Storm Furies

by Wen Spencer

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Urban Fantasy; Romantic Fantasy

Synopsis

Wild urban fantasy as only the nationally best-selling Wen Spencer can write it!

THE GODDESS OF WAR RIDES,

HERALDED BY STORM FURIES

The oni have invaded Pittsburgh on Elfhome. And, so far, it looks like they are winning. All this is according to prophecy. But the prophecy is big on symbols and light on specifics. Tinker and her allies are doing the best they can to defend the city and the civilians caught in the crossfire of a war between elves that’s been brewing for centuries. But the enemy has no hesitation whatsoever in involving innocents. All the pieces in this deadly game are in place—and everyone trusts Tinker will save them. All she needs is a plan. And then the lights go out, and the storm begins to rage. . . .

Release date: August 6, 2024

Publisher: Baen

Print pages: 480

Sample

1: AFTERMATH

“Right.” Tinker bounced in place, thinking frantically. “Change of plans.”

She’d been woken up in the middle of the night with the news that she had somehow acquired six siblings, four of which hadn’t been born yet. Nevertheless, said unborn babies were terrorizing the neighborhood as talking mice. How? She hadn’t a clue although a certain pocket-sized dragon was certainly involved. The day had gone downhill from there. Currently an unknown number of oni warriors were attacking Oakland and all the domana elves might be dead.

She was at the Tinker Domi Computer and Research Center with all five of the sekasha warriors who made up her Hand. Rainlily had left in the morning to take a message to Windwolf but had caught back up with her on Stormsong’s Delta. It meant for vehicles that they had a Rolls-Royce, a hoverbike, and whatever Tinker could commandeer from the EIA. The research center sat at the edge of the North Side, meaning that they would need to cross the Allegheny River to reach Oakland. There were seven bridges that they could take—more if they made a wide enough circle—but that would eat up time. The Veterans Bridge was the most logical place to cross—but the oni had ambushed her on it once this summer already. Dusk was falling; they only had another hour or so of daylight left, but it also meant that they would soon have the cover of darkness. A storm was blowing in. The white canvas tent over the casting circle billowed, threatening to be torn from its stakes. The towering line of windmills hummed loudly, changing the pitch of their blades to keep them from spinning too fast. Judging by the strength of the wind, Pittsburgh was in for a fierce thunderstorm. She might be able to work the storm to her advantage but it meant that using the hoverbike would be risky.

“We had a plan?” Only Stormsong dared to ask.

The other four sekasha warriors looked confused but they weren’t questioning Tinker. Bless them: she really didn’t have any good answers at the moment.

“Yes, I had a plan.” Tinker had learned when fighting against people who could see the future, it was best not to talk about what she was doing. She hadn’t told her Hand what she planned just in case someone was “listening in.” “I was going to hide away and be clever.” Said aloud, it wasn’t much of a plan. “There was a little more than that. I was going to make some…things.” If the EIA came through, she still might make something unexpected, so she’d better not talk about it. “I thought I would have more time.”

Tooloo had said that it could be a matter of minutes before the spell would go off, but at first, Tinker hadn’t believed her. Why did the crazy old elf have to talk in riddles? What did the chicken and weird mismatched chess pieces have to do with the mess Pittsburgh was in now? How bad of a mess was it?

Up to a minute ago, Tinker had felt rapid-fire calls to all three Spell Stones that she could tap. Windwolf, Prince True Blood, and the Stone Clan had been fighting deep in the forest to the east. Forge and Jewel Tear had been scoping out the oni forces attacking Oakland. Everything had stopped so abruptly that she was afraid that the oni’s attack spell had killed the others. She, Oilcan, and the twins had been safe within a shield when the spell hit. All the other elves in Pittsburgh had been unprotected.

“I’m not sure what the oni’s spell did but the other domana seem…incapacitated,” Tinker said as she waited for the other domana to act; to prove that they were still alive. “What did the oni do? Did they kill all the other elves?”

“They could not, not without great risk to themselves,” Pony said. “The ‘greater blood oni’ are in truth nothing but Skin Clan elves hiding behind a façade. In ancient times, before we were immortal, the Skin Clan would test their spell working on their slaves and then interbreed with the successes to bring the desired result into their bloodlines. They are largely as we are. Any spell aimed at the masses will strike them too.”

