Bluepearl added, 'Spindle will hold back on a sharper, Captain, with the mage's name on it.'
'Literally,' Toes threw in, 'and that makes all the difference, Spin being a wizard and all.'
'Yes? And how often has it made the difference in the past, Toes?'
'Well, uh, there's been a bad string of, uh, mitigating circumstances-'
'Abyss below,' Paran breathed. 'Quick Ben, if we don't knock that sorcerer out we'll be feeding roots a drop at a time.'
'We know, Captain. Don't worry. We'll stamp him out before he sparks.'
Paran sighed. 'Toes, find me Picker — I want all these longbows trundled out and issued to everyone without a munition or spell in hand, twenty arrows each, and I want them to have pikes as well.'
'Aye, sir.' Toes climbed to his feet. He reached for one large, mummified toe strung around his neck and kissed it. Then he headed out.
Bluepearl spat onto the ground. 'I feel sick every time he does that.'
A bell and a half later, the captain lay alongside Quick Ben, looking down on the middle stepped trail, where the glint of helms and weapons appeared in the late afternoon's dull light.
The Pannions had not bothered to send scouts ahead, nor was their column preceded by a point. A degree of overconfidence that Paran hoped would prove fatal.
In the soft earth before Quick Ben, the wizard had set a half-dozen twigs, upright, in a rough line. Faint sorcery whispered between them that the captain's eyes could only register peripherally. Twenty paces behind the two men, Shank sat hunched over his modest, pebble-ringed circle of ritual; six twigs from the same branch that Quick Ben had used, jabbed into the moss before the squad mage, surrounding a bladder filled with water. Beads of condensation glistened from these twigs.
Paran heard Quick Ben's soft sigh. The wizard reached out, hovered an index finger over the third twig, then tapped it.
Shank saw one of his twigs twitch. He grinned, whispered the last word of his ritual, releasing its power. The bladder shrivelled, suddenly empty.
Down on the trail, the Seerdomin sorcerer, third in the line, buckled, water spraying from his mouth, lungs filled, clawing at his own chest.
Shank's eyes closed, his face runnelled in sweat as he swiftly added binding spells to the water that filled the Seerdomin's lungs, holding it down against their desperate, spasming efforts to expel the deadly fluid.
Soldiers shouted, gathered around the writhing mage.
Four sharpers sailed into their midst.
Multiple, snapping explosions, at least one of them triggering the row of sharpers buried along the length of the trail, these ones in turn triggering the crackers at the base of the flanking trees, which began toppling inward onto the milling soldiers.
Smoke, the screams of the wounded and dying, figures sprawled, pinned beneath trees and trapped by branches.
Paran saw Hedge and four other sappers, Spindle included, plunging down the slope to one side of the trail. Munitions flew from their hands.
The fallen trees — wood and branches liberally drenched in lantern oil — lit up in a conflagration as the first of the burners exploded. Within the span of a heartbeat, the trail and the entire company trapped upon it were in flames.
Abyss below, we're not a friendly bunch, are we!
Down at the bottom, well behind the last of the Pannions, Picker and her squads had emerged from cover, bows in hand, and were — Paran hoped — taking down those of the enemy who had managed to avoid the ambush and were attempting to flee.
At the moment, all the captain could hear were screams and the thunderous roar of the fire. The gloom of approaching night had been banished from the trail, and Paran could feel the heat gusting against his face. He glanced over at Quick Ben.
The wizard's eyes were closed.
Faint movement on the man's shoulder caught the captain's attention — a tiny figure of sticks and twine — Paran blinked. It was gone, and he began to wonder if he'd seen anything at all… the wild flaring and ebb of firelight, the writhing shadows … ah, I must be imagining things. Not enough sleep, the horror that is this dance of light, heightened senses — those damned screams.
Were fading now, and the fire itself was losing its raging hunger, unable to reach very far into the rain-soaked forest beyond. Smoke wreathed the trail, drifted through the surrounding boles. Blackened bodies filled the path, plates of armour rainbow-burnished, leather curled and peeling, boots blistered and cracking open with terrible sizzling sounds.
If Hood has reserved a pit for his foulest servants, then the Moranth who made these munitions belong in it. And us, since we've used them. This was not battle. This was slaughter.
