Two men Kall-Su had sent out as scouts in the early hours of morning came back over the rise to the east at a gallop. The sun was high in the sky, though one would never know it from looking, the clouds were so thickly grouped. The mists had risen perhaps a hour past and with them had gone the rain that had kept up through the night. It only came down as a fine spray now, barely perceptible to men who had lived perpetually in it for days on end.
The men looked up from under hoods and helms, warily awaiting the approach of the riders. Kall came out from under the shelter of the overhang as the horses skidded to a halt and the scouts swung down. All it took was a look at their faces and the men knew trouble was behind them. Kall lifted his chin and tightened his lips even before they caught the breath to report.
"My Lord. The southern army rides behind us. No more than two hours away."
They must have killed themselves to make that time. Larz was desperate then to catch up with him. He would, with three lame horses and wounded men to hinder Kall's speed -- with the very earth against them.
"We go south." He said. "I won't have this unpassable mountain at our backs. Double up on the sound horses. The men not wounded can walk."
They grimly nodded at those orders, not unaware of the tactical disadvantage of this place. Slowly they put distance between them and the mud covered slope of the mountain where the earth elemental had attacked them. The mist let up entirely and some small scrap of sun peeked through the cloud cover.
"My lord," Chanto walked next to his horse. "Will they attack out of hand or will they parlay if they catch us?"
"I'm through with parlay." Kall said. "Whatever comes, they brought it on themselves."
The lieutenant nodded, face white, young enough and new enough to Kall's forces not to have seen the wars of past years. The most he had seen were skirmishes with winter bandits in the mountains. But, Kiro must have trusted him if he put him in charge of those men he sent with his lord.
Chanto looked as if he might ask another question, but he paused, attention drawn to the east. An arrow sprouted of a sudden, from his neck. He did not even cry out as he was born into the side of Kall's horse. He clutched at the saddle briefly before the startled horse shied away. Men cried out. Arrows from a copse of trees to the east sailed through the air. Kall cursed and slashed a hand diagonally before him. The lot of arrows burst to pieces in mid-air, shattered bits falling harmlessly to the ground.
"To cover. To cover." Someone was crying. There was nothing but rocky slope behind them, and they hurried for that, sending pebbles and rocks rolling down the hill in their haste to climb it. Kall stayed where he was, holding his mount under tight rein, daring the hidden archers to fire another volley at him.
They did not. From out of the cover horsemen emerged. Armored knights on heavy horse, with emblems of the church on their overtunics. Holy swords, who were not only swordsmen but knew a spattering of magic to boot. They galloped into formation in preparation of a charge. Kall cast one look over his shoulder to see that his men were up the hill and under cover, before drawing breath and summoning the power for a spell. He needed something to rent the earth between here and there, making it unpalatable for horses to cross. A Reaver spell. Messy and cumbersome, but it would do the job.
He spoke the words, felt the power gather to its climax and released it to do its damage. The ground split not twenty feet before the charging heavy horse. The earth shook and rock exploded upwards like charges had been set every ten or twenty feet. It tore the earth like a sword going through soft flesh. Horses screamed and riders frantically sought to turn them away before they tumbled into the jagged, gash in the earth. Fifteen feet wide and five deep, it ran for perhaps a thousand yards in either direction.
A knight wheeled his horse and spurred the animal down the rough slope, calling to his fellows to follow his suit. The animal clattered over loose rock and lunged up the opposite side. The holy knight cried out in victory, sword held high.
"No." Kall said simply, narrowing his eyes. The sword crusted with ice. The arm did and the man screamed. The cry was abruptly aborted as his head and neck were frozen solid, followed by the rest of his body and the body of his horse. From one step to the next and the animal stiffened, toppled over and shattered into pieces.
The men across the rift had second thoughts about following their leader.
