WHUUUMPT!
The force of the explosion, despite his shields, nearly rips him out of his saddle, and a wave of heat washes around him. His own shields contract tightly, and he can barely hold them, and the knife to which they are linked feels as though it is burning through its leather sheath and searing his hip.
He forces himself forward in the saddle, but can see nothing through the mist that seems everywhere. His order-chaos senses reveal nothing, either.
Then, slowly, a cooler wind blows from the south, and he begins to be able to make out the tangled mess in the river. Of the eight flatboats with armsmen, there is no sign of three. Behind them are two hulks, one half-buried in the river mud, the second turning in the current. Lerial can finally sense some things, those within a hundred yards or so, but he can only locate three of the shield-ringed boats, and they are already moving with the current well out into the river, as are the last three boats with armsmen.
Lerial continues to watch for several moments, realizing to his horror that the flatboats that survived his efforts are joining those that had abandoned the attack on the south end of the hunting park and another group of flatboats … and look to be moving toward the city piers at Luba.
He glances around, then sees a ranker riding toward him from Eighth Company, clearly sent by the resourceful Fheldar. He only has to wait a few moments.
“Ser?”
“Tell the senior squad leader to have Eighth Company join me. We’re headed to Luba with Twenty-third Company.”
“Yes, ser!” The ranker turns and heads back south, but he has to pick his way around the rubble of the fallen wall. Lerial rides south just enough to reach the collapsed section of the wall, where he reins up.
“Undercaptain!” He boosts his voice, although it turns out that he does not need to because Strauxyn is already riding forward.
“Yes, ser?”
“Hold this position as well as you can. The Heldyans are attacking farther downstream.”
“Yes, ser.”
Lerial turns the gelding and then gallops toward the northeast tower. He reins up short of Kusyl. “The Heldyans are heading for the piers. Take Twenty-third Company and stop them. Eighth Company is coming, but we won’t reach the piers in time if we wait for them. But … don’t…”
“Don’t strain the mounts?” asks the undercaptain with a grin.
“Exactly.”
“We’ll take care of the bastards.”
Lerial watches as Kusyl and his three squads ride north, knowing that the boats and Twenty-third Company will arrive at close to the same time. Eighth Company takes a bit longer than Lerial would have liked to reach him, because the company can get through the rubble of the fallen wall only single-file. From what he can sense, Ascaar is engaged in trying to repulse the Heldyan landing north of Luba proper, a landing likely designed just to keep the Afritan forces from blocking the coming attack on the town itself.
Lerial rides forward to meet Fheldar. “Send a messenger to the main dwelling. Have him report that the Heldyans are attacking Luba proper and that two of our companies are responding.”
“Yes, ser.”
Lerial realizes he should have done that earlier, but by the time he’d thought of it, he had no one to send. “We need to move to back up Kusyl. Have the squads re-form on the move.”
It takes less than a quarter glass before Eighth Company nears the southernmost pier. Even before that, Lerial can sense that two factors have helped his outnumbered Twenty-third Company contain the attackers. First, the stone riverwall and the dredged area north and south of the piers have kept the flatboats from grounding, and has required them to try to anchor to keep from going farther downstream. Second, climbing out of the boats onto the river wall and the piers has slowed the formation of the shield wall and pikes. Clearly, Kusyl used lances to repulse and slow the shieldmen before the Heldyans could position their pikes.
Even so, Kusyl and his men are giving ground to a widening shield wall and the pikemen behind the shields as they push off the pier and onto the river road.
Lerial does not hesitate, but again separates order and chaos, this time targeting sections of the flatboats below the waterline.
FHWHUSSSH!!!
Geysers of superheated water erupt, and steam and hot mist cover the more than thirty flatboats in and around the Luban piers, jammed so close that they almost form a continuous surface. The screams are mercifully short. Lerial winces as the silver-gray mist of multiple deaths flows shoreward and across him, a mist that only a mage or wizard—or a healer—could sense.