Lesson of the Fire (50 page)

— Pondr,

Collected Journals,
edited by Weard Asa Sehtah

“Weard Staute, come to the recon hut
quickly!”

Asfrid Staute, the cyan who had been
coordinating the Protectorates’ defenses since Weard Schwert had
gone to deal with the Flasten invaders, put the finishing touches
on the Blosin gloves she had been enchanting and stood up.

“What is it, Sigrun?”

“Drakes from the north. Stinger guer, from
the looks of it, but it’s hard to tell at this range.”

Asfrid broke into a run. The town leaders
were waiting for her, staring worriedly at the stone at the center
of the hut that served as Heliowache’s recon chamber.

Drakes here in the Protectorates?

She knew the Mardux had fought hard to drive
the gobbel tribes and other Drakes out of the Protectorates when
they were just as often called the Morden Moors — a region long
thought indefensible and unworthy of contest, as well as
technically neutral. But for as long as Asfrid had lived there, she
had never seen so much as a mote on a recon stone that represented
a Drake — at least not one that hadn’t vanished as suddenly as it
had appeared.

Now, though, a swarm of red characters swam
within the reach of the Protectorates’ outermost defenses and were
not diminished by the spells set to ward the Morden Moors against
them. The swarm extended north across the river and off the map. As
Asfrid examined the characters more closely, she saw mostly stinger
guer, but accompanied by jabber guer and gobbels.

“Is it … ?” Sigrun Zwei asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Weard Zwei. The
gobbels have made an alliance with some guer. The Mass is a story
told by magocrats to maintain their monopoly on power.”

Sigrun did not seem completely convinced,
but she didn’t argue.

“Send messages to the other wizards. We will
need to be ready to shore up the Protectorates’ defenses quickly in
case the Drakes wear down the defenses by pure body weight. They do
not have reconnaissance like we do, and a guer fears an enemy it
cannot see no less than a Mar. The Mardux designed the
Protectorates to repel Drake assaults, but we must not let them
find any of the towns. A march of a few miles is but a journey, but
razing an enemy town feels like a victory, and we must give them
none of those.”

“Yes, Weard Staute.”

Asfrid watched the recon stone as the Drakes
pressed against the Protectorates’ defensive perimeter, idly
enchanting more Blosin gloves as she did so. The red characters
touched the boundary and vanished by the dozen, but more Drakes
pushed forward, goaded by whatever dark power commanded them. She
imagined the stinger guer with their tails of poisonous spines,
jabber guer with their strong legs and bony hand spikes, and
gobbels with spears and shields — all marching on and dying in fire
as they hurled themselves against the wall of force that barred
their paths. Mobility sapped their speed, making their attacks too
weak and sluggish to penetrate the walls that stood in their
way.

She knew they would never see a Mar or even
the smoke of a town. A dozen Drakes died and then a hundred, until
those that followed had to press through a wall of their allies’
charred corpses before even reaching the magical wall that halted
their advance. But at last, the Protectorates’ defenses weakened,
and the red dots spilled beyond the outermost wall.

Asfrid put on a pair of studded gloves and
touched Elements. The spell of the Blosin gloves flowed into the
recon stone, and from there, to the buckling northern perimeter
defenses. She shed them and put on another. And another. And scores
more, until she had used up nearly sixty pairs — a tenth of her
stockpile.

The Drakes north of the wall found their
path barred once more, and those south of it discovered the second
line of defenses — a mere hundred yards south of the outer
perimeter — and died swiftly.

Asfrid estimated the Drakes’s casualties at
a thousand when the wave shattered against the Protectorates’
defenses and rolled back from the walls.

One thousand Drakes slain. And no Mar
wounded or slain. No towns burned. No wild rice fields
disturbed.

Asfrid stripped off the Blosin gloves and
restarted the process of enchanting them. It would take spans to
replace the exhausted gloves, which meant fewer remained to deal
with the Flasten army that was almost certainly still absorbing the
southern towns of the Protectorates.

If I didn’t know any better, I might think
the timing of this attack was orchestrated by Flasten to weaken
us.

