Blood of the Earth (52 page)

“It has a rider,” Wizard Sark said. “I didn’t think dragons allowed people to ride them.”

“They don’t,” Magda said.

The man riding the dragon started glowing, softly at first, growing brighter and brighter with each passing moment. By the time he was a thousand feet in the air, he was glowing so brightly that he challenged the sun’s dominance of the sky. The dragon roared again as it turned to pursue the attack wings of Sky Knights that were moving to engage the ships.

“Signal the heavy cavalry,” Abigail said.

General Kern had his order. If the barbarians came forth, he was to mount a charge along the berm wall into the enemy’s flank.

The barbarians met the shield wall with a tumultuous crash that rippled through the still morning air. Many fell against the pikes set atop the shields, but many also made it inside the pike line and engaged the soldiers manning the shields.

The heavy shields, each locked to the next and set into the ground with two heavy spikes jutting from the bottom edge, held against the initial crush of the enemy. The soldiers jabbed their swords through gaps cut into the side of each shield, killing or wounding those directly in front of them. But still the enemy came.

The next wave of brutes climbed up the carnage and vaulted into the soldiers behind the shields.

A few at first, thrashing about against the soldiers all around them, then a few more, killing several men each before they fell to the infantry. A small cluster of barbarians turned back toward the shield line, killed two soldiers, unhooked their shields, hoisted them out of the ground and tossed them into the battle raging around them.

With the line broken, the barbarians started to press forward, killing or maiming with each powerful stroke of their gruesome, battle-honed weapons. The fighting raged behind the shield line as the infantry struggled to stand against the bigger and more powerful barbarians. Zuhl’s soldiers fought with reckless abandon, as if they had already forsaken their lives and simply wished to take as many as they could into the netherworld with them before they fell.

An enterprising captain commanding a company of archers ordered several of his men onto the back of a wagon, giving them a vantage point to fire from. They began sending a steady stream of arrows into the barbarians at the breach.

Another point in the line failed, buckling under the pressure, shields lying down on top of the men strapped into them, crushing them under the weight of the barbarians clambering over the top of them.

Flaming arrows continued in a steady stream, arcing over the battle line and raining down into the enemy camp. Fires were growing behind their lines, but it wouldn’t be enough. Abigail knew her army would have to advance before her archers could reach far enough into the camp to cripple the enemy.

“We have to press forward,” she said. Everything was happening at once. She realized that the battle unfolding right in front of her was the least of her concerns as she looked out across the rest of the very big battlefield.

To the north, Zuhl’s slavers were fighting in pitched battles against the soldiers Torin had mustered from the refugee camp. At a glance she estimated he led a force of five thousand, and they were gaining ground against the barbarians as they freed those slaves they could and sent them into the forest to the north.

To the south, the heavy cavalry was just reaching the flank of the barbarians spilling out of their encampment. General Kern had formed his men into a column twenty wide and five hundred deep. They crashed into the disorganized flank of the barbarians, driving deep into the mass of men before Zuhl’s brutes recognized the danger and turned to face them. As the cavalry slowed, the barbarians began to take a toll on them, dragging men off their horses or striking out at the mounts along the sides of the column.

Three catapults fired into the column, bringing down several horses and disrupting the momentum of the charge. Mage Dax started muttering a spell. A ball of crackling, blue-white energy formed between his hands, floating and sputtering with power. With a word he sent it streaking at the nearest catapult tower. It struck with explosive force, splintering the tower and catapult, but it didn’t stop there. It floated in place for a moment before it streamed in an arc of lightning-like energy to the next tower, shattering it in a shower of kindling, then arced to the third tower. In the space of three breaths, the nearest catapults were demolished.

“Thought it was time I got into the fight,” Dax said.

“I agree,” Sark said, before beginning a spell of his own.

Magda started casting a spell as well.

Out to sea, the Ithilian fleet, led by Admiral Tybalt, had begun firing on the three completed ships anchored in the bay. Abigail thought she saw the firepots burst against a half shell of magical energy hovering over each ship. Then they returned fire. Each of Zuhl’s ships was armed with dozens of ballistae. Each targeted a single vessel with all of their weapons and fired at once.

Three of the vessels in the Ithilian fleet burst into flame as they were pelted by dozens of firepots.

Sky Knights hurled firepots down onto the docks and berths. The docks caught fire easily enough, but floating over each incomplete ship was a half shell of magical energy. The firepots shattered against the shields, coating the bluish shell of magic in angry but impotent burning oil.

The dragon, ridden by the man glowing as bright as the sun, swooped down on an Ithilian attack boat and breathed, not fire, but frost … air so cold it froze the ship and its crew solid in moments, coating everything in ice and solidifying the ocean for dozens of feet in every direction.

Several Sky Knights saw the dragon attack and broke off their futile attempts to destroy the ships. Two came in over the dragon, hurling firepots down at the rider, only to watch them shatter harmlessly against a magical shield. A streak of frosty-white magical energy stabbed out from the brilliantly glowing dragon rider and struck the lead wyvern directly in the chest. Almost instantly, the wyvern and rider froze solid. The wyvern’s wings shattered against the wind and it plummeted into the water hundreds of feet below.

Magda finished her spell. An orb of bluish energy streaked from her hand and stopped abruptly over the barbarians several dozen feet in front of the slowing cavalry charge. It held there for a moment before it shattered into hundreds of shards of force, each beginning to swirl around the center point in an increasingly rapid whirl of deadly arcane power. With a gesture she lowered her creation into the barbarians, tearing into them with horrific violence, rending flesh from bone. She directed it to move along the ground, a twenty-foot-wide, five-foot-tall whirling vortex of magical blades, cutting down everything in its path for a hundred feet before the spell ran its course and dissipated, streamers of light trailing off in a whirl as each shard ceased to exist.

