Beyond The Shadows (43 page)

Fighting in these damn robes was going to be a chore, but Vi was glad she hadn’t worn her scandalous wetboy grays. Well, she’d
worn them, but under the robes. Going into battle without her grays would be like going into battle with her hair unbound.

A blond man wider than he was tall brought his horse into the line next to her. A mage, she could tell. “Feir Cousat,” he
said. “You Vi?”

She nodded. They were positioned ten ranks back, behind pikemen and shield bearers who were guarding the bridge in front of
the dam. From their elevated position, they could see the whole valley.

A flag went up among Garuwashi’s men down in the market. The third time it waved, the Ceurans began marching toward the river.
Lantano Garuwashi himself rode beside the front lines, and when he drew his sword, it glowed in the low light. A cheer went
up.

Vi squinted at the sword. There was something wrong with it.

“What’s wrong?” Feir asked.

“The glow . . .  did you make that?”

“What?! You can see that from here?”

“It just looks like you. Like your work, I mean. I don’t know.”

The highlanders who made up the center of the Khalidoran line were slow to react. They did nothing until half of Garuwashi’s
five thousand had made the opposite bank. “What are they doing?” Feir asked. “The Khalidorans didn’t shoot any arrows.” Then
the highlanders began trotting forward.

Garuwashi’s flag dropped when the highlanders were thirty paces away and a shrill keening shriek sounded from every Ceuran
throat. Shrieking, they charged. To a man, the sa’ceurai ran with their long swords trailing behind them, the other hand extended
forward. Charge was too inelegant a term.

Then the lines crashed together. The average highlander was taller and thicker than the average sa’ceurai, but as the clash
of arms and rattle of armor resounded to where Vi watched, it was highlanders who fell ten to one. The sa’ceurai whipped their
swords under and up, or over and down, or feinted and threw their shoulders into the highlanders instead.

“Best solo fighters in the world,” Feir said. “There are twice as many highlanders out there—and look.”

Within minutes, the rest of the sa’ceurai had made the crossing. As Feir had said, both sides fought man-to-man, breaking
into a thousand duels, though neither side was above hamstringing an enemy whose back was turned. Despite the bulkiness that
made the sa’ceurai’s lacquer armor look heavy, the men danced.

Lantano Garuwashi presided over it all, dealing death every time highlanders pushed through the lines to get to him, but mostly
watching. The air around him winked and sparkled, and Vi figured those were arrows or magic the Khalidorans where shooting
at him. A terrified-looking magus sat on a horse directly behind Garuwashi, making constant gestures as he protected the war
leader.

Vi saw the effect of the meisters before she could see the meisters themselves. The sa’ceurai lines seemed to ripple back
as if all of them had been struck at once. Then she saw green fireballs arcing over the highlanders to splatter among the
sa’ceurai, the flame turning blue where it hit flesh and sizzling, black smoke rising from a hundred bodies on fire.

In that instant, the sa’ceurai advance faltered. Lantano Garuwashi waved his hand forward frantically, and his standard bearer
was waving a flag furiously, but his men sank back. A dozen green fireballs splattered against Garuwashi’s shields and they
nearly collapsed. He sawed his horse’s head back toward the river and joined his men’s retreat, waving his hands and cursing
them all the way.

A cry went up from the highlanders and they surged forward. They’d routed the Ceurans.

But from the rear, where the Khalidorans couldn’t see, it looked all wrong. While those in the front made big, panicky gestures,
none threw down their weapons as they fled. The sa’ceurai closest to the river sheathed their blades and calmly carried the
wounded between them in twos. Lantano Garuwashi’s frenzied waving, the whipping flag—it hadn’t been the same flag he’d used
for the advance, had it?—it was all a setup.

“Palies comin’!” someone shouted.

Across the bridge in front of Vi, hundreds of Khalidoran soldiers were running to their places. Their archers loosed a flight
of arrows. Feir threw his hands up and a shimmering transparent blue sheet of magic unrolled above the Cenarians, covering
those at the foot of the bridge. The first arrows hit the shield and, to Vi’s surprise, didn’t burst into flame. Rather, they
hit the shield like it was a pincushion, poked through it, and robbed of all speed, simply dropped the last five feet onto
the Cenarians.

“Archers, shoot from outside the umbrella!” Feir shouted, but not before several of them had loosed shots into it. The outgoing
arrows stabbed through the umbrella, flew half a dozen feet, then came to rest back on top of the umbrella again, lacking
even the energy to make it back to the ground.

