"My liege-they've summoned earth elementals!"
A staff officer turned his golden horse to Svarezi, proffering a spyglass. "There… heading toward the center of the plain…"
Dust clouds had risen from the fields, helping to obscure the view. Svarezi bullied his hippogriff into standing still, then leveled the perspective glass and scowled down from on high. It took long moments for him to sift the confusing images into order in his mind.
The plain was dotted with giant shapes; juggernauts rolling with a smooth motion that told of wheels. Each object shone a painful silver in the morning light, almost hiding its inverted soup-bowl shape. Svarezi studied the twin wheel tracks the machines left behind in the dirt and slammed shut his telescope with a confident bang.
"War wagons."
"My lord?"
"War wagons. A common enough ploy used by peasant armies fearful of cavalry." Svarezi sat straight in his saddle with one fist proudly planted on his hip. "An enclosed wagon, armored with timber and steel; the interior is filled with crossbowmen, archers… even light artillery.
"They're vulnerable to magic. We'll warp the wooden wheels-use fire spells to touch off their superstructures. Keep the combat troops back, and send in the sorcerers for their sport."
Svarezi looked at his titanic army and for the first time let his face stir with pride.
"Bring up the Sun Cannon! We'll overturn their little carts, vaporize some of their infantry, then see their faces as we melt a hole clean through their city walls."
The mercenary officers exchanged low, cruel smiles as far below, the great battle was finally joined.
"Target left! Left!" Miliana took her eye away from the padded periscope and crashed her pointy hat down across the gunner's head. "There, stupid, rotate the damned turret or I'll wring your neck!"
The worst-tempered vehicle commander in the army cursed and drove her crew into obedience. Wrenching frantically at the traversing cog, the war-turtle's gunner swung the turret to the left and let his sights settle on a proud line of sorcerers readying lethal battle spells.
"I see them… I mean… target sighted!"
Miliana ferociously crammed her face against the viewing slot.
"All right-steady… steady… Shoot!"
The spring arms of the turtle's springal hammered wildly at her side; Miliana watched a cloud of heavy javelins soar out at the enemy, then all spin uselessly aside as one of the sorcerers made an easy gesture with one hand.
"Damn! He's got a spell up to protect him from normal missiles." The girl watched her target with her face set in a snarl. "Load abnormal missiles!" The gunner slammed a bundle of pre-blessed javelins into place. "All right… open fire!"
The turret bucked as the springal hammered out its load. Seen dimly through a haze of dust, the Svarezi sorcerers whirled brokenly aside. Apprentices dropped their books, bells, and candles, and began to run, falling one by one as a flywheel catapult spurted darts from deep inside the turtle's bows.
Other war machines in line with Miliana were having similar success. The juggernauts rolled on, crunching corn stubble under their wheels. Miliana looked down from her high seat to where Lorenzo labored in the dark; the girl excitedly wiped her sweating brow and gave a smile.
"It's brilliant! The war-turtles are actually working!"
"Of course they're working." Lorenzo prodded at a horse's neck and kept power surging through the hull. "I told you they would, didn't I?"
Lorenzo's latest masterpieces were an engineering triumph; inverted bowls of dense ceramic formed the hulls, which were modeled on the bowls used for Lomatran baked beans. Inside the hulls, six huge horses shod in insulated ceramic shoes provided motive power. The vehicle was suspended above the ground by four wide-rimmed ceramic wheels, and trailed leather curtains to seal the hull against the earth.
Atop the horses rode a platform housing two crossbow-men, a flywheel-powered dart projector, and Lorenzo, the turtle's elected driver. In the revolving turret up above, Miliana, a loader, and a gunner dispensed mayhem like children flinging rocks at nests of bees. The double springal sent shudders through the whole machine as it flung loads of missiles out across the fields.
"Earth elemental at one hundred yards… Damn-it's overturned number seven!" Miliana swore as a wave of living soil flipped a war-turtle completely over on its side. "Grab its attention! Load blessed ammunition!"
"Loaded!" The springal crew worked with admirable speed. "I see it."
"Shoot!"
Something made the war-turtle tingle as the great weapon fired. From his perch above the horses, Lorenzo looked up in alarm
"What was that?"
