots all the rest.”
“You can’t do this,”
Talbot protested. “The Kraljica said—”
“The Kraljica and I
disagree. Be honest, Talbot: do you think we can take back the
South Bank from the Westlanders tomorrow? The best defense for the
Isle and the entire city is to take down the ponticas and leave the
Westlanders stranded.”
“That’s not your
decision to make,” Talbot told him.
Sergei grinned up at
him, lifting the lantern. “At the moment, it appears that it is,”
he answered. He touched the end of the fuse cord to the flame. It
hissed and sparked, and fire began to crawl along its length.
Sergei dropped the fuse and began to hurry up the riverbank as fast
as he could, using his cane for leverage.
“Cénzi’s balls,”
Talbot cursed; he stared for a breath as if considering hurrying
down the bank after the fuse, then waved to the gardai at the
bridge’s abutments. “Back!” he shouted to them. “Get away from the
bridge! Take cover!” He half-slid down the embankment and grabbed
Sergei’s arm, hauling him up. Together, they fled as the fuse cord
hissed and sputtered and the blue glow of its fire slid toward the
bridge.
The blast nearly
lifted Sergei off his feet. The concussion slammed into him like a
falling wall; he could feel the heat scorching his back, and the
sound . . . He could hear timbers snapping as rocks and planking
slammed into the ground around them, falling like a hard, dangerous
rain. Sergei and Talbot cowered, covering their heads. When it had
ended, his ears still ringing, Sergei turned. The bridge had
collapsed, the span sloping into the waters of the A’Sele midway
across. The stubs of piling and pillars rose from the water like
broken teeth.
Sergei grinned. “They
won’t be coming across there soon,” he said. “All these men
stationed here can get some rest. Now, let’s finish the job . .
.”
Talbot was shaking
his head. “Sorry, Sergei, I can’t let you. You lied to me. You
disobeyed the Kraljica’s direct orders.”
“I’m trying to save
the damned city,” Sergei retorted.
“It’s not
your damned city.”
Ah, but it is . . . He knew Talbot realized the
worth of what he’d done. He knew Talbot actually agreed with him.
“Talbot, you know I’m right.”
“What I know doesn’t
matter,” Talbot told him. “I’m the Kraljica’s aide, not the
Kraljiki. Damn you to the soul shredders, Sergei . . .” He shook
his head, glaring at the ruins of the bridge. The Garde Brezno were
sidling closer to the edge, staring at the wreckage. Shouts and
lanterns were hurrying toward them. “Allesandra’s going to be
furious.”
“She’ll be more
furious when we take down the other pontica,” Sergei answered, “but
she also won’t be able to undo that.” But Talbot wasn’t going to
admit that Sergei was right. He knew it before Talbot responded,
knew it from the way the aide’s thin face closed up.
“That’s not going to
happen,” Talbot said. He looked at the people running toward them.
“Sergei, you can still survive this: admit that you disobeyed her
and set the black sand packets, but that you were doing it in case
we had to retreat tomorrow and there was no other way to stop the
Tehuantin from crossing over to the Isle and onto the North Bank.
You can tell her that this was an accident; your lamp set off the
fuse. She won’t believe you; she’ll be terribly angry at what
you’ve done, but she won’t be able to prove anything. I’ll back you
that far, Sergei. But no further. The other bridge stays
up.”
“Talbot . .
.”
“No,” Talbot said
firmly, interrupting Sergei. “It’s either that, or I tell her
exactly what happened here and that you intended this all along.
She’ll have you executed as a traitor then, Sergei, and I wouldn’t
blame her. Which is it to be? You decide.”
Talbot was right.
Sergei knew that, knew Allesandra well enough to realize that even
if she understood his reasoning, he’d gone beyond the bounds of
what she could forgive if she knew the whole truth. Dead, he could
do nothing for the city. Dead, he could do nothing more to atone
for all he’d done over his life. Dead, he couldn’t take down the
other bridge.
“All right,” he told
Talbot. “I’ll take your offer.”
She’d followed Nico
back into the maze of Oldtown, to another nondescript house in
another nondescript narrow lane. There was nobody there, nobody
came to Nico’s knock. The door had been locked, but that was no
issue—not to Rochelle. She’d picked the lock and they’d gone in.
Nico had nearly immediately told her that he needed to pray. She
told him that both of them needed to eat—but there had been nothing
in the house. She’d gone foraging, finding stale bread in an
abandoned bakery, and moldy cheese elsewhere. She’d taken water
from the nearest well. When she returned to the house, Nico was in
the front room on his knees. He’d paid no attention when she tried
to get him to eat, when she tried to force some water between his
cracked and bruised lips, when she’d jostled and yelled at him to
try to get his attention.
Her brother was lost,
mumbling half-intelligible prayers to Cénzi and unresponsive. He
ignored her, as if he no longer cared or even knew that she was
there. She could get no reaction from him at all. He seemed to be
in a trance.
