Chapter 57

The wind had picked up so sharply that the Knights Aeris Fidelias had borrowed began to run out of work. The conditions were simply too harsh for the vordknights to stay aloft, especially when a mix of cold rain and sleet began sluicing down. The changing conditions had ripped the Canim's sorcerous mist apart even earlier than that, and Fidelias, from his vantage point on the barn's roof, had gotten an excellent view of the size of the force attacking them.

There weren't thirty thousand vord. There were more like fifty thousand.

No simple ditch could have given the Legions any real hope against a force that outnumbered them so badly. Oh, had they been fighting Marat, Icemen, even Canim, there might have been a straw of hope. Legion discipline in the face of overwhelming odds was less a professional practice than it was a form of contagious insanity, especially in a veteran unit like the First. They might be killed to a man, but they would never break. That fact alone was enough to grind the determination out of any rational foe.

But the vord weren't rational.

So the First Aleran would be killed to a man - and Fidelias with them, if it came to that. Perhaps that was the specter of Valiar Marcus inside his thoughts speaking, but if so, Fidelias had no intention of countermanding him. He wasn't leaving these men.

The rain came down harder, and harder still, until it was almost like one of the typhoons that sometimes visited the southern coast. Fidelias watched his men fighting grimly on against impossible odds and found himself weeping in silence, his face stony. It was raining. No one would see. But even so, force of habit made him reach for the modest watercrafting talents he possessed, which were at least suitable to stop tears.

His head whipped up abruptly, and he snapped, to the nearest courier, "Bring me the First Lady!"

Isana's cloak and dress were soaked through by the time she reached the barn's roof. Thank goodness. It was the closest thing she'd had to a bath in weeks.

The ground continued to quiver and shake at odd intervals. Vast sounds, deep and unearthly, reverberated through the night, passing over the screams and cries and drums and trumpets of battle, the roar of wind, the slap of heavy rain. They reminded Isana of the calls of leviathans in the open sea - only a great deal more expansive. She couldn't see a hundred yards in the rain, and she had a feeling that she should be glad of it.

She hurried across the roof with Araris and Aldrick trailing behind her, to where Valiar Marcus stood with his command staff. He saluted her as she approached, pointed at the ditch the legionares were defending, and said, without preamble, "My lady, I need you to fill that ditch with water."

Isana arched an eyebrow. "I see," she said, and stared thoughtfully at the ditch. Puddles were already collecting in its bottom, thanks to the rain. She closed her eyes, touched upon Rill in her thoughts, and sent the fury out into the land around the steadholt, where it appeared as a barely noticeable ripple in the downpour. It didn't seem favorable. The steadholt was located upon the local high ground, such as it was, so that any floodwaters would pour around it. Making that much water run uphill would be a terrible strain, possibly beyond her strength.

Instead, on an inspiration, she sent Rill up. The fury flowed into the air above the steadholt, leaping from raindrop to raindrop, and then began to spread out like a wide, unseen umbrella above the steadholt. Ah, much better. She spread Rill's presence out as widely as she possibly could and murmured to her to begin redirecting the rain as it fell.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, all at once, a waterfall appeared out of nowhere, the collected rain of several acres worth of ground all funneled to the same spot. It splashed down into the trench, knocking several mantises from their feet, and within seconds had begun to fill it.

Exhausted men lifted their voices in ragged cheers, and the surge of hope that arose from all of them struck Isana like a cleansing fire. The legionares began pushing harder, their spirits lifted, slamming the vord back into water that grew deeper and deeper as Isana's crafting continued.

A good start. But she could do more. Once the improvised moat had been filled, she sent Rill down into it and, with another effort of will and a faint circling motion of one hand, the water began to spin. It was not long before it had become a current, circling the steadholt, strong enough to take a mantis from its feet and send it spinning off downstream. She pressed it faster and faster, then withdrew Rill wearily from the stream. It would continue circling on momentum for a good while, she judged, long enough to give the legionares a few moments to breathe. Vord after vord splashed into the water, only to be swept helplessly around the steadholt, over and over and over - and the current had the added benefit of slowly eroding the ditch deeper. By the time the water did calm enough for them to ford it, the vord would find the defenses higher and more difficult to attempt than they had been before.