"Warp wood spell." Miliana kept her eye glued to her periscopes. "There's a bunch of druids to the left. Svarezi must have hired them in from Turmish. Good thing we used whalebone for the springals. Damn; missed the elemental! Fire again-quickly!"
The whole machine bucked as the catapult fired. Miliana clenched her fists with glee.
"Spitted him with half a dozen!" The girl looked down into the turtle's hull. "Lorenzo-got your sword?"
"Why?"
The answer came as a great heave of the ground. The horses screamed, the whole framework groaned, and a great roaring head made out of soil erupted between the wheels. Lorenzo squealed like a frightened pig, whipped out his rapier, and jammed it in the earth elemental's brow. He jerked the power trigger and sent his last remaining electric charge crackling right between its eyes. The elemental crumbled like a sand castle in the wind, leaving Lorenzo to plaster himself across the back of a trembling horse.
High above, Miliana looked down with a frown.
"Watch where you're steering, dolt, we're going to hit a tree!" The whole contraption rocked, a crunching noise followed, and Miliana scowled into her periscopes. "Oh wait… it's all right. It was only the druids." The girl polished up her periscope lens. "Drat! There's mistletoe hanging off the outside…"
A fireball enfolded the hull, failing to even singe the clever ceramic armor. Here and there a lightning bolt flickered in defiance at the far end of the battle line, ricocheting from the insulated armor. Flipping up her periscope and taking advantage of a temporary lull, Miliana sat back in her chair and heaved a great bloodthirsty sigh.
"It's not bad, this. First we invent the peppercorn vote, and now we overturn the whole basis of modern war." Poison fog from something like a cloudkill suddenly began to creep in through the vision slots. Unconcerned, Miliana slipped on a leather mask and breathed from the vehicle's stored air supply. Her muffled voice rang Lorenzo's praise.
"All in all, I think this battle's going pretty well so far!" The war-turtles clanked ever onward, while all across the fields the last Svarezi sorcerers broke and ran.
High above the melee, the Svarezi air cavalry wheeled in an enormous holding pattern as they watched the unfolding drama of the battlefield. Rumbling out from the city walls came strange enclosed war wagons, closely followed by a dense rush of infantry. The Lomatran mounted corps-what few horsemen and hippogriffs they could muster-all stood their beasts before the city gates, behind a haystack barricade. Clad in scarlet armor and soaring like a war god through the clouds, the captain of Svarezi's air troops let his face split into a gap-toothed smile.
"Cousin! They have isolated their mounted men."
"Aye, cousin…" The captain's second in command-leaner, hungrier, and clad in a purple brigantine, flexed the sinews of his bow. "We can fall on them from behind and crush them into their own retreating war wagons!"
"Good-it is done!" The captain jabbed his laboring mount with his heels. Throwing back its head, the creature gave a piercing rally-scream. "Wings in line astern-attack dive!"
"Wait!"
A terrified voice drifted up from below. The commander hauled back on his reins, bringing an answering surge from the powerful wings beating at his sides. He peered down past the hippogriff's smooth wings to see a tiny flier desperately climbing up to join him.
"Wait! Captain, I see it! The red bird-it's over there-hiding in the trees!"
The air commander rolled his eyes; the morning's scout reports had been less than satisfactory.
"One bird?"
"No, captain! The bird! The red bird!" The scout finally reached a decent altitude for conversation; he seemed sweaty, shaken, and his equipment hung in rags. "It's waiting to take us in the flank as we pass!"
The ferocious killer bird in question could just be seen as it sat in the boughs of an olive tree, bouncing happily up and down like a child on a swing. It looked far too stupid to be anything other than an escapee from some noble's pleasure garden.
However, the scout commander had managed to lose almost half his patrol. The air captain and his cousin exchanged glances across the wings of their hippogriffs, then shrugged in silent accord.
"We'll make our course take us past the bird. We can try arrow shots at the beast in passing." Irritated by the delay, the commander hoisted up his bow. "Now enough! Attack formation-dive!"
