although he wore the value of half a city in the sigils upon his robes, capable of deflecting the strongest blast Nona might throw his way, his protections couldn’t save him from himself.
Nona sucked into her flesh all that the Path had given her. Her skin wanted to blister and bubble away, her bones wanted to ignite. She screamed her denial and launched herself at Kettle’s back. She brought the nun to the floor a yard before the first of the softmen. The legendary impassivity of the softmen cracked at the sight of one enemy tackling another. Shaved brows rose in momentary surprise. Nona shook with barely contained power, pale violet flame licked across her skin and versions of herself kept trying to escape along their own courses. She hauled them all back in. The pain made her want to faint but it was too cruel to allow any such relief.
With a sob Nona used her Path-born strength to throw Kettle one-armed, aiming her like a skittle to take out Bhenta even as she slashed at the first softman to intercept her. Both Grey sisters went tumbling towards the pavilion wall. Already the Path-mage shone brighter than the day, shuddering with power he couldn’t contain. Nona followed her friends, her feet tearing deep gouges in the ground as she hunted for acceleration. A pain-stick lashed out at her but the Path’s invisible armour turned it away.
The detonation behind Nona came at the same moment she landed on top of her sisters, still tangled together on the grass. She spread her arms as the shockwave rippled overhead. A light, whiter and more intense than that of the sun, lit the material of the tent walls as the shockwave shredded them in strange geometric patterns. They hung there for an instant and in the next they were gone. The explosion that scattered the Path-mage reduced the perimeter of guards outside the tent to a red mist, and then shot that mist at the surrounding army who fell like corn before the scythe for fifty yards on all sides. A moment later the oil stores went up with a woof and a firestorm swirled skyward around the catapults.
All about them the ground lay scorched and smoking, the only green where Nona, armoured in her own Path-energies, had lain. She mourned the loss of the Path-mage’s robe. If he had worn it inside out the garment might have survived. With a groan she rolled off Kettle who in turn rolled off Bhenta. The Path’s energy still burned in her, demanding release.
They lay near the centre of a circle of destruction. Nona had never seen someone walk the Path and fail to own what they took. She never wanted to see it again.
She found her voice. ‘Get back to the others.’ The confusion would hide their escape.
Without giving either woman a chance to respond Nona jumped to her feet and took off at a flat sprint towards the Scithrowl assault massed at the base of Verity’s great wall. In the past three years of intensive training under Sister Pan’s direction Nona had grown into her heritage and learned all manner of ways to shape and master the power with which the Path filled her. She still couldn’t walk the Path twice in two days without enormous risk though, and so she aimed to put what she had now to good use.
The speed the Path gave her was like the swiftness a steep slope lends running legs. At first it was just that the running was effortless and far faster than anything you were capable of. And then it would almost be like flying and your feet would beat as rapid a tempo against the ground as your fingers could drum on a table. And almost immediately after that you would know that you had no control and that very soon you would fall and it was going to hurt. A lot.
Nona broke free of the waiting horde before any of them could tear their attention away from the carnage centred on the pavilion. She crossed half the open ground ahead of the walls before the first arrow zipped past her ear.
She crashed into the backs of the soldiers massed at the base of the closest siege tower and broke several of them before their bodies arrested her fearsome momentum. A dozen arrows hammered around her, taking down several more soldiers. She began to weave then, still clinging to the Path’s power, refusing its demands to