Skybound - Chapter 11: Thundersnow

Claire Descroix eyed the banners in the distance, barely swaying over the dark and shadowy forms of the mounted troops cresting the rise. It should not have been possible for the northlands to march a relief force so quickly, but the truth was before her eyes. For all that it was surprising, to her it was not truly unexpected. One did not achieve her rank without merit, no matter the status of birth, and so she had directed her sappers to mine the bridge. As the new arrivals crested the ridge without stopping, she was already snapping orders.

“Sapper teams to the bridge!” she shouted, not waiting for the approaching messenger to close the distance to her as she strode down the hill. “The caltrops will slow them down, but don’t underestimate them.” She could see shadowed forms, barely illuminated by mage-lights and torches, as her own infantry moved into position at the near end of the bridge.

“They are slowing,” said the Lieutenant, who had followed her from the scryer’s tent. “After such a march they cannot be fresh and ready to fight, and we’ll bleed them at the crossing before we blow the bridge.”

Claire’s instincts were honed over a decade of raiding campaigns and skirmishes within the borders of the Empire, and they screamed in the back of her mind as the new enemy came to a halt. The low and resonant drumbeats stilled as well. “Something isn’t right,” she said. “Have them ready to blow the bridge. They can’t use some new trick against us if they can’t reach us, and we committed too many when the barrier faltered.” 

Indeed, she could see her forward lines from the low hill where she stood. When the city’s barrier had been unexpectedly breached, she had capitalized on the weakness. Where her troops had once partially encircled the city from the northwest mountainside and around the wall to the southern gate, now they were still bunched up in the aftermath of the failed assault. The shift in her lines had pulled soldiers out of position near both the south and western gates, and only small pickets remained near the bridge. The timing could not have been worse for the Deskren invaders.

“She’s a right bitch, and timing is her best weapon,” muttered Claire.

“Who?” The Lieutenant had been standing close enough to hear.

“The [Oracle] of course. But timing won’t help them. We have six Corps, nearly a full Armée. They don’t have enough to meet us on the field in a protracted engagement. They’ll hurt us, but we have the numbers and only need to keep them out of the city.”

Thunder interrupted the response from the Lieutenant, who stumbled as the powdered dusting of snow leapt several inches off the ground. The field fell silent for nearly a dozen heartbeats, and Claire snapped her gaze back to the head of the distant column. To a wagon pulled by two of the biggest mules she had ever seen, their outlines blurred by the distance even with her enchanted monocle. And on that wagon stood a slender form with one upraised arm that suddenly fell. For a brief moment she thought she recognized the bearded figure driving the wagon. A figure who seemed to be laughing with maniacal glee as the thunder rolled out and lightning flashed in the clouds overhead.

“Blow the bridge!” She shouted the order in the wake of the thunder, her voice seeming tinny and small in her own ears after such noise. She did not know why the figures on the wagon instilled such nervousness, but she had long learned to trust her instincts on the field. Instinct or no, the enemy force seemed to be preparing to attack nonetheless, and one did not commit unrested troops to battle if there were any other choice. Separated by the river, they could have, no should have stopped to rest and prepare. The enemy commander may have been a fool, but no general gambled on the enemy’s stupidity, not if they wanted to keep their hide intact.

She had also finally remembered why the old man on the wagon was so familiar, as he raised a simple woodcutters axe overhead. She grabbed the Lieutenant, shouting directly into his face. “I said blow the bridge! NOW!”

To his credit the Lieutenant, whose name she could not remember in the moment, did not hesitate. He turned, blowing a shrill whistle by putting two fingers in his mouth, then dispatched a messenger who used obvious speed-enhancing skills to dash off to the western command tents.

“Are we not to wait until they commit to a charge?” he asked, obviously unsettled by her near panic.

“No. Something isn’t right, and…”

She looked back at the enemy as another peal of thunder could be felt through the ground under their feet.

“The Hatchetman is with them.”

