Shadow Walker
by James 'Fel' Galloway
Chapter 13
Alright, so this wasn't going to be as easy as he hoped.
They were getting smarter. The Loreguard, knowing that it was him that had attacked the Pens and freed the Arcans there, had a plan to deal with what they knew about him, and he had to admit, it was clever. Simply put, they allowed no man to move about in less than a group of four. A man had to keep his other three companions in sight at all times, even when they relieved themselves, moving in a unified group. Any man caught out alone was treated as the Shaman, and was locked in the brig until they were absolutely sure it wasn't him. Their thinking was that to replace any one man, Kyven had to kill the other three, and that would prevent him from being able to replace a soldier and use him to get close to an officer or commander. The ruckus of the fight would defeat the purpose of being able to quietly take someone else's identity and use it against the others. The officers had even more extravagant protections, even a lowly Lieutenant moving around with an escort of six men, and the higher officers having even more guards who literally would not get out of visual sight of the officer. The commander of Fort Summer and the general of the Loreguard forces had dozens of men around them, watching them at all times, to ensure Kyven didn't get to their leaders and replace them to lead them astray, as he had done in Rallan.
That made it more challenging, but that didn't mean that their idea had no holes. For one, any Loreguard soldier caught alone was taken to Fort Summer and put in the brig, which was where Kyven wanted to go. For another, the Loreguard thought he could only take someone else's identity, not create three illusions to escort him as he moved to seem to be a four man squad. For that matter, they felt that all he could do was copy the appearance of another man and turn invisible in the darkness. They had no inkling of just what he was capable of doing.
He moved without challenge through the streets of Cheston, where every man paused and tipped his hat or nodded to him, because he wasn't hiding under the illusion of a Loreguard or Cheston Militia officer, he was hiding under the illusion of a comely young girl wearing a slightly revealing white dress and carrying a parasol. The illusion's hair was a vibrant blond and done in a multitude of small curls, something of a fashion trend among Cheston aristocracy, with an ivory comb holding it all together to make the hair look like a crown of curls. The illusion was quite attractive, and it exploited the Chestoner's deference to a young lady. No man would be rough with him or even speak harshly to him, because he appeared to be a young lady of means.
Hidden under his illusion, he surveyed the defenses both for Danvers and for himself, to make sure nothing changed and also ensure that everything looked like it was going to pan out as Danvers hoped. The southwest gate was still shoddily built and the wall threatening to fall down of its own accord, and most of their defenses were focused to the north and northwest, the expected path of the army. Neither the Chestoners nor the Loreguard had blocked off the streets, which was a critical tactical error, for they were of the false belief that Danvers' army was filled with Arcans wielding farm tools and only a few hundred humans with real weapons. The reason for that was because of Danvers' brilliant job of keeping the true size of his army secret, even as they sacked plantations after entering Carin, never letting the civilians see more than a few dozen men and doing a great job of evading enemy scouts and hiding the number of horses in his host by having the Arcans move both in front and behind, so their tracks wiped out the hoofprints. Human scouts on horseback were no match for Arcan scouts using the forest for cover, so the Loreguard couldn't get a single scout close enough to see the enemy army, mainly because it moved mainly at night. Clover's deal with a spirit left the enemy vulnerable to what their alchemical scrying told them, for their scrying only showed the Arcans in Danvers' army, not the humans, a critical bit of misdirection that left the Loreguard with insufficient intelligence to appreciate the true threat Danvers posed.
The Loreguard commanders were cautiously optimistic they could take an Arcan army. The Chestoners were already celebrating their impending victory.
Fools.
Kyven was moving with a purpose, for he had a job to do. It wasn't going to be easy to clear the courtyard and open the gates with him being unable to replace the commander of Fort Summer, a dashing buccaneer of a dark-haired Chestoner who called himself Admiral Greggson, but before he tackled that problem, he had the tower cannons to deal with. They had to be disabled before Danvers arrived, because those cannons could shell the ridge where Danvers intended on massing up the diversionary attack. That was where he was going, for it was only an hour before sunset, and the army would arrive at Cheston not long after it got dark, using the darkness as a shield to set up. After he disabled the cannons, he intended to allow himself to be spotted, to let them know he was here. The main reason for that was because he wanted them uncertain, second-guessing everything, even the commands of their own officers, since they knew he could take someone else's appearance. He had a tool with him for that, a modified Briton rifle that was perfect for distance shooting. From that cannon tower, Kyven could fire on half the city, making him a powerful sniper. He was also armed with an impact rod, a firetube, a shockrod, and fifteen posts knives in a bandolier over his shoulder.
What he didn't have with him were the Arcans and the Lupans. Sirra and Dauro had been very unhappy to be left behind, but nowhere near as much as Ebony and the boys. They had wanted to be with him as he infiltrated the city, fight with him and for him, but there was no place in this dangerous game for anyone but him.
But the fort was only half of what was going on, and half of his plan. He'd been in town since just before noon, and since the moment he stepped in through the southwest gate, he'd been busy. The streets of Cheston were absolutely filled with Arcans, many of them being forced to work to reinforce the shoddy walls. Those Arcans would be the first step of his plan, which was intended to complement Danvers' plan. The second he had the chance, he slipped into an illusion of a Loreguard officer, and he made the rounds of Cheston. Every single Arcan he encountered, he stopped and checked their collars, but in reality he drained them. He let the Arcans see his glowing eyes, and spoke a single word. "Midnight." Much as it had in the pen in Riyan, it was very effective. The Arcans gaped at him, and when they realized he drained their collars, they fell into furious whispering among themselves, making their plans to escape at midnight. He covered the entire city in about six hours, draining thousands of collars, because his intention was a simple one; if the Chestoners tried to slaughter their Arcan slaves when the invading army got a foothold in town, and it appeared that Cheston would fall, he wanted those Arcans to have a fighting chance. He would not allow them to be murdered, he would not let them be held down and have a club crush their skulls, as that haunting image of that mink Arcan being killed in this very town still stuck with Kyven to this day. He would give them a chance, given them their opportunity to be free, and if not to be free, then to fight. No human would advance on a group of Arcans with a club and believe it would be a simple task to murder the lot of them to deny the invaders the chance to get them.
By the time he'd adopted this illusion, there wasn't an Arcan on the streets of Cheston that had a working collar. He couldn't get absolutely all of them, for many Arcans were being held in the kennel and in people's houses, but those who were being held in the city by their plantation masters had drained collars. And at midnight, when the army attacked, the mass escape of the Arcans within would cause chaos.
Men watched him walk by, giving him smiles and appreciative looks, and he had the illusion smile back flirtingly, acting the perennial Cheston debutante. He strolled along the route that Danvers intended to take to the fort, carefully assaying the situation under the illusion, and seeing that Danvers had been right in his assessment. They had virtually no defenses along the route, so confident they were that they'd stop the attack at the outer wall. Clearly, they believed that shooting a few cannonballs into the Arcan formation would panic the slaves and send them running before they reached the wall, then they'd just trot out and capture as many as they could to keep or to sell, given Arcans were worth upwards of a hundred chits each right now, even for the weak or old ones. The buildings that Danvers intended to take over along the way were perfectly chosen to give the men inside them a wide arc of fire on the rest of the town. Men in those buildings could stymie any attempt to move troops through critical intersections due to sniper fire, and that would slow the response as the army tried to stop Danvers as he tried to take Fort Summer.
It was a daring plan, but it was brilliant in its planning and would be utterly devastating should it succeed.
When Kyven reached the fort, he had the illusion saunter by the open gates to the fortress, which consisted of two heavy doors and a portcullis they could drop in front of them, and while the illusion smiled at the ten men guarding the gate, underneath, Kyven studied the workings of the gates. The gates were old-fashioned, would require men to close them by hand, but the portcullis was controlled from an archaic gatehouse over the entrance, where the chains holding the portcullis aloft ran up into the gatehouse through openings above. Kyven could disable the portcullis, but the doors would be trickier. If they had any sense at all, they'd close the gates as soon as Danvers' army arrived, but he doubted they would. But, they would close the gates when word of the attack on the southwest gate reached them, they wouldn't be that crazy to leave them open with an enemy force threatening to gain entry into the city proper.
No, he could keep the gates open. He knew how to do it. It would just require him to wait until it was too late for the enemy to figure it out.
But first things first. It was about a half hour until sunset, and with his rounds in Cheston completed, it was time for Kyven to move. The three batteries of cannons Danvers had worried about had already been eliminated from contention, having been done while he was out draining collars. The men had fallen all over themselves to show the pretty young lady the cannons, and while the illusion ooh'd and ahh'd over them, under the illusion, Kyven used a clever little magical concoction Clover had whipped up with the help of a spirit. It was a flask of silvery liquid, and he poured it into the fuse hole of each cannon as he passed by them during his "inspection" of them. The liquid was literally liquefied steel, and while it was liquid when it came out of the flask, it quickly hardened back to its original state once it was removed from the flask and the magic keeping it in a liquid form faded quickly. The liquid metal clung to other steel like a magnet, and it only took about a shot-glass full of the liquid to completely fill in the fuse hole, and then harden. Those plugs were perfect, and no amount of hammering or auguring would make them come free, for the liquid steel literally welded itself with the surrounding steel, closing the fuse holes permanently. The cannons looked just fine, but when they loaded them and looked to set powder in the fuse hole, they'd find the holes sealed over with steel. They could load them all they wanted, but if they couldn't fire them, they were just very large and very impressive paperweights.
Once he was out of sight, Kyven detached himself from his illusion and hid in an alley and had the illusion walk to a door and seem to open it and walk in, which itself was an illusion. He retreated back into the alley, into the shadows of twilight, then simply hid in the alley, saving his strength and waiting. Danvers intended to attack at midnight, and he couldn't move until the attack was imminent. Timing was everything in this. He intended to attack the cannon towers, draw the soldiers in the fort to the towers, then attack the main bailey just as Danvers attacked, so he didn't have quite so many men to deal with.
He rested against the wall, even napped a little, until his talker vibrated in his belt pouch. He took it out and turned it on. "Go ahead."
"Ten minutes," came Clover's voice.
"Understood. Go. Expect chaos on the streets when you come in."
"Good luck."
"You too."
