The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three Page 9

  In an instant the snow turned to boiling rain.

  His soldiers screamed as the boiling rain hit their bodies. Assailed by the pain from the scalding rain they still fought on. They would live. Maybe they would be disfigured, but a Protocrat was not bred to be pretty.

  The effective on the white furred beasts was entirely different.

  Suddenly, what had been a fearsome force became laughable. Bedraggled, the beasts were nowhere near as large. Powerful, yes, but not unbeatable. And now they could be seen. The entire sky was alight with the Hierophant's terrible fire.

  In the space of a few minutes of frenetic fighting, the rain ceased and the Protectorate Tenthers had retaken the perimeter. Bodies littered the ground, torn and burned, sizzling from the heat of the rain, or from the preternatural fires being extinguished so suddenly.

  The air stank with burned flesh.

  Screams no longer rent the night air, but strange, somehow intelligent and mournful cries...the Hierophant realised it was the beasts that were making the pitiful din as they died.

  He toyed with the idea of calling for one of them to be brought before him, so he could invade its mind and get a sense of its intelligence, were there any.

  He shrugged.

  'No matter,' he said.

  Satisfied, he turned on his heel, trudging barefoot through sludge where once there had been thick snow over ice, and entered his tent to sleep. The cries of pain wouldn't keep him from his rest, and after such energies were loosed, a mage was always tired, even one as powerful as the Hierophant.

  No, the cries of pain did not bother him. Far from it. He welcomed the sound. As he lay down, the cries of the attackers being slaughtered tapered away until there was no sound but a gentle wind, but by then the Hierophant was fast asleep. He wore a slight smile on his face as he drifted into dreamless slumber.

  *

  Chapter Forty-One

  The Hierophant and his subordinates took toll of the dead when the first sun, Carious, broke the horizon. They had lost, by the final tally, nearly one tenth of their entire force - close on to a thousand well-trained soldiers, torn apart in a battle that had lasted perhaps a mere ten minutes. Many more were injured, either maimed by the powerful beasts or burned by fire and burning rain.

  The Hierophant did not care. The Protocrats did not feel pain as keenly as humankind, but it was pain, mild, perhaps, but pain, nonetheless. And the Hierophant fed on pain.

  The Protocrats loss did not matter much to the Hierophant, but he was angered to find some invaluable mages had been lost during the course of the battle.

  Not a single attacker remained alive. Any that had escaped would not return.

  'Skin them. Salt them. We will need provisions,' he said, to a waiting Protocrat. The Protocrat's head was bowed, as though the night's failures rested on his shoulders. The Hierophant, however, was not sure he counted it a failure. He was feeling lenient.

  'Leave me. Carry on,' he said. The Protocrat turned and left. The Hierophant thought maybe he was a captain or some such, but he did not trouble himself to learn the Protectorate ranks. It was unimportant.

  Alone again, as he liked it.

  Ahead, the mountains known in the south as Thaxamalan's Saw loomed.

  By evening, they were many miles closer still, a great swathe of dark garbed soldiers swarming toward the only pass within hundreds of miles. Closer and closer still to Sturma, and the end of an age...for the Hierophant, or for Sturma.

  And the Hierophant was sure which it would be.

  Sturma would not stand longer than a week. He was sure of it. He needed no Kun Grass nor seer to tell him as much.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Two

  While battle raged in the frozen wastelands north of Sturma, the oceans between Sturma and Lianthre were roiling as unnatural winds blew a great fleet of Hierarch and Protocrat ships westward toward landfall and the waiting might of the Sturman armies.

  But in between those two lands, battle waited.

  The seas of Lianthre were vast, and largely uncharted by land-faring peoples.

  The seas were the domain of the Feewar, the people known as the Seafarers. The captain of one of their greatest ships was Lowan Haggard, and he was about to die.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The ships mustered at dawn, the great living ships of the Feewar all amassed across the sea. Even though the flotilla was beyond sight of land, it was obviously enough a blockade of sorts. And the assembled might of the Seafarers was enough to cause a serious obstacle.

