Gaius turned as well, and the woman was abruptly gone. There was no flicker of a veil coming up, no blur of motion as of a windcrafter’s drawing upon a fury for additional speed, nothing. One instant she was standing, regarding Ehren calmly, and the next she was simply… not.
Which was clearly impossible.
“Cursor,” Gaius said, nodding calmly. “Something to report?”
“Sire?” Ehren blinked and recovered himself. “Ah. Yes, sire. Pardon me, I did not mean to interrupt.”
Gaius lifted both eyebrows and asked, a hard little edge on his words, “Interrupt?”
“Your conversation…”
Gaius narrowed his eyes. “Conversation?”
Ehren coughed. “I was thinking, sire, that the vordknights depend upon wings for flight. Like birds. Birds depend upon using the air. They won’t fly in a storm.”
“I’d been thinking the same thing,” Gaius replied with an approving nod. “What else?”
“I would also advise cutting the causeway behind us periodically as we retreat. Every mile or so should be sufficient to ensure that the enemy can’t use it.”
Gaius winced, but blew out a sigh. “Yes. I suppose that would be for the best.”
A cold wind suddenly washed across the tower from the north, a chill blast that felt as if it must have begun at the Shieldwall and come to Ceres without crossing the intervening space between. The First Lord turned into the wind and closed his eyes for a moment, stretching out his hand with his fingers spread. Ehren saw him murmur something under his breath, then nod once. Ehren went to the tower’s edge beside the First Lord, and saw the wind as it crossed the city below, and spread out into the fields beyond. Almost at once, it seemed, fog began to rise from streams and ponds.
In the air above the fields, Ehren saw that the disastrous rout had somehow been arrested, and it did not take long to see why. A second bright star of light, the glowing blade of a High Lord, had risen into the skies, and around that brilliant core of light, the battered Aleran forces had rallied. The bright scarlet of the star identified the High Lord of Aquitaine, and he had gathered what fliers remained into a cohesive force that had moved together in close formation, the sheer power of its combined windstreams sending vordknights scattering wildly through the air-a Legion shieldwall, taken to the skies.
Scarlet lightning flashed through the night, raking Vord from the air and slowing the advance of the oncoming tide. The fleeing cavalry began to emerge from beneath the shadow of the Vord, running for their lives, and only the courage and power of the few men who remained aloft and fighting the Vord sheltered them from being destroyed en masse.
The First Lord lifted his face to the evening sky and closed his eyes. He did not speak or move, but his expression became strained.
The vordknights began to reach the walls of the city, mostly the strays who had been blown that way by the disrupting gale of the Aleran aerial rear guard. The Legions defending Ceres had moved back into position after the first massive salvo of furycraft had taken them from the walls. Knights Flora and Ignus began hammering the Vord from the air with fire and arrow.
One vordknight streaked toward the tower where Ehren and the First Lord stood, only to be struck by half a dozen arrows loosed from the bows of the Knights Flora of the Crown Guard positioned on the neighboring towers. It dropped instantly, smashing into the battlements with a brittle, crackling sound, one of its wings still buzzing uselessly as it fell toward the courtyard fifty feet below.
The cold wind from the north grew colder yet, and Ehren shivered, his cloak suddenly inadequate against it. He turned to look over his shoulder, to the north, and saw the stars change from sharp, clear pinpoints of light to murky, blurry spots of silver in the night sky.
Gaius nodded once, and said, “Let’s begin, then, shall we?” He turned his palms to the sky and lifted them in a single, sharp gesture.
The low-lying fog that had formed on the ground, somehow untouched by the wind, suddenly leapt skyward. It boiled up over the walls of Ceres and swallowed the tower in a sudden rush of warmer air. The fog passed them, and Ehren saw it lifting away into the sky like some enormous blanket.
Gaius sighed and lowered his arms, his shoulders slumping wearily. “Let’s see if this works.”
Ehren swallowed. “Sire? You don’t think it’s going to work?”
“The theory is sound. But we’ve no way of being sure, have we?”
“Ah,” the young Cursor said. “What will we do if it doesn’t?”
Gaius arched an eyebrow and said, calmly, “I expect we will die, Sir Ehren. Don’t you?”
Thunder rumbled through the greyness overhead.
Ehren shivered, but before he had time to respond, he felt the first ice-cold raindrops begin to fall. They came one by one at first, then began to fall more and more thickly. He walked over to stand beside Gaius, who stared out at a battlefield that had been almost entirely occluded by rain. The burning sword of High Lord Aquitaine was leaving a plume of steam behind it, even as the Aleran fliers began to turn back toward the city, losing altitude as they came.
“You knew Rhodes was going to be killed when you sent him out there,” Ehren said quietly.
“Did I?” Gaius asked.
“And when this is over, Aquitaine is going to look like the man who created an orderly retreat out of a rout.”
“Not to quibble,” Gaius murmured, “but Lord Aquitaine is the man who created an orderly retreat out of a rout.” He shook his head. “I’ll give Attis this; he always understood that the strength of a High Lord-or a First Lord, for that matter-is in the hearts and minds of those who support him.”
“The sword,” Ehren said. “He’s using it to hold a firecrafting together. He’s giving them courage.”
“Mmmm,” Gaius agreed. “Rhodes was powerful, in a personal sense, but he never saw any further than the ends of his own fingertips. No different than Lord Kalarus, really, except that Rhodes was more intelligent and had more dangerous neighbors.”
“Far more dangerous,” Ehren said. “So much so that Rhodes’s life was the price of said neighbor’s allegiance.”
The First Lord smiled, a wintry expression that meant nothing. “The Citizenry has been blind to the threat the Vord represent, certain they would be easily overcome. That arrogance was as dangerous to us as the Vord. After tonight, it will no longer be an issue.” He glanced up at the rumbling sky, where the rain continued to fall more and more thickly, and added, his tone wryly amused, “One way or another.”
Then he staggered and fell to one knee.
“Sire!” Ehren said, starting forward.
The First Lord coughed, the sound horrible and hollow, over and over, each one wracking his entire body with clenching motion.
Ehren knelt beside the old man, supporting his weight when Gaius’s balance failed again.
After a moment, the fit of coughing passed. The First Lord shuddered and leaned wearily against the young Cursor, his head bowed. His lips looked blue, to Ehren, his face pallid and grey.
“Sire?” Ehren asked quietly.
Gaius shook his head and spoke in a rasp. “Help me up. They mustn’t see.”
Ehren blinked at the First Lord for a heartbeat, then slipped one of Gaius’s arms over his shoulders and rose, helping the older man to his feet.
Gaius leaned against the battlements for a moment, his hands spread across the cold, wet stone. Then he drew in a deep breath and straightened, his features composed, as the Aleran forces returned to Ceres.
Aquitaine’s sword burned more and more clearly, until he and the men he had gathered around him, some two hundred or so Citizens and Knights Aeris, sailed over the walls of the city and down into the streets beyond, heading for the rally points where the Legions had already planned to gather before withdrawing. The cavalry was not far behind them, their exhausted horses running hard as they streamed back toward the city.