Vannek, sitting near the mesa edge, swigged from his waterskin. A cool wind chilled his face as he looked up to find the blue ko’aye, Drusa, making another circuit, passing beneath the wound in the sky where the stars bled through. That disturbing aerial scar left from the passage of the demon goddess was the only reason the wastelands weren’t blazing in the sun’s heat.
A messenger had relayed that the mages were readying to open the hearthstones, and he wished that they’d get on with it. Too much longer and the men would grow restless. Varama hadn’t been able to bring many warriors through from Darassus, so his own forces consisted of less than forty, half of those recovered from Cerai’s fortress. They sat nearby, looking over their weapons or drawing in the sand or scanning the heavens like himself.
He heard a shrill cry above. Drusa swooped down, calling that many tens of warriors neared.
Vannek frowned and climbed to his feet. Cerai had organized herself quickly.
From his vantage point on the left flank, Vannek looked down on his men, and below them, tiered on the slope, were two ranks of kobalin. While Naor were still inclined to rush for individual opponents, over the last fifteen years discipline had been hammered into many of their units, and the warriors of Vannek’s tiny force were among them. While they might long to rush to battle, they’d hold until he gave the order. He had little faith in the kobalin, however, and fully expected them to break ranks and seek solitary combat.
Ortok had told those on the left that Vannek was their officer, news that they’d absorbed without reaction. They’d been less than pleased when Vannek had instructed them to wait for his word before they attacked, but grunted their assent.
The kobalin shifted to peer between two large dunes on the left, beyond the killing field. Most possessed dog, horse, or bat-wing ears, which stood at full attention as they faced toward a gap. Their hands tightened on the hafts of axes, swords, and polearms.
A moment after the kobalin heard it, the faint sound of hoofbeats reached Vannek, and he called to his men to stand ready. “We have to hold. None of them will get to the center through us!”
The bodyguard at his side grunted doubtfully, and Vannek looked to him for explanation. He rarely said anything, although he’d smiled hugely when they’d been reunited and was following him more closely than ever, as if to make up for having been separated from him during the battle. He had not proven to be a skilled horseman.
“I worry that they will not hold, Lord General,” the young man said.
“I’ll do the worrying. You just keep your blade sharp.”
“Yes, Lord General.”
The rest of his soldiers stretched arms and loosed their swords. Those few who still had bows planted the shafts in the soil. They tested their weapon grips.
Thelar and a wispy young female squire in an ill-fitting tabard arrived at a jog. “Lord General, this is Aspirant Tavella.”
Vannek grunted in greeting and spoke to Thelar. “You think Cerai will throw magic at us?”
“We don’t know what she’ll do.” Thelar slipped on his helmet so that little but his stern eyes, lips, and strong chin showed beneath the metal. He presented a more martial appearance even than Rylin. His assistant, though, only enhanced her childlike appearance as she fixed the chin strap of her own helm. Vannek reminded himself that when it came to mages, outward appearance mattered little.
The first enemies appeared at a notch between two large dunes, four horselike beasts sporting dark iridescent scales and spikelike manes. Two mailed warriors rode along the back of each, the rear-seated man holding a clutch of spears. The helms of a larger host were visible behind them.
Lelanc, now airborne with Drusa, called down that a second large force approached from the right.
“If she’s pinning the flanks,” Thelar said, “Cerai must plan something for the center.”
“True enough,” Vannek agreed.
Muragan had explained about the difference between the exalts and the Altenerai, saying further that Thelar was reputed to be a fair swordsman. He had not also said he was a student of military theory.
The lead horse thing let out a loud snort, disgorging dark smoke from its nostrils.
“She’ll probably use the winged beast Rylin learned about against the center,” Thelar said. “I hope it’s not a dragon.”
“Hope? Best pray.”
“I’ve no faith in prayers,” Thelar said. “Do your Three give you strength or miracles?”
“They deliver victory to the brave and cunning.”
“Let that be us, then,” Thelar said.
“They come for the fight!” a huge brown-furred kobalin shouted eagerly from downslope.
The horses had sprung into motion, churning the sand as they beat forward, closely followed by at least a hundred helmed warriors with round shields and axes. They ran in a loose wedge formation, giving vent to a full-throated roar. Vannek heard that mirrored from the right, but spared them no more thought. His job was to hold the left.
