Rift in the Races (19 page)

“That was the fifth ward,” said Tytamon, spurring his mount to run. He was done watching. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

The Queen, not one to miss out on a fight, ordered her reserve guard to assist, and eager to bloody their weapons, her personal guard was immediately pounding down the shallow grade and across the meadow toward the castle.

“Let’s go, boys,” she said, “or we’re going to miss the fun.”

She’d barely put her heels to her great warhorse when a pair of huge fireballs appeared from somewhere down the hill and to their left. One flew across the intervening space and struck Tytamon’s mount full broadside as he charged toward his ancient home, while the second came straight for the Queen. The second, nearly as large as the warhorse upon which Her Majesty sat, washed over her harmlessly, splitting as it passed over her like a raindrop falling upon the edge of a razor blade. Its two halves flew out behind her and then circled back, streaking as one toward their as yet unseen source. Tytamon did not have as much luck—her Majesty enjoyed the best of all defensive enchantments on her armor, and while possessed of such things himself, Tytamon had had no time to avail himself of them. Both he and his borrowed horse were blown twenty paces sideways by the impact of the fireball, and the pair of them landed in a flaming mass that rolled down the knoll in a tumble of orange flames and smoke that rippled the air with heat.

The horse took the brunt of the flames, and it thrashed about in its agony, hooves striking out reflexively, pointlessly, as it scrambled up, its equine screams piercing and piteous. Tytamon too was shouting in agony of his own, but he rolled in the grass with calm discipline, knowing well enough how to subdue the flames, if not the pain. The whole scene unfolded so fast the great mage had nearly finished snuffing the fire out by the time Altin fully comprehended what he’d just seen.

Where had those fireballs come from?

That’s when he realized they were surrounded, all of them, by a circle of shamans who stood in the knee-high meadow grass. The shroud of invisibility the orcs had been hiding in had been dropped in favor of ducking the fireballs reflected back at them by the Queen’s enchanted armor, a fortuity that may have saved all of the humans there on the hill from certain death, even if only temporarily. The orc casters had new spells underway. A disconcerting show of poise and discipline from what was supposed to be a rabble of primitives.

Between each of the shamans stood a warrior of such monstrous size Altin pulled back unconsciously at his reins. These orcs, nearly two-and-a-half spans tall, were large beyond reckoning, and more disturbing, each of them wore gleaming plate mail that was as finely fitted as it was polished to a shine—a fit and a shine of the sort no orc in recorded history had ever bothered with before, at least none in any books Altin had ever read, and he’d read quite a few.

“Ambush,” shouted the Queen even as she raised one of her crossbows and fired a shot at the shaman nearest her.

The huge warrior beside the orcish holy man reached out with cat-fast reflexes and blocked the bolt before it found the shaman’s throat. The bolt pierced the monster’s hand, its point emerging through the back of it while the dull thud of the impact mixed with the clink of breaking chainmail links. It pulled the barbed shaft the rest of the way through the back of its hand and roared defiantly, its yellow-eyed gaze leveled at the Queen. She roared back as she drew the broadsword off her back.

The eight shamans were chanting in unison.

“Silence!” Altin shouted in warning, recognizing the rhythms from earlier in the day. “They’re casting silen—”

The Queen charged the orc she’d already shot, and Altin could not help but notice that, though her mouth was moving with the violence of her war cry, it made no sound, nor did those of her companions. Their weapons came silently from sheaths, their horse’s hooves not even a whisper upon the ground. That meant the Queen’s guard charging toward the castle would not hear them fighting, much less hear any calls for them to return. The silence was already in place.

General Darklot shouted some unheard order and charged with the Queen, the two captains, the herald and all three signal men right on their heels, each mouthing nothing as they too discovered the true nature of their plight. Altin knew that the herald was an E-ranked transmuter and saw the particular look of dismay come upon his face. His touch would turn nothing into stone now, not even an orc finger or shaman cheek. The man drew a short sword from its scabbard as he rode on.

