Another group of monks hustled in then, the lead brother waving a bag in front of him.
Pony understood without even asking. They had brought gemstonesmostly hematite, likely, that any wounds might be magically tended.
'Out to the wall we go,' Brother Braumin said to her as the others started away. 'Will you join us? '
Pony thought on it for just a moment. She wanted nothing to do with any battles, in truth, but neither could she ignore the responsibility laid before her. If there were powries outside Palmaris' western gate, then likely there would be fighting, and any fighting against powries would mean wounded men. No one in all Corona could wield the gemstones as powerfully as Pony. Was there a wound she could not heal?
One, at least, she reminded herself, the one in her own heart,
She followed Brother Braumin out to the city's western wall. From an alley, Duke Kalas watched the bustle upon the western wall. 'There!' one man cried, and the city guardsmen nearly fell over themselves trying to bring their bows to bear, letting fly a volley of arrows into the mist that likely hit nothing but grass.
They were frightened, Kalas recognized, scared nearly witless. The folk of Palmaris had been involved in more fighting than those of any other major city in Honce-the-Bear during the war, and their city guard had done themselves proud. But they had had their fill of it, Kalas knew, and no one who had ever battled powries wanted another fight with the rugged dwarves.
Unless, of course, they had made a previous agreement with the dwarves concerning how that battle would go.
More cries arose and more arrows flew out from the wall. Then a large group near the center of the crowd cried out and scrambled away, many leaping the ten feet from the parapet back to the ground.
A moment later came a thunderous report as something heavy slammed into the wall.
Kalas smiled; his gunners had spent the better part of the previous day lining up that catapult shot perfectly so that it would hit the wall but do no real damage.
In response, another volley of arrows went out from the wall into the mist, and then a series of howls, shouts, and the gravelly voices of the rugged powries came back at them.
Duke Kalas slipped back into the shadows as another group-Abellican monks and the woman Jilseponie- rushed to join those soldiers and commoners at the wall. The Duke observed their arrival with mixed feelings. He was glad that the monks had come, and especially thrilled that beautiful Jilseponie would witness this moment of his glory. But he was also trepidatious. Might Jilseponie take up a gemstone and lay low the powries?
With that disturbing thought in mind, Kalas rushed back to the other end of the alley and waved his arm, the signal to the trumpeters, then ran to his large pony, the lead To-gai-ru pinto in the line of fifty armored Allheartknights.
From nearly every rooftop in the area, it seemed, the trumpets blared, the rousing battle chorus of the mighty Allheart Brigade. All heads along the wall turned at the sound and at the ensuing thunder of pounding hooves.
'Throw wide the gates!' came a commanding cry. The city guardsmen rushed to pull wide the western gates, opening the path.
Out they went, bursting through the gate and onto the field, their silvery armor gleaming despite the dim light of the drizzly day. With practiced precision, they brought their powerful ponies into a wedge formation, Duke Kalas at the point.
The trumpet song continued a few moments longer, and then, as suddenly as it began, it ended. All on the wall hushed and gawked at the spectacle of the legendary Allheart Brigade. Even Pony, who had seen so much, could not miss the majesty of the moment, the King's finest soldiers in theirbright plate mail. Could any force in all the kingdom, in all the world, standagainst them? At that moment, to Pony, who had felled giants with strokes of magical lightning, who had witnessed Avelyn blasting away the top of a mountain with an amethyst, it didn't seem so.
In a powerful swift motion, Duke Kalas brought his sword from its scabbard and raised it high into the air.
All was silent, the brief moment of calm before the battle.
From somewhere out in the mist, a powrie cursed.
The charge was on-the blare of trumpets, the thunder of horses, the clash of steel, and the cries of battle.
From the wall, Pony and the others couldn't see much, just ghostly forms rushing to and fro in the fog. But then one group of powries burst out of the mist, charging for the wall. Before the archers could level their bows, before Pony could even take the offered graphite stone from Brother Braumin, Duke Kalas and a group of knights charged out behind the dwarves, trampling and slashing, disposing of them in mere seconds, then whirling their superb To-gai-ru ponies and thundering back across the field.
Some of those on the wall uttered a few prayers, but most remained hushed in disbelief, for never had they seen a band of tough powries so completely and easily overwhelmed.
Out in the mist, the sounds of battle began to recede, the powries obviously in flight, the Duke and his men giving chase.
The hundreds on or near Palmaris' western wall broke out into cheers for the Duke, the new Baron of Palmaris.
'Pray they are not being baited,' Brother Francis remarked, an obvious fear given the ease of the rout.
Pony, standing quietly next to him, staring hard at the opaque veil that had kept so much from her eyes, didn't fear that possibility. She simply had a sense that it was not so, that Kalas and his Allheart knights had not gone off into great danger.
Something about the whole battle hadn't seemed… right.
She thought about taking up a hematite then, and spirit-walking across the field, through the veil of mist to watch the Duke's moves more closely. But she dismissed the notion with a shake of her head.
'What is it?' the observant Brother Braumin asked.
'Nothing at all,' Pony replied, running her hand through her damp mop of thick blond hair. She continued to stare out at the mist, continued to listen to the cries of battle and dying powries, continued to feel that something here was not quite right. 'Nothing at all.' From a copse across the field, another set of eyes curiously watched the spectacle of battle. Bedraggled, wet, and miserable with a scraggly beard, his monk's robes long ago tattered by inner demons, Marcalo De'Unnero could not understand how a substantial powrie force-and he figured any force that would go so boldly against Palmaris had to be substantial-had arrived on the field so suddenly without his noticing the approach. He had been here for several days, seeking food and shelter, trying to stay alive and stay sane. He had watched every movement of the few farmers who had dared to come back out from within the walls of their city, to sit buttoned down in their modest homes for the winter. He had spent long hours studying the graceful movements of the skittish animals.
Mostly De'Unnero had watched the animals, his primary prey. He could sense their moods now, could see the world as they did, and he had noted no unusual smell of fear in the air that any approaching army, especially one dragging machines as large as catapults, would likely provoke.
So where had the powries come from?
De'Unnero made his way back into the copse and through the trees, at last sighting the catapult-just a single war engine-and its crew, its human crew, in a small lea amid the trees. The gunners, as far as he had discerned, had lobbed but a single shot and appeared in no hurry to load and fire another.
'Clever Duke Kalas,' De'Unnero, the former brother justice, remarked, figuring out the ruse and the purpose behind it.
He hushed immediately, hearing the snap of a twig not so far away. Close enough for him to smell the blood.
'Yach, damned swordsman,' he heard a powrie grumble, then he spotted the bloody cap dwarf, trudging along a path.
Then De'Unnero spotted the gash on the dwarf's shoulder, a bright line of blood crystal clear to him despite the fog. Yes, he saw it and smelled it, the sweet fragrance filling his nostrils, permeating his senses.
He felt the first convulsions of change an instant later, growled quietly against the sudden, sharp pains in his fingers and toes, and then in his jaw-the transformation of the jaw always hurt the most.
De'Unnero's shoulders lurched forward suddenly as his spine twisted. He fell to all fours, but that was a more comfortable position anyway, as his hips rotated.
