A cry that sounded like the wailing of an angry grass wolf pierced the air. The cry was taken up by twenty thousand throats, and the ground seemed to rumble like thunder.
“I stopped the archers,” Charion said, embarrassed at her own troops panicking like that.
“How many arrows have they left?”
“Half a dozen each, but I’ve ordered up more.” She pointed to a supply wagon being quickly trundled up the ridge by hand.
“Let’s hope the enemy don’t charge in the center first before they’re restocked,” Galen said dourly.
Charion glared at him, but Sendarus held up a hand to each of them. “No time for this. Has anyone here fought with the Chetts?” Both commanders shook their head. “I don’t suppose anyone here has fought against them?”
“If they had, you don’t really think they’d admit it, do you?” Charion said. “The only people to fight against the Chetts in the last two generations have been slavers, mercenaries, and troops from Haxus.”
“What tactics do the Chetts use?”
“Until now, small-scale tactics,” Charion said. “The Chetts have never fielded an army. The largest clan can put up three or four thousand fighters, given time, but no one has ever seen this many warriors before.”
“And never one under the command of a Rosetheme,” Galen added, the contempt clear in his voice.
“You are sure that pennant represents the Key of Union?”
“What else?”
“But they are all horse archers,” Sendarus said, changing the subject. He did not want to think about being in battle against his own wife’s brother, no matter how much she hated him. “So if we keep our discipline, keep our lines intact, we can wear them down.”
“And when the time is right, charge with our own cavalry,” Galen agreed.
“That’s the hard part,” Charion said. “Knowing when to counterattack. The Chetts are good at fooling their enemies into foolish charges, then isolating and destroying them.”
Suddenly the air was rent with the most terrifying cry they had ever heard.
“At least,” Charion added, repressing a shiver, “that’s how the Chetts behaved before they had an army. Who knows how they fight now?”
It was close to midday, but smoke hung so thickly over the city and its harbor that it could have been midnight. Dark figures moved like ghosts through the gloom, lost and aimless. Olio did his best to help organize refugees into groups that came from the same street or the same block so that families could be reunited, but the sheer number of people fleeing the fire made it impossible.
By now magickers from the all the theurgia were present to help, the most successful being those from the Theurgia of Fire—their most powerful spells were able to impede the progress of the fire by lowering its temperature. Mostly the magickers assisted by adding extra bodies to the long water chains that led from the harbor to the worst affected areas of the old quarter. Priests were everywhere, lending a hand and consoling where they could. Royal Guards arrived to help keep control of the crowds, and to distribute food and wine sent down from the palace’s own stores.
The fire had not spread much farther north than the old quarter, where the buildings were uniformly old and badly maintained. Homes beyond the original city gates were spaced farther apart and there were servants and other workers to help landowners defend their property.
Still, it was a larger disaster than Kendra had experienced for many decades; some were saying the worst since the storms that had devastated the whole city one summer day a generation before the late Queen Usharna was born.
Tired and dirty and ragged as he was, Olio was recognized by some members of the Royal Guard and immediately assigned an escort to take him back to the palace. At first he refused to go, but when a brazen cleric pointed out he was more a distraction than a help, he reluctantly left.
The escort took him through that part of the old quarter the fire had already blazed through. Olio could smell charred wood and thatch, and the sickly sweet smell of the occasional burned corpse—sometimes a dog or cat, but usually human—that littered the streets and the burned out shells of what had once been homes. Near the edge of the quarter, where some of the homes seemed less damaged, they came across an inn. The inn’s front wall had partly collapsed, but the roof was still in place and supported by intact beams, and dozens of people lay on the floor. Olio stopped and looked more closely. The people were all injured, and a few uninjured people worked among them to make them comfortable.
“Your Highness,” one of the guards said, “we had best keep moving.”
“Wait here,” he ordered them, and went into the inn. The guards looked unsure but did as they were ordered.
Olio first came across a woman. She had no burns, but one of her legs was broken in several places and she was suffering intense pain. Olio knelt down next to her.
“How did this happen?” he asked her.
“It was the crowd, sir. They trampled all over me. Lucky to have only one leg broken.”
Olio could feel the Key of the Heart warm suddenly. He needed no prompting. He took it out with his left hand and gripped it tightly, then put his right hand on the woman’s knee. She winced in pain but did not cry out, almost as if she knew instinctively what was about to happen. The power surged through him so quickly he had no time to mentally prepare for it. He reeled back, blacked out for a moment. When his vision cleared, he saw that the woman’s leg was completely healed and that she was falling into a deep sleep. Blue energy seemed to crackle around him.
He stood up and felt immediately dizzy, but still made his way to the next person on the floor, another woman, younger, with blackened skin all along her exposed chest and stomach. He did not even talk with her, but bent over and ever so gently placed his fingertips against the curled rind of skin that marked the edge of her burn.
“Soon now,” Trion told Areava. “You are almost there.”
She was crying, and was in too much pain and was too tired to feel embarrassed or ashamed about it.
“My brother,” she whispered hoarsely. “Where is he?”
Trion shook his head. “I am sorry, your Majesty, I don’t know. The midwife and some of your guards are searching for him.”
“He can’t be far,” she said. “Please find him for me. My baby will die ...”
Trion patted her hand. “We’re doing everything we can.”
Someone coughed discreetly near the door. Trion looked up and saw Orkid standing there, his face furrowed in concern. Trion went to him
“How is she?” Orkid asked.
“She is doing fine, but the baby has turned. The contractions are causing her a great deal of pain. Has Prince Olio been found?”
“No.”
“Then I suggest you send out more guards to find him. She calls for him all the time.” He swallowed. “The baby comes too early to live.”
“Does she know?”
“Yes. I think so.” He looked desperately at Orkid. “Only Olio can help.”
“The palace is stripped bare of guards,” Orkid told him. “There has been a terrible fire in city; most of the old quarter had been burned down.”
“God’s death!” Trion hissed. “So that’s what the bells were about.”
“We have no idea how many have died, but the guards are helping to keep things going down there.”
A horrible thought came to Trion. “You don’t think his Highness is down there, do you?”
Orkid could only shrug. “We will find him and bring him to the queen as soon as we can.” He looked across to Areava and saw her arch her back as another spasm of pain rippled through her. He gasped and looked away; he could not stand to see her suffer so.
“Believe me, Chancellor, Areava is young and strong. Nothing will happen to her.”