2: LOST IN THE WOODS
Wolf Who Rules Wind was deep in the forest, surrounded by oni forces, when the transformation spell hit. It washed over him like fire. Every nerve and cell within his body recoiled with pain. His senses went to white, overloaded. He lost all awareness of the world around him. Surely he wasn’t dead—death wouldn’t hurt so much. Time stopped in a sea of white fire. His hearing leaked back as the white started to recede.
“Wolf! Wolf!” Wraith Arrow’s voice called to him.
“Some-some-something hit me.” Wolf struggled to push the words out into the whiteness. His voice sounded distant and frail.
“Get your shield up!” Wraith Arrow urged, seemingly at a great distance.
Wolf guessed that he’d lost his connection to the Spell Stones. He couldn’t feel the link but then he couldn’t feel his body. Two hundred years of training allowed Wolf to twist phantom fingers into the correct shape, bring them to the mouth that he couldn’t feel and say the word that reconnected him to the Spell Stones. The low thrum of power flooded into him, pushing back the whiteness.
He grew aware of the swamp first. The dank earthy smell. The dampness under him as he lay on his back. Somewhere close by, a pitched battle still raged. He could hear the enemy drums beating out commands. The thin whistle of spell arrows cutting through the air. The screams of pain. It was too quiet; he couldn’t hear the roar of True Flame’s fire spells nor the rumble of the Stone Clan’s force strikes. Had the other domana been struck down like he had been?
Wolf staggered to his feet, blinking again and again, trying to force his vision to return. The world slowly came into focus. The sun was setting behind the steep wooded hillside at their back. Heavy rain clouds filled the sky, whipped by storm winds. They stood on the edge of a wide marshy meadow, full of denuded stumps and thick clumps of cattail reeds. On the far eastern side of the marsh, the land sloped up to an enemy fort.
His three Hands—all fifteen of his personal guard—stood alert around him. Where were the rest of his people? Oh yes, he’d sent the laedin-caste warriors to Sunder because he wouldn’t have been able to protect them from the phoenix scorpion. The corpse of that massive horror loomed behind the sekasha. There was no sign, though, that the other domana were alive beyond the fact that the oni were fighting something. Darkness of Stone had been at the center of the camp, protecting his sekasha and laedin warriors after jumping out of Cana Lily’s gossamer. Said airship was drifting over the oni trying to flee to the east, pouring war fire down out of its machicolations. Tall ironwood trees in and around the fort kept him from seeing the gossamer clearly.
Wraith Arrow studied Wolf with concern. “Can you fight?”
Wolf flexed his free hand, taking stock of his own health. Ignoring the fact that his legs felt like they were made of soft noodles, he seemed sound. “I can.”
He considered the battlefield. His sekasha seemed unaffected by whatever hit him. The three clans had split up in four directions. Prince True Flame, two score of Wyverns, and several thousand royal marines were north of the camp. Sunder and Forest Moss had paired up, attacking from the south with a small number of Stone Clan warriors. Wolf had held the west side while Darkness and Cana Lily staged an airborne assault. Until moments ago, all the domana had been holding protective shields over their people while casting scrys and offensive spells. Wolf was the only one currently maintaining an active spell. Even the shield on the Stone Clan gossamer was down, making the great beast vulnerable to enemy fire.
“The oni must have used the weapon that domi warned me about,” Wolf said. “They must have targeted the domana. Either I’m the first to recover or the others were hit harder for some reason.”
His Hands had divided into Shields and Blades. Half of them had cancelled their protective spell to conserve local magic. It was a common tactic for when a domana was too wounded to protect their people. It reminded Wolf that the valley had only a handful of weak ley lines and no fiutana—which was odd. Yes, the swampy ground provided the oni with black willows but otherwise the valley offered no advantages.
The lack of magic meant that the oni couldn’t create strong defensive spells like those protecting his enclaves. It would also mean that if the domana were unconscious or dead, the elves wouldn’t be able to set up a strong fallback position.
“We need to push through the camp to Prince True Flame’s position,” Wolf said. “If the others were more incapacitated by the spell, then we should consolidate our forces.”
Wraith Arrow nodded at this. “The Harbinger’s people are all veterans of the Rebellion; they will be on familiar grounds. Prince True Flame’s forces are younger; they only know how to fight with a domana at their back.”
The same could be said of his people in Pittsburgh. Fear lanced through him as he realized that all the domana within a mei would have been hit by the spell. What of his beloved? Trust your domi to be strong, he’d told Forest Moss. Glib words when Tinker had three esva to call on. She needed to be conscious to use them.
She has Little Horse and Discord to keep her safe until she regains conscious, he told himself.
