fastened to the cannon's tip and, with a manic hiss, opened out his claws.
On the ridgeline below, artillery crewmen ducked as the Sun Cannon fired. A bolt of deadly light sizzled through the air, and Tekoriikii found himself blinking through dazzled eyes.
Much to his amazement, an arrow passed under his wing. Tekoriikii wrenched his neck about, trying to make sense out of the violet afterimages dancing past his eyes.
A black shadow whipped in from the left. Tekoriikii arched his back to break his speed, and suddenly a massive wingtip cracked across his throat. The firebird spun out of control. He clamped his claws onto a flailing black figure, feeling the whole world spin as they clutched together in mutual fear. The bird saw the earth rushing straight at his face, beat furiously with his wings, and somehow managed to land himself and his unwilling partner smack into the turf.
Tekoriikii groaned, watching the universe spin with whirring stars. He gave a croak from his poor sore throat and scrabbled shakily to his feet.
The reason for his nice soft landing immediately became apparent; Tekoriikii had landed tail-first on a gaggle of artillery gunners. The bird stepped off the padded hillock of flesh and dazedly looked around the scene.
A terribly familiar lean black hippogriff flopped and thrashed across the ground, utterly stunned by its fall. The mare gave a pitiful squeal as she tried to move a broken wing. She opened dazed eyes and fixed them on Tekoriikii as she felt the worst nightmares of a flying creature suddenly become real.
Knocked even sillier than usual, Tekoriikii blundered over to the hippogriff and tried to make a motherly little sound.
His voice stuck in his throat. Eyes bulging, the bird clapped wings across his craw and staggered drunkenly aside.
A short, heavy sword swiped through the air right where Tekoriikii's head had been. Snarling like a troll, Ugo Svarezi lurched upright, pinned beneath the hippogriff, and tried to hack Tekoriikii clean in two.
To the firebird, actual violence was utterly meaningless; combat was restricted to demonstrations of supreme cleverness. Taken aback by a direct assault, the bird felt his sense of honor and propriety utterly impugned.
Svarezi lunged across his hippogriff's back, falling just short of Tekoriikii's hide. The bird tried to give an outraged scream, but to no avail; the merest hiss escaped his throat, where once an exquisite singing voice had been. Tekoriikii paddled backward out of range of Svarezi's sword, feeling his whole world swim in a giddy daze. The human hurtled a dagger, missing the throw as Shaatra rolled over him and trilled in agony.
Pinned by his injured mount, Svarezi tried to ram the hippogriff aside. The creature croaked, unable to rise, and tried a half-hearted snap of its beak at the firebird. The prince tried to shove at his mount, but the creature screamed and fought to remain prostrate on the ground. Cursing, Svarezi snatched hold of the hippogriff's neck and whipped his sword up to split the creature's skull.
With a broken hiss, Tekoriikii vaulted up across Shaatra and grappled the human to the ground. His beak fastened on Svarezi's wrist, claws gripping at the man's armored chest as Tekoriikii tried to batter the man's weapons away.
Svarezi somehow beat the firebird clear, almost tearing off his own right hand. Tekoriikii fell, and Svarezi lunged against the weight pinning him to the ground, somehow managing to battle free. Crying out in pain, Shaatra slid downhill across the grass, rolling on her side to tangle with the dizzy firebird.
Prince Svarezi clambered atop the Sun Cannon, laughing as he laid his hands on the controls. He kicked a lever, sending the spindly barrel sinking down to aim at the helpless firebird. Tekoriikii and the hippogriff both stared in horror as the Sun Gem glowed brilliant white before their eyes.
'Damn it!'
Miliana's spectacles had cracked clean across each lens, leaving her staring at an eerie, disjointed world. The whole war-turtle shuddered to a halt, the hull ringing like a temple bell as something crashed hard against its armored shell.
The vehicle ended on a decided list to the right. Lorenzo cut free the horses as Miliana blinked down at him from above.
'What in the name of the Abyss was that?'