“L’homme á la Hache…” His face paled as he spoke the words. “He was supposed to be dead, they killed him in the last war!”

“They failed.”

Suddenly blue light formed around several of the enemy wagons, illuminating the column in an icy glare. Through her monocle, Claire struggled to make out details. Her gaze was drawn back to the lead wagon and those terrible mules and even more terrifying figure holding up the axe. She shivered, her guts clenching in a sudden spike of fear as he held the axe out level, seemingly pointed across the river. Directly at her. She couldn’t say how, but she knew he was looking right at her, and she flinched.

She was sure he was laughing again as the next wave of thunder shook the air.

======================================

Stev Aras lowered the spyglass to his side as another wave of thunder made the stones under his feet vibrate, kicking up dust and small pebbles on the stone floor of the shield tower’s observation deck. Magic pulsed from the room overhead, the city’s defensive barrier was once again in place even though the bombardment had ceased with the arrival of a new force. He eschewed the magically enhanced devices for farsight, preferring the simple magnification of the gnomish lenses and the simple tube. They were less vulnerable to magical interference, even if some detail was sacrificed.

“Nearly ten thousand by a rough count,” he said, as Taz and Xerrioth ascended the steps to the room. “At least three hundred wagons with them, and I’ve never seen that banner…”

Xerrioth shed a small bit of light on that subject when he spoke up. “The local temple has been speaking of dreams of the Black Lance for several days. Is that the banner?”

Taz elbowed him in the ribs, and anyone who did not know her would have mistaken her affection for aggression. “Since when do you hang out in temples? You certainly haven’t been acting pious and respectful with me all this time!”

“I go there to meditate,” he said. “It’s much quieter than most of the city, especially with all the rocks that have been falling. Everyone forgets a blind man can hear things, and I hear them speak in whispers of this Black Lance, who rides with thunder and darkness.”

“Do they know if he is friend of foe?” Stev raised the spyglass once again, tracking his view across the ridge on the far side of the river. “The Deskren do not seem to like this new development, they’re scrambling for the bridge and runes are flashing along the support columns-”

The rumble that cut his words off was different from the thunder that the newcomers had brought. Flashes of angry red light backlit fountains of rubble bursting forth as the supports holding up the bridge collapsed outward with sudden violence. The bridge itself lifted several paces into the air before it began to crack apart and tumble into the rushing, icy waters.

“Enemy of our enemy?” asked Xerrioth.

“The Deskren really don’t want them on this side of the river, so it really doesn’t matter. No one will be able to make a crossing under fire,” answered Taz, crushing her knuckles together. She was still partially shifted from the fighting after the recent breach, and Stev knew she was only a moment away from berserking again. Thankfully for him, her recent dalliance with Xerrioth had proven the gravity mage could deal with her and Stev would not have to subdue his own sister with a knockout dart for her own safety.

Harsh blue light suddenly lit up the new players on the field, and the low misting of clouds and snow flurries were suddenly the canvas upon which eerie eldritch shadows were cast as horses stomped and banners waved. The light intensified, and the tower mage, Varkas, shouted from above.

“Mana, lots of it! I think they’re attacking the Deskren!?” The man’s voice was optimistic, which was a bit premature to Stev’s mind as dozens of frozen blue orbs shot into the sky from the wagons. Three heartbeats and another wave was sent aloft, three more and another.

“They’re aiming for the Deskren, but they can’t possibly reach them at this range,” he said, his voice trailing off as the magical mortars flared at the height of their arcs and the first wave began to descend.

“But why waste…” came the muttered observation from Varkas.

“They were never aiming at the Deskren positions,” stated Stev as realization dawned. The orbs began to fall even faster, the spells unfolding with fractal patterns that painted the night skies in cerulean blue like giant snowflakes falling like meteors.

