but pride made you stay. I’m hoping self-preservation will yet see you go. Neither of you is any use if you’re dead. Leave. Now. Fight another day.”
Ran-jar-din drew a handspan of his long glass sword. “I should—”
“Indris is right.” Far-ad-din’s amethyst eyes were sad, the light almost gone from them. “This drama is lost to us. Indris, Shar—will you and your warriors come with us?”
“It’s too late for that,” Indris murmured. He looked sideways at Shar, who nodded her assent. “This position will be overrun in an hour or so. You go. We’ll cover your retreat. Follow the plan, and we’ll meet up with you as soon as we can.”
“I’m not leaving,” Ran-jar-din spat. He took his spear from where it rested on the table, its long slender blade like a sliver of glowing topaz. Expression fixed and angry, the young heir gestured to his own guard, whose glass helms clouded, then displayed leering skulls with burning eyes. Ran-jar-din bent his knee to his father, then stood. “I’ll redeem our Great House, either by my blood or my victory. We will be remembered, Father.”
“You will do no such thing!” Far-ad-din thundered. His skin and eyes flared and then faded. “Indris…your sister’s mate…will do what needs to be done. Muster your guard. We are retreating into the Rōmarq as planned.”
“I think not.” Ran-jar-din curled his lip at his father. He gave Indris a withering glance. Without a further word, Ran-jar-din and his company of war-troupers flickered into translucency as they sprinted into the fray.
Indris did not allow Far-ad-din the luxury of delay. Within moments the Seethe rahn and his personal guard were crossing the sullen, black-silted waters of the Anqorat River. Once his father-in-law had made good his retreat, Indris gathered a phalanx of Seethe on the east bank of the Anqorat. Soon after, the army of the Great Houses was upon them. Indris’s spear flickered. He used his edged shield as much as a weapon as for defense. His eyes burned with the disentropy he channeled. His voice boomed above the din. Shrieked. Crooned. Words of power laid his enemies low. A swarm of yellow-white butterflies, spun from light, cascaded around him. Where they touched, they set off explosions that left his enemies reeling. Beside him Shar, focused and lethal, used her war-chanter’s song to bolster the hearts of their comrades, while causing their enemies to cower and turn from the sudden fear that deluged them.
All Indris needed to do was buy time. To make himself as appealing a target as he could while Far-ad-din fled westward across the Rōmarq.
Indris’s mind cascaded with numbers as he calculated the force required to raise Abstraction Wards. Layers of rotating mystic defenses, like the tumblers in a lock, formed around him and those nearby. The light yellowed inside the layered field. Sound dulled. Soon enough, the air smelled of lightning storms. Indris looked out through the sepia haze. The Abstraction Wards refracted the world beyond, much like peering through running water, though not enough for him to misinterpret the danger of the predicament they were in. Concussions from the enemy, both arcane and mundane, hammered against the geometric puzzles of his defenses. They struck with arrows, swords, axes, and disentropy, causing the wards to ripple, like a pond into which stones had been thrown. The wards would not last long against such a bombardment. But they did not need to.
After almost half an hour, the exterior wards began to crack, then puff away in motes of dirty light. The next layer followed within fifteen minutes. Facing the inevitable, Indris nodded to the Seethe to raise the unmarked blue pennon that was their signal for surrender.
Rather than anger their enemies further, Indris deconstructed his remaining wards with a thought. Unfiltered light streamed down once more. Enemy soldiers jostled about, weapons quivering in an agitated, blood-smeared thicket.
Officers in the red-and-black armor of the Great House of Erebus, riding sweat-and-gore-streaked harts, forced their way through the throng.
“I’m daimahjin-Indris,” the warrior-mage said as he stepped forward, hands extended to either side in a display of peace. Daimahjin. Warrior and mage. Scholar. Of the highest caste in Avān society. Indris wanted them to think twice about harming him or those with him. “I offer my surrender to Rahn-Näsarat fa Ariskander, Arbiter of the Change, as per the Teshri’s code and measure of sanctioned war. We’ll come with you peacefully. There’s no need for further violence.”
The officers divided the captives wordlessly. Shar frowned at Indris as she was disarmed