Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

Amara shook her head. She’d been trapped without shelter in a furystorm that had called up windmanes once before—and the deadly, wild wind furies had nearly torn her to pieces. Gaius Attis was creating hundreds more of the creatures with the cyclones he was harnessing, and they would haunt the region for decades, if not centuries to come, posing a threat to holders, cattle, wildlife—

Amara forced herself to abandon that line of thought. In this respect, at least, she thought Aquitaine was quite right—if the vord weren’t stopped, here, now, there wouldn’t be any holders. Or cattle. Or wildlife.

We aren’t just fighting for ourselves, she thought. We’re fighting for everything that lives and grows in our world. If we do not throw down the vord, nothing of what we know will remain. We will simply cease to be—and no one will be left to remember us.

Except, she supposed, for the vord.

Amara clenched her hands hard and restrained herself from calling upon Cirrus and flinging her own skills into the battle being fought below.

“Countess?” called Veradis in a shaking voice.

Amara looked around until she spotted the younger woman, hovering several yards farther south and slightly lower than Amara was. She altered her windstream until she had maneuvered into position beside the Ceresian Citizen. “What is it?”

Veradis pointed wordlessly at the causeway leading up from the southwest.

Amara frowned and focused Cirrus upon the task of bringing the road into clearer visibility. At first, in the dim light of the weak moon, she could see nothing. But then flickers of light farther down the road drew her attention, and she found herself staring at…

At a moving mass, on the road. That was all she could be certain of. It was different from the stream of still-coming vord warrior forms in that there was no gleam of wan light on vord armor, no regular, seething mass of creatures moving as many bodies under the control of a single mind. There were flickers of light moving amidst that body, irregular in shape, spacing, and color, or she wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all.

Amara concentrated, murmuring to Cirrus to draw the distant road even closer in her sight. It was difficult to do so while maintaining her windstream, but the far road sprang into focus after a moment of effort and showed Amara the last thing that she had been expecting in the vord’s train.

Furies.

The road was filled with manifest furies. Thousands, tens of thousands, of them.

The variety of the furies in sight was dizzying. Earth furies showed themselves as hummocks of stone in the road, rumbling along through the earth. Some were vaguely shaped like animals, but most were not. The largest of them pushed the entire causeway up into a single hummock as they cruised forward, moving as fast as a running horse. Wood furies bounded along the causeway, their shapes never quite matching that of any single animal or creature, but blending the traits of many—others, invisible in the trees and plants at either side of the road, could only be seen as a ripple of forward motion amidst the living things. Water furies bounded or slithered forward, some shaped like great serpents or frogs, while others were simply amorphous shapes of pure water, held together by the will of the fury inhabiting it. Fire furies rushed among them, mostly in the form of predator animals, though others were flickering forms of fire, changing from one instant to the next—it was they whose light Amara had seen. And from three to twenty feet above the surface of the road rushed a horde of wind furies. They were mostly windmanes, though Amara could see far larger wispy shapes ghosting among them, the largest in the form of a truly enormous shark that cruised through the air as if it were the sea.

So many furies. Amara felt slightly dizzied.

She dimly noted forms moving along the outer edges of the road, or flying slightly above it—captured Alerans. She realized, after a moment’s thought, that they were herding the furies below, using furycraft of their own to keep the mass of furies moving along the causeway. The driven furies were not pleased about it either. Their aggressive anger was something that Amara could practically feel pressing against her teeth.

But if they were doing that it meant…

“Bloody crows,” Amara swore. “Those are feral furies.”

Veradis stared at her with wide eyes, her face pale. “All of them? Th-that’s impossible.”

But it wasn’t. Not after months of warfare against the vord. The enemy had been indiscriminate in its slaughter. And every Aleran killed meant more furies suddenly bereft of human restraint and guidance. Somehow, the vord had gathered together bloody legions of the deadly things. And this was no problem like that of dealing with windmanes in a furystorm, easily solved by taking shelter in a building of earth and stone. If someone tried that against this mob, the earth furies would crush him in his own shelter, assuming the wood furies didn’t simply follow them in, or the fire furies turn what should have been a haven into a murderous furnace.

Feral furies were not easily intimidated or dissuaded from their violence. It required the skills of a full-blown Citizen to deal with them. It had taken Aleran Citizens centuries to pacify the settled lands of Alera, then the routes followed by the causeways.

And now several centuries’ worth of danger and death were racing toward the Aleran lines.

The Legions would never be able to stand before the hammerblow those feral furies would deliver. Simply surviving them would require all of the focus and furycraft at their command—which would mean that they would not be able to direct it toward the vord. And in a purely physical contest, the invaders would grind the Alerans to dust.

And should the feral horde shatter the Legion lines and rush through to Riva and the freemen and refugees now living there… their deaths would be violent and horrible, the loss of life enormous.

The enemy had just transformed Riva from a stronghold into a trap.

Amara felt herself breathing harder and faster than she needed. To the best of her knowledge, there were no Aleran fliers operating as high as her group. The teams covering the lower altitudes wouldn’t be able to see the oncoming threat until it was far too late to react.

Amara shivered and suppressed a desire to scream in frustration.

“Aldrick,” she snapped. “Take the Windwolves back to Riva, directly to the High Lord’s tower. Stand there to cover Lord and Lady Riva, and to respond to any emergency requiring your team’s support.” Her eyes flicked to Veradis. “Lady Veradis will explain.”

Aldrick stared at her, but only for a second. His eyes shifted down and back up, then he nodded once. He made a short series of hand gestures to one of his men, and seconds later, the Windwolves’ fliers and the coaches they carried were banking into a turn, to descend toward the embattled city at their best possible speed.

“Amara,” Veradis said.

“There is no time,” Amara replied calmly. “The enemy has those furies channeled and moving in the proper direction, but they don’t have anything like real control over them. They must have modified the causeway, somehow. Once they turn those furies loose, everything is going to change.”

“What do you mean?” Veradis asked.

“We won’t be able to hold the city,” Amara spat. “Not in the face of so many hostile furies. They’ll rip the city to shreds around us, killing our people along the way. The only thing we can do is withdraw.”

The younger woman shook her head dazedly. “W-withdraw? There’s nowhere left to go.”