She turned wearily to the First Spear, and said, "Is that sufficient?"

Marcus pursed his lips and watched one luckless vord, which was on its third trip around the steadholt. "Entirely, my lady. Thank you."

Isana nodded, and said, "Eventually, I think they'll bridge it, as ants sometimes do. Or simply choke it with enough bodies to create a crossing."

"Probably," Marcus said. "But even so, this buys us time, my lady. And - "

A brassy, blaring, groaning horn call sounded out in the rain-lashed dimness. Then another, and another, and another. A few instants later, the ground shook, and the taurg cavalry burst out of the murk, the huge beasts smashing through the vord gathered around the steadholt. Five thousand strong, their blue-armored Canim riders wielding their axes with deadly skill, they simply sliced off a portion of the vord army. It was, Isana thought, oddly like watching a limb hacked off a body. The cavalry drove through the vord in a wedge-shaped formation, cutting out a portion of the enemy. Then they whirled on those mantises who had been isolated from the main body and crushed them. The entire business took less than two minutes, then the taurga were gone, bounding off into the grey haze of rain and storm. Acres of dead and dying vord were left in their wake.

Marcus let out a low whistle and shook his head.

"I take it that was impressive?" Isana said. "Beyond the surface appearance, I mean."

"In weather like this? Crows, yes, my lady. They took a tithe of the enemy force in a single pass. They won't gain the advantage of surprise again - see there, at the back, where the rearmost vord are facing out now? - but if the vord stay on that ground, the taurg riders will nibble them to death one bite..."

The air suddenly went silent and still. The ground stopped shaking. The only sound was the patter of rain.

"... at a time," Marcus finished, his voice loud in the sudden hush, before closing his mouth himself.

No one spoke. No one moved. Even the vord seemed to recognize that something was happening, for they fell into a restless near stillness. Hushed expectation made the air heavy. Lightning flickered somewhere far overhead, pulses of vord green light. The grumbling sound of their thunder didn't reach Isana's ears for several seconds.

"What is happening?" one of the nearby Knights whispered.

Valiar Marcus glanced from the man to Isana. His expression flickered with a tiny, questioning frown, swiftly hidden.

Isana shook her head. "I'm not sure."

The sky to the northwest flared with irregular flashes of light. Blue, red, vord green, and instants later, the deep purple of an amethyst. Each burst of colored light would fade slowly, only to be replaced by newer brilliances. And the whole time, it was silent. No thunder rolled out to accompany the flashes.

"That's metalcrafting," Araris said with quiet certainty, his voice still ringing with steely undertones. "Three swords. The red and blue - that's Octavian."

Isana drew in a sharp breath. "Tavi."

For several moments, the flashes went on, green against purple. And then the ground suddenly shook again. That incredibly vast sound, laden with pure rage, filled the air once more. The storm returned in an instant, the wind rising to such a howl that, combined with the shaking ground, it knocked Isana from her feet. Araris caught her before she could fall to the stone, supporting her with one cool metallic arm as the earth trembled, and the tempest raged.

The vord warriors let out shrieks of their own and turned to fling themselves at the defenders with fanatic energy once more. Little was accomplished by the attack. The still-running waters of the moat swept them from their path. The shaking earth prevented the ones who managed to reach the other side of the moat from exploiting the vulnerability of the defenders - who were similarly incapacitated by the shaking earth and screaming sky. Lightning began to burn down from the storm, running along the ground like great, grasping fingers digging trenches in the earth for seconds at a time. There was a great wrenching snap of strained stone, and one section of the barn's roof caved in, only a few paces from where they stood.

"What is happening?" cried the Knight again, panic stretching his voice high and thin. "What is happening?"

Isana shivered and clung to Araris, feeling terrified, powerless, and small in the face of such raging, destructive forces. She wasn't sure how long it went on. It felt like hours, though it could only have been a few moments, or they would all have been slain. Then, the earth slowly began to grow calm again. The storm began to wane, the winds and rain dying down until they were no more severe than any springtime gale.

"The vord," Marcus choked. "The vord!"

