Crusader

Chapter 74

Vara

Day 102 of the Siege of Sanctuary

The plains were windblown, a hard, driving rain coming down around them. It was cold, rattling off her armor as the fury of the land itself descended upon Vara. She could hear the steady clatter of it against her helm, the mad tapping as it went along, watched forked lightning cut across the sky in an arc, followed by a crash as loud as if someone had hit a warhammer against armor.

“If I get hit by lightning,” Erith yelled into the maelstrom of the storm, “someone please cast a resurrection spell on me!”

“I just assumed you’d rather remain dead for a time,” Vaste yelled back. “It is rather reminiscent of your ‘lie there and take it’ approach to the bedroom, after all.”

The rain rattled Vara’s helm, followed by a burst of wind. “I do wish you both would keep your damnable thoughts to yourselves,” Vara shouted to be heard, “as there are some things that I would truly prefer to remain ignorant about.”

“Yes, well, you’ve had enough of those moments in the last couple months, I suppose,” Erith called back. Vara turned to look at her as the rain patted upon her face, running down her cheeks. It was not a new sensation of late, the feel of water making its way down her face. It was not normally so cold, though.

“Will we even be able to see the enemy convoys in this mess?” Ryin spoke now, his horse just down the line from Vara’s. “Visibility is a hundred feet at best.”

Vara had to concede the druid’s point; the rain fell in sheets, lines of water visible when it was heavier. A gust picked up and suddenly the wind blew sideways for a moment, and she turned her head as though she could shield her face from the drenching.

“Perhaps if there was some master of the magics of nature who could command the elements, and suspend this thunderstorm,” Vaste said with no small amount of irony, “then we could go about our business only as wet as we presently are, and not completely drenched with all the waters of the entire land.”

“I think the land has given us all it has and then added the entirety of the Torrid Sea for good effect,” Erith said. No one found cause to disagree with her.

“I can only control so much,” Ryin spoke louder, his voice cut off in the middle by another crack of booming thunder; Vara’s sensitive ears echoed yet still she heard every bit of it. “To try and stop a light summer shower is very doable for a druid of my power. To stop a normal thunderstorm is straining it a bit. To try and put the cease to this tempest?” The druid shrugged, and the water ran off the shoulders of his overcoat in drenching sluices.

“I would not allow you to do so in any case,” Vara shouted to make herself heard, and she drew confused looks. “This weather is murder on convoys, and the roads are nothing but long stretches of mud that will bog them down. For the next day we’ll be able to ambush a number of them simply by riding up on them in the night where they remain stuck.”

“Yes,” Vaste agreed, “but we have to be able to see them, else it becomes a fine opportunity for us to stumble into a fight that we’re not prepared for.”

A shadow appeared in front of them, lit by a flash of lightning; Vara saw it for only a second as the sky illuminated the ground, but it was a wagon, and other shapes were around it, and suddenly an arrow flew past her ear.

“See?” Vaste called. “Like that.”

Vara urged her horse forward, sword in hand, and when the next flash lit the world around, she brought her blade down upon the dark elf she saw before her. By the time of the thunderclap he was already falling, bleeding on his way to the ground. The next flash of lightning followed shortly thereafter, and before her was a field in motion, more soldiers than she’d seen before around a convoy; there have to be near five hundred, she thought as she rode on toward a thick cluster of them, and let out her hand, following it with a spell that shot forth into the dark night.

It made a light of its own as it left her palm, and she watched it make contact with three dark elven soldiers, flinging them into the air. A bolt of lightning came from behind her, not above, and she felt the air blister with electricity as it passed. It hit five of the enemy and she could see their shadows jerk with the surge of power, dancing in the oddest fashion before they fell still in the mud.

She rode forward and felt something solid hit her horse, a jarring feel that caused the animal to jerk then start to fall. Oh, dear, was all that had a chance to make it through her mind before she was thrown. Her shoulder hit the mud and all her weight came down on it and then her head, driving her helm and her armor into her soft skin. She heard a crunch upon the impact, and for just a second it felt as though her legs were dangling in the air above her before momentum carried them forward and she felt her back and lower body hit the ground with unmerciful hardness. There was a splash that barely registered, and then shooting pains started from her hips and buttocks, but none worse than the one that raged along her shoulder and neck.

Sweet Goddess of Life. Her lips anchored closed against the cry she felt rising from within. They stabbed my horse with a spear or lance, surely. Damn them. Bloody damn them all to the hells of legend. She tried to move but the pain was suffocating. There was movement all around her, too much to track, and her anguish necessitated she squeeze her eyes closed even as she raised a hand, chanting words under her breath that were as familiar to her as her own name, that had been drilled into her so often that they were rote memory by now, called upon in time of trouble.

The healing spell was minor, at best, compared to the power of the one a healer could call upon. Still, she felt some of the pain subside, the fire in her shoulder was reduced, and she moved it without a scream of agony. She stirred, bringing her sword across the nearest shape to her, a leg in the darkness. She heard a howl of pain when it struck true, and a dark figure began to fall toward her. She rolled left, knocking the legs from underneath the dark elves around her, causing them to teeter. She brought her sword around and made them fall, limbs gushing blood that was not visible in the dark. She pushed them off and got to her feet, looking about as the lightning flashed and the thunder drowned out all the sound of battle that was raging around her.

She stabbed into another dark elf, whose surprise was obvious as his mouth dropped open and exposed the blackness in the gaping back of his mouth. She drew her sword out of him and hit the next, then sensed, rather than saw, someone coming at her from behind. She twirled her open hand and fired the spell that was closer to memory than the healing incantation. It flashed, separate from the lightning, and she watched a surprised face carried through the air where it became pained after the body it was attached to broke upon contact with a wagon.

Vara crouched down then leapt straight up as four enemies came at her all at once. She watched them crash into each other, swords gone awry and striking their own fellows. She landed with both boots hard on the back of two of the survivors’ necks then used her sword to make certain none of them lived. The dark elven escort was visible in flashes, as though someone were taking a candle and holding thick parchment over it, pulling it back and forth rapidly, lighting and unlighting the world.

There was not much to be heard other than the screams, the wet sopping smell of the mud on her armor, the blood already washed away. She leaned into the fight, throwing all her power into each thrust of the sword. She could feel her allies at work somewhere behind her, but for now, she knew, she was on her own and surrounded by enemies. She smiled as she let an attack carry her through. What a marvelous way to spend such an evening. I suppose the God of War would be pleased.

That thought did not chill her near as much as the rain, and with every flash of lightning she took another dark elf’s life, or two or more, and though the tempest raged until long after the last of her enemies was dead, in truth it never stopped, not within her, and she wondered if it ever would.