"I see them… I mean… target sighted!"
Miliana ferociously crammed her face against the viewing slot.
"All right-steady… steady… Shoot!"
The spring arms of the turtle's springal hammered wildly at her side; Miliana watched a cloud of heavy javelins soar out at the enemy, then all spin uselessly aside as one of the sorcerers made an easy gesture with one hand.
"Damn! He's got a spell up to protect him from normal missiles." The girl watched her target with her face set in a snarl. "Load abnormal missiles!" The gunner slammed a bundle of pre-blessed javelins into place. "All right… open fire!"
The turret bucked as the springal hammered out its load. Seen dimly through a haze of dust, the Svarezi sorcerers whirled brokenly aside. Apprentices dropped their books, bells, and candles, and began to run, falling one by one as a flywheel catapult spurted darts from deep inside the turtle's bows.
Other war machines in line with Miliana were having similar success. The juggernauts rolled on, crunching corn stubble under their wheels. Miliana looked down from her high seat to where Lorenzo labored in the dark; the girl excitedly wiped her sweating brow and gave a smile.
"It's brilliant! The war-turtles are actually working!"
"Of course they're working." Lorenzo prodded at a horse's neck and kept power surging through the hull. "I told you they would, didn't I?"
Lorenzo's latest masterpieces were an engineering triumph; inverted bowls of dense ceramic formed the hulls, which were modeled on the bowls used for Lomatran baked beans. Inside the hulls, six huge horses shod in insulated ceramic shoes provided motive power. The vehicle was suspended above the ground by four wide-rimmed ceramic wheels, and trailed leather curtains to seal the hull against the earth.
Atop the horses rode a platform housing two crossbow-men, a flywheel-powered dart projector, and Lorenzo, the turtle's elected driver. In the revolving turret up above, Miliana, a loader, and a gunner dispensed mayhem like children flinging rocks at nests of bees. The double springal sent shudders through the whole machine as it flung loads of missiles out across the fields.
"Earth elemental at one hundred yards… Damn-it's overturned number seven!" Miliana swore as a wave of living soil flipped a war-turtle completely over on its side. "Grab its attention! Load blessed ammunition!"
"Loaded!" The springal crew worked with admirable speed. "I see it."
"Shoot!"
Something made the war-turtle tingle as the great weapon fired. From his perch above the horses, Lorenzo looked up in alarm
"What was that?"
"Warp wood spell." Miliana kept her eye glued to her periscopes. "There's a bunch of druids to the left. Svarezi must have hired them in from Turmish. Good thing we used whalebone for the springals. Damn; missed the elemental! Fire again-quickly!"
The whole machine bucked as the catapult fired. Miliana clenched her fists with glee.
"Spitted him with half a dozen!" The girl looked down into the turtle's hull. "Lorenzo-got your sword?"
"Why?"
The answer came as a great heave of the ground. The horses screamed, the whole framework groaned, and a great roaring head made out of soil erupted between the wheels. Lorenzo squealed like a frightened pig, whipped out his rapier, and jammed it in the earth elemental's brow. He jerked the power trigger and sent his last remaining electric charge crackling right between its eyes. The elemental crumbled like a sand castle in the wind, leaving Lorenzo to plaster himself across the back of a trembling horse.
High above, Miliana looked down with a frown.
"Watch where you're steering, dolt, we're going to hit a tree!" The whole contraption rocked, a crunching noise followed, and Miliana scowled into her periscopes. "Oh wait… it's all right. It was only the druids." The girl polished up her periscope lens. "Drat! There's mistletoe hanging off the outside…"
A fireball enfolded the hull, failing to even singe the clever ceramic armor. Here and there a lightning bolt flickered in defiance at the far end of the battle line, ricocheting from the insulated armor. Flipping up her periscope and taking advantage of a temporary lull, Miliana sat back in her chair and heaved a great bloodthirsty sigh.
"It's not bad, this. First we invent the peppercorn vote, and now we overturn the whole basis of modern war." Poison fog from something like a cloudkill suddenly began to creep in through the vision slots. Unconcerned, Miliana slipped on a leather mask and breathed from the vehicle's stored air supply. Her muffled voice rang Lorenzo's praise.
"All in all, I think this battle's going pretty well so far!" The war-turtles clanked ever onward, while all across the fields the last Svarezi sorcerers broke and ran.
High above the melee, the Svarezi air cavalry wheeled in an enormous holding pattern as they watched the unfolding drama of the battlefield. Rumbling out from the city walls came strange enclosed war wagons, closely followed by a dense rush of infantry. The Lomatran mounted corps-what few horsemen and hippogriffs they could muster-all stood their beasts before the city gates, behind a haystack barricade. Clad in scarlet armor and soaring like a war god through the clouds, the captain of Svarezi's air troops let his face split into a gap-toothed smile.
"Cousin! They have isolated their mounted men."
"Aye, cousin…" The captain's second in command-leaner, hungrier, and clad in a purple brigantine, flexed the sinews of his bow. "We can fall on them from behind and crush them into their own retreating war wagons!"
"Good-it is done!" The captain jabbed his laboring mount with his heels. Throwing back its head, the creature gave a piercing rally-scream. "Wings in line astern-attack dive!"
"Wait!"
A terrified voice drifted up from below. The commander hauled back on his reins, bringing an answering surge from the powerful wings beating at his sides. He peered down past the hippogriff's smooth wings to see a tiny flier desperately climbing up to join him.
"Wait! Captain, I see it! The red bird-it's over there-hiding in the trees!"
The air commander rolled his eyes; the morning's scout reports had been less than satisfactory.
"One bird?"
"No, captain! The bird! The red bird!" The scout finally reached a decent altitude for conversation; he seemed sweaty, shaken, and his equipment hung in rags. "It's waiting to take us in the flank as we pass!"
The ferocious killer bird in question could just be seen as it sat in the boughs of an olive tree, bouncing happily up and down like a child on a swing. It looked far too stupid to be anything other than an escapee from some noble's pleasure garden.
However, the scout commander had managed to lose almost half his patrol. The air captain and his cousin exchanged glances across the wings of their hippogriffs, then shrugged in silent accord.
"We'll make our course take us past the bird. We can try arrow shots at the beast in passing." Irritated by the delay, the commander hoisted up his bow. "Now enough! Attack formation-dive!"
Five hundred hippogriffs turned sharp wing stalls and dove in tight formations toward the city far below. Wind whistled through a thousand wings; sunlight glinted off outstretched hooves and claws. All along the battle squadrons, men added their shrieks to the bloodcurdling sound of monster eagles' screams.
Bouncing happily up and down in the branches of its olive tree, the ferocious red bird seemed utterly engrossed in its own affairs. He genially wig-wagged his wings as he saw the hundreds of horribly be-weaponed hippogriffs diving straight down his throat, then threw back his head and opened his beak in glee.