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Elsa hurled her own fireball, which exploded behind Nathan’s strike. Her flames caused less damage than wizard’s fire, but the blast scattered the confused enemy. Overall, the effect was quite impressive.
As he built his attack, Nathan called upon his gift, feeling the Han in his new heart strong within him with remnants of Chief Handler Ivan’s anger. He disliked feeling the insidious touch of that other wizard inside him, but he used the anger and darkness to create an even larger ball of wizard’s fire that exploded and drove back hundreds of the ancient warriors.
Ildakaran soldiers, furious but undisciplined, spread out as they struck the enemy ranks, like water splashing around rocks in a stream. They fought hundreds of individual opponents and began to crack through the swiftly organized enemy ranks.
Nicci’s lightning danced across Utros’s defenses, while the other wizards continued their magical attacks. Elsa set countless tents alight with her fire, burning lines of enemy soldiers who tried to flee. Nathan found reserves of energy inside him, called another ball of wizard’s fire, and blasted dozens more. Even though each strike drove back entire lines of General Utros’s troops, he knew the Ildakaran sortie couldn’t hope to make more than a dent in the overall ancient force.
Nathan realized he had to think bigger, find a way to cause more substantial damage, not just a hundred enemies at a time. As the remnants of his wizard’s fire continued to rush through the targeted part of the camp, starting secondary fires, he realized something that he and Elsa could easily do, and it might affect a much larger part of the besieging army. “The hills! The dry hills.” He gestured toward the brown slopes at the edge of the valley. “It’s a tinderbox! We can start a blaze that will sweep across the army.”
She immediately understood. “They’ll never be able to fight it.” Reaching out both hands, she used her gift to ignite fire there and build it. But while she was concentrating, a burly enemy soldier lunged forward with a curved sword to cleave her in two.
“No!” Nathan shoved with his other hand, making a shield of air that smashed the enemy off his feet and knocked his curved sword away. The warrior crashed to the ground, but Nathan was so incensed at the threat to Elsa that he slammed down hard with a fist of air and crushed the enemy’s chest and face.
Elsa gasped, thanking Nathan before she threw the next sphere of fire that had materialized in her hand, tossing it as far as she could toward the dry hills.
Nathan summoned more wizard’s fire, one ball in each hand, and launched them both. Blazing, alive with destruction, they arced like comets high into the night, so bright they illuminated the battlefield below. Elsa’s fireball struck first, erupting into a spray of sparks and igniting another swatch of grasses, while Nathan’s more powerful fire impacted higher on the hillside.
At first, the enemy soldiers paid little attention to the spreading grass fire, but Nathan was pleased to see the flames catch and build into a conflagration. Blazing curtains raced up the hillside and burned down toward the encamped army. He grinned at her. “Yes, indeed, that was a good idea.”
“Follow me, Nathan. I may need your help for something else.” Elsa ran deeper into the camp, away from the primary fighting. “I have more magic we can use.”
He saw where she was going. The ancient army was rapidly growing stronger as more soldiers from deeper in the camp gathered their weapons and ran toward the fight. Nathan had hoped to hit these separated ranks hard before too many reinforcements arrived. “Not there. We can’t—”
“We will,” she said. “It’s transference magic. Remember, I prepared for this.”
Elsa ran with surprising speed, and Nathan couldn’t leave her to fight all by herself. “Whatever you say. We did promise to protect each other.”
Elsa reached a large trampled area that had been a section of campsites. She studied the ground, as if hunting for something buried there. She extended an index finger, pointed at the turf, and began to run in a strange, drunkard’s circle.
Nathan caught up with her, panting. “What are you doing? How can I help?”
“Keep me safe. Don’t let those soldiers attack me until I finish drawing my pattern on the ground.”
“What pattern?”
“This transference rune.”
As she bustled along, Elsa’s extended finger released a thin trail of power like an invisible knife that cut a line on the ground, scribing a complex design. She ran to and fro, swirling her finger, adding a flourish to the lines in the dirt.
“It’s a spell-form,” Nathan cried.
“A transference rune,” Elsa said. “I showed you before.”
A force of more than two hundred ancient warriors charged toward him and Elsa. He realized that the partially stone warriors seemed not to see well in the darkness away from the main campfires, but they could surround their targets. Many carried torches, bright firebrands snatched from their own blazes.
“Here they come,” Nathan said. “I hope you’ve thought this through.”
“Yes, in great detail. I etched the corresponding rune on a cistern in Ildakar that holds nearly a thousand barrels of water.”
Not trying to guess what she meant to do, he summoned more wizard’s fire and bowled over the front ranks of charging soldiers. The fiery explosion wiped out the first fifteen, but hundreds more came. Needing to give Elsa time, he called wind and a blast of lightning to delay their attack.
“Almost finished, Nathan.” Elsa pointed to her intricate design that covered a large area on the ground. As the ancient warriors charged forward, Nathan saw he and Elsa would be engulfed at any moment. “Ah, there!” she said.
As the soldiers ran into the open area that Elsa had inscribed, she jabbed down at the ground, made a final connecting line that completed the transference rune, and linked the spell.
In that instant, all the water from the distant cistern suddenly occupied what had been solid ground, and hundreds of charging enemy soldiers found themselves in a slurry of thin mud and clinging quicksand. Rank after rank tumbled and plunged in up to their waists and shoulders, mired and helpless as if the ground had swallowed them up.
Nathan let out a heavy sigh. “I should never have doubted you, my dear.”
Elsa looked at her handiwork, all the enemy soldiers rendered helpless in an instant, and then glanced back
at the hills where the grass fire continued to surge. “No, Nathan, you shouldn’t have doubted me.”
CHAPTER 36
During his training on the Wavewalker, as a naive young man, Bannon had learned to fight with his sword, prancing across the ship’s deck as Nathan showed him true skills. He had never imagined facing such impossible numbers of enemies. Now he did.
He ran forward along with hundreds of fighters into the enemy ranks, reminding himself that they were only targeting a small portion of the huge camp. It should be something they could accomplish. These ancient warriors would have been extraordinary foes under normal circumstances, but now, to make matters worse, they were also partially stone.
Beside him, Lila didn’t seem intimidated at all. She threw herself into the fight.
Utros’s army formed orderly ranks for defense, while the Ildakaran warriors were independent and wild, turning any military response into a melee. Through sheer momentum and energy, their first charge crashed into the enemy’s hastily erected defenses, shuddering the line. Once the city’s surge broke the front ranks, each clash came down to single combat.
Bannon steeled himself and rushed into the fray, holding his iron-tipped club in one hand and Sturdy in the other. His discolored blade met the downsweep of a curved scimitar, and the ringing impact sent a shock wave down his arm. He grunted, but held firm as he swung the iron club in his opposite hand, bashing his opponent’s chest. The blow did little apparent damage, but it forced the soldier back two steps. Bannon pressed forward and swung with Sturdy, chopping the base of his opponent’s neck. The impact felt like an axe hitting solid wood, but the blade cut through even the hardened skin. The enemy toppled to the ground.
“That was good, boy,” Lila called to him, her lips pulled back in a hard grin. “Now do it a dozen more times, and we’ll make some progress.” With a feral hiss, she leaped forward, wielding an iron club in each hand. The muscles on her bare thighs rippled as she sprang, battering and clubbing. She moved from one opponent to the next, smashing hard. The ancient soldiers reeled, but they kept coming back.