“The river…” he said. “They were aiming for the river…”

As the first glowing spell burst upon the water it threw out an explosion of ice that formed a rough disk with jagged edges. The suddenly birthed iceberg began to drift, the current pulling it along to scrape at the far bank of the river until the second blast hit right on the shoreline, freezing it in place against the frozen mud. Thunder pealed out from the top of the ridge, no longer a subtle rumble. Now it was harsh and fierce, and lightning danced on horses’ hooves and wagon wheels.

The distant column charged.

===================================

Millie Thatcher took a deep breath, drawing the crisp arctic air into her lungs. It was finally time. She knew she should feel tired, after so many days, so many long days marching for endless hours. But playing on the march was a steady thing, an exercise in discipline that left her spending most of her waking hours in a trance as she kept time with what the other troops had come to call the Drum Corps. 

The Battlemaster had halted the column just before the road curved to follow the ridge to descend to the crossing. Millie could see the enemy, after so long on the road. She had no words to describe the feeling that rose up within her, but she knew the wait was over. She was a Soldier, and now she had found an Enemy. All the rest seemed to pale in comparison and fade away as she watched the small figures in the distance scurry about around their trenches and trebuchets, illuminated by torches and mage-lights.

She had more than light. She had lightning, and thunder, and while they did not obey her will they always came to her call to dance as she gifted them her drumbeats. She could feel them in the air, the tingling as tiny sparks buzzed along her steel gauntlet and arced between her baton and the metal bolts sicking through the side of the wagon as her arm swung out to bring down the next strike. She held it steady, a slower, deeper rhythm that kept the lightning back in anticipation. A heartbeat, and every heart in the company beat in time with it and with her own. Each strike sent power into the air, into the earth below their feet, as the Battlemaster paced his mount past every wagon with a brief pause to touch the horses.

“He’s bringing them in,” said Hett with barely contained glee. “He’s never pulled the wagoneers into his skill, but this…”

Millie grinned as she struck the drum again, her own anticipation building. The mages and magically adept marching with the Black Lance had already been tasked, and the blue light of charged mana sprang up to cast shadows from behind their lead wagon. The [Thunderstrike Battle-Bard] did not look back, watching as the enemy forces scrambled to shift positions away from the city walls to face the new threat. But Millie could see, they were focused on the bridge.

They have no idea, she thought with glee. We aren’t planning on using the bridge in the first place…

Hett burst out laughing, holding his axe above his head as he cackled like only old men could sound. “Heee he he heee…” he trailed off, looking sharply below at a hilltop with a flag rustling in the breeze and several sharply dressed Deskren with gold braids on their shoulders. He held out his axe, pointing it at them as if they could see, and laughed once more.

The briefing before the morning’s march had been clear, and now she understood the orders. The Icefall mortars, fully charged, launched their spells, and the mages were already charging them up for another firing. As the glowing orbs shot skyward, the Battlemaster had returned to the front of the line with lance in hand. He turned, looking back at his Soldiers, and then he spoke.

==============================

Jacob Ward looked back at those who had followed him. He suppressed a twinge of guilt as his eyes passed over Corporal Thatcher, her arm halted mid-strike as she sensed his intent. Years were longer on Anfealt, but he still would eat his boot if she was a day over sixteen by Earth reckoning. The fact that she was not the youngest to march to war on Anfealt or on Earth was no consolation to him, but to deny her chosen path would have been an even more grievous sin by his understanding of how Classes affected a person’s soul. Hett had warned him how Soldier-Type classers without a good cause almost always turned to bad ones, snapped up by bandit groups and outlaws eager to make use of the skillsets inherent to their class. He could understand it, even if he did not like it, and had resolved to ensure Millie never faced such choices while he was alive.

Ruminations and guilt were for another time, he could not indulge such luxuries now. His own skills had grown as he led a rag-tag band of refugees across two nations to finally reach safety, and then grown even further as the hardest and most capable of those survivors had joined him. He had felt it as their skills grew, a pressure driving him forward as hard as he was pulling them along with him in the rush to relieve Fort Expedition. A collective will that urged him along, but that answered to his command. 

