“Oron, Olgya, and Perri concurred.” Lyesse sounded equally downcast. “But since they are all that remains of the wizards’ duma from Ildakar, we must obey them. They told us to go.” The two morazeth watched the next dinghy come in, rowed by two muscular sailors.
“We all have to obey orders,” Norcross said. Behind him, the town was empty. He could see the deserted wooden houses, shops, inns, town hall, and the open square. “There aren’t many boats left for Nathan and the others. Are they almost finished?”
“Who can know about the work of wizards?” Lyesse asked with a snort. She sprang from the dock into the dinghy even before the sailors had tied it up. Her morazeth sister joined her.
Amber smiled at her brother. “Let’s get out to the ships. It’s our turn.”
Norcross and Amber rode with the two morazeth and several other stragglers as more empty rowboats came to the docks for the last evacuees, which would include Nathan and his companions.
The burly sailors were weary at the oars, having gone back and forth several times already. Seeing this, Thorn and Lyesse moved them from their bench. “You require rest. Let us row.”
Surprised, the muscular men relinquished the oars. The morazeth rowed with great vigor, pulling them toward the nearest three-masted sailing ship. As they passed beneath the tall siege towers at the mouth of the bay, Norcross looked up with a pang. He saw the catapults lined up, ready to hurl boulders at oncoming serpent ships. He had worked so hard on the town’s defenses. “We were prepared to hurt the Norukai, but we won’t get the chance.”
“We’ll get a chance.” Amber clutched her brother’s arm. “This is our chance to survive.”
When the dinghy reached the sailing ship, Norcross and the passengers climbed up a slat ladder to the deck, which was already crowded with Renda Bay evacuees. Captain Mills stood at the stern shading his eyes, deeply worried. In the small boat below, the sailors prepared to set off again, glad for their brief rest while the morazeth rowed.
Norcross stared back at the deserted town. A gigantic army would swarm through those streets before long, ransacking empty buildings. He hoped Nathan and the others would make it back soon.
A lookout high on the mainmast used a spyglass peering southwest. “Confirmed, Captain! Sighting confirmed!”
Mills began clanging a brass bell mounted next to the wheel. He hammered the clapper back and forth for all he was worth. “Prepare yourselves! They’re coming.”
Norcross turned to look out at the open sea and saw a line of ominous ships just coming into view, all of them with midnight-blue sails.
*
Nathan went from building to building in Renda Bay, scribing spell-forms on bare walls, laying down protective webs, and adding anchor points. He fervently wished he had Prelate Verna there to help him, or Elsa with her transference magic. “Dear spirits, I don’t normally use my gift for so much destruction, unless I absolutely have to.”
“This time you absolutely have to,” said Perri. The woman’s gift was weaker than Leo’s had been, but as a shaper Perri could use magic to shift wood and stone. She used her finger to embed gouges and spell-forms in the walls of town buildings, inscribing them swiftly and perfectly, whereas Nathan would have had to carve the designs more crudely with the point of his knife.
With great relish, Oron and Olgya went about setting booby traps. Lord Oron used paint to draw looping connective runes from one street to another, laying down what looked like an odd design but was actually a convoluted trap. This would become readily apparent as soon as the enemy soldiers triggered the small constructed spells in the doorways of major buildings and collapsed the interconnected webs. Olgya laid down magical trip wires across the main streets and inside the primary storehouses that were sure to attract the starving army.
Though he felt a chill about preparing such a cascade of powerful magic, Nathan knew this set of spells was not the same as Verna’s Weeping Stone spell, which had slipped out of her control. This was far simpler, cleaner magic, and they all knew how to use it and master it.
Nathan had mapped the streets of Renda Bay and picked their targets. His gifted comrades listened intently as he described his strategy. “We have to lure the front ranks into the destructive zone. Only then can we let the magic be triggered, otherwise it’ll be too soon.”
Oron gritted his teeth, “So long as they are dead, I don’t care where the magic strikes.”
“We’ll kill more of them if we let them reach the center of town before the trap is sprung,” Sister Sharon pointed out. “The prelate killed thousands when she brought down the canyon wall. Let us do the same in Renda Bay.”
“General Utros may be more cautious now,” Nathan said. “The important part is that we deny them any supplies. His soldiers are already starving, marching along and half dead. They will drop from hunger and weariness soon.”
“I’d rather they burn,” Oron said.
Nathan and Perri worked together in the town hall for the last stage of their plan. Standing inside Thaddeus’s office looking at the historic ledgers and books on the shelves, he felt sadness again. “More knowledge being wiped out. Again! I wonder how we will ever forgive ourselves.”
Perri asked, “Would you rather keep your musty old tomes and let the world be conquered? Sacrificing a few books does not seem like such a great cost to defeat the army.”
“I would rather survive and write new books.”
Perri finished marking spell-forms on the walls of the town leader’s office. “There, now the lines are connected from the tower down to the foundations. Renda Bay is evacuated, and everything is set. We should get to the ships.”
“Yes, the army is close.” Wearing his fine embroidered cape and vest, Nathan felt satisfied as he emerged from the town hall to meet his gifted companions. “Time to go. Everyone down to the harbor.”
They hurried toward the docks, where the calm, blue waters of Renda Bay awaited them. The fishing boats had loaded up and already sailed away to the north. The three large cargo ships remained anchored, filled with passengers and ready to depart, with just a few rowboats ready to carry Nathan and his gifted saboteurs. He glanced one last time at the vacant town. Everyone seemed to be gone. The homes were empty, except for the booby traps of magic they had placed in strategic places.
He heard a sudden loud clamor from the sailing ships out on the water, a bell ringing and ringing to sound the alarm.
Perri looked up. “What is that?”
“Nothing good.” Oron hurried down the street to the waiting rowboats at the dock, where anxious sailors urged them to hurry. Nathan and the others ran faster.
From the dock he could see at least a hundred serpent ships on the horizon, sailing directly toward Renda Bay.
CHAPTER 64
General Utros had not smelled the sea in fifteen centuries. Long ago, one of his military marches had taken him to the coast, and he remembered how he had stared out at the sun on t
he open waves, observed the sailing ships and fishing settlements, and known he wanted to conquer them.
Now, the relentless march took his army along a river that flowed to the ocean. Approaching Renda Bay, he smelled the salt air again, which brought with it a tang of freedom. The soldiers marched nonstop, hour after hour, though they were gaunt and starving despite the spell that numbed the gnawing hunger in their bellies. Along the river, they grabbed fish, waterfowl, even weeds from the current, devouring whatever they could find. And they kept moving.
Utros, Enoch, and Ruva rode in the lead as they approached a significant town at the mouth of the river, the largest settlement they had encountered since crossing the mountains. Along the way, his army had overwhelmed smaller villages, mining towns, and crossroads settlements, which had offered only lean pickings. Renda Bay at last would offer supplies and materials.
“Tonight we will eat well,” said First Commander Enoch, sitting high on his dark horse.
Utros considered making this fishing port his new base, where he could meet up with the Norukai fleet. After King Grieve and his serpent ships departed from Ildakar, the two great military forces had had no communication with each other, and their overall war plan was based on nothing more than crude maps and vague memories. During the long days of marching, Utros had pondered strategic possibilities about conquering the land, whether to use his army as a single battering ram to crush anything in the way, or to split the force into dozens of sub-armies dispatched in all directions. He would make his final decision once he conquered Renda Bay.
When the Norukai eventually joined with his army, the scarred raiders would inspire fear among their victims. Utros would let the reckless warriors bear the brunt of any resistance, suffering casualties so that his own men remained uninjured. That was his entire purpose for the alliance with them.
