They were about to find out.
Aphen took a deep breath and brought up her magic to form a protective shield. She was aware of Bombax doing the same.
Then, without any warning whatsoever, a rail sling positioned somewhere lower down on the weapons ports of the south wall fired a full load of metal shards into the hull of the Arishaig. The sound was startling in the near silence—like a momentary torrential downpour of hailstones on a tin roof—yet the damage to the warship’s reinforced steel plating was insignificant. Aphenglow had only a second to wonder who was responsible—who would be foolish enough to do such a thing—before the Arishaig responded by surging directly toward the Keep, all of her forward weapons firing at the fortress walls and towers at once.
The resulting explosions deafened her as she dropped behind the battlements, and the combined impact of scrap from the rail slings and white fire generated by the diapson crystals housed in the fire launchers caused the walls to shudder and crack. She scrambled for a vantage point farther away, catching a glimpse of Bombax as he moved in the opposite direction. When the flash rips opened up, everything was engulfed in smoke and ash and flames. By then, she was fifty yards down the parapets, crouched at the corner of the south wall and the mid-south tower, fighting to hold herself steady in the wake of a booming roar.
How can this be happening?
Then the Arishaig crossed the invisible plane of the walls, and the wards that protected Paranor struck back. The magic did so as if it were an invisible giant blowing off an annoying insect, its breath slamming into the huge warship with enough force to send her spinning away. All of her crew and most of her weapons went flying across the decks in a jumble of wood and iron and bodies. Screams rent the air, spars and light sheaths snapped loose and went flying into space, and the Arishaig bobbed and yawed as if caught in a windstorm.
Shades, Aphenglow mouthed in awe and disbelief.
Then Cymrian was at her side, crouched next to her in the lee of the wall. “What happened?”
“Magic wards the Keep, and apparently it decided enough was enough,” she answered, still watching the Arishaig as she bucked and swayed and fought to keep flying. The other Federation ships were clustered about her protectively, but none of them tried to approach when she was so clearly out of control. “Where’s Arling?”
“Down below, safe. I told her if she came up here you would just worry and not be able to concentrate.” He gave her a quick once-over. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
She shook her head. Down the way, several hundred yards along the battlements, Bombax was looking at them. She waved to him, signaling that she was all right. When he pointedly looked away, she was angry with him all over again.
The Arishaig had righted herself, and her crew was scurrying about, trying to put the weapons and shields back in place, restringing the radian draws and tightening down the light sheaths. Apparently, the Federation wasn’t finished yet. Aphenglow glanced down the walls to the defensive ports and found Krolling and his Troll guards.
“Everyone stay down!” she shouted. “No weapons! The wards will protect us!”
The Federation transport had backed off and was landing in a clearing some distance off. The scout vessel had joined her. But the three warships had lined up anew in front of Paranor’s walls and were slowly turning broadside to employ the maximum number of weapons possible. Aphenglow felt helpless, crouched down and watching with no real way to stop what was happening.
Then all the Federation weapons began firing at once, one after the other—rail slings, fire launchers, and flash rips—a cacophonous roar of discharge and recoil, the rush of missiles released and the crash of targets struck. Stone blocks cracked and shattered, wooden beams collapsed, the front gates—oak fully two feet thick and reinforced with iron plating—shuddered and split, and dust and ash clogged the air with so much debris that it became impossible to see anything more than a dozen feet away. For long moments the sounds were so overwhelming that the Keep’s defenders could do nothing but crouch behind the walls and wait for the roar to subside.
When it did, Aphenglow raised her head and saw the ships turning from port to bring their starboard weapons to bear.
“We should get off these walls!” Cymrian shouted, crouched close beside her. “We aren’t doing any good here!”
But she was determined to see this through. The wards had defended them earlier; surely they would do so again. She glanced down the walls at the damage done by the Federation weapons. There were gaps and cracks in the stone, but the Keep was essentially intact.
She shook her head at him. She would stay.
Then, as the airships turned all the way to starboard and prepared to launch a fresh attack, the wards she had known were there—that she had prayed would act to save them—finally responded. The giant that had swatted the airships away once already now turned visible. A darkness rose out of the Keep—a huge swirling form that might have been smoke or brume, but was clearly something far more substantial—coalescing to form the Keep’s protector, hanging in the air over Paranor’s walls. The giant howled in fury, a whirlwind releasing the full force of its power, exploding from the Keep with an audible blast, catching up the airships like toys and sending them flying—this time for hundreds of yards. Spinning, whirling, and juddering on wind currents that tore light sheaths to shreds, snapped off spars, and even brought down entire masts, the airships were carried away. Aphenglow saw the cruiser simply fall apart, its occupants spilling out of its shattered container like discarded toys. The other two, stronger and more durable, survived, but only just.
It was over almost before it began. Their giant protector had formed out of nothing, struck out at the airships, and faded away, all in about a minute. The air over Paranor was clear again, the giant gone as if it had never existed. It was the most incredible display of power that Aphenglow had ever witnessed. Whatever wards had been set in place to protect the Druid’s Keep, they were deadly beyond belief.
Beside her, Cymrian breathed out in a harsh whisper. When she glanced down the ramparts to find Bombax, she saw mirrored on his face the same look she knew he would find on hers.
The Federation warships that had survived limped away to join the transport, each managing with some difficulty to effect a landing. Tattered, broken, and mangled, they looked as if they were derelicts destined for the scrap heap. It would take days to make them right enough to fly. Surveying the damage, she felt an undeniable sense of satisfaction.
Drust Chazhul and the rest of his command would think twice before attacking Paranor again.
23
Drust Chazhul wasn’t thinking twice about anything, in spite of what Aphenglow believed. Sitting off to one side from where repairs were under way to his battered airships, still shaken by the fury of the response from the Keep to the Federation attack, he had nevertheless already made up his mind about what he would do next.
He would not, of course, give up and go home. Nor did he intend to launch any further air attacks on the Keep, having acknowledged by now how pointless that would be. Nor would he try using his Federation army, which was intact and unharmed, in an all-out ground assault against the fortress walls.
He would, however, get inside Paranor.