Chapter Fifty One

Instead of being elated, Cinna choked down a curse at the realization that a fire mage had come to her rescue.

There were many disciplines of magic. Any facet of reality could be manipulated as long as the correct words were spoken in the gods’ language. Most combat mages used fire, earth, air, or water, but mages could wield other things as well such as light, plants, and animals. So while there were certainly less useful varieties of magic one could attempt to use to counter an earth mage flinging hardened stones at speeds sufficient to dent plate mail, fire remained far from preferable.

“Stop setting draugr on fire and burn the lich!” Cinna shouted towards the rear where she presumed the fire mage would be. She wondered if they’d even been informed what they were meant to help with. In a fight between a fire mage and an earth mage it was essential the fire mage land the first blow and make it lethal, as they stood little to no chance of fending off even a single counterstrike. Giving away one’s position or even presence like this placed them at a severe disadvantage.

“There’s too many people dying, I can’t keep up,” Lilia complained as she paused her work to sever the souls of several more soldiers before the enemy necromancer could raise them. It would only take a few moments to raise a person whose soul remained in their body if the necromancer doing it didn’t care to place any spells on that soul first. At first the enemy necromancers had begun with spells, but when they noticed Lilia’s interference they’d quickly begun trying to raise the dead as swiftly as possible instead.

She couldn’t tell if they’d noticed her sabotage yet. They’d done nothing to stop her. However, her instincts told her that if she allowed the enemy necromancers to work unimpeded, they’d soon begin to suspect her to be distracted with something else. This left Lilia with no time to focus on dismantling the bridge.

“Have they noticed what you’re doing?” Cinna asked, gears turning in her head. It was quickly becoming clear to her that the current plan wasn’t working. The necromancer opposing them at least knew of Lilia’s presence by now and the constant attempts to raise the dead within the Selkarcian formation might have been as much about distracting her as about disrupting the defenders from the inside.

“I don’t think so. No one is doing anything about what I’ve already done. I just can’t keep it up while I’m constantly stopping them from raising the dead,” Lilia answered after checking her work again. It was hard to tell with just her soul sight, but even the mana tendril she had extended didn’t detect any repaired spellwork on the souls she’d finished with.

“So we need to eliminate one of the liches. Without the earth mage we can hold this position indefinitely, and with the necromancer gone, you’d at least be able to work without interruption,” Cinna summed up. She docked down as the earth mage fired yet another set of projectiles. One struck the man to her left in the shoulder, sending him spinning into the man behind him.

“That would be great!” Lilia agreed happily, even as she freed a freshly deceased soldier from the mortal coil. “When do you think you can do it?”

“I wish it were that easy,” Cinna muttered. “Screw it. They already know you’re here. Can you halt the draugr on my command?”

“Sure? I can also just do it right now if you want—”

“Not yet. I need to arrange one more thing first,” Cinna told Lilia. She turned to the man with the injured soldier, deciding she could get him to safety and relay a message at the same time. “Soldier, what’s your name?”

“Erikson, ma’am!” the man choked out, trying to clutch his arm without dropping his shield. He’d already let go of his weapon, but in Cinna’s opinion he’d made the correct choice.

“Erikson, I need you to get to that fire mage and tell him to stop casting and get his head above the formation on my signal. He’s going to argue. Have someone lift him by the scruff of his neck if that’s what it takes, and lower him before he gets shot,” Cinna instructed.

“Uh, right! On it!” the man replied, clearly confused by the order but not about to question it. Having heard the exchange, the soldiers behind him squeezed aside to allow him through.

“What’s the signal?” Lilia asked, looking up at Cinna. She’d been listening as well, and she’d put together that Cinna meant for her to freeze the undead at the same time, though she didn’t quite get why yet. Mostly she’d just reasoned that two signals would be too confusing.

“I’m just going to yell,” Cinna answered simply.

“Oh. That makes sense,” Lilia replied. After all, Cinna didn’t have a horn to blow into, or a magic tool of some sort, or even a free hand she could use to raise a weapon above her head. In hindsight she probably could have figured that out on her own. Her thoughts were interrupted when another set of stones split the air with a crack, telling Lilia it was time to check for more fallen soldiers. “Hey, there was only one this time…”

Cinna clicked her tongue, but didn’t say anything. Losing only one soldier was a blessing by comparison, true, but she had other concerns. The bodies were piling up. By now a lot of her remaining soldiers likely had at least one foot resting on a corpse. It would grow more and more difficult just to find good footing with every death. Getting the wounded out of the way complicated things even more.

“Ready, General!” someone yelled from the rear. Nodding to herself, Cinna hid behind her shield and waited.

“Should I…?” Lilia asked, unclear what else Cinna could be waiting for. When she saw Cinna shake her head, though, Lilia held back from any further questions. The answer became clear soon enough. Several seconds later another triple thundercrack echoed through the tunnel.

