Chapter 53

"Count Calderon," Ehren said, "I know not everything is as it seems. But I would truly love to know why the fact that we're about to get crushed by that pair of vordbulks is not as it seems. I mean, I thought it would have been obvious by now."

"Crows," Bernard breathed quietly. His face was tight with tension. "They must have missed the Queen."

"What?" Ehren asked.

A seventy-pound boulder went whizzing past them, hurled by one of the hulking behemoths accompanying the vordbulks. It missed them by no more than a foot and smashed into the wall of the tower behind them, sending a webwork of cracks into the stone.

"Bloody crows!" Ehren cried.

"The High Lords and..." He swallowed, and seemed to ignore the near miss. "And my wife learned where the vord Queen was."

"Oh," Ehren said quietly. The obvious move would have been to attempt to end the war immediately - a decapitating strike. Had it happened, the vord would not now be operating with such focus and direction. It was, therefore, reasonable to assume that the strike had failed. Given how critical it was, Ehren judged it unlikely that the High Lords would have done anything but fight to the death. And Countess Amara, while a skilled windcrafter, had been by far the person least able to defend herself against a threat like the one the Queen represented.

"I see," Ehren said quietly. A moment later, he added, "I think it's more likely that the Queen escaped than that they were all killed, Your Excellency. I'm sure your wife is all right."

Bernard shook his head. "Thanks for lying, son."

Ehren grimaced.

"Well," Bernard said. He turned to look at the damage the boulder had done to the tower. "If the High Lords haven't done the job, we'll just have to handle it ourselves, won't we?"

He disappeared inside the tower and emerged a moment later with a great, black bow as long as he was tall, its staves thicker than Ehren's forearms, and a war quiver packed with arrows. Count Calderon took a deep breath. Then he grunted and bent the great bow, leaning into it with the whole of his body. He strained with fury-born strength to bend the bow far enough to set its string - which was more like a cable as thick as Ehren's smallest finger.

Calderon let up on the bow gingerly and let out a huge exhale. The veins on his neck were standing out, and his face was red with the exertion. Ehren looked around nervously as Count Calderon readied the weapon.

The battle on the outer wall was still going well, as battles went, the legionares holding steady. The fight on the northern bluff had slowed the vordbulk dramatically - Cereus and the Citizens he led had been steadily assaulting the monstrous beast with every form of furycraft imaginable.

Dozens of square yards of its chitinous hide had been burned away. Trees swayed and bowed, lashing out with their limbs like enormous clubs, but the black chitin-armor seemed to absorb the impacts readily. Spikes rose from the ground to pierce the vordbulk's feet, but the beast had begun dragging its feet forward, shattering the stone spikes before they could pierce it - and anyone coming close enough to the enormous creature to attempt to bring up the spikes beneath one of the monster's planted feet was viciously assaulted by the vord protecting it.

Though it bled from scores of wounds, the vordbulk had not been killed, only slowed; and the furycrafters working against the beast were growing tired. It was an incredibly durable creature, and not simply because of its size. Despite the massive furycraft being brought to bear against it, it simply hunched its shoulders until the surges of power waned and took another giant's step forward. But this much had been done: The Citizens had stalled the creature for the moment, ruining the notion of a simultaneous assault on both sides.

On the south bluff, the vordbulk had not even been slowed down. Within moments, it would be in position to fall and crush the outer walls, simultaneously breaching the defenses and creating a fleshy ramp that the vord mantises could use to enter.

Bernard slung the war quiver over his shoulder, in a gesture that seemed like ritual to Ehren, something practiced so many times that the Count probably wasn't aware that he'd done it. Count Calderon reached up and selected a single arrow. Its head was oddly heavy, a set of four steel blades that reminded Ehren more of a harpoon than anything else. It was only at the last moment that he noted a sphere of gleaming black glass that had been trapped within the steel blades, like a jewel within its setting.

Bernard stared up at the nearest vordbulk, the one on the southern bluff. As both beasts had been doing periodically since they appeared, the vordbulk let out one of its enormous, bone-shaking basso roars.

"Clan Herdbane," Bernard sighed. "Those fools never did figure out how to stay out of a fight they couldn't win."

As Ehren watched, he saw barbarians and their beasts attacking the vordbulk, hurling spears up at its belly, hoping to hit the vitals, as their deadly predator birds clawed their way several yards up the vordbulk's legs, ripping and tearing to no appreciable effect. Perhaps if given a week, they might eventually nibble the great beast down - but they didn't have that kind of time.

"You might want to back off a ways, Sir Ehren," Bernard said. He brandished the arrow. "I'm not entirely sure this thing won't explode the second I release the string."