Isana looked up and saw... utter confusion among the enemy. Mantises hissed and let out sharp shrieks and ran in every direction. Hundreds, if not thousands, of the creatures were locked in battle with one another - battles that seemed to end mostly in gory mutual destruction. Other mantises ripped at the bodies of their own dead, devouring them as though they were starving.

Again, the brazen horns of the Canim blared, only this time there were twice as many - Varg and the Canim infantry came out of the rain at the rangy lope of a Canim warrior, closing with the enemy from south of the steadholt, even as the taurg cavalry came rushing in from the northeast - accompanied by the bright clarion calls of the Aleran cavalry, who rode on the flanks of the main body of taurga, running down any stragglers who had separated from the main body of the vord... mass, Isana supposed, for it surely was no longer an army.

The Canim assault did not shatter the mantis horde so much as smash it to dust. Isana saw one of the lead taurga bounding a good six feet off the ground to come down with both of its front legs touching together, so that they drove into the vord before it like a sledgehammer, killing it instantly. It seized the next vord with its broad, blunt teeth and flung it into a cluster of other vord, so that four of them were tangled and unable to evade the next rank of taurga, who simply crushed them under their broad, pounding feet. Most of the attacking vord died in the first moments of the engagement, and many fled, only to be run down by teams of Aleran horsemen in position to do precisely that.

"He did it," Isana breathed, and found tears in her eyes. "He did it. My son did it."

The First Spear looked at her and spun to bellow in his parade-ground voice, "The captain's taken the vord Queen! He's done it!"

The cheers of the Legion shook the air, louder than the thunder they'd replaced.

Ehren would never have believed that anyone could be tired enough to sleep through the end of the world - but apparently he was wrong. Still recovering from the horrific wounds he'd taken in the battle, he supposed he hadn't fallen asleep so much as rejected consciousness.

"Ehren," Count Calderon said, shaking him by one shoulder. "Ehren!"

Ehren looked up, squinting down at the battle, then up at the northern bluff. The second vordbulk had almost reached them, and the vord were massing heavily against the defenders, ready to assault the second the bulk had breached the walls.

Though the sky had darkened and cold rain had begun to fall, there was still enough light to see. The sky to the west was absolutely black with storm clouds. The vast form of the great fury Garados could be seen intermittently through the overcast, though there was far less lightning playing through the distant clouds than there had been before. In fact, the bursts of light that colored the layers of cloud were...

"That isn't lightning," Ehren said, yawning. "We'd hear thunder. At least a little. Even this far away."

"What else could it be?" Bernard asked.

Ehren peered at the lights, then sat bolt upright. "Metalcrafting. Up near the head of Garados."

Bernard grunted in the affirmative. "The green flashes are the same color as the croach."

"Someone's taking on the Queen?" Ehren asked. "If they bring her down..."

"It still won't be in time for us," Bernard said calmly.

Ehren looked up at the northern bluff. While he had been unaware, the vordbulk had waded forward through everything that had been thrown at it. It was only yards from being in position to crush Garrison's defenses. The vordbulk let out another bellowing roar.

And a Citizen, bearing a sword that blazed with emerald fire, suddenly streaked from the ground toward the vordbulk. Ehren and Bernard both came to their feet. Both of them recognized the armored, white-haired form of Lord Cereus. The nimbus of light around the old High Lord's sword grew and grew, until it was almost violently bright. Ehren made himself watch, but just as it seemed the light's intensity would force him to avert his gaze, High Lord Cereus plunged completely into the vordbulk's roaring maw.

The vordbulk smashed its jaws shut, and they came together like a pair of city gates closing.

And an instant later, a brilliant green fireball replaced the vordbulk's head and the spreading shield of bone around it. Fire tore at the torso and legs of the vordbulk, incinerating tons of chitin and muscle in one supremely violent blast.

Incredibly, the vordbulk's mangled left front leg quivered and began to take another step, as if the limb had no idea that the head had been destroyed - but then the creature sagged to its left. Lord Cereus had, clearly, timed and directed his attack to achieve that very outcome, and the vordbulk toppled like the one before it, falling away from the fortress. It fell in seeming deliberation, because of its sheer size, but the impact when it came crashing down crushed fully grown trees to splinters.