'They finally got smart. They rolled rocks on us from the ridges above.' Oh well-it had been a good run while it lasted. The war-turtles had done more than their inventor could possibly have dreamed. Now bogged, half buried, or broken up by catapult fire, the machines fell still as their crews abandoned them to take up the fight with crossbow, spell, and blade.
Outside the turtle, enemy infantry still swarmed like angry bugs. A sorcerer saw a chance for an easy kill and maneuvered for a shot under Lorenzo's hull. As he approached, Lorenzo gave a delighted exclamation and reached for a copper pole, which he industriously linked to the hilt of his sword.
A lightning bolt spat toward the damaged turtle. Electricity hit the vehicle's ceramic skin, blasted off mirror plates, then snaked over to the copper rod and poured power up into Lorenzo's sword. The sorcerer snarled in rage, disengaged his spell, and ripped out a long magic staff. Accompanied by half a dozen armored infantry, he rushed the disabled machine and began to claw his way inside.
The internal crew fought hard to keep the intruding infantry at bay. As the battle raged, a vision slit popped open, a copper rod waggled its way out of the hole and prodded itself up against the enemy sorcerer. A violent discharge of electricity ensued, sending the Svarezi troops jerking back like puppets tugged by the strings. Lorenzo popped his head out from under the war-turtle, decided that the coast was clear, and wrenched open the wide rear hatch to let the horses blunder free.
'That's it! Now make for the Sun Cannon-fast!'
Miliana popped out of her turret hatch, accidentally smacking a Colletran swordsman in the eye and sending him tumbling, unconscious, over the side.
'Has Tekoriikii neutralized the thing?'
'He must have.' Lorenzo helped the girl clamber down across the slippery mirror tiles. 'It hasn't fired for a while.'
With an escort of Miliana's two artillerymen, the inventor and the princess took a swift bearing to the cliff top and climbed their way through the rocks above the melee.
Svarezi's infantry up above sniped and skirmished from a little rock fort they had made to command the crest. Deadly accurate fire drove a terrified Miliana into cover with an arrow quivering through her hat.
Crammed hard into a jumble of broken rocks, Lorenzo gave a sudden yelp as a crossbow bolt rebounded from a boulder mere inches from his face. 'Miliana! Do something! What spells did you memorize this morning?'
'Um…' Miliana bit her lip. 'Feather fall. I'm getting good at it.'
'Feather fall?' Lorenzo felt himself slowly going mad. 'You took feather fall spells into a fight?'
'Well I can throw it twice a day now. I'm getting better.'
The inventor wearily put his face in his hands. Incensed, Miliana rolled up her long sleeves, set her pointy hat to an aggressive tilt and found the largest boulder on the mountainside. She hissed out her spell, threw a puff of Tekoriikii's feathers up into the air, and hoisted the titanic rock over her head and hurtled it up into the sky.
The boulder sailed over the Svarezi position, shuddered, and regained normal gravity once again. The enemy infantry stared at it for one long, fragile moment, then screamed and flung themselves downhill. The rock smashed their little fort to pieces and duly chased them all off toward the valley floor.
Lorenzo frowned and wiped a dirty hand across his nose.
'Have you ever had those spell scrolls of yours checked? I read up on feather fall spells-and that isn't what you're casting!'
Miliana poked a nasty tongue out at Lorenzo and made a rapid climb straight up the hill. Muttering to himself, the inventor spurred off in hot pursuit, dragging out his rapier as he climbed in her wake.
'Tekoriikii? Tekoriikii-where are you?'
Miliana topped the cliff face, searching wildly for her friend the firebird. 'Tekoriikii-don't do anything stupid! Wait for me!'
The princess stopped as though she had run into a wall of rock and stared aghast at the hillcrest above.
Tekoriikii lay tangled with a skinny black hippogriff, splayed helpless before the Sun Cannon's maw. Ugo Svarezi-ragged, bloody, and half-crazed with hate-kicked the valve releases to fire the deadly light beam straight