Tinker nodded, clinging tight to the logic of it. The fear that Windwolf and the others were dead lurked deep within her chest. It was a dark, painful thing and she was desperate to ignore it. “So the oni could have just…broken the domana’s link to the Spell Stones? It would explain why the others stopped casting. The domana use a genetic key

to create a link. But each clan has a different genetic key. How could the oni have taken out the Fire Clan and the Stone Clan in one shot?”

“It has always been a closely guarded secret as to how the wood sprites created the domana link to the various Spell Stones.” Pony glanced at Stormsong. “You were trained by the Wyverns. Did they know anything about the genetic key?”

Stormsong clicked her tongue in the equivalent of an elven shrug. “Only that the clans insisted that they alone would be able to access their Spell Stones. Even before the end of the Rebellion, the seeds of the Clan War were growing. Whatever the wood sprites used as their key, it is very dominant. I have never heard of any domana who could not access their clan’s esva.”

She paused a moment, tilting her head in confusion. “Although, now that I think of it, Wolf has been the only one that ever had access to two esva. Not even his siblings could tap both sets of Spell Stones. It was so singular that there was no precedence for how he would be trained. There was a great debate over whether he would be trained on both esva; there were many who said that he only should be given access to the Spell Stones of the clan that he chose to join. My mother—”

“Your mother what?” Tinker asked when Stormsong stopped abruptly, mouth open, her eyes scanning quickly as if reading ancient text a second time.

“My mother…my mother is Pure Radiance, head of the intanyai seyosa caste, greatest ever born after the legendary Vision—”

“Yes, I know who your mother is,” Tinker said, cutting her off impatiently.

“My mother was the author of the marriages between the head of the Clans and King Ashfall’s children. She insisted that Wolf be trained on both esva and martial arts.” Stormsong swore softly in English before falling back to Elvish. “She was the one who encouraged Flame Heart to bear ten children until one was born being able to use both esva.”

In other words, Pure Radiance arranged to have a specific child born, trained in war, and then shipped across the ocean to fight the oni because she foresaw the need of someone like Windwolf.

“Shit,” Tinker whispered. “If she set Windwolf up for this, then he might have been immune to the spell. But if that’s true, why isn’t he tapping the Spell Stones?”

“He could still be in shock,” Pony said. “Remember that you slept for days after your transformation. Even if he was not changed, he could be unconscious.”

Unconscious in the middle of a battle. Tinker swore softly. She wanted to race to Windwolf’s side but she didn’t even know where to find him. The troops had left by train the day before and planned to march into the virgin forest after disembarking at some vague spot alongside the track. Rainlily could get her to the spot where the troops camped. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find Windwolf’s trail as the army cut through the woods. Prince True Flame had emptied Pittsburgh of royal marines. They had taken thousands of the red coated soldiers with them.

“Your responsibility lies with the enclaves,” Pony said as if guessing her thoughts. “Wolf has sworn to protect his Beholden. As his domi, it falls to you to protect them when he cannot. You cannot

abandon them.”

“Right.” Tinker grabbed hold of her hair, resisting the urge to pull it out in frustration. “How long can the shields on the enclaves stand against the oni?”

“The shields were designed to be effective against the dangers which are common to our world: spell arrows, force strike, black willows and the like,” Pony said. “Sparrow was to oversee improving the enclave shields to work against human weapons but there were always delays in the effort.”

Sparrow had been a Skin Clan mole. Of course she would have kept the shields from being improved. It stood to reason that the oni had a means to breach the shields. It meant that no matter what, she needed to go to Oakland and defend the enclaves.

“We have a new plan?” Stormsong prodded.

Tinker held up a hand to hold off questions. She was still thinking furiously. The six of them couldn’t take on an army. What could they do? What should she do? Tooloo seemed to think Tinker could fix everything if she just…just…just what?

“I know you’re clever,” Tooloo had said. “You can figure this out without me showing you how the pieces are arrayed in this deadly game and reminding you how they move.”

