THE GREAT WATERS
Kai-Niquel’s sleek body cut through the water with little resistance, requiring only a slight rippling movement of his rear fins to propel him forward. At this depth, the sea was completely black. But Kai rarely used his eyes for much of anything. Instead, he generated a series of clicking sounds from an organ behind his blow-hole. The returning sounds brought a detailed understanding of the terrain as his resonating jawbone interpreted the echoes.
But the information had stopped hours ago. With the sea floor thousands of fathoms below, there was nothing to return the sound waves. Now, the only other presence in the water was his division of Vidirym, followed by a handful of Myndarym. In the silence, they pressed on, having traveled for nearly twenty four hours without stopping.
Gradually, Kai began to pick up a presence below him. The faint echoes grew stronger as the sea floor rose. Now, only a thousand feet lay below him, and the distance was closing fast. He released a louder pulse of sounds, a blend of moans and chirps, telling his soldiers that they were approaching the target. The floor continued to rise by hundreds of feet per minute, gradually tapering off into a gentle upward slope. With the coastline a mile away to his left, Kai altered his southern course a bit to the east and searched the shelf for a change in texture. As expected, a smooth delta of sand spilled out into the deeper water, signaling that Semjaza’s fortress was near.
Halfway across the wide sandbar, Kai turned directly east and slowed his approach. Just as the Myndarym described, he could feel the jagged mountains rise from both sides of the delta, while directly in front was a flat wall, spanning the hundreds of feet that separated the sea floor from the surface, blocking their entrance to the cove. Descending to the sand below, Kai came to the base of the wall and waited for his team to catch up. Then, he rose slowly, bouncing sound waves off the wall, scanning the front surface for the passages that the Myndarym described. It took only seconds to locate the first one, but to his surprise, it was blocked by a lattice of metal bars.
Kai could sense the confusion from the Myndarym, but remained silent while resuming his work. Using a methodical serpentine pattern to scan the wall in ascending passes, he found one barred passage after another. Finally, he backed away and drifted toward the Myndarym who had been hanging back. “Any other ideas?” he whispered.
“There’s one more at the top,” one of them replied.
Kai nodded, then brought his rear fins together, propelling his body upward toward the surface. He came to a stop fifty feet below the rippled ceiling. At this depth, the miniscule amount of light coming from the starry skies above allowed his eyes to add visual information to his understanding of the obstacle. He could now make out the bottom of an unblocked passage. But his sensitive ears, if they could be called such, picked up something else—subtle vibrations coming through the passage. Someone was on the other side, waiting.
* * * *
THE MOUNTAINS SOUTH OF MUDENA DEL-EDHA
Sariel came up silently over the rocks, riding the gentle updraft that was forced against the mountains from the wind blowing across the Great Waters. The back of an Iryllur sentry came into view and Sariel glided toward the enemy with one vaepkir ready. Without a sound, Sariel tackled the soldier from behind, simultaneously clasping a hand around his mouth and driving the vaepkir beneath his right forewing and into his chest cavity.
The two soldiers tumbled forward across the rocks, locked in a deadly embrace.
Sariel gritted his teeth as his body slammed into jagged stone and slid across the mountaintop. Refusing to release the sentry until the task was complete, he held fast with his arms and legs wrapped tightly until they came to stop. Silence returned once again and Sariel slowly let go. When he regained his footing, he resheathed his vaepkir and walked to the edge of the cliff, giving the signal that the last of the sentries had been removed.
Overhead, the night sky was full of stars which shed soft, silver light across the mountains. On the other side of the deep ravine, Fim-Rada Nuathel and his Iryllurym slowly rose from their hiding places, still clinging to the shadowed crevices like bats. Hundreds of feet below, the front lines of the Anduarym marched quietly toward the pass, the only obstacle separating the ground soldiers from the cove that housed Semjaza’s fortress.
As the silent forms of the Iryllurym dropped from the cliffs, Sariel could barely make out their outlines against the dark terrain. He waited for them to cross the ravine, then jumped from the cliff to join their formation as they turned north and made their way further up the pass. The flight lasted only seconds before they turned toward the cliffs again. Sariel followed and retracted his wings, inverting himself beneath an overhang. When he came to a stop, he was only a few feet away from the Fim-Rada.
“To that outcropping,” whispered Nuathel.
