Frays In The Weave

Another explosion spread shrapnel all over Ming Hjil de Verd, but this time no one stood unprotected. As always any grenade falling directly on a street failed to do any damage other than to surrounding walls. Windows were another matter of course.

He ran along the battlements and made it to another watchtower just before the barrage started again. At least the magic of Verd prevented any damage to foundations and city walls. That went for the towers as well, and anyone inside one was safe.

Pushing himself further inside he climbed the stairs to the first missile platform. It was manned, not because there was anything within spear"s range, but for the simple reason it was a vantage point and soldiers needed to do something to feel useful against an enemy they couldn"t even see.

The men there looked scared but not panicked. Good, they had listened to his warnings as well as his comforting words. He climbed another set of stairs, and another.

Up here the explosions seemed more muted, but they were still loud enough to hurt his ears. Being caught inside the city would be awful now, and in difference from his soldiers the population had nowhere to flee. They could only stay indoors and pray that the next sh.e.l.l didn"t turn their home into a tomb.

Trindai sighed and wiped dirt from his face. Unfair, but the boys in uniforms had become men only a little time earlier. He had managed to bring most of them home, but close to a thousand lay left behind like a string of corpses all the way from the sky port to Verd. Unsurprisingly his cavalry were the least hurt. Horses were a lot faster than running men. A phalanx had nothing to do in a battle against outworlder weapons, but he had known it was really only a pretend battle. They were a sacrifice. He had sacrificed unknowing boys because Keen needed the dead. There would be a reckoning later, but now he had to continue sacrificing soldiers until Verd herself woke and activated her defences

Exactly what was going to happen was a bit unclear, but old doc.u.ments suggested it would more than even the odds. And it was all pure magic, which made him more than a little uneasy. Tolerant or not, he was still a citizen of Keen.

He stared out the slits. Waiting. Waiting and listening to how his city was shredded by the invisible enemy. They had to come here, within sight. The scholars had been adamant on that point. Magecrafters working on Verd"s defences hadn"t even begun to fathom an enemy who couldn"t be seen. To this end he allowed the men who trusted him to die.

A long line of them were manning the walls now. To be seen and to lure the enemy closer, and to die.

Sh.e.l.ls started their slow march from the centre of the city to the eastern walls. It had worked then. Someone was out there watching them, telling whoever worked the outworlder cannons that uniformed targets were on the walls.

Soon after sharp cracks announced direct fire from the smaller guns, and Trindai"s men were cut down where they stood. Most were simply thrown backwards. Dead before they hit the streets, but a few managed a cry before they fell to their deaths.

He closed his fists in impotent rage. Yellow and black. Yellow and white. Yellow and brown. And now, yellow no longer. The soiled uniforms were red, and the men inside only broken bodies.

Then, finally, morale broke, and a few survivors fled the walls. His victims, his accusers. Each one a silent witness to the worst losses any commanding general in Keen had taken for hundreds of years.

After that the march came to a halt, and grenades ate even the few who had managed to reach the streets safely.

Satisfied that the sh.e.l.ling had done its work whoever directed the guns ordered them to return to their primary target. Again explosion after explosion tore at the imperial castle. Trindai hoped they would continue to do so for a long time. The castle was magecrafter built, and nothing the outworlders had could as much as scratch its surface. Shrapnel were still a danger, but even ordinary stone walls kept it at bay as long as it had to travel all across the square before slamming into a building.

Tears welled up in his eyes. He could stop them no longer. Another two hundred dead. Only the G.o.ds knew how many thousands more lay dead inside the ruins. That question forced him to stare south.

On the fields outworlder sky ships burned. How many dead there were inside them he could only guess. Another sacrifice, but not one of his doing. The council had declared war on the outworlder kingdom known as the Terran Federation as soon as the first sky ship blew up.

He turned his attention eastward again. At last. Outworlder floating wagons made their way here. The idiot commander was so confident he allowed them to come on a column following the Vimarin Highway. Trindai swore silently. That idiot commander had every right to be exactly that confident now. After the first disasters on the fields west of the sky port nothing in the world had even hinted at a functional defence

It was time to take cover again. A lucky shot would make it through the slits and he was no use dead. Olvar had explicitly forbidden him to die together with his men. When this was over, and it would be within the day, Trindai promised himself he would meet Olvar and punch him to the floor. Gross insubordination or not, it didn"t matter. No one was supposed to stand and watch his men murdered. To order those murders.