Tinker took out her datapad and looked at the pictures of Tooloo’s chessboard. Tooloo had set up a Queen’s Gambit with Tinker as the black player. It would suggest that, in terms of a game, the oni had moved first. What was Tooloo considering the first move? The start of Vision’s ancient feud with her creator? The Skin Clan’s invasion of Pittsburgh after the first Shutdown? Or was it the attack on Windwolf that Tinker blocked by saving him?

The white pawn had been a small plastic monkey figurine with both hands clapped over its mouth. Lain and Esme Shenske had nicknamed their younger half brothers “Flying Monkey Four and Five.” Tinker wasn’t sure who One, Two, and Three were—their stepbrother Yves Desmarais and themselves? Chloe Polanski could be considered “Flying Monkey Number Six” since she was Lain and Esme’s younger half sister. It felt right to say that the little plastic monkey statue represented Chloe.

It suggested that when Tinker killed Chloe, she accepted the Queen’s Gambit. The tactic in chess meant that she had traded the ability to control the center of the board for greater mobility of her pieces. But what did that mean in the real world? What did Tooloo expect her to do? Should Tinker even be considering doing anything that Tooloo wanted her to do? Who knew if Tooloo’s desired outcome was even morally correct? Did Tooloo want all the domana dead? She certainly acted like they were evil incarnate. Tooloo had tried to keep Tinker from interacting with Windwolf, lying to her about the possible outcome.

Sort of lied.

Tooloo was correct that the human child she helped raise no longer existed; Tinker had been transformed into an elf with all the domana bells and whistles. Tooloo said by becoming Windwolf’s domi, Tinker

had allowed Pure Radiance to get the upper hand. Her daughter used Tinker as poisoned bait in a trap for the oni. Most of the summer had gone—not as Tooloo wanted, but as she had foreseen.

Vision and her daughter had some kind of running war that had spanned thousands of years. Which one did Tinker want to win? How could Tinker know when both weren’t telling her the stakes?

Tinker started to walk fast toward the computer lab while thinking furiously. She didn’t have time for chessboard riddles. If the oni had broken the domanas’ link to the Spell Stones, then she and Oilcan were the only heavy hitters left. She didn’t want Oilcan fighting a horde of oni—Iron Mace’s death already weighed heavily on him. Nor did she want to wade into battle alone. The chances of her messing up and getting everyone killed were too high. She needed more people.

She pulled out her phone and swore. It had no signal. “Oh, no, not now!”

“What is it, domi?” Pony asked.

“I need Jin Wong to call the Flock. I need the tengu in Oakland en masse. He’s probably still in the city—someplace.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pony and Stormsong flash through blade talk and then Stormsong dashed off, toward her hoverbike. Tinker nodded in agreement with her Hand’s decision. It wouldn’t take Stormsong long to find a tengu scout; she was Pure Radiance’s daughter. It might take longer to path her way to Jin but he could use his “calling all tengu” ability to marshal them in the city.

Tinker spotted Captain Roger Josephson across the compound, talking to three of his men. She veered toward him. “Captain! Captain!”

“Domi, I was just coming to find you.” He handed her a piece of paper that showed what his people had managed to collect for her. “We found most of the things on your list—at least, everything in the storage unit. The only thing my men couldn’t locate was the slab saw. You didn’t give a location. We’re not even sure what it is. Do you mean one that cuts wood or stone?”

Tinker waved aside the question. She had added the slab saw to confuse anyone who got hold of the list and tried to figure out what she intended to do with the various pieces. If Josephson’s men had found one, she would have only used the twelve-foot-long, chain-driven sawblade as a psychological warfare weapon. She didn’t plan on getting close enough to the oni to engage in sword versus chainsaw combat. Josephson must have sent out an entire squadron of trucks to comb the city to have found as much as they did. “Good. Good. Cool, you got the electric-to-magic converters. Oh, you found my eight-inch pipes! Fantastic!”

“We’re glad to help,” Josephson said. “The whelping pens were a clarification of the issues for us. Whatever our relationship is with the elves, it’s at least civilized, peaceful, and humane. We have no fears—being stranded on Elfhome—that the elves will not treat us with honor."

Tinker nodded, glad that she could count on unwavering support from Captain Josephson and his men. They were, though, only a small fraction of the EIA forces in Pittsburgh. “Where’s Maynard?”