He was proud of them, more than they could ever know. More than he could ever show, for such things could not be shown as easily given lest their value be diminished. But on this day, he could give back a portion of what they gave him, this strange power and pressure that had been building up like water on the boil. His most singular Skill, which he had found no record of in any books he could get his hands on or even tales from Old Hett.

[Momentum]. They had pushed harder, marched farther and faster than he had intended. The [Oracle] had warned him of disaster if he arrived a day too soon, or too late. After his meeting with King Hanz, somehow word had spread of his talk with the Drakenrider. He surmised one of the Luparans had been close enough to hear with their keen ears. He had heard the whispers since then, when he sat awake apart from campfires and heard their soldierly banter. 

“I chose to be here,” they would say with voices that trembled on the verge of reverence. The loyalty that the once-slaves had for him bordered on the fanatical, and he recognized within himself a duty to temper that loyalty lest it grow into something terrible. He strove to be worthy of it. The same loyalty was only slightly less intense with the other troops, and Millie Thatcher most of all. So they had marched, and he had to slow them down for they drove towards their goal with a single-minded purpose to shame any army he had ever served with or read about.

His skill [Momentum] had allowed him to control their pace, if just barely. It had built up, day by day, mile by mile, until he felt as if he had his back to a barred door. Or a floodgate. He could feel it in his teeth, this ringing energy. He barely been able to manage sleep for several nights, and none the night before. It lent a weight to everything he did, this strength that they gave him even as his own strength and belief in them mirrored it back.

He went from wagon to wagon, pausing on his charger, Ares, only long enough to reach down and lay a hand on a mane here, a harness there. One by one he felt his horsemanship skills pull them into the same collective with which he maneuvered the Lancers. Lord Davin and Lady Jenna gave commands as he passed, him to the Luparans and infantry, and her to the mages. Those who were on foot clambered onto wagons, and when the wagons were full the remaining wolf-men climbed onto the sides holding onto leather loops and rope handles fastened securely to rings riveted right onto the side. Terror met anticipation and hungry rage as they refused to yield to fear of the unknown.

The Icefall Mortars had fired their last charges as he stopped in front of the column once again, turning to look at his Soldiers. Millie’s thunderous power held itself in abeyance, and the banner, weighted down by broken collars, hung still in the frigid air. He couched his lance, holding it vertically at rest.

“I’m not one for speeches,” he said. “You’ll get enough of those from the nobles and their ilk.  Still can't believe they stuck me with a title." He chuckled, before continuing, ignoring the muffled crump that signified the bridge collapsing in an explosion of magic and stone. "The enemy outnumbers us ten to one.  No matter.  They are here, largely against their will.  But you…  You chose to be here!"  

With that, he turned to face the enemy.  "We ride!"

======================

Claire Descroix looked on in horror as the glowing orbs of light fell like shooting stars, not on her troops, but on the river itself. The bridge had been irrelevant, and she had pulled her own soldiers even further out of position. The slope on the opposite shore was steep, far too steep for anyone sane to attempt to ride down, yet they charged.

Over the ridgeline came that monstrous stallion and his rider as thunder shattered the night and lightning surged with every strike of hooves. The magical blasts slammed into the river, dull booming thuds that echoed with glacial rumbles in counterpoint to the thunder of drums and hooves. As the bombardment fell upon the water, steam and ice and vapors billowed into thick clouds that obscured all but flashes and shadow under the glare of the spells falling one by one. The charging horses and wagons plunged into that mist, and Claire thought she could hear screaming in between every blast of the storm.

She turned, dashing for the line of trebuchets, and to the nearest of her own spelltower siege engines. The trebuchets themselves could be rebuilt, but the towers were wrought of enchantment and steel and blood, and she had no way to replace them in the field. “Shield wall on the line!” she screamed, dipping into her own mana and using her Marshall’s baton to inscribe a scorched ring around the spelltower. “Save the towers!” she shouted. “To ME! RALLY!”

