S Farrell - A Magic of Dawn

“We’ve lost here,” ca’Talin half-shouted to her as they plunged into the press of men. “The Westlanders have this side of the river, all the way north. May Cenzi preserve us for tomorrow.”

Seeing the Tehuantin advancing up the far side of the hill toward them, Brie turned her steed and rode hard down to the sparkwheelers, the horse sending rocks and pebbles cascading down ahead of them.

“Talbot! This way,” she cried. “Bring your people and follow me!” Once she saw Talbot’s acknowledgment, saw him begin to shout orders and shove at the sparkwheelers nearest him, she headed up the slope again until she was on the ridge. The Tehuantin were still ascending the hill, with the obvious intention of flanking the main battle and coming on the Garde Kralji from the side and rear while they were intent on the main assault from along the road. The hill’s summit was flat and mostly treeless; the Westlanders were advancing through a meadow. She’d been seen by them, also; she heard an arrow hiss past her head, and she moved downslope slightly.

Talbot and the sparkwheelers were nearly to the top; she quickly told Talbot what she’d seen. They arranged the lines just below the summit, the sparkwheelers checking their weapons again to make certain they were loaded, and opening the leather pouches they wore that held, Brie had been told, the tiny packets of black sand to reload the weapons. She’d seen the packets; they were hardly impressive-they’d only added to her doubts as to the efficiency of the sparkwheel as a weapon.

But she had no other choice. She had to hope that what Talbot had told her wasn’t an elaborate lie. “All right,” she said. “On my command, we’ll move up to the ridge. Talbot, be ready to fire as soon as you’re there-they have archers, so you’re going to be under attack yourselves.” She saw some of the men blanch at that. “You have the high ground and the advantage. Hit them hard, and the archers will be useless,” she told them, though she didn’t believe that at all. She thought their archers would make a wall of bodies on the summit from the sparkwheelers. “Now-forward!”

Almost grudgingly, the men trudged up to the ridgeline, Brie and Talbot alongside them. She heard the calls in the strange Westlander tongue as they appeared, but Talbot was already shouting out the cadence before the first arrows came. “First line, kneel! First line, fire!”

The racket that ensured made Brie’s horse rear up in terror. White, acrid smoke bloomed along the line, and down the hill… Brie could scarcely believe what she saw: Westlanders went down as if a divine blade had scythed through their ranks. She gave a cry of surprise, almost a laugh. “Second line kneel! Second line, fire!”

Again, the reports from the sparkwheels echoed; again, more Westlanders fell, their bodies tumbling back down the hill or crumpling where they stood. A few arrows were slicing into the sparkwheelers now as well, and she saw three or four of the men go down. “Damn it, stand, you bastardos!” Talbot shouted as the lines wavered and started to dissolve. Brie rode behind them as the line in the rear faltered and tried to break rather than reload their weapons.

“No!” she told them. “Stay and fight, or you’ll face my blade! Stay!”

“Third line, kneel. Third line, fire!” Talbot cried, and this time the volley was a stutter rather than a concerted explosion, but still more Tehuantin were falling. Brie could see the enemy wavering. “Again!” she shouted to Talbot. “Hurry!”

“First line, kneel! First line, fire!” Another stuttering, and some of the men could not fire at all, still clumsily trying to load their pieces with trembling hands. But yet more of the Tehuantin were down and the arrow fire had stopped entirely. Down the hill, injured and dying warriors were screaming in their language, and other painted warriors were shouting in return. “Second line, kneel. Second line, fire!”

Again the sparkwheels gave their roar, and as more warriors fell, the Tehuantin finally broke. The warriors turned and began running back down the hill despite the efforts of their offiziers to hold them, and it was suddenly a panicked retreat. The sparkwheeler corps gave a shout of triumph, and a few, without orders from Talbot, fired their sparkwheels at the retreating backs. At the top of the hill, fists punched the air in triumph.

Brie shouted a huzzah with them, but then she looked behind and the joy died in her throat. Well below, on the road, the Garde Kralji was in full flight. She could see Allesandra’s banner waving and hear the cornets calling retreat. Behind them, the Tehuantin warriors were pursuing: a black wave of them that overspread the road along both hills, a wave that would overwhelm their cadre of sparkwheelers if they stayed. “Talbot!” Brie shouted. “To the Kraljica! We can’t stay here.”

They may have won a small victory in their skirmish, but there would be no greater victory here. She led Talbot and the sparkwheelers down the hill to join the Kraljica in her flight.

Niente had thought that Tototl would chase the Easterners straight back into their city, or even overrun their retreat and slay them here. He might have done exactly that, except one of the High Warriors came gasping back to them raving of a massacre: the group that had been sent to the western flank had been nearly destroyed. Tototl called a halt to the advance, sending only a few squadrons to to pursue the fleeing Easterners. Tototl and Niente had followed the High Warrior around to the far side of the hill. Now Niente was looking up on a terrible carnage on the hillside before him-though he’d seen worse in his long deades of warfare, certainly. He’d witnessed men hacked to pieces, had viewed corpses piled on corpses. But this: there was an eerie quiet here, and the bodies were strangely whole. There was too little blood.

Tototl had leaped down from his horse, going from body to body strewn over the grassy slope. “What magic did this?” he demanded of Niente.

Niente shook his head. “A magic I haven’t seen before,” he said to Tototl.

“Why didn’t you see this?” Tototl raged, and Niente could only continue to shake his head. His hands were trembling. He could smell black sand in the air.

Black sand.

This was no magic… The thought kept coming back to him with the scent. The fact that black sand was not created from the X’in Ka was something Niente had kept from the Tecuhtli and the warriors. He wanted the warriors to believe that black sand was something magical. He hadn’t wanted them to know that anyone could make it if they knew the ingredients, the measures of the formula, and the method of preparation. He and the few nahualli he’d entrusted with the secret kept it so-they all suspected that if the warriors could make black sand themselves, they might decide they had no need of nahualli at all.

This was no magic…

He knew this, but he could not admit it to Tototl.

If Atl is facing this also… Fear ran cold through him, and he nearly reached for the carved bird, nearly spoke the word that would allow him to communicate with his son and warn him. But he would be too late: that battle was undoubtedly also underway. Too late. And while the Easterners had this deadly skill, it still hadn’t made a difference in this battle. They had taken out the flanking troops, but they’d still be routed.

But Tototl was right in one respect: he had not seen this. What would the scrying bowl say now?

“The Easterners have learned a spell they’ve never shown us before,” he told Tototl. The wounded bled from deep, jagged, but nearly circular holes. The dead were the worst-it looked as if they been struck by invisible arrows that had-impossibly-torn through metal-and-bamboo armor to plunge deep into the bodies, sometimes lancing entirely through them. And on the top of the hill, where the surviving warriors had said that the terrible barrage had come from, there were no bodies at all, very few signs of blood, though there were a few Tehuantin arrows on the ground. But the ground wasn’t disturbed as it would have been had they needed to drag away bodies. The Easterners had been able to inflict this damage on them without significant loss of their own.