Vannek’s kobalin shifted and stamped their feet in the sand. When two shook their weapons overhead, others joined in. A handful advanced a few steps, and others moved after and soon both lines of kobalin wavered.
“Hold until my signal!” Vannek shouted. “Hold!” The Altenerai horn call from the central mesa signaled the same order. Kobalin, though, would be unlikely to heed it, no matter that they had apparently been taught the meaning of the sounds.
The kobalin ceased their forward movement. Many scowled back at Vannek.
The horses galloped on, racing ahead of the troops.
“Archers!” Vannek shouted. “Drop those animals!”
A moment later a flight of arrows soared for the enemy.
But the shafts of his seven archers glanced off the shining scales of the mounts. Three stuck out from the armored shoulders of a single spearman, in back of a rider. A ragged arrow volley followed the first, and while it too failed to stop the horse-things, one of the mounted spearmen was struck and dropped from the saddle.
First blood was apparently too much for the kobalin. One with dark red fur let out a gibbering shout and charged. A second ran after, and then the dam burst and every single kobalin under Vannek’s command ran screaming at the enemy, a full minute before he would have released them. He swore, then called again for his men to hold.
There were shouts from the right flank as well.
Two kobalin charged straight for the first of the horse things, axes raised. As they closed into range, a fleshy sack at the back of the horse thing’s neck expanded, reminding Vannek of a frog. When the beast opened its scaly mouth far wider than a horse, it didn’t make a sound, but a ball of fire immediately emerged to engulf the scaly green kobalin before it. The other threw itself clear, left arm aflame, and rolled in the sand to put out the blaze.
The horses plunged through the kobalin line, burning and kicking as they went, the spearsmen at their rear taking deadly toll.
One stout, red-scaled kobalin, fully alight, crushed the foreleg of the foremost horse. He fell, dying, but the creature dropped and kobalin swarmed over the beast and its riders.
Cerai’s infantry ran in from behind, and Vannek ordered his archers to loose their final shafts before the soldiers got too close to the kobalin.
In moments, the flame-breathing lizard horses were charging up the sandy brown slope to the top of the mesa. The kobalin mass stopped the greater number of Cerai’s troops, but dozens broke free and ran in the wake of the horses.
That’s when Thelar proved his worth. Just as a third ragged volley of arrows rebounded from the armor of the rider in the forefront, and one well-aimed arrow stuck uselessly beside the lizard horse’s expanding throat sac, the exalt’s fingers worked back and forth as though he manipulated invisible threads. His spell tore the sand from beneath the lead animal and sent it sliding backward. He and his aspirant worked the same trick with the next animal, and sent it head over heels down slope.
The final lizard horse reached the Naor ranks.
The spearsman on its back dropped one of Vannek’s soldiers as the beast raced up, and another four felt the kiss of its flame. They screamed as they died.
Vannek led the rush from the left, spear in hand. He’d heard it said Kyrkenall raced to battle with a poem on his lips, but Vannek offered only a bellow of rage. His bodyguard and three of his spearmen shouted with him as they attacked.
The horse-thing reared and its mouth opened. The spearman behind the rider cast and missed Vannek’s shoulder by a knife length.
Vannek crashed into the animal’s scaled underside, and his men struck a second after him.
One flailing hoof glanced off his mailed shoulder and another hit the warrior to Vannek’s left in his helmeted head, dropping him.
But their assault sent the beast over, and it fell sideways, breathing a gout of flame as it struck the ground.
Vannek threw himself flat, hit the sand hard, and slid. His boot felt momentarily hot, and he jerked his feet out of the way, then rolled and scrambled to stand.
Upright once more he discovered Thelar had covered the creature with a blanket of sand. Vannek’s loyal bodyguard drove his weapon through the rider’s throat.
After that the real battle began in earnest. Cerai’s soldiers raced to close with Vannek’s troops, fighting with ferocity. Vannek’s men held their lines at first, but before long the assault fragmented into the vicious one-on-one conflicts even his own people secretly preferred.
Vannek was at their forefront. He lost all sense of the greater battle, for his attention was rooted only in the now, moving at quarter speed so that each individual moment felt a day’s length. This strike Vannek blocked, that arm he hewed, leaving red ruin. That thrust he dodged, another he took on his shield. He swept a leg with his spear, then drove the point down through armor and turned to face another foe.