Five hundred hippogriffs turned sharp wing stalls and dove in tight formations toward the city far below. Wind whistled through a thousand wings; sunlight glinted off outstretched hooves and claws. All along the battle squadrons, men added their shrieks to the bloodcurdling sound of monster eagles' screams.
Bouncing happily up and down in the branches of its olive tree, the ferocious red bird seemed utterly engrossed in its own affairs. He genially wig-wagged his wings as he saw the hundreds of horribly be-weaponed hippogriffs diving straight down his throat, then threw back his head and opened his beak in glee.
Diving in the middle of the swarm, the Colletran scout leader instantly turned a strange shade of mottled green.
"Don't let it sing! For Tchazzar's sake, don't let it sing!"
In the tree below, Tekoriikii fluffed out his tail and crooned a little song that told of the glories of his long-and-lovely tail. He warbled in brilliant counterpoint to his own complex tune, losing himself in the gorgeous complexity of his musical creation.
The upper end of Tekoriikii's vocal range achieved very little other than causing the wine in Lomatra's tavern barrels to turn instantly to vinegar. The lower notes, apparently pitched to the resonant frequency of a hippogriff's brain, had an altogether different effect. The diving battle mounts staggered as though they had run into a solid wall and began to emit weird, keening moans. Some of the beasts simply rolled over on their backs, spilling wailing riders from their seats where they frantically activated feather fall rings. Other hippogriffs drifted to the ground and tried to cram their crania far beneath the soil.
Annoyed at the lack of audience appreciation, Tekoriikii scowled, fluffed out his feathers, and flew away in a huff. High above the damaged squadrons, the scout leader unplugged his ears and rallied two hundred panicked survivors who swerved like mad canaries through the air.
"There it goes! Don't let it get away!"
Demoralized and shaken, the ravaged squadrons clattered off in pursuit. Looking slyly behind him as he skimmed low across the ground toward long rows of haystacks, the orange bird suddenly gave the lie to its apparent lack of brains. With a decidedly smug flick of its tail, the bird made its escape toward the city walls.
"Kill it! Kill the creature before it sings again!"
The bird whipped low over the ground. Following with a hue and cry in a motley line abreast, two hundred fliers crowded after Tekoriikii in pursuit.
All along the city walls, blacksmiths' apprentices tipped anvils from the battlements. Ropes whipped taught, driveshafts blurred, and suddenly a shocking forest of whirring propellers shot up from the haystacks all around.
The Utrelli Patent Whirligigs buzzed skyward like a swarm of wasps, each trailing part of an enormous fishing net. Some hippogriffs managed to somehow pull themselves aside; others slammed into the netting and tangled helplessly inside. Buoyed by the whirligigs, the captives swung like feathered herring in a net.
"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!"
Still somehow surviving, the scout commander heard the firebird's mocking cry. His hippogriff now shared its rider's ragged breathing and red-rimmed eyes. A dozen fellow air cavalry panted through the air, wildly searching for diving enemies.
Nothing attacked; there was nothing but the braying, hooting firebird whizzing off toward the city gates. The portcullis had been lowered almost to the ground-and the scout leader instantly sensed his victory.
"Dive right for its tail! It'll pull up before it hits the wall. Follow behind and kill it as it pulls up to fly across!"
They had speed on the bird; speed and height. A deadly dive, a flash of spears, and vengeance would be theirs. With a trilling whoop, twelve hippogriff cavalry made sharp wing-overs and sped toward the ground.
Tekoriikii blurred his silly, stubby wings, dragging his brilliant tail across the sky. He sped scarcely a wingtip's length above the ground toward a gateway now fixed at only two feet tall. No airborne creature could possibly make the gap. The hippogriffs hurtled themselves into greater speed, long wings whipping up and down as they outstretched their deadly claws.
"Tek Tek-a-tek Tekorii-kii-kii!"
As the scout leader goggled, a small sally port opened in the portcullis. The bird folded flat its wings and shot like an arrow through the little door, which instantly slammed shut in its wake.
Hippogriff riders, moving too fast to break off their manic dives, hauled at their reins and screamed. Men collided with each other, plowed into the moat, or crashed straight into the gatehouse walls. Screaming like a frightened maid, the scout leader somehow laid his hippogriff on its side; man and mount slammed into the hard-packed road and slithered on their flanks, screaming in fear as the jagged portcullis spines ripped past-a hairsbreadth overhead.