  They waited, large enough to appear an island from even a short distance. The living ships of the Feewar were grown from trees that thrived on the brine. Trees grew tall and proud, with great sails mounted between the trunks. Denied landfall since the curse that had befallen the Feewar, they were masters of all that the seas had to offer. The Seafarers lived and loved their entire lives at sea. Their ships, their magic, their appearance, even, was different to the land-faring people.

  They were a fey breed.

  Lowan Haggard stood on the bow of the greatest ship in the fleet, the Yargar. Terithan, the ship's eldest and wisest man, stood beside him.

  The Yargar sailed fast, not because its keel cut the water fine. It had no keel. It sailed and was steered by the magic of the Feewar. Forever denied the land, their magic was the pinnacle of water magic. The Feewar people's eyes were uniformly blue, just like the mages of Hierarch had reddish or orange eyes - the colour of fire.

  'When we meet, we will lose,' said Terithan. 'We cannot stand against their magic. We are on the wane. Those creatures of the Hierarchy are on the rise. They have mastered the seas like no others on Rythe. They are dangerous to our people.'

  'Then it is a pointless battle,' said Lowan.

  'Never pointless...no more pointless than the tides or the mountains under the blessed seas that will one day rise again. It may seem as though there is no purpose at times, but we will survive and thrive yet.'

  'I don't see how, if we are to die fighting this new enemy.'

  'Who said anything about dying?' said the old man with a grin.

  Lowan thought hard as he stared out to sea. Thought about their chances, and the losses that they must inevitably suffer. But he was no man's fool. And his magic was strong.

  Not strong enough to withstand, but strong enough, perhaps, to swing the tide of the battle for the Sturmen, their lost kin.

  'Hathra,' he called out to his friend and confident and his second, should he fall in the coming battle. 'You see it? On the horizon?'

  'I do. Have seen it for some time. The gathering of the black.'

  'They come.'

  'Then we will be ready to do what we must,' he said.

  Lowan stared out at the fleet of ships. Their homes. The living ships. They could not bear the cost of the loss. Their people were too few.

  But new ships could be grown...

  New people could be born...

  Compared to the might of the armada sailing toward them, they were nothing.

  But they would have to be enough.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Four

  One man can always make a difference. One man can change the tides of Rythe, though the size of the task may seem impossible. That one man was Lowan Haggard, and he knew he would die in the battle, for it needed to be so. To the north, three of their home ships wallowed in the sea, ungainly when not supported by their magic. To the south their remaining kin waited, their ships low in the water.

  Lowan, too, waited.

  The black cloud was upon them, and at last he could see the terrible ships of the Hierarchs, their hated enemy of old.

  Then Lowan's eyes gave forth a bright blue light that perfectly matched the colour of the sea. Yargar began to move. Slow, at first, then faster and faster, directly toward the leading ships of the enemy armada.

  Lowan's energy did not flag, as a mage would tire. Lowan's power came from the seas themselves, and the seas we
re boundless. He did not falter, the ship sped on, because he had the entirety of the Feewar's power vested in him and the seas upon which to feed his magic.

  He felt fear, yes, but elation, too, and the sheer power coursing through him. At his back his people sent him their strength.

  Then, at full speed, Lowan was left nothing but his fear. Yet he was resolved in this course of action.

  To the north and south behind the Yargar, his people fled, using their magic to escape the coming onslaught and unwinnable battle.

  The Yargar was an immense ship. As large, even, as an island. It dwarfed the approaching ships as it skimmed, now, across the sea. Parts of the living ship broke off in the mad rush toward the enemy.

  But those fleeing ships were low in the water because the Yargar was now three home ships in one. With the Feewar's song they had bonded the great ships together, until the Yargar covered the sea, completely encompassing the route of the Hierarchy's ships. The Hierarchy had no way around the Yargar and those two other bonded ships, not at the speed at which the Hierarch's fleet travelled.

