Rift in the Races (13 page)

“What is it?” she asked, rubbing a few hours’ sleep from her eyes.

He stood poised for combat, scouring the sky for another orb and not daring to look at her. He had a fireball spell already locked in his mind, a quick one, and one that he would follow with a teleportation spell if he had to. He could teleport the orb straight into the ground if he needed to. He was fairly sure that would kill it.

Staring up into the sky, he tried not to focus on any one point, setting his vision free to detect motion across the backdrop of the stars.

There it was again. A black streak off to his left.

He conjured the fireball in seconds, then held the core of it burning above his palm, crackling and casting his features into orange and black relief.

“Altin, what is it?” Orli asked again.

“Hostiles,” he said. “I think I saw an orb.”

She began to scan the sky with him, her hand touching the blaster at her side.

“There,” he said. But it was gone before she could see it.

He thought he saw another and spun to face it. Nothing. Then two more, again in his periphery.

Orli started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, still scanning for movement.

“I think those are bats,” she said making no effort to mask her amusement.

He frowned into the night, following the trace of yet another one, the seeing of it made more difficult by the glare of his flickering ball of fire. He supposed it could be.

He watched until he saw another one, this one low enough that he noticed it dip down and brush the water, likely scooping up a bug. He snorted and sent the fireball into the surf where it vanished with a hiss and a puff of steam. “Perhaps I was drifting in and out of sleep there for a while,” he said by way of an excuse. “They seemed bigger than that. Farther off.”

“I think you were farther off,” she said. “But it’s okay. You make me feel safe.”

He put his arm around her, filling with contentment.

“How long was I asleep?” Orli asked. “I’m guessing it’s probably best that I woke up anyway.”

“I’m not certain. Perhaps two hours, three at most.”

“We haven’t been gone twelve hours, have we? My leave is only until morning. You mix up my schedule when you move us across the continent like this.”

He hummed a sound that indicated he did not know. “I expect your Captain Asad would have barked at you if you were late.” His gaze slid to her com badge as he spoke.

“That’s true. I’m probably still okay. But I bet we’re getting pretty close.”

“Yes, I expect it’s nearly sunrise at Calico Castle. Are you ready to go?”

“I’m always ready to go to Calico Castle,” she smiled, stepping into him and laying her cheek against his chest. “I’m just never ready to go back to the fleet or its stupid mine.”

He held her tightly and leaned his own cheek against her soft golden hair, inhaling her wondrous fragrance once again, an intoxicant they simply didn’t have on Prosperion. He would never grow tired of it. “It won’t be like this for long,” he promised her.

After a few moments enjoying their last precious seconds alone together, Altin cast a quick seeing spell to the corner of the great dining hall. It was a small empty space behind an ancient suit of armor where he often teleported when he was going home and in a hurry to find company—or when he was traveling with Orli and did not wish to suggest impropriety by having the two of them seen emerging from his tower … and his bedroom.

The teleporting spell followed, and in a blink, they appeared in the massive hall. Their arrival was met immediately by the sounds of shouting in the distance and unmistakable guttural calls that Altin instantly recognized as the shouting of orcs. The smell of smoke hung heavily in the air.

“Tidalwrath’s fits!” shouted Altin. “The orcs are back.” But this time, he hadn’t taken the tower out, and he certainly hadn’t left a way for any orcs to get in.

Orli’s eyes went wide, and she was about to ask for confirmation of such an impossible claim when a huge crashing sound, like a small bomb going off, shook the floor beneath them and answered her question even as it popped out. “Really?”

“Come on,” he took her by the hand and they ran to the massive double doors of the great hall. He opened one and looked out into the outer hall.

Nothing. But the shouts were louder. He could hear Kettle screaming for Pernie, and he could make out the voices of Gimmel and Nipper cussing up a storm.

They ran out and down the hallway toward the keep’s giant front doors. They stood open, allowing Altin and Orli to look out across the bailey to the walls, upon which he could see groundskeeper Gimmel sending a flurry of arrows down from the front wall and the old steward, Nipper, manning a crossbow as best he could from the far side of the gate. Gauging from the downward angle of their shots, they were trying to hold off an assault on the front gate. Smoke curled up in thick, dark clouds from the area just beyond the wall, suggesting the assailants were using fire to weaken it.

A thunderous crash came a moment later, a blow from a battering ram, no doubt, verifying that the gate was indeed under immediate attack.

He spun on Orli. “Stay here and lock the door behind me.” He pointed urgently at a huge expanse of timber leaning against the wall, towering fourteen feet above them. “That beam is enchanted lightwood. You can lift it.”

Her eyes darted to it and back.

“If they get inside,” he commanded, “go back to the suit of armor in the banquet hall where we came in. Hunker down behind it. They won’t find you there, and the dust and mold in the old tapestries will mask your scent.”

“I’m not going to hide,” she said.

“You’re right. I’m not thinking. I’ll send you to Little Earth.” He closed his eyes, preparing to start the cast, but the sound of her blaster sliding out of its holster caused him to open them again.

“You’re not sending me away either.”

“Orli, they have magic.”

“Altin, I’m not going to hide, and I’m not going to run.”

“You told me you aren’t any good with that.”

“I said I hate it.” He could see by the set of her jaw that she meant to stay and fight.

“Harpy spit,” he swore. He looked around frantically as if some solution might present itself out of thin air. One did not. “Fine. Stay close.”

