by Shae Ford
“Maybe they’ve given up,” a warrior beside him whispered.
Kael knew full well they hadn’t given up. The animal in him bared its teeth as hairs rose down the back of his neck. He wasn’t at all surprised when a red light appeared behind the ice.
It grew quickly, trembling as it swelled. Every inch seemed to bring it closer to bursting. A high-pitched whistle rent the air as the light grew: the more it trembled, the higher the whistling climbed. Soon, the wall began to shake.
Scales of ice broke free and crashed into the ground. The warriors fell back, cursing. They clapped hands to the sides of their helmets; their ranks went from even lines to a clustered, swearing mass. Even Gwen paced a step back, hand tightened around the hilt of her axe.
Then all at once, the wall exploded.
Boulders of ice flew over their heads and into the field beyond. The warriors raised their shields against the deadly wave that blasted from the Cleft’s mouth. Kael’s arm shook against the unexpected force as ice struck his shield. One of the jagged shards splintered the wood above his wrist and stopped mere inches from his face.
Gwen swatted at the ice shards, meeting their force with the spiked front of her shield. A particularly large chunk of ice screamed for her middle, but she hardly glanced at it. She batted it aside absently while her eyes stayed fixed upon the Cleft.
Kael crouched with the other warriors, their shields raised in a protective roof until the last of the ice fell. When he dared to look, he saw an army gathered inside the Cleft.
Hundreds of soldiers stood before them — their gold-tinged armor reddened by the dawn, the twisting black dragons upon their chests coiled for battle. They filled the pass to its jagged walls and waited in perfect, unwavering lines. Their bodies were so still, the vents of their helmets so fixed that for a moment, Kael thought they might be statues.
Then a man at the head of the line barked an order and the front ranks broke apart. They peeled into an archway, feet pounding in an unbroken rhythm and spears clamped across their chests. From between their ranks marched a dozen mages.
Their robes matched the soldiers: gold, with dragons adorning their chests. Even from a distance, Kael could see the red glow of the shackles upon their wrists. His eyes scanned across their faces quickly. But to his relief, there weren’t any children among them.
He supposed Crevan had sent his best.
One mage marched fearlessly at their lead. He was a desert man with a clean-shaven head. The open-mouthed grin he wore was all teeth and no shape — the grin of a polished skull. Kael couldn’t help but stare at his large, overgrown ears. They were stretched to near-transparency; blue veins crisscrossed down their arches.
The remnants of the red spell coiled in wisps about the mage’s fingers. A length of chain wrapped around his arm. Perhaps it was the dawn light toying with him, but Kael swore the chains seemed to squirm across his wrist … as if it was a creature that moved of its own accord.
The lead mage marched until he stood hardly fifty paces from Gwen, and then he stopped.
Not a sound stirred from the ranks of Midlan; the wildmen stayed remarkably still. The hiss of snow blustering against their breastplates was the only noise between them.
Gwen took a step forward, turning so the lead mage could see her axe. “Are you from the King?” she called.
“I’m Ulric, his archmage.” The desert man’s eyes squinched at their bottoms as they dragged across Gwen’s fur armor. “I’d heard that bandits had taken over the Earl’s castle … though I must admit, I didn’t expect you to be so hideous.”
Gwen’s knuckles went white about the axe even as her neck burned red. “We aren’t bandits. The King sent our ancestors to cleanse the mountains long ago. This land is ours by right.”
Kael knew by how her words snapped at their ends that she was doing everything in her power to keep from burying her axe in Ulric’s skull.
But instead of backing away, his manic grin grew wider. “Yes, I’m sure it is,” he called, as if he were merely appeasing a child’s demands. “But as delightful as this little talk has been, I’m afraid we have business to attend to. Give us the Dragongirl, and I promise no harm will come to you. We’ll even let you keep the castle.”
Kael didn’t believe it, not even for a moment. The King hadn’t sent an army into the Valley for Kyleigh — not when he knew that their swords wouldn’t be any good against her scales. No, the mages were here for Kyleigh.
