Chapter 436 — The Magic Barrier of Boulder Fortress

Ever since the last raiding party sent out from the fortress had come limping back, mauled and shattered, the mood inside Boulder Fortress had sunk to its lowest ebb.

Knights in gleaming plate, proud and imposing, had led wave after wave of soldiers out to intercept the Cecil men, and each time they had dragged themselves back inside the walls leaving only their own dead behind; and still the Cecil army crept closer by the day—two days ago they had been somewhere near the hills, and today their banners stood upon the plain, as though nothing in the world could stop them.

The southern nobles, for their part, showed themselves badly shaken. Having had their nerve broken once already, they grew restless at every report of the Cecil advance, and their reaction only sharpened the psychological strain on the garrison—any clear-eyed observer could see that it was precisely the presence of these southern nobles that magnified the threat of the Cecil army and corroded the fortress's morale.

Sir Marchi had even been obliged to speak to the southern nobles in person before they would moderate their bearing and settle down, and stop unsettling everyone else; yet the fact that the atmosphere in the fortress was worsening by the day could not be altered.

On this day the Cecil host finally came to a halt on the plain south of Boulder Fortress and began to pitch camp; and the mages watching the plain through their mage-eyes soon brought back a report that was even more disquieting:

The Cecil men had occupied a height southwest of the plain and had begun setting up some enormous magical mechanism upon it.

It was a place far beyond the range of the fortress's trebuchets—beyond the range of any mage tower, even.

In the inner city district of Boulder Fortress, inside a brightly lit tavern, a stubble-jawed man slammed his tankard down on the table with a "thud," heedless of the beer slopping across the boards, and bellowed, reeking of drink: "That's Skyfire, that is! Skyfire! I know what the Cecil men are up to—I saw it from a distance... with that thing they'll be inside the fortress before long... not a soul will live through it!"

Then the man lifted his cup, drained the last of the beer in great gulps, and shouted drunkenly, "Another!"

He was a down-at-heels knight from the south who had fled into the fortress with the southern nobles and had been knocking about the place for several dozen days now. A knight has some savings, and carries a little gold and silver on him, but he can never match the lordly nobles who can sing and dance the night away in their castle—so he could only get drunk in this noisy, squalid tavern, using alcohol to numb nerves that had been shattered.

Since the Cecil men appeared, such broken knights had been turning up ever more often in the taverns and brothels, and in the old days no one would have troubled them; but today at last someone had had enough—a local knight long stationed at Boulder Fortress surged to his feet, seized the down-at-heels knight by the collar, and hauled him bodily out of his seat: "You coward! What use are you, except to drink here and talk defeat?!"

The drunken knight glanced at the hand gripping his collar, and the muscles of his face twisted into a strange smile: "You're no coward, then—when the Cecil men's Skyfire comes down, you can go up there and try it..."

The local knight's face contorted with rage; instinctively he raised his fist high, meaning to teach this southerner—who was spreading disorder and sapping morale in the fortress—a lesson. Ever since the southern nobles and their retainers had taken refuge inside the walls, friction had been steadily accumulating between the local soldiers and these "outsiders," and now, in this hour of bleak morale, it seemed at last to have reached the breaking point. But before the local knight's fist could fall, a faint rumble, as though from very far away, suddenly reached them.

And then a strange keening shriek came through the night sky, as though something heavy were hurtling toward them at great speed.

In the instant the local knight stood frozen, the southern knight he had grabbed let out a grotesque cry and did something that left everyone dumbstruck: wrenching free of the hand at his collar, he dove under the table at once, shouting at the top of his voice, "Skyfire's coming down! The Cecil men's magic!"

Nor was he alone—in other corners of the tavern, several southern knights and dissolute soldiers likewise dove for the nearest tables, shouting as they scrambled, and what they shouted was, almost without exception, Skyfire and the Cecil men's magic—

The local knight was dumbfounded for a moment. He had meant to berate this craven wretch before him, in whom no trace of a knight's dignity remained, to berate him for such degradation—but then a deafening explosion came from the direction of the southern wall, a blast that shook even the tavern's timber frame and sent great sheets of dust sifting down from the rafters. In an instant the tavern was in pandemonium.

The southern knight poked his head out from under the table and shouted into the chaos: "Skyfire! Skyfire's coming down! Find somewhere to hide! Get down on the ground! Don't stand there running about!"

"Calm down! Order! Take up your weapons and report to the wall!" the local knight howled himself hoarse. "Stop running wild!"

But the second and third explosions that followed on its heels reduced his efforts to nothing; blast after blast rolled in from the south of the fortress, and the last of them seemed to burst directly over everyone's heads.

And yet, amid this unbroken succession of explosions—as spectacular as high-order spells cast by master mages—the southern knight under the table had somehow crawled back out, and out with him came the other southern knights and soldiers who had found cover or thrown themselves flat at the first instant.

"Something's off about that noise..." the southern knight muttered to himself. "It isn't landing on the ground... it isn't coming down inside the city..."

The local knight could not make out the low murmur at all; he bellowed through the pandemonium, "What did you say!?"

"I said something's off! The Skyfire isn't hitting us!"

The southern knight suddenly shouted aloud, and then, to the astonishment of everyone in the tavern, several southerners abruptly rushed out the door.

They burst into the open ground outside the tavern, forced down the fear crawling along their nerves, and raised their eyes toward where the Skyfire had exploded—and then they saw it: the vast barrier that shrouded all of Boulder Fortress.

A hazy corona of light rose from the edge of Boulder Fortress's dark, solemn walls; upon those walls countless magical runes blazed and glittered, and the energy barrier enveloping the whole fortress, sustained by those runes, rippled and shimmered with flowing colour. Through that translucent halo the southerners could clearly see several pale blue streaks of light cutting swiftly across the darkness and striking the barrier—or the distant walls beyond.

A thunderous explosion rang out, and the southern knight and his companions instinctively sagged where they stood—but the blast only surged up outside the barrier. The vast flare of light was like some grand firework conjured by an illusion mage: deafening, shaking the air, raising layer upon layer of radiance across the surface of the energy barrier, and yet never passing through into what it sheltered.

More pale blue streaks streaked across the night sky and fell upon the barrier and the walls, but the southern knight and his companions had steadied themselves. They stared wide-eyed as those dreadful Skyfires burst outside the barrier, and the fear on their faces was at last slowly replaced by wild joy.

The terrible "Skyfire" had been stopped.

The legendary ancient magic walls of Boulder Fortress had proven their might.

Inside the fortress, it was safe!