“He’s been on the move all day. He started on the South Side dealing with the morgue overflow. Then someone drove a car into the Oakland power substation. He started a work crew there and moved to our communication center downtown. Do you need to talk to him?”

“My phone doesn’t have a signal,” Tinker said.

“We have a system separate from the civilian network.”

Tinker indicated that Josephson was to follow her. Time was wasting. She didn’t want to get stuck updating both Josephson and Maynard. “The oni just used a massive magical bioweapon that targeted the domana. That’s why I’m here: I needed a casting circle to erect a countermeasure spell to shield myself.” It sounded so selfish, but it would take too much time to explain that she’d made the bad assumption that Oilcan was in Oakland. At the last minute she realized that he was in McKees Rocks. “There’s a good possibility that all of the other domana are currently unconscious.”

“Does this include the Viceroy and Prince True Flame?” Josephson asked.

“Magic operates on a one-mei range—which is nearly a thousand miles. Even domana on the East Coast were hit.” She pointed at the nearby large military cargo trucks. “I need those trucks, with all the things on my lists loaded into them, and every man you can muster for combat in Oakland as soon as possible.”

To his credit, Captain Josephson only reacted with a slight widening of eyes. “Say again?”

“The oni are launching an attack on the enclaves. I need to counterattack with everything I can pull together—which means I need you to come with me. We’ll leave as soon as I pick up the printouts that I queued earlier. Get hold of Maynard and tell him to send what he can. I’ve put the word out to gather the tengu, so tell your men not to shoot at any that show up.”

“Yes, domi. Understood.” Captain Josephson walked off, barking orders to his men.

Tinker needed more than just the tengu and the EIA if she was going to take on an army.

“Are there any Wyverns or royal marines left in the city?” Tinker was under the impression that Prince True Flame took all of the elves with him to face off against what had seemed to be the bulk of the oni army. She hadn’t seen any of the royal forces all day but she hadn’t been paying close attention. Pony would know—he kept track of that kind of information.

“Prince True Flame left behind one Hand of Wyverns and three platoons of royal marines,” Pony said. “The Wyverns were at his camp.”

Said camp was in a large clearing beyond the enclaves where Windwolf had planned to build a palace. Tinker only vaguely remembered the place as

a shadowy collection of tents where Sparrow ambushed her. Tinker had been avoiding the place, partially because of the bad memories, but mostly because she didn’t want Prince True Flame blocking her more questionable activities.

“They probably could hear any outbreak of fighting in Oakland,” Tinker said. “Would they defend the enclaves or stay at the camp?”

“The Wyverns would definitely engage the enemy,” Pony said. “One platoon of marines are currently guarding over Forest Moss’s domi. They could be anywhere in the city and perhaps unaware of what is going on.”

“Oh! Yeah!” Tinker had totally forgotten about the teenager. The girl was two or three years younger than she was and questionable at making good life choices. “It’s fine if they stay out of the fight.”

“The other platoons are guarding the train station as there are royal forces incoming from Brotherly Love.” Pony named Windwolf’s East Coast holding that was connected via the railroad to Pittsburgh. “One of us should be able to recruit them to join the fight.”

By “one of us,” Pony meant one of the five “holy” warriors who made up her Hand. Tinker had commandeered a platoon of Fire Clan royal marines earlier but they had been standing by, awaiting orders from Prince True Flame. Pony was implying that she wouldn’t be able to repeat the trick on a platoon with direct orders to guard a specific point. The sekasha, however, were considered holy and were to be obeyed without question.

It was a part of elf society that Tinker couldn’t totally wrap her head around. The sekasha were thought to be perfect but the domana were running the show. Everyone would wait for her to lead—even when she didn’t know what she was doing. Since June, Tinker had learned that she needed to give the order before Pony would act. The problem was that she didn’t always have all the data.

“Since the derailment, the trains are only running during the daylight.” She worked through the logic aloud. “There shouldn’t be another train until dawn. Penn Station is the control center for the trains but the rails coming in have dozens of weak points elsewhere that the oni could sabotage more easily if they want to mess with the trains. The royal marines are basically just guarding an empty shell.”

She considered logistics. Stormsong was the only one of Tinker’s Hand who spoke fluent English. The others were trying to learn and picking it up at incredible speed, but it was still rough. “Captain Josephson!”