Tinker was everything he could hope for in a domi. More. He had not known his secret heart until the turbulent summer made his feelings undeniable. He had no inkling of how much he wanted someone who was so separated from the normal social expectations that they would freely accept all of him. His odd parentage. His unusual upbringing that saw him trained as a sekasha as well as a domana. His little blade brother and his first love—so often seen as lowly mutts. His quirky personal household that was a mix of young elves barely past their majority and his grandfather’s people who were all born during the Rebellion. The city full of humans. Even the half-oni and tengu who had quickly proved how worthy they were of being part of his society. Tinker had opened her heart and taken them in and protected them with fierce cunning.
My beloved is clever beyond words. She has already proved herself brave and resourceful.
Then—almost like a reward for his trust in his domi—he felt someone nearby call on the Wind Stones. It could only be his beloved. Relief poured through him.
Much as he wished he could fly to her side, he had tens of thousands here who needed his strength. He could not abandon them in the middle of a battle that he started. He turned his attention back to his own problems.
All the horrors within this camp were dead or safely contained underground. The camp’s crude defenses had been breached when Darkness dropped into the middle of it. The oni within it seemed to be focused on disorderly retreat.
“A straight line will be the shortest path,” Wolf said. “We will cut through the camp. We can see how Darkness fares as we head to Prince True Flame.”
Wraith Arrow nodded agreement to the plan.
A simple plan in words. In deed, it proved to be more complicated, as the swampy meadow had a meandering stream that fed unexpectedly deep pools. They moved from one damp grassy hummock to the next, sometimes taking large steps, other times jumping.
As they picked their way across the meadow, the whistling call of the tengu scout sounded nearby.
Wraith Arrow glanced to Wolf and then waved the hidden scout forward. The male glided down from the edge of the clearing to land silently before Wraith Arrow.
“The oni have fled the immediate area,” the male said as he knelt. “There is a massive force on their way from the other camps. It is a force in the thousands. It is traveling slower than we expected. They have cages that appear to contain some type of horrors. It seems as if transporting them is what is setting their pace. We believe that the oni from this camp are retreating to meet the reinforcements.”
“What of the Stone Clan?”
“Sunder and Forest Moss seem to be unconscious. Sunder’s people would not reply to our call, so we could not confer with them. The Wyverns that were guarding Forest Moss are moving to True Flame’s position—probably to report on the status of Sunder’s group.”
“The Stone Clan would not want outsiders near their unconscious domou,” Wraith Arrow murmured. “Wyvern or tengu.”
If all the other domana were unconscious, then they could not stand against the incoming force. They might need to retreat, at least until the others regained consciousness—assuming that they weren’t somehow permanently harmed by whatever hit them.
The tengu suddenly glanced toward the west, peering into the darkness. “Jin Wong calls the Flock! Domi wants all who can fight to head for Oakland immediately. She’s is angry and goes to fight.”
All? His beloved would only call for all twenty thousand of the tengu if she expected a serious invasion.
“Go to her,” Wolf said. “She will need all that she can gather to her side. Tell Maynard to send trains—we will send what we can to Oakland.”
The tengu nodded and took off.
* * *
On the far eastern side of the marsh, the land sloped up to a stockade of rough-hewn logs placed side by side, their ends sharpened. The oni had dug a trench before the wall—too wide to safely jump—and filled it with wood spikes coated with something organic that was no doubt poisonous. The sound of fighting had grown louder even as the rumble of thunder heralded the approaching thunderstorm.
“Smash it in?” Wraith Arrow suggested a course of action.
Windwolf shook his head. While that was the easiest route, he might hit the already besieged Stone Clan forces. They were without domana shields. “I’ll bring it down toward us. Stand ready.”
He hit the far side of the wall with a force strike. The logs sheared off and fell outward, bridging the trench. The stench of feces and blood flooded out of the camp, smelling like sewage running through a slaughter yard. Chaos reigned inside the high walled area with some oni standing and fighting while others were trying to flee.
Darkness had dropped from a gossamer into the camp with nine Hands of sekasha and a full company of laedin warriors. His people were gathered into a tight knot against the eastern wall. The sekasha stood shoulder to shoulder in a half circle. The laedin fought from behind them, protected by the overlapping shields of the holy warriors. There was no sign of Darkness. Wolf could only assume that the male lay on the ground behind his people. All attacks against them were ineffective. Direct attacks by the oni were dealt with either by the sekasha’s magically sharp swords or laedin spell arrows.
Darkness’s grizzled First sheathed his sword as Wolf approached; it signaled that the holy warrior expected the Wind Clan to honor their vows of peace for the duration of the war. The male was a legend of the Rebellion whom Wolf never thought he would meet: Ruin of Stone. Of the Stone Clan sekasha, only Tempered Steel was more highly thought of. He had the same unbending calm as Tempered Steel. Deep in enemy territory, literally back to the wall, his domana wounded or dead—and Ruin seemed unfazed. His face was splattered with blood but none of it seemed to be his own.