They hit a garbage barrel, showering themselves with refuse until they came to rest buried in a pile of dung. Flapping weakly in shock and pain, the scout leader and his battle steed could do nothing but collapse as a brilliant orange figure fluttered to rest at their side.
"Glub glub!"
Tekoriikii made to sing a song of triumph over his vanquished foes, but to his extreme annoyance, both man and hippogriff screamed in fright and fainted clean away. Sniffing in injured pride, the bird scraped dust over his victims with his claws, fluffed up his tail feathers, and strutted off toward the battlefield.
From his vantage point behind the lines, Svarezi slammed his perspective glass shut. His sorcerers streamed in panic from the field, hounded by monsters summoned by enemy magicians; his entire corps of mages had been destroyed by a peasant militia crammed into wagons.
Svarezi's brooding silence was terrible to behold. He watched the enemy war wagons halting to allow their infantry to close the gaps between the vehicles and slowly begin trundling onward toward his own battle lines.
Behind him, an officer stilled his own pure silver warhorse with a pat of one armored hand.
"We disabled almost ten of them, sire."
"Ten." Svarezi's voice remained utterly without tone. "I see."
"Rock to mud spells proved fairly effective."
Svarezi swung himself up into his hippogriff's saddle, stilling the creature's brooding backward glance with a scowl. He wrapped the reins about one wrist.
"They have demolished a sorcery corps which cost almost three hundred thousand ducats to amass-and all for the cost of ten wagons bogged in the mud." Svarezi kept his cold, professional stare locked on the advancing attack. "We shall make an all-arms assault at the center of their line. Use one third of the army and match them one-to-one. Once the Lomatran forces are committed, I will personally lead the reserves on a drive to the city gates.
"The Sun Cannon will wait until we have descended the hill slopes out of line of sight, and then have it blow their wagons clean away."
Svarezi raised one black, mailed fist, then dropped his open hand to point straight at the valley floor. Behind him twenty thousand densely packed infantry, demilancers, and knights surged toward Lomatra like a vast, organic wall.
"Here they come! I think we've jerked their chains." Miliana had been sitting perched on the upper turret hatch of her war-turtle, watching Tekoriikii's antics overhead. Her reverie came to a dramatic end as catapults began firing from the ridges overhead. "Stir up the horses, and let's get moving!"
She slammed shut the hatch, flicked mistletoe onto Lorenzo's back, and heard a muffled sound of voices from outside as militia packed themselves tight behind the war-turtle's hull. The surviving vehicles scuttled on across the ground like deadly crabs, thickening out a line of the Lomatran alliance's best infantry.
Safely inside the armored hull, Miliana frowned, crammed her eyes against her periscopes, and gave a sudden curse.
"Lorenzo-you know how I said we were outnumbered about three to one?"
"What?" Lorenzo peered through his driving slits, steering the huge vehicle by a series of cranks and ratchets. "Yes?"
"I lied. There's ten to one odds out there, or I'm a garden gnome!"
"It doesn't matter!" Lorenzo let his vision slit clank shut, the hull outside rattling to a sudden rain of arrow fire. "Is Tekoriikii clear?"
"What?"
"Did Tekoriikii get rid of all their air cavalry?"
"Yes!" Miliana had to shout above the awful clatter of hooves, springal winches, and catapult wheels inside the belly of the wagon. "When should he make his run?"
"Not until all their troops have moved away from the artillery!" Lorenzo swung the war-turtle to the left, where it jounced over the ruins of a warrior-priest of Tempus's portable battle shrine. "All we need to do is get that bird to the Sun Cannon, and we can retire behind the city walls."
Suddenly the entire universe lit brighter than a bomb; searing white light glared in through the vision slits, burning paint and scorching skin that fell beneath the beams. The war-turtle shuddered as a shock wave trembled through the ground.
Wide-eyed as an owl, Miliana gazed down at Lorenzo in shock.
"What in the name of Talos's tongue was that?"