  Lowan's magic was strong. The ship barrelled across the ocean toward the coming darkness of the Hierarch's magic. Lowan found that he could laugh, and he did. He let out great bellows. This was what it meant to be Feewar...fearless in the sea.

  At the bow of the Yargar his hair flew back from his face and his strange blue light retreated into his eyes. He hit the darkness that covered the approaching ships.

  The Hierarchs tried to manoeuvre, but could not avoid the collision.

  In moments, Lowan Haggard was thrown to his knees as the three ships under his power hit the first of the oncoming ships. There was a terrible shrieking from the tearing wood of the Hierarch's ships, and from the trees of the Yargar.

  Haggard pushed himself up again, in time to see fireballs flying through the darkness toward his ship, but he and she, for all ships were women at heart, were unstoppable.

  The Yargar took flame, but it ploughed on through the waves, tearing Hierarch ships to pieces and plunging them and their cargoes to the floor of the ocean.

  Then a ball of magical flame landed beside Lowan and exploded, sending him crashing from the helm of the ship to the sea. He was pulled under. He saw the sky above the surface suddenly aflame and their mages tried to burn, halt, and destroy the onrushing island.

  Then the ship was above Lowan. He kicked down, and down, because the sea above was all fire.

  The Feewar could not bear land, nor fire.

  They could hold their breath under the water for a long time, but Lowan knew he could not surface, knew he would drown, because his own ship prevented him from surfacing.

  He died beneath the ocean, along with the Hierarchs that were scuppered. A good death, he thought, his mind becoming clouded as he ran out of air. A good death.

  The Seafarers, too, believed in Madal, the Lord of Death. Perhaps, thought Lowan with finality, he would meet the fabled king there. Perhaps he would see a future when his people made landfall, and the rise of the mountains beneath the sea. Perhaps the tide of Rythe would change once more.

  But by then his body drifted down, and down, to the deep places where no living man had ever been.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Five

  'Bastards. Bastards!'

  The captain of the Hierarch's flagship slowed and skirted around the wide wreckage of too many ships, through the floating bodies and jetsam of broken boats. In among the carnage floated what seemed to be living trees, and the detritus of the Feewar ships. It was spread far and wide, but the remaining mages hit the carcass of the great ships with everything they had, blowing them apart with unnatural fire.

  No bodies, the captain noted. Not one. Those that had fallen in the early collision would have gone down with the ships.

  The seers saw the attack. They had been prepared. But they had not been prepared for the sheer power of the Feewar. Just one man had steered the awesome ships into the Hierarch fleet.

  'Bastard,' swore the captain again.

  It slowed them down, thinned their numbers, but their force was still vast.

  Landfall would not be long. Then, the seers aboard the ship assured him, would come an easy battle. He wasn't sure just how much he trusted his seers' foresight any longer.

  So thinking, he spied the first hint of land on the horizon. Behind him, the Protectorate soldier's felt the coming battle, too.

  An easy battle? They'd just lost too many men, too many ships, and they hadn't even made landfall, yet. He was angry. His men were angry. They'd been tricked, and soldiers lives had been sold cheap.

  But it would be a different matter upon land. They would sell their lives dear. Yet as he looked out upon the shoreline he was the glint of barbarian steel in the cold winter's sunshine. It was a force to be reckoned with. He could not take it lightly.

  The Protocrats made little noise as they took on their light armour, so that they would not sink as they fought their way to the shore.

  After a short time, the armada slowed, and the darkness faded surrounding the ships faded.

  'Light them up,' said the Captain, largely to himself, as he saw the force of barbarians on the frozen shores of the land they called Sturma.

