The Merchant Emperor (59 page)

He whispered his traditional prayer to the local priest of the All-God that he always undertook before leading an assault. He knew Talquist would be furious, but at least at this time the Merchant Emperor could not see into the hearts and souls of his subjects.

At least Fhremus hoped he couldn’t yet. It was clearly only a matter of time.

Keep my men safe, and if I am to die, let me die bravely
, he thought as he always did.
And, for any innocent that may not be spared by my hand, may the All-God be merciful to him in the Afterlife
.

“Riders, mount up.”

55

“Archers, hold the wall. Ready the ballistae.”

Anborn’s voice, its timbre deep and thrilling, boomed out the first defensive command of the battle.

Gwydion could hear his friend and mentor from deep inside the middle of the armed settlement where he had been stationed atop the side rampart, able to see beyond the front wall and inside most of the garrison. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes; they were not from fear or sorrow, or any negative inspiration, but rather an acknowledgment that what he had trained and traded his childhood for was about to begin.

In spite of how seriously they were outnumbered, and how deadly he knew the iacxsis to be, there was an honor of a sort to be felt in being part of such a battle, where survival was as unlikely as he knew it was now. His father had told him stories at night before bed when he came into his adolescent years about doomed regiments and troops who had undertaken suicide missions in a greater cause, to spare a larger population or advance a necessary front, knowing that the cost would be their own lives. He had described it with a sense of camaraderie, of noble sacrifice.

Of immortality.

He thought back to the moment that Stephen had passed from this life, in the arms of his godfather, his grandmother singing his father a song of sustaining and passage, long enough for Melly and him to have a chance to see his spirit, whole and unbroken in the light of the rising sun, his late mother standing at his side in the doorway between life and death.

The Veil of Hoen, Ashe had called it, having been there himself.

A sense of peace came upon him now, thinking about the joy of the reunion that might be awaiting him before the end of the day.

He looked down to the ground at the Lady Cymrian, who was drawing the tongue whip out of her pack and unrolling it carefully. She looked up at him and met his gaze calmly.

“I can offer you but one piece of advice in the bearing of an ancient elemental weapon, and only if you are desirous of it,” she said. Gwydion nodded. “As vain as this concept may be in words, I have found, in training and experience, that it is best to see the sword as an extension of yourself, not the other way around. Its power, its history, and all the bravery and sacrifice with which it has been wielded in the past do not matter in your wielding of it, because, until you are part of its history yourself, it is there to serve you. Tysterisk has been carried by the man I hated the most in my life, and now is being carried by one that, when my name was my own, I have loved the most. It has accomplished great feats and committed great atrocities, neither of them at your hand yet. Be the wind, Gwydion; let the element of air assist you in your fight today, and each day you wield it hence; no more, no less. May its weight in your hand be light.”

“Thank you.”

“At this moment, you are, in word, and deed, and action, the Lord Cymrian, the defender of the Alliance. Believe it, for it is the truth.”

Gwydion nodded again. The expression in his eyes was calm.

She smiled slightly at him. It was an expression he had not seen on her face since she met up with him in Bethany after returning from the Nain.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

She leaned up against the side wall. “Then let them come.”

*   *   *

“Loose the iacxsis.”

The sides of the collapsible boxes atop the heavy wagons crashed to the floor or the ground to the sides of the wagons.

A horrific sound rent the air, the screams of a hundred of the mutant beasts, their giant mandibles snapping, their batlike wings flapping wildly, a buzzing tearing at the ears of their riders and handlers.

And the rest of the army as well as that inside the armed settlement.

From the wagon beds, a great commotion of movement issued forth, rocking the vehicles violently from side to side.

Great clouds of sand rose up into the air as the monsters’ wings began to beat in seriousness now.

And then, one by one, riders and mounts began to take to the air, hovering for a moment above the highgrass of the southern Krevensfield Plain before beginning to ascend, confidently now, into the sky.