“Yes, domi?” Captain Josephson came trotting back to her side.

“Do you have anyone here who speaks Elvish?”

“Private Clemente,” Captain said. “The rest of us have been trying to pick it up as we 

 go.”

“I need Clemente and two of these trucks to go to Penn Station to pick up some royal marines.”

“Understood.” Josephson peeled off, calling out names of men who were going to be drivers for the royal marines.

Tinker turned to Pony. “Pull all the royal marines from the train station. Load them into the trucks. Have them head to Oakland via Forbes Avenue. Oh, and make sure to tell the marines that the tengu are allies.”

That should get the marines to Oakland without colliding with the oni army with no backup.

Pony nodded. Blade talk happened and Little Egret strode off toward the trucks.

Rainlily moved forward, carrying a wyvern-scale vest in Wind Clan Blue.

“Domi,” Pony said. “Please, put this on.”

“Me?” Tinker said.

“It would be best, if we’re going into combat, that you take every precaution against being wounded.”

Yeah. Right. She pulled it over her head as her stomach flip-flopped with fear. She had marched into the whelping pens and had blasted her way through Ginger Wine’s but still, the upcoming fight terrified her. Those were different—she could have pulled out of those fights if things had gone badly. There was going to be no retreat from this battle.

Should she try for other humans? Were there other humans? She had no real pull with the police, especially after Nathan’s death. She couldn’t contact Team Tinker with the cell phone system down nor would they be particularly helpful. Yes, they all had guns: they were Pittsburghers. A few were decent shots. Some—like Andy Roach—were a little dangerous with anything sharp or fragile. Carl Moser had a laedin or two at his art commune but they had joined him because they wanted to be something more than meat shields.

Regular Pittsburghers might not be aware of what was going on in Oakland. Even if the three television stations still had the ability to broadcast, all the TV sets in the city were currently dead. Some of the smaller radio stations—the ones that young people listened to—were probably off the air. There was no way to spread the word, calling for help.

Tinker wasn’t sure if Pittsburghers would even care what happened to the elves. Chloe Polanski had been poisoning humans against the elves for a decade or more. Until Tinker saved Windwolf, there were very few elves who she interacted with: Gin Blossom on Team Tinker and the handful who belonged to Moser’s art commune. Those males and females were rebels against their own society; they had few nice things to say about domana. Between them and Tooloo, Tinker had thought of the domana as aristocratic snobs.

She had to assume that the EIA were going to be the only humans who joined her in the defense of the enclaves.

She gathered up everything that she had queued to the computer center’s various printers. It was a hodgepodge of spells and magical whizzbangs. She wasn’t sure how she was going to use them all. Her lack of preparation was the most terrifying part of this whole mission. What the hell did she know about going to war?

She felt the spark of power that was Jin Wong calling on his Flock. It was like a drop of dark water into a still pool, a sudden break that rippled out over the city. As it spread, there were tiny motes of replies, thousands of them.

Stormsong had found the tengu then and should be on her way back to Tinker.

Far out east, she felt Windwolf call on the Wind Clan Stones.

Relief flooded through her. She closed her eyes and focused on him. He’d set up a shield spell but nothing else. Did he still have access to the Fire Clan esva? Was he alone or had Prince True Flame and the others survived?

Gods, she wanted to ignore the situation in Oakland and go to him. She knew, though, that his heart would echo what her Hand told her: He would want her to protect the enclaves. All their people—some whom he had known for a hundred years or more—were in harm’s way. People who had welcomed her in, watched over her when she was hurt, obeyed her without question even when she made the most impossible requests. They had accepted her wholly when she probably was the last thing that they expected. She owned them.

“Domi?” Pony said softly.

“I’m thinking.” Could she let anyone know that Windwolf could still access the Wind Clan esva? The talking mice suggested that anything spoken aloud might be overheard by a member of her family—evil aunts and all.

She was going to strain their resources just to counter the oni in Oakland. Could she send Windwolf any help at all?

She handed her bag to Pony and walked out in the stormy dusk. She cocked her fingers, brought them to her mouth, and spoke the trigger word that would let her set up a resonance between her and the Wind Clan Spell Stones. She held it for a long minute and then cast a scry spell, sensing the movement of the winds around her. It reported the incoming storm winds, the quickening spin of the windmills, and a large flock of tengu heading toward her.

