Ethan walked with his group over to where Seth now stood in the middle of the angry priests. "Seth, are you okay over here?" he asked. Ethan knew it was a rhetorical question. After all, he couldn't think of a time or situation where Seth hadn't been all right.
Seth only smiled back in Ethan's direction. "Oh yes, no problem," he said. "I was just about to teach these men a lesson."
Now they grew more enraged, yet no one made a move to attack him. "I'll take him on first," one of the priests said.
"Why not all together?" Seth laughed. "I wouldn't want to take advantage of you, after all."
If the blind priest had been attempting to bait them, he had now succeeded. Ethan watched as the men surrounding Seth came at him. First one and then two more were quickly knocked back into the others.
The priests took stock of themselves quickly and reorganized. Okay, so it wouldn't be quite that easy. They formed a circle and then began to move in on Seth in a more organized fashion, trying to coordinate their attacks for success.
Once again, Seth took them on. The first he gouged in the ribs with a precisely placed front kick that sent the man doubled over in pain to the ground. The second and third, who came at the same time, he smashed in the jaw and swept the legs out from under, respectively. The remainder of the dozen attempted a rush and tackle which led Seth to dodge back and forth, blocking and attacking the closest, then next and so on, until all of them lay around him on the ground, holding one or two locations on their bodies in pain. Seth alone remained standing with a sour look on his face.
"Now, you sluggards, you will stand and go through the exercises I prescribe without another word, or I'll thrash you until every single one of you spends the entirety of Mordred's siege in the infirmary eating your food through a straw!"
Ethan had never seen Seth so fierce. He was almost prepared to line up himself. The priests, for their part, quickly got to their feet, despite their new pains, and stood erect, awaiting Seth's instructions. "Very good," he said with a stern smile. He nodded at Ethan, then went on with the training. Ethan went back to his own group and began again. There wouldn't be much time to whip these men into shape. Mordred's army would not wait.
ADVANCE
Gideon watched as Mordred's army worked like insects to bring themselves ashore in the Northern Bay. The cluster of so many large ships in the bay made it appear as though a floating city had been erected overnight. Mordred had brought such a force, Gideon wondered how they could ever be stopped by any means King Stephen might still possess. His overwhelming defeat at Emmanuel had left Wayland's king with precious few resources with which to wage war. Now war was coming to him instead.
The barges crowded the huge stretch of beach having been run as far aground as possible. Gideon had wondered how they would manage to unload their engines of war without them all sinking to the bottom of the bay, but now Mordred's genius shined through. The giants, whom he had seen housed within the walls of Emmanuel City, now served as the muscle to bring Mordred's barges closer to shore.
The big Anakims heaved upon huge sections of rope, at least two hundred per barge, dragging their vessels up, up, up until the bows sat upon the sand of Wayland's shore. With more work, the ropes were then attached to separate moorings upon the decks. Entire forward portions of each deck were then unlocked and pulled forward on hundreds of ball bearings.
The deck plates, reinforced with a meshwork of steel construction underneath, then were eased down to the shore upon the shoulders of the giants. In the end, each forward deck had been transformed into a massive ramp reaching almost completely to the solid ground beyond the beach.
The crew was now free to unload the engines of war fastened to the deck plates, rolling them forward as trees were quickly cleared in order to make a suitable path. A narrow dirt road, leading from the beach back through the trees and into the countryside beyond, was quickly transformed into a much widened thoroughfare. Catapults, great battering rams, and siege engines were assembled on deck and then rolled down to take up their places in an ever lengthening parade headed toward Wayland's capital city of Evelah.
Most of the Anakims had taken up the duty of clearing the way. With axe heads as big as a man, they cut down large trees as though hacking their way through mere brush. Others tossed or rolled the felled trees out of the way. With nearly a thousand of the giants all working to accomplish the tasks, in addition to the hybrid soldiers, the whole ordeal came off with startling efficiency.
Gideon watched it unfold for nearly two hours, himself fascinated by it and wondering what he might do to at least slow them down. So far he had been unable to come up with any good plan. Mordred's Man-o-wars had been, all this time, unloading the main company of soldiers and their provisions onto smaller, shore-going boats. The Man-o-wars remained anchored behind the line of barges in the harbor. But as the ships had been lightened of their burdens, Gideon noticed something new happening onboard.
The hybrid crews had refashioned the sail rigging into some sort of net system which was then suspended from each of the three masts. As Gideon watched, the crews then brought out and unfolded what Gideon first supposed to be sail cloth. But beneath the suspended cloth, fires had been lit in special stoves. The cloth began to fill with hot air and rise up from the decks of the Man-o-wars.
Gideon still did not realize what Mordred was doing by the time the cloth had ballooned up into the nets. The material continued its expansion, with the flaming stoves stoked hot beneath them, until the canvas had billowed higher than the masts themselves and threatened to burst the nets which had been fabricated to hold them. Then, to Gideon's complete astonishment, one of the Man-o-wars began to rise up out of the water.
Water cascaded down from the ship's hull as the sea going vessel left its native habitat to take up residence in the atmosphere. It rose steadily higher until the ship was nearly as high as the surrounding trees. The other Man-o-wars began to do the same-each filling its sail cloth sacks with hot air and leaving the sea for the clouds.
Upon each of the Man-o-wars, smaller sections of sail sprang out from both the starboard and port sides at mid-ship. Rotating fans of wood were mounted near the flanking sails and wind cranked into them by mechanisms working deep inside the ship. The Man-o-wars, now airborne, launched forward under their own wind, gliding forward effortlessly above the treetops toward the city of Evelah.
They weren't fast, by any means, but that wouldn't change the fact that they would reach Wayland's capital much faster than the rest of the army. And if Mordred had devised these new craft for his attack, then there must be a great deal of danger in them. Gideon watched them, fascinated, for a moment longer before realizing that all of the small villages he had seen during his trek here would certainly be destroyed as the ground army moved toward the main city.
Thirty floating, flying Man-o-wars passed out of sight beyond the trees as the Anakims continued their labor below, allowing the ground army to make headway toward Evelah. Gideon had only one choice. He had to ride as fast as he could in order to reach each village and warn them in time to escape. Before the swords of this army, there would be no one spared, no pity, and no remorse.
Gideon hadn't been as fast as he had hoped. He'd not been close to the road leading back into Wayland, opting for a vantage point on the Isthmus where he could better see what was in the bay. That advantage had cost him his ability to get ahead of the surging front of Mordred's forces.
Still, under the cover of the forest, Gideon had managed to pass the slower progress of the giant Anakims as they moved a great swathe of trees from the path of the army following behind them. But cavalry had ridden ahead of everyone else and were already plundering the first village in their path when Gideon arrived on horseback.