Rustannicans toiled at their labors. But that would soon change, he knew, and he would be the catalyst of that change.
On Hoshi’s command, their pilot leveled the barge, then caused it to stop and hover about two hundred meters above the valley floor. None of the other barges was stopping, but Tristan expected this. His first salvo of the craft was to come straightaway. The goal was for Tristan to cause as much devastation to the Rustannicans as possible from above, before Vespasian guessed what was happening and responded in kind. When Tristan unleashed the first of his new powers, the Rustannicans would immediately realize that they were embroiled in a battle of unprecedented ferocity.
Hoshi turned to look at theJin’Sai and pointed toward a group of canvas tents about four hundred meters away, their tops adorned with bright red battle flags.
“There!” she shouted. “That is Vespasian’s compound! Strike there, Jin’Sai, and with all your power!”
Although Tristan knew that he must do this thing, he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was committing murder. How many unsuspecting people would die during his first attack alone? he wondered. Then another concern gripped him.
“What if Julia Idaeus is killed?” he shouted.
“That is a risk we must take!” Hoshi shouted back. “She knows the time of the attack and she promised to be near one of the hundreds of Rustannican portals when it starts! You must attack, Jin’Sai! The time is now, before they see us!”
Tristan closed his eyes, raised his arms, and called the craft. Just as Mashiro had foretold, the craft obeyed him effortlessly, and he felt its power rise in his veins. Soon hundreds of elegant spell calculations came roaring into his mind’s eye. Singling out the one that Hoshi and theInkai wished him to employ, he caused the others to vanish. Concentrating fully on the lone spell, Tristan opened his eyes and loosed the first of his wondrous gifts.
Twin beams shot from his hands, their brilliance nearly blinding. Some Rustannican legionnaires immediately noticed the bolts streaking across the heavens, and they started shouting urgent warnings to their officers. But it was already too late. Concentrating harder, Tristan called forth the second part of the spell.
Subtle matter exists everywhere, Mashiro had taught him. Like the energy of the craft, it can be gathered. But while the uses of azure beams are limited, subtle matter’s applications are many. Use it in the name of the Vigors, Jin’Sai, for only you can do so. Reclaim the Tani Kinkiro and send Vespasian’s invading legions fleeing back to Rustannica.
Despite Mashiro’s careful instruction, when Tristan looked to the sky he could scarcely believe what he saw. Near where his beams streamed, dozens of great meteors were forming from subtle matter collected by his spell. Bright azure in color and burning and revolving with the immense power of the craft, each meteor was easily one hundred meters across. As they grew in size and their surging power begged to be unleashed, Tristan quickly pointed one arm downward, sending the first of them plummeting straight toward Vespasian’s command post.
The monstrous ball landed with a great crash, destroying everything within its sphere. Tents, legionnaires, horses, gold, great mounds of earth, all went flying hundreds of meters into the air and were vaporized. When the smoke cleared, nothing remained where the meteor landed save for a great smoldering crater.
With Tristan’s first attack the entire valley came alive. Hundreds of thousands of legionnaires stopped working and quickly formed military ranks. Bugles were urgently blown and war drums beaten. This instinctive assembly of Vespasian’s legions was just what theInkai had hoped for. As soon as the forming legions presented more compact targets, Tristan caused another meteor to come barreling down out of the sky.
The second one landed directly in their midst. Tens of thousands of legionnaires were killed on the spot, the body parts of those not instantaneously vaporized flying through the air like so many dried leaves on a stiff wind. Like the time before, when the smoke cleared there was nothing to show for the many brave soldiers who had once assembled there, save for another great crater and a quickly growing odor of burning flesh.
Tristan was about to send another meteor crashing down when Hoshi grabbed his arm, stopping him. “Wait!” she ordered. Then she pointed toward the valley floor. “Look!”