“Meisters!” someone screamed.

Before Vi found the dark figure across the bridge, something blasted her from her saddle. She met the rocky ground with far
less speed than she had any right to expect.

“Make that ‘vürdmeisters,’” Feir said, helping her up. “The bastards.”

“You saved me,” Vi said, noticing the unfamiliar shield around her as she stood.

“You owe me. Now do something. I’m tapped out.”

A dozen green fireballs of various sizes arced across the bridge. Vi fumbled for her Talent, but her ears were still ringing.
She was too slow.

Nonetheless, every one of the Khalidorans’ falling fireballs was lifted like an arrow catching a sudden updraft, then curved
in the air and smashed back into the Khalidoran lines. A woman whooped, and Vi recognized Sister Rhoga’s voice. Vi’s battle
magae had practiced that weave for four days straight, but seeing it actually work took Vi’s breath away.

Vi couldn’t find her horse, though she had no idea how it could have gone anywhere through the massed ranks of pikemen, archers,
and shield bearers who were holding the foot of Black Bridge. She pushed her way to the front.

The men maintaining the shield wall at the front line looked at her. Their shields were studded with dozens of arrows each.
The Khalidoran archers had figured out that if they shot at a low enough trajectory, they could find targets here. “How much
cover you want, Sister?” a skinny officer at least twenty years her senior asked. The first row of soldiers were on one knee,
their shields covering them completely; the second row held their shields at an angle and a third held theirs overhead despite
the umbrella. They were packed as tightly as possible.

“You, rest,” Vi told a man in the second row. She pushed her way into place and poked her head through the shields.

She found the Vürdmeister by the swirling black vir-shield spinning in front of him. A moment later, half a dozen darts of
mage fire plunged into his shield, magic breaking and spitting and sizzling in chunks on the bridge at his feet, but the Vürdmeister
barely seemed to notice. He was looking down the river toward the ford at the Great Market.

The Khalidoran highlanders had pursued the sa’ceurai across the river, and thousands had now gained the Cenarian side. Vi’s
heart jumped into her throat.

A blue flare streaked into the sky over the Great Market. To Vi’s right, a magus struggled out onto the narrow stone walkway
that ran across the face of the dam. Because the waters poured over the top of the dam rather than through its centuries-closed
sluices, the magus made his way through a deluge as water poured from fifty feet overhead. He held the handrail and climbed
forward, hand over hand, struggling to keep his feet anchored to the stone. At the center of the walkway were two enormous
pulleys, the chains wrapped around them still pristine. The chains themselves disappeared into the face of the dam where they
would open the sluice gates. The magus threw thick blue ropes of magic at each of the pulleys, straining.

He had barely started when half a dozen Vürdmeisters who’d been hiding in the Khalidoran ranks burst forward. Fire, hammers
of air, gales, and missiles engulfed the lone magus from every direction. The magus’s shields held until a gleaming white
homunculus winged its way to him. The magus screamed as the air ripped open and a pit wyrm struck.

The wyrm’s jaws crunched through shield and man and one of the huge pulleys, then it pulled back into whatever hell it had
come from and disappeared.

A moment later, half a dozen green fire missiles ripped into the other pulley, cracking it and snapping the chains.

Only as they destroyed the second pulley did Vi realize that she’d just seen Garuwashi’s trap defanged. Garuwashi had feigned
the rout to draw the Khalidorans into the river where he meant to drown them. But the Khalidorans had known. Why else would
they have concealed the presence of six Vürdmeisters? Now Garuwashi had just had his trap turned back on himself.

“Feir!” Vi shouted. She turned and was surprised to see he was right behind her, the dread in his eyes telling her he understood.
“Can you protect me?”

His eyes flicked to the Vürdmeisters, who to Vi’s eyes looked all the same. “Three seconds, two thirds, and a sixth shu’ra.
Shit. Maybe?”

One of the younger Vürdmeisters laughed, turning his head over his shoulder to say something. Vi lashed out, grabbed the hem
of his robe, and yanked. If Vi had thought about it, she wouldn’t have tried. She couldn’t reach that far. She never had.

The man was halfway down the gorge before he screamed.

Feir’s eyes were huge. “Nice grab.”

“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Vi said. With her Talent, she pushed men aside right and left. The dam’s walkway
was a good thirty feet out and twenty down. She ripped off her robes.