Altin, like the herald, was helpless with no voice to cast, but unlike the herald, he had no sword to draw. Not that he was particularly skilled with one, and especially not from the back of a horse. Worse, he still had Pernie clinging to him like a barnacle. He hesitated, not sure what to do, then realized he could still help Tytamon put out the fire in his robes, though the legendary wizard had it mostly out now.

Altin slid down from the horse and glanced back toward where the Queen had charged. The clash was imminent, and the warrior orcs ran to intercept in a formation clearly meant to buy their magicians time to cast whatever was coming next. Altin could hear their guttural chants, though he could not make out their words. Such an advantage the orcs had created for themselves.

Altin turned the horse toward Great Forest and motioned for Pernie to ride for the woods; she could make it through the gap being created by the Queen and the general if she rode through fast. He pointed to the trees and then covered his face with his hands, peeking through his fingers to indicate she should hide and watch until the fight was done. He slapped the horse violently on the rump. It bolted forward, but Pernie hopped off before it could carry her away, rolling lightly in the grass and coming right back to her feet. She began scrounging in the grass for stones she could use in her sling.

One of the armored orcs moved away from the shaman it was defending and came at them, intent on killing the two mages while they were still unable to cast any spells. It lumbered toward Altin, its armor rattling and a huge spiked mace held aloft. The warrior swung at Altin with all his might, and it was all the defenseless sorcerer could do to leap out of the way, tumbling to the ground as he did. The orc followed, bashing at Altin repeatedly. Each swing of the mace pounded deep holes into the ground, crushing the grass and exposing the dark soil beneath, each blow landing barely a finger’s width from smashing the tender human like a ripe melon. Somehow Altin kept just out of harm’s way, rolling out from under each new strike as he twisted and dove, trying to avoid becoming a pile of mush. The orc roared its frustration, though all Altin could do was mouth silent curses back.

A jagged rock bounced off the orc’s helmet with a clang. The orc spun and saw Pernie loading another one into her little sling. Three spins and that stone came after the first. It thumped off the exposed chainmail at the inside of the orc’s left elbow and fell away harmlessly. The orc snarled and charged at her.

Pernie got a third stone off, but it clanked off the thick metal breastplate, doing no more damage than the first two had—she might as well have been throwing stones at the Palace wall. Altin saw her mouth open to scream a silent scream. The orc swung its huge mace, a long flat blow low to the ground, too low to duck, just high enough that Pernie couldn’t jump out of the way.

And then she was standing at Altin’s side.

The orc’s momentum carried it straight through where she had just been, spinning it around awkwardly, the lack of contact and its own over-confidence causing it to stumble and nearly fall. Such was the ferocity of the blow it had intended for the child.

She looked up at Altin with wide, frightened eyes, as bewildered by what had happened as Altin was.

Neither had time to dwell on it, however, for the orc recovered and was charging back. They crouched, each ready to leap to either side, both fairly sure this wasn’t going to end well, when the Queen’s leather-clad assassin suddenly appeared in front of the oncoming enemy, his lithe body crouched down at the level of the orc’s knees and waiting, as if he’d been there, invisible, all along. The orc had no time to react, and it tripped over the elf, who stood as the brute came over his back and used the orc’s own energy to hoist it up into the air and throw it past. In his left hand, Shadesbreath held a long, slender dagger which he swung around in an upward arc as the orc flew by, the razor-sharp edge finding the gap between the orc’s helmet and gorget as it soared overhead. A black line opened like a grinning mouth in the vulnerable green flesh of its throat just before its body landed in a clanking pile. Its momentum brought it sliding the remaining distance between the elf and the orc’s intended victims, the smooth meadow grass providing just enough friction to bring the body to a stop only a half step from where Altin and Pernie stood. They watched as the warrior tried to hold in the black gouts of its blood with groping gauntleted hands, but the tar-hued substance spilled between its fingers in a thick rush like molasses under pressure on a hot summer day. No chance to hold that back, Altin thought. Soon the metal clatter of its thrashing subsided in the liquid gasp of its last drowning breath.

