Paul Kidd - The Council of Blades

"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!"

Still somehow surviving, the scout commander heard the firebird's mocking cry. His hippogriff now shared its rider's ragged breathing and red-rimmed eyes. A dozen fellow air cavalry panted through the air, wildly searching for diving enemies.

Nothing attacked; there was nothing but the braying, hooting firebird whizzing off toward the city gates. The portcullis had been lowered almost to the ground-and the scout leader instantly sensed his victory.

"Dive right for its tail! It'll pull up before it hits the wall. Follow behind and kill it as it pulls up to fly across!"

They had speed on the bird; speed and height. A deadly dive, a flash of spears, and vengeance would be theirs. With a trilling whoop, twelve hippogriff cavalry made sharp wing-overs and sped toward the ground.

Tekoriikii blurred his silly, stubby wings, dragging his brilliant tail across the sky. He sped scarcely a wingtip's length above the ground toward a gateway now fixed at only two feet tall. No airborne creature could possibly make the gap. The hippogriffs hurtled themselves into greater speed, long wings whipping up and down as they outstretched their deadly claws.

"Tek Tek-a-tek Tekorii-kii-kii!"

As the scout leader goggled, a small sally port opened in the portcullis. The bird folded flat its wings and shot like an arrow through the little door, which instantly slammed shut in its wake.

Hippogriff riders, moving too fast to break off their manic dives, hauled at their reins and screamed. Men collided with each other, plowed into the moat, or crashed straight into the gatehouse walls. Screaming like a frightened maid, the scout leader somehow laid his hippogriff on its side; man and mount slammed into the hard-packed road and slithered on their flanks, screaming in fear as the jagged portcullis spines ripped past-a hairsbreadth overhead.

They hit a garbage barrel, showering themselves with refuse until they came to rest buried in a pile of dung. Flapping weakly in shock and pain, the scout leader and his battle steed could do nothing but collapse as a brilliant orange figure fluttered to rest at their side.

"Glub glub!"

Tekoriikii made to sing a song of triumph over his vanquished foes, but to his extreme annoyance, both man and hippogriff screamed in fright and fainted clean away. Sniffing in injured pride, the bird scraped dust over his victims with his claws, fluffed up his tail feathers, and strutted off toward the battlefield.

From his vantage point behind the lines, Svarezi slammed his perspective glass shut. His sorcerers streamed in panic from the field, hounded by monsters summoned by enemy magicians; his entire corps of mages had been destroyed by a peasant militia crammed into wagons.

Svarezi's brooding silence was terrible to behold. He watched the enemy war wagons halting to allow their infantry to close the gaps between the vehicles and slowly begin trundling onward toward his own battle lines.

Behind him, an officer stilled his own pure silver warhorse with a pat of one armored hand.

"We disabled almost ten of them, sire."

"Ten." Svarezi's voice remained utterly without tone. "I see."

"Rock to mud spells proved fairly effective."

Svarezi swung himself up into his hippogriff's saddle, stilling the creature's brooding backward glance with a scowl. He wrapped the reins about one wrist.

"They have demolished a sorcery corps which cost almost three hundred thousand ducats to amass-and all for the cost of ten wagons bogged in the mud." Svarezi kept his cold, professional stare locked on the advancing attack. "We shall make an all-arms assault at the center of their line. Use one third of the army and match them one-to-one. Once the Lomatran forces are committed, I will personally lead the reserves on a drive to the city gates.

"The Sun Cannon will wait until we have descended the hill slopes out of line of sight, and then have it blow their wagons clean away."

Svarezi raised one black, mailed fist, then dropped his open hand to point straight at the valley floor. Behind him twenty thousand densely packed infantry, demilancers, and knights surged toward Lomatra like a vast, organic wall.

"Here they come! I think we've jerked their chains." Miliana had been sitting perched on the upper turret hatch of her war-turtle, watching Tekoriikii's antics overhead. Her reverie came to a dramatic end as catapults began firing from the ridges overhead. "Stir up the horses, and let's get moving!"

She slammed shut the hatch, flicked mistletoe onto Lorenzo's back, and heard a muffled sound of voices from outside as militia packed themselves tight behind the war-turtle's hull. The surviving vehicles scuttled on across the ground like deadly crabs, thickening out a line of the Lomatran alliance's best infantry.

Safely inside the armored hull, Miliana frowned, crammed her eyes against her periscopes, and gave a sudden curse.

"Lorenzo-you know how I said we were outnumbered about three to one?"

"What?" Lorenzo peered through his driving slits, steering the huge vehicle by a series of cranks and ratchets. "Yes?"

"I lied. There's ten to one odds out there, or I'm a garden gnome!"

"It doesn't matter!" Lorenzo let his vision slit clank shut, the hull outside rattling to a sudden rain of arrow fire. "Is Tekoriikii clear?"

"What?"

"Did Tekoriikii get rid of all their air cavalry?"

"Yes!" Miliana had to shout above the awful clatter of hooves, springal winches, and catapult wheels inside the belly of the wagon. "When should he make his run?"

"Not until all their troops have moved away from the artillery!" Lorenzo swung the war-turtle to the left, where it jounced over the ruins of a warrior-priest of Tempus's portable battle shrine. "All we need to do is get that bird to the Sun Cannon, and we can retire behind the city walls."

Suddenly the entire universe lit brighter than a bomb; searing white light glared in through the vision slits, burning paint and scorching skin that fell beneath the beams. The war-turtle shuddered as a shock wave trembled through the ground.

Wide-eyed as an owl, Miliana gazed down at Lorenzo in shock.

"What in the name of Talos's tongue was that?"

Crew commanders flung open their hatches to stare. In the center of the alliance battle line, a smoking crater still glowed with molten lava at the rims. A scorched debris of pikes and polearms showed the fate of a company of infantry.

The surrounding regiments were milling in disarray; men who had been gazing in the direction of the blast were blinded by the dazzle. Lorenzo stuck his head out into the open air, stared at the blazing destruction, and gave a bitter curse.

"Miliana! Signal the other war-turtles!"

"Was that the Sun Cannon?" The girl still seemed frozen in utter disbelief. "Was it? Was that the Sun Cannon?"

"Yes, it was the damned Sun Cannon!" Lorenzo abandoned his horses and crawled across the crossbowmen's firing platform to reach the rear of the vehicle. "Miliana! Signal the turtles to make smoke! We're abandoning the infantry!"

"Abandoning them?" The princess wrenched herself around, tangling skirts and frilly knickers as she tried to find the artist as he crawled under her. "We can't leave them all alone!"

"We have to!" A fuse sparked off a pot filled with a sulphurous black brew. "The Sun Cannon can't shoot at what it can't see! We'll leave the infantry in the smoke screen, and the turtles will draw its fire." Lorenzo set his smudge pot spewing dense clouds of smoke behind the tank and crawled clumsily over the backs of his draft horses. "The turtles will punch through the center of their battle line and head for their reserves."

"Lorenzo-we can't leave the infantry all alone against those… hordes!"

Lorenzo slipped into his seat, flipped open his vision flaps, and wrenched the vehicle over to one side.