Intimidating as Ruin might be, Wolf was glad to be facing him instead of Jewel Tear’s proud and untested First, Tiger Eye.
“Something struck down Darkness,” Ruin said in greeting. “He seems unharmed but he is not conscious.”
“I believe it was the magical device that I showed Sunder. I was incapacitated for some time.” Wolf wasn’t sure how long that he had been unaware. It seemed only a few moments to him but it might have been several minutes. “The tengu report that Sunder and Forest Moss seem to be unconscious.”
He added in the information on the oni movement in the area.
“Darkness did not detect any nactka within the camp,” Ruin said. “But that matters little, given the range that the device could reach. We’ve cast a healing spell on Darkness to speed his recovery. He will be awake within the hour. Sunder’s Hands will do the same if hir was struck down.”
“I am joining Prince True Flame’s forces to give them protection,” Windwolf stated, leaving it open to the Stone Clan to choose what they would do.
Ruin nodded. “It would be wise. We will need to change our attack plan to deal with the loss of power. We should see that the prince is protected. His people have never fought without a domana at their back.”
Wolf had been alarmed that the Harbingers had been sent to Pittsburgh. He wondered now if the choice was orchestrated by Pure Radiance, who knew that the forces sent to fight the oni would need to be able to do it without the strength of domana. The Wyvern’s First would have been the one with final say but Sword Strike had always been guided by Pure Radiance.
Wolf would consider it all for the best if it did not make him wonder why Pure Radiance had allowed the Stone Clan to send Earth Son, Forest Moss, and Jewel Tear to Pittsburgh first. It seemed unlikely that the female had been outmaneuvered on something so important. She had come to the Westernlands just to meet his new domi. Or had her visit been a ploy to lure the oni out and force them to make a move before they were fully prepared?
The heavens opened up, pouring down rain.
Now was not the time to distract himself with conjecture.
Wolf recast his shield, this time so it protected Darkness and his people. The rain cascaded down his shield. The Stone Clan gathered up their unconscious domana and their wounded. When they signaled that they were ready to move, Wolf headed north toward the Fire Clan. All the sekasha canceled their personal shields, conserving the local ambient magic for their brethren without a domana to protect them.
“Cana Lily is down,” Wraith Arrow said from Wolf’s flank. He was watching the gossamer that now hung over the southern flank of the battle. “His people are signaling Sunder, asking for orders. They’re rattled. I cannot see what they’re being told.”
“They will be told to withdraw north,” Ruin stated firmly. “Cala Lily was born after the Rebellion. His people will not know how to get him up. The gossamer is a means of evacuating wounded. They are our first priority.”
That statement surprised Wolf. He would have thought that the older warriors would have been fixated on wiping out the oni, given how fast the enemy could spawn. He knew that the basic principle of their society was those who obeyed were to be protected at all cost. He knew most of his people, born during the Clan Wars, would have believed that the laedin’s protection took precedence over the oni. He hadn’t realized that the mindset started prior to the end of the Rebellion.
“Aye, the gossamer is turning north,” Wraith Arrow reported.
The rain grew heavier, pouring down his shield. Between the falling darkness and the heavy rain, Wolf could barely see beyond the edge of his shield. He picked his way carefully northward through the open gate of the oni camp.
“Sunder’s people will follow,” Ruin predicted. “It is the logical tactic given the situation.”
True Flame had reduced much of the forest north of the camp to fire and ash. The force of his flame strikes had shattered branches and splintered the upper trunks of the towering ironwood. The forest-floor bracken had vaporized in the blasts, so only cinders lay underfoot. Here and there, broken timbers still burned brightly, lighting the area. The land sizzled as the heavy rain fell on hot embers. Smoke and steam drifted over the burnt landscape, partially hiding the blacken lumps of dead. Some were clearly wargs. Others were oni that had been humanoid in build. A few could have been elves. A handful of the burned were still alive, too burnt to move, groaning in pain as Wolf’s party neared. His people paused to check on the wounded. When it was clear that it wasn’t an elf in pain, they gave mercy to the dying.
It was nothing like any battle that Wolf had been part of before. Nothing had been this massive, grim, and brutal. It rattled him. He struggled not to let it show. All of his people—those here on the battlefield and others back in Oakland—were counting on him.
A wall of red emerged out of the dark and smoke where the royal marines held a defensive line around a pocket of green. The marines looked startled and unsure by the appearance of Wolf and his people. They apparently had no warning that the battle plan had been changed.