The army was here for the wildmen.
CHAPTER 16
A Fiery Battle
“The pest is gone,” Gwen said with a wave of her hand. “We haven’t seen her for months.”
As she spoke, Kael drew the sword at his hip. He wished he had his bow. Ulric stood within his range — and he thought an arrow between the eyes would’ve done him some good.
“Well, that is regrettable. We rather hoped we would find her here.” Ulric’s dark eyes roved to the walls of Thanehold — and his grin stretched even wider. “Still … it seems a shame to drag an army all the way from Midlan and not have it used.”
Ulric raised his fist, and Kael knew what was coming. Fear jolted him forward. It swelled inside his muscles, brought strength to his limbs. His eyes sharpened upon Ulric’s face and he threw the first thing he could think of — the only thing he had in his hand.
It was an impossible throw. The sword bolted from his hand and flew with an arrow’s speed for Ulric — no more than a gray blur against the white earth. White ringed the archmage’s eyes and for the second the sword flew, Kael thought he had him.
But one of the other mages saw it coming.
His spell struck the sword and sent it to the ground in a thousand glittering pieces. The wildmen stepped in behind Kael and hurled more bolts, but it was too late. The mages’ shock lasted a mere half-blink. They raised their daggers and swords, their hands adorned with gauntlets and silver rings, and an identical blue spell blossomed from their ends.
The spells melded where they touched until it filled the Cleft’s mouth. It made Midlan’s army shimmer and wave, as if it stood behind an enormous bubble. The various weapons the wildmen hurled at Ulric shattered helplessly against its rounded front.
Kael knew they wouldn’t be able to throw anything through the shield. They had to reach Ulric before the fires came. But he only managed to take a single step.
A gust of wind tore through the Cleft. It scraped across the soldiers first — stumbling them forward despite their heavy armor, tugging at their pikes and stirring the links of their mail into a clanging song. It whipped against the blue spell and stirred ripples from its front. Then it whipped across the mages’ robes, striking Ulric last.
Though the wind roared so furiously that it seemed about to punch a hole through the spell, Ulric’s open-mouthed grin never faltered — and his dark eyes stayed fixed on Kael.
The wind rose to a thunderous bellow, growing into a powerful storm. It burst from the clouds in unnatural gusts: knocking them backwards at one moment, dragging them forward the next.
Most of the wildmen were caught off-guard by the strange pattern of the wind. They rolled helplessly towards Thanehold, armor clattering through the snow. A handful managed to wedge themselves against rocks while their strength adjusted.
Even Gwen was struggling. She fell to her knees and wedged her shield against the lip of a rock, holding on tightly as the wind tried to beat her away.
Only Kael managed to keep his feet. He remembered the power of these winds — the gales that’d turned entire flaming vessels onto their sides. His legs braced against the push he knew would come, his muscles tightened to hold him steady.
While the warrior in him planted its feet, the craftsman went to work. Kael watched through his mind’s eye as blackened scales popped up across his skin. They covered his every inch, from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet. He braced himself against the heat he knew would come and shouted to the warriors behind him:
�
�Let go! Get out of the way!”
“No, hold your ground!” Gwen roared from ahead of him. She twisted to glare over her shoulder, her voice sharp with fury. “Don’t give in, keep fight —!”
All at once, light broke above the Cleft.
Something like the afternoon sun erupted before them: an orb that burned with enough fury to chew a hole through the clouds. The snow turned a blinding white beneath it. Kael shielded his eyes against the stabbing light and watched from beneath the crook of his arm as black spots appeared across the ground in front of him.
Not even the mountains’ winter could withstand the power of the light. It stripped the ice from the rocks and shoved the cold aside. Snow boiled and rolled away from the orb like molten steel; the hiss of rising steam filled the air beneath the storm’s thunderous voice.
Shock stole Kael’s breath and for half a moment, he felt a blast of heat slip through the hairline cracks in his armor. He fought against his doubt, fought to seal the cracks before his armor burst and the heat consumed him. He dragged his eyes from the blinding orb to focus, and saw that Gwen hadn’t budged.
