Terry Simpson - Etchings of Power

“Archers! Light!” Guthrie’s voice boomed, silencing the shift of cold feet, the clink of armor, and the restless murmurs of men and women.

All across the lines, archers dipped arrowheads into fires. The ones who needed to move did so quickly and efficiently, rejoining their rank with practiced smoothness.

Galiana opened her Matersense. All around her, she felt Ashishin do the same. They seized essences of fire from the Streams and essences of air from the Flows. The orange flames at the tip of the arrows bloomed into phosphorescent spheres, sealed off and fed by air. Shadows fled before the luminescence.

“Archers! Ready!”

Longbows arched into the air as bowstrings drew taut. The creak of wood stretching whispered along the archer lines. Flames illuminated faces strained in concentration.

“Loose!”

The twang of several thousand bows reverberated through the air. Burning arrows streaked high, illuminating the heavens with its multitude of thunderclouds boiling in a dark stew. The shafts sailed over oil-filled moats, the chasm of palisades and spiked barriers between Eldanhill and the Sendethi army, and down.

Galiana focused on the army, picking out movement among the cavalry. She squinted and brought her looking glass to her eye.

Hooded men stepped forward from around the Golden Tide banners. Hands raised in the air, they moved up in front the Sendethi horse.

“Ashishin!” Galiana yelled. “Shield those arrows. Now!”

A nimbus glowed around the men and women as they quickly linked for the undertaking. A dome rose up in the air above the arrows.

Thunderless lightning cracked across the sky. The bloated clouds tore open, and icy rain fell in a silvery sheet. At the same time, the wind picked up into swirling eddies, buffeting cloaks and spilling hair about the faces of those who went helmetless.

Just as sudden as it began, the storm cut off as the barrier closed above Eldanhill’s forces. The tempest, Forged by the Barsonian Matii, battered against the shield created by the Ashishin. Lightning lanced across its surface, and water flowed off, revealing the shape of the immense oval dome in streaming rivulets.

The shield held. Galiana smirked.

The fire arrows landed with a whoosh.

Flames roared up where the arrows struck oil and tar, racing across the ground in every direction until a curtain of fire, a few thousand feet thick, separated southern Eldanhill from the Sendethi forces. Heat shimmered and swelled to devour the cold that dominated only moments ago. The essences worked into the blaze gobbled up the Mater in the air, and an inferno bloomed, white-hot and eerily quiet. Eldanhill’s army cheered.

Guthrie and the others wasted no time. Orders barked out in quick succession, and their cohorts split.

“Ashishin Berg, Maurer, Jung, and Finkel,” Galiana yelled, voice carrying over the march of the departing soldiers. “Choose five more to feed the fire and maintain the barrier.” She waited as they complied. When they were ready, she nodded her approval of their choices. “The rest of you with me.” She shook her reins and headed toward Eldanhill’s west side.

As she moved, she heard someone yelling and pointing. Why was the town lit up to the west? A sinking feeling grew in the pit of her stomach.

Screams echoed from the same direction. Above those cries came frantic orders. Those on mounts gathered in formation and charged. The infantry quickened their march toward what Galiana knew now to be flames. Eldanhill’s western flank was under attack.

Slapping her reins harder, she broke into a gallop. Rain and biting wind lashed her as she left the protection of the shield. Coupled with the icy water and howling gale, the fear crawling through her stomach chilled her to the bone. She huddled in her saddle, cloak streaming behind her as her dartan dashed headlong along the slick road. Behind her, the remaining Ashishin followed toward the new threat.

Lightning continued to flicker angrily across the sky, but this time thunder bellowed its response. Galiana ignored the tempest, knowing the Barsonian Matii couldn’t be controlling this portion of the storm. Unless they were stronger than she thought. But the elements within the weather brewing above them now was natural and not a Forging. The change was subtle, like the difference between the smoothness of wet clay and grainy texture of mud, but it was there.

She turned off the Eldan Road onto Market Row and kept pushing west. Small houses along tight alleys huddled against the streets in this section of Eldanhill. Sewage and debris spilled onto the lanes from swollen drains, clouding the air with their stench. Along with the icy sheets the freezing rain had created, this made the going much more treacherous. The occasional gust that found its way down the alleys whipped anything not heavy enough into the air.

The trip all seemed to be taking too long. Ahead, the glow from the fires increased. The cacophony of battle rose on the wind-steel clashing against steel, screams of terror, groans of the wounded, and the ripped cries and gurgles of the dying.

Above those sounds rose something terrible.

Inhuman wails, howls and shrieks that scraped along Galiana’s skin. Despite the cold and the rain, sweat beaded her forehead. She knew those sounds. Hundreds of years spent from one battle to another had etched them into her mind, into her core. They were a part of her as surely as her thoughts.

Shadelings.

She burst from an alley out onto the main avenue of the sparsely housed western outskirts of Eldanhill. And into a scene from a nightmare.

Dead bodies littered the cobbles. Blood colored the water runoff, painted the street red, and pooled in any dip or crack, its cloying scent hanging in the air, adding to the stench of shadelings.

Highlighted against the backdrop of burning homes, wraithwolves and darkwraiths fought soldiers and civilians alike. Black blades or claws and fangs ripped into the unprepared and untrained civilians with ease. Desperate townsfolk preferred to run into the blazes of their homes, creating their own funeral pyres, rather than die to the shadelings.

Dagodin fought in small groups to stave off the attackers, boots splashing through bloody pools. Advancing among the shadelings were Sendethi soldiers, mounted and on foot, laying about them with shields and swords. With every kill, the wraithwolves put their cavernous maws to the storming sky and howled.

At first, Eldanhill’s soldiers faltered. On many a face, Galiana saw fear, the kind of raw fear that paralyzes a man.

But Stefan, Guthrie, Devan and many others had seen this sort of battle before. Undaunted, Stefan barked orders and his Generals obeyed.

Dagodin formed ranks among the chaos. Sword and spear gathered in ordered lines. Galiana recognized several of Eldanhill’s Weaponmasters at the forefront of each group and behind them, several rows of archers. Guthrie shouted an order and arrows loosed, struck true and made pincushions of shadeling and Sendethi alike. Pained howls and shrieks ensued.

The response of Eldanhill’s defenders stemmed the tide of the battle for the moment. The advancing army paused.

Wraithwolves and darkwraiths by the hundreds turned to the new threat. Green eyes glowed above elongated snouts and red eyes shone from within the black depths of smoky darkwraith hoods. How could there be so many? She and Stefan had made preparations, assuming but hoping against hope the shadelings hadn’t crossed the Vallum. But now, the proof lay before her, the stench from the wraithwolves holding dominion over the smell of burnt wood, cooked flesh, offal and blood. The shrieks, howls and wails from the shadelings drowned out the crackle of the blazes, the clash of weapons, the marching feet, and the cries and moans of the wounded and dying.