Guild Mage: Apprentice-Chapter 160. The Second Dawn

Crossing the Airaduinë to the southern bank had been easy enough, and the Eld had remained downriver from the edge of the shoal by a considerable margin so as to avoid the sharp-toothed fish which had grown into mana beasts.

The day before their assault on the waystone had been spent in fortifying their camp, caring for their weapons and armor, and making sure that every warrior was as well-rested as they possibly could be. For Keri’s part, the long hours of enforced idleness only made the anxiety that came before battle worse.

He wrote a letter to Rika and Rei, first. That was difficult: the things that Keri wanted to say would only frighten them. ‘If I don’t see you again -’ no, he didn’t want his son reading that, and Rika would be easier to deal with if she didn’t have to think about just how much danger Keri was in. It had been months since he’d seen either of them, but once they controlled the waystone, and things at the bridge were settled, he could take a day or two to visit Mountain Home. That would be good.

He wrote to Livara, as well, and that was easier. Keri knew that he didn’t have to dance around the young woman’s feelings: she was a fighter, like him, and wouldn’t appreciate it even if he tried. He told her that her father was well, and a skilled commander. That the Red Shield Tribe had asked after her bodyguard, and that Wren was invited home to Varuna if she wished to come. He thought about asking after her human boy, but decided not to in the end. Truthfully, Keri would have been surprised if she hadn’t turned him aside by now.

Once the letters were written, he tried to sleep in the heat of the afternoon. It was probably pointless, but at the very least Keri could set an example for the men and women under his command. He surprised himself when he woke in the twilight to the smell of soup cooking over campfires.

Over spoonfuls of fish caught from the Airaduinë, seasoned with foraged herbs in a thin broth, they reviewed the plan in low voices. Vari’s leg bounced nervously, Keri noticed, but none of the older Eld shamed the boy by pointing it out. Soaring Eagle joined them for the last time.

“I spent all of last evening in the trees at the edge of the bridge,” the Red Shield told them, in between mouthfuls of soup. “I saw no signs of my people, nor of any of the goddess’ lieutenants. If I had to make a guess,” Soaring Eagle continued, “I would say that she does not have much use for this place, but has left a force of Antrians here to defend it as a precaution.”

“At Soltheris,” Airis ka Reimis said, “I understand that she opened a connection between two waystones and held it so that her troops could pass back and forth. Do we need to be concerned with that here?”

“No more than at any other waystone in the wide world,” Soaring Eagle said, with a sigh. “Wren was in Ractia’s councils at her father’s side; she might be able to explain things better than I. But as near as I can tell, the stone at the mountain fastness is special.”

“How?” Keri asked.

“It would have saved us months of travel overland through the jungle and skirting the badlands to reach the mountains,” Soaring Eagle said, “if Ractia had simply taken us here and then opened this waystone to her goal. But she did not.”

“Which raises the question of why,” Valtteri said.

Soaring Eagle nodded. “I think she could not. I often heard the mountain fastness described as a place of last resort. This is only my thought - I do not know for certain - but I think that the other waygates cannot open the way to where the goddess is hiding.”

“Its sigil would be absent from every other gate,” Valtteri mused, “though it would contain the full set, in and of itself. She can send troops out, even leave the connection open for them to return, but she had to travel there by foot. You are certain?”

“Certain?” Soaring Eagle shook his head. “No. But if you had seen the miseries she experienced during the journey, you would put aside the idea she chose that route of her own free will. We crossed the jungle from rift to rift, staying in the shoals long enough for her to recover each time. When we made for the next rift, it was a forced march, pushing us to exhaustion and beyond, while she suffered the entire way. There were many times our warriors had to carry the Great Mother into the shoals of the next rift, because she was too weak to make it on her own.”

“That fits with what my father told me,” Valtteri said, nodding. “The old gods cannot survive for long in a land bare of mana. Let us assume for a moment all of your guesses are true, Soaring Eagle. She would have perhaps opened a connection to this waygate long enough to send a few servants to hold the place - and she’s likely done this with any other rift between here and the mountains that has a functioning waystone. But unless they have a way to signal her, she will not know we have seized one of her waystones immediately.”

“Assume regular contact,” Keri said, setting his empty bowl aside. “Once a month perhaps, or once a season. It means we would have some unknown amount of time, before we see any response.”

“The plan proceeds,” Valterri said. “We move when the first light touches the eastern sky, and seize the waystone. Forty-eight warriors with us, a dozen to guard the camp. Livari, you have command here. We will signal you when it is safe to break camp and move the supplies up to the waystone.”

The young man inclined his head.

