Skybound - Chapter 10: Hoofbeats

Belka Torm pulled his furs closer around himself to ward off the chill. He couldn’t be sure what time of day it was with the dark clouds all around and the snow kicked up by the horses obscuring the sun so completely. The column marched through an eerie twilight realm of powder and fog and shadows. Only the beat of the drums and the cadence of hoofbeats held back the unnatural blizzard that had surrounded them for days. The General led them onwards, unhesitant and sure thanks to the maps provided by King Hanz, and the merchant’s wagon never strayed from the roadway as it followed the one in front and lead the ones behind. The strange power of the drummer pushed the snows back around the company, leaving them marching through a tunnel of white and grey punctuated by distant overhead lightnings.

Winter had arrived early, and all the more vicious for it. Belka had worried that frostbite would have begun to sap their numbers, but the Worldwalker enforced a strict discipline on his troops. Every unit’s leaders checked their troops constantly and ensured clothing was kept in proper repair to keep warm. Inattention to such things generally led to latrine duty. The cold actually made for easier travel than the wet rains of autumn had. At least the wagons weren’t bogged down in muddy ruts now that they once again travelled over a stone-paved roadway.

“It’s almost time,” muttered his wife, Laren, sitting next to him on the wagon’s broad seat. Her own dreams had intensified on the march, and she had been almost manic for several days as they neared the end of the journey. “They struck at her expecting to cage a bird, but she danced like a cat and the cat kept them blind…”

“I wish you could actually speak clearly sometimes,” said Belka, hugging her close to share warmth. She leaned into him, grinning at sights he couldn’t see. Her response came as a shock, normally she didn’t answer or acknowledge anyone when she drifted through her dreams.

“It’s not so hard to understand this time,” she said, her grin frighteningly feline. “They hit first, attacking the City of Prophets. She always stays neutral, always, unless herself or the city is attacked. Messages, missives, words whispered in this ear at that time. She is neutral no longer, not since the purple night, and we are part of her counter-stroke against the ones who stung her so sharply.”

“But how are they blind? This is an army, and they haven’t even tried to hide…”

“They’ve marched so far so fast. They look, they hunt, but they see only her face in the mirror…”

“You aren’t making sense again…”

“The [Oracle] has retaliated, husband. The only thing scrying can see is her smiling face. They cannot divine futures, send messages, or scout with farsight. They struck at her, and now she keeps them blind as the lance drives home her answer.”

She smiled and lay her head on his shoulder, drifting back to sleep as the wagon swayed steadily with the beat of the drums and the horse’s hooves.

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Jenna Tillersen shivered in the back of the wagon, trying to let the rocking sway of the carriage lull her back to sleep. The [Water Witch] had worked relentlessly with the other mages, crafting as many enchantments as they could with the materials they had on hand. Several dozens of enchanted rings were complete, ready to cast a low-powered [Icefall] spell upon being charged with anyone’s basic mana. Naturally, trained mages could use them more effectively and with a higher rate of fire, but anyone at all could learn to use one with some basic training and practice.

In addition to what Duchess Erin had called ‘magic mortars’ the adepts of the company had also been busy making other types of enchanted items. Flattened stone disks that could be placed next to a fire for a time and later placed in gloves or boots or slipped into garments to offset the cold for several hours. Jenna had understood the usefulness immediately, although her own affinities meant she worked mainly on the mortars. Her husband, Davin, actually had more skill with earth-type magics than she did, and he had made a fair share of the ‘hot rocks’ on the rare occasions his duties with his troops didn’t keep him away from her campfire when the column stopped. 

Only this day they had not stopped to make camp, marching on into the evening as she tried to rest in the wagon. Jenna was self-taught in her own magics, other than what guidance she had found among the older midwives and otherwise magically talented folk of the villages where she had lived most of her life. Without a formal education in magic, she had developed her own way of thinking and sensing the natural flow of ambient mana around her without knowing the terms for it. Even admitting her own lack of such education, she wasn’t sure any trained scholarly mage could have put words to what she had sensed ever since King Hanz flew off on his drake after the meeting on the hill.

