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The Torrent roared unfettered, washing away all sorts of refuse and beached shipwrecks as it flowed to the sea.

The war party had taken what would have been massive, nigh-unsustainable casualties in any other circumstance. They were bolstered however by the still-healthy prisoners.

Dozens of long-sunken whitewoods clumped together with river gunk for glue floated over and beached on the shore nearby.

Aminia walked out from under the water and onto the raft.

“C’mon. Battle’s already started at the Keep.” Aminia said with a quiet serenity unbefitting the raging river he oversaw.

“You know the guy?” Rita asked Maat.

Maat nodded. “He’s the god of the river. He blessed my birth. Somehow. It’s complicated. Dad gets embarrassed whenever it comes up. I try not to think about it too hard.”

“A god, huh?” Rita mused. “Don’t see those every day.”

The makeshift raft was large enough for maybe a dozen fully equipped warriors. With two hundred uninjured warriors present on the shore, someone was going to have to stay behind.

Aminia pointed to Maat. “You. With me. Earthlanders, pile on.”

Maat, Rita, and even Lloyd and Sara joined the river god on the raft. That makes five.

“You’re injured,” Maat and Rita told Lloyd.

“I’m fine,” Lloyd said.

“Let someone else handle this,” Rita said.

“All Earthlanders come with me,” Aminia repeated dryly. "All water is holy water in my presence; I'll provide healing as we go."

“I’m going to see this to the end,” Lloyd said with an audible pain in his voice.

“And I’m going with him,” Sara said.

Another seven stormlanders who’d avoided injury and were still ready to fight climbed aboard, carrying all the firearms and war clubs they could haul.

With the raft as full as physically possible, Aminia willed the waters to lull it out to the Torrent’s center. When the raft got started, it was urged forward in a matter that was both more stable and far faster than it naturally should have been.

“This is…” Maat began.

“The raft you build all those months ago?” Aminia asked with a smile. “The Torrent taketh, and the Torrent giveth again.”

The river god punctuated this with a quick, snorting laugh.

"I watched you all make that with great interest," Aminia added after a time. "You're naturally drawn to the river. It is..."

"Where I was born, yes." Maat looked to the god, sounding deadpan.

"Your father and I went on many walks along the riverbend and even along the highland cliffs. I can sense prayers done within earshot of the river, y'know? So after Clarissa didn't work out and several years passed, Mikey really, really wanted the Martinez line to continue, what with both his parent's children having disappeared through a portal with no explanation one day. And, well, I answered his prayer."

"I... I got that much," Maat said. "... well, maybe not mechanically."

"Eh, the Torrent must maintain some of its secrets." Aminia put a finger up to his lips. "Anyway, this is an expertly crafted raft. I'd expect nothing less from my very own river born."

Their old off-season project had been buried in mud, beached in the dry times, and was dredged up by the liberation of the river.

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The ride south was swift, but with the distances involved it was still a journey of several hours, even on god-power.

“The fight will come immediately upon landing,” Aminia said with the serene declaration of a prophet.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“What do you see of the battle?” Maat asked.

“The temple outside of Secondhome has been knocked down, stone for stone. A keep of foreign metal has been constructed in its place. Strong enough to withstand the wall of water that hit it mid-battle about…” Aminia looked southwards. “Twenty minutes ago. So long as this fortress stands, the foreign presence will always have a foothold on the island. To say nothing of leaving your home settlement uninhabitable."

All along the river’s path, the signs of ruined Jean’in strongholds remained, half sunken in the swollen waters. Broken paddleboats bobbed here and there, smashed to chunks by the rampaging Torrent. Even a few riverside villages had been drowned. Those could be rebuilt, as they so often were following the rainy seasons.

The odd flash of gunfire deep in the forest could be seen; diversionary tactics from the Quarterchief’s main force. Satellite battles for the main, climatic push.

Around the time they passed the old prison camp, now entirely collapsed into the waters, the crew saw a fishing boat. Belonged to some minor clan on this part of the river that must have been passed over in all the action, left wondering where the river had gone, and why it suddenly surged back. A trio of fishers waved to the war raft. Maat wondered if that clan even knew there was a war on.

Smoke wafted over the tree line on the horizon. The first signs of the great battle awaiting. Din of combat – distant gunshots, the odd war cry – could be heard from a few miles out.

“Brace yourselves,” Aminia said with his usual placid tone of course. “Here we go..."

