Reap the East Wind (11 page)

The stone beast ignored her. It was too busy with its patrols.

Ethrian toyed with Sahmanan for weeks, prospecting for a vein of humanity. It was there. He knew it with a certainty that was absolute. It compelled her to “waste” her strength on her restoration hobby.

He had few successes. That vein lay deep, like a diamond seam. Layers lay over its top. The meek, innocent ingenue with empty eyes. The creature older than the stone beast itself, that had built itself a heart of steel. The priestess...

Ethrian resumed a normal cycle of sleeps and waking, doing his sleeping during the fury of the day.

He wakened one afternoon, suddenly. Instinct made him leap into the air. Terror wriggled down into the core of him. The stone beast had flung out a tremendous bolt of power. The surge left a bleak, hungry vacuum behind. He shuffled this way, then that, moving aimlessly while trying to assemble his wits.

“They came back!” Sahmanan wailed. “They’re going to destroy us!”

He felt the stone beast’s fear. It had fought, and had lost, and in its despair had flung everything in one great black hammer stroke. If that blow failed, doom was upon Nawami.

Ethrian raced around the beast’s paw. He clambered up its back. Sahmanan followed. At the base of the thing’s neck, she gasped, “Get down! He failed!”

Ethrian flung himself against weathered stone. Something tortured the air. He heard the crackle of bacon frying magnified ten thousand times. A titan’s drumstick hammered out one mighty beat. Ethrian turned his head warily. He saw an iridescent dust tower hundreds of yards high, settling back to earth. A thousand diabolic faces leered out, laughed, faded as an unseasonal breeze dispersed the dust.

The stone beast whined. Sahmanan begged. Ethrian ignored them. He scrambled to the peak of the monster’s head, sat cross-legged, faced west. He let his being slip its moorings and drift toward the grey mountains.

He halted when he spied something atop a long, dusty dune, facing the stone beast. Another joined it, then another. Their shapes seemed to waver.

Ethrian drifted closer. It wasn’t just the heat making their edges raggedy. Their cloaks of office rippled in the breeze. There were six of them now. No: seven. The one in the middle was shorter and wider. They wore grotesque masks. Their jeweled eyepieces glistened in the desert sun.

Tervola, he thought. They’ve stopped playing. They’ve come to see for themselves.

Soldiers of the Dread Empire joined their captains. A dozen. A score. A hundred. They stared at the stone beast.

The short one spoke. He made a slight gesture, then descended the back of the dune. One Tervola and a handful of men started forward. The others settled down as if for a long wait.

Ethrian fled toward his body.

6 Year 1016afe

The Desert

SHIH-KA’I CLAMBERED TO the top of the grey dune. His legs ached. He was soaked with perspiration. He felt greasy inside his field gear. He was tired and short on patience. What am I doing out here? he wondered. I belong with the Fourth Demonstration.

He stopped. The breeze felt good, though it had to work to penetrate his field dress. He surveyed the tower of dust still falling in the distance. Other dusts piled up around his boots, gently driven by the wind.

“Very spectacular, Lord.”

“Thank you, Pan ku. I thought it might say something to our friends over there.” He stared at the solitary mountain. Other Tervola joined him. “Am I seeing things?” he asked. “Or is that a creature carved out of stone?”

“I believe so, Lord,” said a Tervola named Meng Chiao. “It looks old.”

“Perhaps. But it’s alive. It’s the source of our trouble. Set up a transfer behind the dune. I’m returning to the fortress. I’ll be right back.”

“As you wish, Lord.”

Shih-ka’i slid and scrambled down the west face of the dune, began trudging toward the nearest active portal. “I’m too old for this,” he grumbled.

“Lord?”

“Talking to myself, Pan ku. Ignore me.”

He wondered why he needed to be here on the line. He was no field officer. The novelty? He had never served with a combat legion.

He stopped. “Pan ku, there’s no need for you to dog me. I’m coming back. Why don’t you wait here?”

“If you command me to, Lord. Otherwise, I wouldn’t feel right.”

“All right. If you don’t mind the exercise and the sun.” The man’s devotion gave Shih-ka’i a small, pleasant feeling of worthiness. Rare were the Tervola who inspired the personal affection of their men.

“I don’t mind, Lord.”