Ehren swallowed and took a couple of steps back. "I... see."

"Bit more," Bernard said.

Ehren walked twenty feet, to the far side of the citadel's balcony.

"Suppose it'll have to do," Bernard said. He set the arrow to the great bow's string, faced the vordbulk, and waited.

"That's... a long shot," Ehren noted. "Three hundred yards?"

"Range isn't a problem," said Bernard through his stiffened jaw. "Angle is a bit odd, though."

"Ahem, yes," Ehren said. "But honestly, sir... there must be some other way for you to... Your Excellency, it's one arrow. What could you possibly think it will do?"

The vordbulk's vast flanks expanded as it drew in a breath.

Bernard drew the black bow, and its staves groaned like the mast of a ship in high winds. Muscles knotted in his shoulders, back, and arms, and again his teeth clenched, and his face turned red with effort. There was a faint trembling in the earth as Bernard pulled the arrow back to his ear. The grain of the black bow writhed and quivered, even as it was bent, and Ehren realized that the Count was putting an enormous amount of earthcrafting into bending the bow and would be using even more woodcrafting to straighten its staves, to impart all the power he could to the missile. When he released the string with a short cry of effort, the reaction of the bow nearly took him from his feet. There was a thundercrack in the air before him, and the arrow leapt into the night so swiftly that Ehren would not have been able to follow it had not the morning light gleamed on the steel head.

The vordbulk opened its mouth to roar again, just as the arrow angled upward, into the creature's vast maw. The roar went on for a moment, then there was a flash of light, a whumping sound, and a burst of smoke and little licks of fire that poured from the vordbulk's mouth. It stopped in its tracks and roared again, this time at a higher pitch, and a veritable fountain of green-brown vord blood spewed from its mouth and fell to the earth in a disgusting miniature waterfall.

"Hngh," Bernard said. He sagged visibly, his chest heaving in slow, deep breaths, and he leaned against the railing to stay upright. "Guess... Pentius Pluvus... was right."

"Eh?" Ehren asked, watching the vordbulk with fascination.

Bernard sagged until he sat down on the bench against the outer wall of the tower, behind them. "Pluvus said an explosion is a very different thing when it starts off surrounded by flesh instead of occurring in the open air. Much more devastating. Apparently a crow ate one of our little fire-spheres one day, and a boy tried to knock it out of the air with his sling before it could escape. Normally, one of the little ones we used at first would only singe some feathers if they went off nearby. This time they found feathers and bits two hundred yards away."

"I see," Ehren said. "How very... very nauseating."

The vordbulk let out another distressed cry. It staggered like a drunkard.

"This bow can put an arrow right through a couple of sides of beef," Bernard said. "I wouldn't practice on live cows, of course. Cruel."

"Mmm," Ehren said faintly.

The vordbulk shook its head. Fluid slewed out and splattered in great, sickening arcs.

"So I shot at the roof of that thing's mouth," Bernard said. "I figure the arrow stopped three or four feet past that. Somewhere up in its brain, maybe. Then..." Bernard made an expanding motion with his hands and settled down to watch the vast creature in silence.

The vordbulk gradually listed to one side and fell. It was a motion more akin to a tree's toppling - to several trees' toppling - than any animal's movement. The ground shook when it landed, and dozens of stones were jarred loose from the side of the bluff, to come crashing down among the buildings of the town. Dust and dirt flew twenty feet into the air around the creature. The vordbulk let out one last slow, gasping cry that trailed off from an earsplitting roar to gradual silence.

Ehren turned his eyes to Bernard and just stared at the man.

"Anybody could have done it," Bernard said wearily.

Wild cheering, faint by contrast, rang up from the city below, and from the reserve positions behind them.

The Count of Calderon closed his eyes and settled back against the wall of the tower, clearly exhausted, and winced as his shoulders moved. "It was a crowbegotten big target." He opened one eye to squint at the second vordbulk. "Now. If only I had another one of those arrows. And a sphere to match it. And a night's sleep." He shook his head. "We're all just so bloody tired. I don't know how Cereus keeps going."

Ehren sat down beside Bernard, frowning up at the second vordbulk. "Count? What are we going to do about that one?"

"Well, Sir Ehren," Bernard said philosophically. "What do you suggest? My weaponsmith says it will be the day after tomorrow before he has another arrow like that one ready. I could send in the Legions, but they'd just get stomped flat by the hundreds. Our Knights and Citizens are all either on the wall fighting the horde, or they're already up on the bluff."

