Bastial Sentinels (The Rhythm of Rivalry: Book 5) (32 page)

Jek’s heart had stopped. He clutched his chest and fell. The burning agony of it made him gasp. He didn’t have the energy to cry out. Just before he felt Peter’s hands on him, his heart started beating again, shuddering in complaint.
Too much SE.
Jek didn’t know exactly when his heart had stopped, most likely right before he cast.

“Bastial hell, are you alright?” Peter helped him up.

“Yes.” Jek felt the steady rhythm returning.

Peter laughed. “It looks like you confused them. They haven’t loaded another rock.”

Good, it’ll give me more time to recover in case they hurl another.

“Archers, keep firing!” Harold yelled.

Peter scrambled to load an arrow.

“Mages, if you can’t reach the skunks, then set the trees on fire. Cast now.”

Jek saved his energy as he watched five fireballs spiral down from the mountain and explode against the trees. The heat wasn’t concentrated enough to set them ablaze. It fragmented into chunks and fizzled out.

But the archers continued to shoot, and the mages didn’t stop casting. The top of one tree was soon ablaze, then another deeper into the forest, then a third even farther away. But would the fire spread? And if it did, would the skunks finally come out to face them, or would they retreat to fight another day?

Jek didn’t have time to tell. Another rock was in the sling.

The enormous wooden pole flew forward and slammed against some sort of stopper, hurling yet another boulder. How many did they have? Jek told his heart to be strong and readied more Sartious Energy.

This jagged rock seemed as if it would strike their mountaintop just like the last, only not on top of Jek but far to his right. He sprinted, pulling the Sartious Energy in a trailing cloud as he gathered even more than last time.

“Don’t block the green mage!” he heard Harold shout. “Let him through.”

People screamed as terror seized them, but they managed to make space for Jek. The boulder was spinning violently on its way down.

Unable to get beneath it in time, Jek prepared his body for the torture of holding Sartious Energy steady from ten yards away. He screamed and grunted. His knees shook. In a blink, the SE pressed into itself so that fifteen thin spears the height of short trees rose, as if out of the ground. They took the force of the boulder and shattered apart, breaking the rock with them. A cloud just like the last one dispersed. Shards of stone tumbled down the slope.

Jek grabbed his heart in anticipation. It stung and shivered, then thrashed against his chest and shot his pulse up to his throbbing forehead. But soon it had calmed.

Let that be the last boulder they hurl at us.
He didn’t know how much more his body could endure, especially now that his army was relying on him to stop each one.

A strange mixture of relief and fear grabbed his unsteady heart at the sound of skunks chanting. He couldn’t distinguish what they said, but their tone was undeniable. A charge was coming.

Another boulder flew into the air, surprising Jek, though he soon saw this one wouldn’t reach them. It flipped at a dizzying speed and came down onto one of the crooked mountain paths. Bouncing, it tore off chunks of rock and dirt that rained down with it in a hail of stone. Jek heard his allies yell but knew nothing of their fates.

Skunks flooded from the trees, looking like ants. He almost started down the mountain until it occurred to him the order hadn’t been given yet.

“Fire!” Harold demanded.

The archers let loose a flurry of arrows. Jek and the other mages followed with fireballs. He watched as he drew more Bastial Energy into his body. The balls of magma were mostly intercepted by the skunks’ raised shields. Many arrows had the same impotent outcome. But some enemies were struck, in their shoulders, legs, and chests, though it wasn’t very many. Half of those hit kept running as if nothing had happened.

The next wave of arrows and fireballs did about as much good as the first.

Jek’s allies below, clad in green armor, charged to meet the skunks. Somewhere among them were Cleve and Calvon.

“Stop firing,” Harold yelled to the archers and mages. “And follow me down the mountain!”

Chapter 30:

JEK

Hearing swords clashing and men dying at the base of the mountain made descending at a safe pace impossible. Jek ran after Harold, with Peter just behind him. There were places where the path was so thin that Jek’s two feet didn’t fit abreast. When he almost slipped off, and the man behind him grabbed his arm and pulled him back, Jek was amazed that his heart hadn’t leapt into his throat. Did his body not fear death? He considered it a strength and pushed it out of his mind.

Horror stopped him when he heard a scream come from behind, not from below like the others. A frog was falling over the edge. His limbs flung in every direction, reaching for something solid. The mountain came out to catch him, though it did more harm than good as he bounced off and started to flip.

Jek turned away.

“Watch your footing!” Harold yelled back. He might as well have reminded them to breathe after someone had just choked.

They slowed as they continued their descent. Peter still almost fell when an arrow bounced off the rocky wall just in front of his face. Jek collided into him. They grabbed each other as Jek was slammed into by the man behind him.

They took a moment to find the source of the arrow. Below was a sea of green and black—frogs and skunks—as they met in a frenzied clash. But back toward the forest, thousands of skunks were still unopposed. Among these skunks were the archers shooting at them. Just when Jek found them, five more arrows shot from their bows. Still clutching each other, Jek and Peter fell flat to the ground.

The man who’d bumped into Jek uttered a guttural cry. He bounced off the wall of stone, his feet slipped off the path, and he started to slide.

From his knees, and with Peter on top of him, Jek reached out to grab something—an arm, a leg, any body part he could. He ended up with the tail of an arrow in his grasp, the other end of it lodged in the man’s chest. The man howled as his momentum didn’t quite stop him but turned him along the steep slope of the mountain. Jek wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t watch another person fall to his death.

But the moment Jek made this decision, the arrow tore loose from the man’s flesh. Jek reached out to grab his shirt, but the frog already had tumbled backward and begun to roll.

