Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

A windmane swept out of the night, letting out a whistling shriek as it dived toward the pair of Cursors speaking at the side of the causeway. Amara idly lifted a hand and made an effort of will. Cirrus flung himself at the hostile fury in a rush of wind, and as the two met, Amara’s fury was outlined in ghostly white light, a specter of a long-legged horse. Like a dozen others in the past hour, the clash was brief. Cirrus’s lashing hooves rapidly drove the windmane away.

“Countess,” Ehren said. “I understand that you were in the city.”

Amara nodded. She felt oddly detached from the events of the night, smooth and unruffled. She wasn’t calm, of course. After what she had seen, only a madwoman would be calm. She suspected it was more like going numb. The terrified, wounded flood of humanity in front of her would have been heart-wrenching if she hadn’t seen so much worse within Riva’s walls as the feral furies overran them. “For a while. I was bearing messages back and forth between Riva and Aquitaine.”

Ehren studied her intently for a moment. Then he said, “That bad?”

“I saw an earth fury that looked like a gargant bull knock down a building being used to shelter orphaned children,” she said in a level tone. “I saw a pregnant woman burned to black bones by a fire fury. I saw an old woman dragged down into a well by a water fury, her husband holding her wrists the whole way. He went with her.” She paused, musing over the placid, inflectionless calm of her own voice, and added, “The second minute was worse.”

Ehren folded his arms and shivered. “I hate to think what would have happened if the High Lords hadn’t been able to return to the city to drive some of the ferals away.”

“True,” Amara said.

“Countess. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Perfectly.”

The little Cursor nodded. “And… the Count?”

Amara felt herself grow more distant. She thought it was likely the only reason she wasn’t weeping hysterically. “I don’t know. He was part of Riva’s command staff. He wasn’t there.”

Ehren nodded. “He… doesn’t seem the sort of man to stay indoors when something like this is happening.”

“No. He isn’t.”

“If I had to guess,” Ehren said diffidently, “I’d say he was probably assisting in the evacuation. And that you’ll see him as soon as he’s gotten everyone he can out of the city.”

“It wouldn’t be out of character,” Amara agreed. She took a deep drink from a flask of water she’d forgotten she was holding. Then she passed it back to Ehren. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” he said. “Where are you going now?”

“I’m to help provide an air patrol over the refugee column,” Amara said. “Princeps Attis thinks that their aerial troops will be in position to attack us farther down the causeway.” She paused, then asked, “And you?”

“I’m consolidating the food and supplies of the column,” Ehren said with a grimace. “Which closely resembles bald theft—especially to everyone whose food I order taken away.”

“There’s no choice,” Amara said. “Without rationing, most of these people won’t have the strength to reach Calderon.”

“I know,” Ehren said, “but that doesn’t make it any more palatable.” They both fell quiet and watched the refugees shuffle past. “Crows.” He sighed. “Hard to believe that this could have been worse. Give the Princeps his due. He reacted quickly. He’s light on his feet.”

Amara felt a thought stirring, deep down beneath the numbness. She frowned. “Yes,” she said. “The presence of the High Lords in the city made the difference…” She drew in a sharp breath as the thought crystallized in her head. “Sir Ehren. The vord will strike at them.”

“I wish them good luck,” Ehren snorted. “The High Lords are more than capable of handling an attack from any of the vord we’ve seen in this battle.”

“What about from their fellow Citizens?” Amara asked. “Such as the ones who took Lady Isana.”

Ehren’s mouth opened slightly. “Ah,” he said. “Oh dear.”

Amara spun on her heel, leapt into the air, and let Cirrus lift her aloft. She gathered speed and was shortly hurtling like an arrow toward the burning city.

Amara soared up toward the High Lord’s citadel, the tallest of many towers in the great city. Several times, she had to bank around columns of thick black smoke. The air was turbulent as fires spread below.

She could hear the battle raging south of the city. Drums rolled, pounding out messages. Horns blared. The huge, hollow thumps of the more traditional fire-spheres thrummed through the air, whumping irregularly against Amara’s chest. Though the screams of wounded legionares did not reach her, the shrieks of dying vord carried through the air, the distance removing the steely menace from their high-pitched cries. They rather sounded like a distant, enormous flock of birds.

Amara wasn’t far enough away to escape the pain and terror of the night, though. Human shouts and cries and screams came up from the city—the men of the civic legion, trying to rescue those trapped by fires, the wounded, the dying. She saw several vord as she overflew the city—solitary warriors, leaner and swifter-looking than those attacking the front lines, who had somehow made their way into the city during the night’s confusion. Teams of three and four armored men, probably Knights Ferrous, seemed to be hunting the vord in turn, stalking through the blazing, panicked maze of Riva’s dying streets.

Knights Aeris and Citizens with the ability to fly were everywhere above the city, pulling trapped civilians from the fires, and Amara fancied that from a distance they must all look like so many moths—dark silhouettes in the air fluttering around Riva’s flames.

Rogue furies roamed the streets and rooftops, constantly repelled by the efforts of a single Citizen or by groups of civilians working in concert. Amara herself had bowled several more windmanes out of her path on the way to the city. At least the feral furies were not as numerous or aggressive as they had been in the hours before, though they were still deadly dangerous to any who met them without sufficient furycraft to defend themselves.

Lights moved through the streets, furylamps carried by fleeing civilians: The wounded and young and elderly piled into the few remaining wagons and their legionare escorts, mostly. The fires cast lights on some of the streets, but the shadows in the others were all the deeper for them.

The High Lord’s tower was the sole island of order and calm within the city walls. Lights blazed all around it, reflecting from the shining armor of the singulares on duty there. The tower had a wide stone balcony winding around its entire exterior, from which the High Lord could look out over his city. As Amara approached, she could see Lord Riva’s entourage, gathered around the man himself, as he paced a steady circle around the balcony, delivering orders to messengers who came and went with desperate haste.

Far too much desperate haste, Amara realized. The havoc resulting from the vord assault had thrown the entire defense of the city into chaos; there was no visible air patrol over the High Lord’s tower. Doubtless, Riva was planning to leave the city within the next hour and had dispatched the majority of his fliers to escort the fleeing refugees. Most of the other fliers were even now saving the lives of those trapped behind burning buildings, much as Amara had done during a fire in the capital during her days in the Academy, starving fires of air on a small scale or using walls of wind to shield those the fires would have consumed. Any remaining fliers had doubtless been pressed into service as messengers, coordinating with Gaius Attis and the Legions.