Heir To The Nova (Book 3) (32 page)

“Ah, the young hero is getting full of righteous indignation,” she snarled. “Excellent. Tell me, Alex Martin, Master Enchanter, Prince of the Nova, when you recruited your harem of sweet companions, did it ever occur to you the high price each and every one of them would pay when you ultimately fail them? Because I intend to make it a very high personal price, indeed.”

“Enough of your mind games, Kerr!” Ranther shouted. “The real game starts in sixty seconds!”

Alex’s father turned to us. “It’s never going to back down and this is getting us nowhere. I know you are both ready for this, just stay together and do what you feel is right. When you have your chance, don’t hesitate, strike with everything you have.” We both nodded, even though that was probably the worst inspirational speech I have ever heard. I was more concerned about the emotions I was seeing scroll across my mate’s face. Alex was truly angry, an emotion that I rarely saw in him; and for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you if that was more likely to spell our salvation or our doom.

Suddenly the sky erupted with another flash of light. I looked up to see an army of nebulia formed in ranks in the clouds. Although their numbers seemed fewer than that of the demons, they saluted us in bravery and triumph.

“Excellent,” gushed the Kerr. “At last, a challenge! You have no idea how long I’ve been setting up this game. But I don’t quite think you understand, little ones. You can’t hide half your pieces on a game board.” My heart sunk a little as I realized that it knew about the Helios we had stashed away and probably every other countermeasure we had dreamed up as well. I should have expected that, I suppose, when your opponent is an ageless, superior being that can create and destroy worlds. With a chilling laugh of evil glee he/she swept her arm back expansively. “But as a show of good faith, I will reveal my cards first.”

Down on the open battlefield below us, scores of zombies and ghouls vanished when eight huge purplish-black portals popped into existence virtually on top of them. Where they went, I’m not sure; but it mattered little as there were still thousands waiting to take their places in the assault. Suddenly, eight monstrous beast-like demons clanked out. I say clanked because their bodies appeared to be made up entirely of steel plate and stone. It took a long time for them to clear the portal, because I would have to estimate they were at least three hundred feet long! Shaped flat and low like some kind of nightmarish centipede, the creature had hundreds of legs, which threw sparks every time it scraped its own sides. The backs were flat, rough textured and ridged across its twenty-foot width, with leaf-shaped bone plates sticking up on both edges. I really had no idea what to make of them, but then I was thinking like a hand-to-hand warrior. Winya finally enlightened me.

“Living siege ladders!”

The look of horror on my face must have said it all, as the Kerr gloated. “Glad you like them. I made them just for the two of you and your irksome enchanted walls.”

Suddenly, Winya was screaming in my head, and I winced in pain as she broadcast loudly to her troops.
“Everyone to your stations! Raise the ballista and bolter stations! Come on, people, move!”
In my head, I saw the doors to the keep burst open and disgorge our Helios defenders at a dead run, each splitting off to her assigned station with practiced efficiency. I saw Alex dash to the back side of the walls and shout something down to our troops below.

Still hovering above us, the Kerr looked down at our army with interest. “Hmm, a new indigenous lesser form of nebulia? Ranther, you naughty boy, you’ve been holding out on me. But no matter, I don’t see the numbers matching up well for you. But I will have to say the game just got a lot more fun.” It giggled, “Well, let’s get this party started!” With great drama, she pulled out a couple of small cubes from an unseen pocket in her slinky dress and tossed them up into the air. They seemed to bounce and roll across the overcast sky, tumbling aimlessly, bumping off clouds, and all the while getting bigger and bigger, until finally teetering to a stop. I recognized them now; they were similar to the game of bones that bored soldiers gambled their pay away on incessantly.

“Snake eyes, how appropriate!” the Kerr sneered, as she cackled and then shot up into the heavens to join her demon army in the sky. She was closely followed by Alex’s parents in their full regalia. There was an almost immediate clap of thunder as the two celestial armies ripped into each other above our heads. Tearing my eyes away from the spectacle, I realized I had to focus on my own battle; and for any of us to survive, we had to win!

A long, low moaning horn blast sounded from the undead and demon horde below us, and a black cloud of flying bat-like demons rose up like a flight of blackbirds over a cornfield and screeched toward us claws and fangs extended. Alex was still at the back of the wall, but I saw him windmill his arm at something down below us and then walk casually back to join me with a satisfied look on his face.

Suddenly, I felt the small hairs on the back of my neck rise up in dread, and I actually felt the air pressure behind me change as two keening screams shattered the night air. It’s hard to describe the sound, but it’s something so basic and primal that a part of our brain reacts without thinking–dragons! Like scaly death itself, Dawn and Dusk flashed up and over the walls just a few feet above our heads, unleashing a flight call that shook the ground two hundred feet below us. They flew eagerly to the attack. Part of me cringed at the display, and the other part noted the vast changes in them. They seem to grow larger every time I see them, but the startling part was the new bluish-white scale mail that covered and protected nearly every inch of them. There was also an impressive set of wicked-looking spikes mounted on their tail armor. It looked heavy, but I couldn’t see that it hampered their movements in the slightest; more of Alex’s enchantments I would wager.

They did a quick pass and circling above our heads, let out a roar which a few short weeks before would have dropped every human within a half mile to their knees. But this time, it served to rally the defenders. I saw silver dragon flags and banners being proudly run up numerous poles to sail defiantly over the fortress as Dawn easily ripped the first over-eager demon she encountered in half, the parts corkscrewing aimlessly to the ground in front of the walls.

The ground forces below us were already grinding steadily toward the river, but it was the flying demons that would strike us first.