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Dozens of supply boxes, spare firearms, the odd war-club, and even the wide-brimmed foreign hats of the mercenaries sat in the water. The Torrent must have swept away a few battalions of Jean'in.

The battle lines wafted into view as the raft rounded the river bend.

A long, mixed unit of stormlanders and plainswalkers besieged a tall metallic wall on the west bank. More traditional lines waited on the east bank, allied stormlanders facing off with firearm laden Jean’in.

Chariot-laden centurion birds ran about the sparse open field areas on both banks. They’d achieved some flanking opportunities on the east bank, scattering some Jean'in-allied traitorous clans.

“Bring us to the west bank,” Rita said. “Mike will be there.”

“That was the plan,” Aminia said.

The raft beached itself irreparably on a smooth floodplain, just out of range of gunshot from the walls.

Bird cavalry approached.

“Whoa, there!” an Earthlander said.

“Dad!” said Sara and Lloyd.

Hector dismounted his war chariot.

“Do my old eyes deceive me?” Hector said, then roped the twins into a group hug.

“Ouch,” Lloyd said, ribs still sore.

“Boss man wants to talk to you,” Hector said to the robed river god still standing on the raft.

“Of course, he does,” Aminia said with a nostalgic smile.

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The whitewood forest provided ample protection from Jean’in bullets. The Quarterchief had set up a command yurt just past the treeline.

“Our weapons are ineffective against a metal motte,” said a stormlander war-chief.

A rudimentary map of the river bend had been set up in the tent. Various war-chiefs poked at it with sticks, trying to plan their assault.

“Draw the men back from the east bank. We can clear the field there and it still won’t get us any closer to the keep,” said an Earthlander in Michael’s inner circle.

“Do that, and the Jean’in will be able to take potshots at us from the far shore,” said a stormlander. “Those weapons are deadly accurate.”

“Why not just leave the Jean’in to rot?” Suggested a plainswalker. “Let them stay in their metal manse. They’ll starve within the season.”

“They’re adjacent to the river. They’ll get resupplied eventually.” Michael said, standing at the center of the yurt, facing the entrance flap. “Or maybe they’ll escape. That’s probably worse. They’ll come back with double the numbers and guns that are twice as effective as whatever we manage to salvage from their abandoned outposts. The first round nearly depopulated the stormheaths. Make the core isles angry enough for a punitive expedition? None of us will be left.”

It was then that the Quarterchief noticed Maat and company’s arrival.

“I see you cleared the dam,” Michael said. “We’d been flanked by Jean’in on two sides. Flood drowned their entire westward push. You really saved our bacon.”

“It wasn’t all on us,” Maat said with a shrug.

Mostly he was just relieved to see his father again.

“What’s bacon?” Aminia entered the yurt, snacking on some river fruit.

Michael’s expression softened when he saw the river god. “You again.”

“Is that how you greet me? Last we met, I nearly died,” Aminia said. “Your beloved son has revived me from the brink of death. Saved my ‘bacon’ too, whatever that is.”

The groups caught up with each other, explaining the situation and where the battle lines stood. Rita’s war party was at least two days’ march away on the eastern bank. That was assuming they didn’t run into any wandering Jean’in.

The eastern shore was holding, though their stormland-clan allies were outnumbered and outgunned. Still, it was a diversionary tactic to keep the enemy from flanking their siege of the keep, and prevent enemy reinforcements from joining the garrison.

“Any further action is moot if we can’t get up in the damn keep,” Hector said.

No war club, or even a pilfered firearm, was going to blow a hole in these walls.

“In our world we slung big stones and rocks into fortifications. Over a period of weeks it could blow a hole in them,” Hector said. "Back in ye olden times. Nowadays we'd just blow it up."

They didn’t have that kind of time. There were still Jean’in forces offshore and at various points around the stormheaths. Not to mention, there’d been no word out of the Laval territories, Richard’s most numerous native allies on the isle. A full-force Laval war party would more than match their current army spread out on the Torrent’s banks. If they arrived, the battle was lost.

“What we need is like, a siege tower,” Michael said. “Another invention from our world. Slow moving, but we can push them up to the wall and just use them like a shielded ladder.”

The only major gates were down in the riverbed, now flooded. A battering ram wasn’t going to work.

Lloyd looked to a whitewood, its mighty trunk towering up to the heavens.

“Hey. Guys,” he said.

There was no response, the war-chiefs had taken to bickering amongst themselves.

“Guys!” Lloyd yelled, drowning out all other voices.

“Those trees,” he pointed outside. “Are they tall enough to reach the wall?”

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