In reality, Clover's work had already been done, for she was too tired now to continue. She had put a Blessing on every human in the army that would last until the sun rose, that would give them the ability to see in the darkness as if it were a sunny day. It was a very simple Blessing, but she had to cast it literally thousands of times, and it had taken her all day to finish. She'd cast until she was too tired to continue, rest and eat raw meat to recover, then keep going. That was going to be a critical asset for their side, since it gave their entire army the ability to see in the darkness. The side effect was that it caused every man's eyes to glow like a Shaman's eyes, which meant they couldn't hide in the darkness. But it would certainly scare the shit out of the Chestoners when they saw rows and rows of glowing eyes looking at them from the ridges, like an army of Shaman. It was the same spell the Shaman put on masks to make the eyes of the wearer glow, which was where the Masked had earned their names, from the masks they wore that hid their identities and made their eyes glow to throw people off when they dared attack in the open.
Ten minutes until the army crested the northern ridge overlooking Cheston and revealed themselves, while the real attack circled to the southwest and waited for the diversionary northern attack to set up. That meant that the real attack was about a half hour away. The northern force would form up, get the army's four cannons set up, then start shelling the north wall to draw the Cheston defense north. Kyven had to be ready before that happened, for the tower cannons could fire on that ridge, where the other cannons in Cheston didn't have the range to fire that far uphill at that distance. Well, some of them did, but Kyven had disabled those cannons. The ones in the fort that had that range were pointed towards the ocean, and the Chestoners, in their arrogance, had not dismounted them from their sea-facing positions and moved them to land-facing positions. They were relying on the batteries in Cheston proper to fire on the enemy army if it attacked.
Ten minutes. No problem.
Kyven vanished from the alley and entered the shadow world, and fought off the vertigo as he took in the shadows of the city. In the darkness, most of the city was visible to him in the shadow world, including the majority of the interior of the fort. He could see the six men in each turret to man the big cannons up there, and he could see that he could easily attack them. He took several steps to the shadows of the turret chamber on the south side, then converged a gateway and stepped through even as he willed it to pass around him. He stepped into the back of the turret chamber, just beside the stacks of gunpowder barrels and cannonballs, and all six men were at the three turret windows that gave them a nearly complete arc of fire in every direction but back towards the other turret cannon. The cannon was mounted on a rotating platform in the middle of the room, which was turned using a pulley chain attached to a big wheel right next to him. There was a second control on the cannon itself to adjust its muzzle height.
He struck without warning. All six men died instantly as a pale blue cone of magical cold blasted over them, emanating from his hand and encompassing the entire front of the circular chamber before him. The men were frozen in that instant of death, to become grisly, frost-rimed statues of frozen flesh that stood as if locked in time, one man even having a trail of brown ice trailing from his teeth as he was spitting out tobacco juice.
He moved quickly. First, he took several barrels of gunpowder and broke them open, then poured them down the stairs leading up to the turret. He then closed the door into the turret, threw the heavy iron locking bar to bar the door, and pulled his rifle over his shoulder. He blended his body into the shadows as he loaded a round in the chamber by actuating the loading lever under the rifle's stock, then he turned and took careful aim across the fort, to the six men who were very visible to him in the south turret, and who were all just standing at the edges of the windows, looking out over the city and the dark forests beyond, searching for any sign of movement or light from the enemy army.
His first shot took the nearest man in the head, blowing half the other side of his head out as the bullet went completely through. He worked the lever with quick and practiced motion as the other five men reacted to the gunshot, a much higher, sharper sound than a musket, and another man's head exploded from one of his bullets. The other four men dove for cover, taking up their muskets as alarm bells sounded in the fort, but what they didn't know was that Kyven could see them through the stone, for his eyes were open to the spirits. He cocked the rifle and simply waited, watching the men, and when one man settled himself to rise up and look over the battlement to see what the hell was going on, just a quick glimpse, Kyven aimed at the space where his head would be and waited for him to move. When he twitched, Kyven pulled the trigger, which caused the man to rise up right into the bullet's path. It hit him high in the head, just over his hairline, and it literally blew the top of his head off.
"Sniper!" one of the three men in the turret screamed. "He's in the north turret! Sniper! Sniper in the north turret!"
One of the frozen men shattered as someone on the ground fired a musket up at the turret, sending frozen chunks of flesh flying in every direction. Kyven looked through the stone and saw six men down there with muskets, and the other five had their weapons pointed at the turret, waiting. He formed a quick illusion in his mind and beseeched the fox for the power to cast the spell, and she responded. A sudden snarling bark issued behind the six men, and one of them turned to look to see what he thought was a Lupan lunging at the men. He screamed and brought his musket to bear, but the illusion blurred and vanished as Kyven swung over the battlement with the rifle in their moment of distraction. He fired two quick shots, working the lever with practiced ease, killing one of them and missing with his second shot, since he was already retreating back behind the wall as they turned back to him and the men in the south turret swung around to take a shot at him. Splinters of stone stung his face as he whirled back into cover, but the men in the south turret had seen what he wanted them to see when they looked him in the eyes as he whirled back out of view.
"Shaman!" one of them screamed, almost hysterically. "Shaman in the turret! It's a fucking Shaman!"
He heard the footsteps barreling up the stairs behind the door, the first of the responding soldiers to the attack. Kyven took the firetube from his belt and aimed it at the crack under the door, then enacted it. A billowing cone of flame roared out of it, hitting the door mostly, but enough went underneath just as the men on the other side came around the circling staircase and got within sight of the door. They must not have noticed the crunching from the gunpowder under their feet as they came up the stairs, but they sure as hell cared when the tongues of flame that came under the door ignited the powder. Gunpowder in open air doesn't explode, but it does burn, and it burns fast. The men shrieked when the powder ignited, the cracking, popping sounds loud behind the door as the fire raced down the stairs, and then he heard the howls of agony when the powder in which they were standing ignited, catching their boots and breeches on fire. He heard at least one of them fall down, probably falling into the burning powder as the fire raced down the stairwell, then glanced through the walls and door and saw eight men in the circular staircase as it wound the outside wall of the turret, two men laying on the stairs, one beating frenetically at his legs, and the other five running back down. He heard a sharp crack and saw the man beating at his legs get thrown against the wall as his powder horn ignited, and that powder, in a confined space, did explode, ripping a huge chunk out of his hip and sending him crashing to the stairs, where his lifeblood poured out of a gaping wound in his hip. The fire reached the barrels that still had a lot of powder in them, and the turret shuddered as a loud BOOM roared through the stairwell, as all that powder in those broken barrels ignited at once.
Seeing the men were no threat, he opened the door, which allowed in a cloud of acrid blue smoke from the gunpowder, the smoke filling the stairwell and only moving after the door was opened to give it a place to go threw four more breached gunpowder barrels down the stairs, then shut and locked it again.
He was counting the minutes. Any minute now, the army would become visible on the northern ridge, but at the moment most of Cheston's attention was fixed on the fort. Kyven fired his Briton rifle until it was empty, using spirit sight to see when it was safe to come out of cover and fire either at the south turret or at the ground, but he'd been forced to switch targets and shoot a few snipers setting up in windows on the upper floors of the buildings facing the fort. They knew he was there now, and knew it was a Shaman, so he was fairly sure that the Loreguard and the Cheston commanders knew it was him ... and that was what he wanted them to know. He wanted them to wonder if every man they saw was really that man or if it was him once the south turret went silent, wanted them to worry, wanted them to doubt.
But for now, he had to temporarily disable the cannon. Feeling that the gunpowder dust from those kegs he threw down the stairs had settled by now, he opened the door and used the firetube to ignite it. He slammed the door shut in the face of a sudden raging inferno, which would fill the turret stairwell with caustic, deadly smoke, and keep the men out of it. There was a minor explosion when the fire reached the kegs holding what gunpowder didn't fly out during their tumbles down the stairs, but it wasn't enough to break down the door. He took some coffee from a cup and poured it on the catchbar that held the locking bar, and froze it, putting a coat of ice on the bar and its frame that stuck them together until it melted. Then after seeing that he still had the attention of the four men in the south turret, he reloaded his rifle before slinging it over his shoulder, took out his impact rod, and shadow walked out of the turret.
He appeared at the door leading to the south turret, just outside the door. The men hadn't closed and barred the door, and that would be their fatal mistake. He covered himself in an illusion of a Cheston Militiaman and stomped his feet on the steps as if he was running up, then he stepped up to the landing. "I'm coming in!" he barked before poking his head in. "Report!"
"It's a Shaman!" one of the men said in a frenzied voice. "He's in the north turret! He musta did magic on the men over there, cause they're all just standing like they're frozen in place!
"You men, get downstairs," he ordered as he unshouldered his rifle with one hand, the other holding his impact rod, which was hidden by his illusion. "I'll deal with the Shaman."
"By yourself?"
"It only takes one shot," he said simply. "Now go!"
The three men, happy to follow the orders of another which got them out of harm's way, rushed towards the door, going past him. The first two got out the door before the last one slowed to a stop. "Hey, ain't you supposed to be with other men?" he asked suspiciously.
It was the last thing he ever said. The impact rod took him full in the face, killing him instantly and blasting him off his feet and through the door, where he crashed into the other two men and knocked them down the stairs. Kyven then quickly did the same thing, breaching the nearest keg of gunpowder with the butt of his impact rod, then hurling it down the stairs. The two men screamed in fear and literally rolled down the stairs to try to get away from the gunpowder. Kyven sent two more breached kegs down the stairs, then set fire to it with the firetube, then slammed the door as caustic smoke filled the stairwell from the gunpowder. The turret shook when the fire reached the powder in the remains of the kegs, but would also fill the stairwell with choking smoke and make any attempt to get to the door a dangerous proposition. He then froze the locking bar to the frame, this time using the blood of one of the dead.
He shadow walked again just as he heard the sharp booms of the cannons north of town; the diversionary force was in place, and they had started shelling. He heard the explosions, the tearing of wood, and knew that the army was right on schedule with the plan. If Danvers himself was on schedule, his riders and Arcans were circling Cheston and would be in position overlooking the southwest gate in just a few minutes, to give the Chestoners time to swarm the north with their forces. And this was where Kyven came into play again, for he had the perfect vantage point. He looked out over the city, seeing the glowing forms of the living through the stone of the turret, and saw that Danvers had indeed predicted correctly. Men were moving from the west wall, redeploying north, and the cannons arrayed about town were being loaded. He heard a startled shout from below, then another, and he saw that his sabotage had finally been noticed.