He pulled open the right side door and they rushed out. Clear of the keep’s main inner building, they could see that Tytamon was on the west wall flinging fireballs and calling down lightning with such fury that the streaks of it painted the darkness with a crackling net of white that glowed in one’s vision for seconds after the bolts had come and gone. It was a storm to worry even a god, and one that Altin was certain would draw the attention of the orc shamans. If they kept Tytamon busy, as they should, it meant the bulk of the physical assault would be at the gates being held off only by Nipper and Gimmel, as there was no sign of the assistant groundskeeper or the stableman. As soon as he thought it, he saw that the assistant groundskeeper lay in a heap at the base of the gate, his body a pincushion of arrows. There was no sign of the stableman.

“Come on,” he said. They ran to the front gates, taking the stairs to the battlements two at a time. He crouched when they reached the walls and nearly yanked Orli’s arm out of her shoulder pulling her down beside him.

“Keep your head down. And watch for when they lower the shields. If you see a line of shields drop, get cover. Their archers will fire immediately.”

She looked terrified. And she was terrified. The guttural shouts and primal drumbeats coming from the other side of the wall were horrifying. Animal snarls accompanied the periodic crush of something massive outside the gates. Smoke filled her lungs, acrid and heavy with the foul stench of burning hair and flesh.

She gripped her blaster in sweating hands that shook even more violently than they had when she’d been in the clutches of the Hostile disease, a horror that nearly wiped out the
Aspect’s
entire crew. Altin glanced from the gate back to her and saw the terror in her eyes.

“You don’t have to fight,” he said. “Let me send you to Little Earth.”

“No.”

He growled. “Then just stay down. If they get through the gate, you can wreak hell on them with that from here.”

She nodded. She wondered if she were going to throw up.

“Don’t bump me,” he said. “I’m going to cast.” He closed his eyes and immediately began chanting. His arms drew invisible shapes in the air, and he sung in a low voice, a cadence she recognized but with words she’d never heard.

A glow of fire began in the air above the center of the courtyard floor, a fireball not much different than the one he’d nearly thrown at the bats—at first. But this one
was
different. It glowed orange only for a moment and then began to burn brighter until it became nearly white. And it grew. It grew and grew until it was so large Orli could feel the fine hairs on her arms begin to curl and turn to ash even from this far away.

And still Altin chanted. And still the fireball grew.

Orli was afraid in his fury he was going to kill them all, that he’d lost control, but then suddenly his eyes popped open and he stood. His face terrified her. It was filled with hate. She’d never seen hate in him before.

“
Ga ahla habam, seh Ah
!” he yelled, and the massive, white-hot ball rose into the air so fast she could barely follow it as it whipped by—it was as if he’d swung it on a rope, out and over the wall, and slammed it down amongst the horde outside. She couldn’t stop herself from scrambling up to watch it, peering through an arrow slot to see what carnage it might have wrought.

The fireball hit with explosive impact amongst a huge knot of orcs standing some twenty paces from the gate. They’d been arranged in alternating rows, twenty across, with shields held out protectively to defend against the arrows and crossbow bolts coming from the two remaining defenders guarding the gate. They hadn’t expected Altin’s fireball.

The fireball smashed into them like a boulder into a crate of eggs. Orcs exploded from the heat and broken bodies were flung into the air in every direction, at least a hundred of them, hurtling skyward with limbs burning, the flames fanned by the rush of air as they spun, whirling like bright pinwheels in the wan morning light.

In the moment of bright glare, she also saw, to her horror, that the entire meadow beyond Calico Castle was filled with the enemy host.

She could not guess their number, and it was still too dark to make out what weaponry they had, but the numbers were so great she ducked back behind the wall, even more frightened than before. Just in time too, for the clatter of two arrows and a crossbow bolt against the stone confirmed the fortuitous timing of having done just that.

“Stay down, gods be damned,” Altin shouted at her. He dove to the ground just as the hiss of three more arrows whizzed over the wall intended for his head.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“We call for help. Will your people come? I can summon Taot and alert the Queen in case Tytamon didn’t have time.”

She immediately tapped on her com badge.

“Pewter to Little Earth. Pewter to Little Earth, come in Prosperion Base.” She realized she was shouting into the badge.

She was greeted by Roberto’s casual tones. “What’s up, girl? Tell me you finally got your man to give it up last night.”

“Calico Castle is under attack. Tell the captain to send help. We’re under attack right now.”

Roberto had known Orli long enough to recognize immediately that this was not a joke. “Attack by who?”

“By a huge army. Orcs. Altin says they’re orcs.”

“Orcs?”

“The pig men. The guys that almost ate Pernie. Altin told you. Goddamn it, Roberto. Tell the fucking captain. There’s hardly anyone here to defend.”

“Roger,” he said. “We’ll be right there.”

She looked over to Altin who was still communicating with someone, either his dragon or someone in the Queen’s army, via one of his telepathic spells. She stared across the courtyard at where Tytamon was. She saw lightning strike right near the ancient mage and thought it odd that he’d cast lightning bolts so close to himself.

Then it occurred to her those lightning bolts must be coming from the other side.

In the flash of a bolt that nearly struck the mage, she finally saw where Kettle’s cries were coming from. The doughty cook was atop the curtain wall to the east, right against Altin’s tower, hurling stones from a large crate near her foot. She was furiously bobbing up and down as she repeatedly threw more and more over the wall. She was screaming for all she was worth as well, calling out in a frantic voice, “Pernie, my baby girl,” over and over again.

Orli peered through the early morning gloom trying to find the child. At first there was no sign of her, but then she saw Pernie come scrambling up over the wall, climbing up the vines that clung to Altin’s tower. She’d come from outside the castle walls!

The old woman grabbed the girl, and the two of them dropped down behind the cover of the rampart, Kettle falling over the child protectively and, gauging from the way the woman’s body moved, sobbing with relief.