Shattered sunlight book.., p.74
Shattered Sunlight (Book Five of the Storm Below), page 74
“But the sides are free,” Amiria chirped. “Split the fleet and hit them from the east and west.”
“Split?” Uickthio gasped. “No, we need to stay together. A massed attack from one direction.”
“East would be better. Puts the city farther away.” Lsuuvick licked her lips. “But splitting the fleet would ensure that no ambushes can take out all of us.”
Uickthio gave the captain a sharp look. “We do not have the strength to split the fleet and survive the barrage from two directions, Captain.”
Amiria’s wings flapped hard. “No, the captain is right. These Wrackthar are cunning and low. Just like Theisseg. We cannot afford to lose today. Split the fleet, Uickthio.”
“Golden Daughter, with all due respect, that is foolishness.”
“Your good captain disagrees.”
“I am the woman you put in charge of your fleet.” Uickthio witnessed the truth in Lsuuvick’s eyes. She knew splitting the fleet would be disastrous. “She is a traitor. She has spoken out against you, Amiria, whispering treason.”
Lsuuvick stepped back, her face graying. Then she went rigid. “Admiral, I tried to stop this folly. Look what happened to the seasons. We destroyed all those skylands and lost summer.”
“Theisseg did that,” chirped Amiria.
“Because you are Theisseg!” the captain snarled, back still rigid, tense, standing at attention. “Admiral, remember that b—”
Pressure crushed Lsuuvick to a ball of ragged flesh. It splattered on the deck.
Uickthio’s stomach roiled. She shivered and shook, fighting down the sick that wanted to burst out of her stomach. What did I just do?
A comforting hand rested on her shoulder. “I had to kill my traitorous friends, too, Sunlight General,” Xorale whispered. “It gets easier. Remember whom she opposed, and whom we serve.”
“Riasruo.” Uickthio straightened. “We’ll attack from the east. All ships. We’ll concentrate on clearing the ballistae, and then we’ll target the Dawnspire.”
Chapter Seventy
“They’re going east,” Chaylene said, lowering her pressure rifle as she stood beneath the north facet of the tower.
“It worked,” sighed Chief Kozzen. The man mopped at his bald, sunburned pate with a greasy rag. “They believed it.”
“Theisseg can’t see through Riasruo’s illusions,” Chaylene said, staring down at the thirty ballistae arranged before the northern arc of the Dawnspire, not a single one of them real. Several Major Lightweavers and a dozen Moderates formed the illusion of the weapons. Chaylene had redeployed, giving her thirteen to cover the other three sides.
She prayed it would be enough.
“Send the word,” Chaylene said. “Reposition our soldiers and prepare to move the ballistae from the south and west.”
“Let’s move them now,” Kozzen said.
She shook her head. “We have to wait for them to commit to the attack. If we reposition early, they can flank us. I spotted several Sowerese ships. They are fast.”
Chaylene and the older man jogged with the other officers around the base of the Dawnspire to the east. She glanced at the fleet. It was small, just on the edge of her vision without the scope on her weapon. The ships were in a tight formation, two ranks of five stacked on top of each other, making a square of twenty ships, with the last three, the Sunrise included, taking up the rear.
They would have no room to maneuver in such a tight formation. Explosions would cause collateral damage on nearby ships. They would come in fast, hard. It reduced the number of her ballistae that could engage. Only seven or eight.
Will that be enough? She glanced northeast. Ary focused on her. He felt so close. She raised her scope, scanning the sky for any hint of the metal Varele. A storm front rumbled from that direction, gray smearing the horizon. If the Varele was close, she was lost in the background.
And if she wasn’t . . .
Chaylene’s stomach twisted.
She frowned as they reached the eastern command post. The fleet rose in altitude, flying higher and higher than ships normally operated over a skyland.
“Oh, no,” Chaylene groaned. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“What?” Kozzen gave her a worried look.
“Flying higher shortens the range of our ballistae while increasing the range of theirs,” Chaylene groaned.
“That’s not good. What can we do about it?”