Imperial infantry rushed to form ranks, but they were merely human with a few Ma’akan badgers. She had committed her entire corps of heavies, Panthren and Ursaran, when the barrier had broken earlier in the day, and her troops were still out of formation. Most had shifted to the lines closer to the now defunct remains of the bridge. She did not have as many as she would have liked to protect the siege engines, but it would have to be enough.

Her own armor hummed, rippling with magic as she activated enchantments she rarely had cause to use. The mail hauberk and chain skirt grew lighter, as did the plate over her shoulders and chest, along with her armored boots and leggings. Lighter to her own perception, anyway. It wasn’t full plate but with her own augmentations it was as strong as mythril unless she ran out of mana to power it.

A twist of her hands on the baton and it extended from the handle into a full staff. She planted the butt firmly in the ground, giving a visible pulse of power as the armor and shields and weapons of the troops around her began to glow with a pale reddish hue. A red crystal set into one of her bracelets flashed and then darkened to black, depleted with the spell as she bolstered the defenses of her men. As the casting finished, another twist and the staff was now two rods, and she took a defensive stance while she watched the thundering mists obscuring the river.

“Any second now…”

The ground began to shake even harder.

===========================

Stev Aras steadied himself with one hand on the stone sill of the window. The thunder had intensified, and even at a distance of almost two leagues the ground shook hard enough to rattle the walls of the city and its towers. He watched in horrified fascination as horses and wagons poured over the ridge and down, almost as if they were falling into the mists below as the blue orbs continued to slam into the shrouded waters.

“They are mad!” he gasped.

Xerrioth stumbled before dancing in place on the balls of his feet. “Thunder in the earth!”

“I can feel it too,” growled Taz.

They faded into the background of Stev’s mind as he watched the field, slow understanding creeping up his face. “The Deskren line, the trebuchets and siege towers,” he said. “They’re gonna hit straight down the enemy line…”

His words proved prophetic as a terrible figure burst forth from the mist and snow over the river, less than a heartbeat after the last orb of cold light fell. The first lancer was huge, and rode a stallion of equally massive proportions, and as the hooves struck the ground the earth flattened while lightning stretched like taffy from every hoofprint and lifted leg, trailing behind the steel shoes until they slammed into the earth once more with another burst of power.

Ahead of the dread rider a lance extended, for all it’s size held steady as the horseman crossed the terrain. Two and a half times as long as the horse he rode, the Lancer held the dread weapon perfectly level, and where blue lightning trailed the horses hooves the lance was wreathed in shimmering darkness that almost hurt Stev’s eyes to see. The black lightning danced around the shaft and mingled with the blue from the hoof-strikes to dance along the armor of rider as well as steed.

And the storm followed after.

========================

Private Dheigrar had been born clanless, in a Deskren kennel to a mother who had never had a name and whom he had been taken from before his eyes opened. Thrown to the testing pits almost before he could walk, his sheer ferocity had earned him a name and conscription into the Gendarmerie. He had since served under several different commanders under the Deskren lash, and while not all of them had been malicious and few had been incompetent, none had ever given the Collared a choice. Disobedience was death as certain as the passing of seasons and the coming of the Dead Sands. The only thing nearly as certain to be a death sentence was failure, and being captured always ended with the collars of the unfortunate being activated by the overseers to exact that last punishment.

He was now sworn to one who had been an enemy, after failing to defeat said enemy. It was both a failure and disobedience, and the skin of his neck where the fur would never grow itched when he thought too much about it. The Battlemaster had eliminated the Overseers too quickly for them to use the Leashes, and the freedom that followed had been as frightening as it was exhilarating.