“Distract them. Now!” she shouted.

The battle magae complied, flinging dozens of fireballs.

Vi ran through the space she’d cleared, a few quick steps taking her to a full sprint. She leapt into the void, barely remembering
to shield herself. The jump was perfect. She landed with both feet on the middle of the walkway, splashing water every direction,
then her momentum carried her into the wall of the dam. Her shield helped, it was still a twenty-foot fall. Vi crunched into
the wall and then rebounded. She clawed blindly and felt stone under her fingertips for a brief instant, then she was flying
into space.

Stupid, Vi, stupid.

She imagined she could hear Nysos laughing. She hadn’t thought of the god of potent liquids in months, and here she was, killed
by water.

She tensed for impact, but it never came. Vi opened her eyes and couldn’t see anything through the torrent. Then she was clear
of it. She saw a thick rope of Talent knotted around her and extending all the way back to Sister Ariel, who was grimacing
with the effort. In another moment, Vi was next to one of the chains. She grabbed it and Sister Ariel released her.

Vi was instantly swept off her feet and spun by the force of the water, but with effort she regained her feet. Above her she
saw the Vürdmeisters—there were only three now—throwing fiery death toward her, but nothing came even close. On the Cenarian
shore two hundred women glowed like torches with Talent: her Sisters. They were protecting her, and nothing could stop them.
Vi’s heart swelled to bursting. These women would die for her. For the first time in her life, she belonged.

She was crying and laughing even as she found the other chain. She stood with one chain in each hand, each link as long as
her forearm. She heaved, but without the pulleys it was just too heavy.

She moved back a step, out of the dam’s shadow into the sun. It wasn’t quite noon. She felt sunlight drenching her skin and
she opened herself to it, opened herself until it burned, until it filled every pore with heat.

Then she heaved again. At first, nothing moved, and then she felt as if deep within the dam mechanisms were threatening to
give way, protesting deep in their iron throats, and finally . . .  turning. Her Talent extended beyond her arms, gripping
the chains like half a dozen hands, grabbing, pulling, and grabbing again. Hissing filled her ears, and she opened her eyes.
Something was glowing, blindingly bright. It was her. She was luminous. Vi glowed like the Seraph herself. Steam rose in great
hissing billows where the water washed over her limbs.

The sluice gates cracked open, three on the left and three on the right. Vi pulled, feeling her strength waning. She had to
finish. She pulled one more time and felt the gates lock open. The water pouring over the top of the dam onto her slowed,
stopped. She could see again.

The six open gates below her jetted water into the valley with incredible force. The water blasted into the thousands of highlanders
crossing into the Great Market. Men clambered for higher ground, stampeding toward shore, crushing their fellows underfoot.

Only Garuwashi’s men were unfazed by the flood. Whether or not they had seen how near their trap had come to collapsing, the
sa’ceurai were ready for it to work. Through all the high ground surrounding the Great Market, they closed ranks and shut
down choke points expertly. Then they surged back, pushing Khalidorans to a watery death. In places, men clawed their way
over the sa’ceurai’s shields, but they were quickly cut down.

Vi became aware that everyone on the bridge was staring at her. They were all shouting, cheering. She was still holding the
chains. They were suddenly unbearably heavy. She dropped them and staggered. Hands grabbed her, steadied her. A dozen Sisters
had ventured out onto the slick walkway to come to her.

Sisters. My sisters. Vi started crying, and no one looked at her like she was stupid.

Lantano Garuwashi was the first to understand the implications of what occurred at the dam. The trap he and Agon and Logan
had worked up had always assumed that they would be able to close the sluice gates after they opened them. With the destruction
of the pulleys, it was a miracle they’d been opened in the first place. After flooding out the highlanders, he and Logan had
planned to throw everything at the shaken Khalidoran army. Caught between the Ceurans and the Cenarians and the cursed ground
of the Dead Demesne, the Khalidoran army would have broken in minutes. Instead, the allies’ armies could only advance across
the narrow bridges.

Garuwashi ordered the crossing and ordered magae to protect the bridges. If he’d been the Khalidorans, that’s what he would
try to destroy.

He was right. The counterattack was almost solely magical. Hundreds of meisters had hit each of the bridges, but then, suddenly,
they’d been called off. The magae told him they could see a magical conflagration on the far side of Black Barrow itself,
Khalidorans fighting barbarians, but they couldn’t tell him anything else. Had he been able to ford the river, he could have
taken advantage of the Godking’s splitting his army. But that was water literally under the bridge. He established beachheads
and put engineers to work widening the bridges by whatever means they could, but the situation looked grim.