Altin looked up to nod his gratitude to the elf, but he was already gone.

Altin glanced over once more to see how the Queen and the rest were doing. The first thing he noticed was that all but Her Majesty had been unhorsed already. Worse, he could see that the general and both captains had already gone down, and the archery signalman seemed close to joining them—he had lost most of his left arm from a vicious axe cut—but somehow he was still on his feet and menacing a shaman with his short sword. The general’s body was pinned to the ground by a shaft of ice nearly as tall as he was, and one of the captains’ bodies was sending up plumes of a foul yellow smoke that Altin recognized as an acid spell at work. No civilized wizard would ever resort to such magical brutality, not even in war. Altin was almost glad for the silence spell then; at least they hadn’t had to endure the sounds of the captain’s agony, which might have set more than a few of the Queen’s company into flight.

So only the Queen was still ahorse, and from her lofty seat she beat blows down upon one of the warriors with astonishing velocity, driving it back toward Calico Castle with every mighty swing, each of them coming with astounding rapidity—especially given the size of that massive broadsword. Her onslaught was merciless, and though the orc parried each blow as effectively as any consummate warrior might, she simply left it no opportunity for counter-attack. The War Queen hadn’t gotten her title by accident.

The other two signalmen were working together trying to finish off one of the two remaining warriors, each jabbing at the towering orc with spears. Altin didn’t think they were going to have much luck given the armor the orc had on. They were, however, keeping it off the Queen, which was the most important thing—she could deal with it herself if they could just buy her the time. The herald was being pressed for all his worth to fend off the last of the armored warriors, and he was being backed farther and farther away from the rest of the group as he slowly retreated from the sweeping arcs of the orc’s enormous scimitar. There was no sign of the elf.

In the grass beneath the embattled group’s feet, and serving as obstacle to be stepped over in the to-and-fro of combat, lay four of the huge warriors, dead and leaking their lifeblood into the soil. So too did two of the shamans, with a third thrashing about in the grass, a cut in the joint of its thigh still sending jets of dark blood into the air almost two spans high. It would be dead soon as well, its soul, if it had one, in search of the place the gods save for evil such as theirs. The remaining four shamans, however, were all in the act of casting another round of spells.

Altin didn’t have a plan when he realized it, but he knew that he had to break up that magic any way he could. “Help Tytamon,” he mouthed to Pernie, and then he charged the nearest shaman, hoping he could traverse the intervening twenty paces before whatever it was casting could go off.

He tackled it at the same moment a black blur appeared behind the farthest away of the four, the briefly invisible assassin having crept up behind the group and gone to work already with his blades. Altin’s adversary went down beneath his hurtling weight, but he soon found himself flying backwards as the explosive shock of an interrupted ice spell sent him sprawling in a blast of freezing air. His skin burned where the chill bit into his flesh, and by the time Altin could scramble to his feet, fearing reprisal, Pernie was upon the fallen shaman, plunging her little knife into its frost-bitten neck. Its blood was too chilled to flow, but it seeped out like tree sap each time she withdrew the blade. Altin wanted to be angry with her, but what was she supposed to do? He couldn’t blame her, though he also couldn’t help but marvel at the child’s ferocity and absolute lack of fear.

Meanwhile, the elf had already killed one of the shamans and was just sliding his knife into the second one’s back to make it two. Altin made for the third, again intent on tackling it, but unfortunately, he was too late to stop its casting an ice lance that took the trumpeter through the chest. The barb of cold shot through the air in a streak of icy blue almost too fast to see and staked the man to the ground, pinning him there where his hot blood made the icy shaft steam. This freed up the warrior the man had been fighting, and the armored orc turned and charged back toward the main body of the fight.

The black blur of the Queen’s assassin manifest again, this time behind the frost shaman, and Altin saw the elf deftly push his long bloody knife into its heart through the soft avenue of its armpit. That would be the last ice lance it cast.