“You don’t know anything,” he said. “They just want to go home.”
“This isn’t making any sense to me,” she said. “This is it, Glim. We’re out of time. All we can do now is try to escape.”
“But-”
“We have to get out of here now! If you have something to tell me, tell me while we’re leaving.”
She got onto the lift that brought things to and from the Fringe Gyre and activated it, and they began to rise.
“The trees,” Glim said. “I understand them now. They changed me so I could help them.”
“Help them do what?”
“Go home.”
“And where is that?” she demanded.
“I don’t know-somewhere else. Not Tamriel. Isn’t that what we want?”
“What I want is for all of this to die, Glim.”
“I can feel it, too,” Fhena said. “Don’t you understand? If it kills the trees, it will kill all of us-including Glim.”
The lift reached the top.
“We’d better hide,” Annaig said. “They’ll be after us soon.”
“Aren’t you listening?”
But Annaig’s head was whirling. It was too much, wasn’t it? Could she really be expected to listen to all of this, put up with it?
“Just-one thing at a time,” she said.
Her locket was begging for attention.
In the gray, unnatural mist, Mazgar bent to her oars, feeling the longboat glide through the water. She felt Brenn huddled close behind her, crowded there by the five other soldiers stuffed into the small craft. As unnatural as the concealing mist was the silence. The lack of chatter and even of breathing left her feeling unsettled. Even the water of the great lake bore their passage without so much as a single lap of oar in water.
But that could work both ways. When the arrows started falling, she didn’t hear them either, or the screams of those they hit. Her first clue was when a man in the boat ahead of her clutched at a shaft in the side of his neck; only then did she notice the cloud of fletched death swooping down on them.
Fortunately, Ram and Dextra were ahead of her, hefting their shields to catch most of the darts coming their way.
But while all eyes were turned up, Mazgar felt something seize her oar. She jerked at it, and then the boat heaved up on one side.
The wormies were in the water.
Ahead, the mist was suddenly incandescent with bursts of orange and azure.
So much for surprise, she thought.
The boat started to flip, so she jumped clear into the water. To fight the panic being submerged always brought on, she concentrated instead on finding the bottom with her feet, as all around her the upper bodies of wormies appeared, water draining from the cavities in their faces and chests.
She set her footing in the muddy bottom and boxed away the nearest before drawing her close-work dagger. Ram, Dextra, Martin, and a Redguard whose name she didn’t know formed a diamond formation around Brennus and started pushing toward shore. She went for their hands first; grab with her left, sever at the wrist with her knife, cut the side of the neck, move on. She was slower in the water, but so-thank Mauloch-were they.
She saw Ram had one on his back and cut its arm off at the elbow, ruining its grip, but then another hail of arrows dropped into the water and Ram went down anyway, screaming soundlessly and gripping at a shaft in his sternum.
Mazgar felt a pleasant shock, and then the wormies fell away from them, moving off to other targets. She was relieved-because that meant Brenn was alive-but turned to confirm it anyway. He nodded at her.
By the time they reached the shore, the survivors of the first two waves of boats had formed a double line, one to face the enemy coming from the sea, the other looking landward. Sound came back-battle cries, screams of pain, terse orders passed up and down the lines. She found Prossos and he put her in the front line, which suited her fine. She drew Sister, which was more suited to this sort of work.
And work it was going to be.
She had started the day with five hundred soldiers. Their job was to cross Lake Rumare from the north, there to join with a massive push toward the northwest side of the city. That’s where the enemy was massed most deeply, and lately had begun actively trying to break through the gate that led to the Imperial prison. It was also where Umbriel would arrive, if it continued on the course it was presently following.
Now she stood with something between two and three hundred comrades. They looked to be lined up against three times that.
Still, they gained ground steadily. The land was pretty flat here, and the archers who had plagued them earlier either seemed to have been dealt with or more likely couldn’t make decent shots with ranks so close. As they pushed forward, their line formed a wedge, to prevent the wormies from outflanking them with their numbers and rolling them up. After that, they settled into a bloody pace. Someone off to her left starting bellowing “General Slaughter’s Comely Daughter” a little off-key, and a few heartbeats later the whole cohort was shouting the response, and it started to feel like a party.
A blond man to her right dropped with a leaf-shaped spear pushed all the way through him. She felt a tap on her shoulder and nodded, dragging the wounded man back as an orc half again her size filled the gap.
In the empty center of the phalanx, she yelled for a healer, but it was clear Blondie wasn’t going to make it.
He knew it, too.
“It’s okay,” he managed. “Just be quick.”
She nodded and closed his eyes. Then she took off his head with a single blow, followed by both hands and feet. Sometimes they came back, even without heads.
She took her ten-minute rest and had a long drink of water while watching the huge bulk of Umbriel draw ever nearer.
Brennus fell in with her.
“I know that’s hard,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to do it.”
“Orders are orders,” she said. “Especially when they make sense.”
“I know,” he said. “That doesn’t make it easy.”
“How long before it gets to the walls, you think?” she asked, jabbing her tusks toward the flying city.
“Hours,” he said, “unless the Emperor has some tricks to try still.”
“I heard from that rat-face, Solein, that they made two more tries to invade by air.”
“We’re not supposed to spread it around, but yes, both just as unsuccessful as that first one. But the wall might be a different matter; the Synod and the College of Whispers will give it all they’ve got, you can be sure of that. And they’ve had a long while to prepare defenses.”
Mazgar handed him the skin. “I’ll let them worry about that,” she said. “I’ve got my own job to think about.”
She clapped him on the shoulder and went back to take her place on the line.
EIGHT
“Attrebus.”
He opened his eyes at the sound of the voice and found Sul’s crimson gaze only inches away.
He felt stone beneath his back and was soaking wet. Behind Sul he saw a rough, faintly luminescent wall.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“We fell in the lake in the center of Umbriel,” Sul replied. “This is some sort of cave above the