As soon as the Khalidorans saw that his men were establishing fortifications and not attacking, they withdrew to high points
hundreds of paces away and began working on their own.

In the early afternoon, Garuwashi found King Gyre in their command tent, which had been moved to the foot of Oxbridge.

“Today was a great victory,” Logan said. “They lost more than nine thousand highlanders. I lost ninety men holding the market.
How many sa’ceurai?”

“One hundred fifteen in baiting the trap. Eight in springing it.”

“Two hundred men, to kill nine thousand,” Logan said. He didn’t elaborate. It was a victory, but it was a victory that was
a prelude to defeat.

“Tomorrow their fifteen thousand come back from Reigukhas, and you lose my sa’ceurai,” Garuwashi said.

“How long until the Regent arrives?” Logan asked.

“An hour. His messengers have asked that he see me immediately.” It wasn’t right. After such a great victory, he should be
looking on the morrow with relish. Instead, this night he would kill himself. Many of his sa’ceurai would join him. The twenty
thousand sa’ceurai who accompanied the Regent would simply turn and go home.

“Can’t you just use the illusion you used today?” Logan asked.

Garuwashi sighed. “Feir said there’s something about the magic of the blade that interferes with illusions. The glow looked
good from ten or twenty paces while the sword was cutting back and forth, but from up close? It wouldn’t withstand a child’s
scrutiny.”

“Your Majesties, if I may?” Feir asked. Garuwashi hadn’t seen him arrive, despite his huge bulk. It was a measure of how exhausted
he was. Logan gestured Feir to continue. “I made that sword. If we can find a ruby to hold the spells, I dare say I’m the
only person in the world who could tell the difference between the new Ceur’caelestos and the real thing. We don’t even need
a special ruby. It just needs to be big. King Gyre, I’m sure your treasury has something that will work. It seems ridiculous
that we’d give up this close.”

“It’s not giving up,” Garuwashi snapped. “It’s having our fraud discovered.”

“What if they didn’t discover it?” Feir asked.

“The Regents have been waiting centuries for this,” Logan said. “I’m sure they have some kind of test to determine if the
blade is real.”

“So what if they do?” Feir asked. “The Regent’s not Talented and you have magae at your disposal. With a little preparation,
we can—”

“Get out,” Garuwashi breathed. “I listened to you once and dishonored myself. No more. You know nothing of sa’ceurai. Begone,
snake.”

Feir’s face drained of color. He stood slowly. Garuwashi turned his back to him. He almost hoped Feir would strike him down.
Let Garuwashi die betrayed. Then any flaw found with the sword would be assumed to be the work of the betrayer. Something
would be left of Garuwashi’s name.

“If you would save this army and all these thousands of souls, the magae and I will be near,” Feir said quietly. “If you would
save only your precious honor, you can go to hell.”

When Garuwashi turned, the big man was gone. King Gyre looked at him silently.

“What is a king without honor?” Garuwashi asked. “These men mean everything to me. They have followed me from villages and
cities to foreign lands. Where I have gone, they have gone. When I have told a hundred to take a hill, knowing it would cost
ninety their lives, they have obeyed. They are lions. If they are to die, they should die in battle, not dishonored by their
lord. Tomorrow, you will face twenty thousand Khalidorans and two thousand meisters, who barely fought today. Without the
sa’ceurai, your men will be shaken.”

“Seeing six thousand men and their unbeatable general kill themselves may do that,” Logan said dryly. “As will looking at
the backs of twenty thousand sa’ceurai who could have been allies.”

“You are a king. What would you do?” Garuwashi asked.

“You ask me that when I have such an interest in your answer?”

“I saw you put your closest friend to death for honor.”

Logan looked at his hands. He said nothing for a long time. “The night before Kylar went to the wheel, I sent a man to break
him out of my own gaol. Kylar refused to leave because it would hurt my reign. He believed in me that much. To be king means
to accept that others will pay the price of your failures—and even your successes. Part of me died on that wheel. Whatever
you decide, doen-Lantano, it has been an honor to fight beside you.”

“King Gyre, if I choose expiation, will you be my second?”

Logan Gyre bowed low, his face rigid. “Doen-Lantano, I would be honored.”