Shih-ka’i transferred to the Seventeenth’s headquarters. Had he become too dependent on that one sorcery? It had its limits, and he dared not lose them in the bigger picture. His brethren had learned that the hard way during the last war. A large force could not be supported through transfers alone. They were too slow. They had too small a capacity. Their lifespans were limited. Only a few could operate within a small area. More began interfering with one another. Still, they were superb backing for small tactical operations. To move and supply a legion, old-fashioned boot leather and wagon wheels remained the most practical approach.

Portals had their dangers, too. Sometimes people disappeared. That had happened too often during the western war. The wizard Varthlokkur had learned to tamper with the transfer stream.

Shih-ka’i shuddered.

Easy, he told himself. It’s just weariness working on your nerves.

Nerves were not the whole problem. He was apprehensive about that stone thing. Caution was indicated. It was a complete unknown.

Tasi-feng greeted him. “What’s happening out there, Lord?”

“We found the center of it. Giant artifact shaped like an animal. Looks like it was carved from a mountain. I sent Hsu Shen to take a closer look. Are the ballistae ready?”

“They’re waiting, Lord. I inspected them myself. The Candidates did a good job. Every shaft was properly impressed and ranged. All we need is someone to target up front.”

“I’ll do that. How many shafts?”

“Twelve were all we had, Lord. Six in the trough, six standing by.”

“Should be adequate. The damned thing will look like the moths have been after it before we’re done. Let’s look them over.”

The ballista battery waited in a field outside the fortress. At first glance the engines looked like common siege equipment. The frames, troughs, and cranks were of standard imperial design. The specialized pieces were the bows and strings. Those had been prepared in a thaumaturgical arsenal hidden deep in the heart of Shinsan. Not even Lord Ssu-ma knew its location.

The shafts, too, had come out of that arsenal. They were of a very dark, hard, and heavy material. Inlaid into them were traceries of silver, gold, and a dull greyish metal. The heads were crystals in spearhead shape. They glowed with a fierce inner fire.

Shih-ka’i thumbed one, asked, “Ever wonder what one of these costs?”

“A small fortune,” Tasi-feng guessed.

“I’m sure. Crank one back. And set me a portal here so I can jump back and forth.”

“I arranged a portal earlier, Lord. Over here. I thought you’d want to range them yourself.”

Shih-ka’i scowled. Lord Lun-yu was too damned efficient. Or he himself was too predictable. “First three at two-minute intervals. I’ll come back if I want more.” He surveyed the crews. Candidates all. Ordinary soldiers were not permitted to operate specialized equipment. It became dangerous in the hands of the untrained.

“You. Go ahead and shoot.”

A ballista string whipped forward. There was a tremendous crack. A shaft hurtled into the air, a quicksilver sliver slicing into the distance. It did not follow a normal, gravity-defeated arc. It was still climbing when last it caught the sun.

“Two-minute intervals,” Shih-ka’i reminded. He entered the ready portal. Pan ku followed as soon as the portal permitted.

A minute later Shih-ka’i topped the dusty dune in the far desert. He faced westward, waiting for a silver sparkle to appear over the mountains. “Hsu Shen run into anything yet?” he asked.

“No, Lord. He’s halfway there.”

“Signal him to take a position where we can see him, then to wait. I don’t want him too close to target. Ah. Here it comes.”

He sealed his eyes, reached with Tervola-trained senses, touched the hurtling shaft. Another part of his mind found the stone thing. He etched a mental line from spear to target. “Coming down, men. Shield your eyes.”

The shaft hurtled toward the earth. Impact! Light-balls swarmed the touchdown point like a hundred round lightning flashes blasting away in rapid succession.

Shih-ka’i opened his eyes. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured. He had missed by two hundred yards.

Roaring, rising heat sucked up dust from hundreds of feet around the impact point. A pool fifty feet in diameter bubbled and splashed like overheated water. “Warm your hands around that,” Shih-ka’i said. But his cockiness had fled.

He had missed. That could be no accident. He faced west again, watching for the next flash of silver.

He concentrated harder this time. He retained control till the moment of impact. And this time he felt the will resisting his own.

He opened his eyes. “Another miss!” But this time the first great upwelling of molten earth splashed the flank of the stone thing. He had brought the weapon in close.

“More power on the impression?” he asked the other Tervola.

One of the oldest, exiled by Lord Kuo, replied, “No, Lord. Range and impression felt perfect. It’s the targeting. Something is resisting.”