“Nothing.” Chaylene’s hands trembled on her pressure rifle, palms sweaty. She took deep breaths, trying to control her nerves as the realization struck her. It’s set. The battle’s about to happen. I can’t do anything else to contribute. I just have to hope my plans are sound.
Her body shivered worse. Sound plans? She had six months of experience in the navy. She was up against a fleet of experienced captains and admirals, including the woman who’d led the Vaarckthian fleet in their invasion of the Autonomy. The Vaarckthians had been winning when Chaylene deserted.
“I’ve doomed us,” Chaylene groaned, panic nibbling at the edges. “Riasruo Above, why did anyone let me make decisions?”
“What?” Kozzen gasped.
Be strong, she told herself. Be strong. Be an officer. Be Captain Dhar. Calm, unflappable. Look like you’re in charge.
“They’re turning,” Chaylene said. “They’re committing. Redeploy the ballistae and soldiers. The transports are coming in low behind the fleet. They’re preparing to disembark soldiers.”
“But . . . You just said—”
“Go!” Chaylene bellowed, forcing herself to be in charge. She had the responsibility. She had agreed to it. She couldn’t shirk it now. “Hurry!”
The fleet advanced fast, sails billowing. The large Ethinski and Zzuki ships held the center, smaller Vionese, Soweral, and Vaarckthians on the flanks. She stared at the bottom of their hulls, taking deep breaths as shouts roared around her. Ballistae changed their elevation, their officers readying their weapons to fire. Great stockpiles of metal shots sat beside each one.
“Now,” she whispered.
TWANG!
The Wrackthar ballistae fired. Eight hurtled their shots up into the air, metal balls glinting as they arched with deadly precision at the approaching fleet. Chaylene’s stomach churned with frothying acids, breath coming faster and faster.
THWUNK!
The enemy ships answered. Clay shots arced from the decks, tumbling down towards her ballistae. The missiles hurtled past each other. Her stomach tightened. A fist squeezed about her chest, her heart laboring.
The explosions blossomed above.
An Ethinski warship took a hit in the lower hull, midway down from the bow. The shot ripped through the hull then blew out the starboard side of the ship, exposing the multiple levels of the hold. Debris rained down onto the ground below, red-scaled bodies falling with the dark wood.
The ground shook beneath Chaylene’s feet. She flinched back from the heat of explosions detonating before her. The smaller shots from the ships cratered the ground along the ballistae, sending debris and parts of bodies flying. The concussive waves pummeled her body, her ears ringing.
A ballista lay mangled, metal twisted, crew scattered in bloody agony.
“Keep firing,” she screamed, voice hoarse. “Reload! Reload! Take those ships out before the rest find their range!”
The ships were closer. The Ethinski ship listed to starboard, her hull warping and torqueing. Smoke billowed from its blown-out guts, combustibles set ablaze. Another red body fell from the ship as the Wrackthar ballistae fired again.
Destruction slammed into the enemy ships as they launched death back.
Three ships took direct hits, two bursting from powder magazine explosions. A Vionese corvette showered its neighboring Sowerese ship with shrapnel, snapping its mast and twisting the ship in the air. The mast fell over the side, sails billowing. The drag turned the ship more, facing its port hull towards the Wrackthar defenders. Above, a large Zzuki ship lost the front of its bow. The smoking wood plummeted down and crashed into the decking of the already badly damaged Ethinsk vessel flying below it. A great crunch echoed over the explosions raining on the ground.
Chaylene, falling to her knees, watched the combined wreckage of the Zzuki bow and the Ethinski wreck tumbling to the ground. They impacted, hitting with a jarring crash. Dirt fountained as the stern of the ship snapped off from the wreckage, the engine still powering it. It tumbled forward for the Dawnspire.
Beside her, Kozzen screamed, clutching his hands over his head as death traded back and forth. The ground rumbled beneath Chaylene as shots rained down from above, each one cratering the earth. Metal groaned as ballistae were damaged. If she screamed, she couldn’t hear it over the cacophony.
In the sky, ships burst apart. Wood showered down on the defenders. Kindling drifted through the air, spun about by the winds, dancing around torn canvas. Bodies slammed into the ground amid the splintered lumber.