Her head was twisted aside, her teeth bared against the heat. But even when the light brightened and she cried out in pain, she clung stubbornly to the rock — determined not to let the wind cast her aside.
Kael forgot his worry, forgot his doubt. “Let go!” he bellowed, his heart thumping in panic. “Let go, for mercy’s sake!”
But no matter how he roared, she couldn’t hear him.
Flames had begun to boil inside the clouds. The orb was near to bursting. Kael fought against the ripping winds and the growing heat, against the knee-high weeping of the snow. He grabbed the furred back of Gwen’s tunic just as the light erupted, blinding him. His warrior strength surged, bolstered by his panic. In the last seconds before the fires came, he wrenched Gwen from the ground and charged blindly out of the light’s path — running as far as he could.
No sooner had they escaped than the fire rained down.
Flames as high and vast as the trees spouted from the earth behind him. They wrought all the ground they touched in a furious golden light, while everything around them fell to shadow. Kael held Gwen beneath him as the fires roared; her body shook with angry howls.
Though the scales of his armor kept his flesh from burning, Kael could still feel the heat. It was more a presence than anything: a serpent that lay coiled about him, its muscles poised to tighten. He knew that if his concentration wavered for even a moment, the heat would strangle them both. So he fought against it and held on tightly.
Just when he thought Gwen wouldn’t last another moment, the fires abated.
The flames whipped away and died with a hiss against the frozen air. The winds that blew across them now were from the mountains — not the strange gusts of Ulric’s spell. They carried the smoke away, stirring up a monstrous cloud of ash from the charred earth behind them.
Kael’s eyes still ached from the light. He watched as the shadows ahead of him became men and mages, as the archmage came into focus and as his dark eyes dragged from the sky and back onto Kael.
Sweat drenched his face and left a dark ring around the collar of his robes. When he saw Kael lived, the open-mouthed grin he wore slipped into a snarl. He raised his fist again, arm shaking with the effort —
“No!”
The cry didn’t come from Ulric, but from Gwen. She shoved Kael away with such surprising force that he rolled to the side. She scrambled to her feet and took a few halting steps towards the charred land behind them before she fell to her knees. She collapsed as if she’d taken an arrow to the gut, and Kael thought she might be wounded.
He fell in beside her. There were raw, red burns across her face — gaps in her swirling paint, spots where a layer of her skin had peeled away. But as he reached for her wounds, she threw her fist into the side of his helmet and screamed:
“No!”
She struck him again, but he hardly felt it. The only thing he seemed able to feel was his gut as it plunged from his middle — evaporating before it struck the ground.
A circle of black stretched before them, a ring that’d obviously been meant to destroy the wildmen’s front line. Though most had been swept backwards by the force of the wind, a few of the warriors had managed to hold their ground.
Now their bones lay in twisted heaps … charred black as night.
“No …” Gwen’s voice was strangled, cracked in anguish. Her eyes were sharp with a mix of fury and pain. She dragged her fingers across her wounds and the rest of her skin turned as raw as her burns.
The warriors who’d been tossed aside by the wind had regained their footing. They came rushing through the cloud of ash at the sound of her cries. Their faces hardened at the sight of their companions’ bodies. Anger boiled in their eyes.
Kael didn’t have to grasp their hands to feel their fury, to hear the wild shrieking of their hearts. He saw it in their eyes, felt it in their stares. It washed over him in a furious, awakening heat; it added to his own molten rage. And by the time Kael turned, he was furious enough to shake the mountains.
Ulric must’ve seen the death scrawled in the dark of his eyes: his face turned ashen. He raised his fist higher and shouted words that Kael couldn’t hear — he couldn’t hear them because he was roaring, pouring all of his anger into a howl.
The cry that ripped from his throat grew — carried upwards and bolstered by the wildmen who crashed in behind him.
Ulric nearly tripped over his robes in his rush to get behind the soldiers. He ran between their ranks with his fist still raised, screaming: “Attack! Fight them, you fools!”