“Gobbels and guer fighting together in
formations,” Sigrun remarked. “This is unheard of except ...”

“If it had been the Mass, we would not have
driven them away with a few traps.”

“Unless it was a scouting force testing the
strength of the Protectorates’ defenses, Weard Staute. This might
have been a mere test. If so, the next attack will be far
worse.”

Asfrid digested this for a long minute
without comment.

“If you are right, what can we do about it?
We’ve had no word from Weard Schwert, so it is likely Flasten’s
invasion continues unabated. The Mardux faces Dux Feiglin’s army in
the field, so he cannot spare reinforcements. Even if we were to
violate the Unwritten Laws, we hardly have enough torutsen to train
our apprentices, much less the mundanes at large.”

“There is no hope, then?”

Asfrid shrugged. “Only the hope of the
fallen. We can die like Mar on the fringes of civilization always
have when the Mass invaded — outnumbered and under-equipped but
fearless. If we inflict enough casualties, we might discourage
future incursions. But that is all we can do, Sigrun.”

* * *

Sven sat on the Chair, but he did not sit in
the citadel. Rather, he sat at the top of a stone tower on the
northern side of Domus Palus. Nine priests of Marrish dressed in
yellow attended him — one for each of his patrons. He had chosen
them for the task from the nearly four hundred priests in Domus
Palus for his own reasons — three women and six men of varying ages
and appearances.

The cries and howls of the Mass rushed
through the surrounding swamps ahead of the terrible forms of the
Drakes as they appeared north of Domus Palus. No one raised an
alarm, for they were not as numerous as Sven had expected.
According to the recon stone in the citadel, slightly more than
eight thousand had survived the journey from the Lapis Amnis. Such
a small force was no threat to the 75,000 adepts in Domus
Palus.

Even if only one in five has actually had
tactical training and we can’t train the rest without endangering
our torutsen supply.

Bui’s guerilla-adepts had launched dozens of
raids in a few short days — striking swiftly with magic attacks and
retreating just as quickly. After this battle, Sven intended to
send him reinforcements. He knew he would have no trouble finding
volunteers for the force the adepts had started calling Bui’s draxi
— named for a mythical race of guer that could fly and breathe
fire. Given the origin of Bui’s signature tactics, it seemed a
fitting moniker.

Sven surveyed the gathering army from the
northern wall of Domus Palus. Whatever ruin the rest of the
capital’s buildings might have fallen into, the Mar had carefully
maintained its outer wall.

If they overwhelm that, though, the citadel
is in no condition to weather an assault.

The wall had once been taller, for even the
relatively solid ground upon which Domus Palus was built was soft
by the standards of other nations, and layers of rock had to be
periodically added to the top of the wall to compensate for the
layers that had sunk into the ground. “Fifteen feet high and a
hundred feet deep,” the residents of Domus Palus joked, and there
were plenty of stories about invaders who had tried to tunnel under
the wall only to find themselves foiled by the impenetrable barrier
of centuries of slowly sinking stone.

Tens of thousands of mundanes had been
evacuated from the outlying villages that lay beyond the city walls
— mostly harvesters who tended the wild rice fields that helped
feed the vast population of Domus Palus. Only food levies exacted
by the duxy’s magocrats normally prevented the city from
starving.

No mundane had stayed behind in those
villages. Sven’s recon stone had made sure of that. It wasn’t
entirely out of concern for their safety. Drakes were perfectly
willing to eat any Mar they caught. Unsavory though it might seem
to the Mar, even an army of Drakes needed to eat something, and a
sufficiently large army of Drakes could not live off the land for
long.

The Drake army came to a halt, and a company
of jabber guer charged into the outermost northern village.

My, but they learn
quickly,
Sven mused.

The air burst into flames around the
scouting force, which quickly switched from a charge to a
withdrawal. A quarter of an hour later, companies of jabbers tested
the perimeter a little to the east and west. The Drakes knew ravit
tactics, so they would probe every point in the Mar defenses in
hopes of finding some weakness. Sven almost pitied them for having
to rely on such crude methods of reconnaissance.

