Aela’s shield clanked as it bounced off a crossbar, bobbing on her back as she followed her excited brother. The metal smelled a sickly-sweet combination of water and steel. The beams were cold and Aela hoped the potent odor of the unpainted alloy was a sign they were still sturdy, the iron smell of rust thankfully absent.
“I seem to remember you saying something like that when we were kids,” Darren said as he reached the end of the truss. It had snapped off and fallen into the rushing river. The pylon was only a short distance away and a different truss hung from its bent tip, swinging slightly in the wind. “The ridges at the edge of Pinnacle, remember?”
“Yes,” Aela replied, “and I remember I had to jury-rig a splint when you broke your — Darren!”
Darren leapt for the swinging truss and grabbed hold of the smooth crossbar. His left hand slipped and he hung by one arm, kicking and squirming for a few moments before he got his hand back in a hold and pulled himself up. As he got a leg around, he turned to his sister and said, “Hey, I got your book back for you didn’t I? Your fault for dropping it.”
“And your fault for not waiting till I got help,” Aela said and licked her lips, eyeing the jump and calculating the distance in her mind.
Darren had already started climbing up the swinging truss, using the crossbars like a ladder as he neared the first pylon. “Always thinking like a Gold. You coming or what?”
Aela snickered and leapt, slipped, and barely held onto the truss, pulling herself up with a grunt and only a minor use of her strengthening shield. Panting when she got up and started climbing after Darren, she sighed with relief that she was actually able to keep up with her monkey of a brother. “And you’ve always thought like a Red.”
Darren stopped at the top of the top of the pylon, looking down for a way to proceed along the twisted bars of steel. He smiled at his sister, pulling out his pistol and pointing it at the bundle of roadway blocking their path. “You got that right.”
Darren fired at a joint holding up the twisted steel, and grabbed hold of the pylon as the roadway collapsed further into the river. After the bridge settled and the splash of water came down, Darren bowed in front of the marginally straight roadway that had settled to a stop a few feet from the rushing water. As he did, he reached out his hand, retrieved his bullet, and blew an imaginary puff of smoke off the gun’s muzzle.
“You’re just lucky this is the one and only time destroying something actually fixes it,” Aela said as she and her brother walked along the partially whole roadway.
The rest of the cross wasn’t terribly difficult, the siblings hopping from one bundled group of steel beams to the next. Only once did they get close enough to falling in the river to make either of them worry, and that was just Darren messing around. When they crossed the blown-out remains of the second pylon and reached the middle of the bridge, they saw a pillar of smoke rising from the far side.
“Hurry up, sis,” Darren said as they got closer to the eastern shoreline. “I think I can see something.”
“I can too,” Aela said, and pointed upstream of the Thelga. “Look.”
Out in the distance, massive barges came down the river. Dozens, maybe even a hundred of them steamed their way toward the collapsed hydroelectric bridge.
“They’ll never make it through — whoa!” Darren was just about to comment on the futility of passing through the ruined remains of the bridge when he saw a cloud of dust, metal, and water erupt from the center of the collapsed power plant. When the smoke cleared and the pieces of the bridge splashed into the water, a gap big enough for the barges had been cleared.
“Those look like Torin boats. We have to hurry.”
“You know, sis, I have a feeling that the Prophets didn’t push the Torins this far.”
Darren pointed back to the flat surface of the other side of the river. Through the line of houses and apartments that had been flattened in bombings and artillery barrages, a solid line of tanks advanced and stopped a few hundred meters from the gravel beach of the Thelga. A few moments passed and a massive group of trucks poured out of the streets, lines of infantry marching alongside the filled transports. As the Torin army assembled and artillery guns took positions at their rear, the barges steamed toward the beaches.
“The Torins are getting ready to cross,” Aela stated.
“Nah, ya think?” Darren replied.
“We have to warn the Prophets. If they’re on the east side of the river they’ll be spotted.”
“We’ll be spotted too. And I don’t think they’d stand much chance on the other side of the river either.”
Aela looked to the southern outlet of the river, where the wide Graden Bay glistened in the early afternoon sun. A fleet of warships, massive Ierilan cruisers and miners, stick out in the distance like floating fortresses.
“We have to warn the Joya and Ieral armies. They need to know this attack is coming.” Aela took one last glance at the assembling Torin army, making a quick calculation of numbers, and tried to move as fast as she could back to the western shore.
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“Wait, wait, Aela.” Darren caught up to his sister around the third pylon and stopped her. “It took us over an hour to get here. By the time we get to the other shore those barges will be off-loading Torins into the Cupola Plaza.” Darren readied his gun in one hand and pointed it at the Torins. “We have to slow them down.”
“Don’t be stupid, Darren, you can’t take on an army,” Aela said.
“Maybe not. But I can slow them down. At the least them blowing up this bridge might be visible from the bay. That would be enough to warn the Ierilans,” Darren said, and pointed off in the direction of the ships in the bay, while the ships in the river came closer to the assembling Torin army.
“Wait, they probably can see the bridge from there, maybe just enough.”
“Okay, so you go and I’ll get you some time.”
“Stop trying to sacrifice yourself already, Darren, I have a plan. Stay down here.” Aela checked her shield to make sure it was strapped on tight, then started climbing the tall pylon.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to signal the Ierilan fleet with my shield. Stay down there, it shouldn’t take long.”