His talker beeped, and he pulled it out. "Go."
"Two minutes," Clover called out.
"Turrets secured."
"Move to stage two."
"Understood. The way will not be clear."
"Understood."
He had two minutes before Danvers assaulted the southwest gate, and if the Chestoners were smart, they closed the fortress doors. According to Danvers, it would take them about fifteen minutes to reach the fort once they had the gates open, and that might take more than fifteen minutes itself.
A half an hour ... spirits. This was going to be brutal.
But there was no help for it.
He again shadow walked out of the turret, and this time, he appeared within the gatehouse over the main gates. There were six men in the gatehouse, two at the portcullis winch and four musketmen at murder holes looking out over the city. Only one man noticed him appear, but he died before he could utter a sound, when Kyven froze him, the other musketman, and the two winch operators where they stood with a blast of cold, a blast that took it out of him. The other two musketmen noticed the sudden chill in the room, but neither had a chance to act on it, since their attention was outside. They too died, frozen in place, and Kyven had to pant to recover, knowing that he was tiring himself out before he even did the hard part, but there was no help for it. He needed those bodies to at least look like they were where they were supposed to be.
He moved quickly. First, he jammed the portcullis winch so it couldn't be moved from its current position, then he retreated into the shadows behind the winch, blended with the shadows, and then sat down on the floor and took in several deep, centering breaths. He needed all his strength for this, so he rested as long as he felt it was safe, took a bit of raw beef out of his pouch and wolfed it down to get a little energy back, then closed his eyes and centered himself. He'd studied the inner courtyard of the keep under the illusion of a fly around noon, so he was intimately familiar with the place and how things looked. He very carefully built the illusion he had in mind, laboring to make it as detailed as possible, instilling such a level of realism into the images that he hoped they would take on aspects of reality themselves ... it was absolutely critical that they did so. Absolutely critical.
This was the moment. This was the time when he had to show himself and his totem that he was a master of illusions, because never before had so many depended on his ability to alter the very perception of reality of others. If he failed, then Danvers and his invading force would be stopped at the fort and wiped out, and that would break the army. He had to succeed ... he had to succeed. On the first try. Just as his totem had long ago told him.
He moved quickly but carefully, completing the images in his mind, then looking them over with swift but exactingly critical eyes. They looked proper. He then injected the substance of the illusions into them, the feel, the weight, the smell, how shadows played over them, how they loomed and looked imposing. When he instilled the proper substance into the illusion, he then put it in the back of his mind, not casting it but keeping it ready at a moment's notice, then wove a much simpler illusion that was much easier, since it was an illusion of himself. He opened his eyes and looked through the stone into the inner courtyard, and saw that Admiral Greggson was there, along with nearly twenty men manning the battlements over the courtyard, and another twenty men down in the courtyard itself. There had been more earlier, but those men were now battling through the choking smoke at the turrets to try to gain entry to them.
He created his first illusion. To the men in the courtyard, the human Shaman dropped from the roof of the fort and onto the battlement not twenty paces from Greggson, eyes glowing and hand swinging towards him as if to kill him. One of his guards reacted swiftly to the attack, raising one of those repeating pistols and firing. A bloom of blood exploded across the illusion's shoulder, and then the figure dropped off the battlement as the alert guard fired again and again, but hitting nothing but wall and ground. "Shaman!" someone screamed, and then the figure ran with a sudden and unnatural burst of speed, running out the open gate while being chased by a volley of musket fire, turning and vanishing from their viewpoint.
"Send men after him!" Greggson shouted. He held a talker up to his ear, and he suddenly paled. "And close the gates! Close the gates!"
"Close the gates!" the order was relayed by several men, and then Kyven heard someone near the gatehouse scream "lower the portcullis!"
It was time.
Kyven centered himself and brought the illusion back into the forefront of his mind, giving it one final inspection, then he beseeched his spirit for the power to cast the spell. She responded immediately, and what was surprising to him, in person. She melted from the shadows literally in his lap, and she touched her nose to his as her paws rested on his shoulders. Now, she intoned in his mind.
Below, in the courtyard, the huge, iron-banded main gates were covered over by an illusion of identical doors, identical down to the grain of wood in the squared logs that made them up and nicks in the edges. Nobody noticed the shift because the illusion laid over the real doors perfectly, seamlessly, and then those two massive doors slowly, finger by finger, crept forward on their hinges of their own volition as men surged towards them to separate from the real doors, now hidden by the illusion. At the same time, an illusion of the portcullis began to lower at a methodical rate of speed, chains rattling, metal squealing, and wooden pegs rattling against a backstop, just as the men would expect to see and hear as the portcullis lowered. There was even a tremble in the ground when the pointed bases of the portcullis bars slammed home into recessed holes in the fort's entrance, then there was the sound underneath of those bars being locked in place by locking pins under the entry stones, to prevent the portcullis from being easily raised.
Kyven was too lost in concentration as men rushed to the doors, too anxious or afraid or distracted to notice that the doors had moved about a rod from their normal position, of their own volition, then reached out and touched them. Their hands did not fall through the illusion. They met the illusion's surface as if it were a solid object, their minds accepting what their eyes saw as reality, and the feel of the illusion reinforced it as the men pushed against the heavy doors. They barely budged at first, but then more and more men reached the doors and joined in, which caused both doors to swing with building momentum. The right door banged against the entryway first and rebounded slightly as the left door was nearly closed, and then it too slammed home as the ten men on the doors leaned against them, held upright by the power of Kyven's ability to make them accept his illusion as their reality, just as he had defied gravity by accepting his Wolveran as reality and was able to climb it. In his mind, the boundary between illusion and reality blurred, and then broke down as he took what he wanted to be reality and pushed it against what was actually there.
And he won the battle.
The two massive steel locking bars at the top and bottom of the gateway fell home on the door, locking it in place. And once the doors were closed, he withdrew all substance from the illusion of the portcullis except for its visual effect, so those outside didn't see the portcullis disappear, to save his energy for the door. He then girded himself and concentrated all his effort on those doors, on those huge doors, for he had to hold that illusion until Danvers and his army reached them.
It was the hardest thing he ever did in his life. He could hold illusions for a long time, but he started already tired and this was not just one big illusion, but three, because there were two doors and the portcullis outside. He was able to manage it because he consolidated all three into a single effort, looking at them as a whole from above, able to see them all from his vantage point. Since the illusions were in place, he was able to close his eyes and maintain them, and he was forced to, forced to put everything else out of his mind and throw everything into maintaining those doors. The only attention he spared for himself was to keep an eye out for the army, because he had to know when it approached.
Outside, it was anarchy. Freed Arcans were everywhere, running around in groups as disorganized Chestoners and Loreguard weren't quite sure what to do. The Arcans that had been forced to stand in alleys and along the sides of streets were now moving, running away from the shelling north, fleeing to the south past the fort and, bless them, they were drawing some of the enemy army away from the fort as the soldiers gave chase. There was sporadic musket fire, but for the most part the Arcans simply ran ... until they realized they had the advantage. He saw one such drama play out right in front of the fort, when two Chestoners chased a group of ten Arcans who were wearing ragged clothing, plantation worker clothes, chased them with whoops and amused shouts until the Arcans were stopped by a fence. Those Arcans then turned on the two men and attacked them. One man tried to raise his musket, but he was swarmed over by five of them while the other was tackled by a small ferret Arcan before he could bring his musket to bear. The screaming of the men echoed through the square, until it trailed off to silence. The ten Arcans then ran away, carrying the men's muskets and knives, leaving behind two bloody corpses.
Stay strong, Shaman, his spirit intoned, trying to bolster him with her presence ... and it worked. He drew strength from her, from the fact she wasn't just watching him, but touching him, right there for him, and he would make her proud. He would prove to her that he was her Shaman.
But the minutes pressed on him. Sweat beaded from his forehead. His hands began to tremble as he reached out for his spirit, and she allowed him to touch her, gripping her soft, thick fur. The illusion weighed more and more on him, until he felt as if it was crushing him, smothering him. Strength, Shaman, she called, cutting through his fatigue with her call and refocusing him when he came dangerously close to losing his concentration.
I'm not going to make it, he thought to himself as he gripped his spirit's fur, as his mind swam in crushing fatigue.
You can, she called to him. I am here. I can help you.
How?
Make a bargain with me, Shaman, she crooned softly. I can help you.
No! No ... no, I will not!
You must. They are depending on you.
Even in his fatigue, even through his concentration, he felt his blood run cold. But he was about to fail, and the army was nowhere in sight. They were depending on him. Lives, hundreds of lives, were at stake. The outcome of the war may very well be at stake should Danvers fail to take Fort Summer.
He had no choice. She had trapped him again.
I beseech you, shadow fox, he called through his mind-swimming fatigue, beginning the ritual of summoning. I beg you for your aid.
And what do you offer for my favor? she replied in a victorious tone. Will you pay my price?
What aid do you offer?
I will give you the strength to carry through your spell until the army arrives. What do you offer for my favor?
What do you wish?
I would have Danna's Seal.
I will not give it, he declared adamantly. Even should it cost me this army.
Indeed, she murmured, amused by his adamance, but sensing that he meant it. Danna mattered more to him than this army, and the shadow fox now knew it. Then I demand a service.
You demand what you already have, for I am a totem Shaman.
I demand a service you would not perform should you have a choice.
No. I will offer you no more than you offer me. You offer me an extra fifteen minutes of strength, which is a simple thing for you to do. I will offer you no more of a service in return, neither by time nor by effort, and in no way, shape, or form will I agree to any service not spelled out here and now. I will not let you trick me into giving you Danna's Seal.
Then you will fail.
And so will you, and all the plans you have made concerning this war will be for naught. Is Danna's Seal worth watching your plans crumble to dust, shadow fox?
There was a brief silence, and then the shadow fox licked him on the cheek. Wisely done, my Shaman, she answered in a mysteriously amused voice. Very well, I am inclined to grant you your boon. I will restore your strength, and I will inform the army that the doors of the fort are nothing but an illusion so they do not slow them down. In return, my price will be that you sire a second litter of pups with Umbra, which you can do while transformed by the amulet. I will not have to change you back. Is this a fair bargain?
