Of Bone and Thunder (65 page)

Ahmy lay slumped over his crossbow, a single arrow sticking out from between his eyes. Carny looked down at the amulet in his hand. He held it between his fingers, rubbing the outline of the Sacred Tree as he contemplated Ahmy's body. Finally, he bent down and gently rolled Ahmy over onto his back. With a tenderness he never would have shown the soldier in life, Carny leaned over Ahmy and placed the amulet on his chest.

“You were always a fucking prick,” Carny said. He looked up and knew that this defensive position was no longer tenable. They'd beat back the slyts, but the harrows were out of commission and the boulders in front of the berm now blocked their lines of fire.

He considered waiting for new orders but killed that idea on the spot. These men were his responsibility, and even if every one of them was doomed, he wasn't going to make it any easier for death to claim them.

“Grab your gear and leave nothing behind for the FnC. We're moving to the last line outside of Iron Fist. Fall back!”

JAWN SLID ON PLANE
and left his body behind. He gloried in the cold that engulfed him. He'd always fought to keep a grasp on who he was when he entered the aether to conduct a process, but that was before. Now he knew he could fly from plane to plane and return to his body whenever he wished. Breeze worried about him, he knew that, but she didn't understand. He was . . . more.

The academy taught a thaum how to conduct processes, but what none of Jawn's instructors had told him, perhaps because they themselves didn't know, was that a thaum
could
go beyond the conducting of processes to actually become a process. Cross-planing was everything. Jawn had been taught to fear it, but now he understood it was the key.

Losing his sight had felt like the end of everything, but no longer. In the aether, he was king. He dove deeper, letting the cold clarify his mind. He left the imaginary mountain peak that centralized his being and allowed himself to disperse, entering plane after plane. The thrill of fear gave him pause, but he quickly brushed it aside. He understood now. Two planes, ten planes, it made no difference. Once you grasped the importance of letting go, you could be everywhere in the aether.

The tangle that was the four slyt thaums loomed before him. It was bold, tying four minds together and in so doing, four planes. Jawn had marveled at what they had done, but now he pitied them, for they had sacrificed everything to gain this power, at the cost of their lives. He appreciated the irony. He had been prepared to sacrifice his own, but now the planes opened up before him like new vistas to be explored. He could do what they could not.

He dove deeper still, cascading his existence all around the slyt thaums, slowly sealing off their escape routes one by one. They lashed out,
aware of his presence. The heat of real pain reached him in the deep, and he remembered that though he could now cross-plane with abandon, he was still mortal, and could still be killed.

Jawn dispersed himself over more planes still, accepting the burning cuts as minuscule parts of himself were destroyed. It hurt, and he knew the price would not be cheap when he returned to his body, but that no longer mattered. This was where he wanted to live!

Growing frantic, the slyt thaums coursed energy through the planes, trying to follow him, to pin him down and set him adrift, but he was too fast, too adept. He took their blows, all the while weaving a net around them. He focused all his energy on one shining point and drove it deep into their presence, like a stake into a heart. Their screams reverberated through the aether as they writhed. Specters of energy surged from the cold and coiled around his presence. He had trapped them, but they in turn had him.

Now Jawn did feel fear. It was no longer up to him whether he lived or died.

Breeze, I have them
.

“WE'VE GOT THEM!
They're on Codpiece!” Breeze shouted. “They're on the south face, just below the peak.”

Vorly looked. “I can't see it! The damn mist is too thick to the north.”

“They're there. Jawn has them,” Breeze said.

Vorly looked down at his crystal. The sheet was alive with lines twisting and pulsing like a nest of snakes.

“I believe you, Breeze, but I can't fly Carduus straight at a mountain I can't see.”

“We have to attack!” Breeze shouted, her voice growing frantic. “Black Star has them engaged, but he can't hold them on his own for long.”

“How the fuck I am supposed to attack something I can't see?” Vorly asked, wondering if he'd made a fatal mistake in agreeing to this.
Maybe
, he realized,
but what choice did I have
? Between the mist and the lightning, his rags might as well be oxen for all the good they were doing. If the enemy thaums weren't destroyed, the valley was certain to fall.

