Leaves of Flame (52 page)

Then, two Riders away, a pack of the gruen appeared, their black, hairless bodies swarming over a Rider and his mount in the space of a breath.The dwarren roared,hacked at the gruen bodies as they raked him with their claws and latched onto his arms and armor. The Rider’s gaezel shrieked and panicked, eyes rolling white. It tried to leap away, but there was no room.

With a startlingly quick move, one of the gruen seized the dwarren by the throat with its teeth and ripped it away.

Before the body had begun to sag, one of the gruen emitted a harsh chittering sound—

And then they all launched themselves deeper into the dwarren lines.

One leaped straight for Quotl.

He cut off his chant in mid-verse and swung the scepter, catching the gruen in the side. It barked in pain, slamming into the back of the Rider beside him, but twisted and jumped to Quotl’s mount, going for Quotl’s face.

Quotl brought his knife up.The impact with the creature jarred his hand, but he felt the blade sink deep into its chest. It hissed and reached with its claws, already dying, but Quotl thrust it to the side with disdain.

A sense of calm enveloped him, one that he experienced with his meditations and spirit journeys. Except here there was no smoke to help disassociate himself from his body so he could join the spirit world. He drew in the energy of that calm anyway, began to slash at the gruen with a cold, methodical detachment. The creatures’ black blood flew, coating the blade, his fingers, making his hand slick, but he didn’t stop. He tightened his grip and brought his scepter to bear, the gaezel beneath him reacting to his movements, shifting left and right as if it sensed his needs, leaping forward into gaps or rearing back and turning. It snorted and pawed the ground, ducked its head and used its horns, impaling gruen and scoring jagged cuts along the Alvritshai horses if they pressed too close. Quotl focused on the gruen, left the Alvritshai to the Riders’ blades, and found himself muttering chants from the histories as he struck, lines from the oldest records, from the time of the previous Turning, the words taking on the distinct accent of the Ancients, punctuated by a slice of his knife or the impact of his scepter. And the gruen appeared to be reacting, fl inching away from the words with hisses or sharp cries.

As he fought, continuing the chant, something new intruded on the calm that enveloped him. It seeped up from the ground, enfolding him in a warmth that radiated from within, that suffused him, tingling in his fingers and pulsing with his heart,tasting of silt and heat-baked rock.All of the aches and pains of the ride and of age were absorbed by the warmth. He felt alive, one with the Lands. He could hear the rock beneath him, taste the wind against his skin, smell the sun, and feel the grasses growing around him, even as he fought the gruen. The power of Ilacqua and the Four Winds flowed through him. He thought at first the sensation came from the Archon, but he could feel the head shaman’s power radiating from the south, where he and the Cochen waited for their signal. This power didn’t come from the Archon, it came from the Lands.

And the Wraith army was a malignancy on the Lands, a repulsive growth that needed to be excised. He could sense the individual creatures of the Turning—the gruen, scrambling across the earth around him and swarming the dwarren on all sides; the dreun, circling and diving at the army beneath, leather wings raking the air; the terren, massive rocklike bodies cracking the stone beneath their feet as they trundled forward—and rage ran hot and fluid through his blood. He began to spit the words of the Ancients, his blows more vicious, more ferocious. He urged his gaezel toward the creatures nearby, seeking them out, crushing them beneath his scepter, severing them from the Lands with his knife. He could not sense the Alvritshai as he did the others, so he blocked them out, focused on the malignancy, on the disease, destroying it before it could infect the Lands.

Then, abruptly, his gaezel stepped back and he found himself in a pocket of calm, his breath heaving, his heart thundering through his body, throbbing with power. The front line lay ahead, at least thirty dwarren between him and the nearest part of the Wraith army.All of the gruen on his part of the line were dead, their lithe bodies trampled underfoot as the line surged back and forth. A few fellow dwarren and their gaezels riddled the ground on all sides as well, blood seeping into the red soil. He glanced up at the sky,was shocked to see that hours had passed.The dwarren line had been pushed back nearly to the makeshift defenses. They’d held out longer than he’d thought.

But when Quotl faced east, he saw that a significant portion of the Wraith army hadn’t joined the battle. At least a third still waited, watching from a distance. These were not mounted like the Alvritshai, and something about their stance was odd. Like the Alvritshai, though, they did not reek of wrongness. He could not sense them through the earth or the air.