Priests of the High God chanted and prayed under the Prophet's watchful eye. He sat on a field stool amidst them, hands steepled before his face, listening to the monotonous chant, his mind elsewhere. He felt the release of magic and knew his calvery had reached Kall-Su and foolishly tested him without the benefit of magical backup to ward them against his spells. Fine. If they died, it was a useful enough distraction to keep him busy until Larz main force could catch up with him. Martyrs in the name of a higher purpose.
He rose and the priests faltered in their mantra. He waved them to continue and walked out of their circle. Sinakha became a shadow on his heels. It was time that he went to a place where he might better oversee this battle. It was time that the Prophet used the powers he had gained in the name of the high God to His benefit.
"Canambra." He whispered and felt the faint stirring of life force. The elemental was alive still, but wounded. It wanted nothing more than to hibernate in the cold, dark earth. The Prophet would not allow that. He did not need it to come to him to direct it.
"They're still alive. The men at the mountain. Go south and find them."
There was sluggish acceptance of his words. The elemental shifted into motion, groaning in its agony as it did. Angelo lifted his thin nose in satisfaction, the pain of a godless, soulless creature bent to his will was the sweetest bounty of all. Now all he needed was to snare a wizard or two to make his beatitude complete.
Chanto's blood was on his leg and his saddle. Cold anger seethed inside him. He took it out on the holy sword that dared to attack him and his. He called an ice elemental that was particularly gleeful in the handing out of destruction to do his bidding, setting it on the field of knights and letting it slice through them, freezing them as they ran screaming from it, then shattering them where they stood. The forest that hid the archers turned to a glade of icy spears and all the ground was covered in frost. Someone put up a shield and Kall wiped it away contemptuously.
They tried to retreat and he almost went after them, but for the sudden flaring of power behind him. The rocky face of the slope surged up, between him and his men. Shards of rock rained like hail upon his back and he barely got a shield up in time to deflect the worst of it. As it was he got hit by enough of it to hurt and pain spots danced at the edge of his vision. He hadn't the luxury of time to work a healing because the mountain side was intent on swallowing him.
It reared up like a great wave, blocking out the gray sky, and crashed down hill towards Kall. It was easier to try and avoid it, than summon a spell that might or might not dispel it. He kicked his horse into motion and the animal was more than happy to comply with a burst of frantic speed, greatly affronted with the dishonest way the earth had been acting under its hooves. The swell followed him, like some great creature glided under the surface of rock and dirt as easily as it might under water. His horse leapt awkwardly over a convulsing finger of rock that Kall hadn't even noticed. The ground was damned treacherous, and good sense said take to the air, but he balked at abandoning the faithful horse.
He was developing a distinct distaste for earth elementals. The damned things were ridiculously stubborn and hard to kill. He was tired of dealing with it, ready to use a high powered, energy draining spell to banish it once an for all. He wheeled his horse about, riding almost to the rift he had made in the field, trying to give himself enough distance to summon the spell before the thing was upon him. He spoke the words quickly, intensely, the ritual bidding punctuating the gathering forces that swirled around him.
It came up out of the earth before him, a ragged rendition of the elemental he had faced before, scarred from his prior attentions and all the more deadly looking from the jagged protrusions and gaping chunks missing from its earthy hide.
The air coalesced around it, turning hazy and thick. There was a sound, like the tinkling of glass, only deeper and more resonant, that quickly grew to a screeching crescendo. Of a sudden, it was like a thousand panes of glass had shattered. The air itself turned into shards of razor edged death. Spears the width of a finger and the thickness of a horse came from every direction, an inverted sphere that pierced the slab of moving earth a thousand times. That kept coming, forming out of the air and the very moisture of the earth itself. It writhed. Ice shattered on the ground about it. Pieces of itself fell with them. And it didn't stop. The cocoon of death around it grew, expanding as it sucked moisture out of the air to feed itself. Kall had to move away, the outer edges of it threatening even the spell caster. Anything it touched it would engulf. A thing of flesh, any thing of flesh no matter the size would have been long dead of it. It took more effort to destroy living earth. But it did. It broke away at the elemental until it was nothing but chips of dirt and rock on the ground, then continued to wreck the earth, creating a great crater that ate into half the mountain side before the shards of ice grew less and finally dissipated into a pool of frozen water that lay at the bottom of the pit.
