But the Nightbringers’ ranks had swelled as their fame grew, and keeping secrets amid a growing army was a losing game—especially when your army included the giant grizzly Tallach that was partnered with Conn Arthur.
Still, Kip’s attempts at secrecy and the lightning-fast relocation that the skimmers allowed had borne fruit. Now it was time to push into the next stage of the war.
Kip hoped that all meant the Blood Robes wouldn’t be ready for a night attack of this magnitude.
He found Sibéal lying under some bushes at a good vantage point, her skin flushed the adrenal war blue of her people. He lay down beside her and clicked his tongue softly. Two mastiffs in heavy armor came up on either side of him. The Cwn y Wawr—the Dogs of Dawn—hadn’t chosen their name at random. They’d kept war dogs for centuries. Getting the dogs’ handlers to agree to let will-casters close to those beloved hounds had been beyond Kip’s persuasive powers.
But somehow, someone in the will-casters’ ranks had convinced the Cwn y Wawr that they cherished the animals they partnered with, and that the dogs would be safer with a human partner than without. Perhaps it had been that simple. Kip didn’t know how it had happened.
That was what it was to be part of a team. Others were out there, doing things you never heard about to try to achieve the same goals you had.
There was a sound low in the bushes, and a hound with droopy ears emerged. Sibéal Siofra woke and the hound shook itself as if it had been wet. Then it licked her as she reported, “Sixty oxen. Somewhere around one hundred men. Sarai’s not good at counting that high and their scents are all on top of each other. Sixty-two horses. A blue drafter. Four red drafters. Red luxin. Two greens. And, um, freshly dug earth?”
“From fortifications, I’d guess. War dogs,” Kip announced, “those are on you. Clear a path for us.”
Kip gave a few moments for the word to filter down his lines. Men were making the sign of the three and the four, praying. Kip looked back at the massive hillock behind him that was Conn Arthur’s giant grizzly Tallach. He really needed to have that talk with the conn about his brother. Not tonight, though.
The giant grizzly was lying down so as not to upset any of the other animals more than necessary. Its head, helmed with blackened steel and yellow luxin over the eyes, bobbed in assent. That and a small breastplate (well, small relative to a mountain) were all the armor the great bear would tolerate.
Kip threw up a superviolet flare to signal the drafters to fill themselves with their colors, sharing lux torches and shielding them under blankets. The lux torches’ flaring made for a lot of night-blind drafters—not all of them had at-will pupil control yet—but it couldn’t be helped.
He studied the trees for reflections of light from the torches and was pleased to see none.
“Wolves,” Kip said quietly. “Go!”
They tore off with the unnerving speed of the predators they were. They were to hit the camp first, silently, and take out as many sentries as possible.
“War dogs. Go.”
The mastiffs were off only slightly slower, all big shoulders and spiky armor, and terrifying mass. If the wolves didn’t raise an alarm, the war dogs definitely would.
“Night mares. Go.”
It had been a joke at first. It wasn’t a joke. Most of the night mares were actual woodland ponies. Some were warhorses. Some were great elk. All were will-cast and carried Cwn y Wawr drafters on their backs. A will-cast horse knew when you needed it to be silent, and the union of its animal dexterity with full human intelligence and discipline—discipline not to bolt despite the pressures of battle and magic and snarling animals on every side—meant every one of them was at least the equal of a well-trained veteran warhorse.
Kip turned and found Tallach waiting, snout low and level to the ground. Kip stepped up and grabbed the horns of his platform. One didn’t ride a giant grizzly. Its mass was too great for human legs to straddle. And if you somehow strapped yourself on, the undulations of its great form when it ran would break you. Instead Ben-hadad had designed something halfway between a saddle and a howdah. Kip—sometimes joined by Cruxer—could stand and stabilize himself with one hand on any number of grips while either drafting or firing one of the many muskets attached to the platform’s racks, or he could sit and lock his legs into place, whether Tallach was on all fours or rearing up on his hind legs.
Whether it terrified the enemy or Kip more, he still hadn’t figured out.
“Nightbringers,” Kip commanded. “At a walk. Advance.”
For those beyond the sound of his voice, he threw up a superviolet flare, shielded like the first to radiate light only toward his own lines. A superviolet drafter looking into superviolet might still notice the light on the branches of the trees, but if you have to speak during a stealth attack, it is still better to whisper than to shout.
“Tallach—”
But the bear and the man inside it didn’t wait for the complete order. Kip held on to two horns of his howdah and absorbed each loping impact with the ground with his knees. It was terrifying that something so large could move so quickly and dexterously. He ducked and bobbed and prayed while Tallach wove around the spruces that had branches low enough to sweep Kip off. The giant grizzly was still fast enough to almost close the gap with the night mares before they hit the camp.
The first cries that rose into the air were cries of surprise, not alarm: more yelps of What the hell was that thing that just ran past me? than fear. The wolves went only for the sentries and men with torches.
Where the wolves had slipped easily through the gaps in the sharpened stakes ringing the camp, the mastiffs had to pause to muscle their way in. Two teams of them stopped to clear lanes through the stakes for the horses and men coming up behind them, while the rest of the mastiffs streaked on, hunting anyone with the stench of drafting on him.
The tenor of the cries changed immediately as they began bursting through tents and tearing out throats.
The night mares rolled like distant thunder on the horizon into the camps next, streaming like twin lightning strikes through the two paths the war dogs had cleared, with Kip and Tallach hard behind them. The Nightbringer drafters riding on the night mares splashed green or blue or orange luxin down on every fire to smother it, from the smallest torch to the cookfires, engaging only those Blood Robes who directly stood in their way.
The White King’s camp was plunged into darkness—and blindness for most of the humans, who were so bad at seeing at night. Blood Robes, spinning, startled by the streaking shapes, fired their muskets blindly, hitting nothing or hitting their own comrades.
Tallach simply jumped over the stakes ringing the camp, his gait hardly changing. When they landed, Kip finally had time to grab a flash grenado from his belt. His job was to guard Tallach’s back—which mostly meant to distract and delay anyone who attacked him.
A Blood Robe soldier knelt with flint and steel, trying to light a slow match for his musket, each skritch and flare of sparks an invitation to death. Tallach’s claws answered the call with a quick bloody swat.
Then Kip saw the sudden starburst of mag torches being broken open at the center of the camp, near the wagons.
Tallach saw it, too, and charged straight for it. His path took him over tents and through a dozen men trying to hand out muskets, whom he scattered like chaff. In a bound, he leapt over a picket of whinnying horses.
Then, from the high vantage that only Kip had, the disaster opened in front of him. The central pavilion contained nothing except a great pit. One of the mastiffs must have inadvertently knocked down one of the supports or had already fallen in. A pit that big could only be for Tallach.
A trap.