He ran a broad hand back over his short hair. "We can't bog them down like we did at the last wall, because the whole bluff is a rock shelf, and toying with that could collapse the entire bluff and kill us all, including our refugees. I don't have any more of those arrows, or the high-grade firestones, or the strength to shoot that bow. Think I tore something. My back is on fire." He grimaced. "So we hope the Citizens and Lord Cereus can wear it down before it gets here, and I'm forced to ask Doroga and his gargant riders to make a last-ditch attempt, which is likely to get them killed for no good reason."

"We can't just sit here." Ehren protested.

"No?" Bernard asked. "We've got nothing left in reserve, Sir Ehren. Nothing has been held back. It's coming down to old Cereus and the Citizens up on that bluff. If that thing makes it all the way here, this war is over. It's as simple as that."

They were both silent for a moment. The cries and calls of battle, and the distant report of furycraftings hurled in vain at the vordbulk wound around them.

"Sometimes, son," Count Calderon said, "you have to acknowledge that your future is in someone else's hands."

"What do we do?" Ehren asked quietly.

"We wait," Bernard said, "and see."

High Lady Placida Aria stumbled back as the vord rushed into the hive through the holes in the ceiling, and Isana had to roll rapidly to one side to keep from being trampled upon. The mantis warriors landed and rushed about in short, darting motions for a moment, clearly disoriented.

Aria fell back against the wall with a short cry. Isana's eyes widened in alarm. Lady Placida's system had been badly strained by the poison and her injury. Isana had healed the broken bone, and the Blessing of Night had countered the poison, but the High Lady had been utterly exhausted.

"I c-can't," she panted, and shook her head. "That last e-earthcrafting... I can't."

Isana's eyes went to Amara, who was in worse shape than Aria was. The Cursor had only just managed to lever herself up to her elbows.

Which meant...

"It's up to me," Isana breathed. She fumbled for a proper phrase to express the feelings that realization inspired, and settled upon, "Oh, bloody crows."

Then she steeled herself, reached for Aria's belt, and drew the High Lady's slender dueling sword from its sheath. She turned to face the six vord warriors, bouncing the sword in her right hand a few times, testing its weight and balance. Then she extended her left hand to the pool of water and narrowed her eyes. A bathing tub's worth of liquid abruptly leapt out of the water and gathered upon her left arm. Isana concentrated on it for a few ferocious seconds, and the water formed into the shape of a round disc several inches thick, resting upon her left forearm. The disc then began to stir and spin in emulation of a current, whirling faster and faster.

The whirling disc pulled on her upper body oddly, but Isana managed to take a few steps to place herself between the vord and the survivors of the assault on the hive, sword and improvised shield in hand.

One of the warriors noticed her and leapt at her with an unsettling hiss, like a teakettle boiling over. Isana saw the scythe-limbs of the mantis sweeping down toward her head and lifted her arm to interpose the watery shield.

The razor-sharp weapons pierced the water easily - and were both flung to Isana's left with such violence that the entire body of the mantis was hauled several steps in the same direction. Isana swept the long, narrow dueling blade in a nearly vertical slash, and the razor-sharp steel bit into one of the mantis's legs, laying open a wound more than a foot long. The vord let out a sharp whistle and reeled away.

Three more mantises turned their heads toward Isana and came scuttling forward. Isana saw that she could not simply try to interpose the water shield between herself and every single scythe - but she picked the mantis on the far right, stepping that way, creating an extra fraction of a second in which her target would attack her, but the other two could not. Once again, she raised the whirling shield of water, and once again the mantis's weapon-limbs were hauled violently to her left, tugging the mantis with it. The creature stumbled into its companions, fouling their attacks, and Isana had time to slash twice at the vord, inflicting two more obviously painful but less-than-fatal wounds.

She shuffled her feet to get between the vord and the wounded again, panting hard, her whole body trembling with painful fear. This was hardly her forte. Where was Araris?

Twice more she was rushed by single mantis warriors, and both times she defeated them the same way she had the others, though on the last attempt she nearly dropped the sword, her hands were shaking so hard.

The vord whistled and hissed at one another, their bodies beginning to bob up and down in unified agitation. And then, moving together, all six of them spread out into a half circle around her and began to close in with slow, certain confidence.

Isana felt her eyes grow enormously round, and she heard herself saying, in a completely level tone, "This is just ridiculous."

The vord plunged forward, all at the same time.

Isana wasn't sure exactly when she decided to do what she did. It simply happened, coming forth from her as naturally as if she'd planned and practiced the crafting for weeks. Again, she lifted the spinning water shield to the horizontal, but this time she cut the whirling wheel of liquid into slices, as one would a wheel of cheese. At the speed the watery shield was rotating, this had the effect of releasing a series of blasts of water, each consisting of several gallons of liquid.