“Quotl!”

He turned as Azuka rode toward him at the back of the fighting. The young shaman was covered in blood, a gash along his forehead bleeding down into his beard. His scepter was slick with the black blood of the gruen.

When Azuka came close enough to see him clearly, shock registered on his face and he drew back in uncertainty. “Quotl?”

“What is it?” Quotl asked. His own voice thrummed on the air, vibrated through his body and caused his gaezel to shift in place.

Azuka swallowed, as if to steady himself. “Peyo doesn’t think Corranu and Painted Sands can hold much longer.”

Quotl glanced toward the northern line. It had given more ground than Thousand Springs, the Riders nearly to the ditches and mounds of earth. “Tell them to order the retreat. I’ll inform Tarramic.”

Azuka spun his mount and sprinted toward the northern line. Quotl watched a moment, feeling the gaezel’s hooves trembling through the soil, then turned to find Tarramic.

The dwarren clan chief was engaged in the midst of a roiling battle with the Alvritshai. Even as he watched, Tarramic—mouth twisted in an animalistic snarl—stabbed his sword into a mounted Alvritshai’s side, his other hand grabbing the pale-skinned rider’s armor and pulling him down from his horse. Blood splattered Tarramic’s face, but as the horse the Alvritshai had ridden was cut down, more Alvritshai slid forward to take their fallen comrade’s place.

He would never reach the clan chief in time. Not through the chaos of the fight.

He spun and found one of the younger Riders who carried a drum. Kneeing his mount forward, he ground to a halt in the rocky soil at the Rider’s side and pointed with his blood-soaked staff at the edge of the fighting. “Call the retreat!” When the Rider fl inched, eyes going wide at the sight of the head shaman, he barked, “Now!”

The Rider fumbled with the drum, brought it around and pounded out an unsteady rhythm. Quotl didn’t wait, racing down the length of the army’s back, roaring, “Retreat! Fall behind the defenses!” his voice throbbing with power, reverberating on the air.Those at the rear of the army turned startled glances back at him, hesitating as the drumbeat steadied and began reiterating the command. All along the line, the shamans took up their head shaman’s call, scepters raised, and slowly Thousand Springs began to pull back. To the north, Quotl heard the drums of Painted Sands echoing the call, saw the Riders breaking away and fleeing northward around the ditches, others heading directly toward them, leaping their depths with their fl eet gaezels. Quotl found himself surrounded, his own gaezel snorting and stamping the ground as the dwarren retreated, but he did not allow his mount its head. The Wraith army had begun hounding the retreat, the Alvritshai leaping forward to seize the advantage, cutting down dwarren as they turned, the front of the line fighting hard to hold them back while seeking an opportunity to flee.To the north,the mixed creatures of the Turning roared in triumph, the terren and gruen breaking formation as Painted Sands gave up completely and ran, a few dwarren stout of heart overwhelmed in instants. In the south, the last line of dwarren in Thousand Springs held more firmly, intent on giving their fellow dwarren the greatest chance possible of reaching the defenses before the Wraith army.

Including Clan Chief Tarramic.

Cursing, Quotl kicked his mount forward, passing through the last stragglers racing for the ditches.As he drew up behind Tarramic’s position,he bellowed,“Tarramic! Retreat! Pull back now!”

He saw Tarramic’s attention waver, knew that he had heard. But the clan chief roared and dove forward, attacking with a vengeance.

Growling in frustration, Quotl reached for the power that suffused him, sank into the earth beneath on instinct, seized the patterns he found there, and without thought
twisted
.

The earth beneath the Alvritshai forces shattered, flinty stone shards flying upward into the Wraith forces like daggers. Horses screamed and reared, throwing their riders to the ground as they kicked the air with their hooves. The dwarren who had engaged them a moment before shied back, a few caught in the edge of the destruction, the gaezels milling in confusion.

Quotl himself felt a moment of utter shock, slicing down through the power that pulsed through his body, followed by a wave of weariness, but there was no time to evaluate it, no time to think. He raised his scepter and pointed toward the defenses behind them. “Retreat, you gods-damned fools! Now, before they have time to recover!”