Kall expelled the breath he had been holding, shuddering at the power that spell had drained out of him. He rode to the edge of the crater and stared down at it, rather satisfied with the intensity of the spell. All the rain in the air had fed it to a surprising crescendo. He heard distant shouts from his men, which he thought were celebratory, and his horse stomped skittishly, tack jangling. He looked to the north east, a darkness catching his eye. Over the hill top appeared a moving shadow that obscured the line of horizon and slowly spilled over the gentle slopes of those not too distant foothills. Larz army had arrived.
The Prophet's church ordained heavy horse had made a poor showing for themselves. His light horse he would use more carefully. The infantry was a half day behind them and beyond them the baggage and supply train had been left far in the wake. The king's army was in much the same situation. Six legions of foot soldiers left to make as quick a time as they might through soggy fields, while the not inconsiderable calvery sped ahead at the Prophet's dire urgings. Larz would have preferred not to have split his forces. Larz was canny enough general to realize that sheer numbers spread wide were an opposition that even a wizard couldn't deal with for too long of a time. There were only limited spells available to even the most powerful sorcerer and once they were employed only mundane means were left. With enough sacrifice, and enough men to make it, any battle could be won against magic. The Prophet embraced that creed. The king was not eager to employ it, but being the tactician that he was would not balk if there were no other choice.
Kall-Su was already weary. The Prophet was well aware of that, having kept a scrutinous eye to his activities. He felt the demise of Canambra, well and truly gone now, with no coming back. He felt a moments vexation over the loss of such a valuable tool. Elementals of that class were not so easy to enslave. It had taken four lifetimes to conquer that one.
He scowled blackly, out of the sight of his faithful, to whom he never showed more than serene tranquillity. The foot of his staff dug into soft earth, planted there by the pressure of his grip. He stood on a hillock half a mile from the point of conflict. Sinakha stood behind him, silent and wary, hands folded over the pommel of his greatsword which he had unsheathed before him. He saw the black ants that were Larz light horse spill over the hill, bypassing the far edge of Kall-Su's rift that had stymied the church knights. Angelo felt the faint tingling of magic in the air. A spell being cast. Mist formed on the narrow strip of land between rent earth and steep mountain slope and from it sprang forth creatures of ice. A fair sized coiled reptile that hissed frozen vapor. The horses balked, wanting nothing of such a creature.
Angelo smiled slightly and chanted the words of a spell of his own. He extended his staff and from its tip spewed fire. Sinakha had to catch the reins of their own horses, who spooked at the sudden heat and light that occupied the hill top with them. The Inferno spell left his staff, as if it had been shot from a cannon and rocketed towards the ice creature. It hit with a combustive boom of sound. The reptile screeched. Steam wafted skyward. Ice cracked and melted, dissolving into harmless water.
The Ice Lord wheeled his horse, searching for the originator of that spell both physically and magically. Angelo felt the whisper of the seeking and repelled it. He was a master of shadows and nothing earthborn or spawned of hell could pierce the vale if he chose for it not to. He imagined even Larz was wondering where that strike had come from. He would look to his priests, who were Angelo's minions and whom the Prophet would feed power to if need be to protect the secret of his own strength.
There were enough infantry men to lay siege to any city in the south slogging their way through the muddied foothills of the western mountains. Gara passed without them ever being aware of his presence. Arshes Nei swung further north, not as interested in spying out the numbers of possible enemies as making swift time without being delayed by inconsequential footsoldiers when the core of Larz forces had clearly hurried west. She was not one for subterfuge. When she had a goal she was single minded in its pursuit. And that goal at the moment was getting ahead of Larz, even if they hadn't a clue what path he followed. Gara would have preferred to slink along in the armies wake and let Larz do the detective work, then reap the benefits. Arshes wouldn't hear of it. Which made Gara remember why he had always preferred to work alone. Knights, lords and wizards were always so damned pretentious.