As Tristan gazed down into the valley he quickly grasped why Hoshi had ordered him to desist. Had he sent another meteor plummeting down, it would have killed as many attacking katsugai as Rustannican legionnaires. From now on his targets would be fewer because the battlefield was changing by the second, breathtaking in its vast scale and terrible in its quickening ferocity.
The thousands of Shashidan war barges had landed on the valley floor to discharge their katsugai. Screaming madly, the Shashidan warriors flooded against the still-forming Rustannican legions in mighty clashes of muscle, armor, and steel. Mystic officers on each side of the struggle soon began using the craft against each other, and the resulting carnage was stupefying.
Aside from hand-to-hand combat, azure bolts crisscrossed the battle scene, killing hundreds at a time. Explosion after explosion rocked the valley, sending dark smoke hundreds of meters into the air. Endowed archers from either side launched so many shafts that sometimes the sky went nearly black with them, each one invariably finding an enemy soldier by way of the craft.
And with the death of so many craft mystics, there soon arrived the stunning atmospheric phenomena always associated with passing of their blood and the forestallments that that blood carried. Lightning ripped across the sky and the wind howled violently, threatening to overturn Tristan and Hoshi’s barge. Tristan had seen these phenomena before, but never with such fury as this.
Wondering when his fellow Eutracians might join the fight, Tristan looked toward the southern end of the valley. To his surprise, theTammerland and theEphyra had arrived and were soaring northward, low over the valley floor. The ships must have flown over the legions guarding the southern pass, Tristan reasoned.
Even from this distance he could see his mystics’ azure bolts streaming down from the ships and tearing into the swarming legions, and he could imagine Tyranny prowling the topside of theTammerland, anxiously shouting out orders. Then he watched the ships suddenly come to a stop and hover over the green pastures south of his and Hoshi’s position. As ever more azure bolts streamed down from the Black Ships’ decks, Tristan saw his Minion phalanxes take flight to attack the nearest legionnaires. He smiled grimly as he realized that Vespasian’s troops were about to confront a new and more ruthless foe than they had ever seen before.
As the battle raged and lightning continued to tear across the heavens, Hoshi saw something that made her breath catch in her lungs. Not far from where her and Tristan’s barge hung in the sky, a host of legionnaires were running furiously toward the Bedeviler pens. Thousands of the enchanted beasts were being held there, waiting their turns to haul the stolen gold. Screaming and pawing the ground, the monsters clearly wanted to be unleashed against the flood of attacking katsugai. Hoshi knew all too well that the pens were craft constructs, their glowing azure bars impervious to even the massive Bedevilers. Only the legionnaire mystics could release the beasts, and it would happen in moments.
Hoshi again pointed downward. “There!” she shouted. “That is where you must strike next! Kill the Vagaries monsters before they can be freed!”
Without hesitation Tristan raised one hand and called down another azure meteor. With a thunderous crash it landed squarely in the center of the Bedeviler holding area. The beasts and the frantic legionnaires trying to free them simply disappeared in an eruption of earth and smoke, never to be seen again.
At Hoshi’s renewed insistence, Tristan again refrained from using his gifts. With their hearts in their throats, they anxiously waited and watched.
“DO NOT ARGUE WITH ME!” VESPASIAN SCREAMED ATPersephone. “The battle is lost! You must go while you still can!”
As the fighting raged all around them, Vespasian gripped his wife’s arms and glared into her eyes, trying to make her understand. Lucius stood faithfully beside him, he too refusing to go until his emperor did the same.
Vespasian’s legions were fighting back valiantly, and for a time he believed that they might be able to vanquish the attacking Shashidans. Even when he learned that his forces had been surrounded and that the north and south valley entrances had been breached, he clung to the hope that his legions might somehow hold out. But when he saw the first azure meteor rush down from the heavens, he knew that it could have been summoned by only one living being other than he. After quickly conferring with Lucius and Gracchus, Vespasian decided to abandon the Vallesis Majestatis and retreat homeward.