The flying bursts struck the vord with flawless accuracy, one after the other, the sound of it a rapid slap-slap-slap-slap. And, as soon as the bursts of water had hit one of the vord, Isana locked it there through Rill, surrounding the mantises' rather tiny heads with globes of water.

The vord went mad, bounding about, leaping, clawing uselessly at their heads with their grasping claws, only to have them pass harmlessly through the water. Isana had no love for the vord, but she hated to see any creature suffer. Though they had no emotions readily identifiable with humanity, they felt fear as well as anything else that walked the surface of Alera - and Isana pitied them for their fear.

They collapsed, one by one, quivering still on the ground. Isana stepped forward, to finish each off as mercifully as she could, when another shadow blocked the ceiling above, and a steely figure dropped to the croach-covered floor, crushing the croach with his weight as he fell.

Araris's blade flashed through one vord, then a second, before it slowed and the steel-skinned Knight looked slowly around the hive at the six dead or dying mantises. Then he straightened, his sword dropping rather limply to his side as he turned to stare at Isana.

"Pardon, love," Isana said, rather whimsically. "I regret that you had to see me do anything so unladylike."

Araris Valerian's mouth spread into a slow, calm, and very pleased smile. Then he shook himself a little and dispatched the rest of the mantises as men in the armor of legionares - in the armor of the First Aleran, by all the furies, piled down the hole in Araris's wake.

"Come with me, my lady," Araris said. "There's little time. There's a team coming down to get you and the wounded out and back to Garrison, and another trying to find Lord Placida, but it's going to be close."

Amara pushed herself awkwardly to her feet. "Why? What's happening?"

Araris walked over to Lord Antillus, sheathing his sword. "The First Aleran is about to be overrun."

"The First Aleran," said Isana. "If the First Aleran is here, Araris, where is my son?"

From the hole above them came a screech of fury of such pure malice and scorn and raw, seething hatred that Isana had to flinch away from its intensity. The scream made her feel as though someone with long, dirty fingernails had shoved them beneath the skin of her back and drawn them slowly, spitefully over her spine.

Isana became aware that the men around her had gone very still, staring up toward the origin of that hideous sound.

"Where do you think?" Araris asked quietly, his voice still buzzing with that metallic edge. The swordsman indicated the ceiling with a flick of his sword's tip, and said, "He's fighting that."

Chapter 54

Tavi rolled to his right on pure instinct, and an instant later the Queen's sword sliced through the empty space he had occupied. Her windstream was enormous, violent, and the vicious turbulence that followed her was nearly enough to send him spinning from the sky.

By the time he regained his balance, the Queen was not in sight. The Canim-wrought mist had long since cloaked the ground from view, and at the speeds they were traveling, they would only be visible to one another for a flashing instant through the haze. But Tavi could hear her, or at least her presence. The dull, empty howl of her overpowered windstream was rendered directionless by the mist and seemed to come from everywhere. But Tavi knew she was out there, somewhere, circling him.

Excellent.

Tavi drew himself into a steady hover, reached out a hand, and summoned three fire-spheres in rapid order. They appeared with a disproportionately loud boom and were followed by the hiss of mist being turned to steam. They never came anywhere close to the vord Queen. They weren't supposed to.

The vord Queen let out another spine-shuddering shriek of hostility and rage - which grew louder as it went on. She was coming straight at him. Tavi swept his sword in a couple of swift circles and checked his pocket to be sure he was ready.

The Queen appeared: a sudden blur of white hair, glittering black eyes, and windblown cloak spreading like dark wings. She accelerated toward him with astonishing rapidity, and Tavi lifted his sword as though he meant to meet her blade to blade.

At the last second, he threw a firecrafting at her - even as she did exactly the same thing. The two craftings intercepted one another, and there was a deafening explosion of red and green flame. The vord Queen came plunging through it, the vanishing remnants of the explosion setting the edges of her cloak on fire in both colors. Her blade swept at his throat, but Tavi's sword intercepted the strike neatly. A red, blue, and vord green explosion of sparks the size of a city market flew out from the impact, and the vord Queen shrieked again in furious disappointment as she shot past him and banked immediately, coming around to rush him again.

From somewhere below, Tavi heard the weird, ululating howl of a Cane, and the bloodstone in his pocket suddenly felt almost warm enough to blister his skin. Marok had heard his signal.