Their siege equipment will not be up to the
task, either.

Bui’s draxi had been surprised to learn that
the Mass had not wantonly burned down captured Mar villages in
their path the way Drakes usually did. Instead, they collected
every stick and scrap of metal they could find to build scaling
ladders and battering rams for the siege that inevitably awaited
them.

Armed with this knowledge, Sven had ordered
all the buildings of the outlying villages burned in advance of the
Drakes’ arrival. There would be no siege towers to bring attackers
into the city — only the tough striped guer.

But not until the jabbers and stingers clear
the magic traps around the city the hard way.

Sven ate his lunch of wild rice, venison and
mushroom soup on the wall. The most opulent of the priests — the
Mardux named him Cedar in his mind but never addressed him as such
— brought it to him. It was saltier than Sven preferred, but they
had already run out of fresh meat and would have to subsist on
cured meat from here on. While he ate, he watched the Drakes snake
farther around the western edge of the defenses, aiming for the gap
between the city and the docks along Domus Palus Bay.

As I expected, they seek to cut off our
supply lines quickly so our foraging parties won’t be able to bring
us the food, fuel or kalysut leaves we need.

“Weard Snelfus,” he said to the priestess he
thought of as Fraemauna.

“Yes, Mardux?” Guthrun Snelfus was
remarkably young for a yellow — barely twenty-five — but her small
size and girlish voice made her seem even younger.

“Send out the adepts of the Swind Legion at
the west gate. Put the priests and the other eight legions on
alert.”

If the Drakes throw their full weight at the
legion we field, none of them will live long enough to regret the
mistake. I’d rather save the morutdyjiton for a larger assault, but
it is more important for the adepts to win their first battle
against the Mass.

There were now more than thirty different
kinds of Blosin gloves and Blosin wands in use in Domus Palus, and
each variety produced a different magical application. Sven had
therefore been forced to distinguish them from one another. Names
helped in conversations. Morutdyjiton were the most powerful
offensive Blosin gloves at his disposal, for they allowed any
magic-wielder to use morutmanon. Painted bands on wands and the
shapes and color of the metal studs on the gloves allowed even
illiterate adepts to recognize which wand would heal an ally rather
than roasting him alive.

With a nod, Fraemauna — Guthrun — vanished
into the Tempest to deliver his orders.

“What is the word on the
search for my wife?”
Erika … forgive
me.
Sven knew she was in the Protectorates,
with Asa. The recon stones did not stretch that far, so he had sent
someone to find out what was going on.

“No word,” someone said.

He felt a tear sting his eye. He wished he
could go, but look at what happened when he left last! Thousands of
adepts running away, taking over the city as if they knew how to
run it. His own wife and a mapmaker had duped Verlren, and who knew
where that coward dux had gone? No one had had his patience. Now
they would learn from his example, though it chafed to not seek his
own wife.

Eight years ago you would have done it and
been back before anyone knew you were gone.

Eight years ago it was just the
Protectorates.

He took a deep breath and turned to give
more orders.

Erika, forgive me.

An hour later, Sven and the Chair sat on the
western wall with his escort of nine priests.

The Swind Legion — a force of about a
thousand adepts armed with spears and Blosin wands — marched
through the west gate. The Drakes began their charge before the
four wide ranks came to a halt.

They were jabber guer, known for being able
to leap dozens of feet in the air and rain down on their foe with
pinpoint accuracy. Sven smirked as they did such now, jumping his
traps. Against their normal foes, the jabber ability was
deadly.

Against his adepts, it was fatal.

Fire rose from the ranks of the adepts, and
the guer rained down over the traps, springing a few of them.

Spiny-tailed guer sent companies of archers
and slingers to support the struggling jabber guer. Missiles frayed
the adepts’ left flank, killing some and wounding many others. The
adepts lacked the range to return fire, but those on the left flank
soon erected walls of magic that rendered arrows and stones
harmless. True, arrows could penetrate walls of Power as surely as
a mundane shield, but not at long ranges, and if the spiny-tailed
archers moved closer, they would be within range of the adepts’
attack wands.