First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)

He and the Queen regained their windstreams at almost the same instant, and she let out a shriek of frustration - cut off midway by another privacy windcrafting. She whirled on him, naked but for a cloak, her sword in hand, her eyes glittering. Then she reversed the direction of her windstream, slowing her forward momentum.

Just as her velocity came to an instant's standstill, there was the hiss of an arrow loosed from a bow in the darkness above Tavi. The sound gave the vord Queen more than enough time to react, and her sword rose to cut the arrow from the air. The missile splintered upon her blade.

The impact shattered the salt-crystal head of the arrow, and the Queen screamed as her wind furies were ripped and shredded by the weapon. Her windstream collapsed. She fell to the ground and landed on all fours, falling into an instant, inhumanly flexible roll that saved her from the swift sphere of white-hot fire Tavi called forth at the point of her impact.

Kitai and the Knights Pisces swept down and began strafing the Queen in twos and threes, flashing past and loosing arrow after arrow. She dodged with contemptuous speed and began shrieking once more to awaken the sleeping warriors - Kitai's arrow had disrupted Tavi's privacy windcrafting with the same vicious efficacy it had the Queen's windstream.

The nearby warriors stirred at once.

Tavi ground his teeth in frustration. If they allowed the Queen to fly, she would almost certainly waken all the sleeping vord, and odds were good that she might escape entirely - but using salt to keep her grounded also prevented Tavi from using the windcrafting that would prevent her from waking the other vord. If she managed to rouse enough of them, she could disappear into the swarm, and they might never be able to find her, much less bring lethal amounts of power to bear upon her.

Tavi glanced back. They hadn't flown for long, but it had taken them a mile or more away from the cloud-shrouded host. No help would be coming from there in time to do him any good.

She shrieked again, and, out of pure frustration, Tavi threw another fire-sphere at her. She darted out of it easily and slapped aside another arrow from one of the strafing Knights as she went. Tavi's strike missed her but caught half a dozen mantis warriors in its blast, charring them to twisted, skeletal shapes.

The vord Queen whirled to look at him, and Tavi felt the last thing he had expected: His watercrafting senses were pounded with an emotional assault - pure rage, the rage of a mother whose children are endangered.

Yes, he thought. This is what I needed.

"Aleran!" Kitai screamed.

He whipped his head up to see Kitai pointing toward the east. The sky, now the pale blue harbinger of sunrise, was thickly dotted with hundreds or thousands of dark shapes moving toward them - vordknights, they had to be. They would reach them in moments, and if that happened, there would be no way to bring enough power to bear upon the Queen.

The fliers of the First Aleran could not possibly stand against so many vordknights. Though their discipline and furycraft might make each Knight Aeris the equal of a dozen vord fliers, there were more than enough of the enemy on the way simply to overwhelm them. If he ordered them to stand against that, they would not survive. Their deaths would serve only to buy time.

But he needed the time.

He flashed the orders to Sir Callum by hand signal: Engage and hold the incoming enemy to the east.

By then, it was just light enough for Tavi to see the expression on Callum's face. He looked to the east and saw what was coming. He became pale, his expression twisting into a grimace of fear. He closed his eyes for a second and turned to Tavi. He banged his fist against his armored chest, meeting his gaze, and nodded slightly - whether in agreement or farewell, Tavi did not know. Then Callum began passing orders to the fliers, gathering each of them up as they finished their runs on the Queen.

As they did, Tavi continued hurling flame into the ranks around the vord Queen, killing dozens of mantis warriors, each blast earning him a fresh flash of her pure rage. Kitai took up the slack of the Knights as they ceased shooting at the Queen, her hand flying from quiver to bowstring, her arrows flashing with the supernatural speed and accuracy of a woodcrafter. The Queen was an elusive target - many arrows missed altogether, and those that stayed on their mark inevitably met with her blade. The Queen kept on shrieking, and several thousand mantis warriors were on the move, gathering up around her.

There was an enormous roar of collected windstreams as Callum and his men streaked out to engage the incoming vordknights, and a moment later Kitai switched to firecrafting as well. Bright spheres of blue-white light exploded beside Tavi's scarlet-white firecraftings, chewing a pair of broad holes in the ground. Mantis warriors screamed in agony and died in dozens as they were engulfed in the flames.

The Queen let out another howl of rage and turned toward Kitai, one hand raised and gathering a fistful of flame. As soon as Tavi saw that the Queen's attention was off him, he altered course to soar around behind her and, even as she sent the firecrafting at Kitai, Tavi hurled one of his own at the Queen.

The vord's spectacular reflexes saved her from Tavi's attack, though the warriors immediately around her were scoured from the face of the land. But the dodge had cost her - her own firecrafting exploded yards and yards short of Kitai.

The Queen shifted her aim to attack Tavi, only to have Kitai emulate the tactic Tavi had just used. As the Queen threw, Kitai's fire blast tore into her, forcing her to dodge and ruining her aim. Tavi felt his mouth turning up into a wolfish smile. If they could keep the battle moving this way, they would have her - and the vord Queen had to realize that every bit as much as Tavi did. Which meant that any second now she would...

The Queen shrieked again in anger and flung herself airborne. For a moment, Tavi thought that her wind furies were still in a state of disruption and that she wasn't going to have enough lift to fly - but then a vortex like a small tornado abruptly gathered beneath her, tossing her own brood about like toys, and she came rushing up at them at terrible speed, a wave of raw anger pulsing through the air before her as she flew straight toward Kitai.

Kitai set another salt-headed arrow to her bow, drew, and calmly waited until the last instant to loose it. The arrow leapt from the bow.

The vord Queen snatched it out of the air with her left hand, turned her wrist in a sinuous movement too swift to follow, and drove the tip toward Kitai's throat. Kitai lifted an arm in a desperate block, and the salt-crystal tip drove through her forearm and began to emerge from the other side before the arrow's slender shaft snapped. The blow still drove her forearm up against her mail, and the protruding portion of bloodied salt crystal was powdered to grains against it.