webcrawl/APGTE/Book-4/tex/Ch-088.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-64-momentum}{%
\section{Chapter 64: Momentum}\label{chapter-64-momentum}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``When in doubt, attack. When doubtless, attack as well.''}

-- Bastien de Hauteville, Proceran general
\end{quote}

Great Lotow was nothing like I'd expected.

All I'd seen of the drow so far was raised stones and the occasional
clever exploitation of natural features, and so my expectations had been
rather low before I took my first look at one of their `cities'. I'd
believed it would be a few half-ruined structures and perhaps a
surviving set of walls, but the Lotow I was looking upon served as a
reminder that the Everdark had once been an empire in its own right. I'd
thought of the term city in the Callowan sense, a gathering of houses
and streets with marketplaces and maybe a decent set of ramparts. But
that was a surface way of looking at things, wasn't it? Up there, cities
were built in breadth. Spreading when the population rose. The drow had
instead built in depth, in a way that would have been impossible in the
land of my birth.

Great Lotow was built in levels, that was the easiest way to describe
it. The heart of the city was a massive pit with a spire of stone in the
centre, from base to summit large as a small fortress. From that tree
radiates branch-like bridges leading to districts carved directly into
the rock across the chasm, their sizes variable. Closer to the bottom I
could glimpse districts large as Summerholm itself serving as farms and
lakes, while closer to the centre the holes in the rock were more like
neighbourhoods of carved houses. At its peak, I thought, Lotow must have
had several hundred thousand drow living in it. Now, though, most of it
was abandoned. Some of the bridges linking the spire to the sides had
been broken and though some were replaced by rope bridges made of some
kind of pale weed many more had simply been left gaping, the districts
they led to now empty ruins.

It was a moving sight, I would admit. The structure of the city alone
would have been impressive, but the ancient drow had made of Lotow a
work of art. There was hardly a wall or floor that was not filled by a
mosaic or bas-relief, stalactites and stalagmites had been carved into
painted statues of drow and animals. Entire spans of ceiling had been
set with coloured stones and gems to create a sky, and there were tall
steles showing spindly sentences in Crepuscular reciting old stories and
ballads where my people would have placed street signs instead. Ivah had
told me that last detail was an old drow custom: streets had once been
known by the never-mentioned titles of the written work on the stele,
every drow expected to be well-taught enough to know it at a glance.

Now, though, those old stories were painted over with blood red runes to
mark where territories began and ended. Metal and precious stones had
been ripped out of statues and mosaics, carvings older than Callow left
to erode under the depredations of elements and time. Stone houses that
collapsed were not raised anew but covered with skins and leathers as
half-tents while ancient temples and mansions lay cracked open, their
heavy stones used to make walls of piled rock. And still, after
centuries and millennia, Great Lotow endured. Long winding aqueducts
rival to any of Miezan make descended along the sides of the pit and
provided water to cisterns and fountains, sewers unlike I'd ever seen
sent filth towards the lower farms without overflowing or clogging after
what must have been centuries of disrepair. There was no city like this
in Callow, I thought. Not even in Praes, who had been under Miezan
occupation and so benefitted from that empire's fondness for great civil
works. Great Lotow would have been the crown jewel of any surface
nation, the envy of the continent.

Down here, it was just one more decaying corpse in the pile. It was a
sorrowful sort of awe that I felt. \emph{Would we have raised cities
like this, if we were not always at war?} I wondered. Callow had little
to boast of save for cathedrals and fortresses. The bridges linking
Summerholm were a wonder, to be sure, but a Miezan one. Sometimes I
could see why the rest of Calernia called us backwards peasants. We were
so much less than we could have been. Praes too, I thought. There was so
much potential in the Empire, if it would just cease devouring itself
every other decade. So much knowledge and skill, always turned to acts
of self-immolation that took chunks of the continent along with it.

``You're being quiet,'' Indrani said.

``It's a lot to take in,'' I replied.

``Eh,'' my friend shrugged. ``After Keter the bar's been raised. Gonna
take more than pretty ruins to impress me.''

``We walk through the grave of an empire,'' I murmured. ``That's worth a
moment of contemplation.''

``Oh, there's still people down there,'' Indrani mused. ``For now. I
don't see this lot surviving a firm assault from the dwarves, if we
don't get them moving.''

