Set in Stone (35 page)

A few did not.

The tree scattered those hapless few like corn before a scythe. It continued down the hill, leaving broken bodies strewn across the slope in its wake. All around Connor, soldiers of the rearguard exclaimed with dismay and anger.

They should have known better. Captain Ilse was not one to be underestimated.

He could not sit still, not after battle was joined. So he slipped down from the tree and shoved one hand into the pouch of basalt on his belt.

He concentrated, and the warm energy of the powdered stone began flowing into his hand. It slithered up his arm and filled him with boundless energy, with the need to run.

So he ran. He angled upslope and to the right. Carbrey had ordered him to stay behind the army, but not by how far. He had to get closer, had to get a better view.

Connor grinned as he poured on the speed and tore up the slope. He'd planned to stop when he hit the soft, muddy ground on the eastern edge of the slope, but before the change in ground even registered, he was racing across it. He laughed. He was running too fast to sink in the mud!

Emboldened by his success, Connor increased his tap-rate and accelerated. Water and mud sprayed out behind him as he shot up the slope and across the muddy bog to where the slope met the base of the mountain.

Connor spied a shelf of rock protruding from that steep mountainside about fifty feet up, and raced toward it. Running on his toes, he shot up the side of the mountain, hardly slowing. With a final leap, he landed on the shelf.

"Yes!" Connor raised both hands in victory and hopped up and down several times in exultant glee.

Basalt was so much fun. Why hadn't he been cursed with this all his life?

He looked upslope toward the plateau just as the long earthen wall collapsed and sank into the ground. Connor stood high enough that he could see the top of the plateau all the way to the manor house.

Several figures stood near the edge of the plateau, tiny in the distance, but he thought he recognized Captain Ilse and the sibling Petralists. Luckily, he did not recognize any of the Cutters. Ilse must have expected her wall to hold off the advancing army longer.

He fervently prayed his father would live out the day.

Movement behind the small group drew his gaze. Connor blinked a couple of times to make sure he was not imagining the sight. A tiny figure who had to be Verena stood atop a wide platform along with another stripped tree trunk. They were flying up the side of the big barn. Connor squinted to see better, but the distance was too great and he could not see what lifted them up the side of the tall barn.

He'd sort of flown the Heatstone oven, and Verena had been propelled back into the manor house by her air blasting stone, but he'd never imagined anything so graceful, so controlled as what he witnessed.

How was it possible?

When Verena reached the roof, several soldiers rolled the heavy tree trunk off the platform and onto a complex contraption he could not clearly make out. Then they scurried to the side.

"Look out!" Connor shouted, even though the soldiers in Carbrey's army could not hear him.

A pair of tall fir trees that flanked the big barn, that had been cranked dangerously far over backward, sprang upright. The tree trunk, lashed to those bent-over trees with a series of ropes and pulleys, shot up into the air.

They built a catapult in one night?

The tree-become-missile sailed gracefully high over the edge of the plateau, slammed down onto the slope, and careened down the hill. Most of the soldiers were already clear of the path of destruction, but several of the fallen still lay where they had fallen. Men were racing to pull them aside lest they be crushed a second time.

They shouldn't have bothered. The second tree did not follow the same track as the first. Somehow the Grandurians had launched it at an angle, and it barreled down the slope directly at a full company of surprised infantry.

Rory and his Fast Rollers had already moved to the opposite side of the slope, along with half of Captain Peader's Boulders. Only six Boulders stood forth to meet the tree and its thousands of stone weight, in a desperate attempt to save the lives of the men who scrambled to get out of the way.

Shona stood with them.

"Look out!" Connor shouted again, so loud his voice cracked.

How did Shona end up there, directly in the path of destruction? Had Ilse targeted her specifically?

She looked like a child standing next to the hulking Boulders, but she did not retreat.

Please spirits, let the tree bounce over them
.

The tree bounced high, and for a second Connor exulted.

With a sickening feeling of dread, Connor realized the truth. The tree came straight down at Shona and the six Boulders. The Boulders braced their shields, and Shona lifted empty hands to ward against the unstoppable force. Surely they max-tapped their powers.

It did no good.

The tree plowed through the heroic group without slowing. Shona and two of the Boulders collapsed to the ground under the tree's awful weight, while the other four tumbled aside like chaff in a strong wind. Without slowing, the deadly missile smashed through the remnants of the column that were too slow to dodge.

This time, Connor clearly heard the screams of pain as men were crushed. The tree continued on until it ground to a halt in the mire of the eastern edge of the slope, a little north of where Connor perched safely up on the mountain slope.

Healers and soldiers pressed into service to help them raced up the slope to pull the wounded from the battlefield. Connor stared at the carnage, at the broken bodies, and the crimson smears marring the brown slope. Mostly he stared at Shona's leather-clad form that lay unmoving on the hillside, and clenched his fists in helpless rage.

Ilse might claim all she did was defend her people, but she was the aggressor in Alasdair. It was her fault these brave men were hurt and dying.

For the first time Connor hated her, and wished with all his soul that Carbrey would reach the plateau and utterly destroy the Grandurians. He felt sad for what would happen to Verena, but she'd chosen her course.

