Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

It swept over the battlefield, a globe of white daylight several hundred yards across. It zipped over countless mantis warriors, and at one point blew entirely through the torso of a vordknight that had flown down to intercept it, not even slowing down.

“Bad idea,” Gram said, shaking his head, “getting in Phyllis’s way like that.”

“Phyllis?” Bernard asked.

“Keep those teeth together, Calderon,” Gram said testily. “Named her for my first wife. Hotter than any torch, couldn’t sit still, and you didn’t want to get in her way, either.”

Amara smiled at the exchange and tracked Phyllis’s progress—and within moments, she spotted the oncoming special units, exactly where Invidia had said they would be.

“Bloody blighted crows,” Gram breathed, as if barely able to summon enough wind to speak.

Amara understood the feeling.

The oncoming vord were huge.

They weren’t huge on the same order as a gargant. They were huge on the same order as buildings . There were half a dozen of them, each the size of three or four of the largest merchant ships. They moved on four legs, each thicker than the trunk of any tree Amara had ever seen. Their vaguely triangular heads ended in a jagged, black chitin beak that rather reminded her of that of an octopus, except large enough to hold three or four hogshead barrels. The creatures had no eyes that she could see, and their beaks simply seemed to flow up into their skulls, and from there into enormous arching fans of the same material, spreading around the titans’ heads like shields. Every stride carried them a good twenty feet, and though they looked ponderous, their pace was, like a gargant’s, swifter than one would expect. Dozens of mantis warriors could run beneath them at a time, and though a mantis could run faster than some horses, they passed the enormous bulks of moving black chitin only slowly.

A word from Gram halted Phyllis above the nearest bulk, and everyone on the walls who could be spared from fighting could only stare. Centurion Giraldi stepped up to the battlements beside Bernard and Gram. He stared at the bulks for a moment, and breathed, “Sir? I’d like a bigger wall now.”

In the same instant, all six of the bulks raised their opened maws and let out basso bellows. They did not sound loud, precisely, but the sound shook the wall and Amara’s bones with unnerving intensity.

The mules loosed another volley, which landed all around the leading bulk, exploding into fiery destruction. The great beast did not react. It just kept coming on, as vast and unstoppable as a glacier. As the bulks passed through the fires, Amara saw vord behemoths and mantises crouched upon their glossy, armored backs, as tiny as parasite-birds on the backs of gargants.

Amara could see the idea behind the creatures at once. They would roll forward and smash through the wall like so much rotten fencing. Anyone that attacked them would be forced to deal with the defenders riding upon them.

Amara started as a sudden presence intruded close upon her, but looked over to find that Doroga had arrived and made his way to them on the wall. The slab-shouldered Marat looked calm and interested as his eyes traveled along the walls, through the skies, then down to the field out in front of them. He, too, stared at the bulks for a slow count to seven before pursing his lips, and saying, “Hungh.” After a moment, he added, “Big.”

“Bloody crows,” Gram said. “Bloody crows. Bloody crows.”

“We got a problem, Count,” Giraldi said.

“Bloody crows.”

Bernard nodded. “Possibly.”

“Bloody crows,” said Gram. “ Blighted bloody crows.”

Giraldi’s hand was resting on his sword. “I’d say get some archers and go for the eyes. But they ain’t got any eyes.”

“Mmmm,” Bernard said.

“Bloody crows,” said Gram.

“Sir?” the centurion asked. “What do we do?”

“We be quiet for a moment, so that I can think,” Bernard said. He stared at the oncoming bulks. They were bellowing almost constantly, and signs of panic had begun to spread along the wall. A nervous gargant, somewhere nearby, let out its own coughing roar, and Bernard glanced over his shoulder in irritation—and then his eyes locked onto Doroga. They narrowed once, and the wolfish smile reappeared.

“We don’t go for the eyes, centurion,” Bernard said. “We go for their feet .”

Doroga looked at Bernard, then barked out a harsh laugh, one that sounded rather remarkably like the one that the gargant, probably Walker, had just loosed.

Amara looked at Doroga, blinking, and suddenly understood. Years before, during the first vord invasion in this very valley, they had spoken with Doroga after a battle, while the Marat took care of his gargant’s enormous padded paws:

“Feet,” the Marat had rumbled. “Always got to help him take care of his feet. Feet are important when you are as big as Walker.”

It made sense. Those creatures, whatever they were, had to be of fantastic weight—all of it settling upon four relatively small feet. Something that large could not easily manage its own mass, Amara was sure. A crippled foot might prevent the beast from moving at all.

Of course, the thousands of mantises running in a living river around and sometimes upon those feet could make it a bit difficult to reach the target. One of the High Lords might make short work of it, but they were mostly engaged above, and the Legion firecrafters had already exhausted themselves.

Of course… one didn’t really need to hurt the bulks. They only needed to stop them, before they breached the wall and left gaps into which the vord swarm would pour, running down the retreating Legions before they could reach Garrison.

“Bernard,” Amara said, her own voice thready. “Riva.”

“Hah,” Bernard said. He turned to Giraldi. “Centurion, signal arrows. One: Lord Riva to report to me. Two: General call for engineers at this location.”

Signal arrows were bright enough to be seen for miles. The message would get to Riva within a moment. It would take him little longer to fly back to the front, but Amara was not sure how much time they actually had .

It seemed to take forever, and the bulks pressed ever closer. The mantises seemed to go mad with eagerness as they did, as if the bulks were pushing out some kind of psychic bow wave. One breach appeared atop the wall, and another, and Bernard dispatched reserves to reinforce the weakened areas.

There was the roar of a nearby windstream, and Riva, dressed in trousers and a loose, unbuttoned shirt, his hair a wildly tossed mess, looked blearily around the wall. He spotted Bernard and moved to him, lifting his fist in a salute and glancing out at the bulks as he did. He froze. “Bloody crows.”

“Bloody crows,” agreed Gram.

“We need water,” Bernard said to Riva. “My lord, we need to water that ground, and we need to do it now.”

Riva opened and closed his mouth a few times, then seemed to shake himself. “Oh, of course. Bog them down. We’d need a river to do it in time.”

“The Rillwater,” Bernard said. “It isn’t far from here. Maybe a quarter mile southwest.”

Riva lifted his eyebrows and nodded. “Possible, perhaps. Engineers?”

“Assembled below.”

“Aye, aye,” Riva mused. “Just like irrigating a field. Only more so. Ex cuse me.”

Riva leapt from the wall to the courtyard below, braking his fall with windcrafting, and turned to the engineers. He began issuing rapid orders. The men gathered in ranks and knelt to place their bare hands against the earth. Riva, at the front of the group, did the same, and several hundred experienced engineers, led by Riva, began to make the earth quiver.