'Damn.' The princess blundered over to the Sun Cannon and leaned against its hull. 'We have to do something!'
Miliana froze; blinking her rather pretty eyes, she began wrinkling her nose like a rabbit and exploring the air.
'Um-Lorenzo?'
'Yes?'
'Should I be able to smell cherries?'
The two humans both turned to look up at the gigantic chemical vats looming overhead. Shaatra the hippogriff and Tekoriikii both caught the sudden aura of fear and joined them in staring at the weapon in alarm.
A hissing cloud of pink steam escaped from the armored pipes and valves, and Lorenzo instinctively backed away.
'The explosion must have cracked the vats…'
'You mean those chemicals are going to mix?'
'Ummm…'
Miliana peered through a cloud of cherry-scented death.
'How big a bang will the damned thing make?'
'Um, well, a bench model the size of your hat blew up my old room at your father's palace.'
'That's what I thought.' The new, improved model weighed ten thousand times more. 'Can we stop it from going off?'
'Um… no!' Lorenzo frenziedly sought the best route for escape. 'Miliana-we have to run!'
'The hippogriff can't move!' Miliana pulled chocks from under the Sun Cannon's wheels. 'Come on!'
'Miliana!'
'She saved Tekoriikii! We can't let her get blown to H'Catha!' Miliana planted her skinny shoulder blades against the back of the giant armored wagon. 'Push! Come on, it'll roll downhill if we can get it moving. Tekoriikii- give a hand!'
The bird floundered up from where he had been contemplating his newly ruined tail. Ineffectually leaping and hopping up into the air, he tried to throw his weight behind the wagon. The injured hippogriff looked on in wonder as all three friends ignored the growing hiss of chemicals and tried to shove the gun downhill.
'It's too heavy!' Lorenzo searched about for a lever or a pulley. 'I can't get it to move!'
Miliana stepped back, rolled up her sleeves, and sang out her last and only spell; the feather fall effect rippled the Sun Cannon with a gleaming purple skin, temporarily reducing the weapon's mass to nil.
'Now shove!'
A mighty heave sent the wagon on its way. Fifty feet long and three man-heights high, the juggernaut rolled down onto the road, picked up speed, and careened down toward the valley floor. The rearmost unit of Svarezi infantry looked back in alarm, then screamed as one as the wagon heeled slowly over and crashed down onto its side.
The entire valley floor lit with an explosion of violet light. Svarezi's reserve regiments disintegrated; others flung themselves down before a hail of debris. The Lomatran militia dove for cover, then crept slowly out to watch a cloud of reeking purple smoke fade and disappear.
Svarezi's battle lines were a crushed, molten wilderness of broken men and steel.
On the ridgeline high above, Lorenzo numbly helped Tekoriikii to his feet, then took a pace back to stare, dumbfounded, at the view.
'It does make rather a bad bang. Next time maybe I should use less cherries.'
'What next time?' Miliana blinked into an out-of-focus world. 'Did we win yet?'
'That just about does it.' Lorenzo took another pace to his rear. 'Oh! I've found your spectacles…'
'Really?' The girl eagerly reached out her hands. 'Are they all right?'
'Um… not really. I've just trod on them.'
Shaking her head, Miliana linked her arm through Lorenzo's and gazed off across the valley with a sigh.
Left to his own devices, Tekoriikii took a quick look left and right, then scampered off downhill and fluttered up into the reeking purple clouds.
'Are we too late?'
'No, no, no, sir knight! I would say you are fortuitously just in time.' Spirelli the snail clung stickily to the back of a rather annoyed horse, peering his eyestalks out beneath his helmet brim. 'I believe the time has come to charge and claim the day!'
Beside the snail, Orlando Toporello stood in his stirrups and signaled to his men. A thousand Sumbrian refugees, welcomed onto the battlefield by a slimy, charismatic snail, slammed down their lances and spurred into the charge. They swept past cheering Lomatran infantry-past dangling nets of snarling hippogriffs and streams filled with joyous nixies-and out into the plains to surround Svarezi's last remaining infantry.
Carried along throughout the charge, Spirelli remained close upon Toporello's heels. Toporello's men began to gather in the remains of Svarezi's army, reaping a rich harvest of prisoners from the field.
Ignoring the fracas, the snail eagerly intruded himself into Toporello's field of view.
'Sir! Sir, since you have fought for no payment at all, I wondered if I might offer you the use of my own house, my own stables, and my own rations for your men? Just as a show of proper hospitality.' The snail shouted to be heard above the cheers of exhausted men. 'We could sign a little receipt if it makes you feel better-just for my own records, of course.'
'I couldn't impose upon you, sir.' Old Toporello brushed his mustaches back into proper order as he saw his princess, the Lady Miliana, standing watching him from high above. 'You are not our employer, after all.'
The snail extended its eyestalks in genteel emphasis as he rode at Toporello's side.
'We can soon see to such little niceties. Perhaps your men might each take a peppercorn from me as a token piece of pay?'
'Why not?' Toporello scowled, then dismissed the whole affair as some foreign idiosyncrasy. 'Why not indeed! They've already received a peppercorn apiece from your prince.'
The snail cursed under its shell as Toporello rode away, then spied a dazed company of Colletran prisoners. Slapping his horse into action, Spirelli swiftly rode over to the mercenaries' side.
'I say! Would any of you men care to undertake regular work? Say, for the price of a meal tonight, a roof over your heads-and a peppercorn?'
18
In the clean sunlight of a Sumbrian dawn, the ravaged city almost seemed at peace. Light filtered through the clouds and lit the dirty streets and cluttered wards, sheeting everything with a film of purest gold. The abuses of Svarezi's occupation still stood out like vulgar sores, but time would surely smooth the scars and blemishes away.
The age of city-states seemed dead and gone; Svarezi had ended Blade Wars for all time. First Colletro, Sumbria, and Zutria had been crushed down into one single state, and now Lomatra had helped forge a small alliance all its own. The 'peppercorn vote' had swept the Blade Kingdoms in a rage; perhaps it was time to weld the tiny kingdoms into something greater overall.
Firstly, the abuses of war had to be soothed and healed. Walking the streets of her old, dear Sumbria, Miliana heaved a sigh. Palaces had burned and fallen, and the bricks had been roughly clamped together into ugly communal housing for the impoverished citizens. The river barges had to be rebuilt; hopefully with help from Princess Krrrr-poka's generous nixies; the coming harvest would not be stranded far upstream. There were streets to clean and trees to seed, a council to rebuild and lives to find. With Lorenzo, Tekoriikii and Prince Rosso at her side, Miliana walked up the ruined steps of her old home.
Here, more than anywhere, the worst changes had come. The Mannicci palace now looked much the worse for wear, still showing the scars of a night of fireworks and frenzy so long ago. The towers had been used as