He didn't even hesitate. I agree to your terms.
Instantly, newfound strength flowed into him, revitalizing him. The fox had her jaws in his neck, and her bite had drawn blood ... and in that touch of her fangs with his blood, her strength flowed into him. She restored him to vigor, feeling as if he'd used no magic at all. That newfound strength was immediately channeled into his illusion, bolstering it, and he found it much easier to maintain ... though its size did still drain him considerably faster than a smaller illusion would. She remained in his lap, her paws on his shoulders, and she licked his neck almost sensually, licking away the wounds she had inflicted with her bite. He kept hold of her, using that sense of touch as a focus, and besides, her fur was soft and she was warm, and he liked the sense of her nearness even as he hated her. She continued to lick his neck even after his wounds were long healed, then she put her forehead against his and maintained that touch, and that communion, continuing to offer her quiet support as he labored with his restored strength to hold the illusion.
For long minutes, his restored strength drained steadily as he maintained his illusion, and watched for the army. He heard the cracking of Briton rifles, heard distant shouts and screams, some of the Arcan, but he maintained his concentration. Long minutes went by as the sharp reports of Briton rifles got closer and closer, and the men below got antsy as those sounds neared them, but he maintained his concentration. He then saw the army racing out of the side street, being led by men on horseback with Arcans behind, even with six Lupans loping just behind Strider, and they pulled up quickly and shouldered their rifles, both men and Arcans. A blasting volley swept over a dozen men off the walls, and then they surged forward towards the seemingly solid doors, which confused the men on the walls for a fatal moment.
The men charged their horses towards the doors, they went right through them, jumping their horses over the lower locking bar as if they knew it was there. Then, to the stunning shock of the men in the courtyard, the doors just vanished.
That startled the hell out of the men in the courtyard, but what startled them more was the swarm of Arcans that raced in after them. Those Arcans moved swiftly, some of them climbing the walls with shocking speed, gaining a critical moment of surprise in which the defenders were immobilized by disbelief. His spirit moved as he stood up, but she stayed near him as he went to the window to help Danvers and the army any way he could. Finally, the courtyard defenders shook it off as Greggson jumped up with a musket in hand, but then he fell back with a smoking hole in his chest after Kyven channeled lighting against him.
The loss of their commander confused the men, but they did fight back. Several Arcans and two men were felled by musket fire before the courtyard turned into a chaotic melee. More and more Arcans and mounted men poured into the courtyard, and the defenders found that their walls were no protection against Arcans that could climb. The men fired on those in the courtyard, but then had to fight off clawed Arcans that climbed the walls and stormed their positions. Arcans were felled by musket fire, but those behind swarmed over the men before they could reload, for they had no close-quarters weapons other than bayonets, and a man wielding a bayonet like a dagger was no match for an Arcan. As the men battled the Arcans on the battlements, the men on horseback in the courtyard fired continuously with their Briton rifles, sweeping the battlements of any man separated enough for them to get a clear shot, and mowing down quite a few squads of Chestoners who ran in from passages, killing them before they even had a chance. The six Lupans darted to and fro among the horses, killing the defenders who tried to attack the mounted men, slaughtering many of them as they came barging out of passages and tried to raise their muskets. Sirra and Dauro were among the six Lupans, and they killed swiftly and with coordination between themselves and the other four with them, proving to be a lethal and effective defense of the horses and the Equar.
And in the middle of it all was Lightfoot, Ebony, and his two boys. They fought like Arcans possessed, Lightfoot, little Lightfoot, a demon from hell as she moved through the flustered Chestoners with her shockrod and her pistol. She shot one man, fried another, then dropped her pistol and used her claws, ripping the life out of men left and right as the humans struggled to match the little cat's speed. Any man out of reach of her claws was fried by her shockrod, and the one human who had a chance against her, leveling his musket, pulled the trigger and shot one of his own men in the back when the lithe cat simple melted aside, her eyes never leaving the man's as she dashed up, then ripped his throat out with her claws. Ebony was an absolute nightmare on the battlements, her short yet strong claws ripping through men by brute force, but her more effective attack was to simply throw every man she could reach over the wall to fall the twenty rods to the courtyard below. She had the raw strength to toss men about like sacks of meal, and men were flung as she paced down the battlement, at least until she picked up a musket. She took hold of the barrel and shattered the stock against a man's head, almost ripping it off, then laid into the men with the shattered musket, until all that was left was the steel barrel ... but that was more than effective enough. His spotted cat and coyote boys were just as devastating. The cat was blazing fast, as fast as Lightfoot, but he was even stronger. His claws shredded men, sending blood flying with every swipe of his hands, as well as bodies when his claws hit bone and swept his enemies out of his way. The coyote had one of the impact rods from the Pens, and he knew how to use it, shattering skulls and bones and killing men with every swing, cleverly and wisely keeping men with fired muskets between him and the men who had yet to fire. At one point, he even grabbed one man and used him as a shield as he advanced on two men with their muskets pointed at him, the man's body absorbing the shots, then he cast the dead man aside and killed the two other men with expert strikes from the impact rod. Without pistols or shockrods, the men had no defense against Ebony, Lightfoot, and his two boys, nor any other Arcan on the battlements. Kyven helped where he could with his Briton rifle, picking off any man that had enough separation to give him a shot, firing his rifle empty. He then tossed it aside and took up his shockrod, sending lances of lighting from his window overlooking the courtyard down against the defenders, killing them with almost every discharge. He depleted his shockrod, and wanting to save his Shaman strength for what may come, he started pulling his posts knives and throwing them at any uniformed Chestoner he could single out. Though it was much further than usual for him to throw the light knives, the downward trajectory helped them reach their targets, and he proved that he was still one of the deadliest knife throwers in Noraam by killing twelve men with his fifteen knives.
In short minutes, seconds after he threw his last knife into one of the last pockets of Chestoners, the Arcans had the courtyard. More and more poured in, men and Arcans, even slave Arcans that had seen the attack and had fallen in behind it to join their brothers and sister, until nearly two thousand men and Arcans were in the fort, already swarming through the passages searching for defenders. Sporadic musket fire and sharp Briton rifle fire echoed in the passages, but in the courtyard, the army released the locking bars, then closed the doors ... the real doors. They boomed shut loudly, and once they were closed and the locking bars were reset, Kyven released the winch on the portcullis, clearing the dagger that had been jammed in it, and kicked the locking brake lever. The chains suddenly rattled as the drum turned, and the portcullis rattled down with shocking speed, then banged home to the sound of the locking pins securing it in place, shaking the gatehouse.
The fort was theirs.
Danvers was down in the courtyard, astride Strider, and there was a bloody gash on his forehead that dripped blood on his shirt. But his eyes were calm and calculating as he barked commands for the army to sweep the fort of defenders and secure the courtyard, sending squads of men and Arcans to specific points in the fort by a preplanned distribution. The Chestoners had been driven from the courtyard, and now the fighting was taking place throughout the entire fort, booming muskets and sharp Briton rifles trading shots deeper inside.
"Sweep the halls! Sniper teams, get to the murder holes and on the battlements before they organize to attack the fort! Willis, take your company and secure the armory! Vick, take your squad and make sure the sea doors are closed and secured! I want the artillery teams on those cannons immediately!" Danvers boomed. "Kyven! Kyven! Kyven, where are you!"
"Up here, General," he called from the window of the gatehouse.
"Good lad! If you've blocked off the turrets, go unblock them so my cannoneers can get to work!"
"I'll do that right now, but there will be a lot of defenders in the halls leading to the turrets! They were trying to retake them before you invaded!"
"Humbolt, Greenbranch, go reinforce the halls and get those artillery teams to their turrets alive! I want those turrets manned and shelling Cheston immediately!" Danvers barked. "Kyven, go! Go!"
It was a simple matter to shadow walk up to the north turret and unbar the door, but when he walked to the south turret, he noticed that the things in the shadow world were close now. Not close enough to threaten him, but now they were too close to shadow walk without concern. He'd have to be careful if he walked again. He melted the frozen blood on the door and threw the bar, and saw his army rushing up the stairs, coughing from the smoke still lingering in the stairwell. They stumbled into the turret, and then looked around. "Alright, let's get to work!" a grizzled-looking older man with a gray beard barked. "Hunter, I need those Arcan muscles on the cannonballs," he told the canine Arcan that had come with them.
"Just tell me what to do, Sergeant," he answered, then he came up to Kyven. "Will you bless me before you go, Shaman?"
"Of course," he smiled, putting his hand on the Arcan's shoulder and reciting the ritual benediction. His tail was wagging when he scurried towards the neatly stacked cannonballs.
She was there as he came down through the smoke, stepping over a charred body on the stairs, the man he'd killed with the impact rod. She sat sedately, her tail wrapped around her legs, regarding him calmly with her glowing emerald eyes. He knelt before her, feeling that mixture of respect and anger, humility and hatred, and she stood up and put her nose against his jaw. In that touch, there was communication. I am proud of you, my Shaman, she declared. You have proved your mastery of illusion, and you proved you are wiser than the last time we bargained, she added impishly. But know that there is more you can achieve with illusion, more than imposing your reality on the mind of another, and it is for that which you must now strive. And mind, Shaman, that I will take Danna from you eventually. Mark my words.
You'll try, he thought blandly, which caused her to lick his cheek.
Go with my blessing, Shaman. Do what you can to assist.
I will, sister shadow fox. Thank you for your help earlier.
It was as we bargained, my Shaman. No more, no less. Be thankful I was bursting with pride at the perfection of your illusion, and my pride dulled my bargaining prowess.
Then I'll make sure to impress you right before we bargain the next time.
I am sure you will try, she answered, amused. Now go. They still need you.
He stood up, and the shadows consumed her, until nothing but her eyes remained. Then they too vanished.
He put her out of his mind. He had little doubt her speech was part of her plan to get Danna's Seal, so he didn't put much weight behind it. But he did feel a bit of pride that she was proud of him. That was something he could feel good about.
Another thing he felt good about was that he finally at least held his ground against her in a bargain. It just took always keeping in mind that she was a deceptive bitch that could not be trusted.
He felt helpless and a little sad, but then again, there was no better way for an Arcan to die.