A few of the Alvritshai already were, rallying around those who had been at the back of the Alvritshai forces and had not been caught in the blast. Riderless horses bolted across the plains behind them, but there weren’t enough dead to shift the tide of battle.

And there were still the reinforcements waiting beyond.

As soon as Tarramic broke and tore toward the ditches, his entourage covering his withdrawal, Quotl jerked his gaezel about and sprinted toward the dwarren regrouping behind.The ditches and mounds of dirt stretched across the earth in an arch over a thousand strides long, a swath of flat land before the landslide began sloping toward the plains above. He could see the archers of Claw Lake lining the cliffs to the north, Shadow Moon to the south. Any of the Wraith army that passed the ditches would be in range of the archers. The confrontation on the plains had only been a delaying tactic; it had never been meant to hold for long. The real defense would now begin.

He focused on the ditches a moment before his gaezel tensed and leaped the first, landing with a jarring thud on the far side, sprinting for a breath, two, then leaping over another. Quotl grunted on the last leap, steering his mount toward the bulk of the army, saw Tarramic doing the same to one side. They arrived at the same time.

“What shattered the ground?” Tarramic asked, an edge of fear in his voice.

“The will of Ilacqua,” Quotl answered.

Tarramic spun toward him, the rest of his leading Riders milling around behind him. The clan chief’s eyes narrowed, tense, then widened in awe. “What’s happened to you, Quotl? You’re . . .” He groped for a word, shook his head when he failed.

Quotl recalled Azuka’s reaction, knew that something about him had changed, although he didn’t know what. But he could hear it in his voice, knew that he had caused the earth to shatter.

“The gods are working through me,” he said, trying to stem the flood of panic in his chest. He’d said it softly, but most of those near heard, spreading the word through the ranks in a nearly visible ripple. Quotl frowned in annoyance,catching Tarramic’s gaze.“The defenses,”he prodded.

Tarramic snapped out of his awe, although Quotl could still feel its brittle edge as the Riders watched him out of the corners of their eyes. “Prepare to defend the ditches. And call in the archers.”

Half of the Riders dismounted and scrambled over the earthworks, the other half herding the gaezels a short distance away before converging on the open area between where the ditches ended and the cliffs of the Break rose to the south. Painted Sands had already begun digging in to the north. From behind, the small group of archers from both clans who had waited in reserve trotted forward and arrayed themselves behind the lines.

“Is it the Archon?” Tarramic asked. “Is he channeling Ilacqua’s power through you?”

Quotl’s skin prickled at the gruff awe in Tarramic’s voice, but he paused, took a moment to test this newfound strength. He could sense no connection between the power flowing through him and his sense of the Archon to the south. “No, it is not coming from the Archon. It’s coming from the Lands.”

Tarramic merely frowned. In the distance, the Alvritshai and the rest of the Wraith army had broken off their attack on the retreating dwarren and reassembled, the reinforcements that waited behind moving forward. As the new forces merged with the rest, close enough to see now, Quotl realized why they had appeared so strange.

“Orannian,” Tarramic spat.

Quotl grunted in agreement. The dwarren histories spoke of those with the skins of lizards.They had once been like the dwarren, but they had been changed by the cataclysmic Shattering that had destroyed the world and reshaped it. How the Shattering had come about, and how it had changed the world, was unclear, those oldest of oral histories fragmentary and obscure, but the mentions of the orannian were not.

And yet, Quotl could not sense them as he could the rest of the creatures of the Turning.

He frowned, but tore his attention away from the gathering forces. Wounded were dragged from their gaezels and led away, although there were few. Most of those grievously hurt had been left behind on the broken rock now beyond their reach, and those who’d managed to escape to the ditches weren’t wounded enough to be pulled from the ranks. Some of the shamans were passing among the Riders with vials from the Sacred Waters, the pink-tinged liquid healing the least of the wounds so they could continue fighting; others were passing out food.

Quotl felt sick at heart over those left behind, but there was nothing that could be done.

Azuka appeared with water and dry flatbread, handing it out among Tarramic’s entourage.The clan chief drank,handing the skin to Quotl. “It will be a small reprieve,” Tarramic said, voice somber. “The Wraith army already gathers.”