A great roar of affirmation rose from the army behind them. As if buoyed on the voices of the men below them, the iacxsis gained altitude, stretched their wings, and banked off to the north in the direction of the farming settlement.

*   *   *

“Hold your fire,” Anborn commanded as the sound of four hundred crossbows being set rattled the wood of the wall around the settlement. “Peace; await my order.”

He was still atop his beautiful black warhorse, riding smoothly the east-western line in the foreguard just inside the gate. The sight of the creatures ascending into the air in the distance was a disturbing one, he knew; it was critical not to let that frightening sight generate fear that would be a weapon of its own.

He looked at the soldiers standing in wait, and a fondness beyond reason came over him. They were not the elite soldiers of the united army Ashe had recruited and trained, but rather the reserves and volunteers, the men who had not made a life of soldiering but rather had answered the call when their land was in need of them. Uniforms badly buttoned, hair not within regulation length, intense worry almost successfully hidden by miens of grim determination, they were warriors nonetheless, ready to pay the price at a greater cost than their more professional counterparts.

He felt akin to them.

“Hold,” he said again. “We will get our chance. For now, let them sign their own death warrants.”

He slung his own crossbow up from the horse’s side, and walked the horse back to the front wall.

Waiting.

56

“They’re coming,” Gwydion Navarne called down to the soldiers stationed within the walls of the settlement. It was not necessary to tell the archers; they could undoubtedly see the wave of beasts gaining momentum. “Be ready.”

“Stay down,” Anborn called to the archers atop the front rampart. “Keep out of sight as much as you can; we want them to come in and make themselves at home.”

“Ballistae set,” Gwydion said as quietly as he could without his command being missed. The soldiers manning the large-armed weapons checked the torsion springs and the coils of rope attached to the heavy barbed missiles in those arms, then silently signaled their assent.

He glanced down at Rhapsody, who had unrolled the whip in her left hand, and had quietly loosed the bindings of the scabbard with Daystar Clarion with her right. She was scanning the skies above her, waiting, her face blank.

*   *   *

When they got within half a league of the farming settlement, the iacxsis squadron split into quarters and separated into the cardinal directions, approaching the camp from all four sides. The squadron commander signaled the successful alignment.

Then the riders pressed their knees into the hearing organs on the beasts’ abdomens; the iacxsis, feeling the change in pressure, beat their wings more savagely until they were just above the encampment walls.

Then they dove.

*   *   *

“Fire!” Anborn screamed to the soldiers manning the ballistae.

Which were, against the traditional trajectory of the weaponry, pointed almost directly up.

The heavy barbs shot forth like immense arrowheads with solid coils of rope attached. Some of the barbs sliced into the underwings, piercing the leathery hide from the bottom. Others pierced the riders, sending some of them sliding, with their specially adapted saddles to which they had been lashed, over the sides of the beasts, hanging helpless in the air. Their steeds, now out of control, deviated happily from their directions until the ropes that were attached to the barbs tangled in their wings, sending them and the men more or less atop them spinning suddenly into the ground.

Rhapsody stepped out from the safety of the wall and signaled to Gwydion Navarne, readying her whip. She inserted her arm into the flared opening, concentrating as the tongue constricted on her arm.

In the name of Mylinmacr,
she thought silently,
aid our efforts
.

Another rank of iacxsis struck from the air. Three of them strafed the front rampart, seizing hapless archers in their mandibles. Rhapsody aimed at the closest one, swinging the whip over her head, then pulled back and struck.

The dragon tongue thinned, then cracked with a loud
boom
. It encircled the neck of the iacxsis as Rhapsody dragged it back and, with all her strength, pulled the winged beast and its rider from the wall along with the archer in its maw. A tangle of bodies, human and insectoid, spun and fell to the ground inside the camp.

Gwydion drew Tysterisk as the ballistae in the depths of the encampment fired again. He held the sword hilt up before his eyes, its blade all but invisible, the only evidence of its existence the tiny swirling patterns that spun in spirals where the blade would have been, closed his eyes, and concentrated.