Fine. She was used to
madness. She’d dealt with it long enough with their
matarh.
She slept a little on
the floor next to him, but couldn’t sleep long. She found herself
awake in the dark with Nico still praying next to her. By now, she
thought, it must be only a few turns before close to First Call.
“Nico? Nico—talk to me.”
There was no answer.
He was in the same position he’d been in for turn upon turn. So,
Nico had abandoned her, too—well, she was used to being alone, to
making her own decisions. She couldn’t help Nico, couldn’t go
wherever it was he was, but there were still things she could do,
that she was supposed to do. She touched the hilt of the knife
she’d stolen from her vatarh, stroking the bejeweled
hilt.
Promise me you will do what I couldn’t do. Promise me . .
.
“I will,” she told
her matarh’s ghost. “I will.”
She went back to
Nico, kneeling on the bare wooden floor. His legs must have long
ago lost any feeling. His hands were clasped in the sign of Cénzi,
his head bowed down toward them, his eyes closed. She could hear
him mumbling. “Nico?” she said, touching his shoulder. “Nico, I
need you to answer me.”
He did not. The
mumbling continued, unabated. She hugged him once. “Then pray for
me,” she told him. “Pray for both of us.”
There was no sign
he’d heard. She stood, watching him, then finally left the room.
She closed the door behind her, and went out into the streets of
Oldtown. In the early morning, the streets were dark and deserted.
Most of the inhabitants, those who could, had fled eastward out of
the city. There were strange flashes in the sky to the west,
accompanied by distant thunder, and southward, clouds of smoke were
touched underneath with the glow of fires.
South. Rochelle went
that way, sliding easily through the shadows cast by the
moon.
She had no idea how
long it was before she came to the Pontica Kralji, linking the
North Bank to the Isle. There were no gardai on the bridge, no
traffic at all. The moon was setting and the sky was beginning to
lighten in the east, extinguishing the stars at the zenith. The
waters of the A’Sele roiled around the pilings, dark and
mysterious. The smell of burning wood mingled with the scent of mud
and river water.
Something bright
flared in the sky ahead of her, trailing sparks and painting the
currents of the A’Sele with its bright reflections. The apparition
brightened and swelled, descending rapidly. She saw it fall, felt
the impact through the soles of her boots, saw the fire of the
explosion. Someone shrieked distantly in pain and alarm and the
smell of burning grew stronger, overlaid now with a sulfurous
stench. Another fireball shrieked into the southern sky; this one
exploded high above the Isle, sending black shadows
racing.
A rider appeared from
the Isle a’Kralji end of the pontica, galloping over the bridge
toward her, his cloak billowing behind. Rochelle shrank back
against the bridge supports; the rider hurtled past her without a
glance, turning sharply left toward the River Market. She could see
the leather pouch around his body: a fast-rider carrying a
message.
That meant that the
Kraljica was most likely on the Isle. Allesandra. Her great-matarh.
Her matarh’s voice seemed to whisper in her ears: “Promise me . . .”
Another fireball
played false sun, this one also slamming to earth somewhere on the
Isle. She could hear the wind-horns of the Old Temple growling a
low alarm.
Rochelle ran across
the pontica, half-expecting someone to shout after her, or perhaps
for an arrow to find her. Nothing happened. She was on the Avi
a’Parete on the Isle. All about her were the Isle’s grand
buildings, dominated here by the Kraljica’s Palais, directly ahead
on the left. She slid to her left, following a street dominated by
government buildings. Farther south, she could hear activity: horns
calling, people shouting, She turned the corner, moving southward
again; ahead, she could see people far down the street. She hurried
to the wall surrounding the palais. A servants’ door was set there
to one side. She knocked on it, waited, knocked again. No one
answered. She crouched down and took out her lockpick kit. A few
breaths later, she pushed the door open and slipped inside the
grounds.
She found herself
standing in the gardens of the palais. The scent of flowers was
strong, and she could hear a fountain trickling water nearby. There
was no one in the gardens at all, and few of the palais windows
were lit.
Another fireball
lifted its bright head over the far wall of the palais grounds. It
seemed to be heading directly toward her and the palais, but at the
last moment when it seemed to be about to strike the palais itself,
it shattered into a thousand fragments, each hissing and glowing as
they fell—a counter-spell must have found it. She wondered how many
fires the sparks would set, and whether the fire-téni would come to
put them out.
Rochelle ran to the
nearest palais door. Locked: again, she took out the picks,
manipulating them until she heard the snick of the mechanism opening. She opened the door
just enough to slide inside.
She found herself in
what must have been the servants’ corridor: a plain narrow hallway
with cross-corridors opening off to either side and a large door at
the end. If this was like Brezno Palais, as she expected it would
be, then most of these doors would be unlocked. The servants needed
to have access to all parts of the palais to serve their masters
and mistresses, and to do so in the most unobtrusive manner
possible. Doubtless, the palais was honeycombed with such
passages.