When his spear lodged too firmly in a chest, he snatched a dead man’s sword and carried on the fight. When his shield splintered under a terrific axe blow he grabbed a knife in his off hand and drove it into a screaming enemy face.
He fought his way through the warriors that came and came until he discovered he had somehow survived and all of his opponents were down. When he paused to wipe sweat from his face he accidentally smeared blood from an arm wound he hadn’t felt.
Scanning his surroundings, he discovered his bodyguard stood still beside him, and gave an approving nod to the devoted young warrior. The man smiled as though he’d been awarded a land grant. Thelar and the aspirant remained, along with fifteen more of Vannek’s men, panting in a ragged line. Others lived, farther down slope. The dead and dying littered the ground on every side like broken grain stalks.
While he’d been fighting for his life, a strange silver beast had appeared in the sky. It resembled a ko’aye, but a second set of wings flapped behind the first upon its elongated back. A helmed woman in an Altenerai khalat rode behind its long neck. That had to be Cerai. Four warriors sat behind her along its sinuous spine. As the beast swooped above the center of the mesa, the enchantress who commanded it directed a burning blue flame at the ground below; someone screamed, but it seemed more a cry of alarm than of pain.
An answering golden beam shot up from the midst of the mesa and struck the beast along its tail. A swath of it fell away as shining flakes and the beast trembled.
Cerai set her beast climbing. The two ko’aye dropped from out of the sun and closed upon the winged thing. Seeing a rider with a bow upon the back of Drusa, Vannek smiled. For long years his people had been the target of the world’s greatest archer, and they had both feared and admired him. Being Kyrkenall’s ally was strangely thrilling, and he looked forward to seeing the destruction he would wreak.
The ko’aye dodged and weaved away from spears and shafts cast by Cerai’s warriors, but the peerless bowman found his marks. Two of the beast’s weapons-men slumped with arrows standing from their helmets. Even at a distance, on a moving platform, to a shifting target, Kyrkenall had struck two men dead through tiny gaps in armor.
Lelanc tore another warrior from his seat. While he fell, screaming, both ko’aye dove at Cerai, Kyrkenall firing the while.
An arrow struck her in the throat and a second was engulfed in the wave of blue-white flame rolling out from a shining object she held. Lelanc took the brunt of the attack, and burst into flame. The ko’aye’s wings evaporated almost on the instant and her charred, smoking form dropped stonelike toward the desert floor. A loud cry of dismay rose from the throats of many of the watchers, and Vannek wasn’t entirely surprised some were his own men, who would gladly have hunted ko’aye only a week before.
Drusa pulled away, one of her own wings smoking. Her neck flared back, her wings spread wide. Kyrkenall, on her back, leaned toward her head, shouting something.
But the ko’aye could not hold its glide, and plummeted. Vannek swore.
Then, only a dozen feet from the ground, Drusa’s astonishing speed eased until she drifted slowly down. The ko’aye didn’t seem to have anything to do with the action, for she hung limp. Instead, she appeared to be borne gently by invisible hands.
Vannek grew conscious of Thelar, working magic at his side, but he didn’t think he had saved Kyrkenall either, for the exalt’s hands were still moving after Drusa settled safely. Thelar followed the movements of Cerai, circling back on her monstrous, four-winged ko’aye. His breathing was labored.
“Who saved Kyrkenall and his ko’aye?” Vannek asked the aspirant.
“I think that was Kalandra,” the young woman answered, her voice hollow from within her helm. “I don’t know how her spell reached so far.”
“Why isn’t Elenai shooting at Cerai?”
“The weapons don’t have that great a range.”
“What’s he doing?” Vannek asked, looking pointedly at Thelar.
“The threads on the dragon have been torn open,” the aspirant said, then paused to take a breath. “Exalt Thelar’s pulling on them. The range is too great, though.” She spoke to Thelar. “You shouldn’t risk—”
Thelar drew heavily down with both hands, like a beast clawing flesh. Above, the dragon simply fell away into wind-borne strands of silver, as though it had been composed of spools of yarn the exalt had unwound. Cerai and her last warrior flailed as they fell.
A cheer went up from the allied troops. The warrior struck ground with a thud. A heartbeat before Cerai did the same, a shimmering violet portal flared into existence beneath her and she vanished through it.