There. She had let Windwolf know that she was alive and kicking. Hopefully he would find it as comforting as she had found proof of his survival. It was all that she could send him.

It made her feel helpless, though, and the feeling enraged her.

Captain Josephson came jogging over to her. “Domi, we’re ready.”

She nodded. “When the tengu get here, we’ll head out.”

She should also let Oilcan know that she was okay. She had felt him set up the new shield in McKees Rocks just before the oni spell hit. Oilcan must have used Geoffrey Kryskill’s casting circle. She’d forgotten all about it or she might have gone there. She didn’t want him in the

 middle of the insanity she was about to throw herself into. She flashed through the morse code: GE OB LVG NS AS MR AR. Good evening. Old boy. Leaving North Side. Stand by McKees Rocks. End of message.

NS and MR was their own personal code for locations around Pittsburgh.

Oilcan tapped the Spell Stones and signaled back: VE AR. Understood. End of message.

As lightning flashed on the western horizon, the tengu came swooping in on massive crow-black wings. They settled around her, kneeling. It was Riki and a hundred of his people, faces painted for war.

“Domi, the Flock is yours to command,” Riki said. “Jin Wong is leading our main force to Oakland. I am here to coordinate our efforts.”

Thunder rolled over them.

Tinker pointed toward the gate. “We go.”

 

2: LOST IN THE WOODS

 

Wolf Who Rules Wind was deep in the forest, surrounded by oni forces, when the transformation spell hit. It washed over him like fire. Every nerve and cell within his body recoiled with pain. His senses went to white, overloaded. He lost all awareness of the world around him. Surely he wasn’t dead—death wouldn’t hurt so much. Time stopped in a sea of white fire. His hearing leaked back as the white started to recede.

“Wolf! Wolf!” Wraith Arrow’s voice called to him.

“Some-some-something hit me.” Wolf struggled to push the words out into the whiteness. His voice sounded distant and frail.

“Get your shield up!” Wraith Arrow urged, seemingly at a great distance.

Wolf guessed that he’d lost his connection to the Spell Stones. He couldn’t feel the link but then he couldn’t feel his body. Two hundred years of training allowed Wolf to twist phantom fingers into the correct shape, bring them to the mouth that he couldn’t feel and say the word that reconnected him to the Spell Stones. The low thrum of power flooded into him, pushing back the whiteness.

He grew aware of the swamp first. The dank earthy smell. The dampness under him as he lay on his back. Somewhere close by, a pitched battle still raged. He could hear the enemy drums beating out commands. The thin whistle of spell arrows cutting through the air. The screams of pain. It was too quiet; he couldn’t hear the roar of True Flame’s fire spells nor the rumble of the Stone Clan’s force strikes. Had the other domana been struck down like he had been?

Wolf staggered to his feet, blinking again and again, trying to force his vision to return. The world slowly came into focus. The sun was setting behind the steep wooded hillside at their back. Heavy rain clouds filled the sky, whipped by storm winds. They stood on the edge of a wide marshy meadow, full of denuded stumps and thick clumps of cattail reeds. On the far eastern side of the marsh, the land sloped up to an enemy fort.

His three Hands—all fifteen of his personal guard—stood alert around him. Where were the rest of his people? Oh yes, he’d sent the laedin-caste warriors to Sunder because he wouldn’t have been able to protect them from the phoenix scorpion. The corpse of that massive horror loomed behind the sekasha. There was no sign, though, that the other domana were alive beyond the fact that the oni were fighting something. Darkness of Stone had been at the center of the camp, protecting his sekasha and laedin warriors after jumping out of Cana Lily’s gossamer. Said airship was drifting over the oni trying to flee to the east, pouring war fire down out of its machicolations. Tall ironwood trees in and around the fort kept him from seeing the gossamer clearly.

Wraith Arrow studied Wolf with concern. “Can you fight?”

Wolf flexed his free hand, taking stock of his own health. Ignoring the fact that his legs felt like they were made of soft noodles, he seemed sound. “I can.”