But the back
corridors of Brezno Palais had also been a bustle of activity. This
one was silent, and Rochelle found that strange. She moved quickly
to the main door, easing the door open a crack. She glimpsed one of
the main public hallways of the palais; she could also hear voices.
There were several people walking hurriedly away from another room
just farther down. One of the men she recognized immediately:
Sergei ca’Rudka, the silver nose gleaming on his wrinkled, pasty
face, his cane tapping an erratic rhythm on the tiles. The woman
alongside him was talking, in a hurried and angry voice. “. . .
don’t care what you were thinking or what your reasons were. I’m
furious with you, Sergei. Absolutely
furious. And Talbot; why in Cénzi’s name didn’t you check with me?
You knew I’d ordered the ponticas to stay up.”
“I must apologize
profusely, Kraljica,” Sergei said, though Rochelle thought he
sounded more pleased than apologetic. So that was the Kraljica. Great-matarh, I’m here for you . . . But not now.
Not yet. There were too many people around her: Sergei, the one
called Talbot, as well as a quartet of gardai.
“Your ‘accident’—if
that’s what it really was—may have jeopardized our chance to
assault the Tehuantin on the South Bank. Now there’s only one route
over, so . . .”
Their voices drifted
into unintelligibility as they walked down the corridor. Rochelle
risked opening the door wider. There were two gardai stationed at
the door from where the group had come. Rochelle ducked back into
the servants’ corridor. She took the corridor that led off in the
direction of the room with the gardai, counting her steps to judge
when she’d walked the distance. There was another door a few
strides farther down the corridor. She opened that
door.
She found herself in
the Hall of the Sun Throne. The crystalline mass of the Sun Throne
itself dominated the hall on its dais. Fine. This would do: the
Kraljica must come back here in time, and Rochelle could fulfill
her promise.
She saw a flash of
light through the high windows of the hall, and the palais itself
shook as thunder grumbled. She could smell woodsmoke and the
windows of the palais were alight with a dawn of
flame.
Rochelle settled
herself in to wait.
Niente dusted the
water in the scrying bowl with the orange powder and chanted the
spell to open his mind to Axat. The green mist began to rise, and
he bent his head over the bowl.
They were encamped in
the city itself, with warriors securing the streets and plundering
the houses and buildings there—for food and supplies, had been
Tototl’s orders, but Niente was certain that many of the warriors
were also taking whatever treasures they could carry. Others had
been set to building a catapult, and Niente had tasked the nahualli
with enchanting the bags of black sand that the catapult would hurl
onto the island so that they would explode upon impact. The
chanting of the nahualli and the hammering of the warrior engineers
filled the wide boulevard outside the fortress prison at the
river’s edge. From the gates of the edifice, the skull of a
horrible, many-toothed creature leered down at Niente—almost as if
it could be the head of the winged serpent that flew on the
Tecuhtli’s banner. That, Niente thought, was nearly an irony.
Axat’s Eye had risen, and it seemed to watch Niente as he performed
the ritual, watched him as intently as did Tototl.
The visions came
quickly, rushing toward him almost too fast for him to see, the
paths of the future twisting and intertwining. Niente could still
see victory along the clearest, closest path, but now it was a
victory won at terrible cost. There were changes wrought on the
landscape, powers rising that hadn’t been glimpsed before, or that
had been hinted at only in wisps of possibilities: the king of
black-and-silver; the old woman who smelled of black sand; the
young man with the wild, strange power. That last one . . . He was
the most difficult of all for Niente to see, wrapped in mist and
mystery. Around him, all the possible paths of the future seemed to
be coiled. Niente wanted to stay with this one, but the mists kept
pushing him away no matter how hard he tried.
In the mist, Niente
could also feel Atl, so close that he almost thought that his son
was standing beside him, peering into his bowl at the same time.
Here. He tried to cast his thoughts
toward Atl. See what I see. Let me find the
Long Path, and hope you see it also . . .
But there was no
response. He couldn’t show Atl what he had seen, nor could he see
what Atl saw. In the mist, they stayed separate.
“Will they take down
the other bridge?” Tototl asked. “If they do that . .
.”
“If they do that,
then we can’t get across to help Tecuhtli Citlali. I know. Now let
me look . . .”
He’d already seen
that: in the primary path, the Easterners inexplicably never
destroyed either bridge. He didn’t understand that. With the
bridges up, Tototl would win through to the Isle, though at
terrible cost. The strange black sand weapons that the Easterners
wielded would take down far too many warriors before they could,
inevitably, overwhelm them. They would reach Citlali and still
crush the Easterners between them, but this was no longer the
overwhelming victory that Niente had seen in Tlaxcala. Everything
had changed.
Which meant the Long
Path had changed as well. If the Long Path were still there at
all.
Niente bent his head
into the mist again, searching. Please, Axat.
Show me . . .
And She
did.
