This is it, he thought. The outpost that has housed generation after generation of Northwatch Legions.
There was so much history and emotion tied to the Crown Bluffs that Rogan couldn’t help but be overwhelmed in the shadow of their presence. While it truly was a stunning view, he could see more importantly that the location would be easily defendable. The narrow channel that flowed inland would prevent a large number of ships from infiltrating the island at one time, and defenders could easily position themselves on top of the wide cliffs to harry invaders from the seaside.
Rough stairs hewn into the side of the bluffs ran all the way to the top with roped-off landings at spaced intervals. A simple pulley system transported supplies in a bucket to the men patrolling there. The encampment, spread out resourcefully around the lake, consisted of two barracks for the soldiers, a dining hall, bathing stalls, and a small private dwelling for Commander Dismore.
Out in front of it all, the legionnaires of Troop 157 standing rigidly at attention to greet them.
“Look ahead, Airron!” Rogan shouted, pointing at an outhouse. “That is where you’ll be spending most of your time.”
Everyone within earshot laughed, including Airron whose punishment for his disappearing act cost him two weeks of latrine duty.
“Glad to be of service, my friends,” the Elf said, bowing dramatically with a sidelong glance at his hooded riding companion.
Rogan noticed the glance. He also knew as surely as he knew his own name that the figure riding next to Airron was Kiernan Everard. Knowing Kiernan as long as he had, he wasn’t surprised. He just wondered how long it would take until she was finally noticed and acknowledged by the others.
A legionnaire with the stripes of a lieutenant on his uniform, stepped out in front. “Welcome Commander! Welcome Troop 158!”
In response, each legionnaire of Troop 157 slammed fist to chest in perfect unison.
“We have a lot of work to do to be that precise,” Beck whispered out of the side of his mouth.
Rogan nodded in agreement. To think that this motley group of eighteen year olds could look like the regimented unit standing before him seemed farfetched, but he knew they would be. Dismore would make certain of it.
The commander rode forward and dismounted. “Thank you, Lieutenant Wilem.”
Dismore traded grips with the legionnaire and then looked back at the mounted recruits. “As first order of business, I must elect a lieutenant for Troop 158. As always, the journey north tells me much about my new company, and I am honored to tell you that your new lieutenant is…” Dismore paused. “Beck Atlan.”
In contrast to Troop 157, who extended a professional salute to Beck, Troop 158 dismounted in a disorderly fashion and pulled Beck from his horse, mussing his hair and offering him their raucous congratulations. Heath and Jon Anders simply stood back and watched. They were coming around, but not quite there yet.
Rogan grinned when Rory Greeley started hopping up and down excitedly. “I told you!” he shouted to no one in particular. “I just knew it would be him!”
Airron didn’t waste any time trying to exploit his friend’s position. “Hey, Lieutenant! Any chance you can help with the latrine duty?” he asked, grinning from ear to ear.
Beck smiled just as wide. “Sorry, Airron, but I think that the commander was totally justified in his punishment.”
“Huh?” Airron questioned with raised eyebrows.
Rogan listened in as Beck beckoned Airron closer and whispered “Maybe this will serve as a reminder not to be snakey…I mean…sneaky in the future.”
Rogan didn’t know what Beck was talking about, but assumed by his comment and the look on Airron’s face that he also knew that Kiernan was here. How could he not? They were family, after all. The only family Rogan had known since he was six years old and his own parents abandoned him. Like Kiernan, he felt restless, but he was also angry. Angry with Galen Starr for committing generations of shifters to exile, and angry with his parents for not loving him enough to stay by his side.
He often thought that there was more to the story and the truth of it lay hidden in some dark chamber of his mind. But whenever he felt close to remembering, the images would slip away into wisps of smoke. It was maddening that he could never latch on to any specific detail. If he could remember just one, it might help to recover the rest.
Some day, he promised himself, he would find those answers. Of course, it would be easier if they weren’t located hundreds of leagues away in his homeland of Deepstone.
“You coming, Rogan?” It was Beck.