Chaylene forced herself to survey the destruction. Half her ballistae were destroyed. The others had explosions falling around them, the ships above desperate to bring them down. The ruins of destroyed ships, their engines still powering shattered remnants, tumbled amid the ships still sailing.
Half were gone.
A Soweral ship took a shot in the bow. A heartbeat later, the front of the ship vanished in a black cloud. The sails fell forward, tumbling through the sky like giant kites. The stern flipped around, trailing smoke.
Is it enough?
Horses neighed. Chaylene looked over her shoulder. Teams of a dozen horses each dragged the ballistae from the western side around the Dawnspire, furrowing the soil. Crews whipped at the horses while others pushed at the heavy engines from behind. Her heart leaped into her throat.
Reinforcements.
She raced to the nearest team. “Set up here,” she shouted at its captain. “Just get the weapon firing. Now! Hurry!” She waved at the next team, pointing to the right. “I want it here! Here!”
They could do this.
*
Debris from the exploding Vionese frigate slammed into the bow of the Sunrise. The frigate’s engine burst free of the wreckage, tumbling through the air, a purple star shining bright while the rest of the ship plummeted toward the ground below.
“Press the attack,” sang Amiria as death reigned down before them.
“I have seven ships left!” Uickthio shouted back. “And they’re bringing in fresh weapons. Look, they’re setting them up around the Dawnspire! Halt the fleet!”
“Halt!” Amiria rounded, wings spread wide. “What are you doing?”
“We need to regroup and rethink. They have stripped weapons away. We could try and—”
“Send in the soldiers,” Amiria chirped. “Land them now, Sunlight General.”
“But . . . if they are on the ground when we destroy the Dawnspire . . .” Uickthio’s eyes widened. Only the Sunrise with Amiria aboard to shield the ship could survive the skyland’s destruction. The inferno of Les burned through her memory. The molten debris launched into the air like the largest shots ever fired from a ballista. “You knew?”
“Sacrifices so others could know peace. They are soldiers. That is their job.” Amiria’s golden eyes bored into Uickthio’s. “Do it!”
Uickthio stepped back, hit by the force of the gaze. She clutched her chest. Her stomach twisted as the enormity of the Golden Daughter’s words struck her. She had brought them all here to die with the tainted Wrackthar and Agerzaks.
“The fire cleanses us all,” she heard herself say.
“The fire cleanses us all!” sang Amiria and Xorale at the same moment, almost like they spoke with the same voice.
“Land the soldiers,” Uickthio gasped, her body shaking. Riasruo, forgive me.
The thought struck her as ridiculous. She did this on the Golden Daughter’s orders. Amiria spoke for Riasruo. Uickthio beat down that thought as she stumbled to the railing. Ships burned on the plains below.
Signal flags waved. The transports sailed forward, soldiers bristling on the deck, ready to rope down and attack the beleaguered Wrackthar defenders.
*
“Hurry!” Chaylene urged. “Right here! Set up right here!”
She glanced over her shoulder. The enemy ships stopped, just out of range of her new line of weapons placed right before the Spire. The warmth from it bathed her back. Beneath the enemy warships, the transports landed. Soldiers disgorged from the ships, Humans and Gezitziz sliding down ropes to the ground.
“Where are the shots?” Chaylene asked. “Didn’t you bring any?”
“Coming,” an older Wrackthar grunted as he unhitched a team of horses.
“They’ve given us a breather,” Chaylene said. “We have to hurry. If those ships come in and start shooting at us before the ballistae are even set up, we’re doomed.”
“They’re coming, Stormender’s Wife.”
Chaylene turned back to the battle. Her soldiers, deployed at the base of the hill before her circle of ballistae, struggled to form up. The seven remaining enemy ships pounded their positions with shots, disrupting the Wrackthar lines. Already, the enemy soldiers were marching at the double step, closing the distance for the charge.
“Where are those shots?” Chaylene demanded. “We need to resume firing!”
“I said they are coming!” the man snapped back. “See!”
Wagons now rounded the Dawnspire, wheels bouncing over the ruts left by the ballistae. The hill was flat for only a narrow strip around the thrusting Spire and then became a gentle slope towards the plain above. One wagon was on the edge, bouncing over ruts, wooden wheels wobbling.
