First Lord's Fury (Page 154)

Bernard slung the war quiver over his shoulder, in a gesture that seemed like ritual to Ehren, something practiced so many times that the Count probably wasn’t aware that he’d done it. Count Calderon reached up and selected a single arrow. Its head was oddly heavy, a set of four steel blades that reminded Ehren more of a harpoon than anything else. It was only at the last moment that he noted a sphere of gleaming black glass that had been trapped within the steel blades, like a jewel within its setting.

Bernard stared up at the nearest vordbulk, the one on the southern bluff. As both beasts had been doing periodically since they appeared, the vordbulk let out one of its enormous, bone-shaking basso roars.

"Clan Herdbane," Bernard sighed. "Those fools never did figure out how to stay out of a fight they couldn’t win."

As Ehren watched, he saw barbarians and their beasts attacking the vordbulk, hurling spears up at its belly, hoping to hit the vitals, as their deadly predator birds clawed their way several yards up the vordbulk’s legs, ripping and tearing to no appreciable effect. Perhaps if given a week, they might eventually nibble the great beast down – but they didn’t have that kind of time.

"You might want to back off a ways, Sir Ehren," Bernard said. He brandished the arrow. "I’m not entirely sure this thing won’t explode the second I release the string."

Ehren swallowed and took a couple of steps back. "I… see."

"Bit more," Bernard said.

Ehren walked twenty feet, to the far side of the citadel’s balcony.

"Suppose it’ll have to do," Bernard said. He set the arrow to the great bow’s string, faced the vordbulk, and waited.

"That’s… a long shot," Ehren noted. "Three hundred yards?"

"Range isn’t a problem," said Bernard through his stiffened jaw. "Angle is a bit odd, though."

"Ahem, yes," Ehren said. "But honestly, sir… there must be some other way for you to… Your Excellency, it’s one arrow. What could you possibly think it will do?"

The vordbulk’s vast flanks expanded as it drew in a breath.

Bernard drew the black bow, and its staves groaned like the mast of a ship in high winds. Muscles knotted in his shoulders, back, and arms, and again his teeth clenched, and his face turned red with effort. There was a faint trembling in the earth as Bernard pulled the arrow back to his ear. The grain of the black bow writhed and quivered, even as it was bent, and Ehren realized that the Count was putting an enormous amount of earthcrafting into bending the bow and would be using even more woodcrafting to straighten its staves, to impart all the power he could to the missile. When he released the string with a short cry of effort, the reaction of the bow nearly took him from his feet. There was a thundercrack in the air before him, and the arrow leapt into the night so swiftly that Ehren would not have been able to follow it had not the morning light gleamed on the steel head.

The vordbulk opened its mouth to roar again, just as the arrow angled upward, into the creature’s vast maw. The roar went on for a moment, then there was a flash of light, a whumping sound, and a burst of smoke and little licks of fire that poured from the vordbulk’s mouth. It stopped in its tracks and roared again, this time at a higher pitch, and a veritable fountain of green-brown vord blood spewed from its mouth and fell to the earth in a disgusting miniature waterfall.

"Hngh," Bernard said. He sagged visibly, his chest heaving in slow, deep breaths, and he leaned against the railing to stay upright. "Guess… Pentius Pluvus… was right."

"Eh?" Ehren asked, watching the vordbulk with fascination.

Bernard sagged until he sat down on the bench against the outer wall of the tower, behind them. "Pluvus said an explosion is a very different thing when it starts off surrounded by flesh instead of occurring in the open air. Much more devastating. Apparently a crow ate one of our little fire-spheres one day, and a boy tried to knock it out of the air with his sling before it could escape. Normally, one of the little ones we used at first would only singe some feathers if they went off nearby. This time they found feathers and bits two hundred yards away."

"I see," Ehren said. "How very… very nauseating."

The vordbulk let out another distressed cry. It staggered like a drunkard.

"This bow can put an arrow right through a couple of sides of beef," Bernard said. "I wouldn’t practice on live cows, of course. Cruel."

"Mmm," Ehren said faintly.

The vordbulk shook its head. Fluid slewed out and splattered in great, sickening arcs.

"So I shot at the roof of that thing’s mouth," Bernard said. "I figure the arrow stopped three or four feet past that. Somewhere up in its brain, maybe. Then…" Bernard made an expanding motion with his hands and settled down to watch the vast creature in silence.

The vordbulk gradually listed to one side and fell. It was a motion more akin to a tree’s toppling – to several trees’ toppling – than any animal’s movement. The ground shook when it landed, and dozens of stones were jarred loose from the side of the bluff, to come crashing down among the buildings of the town. Dust and dirt flew twenty feet into the air around the creature. The vordbulk let out one last slow, gasping cry that trailed off from an earsplitting roar to gradual silence.

Ehren turned his eyes to Bernard and just stared at the man.

"Anybody could have done it," Bernard said wearily.

Wild cheering, faint by contrast, rang up from the city below, and from the reserve positions behind them.

The Count of Calderon closed his eyes and settled back against the wall of the tower, clearly exhausted, and winced as his shoulders moved. "It was a crowbegotten big target." He opened one eye to squint at the second vordbulk. "Now. If only I had another one of those arrows. And a sphere to match it. And a night’s sleep." He shook his head. "We’re all just so bloody tired. I don’t know how Cereus keeps going."

Ehren sat down beside Bernard, frowning up at the second vordbulk. "Count? What are we going to do about that one?"

"Well, Sir Ehren," Bernard said philosophically. "What do you suggest? My weaponsmith says it will be the day after tomorrow before he has another arrow like that one ready. I could send in the Legions, but they’d just get stomped flat by the hundreds. Our Knights and Citizens are all either on the wall fighting the horde, or they’re already up on the bluff."

He ran a broad hand back over his short hair. "We can’t bog them down like we did at the last wall, because the whole bluff is a rock shelf, and toying with that could collapse the entire bluff and kill us all, including our refugees. I don’t have any more of those arrows, or the high-grade firestones, or the strength to shoot that bow. Think I tore something. My back is on fire." He grimaced. "So we hope the Citizens and Lord Cereus can wear it down before it gets here, and I’m forced to ask Doroga and his gargant riders to make a last-ditch attempt, which is likely to get them killed for no good reason."