The First Lord snapped awake at once-and from his seat nearby, Ehren saw Gaius’s face contort with pain. Then the old man closed his eyes, took in a determined breath, and pushed himself up off the couch to stride toward the balcony. Ehren rose at once to follow him.
Gaius listened to the horn calls for a moment and nodded to himself. “They’re coming through. Here is where we force their hand, Cursor.” He pointed at the trumpeter without looking back at the man, and said, “Sound the attack.”
The clarion call of the charge, universal among the Legions, rang in Ehren’s ears, and was answered by hundreds of horns in the city below.
Gaius raised his hand and cried out, and the chilly northern wind rose to an abrupt gale that threatened to throw Ehren from his feet. The wind roared down over the city, and carried away the pall of smoke and fog-while fanning what was left of the fires to vicious life.
Ehren paced the balcony at Gaius’s side, and saw that the Vord had surrounded nearly half the circumference of the city-and were surging forward in a unified attack.
Once more, earth furies rose to battle, among the fires and ruined buildings, disdaining the heat. In addition to that, spheres of white-hot fire began to erupt among them, some of them large enough to engulf a behemoth and the Vord-lizards all around it. Knights Aeris erupted into the skies all around the city, and teams of the men streaked along over the outlying buildings, using their windstreams to fan fires and to topple ruined buildings upon the foe.
The Vord advance was slowed-not because they had begun to waver, but simply because the Alerans were killing them faster than they could run forward. Ehren stared at the naked destruction in awe and terror. The ground itself was being rent by the fires unleashed by the Citizens of Alera, gouging out chunks of earth as easily as one might scoop butter from its container. The Vord shrieked and writhed and died, and Ehren could hear their cries even from atop the balcony.
The First Lord was staring hard around the city, though, his eyes searching. “Bloody crows,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Bloody crows take that arrogant slive. Where is he?”
“Who, sire?”
“Aquitaine,” Gaius growled. “This is the moment to strike them, when they are all focused forward on the walls. He had plenty of time to move into position. Where
No sooner had Gaius said the words than the mighty Gaul suddenly convulsed. The great river, shining silver beneath an almost-full moon, rose from its banks and flowed abruptly toward the rear of the Vord positions, the water cutting smoothly across the plain outside the city, spreading in the midst of the Vord ranks, driving some forward and others back.
Then, impossibly, trumpets sounded from the suddenly empty riverbed, and with a sea-crash roar of furious voices, the full strength of five Legions came charging out of the trench where the river had flowed. They smashed into the flanks and rear of the enemy horde, their flank secured by the new course of the river, and began driving hard into the Vord lines.
“Bloody crows!” Ehren all but screamed.
Even the First Lord arched his eyebrows at the sight. “He must have used his watercrafters to convince the river to flow over and around his troops. Windcrafting to keep the air in the bubble fresh. Earthcrafting to solidify the silt so they could march on it.” Gaius shook his head. “Impressive.”
The city’s defenders roared in defiance. As the endurance of the Citizenry below began to flag, the Vord began to reach the outer wall and
The whole while, Aquitainus Attis and the Legions under his command would be cutting the Vord to bloody ribbons.
Ehren focused on the battle, hope surging in his heart, as the scarlet star of fire that marked the blade of the High Lord of Aquitaine flickered and flashed. Through the magnification of Gaius’s windcrafting, Ehren could see Aquitaine himself in the front ranks of his Legion, surrounded by heavily armored bodyguards. As Ehren watched, the High Lord braced a pair of behemoths.
With a flick of his hand, a tiny sphere of fire erupted upon the face of one of the huge beasts, and, while it roared in pain, Aquitaine dodged the thundering downswing of the second. In several dancelike steps, he struck an arm and a leg from the second behemoth, sending it crashing down, and in the course of returning to the ranks he slew the burned, screaming beast before it could recover from the pain. His men howled in a frenzy of rage and encouragement, and the entire force continued on inexorably, like a single, vast scythe cutting down wheat.
Then the Vord queen struck back.
The taken Alerans turned as one to charge Aquitaine’s lines. Even as they approached, fire and earth and wind erupted toward them, slaughtering the first several dozen to draw near.
But the hundred who came after them let out eerie screams, raised their hands, and turned fire and earth and wind back upon the Legion lines. Men died screaming in blasts of fire, or were hauled into the earth by hideous shapes, never to be seen again. Wind cast dust and ashes into their faces in thick clouds, and their formations began to falter. More and more taken Alerans arrived, and the furycrafted pressure against Aquitaine’s force doubled and doubled again, as each new taken seemed to feed upon the energies being unleashed, adding its own to the struggle.
“Knights Aeris to their aid,” Gaius said calmly. “Focus on the enemy crafters and take them with blades alone.”
Another courier screamed skyward, and within a moment several cohorts of Knights Aeris rose from the city and streaked toward the battle. It took them only seconds to land among the taken and attack, wielding steel alone. Aquitaine’s Legions realized what was happening as the pressure on them began to ease, and they surged forward in a desperate effort to reach the Knights Aeris before they were engulfed by the oncoming horde.
It was then that the vordknights pounced.
They suddenly burst up from the ground on the far side of the redirected river, where they must have slipped into position once the sun was down. They were barely a half mile from the battle, and they swept down upon the Knights Aeris of Alera like a swarm of bees. The Knights found themselves suddenly beset on all sides, and did what any of them with any sense would do-they called their furies and prepared to take to the air.
Until the taken began throwing salt at them.
Windcrafters screamed in agony as the salt crystals ripped holes through their furies, dispersing and weakening them. Several made it off the ground and managed to escape-but most didn’t. Though the Legions tried to push forward to shelter the exposed Knights Aeris, they had lost too much of their momentum to reach them in time. In seconds, the masters of Alera’s skies were all but drowned in armored bodies and hacking limbs.
And then the true death blow fell.
Crows by the tens of thousands suddenly plummeted into the capital’s streets, buildings, and rooftops. Several of the creatures even fell to the stones of the balcony upon which Ehren stood. The crows, upon landing, fluttered in bizarre spasms, then went still.
Ehren and the others stared around the balcony and out at the city, perplexed.
“Great furies,” Ehren breathed. “What was that about?”
Gaius’s pensive frown suddenly froze in place. His eyes widened slightly, and he said, “No. Cursor, ware!”
The bodies of the crows erupted with Vord takers.
They weren’t impressive things to look at. Each was about the size of a scorpion, and vaguely resembled one, except for dozens of flailing tendrils sprouting from all parts of its body. They were swift, though, as quick as startled mice, and half a dozen of the things scuttled toward those upon the balcony in a blur of green-black chitin.
Ehren spun and stomped a foot down upon one of the takers, and slapped a second from the back of his thigh. One of the couriers stomped at another one, missed, and lost his balance. Three takers swarmed up his body, and, as he cried out in surprise and revulsion, one of them plunged into his mouth.
The man screamed once, and then fell backward in convulsions, his eyes rolling back into his head. Another cry died as it was born-and then his eyes went flat, and swiveled toward the First Lord. He came to his feet and