Crew commanders flung open their hatches to stare. In the center of the alliance battle line, a smoking crater still glowed with molten lava at the rims. A scorched debris of pikes and polearms showed the fate of a company of infantry.
The surrounding regiments were milling in disarray; men who had been gazing in the direction of the blast were blinded by the dazzle. Lorenzo stuck his head out into the open air, stared at the blazing destruction, and gave a bitter curse.
"Miliana! Signal the other war-turtles!"
"Was that the Sun Cannon?" The girl still seemed frozen in utter disbelief. "Was it? Was that the Sun Cannon?"
"Yes, it was the damned Sun Cannon!" Lorenzo abandoned his horses and crawled across the crossbowmen's firing platform to reach the rear of the vehicle. "Miliana! Signal the turtles to make smoke! We're abandoning the infantry!"
"Abandoning them?" The princess wrenched herself around, tangling skirts and frilly knickers as she tried to find the artist as he crawled under her. "We can't leave them all alone!"
"We have to!" A fuse sparked off a pot filled with a sulphurous black brew. "The Sun Cannon can't shoot at what it can't see! We'll leave the infantry in the smoke screen, and the turtles will draw its fire." Lorenzo set his smudge pot spewing dense clouds of smoke behind the tank and crawled clumsily over the backs of his draft horses. "The turtles will punch through the center of their battle line and head for their reserves."
"Lorenzo-we can't leave the infantry all alone against those… hordes!"
Lorenzo slipped into his seat, flipped open his vision flaps, and wrenched the vehicle over to one side.
"It's safer! Once his army closes with the infantry, the Sun Cannon can't fire at them any more!"
Once again the outside world sheeted brilliant white. This time the beam centered on a war-turtle, hit the mirror tiles sheathing the ceramic skin, and scattered wildly away. The searing light scorched soil to the turtle's front and melted the mirrors, but left the vehicle unharmed. The singed leviathan staggered but struggled on, its crew insulated from the heat by the ceramic hull.
Pulling free her spectacles to reveal a sunburned face, Miliana risked a peek at the outside world, then scowled down at Lorenzo.
"What are these damned things made out of anyway?"
"They're mirror tiles; silver sprayed over the back of clear glass."
"Really?" Miliana tried to rub the dazzle from her eyes. "Aren't they expensive?"
"Never you mind!" Lorenzo attended to his steering controls "Just make the damned signal!"
Miliana waited for the violet afterglow from the Sun Cannon to fade, then popped the upper hatch. Removing her pointy hat, she uncapped the tip and used the garment as a megaphone.
"War-turtles make smoke! All war-turtles make smoke!" Miliana's high pitched voice whirled out across the chaotic battle front like a thin bird caught in the breeze. "Form on the flagship for fast assault!"
Spewing vast billows of black smog which left the infantry coughing and frantically reaching for their sea-sponge gas masks, the war-turtles lumbered into a tighter formation. Miliana signaled the charge with her most impressive hat. Hatches clanged shut as the vehicles built up speed, rocking wildly as the horses found their footing on the solid valley floor and built up a crazy momentum. Here and there a vehicle squealed its brakes as the horses began to lose control of the runaway wagons.
A brilliant sun bolt scored the ground and clipped a war-turtle; the huge vehicle exploded like a bomb as the ray hit battle-damaged mirrors and stabbed into the hull beyond.
"Drawing its fire?" Clutching to her seat as the charge bounded wildly over broken ground, Miliana stared agog at the ruins of their fellow battle wagon. "Lorenzo!"
"I didn't say we'd survive!" The inventor whipped the horses into greater speed. "I just said it was best for everybody else!"
"Oh, wonderful!" Miliana lurched, frantically grabbing for handholds as the turtle sped toward the vast wall of enemy infantry. "Aren't you going to slow down?"
"No!"
"I thought not." The princess settled her spectacles grimly on her eyes. "Load explosive!"
"Explosive loaded-weapon up!"
"Shoot!" Miliana scarcely felt the twang as a pot-load of priceless smoke powder was lobbed into the enemy ahead."… and then hold on tight!"
