She circled, her hawk spreading its webbed tentacles to catch the meager thermals rising up from the town below. She could make out several warships in the harbor, their edges blurred by the movement of hundreds of people loading more equipment and weapons. Smaller vessels bobbed alongside, and farther out in the bay, constantly dodging chunks of ice many times their size, dozens more warships awaited the signal to depart. Even this high up there was a thrill in the air, a hint of excitement that Lenora had not felt for three centuries. Through all their time here-their catastrophic arrival, the battles that followed, the eventual subduing of the people they had found already living in this forsaken land-there had never been anything to really offer hope. Now Lenora thought that everything they had lived for down the years may well come true, something that even she had sometimes doubted. Fully armed and ready to fly south, she felt her love for the Mages glowing as strong as ever.
Their summons had come just that morning, and she had flown a hawk up into the Mages’ remote mountain keep. They had told her of the whispers from Noreela-the Nax awake, the Red Monks on the move-and she had not asked how they knew. They had their spies and ways. The implication of their words was huge; that magic was back in the land! She had seen the light of exhilaration in their ancient eyes, and Lenora left knowing that this was her last day on Dana’Man. She had packed her weapons and clothing without a moment’s regret.
Every breath froze her lungs, every thought was informed by the cold. This high up, Lenora picked up layers of sparkling frost on her face and clothing as the hawk drifted through hazy clouds. Her bald head glittered with ice. Her furs and leathers were stiff and cracked from the cold, but her blood burned inside, filled with rage and anticipation of the weeks to come. Soon she would feel the warmth of the Noreelan sun on her skin again. And then, when the fighting was done and magic was back in the hands of the Mages, Lenora would be free to seek her own very personal revenge.
There was movement far below, a hundred specks passing across the snowfields and then drifting across the harbor, rising higher and coming up to meet her. Her Krote warriors on their hawks. They all knew their mission, and she sensed their eagerness, heard it in the shouts and laughter that accompanied their approach. Weapons glinted in the ice-cold sunlight, and Lenora could not recall the last time she had seen so many of her warriors smiling.
They circled their mighty hawks above the harbor for several minutes, shouting to one another, waving good-bye to the snow and ice, full of bravado yet doubtless harboring their own private thoughts: relief and trepidation; excitement and fear. Each Krote carried arrows and stars, shield and slingshot, pouches and bottles of various poisons. Singly they were fearsome; together, in a group so large, they looked like the end of the world.
“Let’s go and find some sun!” Lenora shouted. She was the first to peel away from the formation and dip her hawk’s nose, heading out to sea. Warships passed by below her, then a couple of small coastal patrols, and then within minutes the sea’s surface was disturbed only by giant icebergs, and the occasional splash of something huge rising and submerging again.
Lenora had dreamed of this forever. As they flew south toward Noreela for the first time in three hundred years, she remembered the day she left…
SOMEHOW IT HADall gone wrong. The Mages-the exiled Shantasi Mystic S’Hivez and his lover, Angel-had lived so many dreams, won so many rapid victories, drawn so much power to their sides in the magic they had twisted to their ways… and now they and the remnants of their army fought their final defense on the northernmost beaches of Noreela. Disbelief clouded Lenora’s vision. It was a hazy red, the color of life, as if blood were teasing her eyes before leaking away forever. She had no doubt that she was going to die. Whatever strange powers the Mages once had, the ferocity of the Noreelan people’s army had shattered her confidence, leaving it strewn across the Noreelan landscape and trodden down into battle-bloodied soil. They had been fighting for weeks, and the only end in sight was death.
The beaches here on this nameless island were wide, high dunes marking the dividing line between sand and the lush forests farther inland. Some of the dunes sprouted corpses, like sapling trees seeking the sun, and the hollows in between were quagmires of blood and guts. The dead outnumbered the living, and their majority was growing every minute. Several days earlier the two Mages had still been able to raise dead Krotes and throw them back at the enemy-shambling zombies that the Noreelans could only stop by hacking to pieces. And ten days before that-at the Battle of Lake Denyah-dead Krotes’ wraiths had been forced into battle by the Mages, a nebulous army that could not be stabbed or killed. Now they could do neither, and each Krote killed merely reduced their army by one more.
The Krotes were trapped between land and sea, on a stretch of beach maybe half a mile in length. They were harried at both ends by Noreelans mounted or on foot, while from the forests beyond the sand dunes came frequent machine attacks. The Noreelan war machines were graceful things, long legs and scything arms that kicked or cut Krotes aside every time they attacked. Some of them had been brought down-their mounts slaughtered, the machines themselves hacked at until they came apart-but still metal limbs thrashed at the sand, and ruptured stone bodies leaked blood and other fluids as they thumped across the beach.
The Mages’ final machines had failed two days ago. As the last one ground to a halt and tipped over, crushing its rider, it was already stinking of decay. Lenora had stood aside in stunned disbelief as the Mage S’Hivez shouted and raged at the dead machine, throwing pulses of sickly light at its clotted arteries and molten metal joints. It had done no good, of course, and the Krotes had fled on foot. The Mages had drifted overhead, directing the battle from atop their hawks and sweeping down now and then to pluck up a screaming Noreelan. Several times Lenora had seen these unfortunate victims thrown from the hawks’ backs, shriveled and denuded from their brief time with the Mages. Loose-limbed and bloodless. Eyes sucked from their sockets. The viciousness of the Mages had encouraged her to keep fighting.
The sand beneath her feet was sticky with blood, clotting to her leather shoes and slowing her down. She tripped over hacked-off limbs and headless bodies. Someone grasped at her ankle and she kicked him away, spitting down at the wounded Krote’s face. His fight was over, hers was still at its height. If she remembered, she would go back soon to put him out of his misery.
She fought at their left flank, hacking at advancing Noreelans with her heavy sword. She had run out of stars and discs and arrows long ago, and she had lost her slingshot when it became embedded in a Noreelan’s spine. That had torn a swath of skin from her right forearm, and now sand was stinging the wound. The agony kept her awake and alive, maintained the rage that had driven her for days, ever since they had burst from the Mages’ keep and forced the Noreelan army back into Lake Denyah.
Then something had happened. Her memory of it was vague, its taste rank in her mouth, but it had been bad; a change in the air, a shiver through the ground as the land took a breath. At the height of battle, victory had been snatched from them. The Mages’ grasp on defiled magic had held for a dozen more days, but a purer magic had seemed to present a final defense, empowering the Noreelans to launch a counterattack in such huge numbers that the Krote army had been overwhelmed. For every ten thousand Noreelans they killed, twenty thousand took their place. Zombies of Krote dead waded into the throng, taking twenty with them before they were hacked to pieces. Wraiths spun and thrashed, whipping at the flesh of the enemy and opening them to steam into the night, before Noreelan priests managed to put them down. The untrained Noreelan army had gathered momentum, sucking power from the land and launching it at the Krote army with wave after wave of machine attacks. Surprised, overwhelmed, the flight north had begun.