Cease,
he said to the wind beneath the wings of the iacxsis squadron that was now flying overhead.

Nine of the beasts, gliding a moment before on a warm updraft, dropped like stones out of the air.

A roar of excitement rose from the ranks of soldiers inside the walled encampment.

*   *   *

Fhremus could not believe his eyes.

‘The last time the iacxsis had been deployed, the rout of the citizenry of Sepulvarta had been a nauseating, fascinating thing to watch from outside the gates of the walled City of Reason. The beasts had almost hopped more than flown, much in the manner their insect progenitors preferred, snatching unfortunate townspeople, civilian and soldier alike, in their great hinged jaws and had crushed them while still in flight. The riders maintained order the best they could, but iacxsis were not horses, and had primitive but stubborn minds of their own, as well as their own priorities. When the soldiers guarding Sepulvarta had come to realize that the hides of the iacxsis were impervious to their arrows, they had turned their weapons on the riders, shooting them off the beasts’ backs and out of the sky. This outcome was even worse than the initial attack; the iacxsis, now freed from any sort of human direction, reverted to primitive mandates and began snatching humans, crushing their spinal columns and devouring them in the streets or the air. Recent training improvements had seen a far better result in the attack on the harbors of Avonderre and Tallono, with the riders maintaining a better record of control.

But now, as he watched through his spyglass, the assault on this insignificant farming settlement seemed to be going terribly wrong.

He could not see anything but the top of the wall, which was manned with somewhere between three and four hundred crossbowmen and archers; the rampart obscured any sight into the encampment itself. The squadron of iacxsis had achieved the directional split successfully; the diving, the first stage of aerial-to-ground attack, bordered on artistry, in his opinion. He waited for the second state, the reascent, and was surprised to see that, to a one, none occurred.

In the second wave, he saw three Alliance bowmen on the wall targeted, two of which made successful strikes, but the easternmost iacxsis had not so much as gotten its prey into its mandibles when it seemed to have been dragged off the wall and into the depths of the fortress.

What in the name of the All-God is going on in there?
he wondered as nine more iacxsis dropped out of the air, as if pulled to the earth beyond the wall by a giant magnet. Another four dropped on the eastern side of the wall, one of which fell outside the rampart, its rider hitting the ground headfirst. He saw the body of the iacxsis shatter on impact, the fragile skeleton beneath its impenetrable hide breaking into a dozen or more pieces.

In vain he sat up straighter on his mount, trying to get a better view into the fortress, but all he could see was the repeated iacxsis attacks seemingly broken by an unforgiving wind, as the creatures seemed alternately to be dragged from the sky over the middle of the encampment or to fall from it from nowhere.

In the distance he could hear the muffled cheering from behind the walls, could see the archers dancing with glee on the battlements, as the squadron of unassailable winged beasts disappeared before his eyes into the bowels of the pathetic farming village.

He waited for a quarter hour longer, hoping to see the elite squadron of riders and flying mounts rise from the interior floor into the air and return, but not a single one did. The cheering on the ramparts grew louder; it was a sound that enflamed his blood and made his head pound with anger.

“All right,” he said to his stunned field commanders, who were staring at the armed farming village in shock. “Let us find out what’s going on inside this pathetic excuse for a fortress. Archers, provide cover—cavalry, prepare to charge. Leave one alive to render an explanation. But only one.”

*   *   *

The stunned auxiliary soldiers of the Alliance were ruthless in dispatching both the beasts and the riders that had been dragged from the sky by the whip in the hand of the Lady Cymrian, or the wind manipulated by the sword of the duke of Navarne.

As she got a little better accustomed to the whip, Rhapsody had stepped more to the center of the encampment, seeking to make use of the ground and the wall encircling what had at one time been a small village and a handful of family farms. She saw that impact was more destructive to the iacxsis than weaponsfire, so she tried to use the whip’s flexibility to not only wrap around a limb or neck, but to yank each beast from the very air itself and smash it, using its own momentum, into something hard.