He knelt by the body of a male canine Arcan, shot through the chest by a musket ball, eyes open and glazed. He was one of 37 Arcans and 9 humans killed in the fort as the battle to take it was won by Danvers' army, and another 114 Arcans and 42 human soldiers had died attacking the southwest gate and charging the fort. Those brave snipers who had taken over the buildings had held them as long as possible, then they either escaped out the breached southwest wall or ran for the fort in the darkness, where they were pulled up on ropes. But, the casualties would have been much worse had they attacked during the day. The Loreguard and Chestoners were all but blind in the night, with only a handful of alchemical night spectacles, and those had been in the hands of the cannoneers so they could aim their artillery better.
But still, it was such a tragedy. This canine had been rescued from the pen in Riyan, and had died before he tasted true freedom. He had died short of his reward ... but he died in a manner of his own choosing. He had died fighting for something. And for an Arcan, that was the best way to go.
He sighed and closed the Arcan's eyes, then stood up as the sounds of the cannons boomed through the fort, and the chatter of rifle and musket fire racketed from above. There was a contingent of Loreguard soldiers outside trying to retake the fort, but they had no cannons and little cover in the darkness, as their night-sighted opponents eviscerated their formations as they tried to move under cover of darkness, then pinned them down behind buildings. The turret cannons and battlement cannons were pounding Cheston from within, firing down on any concentration of enemy soldiers and blowing the walls out from the inside, pounding holes all through them in every direction. The cannons outside also pounded the city, and in just two hours, the city had suffered mightily. The Loreguard barracks had been the first building destroyed by the turret cannons, but other important buildings and objects had been destroyed since then, such as the wharfs and docks, the city hall, the two largest stables in the city, and they had destroyed all the cannons that the Loreguard tried to move into position to attack the fort. They had even sunk every ship in the harbor, to prevent a military vessel from being able to easily navigate the harbor and attempt to get men inside the fort from the seaward side. The Chestoners were surrounded on the outside by the army and found themselves being raked with cannon and gun fire from their own fort, where the rebels with their accurate rifles were picking apart the Cheston defenders one sniper shot in the darkness at a time. With the Loreguard barracks and the weaponry contained within totally destroyed, any alchemical weapons that might breach the walls of the fort were denied to the defenders, since the other alchemical devices that might have been useful to them were in the fort, and now in the hands of the enemy. They had a groundpounder, a device that shattered earth and stone, they had a few grounders, and they also had a device that looked like a death machine, just with no black crystal to power it. The Loreguard hadn't brought out their heavy siege weapons, believing that they wouldn't be dealing with a situation where they would have to attack a heavily fortified position, and they paid for it when the turret cannons pounded their barracks into a smoking crater, leaving not a single brick standing.
This was part of the plan. They had to do as much damage as possible in the darkness, where they could see, so the Chestoners had as little resources as possible available to them when the sun came up, so the army could withstand the assault on the fort. The Chestoners knew this fort, and if it had a secret entrance, they would know where it was. They had to cripple the Chestoners' ability to retake the fort, and part of that was to destroy any asset they could use to aid in that recapture. All the enemy cannons had already been destroyed, and now the cannons inside and outside, their targeting coordinated by talkers, were destroying every large building in Cheston that might hide or house a threat to them. The turret cannons were the ones blowing out the hastily built wall from the inside and firing on any concentration of Chestoners and Loreguard that tried to form up to attack the western ridge where their cannons and the rest of their army was located, while the battery cannons were shelling enemy concentrations and attacking buildings in the city. Clover was with the other half of the army, along with Ember, for the young vixen almost never left Clover's side now that they were in a dangerous position. What he would give to change sides with her, so her healing powers were where they could do the most good. The only attack the Chestoners made on the western ridge had been decimated by Briton rifles before they got within musket range.
Ebony stood behind him, as did his boys. They had found him quickly after the battle for the courtyard, and they had not left him. Nor had the Lupans. All six of them. The six Lupans and three fighting Arcans were a wall of pure intimidation against anyone who approached him, but he generally ignored them as he checked the still forms, looking for anyone still alive.
He found one. It was a slender, willowy female cat Arcan, her fur in a gray tabby pattern, one of the climbers who assaulted the battlements. She had a bad wound in her belly and several bayonet wounds in her chest. Yet despite those ghastly wounds, she was still alive. She held her hand up weakly to him as he knelt by her. "Sha ... man," she whispered. "Will you ... bless ... me?"
"It is you who bless me, little sister," he told her with sheening eyes. "I am so proud of you." He put his hand on her shoulder. "May the spirits bless you, my brave sister, for you have earned their respect. May they give you every reward you have earned this night. May we all be as brave as you are, my wonderful sister, and may we never forget you and what you have done here this night," he told her.
She gave him a weak smile, her teeth coated with blood, then her hand slipped limply from his, and her eyes glazed over in death.
He closed her eyes gently, then sighed and stood up. His trousers were soaked with blood from the thighs down from kneeling in pools of blood, but he didn't even notice. It was times like this that he cursed his weakness, cursed his limitations. If he had more power, he could heal, but he was too weak. Too weak. It was almost infuriating, knowing he could cast a healing spell, but that it would kill him if he did so.
"She died fighting, Shaman," Ebony told him. "She died her way."
"I know," he sighed. "But to get this close to freedom ... it's sad."
"She's free now, Shaman," the coyote told him.
"Not the way I wanted to see it." He glanced back at him. "And I guess I owe you a name."
"I don't know, Cuddlewuggums is growing on me," he said dryly, which made Kyven actually laugh.
"But not a name worthy of a fighting Arcan who proved himself this night. So, in honor of your skill with a rod, I think I'll call you Striker." He looked to the cat. "And you are Fastpaw, because you are the fastest Arcan with your hands I've ever seen."
"They are fine names," Ebony told them.
Sirra came up beside him, and he stroked her flank, needing to touch, needing to comfort, which comforted him. He had fought, he had killed, even killed the innocent, but he had never seen anything like this. He had never seen bodies strewn about like refuse, had never known that Arcans who only wanted to be free had willingly fought, willingly died, to secure not their freedom, but the freedom of others. They had fought because the Shaman had asked them to fight, and now he felt no small measure of responsibility for the death around him.
His talker beeped, and he picked it up. "Yes, Clover?" he asked.
"It's me," Ember answered. "Clover is healing a few wounds. We had a horse fall on a couple of men."
"What is it, sister?" he asked.
"Clover just asked me to check in with you, that's all," she replied. "That everything is going okay here."
"Any trouble at all?"
"Not really. A few men tried to sneak close to us, but the Arcans caught them and killed them. We're bringing in a lot of Arcans from Cheston, though. They're coming out of the holes in the walls and running for the woods, and our scouts are bringing them to us."
He sighed. "Good."
"Is everything okay there?"
"Alright here," he said, then a cannon boomed. "How long until sunrise?"
"About an hour," she answered after calling out the question and getting a reply. "I'll call back at sunrise, brother."
"Alright. Be safe, little sister."
"You too, Kyven."
He put the talker back on his belt, then sighed and turned away from the dead female cat. There would be time for tears later, when they weren't fighting for their lives. "Alright, we have things to do, guys," he said wearily, as he stepped down the battlement and checked another Arcan.
He found no other Arcans alive that weren't already being helped by medics, so he helped in the only way he really could now, and that was with a rifle. The Lupans crowded the battlement around him, but they were too low to be hit by any musket fire as Kyven took up his modified rifle and served Danvers as a sniper, and one of his better ones. He and three other snipers, men dedicated to the long shot, were clustered on the top of the wall, quietly following the direction of their spotter, a young male wolf Arcan who had proven to have exceptionally keen eyesight and was the perfect one to spot trouble and direct their fire to it. Ebony and the boys took up rifles as well, having been taught how to shoot them after Kyven left the army, and while they weren't anywhere near as good as the four men, that was still bullets flying and pinning enemies down.
"How does it look?" one of the men asked him.
"I'm not sure, I haven't talked to Danvers for a while," he answered. "But from the looks of the city, I'd say that we're in good shape." They looked out, looking at the shattered buildings, and several fires that burned out of control near the docks. There had not been a single cannon shot in their direction since the fort cannons destroyed the artillery emplacements Kyven hadn't sabotaged, but those sabotaged cannons had been destroyed as well, just in case. "All we have to do is hold the fort until they realize we can destroy the city, then they'll surrender."
"Ten soldiers, six blocks, there," their spotter called, pointing down a street. All seven of them turned their rifles in that direction, and Kyven saw the men through spirit sight. The men were trying to move a cannon that had an intact barrel, enlisting the aid of four Arcans, but had had its mount destroyed by shelling. Five of them men slumped to the ground almost immediately after the snipers started firing on them, and two more fell to the ground as the survivors tried to flee for cover. The Arcans stood there for a moment, then they too ran for cover, leaving the cannon behind. One of them grabbed at his neck as his collar punished him, and the other three dashed nervously back out as the Loreguard made them go back out into the enemy fire to move the cannon.
Not going to happen.
"Hold your fire," Kyven barked, even as his body seemed to turn to cold water, and it shifted and changed by the power of his amulet. In seconds, the shadow fox Arcan stood in his stead, shivering off the sensation and getting out of boots that no longer fit his feet. Out there on those streets, this close to the fort, any human might be shot by the snipers, so he needed to be in Arcan form to go out there. The men in the fort would not fire on an Arcan. "I'll be right back," he told them, as the shadows rose up around the men and converged around him. They vanished quickly, taking him with them.
He stepped from the shadows behind the three surviving Loreguard, and killed them quickly with his impact rod, ambushing them. Two were dead before the last one even reacted to the attack, whirling around with a pistol in his hands, but then he too died when the rod crushed his skull, crumpling him to the ground. The four Arcans looked at him in shock, and hurried over to him when he beckoned them over. He pulled the collar off a burly canine male without hesitation, pulled off the other three, then knelt and rummaged through the dead men's pouches. "Shaman!" one of them said in surprise. "Will you bless me, Shaman?"
"Later," he answered quickly, moving to the next man. "Listen, all of you. Scavenge weapons from the dead, then run for the west side of Cheston, and be careful. An army of Arcans is on the west ridge. Run that way, and they'll find you and take you in. Just be careful, the humans might try to shoot you. Stay off the main streets and keep to the alleys as much as you can, stay out of the light. The humans can't see well in the dark." He pulled the talker out of the dead man's pocket, what he was searching for, then stood up.