“What if the Torins see you?”
“Then I’ll get down.”
Darren bit his lip as he watched his sister climb. “Uh-uh. I’ll make sure they don’t shoot at you first.” Holstering his gun, the Red Prophet grabbed the rivet-studded steel and climbed the pylon after Aela.
The top was flat, mostly, with a solid piece of steel where workers would normally be able to switch out old rivets and repair any wind damage done to the bridge. It offered a stable platform for the two Prophets to look out over the Thelga.
“I told you not to follow me,” Aela said to her brother as she helped him to the top.
“And I told you I was coming anyway,” Darren said as he held onto the pylon’s tip for support, looking down as the first barge slowed its approach near the thin beach, infantry eagerly waiting to board. Darren readied his pistol and aimed at the boats. “You better warn the navy quick.”
“On it.”
It was as if a ball of light had burst into being on the top of the pylon. Aela freed her mind of worry and pain and allowed her energies to flow in and out of the blessed shield, and made it glow like a searchlight. She directed the shield in the direction of the navy, spelling out words in a code of lights she had learned serving in Ieral. Every army on Home used its simple patterns for quick communications.
“Torins landing assault on western shore of river,” Aela said slowly.
“You don’t have to say the message out loud, just send it,” Darren said, his eyes on the Torin riflemen getting ready to load into the boats.
“Stop distracting me while I’m trying to send a message.”
“Stop talking and just send the message.”
“Be quiet. I can’t concentrate on my coding if you don’t shut up.”
“You shut…” Darren said, when he heard a rising shout come from the gathered Torins. He watched as over twenty thousand soldiers stopped gathering on the beach and ducked down, pointing up at the pylon where he and his sister stood. “They’ve spotted us. Aela, they’ve spotted us.”
“Hold on!” Aela shouted as she got to the last part of her message, rushing through it. She knew the Torins could easily see her flashing shield like a lighthouse in the middle of the river, so she had to hurry.
“Prophets here. Get ready for attack,” Aela said, vocalizing the last part of her message. The universal code sent, Aela turned her shield back around and stepped in front of her brother to shield them. “It’s done. Let’s get out of here.”
“You go first. I’ll cover you.” Darren pulled the trigger on his pistol and sent a stream of crimson bursts into the gathered Torins. Almost at the first shot that struck and killed a single infantryman, the Torins turned and ran back into the streets of the east side of the river. “What the…?”
Darren kept firing, hitting the Torin tanks and blasting away at the boats and artillery pieces. He stopped shooting at the men and before all eighteen bullets had been spent, the beach had all but cleared of troops and machinery, the boats making swift u-shaped wakes as they sped back toward the power plant bridge.
“Yeah! Yeah, that’s right!” Darren shouted as he raised his empty chamber in the air and retrieved his bullets. “That’s right, run!”
Aela punched him in the shoulder.
“Ow!” he said.
“Stop that,” the Gold Prophet scolded. “You’re a Prophet not a football player.”
“Did you see that?” Darren pointed back at the fleeing mass of soldiers. “I just fought off an entire army! Showed you, didn’t I?”
“I don’t know why they fled, but I’m sure there was something else involved.”
“Oh please. I’m just too much for them.” Darren twirled his pistol on his finger and holstered it in a very dramatic fashion. “Admit it. That was impressive.”
Aela watched as the Torins fled back into the eastern side of the city, an orderly but still very hasty retreat. The Gold Prophet rolled her eyes. “I admit nothing.”
“Ha-ha! Good enough as a yes for me.”
“Come on. You can brag about chasing off the Torins when we get to the Joya and Ierilan camps. Let’s just hope that’s where the Prophets went.”
“Darren of the Red Prophets, destroyer of armies, router of thousands, feared throughout the—”
“Stop that.”
The climb down from the pylon was easy enough. Since they had basically been going up as they crossed the ruins of the bridge, heading back to the western shore was much easier. Only the creaking and swaying movements of the bridge made the trek challenging.
As they went, they talked about what might have been the reason for the Torin retreat. It had appeared that the attack was precisely timed, the advance to the boats being made at the exact moment the power plant bridge had been cleared. After Aela got Darren to stop bragging about chasing off the army with eighteen bullets, they started wondering if the loss of surprise might have been the reason they’d called off the attack.
“Maybe they thought there were more Prophets around us,” Aela wondered as she jumped off the last truss and onto the ramp at the western shore. “If only a hundred took on that many Torins before, I’m sure they’d be frightened of another Prophet attack.”
Darren jumped down next to his sister, the ramp creaking when he landed. “I guess that means the others are with the Ierilans or Joyas,” the Red Prophet noted. He looked out to the open waters of the Graden Bay, Ierilan transport ships still off-loading troops and equipment. “You think the highway will be clear?”
“I’m not sure. It would without a doubt be the fastest way to reach the camps we’ve sided with.”
Aela looked at the hole-strewn highway in front of her. Burnt-out husks of cars and dozens of military trucks littered the wide road. It would take a bulldozer to clear all the wreckage and damage on the highway enough for a significant force to pass through. Worse than that, all the empty vehicles and buildings surrounding the highway provided perfect positions for ambushes and traps.
“But… there’s a but in there, right?” Darren asked.
“However,” Aela said, “it may not be the safest way to travel.”