He felt the working of a magic great enough to prick even his dull arcane senses. Something had started. Something had definitely begun. The mountains loomed ahead, green sloped, mist covered giants. The ground underfoot was trodden and torn, passed over by many a horse. They passed another rise and a large group of horsemen appeared to the north. Arshes Nei and her men. Gara waved for his own to continue on and veered off to intersect her passage. She didn't slow. Her face under her helm was tense and focused.
"Did you feel that?" he asked.
"Kall-Su." She replied.
He blinked in surprise.
"Already? Damn, but he made good time."
"There's another power there. I can't pin it down or recognize it."
"The calvery left the infantry far behind. We'll ride right up their rear end."
"Good. Let them feel my wraith for going after Dark Schneider."
"My men do better slipping in unnoticed from the sides."
"Assassins generally do."
He didn't comment on that. He split from her, figuring that while she hit hard and fast from the rear, he and his would slip around the sides and pierce the center. There were too many of them to take by sheer force alone, which meant he had to get at the heart of the matter.
Another rise and the unsuspecting back of an army was revealed. Gara and his ninjas scattered in either direction, blending in unnoticed with horsemen who had other targets in their sights. Fire flared a quarter mile ahead, past five hundred armed riders, a dozen banners waving in the breeze and what seemed a giant trough cut through the very earth at the center of the valley that lay between hill and mountain slope. Perhaps he had another goal.
His men were down the slope and at his back against his will. Foolish, foolish men to think that their piddling numbers would make a difference if his magic could not. Kall was spooked by the spell that had so efficiently destroyed his ice creature. Not so much by the magic itself as from the way the source of it seemed non-existent. Any powerful enough wizard had a flavor to their magic. A unique and personal scent of a sort that was easy enough to identify if one had sensed it before. With this spell there had been nothing. No spoor, no trail of power to lead back to the caster. No hint that it had not come straight out of the heavens on a whim of whatever gods looked down upon this field.
He drew his sword from its saddle scabbard and felt the power of the thing pulse in his hands. He let them come, bunched in the bottle neck made of mountain and rift. There were shields protecting them. Shields of a holy sort that he could trace back to a cluster of sources in the midst of the mass of riders, further up the hill.
Lord of the cold depths. From the heart of darkest glacier . . .
A faint mantra to stir the already hungry soul that resided within the Ice Falchion. He sliced the blade horizontally through the air and the front ranks disintegrated, blown backwards by a force that ripped the armor from their bodies and the skin and flesh from their bones. Their shields were nothing compared to the force of the Ice Falchion. And over the bodies of the dead, the second rank spilled, faces dark and murderous under their helms at the havoc done to their comrades.
He struck again, slicing back the other way, standing with the blade extended while its destructive fury ate at the bodies of mortal man. There was an answering boom of power from across the hill to the east. A flare of light that momentarily made the dull gray of the day bright. He turned his head that way and sensed a hint of familiarity.
The Thunder Empress lived up to her repute. The crack of lightening that skimmed across the rear line of Larz's army was followed by a deafening boom of thunder. The ground shook at the resonance of it. Men across the field cried out in shock, most of them unawares that they were suddenly beset on two sides by wizardly powers.
Angelo knew. He whispered a blasphemy under his breath that he hadn't used in -- well, since Schneider's escape -- but not for several lifetimes before that. The priests were towards the rear, he felt their fear and panic as a wave of destructive energy washed towards them. Then Larz, who commanded from a vantage closer to them than to the low point of the valley, threw up a shield that protected them. He rode out, despite his general's protests to face the Thunder Empress. Fool. Angelo thought. He didn't have the strength of Geo Note's clerics to back him and Angelo himself was busy with other things. If Arshes Nei overwhelmed him, it would be entirely on his own head.
