The Gates of Memory, стр. 87
The first arrows came without warning, shot from invaders hiding in the trees. Brandt never even saw where they came from. One moment they were walking, the next a half dozen arrows hung frozen in the air before them.
Hanns waved his hand, and the arrows spun and returned on the lines they’d come from. Brandt heard at least two archers fall from their perches.
The Falari tried again, but again the arrows stopped in midair, and again Hanns returned them to the archers who’d launched them.
Two attempts seemed to be enough to teach the Falari their lesson. The war party responded in typical Falari fashion. In Brandt’s own experience, the Falari rarely retreated. When they faced an overwhelming force, they simply redoubled their effort.
It typically made them fearsome foes, but today that instinct worked against them.
The war party gathered on the road before the imperials, lining up in rows with bows drawn. On command, two dozen arrows cut through the space between the combatants.
And froze a dozen paces in front of Hanns. They fell to the ground.
If Brandt had been commanding the Falari, he would have ordered the retreat.
He heard the emperor’s skill ringing in his head, his own affinity responding to the use of the gates. Brandt heard the songs of the elements, all playing at different strengths, all coursing through Hanns. The emperor’s feats were a combination of awareness, control, and unbelievable power. The battle was over before it started.
But the Falari didn’t think that way.
The Falari dropped their bows, drawing knives and swords. With a shouted command, they charged.
Hans came to a stop, standing calmly in the center of the road. Brandt heard the low hum of stone once again building, and the power of it squeezed his head like a melon. Ahead of them, stone of all shapes and sizes lifted from the road and the surrounding area, cracking with a rolling thunder that echoed in the valley. When the echoes faded, hundreds of small pieces of granite hung in the air like a cloud.
The Falari charge faltered, expressions ranging from anger to confusion to fear. This wasn’t battle as the Falari understood it. They’d eliminated affinities from their people, and even in their fight against imperials, affinities rarely made a difference.
And they didn’t understand the power of the gate.
Hanns released the cloud. It burst forward, none of the stones aimed at any particular target. Instead, they were all flung at their enemies like an angry swarm of insects.
The result devastated the invading Falari. The force of the impacts drove those in the front from their feet, the equivalent force of being shot by a dozen blunt and powerful bolts at once. The only people who survived were those near the back of the charge, and many of those looked grievously wounded.
Brandt looked to the emperor. Any worries he’d had about Hanns’ readiness vanished. His ruler hadn’t even broken a sweat, and he looked upon the remaining Falari with a cold disdain.
They continued walking the road to Weylen’s village, but the outcome had already been decided. Those who survived the charge ran in terror, but the battle had been visible to everyone in the valley. Before long, more warriors came down to the road, but they were Weylen’s fighters, come to report that every invader in the valley was running.
Weylen’s village had been freed, and it hadn’t cost them a single allied life.
46
Fear had many different faces. Some Alena recognized, but in the aftermath of Hanns’ display of power, she discovered an unfamiliar one.
In her travels, she sometimes forgot that she was a child of the empire, exposed to certain beliefs. Within those familiar borders, affinities were largely accepted as a part of life. Limited by the cost as they were, they didn’t often mean much. But they existed. While the depth of Hanns’ gate-assisted abilities surprised her, her surprise was little more than an issue of scale.
But the Falari didn’t have her daily experiences. To them, Hanns’ attacks were a power straight from the cautionary tales of their ancestors.
Today, Alena saw the fear of a people whose legends had come to life. Legends that ended in disaster.
She wondered if Hanns and the other imperials saw as she did. Hanns grinned, no doubt pleased he had freed the town without the loss of friendly life. From a military perspective, she supposed, it was a great victory.
But Hanns had lost something, perhaps more valuable than a few lives, in his attack.
The others might not see, but she did. The Falari warriors avoided the clump of imperials, several of them making small gestures she took to be warding signs. Hanns might have won the battle, but he very well might have lost his allies.
Alena watched Weylen navigate the tricky waters of this fragile alliance. Of course he was grateful that his town was free. Horrified by the means or not, no leader wished for the deaths of his people. So Weylen welcomed the imperials and their Falari allies into the village, filling every open room with a warm and exhausted body.
Greetings were exchanged, but it was agreed that the traditional welcome feast be postponed for a day. Those who had escaped Faldun all appeared to be sleepwalking, and those besieged within the village still jumped every time a cloud passed overhead, worried it might be a flight of arrows. Alena suspected another motive as well: another day would allow Weylen to speak with his people, to calm them and discuss Hanns’ presence.
Alena and the others made no complaint about the extra rest. Toren received better healing in the village, and Alena collapsed into the bed given to her. For the first time in more days than she cared to count, she felt safe, and until this moment, she hadn’t realized how much she needed that feeling. Despite the sun still being in the sky, she fell asleep the moment