After the miniature avalanche, the advance froze for a few minutes, while the Guards got their bearings. Calder didn’t see any deaths and surprisingly few injuries, but the armored Guards had taken the brunt of the trap. As they gathered themselves, the Imperial Guards advanced once again.
This time, Calder didn’t see what struck them down. It might have been darts, or a poison gas, or even bees, as far as he knew. But the front ranks started slapping at themselves, waving crazily in the air, and collapsing. Some of the toughest members withstood the traps, continuing forward, but many others stayed on the ground. Now, there were corpses.
But after the first wave, no one behind them suffered the same symptoms. Either the traps had run out of darts, or the Consultants were preparing a different surprise. It was hard to see details in the chaos, even through a spyglass.
Seconds later, the ground erupted in enemies. Black-clad Consultants burst from behind boulders, from under camouflaged trap doors, and from the trees. As one, they each discharged pistols, stabbed with spears, or struck with their daggers. They seemed to come out of nowhere, at least three attackers for each victim, and then they faded back into their territory.
Of course, they weren’t without casualties. One Imperial Guard with clawed hands seized a Consultant by the neck, pulling the man’s head off. A woman, a Navigator, managed to shoot one Consultant in the chest and stab another before the third killed her.
Those enemies that had encountered resistance remained, dead or locked in hopeless combat. The majority of the Consultants had disappeared, fading back into the landscape.
Unable to watch quietly any longer, Calder signaled the Lyathatan. It pulled the ship forward, easing it toward the battle in progress.
The Consultants had found a way to resist his crown since his last visit, as he’d feared they would. But maybe it wouldn’t work at close range. Maybe it only worked once. Either way, he needed to try something else.
As he got closer, he realized he wasn’t alone. The Eternal was off to their port, which wasn’t unusual; Cheska had just repaired her ship and wouldn’t want to see it damaged so early, and she needed a vantage from which to call orders. But to starboard was another Navigator’s ship, one that seemed to be edged in gold. Empty golden snakeskins the size of blankets hung from the railings and virtually every surface, streaming in the wind like flags.
He’d never seen the ship before. That in itself wasn’t particularly suspicious, as new Navigators joined the Guild every month or two, but it was hanging back just as he was. He looked over to Cheska and jerked his thumb in the direction of the other ship.
She understood. They were close enough to communicate without use of a captain’s horn, so she called over. “Scavengers. Don’t worry about them. They’ll hang around any battle to see if they can get something out of it.”
Calder was still somewhat curious, but he put the other ship out of his mind. He was no tactician, but he could tell the battle was not going well. The Imperial Guards had stalled, unable to press forward in the face of traps and potential ambush.
He shouted through the captain’s horn as he approached, demanding that any Consultants reveal and surrender themselves immediately. Not one complied. The closer he got, the clearer it became that the crown simply wasn’t going to work. Whether the distance was stopping him, or the thin layer of mist, or whether Jorin had come up with some countermeasure, it was clear that he couldn’t order the Consultants to give up.
Which left one chance for a quick and easy victory: eliminating Jorin. If Bliss and Teach succeeded in removing Jorin from the fight, the rest of the Guild would have little choice but to give up. Whether he died, fled, or gave up, it would result in victory for the Imperialist forces. Calder just had to leave it to the Guild Heads.
He wasn’t prepared to do that.
The Testament drifted closer to the island as he kept shouting orders to the hidden Consultants. Maybe something about the Intent of the captain’s horn interfered with that of the crown. If he descended in person, he might be able to break the stalemate.
Besides his futile commands and Cheska’s periodic orders, the day was largely quiet once more. For a handful of minutes, the Imperial Guards on the shore simply milled about where they were, searching for hidden bolt-holes or traps. There was no sense advancing into more traps, while Calder and Cheska waited for news from the other Guild Heads.
Each minute that scraped by felt like hours, with the sun seemingly frozen overhead. Finally, as he could take it no more, Calder decided to have the Lyathatan carry him over to The Eternal so that he could confer with Cheska more closely.
Then General Teach smashed through the treeline as though blasted from a cannon, her armored form crashing through a stray pine. She trailed dark power like a smoky comet, and as she landed, the grass crisped up and died around her.
“Withdraw!” she shouted as she pushed herself to her knees, propped up by Tyrfang’s naked length. The blade was a pure, almost haunting black, with an irregular vein of throbbing red up the center. Even at this distance, Calder felt its Intent press against his mind. He had to focus through Kelarac’s mark, bracing himself, in order to stay conscious.
Consultants scurried away from their hiding places like wasps from a kicked hive, scrambling to escape Tyrfang’s radius. Not all of them made it; a few black-clad figures lost strength mid-stride, tumbling to a halt on the dying grass. Half a dozen of the Imperial combatants met the same fate, keeling over in silence if they were too close to Teach’s landing site. The rest of the Imperialists on the beach retreated in a panicked wave.
A man jogged out down from the island, another dark sword in his hand, and trees blackened around him. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and a pair of dark-tinted spectacles, as well as a billowing brown coat that looked as though it was made of pockets. But even that wasn’t enough storage for him; through the spyglass, Calder saw a ring of keys on one hip, something like a shriveled head on the other, and a variety of other packs and pouches that he would expect from any Reader in the field.
Jorin Curse-breaker followed the line of dead grass like a road straight to Teach, but the deadly power of his weapon pulsed outward like a wave. If her Intent was a headsman’s blade, his was a tide, killing and corrupting everything around him. If grass died under Teach’s influence, under his, it dissolved to black ash.
When the bodies began to crumble and blow away, the Imperial Guards fled back to the ships. Calder added his own orders to Cheska’s: “Retreat. Regroup. Back to the ships.” None of them could resist the power of the Awakened blades, and it was foolish to try.
The Regent of the South tipped his hat back, scratching at his hairline. “My oath to eternity, it’s not so large a request. Pack up your dancing monkeys and take your show back on the road. We have no bare axes between us, and as I see it, we’ll be a family again before year’s end.”
Calder took a second to puzzle over the man’s speech, but apparently Teach understood him. “Please withdraw to your territory, Regent. This is a Guild enforcement matter.”
Jorin replaced his hat, shrugged his shoulders, and ran forward. Faster than he had any right to—he must have some sort of enhancements, like Teach herself. In a blink, he was before the Guild Head, slamming his blade down.
The Regent’s sword met Tyrfang, and the explosion of shadow and deadly Intent was so strong that it blacked them out for a moment. A few of the slowest Guards died, struck down before they could reach the longboats.