Jek cursed and almost fell down the mountain in his mad—and ultimately unsuccessful—effort to save the man’s life. Peter pulled Jek back up, and they scampered backward until they both hit the jagged rocks behind them. Quickly, he and Peter scrambled to their feet. Their current path took them away from the edge, allowing them to pick up speed as more arrows pelted the mountainside.

Jek had walked up and down the sharply turning paths every day, never once sprinting. And although he was running now, it seemed to take twice as long to get to the bottom.

When they came close, and he saw the brawl that awaited, his eagerness immediately dissolved.

Harold stopped them just before the last slope. “Shoot the skunks clustered in the back!”

As the archers aimed, Jek told Harold, “The mages won’t be able to reach them.”

“Then get in there and fight.” Harold slapped his back. “Mages, follow Jek into the battle!”

Jek lurched forward and then stopped, waiting for his mind to catch up. It was screaming that there had to be a better option.

“Go!” Harold demanded as the archers let loose their arrows in an arc over the tens of thousands of men and Elves.

Jek’s heart wanted him to rush ahead and find Cleve, but his abilities weren’t of much use when surrounded by frogs and skunks. He had no skill with a sword, nor did the mages behind him.

He surveyed the battlefield, unsure what he was looking for. Just ahead was chaos. The sword was everyone’s chosen weapon except for the Elven psychics, who were stabbing enemy fighters with daggers. Even if Jek and the other mages weren’t cut down the moment they entered the fray, the chances of striking a skunk with a fireball without hitting an ally were slim.

Harold kicked Jek in the rear. “Are you a coward?” the officer yelled.

Jek spun with rage, tightening the grip on his wand. “We’re of better use alive!”

“Not if you’re just going to stand here—” Then Harold’s eyes caught sight of something over Jek’s shoulder. “Archers aiming at us to the west!”

Jek turned to find a cloud of arrows darkening the sky. He snapped his wand to create a hovering wall of SE.

There were too many arrows. Some went over, others landed short, and even more were too far off to the side for Jek to block, but those that did strike the translucent green wall bounced off with a clank. He saw no one was hit.

Then it occurred to Jek what he needed to do. Slashing his wand, he broke the Sartious wall into dust and pulled the energy behind him as he ran west, parallel to the backs of his allies. The other mages followed.

As momentum kicked in, dragging the energy felt no different than pulling a wagon. He split his mind, concentrating on gathering more SE into the cloud as he kept it controlled behind him.

But he didn’t notice the archers freely shooting at them until one of his mages called out, “Arrows!”

Jek found the skunks and whipped the Sartious Energy into a block between them and his mages. None of the arrows even cracked the heavy energy.

He broke the SE apart, still gathering more, still running toward the archers, but now with labored breaths—now with a strained heart. He focused to keep the SE behind him and out of his body as best he could, but there was just so much of it. With a quick glance, he was surprised to see the cloud was the size of the Lages’ mansion! He could feel his body trying to suck it in like air after a long dive underwater, so he focused to keep it out of his blood…out of his heart.

It had been a year since he’d tested how much Sartious Energy he could gather and maintain. It was about half of what he had now, and he still had the strength to handle more.

The mages behind him shot fireballs at the still-unopposed archers. Two skunks were hit. The other enemies tried to shoot Jek and his mages once more, but Jek needed only a third of his gathered SE to block their arrows with a thin wall.

Close enough now to see their faces, the skunks looked to each other for ideas. “Need swordsmen!” some shouted.

An enemy officer picked up on the call. “Gather around me,” he commanded from the outer rim of the brawling swordsmen. Skunks left their current skirmish to surround him.

The red mages with Jek shot fireballs at those now in front of the enemy archers. But they had their shields ready. Some were still knocked on their backs, but they rose quickly before any mages could cast again.

The officer brought his thirty swordsmen forward. “We’ll kill these mages. Join the other archers.”

“Jek, call for help,” one mage said.

Even if he wanted to summon aid, they’d pushed too far into the ranks. No ally would make it to them in time. “We can handle this. Just don’t shoot until I say so.”

The enemy officer was the first of his men to charge, the gilded shoulders of his otherwise black tunic glistening in the setting sun. The other thirty came to his side or stayed close to his heels. Everyone in front raised his shield in anticipation.

“Shoot?” a mage nervously asked.

“Not yet,” Jek instructed.

He strained to move the mountainous cloud of SE between his mages and their attackers. His arm shook. His heart heaved with each strained beat. The skunks eyed the massive Sartious cloud as they advanced toward it. They sneered, not a single one of them suspicious. It made Jek more nervous. Never had he attempted such a spell. Could they know better than he did that it wouldn’t work?

It’ll work!
a voice yelled inside his head.
They just aren’t expecting it.

It had to be true. None of these skunks could’ve anticipated what he had planned. They’d seen Sartious shells stop fireballs and Sartious walls stop arrows, but they’d never known pure Sartious Energy to crush a man.

He waited until the cluster of storming swordsmen was directly beneath the enormous cloud. Then he brought back his arm as if readying to throw a ball. The skunks held their shields in front of their chests, expecting a fireball. But death would come from above this time.

Jek screamed as he crammed the heavy cloud into a block. He’d never forced so much SE together at once. Time seemed to slow as he forced it against itself. The process strained his whole body. It felt like folding steel, like collapsing a metal box with his bare hands, like taking all the clouds in the sky and forcing them into a single point, all in the span of a breath. The energy pressing together made a clang like a hundred blacksmiths slamming down the final strike of their hammers onto a hot blade.

Then Jek finally released his hold on the block and gasped for air.

It shook the land when it fell. None of those beneath it had a chance to scream. The officer was the only one to escape, as he’d been just one step too far ahead. The force catapulted him. After a somersault, he jumped to his feet and looked behind to see what had happened. When he beheld the block of emerald energy, he turned to Jek with a gaping mouth of utter shock.