He nodded and led his mount after the others.
It was late by the time both legion companies had eaten and were settled into the barracks for the evening. It was a tight fit, but necessary since Troop 157 wouldn’t be departing until first light the following morning.
Rogan watched as Kiernan’s slight form slipped into the building behind Airron. With a shake of his head, he stretched out on the cot assigned to him, closed his eyes and was asleep in seconds.
He was so tired that his mind refused to respond when he heard frantic shouts from outside that sent legionnaires rushing out of the doors of the barracks. Rogan sighed and sat up, surprised that light was spilling in through the windows.
Is it morning already?
He stood and took off running along with the rest of the legionnaires thinking as he did that for a journey that was supposed to be boring and uneventful, there was a plenty of screaming going on.
***
Beck was the first one out of the barracks, and he scanned the area for the source of trouble. A movement on top of the bluffs caught his eye, and he looked up just as one of the patrolling legionnaires came into view and issued a loud warning signal on his bugle with one long and two short bursts.
Enemy advancing.
What? What enemy?
Three legionnaires of Troop 157 pushed roughly past him and started up the steps in the cliff at a sprint. Dismore rushed out of his private quarters thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his uniformed shirt and left it unbuttoned as he made his way to the top of the bluff. Beck followed behind, vigorously resisting the desire to give him a helpful shove along the way.
“Demon’s breath,” whispered the winded commander, emerging onto the wide platform built on the cliff top.
Beck stepped around Dismore and put a hand above his eyes to shade his view. His breath caught in his throat. An armada of ships surrounded the Crown Bluffs. Large, black, three-masted vessels.
He had an instant to wonder if the ships could be friendly when shifted fire careened toward the bluff.
A waist-high stone wall built into the other side of the walkway—most likely designed for safety purposes rather than defense—provided the only barrier between him and the fire, and he dove behind it.
“Topside!” Dismore bellowed. “All legionnaires to the bluff!”
Rogan hurried over to Dismore in a crouch, snapping both arms out away from his sides as fire roared to life in each hand. “Commander! With your permission, sir!”
Dismore looked at Rogan with a bewildered expression. Despite all of the years of tours and training, the commander seemed wholly unprepared for an actual attack. Beck doubted that the man thought that this day would ever come. He doubted that there was a shifter in the last six generations that believed this day would ever come.
“Yes, yes. Go ahead, Radek. Hurry!”
“Stand back,” Rogan barked as he stood upright and shifted a large, sizzling lightning bolt into existence. He ran a few steps, spun in the air, and used the momentum of the spin to heave the fire toward the nearest ship. The bolt sliced through the air with a loud whoosh and on its downward arc made direct contact with one of the ship’s enormous sails. The material caught fire immediately and spread to the wooden decking below. Men closest to the flames screamed and jumped from the burning ship into the ocean and began swimming toward the beach. Several of the black vessels were alre
ady lowering smaller skiffs over their sides, sending them after the men in the water and others yet directly for Massan shores.
The atmosphere turned chaotic and charged with the experienced Troop 157 running along the platform and shouting orders and the inexperienced Troop 158 floundering about in confusion.
Fortunately, Dismore seemed to have finally recovered somewhat. “Fireshifters to me!”
Soldiers quickly formed at the wall and once the order was given, volleyed fire down on the enemy.
“Archers!”
Legionnaires were still scrambling up the stairs, but several archers appeared and wasted no time in taking up their bows and firing at Dismore’s signal.
Beck peered down at the invaders. As the first of them made their way to shore, he shrank back in horror. They weren’t men at all, but enormous, thick-skinned creatures with one eye! He never could have imagined that such monsters existed in the world, and watched dejectedly as the archers’ arrows bounced harmlessly off their hides. He shuddered and then ducked as a ball of friendly fire flew close by over his head.