"I want to stay with you and fight!" one of them declared.
"Alright then, come with me, and I'll get you in the fort," he told the small male mink.
"I'll stay with you, Shaman," the rodent, maybe a squirrel or some other type, added.
The four of them decided to stay with him rather than flee, so he carefully led them back to the fort. He used spirit sight to keep an eye on the soldiers, civilians, and what few Arcans remained in Cheston as they moved, holding the four of them up as a group of Loreguard rode down a side street on horses, pounding north, then leading them forward again. He got them up to the fort wall, then he called up to the wall. "Ropes!" he said as loudly as he dared. In seconds, two ropes were thrown down, and he got the Arcans started up the walls. He kept a careful eye on things until they were all the way up, then he grabbed a rope and hand-walked his way to the top with steady speed. "Thanks for not shooting us," he said dryly to the men on the battlement.
One of them chuckled. "We almost did, Shaman. You should make yourself a little more conspicuous."
"Sorry, you can run for your life with only so much dignity," he answered, which made them all grin. "Alright, boys, come with me. I'll take you to someone that can help you find a job to do."
Dawn brought blessed light to the city of Cheston, but the dawn rose on a city that was barely recognizable.
Fires raged out of control around the docks, where the buildings were all made of wood and were packed close together. There were other fires dotted throughout the city, and a haze of smoke hung in the air like a pall, rising slowly in the heavy morning air. The booming of cannons still roared across the city as the occupied fort continued to shell the town around it, and the four cannons outside lobbed cannonballs into the city. Civilians huddled in basements and cellars, and embattled Cheston Militia and Loreguard hunkered behind walls and buildings, trying to regroup at the far northern edge of the city, far out of range of the deadly rifles of the men holding the keep.
It had not been a good night for the defenders. The chaos of the Arcans running loose had distracted them for a fatal moment before the attack on the southwest gate, where the men learned the hard way that a wooden wall was no protection against Arcans. They had climbed the wall and stormed the defenses, then opened the gates and allowed the enemy army in. Every single man was on a horse, and the Arcans ran with them, moving far faster for the defenders to either react or keep up. Then, somehow, some way, they had managed to breach to main gate of the fort and stormed it, and now their precious Fort Summer was being occupied by the enemy. Then, in the ultimate insult, the fort's cannons were then used to attack the city the fort was supposed to protect. The defenders had known exactly where and how to attack, for they had destroyed every building important to the defenders, primarily catching them with their pants down and destroying the Loreguard barracks, and all the weapons it contained that had not been deemed necessary to use in this battle. Then there was the disastrous attack on those cannon emplacements outside. The humans had formed up and advanced, able to see their quarry because of the fires both behind and on the ridge, but they had been cut to ribbons far, far out of musket range by the strange weapons the attackers were using, some kind of new musket that had far more range and could be fired multiple times before having to reload. The attackers had been withered by that sustained gunfire, until they had been forced to flee, forced back behind the walls. And then Arcans had snuck out and braved death grabbing muskets up off the ground and running back with them, using the darkness in the middle of the field as cover to collect up the muskets. Some of them were killed in the attempt, but far more got back with muskets than were stopped, which only gave their enemies more weapons to use against them.
Battle ... they were still in stunned shock. They had never in a million years dreamed that Arcans could fight with coordination and skill, but they had seen it. They had seen them attack the southwest gate in a coordinated effort, then run with the horses through the city to the fort, moving with purpose. And now, there were Arcans armed with muskets and some kind of new firearm up on the battlements, shooting at any human that moved in the city below.
There had been some reprisals. A few hundred collared Arcans had been slaughtered by their human masters, and more had been killed as they tried to escape, but in the long run, it had been the Arcans that had gotten the better of their human masters this day, and the humans knew it. The Arcans penned up in the city had escaped in huge numbers, and some of them were even now with the enemy, being given weapons and fighting against their former masters. Thousands of Arcans had escaped, and now there was an army of Arcans fighting as a team, holed up in their own fort and on that fortified ridge to the west.
The defenders of the fort knew what was coming next. Now that it was daylight, the Chestoners and Loreguard would attack the keep, try to get it back, and they were ready for it. Men and Arcans lined the battlements armed with rifles and muskets, even armed with rock debris to throw down on to the enemies should they try to scale the walls. Clover had bargained with the spirits for an additional protection, and that was that no collar would work within a hundred rods of the walls. If the Loreguard collected up all the Arcans Kyven missed and tried to force them to storm the walls as gun fodder, they'd find out quickly that their tactic was going to fail. The men were even forced to gather at sunrise far from the fort, and stay behind buildings and out of sight, for the defenders would turn their cannons on any concentration of men they saw in the city. Which wasn't easy, since the other army on the western ridge could look down into town from a different angle, and they were communicating with the fort via talkers. The western spotters were calling in targets to the fort and vice versa, which made it extremely hard for the Chestoners to assemble any large number of men in one place in preparation for an attack.
Kyven was up on the battlement, feeling tired but knowing that he couldn't afford to sleep, because the Chestoners would make their play for the fort any minute now. They absolutely had to take the fort, for Danvers could pound Cheston to rubble from within the fort otherwise. Kyven wanted to see what they came up with, for the they had no cannons, no alchemical siege weapons, no death machines, not even any heavy equipment. All they had were men, about twelve thousand soldiers and men who were conscripted during the night once their army penetrated the city and took the fort, and maybe what Arcans they could gather together to force to march in front to take the bullets.
But sunrise also brought some concern for Kyven and his people, for Clover called them at sunrise with disturbing news. "Look south," she called over the talker. Kyven and Danvers went up to the south turret and looked south of the city, where there was a thin trail of dust.
"Shit," Danvers growled. "Clover, send scouts."
"I already did, General," she answered.
"Another army?" Kyven asked.
Danvers nodded. "Moving this way form the look of it. It might be another Loreguard army, coming from Lanna to reinforce Cheston."
"We'll find out soon," Kyven said.
As they worried about that, the Chestoners began to prepare for their attack. They formed up their soldiers behind the kennel, the one place they felt the cannons wouldn't attack since the kennels had been untouched all night, still even holding the Arcans inside. They did as Clover and Kyven predicted, as well, for they pulled every Arcan they could get from the kennels, from the houses, from the pools of freed Arcans that had been recaptured during the night, and formed them up in front of the kennel, intending to use them in the attack.
Danvers watched them, then he smiled grimly. "Well, we can deal with that," he said.
"What did you have in mind?" Kyven asked.
"They won't charge the walls with their army, Kyven," he explained. "They'll get under the inside range of the cannons and set up in the buildings and along the walls and fire on us as they send the Arcans in to try to breach the keep. The only reason for it is to force us to divide our attention as they try to get in some other way. The Arcans are a diversion, nothing more."
"So what do we do?"
"Simple. We open the gates and let them in," he said calmly.
Kyven gave him a startled look. "And just let the soldiers behind them in?" he asked incredulously.
"Have you seen the inner courtyard, Kyven?" he asked, to which Kyven shook his head. "The lower passages out of the courtyard have all been sealed. The only way out of the ground level is to climb the walls. If we just open the gates, the Arcans, who have all the ladders, run in first. Now, the humans charge in after them, thinking we've just let them in, and now they're in a large open area with only one way in or out, surrounded by Arcans, and they have no ladders. Odds are, the very Arcans they forced to attack the walls will turn on them in that confined space, especially after we tell them their collars no longer work."
Kyven gave him a startled look, then laughed. "That's devious!"
"Thank you. While we pull that little stunt on them, the rest of us have to watch for what they're really going to do. I have large numbers of men and Arcans in every room in the keep, searching for a hidden entrance. I'll almost bet there's one here somewhere. They're going to draw our attention to the front door while they attack from an unexpected direction. But they don't know how many men we have in here," he grinned. "I have enough men to cover the front courtyard and put so many men in every room and passage that any attempt to sneak in through a secret passage is going to get stalled. I just flood men and supplies to their breach and drive them back, then use the groundpounder they had in their arsenal to collapse the tunnel. I have a man with a repeller at critical points in every lower hallway, ready to respond to any breach through a secret passage."
"Repeller?"
"It's an alchemical device," he answered. "Fairly standard in militaries. It's a shield, Kyven. It creates an alchemical shield that nothing can enter, but only from the outside. They're fairly large and require two men to move, and they burn through crystals in about ten minutes once they're activated, but what they'll do is move the repeller into the passage so no man can get past it, then the men on our side of the shield simply shoot through it and kill the attackers. That ten minutes will be all we need to push them back."
"Why didn't they have those out when we attacked?"
"Because they never believed we'd get anywhere near the fort, let alone take it," he said smugly. "But they've never had to deal with a Shaman like you, Kyven, someone that can make them doubt everything they see and hear. Draining half the collars in Cheston to free the Arcans? Sabotaging cannons without them noticing? Taking over the turrets single-handedly? Really, creating illusionary doors and tricking them into thinking the doors were closed? That was brilliant, Kyven, absolutely brilliant. I swear, if I had five like you, I could conquer Noraam."
"I wouldn't help you do that, General," Kyven chuckled. "But thanks for the complement."
"General!" an Arcan called, running up the stairs. "General, they found a hidden door in one of the cellars!"
Danvers absolutely beamed. "Excellent work. Put a repeller and two companies in that room and in the passages leading out of it with orders to kill anyone who comes through that door, and keep looking for other doors. There might be more than one."
"Yes, sir!" the canine saluted, then rushed back down the steps.
"Why not collapse it?"
"And miss the chance to wipe out quite a few of them? Kyven, learn to take advantage of these opportunities."
Kyven chuckled. "Savage."
"War is savagery, Kyven. And nothing but."
He was quiet a moment. "True," he finally agreed.
As the cloud of dust got closer and closer, the Chestoners and Loreguard were almost ready to attack. They saw nearly a thousand men spread out just under the minimum range of the cannons, taking up positions in buildings and behind walls, ready to open fire on the fort. About a thousand frightened Arcans had been herded into an open plaza within sight of the fort's main gate, and they were armed with sticks and ladders. All of them were collared.
