Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept (40 page)

Thousands
of men lay dead or dying below as more Sky Knights floated in, dropping death from the sky to kill and maim indiscriminately. The enemy suffered terrible losses. Without magic, they were all but defenseless against such an aerial attack. It lasted nearly an hour. Wyverns launching, Sky Knights dropping rocks into the midst of the enemy and returning to reload. They started their attack in the central camp, pounding the leadership hard before spreading out to kill many of the rank and file.

By the time it was done, Alexander estimated twenty thousand dead or
wounded. The field was red with blood and the air filled with cries for help, water and mercy. He’d hoped that such a devastating attack would motivate the enemy to retreat, but it seemed to provoke the exact opposite response.

The seven remaining legions
had nowhere to go except to follow their assault legion. Most of the men just milled about aimlessly, looking for someplace to direct their aggression. But two legions began to mobilize and follow after the troops already moving toward Anatoly.

The assault legion formed into a lo
ose column about fifty abreast and two hundred deep, shields up and interlocked in haphazard fashion. A volley of arrows went up at Anatoly’s signal. It produced more of a clatter than bloodshed. The advancing enemy closed in tighter, filling the spaces between shields, the entire legion moving along at a crawling pace, but closing the distance nonetheless.

Anatoly held up five fingers to
Commander Blake. A few moments later, five volleys of arrows went up over the berm, raining down into the enemy shields, most falling harmlessly against their defenses but some getting through.

“Signal the slingers on the bluffs,” Anatoly said.

Blake took up a horn and blew it three times—the great, low, booming tones reverberated throughout Fool’s Gap, filling the air with tension and expectancy.

A few moments later, stones began to
fall from the bluffs, raining down on the attackers from both sides, pelting their shields, disrupting their defenses, even killing a few. Anatoly’s people atop the cliffs were armed with slingshots and an endless supply of stones the size of a man’s fist.

He looked over to Blake, signaling for another volley of five. Arrows went up, finding more targets with the enemy under siege from the cliffs, killing or wounding nearly a quarter of their number.

Someone near the front of the enemy ranks blew a horn. The entire legion, or what remained of it, broke ranks and raced forward, shields held high but no longer interlocked and close. Arrows rained into their midst, killing many more, but they gained precious ground. A shouted command brought the leading edge of the charge to an abrupt halt, men forming up and interlocking shields again as more men filled in the ranks behind them, forming another steel turtle shell over the closely packed cluster of men. Arrows clattered against their shields, dwindling as the last of the volley fell to earth.

“Ready one on my command,” Anatoly said, raising his hand, holding up his finger, watching the enemy. He trusted Blake to get the signal right.

A muffled shout went up and the enemy shields all came down as one, followed by a volley of javelins.

Anatoly shouted, “Now!”
dropping his hand the moment he heard the enemy command.

Arrows and javelins arced through the air, crossing paths only briefly before crashing into their targets.

Arrows reached the enemy before most could raise their shields. The damage was severe, hitting close to half of all that remained, leaving gaps in their defenses.

The javelins hit the shield line atop the berm wall hard, penetrating shields in some cases, stabbing into the guts of the men holding them,
some passing into the second and third ranks, killing in most cases, in others wounding so severely that death seemed a foregone conclusion.

Before Anatoly could signal for another volley, the enemy charged again, this time in a headlong rush to reach the berm wall.
Arrows were no longer an option for these men, but another two legions were rushing in behind them, clogging the switchback road that led up to the gap and filling the space between the two cliffs with men, pushing in behind the more organized assault unit.

Anatoly’s line braced for the charge as the rear ranks began hurling stones into the onrushing enemy with their slingshots. Most stones bounced off their shields, but some made it through.

The enemy reached the berm wall quickly, but rather than assault it all at once, they broke into four units, each called to their position by a banner held high. They formed up into wedges protected by raised shields and moved forward, advancing up the spiked incline methodically, defending against the pike and slingshot attacks with their heavy shields.

The first wedge reached the shield wall. Rather than thrust into the wall, the lead man reached out with his war axe, hooked the nearest man’s shield over the top and yanked him down the hill into the midst of his
soldiers. He died quickly. A pike darted out and stuck the lead man through the shoulder. Another took his place.

F
our points on the line came under focused attack at once … and it was working. The enemy was weakening the line, primarily through the tactic of pulling defenders down the berm one at a time where they could be hacked to death quickly.

Behind them
, another twenty thousand men began to crowd into the gap, charging forward with reckless abandon.

“
Signal the archers to fall back to the secondary line,” Anatoly said.

Blake
dutifully waved the flag to the archer commander.

“
Spread the word,” Anatoly said, “on the whistler, the shield wall will fall back to the narrows.”

“Right away,” Iker said, trotting off to deli
ver the message to his runners.

“You need to fall back
, too,” Liam said.

Anatoly didn’t respond, staring at the advancing enemy, watching his archers begin to pick up and run back to the second line of sol
diers. He’d chosen a narrow spot in the gap, not even a hundred feet wide, to form the basis of his second defensive line.

“He’s right, Anatoly,” Alexander said. “You need to fall back to your secondary command post. You’re about to be overrun.”

Anatoly nodded reluctantly. “I’ve always hated to retreat.”

“I’ll go see what Corina has ready,” Alexander said, vanishing and reappearing in the wyvern camp well to the rear of the battle.

Corina was standing in the middle of the camp yelling for someone to hurry up.