Taking a chance, he popped up from behind his cover and leaned far over the stone wall to look at the cliff face. He quickly found what he was looking for and thrust his hand out toward several large granite boulders embedded in the wall below him. The earth obediently responded to his summons and the dirt beneath the rocks shifted away in a controlled maelstrom of dust. Beck’s legs and arms ached from his position hanging head down from the wall, but he couldn’t proceed any faster for fear that he would disturb the foundation too much and cause a collapse.
His face a hardened mask of grime and sweat, he ignored the shouts and explosions above and continued shifting until three of the boulders finally came loose and tumbled down the cliff face.
Swinging back up to the safety of the bluff, he saw the first creature emerge from the ocean without noticing the danger. One of the boulders crashed into him with deadly accuracy, pounding him into the sand.
The second boulder went wide, spinning harmlessly into the ocean.
Another invader stopped to help pull one of his comrades from the water when the third granite missile hurtled into them, killing both instantly.
A blinding flare of fire suddenly erupted further out to sea, and Beck had to throw an arm up to shield his eyes. When he could, he peered back and focused on a man in black standing on the prow of one of the ships, cloak billowing out behind him.
He was human, Beck noticed, unlike the creatures that had come to shore, and also a magic user. That much was obvious as his hands were held out in front of him shifting a considerable amount of fire.
Beck turned and saw Rogan’s narrowed and confident gaze on the man as he, too, shifted fire. With a loud hiss, he shaped a fiery club that he held in one hand and twirled in anticipation of slamming any fire balls back to the magic user.
The man stared back just as sure. He separated his fire into balls and began juggling them in the air—one of Rogan’s favorite tricks. The balls spun in an orange blur above the shifter’s head, creating a vortex that ultimately coalesced into one huge bright orb of fire.
The Northwatch Legion stopped to stare in shock as the fiery sphere twisted and morphed into the face of the creatures with one eye now swarming ashore. Only this image was even more grotesquely deformed with two rows of jagged teeth through which a serpent tongue darted in and out. Unexpectedly, the head turned toward the legionnaires lining the bluff and sped toward them, fiery jaws snapping.
“Bloody amazing,” Rogan said in awe at the man’s skill in fireshifting.
Catching sight of the danger hurtling toward their position on the bluffs, several legionnaires screamed in fright and ran toward the stone stairs on the other side of the cliff. Beck watched as the big earthshifter, Heath, pushed his fellow soldiers out of the way to get to the front of the line. One pushed back and Heath slipped from the edge, plummeting to the ground below.
Beck shook his head remorsefully. There was no way that the earthshifter could have survived that fall.
Realizing that the fight was going to take place on the southern side of the bluffs anyway, he screamed out to start more of the soldiers moving toward the stairs and away from the dangerous fireshifting. “Legionnaires! Move! Down to the camp! Everyone move!”
Where is Dismore?
Beck turned back to Rogan just in time to see him take a swing with his club at the head of the fire monster. Regrettably, it managed to evade the strike and turned its jaws instead on one of the legionnaires heading for the stairs and swallowed him whole. The screams as the young man burned were unbearable for Beck to hear, and he was grateful when Rogan honed his club into a sword and ended the legionnaire’s agony.
The grisly scene caused more legionnaires to panic and two of them slipped down the seaside cliff face and onto the sand below. Beck ran to the stone wall to look down. Neither legionnaire survived, but that didn’t stop one of the creatures from ripping apart their corpses.
Furious, Beck reached out his hand and the sand beneath the invader began to liquefy and pull at his boots. The creature’s one eye widened in terror as he tried to escape, but the shifted sand held him fast and he sank lower and lower into the earth. The doomed invader’s comrades stood by helplessly as the sand buried him up to his neck. Beck turned away only when the beast fully disappeared, silencing his screams forever.
Beck ran for the stairs. Several of the intruders had made it through the channel on their skiffs and were engaging the legionnaires in battle.
Time and motion suddenly slowed for Beck, and his feet rooted in place as he looked from scene to terrifying scene. Earthshifters with little magic to call forth were on the ground taking on the larger invaders in a physical fight to the death. Bodyshifters were summoning their fiercest forms to tear at the trespassers with sharp teeth and claws.