The Prophet turned his attention back to Kall-Su, who had actually managed to gain an advantage with the restricted passage the calvery had to get at him, and the power of his Great Sword backing his own magic. The longer he held them off, the more chance of that half elf bitch wrecking havoc from the rear and the two of them combining forces to wipe out all of Angelo's carefully laid plans. He stalked a few yards down the grassy slope, looked up at the black clouds that drifted over the valley. It was time for a miracle, he thought. A sign from the High God that he smiled upon their venture. It was time for the Hand of God to strike down the unclean.
De voy, Lachesis, Tandum and Rovh. Powers that troll the gate ways between, hear my call and heed my summoning. Cleave the sacrifice of blood on blood and honor our pact. I call you to my bidding. Hand of God, strike my enemies.
He threw out his arms, his body suddenly spasming as power surged through it. Foreign energies that twined and merged with the layers and layers of stolen magics that he had collected throughout the centuries. His mouth opened and ghostly shapes streamed out of it, coiling towards the clouds. His eyes glowed bright white in their sockets. Behind him, Sinakha crouched, turning his head from the spectacle.
High above, the churning dark storm clouds parted and a light as white as sun off of newfallen snow shone through.
"Arshes." Kall-Su almost laughed the relief was so tangible. He felt the ebb and flow of her power unseen across the hill. He saw and heard the tell tale signs of it. His spirits rose at the much needed aid. Even the afternoon seemed brighter for it. A ray of light shone down upon the valley. He spared a glance skywards at parted clouds and shimmering sunlight. Light so bright it hurt the eyes to look upon that seemed to pulse behind the clouds. The air turned still and static. He felt it a moment before it hit. Put up desperate shields as it came crashing down. Heat and light and energy, so concentrated it pierced his strongest shield. Blasted into body and mind and sent him spinning into pain and numbness. He was burning and he was not cognizant to stop it. The shields faltered and went down and the light engulfed everything.
He curled into a knot and tried to block it out. Tried to force awareness back into a light and power shocked brain. He thought the power might have ripped the world apart, but he vaguely heard the cries of men not far from him, the screams of blinded horses. Concentrated on him then. So finely crafted a spell, so very very delicate in what it destroyed. Schneider couldn't have done better, at least not without taking out half the landscape with the effort. Kall was somewhat amazed that he was alive to contemplate the workings of the spell that had downed him. He blinked his eyes, and past the spots found himself face to face with the great brown equine eyes of his horse, its head level with his in the dirt. Blood ran down the aquiline nose and no breath stirred the soft nostrils.
He felt sick. His vision swam. What he with magic to sustain him had survived -- barely -- had killed his mount. He couldn't stand it, the light behind his eyes, the ringing in his ears and the inexplicable loss of a favored horse. He put an arm over his eyes and lay there, until the sound of swords clashing and men crying out in rage brought him back to harsh reality. He rose to an elbow and regretted it, head spinning dizzily. An unhorsed knight ran up the hill towards him, sword drawn back, a battle cry on his lips. Kall stared, not able to think of a single action or spell to counter the attack.
The sword swung down at his head and another crossed paths with it, striking sparks. The second sword slid under the first with the speed and grace of a striking snake and sliced open the knights belly, regardless of armor protecting it. No usual sword then. Gara squinted down at him, a shadowed silhouette in his light splotched vision.
"You might want to get up and lend a hand."
Kall blinked. Gara reached down and hauled him up. Steadied him with one hand when he swayed, vaguely disoriented.
"Where's my sword?" He looked at his hands as if he expected it to appear in them. Gara pointed to the earth some few feet away, where the Ice Falchion stuck, point down, then the Ninja Master met another charge, this one horse based and had no more time to waste while Kall's reclaimed control of his senses.