First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)
Page 167The vordbulk smashed its jaws shut, and they came together like a pair of city gates closing.
And an instant later, a brilliant green fireball replaced the vordbulk's head and the spreading shield of bone around it. Fire tore at the torso and legs of the vordbulk, incinerating tons of chitin and muscle in one supremely violent blast.
Incredibly, the vordbulk's mangled left front leg quivered and began to take another step, as if the limb had no idea that the head had been destroyed - but then the creature sagged to its left. Lord Cereus had, clearly, timed and directed his attack to achieve that very outcome, and the vordbulk toppled like the one before it, falling away from the fortress. It fell in seeming deliberation, because of its sheer size, but the impact when it came crashing down crushed fully grown trees to splinters.
Ehren stared in shock at the fallen vordbulk for a full minute, hardly able to comprehend the incredible courage and sacrifice of the old High Lord. But then, Cereus's daughter Veradis was behind the walls, employing her considerable talents as a healer, and his grandchildren were in the refugee camp. Of course her father would be willing to lay down his life to protect his sole surviving child and his sons' orphans; or at least, a man of Cereus's character would. It was one thing for a man to say he was willing to lay down his life for his child - but quite another for him to actually do it.
Count Calderon exhaled heavily, and breathed, "Thank you, Your Grace."
Ferocious battle ensued on the northern bluff, between the Wolf tribe and the vord who had been guarding the vordbulk, but it was no longer a hopeless fight for the Wolf, especially with the support of the Horse. Cereus's brigade of Citizens came flying back into the fortress in a state of total exhaustion.
Bernard looked up from a message brought by a courier and grunted. "That's it, then. We're out of firestones, and the rain is keeping the workshop from making any more."
"We can hold them with steel alone if they don't bring us any more surprises," Ehren said.
Ehren sighed. "Of course, my lord. Better to hear it now than in rumor half an hour from now."
Bernard nodded and rubbed at his jaw - then froze and peered to the west.
Far down the valley, the storm clouds veiling Garados had apparently gone mad, spewing a thousand colors of lightning like spray at the bottom of a waterfall. Ehren stopped in his tracks and watched, as well, as the distant storm raked the land with lightning bolts. He was sure he imagined it, but for a moment it almost looked like one enormous windmane, miles and miles across, was raking the ground with claws of living lightning.
Then the vord all began to shriek, screaming as one creature. The wail put the hairs up on the back of Ehren's neck, but he stepped forward and gripped the edge of the balcony's railing, staring.
The seething, pulsing rhythm of the mass of vord, that sense of underlying organization and purpose that made them all seem like the various organs of a single body, began to fray. Over the next several minutes, Ehren watched the vord attackers change from an army driven by purpose and perfect discipline to a mob of hungry, dangerous predators. Though the sheer pressure of numbers crammed into limited space forced the vord at the leading edge of the mob to continue the attack on the walls of Garrison, farther back was a different tale.
Ehren brought up a sightcrafting and stared as the vord to the rear of the immediate combat began to turn upon one another, apparently driven by desperate hunger - and those farthest back began to depart altogether. It would take a long time, hours perhaps, for the pressure on the leading edge of the vord to relent enough to allow them to retreat, but it would happen. It would happen!
"What can you see?" Count Calderon asked, his weary voice anxious.
"They did it," Count Calderon breathed. "By all the furies, they did it. They killed the Queen!"
Ehren couldn't hear what Calderon said next. Months of horror and despair had all come down to this moment. He found himself sitting on the stone floor of the balcony, sobbing and laughing at the same time. He had never believed, never really believed, that the vord could be defeated. Not after so many retreats, so many deadly surprises.
But here, in the Calderon Valley, they had finally done it. They had endured the heaviest blows the enemy could deliver and survived. The Realm had survived. The Realm would survive.
It would survive thanks to the sacrifice of Cereus, and to the rather unassuming backcountry Citizen who now knelt beside him, putting a brawny arm around Ehren's shoulders. "Easy there, son. Easy. Come with me. I could use a drink. I've given orders to the Legions to keep rotating fresh troops in. Now all we have to do is wait this out."
Ehren nodded several times. "A drink," he said, his voice thick. "I don't drink very well." Then he added, "But if you can't drink to this, what can you drink to? Let's go."
EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
But history is a cold and distant observer. Those of us who must face today have goals far more finite: We must mend our wounds, mourn our dead - and survive the winter. Crows take what the historians think.
History will attend to itself.
- GAIUS TAVARUS MAGNUS, 1 AV.
"It's too tight," Tavi complained, tugging at the neck of the tunic. "And it's ridiculously overdone. Honestly, people are starving, and they're trying to deck me out in gems and cloth of gold?"
"No one is starving," Max said. "They just wish they were." He wore his new suit of armor, marked with the black crow of the First Aleran Legion upon a field of red and blue, and his dress uniform beneath it, including a captain's cloak of red velvet. "Bloody clever way to get rid of the croach if you ask me. Let people eat it up, especially as we're short on food and all."