Wolf in the fold, p.29
Wolf in the Fold, page 29
She closed her eyes for a long moment, feeling the city’s presence poisoning the land. Her senses were worse than useless, leaving her unsure if her feeling they were being watched was real or merely her paranoia demanding attention. They had been attacked several times ... she wasn’t sure if the enemy had been trying to impede their progress or if they’d wandered into hostile territory, the attackers letting them go when it was clear they were leaving. There was just no way to be sure, except ...
They could have done a better job if they wanted to kill us, she told herself. We’re so far from the Allied Lands that it would take weeks to mount a rescue mission, if we fell out of contact, and by the time they arrived it would be far too late.
Something moved, behind her. She turned, bracing herself as she readied a spell. Serigala stood there, staring at the city. He couldn’t see it from his vantage point, but ... he knew it was there. It was all too clear ...
“Professor,” she said. “You should stay at the campsite.”
“I need to get a proper look at the city, before it gets turned into a battleground,” Serigala said, stepping forward. His eyes went wide as the city came into view. “The chance to study such rare magics will never come again.”
“You’ll get a look afterwards,” Emily reassured him. “What do you think they’re trying to do?”
“I think they’re planning to contact the Faerie,” Serigala said. “I do think so. I can’t imagine anything else they could do with such ...”
He waved a hand at the city, the multiple dimensions visible even in darkness. “What else can they do?”
Emily had no answer. What did the Hierarchy want? She had never been able to get an answer to that question, although there were rumours galore. Some insisted the Hierarchy were the secret masters of the world or wanted to become so; some insisted the Hierarchy merely wanted to push the limits of magic as far as they would go. She wouldn’t be too surprised to discover both, and a bunch of others, were true. The Hierarchy was old enough to have evolved, the original goal morphing into something else ... it wasn’t uncommon, she knew, for an organisation to change when it accomplished its first goal, rather than accept its success and dissolve itself. For all she knew, all the rumours had been true ... once upon a time. If they were still true ...
“Why?” Emily turned to look at him. “Why would they do something like that?”
Serigala shrugged. “Think of the possibilities,” he said. “The chance to learn from creatures of pure magic. The chance to gain their power and use it. The chance to become far more than merely human ...”
“Or dead,” Emily said. She’d heard the same thing, about demons. The DemonMasters of old had thought themselves the ones in charge, commanding entities that were little more than animals of very little brain. It wasn’t until it was far too late that they’d realised they were dealing with entities far superior to themselves, burning with endless malice and driven by a determination to give their supposed masters enough rope to hang themselves ... perhaps literally. “They’re dealing with powers they don’t understand.”
“But they could understand,” Serigala said. “Given time ...”
He waved a hand northwards. “There was a tomb we uncovered, fifty years ago. It was complex, insanely so. Every level was layered with traps, every simple spell had another trap buried underneath it ... the whole network of spells was designed to fill in the holes, repair the damage as we withdrew ... every time we left, we had to start again from scratch. There were nasty curses and other surprises, most lethal – or worse. I saw a friend get possessed by the spirit of a long-dead sorcerer-king, spitting out magics he’d never known ... magic fuelled by his very soul. He burned up in front of me, collapsing into ash.”
Emily shuddered. Serigala didn’t seem to notice.
“We made it eventually, down to the bottom of the tomb,” he continued. “We learnt a great deal about the sorcerer-king, and the ancient magics, once we managed to deactivate all the deadly magics holding the place together. There were people who argued we should give up, and let the builder rest in peace, but we needed to know. It was worth it.”
“Was it?” Emily couldn’t keep the waspishness out of her voice. “Would your dead comrade agree?”
“He knew the risks; we all did,” Serigala said. “I wouldn’t have come out here if I hadn’t been willing to die in the pursuit of knowledge.”
He looked up as lightning flashed overhead, the sheets of raw power striking the tower and running down the semi-organic mass to the ground. “Aren’t you?”
Emily hesitated. “If it was just my life at risk ...”
She shook her head. “It isn’t just me,” she pointed out. “Whatever they’re doing is very dangerous. If you’re right, they’re planning to bring back the most destructive force in human history. If you’re wrong ... nothing they’ve done, nothing they intend to do, can justify their actions. They took slaves from Celeste, funded revolutions and stole things from Whitehall ... whatever their intentions are, they’re not good. They have to be stopped.”
Serigala said nothing for a long moment, his eyes lingering on the city. “Even at the risk of losing ... losing whatever we might learn from the city?”
“We have to worry about the here and now,” Emily said. “There’s no guarantee we’ll find anything within the city.”
“That is a very old city, surrounded by ancient ruins,” Serigala countered. “The city itself is an ancient ruin. We’ll find something.”
“Afterwards,” Emily said.
She looked past him as Frieda and Caleb appeared. “The portal is ready,” Caleb said. “The troops will have no trouble arriving.”
“Don’t activate it until the final moment,” Emily reminded him. The portal would be instantly detectable ... probably. She didn’t know if the haze would be enough to keep the defenders from sensing the portal – there was so much raw magic in the air that her senses were almost useless – but she dared not assume so. “Did Jade get in touch?”