“Now!”

“Stop!” Lilia yelled, though all she really needed was to focus her will into her mana as she released it.

“Huh?”

“They stopped…?”

“What’s going on?”

“Aiieee!”

The soldiers in the front were taken aback when their foes suddenly froze in place, while a certain someone to the rear screamed in fear.

“Stop screaming and burn anything that still moves!” Cinna commanded the mage with such force that her throat, well used to issuing commands at maximum volume, stung from the exertion. She’d had her suspicions based on the man’s poor tactical choices earlier, but now she knew for certain that he wasn’t from the royal army. Most noble families wouldn’t have put up with such cowardice in their scions, so Cinna pegged him as a conscripted civilian mage, though she couldn’t be entirely certain.

“How long do I keep doing this?” Lilia asked.

“I’ll let you know when to stop,” Cinna replied hoarsely.

Soon the earth lich fired the next volley, but judging by the distinct lack of horrified screams from the rear, the fire mage had been lowered in time to avoid being shot in the head. Even so, the lich had time to fire off another two sets of projectiles before a response came. That fell more or less in line with Cinna’s evaluation of the fire mage, though she’d be lying if she claimed she felt no worry in the meantime.

Eventually, however, a jet of flame rose up from the bridge. It quickly grew tall enough that Cinna could easily see it over the rim of her shield. She counted to ten, wondering if the charred lich would be the earth mage or the necromancer. Simply burning the necromancer likely wouldn’t be enough to remove it from the field entirely, not unless the fire mage could vaporize the necromancer’s body in a single spell, but it would at least make it easier to target.

Ten seconds came and went. No more projectiles shot forth to butcher Cinna’s soldiers.

As Cinna celebrated the success, Lilia saw her opportunity. She transferred her attention entirely to the tendril of mana she still had snaked across the bridge, seizing hold of the next soul in line. With no distractions, she managed to quickly separate another soul from the construct. Then a foreign feeling came over her; one she’d only experienced anything even similar to once before.

“Gross! That feels so gross!” Lilia yelled, recoiling away in more than one sense. Her back pushed up against hard metal even as she pulled her mana back. Something gripped it like an iron shackle, though, and she had to release her control of the tendril just to escape it.

“Lilia, what’s wrong?” Cinna questioned.

“They noticed me!” Lilia answered. “I can’t do anything else as long as there’s a necromancer in the way.”

Cinna took a deep breath and looked around her. She couldn’t tell how long the fighting had gone on for, but it seemed to have been the better part of an hour now. Her limited forces were exhausted; they’d continued to cycle their ranks throughout the fighting, but even those rotating back towards the front looked spent. They’d taken so many casualties from that earth mage alone that the remaining troops hadn’t had time to properly rest.

Many of the regulars had lost their shields. They’d either been destroyed or snatched away by hostile draugr. Those men and women would have a harder time holding off the draugr without proper protection. Lilia could help with that, but there would be no meaning in doing so if she couldn’t collapse the bridge at the same time. And while the knights could take over, using their superior armor to take the blows instead, they couldn’t hold the line on their own forever.

“We’re pulling back to behind the gate! Initiate a tactical retreat, step by step, on my command! Three, two, one, step!” Cinna ordered, pausing long enough for even those in combat to process her words before beginning.

Retreats were always one of the riskiest parts of any battle. They threatened to turn into an outright rout even when planned. It took ironclad discipline for a formation to retreat from combat in an orderly fashion without panic setting in. Even well-trained units with excellent cohesion could fall apart depending on the circumstances. Fortunately, there really anywhere for fleeing soldiers to run to at the moment. At the very worst they might reach the courtyard a little sooner than the rest, and Cinna wasn’t terribly worried about holding the undead back from the gate by force of arms with Lilia present.

“Lilia, hold the undead back while we retreat, please,” Cinna requested. She didn’t have time to wait for a reply, though. “Step!”

“Right, okay, yeah, that I can still do,” Lilia said anyway. Coming directly into contact with that lich’s mana had shaken her, and it came out in her voice. It hadn’t felt right. There shouldn’t have been any tangible difference between the mana of a lich and a living being. She hadn’t sense any when she’d grappled with Javert. The only conclusion she could reach was that it had been something about that lich in particular; some quality they’d possessed even in life.

Evidence of a soul so disturbed it could conceive of a plan to cobble thousands of squirming souls together into a single abomination just to build a bridge, perhaps.

Lilia barely processed the retreat any more than she had the advance, occupied as she was by such thoughts. One way or another the Selkarcian forces retreated behind the gate successfully. It slammed shut behind them, sealing the draugr outside of the fortress again. Above, though, the sounds of battle could still be heard. Just because this fight had ended didn’t mean the siege was over or that the threat posed by the bridge was over.

“Lilia, come with me. We must speak to my uncle again. Our goal was sound, but we need a new plan for achieving it.”