There \emph{were} still drow, it was true. A mere pittance compared to
what Lotow must have kept in olden days, but our new acquisitions form
the departed Delen Sigil had estimated twenty thousand people here and I
believed that was a conservative number. The larger sigils reigned close
to the bottom, where the old farms could be kept going and so allow for
more nisi to be held, but that didn't necessarily mean the deeper sigils
were the most powerful. Mighty Delen and its tribe had been intending to
have a go at claiming territory on the outskirts of Lotow within the
decade, and so interrogation had wielded more information than I'd
expected. The central spire -- called an overly-long word meaning
`column' in Crepuscular -- wasn't the territory of any single sigil, as
whoever held it would have a massive advantage over rivals, but the rest
of the inhabited city had been carved up between the ten sigils that
inhabited it. The weakest, and the one we'd go after first, was the
Urulan Sigil. They'd once ruled a few of the central districts, but
after being evicted by a stronger sigil they'd moved upwards and
devoured the sigil that had previously ruled the part of Lotow called
the Crossroads.

If the city was a cylinder from which districts sprouted, then the
Crossroads was the circle atop that cylinder, connected through the
central Column by four broad bridges. Nearly every tunnel in the region
led to the Crossroads, including the one where we currently stood,
though the Hallian ways that had once been the highways of the drow
empire were linked to Lotow's bottom level instead. Which was
unfortunate, since I intended to go through those. The Crossroads were
arguably the city's second most important strategic point, but highly
unpopular territory for a sigil to hold: since near every tunnel led to
them, any ambitious sigil trying to get into the Lotow scrap would begin
by taking a swing at whoever held them. Word was that a sigil holding
them could expect slow and steady decline through constant conflict
until either a sigil of the outer ring managed to mount a strong enough
assault or a sigil on the losing side of a conflict deeper down moved up
and evicted the latest occupants -- much as the Urulan themselves had
done.

Sadly, the Urulan Sigil had been force to migrate less than twenty years
ago. They might be a wreck compared to any of the deeper sigils, but
they would have maintained enough strength they'd make any of the fights
I'd picked in the Everdark so far look like child's play.

``The city will be tricky to assault,'' I finally said.

``Gotta take the Crossroads before we go at it seriously,'' Indrani
noted, squinting down. ``That'll be ugly fighting, mark my words.''

I did not disagree. Though that section of the city was a single ring
going around the edges of the pit holding the Column, it wasn't flat
grounds. Large rectangular halls were tightly clustered, with small
streets and broader avenues between them. Easy to defend, to force the
attacker in a bottleneck.

``We'll have to split our force in two,'' I said. ``Sweep the ring from
both sides. I'll need you to lead one of the assaults.''

She shot me a curious look.

``Who am I getting as a lieutenant, Diabolist or Ivah?''

``You get Akua,'' I grunted. ``I imagine I'll need a translator more
than you.''

``Sure,'' she snorted. ``Let's pretend that's true. We certain we want
no one keeping an eye on the bridges?''

That was the large risk here, I thought. The odds that a deeper sigil
would be willing to send its Mighty against an attacker it hadn't
properly looked over were low -- sigils prone to taking those kinds of
gambles didn't tend to last long. They weren't non-existent, however,
and it might change the situation if they learned that it was a human
leading the charge. Still, I couldn't afford to let the Urulan run or
concentrate their forces. \emph{But can I afford to be flanked halfway
through?} Not really, no. After Archer had `acquired' the Delen Sigil
and we'd gathered the people from both them and the Berelun, our numbers
had doubled: a little over four thousand drow were now under my banner.
Of those, I counted three hundred and change dzulu and twenty-three
Mighty of varying ranks. It wasn't a small force, by the standards of
the outer ring, but all the real players down here were either in a city
or the inner ring. We wouldn't be fighting dregs, this time. If we ended
up going against two real sigils at the same time\ldots{}

``Fair point,'' I said. ``Change of plans. I want you to sweep a quarter
of the ring, then stop in front of the bridge and keep an eye on what's
happening.''

``To put arrows in the curious and the runners, if there happen to be
any,'' Indrani sighed. ``Ugh, I always get the shit jobs.''

``You'd get bored scything through dzulu,'' I countered. ``Besides, feel
free to take shot from your perch at anything getting in my way.''

``Slightly better,'' she conceded.

The two of us remained standing there for a while, strangers in this
broken land looking down at a once-great city. I would have called the
moment solemn, if not for the fact that Indrani was pulling at a flask
of liquor. She sighed in satisfaction, then rolled her shoulders.

