Academ's Fury (56 page)

As the first
legionares
came to the end of the
croach
, Giraldi snapped another order. The men whirled, snapping into their lines again, this time on either side of the channel, shieldwalls aligned to funnel the vord warriors between them. The vord, reckless and aggressive, flooded directly toward the Alerans, their course guided by the shieldwalls, which channeled them directly into Doroga, Walker, and the crushing strength of Bernard's Knights Terra.

Walker let out a fighting bellow, rising up onto his rear legs to slash one vord from the air as it tried to take wing, and the gargant's crushing strength was more than a match for the vord's armor. It fell broken to the ground, while Amara clutched desperately on to Doroga's waist to keep from falling off the beast's back entirely.

The Knights Terra held the gargant's flanks, and ripples of earth, furycrafted by the Knights, lashed out at the vord as they closed, shattering the momentum of their charge and exposing them to well-timed blows from the savage hammers that crushed vord armor plates like eggshells.

And all of it was nothing but a prelude to the true attack.

"Giraldi!" Bernard cried.

"Fire!" the centurion bellowed. "Fire, fire, fire!"

Along the whole of the Legion shieldwall, furylamps blazed into full and blinding brilliance.

And as one, the
legionares
hurled the lamps down into the viscous liquid of the broken
croach
mixed with lamp oil and alcohol.

Flames spread with astonishing speed, the individual fires in nearly a hundred places rapidly meeting, melding, feeding one another. Within seconds, the fire blazed up and began to consume the entrapped vord warriors.

Now the
legionares
had to fight in earnest, as desperate vord tried to batter their way out of the trap. Men screamed. Black smoke and hideous stench filled the air. Giraldi bellowed orders, hardly audible over the frenzied rattling and clicking of the armored vord.

And the lines held. The vord at the rear of the trap managed to reverse their direction, streaming back toward the cave.

"Countess!" Bernard cried.

Amara reached out for Cirrus and felt the sudden, eager presence of her wind fury. She took a deep breath, focused her concentration, and shouted, "Ready!"

"Down, down, down!" Giraldi barked.

Amara saw everything moving very, very slowly. All along the lines,
legionares
abruptly drew back a pace and dropped to one knee, then to their sides, their curving tower shields closing over them like coffin lids. Desperate vord staggered and thrashed their way to their deaths, while those who had managed to retreat drove directly for the cave.

Amara drew Cirrus into her thoughts and sent it, with every ounce of her will, to fly toward the fleeing vord.

A hurricane of violent wind swept down from the air at Amara's command. It caught up the blazing liquid and hurled it in a sudden, blinding storm of blossoming flame. Fire engulfed the air itself, fed wildly by the wind, and the heat burned away the
croach
wherever it touched, melting it like the wax it resembled. Croach-covered trees burst into individual infernos, and still the frantic fire, driven by Amara's wind, rolled forward.

It engulfed the last of the vord who had attacked fifty feet short of the mouth of the cave—and then kept right on going, fires spreading and whirling madly, burning away the
croach
wherever it touched it.

Amara's concentration and will faltered in a sudden, nauseating spasm of fatigue, and she slumped hard against Doroga's back. Without the gale winds to feed and push them, the fires began to die down into individual blazes. There was no sign whatsoever of any
croach
anywhere upon the surfaceùonly blackened earth and burning trees.

They'd done it.

Amara closed her eyes in exhaustion. She didn't feel herself listing to one side until she actually began to fall, and Doroga had to turn and catch her with one heavily muscled arm before she pitched off Walker's back and to the ground.

Things were blurry for a few moments, then she heard Bernard giving orders. She forced herself to lift her head and look around until she spotted Bernard.

"Bernard," she called weakly. The Count looked up from where he knelt, supporting a wounded soldier while a healer removed a broken shard of vord mandible from the man's leg. "The queen," Amara called. "Did we kill the queen?"

"Can't say yet," he replied. "Not until we check the cave, but it's a death trap. Has a high ceiling, but it isn't deep. It wouldn't surprise me if the firestorm cooked everything inside."

"We should hurry," she said, while Doroga slowly turned Walker around to face away from the cave. "Finish it before it has the chance to recover. We have to kill the queen or it's all for nothing."

"Understood. But I've got men dying here, and no watercrafter. We see to them first."

"Hey," Doroga growled. "You two. The queen is not in the cave."

