Jim Butcher - Cursors's Fury

Tavi could only imagine what was happening now, behind him and up on the walls and in the skies over the Elinarch. Thirty Knights, all together, raised a far-viewing crafting of the kind normally used to observe objects at distance. Instead of forming only between their own hands, however, this crafting was massive, all their furies working in tandem to form a disk-shaped crafting a quarter of a mile across, directly above the wall where they stood. It gathered in all of that sudden sunlight, shaping it, focusing it into a fiery stream of energy only a few inches across that bore down directly upon Max.

Tavi heard Max bellow, and his mind’s eye provided him with another image-Max, raising up his own far-view crafting in a series of individual disks that curved and bent that light to flash down the length of the bridge’s slope.

To shape it into a weapon. Precisely as Tavi had used his bit of curved Romanic glass to start a fire, only… larger.

The searing point of sunlight flashed across the bridge, and where it touched, raiders and ritualists screamed as skin blackened and clothing and fur instantly burst into flame. Tavi glanced over his shoulder, and saw Max on the wall, arms lifted high, his expression one of strain-and rage. He cried out and that terrible light began sweeping over the Canim, felling them as a scythe fells wheat. A horrible stench-and an cacophony of infinitely hideous shrieks-filled the air.

Back and forth flicked the light, deadly, precise, and there was nowhere for the Canim to hide. Dozens died with every single one of Tavi’s labored heartbeats-and suddenly the tide of battle began to change. The rift in the clouds widened, more light poured down, and Tavi thought he could see the shadow of a single person high in the air, at the center of the clear area of sky.

And, as the Canim attack came to a shocked halt, Tavi saw Sari again, not twenty feet away. The ritualist stared upward for a second, then whirled to see his army dying, burned to death before his very eyes. He whirled around, naked terror on his face, as his final assault became a desperate rout. The panicked raiders ran for their lives, trampled their fellows, and threw themselves from the bridge in their effort to avoid the horrible, unexpected Aleran sorcery. Those nearest the next wall managed to scramble through it in time.

The rest died. They died by fire, at the hands of their comrades, or in the jaws of the hungry sea-beasts in the river below. By the hundreds, by the thousands, they died.

In seconds, only those Canim nearest the Aleran shieldwall, and therefore too close to the Alerans to be targeted, were still alive. Those who attempted to flee were cut down by Antillar Maximus’s deadly sunbeam. The rest, almost entirely ritualists, flew into an even greater frenzy born of their despair and the death they knew had come for them.

Tavi grimly dodged the wild backswing of a fangstaff, and when he looked back at Sari, he saw the Cane staring at him-then up at the sky overhead.

Sari’s eyes turned calculating, burning with rage and madness, and then he suddenly howled, body arching up precisely as it had the day before.

Sari had to know that his life was over, and Tavi knew that Sari had plenty of time to call down the lightning once more-and Tavi was surrounded by his fellow Alerans. Though the blast would be meant for him, anyone near him would die as well, just as they had when Sari’s lightning struck Captain Cyril’s command tent.

He’d given Lady Antillus’s bloodstone to Crassus, so Tavi made the only choice he could.

He sprinted forward, out of the wall, and charged Sari.

Once more the power crackled in the air. Once more, lights blazed along the ritualist’s body. Once more the scarlet lightning filtered through the clouds all around the single shaft of clear blue sky Crassus had opened.

Once more blinding, white light and thunderous noise hammered down upon Tavi.

And once more it did nothing.

Chips of hot stone flew up from the bridge. A ritualist, accidentally standing too close, was charred to smoking meat. But Tavi never slowed. He crossed the remaining space in a single leap, sword raised.

Sari had a single instant in which he stared at Tavi, eyes wide with shock. He fumbled for a defensive grip on his fangstaff.

Before he could get it, Tavi rammed his sword into Sari’s throat. He stared at the Cane’s startled eyes for a single second-then he twisted the blade, jerking it free, ripping wide the ritualist’s throat.

Blood sheeted down over Sari’s scarlet armor, and he sank limply to the bridge, to die with a surprised look still on his face. There was a horrified cry from the ritualists as their master fell. “Battlecrows! “ Tavi howled, signaling them forward with his sword. “Take them!”

The Battlecrows charged the Canim with a roar.

And a moment later, the Battle of the Elinarch was over.

Max came running up to Tavi after the last of the ritualists had been slain. The maddened Canim had neither given nor asked for quarter, which Tavi supposed was just as well. He wasn’t at all sure that he could have restrained his le-gionares after the losses they’d suffered.

“Calderon,” Max demanded. “He tried the lightning on you. Again .” Max was sweating from the effort of his crafting and looked pale. “How the crows did you survive it?”

Tavi reached to his belt and drew the Canim knife they’d captured while engaging the raiding parties the day before the battle. He held up the skull-shaped pommel. A bloodstone glimmered wetly in one of the eyes. Wet, red blood dribbled down from the jewel and over the handle. “We had another gem, remember?”

“Oh,” Max said. “Right.” He frowned. “So how come you can hear me?”

“Opened my mouth and had some lining in my helmet,” Tavi said. “Foss said it made a difference. Something about air pressure.”

Max scowled at Tavi, and said, “Gave me a heart attack. Thought you were dead, and you just had another gem the whole time.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t you just give that one to Crassus?”

“Wasn’t sure it would work,” Tavi said. “I knew the one I gave him would. He was more important than me for this.”

The young Knight in question descended wearily from the sky and landed on the bridge to the cheers of the Knights Pisces. Crassus walked slowly over to Tavi and saluted. “Sir.”

“Well done, Tribune,” Tavi said, his voice warm. “Well done.”

Crassus smiled a bit, and Max clapped him roughly on the shoulder. “Not bad.”

Ehren, still bearing the standard, also offered his congratulations, though Kitai only gave Crassus a speculative glance.

Tavi looked around him, struggling to order his thoughts. It was more difficult than he had thought it would be. Too many emotions were rushing back and forth through him. Elation that his plan had succeeded. Crushing guilt, that so many had died for that success. Fury at the Canim, at Kalarus, at the treacherous Lady Antillus, and fury, too, for Sari and his like, whose lust for power had killed so many Alerans and Canim alike. Sickness, nauseous sickness at the sight and scent of so much blood, so many corpses, cut down with steel or charred by the savage sunfire he’d had his Knights unleash on the enemy. Giddiness that he had, against difficult odds, survived the past several days. And… realization.

His work was not yet done.

“All right,” he said, raising his voice. “Schultz, get the wounded to the healers and fall back to the wall. Tell the First Spear I want him to consolidate units with too many losses into functioning cohorts and take up defensive positions until we’re sure the enemy has withdrawn from the town and is on his way back to Founderport. Get everyone a meal, some rest, especially the healers, and tell him…” Tavi paused, took a breath, and shook his head. “He’ll know what to do. Tell him to shore up defenses and see to our people.”