"And here comes the diversion," Danvers said as a single musket shot came from the plaza, and the Arcans started forward, quite unwillingly. The men all opened fire with their muskets, and the sounds of the musket balls hitting the stones of the fort was a loud staccato that directly preceded the sounds of the shots as they reached them. They kept firing, no doubt having men doing nothing but reloading muskets, but the defenders did not return fire, just kept under cover. "Now, call out to them when they get close," Danvers ordered. "An illusion would do the trick. Tell them to come inside."
"I have just the right one," he nodded, opening his eyes to the spirits. He watched the Arcans as they ran towards the fort carrying their sticks and ladders, terrified of attacking the fort but knowing that certain death would come if they refused, rushing into the large courtyard area immediately outside the main gate. Kyven created his illusion, an illusion of himself in his Arcan form, twenty rods tall, with glowing green eyes. His illusion was intentionally transparent, nothing but a projection, but he was sure to put the illusion's head so high that any Chestoner that took a shot at it didn't shoot one of the Arcans in the back. He then spoke, but the illusion's auditory component was such that it was very loud, but only to those within one hundred rods of the illusion. Just one rod past that, and the voice was not in any way audible. In this way, the Chestoners had no idea that their Arcans were being given instructions that might cause them to gun down their own Arcans to prevent what was coming.
The illusion made them all skid to a halt, looking up at him in shock. The Arcan body and the glowing eyes told them that they were looking at a Shaman, or at least the image of one. "The humans cannot hear this," the illusion boomed, in a voice which was inaudible more than a hundred rods away from it. "Your collars no longer work. Take them off. Take them off and come in, come in and join us, brothers and sisters. We will open the doors for you. Just mind that the humans will run up behind you as soon as the doors open, so be ready to fight them as we close them again."
Behind the illusion, the portcullis began to raise, and the doors swung open.
"Come in," he called, "come in and be free."
They stood there in stunned shock for a moment, then one Arcan, a very, very young cat Arcan female, reached up and tugged at her bronze collar. It came off without resistance. The Arcans saw that, then they gave a great cry and surged towards the doors, ducking under the raising portcullis, knocking the brave Arcans who were in the courtyard opening them aside as they charged in.
The Chestoners were a bit startled that the defenders would simply open the doors, and then the reality of that dawned on them. Danvers' prediction turned out to be correct, because the Chestoners and Loreguard didn't immediately charge the gates; they had not expected the doors to open, and they knew they were nothing but a diversion. It took nearly a minute for them to decide that since the doors were open, then they should actually try to get inside, since they'd have the Arcans to do the dying for them. But, as they surged out to get into those doors, the defenders on the walls leaped up from their cover on Danvers' command and opened fire, sending a withering hail of bullets and musket balls over the heads of the Arcans and into them. The Chestoners were mowed down like wheat, over a hundred dying in that initial barrage, and that withering hail of fire caused the Chestoners to scramble back into cover. They tried to regather their wits as they were pinned down by a savage barrage of continuous gunfire. Any man that dared try to raise up or pivot around a corner and take a shot took his life in his hands, and had only an even chance to make his shot and get back under cover before he was drilled by enemy fire. The cover fire was so intense, so successful, it pinned the Chestoners down for over a minute, and that entire time the Arcans poured into the courtyard. The humans then tried to return fire, lay down cover fire of their own so they could form up to try for the gates, but it was too sporadic.
Then a cannon boomed. The men didn't immediately react, for they were too close for the high-mounted cannons to get an angle on them, but then they heard the whistle. The cannon had fired at a high trajectory arc, and the cannonball crashed about a half a block behind them, all but completely destroying a modest house. Another cannon fired, then another, then another, and the shrill whistle of the cannonballs plowed into buildings closer and closer to the Chestoners' positions facing the main gate. The artillery crews were finding the range on them, and they knew their number was up ... but they were nothing but a diversion anyway. They decided to abandon the Arcans to whatever trap they were facing inside the main gate, then they pulled out carefully while under constant fire and retreated. The Loreguard captain, however, did take a device out of his belt pouch and put it to its maximum setting, then press its button, which would kill every Arcan wearing a Loreguard collar within five city blocks. He looked to the gate and expected to see the Arcans there drop dead in unison, but nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. He pressed the button again, but nothing happened. He checked to make sure it was enabled, even made sure it had a crystal in it, then pressed the button one more time, but nothing happened. Then he was thrown to the ground in a spray of blood and brain matter, shot through the head, because he spent a second too long looking around the corner at the Arcans.
The Arcans pressed into the courtyard, and then the portcullis ratcheted down quickly, and the doors began to close.
Deep in the fortress, the Chestoners were advancing through a secret tunnel that opened in one of the cellar storerooms. The tunnel was old and almost never used, opening under the city hall of Cheston, which had been shelled into rubble. But the Chestoners had cleared the rubble leading to the passage, and now five hundred Cheston Militiamen were marching quietly up the tunnel, armed with short-barrel muskets, pistols, shockrods, firetubes, and other close-quarter weapons, weapons ideal for fighting in the confined spaces of the fort's cellars and passages.
"The diversion attack is under way," came a voice through the talker in the hand of the commander, who was the fifth man in the line. "You're go to attack."
"Alright, men, get ready," he called as they approached the door, melting out of the darkness as their alchemical lamps got their light to reach it. "Remember, the armory is our primary objective. Left out the door, turn left at the first intersection, all the way to the end. Got it?"
They all rumbled in acknowledgment.
They reached the door. It was covered in dust and spiderwebs on this side, a simple bar holding it locked in place. The commander had them wait as those behind got up to them, packing them tight into the passageway. When they opened the door, the commander and the ten men around him would secure the cellar while a team of fifty men went straight for the armory. The rest of the men would spread out and secure critical intersections, and since they'd be discovered by then, they would then fight their way up into the fort. There was another thousand men already entering the tunnel behind them, and there would be an unending stream of men flooding the keep through its cellar until it was retaken.
The point man looked back to the commander, and he nodded. He quickly unlatched the bar on the door, then pushed it outward even as he drew his shockrod.
The door swung open, flooding light into the passage. The commander looked past the men, and instead of seeing an empty cellar, there were dozen of men in the cellar, and they had weapons pointed at the open door.
"Back!" the commander managed to say, then he said no more. Huge cones of fire roared into the passage as five men with firetubes set at maximum blasted hellish fire into the passage, incinerating the first twenty men in the line instantly. The men at the terminus of the attack were set on fire, and their agonized shrieks caused instant panic in the passage, for they were in a confined passageway and had nowhere to go as that fire advanced up the passageway. A few desperate shots fired up the passageway from the men who could see the ambush bounced off something invisible, causing it to flare to visibility on impact, then fade back to nothingness. The men set ablaze ran towards the attackers or back against their own men, setting them on fire, while a couple of them dropped and rolled on the floor, over and against the burning corpses of the dead. More fire blasted into the passageway as two men pushing a large wheeled cart in front of men unleashing firetubes into the confined space, projecting blistering cones of fire that ripped into the men as they tried to scramble backwards. Shouting and smoke and fire led to panic, and soon the men were clawing at each other to escape as those behind tried to fire on the attackers, only to have their shots and arcs of lightning bounce aside harmlessly.
It turned into a disorganized rout as the Chestoners were pushed back by continuous cones of hellish fire, as the men pushing the cart reached the bodies of the dead in the passageway and could push it no further. When the men got beyond the terminus of the fire, ten men armed with rifles began firing into the retreating men, felling a man with every shot simply because they had nowhere to go. The burning bodies illuminated the passageway along with the alchemical lamps, and the Chestoners that found themselves facing those rifles bravely raised their short muskets and returned fire, even as they were cut down. But their musket balls were stopped by the repeller, where the rifle shots went right through and cut men down. The ten men fired five rifles empty each, killing over a hundred men in the confined passageway as they retreated, putting out their lamps and plunging their side of the tunnel into darkness, then they again took out their firetubes and completely depleted them not on the men, but on the floor and the walls, sustaining that blast of fire for over a minute, until the stones of the passageway were glowing a bright red and throwing off so much heat that they would cook anyone that tried to get past them. The men retreated as they bathed the walls in fire, heating the stones of the walls, floor, and ceiling, and charring the dead beyond all forms of recognition as they smoldered on the red-hot floor. The men then withdrew, and four other men dragged a heavy box-like device with three legs and a heavy cylinder extending down from the middle of them. They set it in the middle of the passageway. One man turned it on, and the cylinder slowly extended down to the floor, raised up, then fired down into it with shocking speed. A heavy WHAM rocketed up the passageway as the door was closed, and then the cylinder began a hasty rhythm of striking its cylinder on the floor, which sent a shockwave of force up the passageway. The retreating men felt the vibrations under their feet, and that only spurred them on, making them go faster.
Dust began sifting down from the ceiling as the shockwaves roared down the passage, then individual stones
began to fall, dislodged by the shocks. Then not far behind the last man, they heard a sudden roaring cacophony,
and a billowing cloud of dust roared over them, making them cough and choke.
"What the fuck was that?" one asked.
"Groundpounder," another said grimly. "They was waitin' for us. They knew we was comin!"
"We must have a spy somewhere," another man declared angrily.
The men had no choice. They retreated back up the passageway so they could report not only their failure to take the fort, but the collapse of the secret tunnel leading into it. If they wanted to take the fort, they'd have to do it the hard way.
The Loreguard and their Cheston allies pulled back to regroup, but Danvers and the attackers were more worried about that other army. Danvers paced after that attack on the fort was thwarted, as his unorthodox solution to the diversion netted them nearly a thousand Arcans to add to their army, and they waited for Clover's scouts to get a look at them. The cannons continued to fire, however, pounding Cheston mercilessly.
Kyven took the opportunity to rest, even as he moved through the hundreds of new Arcans, checking for wounds, reassuring them with his presence, distributing blessings, asking them what was going on out there. The Arcans told him about a city in chaos, where the civilians were trying to flee, but being pinned down by the cannon fire, about frenzied Loreguard and Chestoners dragging every able-bodied man out of every hole to add to their defense, about them trying to pull men in from the plantations around to get enough men to attack the entrenched army outside the city walls, and just general confusion and fear. Half of the humans couldn't believe that the enemy had taken over the fort, and couldn't understand why the fort was shelling its own city. They told him that civilians, a few Arcans, and deserters were pouring out of the holes in the walls, running from the city and the fight, and they told him that there were bodies laying everywhere out in the streets, bodies of civilians, bodies of soldiers, and bodies of Arcans, killed either by the invading army, the shelling, or by the defenders themselves. One Arcan told him of a squad of Loreguard that had dragged four men from a hole and shot them dead, accusing them of being deserters. The youngest of them, the Arcan said, couldn't be more than fifteen years old.