  'Light them up, damn it,' wished the Captain once again. So he could go home, and be warm, and be done with this pointless war. He was a Protocrat, yes, but not all Protocrats were build equally. The captain had little taste for bloodshed. He was a captain of a warship, but he had his men to mete out destruction. He did not often taste blood and pain himself. Even so, he would quite happily revel in the carnage as his men tore into the barbarians that had dragged him to this godsforsaken land.

  He was about to shout out once more for his mages to attack, but it proved unnecessary.

  Brightness lit the sky, even brighter than the suns for an instant. The mages aboard his ship began to rain fire on the forces massed on the shore. A hail of arrows answered, but they did not have the range of the magic.

  The human force fell back...they had little choice.

  'Go, go, go!' shouted the captains of each boat, seemingly as one.

  With practised ease through training the protectorate soldiers, the tenthers, alighted to smaller ships and took up oars. With powerful strokes they made for the shore and the slaughter that surely waited. Fire rained down on the waiting armies, arcing over the landing ships.

  Devastation. The captain grinned. Perhaps the seers were right this time after all.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Six

  A Hierarch known as Klan Freynard smoked the pungent Seer's grass as he walked ahead of the Hierophant's inner circle of mages in the frozen northlands. It was no mean feat, to see the shimmering patterns of the future and to put one foot in front of the other at the same time. Yet Klan Freynard had grown to maturity far from the folds of his brethren, on the southern marshes of the Lianthran continent. There, a nip from many a creature, the sandpipers, the Southern Tempath, spiders too numerous to count...any one of a thousand creatures could prove fatal to a careless walker. But Freynard still lived.

  He wasn't sure about everybody else.

  Smoke hung thick around his head in the cold air. He smoked through a pipe, as was the new fashion. His eyes watered and he could not see straight, but for a man accustomed to dodging poisonous snakes and the like, wandering the white hazy wastes was nothing.

  There was no magic on Sturma, the Hierophant had told them yet again. But what of the strange white beasts?

  And what of the song?

  Because, strangely, Freynard could hear music. A beautiful song sung with many voices, lilting, alluring...and confusing.

  Because they were in the wastes, weren't they?

  And music was magic.

  With frost crusting his cheeks where his tears froze, he turned to seek out the Hierophant.

  In his vision, unusually for him, he had heard the song. There was never sound nor smell, taste nor touch, in his visi
ons of the future. Solely sight. And yet under the influence on the Seers' Grass, he heard song. He was sure of it. It was something their leader needed to know. Freynard was the seer, and there was magic ahead. Waiting. Waiting in the cold pass to the south.

  He walked back through the ranks of Protocrats as they marched tirelessly south. He approached the Hierophant, carefully, ensuring he made enough noise to be heard over the cacophony of marching soldiers.

  The Hierophant's eyes were closed, despite that he walked. Almost as though he were playing a game, to see how far he could walk without sight.

  'Lord,' he said. 'I have had a vision.'

  The Hierophant's eyes opened, and Freynard was struck once again at just how old the Hierophant seemed. As for himself, he was barely two hundred years old. The Hierophant's hair was white, where most Hierarchs sported black or red hair. His face even bore wrinkles.

  His eyes were turning red. The mark of true greatness, or so the current wisdom was. When a Hierarch's eyes became as red as blood, they would ascend to true power.

  Klan Freynard could not imagine the Hierophant becoming more powerful. He seemed a terrible, implacable force as it was.

  If that was the price of leadership, the Hierophant could keep it.

  'And? Klan Freynard, is it? And?'

  'There is magic yet to come. Magic in the mountains. I advise caution,' he said.

  The Hierophant nodded and raised a hand to wave the troublesome Freynard away...paused.

  'You hear that?' said the Hierophant, confusion on his face. His hand faltered.

  The force came to a halt before the pass.

  Then Freynard heard the music he had heard under the influence of the Seer's Grass. A slow tune, passionate and unlike anything he had ever heard. It was anathema to him, tearing into his sadist's soul. Like the memory of beauty.