Ehren stared in shock at the fallen vordbulk for a full minute, hardly able to comprehend the incredible courage and sacrifice of the old High Lord. But then, Cereus's daughter Veradis was behind the walls, employing her considerable talents as a healer, and his grandchildren were in the refugee camp. Of course her father would be willing to lay down his life to protect his sole surviving child and his sons' orphans; or at least, a man of Cereus's character would. It was one thing for a man to say he was willing to lay down his life for his child - but quite another for him to actually do it.

Count Calderon exhaled heavily, and breathed, "Thank you, Your Grace."

Ferocious battle ensued on the northern bluff, between the Wolf tribe and the vord who had been guarding the vordbulk, but it was no longer a hopeless fight for the Wolf, especially with the support of the Horse. Cereus's brigade of Citizens came flying back into the fortress in a state of total exhaustion.

Bernard looked up from a message brought by a courier and grunted. "That's it, then. We're out of firestones, and the rain is keeping the workshop from making any more."

"We can hold them with steel alone if they don't bring us any more surprises," Ehren said.

"I'd like to think that the vord are straining their limits as much as we are," Bernard said. "But our experience with them thus far does not fill me with confidence." He shook his head. "Well. We can only do what we can do. We'll stand for as long as our legs hold us. Sir Ehren, I wonder if you would please inform High Lady Cereus of her lord father's passing. Let her know exactly what happened."

Ehren sighed. "Of course, my lord. Better to hear it now than in rumor half an hour from now."

Bernard nodded and rubbed at his jaw - then froze and peered to the west.

Far down the valley, the storm clouds veiling Garados had apparently gone mad, spewing a thousand colors of lightning like spray at the bottom of a waterfall. Ehren stopped in his tracks and watched, as well, as the distant storm raked the land with lightning bolts. He was sure he imagined it, but for a moment it almost looked like one enormous windmane, miles and miles across, was raking the ground with claws of living lightning.

Then the vord all began to shriek, screaming as one creature. The wail put the hairs up on the back of Ehren's neck, but he stepped forward and gripped the edge of the balcony's railing, staring.

The seething, pulsing rhythm of the mass of vord, that sense of underlying organization and purpose that made them all seem like the various organs of a single body, began to fray. Over the next several minutes, Ehren watched the vord attackers change from an army driven by purpose and perfect discipline to a mob of hungry, dangerous predators. Though the sheer pressure of numbers crammed into limited space forced the vord at the leading edge of the mob to continue the attack on the walls of Garrison, farther back was a different tale.

Ehren brought up a sightcrafting and stared as the vord to the rear of the immediate combat began to turn upon one another, apparently driven by desperate hunger - and those farthest back began to depart altogether. It would take a long time, hours perhaps, for the pressure on the leading edge of the vord to relent enough to allow them to retreat, but it would happen. It would happen!

"What can you see?" Count Calderon asked, his weary voice anxious.

"They're breaking," Ehren said. He recognized that his own voice was thick with emotion he had neither expected nor approved. "They're turning on one another at the back of the mob. They're breaking." His vision was blurred by something. "They aren't holding together. They're breaking."

"They did it," Count Calderon breathed. "By all the furies, they did it. They killed the Queen!"

Ehren couldn't hear what Calderon said next. Months of horror and despair had all come down to this moment. He found himself sitting on the stone floor of the balcony, sobbing and laughing at the same time. He had never believed, never really believed, that the vord could be defeated. Not after so many retreats, so many deadly surprises.

But here, in the Calderon Valley, they had finally done it. They had endured the heaviest blows the enemy could deliver and survived. The Realm had survived. The Realm would survive.

It would survive thanks to the sacrifice of Cereus, and to the rather unassuming backcountry Citizen who now knelt beside him, putting a brawny arm around Ehren's shoulders. "Easy there, son. Easy. Come with me. I could use a drink. I've given orders to the Legions to keep rotating fresh troops in. Now all we have to do is wait this out."

Ehren nodded several times. "A drink," he said, his voice thick. "I don't drink very well." Then he added, "But if you can't drink to this, what can you drink to? Let's go."