``All right,'' Archer said. ``We doing this or what?''

``Don't get yourself killed,'' I reminded her, meeting hazelnut eyes
with my own.

``Never have before,'' Indrani drawled. ``So, you know, if we go purely
by precedent it only makes sense that I'm immortal.''

While pushing her over the tunnel's edge would have been deeply
satisfying, we did have a battle to win. I settled for freezing her
flask solid instead, grinning at the muttered imprecations that
followed.

---

Steel-clad boots hit the ground, and I slowed long enough to have a look
at my warriors -- and they were definitely that, not a soldier among
them. One hundred dzulu, moving like large hunting cats with their
spears and swords in hand, barely a dozen shields among them. Thirteen
Mighty, most of them ispe with only a single jawor and a pair of
freshly-harvested rylleh to serve as heavy hitters. My Lord of Silent
Steps led the pack from the front, and they slowed along with me without
a word.

``Ivah,'' I said. ``Translate. The old terms apply: nisi are not to be
touched save in self-defence, surrenders are to be accepted and
observed. Anyone they kill, they can take. Corpses of my own making go
to auction, and I will personally execute any who reaps their Night.''

Not exactly the most inspirational of speeches, but then with drow I'd
found it more important to lay down rules than tug at heartstrings. They
had precious few of either, and the latter was beyond my ability to fix.
The words were repeated in Crepuscular, and within a heartbeat of the
sentence ending the first shot of the battle for Great Lotow was fired.
A javelin, thrown from a rooftop maybe half a hundred feet ahead. Aimed
towards me, which meant either it was a warning to the drow or they'd
already caught on to the fact I was running things. I could have simply
stepped aside -- it was aimed at my centre of mass, well-thrown but
barely any better than a mundane human could have -- but sometimes it
was necessary to make an impression and\ldots{} set the tone. I let it
arc downwards, and at the last moment caught the shaft. Less than an
inch stood between the sharp stone tip and my plate. Casually, I spun
the javelin around between my fingers and gripped it correctly. One
step, lowering my body, then rising up I threw the javelin back.

It, uh, wasn't something I was trained in. I had better aim and
certainly more body strength than I'd used to, but that didn't translate
to skill. It flew like a damned crossbow bolt, in a straight line, and
was easily dodged by the silhouette on the rooftop. Still, at least no
other projectile had followed. It was a start. I flicked my wrist,
forming a blade of frost, and advanced.

``Forward,'' I ordered, Ivah translating a heartbeat afterwards.

Archer would begin her own sweep the moment we engaged the enemy
properly, so all I had to worry about was the world in front of me. I
went down the slope at a pace, and entered the avenue briskly. Already
the Urulan had prepared a reception. A dozen dzulu led by a drow roiling
with Night -- Mighty, and stronger than ispe -- were spread out in a
loose crescent with with Mighty at the tip. I'd missed this, I realized.
The simplicity of it. Enemies ahead, allies behind. No tricky little
shades of morality, no debate over right and necessity. It was like I'd
been whisked back to the Pit and its much less complicated time. I felt
a savage grin split my lips, and for the first time in ages I could
savour the air in my lungs. The glorious burn of it, illusion that it
was. I'd keep it going as long as I could. I darted forward, dashing
around another javelin and closing the distance in mere heartbeats. The
Mighty yelled and Night flared, the sound reverberating, but instead of
ducking I plunged into it. My eardrums burst and reformed in the same
moment, and the last I saw of that drow was the look of utter surprise
on its face when my sword carved through its throat.

The dzulu immediately began retreating, faces gone pale, but I was
having none of that. I moved faster than them, and the first I caught
before it could even turn to strike me. My hand went through its back
and I snapped its spine, withdrawing bloodied fingers. The next struck
at me with spear, but I let the stone tip bounce off my plate and
slapped its cheek hard enough the neck broke. The third tried to parry
my strike, but while the blades were at the right angle the difference
in strength made it pointless. Its arm was forced down, and a flick of
the wrist had its head rolling on the floor. My own drow joined the fray
eagerly, falling on the survivors like wolves on the fold, but I pressed
on. I'd not come here to make sport of dzulu. Archer would be going to
the right, so my charge was to sweep by the left. Already yells were
sounding in the distance, the Urulan gathering for war, but I did not
intend to give them the opportunity of mustering a proper resistance.
Through halls and houses I strode, ears sharp, and caught my first
ambusher. Atop one of those long halls, pressed closely against the
roof. Laughing, I struck at the wall and tore through the stone. It
rose, alarmed, and I leapt up.