“Siege teams, light them up!” Ebony shouted as she assumed her position on the walls near where we stood. Looking back at the curtain walls to our rear, I saw the emplacements swivel around and suddenly the sky was filled with blue projectiles of pure magic, streaming out in long twists of power. The first wall of demons hit and were absolutely shredded. I felt a brief moment of confidence, at least that part worked. Unfortunately, unlike undead, the demons were smart enough to change tactics and spread out, forcing our turrets to target them individually. We only have four emplacements, and there were thousands of fliers.

I thought for sure they would attack the wall defenders first, but I was wrong. As I watched in horror, wave after wave peeled off and pursued our dragon girls. They were savaging them relentlessly, with fireballs and claws. I was ready to fly out to save them, but Alex’s strong hand fastened onto my shoulder.

“Maya, the girls will be fine.”

My eyes were already tearing up and the battle hadn’t really started yet. “But, Alex, they are being hit with fire! They hate fire!”

He shook his head. “Not anymore, not in that armor. A silver dragon’s hide is the thickest and strongest of all the dragons, only fire can normally hurt them. That ice armor was designed for just that, nothing else. Now I think we have other matters to attend to.”

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Alex

Maya was concerned and scared about what might happen to our friends and family; well, so was I, with all my heart. But deep down I knew the time for brooding over what could have been or what should have been was over. I reached down, and for the first time felt a palatable connection to my Vakha spirit animal. I knew without a shadow of a doubt I would defend my mate, my friends, and this place to my last drop of blood.

The heavy ballista eventually rose out of their shielded berths and locked on target, finally started to churn. Launching ten pound steel-tipped spears, the expert dwarven crews could manage a shot every thirty seconds. Most were the stocks that Elsa had purchased from the dwarf capital, but every crew had a few specials to use at their discretion.

In my head, almost as an urgent background commentary, I could hear Winya barking out a string of orders and repositioning artillery.

“Ballista teams, concentrate on the big demons. Once dealt with, or if unable to target effectively, refocus on the demon infantry. Catapults and trebuchets, areas five and eight, fire for effect!”

The nearby ka-chuk of the firing ballista intensified as I watched them deliver direct hits to the fleshy sides of the siege ladder demons. But as accurate and powerful as the missiles were, they didn’t seem to faze the beasts in the slightest.

“Winya, one ballista station per beast is too slow. You’ll need to concentrate multiples on a single target and start using the special-tipped ones,”
I sent her over our link. She didn’t acknowledge me directly, but almost immediately her orders changed to reflect my instructions.

“All ballista, retarget ladder beast in sector six!”

The turrets swiveled as one and fired, a salvo of missiles striking the selected victim. Several of the heavy javelins pierced the armor where it was weakest–at the leg joints. This had the effect of disabling a number of legs on its right side. Apparently too stupid to compensate for the imbalance, the creature veered perilously off course and ended up crashing recklessly through the assembled undead that were milling about in front of the river.

By now, the first waves of undead and demons lined the waterway. I even watched as several demons deliberately pushed a few zombies into the rushing water to see what would happen. They were swept away in a heartbeat, their bodies dissolving almost before they were cast off either side of the mountain’s lower waterfalls.

“What the…?”

Winya chuckled, pausing in her non-stop barking of orders.
“The water that passes through the fortress comes in contact with enough of the crystal guy’s magic to give it a ‘positive charge of good’. It’s like acid to the low-level undead and poison to the higher-ups and demons. In fact, that’s probably what killed that vampire we found on our first day here.”

“Boy, did Lifebane pick the wrong fortress to pick on!”

“I would agree. Now, let’s prove it to him!”

The undead bunched up at the river’s edge, and being reasonably close to our walls, made a perfect target for our magic users. Mingt and his students cast fireball after fireball into their tightly-packed midst. He had conscripted Nia into their group as well, and I saw my friend flitting around the ramparts, unleashing pixie fire as only she could. They appeared to be doing a lot of damage, and corpses were clearly on fire as the flames spread from zombie to zombie. The demons actually seemed to be enjoying the heat though. The first three ladder demons reached the river, rearing back at the banks and flinging their front claws toward the far bank. The first two managed to span the river correctly; and even though I could see their legs and soft undersides boiling away in the holy water, their stone and steel backs held up, locking together and creating a perfect arched bridge. The third demon was not so lucky. It caught a ballista bolt just as it flung its length across the tumultuous water. It contracted in pain just enough to miss the far bank and collapse fully into the frothing torrent. The chunks that were left by the time it washed over the side falls weren’t big enough to put in a bread basket.

The two functional bridges now had undead and demon troops swarming across as Winya bellowed coordinates for the siege engines to take them out. One more centipede bridge attached itself to the far bank despite heavy fire from our catapults and ballista, and the last three crossed over the existing bridges and were now angling for our foundation walls. The remaining bridge demon, which had encountered navigation problems earlier, seemed to have repaired itself. It was now attempting to limp slowly over one of its brethren spanning the water. Winya shouted out instructions to one of the dwarven spotters, and a few seconds later, I heard an enormous crash as one of the trebuchets let loose from within the main courtyard. A stone as big as a beer barrel lofted far over our heads, reached its arc, and descended sharply down. It caught the demon while it was at the midpoint of traversing the bridge, and the heavy projectile holed both the centipede and the demon bridge under it, splashing into the river below. With a loud crack I could clearly hear from the top of the walls, the bridge fractured and broke apart, collapsing both creatures into the steaming waters. A spirited cheer went up from the dwarven engineers manning the emplacements.

Too close for either bombardment or direct fire ballista, the bridge demons at the base of our walls were able to work practically unmolested, save for arrow fire which was ineffectual. They stretched up to their full height and one by one, essentially fell over onto our walls. The charms on the walls worked to kill them the same as the holy water, but by this time the damage was done. Even dead, they bridged our walls, and the rapidly moving demons and ghouls scrambled up the makeshift siege towers to battle our defenders.