Again, the Iryllurym took to the air and headed for a larger section of rock that jutted from the cliff at a higher elevation. As soon as he reached it, Sariel had a line of sight to the land entrance of Mudena Del-Edha.* Its stone wall stood nearly one hundred feet tall and spanned the width of the pass. It was flanked by a pair of angular, pointed towers that loomed ominously over the gorge. As Danduel’s army crept closer to the gate, keeping to the shadows on the southern side of the pass, Sariel’s eyes darted between the towers and the passage leading through the center of the wall.
“I don’t see any movement,” he said quietly.
Nuathel leaned out from the cliff slightly to get a better view. “Nothing yet. Hopefully they won’t know until we’re upon them.”
Through the eye holes in his helmet, Sariel scanned the ranks of the Anduar army below. They were within a few hundred yards now—almost to the signal point.
“Get ready,” Nuathel announced quietly.
Sariel quickly inspected the towers one last time, surprised by the absence of guards or scouts.
“They’re at the signal point. Go. Go. Go,” Nuathel commanded.
Sariel jumped from his place of concealment and stretched his wings. When he felt the lift of the air underneath him, he thrust himself forward and into position behind the other Iryllurym. The angels were superbly trained, quickly assembling into a column with their leader at the point. Dropping a few hundred feet in elevation, their speed increased as they covered the distance to the defensive structure. The column of winged angels flowed gracefully over the steep terrain, condensing and expanding with each outcropping and fissure.
Sariel reached to either side of his breastplate and pulled his vaepkir from the sheaths crisscrossed along his back. Banking slightly to the west, he followed the formation out of the cliffs to come directly over the top of the wall. Now only twenty feet below them, the length of the battlements seemed to pass by more swiftly.
The formation broke into six-person teams, one for each of the eight corridors on both sides of the passage. As one, the whole column rose, banked, then inverted to come straight down into the channels, with the lead groups taking the nearest.
Bringing up the rear, Sariel followed the last group into the final corridor on the western end of the passage. The dull starlight was instantly blackened within the confines of the stone structure. Pulling his wings inward, he pressed forward into the formation which now spanned the entire width of the corridor.
Shapes moved in the darkness before them; colorless patches of random forms, shifting in the shadows.
The Iryllurym approached rapidly, breaking into the mass of bodies as a wave of sharpened metal. The blades of Sariel’s vaepkir jolted in his hands and rammed into his forearms as they sliced through the flesh of the enemy. Following the narrow channel around a bend, the winged angels pulled up and out of the corridor just before their forward motion stalled, pumping their wings to propel themselves into open air.
Looking out across the cove, Sariel could see the tower of Aryun Del-Edha rising from the center of the water like a multi-pronged spearhead.
The Iryllurym quickly banked to the east as the other groups did the same, each having made their first pass. Now approaching from behind the gate, the Iryllurym descended once more, positioning themselves for a second pass. On the ground below, a mass of bodies swelled behind the gate, filling the side corridors and blocking the main entrance. But something looked strange from this new vantage point.
“THEY’RE HUMAN!” Sariel shouted.
Atop the wall, at the base of the northern guard tower, a low horn sounded, blanketing the cove with an unmistakable warning call.
“Pull up! Pull up!” Nuathel commanded.
At once, the formation leveled out.
Sariel looked down in disbelief as they passed over the entrance while human soldiers gathered behind the gate. Not only did Semjaza know they were coming, but he had enough foreknowledge to amass an army that the Amatru weren’t authorized to kill.
“We can’t attack them!” Nuathel shouted only a second later.
“We have to warn the Anduarym!” Sariel shouted back.
Following Nuathel’s lead, the Iryllurym dropped into the mountain pass and banked to the south, following the road leading away from the gate. Quickly, they came upon the Anduar army and dropped to the ground in front of the soldiers.
Fer-Rada Danduel ran from the front lines to meet them.
“A human army guards the gate,” Nuathel explained quickly.
“Humans?” Danduel asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Hundreds of them.”
“But we’re not authorized—” Danduel began. His once wide eyes suddenly narrowed and he spun around to address his approaching army. “The gate is guarded by a human army!” he shouted above the din of marching footsteps. “We are not authorized to kill humans, even under Semjaza’s leadership. But we must breach that gate!”
The army halted.
“Push them out of the way. Throw them to the ground. Injure them if you must. But do not kill them. We will take this gate tonight! Semjaza’s deception cannot stop the Amatru.”
“Rada Talad!” came the unified response.
Danduel turned back to Nuathel. “Can you carry them away from the gate without killing them?”