Just a dzulu, I saw, eyes barely touched with silver. Disappointed, I
snatched it by the neck before it could bring up its weapon and tossed
it further down the avenue. It hit stone with a loud squelch, head
pulped. I leapt back down, noting my forces were beginning to catch up.
The first enemies had been too heavily outnumbered to put up a real
fight. I took the lead, moving down the avenue. We hadn't even taken a
fifth of the circle yet, but I found the resistance to have been too
lukewarm. Someone had sent expendable to probe out strength while they
prepared a response. My instincts proved right maybe sixty heartbeats
later, when I found the length of the ring had been walled up. Thin
walls of hide held by a framework of glue and stone, but they were
decent makeshift fortifications to block off the streets and avenues.
Atop the roofs drow with bows and javelins were awaiting, while the
streets behind the hide blocks slowly filled with reinforcements. The
first chokepoint to break, then. They'd made a kill zone at ground level
-- the hide panels were likely movable to let through their own warriors
-- so I'd go at it from a different angle.

I leapt back up on the nearest rooftop and broke into a run. Best to
soften up this lot before my drow ran into them. Arrows and javelins
streaked the air, which bothered me little -- they were loud and slow
and my body was mist whenever I wished. They might as well have been
shooting at a ghost. I closed the distance and then streaks of Night
began lashing out towards me, which was more dangerous. I suspected the
mist trick would fail against sorcery, and this was as close as drow
could get to magic. There were, by the looks of it, seven casters. I
could take the hits and barrel through, most likely, but the knowledge
that my body was exceedingly difficult to permanently damage nowadays
had not whisked away Black's earliest lessons. \emph{Never take a blow
unless you have to, much less if you do not know what it will do.} A
platform served as anchor for the push that sent me to crash into the
house beneath which the archers and casters were standing. Momentum
alone would not get me through that wall, even in plate, so instead I
formed a spike of ice at an angle and caught it with my free hand. A
spin had me leaping back upwards, the looks on the faces of the drow
when I came of height with them most amusing. Another platform -- just
in time to avoid a second set of Night streaks -- had me landing in a
roll among them.

The dzulu, for that was what most of them were, scattered immediately. I
didn't have the time to go through them one at a time, so I dipped into
Winter and let loose a working. The rings of sharp ice spears formed
around my abdomen, lingering for a moment before shooting out. Blood,
screams and shredded flesh followed in their wake. I had to throw myself
to the side when looked like a snake made of Night ran through where I'd
been a heartbeat earlier, jaws snapping. Another two follow suit,
keeping me dancing, and to my distaste a streak of Night clipped me on
the shoulder as I landed in a roll. It went straight through the plate,
though at an angle that meant it hit air instead of flesh after punching
through. Seven casters, I found, the only ones not dead or running. The
snakes were coming out of their bellies, coiling and releasing at their
will, while the other four drow were shooting shorter bursts to keep me
from closing distance. Irritating. If they were Mighty, which was
likely, they weren't far up the ranks. I didn't have time to waste on
these when the real threats were still on the loose.

I sidestepped another streak, ducked under a snake and exerted my will.
The drow guiding the snake found its throat filled with ice and began
clawing at its skin impotently. I caught another snake-charmer and one
of the shooters before being forced to move again. Darting around a
snaked extended sharply like an arrow shot I ran forward, rolling under
another streak of Night and responding with a collar of ice around the
second drow's neck that tightened and immediately choked it. They'd
needed the numbers to keep me busy, they realized too late as I carved
through the throat of the last snake-charmer. The remaining two tried to
make a run for it but I pursued, shaping my sword into a spear and
tossing it in the first's back. The last survivor leapt down from the
roof and I sighed. Its throat filled with ice a moment later and it
dropped. The whole of it could not had taken more than seventy
heartbeats, and now my own sigil was assaulting the barricades. I
casually formed an anvil of ice and dropped it on the nearest hide wall
to make an easy point of entry. I supposed I could clear out the dzulu a
bit to make it easier on my warriors.

Then the roof under my feet turned into Night, and the Mighty of the
Urulan Sigil entered the fray.