Chapter Seventeen #2
The Drowned had been roused and now gave chase, like an unthinking swarm pouring forward as one body, committing almost their entire number.
Lorath and Keldon readied to light the fuses.
The Amazon cavalry held its position, firing volleys of arrows into the charging Drowned army, then suddenly turned and galloped eastward as if in retreat, deeper into the glen.
The enemy kept coming, and a moment later their vanguard crossed the mouth of the valley.
“Hold,” Lorath said.
They waited until the first third of the enemy force breached the glen, and then they ignited the first fuses, scrambling over the shale from one incendiary vessel to the next.
When the first ones blew, they shot fire, splinters of rock, and clouds of oily smoke into the air.
They loosed a cascade, but nowhere near the size the Amazons would need down below to bury the enemy.
Almost without thought, Lorath snatched up a jug and darted upward.
“Get clear!” he shouted at Keldon over the crashing of falling shale.
“What?” the sailor said, but then he seemed to realize what Lorath planned to do and rushed out of the way. “You’re mad!”
Lorath bolted up the ridge, ignoring the charges blowing behind him, until he reached the narrow base of the Pommel.
He had no idea if this would work, but the rockslide they had triggered would only slow the enemy, not destroy it.
They needed something much more massive.
He rammed the jug up against the Pommel’s throat on its north side, facing the valley.
Then he murmured the incantation needed to summon a flame.
Lorath didn’t have Donan’s skill with magic, but he knew a few useful spells, and a moment later, he had lit the fuse.
Then he clambered away, getting as much distance as he could before the jug exploded with a thunderous crack, throwing a cloud of smoke and shrapnel outward.
Nothing happened at first. Then the Pommel shifted slowly, grinding and grumbling, and as it leaned, its shifting weight crushed more and more of its own base, until it finally tipped over like a tower falling to an earthquake.
When it slammed into the hillside, it sank into the shale and sundered, scattering monolithic pieces of itself, all of which took the mountainside down with them as they tumbled into the glen.
The roar of it was deafening, and Lorath felt the entire ridge trembling beneath his feet as the rockslide swelled into a much greater avalanche than he had expected.
He could do nothing but watch, hoping the Amazons had gotten themselves clear.
The Drowned army had not. Through the choking billow of dust, Lorath could see the bulk of the horde had been caught beneath it, smashed into oblivion by a churning tide of rock.
When the pieces of the Pommel finally settled in their bed of shale, fixed in the wedge of the valley, they blocked the mouth of the glen like a towering dam.
The moments of quiet that followed felt shocked, throttled into silence. Lorath waved the dust away from his face, coughing and peering at the ridge below. “Keldon!” he shouted. “Are you there?”
“Barely!” the sailor shouted. “Warn me the next time you plan to break a mountain in half!”
Lorath laughed with relief. Then he heard war cries coming from the north.
He looked across the valley at the opposing ridge, and through the settling haze he glimpsed the Amazon cavalry racing along the old trackway.
In their feigned retreat, they had backtracked to climb up onto the hill, which carried them over and around the landslide now blocking the lower road, then down to the field before the fort.
Lorath could see little of their work, but he could hear the enemy shrieking and dying.
The few remaining Drowned were in disarray and could hardly mount a defense as the cavalry stampeded through them with spear and bow.
The Amazons within the fort had opened the gates and charged out to assist in slaying the last of the horde.
Lorath descended to the lower ridge and found Keldon coated with rock dust like a miller covered in flour.
The two of them shared another laugh and then picked their way downward as fast as they could to join the battle, but by the time they reached the field, the Drowned had been annihilated.
The fort was saved. The incursion had been defeated.
The Athulua Garrison was a much smaller encampment than Fort Galina, but after their victory, no one objected to the cramped quarters.
Keldon found somewhere to rest and celebrate, but Lorath immediately went to help with the horses in the crowded stables, checking them over after their hard ride and the battle.
A few of them had gone lame, and others had been mortally injured in the battle, but Lorath was relieved to find that Zerae had come through her ordeal and would hopefully return to Arjak soon.
The sunset that evening appeared crimson through the lingering dust and the thick columns of smoke rising from the bonfires of Drowned corpses.
As Lorath was heaving fresh straw bedding into the stalls, Adreona came looking for him.
She wore a bandage wrapped around her arm through which had soaked a bit of blood.
Dirt had collected in the fine creases of her skin, and by the red evening light, her green eyes seemed illuminated from within.
“I wondered where you had got to,” she said.
“You assigned me to the stables. I’m simply performing the duty I was given.” He nodded toward her bandage. “Are you okay?”
“It will heal.” She took a step closer to him. “Listen, what you did…that was quite the landslide.”
He quit shoveling straw and propped the pitchfork against the side of the stall. “Wasn’t that the plan?”
“Yes. But bringing down the Pommel was not. You—”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t know when to quit.”
She smiled. “No, you don’t, but that’s not what I was going to say.”
“No? Then what were you going to say?”
“I was going to thank you, actually. I don’t think the plan would have worked if you hadn’t done what you did. You were right, and you keep managing to surprise me.”
Lorath had not expected a thank-you, but he accepted it with a bow of his head. “The plan would not have worked without you, either. It was you who baited the Drowned. I watched you from the ridge, and that was an impressive ride.”
She looked down at the bandage on her arm. “I did only what any of my war-sisters would have done.”
Then they stood in a silence that felt suddenly charged.
Until this moment, Lorath’s attraction to Adreona had been easy to dismiss, along with Keldon’s taunts.
In another time and place, he would not have hesitated to pursue her, but she was not a passing flirtation in a tavern, and he was no longer a soldier marching through her village.
