‘Mid-afternoon at their current speed, my Lord Denser.’
‘And you have not even managed to slow them?’
‘Slowing them isn’t the issue. Their pace is ponderous in the extreme. But they will not turn. They will not negotiate and they will not trade. They do not believe they have to.’
‘What will you do? I can spare no one. We are mounting an attack on the enemy coming towards us, but like you the dead in our midst tell us we will fail. I refuse to believe that.’
‘As do I,’ said Heryst. ‘We have precious little in the way of meaningful defence but what we do have will be unleashed the moment they set foot inside the city boundaries. They have been told this will happen. My conscience is clear.’
‘Keep the Globe running,’ said Denser. ‘We can win if we work together. Anything you learn, anything we learn, we must exchange.’
‘You have my word on that.’
‘Good luck, Lord Heryst. The wishes of the whole of Xetesk are with you.’
‘That means more than you know. I must go. The refugees are building up and I need to position my forces. We will speak later in the day.’
‘I’m counting on it.’
The Communion Globe changed from vibrant green to a dull grey. Idling, the Communion teams called it. Heryst relaxed and removed his hand from the panel. Two others did the same, leaving three to maintain the casting at a low level. After a moment to gather himself, he stood.
‘Whatever you hear and whatever you see in the coming days, we must keep this alive. I do not know if we can stop the enemy. All we know is that in their wake lies devastation and that they are coming right for us. Keep strong, you and the resting teams. Balaia needs you.’
Heryst moved to the heavy door of the chamber and knocked for it to be pulled open. Cool air washed in. The door was made from thick oak timbers and bound with iron. A dormant spell lay on the door, a WardLock ready to be activated by a command word from inside should anyone threaten the Globe. Heryst thought it likely they would need to use it soon enough.
Outside, the energy of the Heart warmed his body. It rested thirty feet above his head. A tall, cylindrical stone, similar to those in all the colleges in a chamber designed to circulate mana at high density. Without it, mages aligned to the college anywhere in the world would be unable to cast spells with any degree of certainty or success.
Heryst nodded to the guards and began to climb the long, gentle, circular stairway up to ground level. There were mirrors set along the outside wall every thirty feet or so, all of them ancient and tarnished, hung as a security measure by a high elder mage of generations past. He caught his reflection in one of them and rather wished he hadn’t.
He admitted to being sixty but looked more like ninety. His once-proud head of hair was gone and he wore a skullcap to keep the chill away. His face was wrinkled and puffy, his nose and cheeks perennially red and veined. Heryst knew why but the shakes in the morning were only ever quelled by strong spirits.
The demons had taken so much. Maybe not his soul but the man he had been was lost forever. Sleep was a fleeting pleasure ruined by nightmares and food was taken merely to live. The joy of taste was a bitter memory.
Heryst sighed. His eyes were not still. The pupils performed a tiny, jerking dance and took the edge off his focus. He reached out a hand to the mirror and touched it with the tips of his skeletal fingers.
‘I’ve been fooling you, haven’t I? This isn’t life; it is just a long decline to the grave,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps defeat would be best for us all.’
Chapter 12
‘I don’t see this lot as being too much of a problem,’ said Denser.
‘No indeed,’ said Sol. ‘Hard to remember a time when I could count an enemy invasion force on the fingers of one hand. A well-placed Jalyr’s Sun should do the trick.’
‘You do realise it can’t be that easy, don’t you?’ said Denser.
‘Of course,’ said Sol.
‘Where do you think we should try and take them?’
Sol looked out over the gently rolling countryside that was so typical of inland Balaia. They were three days easy ride south-east of Xetesk on the southern borders of the Pontois Plains. The land north was beautiful and green, scattered with the purple flowers of heather. To the south the landscape was dominated by the great Grethern Forest, where Thraun used to run as a wolf. But to the east the ground was parched and dying, as if anticipating the disaster about to overcome it and reduce it still further. Its rolls and shallow dips hid the enemy for short periods, though their position could always be marked by the belching cloud, metallic thudding and occasional flash of mana fire that preceded a wash of heat.
The horizon was full of dust and the air tainted with an acrid burning scent that stuck in the throat. The enemy was transforming Balaia into a wasteland and their ambling pace told of a power mighty enough to have no need of urgency. It was clear even from this distance that they did not consider the soldiers and mages of Balaia any sort of threat.
The shock of seeing the enemy and their extraordinary machine had passed quickly enough. The moment’s fear of the unknown had been washed away by relief that only three men walked in front of the machine which, it had been confirmed quickly, was drawing in mana, or rather whatever it was mana became after it had been ignited. It had made sense of the spreading dropouts in the mana spectrum. The huge, bulbous, metallic balloon being dragged on sled runners sent gouts of steam and smoke from multiple chimneys, while from within the thundering of metal parts hammering together occasionally drowned out all speech.
There was to have been a discussion about talking to the enemy. Seeing the spreading destruction left in their wake had strangled that thought at birth.
‘I think as soon as we are ready we should attack. No sense in delay.’
They were standing with thirty mages and two hundred college guard, having ridden to their forward camp late the previous evening. The returned Raven, unable to ride horses because no horse would take a dead man on its back, had joined them this morning.
‘I thought all you dead folk liked to stick together,’ said Denser ‘I’m surprised no more of you came. Solidarity and all that.’
‘They can’t, as I am tired of explaining,’ said Hirad. ‘Not unless their loved ones are standing here too. And add to that, they’re bloody scared of this enemy. Just like me.’
‘But I thought the whole was greater than the sum, if you get me,’ said Denser.
‘And that is why they congregate close together in Xetesk for the most part. But they, like we, have other compulsions,’ said Ilkar.
‘You’ve felt it, Unknown,’ said Hirad. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t. Or you, Xetesk-man. The weight of souls around you. They need something to hang on to. Alone they just get blown away one by one. But together there is strength.’
Ilkar nodded. ‘In our own dimension we congregated because the more that are in one place, the greater the bliss and comfort. Now we congregate if we are not to fade. Not all of them have purpose beyond survival, and for them the dual support of being by their loved ones and in a mass is safe. But for us it’s different. For us to survive, we need a purpose and we need someone living to show us the way. We’re beginning to think that, for better or worse, that’s you, Unknown, and you, Denser.’
‘I’m not with you,’ said Sol.
‘You two are what binds us all, that’s what we think,’ said Erienne, her young frame dwarfed by that of Sol. ‘We can’t prove it, but what we do know is that now we’re back, the further we are from you, the more it hurts.’
‘So you’re saying you want to help us in this fight? I thought you said we couldn’t beat them,’ said Sol.