All Dheigrar knew was marching to fight, and fighting when not marching. The Gendarmes were pitted against the strongest of foes, and the Luparan were the light skirmishers of the Gendarmes. Yet for all he had once considered himself elite, even if only among slaves…

The Battlemaster had proven that he and his brethren could be something more. They no longer stood in formed ranks, their new commander had let them split into smaller groups as their pack instincts returned without a Deskren lash to smother them. Fast. Faster. The new “squads” as Jacob had designated them could run down a horse over a short distance, or harry them for farther. The training the human had set them to had been strenuous, but satisfying in a way only the memory of scent of his mother’s fur had been when he was a pup. Stalking, tracking, hunting, and then the taking of the kill. Attacks in training used blunted or wooden weapons, of course, but the Duke merely raised an eyebrow when the Lancers complained of bruises.

“Did you think we are only training them?” he had asked the mounted Sergeant. “They are learning how to chase down and take on mounted units. You are learning how to avoid or fight Luparan pack-squads. And Sergeant,” he had said, letting his charger prance closer. “They are learning faster than you and your men. I suggest you try harder.”

The training had indeed become more difficult as they marched, but Dheigrar did not care. He moved as one with his squad, sniffed out whatever objectives his commanding officer ordered to the best of his increasingly considerable ability, and never once did he regret making his Choice. The first choice he had ever been given.

Never regretted until this moment, however. The thunder crashed from the sky and the ground, answering the call of the Battle-Bard’s drum. The volume was many times greater than it had ever been on the march, even louder and more terrifying than it had been to charge into on the day of thunder and mud when he had been given his freedom. He could have endured the thunder, and even the lightning. 

But he could not contain his terror as he held onto the side of a wagon, desperately gripping a braided leather strap fastened to a riveted iron ring, with his feet braced on a wooden strut running along the outside of the wagon bed. The wagon raced forward, the drum beat the storm into submission, the horses screamed as the wagon plunged over the ridge, and Dheigrar…

Dheigrar howled as if all the demons of every hell he’d ever heard of were nipping at his tail.

============================

Calvin Descroix heard the wolf-men begin to howl, a mad cacophony that blended with the thunder of drums and crash of lightning. He had one arm looped under the back of the wagon’s bench, having long since crouched low as he could on the wide drovers seat as the wagoneer screeched and sawed on the reins to no avail. The Battlemaster had the horses now, and no whip nor halter would stop them from running as he willed. One arm clung to the wagon while his feet braced up under the board in front of the seat, another held a crossbow at the ready. A half dozen soldiers were similarly armed and sat secured in the bed of the wagon to look out to either side.

The race down the ridge had given Calvin a fright, but the sharp upturn and the lurch that dropped his belly down to his ankles had been even more terrifying. The horses screamed, the wolves howled, and Calvin held on for dear life wishing he was in the back of the wagon where he couldn’t see where they were going. The column raced out from the slope and didn’t turn at the water. The Icefall blasts continued to fall and they charged under that eery light with mist and the sound of rushing water and crashing ice on either side.

As suddenly as they had plunged down the ridge, they were across the river and charging up the opposite bank. He thought the wagon might shake itself apart. The night was dark but lit in steady flashes of lightning like flipping through pages in a sketchbook by harsh candlelight, and each burst burned into his eyes in time with the screams of the horses and wolfmen. They charged over the first hill onto the enemy camp and he saw in brief glimpses the familiar standard lines of Deskren trebuchets and trenches, but instead of acting to stop this charge it merely gave the Battlemaster a road to follow.

A road filled with targets.

The first trebuchet and the few soldiers in front of it exploded, wood splinters, pieces of timbers and fountains of blood that froze in mid-air as it met the winter-driven storm. What was left by the time Calvin’s wagon near the middle of the column got there had been trampled into a paste mixed with the mud and the blood as the horses continued on their way.

