375. Meeting in the Field
Shooting Star came fluttering past the corner of the corridor, a spray of bullets from an Antrian crashing into the far wall immediately after he’d gotten behind cover. The bullets cracked the metal wall, leaving deformed holes behind. Ettie didn’t have to imagine what such weapons could do to a human body: she’d lost one of her soldiers to those weapons while fighting their way out of the domed garden, only a half bell before.
Star landed in human form, spear in his hand, panting and out of breath. “There’s a group of Alliance soldiers ahead,” he explained. “Come the other way. The intersection’s shaped like a ‘T,’ and the cultists have it fortified. Two Antrian, a few eld, at least a dozen humans, and two of those mana cannons, all barricaded behind every piece of furniture and scrap metal they could find.”
“What are they protecting?” Ronja asked. “It’s got to be something important, for all that.”
“It is,” Shooting Star answered. “As near as I can tell, it’s the way to one of those struts outside.”
“The ones drinking the sun?” Tom asked. All of the soldiers were kneeling close about, to hear what their scout had to say, but the man from the Lower Banks was one of those whose name Ettie had learned. He’d practically attached himself to her, and with a few of the other Whitehill men, seemed determined that nothing would happen to their heir.
“The very same,” Star confirmed.
“Could you see who was leading the Alliance group?” Ettie asked. A pair each of both mana cannons and Antrians was, in all honesty, a bit harder nut to crack than her group was prepared for. One of each, perhaps – but neither she nor Ronja were the sort of mages who could throw around real battle-magic. They were still only apprentices, after all.
“I could,” the Red Shield said, though with a bit of hesitation that Ettie found puzzling. “I don’t think I would have recognized them if they hadn’t been with the queen back when – well. I believe it's your parents, Ettie.”
“The duke and duchess?” one of the men leaned closer to hiss. “Are you certain, man?” He’d only just managed to duck a spray of venom from one of the Iravatan Eld, earlier, and it had left a speckling of pock-marks across his helm, and black, circular burns on his cheek.
“I don’t know them well,” Shooting Star admitted. “But the man had one arm, and the woman’s eyes were shining blue, like mana.”
“That’s them, sure enough,” Ettie said, with a sigh. “How does it look like they’re doing?” She’d wanted to find her family, but she wasn’t certain she wanted them to see her - especially her parents. If it had been Aunt Liv, she would have been in trouble, but not nearly so much as with her own mother – and even the scolding would have waited until after all the fighting was done.
“Not well,” Shooting Star said, with a shrug. “They’re mostly tossing a few crossbow bolts at the barricade, but if they had anyone with them who can break that kind of defenses, I think they would have done it by now.”
Ettie drummed her fingers against her thigh. She’d found her parents, and now she knew that they were alive. The smart thing to do was probably to turn around and look for enemy stragglers. She had a small group of soldiers who’d already been through some hard fighting, and not a one of them had the raw power to take a heavily defended position. And for all that her father had taught her, she’d never actually commanded troops before. Or are those all justifications, because you know your parents will be angry you came?
On the other hand – what if something happened to her mother and father? What if they were hurt or killed, trying to capture that intersection, and Ettie could have done something to help? Would she ever be able to forgive herself? Why had she come up here at all, if it wasn’t to help protect them?
“This is what we’re going to do,” Ettie said, trying to put a confidence into her voice that she didn’t feel. “Let them focus on my parents for a moment and forget about that wandering bat they saw. They spotted Star, but none of the rest of us have come in sight. Ronja, how many of us can you pull through a shadow to come up behind their barricade?”
“A couple,” her friend said, holding up her left hand and wiggling it. “Let’s say myself and four others. But I need to be able to see where I’m going, and the moment I poke my head out those Antrians are going to try to take it right off.”
“Let us go first, then,” Tom offered. “We’ll make a charge, and they’ll be focused on us. If you follow close behind, you’ll have a short while to act, m’lady.”
“Star, Ronja, and the two of you best at close in fighting are with me, then,” Ettie decided. “And the moment we’re behind the barricade, we need to kill the cultists firing those mana cannons, then round on the Antrians. That will give the rest of you men time to get in close and help us finish them all off. And once we make our move, we’ll just have to trust my parents to see what’s happening and support us.” She looked around, and waited for every one of the soldiers to nod.
Tom gathered all but two of the men, held up three fingers, and then lowered them, one at a time. When he lowered the last finger, he and all the rest of the soldiers – save for the two who remained behind with Ettie and her friends – ran out into the corridor, screaming as loud as they could. They must have made themselves a wonderful target, for the roar of Antrian weapons immediately echoed through the halls of the ruins.
“Stay low!” Ettie hissed, and took Ronja’s hand in hers, dragging her friend out into the corridor. She felt Shooting Star take hold of her belt, and the two soldiers in their armor pressed in close to either side of her, doing their best to shield her body with their own.