“I bid you all farewell, then,” Soaring Eagle said, rising from the log upon which he had made his seat. “I have been away from my family and my people long enough, and I will not be drawn into this battle. But I will send scouts, and if you hold this place, it may be that we have reason to trade with each other.”

The other men rose as well, and clasped hands with the Red Shield one after another. When it was Keri’s turn, he held his grip for a moment. “I have written a message to Valtteri’s daughter,” he said, “which will bring your words to Wren. It will be sent through the waystone once things have settled here, though I cannot tell you how long it will take to make its way to them.”

“Thank you,” Soaring Eagle said. “My wife will be pleased to hear of this.” At the same time, each man released the other’s hand, and then Soaring Eagle was gone, replaced by a dark-winged bat, winging its way off into the night, toward the east.

☙

The eastern sky was just beginning to glow a faint blue over the long river when Keri and the others moved out. Just over fifty Elden warriors, all in full armor and carrying their weapons, made their way upriver along the southern bank, toward the long-unused waystone. They were within sight of the pale stone of the bridge - the dam, really - illuminated by the great ring shining overhead in the night sky when one of the women from Al’Fenthia stepped on a slumbering monster.

In the dark, the mana beast had looked like nothing so much as the shadow of a fallen tree trunk, stretched across the sand and into the river. It moved fast, when roused, opening a long snout and then snapping its jaws shut around the woman’s leg again. She screamed, and Keri could not blame her, but it ruined the stealth of their approach. The monster that had her rolled, and with a horrifying tearing sound, the leg came loose, flinging the Elden warrior off to one side. More shadowed tree-trunks fell upon her immediately, tearing the woman to pieces as they consumed her.

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“To the waystone!” Valtteri shouted. “Run!”

All attempt at going unnoticed was thrown aside in favor of speed. A serpent dropped out of the trees above them, grown nearly as long and fat as a juvenile wyrm, and Keri impaled it on his spear as he rushed by, then shook the corpse off so that it wouldn’t slow him down.

They scrambled up the slope in the darkness, over sharp rocks, tangled tree roots, and through dense undergrowth, complete with thorns that caught at any exposed skin. Somewhere behind him, Keri heard the yowl of a jungle cat, and looked back to see it land on Olavi’s back, bearing the man to the ground.

“Savelet Aiveh Fleia o’Mae!” Keri shouted, and for a moment the night gave way to day. A bar of blinding light connected his outstretched hand and the wildcat, blowing what was left of the mana beast off the Elden warrior entirely, to be sprayed in smoking chunks of burned meat across the nearest tree trunk. In the instant of light, Keri could see that the shadowed logs were in fact some sort of great, armored lizard, with long triangular snouts and two eyes that rose from the top of their heads like bumps, and long tails like whips. There were at least half a dozen of them along the riverbank, now awake and stirred into motion by the passage of the Eld.

“Keep moving!” Keri shouted, waving his spear forward. Olavi threw himself up into motion, more of a stagger than a run, and Keri caught the man about the shoulder and pulled him along, always upslope.

From somewhere not far ahead, a wave of cold spilled out into the jungle, and great ramparts of sparkling ice began to rise up toward the stars. Valtteri must have reached the waystone. Linnea appeared at Olavi’s other side, and together she and Keri dragged the man up to where the warriors at the front were already taking up positions around the circle of white stone.

“Here!” Airis ka Reimis shouted, and slammed his hand down on a sigil. Keri didn’t have a good view from where he was, but it must have been the mark for Al’Fenthia.

“You see which one is missing?” Valtteri shouted, taking Airis by the shoulder as the stone began to shine with blue light.

“I’ll recognize it,” the merchant said.

“Everyone else, off the stone!” Valterri shouted. “Defenses! Now!”

Somewhere in the desperate scramble along the riverbank, the first sliver of the sun had crossed the horizon to the east, painting the flowing waters of the Airaduinë with molten gold. It was easier to see now, and Keri scrambled up the slippery steps of ice to the parapet. Valtteri’s power was nearly as awe-inspiring as his father’s had been, at the Hall of Ancestors, but Keri didn’t have time to reflect on that now.

Between the crenellations, he could see the Antrian war-machines coming across the top of the dam, their clawed metal feet grinding the stone. One the first two, the armor plates along one shoulder opened, and some sort of contraption of metal tubes emerged. Keri had just enough time to wonder what it was before a roar, like a thousand hailstones hitting a roof all at once, filled his ears. Below them, the wall of ice shivered, and dozens of impacts sprayed frozen dust and shards in every direction.

Whatever Vædic weapon they were using, Keri knew the machines couldn’t be allowed to bring the wall down. “Savelet Aiveh Fleia o’Mae,” he shouted again, over the roar of the machines’ weapons, but this time held his intent. Instead of a single short blast, he swept the bar of light, of volcanic heat, across the two oncoming machines, from one to the other and across the stone between them.

