Rosethorn nodded. “If we have to fight, it’s a good plan,” she replied.
“But I have seen you fight,” Parahan commented with surprise. “You did not hang back.”
“I am like most who take up a religious life in our wicked world,” Rosethorn said. As she and Briar rode, they used their magic to open the seed balls and drop thumb-sized stones into them. Another touch of magic wove the cotton together once more. “I will not surrender to evil, or allow anyone in my charge to be harmed by evil, and violence that kills the helpless and destroys the beauties of the world is evil. But I am also a healer. It can be depressing to have to repair what you took apart that morning.”
“There are religious orders that live in isolation and refuse to commit any violence,” Souda remarked.
“I hope they are mages who can defend or hide themselves, then,” Rosethorn replied. “I and mine, we live in the real world.”
Everyone ate midday in the saddle. Not long after that a cloud of dust rolled toward them across the flatlands from the east. The tribal shamans began a heavy, droning chant like that Briar had heard in the temples and in the canyon behind Garmashing. It was a song with a buzz under it, much like the sound of the great horns. As the shamans chanted they pounded small drums or banged little gongs. Goose bumps prickled all over Briar: They were raising Gyongxin magic.
He passed a cloth seed ball to Jimut, who already had his sling in hand. Rosethorn’s slinger balanced his cloth ball in his hand, noticing the weight. He raised his brows, then settled it into his sling.
Whatever the other mages had put in motion, it seemed to be working. The dust cloud was breaking up and drifting skyward. As it thinned, it revealed several companies of imperial horsemen.
“Archers!” cried Parahan, Souda, and Lango at the same time.
“Wait,” Briar murmured to Jimut. He heard a change in the chanting of the shamans. Lango’s mage had also begun something of his own.
Briar shifted his attention to the grasses that grew ahead of the enemy horses’ hooves. Under the earth’s surface, he followed his power into their roots.
He didn’t hear the commanders giving the archers the order to shoot. In the part of him that stayed with his body he noticed that Jimut and Rosethorn’s slinger released their balls of weighted seed at the same time. Seed and arrows soared high, then fell among the enemy soldiers even as the Yanjingyi archers shot. The Gyongxin tribes and temple warriors on the right and left attacked, charging under most of the Yanjingyi volley of arrows. Those were aimed for the commanders and mages on the road.
Parahan, Souda, and Lango barked the order for the archers to prepare to shoot again. Briar urged his body to hand a second thorn ball to his slinger, as Rosethorn was doing, and returned to his work on the grasses ahead.
He heard shrieking war cries: The tribal and temple warriors were colliding with Yanjingyi horsemen on the right and the left. The center of the Yanjingyi line began to charge, bellowing in return.
Lango and the twins yelled the order to shoot; the archers obeyed, aiming at the heart of the charging line. Riders and horses went down. Jimut and Rosethorn’s slinger released their seed balls to strike the enemy soldiers who still galloped on.
They were falling even before the balls hit the ground and exploded. Growing ferociously, the grasses enveloped the horses’ hooves. The animals went down, throwing their riders. In the heart of the army, warriors screamed as thorny vines shot through and around them. Horses reared, trying to shake the grip of the tough grasses. They dropped under the hooves of those horses galloping up behind them.
Some of the thorns and grass went gray. Some burst into flame, burning the soldiers in their grasp. Briar fumbled as he passed another ball to Jimut, his fingers going numb. A strange green veil was falling over his eyes; his throat had gone too tight to breathe. He clawed at it, gasping.
Suddenly air rushed into his throat. He inhaled several times, filling his poor lungs, then looked for the cause of his sudden cure. Jimut was holding an oblong disk in front of his face. “Are you all right?” the man asked.
“Better, thanks. What is that?” Briar wanted to know.
Jimut turned the disk around for a moment, then turned it back so the polished side faced the enemy. It was a metal mirror. It had reflected the enemy’s spell back to them.
Briar checked Rosethorn. A temple mage with her face tattooed all over with interesting patterns had ridden her horse next to Rosethorn. She wrote signs on the air between her and Briar’s teacher. As she worked, Rosethorn sat with her hands palm up in her lap, peacefully gazing at the battle before them. Vines were growing rapidly, twining around enemy warriors and yanking them from the saddle to be trampled in the fighting. Whatever the temple mage was doing, she held the Yanjingyi mages off Rosethorn, it was plain.
Briar let Rosethorn work with the vines. There was a cluster of stillness in the spot where the Yanjingyi soldiers had waited before their charge. He would wager that was where the mages and perhaps the commanders watched the fighting. He closed his eyes and poured his magical self through the grass roots between him and that stillness. The grasses lent him their strength as he ran from root to root.
The Yanjingyi mages’ power shone like a beacon even underground, guiding him to them. Below them in the earth, Briar drew on the vast network of plants that stretched out around him and carefully reached up with his power. There were the above-ground grasses that grew around the horses’ hooves. Out of habit they tried to eat a mouthful or two, but these were the finest products of the army’s stables. The plants of the Gyongxin plain were a little too tough for their liking. Sensing Briar’s presence in the grass, they huffed and stamped, only to be slapped by the soldiers who held their reins. Neither the generals nor the mages wanted to be disturbed by restless animals.