‘HellFire,’ he said.
A dozen columns of fire crashed through the roofs of occupied dwellings, deluging victims and devastating buildings. Wood and flame filled the air. Burning figures ran from buildings, noise pounded the ears.
At the end of their sweep, the Protectors dismounted in almost balletic synchronicity and jogged back through the carnage, axes now drawn in spare hands. The village was in chaos. The dozen buildings hit by Styliann’s soul-searching HellFire burnt fiercely, sending palls of black smoke into the sky. Survivors of the flames and the first Protector charge ran, some for the trees, some for their weapons. One marched towards the unprotected Styliann.
The Lord of the Mount slid from his horse, his magical shield formed and deployed immediately following the HellFire, sword drawn. The Shaman cast, ten black tendrils coursing at Styliann, playing over the shield and sending lines of force around his body. The shield should have breached under the pressure. Styliann could see that in the Shaman’s eyes.
‘Oh dear,’ said Styliann. He walked forward and punched the Shaman with the pommel of his sword. Around him, the Protectors, silent, fast, ruthlessly efficient, were firing the remaining buildings and slaughtering everyone they found, young or old, suffering hardly a scratch as they advanced. The Shaman fell back, stumbling to his knees. Styliann’s kick into his face hurled him clear on to his back, where he sprawled, blood covering his nose and cheeks. The Lord of the Mount crouched by him, the terrified man unable to do anything but stare into his face.
‘You will be a message to your masters, your village will be a shrine to all who follow me, its buildings left to blacken, its people carrion, rotting as they lie unburied in the sun.’
‘Who are you?’
Styliann smiled. ‘Dare not challenge the power of Xetesk.’ He slapped the Shaman’s hand from his nose and placed his own hand over the man’s mouth, holding it there while casting a FlamePalm directly into his throat. The Shaman died, writhing in agony, fire from his eyes and nostrils, hair smouldering and cracking. Styliann rose, dusted himself down and remounted his horse.
‘Disengage!’ he ordered. He looked about him satisfied, wondering if Parve would burn as well.
‘Close up!’ yelled Darrick. ‘Deploy shields.’
The four-College cavalry was ploughing along the main trail between Understone and Parve before turning north to come at Parve from what Darrick assumed would be right angles to The Raven. They tore down the trail and hammered into the front of the Wesmen force, stopped along the trail and barely armed and ready by the time they were hit.
‘Shields up!’ called a mage as the spearmen at the front of the column scythed the first Wesmen aside. The cavalry galloped through, swords slicing left and right, shields flaring as Shamen magic hit but couldn’t penetrate the overlapping College spells. They didn’t pause, didn’t turn and didn’t look back, and in their wake, seventy Wesmen would never make Understone Pass.
Leaving the main trail shortly afterwards for the northern marches, two days from the Torn Wastes, Darrick drew his cavalry to a halt and a well-earned rest stop.
‘Was that really necessary?’ asked one of his mages.
‘No,’ said Darrick. ‘But I’ll tell you something, it was bloody good fun.’
And all about them, the smiles returned to the faces of his warriors.
Barras stood in the watchtower, unable to drag himself away as light faded on the penultimate day of peace in Julatsa. Behind the old elf mage, his College City prepared for a war they couldn’t hope to win following the slaughter at Triverne Inlet only three days before. So many men, so many mages had gone, and while relief had been promised, none of it had arrived. Xetesk had even reported Styliann on his way with a hundred Protectors, but Barras knew in his heart where Styliann had gone.
And so he stood, watching the dark mass of Wesmen advancing. They would be within range of spells early the next morning, and Barras shivered at the thought of the white and black fire that the Shamen used, gouging the heart of Julatsa.
The City and College Guards were ready, the College’s mages were briefed and positioned, but Barras knew that, failing a miracle, Julatsa would be in Wesmen hands by nightfall the day after tomorrow. They simply had no winning answer to the Shamen magic. Yes, they could shield effectively against it, but the drain on mana and mage resources was so great, it left too few to cast offensively. And with Julatsan swordsmen outnumbered better than four to one, and with no walls around the City, the outcome of the battle was inevitable because the Shamen never seemed to tire.
Barras felt his eyes filling with tears as he recalled the stories of his great-grandfather, who, as a young mage, had witnessed the first Wytch Lord-backed Wesmen invasion. Towns and cities on fire, crops torched, bodies scattered, children fatherless. Refugees clustered in shelter where they could, marauding bands of Wesmen murdering everyone they found and the Shamen, nowhere near as powerful as this time, performing rites and sacrifices as they claimed eastern lands for their own.
It was all going to happen again and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. And this time there was no mage force capable of defeating the Wytch Lords, there was no army capable of routing the Wesmen. The only hope was The Raven, but Barras had so many doubts about their chances of success. His last prayer as he made his weary way down from the tower was that they would destroy Dawnthief if they couldn’t cast it.
A shudder went through his body, then a moment of calm. At least if the spell fell into Wytch Lord hands, the suffering of the peoples of the east would be short.
Safe for now, with night falling to cloak their hiding place in the hills, Blackthorne, Gresse and the remnants of the Bay of Gyernath force sat in cold contemplation of their fate. Already, many of the mercenaries had left to prepare for the fights for their own families, or simply to run, meaning that little over four hundred swordsmen and mages remained to slow the relentless progress of the Wesmen towards Understone.
Gresse, his left arm bandaged and good for little but lifting his fork to his mouth, bit into his bread, speaking after he had washed it down with water.
‘They’ll be at Understone in less than three days if we don’t delay them again. We have to try.’
‘It’s suicide,’ said Blackthorne, his face smeared with dirt and lined by the constant attrition of his forces. Five times they had attacked the Wesmen and five times they had been driven away by a combination of the Shamen magic and the increasing ferocity of the Wesmen themselves. They had two horses for every three men, and taking away the wounded and exhausted, around three hundred and fifty men fit to fight on.
‘We can’t let them take Understone,’ said Gresse. ‘Not without - what was it you said? - giving them something to think about. If they do, they’ll control all the entry points to the east and the Colleges will be open from both flanks.’
‘So what do you suggest?’ asked Blackthorne wearily.
‘First light tomorrow, we hit them from the front. The Shamen are far enough to the rear of the lines to give us a few seconds’ killing time before we have to put the shields up, and at least it’ll stop them moving.’
‘They’ll slaughter us.’
Gresse nodded. ‘I know. But a battle lasting an hour will delay them most of the day once they have re-formed, burned their dead and made sure we are gone for good.’
Blackthorne looked long at his friend, the older man’s eyes still twinkling in his head, his energy seemingly boundless. He had a better idea, but the result would be no less final.
‘We’ll take them at the Varhawk Crags,’ said Blackthorne. ‘There, we can station archers and mages to cause trouble to the centre of the column while we make a double-shielded charge into the front.’
‘How far?’
‘We need to leave now or the mages will not get enough rest. And we need to leave quietly or the Wesmen will hear us.’ Blackthorne felt himself coming alive. They were going to die but they were going to go down in a river of blood and mana fire.