Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(192)

Koric shakes his head. "We'll get them."

Another set of firebolts flare at the post, and another.

As the wizards work to destroy the lynch post, as the foot levies and engineers hack away the barrier of pikes and bodies, the arrows keep falling, and horses and men scream.

Then one line of the crude angel pikes falls, and another, and the remaining lancers start forward.

"To the left!" yells Koric, riding forward, and sending his remaining messengers out.

The left end lynch post of the second pike line crumbles into ashes, but the next line of pikes springs up to the west of the last section, and a handful of angels sprint downhill from behind the posts. A half-dozen overeager lancers spit themselves on the second line of pikes, but one of the few crossbowmen slams a bolt between the shoulder blades of a fleeing angel, and the woman pitches headfirst into the grass.

"One less evil angel," mutters Terek. Sillek studies the field, watching as the remnants of the angels, a handful on foot, less than a score on mounts, draw up on the new paved road above a new stone bridge, a thin line between the advancing forces and the tower. "It's almost a pity," he murmurs. "A waste."

"Don't feel sorry now, My Lord," rumbles Koric. Sillek shakes off the feeling and sheathes the sabre. Then he pulls forth the great blade from the shoulder scabbard, a blade as near a duplicate to his father's as he has been able to have forged.

"Ser!" yells Terek. "The wizard's down there, in that little stone fort, and he's doing something."

"Well, undo it!" snaps Sillek. "That's your job." He glances over his shoulder to see that the last of his forces are clear of the demonish pikes and ready for the assault on the remaining angels.

The trumpet sounds, and the Lornian forces move forward, a trot for the lancers, a quickstep for the foot, ready at last to avenge all the hurts, the wounds, the deaths suffered on this campaign into the cold and unfriendly Westhorns.

Sillek raises his blade and rides forward. So does Viendros.

As they do, the hillside is bathed in red light-a red light that burns faintly, as though the sun had grown hotter, or Sillek had stood too close to the fire. The Lord of Lornth turns in the saddle, not slowing, to see Terek and Jissek, almost frozen in their saddles. Even Sillek can sense the immense forces that surge between the two wizards and the small fort on the flat below.

"Faster!" he yells to Koric.

Koric looks to the wizards, and then jabs the bugler, and the quick advance call rings out over the hillside.

Sillek gallops toward the angels, aiming himself toward the tall black-haired woman.

Another wave of red light flashes across the downslope, and Sillek urges his mount forward, knowing he must reach the angels quickly.

The ground trembles.

Sillek spurs his horse forward. Yet another two hundred cubits separate him from the angel forces, and the ground trembles again.

Then, a single shriek and a dull rumbling sound that lasts forever and yet is instantaneous cross the hillside, and Sillek feels as though a mighty blade of fire and destruction slams toward the hillside, toward him, as the heavens turn brilliant, burning white, as the air sears hotter than noon in the Stone Hills.

"Govern well, Gethen," whispers Sillek, and, as the incredible flare of whiteness flashes out from that focal point around Terek and Jissek, Sillek feels himself flaming, and he holds, for a moment, the images of Zeldyan and Nesslek, even as his great sword melts in his hand, and he with it.

The hillside shudders, and a dull huge clap echoes off the rocks and the surrounding higher peaks, echoes, and reechoes, like a chain of images trapped in mirrors facing each other, getting fainter and fainter, and stretching farther and farther away. The earth tremors echo each other, and flashes of light, like whole-sky lightning, blaze across the Roof of the World.

Then ... ashes fall like snow across the hillside, burning like fire as they touch the dry grass west of the devastation.





CXXVII



CRUUMPPTTT!!!

The building of intertwined chaos and order stretched and stretched through an endless and timeless moment, then ...

A miniature sun-a green and gold fireball-flared in the middle of the hillside below the ridge and east of Tower Black, transforming the soldiers and horses around it into statues of gray ash, then flattening those fragile shapes with its shock wave. The incineration and flattening effect flared through those Lornians farther away as the circle of destruction widened almost instantaneously.

For a fraction of an instant two white-clad figures seemed to stand out against the tide of destruction, as if standing on a crumbling cliff before a tsunami of chaos washed over them, before they too flashed into fire and ashes.

Nylan staggered, but continued to concentrate on focusing the laser even as he felt that wave of whiteness and mass death screaming toward him. With eyes already blind, knives stabbing through his skull, he forced the last ergs of power across the hillside, incinerating all that moved toward the road, raising instant funeral pyres-and the shock waves echoed and reechoed across the Roof of the World.

Perhaps a handful of riders pounded downhill toward the laser, toward the smith who wielded its dying hammer against the remnants of the Lornian forces on the hillside.

As Nylan shuddered under the first of the chaos waves that battered him, clinging to the laser, the five lancers charged the small fort.