Vorly eased Carduus into a turn to port, letting their height slip in the hopes of seeing a path through the mist. “Breeze, without a marker, I can't see anything. Can you do that lightning-bolt thing and hit them?”

“No! That's a whole other process and, oh, fuck it! We have to burn them with Carduus. It's the only way, and we have to do it now!”

Vorly reefed Carduus into a turn to starboard, looking for a glimpse of the Codpiece. A lightning bolt lit up the sky as it sliced down at them no more than fifteen yards in front of Carduus. The rag howled and veered to port. Burnt air stung Vorly's nostrils as they flew through its wake. Another bolt landed fifty yards to their starboard, briefly revealing the mountain peak it hit in a spray of flame. Vorly knew that, if not for the other thaums back at the roost working to shield their flight from the slyt thaums, Carduus would have been hit by a bolt long ago. As it was, the bolts were getting damn close.

“I have a terrible idea!” Breeze shouted. “I'll get Hyaminth and the others to quit shielding us. We'll navigate by the lightning bolts!”

“Woman, are you mad? They're the only thing keeping us in the air!”

“I can guide you. Every bolt shows up a couple of flicks on plane before it strikes. I can tell you what to do to avoid them, but you have to do exactly what I say.”

Vorly sat up in his saddle and twisted his back. A string of three bolts plunged down a hundred yards to port, momentarily ripping away the veil of mist and darkness to reveal the valley below.

“Do it!” Vorly shouted, gripping the reins tight in his gloved hands. He glanced down at the crystal, not sure what to expect.

“Climb, climb, climb!”

Vorly tore his eyes away from the sheet and pulled back on the reins. Carduus responded and drove his massive wings down in a violent show of force. It sounded as if the very air itself had been torn asunder.

“Fuuuuuuck!” Vorly grunted as a suffocating weight enveloped him and his vision grayed. A lightning bolt sliced diagonally beneath Carduus, but Vorly was unable to see a thing. Not waiting for Breeze's next command, he kicked Carduus with what strength he still had.

Carduus slowed his wing beats and began to level out.

“Dive, dive, dive!”

Vorly snapped the reins and threw himself forward in the saddle as Carduus flicked his tail, heeled over onto his port wing until he was nearly upside down. In a move as graceful as it was terrifying, Carduus arched his long neck up and over Vorly until his head pointed toward the valley floor and then dropped like an avalanche.

Vorly's head pounded, as if it was being pumped full of hot water. The wind screamed in his ears as Carduus began shaking, his scales clattering in the growing turbulence. Vorly turned his head to the right to check on Carduus's wing and then quickly looked back. The membrane was vibrating so hard it was difficult to tell if the wing was even still there.

Vorly was about to pull Carduus out of the dive when a dazzling burst of ball lightning stitched the sky all around them. Every cardinal direction was ablaze with crackling white fire. Only Breeze's order to dive had saved them.

“The Codpiece!” Breeze shouted. “Go left! Port, go to port!”

Vorly spurred Carduus to port, allowing Carduus to twist and contort his body as he flew through the ball lightning. Vorly looked up and the peaks of the northern mountains were clear in the burning light.

Two more lightning bolts stabbed down at them. Vorly kicked Carduus into a series of quick turns and rolls, climbing and diving as they approached the peaks. Another bolt hit, missing them and lighting up a peak ahead.

“There!” Vorly shouted, pointing. For a brief flicker the outline of Codpiece was visible.

“Now!”

Vorly looked down at his sheet. The screen was a mess of angry red lines. He looked back up and then took his helm off and tossed it away.

A bolt hit a peak just to Carduus's starboard wing, not fifty yards away. Shards of the lightning flared out and hit his wing, setting it on fire. Carduus roared.

Vorly saw the fire out of the corner of his eye but ignored it. There was the Codpiece, dead ahead. This was working! The lightning was providing him the light he needed.

“How far down the peak?” Vorly shouted.

“No more than a hundred yards! We have to hurry!”

Vorly loosened his grip on the reins and shouted at Carduus. “The bastards throwing lightning bolts at you are sitting on that mountain! Get ready, my boy, get ready!”