“Let us pass,” Wraith Arrow ordered.
The royal marines made an opening. One turned and whistled, “Ally commanders in camp.” A “Confirm” sounded faintly out of the darkness behind the Fire Clan troops.
“Our people will scout.” Ruin pointed to three of the Stone Clan sekasha and flashed through blade talk to order them to sweep the surrounding area. “They will assess what the oni forces stand at in the immediate vicinity.”
Three Hands of the holy warriors peeled away, disappearing into the dark rain.
There had been five thousand royal marines with Prince True Flame. It seemed as if most survived the initial attack unscathed. There were only a handful of wounded near the back of the line. Judging where they’d seen the oni undead lying, it seemed as if the enemy hadn’t gotten close enough to engage the Fire Clan hand to hand.
The marines took note that Wolf had Stone Clan mixed with his own people and their gaze went fearful. They realized that the other domana must be down for the Stone Clan to be inside Wolf’s shield.
Red Knife came jogging up to meet them. If True Flame’s First was coming to greet them alone, then Wolf’s cousin was truly unconscious.
“We have set up a base on a stone outcropping just before another marsh.” Red Knife pointed into the darkness. “The oni in the immediate area are dead. What survived our initial attack has fallen back. We were going to pursue but True Flame suddenly dropped unconscious.”
“If you allow it, we can cast a recovery spell on the prince,” Ruin said.
Like Cana Lily, True Flame had been born after the Rebellion. His people were too young to know the spell.
Red Knife nodded. “I will permit it.”
Ruin signaled to his Second then turned to Wolf.
The three sekasha stood waiting for Wolf to speak. As the only domana standing, it fell to Wolf to decide their course of action. The problem was that all three of the holy warriors were painfully aware that he was only two hundred and fourteen years old. Wraith Arrow would support Wolf regardless of his decision. A good First would never undermine their domana’s ability to command, especially in front of other clans. Red Knife had helped to train Wolf in combat tactics; he might still see Wolf as a student, not a commander. Ruin was over thirty times Wolf’s age, a legendary warrior who had fought in two wars that spanned centuries. The males, however, represented three different clans. Ruin most likely would not bow to the much younger Wyvern. Wraith Arrow had battled for ultimate leadership of the sekasha caste and lost by a single sword blow. He gave the younger Red Knife the respect due to his status but only because of Wraith Arrow’s failure to protect Howling.
Wolf took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts. They had neutralized the nearest oni camp. The tengu stated that the collective contents of the other three were converging on their location—although not at a fast march. It meant that they had a little over an hour before thousands of oni flooded over them.
It was clear to Wolf now that the camps had been set up as trap for the elves. The oni had been in disarray during their attack; there had been no clear high commander in their ranks. It seemed that the camp, despite having more than a thousand oni, wargs, and horrors, had been stripped of its top leader. While Pony noticed that the oni were slipshod when compared to elves, Lord Tomtom had been brutally efficient. It made no sense to have no high-ranking officer within the camp—unless everything within it was just poisoned bait.
Tinker had warned him that the oni had eleven of the magical devices. She had mobilized her people to find the nactka, but obviously she hadn’t found them yet. Kajo had used one to do something to the domana—most likely make it so that both the Fire Clan and Stone Clan couldn’t call magic from their Spell Stones. It meant that the enclaves had lost their two trained defenders and Oilcan, leaving only Tinker. She, like Wolf, was able to use more than one esva. The spell had definitely touched Wolf; so their immunity was limited. He wanted to rush back to Tinker, keep her safe, but with the other ten nactka still in play, Wolf could lose all his powers once the oni realized he had escaped their first attack. He couldn’t allow the massive force within the forest to follow him back to Pittsburgh. He needed to deal with them now.
“Oakland most likely will come under attack shortly,” Wolf said. “The lack of high-ranking officers here means that they are elsewhere. The logical target would be the enclaves. If the attack had come earlier, the Stone Clan domana would have noticed Forge and Jewel Tear tapping the Spell Stones. The oni waited until we were engaged here to spring their trap. We will split our forces. I will hold here with a bare minimum while the rest return to Oakland.”
Wraith Arrow stiffened but allowed nothing to show on his face. It was the sekasha way to hide one’s feelings from their enemies.
Red Knife glanced at Ruin to see if the Stone Clan agreed to this tactic. There was nothing to read on Ruin’s face. Red Knife voiced the doubt that the others refused to show. “What about the horrors? Can you take them alone?”
Lighting flickered across the sky as the wind kicked up.
“The night is ripe for violence,” Wolf said. “The goddess of war rides, heralded by the storm furies. She blesses me with this raging tempest. I will take her blessing and use it against the oni.”