He considered the battlefield. His sekasha seemed unaffected by whatever hit him. The three clans had split up in four directions. Prince True Flame, two score of Wyverns, and several thousand royal marines were north of the camp. Sunder and Forest Moss had paired up, attacking from the south with a small number of Stone Clan warriors. Wolf had held the west side while Darkness and Cana Lily staged an airborne assault. Until moments ago, all the domana had been holding protective shields over their people while casting scrys and offensive spells. Wolf was the only one currently maintaining an active spell. Even the shield on the Stone Clan gossamer was down, making the great beast vulnerable to enemy fire.

“The oni must have used the weapon that domi warned me about,” Wolf said. “They must have targeted the domana. Either I’m the first to recover or the others were hit harder for some reason.”

His Hands had divided into Shields and Blades. Half of them had cancelled their protective spell to conserve local magic. It was a common tactic for when a domana was too wounded to protect their people. It reminded Wolf that the valley had only a handful of weak ley lines and no fiutana—which was odd. Yes, the swampy ground provided the oni with black willows but otherwise the valley offered no advantages.

The lack of magic meant that the oni couldn’t create strong defensive spells like those

protecting his enclaves. It would also mean that if the domana were unconscious or dead, the elves wouldn’t be able to set up a strong fallback position.

“We need to push through the camp to Prince True Flame’s position,” Wolf said. “If the others were more incapacitated by the spell, then we should consolidate our forces.”

Wraith Arrow nodded at this. “The Harbinger’s people are all veterans of the Rebellion; they will be on familiar grounds. Prince True Flame’s forces are younger; they only know how to fight with a domana at their back.”

The same could be said of his people in Pittsburgh. Fear lanced through him as he realized that all the domana within a mei would have been hit by the spell. What of his beloved? Trust your domi to be strong, he’d told Forest Moss. Glib words when Tinker had three esva to call on. She needed to be conscious to use them.

She has Little Horse and Discord to keep her safe until she regains consciousness, he told himself.

Tinker was everything he could hope for in a domi. More. He had not known his secret heart until the turbulent summer made his feelings undeniable. He had no inkling of how much he wanted someone who was so separated from the normal social expectations that they would freely accept all of him. His odd parentage. His unusual upbringing that saw him trained as a sekasha as well as a domana. His little blade brother and his first love—so often seen as lowly mutts. His quirky personal household that was a mix of young elves barely past their majority and his grandfather’s people who were all born during the Rebellion. The city full of humans. Even the half-oni and tengu who had quickly proved how worthy they were of being part of his society. Tinker had opened her heart and taken them in and protected them with fierce cunning.

My beloved is clever beyond words. She has already proved herself brave and resourceful.

Then—almost like a reward for his trust in his domi—he felt someone nearby call on the Wind Stones. It could only be his beloved. Relief poured through him.

Much as he wished he could fly to her side, he had tens of thousands here who needed his strength. He could not abandon them in the middle of a battle that he started. He turned his attention back to his own problems.

All the horrors within this camp were dead or safely contained underground. The camp’s crude defenses had been breached when Darkness dropped into the middle of it. The oni within it seemed to be focused on disorderly retreat.

“A straight line will be the shortest path,” Wolf said. “We will cut through the camp. We can see how Darkness fares as we head to Prince True Flame.”

Wraith Arrow nodded agreement to the plan.

A simple plan in words. In deed, it proved to be more complicated, as the swampy meadow had a meandering stream that fed unexpectedly deep pools. They moved from one damp grassy hummock to the next, sometimes taking large steps, other times jumping.

As they picked their way across the meadow, the whistling call of the tengu scout sounded nearby.

Wraith Arrow glanced to Wolf and then waved the hidden scout forward. The male glided down from the edge of the clearing to land silently before Wraith Arrow.

“The oni have fled the immediate area,” the male said as he knelt. “There is a massive force on their way from the other camps. It is a force in the thousands. It is traveling slower than we expected. They have cages that appear to contain some type of horrors. It seems as if transporting them is what is setting their pace. We believe that the oni from this camp are retreating to meet the reinforcements.”

“What of the Stone Clan?”

“Sunder and Forest Moss seem to be unconscious. Sunder’s people would not reply to our call, so we could not confer with them. The Wyverns that were guarding Forest Moss are moving to True Flame’s position—probably to report on the status of Sunder’s group.”