A great shout rose, whipping her attention back to the front. The ship ballistae stopped firing, the last detonations bursting across the lines. The army of the Dawn Empire charged across the littered field, scrambling over the wreckage of the fleet as the Wrackthar soldiers struggled to reform in the brief lull. The men and women dazed by the barrage had perhaps twenty heartbeats to regroup. The enemy raced closer and closer, breaking out of the wreckage of crashed ships to run at full speed across the open ground.
The Wrackthar answered with a loud roar, two thousand years of anger roaring from their throats. Howling fury, they charged. The two armies crashed like two great storms slamming into each other. Weapons fell. Humans and Gezitziz died. The two lines pressed together, the enemy’s ranks spilling around edges. They curled in to engulf the Wrackthar’s. Their lines bent, trying to hold their flanks. But there were already so many dead. The ground behind the Wrackthar was littered with craters filled with mangled bodies in twisted armor.
Chaylene’s stomach clenched as she stared at the numbers fighting. A cacophony of clashes rang through the air, mixed with the shouts of the dying. There were far more on her enemy’s side. The armored Wrackthar looked so thin, a line drawn with a sharp quill versus one drawn by a blunt finger.
A loud snap echoed behind her. Metal clanked and tumbled. She whirled her head. A wagon’s axle had snapped, dumping its load of metal shots down the slope. The balls rolled and bounced towards the Lightweavers maintaining the fake weapons below and—
The chain reaction of explosions knocked her off her feet. Detonations burst across the ground. The jarring, bouncing tumble had ruptured the glass fuses, setting off the chemical reactions and igniting the black powder.
“No,” she groaned, lying on her back, struggling to think. It was a disaster. She had weapons with no missiles to fire.
Sails snapped, billowed. Above, the remaining ships sailed closer at quarter sail, moving into range of the new weapons she’d deployed. She tensed, waiting for death to rain down upon them.
Hurry, Ary.
*
Uickthio’s eyes widened as she studied the ballistae being set up. She saw no stockpile of shots. The stockpiles the original line used had been destroyed in the fleet’s bombardment. The Wrackthar unhooked their horses from the new weapons and unlimbered them, but they didn’t bring up any ammunition.
“Lieutenant,” she barked at one of the junior officers hovering around the edge of the stern deck, “order the fleet in slow. We’re engaging the new positions.”
“Engaging?” Amiria said. “You halted us to protect us. Let the soldiers sweep in and take them out.”
“They’re defenseless.” Uickthio laughed, hovering on hysteric’s edge. So many people are about to die. “They didn’t bring up shots with them. They went in too much haste. We have an opening. We have to seize it.”
Then another miracle happened. Explosions tore through the grass to the north, throwing dirt and debris into the air. The ballistae, still lined up to the north, wavered and broke into light, mere illusions, as Wrackthar ran from the bouncing devastation. Steel balls glinted as they tumbled from a broken wagon just rounding the Dawnspire, spilling its deadly cargo down the hill. More and more shots exploded.
“We have them, Amiria!”
The Golden Daughter sang her triumph.
*
The fires guttered lower and lower. The soft gentle song and the stroking hand were failing to keep the flames burning. Moment by moment, they dwindled, consuming their fuel. The coals did not want to snuff out, did not want to leave the comfort of the voice, but cold seeped in.
The voice begged, pleaded, sobbed.
The coals struggled, burning every bit of fuel left, holding onto what warmth there was against the reaching cold of darkness. It grew harder and harder. It was easier to gutter out and die.
Chapter Seventy-One
Zori watched the carnage below as the Sunrise crept forward, a light breeze edging them into position to bombard the new ballistae. Their soldiers butchered the Wrackthar defenders. It wouldn’t be long before there was a breach. To the north of the Dawnspires, explosions still detonated, revealing the ruse of all the weapons ringing it, diverting the fleet to attack from the east.
Tricked you again, Theisseg.
“You should withdraw the soldiers, Sunlight General,” Zori said, in control of her body right now.