“The troops will be ready,” Frieda said. “They’ll move at dawn, our time.”
Emily nodded. “Can you take the professor back to bed? Caleb and I will stand watch.”
Serigala looked irked, but didn’t argue as Frieda escorted him back to the tents. Emily didn’t think he’d be foolish enough to go down to the city in the middle of the night, but he’d already wandered off once. He should have known better, given his history, although ... he was old, running out of time to make new discoveries and bask in the glory of adding more knowledge to humanity’s understanding of the universe. Emily could understand – the professor was old enough to be her grandfather – and yet, there was no time to explore the city. It wasn’t a dead ruin, but an enemy stronghold. They could examine it after the enemy had been defeated.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Caleb said. “I tested the chat parchments. Their defences are fiendishly complex.”
“We’re going to have to try,” Emily said. She disliked the thought of sending anyone into danger. She didn’t know how Alassa – or her father, for that matter – had coped. She was no military leader, no strategist who thought of people as numbers rather than living, breathing entities in their own right. She felt guilty because she didn’t know the names and faces of the men Jade was about to lead into battle. “If we can’t take the tower down quickly, it’s going to be impossible to keep them from supercharging the defences and driving us back out again.”
She grimaced. It was difficult, if not impossible, to assault defences powered by a nexus point. The only way to do it was internal sabotage and even that was tricky. Shadye had gotten into Whitehall through using her as a tool to lower the defences, Emily herself had cheated by using time travel to enter the school before the defences were ever raised. She wondered, grimly, if the Hierarchy had figured out what she’d done. They had a nexus point of their own. There was no reason they couldn’t travel back in time to set wrong what once went right.
And from their point of view, she reminded herself, it would be the other way around.
Caleb wrapped an arm around her as thunder rumbled, overhead. Emily lifted her lips to meet his. They were alone and ... she wished they could do more, all too aware they might not live to see another day, but ... they weren’t alone. And besides, the ground was hard and stony and ...
She kissed him, lightly. “After this, you want to elope?”
Caleb smiled. “I think we left it too late.”
Emily had to smile back. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess you’re right.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Watch yourselves,” Emily said, as the portal started to glow. “If they sense us, they’ll attack.”
“Teach your mother to count coins,” Cat said, dryly. “I do know the risks.”
Emily gave him a sidelong look. Sergeant Miles had taught them, repeatedly, about the advantages and disadvantages of using portals in wartime. On one hand, they allowed armies to cross hundreds of miles in an instant, often appearing well behind enemy lines; on the other, they were bridgeheads; if they were destroyed, the army would be stranded, unable to retreat as the enemy brought more and greater force to bear against the intruders. The portal might even fall into enemy hands, allowing them to mount counterattacks. Alassa had taken precautions, Emily was sure, but the risk couldn’t be understated. There was no way to know if the Hierarchy had enough iron giants to launch an invasion of Zangaria.
We know how to stop them now, she reminded herself. Unless they’ve already come up with ways to counter the countermeasures ...
The portal flared to life. Jade stepped through, a pistol in one hand and a wand in the other; Emily allowed herself a smile, all too aware that Jade wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything he was unwilling to do himself. Jade and Cat exchanged glances – they were old friends – as the rest of the army started to come through the portal, young men carrying rifles and swords backed up by combat magicians and artillerymen. Zangaria prided itself on having the most modern army in the Allied Lands, and Jade had crafted the remnants of the old army into a tough, professional – and volunteer – force that could best an old-style military several times its size. It was very far from modern by her stands – no tanks, no jets, no missiles – but it was getting there. The simple fact promotion was secured through merit rather than birth or connections ensured the officers and sergeants never lost their edge.
“I hope you’ll be coming with us,” Jade said, to Cat. “It’ll be just like old times.”
“Well, I should keep an eye on Penny,” Cat teased. His apprentice spluttered. “Take Beth back through the portal and you have a deal.”
Emily stepped aside as the line of troops kept moving down the mountain, onto the plain outside the city. They were making no attempt to hide ... she wondered, sourly, if that was a mistake. The enemy didn’t seem to be reacting to the portal ... odd, unless they were confident in their defences. They could be channelling power into the wards already, she supposed, but it was still a mistake to let the attackers secure a beachhead and bring in an entire army. Jade wasn’t letting the grass grow under his feet. He’d already detailed men to secure the bridgehead and start setting up more portals. The longer he was left to do it unmolested, the better the odds of victory.
Frieda grinned as a row of cannon were half-carried, half-dragged out of the portal. “You want me to keep an eye on the professor?”
“Don’t let him do anything stupid,” Emily said, wishing they’d been able to bring Hoban instead. He would have understood the dangers and had less reason to take risks in hope of making a discovery that would ensure his name entered the history books, regardless of the risk to himself and others. “He can explore the city after its secured.”
“Got it.” Frieda started to turn away, then stopped. “You take care of yourself down there, all right? I don’t want to lose you.”