“Your first attack was a success, but rather than retreat, they came straight at us.”

“I see. I have a squad loaded and ready right now,” she said. “I can send more as they’re made ready.”

“Whatever you can do will help,” Alexander said, vanishing and moving his sight to the enemy wedges attacking Anatoly’s line. He manifested three bright orbs of light and began to float around the weakest point
s in the line, moving toward the advancing enemy in erratic and threatening ways, blinding or distracting them while they fought. The technique worked. When the enemy soldiers ducked or flinched to avoid one of Alexander’s orbs, they would open themselves up to attack, usually with dire consequences.

The whistler went up and the line began to fall back. Alexander started racing up and down the line, three orbs of light dazzling enemy soldiers all along the way, flashing up to within inches of their eyes, moving with the speed and precision of thought, unbridled by the constraints of time and substance.

The illusory light he could muster was nothing compared to the brilliance of Luminessence, and it didn’t even belong in the same category as his staff’s brightest light, but it was enough to blind, dazzle, distract, and otherwise sow chaos within the enemy’s ranks.

Anatoly’s force
s fell back, quickly racing toward the narrows and the second line, filing in between the men waiting for their turn to hold against the enemy. Many of the last to retreat were cut down by javelins, but otherwise the action was a success. The second line closed ranks and locked their shields.

The horde charging from behind the assault
force reached the berm just as the four wedge units were re-forming into a single unit on the near side of the berm. The horde came over the top and spilled into the enclosed space like a wave.

The commander of the assault force tried to assert command
and gain control, but finally simply braced for the impending flood of barbarians. They washed over the berm and around the assault force, surging toward the line with battle lust and mob mentality.

Anatoly gave the signal. Archers and slingers began to fire at will. The air filled with arrows and stones, whizzing and hurtling toward the enemy in the kill zone. This was the spot that would be stained the reddest. Rank after rank of archer
s filled the space behind the shield wall. Soldiers just behind the shield line hurled stones with their slingshots while the soldiers lining the cliffs rained stone and shaft into the enemy.

While the ass
ault force had shields, this horde had no such protection. Most wore light armor, a few had breastplates.

The arrows devastated
the onrushing barbarians, felling them in waves as each volley crashed into them, but still they came. The surge of so many pushing forward carried those in front, driving them toward the shield line that bristled with hundreds of pikes and spears.

A wyvern roared and then the sky
seemed to fall onto the switchback road as twelve Sky Knights dropped several tons of stones into the back ranks of the horde. The sound alone was enough to stop the battle for a moment. The barbarians faltered as those nearer the front seemed to realize that they were trapped and being pushed toward a field of death littered with corpses, arrows sticking up at odd angles by the thousands.

Momentum carried the next wave of enemy into the kill zone, advancing into a lull created by the death of so many men in so
little time. A few reached the shield line but were easily killed by pike before they even got close enough to attack.

Anatoly shook hi
s head sadly before ordering another volley.

“Corina will send what she has when she has it,” Alexander said.

Anatoly nodded, looking out over the battlefield, enemy soldiers clambering over their dead comrades to get one step closer to death. Arrows raining down into them, bodies beginning to pile up.

“They can overwhelm us if they’re willing to take the losses up front,” Anatoly said.

Alexander nodded. “I’m hoping they don’t have anyone left who’s smart enough to realize that.”

“The commander of that assault force knows what he’s doing,” Anatoly said, pointing his finger out into the growing carnage. “If he manages to get control
of his men, we’re in trouble.”

“Bianca should be here later today,” Alexander said.

“And Conner a few days after that, I know,” Anatoly said. “If we make it that long, we’ll have a chance.”

“You just have to hold out, Anatoly.”

“I know, Alexander. This was my plan, remember? But I also know how it ends. You need to be prepared for that.”

“I don’t want to hear that
. I won’t let you give up,” Alexander said.

“Give up?” Anatoly said with a humorless chuckle. “I’m not giving up, I’m going to fight with my last breath
. But I’m outnumbered ten to one.” He paused, looking out over the sprawling carnage. “Well, maybe seven to one now. The point is, I’m going to run out of arrows eventually and then it’ll come down to men on a line stabbing at each other. That’s a numbers game.”

Alexander sighed, nodding to himself, forcing himself to face the reality of Anatoly’s situation and then to face the very real possibility that Anatoly might die in this mountain pass. Intellectually, he had always known that it was possib
le, but it never carried weight before. Now, in the face of such an onslaught, Alexander had to face the fact that his mentor and one of his oldest friends might meet his end in this battle.

Thinking about it made his stomach
churn.

“Tell me what I can do,” Alexander said.

“You’ve done all you can, for now anyway,” Anatoly said. “It looks like the momentum has shifted. They seem to be falling back to their base camp.”

“If I came over a berm and saw that,” Alexander said, gesturing to the field of death spread out before them, “I’d turn around too.”

“Yeah,” Anatoly said, nodding, his eyes staring off into the distance. “Check in with me later. I might need your help.”

“I will,” Alexander said. “What are you going to do?”

“I thought we’d go get some of our arrows back. Then we wait. It’s their move.”

Alexander nodded. “I’ll be back
tonight,” he said, vanishing into the firmament and returning to his body.

He felt restless. So much was happening around the
Seven Isles and he was waiting, sitting still. He needed to do something useful. He considered leaving, heading to Karth, but reconsidered again for the same reason—the delivery he was awaiting was far too dangerous. He had to be here when it arrived.