Chapter 27

Night gave way to morning without much in the way of action.

So far, Lady Flir’s forces hadn’t done much more than send a messenger to the gates to demand our surrender. Degle declined, of course. The city was nearly empty, of both people and goods, but absent orders to retreat, she was to hold it to the last man.

Realistically, that was sheer stupidity on behalf of her chain of command. Even with Kaze and I and all our tricks, the battle was a coin toss. Without us, they were doomed. A smart commander would pull them out, let Flir have the city for now, and come back ready for a proper fight. It’s not like she could leave with the keystone. They were anchored to the ley line as surely as it was anchored to them.

If there’s a downside to following Aethna, it’s that you lose the right to self delusion. She demands her followers see the world as it is, not as they want it. Degle knew just how screwed she was. For all that, she was in remarkably good spirits. After all, she was very nearly done dealing with everyone else’s stupidity.

As for me, I was feeling pretty good when I settled into my sniper’s nest, despite the sun rising over the building army to the west.

You know, a little playful grabass before battle can go a long way to soothing one’s nerves. I’d forgotten that. Brin was the last person I let myself get close to, and that was decades ago. That’s a long time to go without physical intimacy. I’d forgotten how much I missed it.

Don’t get me wrong: I kept my word. I was a perfect gentleman. Kaze played the part of the lady, teasing and coquettish without taking things too far. She needed the moment as much as I did. She was careful not to ruin it by pushing me outside of my comfort zone. I appreciated that. Had she pushed, I’m not sure my self control would have held, and I didn’t need to be distracted by guilt with an army on the horizon.

There is a world, I imagine, where we threw caution to the wind, declared our love for each other, and made like the tragic leads of a romance novel. Sounds great, right? Especially if you’ve never lost someone you love in the heat of battle. There are worse things than death, my friend. Burying someone you love before their time is one of them. Watching the horror of battle turn the love of your life into someone you no longer recognize is another.

My analogy back on the boat wasn’t a complete fabrication. I just swapped the roles, that’s all. My beloved Flir turned into someone I no longer recognized before my very eyes. The monster that took her place was hateful to the memory of the woman I once loved.

I think Kaze understood that a little better now. The closest she came to expressing her feelings was a kiss on the cheek as she prepared to head downstairs, the corners of our lips just barely brushing.

Even that was enough to have me floating on a cloud.

It’s the little things, you know?

And then my earpiece crackled to life. Aside: if you can find a technomancer who can do comms, make it a priority to be their best friend in the whole wide world. The enchanted earpieces let Kaze and I communicate from hundreds of meters away without signal mirrors. They’re well worth the eye-watering price.

“They’re on the move,” she said.

I peered out through my spyglass, the ocular lens covered with a sheet of thin gauze to kill the reflection. I could see through just fine. There was a slight haze on the image, nothing more.

“I still don’t see any banners yet.”

“Nor do I. They must be trying to hide who’s in charge until the last moment.”

“Is that normal?” I asked.

“No. I can only guess that they’re taking the hero’s warning about you seriously.”

“Sounds about right. Well, maybe the queen bee herself will make an appearance,” I said. “That’d save us a lot of heartache.”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up just yet.”

She was right, of course. From her vantage point atop the wall, she could see the sappers moving into the minefield just as well as I could. Probably better.

The engineers weren’t idiots. They knew they were stepping into their own personal hell. The only question that remained was if they’d realize how shallow it was before their will to forge ahead was shattered.

The first team came across a patch of disturbed earth and halted. The leader had a device in his hand that, presumably, looked for metal content based on the fluctuations it made in the local mana field. Minesweepers often relied on such gadgets. They were a reliable way to find the metal casings of fragmentation mines.

In this case, my lack of resources worked in our favor. The buried barrel of gunpowder contained no metal or fuze.

The team lead scanned the patch of disturbed earth, his expression troubled. His instincts told him that there was a nasty surprise waiting. His machine told him it was safe. Which to trust?

He ordered his team back and pulled a cylinder from his belt, about three centimeters wide and twenty centimeters long. Commercial grade explosives, primarily used for mining. He intended to detonate it above the presumed mine.

“He’s smart,” I murmured.

Kaze didn’t reply. She knew by now when I was thinking aloud.

The team leader lit the fuze, gently lobbed the stick of explosives onto the center of the patch, and ran like hell. Instinctively, I knew that he set a ten second fuze.

It wouldn’t be nearly long enough.

I didn’t just futz around with the composition of the gunpowder. I completely altered its chemical makeup, changing it from dangerous but largely insensitive gunpowder to the sort of nightmare that kept alchemists up at night: a perfectly stoichiometric explosive mixture pumped to the gills with mana. All the ingredients were there in the base. I just had to rearrange them, and add a little metaphysical oomph.

The team lead’s instincts must have warned him that he bit off more than he could chew. He threw himself to the ground at the last second. An instant later, the landscape was blotted out by an azure flash brighter than the sun.

I knew to keep my eyes screwed shut, lest I be temporarily blinded, and the flash was still bright enough to leave me seeing stars. I felt the heat instantly. 2.3 seconds later, the shockwave crashed into the tower, shattering any glass not protected by the blast shadow of the city’s wall. A mushroom-shaped fireball shot up well over a hundred meters into the sky in an instant. Of the team leader, his team, and anyone standing within two hundred meters of the blast, there was nothing but char and ash. Outside of the two hundred meter circle, everything remained untouched.

Mana-fueled blasts are odd like that. The instant they reach the end of their energy, the effects just stop. The heat I felt, and the shockwave, were all purely physics. Any five hundred kilogram charge of blasting powder would do the same.

Needless to say, the rest of the sappers ran like hell to get clear of the minefield. There wasn’t enough gold in the world to make them brave that.

“Gods above!” Kaze shouted. “Warn us next time!”

“Hey, I calculated that charge perfectly,” I said. “Maximum disruption to the enemy, minimum to friendly lines.”

“That’s what you call minimum?”

“Is anyone on the wall dead?”

“No, but it was bleeding close,” she complained.

“Then yes, that’s what I call minimum,” I said. “Though it should be noted that you’ll want to take cover behind something solid when they get to the cannon.”

“How solid?”

“Um. The walls should hold,” I said.

“SHOULD?”

“Nag nag nag,” I grumbled. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

“Garan. We need that wall to anchor the defense. If you blow it to smithereens, we’re screwed,” she said.

“O ye of little faith,” I said. “The walls don’t hold a candle to the crater. I’d pay good money to watch the bastards try to climb up that.”