No order of silence had been given, but none had spoken of the Duke’s words with the King. At least not within her hearing. Yet word seemed to have travelled, nonetheless. A new sort of intensity had spread within the ranks, and none were more affected than the freed Gendarmes. It wasn’t a thing she could name, or even point out in any specific way. It was dozens of little things all added together. Ears perked up and more attentive. A crisper gait where before they plodded along. They threw themselves into drills in the smaller squads the General had split them into. Jenna had no battlefield experience before the deskren invasion, but the smaller groups working together seemed more fearsome to her than they had when she had first seen them marching in ranks. Her husband had informed her that the Deskren military doctrine tried to use them like human infantry when their bodies were not built for a proper shield wall, and the Battlemaster was keen to break them from that lifetime of training in order to cultivate their natural aptitude for pack tactics as fast and vicious skirmishers. To Jenna’s untrained eye they seemed to adapt quite eagerly, and Davin confirmed as much.

So they had marched, after the King of Drakenth took his leave. March and train and train and march, and Jenna could feel something changing within the column. The drums beat relentlessly, no longer just the single frightening girl on the lead wagon, but several more working along with her. And ever since the meeting on the hill, something was different about the beat, and not just the soldiers that marched to it.

The weather grew colder and more grim, and the company marched on. Time seemed to stretch as they travelled, and the greyish white clouds along with the lightning that punctuated the drums made it difficult to tell night from day. A tension was growing slowly, she could feel it thrumming in the air the farther they travelled. Like a bowstring being pulled back, ever so slowly. Jacob Ward grew more terse and stern as well, as did his officers. It felt to her that they no longer had to pull the column along, and more like they were being pushed. Their journey no longer felt as if they were going somewhere. It feels like we are merely waiting to arrive…

A thump on the side of the wagon interrupted her thoughts, and she pulled back a flap of canvas. One of the farriers that had joined the Black Lance instead of staying at Possibility was walking right next to her carriage, and he nodded with a slight bow without missing a step.

“Sorry ma’am, orders,” he said in a rush as he fastened a metal ring to the side of the wagon with a metal clasp over the side-board, which he then locked into place with a rivet using a strange kind of pliers and a burst of his own metallic flavored mana. A leather strap was then looped through the ring to hang down the side, and another ring and strap soon joined the first, a single arm’s span down the sidewall. “Every wagon is to get them, we’ve been turning them out faster than horseshoes every night,” he said.

“You aren’t the only ones given strange projects,” she told the man as he jogged to the other side, pulling another ring out of a satchel.

“Even so,” said the man, dutifully resuming his work. Jenna laid back as well as she could, and barely heard the thuds as he finished the job and moved on to the next wagon in line.

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Stev Aras leaned back against the wall, lungs heaving to draw in vital air as mage-fire rained through a gap in the barrier. The bombardment was fading as the magical defenses recovered, but the damage had been severe before he and his team could escort a trio of mages and an artificer to restore the damaged warding tower. When the warding crystal had failed it had shattered, killing the man on duty and dropping a section of the dome.

The enemy commander had been ready for just such an occasion, and hundreds of skirmishers had cleared the wall under cover of magical artillery. Bolts of fire and ice, interspersed with blasts of potent chain-lightning had kept the defenders off the walls just long enough. His sister Taz, and her friend Xerrioth, had proven more than a match for the invaders in open combat, but they could not ferret out the more dangerous assassins and saboteurs who had inevitably made their way into the city in the chaos.

Stev kicked the corpse at his feet before stumbling out of the alley, ignoring the shiny slivers of golden metal that clinked against the cobblestones as they fell away from the body. His sister and her new romantic victim were excellent front-line combatants, but the more subtle work of the night fell to himself and the rest of the Acquisitions Guild. The Huntress was not merciful to the darker trades when she caught those that plied them within her domain, so only the most skilled and the most lucky, or both, generally survived to operate within Fort Expedition at all. 