“The Stone Clan would not want outsiders near their unconscious domou,” Wraith Arrow murmured. “Wyvern or tengu.”

If all the other domana were unconscious, then they could not stand against the incoming force. They might need to retreat, at least until the others regained consciousness—assuming that they weren’t somehow permanently harmed by whatever hit them.

The tengu suddenly glanced toward the west, peering into the darkness. “Jin Wong calls the Flock! Domi wants all who can fight to head for Oakland immediately. She’s is angry and goes to fight.”

All? His beloved would only call for all twenty thousand of the tengu if she expected a serious invasion.

“Go to her,” Wolf said. “She will need all that she can gather to her side. Tell Maynard to send trains—we will send what we can to Oakland.”

The tengu nodded and took off.

 

On the far eastern side of the marsh, the land sloped up to a stockade of rough-hewn logs placed side by side, their ends sharpened. The oni had dug a trench before the wall—too wide to safely jump—and filled it with wood spikes coated with something organic that was no doubt poisonous. The sound of fighting had grown louder even as the rumble of thunder heralded the approaching thunderstorm.

“Smash it in?” Wraith Arrow suggested a course of action.

Windwolf shook his head. While that was the easiest route, he might hit the already besieged Stone Clan forces. They were without domana shields. “I’ll bring it down toward us. Stand ready.”

He hit the far side of the wall with a force strike. The logs sheared off and fell outward, bridging the trench. The stench of feces and blood flooded 

out of the camp, smelling like sewage running through a slaughter yard. Chaos reigned inside the high walled area with some oni standing and fighting while others were trying to flee.

Darkness had dropped from a gossamer into the camp with nine Hands of sekasha and a full company of laedin warriors. His people were gathered into a tight knot against the eastern wall. The sekasha stood shoulder to shoulder in a half circle. The laedin fought from behind them, protected by the overlapping shields of the holy warriors. There was no sign of Darkness. Wolf could only assume that the male lay on the ground behind his people. All attacks against them were ineffective. Direct attacks by the oni were dealt with either by the sekasha’s magically sharp swords or laedin spell arrows.

Darkness’s grizzled First sheathed his sword as Wolf approached; it signaled that the holy warrior expected the Wind Clan to honor their vows of peace for the duration of the war. The male was a legend of the Rebellion whom Wolf never thought he would meet: Ruin of Stone. Of the Stone Clan sekasha, only Tempered Steel was more highly thought of. He had the same unbending calm as Tempered Steel. Deep in enemy territory, literally back to the wall, his domana wounded or dead—and Ruin seemed unfazed. His face was splattered with blood but none of it seemed to be his own.

Intimidating as Ruin might be, Wolf was glad to be facing him instead of Jewel Tear’s proud and untested First, Tiger Eye.

“Something struck down Darkness,” Ruin said in greeting. “He seems unharmed but he is not conscious.”

“I believe it was the magical device that I showed Sunder. I was incapacitated for some time.” Wolf wasn’t sure how long that he had been unaware. It seemed only a few moments to him but it might have been several minutes. “The tengu report that Sunder and Forest Moss seem to be unconscious.”

He added in the information on the oni movement in the area.

“Darkness did not detect any nactka within the camp,” Ruin said. “But that matters little, given the range that the device could reach. We’ve cast a healing spell on Darkness to speed his recovery. He will be awake within the hour. Sunder’s Hands will do the same if hir was struck down.”

“I am joining Prince True Flame’s forces to give them protection,” Windwolf stated, leaving it open to the Stone Clan to choose what they would do.

Ruin nodded. “It would be wise. We will need to change our attack plan to deal with the loss of power. We should see that the prince is protected. His people have never fought without a domana at their back.”

Wolf had been alarmed that the Harbingers had been sent to Pittsburgh. He wondered now if the choice was orchestrated by Pure Radiance, who knew

that the forces sent to fight the oni would need to be able to do it without the strength of domana. The Wyvern’s First would have been the one with final say but Sword Strike had always been guided by Pure Radiance.

Wolf would consider it all for the best if it did not make him wonder why Pure Radiance had allowed the Stone Clan to send Earth Son, ...