It sounded insane out there ... but war was insanity by definition.
His talker beeped, and he pulled it from his belt. "Yes, sister?"
"It's the Flaurens!" she called out in glee. "It's the Flaurens, brother! They've arrived! Tens of thousands of them!"
He couldn't resist giving a whoop of glee. "Lucky speaks Flauren, Clover, get him out there!"
"I already have a Flauren officer here, brother," she answered. "And there's someone else here I believe you know."
There was a brief pause, and a new voice came over the talker. "Ayah, Ah shore never thought Ah'd be seein' you here, Kyv!"
"Toby!" he gasped, then he laughed. "Toby Fisher, what are you doing with a Flauren army?"
"Ah'm just doin' what yo' spirit paid me ta' do, Kyv," he answered. "Just wait til yo' see me."
"What, you're even more scary looking?"
"No, Clover thinks Ah'm handsome now," he answered.
He almost laughed, but then he got very serious, very fast. "You mean she changed you?"
"Ayah, fo' just a little while," he answered. "An' I can change back ta' mahself usin' a little trinket she gave me, but it don't last none too long. Why, Ah even have an Arcan woman now, just like Umbra was yo' woman," he declared. "Ah'll introduce you when we get there."
"She's with you?"
"Ayah. Her name is Nightfall."
Kyven was shocked a moment, then he could only laugh ruefully. So his spirit could do it to someone else! And she'd somehow managed to bargain Toby into the same trap she'd gotten him and Danna into.
"Toby, we really have to talk."
"Ayah, Ah know," he answered. "The Flaurens'll be at Cheston in about an hour, friend. Ah'll come in with 'em an' we'll meet."
"Alright, I'll go break the good news to Danvers."
"He knows," Clover answered. "I called him using another talker."
"Oh, well, then we just hunker down and wait until the Loreguard realize they have no chance," he chuckled.
"I would assume so," she answered. "I'll see you soon, my brother."
Kyven could only laugh ruefully as he put his talker back on his belt. His spirit had been a very busy girl, and had gone out and trapped Toby, then created another Arcan out of a shadow fox monster using Toby's humanity ... or maybe Danna's, who knew. But either way, since Kyven and Danna were being resistant, she'd worked around them using Toby and one of her own.
Clever girl.
The Loreguard and Cheston figured it out pretty quick, when formation after formation of red-garbed Flauren soldiers marched onto the field, followed by rank after rank of cavalry, with men, wagons, supplies, and even Arcans stretched out behind them in a column that was over a minar long. But not only were there Flauren banners in those massive armies, the gray cotton flower pennant of Georvan was represented as well, and behind the Flauren infantry there were formations of gray-coated Georvans marching towards them. The Flauren field marshal, a resplendent fellow in his red coat with gleaming silver buttons, accepted a white flag of truce from a Cheston officer and a Loreguard commander, and they were informed in terse brevity that they were the allies of their attackers, and that they had better surrender right now if they didn't want Cheston razed to the ground.
The Loreguard commander looked at the seething mass of humanity slowly taking the field, swallowed, and capitulated immediately. The Cheston officer wanted to be defiant, but in the end, he couldn't deny that the entire city would be absolutely annihilated if they did not surrender.
And so, Cheston fell.
The Chestoners started creeping slowly out of their burning city when the soldiers filed out carrying their muskets by the barrel and upside-down, the sign of surrender, and handed over all weapons to Flauren and Georvan officers who accepted the ranks of soldiers that marched out of the city.
Danvers held the fort, however, until a Flauren general rode up to the gates with ten Flauren and Georvan escorts and a few thousand infantry soldiers marching behind them, and hailed the lookout peering through the window of the gatehouse. Danvers was summoned, and Kyven was with him as he shouted down to the men below. "Welcome to Cheston, gentlemen!" he called down. "Do you have control of the city?"
"We have complete control," the Flauren called back. "I must admit, your reputation precedes you, General Wilson Danvers. You captured Fort Summer! I am impressed!"
"A general is only as good as his army, General," he said modestly. "Please wait a moment while we open the gates for you." He turned and nodded to the two Arcans at the winch, then he capered over shouted down into the courtyard. "Open the gates, and everyone stand down! We are being relieved!"
A cheer rose from the fort as the portcullis was raised and the doors were opened, and Danvers scurried down to the battlement, down a ladder, and met the Flauren as he dismounted his white horse. They shook hands, and the Flauren looked around. Kyven, however, didn't feel like meeting the brass, so he rounded up his Arcan friends and the Lupans and headed for the gate, to go out to Clover and see Toby. He climbed down to the courtyard, but was called over by Danvers as the general and four of the newcomers talked. "This is how we took the fort, General," Danvers said with a smile, motioning at him. "General Irro, may I present Kyven Steelhammer, one of two Shaman the Masked sent to us."
The four men gaped at him, and the Flauren gave him a hard, unfriendly look. "You are a Shaman?" he asked.
"Yes, I am," he answered calmly.
"Mei diau," he exclaimed. "It is impossible! You are human!"
"There are human Shaman, general," he said evenly. "You just never see us. We're much better at hiding than the Arcan Shaman are."
"And Kyven here is one of the best," Danvers said proudly. "If not for him, we would have never taken the fort."
"How can one Shaman pull off that miracle?" one of the Georvans asked, giving him a cold look.
"Stick around, you'll see when we reach the next town," he said, glancing at Ebony. The men all jumped back, however, when the Lupans jumped easily down from the battlement to the courtyard, and padded up and around him and the three Arcans. "Now if you'll excuse us, my large friends here would like to get out of the city," he said, patting the flank of one of them absently.
"You have trained Lupans, Danvers?"
"Ah, no, those are wild Lupans, Colonel," he said with a slight smile. "The Shaman can communicate with them, so they've been helping us."
Kyven left the officers behind, and his three Arcan babysitters went with him as he and the Lupans padded out. There were soldiers in red or gray everywhere, squads at every corner, columns marching along the streets as dejected, stunned Chestoners looked on at them. Kyven and the others walked along the same route the army had taken to invade the city, then out of the ruined southwest gate.
"I'm glad to be out of there," Fastpaw said. "The smell wasn't fun."
The Lupans all broke for the trees at a fast lope, and he waved them on as startled and nervous soldiers setting up camp outside the city watched them go. They also watched Kyven and the Arcans as they walked between the camps, towards the west ridge where Clover and the other half of their army was still dug in, though they were coming down to the larger army.
Kyven couldn't miss Toby at all. He padded down out of the trees and waved, and it was abundantly clear that he was now under his spirit's paw, for he really was a shadow fox Arcan. He was still tall and lean and sleek, and still had his blond braid, but now he had black fur and a muzzle, clawed hands and feet, and Arcan legs rather than human ones. He bounded down on all fours and came up to Kyven, then hugged him with a laugh. "Ayah, it's good ta' see you, Kyv!" he declared. "Look at you!"
"Look at you!" he countered. "Why did you let her do this to you?"
"Ah got a good deal out of her," he answered. "She was willin' ta' pay handsomely fo' this, Kyv, an' as you know, Ah do what Ah'm paid ta' do."
"I hope it was a lot."
"Ah'll never have ta' work again, friend," he grinned toothily. "After this is all over, Ah'm gonna retire."
"Well, good luck getting away from her," he said with a thin smile.
"Ayah!" he said as another figure came down the hill. It was another shadow fox Arcan, female, tall and very sleek, but also much more buxom than the usual female Arcan. She had midnight black hair that was so long it brushed the base of her tail, thick and poofy, like a wide fan hanging behind her back. She wore not a stitch of clothing, which wasn't unusual in his mind, since Umbra wouldn't either. They were both monster-born Arcans, so there were no doubt going to be some similarities between Umbra and Nightfall. "Kyven, this is Nightfall, she's mah lady," he said. "Me an' her have a job ta' do. Nightfall, this is Kyven, he's a Shaman."
"You're the other one mother told me about, the other male," she said, looking at him critically, a clawed finger to her chin. "You look like a human, but you don't smell like one at all. But you do have nice hair."
"Thanks, and it's nice to meet you, Nightfall," He said, nodding to her. "These are friends of mine. This is Ebony, this is Striker, and this is Fastpaw."
"We protect the Shaman," Ebony declared in a strong voice.
"In other words, they're my nannies," Kyven said dryly, which made Toby laugh.
"This one don't need no protectin' 'tall, mah tall friend," Toby grinned at her. "He's all kinds o' dangerous all by hisself."
"Still, we protect him when he needs us," she said simply.
"Kyven!" Clover called. She and Ember ran down the hill, and he gave her a huge hug when she reached them. "I'm so proud of you, my brother!" she declared, licking his cheek.
"Oh sure, now you show me affection, when there's another girl around," he teased, which made her laugh and slap his shoulder. He gave Ember an affectionate squeeze of her shoulders when she reached them. "You okay, Ember?"
"I had like fifty Arcans surrounding me the whole time," she said, sticking her tongue out a little, which made him laugh.
"I told you they won't let anything within a minar of you, little sister," he grinned.
"Where's Lightfoot?" Clover asked.
"Still in the fort," he answered. "Danvers had her doing something. Where's Lucky?"
"Up there," she answered, pointing back towards the ridge. "Talking with one of the Flaurens. Come on, we have a lot to talk about!" she said, taking his hand.
"Yeah, we really do," he chuckled, looking at Toby, who just grinned at him.
"Ah'll tell you all about it, mah friend," he promised. "But you look a bit tired, so come up and get somethin' ta' eat."
"That sounds wonderful, I haven't eaten since, hell, I have no idea," he grunted, which made Ember giggle.
"Then come on. I'll have Danvers send Lightfoot back to us, and we'll talk over breakfast," Clover announced.
Oh yeah, there was plenty to talk about.