Recruiting them had been as simple as offering amnesty and not asking for names. That would have been enough, but once the first Shackled assassin had been killed and his collar destroyed, all semblance of restraint had vanished. The city council had offered gold for intact golden collars, but gold couldn’t buy levels, especially for the older and more powerful classers in the city. All Stev had found of collars had been ruined pieces until the attack had already begun to fade, the less scrupulous guilds and solitary adventurers with the capability of taking on the enslaved killers had done so with extreme enthusiasm. He was sure that much of the destruction near the breach and peppered through the streets away from it had been more from defenders getting carried away than from Deskren intent.

His newly gained level had brought welcome rejuvenation, although he knew he would have to eat to fully recover. A problem all its own, after weeks under siege. Rations were running out, and after the third supply raid the Deskren had learned to keep their supply wagons and stores well out of any range Stev’s people could feasibly get to them. He made his way through the narrow alleys and walkways, staying out of sight as he approached the spelltower maintaining the barrier. Torn stone and shattered bodies gave evidence that his sister and the gravity mage had passed earlier, and several glints of gold he could see meant an entirely different manner of celebration would befall the unfortunate blind man.

The guard watching the steps leading up to the entrance of the tower nearly shot him in the face when he appeared from the shadows, but she recognized him at the last second and jerked the crossbow back and away. The bolt clattered off a rooftop in the distance as she apologized.

“Sorry sir!”

He waved away her mistake with a dismissive gesture. “It’s confusing enough out there. They’ve stopped the bombardment,” he said. “Your team’s done good work getting the barrier back up so quickly.”

She looked at him in confusion for a moment. “They haven’t even finished, sir. Mage Varkas doesn’t know if it’s the weather or what is happening, but they’ve backed off from the walls and seem to be regrouping…”

Said mage shouted down from the shield chamber above them. “I can’t tell through the storm! Something else has their attention though, it’s the only reason they’d let up.”

Magic thrummed as the mage finished whatever arcane workings he had been focused on, and blue light pulsed from the stones surrounding the tower footing. Overhead the barrier deepened in color, its cyan light spreading out in a wave that left an even darker shimmer to the city’s magical shield.

“The stabilizing matrices were damaged,” said the artificer, leaving the mage in the shield chamber with a satchel of mana crystals. “We had to lay in extra runes to repair the spell-” he cut off as Stev interrupted him with a wave.

“I’m no magicker,” he said. “I simply trust it is in working order and will hold up if they resume the attack?”

“Oh, yes sir,” the man nodded. “Should be even more resilient than before. The shard only shattered because the buffering layers had not been maintained or inspected in several years. It’ll hold up much better now, at least for the short term.”

“They broke off their assault before we had the shield restored,” said Stev, climbing the steps to look out over the wall through an arrow slit. Swirling snows hid the encamped attackers, and only the smoke and faint screams and fading fires gave any evidence at all that they were under siege. “Is scrying still unreliable?” he asked.

“Confusion and thunder is all anyone with that talent can report,” said Varkas as he looked out through another gap in the stone. The mage had joined them on the second level, but stayed close to the entrance to the shield chamber.

“Something has caused them to regroup,” said Stev. “And we can’t know if it’s good or bad, we’re just waiting for it all to go south.”

“Another day and it won’t matter, sir,” said the mage with a snort. “We simply don’t have enough supplies to hold. We’re down to jerky and bad ale, and the last dregs of crystals from the council stores.”

“Well, something has them spooked,” added the guardswoman.

Stev looked out into the swirling snows as the evening darkened further. “Let’s hope it’s in our favor then…”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and they all looked to the west.

