First Lord's Fury

CHAPTER 37

Amara watched the vord’s first assault go up in flames.

It had all worked more or less according to plan. When the firecrafters had lit the oil-lined little tunnels, the flame had rapidly spread down them, out to a distance of about half a mile, creating a steady source of flame. Black smoke had begun oozing up through the air holes.

Then, when the concealed High Lords sent a vast gale of wind sweeping across the plain, they had exploded. The ground erupted with fire and gouts of shattered coal in long lines spaced about twenty yards apart. Oil had splattered everywhere, along with the coal, and within moments the whole plain had been devoured by fire.

Beside her, Bernard peered through the sightcrafting she held between her outstretched hands. He grunted with satisfaction. “Tavi did this at the Elinarch, only backward,” he told High Lord Riva.

“How’s that?” Riva asked.

“At the Elinarch,” Amara said, to spare her husband’s jaw, “he heated the paving stones first, to drive assaulting Canim off them and into the town’s buildings. Then he set the buildings on fire.”

Riva stared out at the plain of fire before them and shuddered. “Ruthless.”

“Indeed,” Amara said.

“The boy finishes what he begins,” Bernard said. His mouth quirked up at one corner. “His Highness, the boy.”

Riva turned to look at the two of them thoughtfully, frowning. “Do you think he’s really on the way?”

“Said he was,” Bernard said.

“But he has so few men.”

Bernard snorted. “Boy didn’t have anyone but an unarmed slave with him when he stopped the Marat at Second Calderon.” He turned to face Riva and met his eyes. “He says he’s coming to fight, believe him.”

Lord Riva stared back at Bernard, his eyes thoughtful. Out on the plain, the fires had begun to die down—leaving half a mile of red-hot coals underfoot. The air over the plain wavered madly in the heat. Burning vord chitin smelled utterly hideous, she noted. There was a dull roar of windstreams overhead as the High Lords, their task completed, returned to friendly lines.

“Bernard,” Amara said quietly.

Her husband glanced out at the plain and nodded. He turned to Giraldi, and said, “Sound the retreat. We fall back to the next wall.”

Giraldi saluted and passed the order along to the trumpeter. Soon, the signal was echoing up and down the length of the wall. Centurions began barking orders. Men began to withdraw down the stairs leading from the walls and form into their units. Marat gargants had rolled up a few moments before, their long, slow steps covering ground rapidly. The wounded were being loaded onto beasts whose saddlecloths had been prepared to carry hurt men safely.

“Count Calderon,” Riva said, his voice becoming somewhat stilted and formal, “I realize that our relationship has been… a distant one. And that you have doubtless already worked very hard to prepare the valley’s defenses. Nonetheless, I should like to volunteer my skills and those of my engineers to do whatever we can to help.”

Bernard eyed him again.

“I’m not a very good soldier, Your Excellency,” Riva said. “But I know about building. And some of the finest architects and engineers in the Realm ply their trade in my city.”

Bernard glanced at Amara, who smiled very faintly and pretended to be watching for the enemy.

“Be honored, Your Grace,” Bernard said. “Giraldi, here, will show you to Pentius Pluvus. He’s kept books and schedules for us on this project. He’ll know where you and your folks can help the most.”

Riva offered Bernard his hand. They clasped forearms briefly, and Riva smiled. “Good luck to you, Count.”

Bernard answered him with small, sad smile. “To all of us.”

Riva and Giraldi departed. Bernard gave orders to the rest of the command staff to begin the retreat to the tower. Amara moved to stand beside her husband and twined her fingers with his. Bernard stared out at the fields of glowing coals. Grass fires had begun at the edges of the burning coal, where the heat had leached the water from the land nearby.

Beyond the curtains of wavering heat, the vord were massing, moving, flowing like a single being with a million limbs. It was impossible to make out any details, beyond the fact that they were there—and that more and more of them kept coming.

Amara shuddered.

“Shouldn’t we go?” she asked her husband.

“There’s a little time,” Bernard said. “That’s the beauty of this plan. It does two things at once. Kills the vord and gives us time to fall back to a stronger position.”

He fell silent and resumed staring to the west.

Amara said, very quietly, “You’re thinking about Isana.”

“She’s my sister,” Bernard said.

“You heard what Ehren said.”

Bernard’s expression hardened. He clenched his fist and slammed it into one of the low merlons on the wall. A webwork of cracks shot through it. “The Queen has her.”

Amara put her hand on his fist and squeezed gently. Bernard closed his eyes and made a visible effort to relax. His fist came unclenched a moment later.

“I hoped this would draw her out,” he whispered. “She’d run from a confrontation, but she might lead us back to Isana.”

“The vord Queen is anything but stupid,” Amara said. “She must know that we plan to kill her.”

Bernard grunted. “We’ve got to make her come out. Show herself. If we can’t do that, this is over.”

“I know,” Amara said quietly. “But so does she.”

Bernard rubbed at his jaw again. “How’s Masha?”

“According to Olivia, she’s frightened,” Amara said. “She knows that there’s something bad going on.”

“Poor thing,” Bernard said. “Too bright for her own good.”

“For her own peace of mind, perhaps,” Amara said. “Not necessarily the other.”

He grunted an agreement. “Suppose we shouldn’t waste any more time here.” He put two fingers to his lips and let out a sharp whistle. The horses they were riding nickered and came trotting over to the stairs nearest them.

Amara eyed him, smiling a little. “How do you do that?”

“It isn’t hard,” Bernard said. “You just—”

He stopped talking abruptly as a plume of gaseous white vapor suddenly billowed up from the far side of the field of coal. Amara felt her breath catch in her throat as she watched. The plume thickened, doubling in size and doubling again. At its edges, it became translucent.

“Steam,” Amara breathed.

“Watercraft?” Bernard murmured. He looked up. Only a few white, innocent clouds raced across the sky, none of them dropping rain. “How?”

Amara frowned, then said, “They must have diverted a river. Like Aquitaine did at Alera Imperia.”

Bernard thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “The Little Goose is about a mile and a half past that last hill. Would it be possible to move it that far?”

Amara tried to picture the intervening terrain in her mind, especially elevation. “It shouldn’t be,” she said. “We must be thirty or forty feet higher here than at the river’s nearest point.”

The plume doubled and redoubled again, and the rising column of steam began to approach their position on the wall.

Bernard whistled. “Serious crafting. And they did it far enough out so that even if the Queen was in on it, we’d never come within sight of her. Invidia’s idea, you think?”

Amara shrugged. “It would take several crafters working together to accomplish this. Water is heavy. To make it move against its nature that way—I’m not sure if even Sextus could have done it.”

Bernard spat on the ground in frustration. “I make it maybe three-quarters of an hour before they can walk right on up to the wall again.”

Amara shook her head. “Less.”

“Figured we had two, three hours at least.” Bernard clenched his jaw and turned to descend the steps toward the waiting horses. “We’d better get moving.”