Canim desperately tried to find escape from the heated stones, leaping up onto houses, shops, and other buildings around the courtyard. Still, more poured through, and in seconds there were no more such places to go. Canim fell, succumbing to agony, only to have it doubled and redoubled as their flesh fell fully onto the courtyard stone. The gale winds blew into Canim eyes, ears, and noses, and the confusion changed the assault into a madhouse of the dead and dying.
And still more Canim poured in, the raiders now maddened and howling, thirsting for blood, walking on the burned and burning bodies of their dead and dying fellows to find respite from the sizzling stone of the courtyard. They oriented on the bridge, and Tavi saw them begin charging toward it. He put his head down and ran, flanked by Knights Aeris, who moved from roof to roof and kept the nearest Canim blind to Tavi and the stragglers from the walls.
It seemed to take forever to run the few hundred yards to the Elinarch-and to the defenses the engineers had constructed upon it. Using clay from the riverbed, they had constructed a series of five walls spaced evenly over the bridge, earthcrafted into shape, and then blasted with firecrafting until the clay had baked into a consistency almost as tough and hard as stone, leaving an opening scarcely wide enough for two men. At the southern end of the bridge was another such barrier, this one fully as large as the city’s walls themselves.
Tavi and the covering Knights Aeris rushed through the newly created defenses while the Canim, goaded to fury by the heated stones, rushed forward.
“Medico!” Tavi shouted. Foss appeared, and Tavi all but dumped the First Spear into the healer’s arms. Then he ran for the wall and pounded up the crude steps built into it to the improvised battlements there. Max and Crassus, together with the First Aleran’s cohort prime, waited, already in position with the other Knights Aeris spread along the wall. The last of the Knights Aeris followed Tavi up to the walls.
Max and Crassus both looked exhausted, and Tavi knew that the firecraft-ing they’d used to heat the stones had been intensely fatiguing. But if they looked bad, the skinny young redheaded Knight Ignus beside them looked nine-tenths dead. He sat with his back against the battlements, his eyes focused elsewhere, shivering in the cool of the evening. Ehren appeared out of the night’s shadows, still bearing the Legion’s standard. Tavi nodded at him, and Ehren planted the blackened eagle standard in a socket in the adobe battlements the engineers had prepared for it.
Enough furylamps remained in the town to let Tavi see the raiders charging through the town, bounding over rooftops with inhuman grace, and their eyes gleamed red in the near darkness. Their cries and howls grew louder and louder.
Tavi watched them impassively, until the nearest one he could see was no more than fifty yards from the bridge. “Ready,” he said quietly, to Max.
Max nodded, and put a hand on Jens’s shoulder.
Tavi tried to count the oncoming Canim, but the shifting light-now only furylamps, now dancing red lightning strobes-made it impossible. More than a thousand of them, maybe even two or three times that many. He waited a few instants more, to give the Canim as much time as possible to pour more troops into the city.
“All right,” he said quietly. “Frying pan’s done. Time for fire.”
“Bring up the wind!” Crassus commanded, and he and his Knights Aeris faced the oncoming foe and brought up a strong, steady wind.
“Jens,” Max said to the young Knight. “You can let it go.”
Jens let out a gasp and sagged like a man suddenly rendered unconscious by a blow to the neck.
And the entire southern half of the town became a sudden and enormous bonfire. Tavi could see, in his mind’s eye, the boxes and barrels that had been filled with fine sawdust, intentionally manufactured by volunteers through the town and the followers camp for the past several days, and stored in whatever containers they could find-then scattered still more sawdust liberally throughout each building. In each container was a furylamp, put in place by Jens, each tiny fire fury leashed to his will, restrained from flickering to life within the fine, volatile sawdust.
When Jens released them, hundreds of tiny furies had suddenly been free to run amok, and the barrels and barrels of sawdust all but exploded into flame. The dust-strewn buildings went up like torches, and the strong winds commanded by Crassus’s Knights both fed the fires more air, making them hotter and hotter, and blew them back toward the onrushing enemy.
Tavi watched as Canim died, horribly, consumed by the flames, trapped within the city’s stone walls. Some of them might have survived, he supposed. But even with the wind keeping the conflagration away from the bridge, the heat of it was uncomfortable on Tavi’s face. The fire made an enormous roaring sound, drowning out the occasional thunder of the lightning overhead, the cries of the dying Canim, and the cheers of the Alerans watching their terrifying foes fall.
Tavi let it go on for five or ten minutes. Then he signaled Crassus with a wave of one hand, and the Knight Tribune and his Knights Aeris sagged in relief, ceasing their efforts. There was a long silence on the walls, broken only by the low roar of flames, and the occasional shriek of tortured wood as burning buildings fell in upon themselves.
Tavi closed his eyes. He could, quite faintly, make out another sound beneath the fire-the long, mournful, angry howls of grieving Canim.
“At ease, people,” Tavi said to no one in particular. “Maximus, Crassus, get yourselves and your people some food and some rest. It will be a couple of hours before those fires die down enough to let them through. But when they come, they’re going to be angry.”
Crassus frowned at Tavi, and his voice sounded heavy. “You don’t think this will convince them to go somewhere else?”
“We cost them plenty,” Tavi said. “But not from their best. They can afford it.”
Crassus frowned and nodded. “What’s next, then?”
“Next, you get some food and rest. We’ve still got a bridge to defend. Send something up for the prime cohort, too.”
“Yes, sir,” Crassus said. He saluted, then began giving orders to his men, and they descended from the wall. Moments later, several fish arrived carrying pots of spiced tea and fresh bread, and at a nod from Tavi, the veterans on the walls went to collect food and drink. Tavi took advantage of the moment to walk down to the far end of the wall. He slipped up onto the wall itself, hung his feet over the side, and sat with his head leaning against a merlon.
Tavi heard Max’s footsteps approach.
“You all right?” Max asked.
“Go get some food,” Tavi said.
“Balls. Talk to me.”
Tavi was quiet for a second, then said, “Can’t. Not yet. “
“Calderon…”
Tavi shook his head. “Let it be, Max. We still have work to do.”
Maximus grunted. “When we re done, we’ll go get drunk. Talk then.”
Tavi made an effort to smile. “Only if you’re buying. I know how much you can drink. Max.”
His friend snorted, then made his way from the wall, leaving Tavi alone with this thoughts.
Tavi’s stratagem had lured maybe half a Legion of Canim to their deaths in the inferno, but the burning buildings lit up the countryside beyond the walls and the enormous numbers of Canim moving toward the river. He couldn’t tell, at a glance, that the enemy had taken any losses at all.
The cold, leaden reality of mathematics pressed relentlessly into his thoughts. He’d known that the Canim army outnumbered the Alerans, but numbers mentioned on paper, on a tactical map, or in a planning session were entirely different than numbers applied to a real, physical, murderous enemy you could see marching toward you. Looking out at thousands of Canim, all in view and moving for the first time, Tavi gained an entirely new perspective on the magnitude of the task they faced.
It made him feel bitterly, poisonously weary.
At least he’d gained a few hours of respite for the men. For whatever it was worth. Except for those who had already died, of course. They now had all the time in the world to rest.
He sat for a moment, watching half of the town he was defending burn. He wondered how many homes and businesses he’d just destroyed. How many hard-earned generations of wealth and knowledge he’d sacrificed. How many irreplaceable family heirlooms and artifacts he’d burned to ashes.