"What?" Amara lifted her head blearily. "What do you mean?"

Doroga nodded grimly toward the crest of the hill behind them, back toward Aricholt.

The taken holders were there in a silent group, a simple crowd of people of all ages and both sexes who stood there in the weak moonlight and stared down at the Aleran forces with empty eyes.

Beside them stood Felix's century, together with what looked like every single
legionare
they'd been compelled to leave behind at Aricholt.

And all of them had been taken.

At the head of the silent host, something crouched low, and Amara had no doubts whatsoever as to what she was looking at. It was man-sized, more or less, and little more than an oddly shaped shadow. If it hadn't been for the luminous glow of its eyes, Amara would have thought that the vord queen was only an illusion of bad light and heavy shadows.

But it was real. It took a slow, steady pace down the slope of the hill, moving weirdly, as if walking on four legs when it was meant for two, and at precisely the same instant the entire taken host stepped forward as well.

"Furies," Amara breathed, almost too tired to be terrified at what she saw. Even as they had sprung their trap on the vord, the vord had been circling behind them to strike at the weaker target. Back at Aricholt, even a few taken had proved to be deadly—and now they outnumbered the
legionares
still left to face them.

"Bernard," she said quietly. "How many wounded?"

"Two dozen," he said tiredly.

The taken poured down the hill, in no great hurry, led by the glowing-eyed shadow at their forefront. Something like hissing, moaning laughter echoed through the night, dancing among the popping sparks of the burning trees.

"There are too many of them," Amara said quietly. "Too many. Can we run?"

"Not with this many wounded," Bernard said. "And even if we could move them, we've got our backs pinned to Garados. We'd have to retreat over his slopes, and no one could conceal that much movement from the mountain."

Amara nodded and drew in a deep breath. "Then we have to fight."

"Yes," Bernard said. "Giraldi?"

The centurion appeared. He had blood on his leg, and there was a savage dent in the overlapping plates guarding one shoulder, but he struck his fist to his breastplate sharply. "Yes, my lord."

"Get everyone moving," he said quietly. "We'll fall back to the cave. We can fight in shifts there. Maybe hold out for a while."

Giraldi looked at Bernard for a moment, and there was no expression on his face but for troubled eyes. Then he nodded, saluted again, turned, and started giving quiet orders.

Amara closed her eyes wearily. Some part of her wondered if it might not be better to just go to sleep and let events take their course. She was so very tired. She tried to find some reason to keep herself moving forward, to keep pushing away despair.

Duty
, she thought. She had a duty to do her utmost to protect the nobles,
legionares
, and holders of the Realm. That duty did not permit simple surrender to death. But it felt hollow. More than anything, she wanted to be someplace warm and safe—but duty was a cold and barren shelter for a wounded spirit.

She looked up again and saw Bernard helping a wounded man rise and hobble along to the cave while leaning on the haft of his spear. He helped the man get started, encouraging him, and turned to the next man in need of help while he organized their retreat—however temporarily it might extend their lives.

He was reason enough.

Doroga abruptly started laughing.

"What is so amusing?" she asked him quietly.

"Good thing we talked before this," Doroga rumbled, eyes merry. "Otherwise, I might have forgotten that no matter what happens, we got something to look forward to." He was still laughing to himself under his breath as he turned Walker to bring up the rear of the Aleran column.

Amara turned her head as they rode and watched the vord queen and the taken slowly closing in behind them.

Chapter 34

Tavi frowned at Ehren, and whispered, "What do you mean, nothing?"

"I'm sorry," Ehren whispered back. "I did as much as I could in the time I had. During the attack, someone apparently killed the streetlamps. Several people heard fighting, two even saw the beginning of the attack, but someone put the lamps out and after that, nothing."

Tavi exhaled slowly and leaned his head back against the wall. The examination room was more than mildly stifling. The history examination's written portion had begun after the noon meal and concluded a mere four hours later—to be followed by individual oral examinations. Sunset light slipped orange fingers through the upper windows of the hall, and there wasn't one of the hundred-odd students present who wasn't wild to leave.

Maestro Larus, a slump-shouldered man with an impressive mane of silver hair and an immaculate white beard, nodded to the student standing before his chair and flicked his hand in curt dismissal. He took a moment to make a note on the uppermost of a stack of parchments, then glared at Tavi and Ehren.