stratagems getting by the Skolati and the Mare forces, and now all they were left with was a plain straightforward assault.
They’d entered the lee of the Barrier range and many vessels had had to break out the sweeps to continue shoreward. It was clear that the rocky coast was too rough for the ships to anchor anywhere close and so crews readied launches. Ashore, bonfires burned and Devaleth could make out timber barriers and massed troops. The Roolians. Obviously Yeull also understood that this length of shore was the crucial landing place.
The vessels nosed as close to the shore as possible. Smaller cutters and sloops swept in closer, carrying as many troops as could be jammed on board. But while the water was still too deep for the men and women to jump off sheeting bow-fire met them, arcing up from massed archers. Devaleth’s stomach clenched seeing the troops delay while launches and all manner of rowboats were readied. They were sitting targets!
The coast was so rocky and dangerous here, only the smallest boats dared approach, so only the barest handful of troopers could land at any one time. Parties slogged ashore in fives and tens through the waist-deep water, and, while Devaleth watched, overwhelming numbers jumped up from behind fallen logs and rocks to charge. She saw entire boatloads of infantry cut down one at a time before escaping the wash of the waves.
This is a catastrophe! And the Korelri haven’t even yet lent their weight to the battle.
Then, just as Devaleth could not imagine things unfolding any more disastrously, batteries of mangonels, catapults and onagers opened up from the shore. A barrage of projectiles came streaming up from the hidden weapons. Devaleth jumped, flinching at the sight of the fusillade. She watched frozen in a sort of suspended fascination as the stones descended, roaring, amid the anchored fleet. Most struck only water, sending up massive jets of spray. But a few found targets and punched down through decking and hull. This is insane! Where was Greymane? The fool! Yeull was waiting for them!
But yet again she’d forgotten about the Moranth. The engines that had cast so much death and destruction among the Mare fleet now responded. The colour of the dawn changed to an orange-red as a great sheet of flaming projectiles arced up from the Blue vessels. She watched just as fascinated as this barrage passed over the immediate shore to land a good hundred paces back from the lip of the sand cliffs masking the coast.
A firestorm blossomed, roiling in fat billowing flames and black smoke. It spread in great arcs of incendiaries that reached like claws, secondary bursts scattering the inferno even farther. The blast reached Devaleth like a distant rockslide or titanic waterfall. She was shaken from the spell of that eruption by soldiers jostling her: the Star of Unta was unloading its some four hundred infantry on to launches and jolly boats.
Smoke now veiled the shore. Wave after wave of infantry from the Fourth and Eighth Armies heaved themselves over the sides of the boats to wade into the killing zone where the surf broke amid rocks and pockets of gravel strand. She could not quite tell if any foothold had yet been gained. The bodies that had not sunk now washed about, crowding the surf like driftwood.
Punching through the smoke came a continued barrage from the defending engines, only now aimed higher, to fall short among the crowded boats and knots of men. Great jets burst skyward with each impact, throwing troopers like rags. Some few struck boats, exploding them in a great eruption of wood splinters and disintegrated bodies.
A hand grasped Devaleth’s upper arm and she jumped, gasping. It was Greymane.
‘I was calling you,’ he said.
She swallowed, her heart pounding. ‘I’m — I’m sorry. I’m so… Is this as bad as it looks?’
The big man grimaced his understanding. ‘It’s ugly — there’s no way round it. Attacking a hostile shore? You can only push and keep pushing. It’s up to the troops now — they mustn’t flinch.’ He looked to shore, his pale eyes the colour of the sky. ‘But I have every confidence in them.’ His gaze returned to her. ‘Now I have a request of you, High Mage.’
‘Me?’
‘A journey through your Warren. I’m needed elsewhere.’
‘What?’ She gestured to the shore. ‘But what of this? You’re needed here!’
He shook his head. ‘No. It’s no longer up to me here. I can only watch. Nok and Shul have their orders and they will see things through. I must go — believe me.’
‘But the Lady…’
His lips crooked up in a smile. ‘We’re on water, mage.’
She sighed as she acknowledged defeat. ‘Very well. Where?’
‘West. I will let you know. In fact, you may sense it yourself.’
‘All right. West. If you must.’ She took hold of his forearm. ‘Gods — it’s been ages since I’ve done this.’ She reached out to Ruse
… and stepped through.
She found herself on a flooded plain, standing in shin-deep water. The sky was clear, deep blue. Greymane was with her in his heavy armour of banded iron, helmet pushed high on his head. He hooked his gauntleted hands at his belt. ‘Where are we?’
‘I don’t know.’ She turned full circle: flat desolation in all directions. The water was fetid, heavy with silt and muck. The stink, gorge-rising.
‘Which way?’ Greymane asked, wincing at the smell.
‘This way.’ She headed off, slogging through the flood. Her sodden robes dragged as she pushed through the water.
They came to a long low hill, like a moraine, and there washed up against its side lay a great line of pale things like a high-water mark. At first she thought them stranded sea-life, seals or porpoises, but as they drew closer the awful truth of them clawed at her and she bent over, heaving up her stomach. Greymane steadied her.
‘God of the Sea preserve us,’ she managed, spitting and gasping. ‘What has happened here?’
‘It’s me,’ Greymane ground out, his voice thick with suppressed emotion. ‘A warning, or a lesson, from Mael.’
‘A lesson?’ She studied him anew. ‘What is this? What is going on here?’
The man tried to speak, looked away, blinking back tears, then tried again. ‘I’m going to do something, Devaleth. Something I’ve been running from for decades. Something that terrifies me.’
She backed away, splashing through the shallow polluted waters. ‘No!’ A dizzying suspicion clenched her chest — she could not breathe. ‘Stonewielder! No! Do not do this thing!’
‘It must be done. I’ve always known that. I… I couldn’t summon the nerve, the determination, before. But now I see there’s no choice.’
She pointed to the swollen rotting corpses, men, women, children, heaved up like wreckage. ‘And what is this? You would do this!’
He bowed his head then raised it to look to the sky, blinking. ‘I was handed two ghastly choices decades ago, Devaleth. Mass murder on the one hand — and an unending atrocity of blood and death on the other. Which would you choose?’
‘I would find a third course!’
‘I tried. Believe me, I tried.’ He gestured off into the distance. ‘But it hasn’t stopped, has it?’ He added, more softly, ‘And do you really think it will?’
She had to shake her head. ‘No. It won’t. But… the price…’
‘It’s the only way to end it. Everyone is in too deep. A price must be paid.’
Devaleth hugged herself as if to keep the pain swelling in her chest contained. ‘I… I understand. For us the time for easy options is long past. And now our delay has brought us to this.’
‘Yes.’
She bowed her head. Gods — you are all a merciless lot, aren’t you? But then, how can you be any better than your worshippers? She started off again. ‘This way. I feel it. It’s unmistakable.’
She found the locus: a great current coursing through the flood where the water fairly vibrated with power. Here she brought them out of the Warren to appear in the shallows of a long wide beach that led up to a wooded shore.
Greymane turned to her. ‘My thanks. You didn’t have to…’
She waved that aside. ‘I understand. It’s time we made the hard choices. And I understand now why you pushed everyone away. Your friend Kyle. Us. All of us.’