The Fim-Rada thought for a moment. “It will be much slower, but yes.”
Sariel replaced his vaepkir, safely tucking one under each wing. A sudden noise brought his attention back to the gate where hundreds of humans now came pouring out of the entrance, massing in front of the wall.
“We’ll take care of these,” Danduel said. “You just concentrate on those corridors so they’re clear by the time we reach the entrance.”
“Yes Fer-Rada.” Nuathel replied, then turned to his own soldiers. “Back to the gate!”
Sariel unfurled his wings and leaped upward to join the other Iryllurym.
* * * *
With Danduel at the point of a tight wedge formation, the Anduarym advanced quickly upon the gate. Semjaza had formed an army from the Kahyin, the tallest and strongest of the human species. But they were no match for the Anduarym, who were approximately twice their height. The wedge concentrated the force of the Anduar strength at the center of the opposing army, dividing the humans into two groups who were now faced with a solid wall of shields. With each flank protected, the soldiers marched quickly to the wall and entered the main passage.
Once inside, Danduel and the others at the point of the wedge pulled back and formed a line, while the flanks of the wedge pulled inward to create a column.
Despite the efforts of the Iryllurym, humans continued to pour out of each corridor and attack the flanks of Danduel’s formation. They came forward with reckless abandon, throwing their spears which shattered harmlessly against the shields of the Anduarym. The few unfortunate souls who ran at the angels were easily turned away or knocked down.
Within minutes, Danduel’s ground forces had driven through the passage and were now only yards from breaching the land gate of Mudena Del-Edha. As the Fer-Rada crested the hill and caught sight of the bay glittering in the moonlight, he saw Semjaza’s Anduarym waiting.
“AMBUSH!” he yelled.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the stars were blotted out by shadows from above. At the same moment he recognized the enemy Iryllurym, one of the soldiers at his side fell, pierced through the neck with a spear. Danduel quickly realized that he was trapped.
More of Semjaza’s Anduarym were arrayed along the top of the wall, casting their spears down into the mass of vulnerable angels, who were unable to protect themselves from multiple directions at once. Danduel gritted his teeth. If he pressed forward, he and his soldiers at the head of the column might be cut off from the bulk of their force still outside the passage. With the objective so close, yet unattainable, he shouted in frustration.
Suddenly, the humans pulled back into the side corridors while Semjaza’s Anduarym advanced down the center passage, picking up speed.
Danduel knew that at any moment, he would see them coming from the side corridors as well. And then the battle would be over. He was now faced with the painful realization of Semjaza’s strategic brilliance. There had been almost no information available on the Pri-Rada, which meant that his missions were classified. From the design of this fortress, to his deceptive strategies and efficient utilization of soldiers, Danduel could now see clearly that Semjaza was a master of battlefield tactics. Danduel was out of his league.
“Dreg aftur! Dreg aftur!” Danduel yelled, moving his shield over his head.
His orders were relayed along the column of Anduarym, and slowly, his army backed out of the passage, leaving behind the bodies of fallen comrades.
The front line of enemy angels came forward, marching quicker than the retreating army.
Danduel knew that they wouldn’t make it out of the passage in time. “Varnir, horfa!” he shouted.
The column, responding immediately to his orders, pulled themselves into a denser formation, interlocking their shields to present themselves as an armored wall with protruding spikes. The column continued moving slowly backward, using the standard retreating front defense formation.
Semjaza’s soldiers crashed into the front line and used the high ground advantage to push the invading force out of the gate faster than they could retreat.
One by one, Danduel’s soldiers were thrown off balance and either trampled or impaled as soon as they fell to the ground. Danduel flinched as his left shoulder was thrown violently forward, followed by a sharp pain. Grazed by a spear from above, he now felt warm blood flowing down his arm.
“Dreg aftur!” he shouted again.
* * * *
At the rear of the column, Ananel heard the command to pull back being passed from soldier to soldier. Semjaza’s Anduarym were now atop the wall, casting their weapons down upon the confused Amatru. The Iryllurym on both sides of the conflict were swarming overhead. Inside the passage at the center of the wall, a frenzy of movement was taking place. The original plan was being abandoned. Semjaza had been prepared for their coming.
As Ananel looked around at the other Myndarym huddled within the protective lines of Anduar soldiers, another idea came to mind—one for which Semjaza would surely not be prepared. He could now see Danduel exiting the passage with his shield over his head.
“Step aside,” he shouted. “I have to speak with the Fer-Rada!”