Carduus angled his body so that he began to arch skyward as they approached the peak of Codpiece. His air gills opened and wind roared into them, churning the fire inside Carduus into a maelstrom.

Vorly gasped as the heat built. “Breeze, get ready to slide off plane! Tell Jawn to do the same!”

The clouds and mist above the valley flashed and shook as lightning and thunder ripped through them. More bolts stabbed down at Carduus, but the rag flew unwaveringly at the peak.

“They have us! I can't shield anymore! The next bolt will kill us!” Breeze screamed.

Vorly closed his eyes and made the sign of the Sacred Tree. “Fire, Carduus, fire!”

A heat unlike anything Vorly had experienced before on Carduus enveloped him. Even with his eyes closed his vision turned white.

“My crystals!” Breeze shouted.

“Slide off, now!” Vorly shouted, holding Carduus on course.

Risking blindness, Vorly peered through the fingers of his gloves covering his face. A roaring pillar of pure white fire flew out of Carduus's maw and plunged into the jungle on Codpiece.

The very top of the peak shimmered and then shattered, scattering rock and trees for hundreds of yards into the air. Carduus's fire continued to hammer the mountain. Vorly watched it all, terrified and amazed at what he'd set loose.

“Vorly, we're going to die here!” Breeze shouted.

Vorly tore his eyes away from the destruction. She was right. They couldn't survive this kind of heat.

“We'll jump!” he shouted, unbuckling his harness. He turned and grabbed her, lifting her out of her saddle and holding her in his arms.

“We'll die!” she shouted.

He looked into her bloody eyes and smiled. “Maybe, but we're not charking!”

As Carduus carved the mountain with his fire, Vorly took a step to the side, closed his eyes, and jumped.

IT OCCURRED TO
Carny as the slyts came across the dosha swamp and closed in on Red Shield's final skirmish line that he had never made a last will and testament. Not that he really had anything of value, except maybe the piece of paper he'd signed with Tryser for the crossbow. Still, it seemed wrong.

“Bard!”

“SL?” the Bard shouted, lifting his head from his position along the berm ten yards away.

“If I die, you can have my things!”

“What?”

“He said,” Wiz shouted, running past, “if he dies, you can have his things!”

“Oh.” There was a long pause as the slyts fired another volley. “I guess you can have mine if I die then.”

“What the fuck am I going to do with a psaltery?” Carny shouted, standing up and firing a quick couple of bolts, then ducking back down.

“Well, what I am going to do with . . . what the hell do you have?”

“Nothing really!” Carny shouted, reaching into his quiver and pulling out his last three bolts.

“So if you die, I get nothing?”

Carny thought about that as he reloaded his crossbow. “Yeah, I guess so. Never mind!”

Carny recocked his crossbow and was preparing to fire when a series of lightning bolts lit up the sky to the north.

“Better there than here,” someone said.

Carny was looking down his bow, searching for a slyt leader to take out, when the sky grew lighter. Suddenly, white light tore the darkness away. Carny could see the slyts as clearly as if it were daytime.

The Codpiece lit up like a torch. The entire valley became a dizzying landscape of vibrating light. A flick later, the entire peak of the Codpiece exploded. The roar of the flame reached them a flick later, rumbling
across the valley. The force of the sound shook Carny's chest from the inside.

Carny squinted and saw a shape pass in front of the mountain, then disappear in the glare reflecting off the mist. It reminded him of a comet among the stars, but instead of falling, this comet was climbing higher into the sky and picking up speed as it did so. In that moment, two smaller objects fell past the comet's tail and disappeared into the jungle.

An arrow wobbled past Carny's head and he brought his gaze back to the field of battle. The slyts massing in front of the shield's position were milling about in confusion, but despite the thunderous explosion on the Codpiece they weren't retreating. In fact, they were quickly sorting themselves out for another attack.

Even Carny could do this math. They were massively outnumbered. One more slyt charge would finish them. Whatever happened on the peak of the Codpiece wasn't going to help Red Shield.

“Prepare to volley!” Carny shouted, turning and pointing at his men. “Fuck tomorrow, let's make tonight forever!”