Ahead, in the distance, Calvin could see a familiar red hue surrounding the armor and shields of several hundred infantry. He knew his sister was there by her signature mana and the pulsing light that bolstered her troops. Another trebuchet vanished in an explosive impact, the pieces not trampled falling to either side of the charging forces as the red light grew. He knew his sister, and knew her armor better than almost anyone. The Lancers closed with the angry glow of her magic, and Calvin hoped the Battlemaster’s power would be enough…

============================

Claire Descroix watched the first trebuchet explode into kindling, and the soldiers near it get crushed into mist and paste. Surely they’ll start slowing down, she thought. Her heart fell as a second siege engine suffered the same fate as the first, shattered timbers and broken bodies flying through the air. Power and shadow wreathed the lead Lancer’s weapon, crackling out in snapping tendrils to wrap around the riders to his left and right and the gleaming steel of those that followed. They weren’t slowing at all, it even seemed to her that they were gaining momentum.

With resolve bordering on desperation she burned three more [Bloodshard Crystals] on her bracelet, leaving just two in reserve. Her magic pulsed out, further strengthening the soldiers around her as she stepped back and knelt to drive the two pieces of her scepter into the ground. “Shielding!” she shouted to the defenders before the spelltower. They stood straighter, bolstered by the power of the gifted lifeblood and her own mana. Two more trebuchets went down in pieces as the charging lancers simply plowed through the line heading straight for her position. The air seemed to thicken with power as she burned yet another bloodshard. “HOLD!” she snapped to her men. We have to turn them here! She thought. Aside from herself, none stood within the Deskren ranks on the field who could hope to stop such a charge. She braced herself, both her body and her magic, and hoped it would be enough.

It wasn’t.

=====================================

Stev Aras watched the charging riders, followed by the wagons and more lancers to either side. They moved as if one single minded entity, and first one, then two, then three and four enemy siege engines were destroyed, and troops by the dozens trampled under that grim inevitability. They simply rode along the Deskren’s back line, behind their forward pickets and trenches and defenses. Anything that could have stopped them was simply facing the wrong way, pointed towards the fortress city.

The Deskren had built a lot of trebuchets. The local forest had been nearly clearcut of timber for construction and firewood. Now that siege equipment was being systematically reduced to matchsticks, and the men and women around them fared no better. The spelltowers were of a different sort, and the attackers had shipped them up the river from some foothold they must hold in the southeast, if not farther even into Kosala. Reeking of blood magic and sacrifice, their destructive power was useless against the barrier but had been devastating once part of that defense had failed. If not for the dwarven-made and fortified outer stone wall they might have managed to bring down the already damaged warding tower before the besieged could bring it back up.

Stev could see the Deskren commander on the field, her familiar reddish spell-light growing to envelope nearly a hundred soldiers in formation before her and the spelltower. Magic pulsed, angry and powerful to anyone with enough sensitivity, and he could see the enemy troops stiffen and stand straighter, backed up by magical power and the confidence it brought. Unlike when he had seen Taz and Xerrioth close with the woman, there was no chain lightning, not against a foe who made lightning dance to a drum. Instead the magic traced patterns along the Deskren armor and equipment, outlining them in harsh red and gold.

Stev’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the edge of the stone window in front of him, but he didn’t notice. The black lancers closed with the enemy commander…

===============================

Millie Thatcher had not lamented giving up her voice for a single moment since taking her class, but if she could in this moment she would have laughed or screamed. The thunder beat with her heart and her drum, and the lightning danced in her bones. It was a savage glee, and she had no voice to give it, so she gave it a beat and let it ride. She could see the red light ahead, and a woman behind several rows of shield-locked soldiers. Hoplites or Gendarmes, Millie did not know or care. She felt in this moment that they would not be stopped or turned, could not, with a month’s worth of storm and fury built up on the march with every beat of her drum and every step of boot and turn of wagon wheel and stomp of hoof.

The Black Lance may have been born on the day of thunder and mud, but today was thunder and snow and they would claim their name. The Battlemaster had explained to the Lancers, the riders who trained just for that and not for the other roles in the company. He had explained, and she had heard from her seat on the wagon. “A lance moves forward,” he had said to them. “Into the enemy, and through.”