A block of soldiers stepped forward — Midlan seemed to think that was all they would need. The soldiers marched through the blue shield and its shimmering flesh clung wetly to their armor as they passed. The first rows dropped to one knee and raised their pikes, aiming for the wildmen’s chests. Archers readied their arrows behind them. They moved swiftly, helmets turned upon the small pack of charging men.
Kael’s boots thundered beneath him. He never once glanced at the deadly, glinting tips of the pikes but kept his eyes focused upon the soldier in front of him. The shaft of his weapon rested gently — lazily, even — between his armored fists. It wasn’t until Kael was within ten paces that his grip tightened. His helmet dropped, and Kael imagined the soldier probably grinned when he realized the wildmen weren’t going to stop. He likely thought the battle would be over by midday. But he was wrong.
It would be over much sooner than that.
Kael heard the screech of metal as the pike’s tip shattered across his chest, saw the soldier’s eyes widen through the slits of his helmet, illuminated briefly by a touch of the rising sun. Then there was wet, warmth — a scarlet wave that churned over his arm as the soldier’s head rolled aside, hewed by the sharpened edges of his scales.
The warriors knocked the pikes aside with their shields, swatting the weapons away without ever breaking stride. They dodged arrows with ease, swung their blades in relentless arcs for the soldiers’ heads and chests.
When their swords broke, they swung their fists.
Kael had ripped his way to the middle of the horde when a burst of strange, muffled words came from the mages. Three of them stood together, sweat dripping off their chins as they struggled to hold the blue shield in place. But the rest had fallen back.
Now they cast a spell from behind the wall of soldiers. A thunderhead swelled over the ranks of Midlan, its rumbling edges bolstered by the mages’ strange words. In mere seconds, it’d swelled to darken the sky above the Cleft. Seconds later, a torrent of blue-green lightning fell from the clouds.
It struck the earth with a crackling fury — cleft the hills and the rocks with its bolts. What little remained of Midlan’s front ranks were melted inside their armor. But though the ground blackened and sank beneath their boots, the wildmen were unharmed.
Their battle slowed for a moment as the mothy tang
of the spell washed over them. They blinked furiously, their eyes streamed against it. Even through the scales and his iron helmet, Kael could smell it — and he knew the wildmen could, as well.
Red filled his vision as the warrior in him roared. He saw only bits of things: the shield’s blue flesh parting around his body, the blood pounding inside the mages’ throats — the dark lines of fear that wreathed their eyes when he raised his fists …
Bodies fell beneath his arms; wet warmth spattered across his face. The three mages that’d been left with the shield were now no more a worry than the rocks beneath his feet — and the scent of their blood drove the wildmen’s strength to madness.
Gwen fell in beside him. She charged with her shield braced against her shoulder, knocking a whole row of soldiers onto their backs. Her axe split their helmets and her boots clomped down upon their chests. The crazed strength that filled every wire of her limbs sunk into Kael as she ground in beside him. She plastered herself to his shoulder, and he matched her blow for blow.
It wasn’t long before he realized they were no longer battling Midlan: they warred with each other. Each tried to outfight the other — each tried to be the first to reach Ulric.
Each wanted to be the one to rip the ridging from his throat.
The army was just a spiny, gold-tinged wall in their path.
“Come back!”
The cry was faint at first — merely a scream that skittered across the tops of the soldiers’ helmets. But the next time it came, Kael heard the magic in the command as Ulric’s spell drove it to thunder:
“Come back! Come back and finish them, beast!”
Kael slowed; Gwen shoved past him. Blades shattered across his scales as Midlan tried to bring him down. A tidal wave of wildmen charged by and swept the soldiers back, but he hardly noticed:
Kael watched the skies.
Beast?
Something wriggled inside his head — the same nagging fear that’d clawed at him as he listened to Baird’s story. It was impossible. He’d told himself it was impossible. Even now, he didn’t want to believe it. But his feet seemed to have a mind of their own.
