Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

The vordbulk opened its mouth to roar again, just as the arrow angled upward, into the creature’s vast maw. The roar went on for a moment, then there was a flash of light, a whumping sound, and a burst of smoke and little licks of fire that poured from the vordbulk’s mouth. It stopped in its tracks and roared again, this time at a higher pitch, and a veritable fountain of green-brown vord blood spewed from its mouth and fell to the earth in a disgusting miniature waterfall.

“Hngh,” Bernard said. He sagged visibly, his chest heaving in slow, deep breaths, and he leaned against the railing to stay upright. “Guess… Pentius Pluvus… was right.”

“Eh?” Ehren asked, watching the vordbulk with fascination.

Bernard sagged until he sat down on the bench against the outer wall of the tower, behind them. “Pluvus said an explosion is a very different thing when it starts off surrounded by flesh instead of occurring in the open air. Much more devastating. Apparently a crow ate one of our little fire-spheres one day, and a boy tried to knock it out of the air with his sling before it could escape. Normally, one of the little ones we used at first would only singe some feathers if they went off nearby. This time they found feathers and bits two hundred yards away.”

“I see,” Ehren said. “How very… very nauseating.”

The vordbulk let out another distressed cry. It staggered like a drunkard.

“This bow can put an arrow right through a couple of sides of beef,” Bernard said. “I wouldn’t practice on live cows, of course. Cruel.”

“Mmm,” Ehren said faintly.

The vordbulk shook its head. Fluid slewed out and splattered in great, sickening arcs.

“So I shot at the roof of that thing’s mouth,” Bernard said. “I figure the arrow stopped three or four feet past that. Somewhere up in its brain, maybe. Then…” Bernard made an expanding motion with his hands and settled down to watch the vast creature in silence.

The vordbulk gradually listed to one side and fell. It was a motion more akin to a tree’s toppling—to several trees’ toppling—than any animal’s movement. The ground shook when it landed, and dozens of stones were jarred loose from the side of the bluff, to come crashing down among the buildings of the town. Dust and dirt flew twenty feet into the air around the creature. The vordbulk let out one last slow, gasping cry that trailed off from an earsplitting roar to gradual silence.

Ehren turned his eyes to Bernard and just stared at the man.

“Anybody could have done it,” Bernard said wearily.

Wild cheering, faint by contrast, rang up from the city below, and from the reserve positions behind them.

The Count of Calderon closed his eyes and settled back against the wall of the tower, clearly exhausted, and winced as his shoulders moved. “It was a crowbegotten big target.” He opened one eye to squint at the second vordbulk. “Now. If only I had another one of those arrows. And a sphere to match it. And a night’s sleep.” He shook his head. “We’re all just so bloody tired. I don’t know how Cereus keeps going.”

Ehren sat down beside Bernard, frowning up at the second vordbulk. “Count? What are we going to do about that one?”

“Well, Sir Ehren,” Bernard said philosophically. “What do you suggest? My weaponsmith says it will be the day after tomorrow before he has another arrow like that one ready. I could send in the Legions, but they’d just get stomped flat by the hundreds. Our Knights and Citizens are all either on the wall fighting the horde, or they’re already up on the bluff.”

He ran a broad hand back over his short hair. “We can’t bog them down like we did at the last wall, because the whole bluff is a rock shelf, and toying with that could collapse the entire bluff and kill us all, including our refugees. I don’t have any more of those arrows, or the high-grade firestones, or the strength to shoot that bow. Think I tore something. My back is on fire.” He grimaced. “So we hope the Citizens and Lord Cereus can wear it down before it gets here, and I’m forced to ask Doroga and his gargant riders to make a last-ditch attempt, which is likely to get them killed for no good reason.”

“We can’t just sit here.” Ehren protested.

“No?” Bernard asked. “We’ve got nothing left in reserve, Sir Ehren. Nothing has been held back. It’s coming down to old Cereus and the Citizens up on that bluff. If that thing makes it all the way here, this war is over. It’s as simple as that.”

They were both silent for a moment. The cries and calls of battle, and the distant report of furycraftings hurled in vain at the vordbulk wound around them.

“Sometimes, son,” Count Calderon said, “you have to acknowledge that your future is in someone else’s hands.”

“What do we do?” Ehren asked quietly.

“We wait,” Bernard said, “and see.”

High Lady Placida Aria stumbled back as the vord rushed into the hive through the holes in the ceiling, and Isana had to roll rapidly to one side to keep from being trampled upon. The mantis warriors landed and rushed about in short, darting motions for a moment, clearly disoriented.

Aria fell back against the wall with a short cry. Isana’s eyes widened in alarm. Lady Placida’s system had been badly strained by the poison and her injury. Isana had healed the broken bone, and the Blessing of Night had countered the poison, but the High Lady had been utterly exhausted.

“I c-can’t,” she panted, and shook her head. “That last e-earthcrafting… I can’t.”

Isana’s eyes went to Amara, who was in worse shape than Aria was. The Cursor had only just managed to lever herself up to her elbows.

Which meant…

“It’s up to me,” Isana breathed. She fumbled for a proper phrase to express the feelings that realization inspired, and settled upon, “Oh, bloody crows.”

Then she steeled herself, reached for Aria’s belt, and drew the High Lady’s slender dueling sword from its sheath. She turned to face the six vord warriors, bouncing the sword in her right hand a few times, testing its weight and balance. Then she extended her left hand to the pool of water and narrowed her eyes. A bathing tub’s worth of liquid abruptly leapt out of the water and gathered upon her left arm. Isana concentrated on it for a few ferocious seconds, and the water formed into the shape of a round disc several inches thick, resting upon her left forearm. The disc then began to stir and spin in emulation of a current, whirling faster and faster.

The whirling disc pulled on her upper body oddly, but Isana managed to take a few steps to place herself between the vord and the survivors of the assault on the hive, sword and improvised shield in hand.

One of the warriors noticed her and leapt at her with an unsettling hiss, like a teakettle boiling over. Isana saw the scythe-limbs of the mantis sweeping down toward her head and lifted her arm to interpose the watery shield.

The razor-sharp weapons pierced the water easily—and were both flung to Isana’s left with such violence that the entire body of the mantis was hauled several steps in the same direction. Isana swept the long, narrow dueling blade in a nearly vertical slash, and the razor-sharp steel bit into one of the mantis’s legs, laying open a wound more than a foot long. The vord let out a sharp whistle and reeled away.

Three more mantises turned their heads toward Isana and came scuttling forward. Isana saw that she could not simply try to interpose the water shield between herself and every single scythe—but she picked the mantis on the far right, stepping that way, creating an extra fraction of a second in which her target would attack her, but the other two could not. Once again, she raised the whirling shield of water, and once again the mantis’s weapon-limbs were hauled violently to her left, tugging the mantis with it. The creature stumbled into its companions, fouling their attacks, and Isana had time to slash twice at the vord, inflicting two more obviously painful but less-than-fatal wounds.