Below the hovering armada great fires raged. Hulls were peppered with blazing arrows. Ballista bolts struck home, digging deep into the golden keels and trailing oiled ropes from the ships below. Men kindled those ropes and the flames shot upward to rush across the bottoms of the sky-ships. The Khyrein globes of pitch struck home as well, scorching hulls or burning tiny holes in the sides of dreadnoughts. The airships were far too large for the catapults to do much damage. The only true threat to the dreadnoughts’ superiority, besides Khama’s power, were the thousands of arrows spreading flame across their lower halves.
Khama sped outside of the dreadnoughts’ circle to get a better look at the efficacy of their weapons. From each iron tube a bolt of brilliant flame raced like venom from a cobra’s mouth, setting fire to whatever sea vessels it fell upon. The dreadnoughts were equipped with mechanisms of sorcery that hurled gouts of alchemical flame. At least twenty of these iron tubes sprouted on either side of every sky-ship, raining forty streams of enchanted fire upon their foes. Already half of the aquatic ships were burning, compared to a mere fifty or so dreadnoughts that were set aflame by arrow, bolt, or catapult. And the battle was only thirty seconds engaged.
Men leaped into the water to avoid burning to death, but the sorcerous fires burned atop the water. There was no escaping the devastation by abandoning ship. The dreadnoughts fired a second barrage of flames, and more warships ignited. Volleys of burning arrows rose from ships individually now. In the broadening devastation there would be no more simultaneous fleet-wide volleys launched upward. Scores of ships were now separated by flames, panic, smoke, and the chaos of battle.
Khama had no time to seek out the Bird of War to check Undutu’s status. He hurtled toward another of the dreadnoughts. A blast of lightning flew from his tongue and set the airship’s sails alight. The ship quavered and a hundred arrows flew at Khama from its decks. They bounced off the scales beneath his feathers as he plummeted. The two nearest dreadnoughts sprayed him with flaming alchemy as he passed, so when he struck his target it was as a flaming meteor. Men and wood went flying. Khama found himself immersed in the bowels of the great ship this time, without enough force to burst through its bottom hull. He looked through a shattered bulkhead into a womb-like chamber filled by another mammoth tree.
Among the topaz branches of the tree floated a woman in silver robes similar to those of Damodar. Another of Zyung’s Old Breed slaves. She shouted wrath at Khama and unseen forces hurled his body from the pierced ship. He left a hole torn halfway through its decks all the way to its heart.
The trees are the source of power for these vessels.
He knew it instantly, whirling above the dreadnoughts to quench the flames along his coils. Why else would sorcerers guard and protect these trees? The tree’s countless branches and roots, he had noted, flowed into the substance of the ship itself. The trees were the seeds from which grew the dreadnoughts, sculpted by the will of Old Breed magic. How could he use this knowledge to defeat the armada? An answer eluded him.
There was no time to consider it further as six globes of light rose from six different dreadnoughts to surround Khama. At the center of each radiance floated a silver-robed sorcerer. They glared at him with eyes of murderous calm. He recognized one of them as the very same envoy he had cast out of Zharua’s palace.
Damodar and his fellow wizards, come to rip the Feathered Serpent apart.
Khama bellowed a gout of thunder at the silver-robes, scattering them like leaves. Yet more of them rose from the surrounding dreadnoughts. He could not count their numbers. He had never seen so many sorcerers gathered in one spot, not in all his eons of existence.
Below him the allied fleets were burning, the cries of dying men rising like ash to fill the superheated air. The dreadnoughts continued pouring their flame upon the aquatic ships, as fewer and fewer arrows rose from the crumbling decks.
How can it be over so soon?
Khama swirled in the air, weaving a pattern of cosmic energies as the floating silver-robes converged upon him. They cast bolts of starlight from their mouths and fingers, yet their power cascaded across the sizzling corona of his sorcery. Faster and faster he spun, releasing the core of his power, glowing like a second sun in the crowded sky, absorbing the blasts hurled against him, swallowing the pain, letting his physical form give way to the raw currents of sorcery that fueled his eternal spirit.
More of Zyung’s sorcerers flew toward him, yet he barely saw them through the haze of his own unleashed potency. Finally he released all of it, exploding from the epicenter of his being. His fury washed across the sorcerers and the ships behind them, a tidal wave of light and gravity and the all-consuming fires of stellar destruction.