In time that felt mired in thick syrup, Beck struggled to turn his head to the left and saw that Rogan was still battling the fire monster, muscles straining and arms and face blistered by the alien flames. Farther down the platform, Beck finally found Commander Dismore. He was lying face up with his eyes open and a hole in his chest where a ball of fire had slammed into him.
For the first time in three hundred years, the defenses at the Crown Bluffs had been breached. Legionnaires were dying. Young men Beck’s age, most of whom had grown up in Parsis and attended the academy with him.
Dead.
His friends.
Through the haze, Beck faintly heard Rory crying out to him from the stairs several feet below. “Lieutenant! We need help!”
Beck fought to turn his head to look over once again at his best friend. Rogan continued his solitary fight, breaking down the monster with every mighty swing he took. He was the last one standing on the cliff now, and if Beck left him, he would be utterly alone.
Rogan must have sensed his hesitation, because he turned to him and screamed, “Go, Beck, I’ve got this!”
Rogan’s words brought time slamming back into place and Beck’s body jerked in response. That was when he remembered that Kiernan was down there somewhere. He nodded to Rogan and raced down the steps, passing Rory in his headlong flight into the fight.
The first person he saw as he leapt from the stairs was Airron. The Elf was sprinting to reach Jon Anders locked in mortal combat with one of the giants. By the look of the creature’s open wounds, Jon had put up a good fight but the earthshifter now had his back up against the cliff wall. He was leaning into it in exhaustion, sword point dropping to the ground.
The invader grinned and made an aggressive maneuver toward Jon.
Behind him, Airron sprang and shifted midair into one of the great black wolves of the Grayan Forest, sailing onto the creature’s back and digging his claws into its body. The giant bellowed in pain and twisted around to grab at the wolf clinging to its broad shoulders. The distraction provided Jon the opportunity he needed, and he took it, shoving his sword into the single ey
e of his combatant. The creature fell over dead, and the wolf jumped free of the falling enemy and grinned.
Beck hurried over.
“We have to get out of here…Lieutenant,” Jon said tiredly. “We’re no match for these invaders, and we have to save those still alive.”
Beck nodded. “How many have we lost?”
“Over half,” said Jon.
He was right. Retreat was the only viable option at this point. Beck approached the wolf. “Where’s Kiernan? Have you seen her?” The black wolf shook his head and then loped away, hopefully to find her.
“Anders, I have to go back for Rogan. Gather up the legionnaires and meet me at the top of the valley where we first arrived.”
The blonde earthshifter nodded. “Retreat!” he yelled, running through the melee. “Retreat!”
Beck studied the battlefield and at the same time held out his arms and shifted the earth. The dirt and stones ran up and over his body in a wave creating an earthen suit of armor. When he had finished, a two-inch layer of stone covered every part of his body except his eyes. “Kiernan!” he shouted over the screams of battle. “Kiernan!”
He spotted a small, hooded legionnaire near the barracks fighting one of the monsters. By the expert lunges and slices, Beck knew it to be Kiernan even before the hood slipped off revealing her blonde hair.
Howling with rage, he charged toward her, but was lifted off his feet when one of the invaders struck him from behind. He fell into the dirt, but rolled away just in time to avoid a powerful kick. He put his hands underneath him and summoned the earth to lift him upright. With his feet now planted squarely underneath him, he swung a mighty fist of stone at his foe and knocked him several feet into the air and up against the cliff wall, dead.
Another challenger rushed him and Beck ducked under his grasp and took him down at the knees. He then seized the giant by one arm and one leg and swung with all of his super strength before letting go. The body crashed into what was once Dismore’s quarters, caving in one wall.
Searching for Kiernan again, Beck was relieved to see Bajan at her side and the creature she had been fighting unmoving on the ground.
Starting toward her once again, he was knocked to the ground a second time by a large explosion that rocked the morning air. He looked up at a sky littered with tiny sparks of fire and watched the lethal embers fall down onto the rooftops of the buildings in the camp and start to take hold.