Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (65 page)

“Rashan warned me about that as well. His advice was
to kill enough of them that they started individually deciding that seeking me
out was a bad idea. If enough of them do that, I will be the one chasing them,”
Iridan said.

“You think that will work?”

“It might have if he let me have his sword. On my own,
I doubt I can be that fearsome. Who knows, though, maybe someday …”

Hours passed after midday, and the sun grew low.
Brannis waited. The lower the sun got, the more he caught himself staring out
to the west, expecting the first reports of the goblin cannons. He was the only
one who would recognize the sound for what it was. For everyone else, it would
be terrifying. There was no helping it, though; the cannon was something that
had no counterpart in Veydrus. There was magic—terrifying in battle in its own
right—and siege weapons, but nothing with the sort of destructive power that
could strike from so far away it could not be countered.

All around him, bowmen and officers waited
impatiently, conversing in hushed tones and keeping wary eyes on the fog. Fog
was not so uncommon around Raynesdark, but even the most skeptical among the
soldiers was convinced that the goblins lay beneath that misty blanket, and
that the fog was magical. Real fog would have burned off in the late morning.

Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom! Kthooom!

There was no warning, no preamble. The air erupted in
metal. Low overhead, the whistle of the cannon shot sped by, the shots
themselves moving too fast to be seen. There was a crash among the stone
buildings of the city where the cannonballs had found a place to cease their
flight, though not their intended target. Nearly everyone on the walls moved to
the city side to see what had just befallen.

Homes had largely been struck in the first volley,
with a smithy taking a shot as well. The sturdy stone construction of
Raynesdark’s buildings, many of them hundreds of summers old or more, was no
match for the goblin version of Acardian cannons.

“Stay low, wait for them to lift the fog. They are
firing blindly at us,” Brannis yelled out a warning to everyone on the wall.

Following Iridan’s advice, he made his way along the
wall to one of the large defensive towers that had sported a catapult earlier
that day. Without the catapult crews in the way, the tower was an excellent
vantage point.

Brrrraaaaaaaaapp. Brrraap. Brrrraaaaap. Brrraaaaaap.

The sound of the horn echoed among the mountains.
Brannis eyes widened in comprehension:
They have a spotter!

“Look to the fields! Find where that horn is sounding
from,” Brannis shouted.

Men were already rushing to the very edge of the wall
to seek out the source of the noise. The fresh fallen snow should have made
picking out the goblin spotter easier, but the distance was working against
them, and the goblin may have used magic to cover his tracks.

Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom!

The volley was less dangerous than the first, smashing
into the road leading up to the city. The shots hit various switchbacks, but
all were low by roughly the height of the wall. The goblins were adjusting
their aim by the spotter’s signal.

Brrraap. Brrraap. Brrraaaaaap.

“Iridan, bring one of those can—metal balls up here,”
Brannis called out, just stopping himself before calling it a cannonball. “And
someone fetch Faolen, and quickly.”

Brannis had an idea how to play the goblins’ blindness
against them. If they could fool the spotter, they would not need to find him
and kill him.

Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom!

Brannis ducked instinctively as the sound of the shots
passed close next to him. There was a wet, splattering sound, and one of the
archers on the wall nearby was gone. Two other shots had clipped the top of the
wall, shattering stone despite the wards.

This is not good. I had hoped that the wards would
have done more.

“Brannis, here!” Iridan shouted.

Brannis turned to see an bronze sphere floating his
way. Brannis caught the goblins’ cannonball as it came close. It was still hot
and would have burned his hand if not for the protection his gauntlet offered.
It was identical in size to the ones he had seen aboard the
Fair Trader
.
He turned it over and around, studying the runes carved into it. He was no
expert on runes, but these seemed meant to damage the wards that the walls
bore. The cannonball was even in good shape after its impact. It could probably
be used again without having to be tended to by a smith.

“Where is Faolen?” Brannis shouted, finding renewed
urgency in misleading the goblin spotter.

If we cannot get them to miss the wall, it will not
last long.

The accursed horn sounded again:
Brrrraaaaaaaaapp.
Brrraap.

Brannis could only hope that they could get Faolen to
the wall before the goblins found their range and brought it down around them.

We need to get the goblins to commit to a charge while
the wall is still intact.

Then:
Kthooom!
Kthooom! Kthooom! Kthooom!

The tower where Brannis stood shook under the direct
impact of at least two of the shots. The goblins were on target. The tower’s
wards held, but the wall had not been so lucky. Plumes of stone dust rose
skyward as the cannonballs made holes in several places. Some spots just
cracked, as the wards spent themselves protecting the walls, but not enough
wards were holding.

Dammit, Iridan! Was that all that could be done to
shore up those runes?

“Sir Brannis!” Faolen yelled. He was out of breath
after being brought back from the safety of the castle and climbing the ladder
up to the wall.

“Quickly! Hide that dust cloud. We need to have the
goblins think they missed,” Brannis ordered.

It may have been too late already, but it was their
best chance. If they adjusted their aim again, they might be able to convince
them they were hitting wall when all they were destroying was the road below.

“Huaxti janidu deldore wanetexu elu mulaftu sekedori
puc’anzu margek lotok junubi,”
Faolen
chanted quickly.

He seemed to paint the air with his fingers, creating
an image of clear air in front of the debris made by the cannonballs’ impact.
It was a much longer incantation than Brannis was used to hearing, but he knew
little of illusion and could see how it might need to be a bit more intricate
than turning aether into fire or wind.

