This was no magic…
He knew this, but he could not admit it to Tototl.
If Atl is facing this also… Fear ran cold through him, and he nearly reached for the carved bird, nearly spoke the word that would allow him to communicate with his son and warn him. But he would be too late: that battle was undoubtedly also underway. Too late. And while the Easterners had this deadly skill, it still hadn’t made a difference in this battle. They had taken out the flanking troops, but they’d still be routed.
But Tototl was right in one respect: he had not seen this. What would the scrying bowl say now?
“The Easterners have learned a spell they’ve never shown us before,” he told Tototl. The wounded bled from deep, jagged, but nearly circular holes. The dead were the worst-it looked as if they been struck by invisible arrows that had-impossibly-torn through metal-and-bamboo armor to plunge deep into the bodies, sometimes lancing entirely through them. And on the top of the hill, where the surviving warriors had said that the terrible barrage had come from, there were no bodies at all, very few signs of blood, though there were a few Tehuantin arrows on the ground. But the ground wasn’t disturbed as it would have been had they needed to drag away bodies. The Easterners had been able to inflict this damage on them without significant loss of their own.
Could they have done this with the main troops? Are they holding this back, waiting for a better place to use this power?
It may not have been magic, but something both awful and unbelievable had happened here. They had used black sand in some way that Niente could not comprehend. “I need to use the scrying bowl again,” he said to Tototl. “Something has changed, something Axat didn’t show me before. This is important. I worry about the Tecuhtli.” The Long Path: could it still be there? Could it have changed, too? Or has everything changed? Has Atl seen this? He had to know. He had to find out. He was missing something that was critical to understanding their situation-he could feel it in the roiling in his gut, a burning. He felt old, used up, useless.
“There isn’t time,” Tototl answered. “The Tecuhtli will take care of himself, and he has the Nahual with him. The city is open to us. All we need to do is chase them. They’re running; I can’t give them time to regroup.”
“Then as soon as we can after we reach the city,” Niente told him. “Look at this! Do you want this to happen to us or to Citlali?”
Tototl scowled. “Pour oil on the bodies and burn them,” he ordered the warriors. “Then rejoin us. Niente, come with me-the city awaits us.”
He spat on the ground. Then, with a final scowl, he remounted. Niente was still staring, still trying to make some sense of this. “Come, Uchben Nahual,” Tototl told him. “The answers you want are running from us as we stand here.”
In that, the warrior was right. Niente sighed, then went to his own horse and-with the help of one of the warriors-pulled himself back into the saddle.
They rode away, Tototl already calling out to resume their advance.
If the day had been terrible, the night was hideous. Varina was huddled with the Garde Civile, pressed between the two earthen ramparts that had been built over the previous few days, and the night rained spark and fire, as if hands were plucking the very stars from the heavens and hurling them to earth. Both sides now used catapults to throw black sand fire into each other’s ranks. The explosions thundered every few breaths: sometimes distant, sometimes distressingly close.
There was no rest this night and no sleep. She watched the fireballs arc overhead to fall westward, and cowered as the return barrage hammered at their ramparts. She tried to blot out the sounds of screams and wails whenever one of the Tehuantin missiles struck.
This was worse than open combat. At least there she had a semblance of control. There was no control in this: her life, and the lives of all of those around her were up to the whims of fate and accident. The next fireball could fall on her and it would be over, or it would miss and take someone else’s life. Varina felt helpless and powerless, cowering with her back against cold dirt and trying to recover as much of her strength as she could so that she could replenish her spells for the attack that would come in the morning.
It would come. They all knew it.
The news from the north had been disheartening. Neither Starkkapitan ca’Damont nor Hirzg Jan, with the Firenzcian troops, had been able to hold the west bank of the Infante. Both had been forced to retreat across the river. Worse, the word had come that Hirzg Jan had been injured during the retreat, as the a’Certendi bridge was destroyed. The rumors were wild and varied: Varina heard that Jan was dying; she heard that he had been carried back to the city to the healers; she heard that he was directing the defense from his tent-bed; she heard that he’d had himself lashed to his horse so that he would appear unhurt to his men as he rode about encouraging them; she’d heard that his injuries were minor and he was fine.
She had no idea which rumors were false and which true. What was apparent was that the battle of the day before had been only a prelude. The Infante would be forded; they all knew that. The Tehuantin would find the shallow places and they would cross as soon as it was light.
She trembled, closing her eyes as another fireball shrieked overhead and exploded well to her left. Had she believed in Cenzi, she would have prayed-there were certainly prayers being mumbled all around her. She almost envied the comfort the soldiers might find in them.
“Varina?” Commandant ca’Damont crouched next to her. In the noise, she hadn’t heard his approach. She started to stand, but he shook his head and motioned to her to stay down.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was trying to rest.”
He smiled wanly. “There’s not much rest around here. I wanted to tell you-Mason, your Vajiki ce’Fieur: the healers say he’ll recover. They’ve going to evacuate him back to the city.”
“Good. Thank you. I appreciate your telling me that.”
“I want you to go with him,” ca’Damont continued. “This is no place for you.”
An old, frail woman… She could nearly hear the unsaid comment. “No,” she told him. “You need me here. I’m A’Morce Numetodo; this is where I belong.”
“More war-teni have arrived,” he said. “A full double hand. And I have the other Numetodo you brought with you. You proved yourself earlier, Varina. No one could ask more of you. And you have a child to think of.”
She wanted to agree. She wanted to take his offer and go running back to the city-but even there she wouldn’t be safe. She could flee as far as she wanted, she could take Serafina and go east or north, but if they lost here-and she could see no way that they could win-she would always wonder whether she should have stayed, whether her presence might have made a difference.
Karl would not have fled. He would have stayed, even if he thought that the battle was lost. She knew that for a certainty. “Most of the gardai here have children to think of,” she told him firmly. “That’s why they’re here.”
“Still…”
“I’m not leaving,” she told him.
The Commandant nodded. He stood and saluted her. “You’re certain?”
She gave a shuddering laugh as another fireball howled past. Firelight bloomed and shadows moved as it exploded. “No,” she answered. “But I’m staying, and you’re interrupting my rest.”
They heard the low rumble of another explosion somewhere beyond the rampart. “Rest?” the Commandant said. “I doubt any of us will be getting that tonight. But all right. Stay if you want. Cenzi knows that we need all the help we can get.” He seemed to realize what he’d said, giving a wry half-smile. “Forgive me, A’Morce.”
“Don’t apologize,” she told him. “If your Cenzi exists, I hope He’s listening to you.”
It wasn’t supposed to have been this way. Sergei had prayed to Cenzi, but Cenzi hadn’t answered-not that he expected any help from that quarter. The Tehuantin pursued Kraljica Allesandra and the Garde Kralji all the way back into the city. The Kraljica had tried to re-form and stand at Sutegate, but the Tehuantin were moving across too wide a swath now, pouring into the city’s streets from everywhere along the southern reaches. Allesandra didn’t have troops enough to cover the city’s entire southern border. It had become quickly obvious that they couldn’t hold the South Bank: not with the Garde Kralji, not even with the sparkwheelers, who had proved oddly effective during the retreat. They’d pulled back even farther, abandoning the entire South Bank for the Isle A’Kralji.
They could keep the Tehuantin from pouring through the bottlenecks that were the two bridges.
Sergei had urged Allesandra to destroy the Pontica a’Brezi Veste and Pontica a’Brezi Nippoli entirely, to take down the spans so that the Tehuantin couldn’t cross the southern fork of the A’Sele without ships. She refused. “The ponticas stay up,” she said. “I will not just give up half the city. The bridges stay up, we defend them tonight,
