First Lord's Fury (Page 155)

"We can’t just sit here." Ehren protested.

"No?" Bernard asked. "We’ve got nothing left in reserve, Sir Ehren. Nothing has been held back. It’s coming down to old Cereus and the Citizens up on that bluff. If that thing makes it all the way here, this war is over. It’s as simple as that."

They were both silent for a moment. The cries and calls of battle, and the distant report of furycraftings hurled in vain at the vordbulk wound around them.

"Sometimes, son," Count Calderon said, "you have to acknowledge that your future is in someone else’s hands."

"What do we do?" Ehren asked quietly.

"We wait," Bernard said, "and see."

High Lady Placida Aria stumbled back as the vord rushed into the hive through the holes in the ceiling, and Isana had to roll rapidly to one side to keep from being trampled upon. The mantis warriors landed and rushed about in short, darting motions for a moment, clearly disoriented.

Aria fell back against the wall with a short cry. Isana’s eyes widened in alarm. Lady Placida’s system had been badly strained by the poison and her injury. Isana had healed the broken bone, and the Blessing of Night had countered the poison, but the High Lady had been utterly exhausted.

"I c-can’t," she panted, and shook her head. "That last e-earthcrafting… I can’t."

Isana’s eyes went to Amara, who was in worse shape than Aria was. The Cursor had only just managed to lever herself up to her elbows.

Which meant…

"It’s up to me," Isana breathed. She fumbled for a proper phrase to express the feelings that realization inspired, and settled upon, "Oh, bloody crows."

Then she steeled herself, reached for Aria’s belt, and drew the High Lady’s slender dueling sword from its sheath. She turned to face the six vord warriors, bouncing the sword in her right hand a few times, testing its weight and balance. Then she extended her left hand to the pool of water and narrowed her eyes. A bathing tub’s worth of liquid abruptly leapt out of the water and gathered upon her left arm. Isana concentrated on it for a few ferocious seconds, and the water formed into the shape of a round disc several inches thick, resting upon her left forearm. The disc then began to stir and spin in emulation of a current, whirling faster and faster.

The whirling disc pulled on her upper body oddly, but Isana managed to take a few steps to place herself between the vord and the survivors of the assault on the hive, sword and improvised shield in hand.

One of the warriors noticed her and leapt at her with an unsettling hiss, like a teakettle boiling over. Isana saw the scythe-limbs of the mantis sweeping down toward her head and lifted her arm to interpose the watery shield.

The razor-sharp weapons pierced the water easily – and were both flung to Isana’s left with such violence that the entire body of the mantis was hauled several steps in the same direction. Isana swept the long, narrow dueling blade in a nearly vertical slash, and the razor-sharp steel bit into one of the mantis’s legs, laying open a wound more than a foot long. The vord let out a sharp whistle and reeled away.

Three more mantises turned their heads toward Isana and came scuttling forward. Isana saw that she could not simply try to interpose the water shield between herself and every single scythe – but she picked the mantis on the far right, stepping that way, creating an extra fraction of a second in which her target would attack her, but the other two could not. Once again, she raised the whirling shield of water, and once again the mantis’s weapon-limbs were hauled violently to her left, tugging the mantis with it. The creature stumbled into its companions, fouling their attacks, and Isana had time to slash twice at the vord, inflicting two more obviously painful but less-than-fatal wounds.

She shuffled her feet to get between the vord and the wounded again, panting hard, her whole body trembling with painful fear. This was hardly her forte. Where was Araris?

Twice more she was rushed by single mantis warriors, and both times she defeated them the same way she had the others, though on the last attempt she nearly dropped the sword, her hands were shaking so hard.

The vord whistled and hissed at one another, their bodies beginning to bob up and down in unified agitation. And then, moving together, all six of them spread out into a half circle around her and began to close in with slow, certain confidence.

Isana felt her eyes grow enormously round, and she heard herself saying, in a completely level tone, "This is just ridiculous."

The vord plunged forward, all at the same time.

Isana wasn’t sure exactly when she decided to do what she did. It simply happened, coming forth from her as naturally as if she’d planned and practiced the crafting for weeks. Again, she lifted the spinning water shield to the horizontal, but this time she cut the whirling wheel of liquid into slices, as one would a wheel of cheese. At the speed the watery shield was rotating, this had the effect of releasing a series of blasts of water, each consisting of several gallons of liquid.

The flying bursts struck the vord with flawless accuracy, one after the other, the sound of it a rapid slap-slap-slap-slap. And, as soon as the bursts of water had hit one of the vord, Isana locked it there through Rill, surrounding the mantises’ rather tiny heads with globes of water.

The vord went mad, bounding about, leaping, clawing uselessly at their heads with their grasping claws, only to have them pass harmlessly through the water. Isana had no love for the vord, but she hated to see any creature suffer. Though they had no emotions readily identifiable with humanity, they felt fear as well as anything else that walked the surface of Alera – and Isana pitied them for their fear.

They collapsed, one by one, quivering still on the ground. Isana stepped forward, to finish each off as mercifully as she could, when another shadow blocked the ceiling above, and a steely figure dropped to the croach-covered floor, crushing the croach with his weight as he fell.

Araris’s blade flashed through one vord, then a second, before it slowed and the steel-skinned Knight looked slowly around the hive at the six dead or dying mantises. Then he straightened, his sword dropping rather limply to his side as he turned to stare at Isana.

"Pardon, love," Isana said, rather whimsically. "I regret that you had to see me do anything so unladylike."

Araris Valerian’s mouth spread into a slow, calm, and very pleased smile. Then he shook himself a little and dispatched the rest of the mantises as men in the armor of legionares – in the armor of the First Aleran, by all the furies, piled down the hole in Araris’s wake.

"Come with me, my lady," Araris said. "There’s little time. There’s a team coming down to get you and the wounded out and back to Garrison, and another trying to find Lord Placida, but it’s going to be close."