And so they did. Weeks of marching, of training, of practice, it had felt meaningful, yes. But it was not their purpose. Merely preparation for it. Now that purpose was before them, and they would not be denied. Forward. As if they were falling, but in perfect step, the Black Lance charged, and Millie gave them thunder as a battle-cry. She grinned as the rooster struggled to keep his balance on the backboard of Hett’s wagon-seat. Some things needed no words, and though the Gods had been silent since long before she was born, that didn’t mean they had no power at all. After all, one had granted her an Aspect, and she would be a fool to deny what was before her own eyes after that.

The Battlemaster, at the tip of the spear that was the Black Lance and those that followed, smashed through yet another trebuchet and closed with the phalanx of shields and spears in front of the angry red-glowing mage in front of a savage and strange looking tower of blood-stained iron.

Black Lance met red shields, and time seemed to slow between one heartbeat and the next.

Millie could see the Battlemaster lean further into the charge, his arm up and lance moving forward.

The lance met the magic.

The rooster crowed.

And Millie struck her drum with all her might.

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Claire Descroix had one brief glimpse of hope where she almost believed they would be able to, if not stop, then turn the charge at least enough to spare the spelltower. The lead Lancer struck the shield wall, and for a fraction of a heartbeat the magic held as the men were pushed back with their feet digging furrows in the earth.

Then a rooster crowed, and lightning surged under the charging horses, and into the Lancers’ lances, and the spell shattered as thunder crushed the night air and drove Claire to her knees. It was a small mercy that she was deafened, so she could not hear the screams of her men as they were broken and trampled, although they had inflicted a toll as several horses went down with their riders. Not that fearsome leader though. She looked up through bloodshot eyes with her ears ringing, trying to stand. She made it almost to her feet when the tip of the lance glanced off her breastplate as she twisted to the side, but it caught on the buckle of her pauldron and suddenly she was off the ground with a horrendous wrenching sensation.

Her vision whirled, her world nothing but thunder and agony. Almost effortlessly it seemed, the rider lifted his lance and her with it, as they slammed into the iron-wrought spelltower. The tip of the lance punched through, ignoring enchantments on her armor that had cost more than some kingdoms to produce, and it emerged from her back to pin her to the siege engine. That did not stop the rider, and she thought again he might finally be turned from the rest of the line.

The lance shattered with a thunder crack, and the shadows around the rider himself and those that followed deepened as his stallion impacted the tower next to her. The armored horse didn’t even slow, and the spell-worked iron crumpled with the groans and shrieks of tortured metal as the whole construct collapsed. The last thing Claire saw as her last defense activated and the amulet under her armor wrapped her in blessed oblivion was several tons of iron and wood and a screaming mage falling towards her.

And then blackness.

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Stev Aras stood in awe. The riders crossed another half a league, shattering dozens of trebuchets and siegeworks, trampling tents and troops with equal abandon while thunder hammered the earth and sky behind a backdrop of screams and howls. A more terrifying sight and sound he had never witnessed, and hoped never again. He could see, though, after the second spelltower fell, that the lancers were finally beginning to slow. They turned slightly, almost carried over the bank on the far side of the south road by their own inertia, and he could see that they were heading for the south gate to the city.

“They’re headed for the south gate, but it would take an hour or more to open it!” he exclaimed.

“They don’t have the numbers to hold outside the walls for that long,” growled Taz, eyes burning as she watched the continuing spectacle of rampant violence and destruction. “Xer, can you open the gate?”

“I can, but I’m not sure it will be functional afterwards,” he said grimly. “We don’t have much time to get there…”

“Don’t worry about collateral damage!” snapped Stev. “Do what you must, and we’ll fix it later. We can’t let them be pinned out there!”

Xerrioth nodded, stepping to the window with a gentle wave of mana swirling around him. “Don’t worry about the damages?” he said, as he turned his back and began to fall out of the window. “I’ll hold you to that!”

His strange magic surged suddenly as he pushed off the window with his feet. Stone shook and dust billowed from the ground and the stones of the nearby buildings. The gravity mage launched himself across the city, and Stev hoped he would be in time.