S Farrell - A Magic of Dawn

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, Hirzgin, if that’s your worry. No flaunting of ‘Cenzi’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 Scath 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 teni 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 Starkkapitan ca’Damont’s command just to the north, and with Hirzg 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 Scath 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.