Where the light passed, the enchanted steel of the Antrian’s armor melted, running like water. The stone between them was scorched black, a furrow dug across the top of the dam as if someone had taken a shovel to the earth. But when Keri’s light touched the rotating bundle of tubes on the second war-machine’s shoulder, a sudden series of popping sounds replaced the weapon’s roar.

Keri released the light, and watched the first two Antrians fall, nothing more than smoking wrecks on the stone. For a moment, the men and women who’d climbed to the top of the frozen battlements cheered. Then, the remaining four war-machines reached the place where their brethren had been destroyed.

Two of them stepped forward and knelt, raising one arm so that brilliant red sigils lit with power. From each war-machine, a pane of blue mana appeared, and with a small adjustment of their arms, the two mana-shields touched and joined. Behind them, the other pair of Antrians sheltered, their own shoulder armor opening to reveal more of the weapons that had already weakened the wall.

Behind Keri, a flash of light erupted, stretching up into the sky as if it would touch the very ring in the heavens. That meant that Airis ka Reimis was gone. The soldiers meant to reinforce their position would be waiting at Al’Fenthia - but waiting did not mean they would come instantly. How long for Airis to stumble off the waystone, to call for his men, to get them ready to depart and then activate the return sigil? Would he even be able to find the correct marking?

Valtteri barreled up the steps and took a position at the top of the wall next to Keri. “Good work,” the older man said, once he saw the two mettled Antrians. “But if they’re allowed to keep using those weapons, this wall won’t last long.”

All around them, Elden warriors launched spikes of ice, rays of light, whipping thorns, gusts of wind, or even stranger magic at the mana shields. The left shield cracked and shattered, to another cheer. But the four Antrians on the bridge reacted immediately, as if they’d trained for just such an event.

The two war-machines in the front rank rose and stepped aside, allowing the two in the back to come forward. The Antrians formerly in the rear now knelt, activating their own enchantments and joining two fresh shields together, while the two who had been in the front rank now revealed their own shoulder weapons.

“Can you imagine fifty of those things, fighting in ranks?” Valtteri said, shaking his head.

“Four is bad enough,” Keri remarked.

“Keep them distracted for a moment,” Valtteri muttered, and then began to chant. The bone charms and trinkets braided into his hair began to glow.

Keri shrugged, extended his spear over the wall, and launched another bar of blazing light down at their enemies. When the blinding light passed, however, the joined-mana shields remained intact. Undaunted, the warriors along the wall continued to fling magic down at the war-machines.

Valtteri turned to the left, where the dam held back a great reservoir of water. The older man lifted both his hands, as if he were grasping something, and then the still depths were broken by ripples. For a moment, the entire battle seemed to pause, and every sound in the surrounding jungle stopped.

Then, a massive wave of ice, the size of Mountain Home itself, shot up out of the water and over the dam. It was all spikes and blades, crests and grasping hands. Keri thought he saw wolves, bears, and wyrms flash in the light of the dawn, and then the enormous construct hit the four Antrians from the side.

The war-machines were tossed from the top of the dam like nothing more substantial than a child’s rag doll, broken into pieces that splashed down into the waiting arms of the Airaduinë river below. The lizards turned and dove into the water, though Keri thought they would be disappointed when they discovered that pieces of enchanted steel were not particularly edible.

The dam itself was bisected by a frozen, glacial mass, though Valtteri had used enough finesse and control to avoid actually breaking any of the stone. It was as if a glacier had punched their enemies, sent them flying, and then simply stopped.

“That will take days to melt, even in this heat,” Keri said, shaking his head.

“See to the wounded!” Valtteri shouted. “Defend the stone!”

Keri looked down at the white circle and the sigils along its border, and saw that a red light was beginning to build there. “Reinforcements coming!” He shouted. “Clear the way for arrival!”

Below, the Elden warriors on the ground fought off a motley collection of mana-beasts: a pair of wildcats, a few snakes, and even one of the horrid reptilian monsters that had made its way up from the river banks below. Still, with the Antrians disposed of, victory was no longer in doubt.

Keeping watch from atop the wall of ice, Keri counted down from two hundred. Finally, the captured waystone flashed with light, and ranks of fresh, armored Elden warriors stepped off the waystone, rushing forward to reinforce the lines of their brethren who were already fighting. No sooner had the first wave arrived, than the waystone began to glow red again, warning of the next.

“We did it,” Valtteri ka Auris said, clapping a hand to Keri’s shoulder. “We have our foothold in Varuna. Now the war truly begins.”