The mist all around them thickened, congealed, and dark shapes stirred within. Long, twining tendrils of reddish flesh lashed out from a dozen different directions, and Tavi's heart lurched into his throat. No less than three of the Canim-called horrors had appeared all around him, and their questing tentacles slithered toward him, dripping a slime Tavi knew to be deadly acidic and poisonous to boot. He found himself all but holding his breath as the tendrils snaked all around him for several endless seconds... and abruptly withdrew. The protective power of the bloodstone talisman he carried had been enough to turn the beasts away - or at least enough to make them seek other prey.

The vord Queen had been swarmed by a dozen of the things.

Tentacles lashed out at her, flailing and grabbing. She eluded most of them but not all, and she shrieked in pain and anger as half a dozen dripping limbs left mild burn marks upon her seemingly vulnerable skin. The Queen spun madly in place, and her sword burst into flame as she began cutting her way free of the mist beasts.

Tavi didn't give her a chance to get loose. He focused his concentration upon her and crafted the hottest and most violent fire-sphere he'd ever attempted. It burst upon the vord Queen in a brilliant flash of light and a deafening roar of thunder.

Tavi wasn't trying to conform to the standards of a duel. He certainly had nothing to prove to anyone. And he'd seen too many battles to have any illusions about an honorable struggle; if he had his way, he would never engage in a fair fight ever again.

So he hammered the Queen with another fire-sphere. And another and another, as swiftly as he could throw them. The sound of her furious shriek provided a melody to the brutal percussion of the firecrafting.

He had her dead to rights for perhaps three or four seconds - but it couldn't last. His firecraftings might have been scorching the Queen, but they were wreaking havoc on the mist beasts, burning away the tentacles that held the Queen in place. The second she was free of them, the Queen dropped her windcrafting and plummeted into the mist. Tavi had a quick glimpse of a naked body, white hair burned away, half-covered by black scorch marks, like a steak left too long over the fire. Then she vanished.

Tavi turned and streaked after her. He could not afford to let her escape.

Fire rose from nowhere as he dived, and he realized with a start that the Queen had veiled herself and slowed her fall. He lifted his sword as the flame enveloped him, drawing the heat into the blade and away from his flesh, igniting the sword once more. Then the Queen was diving toward the ground beside him, an apparition half-hidden behind a veil, only the green fire of her sword truly visible. Their weapons flashed and chimed a dozen times, and suddenly the ground was rushing toward them.

Tavi pulled up first, terrified for a second that he was already too near the ground to manage it, but he was able to turn his motion from vertical to horizontal, just above a stretch of open field. Tall weeds and bits of the previous year's bracken scratched and hissed upon his armor, and he looked over his shoulder to see the vord Queen in pursuit, apparently none the slower for the damage wrought upon her flesh.

Crows. He'd been sure the Queen would be worse off than that after tangling with the Canim's pet horrors. Still, it had to have taken something out of her. She wasn't closing the distance on him nearly as quickly as he'd expected her to.

How many times had he been in this position, in front of someone much stronger than he was, knowing that only his wits would keep his skin in one piece. As a child in the Valley, and one who had never learned the knack of fading into the background, it had happened frequently with his playmates. But he had also dealt with thanadents and snow cats - crows, even the bloody sheep had been a great deal larger and stronger than he was, and the flocks' rams had frequently chased him up trees. And all of that before he'd left the Calderon Valley.

He found himself grinning.

Though worry and terror and rage all burned away at his guts, Gaius Octavian was smiling.

This was a game he knew how to play.

He altered his course abruptly, shooting straight up into the air. The Queen came after him, her windstream a howling, cyclonic roar.

It took him only a moment to clear the ritualists' mist, and he climbed out of it to find the sun coming up red on the eastern horizon under a heavily clouded sky, painting the Calderon Valley in the colors of blood. To his right, the Canim cavalry was engaged in wholesale slaughter of the sleeping vord, though Varg and the infantry were loping swiftly toward the vast bank of mist that hid the two Legions. Awakened vord ran amok by the thousands, and the comparatively small Aleran cavalry force was hitting any group of vord who thought they might attack the Canim infantry from the flanks while they marched. The sound of battle and the hollow coughs of medium-sized firecraftings drifted up to him, oddly attenuated by the mist.

The Queen emerged below him after several seconds. The unblackened part of her body sported fresh black-edged acid marks, and her speed seemed to have dropped even more, but her eyes glittered coldly, focused on Tavi and Tavi alone.

Tavi felt the grin spreading wider across his face. "All right. If you want the Calderon Valley so badly, the least I can do is give you the tour."

He poured all his concentration and will into his windstream and shot off to the northwest, toward the thunderstorm-shrouded peak of Garados.