Margaret Weis - Shadow Raiders

“What happened?” Stephano asked.

“I knew it!” Miri repeated, exultant. “They were carrying too much sail in this wind and snapped a yard on the main topsail. They’ll have to slow down or risk losing the balloon.”

The Silver Raven was still sailing, but the Cloud Hopper was definitely catching up to her. Stephano turned to look back at the battle. The Royal Lion, King Alaric’s pride and joy, fired a broadside at the demon ship.

The demon ship took no damage that Stephano could see. The magical sigils on its hull protected the ship much as Gythe’s sigils protected theirs. The single gun mounted on the prow fired. The green beam swept over the flagship.

The Royal Lion seemed to shudder. Stephano heard a series of cracks and groans. Several small explosions tore through the lower gunports, and then the entire hull on the port side exploded outward. A moment later explosions rocked the starboard side. Flames flared from the quarterdeck and main hatches.

The flames breached the main magazine and ignited the ship’s store of powder. The entire bottom half of the ship disappeared in a blinding flash. The flaming remains of the Royal Lion fell into the Breath and were gone.

“Dear God in Heaven!” Stephano breathed softly. “Not even for you, Hastind, would I have wished such a fate. God have mercy on you all.”

WHEN HE FIRST SAW THE SWARM OF DEMONS flying to the attack, Sir Ander had regretted the fact that his magically reinforced heavy steel breastplate was back in his guest room on the armor stand. Scrambling down the face of the cliff and running along the battlements in the heat of midday, trying to keep up with Father Jacob, Sir Ander no longer regretted the breastplate. He was now starting to regret wearing clothes.

Father Jacob was running across the battlements, shouting at the top of his lungs, “To arms! To arms!”

Guards grabbed their weapons and looked about for the enemy. If the warning had come from anyone except a priest of the Arcanum, the guards might well have shaken their heads and gone back to watching the navy ships harassing merchant vessels.

An officer cried out, “Father, where is the foe?”

Father Jacob did not stop running, but he did slow down. He pointed to the sky above the Bastion.

Sir Ander, who was closing in on the priest, saw the startled look on an officer’s face, saw the man’s jaw drop, his eyes widen. He could imagine what was going through the man’s mind. The officer was about to rush off when Father Jacob grabbed him.

“Tell the… battery… run out… all the guns…” Father Jacob gasped. “All of them!”

The officer nodded. Clapping his hand over the sword that was banging against his leg, he dashed off, shouting commands as he went.

Sir Ander’s duty was to guard the person of Father Jacob, but he did not forget Brother Barnaby the monk’s steps lagged. He stared at the demons. Ander wandered if the fiends were speaking to the monk again. Brother Barnaby saw Ander looking back at him with concern, and he smiled and waved his hand and shouted out, “Tell Father Jacob I’m coming, sir!”

The battlements were divided into four segments, each guarded by a tower manned by twenty soldiers armed with muskets and smaller field artillery. The large batteries were down below-cannons lined up in a long row, each manned by its own crew. Sir Ander had been down to have a look at the batteries when they’d first taken up residence at the Old Fort, and he’d been impressed by the gunnery officers and the men they commanded. The city of Westfirth relied on the shore batteries for its defense; a Freyan attack would undoubtedly come from the Breath, not overland.

A few of the guns had been run out to deal with the merchant vessels. Now they were all being run out. Sir Ander could feel the rumble beneath his feet and picture the activity in the bunker; the gun crews opening the gunports, running out the cannons, swabbing, loading; stacks of cannonballs piled neatly nearby. The demons would find the fortification difficult to attack, for the guns were in a man-made cavern dug out of the side of the cliff, protected by stone, concrete, and magic.

“We should take cover, Father!” Sir Ander yelled, pointing to the guard tower they were fast approaching.

Father Jacob shook his head and kept running. He shouted over his shoulder. “The books!”

Sir Ander understood. The books on contramagic written by the Saints were in Father Jacob’s room in the main part of Old Fort and although they were hidden in a safe place, protected by all manner of magical spells, Father Jacob was not about to risk letting them fall into enemy hands.

Father Jacob stopped at the second tower to give the same orders, which proved unnecessary, for drums were beating and the guards were already in position.

“Can we at least… stop and rest…” Sir Ander gasped, bending over, his hands on his knees to relieve a painful stitch in his side. “And wait for… Barnaby.”

Father Jacob had no breath left to answer and stood for a moment leaning with his hand on the wall. He and Sir Ander watched in silence as the bats swooped past the Old Fort, flying toward the merchants in the harbor. The guards in the tower were thrown into confusion at the sight of the gigantic bats and their demon riders.

Some cried that they were fiends from Hell and that the world was ending. Throwing down their guns, they fell to their knees and began to pray. Others remained grimly at their posts and fired their muskets, but the fastmoving bats were almost impossible to hit.

“They’re human,” said Father Jacob testily. “Tell them they’re human!”

“They won’t believe you,” said Sir Ander. He helped himself to water from a barrel, drinking from the community mug that was attached to the wall by a rope.

He offered the water to Father Jacob, who drank gratefully. “And even if they are human, they have the accursed souls of demons, which is how I will always think of them. So why do these Bottom Dweller demons want the books? Why torture Brother Barnaby and Brother Paul to try to find out where they are?”

“A question I would love to be able to answer,” said Father Jacob. “They obviously know far more about the use and workings of contramagic than the Saints, who barely understood the true nature of their discovery.”

“Perhaps these fiends are afraid we may learn how to combat them through reading these books,” Sir Ander suggested.

Father Jacob gave a grim smile. “The Bottom Dwellers have no need to worry. It will take us years and years of study and experiment to even begin to start to understand contramagic. If the Church had not suppressed it…”

He shook his head in bitter frustration, then smiled to see Brother Barnaby running up to the guard tower. He drank the water Sir Ander offered and stood panting for breath.

Father Jacob walked over to peer out a murder hole. Gunfire was sporadically going off around them. Most of the Bottom Dwellers were still too far out of range for anyone to hit.

“They are concentrating their attack on the naval ships,” said Father Jacob. “Look! There are our friends! That’s the Cloud Hopper! ”

Sir Ander and Barnaby crowded next to him to see.

“They’re coming under attack,” said Sir Ander.

“Poor Gythe!” said Brother Barnaby unhappily. “She will be terrified.”