“Then I didn’t imagine that.”

“No, Lord. I suggest we all target the next one.”

“Absolutely,” Shih-ka’i said. “I want to see what happens when we get a direct hit.”

“It’s coming, Lord.”

Shih-ka’i felt for the shaft and found it. He drew his targeting line. His brethren came in. They made of the line a tube from which the missile could not escape.

The missile hurtled down. The will trying to shunt it aside failed. It struck. Shih-ka’i opened his eyes.

Gouts of molten rock had blown out of the stone thing’s haunch. “Dead on,” he crowed. “Dead on. Now we wait.”

They did not wait long.

“Is that someone standing on its head?” Shih-ka’i asked. He squinted, could not be sure. His eyes weren’t what they had been.

“Looks like two of them, Lord.”

“Curious. Can you tell what they’re doing?”

“No, Lord.”

A great angry bellow shook the desert. It filled the universe and rattled Shih-ka’i’s teeth in his jaws. Dust devils raced across the barrens, circling in panic. Shih-ka’i pictured this as the flight of frightened ghosts. He smiled at his own imagination. “Prepare to defend yourselves,” he ordered.

Something had changed. The feel of the situation was different. One of the Tervola said, “Something is happening around the thing’s forelegs, Lord.”

Shih-ka’i squinted again. “Tell Hsu Shen to get back here now!” he snapped.

Soldiers were pouring into the desert! Out of nowhere. Horsemen. Infantry. Battalion after battalion...

“Form line of battle, gentlemen. Meng Chiao. Prepare portals for an emergency withdrawal. Gentlemen, I’m returning to the fortress. I’ll make my arrangements there and come right back.”

He descended the rear of the dune, slipping and sliding in his haste. Pan ku was a step behind him. He hoped the others did not think he was fleeing. They might lose heart.

If there was a flaw in Shinsan’s military structure, it was the failure of the Tervola to meet the high personal standards they set for their men. They themselves sometimes yielded to emotion on the battlefield.

Tasi-feng was surprised to see him back so soon. “Lord Ssu-ma. Did something go wrong?”

“Not at this end. I may have made a poor decision up there. We’ve awakened something very old and very nasty. Nine shafts left? I want the first six at thirty-second intervals. Portals are to be arranged to allow the forward group to be evacuated in a hurry if necessary. Inform all legion commanders that Seventeenth is combat operational. They’re to be ready to march on short notice. Contact Northern Army. Tell them I may invoke my right to demand reinforcements.”

“Lord, we’re concentrating too many portals in too small an area.”

“I’m aware of the risks, Lord Lun-yu. I’m also certain we’ve grabbed a monster by the tail. It might not let us turn loose.” Shih-ka’i turned to the Candidates manning the ballistae. “Thirty-second intervals. Loose the first shaft.”

He watched silver flicker up and into the east, then strode through the portal.

The situation had worsened in his absence. A sea of warriors surrounded the stone thing. A soldier-river swept toward the dune. Hsu Shen’s men were kicking up clouds of dust in their race to rejoin their comrades.

Flying things swarmed over the lonely mountain like clouds of gnats. “What are they?” Shih-ka’i asked.

“Dragons with riders, Lord Ssu-ma. Small dragons, probably specially bred. It’s impossible to be sure from here, but the riders seem to be nonhuman. Ou-yan is trying to get a better look, but something keeps interfering.”

Shih-ka’i moved to where a Tervola sat cross-legged before a wide silver bowl pushed deep into the sand. The man kept chanting the same cantrips over and over. Cloudy pictures would form in the water m the bowl. Then something would interfere and they would fade away.

“Shaft coming, Lord,” Pan ku said.

Shih-ka’i turned, caught it, drew a line connected with the flood chasing Hsu Shen. He brought it down perfectly. Whole platoons vaporized. Companies were decimated by splashes of molten stone.

“Shaft, Lord.”

Shih-ka’i flung that and the next into the rapidly expanding horde around the stone thing. Huge, steaming holes appeared amidst the darkness of them.

That desert-shaking roar came again.

“I think somebody’s mad, Lord,” said Pan ku. Shih-ka’i glanced at his batman. Pan ku wore a straight face.

“I think so, yes.”

“The flyers, Lord.”

The gnat-swarms hurtled toward the dune. “Stand by!” Shih-ka’i ordered. “They could be dangerous.”

“Shaft, Lord.”