“I can’t get a good look,” Ronja exclaimed, and stood up straight. “Ium'Vesēmus Ve Encve Erēmus Merg Kveis –” Her incantation cut off in a scream, and Ettie felt hot blood splatter against her face. Then, once again, Ettie was drawn through the cold and the dark. If she’d thought the sensation might not be quite so panic-induding, this time, since she had experienced the magic once before, she was wrong.
When they came out, it was beneath the barrel of a mana cannon, where the thin strips of glowing mana stone set into the ceiling cast enough of a shadow for Ronja, apparently, to use. Shooting Star was already moving, his hunting spear taking a human cultist through the throat. The man tried to scream, but it came out as only a choking gurgle. Star yanked the head of the spear back, and the man clutched at his neck with both hands, trying to stop his blood from spurting out with each pump of his heart. It did no good: by the time he’d fallen to the floor of the corridor, his face was gray, and he wasn’t moving.
The two soldiers – one was the man who’d taken a few drops of venom to his face – fought to either side of Ettie, stabbing and thrusting with their halberds. One impaled the cultist operating the mana cannon they’d come up beneath, set the base of his haft on the floor, and with a great yank jerked the screaming man up into the air and off to the side. He turned to find another enemy, only to be cut from shoulder to hip by the red-sigiled blade of an Antrian war-machine.
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Ettie, in the meanwhile, caught Ronja as she fell. Her friend was clutching at her left shoulder, where blood welled up between her pale fingers. There was no crossbow bolt, no dagger, and Ettie knew, from a long-ago conversation with Ghveris, that she wouldn’t be able to tell whether an Antrian bullet was still in the wound until she’d dug around with the tip of a dagger.
“You’re going to be alright,” Ettie said, lowering Ronja down to the floor. “We’re going to wrap the wound and stop the bleeding, and get you to the healers once we’re done here.”
“Veset’co Aiveh Scelis O’mae!” Ronja gasped, and a shard of pure darkness formed next to her face before shooting past Ettie’s ear.
A scream sounded from behind, and Ettie turned her head to see an Elden man with a curved blade raised up above his head, prepared for a downward stroke aimed at her vulnerable back. The shard of darkness protruded from his eye, and blood began to pour down his cheek, before his body collapsed.
“Worry about me later,” Ronja said. “Right now, keep us both alive.” Then, she collapsed back onto the floor, wincing against the pain of her wound.
Ettie spun about, snatched the dead man’s curved sword, and sprang to her feet. Shooting Star was trying to face an Antrian by himself, which mostly involved desperately trying not to die and collapsing into a mist of blood. One of the soldiers they’d brought was dead, and the other was struggling with the cultist who manned the second mana cannon. A quick glance was enough to show Ettie that none of her other soldiers had made it close enough to help quite yet – and they were going to have to climb the barricade to get inside enemy lines. That left one Antrian that was completely unopposed, and if Ettie didn’t do something about it immediately, it was going to begin cutting she and her friends down one by one.
With a whispered incantation, Bheuv flared to life at Ettie’s eyes once again. She felt a rush of exhaustion as the mana left her: this was the last spell that she was going to be able to manage, but she couldn’t imagine fighting a war-machine like this without the word of perception.
Through a world hazed in blue, Ettie saw the barrels of the machine’s shoulder-mounted weapon spin to life, and she flung herself away from Ronja, toward the un-manned mana cannon. The sharp, staccato bark of the weapon was followed by the ping of bullets hitting the immense barrel of the siege engine – which was, in Ettie’s opinion, far preferable to hitting her skin. She didn’t trust the jack-of-plate she’d borrowed to stop that kind of attack.
The moment the sound stopped, she came out from behind the mana cannon and lunged forward. Antrian’s didn’t have the sort of tells you found in living, flesh and blood people – but they still needed to physically begin a motion. That was just how the world worked. A shift of the feet, of the mechanical hips, and Ettie knew that its mana-edged armblade was coming at her in a rising, diagonal cut. The thing was too much taller than she was to catch her in the thigh, but it would gut her easily enough if she let it.
Using the footwork her father and mother had drilled into her since she was a little girl, Ettie slid backward just far enough to get out of the monster’s reach. The moment the blade passed her by, she rushed forward again, slicing up with the curved Elden blade into its armpit. Just like the plate armor worn by knights of generations past, that was a vulnerable area.
Sparks shot out from beneath the armor as Ettie’s blade dragged across the vulnerable mechanisms within, and metal screeched against metal. Something caught at the sword, dragging it further into the Antrian’s workings, and came the horrible sound of steel crumpling. The Antrian’s arm jerked and fell, limp, at its side.