He was in Skovos as a member of the Horadrim, and he put that responsibility above all else.
She was an Amazon captain, subject to her queen and bound by the oath that she had sworn.
Drawn as Lorath was to her, he doubted she felt the same way toward him.
“I am holding a council meeting this evening,” she said. “You and Keldon have earned a place there. We have important matters to discuss, and I think your perspectives might be useful.”
Attraction aside, at least her view of his martial value had shifted. “We would be glad to attend and offer what help we can.”
So, later that night, he and Keldon joined Adreona, Tavie, and a few other Amazons of senior rank around a campfire, as the fort’s main hall had been given over to the tending of the wounded.
They ate a meager meal of field rations and then passed around a bottle of Skovos wine that someone had found in the fort’s stores, taking turns swigging from it.
“I wanted to wait until nightfall to be sure,” Adreona said, “but it seems clear now that the great watchfire has gone out.”
Tavie cast a quick glance at Lorath. Only days before, she had been standing over the map at Fort Galina, talking with him about this very possibility.
“We don’t know how,” Adreona continued. “The watchfire has never been extinguished. That’s why I plan to take a ship and investigate what happened.”
“You want to sail out there?” asked one of the other Amazons. “Now? With the Drowned massing offshore?”
“Yes.” Adreona looked into the eyes of everyone sitting around the fire.
“I think the Drowned are gathering out there because the watchfire has somehow been extinguished. We have dealt them a blow today, but without the watchfire, more of them will come, and they will keep coming. This incursion isn’t over.
It’s just beginning, and the longer we wait, the harder it will be to get out there and determine what happened. ”
The fire popped and sparked. No one spoke for several moments.
“Who will you send?” asked Tavie.
“I won’t ask anyone else to take such a risk,” Adreona answered. “I will go.”
Tavie looked down suddenly at her boots, shaking her head and bouncing one of her knees.
“Do you have an objection, Shieldmatron?” Adreona asked.
“Yes,” Tavie said, looking up. “Yes, I do. This is not a risk you should take—nor anyone else. Not right now.” She sat up straight and pointed westward.
“We can all see from here the watchfire is out. In this moment, what more do we need to know? I think we should notify Queen Etara and request that Captain Myrina send us a legion of silks to reinforce our position. Once we are secure, then we can investigate what happened.”
“Thank you for your input,” Adreona said. Lorath could see her neck muscles tightening in the firelight. “Does anyone else have something to add?”
No one spoke. Lorath fought with himself over whether he should remain silent, but he decided to trust that Adreona had meant what she said when she invited him to this council. He cleared his throat. “I have something to say.”
Everyone around the fire turned to stare at him.
“If I may?” he added.
“You may,” said Adreona.
Tavie looked like she wanted to object, but she refrained from doing so.
“I know I’m an outsider,” Lorath said, “but I agree with the captain. This incursion only happened because the watchfire went out. To plan your future defense, you need to understand the capabilities of your enemy, which means it is critical to find out if the Drowned somehow managed to extinguish the fire.”
A few of the Amazons nodded in agreement with him. Adreona gave him a very subtle bow of her head in thanks.
“Exactly my thinking,” she said. “I will sail tomorrow, alone if I must.”
Tavie stood. “You know I will follow your command. If you are going, then I will go with you. I know others will volunteer. We’ll take one of the warships—”
“No,” said Adreona. “All our ships are needed here, to maintain the sea defense of this garrison.”
“Well, that answers my question,” said Keldon, tipping back the dregs of the wine bottle. “I was wondering why you invited an old sailor like me to this esteemed gathering.”
Adreona acknowledged this with a nod. “But I won’t force you to allow us the use of your ship.”
“You don’t have to,” Keldon said, and then he turned to Lorath. “Isn’t that right?”
“That’s right,” said Lorath. He would have wanted to offer the Arabel even if Adreona had not asked. “We’ll leave at first light.”
After the fireside council, Keldon went to sleep on the Arabel, while Lorath returned to the stables.
A bed of hay on land seemed more appealing to him than the tight, rocking confines of a ship’s bunk, especially since they would be setting sail the next morning.
He had just spread his blanket over the straw when a shadow fell across him, and he looked back to see that Adreona had returned.
“I hope I didn’t speak out of turn,” he said.
“Not at all. I appreciated what you said.”
“Well, I meant it. I think you’re right to go investigate—”
“No more talk of that tonight.” She stepped closer toward him. “Let me help you with your armor.”
“I don’t need—”
She looked directly into his eyes as she gently but insistently turned him around.
His back to her, she loosened the straps securing his pauldrons to his shoulders, which she removed and set carefully down in the straw.
He felt her hands at his sides next, unfastening the buckles connecting his back and breastplates until she pulled both pieces away.
She turned him back around, and together they stripped off his mail shirt, which fell to the ground with a heavy clink, followed by his gambeson.
Then she knelt, and her hands felt around his cuisses, reaching between his legs to remove the armor from his thighs.
After that, she stood. “Now help me with mine,” she said.
He did as she asked, loosening the ties and straps of her leather armor, removing it piece by piece from her body in the same order that she had removed his, revealing the linen tunic she wore beneath.
The blue moonlight put the sea in her green eyes, and his earlier reservations fell away.
It seemed she was as drawn to him as he was to her.
“Adreona—”
She pulled him into an aggressive kiss, her breath hot against his lips, his face, his neck.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her up against him, returning her kiss.
His own lips traced a line along her cheek to her ear, then down her neck to her collarbone and out across her bare shoulder as he yanked the collar of her tunic aside.
She peeled off her shirt, then pulled him down on top of her into the bed he had made in the straw.