Free The Arcanist by Greg Curtis

enemies. Of course that was something he had never needed to do. Not in these peaceful times. He didn't even shut the gate at night. But in his own defence it was on the heavy side and not many people bothered him after the sun went down. And Breakwater was a very peaceful town.
     
    Still, sitting there in the horseless carriage with the others, Edouard found himself almost overcome with emotion for his home. It was big and squat and brutish, and undeniably intimidating, and yet just then it was the most beautiful building he knew. Maybe that was simply because when he'd left it a few hours before, he'd truly been afraid that he would never see it again.
     
    Fortunately he was spared the need to explain his choice of home as Marcus came rushing out, clothed again. Of course since they were Edouard's clothes he was wearing, they were rather tight on him, and still left far too much skin showing to be respectable. Which was why he'd found another cape and started busily draping it around himself as he made himself comfortable in the carriage once more. Marcus was a large man.
     
    He'd also grabbed a couple of Edouard's heavy muskets, and was nursing them on his knees. Edouard carefully didn't say anything about it. He knew why Marcus had taken them. The muskets of the city guards were good at stopping people, but the little half inch lead balls they fired would barely have stung a mammoth. His weapons though were far more powerful; the musket balls larger and with four barrels apiece they gave a soldier three more chances to hit what he aimed at before he had to reload. Whether even they could stop a mammoth he didn't know, but if they couldn't then that left only a cannon to try. He hoped it didn't come to that. Not least because he suspected the handmaidens would not have been so thrilled at the thought of shooting the beasts. In their minds the mammoths were innocent as well.
     
    “Are we ready?” Edouard asked and Marcus nodded in response. The handmaidens nodded as well though they had no need. They'd never left the carriage.
     
    “All right then, next stop Theria.”
     

Chapter Five
     
     
    “By the Seven!”
     
    Edouard was shocked when he first saw the city of Theria with his own eyes. Those same eyes grew even wider with every mile they travelled closer as he could see more clearly the damage done to the city. Such terrible damage!
     
    The walls were the first sign that something was amiss, the vast holes in them writing a story he wasn't sure he wanted to read. But he had to. The holes in the walls were far too large to ignore, and as they drew closer he could see there were bodies lying on the grass beside them. A lot of bodies.
     
    Theria was a walled city and they were the first thing that anyone saw when they arrived. The huge walls surrounding the entire city were a reminder of a time centuries before when the province had not been so peaceful. They had been built to repel invaders. And more than that, to intimidate. To tell any enemies that no matter how many soldiers they had, they would not break through. But they couldn't repel anyone anymore. The walls had been broken.
     
    They stood forty feet tall at least and were built of countless tons of stone blocks held together with steel pegs. They were nearly unassailable by even cannon according to the militarily minded. And they could protect the thirty to fifty thousand people inside against an army. But against a herd of stampeding mammoths even they had given way.
     
    Mammoths when they ran knew nothing of what they ran into. They just hit it like battering rams. They would not be stopped. Indeed Edouard had heard of tales of the beasts smashing into mountains and knocking over small hills. And where the city's great walls had been hit by the unstoppable force of the beasts, even they had collapsed completely.
     
    Approaching the city Edouard could see a good dozen holes in the walls. And by each of those holes gangs of workmen were busy