It was just that, at the moment, with three vord having mounted the wall and with, oh dear, one of them looking directly at him, it did not seem to Ehren like a sound approach to warfare. He also suddenly thought that it would have been a fine idea to have accepted the set of lorica he had been offered yesterday. Thirty or forty pounds of steel over his fragile flesh (which had seemed impossibly cumbersome for the use of a man who was essentially a glorified rapid-messenger boy, a few hours before) suddenly sounded splendid.
A fourth vord appeared at the top of the wall, and Ehren realized that it was too late for the Aleran counterstroke to save them, even if it happened at that instant. They had to retake the wall, and right now, or the vord would kill the men all around him - and quite likely Ehren himself. Worse, they would kill Gram, one of only a few firecrafters with the capability to craft a flame hot enough for the counterstroke. His death was unacceptable.
A block of legionares followed the Knight Terra in an attack on the first two vord to reach the top, but the third swept a legionare from the wall and into the sea of scythes below it. The man's screams were swallowed as abruptly as if he had fallen into water. The vord's glittering eyes locked onto Ehren, and the mantis-form warrior scuttled forward, scythes flashing.
One of the deadly weapons plunged down at Ehren, who hopped back out of reach, and shouted, "Gram, watch out!" He put a shoulder into Gram's hip and shoved him roughly back from the oncoming warrior.
The movement cost him precious instants and inches. He did not quite evade the mantis warrior's reach, and a darting scythe plowed a bloody furrow down one shoulder blade, skipped a bit where his body arched in instinctive pain and reaction, then bit into him again as it sliced along one buttock.
Ehren staggered and went to one knee, knowing instinctively that he could not possibly remain there and sure that he could not escape the reach of the mantis. The legionares were coming, as eager as he had been to close the breach, but they were an endless second away.
Ehren flung himself backward, toward the vord, tucking his body into a roll as he went. He felt the scythe flash down at him and miss, digging into the stone of the wall.
Ehren stopped underneath the body of the vord, which began dancing about, trying to thrust its scythes beneath it, but unable to reach him. Ehren reached out a hand toward a fallen legionare's spear, which lay nearby. His woodcrafting was nothing to write home about, but it was more than sufficient to bend the haft of the spear a little, and when he released it, to allow its elastic spring to send it clattering into the reach of his hand.
He seized the spear, rolled to one side very quickly, and barely dodged the scythe that plunged down at him from the vord now mounting the wall beside his opponent. Scuttling like a limping crab, Ehren stayed beneath the vord warrior, grasping the spear and once more reaching out for his woodcrafting, until he had bent its shaft into a quivering bow that would have enclosed most of a circle. Then he took a second to decide where to strike and how to aim, grounded the spear's butt against the stone of the wall, and released the woodcrafting.
The spear straightened again, with vicious energy. The sharp tip of the weapon skittered along the vord's armored underbelly - but then the tip bit into the joint between two plates of chitin and plunged into the vord with such force that it lifted its forequarters off the ground. Dirty green-brown blood geysered from the wound, and the vord fell off on the Aleran side of the wall, thrashing in its death throes.
Ehren let out a whoop - but it turned into a scream as something that felt red-hot slammed into his lower back. There was a thumping sound, and his body jerked, and a muscle behind his right shoulder blade went into a sudden, vicious cramp. He tried to move, but something held him fast to the ground. It might have been gravity. He felt very heavy.
He looked over his shoulder, itself an agonizing motion, and saw that the next vord up the wall had leapt onto him as its less fortunate relative fell to the ground. He couldn't see the scythes or where they had pierced him. Thinking about it, he decided, he really didn't want to. The pain was bad enough. He didn't need a visual image to go with it.
He couldn't breathe. He just wanted to take a good, deep breath. But he couldn't inhale at all. That didn't seem fair. He laid his cheek on the stone.
There was a bright light, and something warm passed over him, and a vord shrieked.
"Healer!" bellowed Gram.
Ehren blinked open his eyes and looked to the south. There, hovering in the air, was a single brilliant spark of bright red fire.
"No, you idiot, don't pull them out of him," Gram snarled at someone. "He'll bleed out right here."
"But they've got him spiked to the bloody wall," protested someone with a deep, resonant voice.
"Use your head for something besides finding things to smash with that maul, Frederick," Gram answered. "Earthcraft the wall enough to get them loose."
"Oh. Right. Just a second..."
Gram was leaning over him, and there were legionares back on the wall around them. They must have closed the breach. That was good. Ehren lifted his hand. It shook more than it should have, he thought. "Gram," he gasped, pointing. "Signal."
The old Lord looked back over his shoulder, growled, then rose. He looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, then lifted his hand and sent what looked like a small blue star blazing into the air.
All up and down the wall, other stars answered.
A second star pulsed out from the command post, this one burning white-hot, almost painful to look at even in broad daylight.
Up and down the wall, Ehren knew, firecrafters were doing precisely what Gram was. The old Lord had his eyes focused on the ground in front of the wall, and a pair of legionares was covering him from any enemy attack. He concentrated for a moment, then pointed a finger down at the ground below and spoke a single harsh, quiet word. "Burn."
A sphere of white fire leapt from Gram's fingertip to the ground below.
For a long minute, nothing happened.
Ehren closed his eyes and pictured it in his mind. Bringing siege walls up from the earth required the moving of quality, heavy stone. But that wasn't the only thing that could be moved. The earth was full of all sorts of interesting minerals. Gold. Silver. Gems.
And coal.
And oil.
Over the past months, the entire plain before the first wall had been seeded with the latter two. Coal had been raised to within inches of the surface - and the much more easily manipulated oil had been brought up to the surface layers of earth, until the ground fairly squelched with it. It was hardly noticeable, given how soft and damp the regular rains had left the ground in the past few days, except for the smell. And the vord did not appear to be bright enough to recognize it.