The carnage was so stunning that many of the barbarians momentarily stopped and tried to grasp the enemy they faced, only to be run down by the renewed momentum of General Kern’s cavalry charge. The soldiers cut a swath through the barbarian horde, relieving the pressure on the front line and clearing the field for the shield wall to advance.

Abigail waited for the cavalry to clear the space between her infantry and the berm wall of the encampment.

“Push forward,” she ordered.

General Markos nodded to a nearby soldier who was standing ready with a signal horn. He blew a long, steady note that drifted out over the field, penetrating the din of battle.

The shield bearers lifted and unhooked their shields, the pikemen dropped the points of their pikes between each shield man, and the whole line lumbered forward, slowly at first, scrambling over the fallen wreckage of the enemy piled up before them but gaining momentum as soon as they passed the jumble of bodies. A few remaining barbarians got through the lines, and while formidable in single combat, they fell easily to attacks from all directions by the infantry behind the shield bearers and pikemen.

Once they had gained a hundred feet, the shield line planted their spikes firmly into the ground and locked shields together, the pikemen dropped the hafts of their weapons into the guides atop each shield, and the whole line braced for the next wave of barbarians.

All the while, a steady stream of arrows rained down into the enemy. At least that part of the plan was working, Abigail thought to herself as she looked back out to sea.

The dragon ignored a direct hit from a light-lance spell hot enough to burn a hole through a man as it dove toward the Ithilian fleet. A gout of frigid dragon breath froze a swath of the ocean three hundred feet long into an instant iceberg, disrupting the path of two light warships intent on ramming the nearest of Zuhl’s giant ships.

A wyvern dove at the dragon, pulling up at the last moment and whip-striking with its bone-bladed tail. The dragon folded its wings and twisted around upside down, grabbing the wyvern’s tail with its powerful rear talons and clamping into the wyvern’s soft underbelly with its powerful jaws. As it fell toward the ocean, the dragon thrust out one wing and spun around on top of the wyvern, driving both hind feet into the belly of the dying beast as it thrust its wings downward, gaining dozens of feet with a single stroke.

Over two dozen Sky Knights had refocused their attack on the docks and the soldiers within the encampment, this time with some success. They rained firepots and javelins into the surging barbarian horde, but the ships, the real target of the battle, remained unharmed.

Another Sky Knight made an attack run at the dragon, coming in high and from behind. The witch guided her wyvern into a talon-strike dive targeting the dragon’s wings. Abigail watched as the brilliantly glowing rider turned and released his spell. A wave of translucent energy that looked like heat wavering over desert sands struck the wyvern and blew it backward, sending it spiraling into the ocean below. Then the dragon breathed on another ship, fusing it with the ocean around it and solidifying its crew in an instant.

Wizard Sark turned to vapor in a whirlwind and lifted off the ground, floating through the air, gaining strength until he touched down on the northern corner of the berm wall as a full-force tornado, sucking up dirt and sharpened spikes, cutting a swath big enough for a column of infantry to ride through. He continued to tear a path of destruction through the camp on his way toward the docks, sending Zuhl’s soldiers and debris flying away from him as he went.

Abigail seized the opening before the enemy could respond.

“Send in the cavalry—all of them,” she commanded.

General Markos issued his orders to the signalmen. Two horns blew, the first commanding the heavy cavalry to charge, the second calling for the two legions of Rangers held in reserve to attack.

“Conner, you have command, crush them to a man,” Abigail said. “Magda, you’re with me.” She turned toward the rear of the camp, but Anatoly stopped her with a hand on her upper arm before she could take three steps.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, worry creasing his brow.

“I’m going after that dragon before it kills the entire fleet,” she said, meeting his eyes without flinching.

“That’s madness, Abigail. I can’t protect you up there.”

“I’ll be right beside her, Master Grace,” Magda said.

“I have to do this,” Abigail said. “I’m the only one with a weapon that can get through its scales.”

“And what about the wizard riding it?” Anatoly asked. “You’re no match for him.”

“I am if I can get close enough,” Abigail said.

“I’ll handle Zuhl,” Magda said.

Both Abigail and Anatoly looked at the triumvir.

She shrugged. “I’m nearly certain Zuhl himself is riding that dragon. The spells I’ve seen him cast would require a mage or a high witch.”

“I agree,” Mage Dax said, pointing out to sea. “We’ll win the ground war, but his ships are getting away.”

Another of the giant ships slipped free of its berth, followed by another. Now five were in the water.

“Anatoly,” Abigail said, drawing herself up and facing him like a queen, “take whatever men you need to board one of those ships and capture it before it casts off. We all have a part to play … mine is dealing with that dragon.”

Anatoly clenched his jaw, struggling with his inner turmoil, then nodded once and hugged her fiercely before turning away. “Captain Sava, you and your men are with me,” he barked as he spun his war axe off his back.

Anatoly was angry, not at Abigail, but at the fact that he couldn’t stand with her in this battle. He loved her like a daughter and it ate at him that he might never see her again. The enemy she’d chosen to fight was beyond her, beyond most mortal opponents, yet she was the best suited to defeat it because of the sword her brother had given her. He also worried about Alexander. If Abigail died in a battle because he had given her the Thinblade, he would never forgive himself. They were best friends, inseparable as children, closer than ever as adults, even with an ocean between them.

Captain Sava followed with two squads of dragon-plate-armored men right behind him. Anatoly set aside his concern for Abigail and turned his attention to the task at hand. He had a ship to capture and an army between him and his objective. A quick survey of the battlefield revealed his best chances for success. The shield wall had pushed forward to the top of the enemy berm and the fighting was fierce. Men were piling up in front of the interlocking shields but still more of the big, brutish barbarians hurled themselves forward.