The Blood Robes had surely suspected fire, but they expected nothing as ferocious as the holocaust that swept in upon them.
The men and women of Big Jasper stood agape, watching a spectacle such as they would never see again if they lived a hundred years. The intensity of the flames was matched only by the intensity of the screams as every dock, every ship, and the whole length of the seawall went up in sudden flames. In a few places, the incendiary luxin hadn’t been set or had failed, but it didn’t matter. The flames jumped gaps and burned everything.
“Fire crews ready?” Kip asked.
“Yes, sir. Watching the wind carefully and spread out appropriately. Looks like it’s in our favor.”
One of the worst things about commanding was that sometimes you see what’s going to happen some minutes hence, and you know how to stop it, and there’s time to stop it, but your people won’t listen to you.
Such was the commander of the armada’s plight.
Kip could see him waving his arms and screaming. The drafters had made his situation much worse by connecting the ships. With no incendiaries aboard, the floating-island armada caught fire far more slowly than the docks had, but they were lashed together. They couldn’t push apart from one another to make gaps too large for the fire to pass. The ones at the back were having great difficulty breaking free to retreat.
After a few minutes, though, he rallied enough drafters and officers, and cut deep, setting a fire line where he gave up fully a quarter of his fleet. At this line, they would break away from the island and abandon all those on the side nearer to Big Jasper.
It was what Kip had been waiting for.
“Catapults, go,” Kip said. The crews knew where to aim.
Catapults. Who used catapults in the age of gunpowder? It was one of Corvan’s discoveries when he did a personal inventory of the Jaspers’ defenses. They’d been kept for decades beyond their obsolescence by Carver Black, who couldn’t bear to sell them off for a pittance for lumber, yet hadn’t been able to replace them all on the meager budget he had to buy cannon.
The catapults now hurled barrels of red luxin and sub-red charges skyward and onto the armada—behind the lines where all the drafters and officers were working. They exploded in the air, or even in the water, flinging pyrejelly everywhere on the ships and even floating on the waves.
Suddenly, those people, the only ones on the armada under control and not panicking, had fire before them and fire behind. They were cut off.
Kip and Corvan had expected to get a quarter to a third of all the attackers—though only half of the armada had attacked this side of Big Jasper. They’d expected a retreat, and then after the fires died down, a second attack later in the day. They’d arranged killing grounds and lines of retreat, choke points and ambushes.
They weren’t going to be using any of those. Not on this side of the island. With the fires still roaring and men still screaming their despair and pain, Kip sent half his army to the other side of the island, and a messenger to High General Danavis asking for orders.
Most of the observers didn’t realize it yet, but there would be no fighting on this side of Big Jasper for at least a few hours. They’d already won the first round here. This part of the armada was dead. The poor bastards just had to decide if they went by fire or water.
The rest of the armada wasn’t going to attack here again, not until the fires had gone out, not until they could reorganize.
It was a great victory.
But Kip’s heart was as light as a millstone.
“What’s he doing?” Ben-hadad asked. He meant Koios.
Ben understood the heart of the problem. Karris had told them that Koios wanted to burn the whole world down and start over, that he didn’t care how big his losses were, but Kip hadn’t known if he should believe that—calling your enemy’s every failure somehow part of a brilliant larger plan was more likely to be paranoia than anything; after all, Koios’s first attack could well have succeeded.
But maybe paranoia was the right response. Why hadn’t Koios raised all the bane?
“If he wins with his first assault, he seems invincible in the field,” Kip said. “But if he loses, and then ultimately wins when he attacks with the bane, he shows his future subjects that nothing can stand against his magic.”
Ben-hadad wrinkled his nose. “Or he just loused up the incredibly difficult task of a combined amphibious and magical assault because he met a strong defense.”
Kip shrugged, admitting that was possible, too. All he knew was that his fight wasn’t over; his fight had barely begun. Everything all the Chromeria’s people had accomplished here could be wiped out in a moment if Kip failed.
Behind Kip, someone cleared his throat.
“High Lord, I come from Promachos Andross Guile,” a young man reported. “He requires your presence at the Chromeria. You are to join him at the back dock. He said it has to do with the Lightbringer.”
“Now?” Kip said. “The plan was that I go to the mirrors next.”
“There have also been . . . developments with the Prism-elect.”
Kip swore under his breath. Was Andross actually trying to make good on his bet? Or was it a trap?
It was surely past time for Kip to take over the mirrors. But the pro-machos was the ultimate authority in a war. If Kip was going to start disobeying him now, he’d have to do it for some better reason than simple gut instinct.
“Sir, my apologies,” a young woman interrupted, coming in. “A message from High General Danavis. He says to send half your men to West Bay.”
“Already done,” Kip said.
“Also, he says under absolutely no circumstances should you go to the Chromeria. There have been developments with the Prism-elect.”
“What the hell?” Kip asked.
“Danavis said no more, sir,” the woman said, but her face was pained.
“But you know more than that. Tell me,” Kip demanded.
“The Prism-elect had himself declared Prism, and we’ve heard there was some kind of scuffle or, um, skirmish? between Lightguards loyal to Zymun and Blackguards loyal to the White.”
Kip surveyed his Mighty: goofy Ferkudi, now grim; Winsen, languorous; Ben-hadad, intense; Big Leo, sinisterly smirking. They would follow him to hell and back. Only Kip couldn’t promise the ‘back’ part, not today.
“Well, obviously, High General Danavis has the right of it,” Kip said. “It’s madness to go to the Chromeria and charge into some situation we know so little about.”
He looked around at his men.
“So we’re going?” Big Leo asked.
Ferkudi said, “The horses are already saddled.”
Chapter 113
“I see what you’re doing,” Gavin growled.
They held each other, arms locked, heads against each other’s necks, bodies crouching low—though in their exhaustion, not so low as proper wrestling form dictated. Lucidonius grunted, tried to butt his head against Gavin’s cheekbone, but with their closeness, he couldn’t get any force into it.
“You think I don’t know?” Gavin demanded.
Lucidonius only drove him in a circle with little steps.
The sun had swollen fat with the day’s many injuries. It limped now along the last of its lonely path home, hemorrhaging gouts of light, spattering streaky cirrus clouds with arterial glory, seeking some safety, but its horizon-home held only its warm, waiting deathbed.