Then the world turned itself inside out. He was no longer in Verd. He was nowhere. A landscape he"d only seen in his dreams stretched out before him. Fields moving like waves under green clouds, and the world wrenched again, and he was back.

Whatever had happened it wasn"t anything he wanted to experience again. He"d felt the world move when Escha and Trai used their magic two seasons earlier. He knew both were horribly strong, but it was nothing compared to the sensation of the world chewing him up and spitting him out again.

Below him the floor trembled. Dust danced in the air and he lost his balance. Crawling to the wall he watched how the racks with spears suddenly emptied. One moment they were there, neatly locked in place, the next all racks were empty.

The shaking stopped, and he was able to rise again. He came to unsteady feet, driven by a longing to see with his own eyes what had just happened. His hands cramped over the closest slit and he stared out, and down.

The ground was alive with men in ancient armour Larger than life men, and they marched toward the enemy. Verd held no such regiment. Trindai doubted Keen had used the type of armour he saw since days of legends almost forgotten.

Hundreds of men, each the size of a khraga, walked to meet an enemy as outlandish as themselves. How they expected to survive was beyond him, but he stared in fascination as they continued their steady march.

Slowly he realized they weren"t cut down the way they should. Nothing had a right to survive that hailstorm of outworlder missiles. Nothing but outworlder moving armour perhaps, and again realization struck him. This was moving armour. No human made them move. They were automations created to kill. Simple-minded and horrible.

Then one of them went down, and another. Whatever the magecrafters had done to them they were still not indestructible. He gritted his teeth. Had it all been for nothing? Unfair! Trindai yelled the childish thought over and over again, but the armoured monsters conjured from beneath the capital fell over one after another. Then they stopped. All of them, and Trindai cried out his denial.

A long line of armour just stood on the field, gaping holes in the formation showing the losses they had taken, and they did nothing to prevent more of them from crumbling under outworlder fire.

The next moment spears arrived in their hands. Trindai gagged down a laugh. Spears, the magic defences of Verd depended on spears. It was so laughable he could only shake his head.

And the spears flew. Nothing made in Keen could throw a spear like that, nothing at least that he could imagine. Hundreds of lamps away a deadly shower of spears rained down among the enemy, and by that time another volley was already in the air.

Again and again he felt the sensation of unreality as the towers magically emptied their racks. Beneath him he heard men yelling, and he knew they had just experienced the same impossibility. Soon those cries turned to jubilation as it became clear that the outworlders could die just the same as the defenders.

Trindai watched as the line of armour strode toward their targets never ceasing to release the deadly rain of spears. He wondered if the outworlders would break or not, if they could even start to comprehend what was happening or if they would just accept it as just another type of missiles.

The spears flew no more. Enemy guns once again started their hammering, but the monstrous soldiers shrugged it off and jumped into the air. And flew. They quickly caught speed, faster even than Goldberger"s men had been able to run in their armour

A few fell from the air, broken sh.e.l.ls of metal, but most made it all the way to the enemy lines.

Silence.

Silence so profound he wondered if he had turned deaf. At first he didn"t understand. Then he yelled with relief.

He saw the walls manned once again. With no outworlder missiles scything them clean any longer a grim curiosity took control of his men, and they climbed stairs and ladders to see what had happened.

Far away something went berserk. Hundreds of somethings. Trindai knew for an absolute certain that the killing machines had taken the battle to close quarters, a kind of combat he was sure outworlders were not properly trained to handle. They did their killing from a distance. Most, he guessed, hadn"t even been trained for a battle where they had to actually see the results their weapons inflicted. They would break. Faced with swords wielded by soulless monsters they would break.

Another thought claimed him. A question. Would the automations cease? Did they care if an enemy yielded or did they just go on killing until nothing was left to kill? Would they even cease killing after that? That was an awful possibility he didn"t want to linger on. Magecrafters weren"t stupid. He hoped they hadn"t been when they built the disgusting machines busy at b.l.o.o.d.y work.

It was silent no longer. Beneath him he heard the Vimarin Gates opening, and Colonel Berdaler rode out with his men. Ingeld must have come to the same conclusion, and now he was on his way to confirm that they had indeed won the day.

Trindai stared east. Still no sharp cracks, but the muted thunder of outworlder weapons told him they still lived and fought, and died. The dull booms came more seldom now, and Trindai doubted Ingeld would find any enemy soldiers alive when he finally reached their lines.