That takes the mana blade out of play, Ettie told herself. But there’s no way to know when it’s actually out of bullets. And on top of that, of course, the monstrosity was big enough to simply pick her up by the neck and smash her head into the wall until her skull burst like an overripe grape.
With no magic, she was going to have to get creative. Ettie scrambled backward to where the damaged mana cannon swung, limp, cables dangling from the back of the thing before climbing up to connections in the ceiling. The crab-like legs scratched at the metal floor, uncontrolled. Ettie swung herself up into the seat and wrapped her fingers around two handles, each with a trigger like those built into a crossbow. A brilliant bar of white light shot past, melting away part of the barricade, but since it wasn’t an immediate threat, Ettie put it out of mind for the moment and focused on using the cannon.
To her surprise, the barrel swung around easily. If she’d had to struggle with it, Ettie realized only afterward, the Antrian would have got to her first. Instead, it had only time to raise its remaining arm and activate a mana shield. At the squeeze of Ettie’s fingers, the barrel of the mana cannon lit up in spiraling arcs of sigils, the enchantments which had been engraved into the metal flaring to life. The entire apparatus jerked beneath her, even the seat, and she very nearly fell out and onto the floor.
Brilliant explosions of mana roared out of the barrel, directly into the mana shield of the Antrian. The shield cracked, then gave way, and the eruptions of mana tore through the war-machine’s breastplate, sending a gout of thick black smoke up toward the ceiling. It tipped back, hung balanced precariously for just an instant, and then fell over, hitting the floor with a crash.
Ettie swung the cannon around, surprised at how easy and instinctive the controls were, ready to deal with the Antrian that Shooting Star had been delaying. But when she got it in view, she saw that not only had her own soldiers come over the melted, wrecked barricade, but so had the Alliance fighters who’d been hard-pressed down the other hallway.
All around her, cultists were cut down by halberds, pierced through the chest by crossbow bolts, or cut down by swords. A flare of blue mana to Ettie’s left, and she saw her father, fighting with only one arm. With an ease born of decades drilling in the training yard at Castle Whitehill, he parried the wild dagger-stroke of a cultist, then returned a riposte that ran the woman through her heart.
Her mother had charged straight for the remaining Antrian. Somehow, Beatrice Crossbie parried the stroke of the enormous machine’s mana-blade, slid inside its guard, and then slipped the tip of her rapier through a seam in the armor of its torso. Sigils flared to life along the length of the duchess’s blade, and then a dozen spikes of solid blue mana exploded outward from inside the Antrian, sending pieces of its armor flying off in every direction.
It was precisely the same contingent spell that Ettie had seen her mother use to demolish half a dozen training dummies, while she was playing with the magic to get it just right. Watching the effect in an actual battle was something else all together, and she couldn’t help but stare, wide-eyed, as the last of the enemy forces were put down.
“Henriette Summerset,” the duchess growled, pulling her blade back out of the smoldering remains of the Antrian, “what in the name of the Trinity are you doing here? You’re supposed to be back at Bald Peak, with the other students!”
Ettie couldn’t help but wince, and she resisted the urge to hunch her shoulders. Despite the fact that she was a grown woman at eighteen years of age, that tone in her mother’s voice made her feel the exact same as when she’d been six years old and knee-high. Shooting Star came up to stand near her, leaning on his gore-streaked spear, but he couldn’t do the talking for her.
“I couldn’t let my entire family come up here without me,” she said. “I’m sorry mother, but I couldn’t. If none of you came back, I’d always wonder –”
Her father stepped forward, reached up, and placed his hand on her shoulder. “I understand. And I suspect, even if she’d rather not admit it, your mother does, as well. You’re up here now. Report.”
Ettie swallowed. “We cleared the dome where they grew their food,” she said. “Put down two Antrians and an Elden mage there, then we found your soldiers struggling with this barricade, so we decided to help clear the way.”
Matthew Summerset nodded. “The aid is appreciated. See to our wounded,” he commanded, raising his voice. “Once we’re certain no one’s going to die, everyone who can still fight is coming with me!”
“Where’s Aunt Liv?” Ettie asked. She saw that one of the soldiers was wrapping Ronja’s shoulder tightly with a sigil-embroidered bandage.
“Hunting a goddess with your uncle,” her mother replied. “We’d be fools to get involved with that. But there is a way we can help, I believe.”
Ettie turned to look at the sealed door the cultists had been defending. The mana cannon, somehow sensing the way her weight shifted, rocked on its crab legs and turned about until she was pointed in that direction. “The struts,” she guessed. “The ones doing – whatever it is they’re doing – to the sun. Right?”
“Exactly,” her father said. “The only thing I wasn’t certain of was how to destroy them; neither your mother or I are precisely archmages. But I think you may have found the answer I was looking for.”
Ettie looked down at her fingers, wrapped around the handles of the mana cannon, and grinned.