Nineteen gigantic battle wagons, all careening along at breakneck speed, smashed into a titanic formation of Svarezi pikemen. Useless spears bowed and snapped like twigs, rattling off mirror plates and shattering apart. Soldiers flew to every side like broken puppets as the vehicles impacted on the tight-packed mobs of men. Miliana retched as she felt the wheels judder across a surface that felt like corduroy paving, but came accompanied by a demented peal of screams.
A whip cracked, urging the horses on as they bogged down against the outside mass; a bucket of darts was upended over the whirring flywheel, spraying shot into the outside world. Bombs exploded, and Miliana's artillery crew fired unbidden, hammering lethal clouds of darts into the mob beyond.
Infantry scattered in terror, and the battle vehicles lurched on; a storm of crossbow fire flicked like hail from the hulls as a new line of troops compacted in front of the monsters and prepared to resist the assault.
With a sudden cry, a swarm of swordsmen raced out from behind the lines, crashing into the wagons and trying to tip them over with their hands.
Lorenzo felt the vehicle rocking and frowned at the blades and spear shafts jabbing under the hull. The enemy crammed themselves against the vehicles' fronts and jammed in their heels, braking the ponderous wagons to a halt, trying to lever the war-turtles over on their backs.
All of which allowed the choking clouds from the turtles' burning smudge pots to envelop the valley floor. Pressure eased as Svarezi's infantry scattered away to every side, fighting desperately for air.
"Don't pursue! Get in among the enemy lines so the Sun Cannon can't fire!"
Blocked from firing at the Lomatran infantry or vehicles, the Sun Cannon vented its fury on the city walls. Whole lengths of battlements were sliced like wedding cake, slumping into molten heaps of slag.
Watching the battle wagons charge, Ugo Svarezi curbed his hissing hippogriff and nodded to his heralds. The young men stood in their stirrups and raised trumpets to their lips, signaling the reserves to concentrate in readiness for the coup de grace.
The Lomatran forces were engaged, and all that was needed for a victory was a simple envelopment-a sharp dash to cut the enemy's route back into the city, then a charge to take their militia in the rear. The expensive loss of troops against the war wagons could be forgotten, and the lives of foreign mercenaries scarcely mattered to Svarezi's schemes. He would raise more foreign regiments on the loot from this one campaign, and the Blade Kingdoms would prove the stepping stone to empire. With a slash of his hand, he sent four thousand horsemen sweeping wide around the enemy, heading toward the Trevi River, which emptied past the walls into the sea. The stream stood low, the path to victory lay open, and in minutes the Lomatran alliance would be no more.
Beneath a tree beside the river, Luccio Irozzi lounged idly in the water watching the battle on the plains. Naked save for sharkskin flippers, a loincloth, and a long snorkel lashed to his head, he winced as he felt cold goosebumps creeping all across his skin. He watched the dark cloud of Svarezi's cavalry reserves begin their envelopment, checked that their path would intersect his little haven from the storm, and slipped an outlandish diving helmet into place across his head.
"I believe it's time to sink beneath the drink." The young noble slithered deeper into the water, ducking splashes as dozens of nixies rose all around him to stand high in the water on their thrashing fins, staring at the encroaching cavalry. Princess Krrrr-poka hefted a long battle trident to signal her men, and one by one the creatures ducked out of sight beneath the river.
The water was three feet deep, a vile smoky green, and freezing cold with snowmelt from the mountaintops. Teeth chattering with the cold, Luccio eased his tender body down into the water and concealed his snorkel tube among the reeds.
In a tree above, Tekoriikii continued happily bouncing up and down, using the whip motion of the branches to give him a clear view across the field. He watched the huge infantry lines engage; saw the war-turtles bashing their way toward the mountain passes. Finally, he saw the high roads begin streaming with cavalry. The Svarezi reserves abandoned their protective stance about the Sun Cannon and descended from the ridgeline high above, forming lines and advancing at a sharp trot to the stream. Opening his wings, the bird crossed his eyes and tried to remember his instructions, then let the air shiver to a great, delighted cry.
Tekoriikii the firebird ceased bouncing up and down in his tree. His feather-brain quite clearly remembered the spectacular trick he was to play. Ascending to the now safe, deserted skies, he thrashed his way off toward the Sun Cannon, where it sat all alone above the pass.