Emily gave her a quick hug, then turned and made her way to the vantage point. The army was already deploying, a third of the men standing guard while another third set up the guns and the remainder dug earthworks. Jade had scattered his formations, ensuring they couldn’t be chopped down by makeshift Gatling guns – the Hierarchy had shown a surprising willingness to use mundane technology – or even magic by itself. She leaned forward, studying the deployment as the army slowly surrounded the city. The old guard would be horrified at the lack of cavalry, she noted wryly, but they’d be worse than useless here. They’d get themselves killed for nothing.
“The chat parchments are still in place,” Caleb commented. “There’s no sign the enemy have noticed a thing.”
“Weird.” Emily could understand missing a handful of intruders sneaking through the city, but the army was too big to be missed. The enemy would have sensed its presence even if the watchmen were blind and deaf. “Is it a trap of some kind?”
She leaned forward. The haze surrounding the city ebbed and flowed with pulses of raw magic, flowing out of the nexus point, but it didn’t seem to have hardened into proper defences. It was insane. It had to be a trap. No one in their right mind would simply ignore an army at the gates ... she peered into the haze, picking out a handful of slaves performing their ritual as if their masters didn’t have a care in the world. The nagging familiarity mocked her. She’d seen something like it before, she really had, but where?
Caleb looked at her. “We can’t refuse to do anything.”
“No,” Emily agreed. “Get ready to hack the defences.”
Penny scrambled up towards them, her face dark with annoyance. “Prince Jade’s compliments, Lady Emily, and he wishes you to know the attack will begin in five minutes.”
“Understood,” Emily said. Penny really didn’t look pleased. Cat was well within his rights to use her as a messenger, but ... it meant sending her away from the battlefield. She wouldn’t like that. It was hard enough being a combat sorceress when one wasn’t being ordered to carry messages, raising the spectre of being thought a coward. Lady Barb had had some stories about having to teach the men to respect her with her fists, rather than magic. “Go back to Prince Jade” – Prince Consort, her mind corrected silently – “and inform him we’ll be ready.”
“Thank you,” Penny said. “Good luck.”
She turned and hurried away. Emily kept one eye on her watch as she pressed her hand against the chat parchment, bracing herself. If it was a trap, it was about to be sprung. She couldn’t believe the enemy hadn’t noticed the army outside ... unless they were that confident in their wards. Did they think they could simply raise their wards and keep everyone out, using the nexus point to patch the holes in their defences? Or ... or did they think ... what? Emily knew she was no expert, when it came to military matters, but it just made no sense.
“Maybe they’re surprised we brought an army,” she mused. But she knew that was just wishful thinking. The portable portals were relatively new, but portals themselves were hundreds of years old. Generals had been accounting for them well before her birth. “Or maybe it really is a trap.”
“They might not have realised we could set a portal up out here,” Caleb offered, doubtfully. “The magic storms alone would make the portal unreliable.”
“It’s worked fine so far,” Emily said.
Caleb frowned. “So far.”
Emily supposed he had a point and yet ... no. She didn’t believe it. The Hierarchy was hardly hidebound. They had been at the forefront of magical development, stealing her concepts and improving on them while coming up with newer and better ideas of their own. They had to know about improvements she and others had made to portal spells, how Heart’s Eye had used a portal to attack behind enemy lines ... hell, how she’d done it herself to end the Necromantic Wars. The whole affair just didn’t make sense.
A gun fired, once. The army started to advance.
“Now,” Caleb said.
Emily reached out through the chat parchments, slipping into the enemy wards with all the ease of someone with full access rights. No human or near-human mind touched hers, nothing capable of recognising she was an intruder ... nothing aware enough to understand that just because she was inside the defences didn’t mean she was supposed to be there. She took a moment to scan the system, her eyes narrowing as she realised just how odd it was. Half the spellware was incredibly sophisticated, advanced enough to pass for a mimic; the other half was so primitive, it was actually too dumb to fool. The disparity made no sense. She couldn’t help wondering if the more advanced spellware had only been woven after they’d created the nexus point.
She swept through the system, feeling a twinge of relief as she realised it was finally reacting to the attack. Orders were snapping out ... she thought, just for a second, that she’d felt the iron giants getting their instructions before her conscious mind went elsewhere. She could feel the defences start to harden, channelling power from the nexus point into structures ... it took her longer than it should to realise they’d built wands and keyed them to the spellware, turning them into makeshift machine guns. Gritting her teeth, she shut as many of the outer defences down as possible and retargeted the remainder. It shouldn’t have worked, but it had.
Her eyes snapped open as guns began to boom. The iron giants had left the gatehouse and were charging the army, moving with incredible speed. They lacked the flexibility of their counterparts from Celeste – Emily guessed the operators had been conscripted, instead of being willing– but they had a great deal of power and she could see more making their way through the streets, some carrying their own wands and staffs. The cannons fired, slamming cannonballs into their targets. Some staggered under the impact, but others kept coming. The riflemen darted forward, hitting them with runic bullets. The iron giants started to tumble.