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Claire Descroix wheeled her horse, turning to race through the rear encampment. Horns and mage-light flares had gone up from a section of tents where the seers were kept, and she rushed to see what was wrong with her own eyes. The main camp stretched in an arc that spanned almost three miles, closing off the valley south of Fort Expedition and sprawling out into the hills that led westward to the Eastwater. The river had been a critical pipeline in their logistics, ferries and barges keeping a steady supply of food and materials and troops as they had arrived on the coastline northeast of the Dead Sands. She crested a low hill and let her horse drop to a canter as she approached a section of tents far more comfortably furnished than most of the infantry were afforded. Seers were a rare commodity in the Empire, and those who served willingly were treated far better than any that served in chains.

“Report!” she snapped, pulling her horse to a stop and swinging down to the ground as a steward took the reigns.

“Marshal,” said an officer with a golden tassel marking him as a Lieutenant braided across his shoulder. He saluted with a fist to his chest. “The seers suddenly collapsed, screaming of thunder.”

“All of them?” she asked curtly, her voice clipped and short.

“Yes Ma’am, I had the flares sent up and messengers dispatched immediately. None remain standing, and they babble gibberish.”

“You did the right thing, even if it has nearly caused a panic and delayed today’s assault,” she said, her tone slightly softer. The man visibly relaxed with the realization that he had earned no immediate punishment. In truth she had not expected the barrier to fail so early, and the push against the walls had been a hastily assembled force of skirmishers to take advantage of the event. 

The breach had been unplanned, but it had demonstrated just how effective the newer amplification arrays for her mages’ artillery spells had been. Even harder to move than trebuchets or catapults, the arrays were more akin to stationary siege engines that allowed her spellcasters to focus power to a far more intense degree and unleash it with devastating effect. Her nephew, Kavnerrin, had provided the latest designs. However weaselly and distasteful she found him to be as he skulked in the shadows, his projects and laboratories were occasionally useful, even if she knew it was the work of his underlings and not his own intellect.

Putting such thoughts aside, she pushed past the tent flaps and strode into the scrying tent. Two women and a man, all seers, lay on the ground. Another woman was sitting, but held her head in her hands as blood dribbled from her nose and ears. Claire knelt close to the woman, handing her a cloth to clean herself as a servant brought a basin of water.

“What can you tell me, Seeress?”

“Your Highness,” sputtered the woman, wiping her face.

“Appearances can wait for a better time,” said Claire. “Just tell me what you saw…”

The diviner nodded in relief. “Only her face, for months on end, with glimpses in between,” she said. “It has made all but the deepest dreams impassable until now.”

“What has changed?”

Instead of speaking, the seeress held up the white cloth, now stained with blood. That blood drew a dark, almost black slash down the center of the cloth.

“A lance, and thunder. She hid them from us until now.” Who that she was needed no explanation. Only one could disrupt magical sight on such a grand scale.

“Do you know what it means?”

“Yes, Highness…”

She looked up at Claire. “He is here.”

“Who?”

“To the west! Look to the west!”

It was then that something broke through the sound of the wind, muffled by the snows that swirled in the air. Claire rose, striding from the tent. She ignored the questioning looks of the Lieutenant as she continued past the row of tents, leaving her horse and retinue behind. The sound was low, but steady, a rhythmic pulsing in the air that stirred the blood. She could feel it in her chest, growing closer.

As she reached the top of the hill she pulled a scry-glass from her belt pouch and raised it to her eye. The enchanted monocle was made of the finest imperial glass and nearly perfect in clarity, set in a silver band inscribed with runes. The drifting flurries had let up, the evening settling into slightly better visibility than the earlier part of the day. She looked across the river to the west, seeing nothing near the northern bridge or along the banks.

It was the lightning that revealed the truth. A grim flash, punctuated with a rumble as the snows parted above the ridge that overlooked the far side of the river. In that gap in the storm, she saw shadowy figures on horseback, and over their heads…

A vertical pike, with a stained white banner that hung as if weighted. The splash of dark red looked black in the fading light of the overcast evening. 

The Black Lance had arrived.