No way am I going to remember all that; I could barely
follow it. That is, if I live to see nightfall at all for Kyrus to make use of
the knowledge.

Brannis had to remind himself that there was a horde
of goblins who were intent on destroying them, and it was not a foregone
conclusion that he would see the next day.

Brannis and the other Kadrin defenders had no
perspective that would let them see how the goblins were perceiving Faolen’s
illusion. The aether construct of a patch of clear air “painted” in the sky was
set between the debris cloud and the goblin fog shroud.

They waited.

After a long while, the horn sounded again. The
spotter must have been confused.

Brrrraaaaaaaaapp. Brrraap. Brrrraaaaap.

Brannis wished he had been better able to pick out a
pattern in the trumpeting. He wanted to know whether he was going to be seeing
cannonballs crashing into the rocks below the wall or ducking ones near his
head. There was nothing to do but wait. The soldiers along the wall were
becoming accustomed to the pattern and hunkered down behind the parapets after
the horn’s call faded.

Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom! Kthooom!

The ground shook but not like it had before. Brannis
looked over to see that the shots had missed low. The cannons were striking at
the rock just below the base of the wall. A few shots had ricocheted into the
wall itself, but the wards had held against the reduced impact.

“Faolen, show them that they hit. Unmask the debris
cloud. Make it more visible if you can,” Brannis ordered.

“Consider it done,” Faolen replied.

They toyed with the goblins for volley after volley.
They seemed to be catching on that something was wrong, but the goblin spotter
was guessing against them and losing. Faolen adjusted the visible debris and
created the appearance of damage where there was none, or revealed earlier
damage from the errant shots that occasionally slipped through their web of
deceptions and hit the wall anyway.

Brannis wished there was someone that could lend aid
to Faolen, but there was no one else who had more than a basic understanding of
illusion. It was an ill-reputed discipline, and a highly specialized one;
illusion attracted few to its way. Brannis could see the strain it was putting
on the slightly built sorcerer’s body.

It thus came as no surprise when Faolen collapsed
unconscious after one more time having to renew his spell for painting the sky
with lies.

“Quickly, get him into town,” Brannis said. “Get him
water and lay him down. If you can rouse him, help him back to the battle.”

This is it. The goblins are going to figure out their
range, and we will lose the wall
.

Brannis had expected it, but it was no less galling to
be driven back. Still, they had not lost the wall yet, and it was possible that
they might have run the goblins out of—or at least low on—ammunition or black
powder.

Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom! Kthooom!

Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom! Kthooom!

Kthooom!
Kthooom!
Kthooom! Kthooom!

There was little they could do but wait it out, and
hope the wall still offered some protection when the goblins ran out of shots
to fire, or patience, and attacked.

*
* * * * * * *

Looking out the flap of the tent, Celia could see
little in the heavy, magical fog. There was visibility to a dozen paces or so,
but that only showed her the commanders and the Megrenn sorcerer.

He had taken her again that morning, a final human
comfort before going into battle beside the goblins. He whispered promises that
he would protect her and, for the first time, spoke of not ransoming her back
to Kadrin at all. He said he wanted to bring her back to Megrenn with him after
conquering Raynesdark and take her for a wife. She would be his fourth wife, he
said, and rich as a princess.

“There is no future in Kadrin as a sorceress,”
he had said.

She was oddly conflicted. Jinzan had been the only one
kind to her in the least since the goblin invasion. Her husband had died trying
to flee the city—without her—and had been caught by the goblin invaders. He was
Lord Feldrake’s guard captain and had disgraced himself badly. He had talked
bravely, but after a few short months of marriage, she had discovered that he
was just a braggart and a bully, and on the day he died, she realized he was a
coward who would abandon her to save his own hide. Jinzan was a hero among his
people: he had fought for—and won—his people’s freedom. He was ruthless, but he
was also intelligent and brave in the true sense, backed by actions and not
just idle words. Enemy or not, he was more a man than her late husband, and she
was now widowed.

Can Megrenn really retake not only their own lands,
but steal Kadrin’s as well?

An alliance with goblins and the marvelous war
machines they had made from Jinzan’s plans spoke to a shift in power in favor
of the mistreated former vassal. She had been hearing the “cannons,” as he
called them, for nearly an hour. The noise they made was unlike thunder, which
was loud but lasted and faded. These cannons split the air itself with their
report. She learned after the first volley to wait for the spotter’s horn, then
plug her ears.

At least they had left her hands unbound. She did not
know whether it was arrogance or oversight. Jinzan had taken no chances with
her, certainly. She had slept the night gagged and with her wrists and even
fingers tied together. He would treat her as a dangerous enemy, he had told
her, until she had chosen her fate. If she agreed to return to Megrenn with
him, he promised there would be no more need for such precautions. She believed
him too. She had seen his Source and seen his draw. He was far more powerful
than Celia, and she knew it.

I wonder how he would treat me if he knew I was Fifth
Circle, and not Seventh?
Celia mused.

She had lied to keep from being considered even more
dangerous than a lesser-ranked sorceress would be. Her Source looked weaker than
it truly was, due to her aptitude at life extension. Diverting much of her
Source into preserving her youth limited her power, but it was well worth it in
her mind. She was seven springtimes older than she claimed but looked young
even for the nineteen autumns she pretended to be. For the young sorceresses of
Kadrin, it was never too early to begin preserving their looks.