Connor leaped from the shelf and slid down the steep slope. Just before he landed in the mire, he tapped his basalt speed and pulled deep from the boundless energy raging through his limbs.

He nearly over-ran his balance as he sprang forward, but managed to right himself. His legs moved so fast he dared not look at the ground as it shot under his feet for fear of stumbling. He'd never dreamed of such speed.

Deep in his bones, his hips and upper legs burned with a need to move differently, to shift in impossible directions. Sharp pain spiked through his hips and thighs and for a second it felt like his bones began to crack under the onslaught of the basalt.

He panicked and eased back, reducing the tap-rate. He hadn't realized it was possible to draw too deep from the basalt and break his own legs.

Was that one of the dangers Rory was trying to warn him about?

Easing his stride a little seemed to work. He slowed just a fraction, and his bones solidified again. Maybe the Curse he'd grown up with wasn't so bad after all.

Something loomed in Connor's vision, and only then did he realize he'd been sprinting up the slope, so distracted by the basalt that he hadn't realized his course had started to wander.

The tree that just crushed Shona to the earth lay right in front of him. Connor tried to leap over it.

He almost made it. His leading foot caught the top edge of the trunk, and he tumbled forward, out of control. He started shouting, but then his face struck the muddy ground and his mouth filled with mud. He gagged and then spewed mud as he somersaulted like a Sogail competition ball up the slope.

He finally came to a stop, face down, spread-eagled in the mud. After a moment, he rolled over, gasping, his heart pounding with fear and elation. He'd nearly died.

But he hadn't. He couldn't stay there. He had to reach Shona, so he forced himself to unsteady feet. Mud and water cascaded off. He tasted mud, and one of his nostrils was plugged with it, as were both ears.

Connor shook himself like a wet dog in a vain effort to dislodge the mud, blew it out his nose, and dug a muddy finger into his ears. That didn't help as much as he'd hoped. He spat a few times, but the taste clung to his mouth, and all he could smell was wet dirt.

Connor carefully tapped basalt again and leaped forward.

And fell right onto his face.

He spat a new mouthful of mud and looked down at his feet. They were stuck up to the ankles. All he'd managed to do was trip himself.

One boot almost came off as he pried his feed out of the mud. Upslope a third tree trunk began its wild, tumbling assault on the left flank of the army this time. Rory and the Fast Rollers, assisted with Captain Peader and his Boulders, and by a lucky bounce of the tree, knocked it high enough that it sailed completely over the company that huddled right behind them.

Connor breathed a sigh of relief and, with his feet finally free, tapped basalt again. This time he quickly gained speed until he rippled across the muddy ground, like a rock skipping across a pond.

Mud and water sprayed far out behind him as he found his pace, and Connor laughed at the thrill of moving so fast.

Within seconds, he passed the scattered remnants of broken companies, altered course, and closed on Shona, who was sitting up, attended by a couple of soldiers.

Connor, gratified to see she still lived, slowed and dropped to his knees beside her. She sat awkwardly, as if in great pain. Her light brown hair was matted with blood and covered her face as her head lolled forward onto her chest.

One of the soldiers was saying, "We need to get you to safety, Lady Shona."

She tried to push him away. "Where's my sword?"

"Broken."

"Help me up," she commanded and lifted one hand that wobbled in the air. "We need to attack the . . . thing, and beat . . . the other one."

The soldier shared a helpless look with his companion.

Connor took Shona's upraised hand, "Lady Shona, are you all right?"

"Connor?" She slowly lifted her head.

He gently brushed her hair back from her face, and stared in shock. Her skin still bore the gray sheen of granite power, and a series of fine cracks spread across the side of her face. Her eyes stared at him dully, as if not quite able to focus.

"Have to fight," she muttered.

"Shona, you can't. You're cracked."

One of the nearby soldiers said sharply, "Watch it, boy. That's Lady Shona you're talking to."

Shona frowned and blinked a couple of times, finally bringing her eyes into focus. "How dare you say that to me, you ungrateful Linn?"

"I didn't mean it that way, not like you're mentally cracked. It's your face, you're really cracked."

She pushed at him. "You're hopeless. Get away from me. You're filthy, and you stink."

She tried to rise, and fell back to the ground with a strangled cry of pain. The soldiers moved to help her, but Connor waved them back.

"I've got this."

One soldier snarled, "Watch it, kid, or you'll be cracked."

"No, seriously. She granted me Patronage. It's my duty to help."

As they regarded him suspiciously, he drove his hand into the pouch of granite powder at his belt. Instantly the insect-crawly feeling of granite power skittered up his arm. He'd show Shona who was useless. Connor drew upon the Curse and focused it throughout his body.

White-hot agony exploded through Connor's entire being. Every muscle convulsed, and he collapsed to the ground beside Shona, shaking, his feet pattering on the ground. His skin faded to gray, then to white, and began to flake and peel. Every inch of skin burned as if someone scraped it raw with burning irons.

Connor tried to scream, but his throat closed, and he lacked the ability to even writhe under the agony of it. His vision blurred, and his body faded from burning agony to a dead numbness so deep he might never wake again.

Beside him, Shona said weakly, "Who's cracked now?"

Connor could not even groan.

As blackness flickered at the edges of his blurry vision, he dimly heard General Carbrey.

"Cavalry charge!"