Michael Stackpole - The New World

Ciras deployed the armor and spikes barely a dozen yards before the conscript line. He squeezed his knees and rode over the first man. His sword flicked right. A bloody geyser spurted into the night, then he was through.

A xonarch towered over him. Ciras had known they were big, but hadn’t appreciated just how big. The creature could have easily grasped the top of the city’s wall and hauled itself over.

Ciras drove in hard, then rose in his stirrups and slashed mightily at the thing’s left ankle. Fur flew and blood flowed. He’d hoped to cut the tendon and hobble it, but he would have had an easier time hewing through oak.

The creature roared furiously and flung a handful of stones. They crushed a dozen of its allies, smearing broken bodies across the ground. By then Ciras had ridden far enough forward for the driver to see him. The driver jerked a lever and the beast swiped a hand at him.

Ducking the blow, Ciras slashed the creature’s palm. The xonarch roared again and sucked on the wound. The driver worked the control rods. The xonarchii stopped midlick, then smashed both fists against the ground. It gathered itself to leap.

Too close. I’m dead.

The tingle of jaedun accompanied an arrow’s flight from the walls. The shaft passed through the beast’s right nostril and burst through the thin bone wall separating sinus from brain. The razored broadhead sliced through nerves and arteries, plunging deep into the brain stem.

The xonarch ’s left arm and leg collapsed. It mewed, stricken, crashing on its left side. The impact bounced the swordsman and his mount into the air. The right arm clawed weakly at Ciras but missed. Then the only visible eye fluttered and rolled up in the broad, bony head.

He landed astride his mount in the gap between its arms and thighs. The war mask’s visage concealed his surprise. He brought his mount past, thinking to cut around the body and deal with the driver, but he never got the chance.

The ground opened beneath him.

Ciras rode a dirt-and-grass avalanche into a breached tunnel. Four yards down, the mount found its feet. It kicked at dirt-covered men. In response to Ciras’ commands, it started scrambling back to the surface. Ciras clung to it, but a flying stone struck him full in the chest. It glanced off his breastplate with enough force to somersault him backward, casting him again into the darkness.

He landed on one knee, somehow retaining the vanyesh blade. He rose and placed his back against a tunnel wall. Surprise pulsed through him, chased by fear. Many men emerged from both sides of the darkened tunnel. They all brandished swords, their lethal silhouettes intent on his death.

Ciras invoked jaedun. What he saw and heard took on secondary importance. He concentrated on what he felt. He parried. His blade came around and up, then thrust through a throat. He pulled back, and slashed left. The vanyesh blade clanged off a battle mask, then chopped down. Blood splashed black and hot. Shift left, parry with a hip and twist, letting another thrust pass wide of his ribs. Slash up through an armpit. A limb drops, a scream echoes.

The battle shifted. Close quarters had favored his foes initially. Quickly, however, fear constricted the battlefield, dictating their movements. Their desire to elude death just made them easier to kill.

One man lunged from the darkness. Ciras sensed him only as a point of fury in that sea of fear. Ciras parried the thrust, then riposted. His blade arced up and around, slashing at the man’s head.

His opponent ducked, whipped his other hand around. His blade’s wooden scabbard cracked against Ciras’ knee.

Pain exploded and the swordsman danced back, eluding another slash. Ciras gingerly planted his right foot. More pain, but his knee held. Then something grabbed his ankle. A dying man, blind and desperate, curled himself around Ciras’ leg.

I am rooted in place like an oak! A vision flashed before his eyes. His feet extended roots into the earth. His limbs stiffened like branches. His skin became bark.

Then came the killing stroke. It passed beneath Ciras’ left elbow, aimed at his waist. Sliding below the breastplate, the blade sliced cleanly through armor lacings and his robe.

It will open me cleanly. My guts will pour out in one steaming mass.

He prepared himself for the sting, for the gush and flow, but it never happened.

The cut splintered flesh and caught firmly in the wood beneath.

Ciras’ blade fell, driven by the weight of an oaken limb. It drove the man to his knees, crushing his shoulder. He looked up, disbelief in his eyes. Ciras hit him again, scattering his brains, then slashed down and rid himself of the man hugging his leg.

Three thumps heralded the arrival of gyanrigot reinforcements. One killing machine began working its way south, while the other two charged into the tunnel’s north end. Men screamed, and the machines clanked. Both sets of sounds grew distant quickly.

Alone save for the dead, Ciras probed the wound at his left hip. His glove came away darkly stained, but he smelled no blood.

And those pale flecks…they are splinters. Oak splinters.

He wiped the glove against his thigh, then scrambled out of the tunnel. His mount awaited him, standing stock-still behind the breastwork of the xonarch ’s body. Ciras pulled himself into the saddle and guided the mount around the hole.

He hadn’t been underground for that long, but already the invaders were in full retreat. The ram burned fifty yards shy of the gate, and one of the towers had fallen over-also the victim of a collapsed tunnel. The other tower still stood tall, abandoned on the road.

The Voraxani had regrouped and were heading back. Vlay Laedhze hailed him heartily. The man’s right arm hung limp, transfixed by a pair of arrows. Most of the Voraxani had made it back, with a few worse for the fight, but most just spattered with the blood of others.

Once through the sally port and safe again, Ciras studied his stained glove. What happened? He understood the magic of the sword, he could invoke it as needed but this was something else, something strange.

He did not like it.

If magic can make me invulnerable, how then am I different from war machines that cannot be destroyed?

26th day, Month of the Eagle, Year of the Rat

Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th Year since the Cataclysm

Anturasikun, Moriande

Nalenyr

Keles practically lived on tzaden — flower tea. His hands had recovered significantly, and he practiced each day at drawing maps. His lines became strong, even bold. While nothing he drew created a physical change in the world, the clarity of his charts heartened Moriande’s defenders. Word had gone out that Prince Cyron was using Anturasi maps.

Keles spent much of his time in Qiro’s observatory atop Anturasikun. To the south, beyond the battlefield, lay the hills where Nelesquin’s troops waited. Those hills had not actually been quite so close-at least he did not remember their being so close-but their location matched the available charts.

Remembering how Qiro’s perception of a map might have transformed it, Keles had sketched out a new map that pushed the hills back to where he remembered them. He made a show of taking as many measurements as he could-scaling the map precisely-then had his cousins copy the map again and again. He wanted them to believe it was accurate, too.

But in drawing the hills, Keles had met resistance. His hand didn’t want to move forward. Something inside him screamed that what he was doing was wrong. The voice sounded like Qiro, which steeled his resolve to continue.

It also left him uneasy.

His grandfather was out there. He sensed Qiro strongly, but Keles could not connect with him. Something else was blocking him. Keles felt another presence-someone who was bending Qiro’s will to his own. If Nelesquin could do that, it would be impossible for Moriande to stand against him.