by E. A. Copen
At the top, I found archers with barrels of black pitch beside them peering out over the horizon with wide eyes and trembling hands. An archer with trembling fingers missed more shots than he made. I didn’t have to be a tactical genius to know that.
Beyond the high wall stood another, lower wall that was more heavily staffed. It was still high enough that no army would breach it without ladders and siege equipment of some kind, but there were several weak points. Wooden doors stood under heavy arches, bolted shut. In every fantasy movie ever, the invaders brought a big battering ram to crush wooden doors just like those.
A moat of green water surrounded the castle outside the second wall. Past that, a green landscape of rolling hills and bright flowers stretched as far as the eye could see. In the distance, shadow touched the land, moving like liquid streaming from an out of control river. It splashed against the hillsides and scattered, devouring the flowers and leaving behind only darkness. The Shadow army led by Kellas.
I stopped the next Summer soldier that passed me on the wall. “Who’s in charge up here?”
He blinked at me from under his helmet. “Lord Mayberry.”
“Mayberry is an idiot,” Declan whispered. “You want Sir Foxglove, Mayberry’s commanding knight. He’ll be the one really giving orders.”
“Where do I find this Sir Foxglove?”
Declan pointed further down the wall. A hard-faced man in dented plate and a crimson cape barked orders at a group of archers in a commanding tone. He paused when he saw two young men—more like boys, really—struggling to get another barrel of pitch up the stairs and went to roll the barrel himself.
I approached and waited at the top of the stairs. “Sir Foxglove?”
He looked up at me, bright blue eyes the color of the Arctic. A puckered scar ran along his jawline. He reached the top of the stairs and handed the barrel off, dusting his hands clean. “How may I be of service to the Summer Knight?” The way he spoke told me he didn’t care for wasted time.
“I was told you’re in charge of the defense here.”
Foxglove turned and started down the battlements the way I’d come, giving me no choice but to follow him if I wanted the conversation to continue. “Sir William is injured. Mahon fled. Sir Chesson can barely stand thanks to his gout and Sir Thesk owes his position to being the queen’s former lover rather than any actual battle experience. So yes, I’m in charge here, despite what Thesk will tell you.” He stopped and raised two hands to cup his mouth and yell, “Raise the spikes!”
A giant metal clang sounded followed by a rhythmic ticking as the fae next to the closest gate turned a giant, spoked wheel. Massive copper spikes rose from inside the moat, tilting toward the oncoming army.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “It looks like you’ve got things pretty well covered.”
Foxglove squinted at me. “We will be able to withstand them until nightfall, or until more men desert. Most of these have never seen real combat, Sir Knight. Too many fae lords are withholding their men based on some perceived slight in the past, while others have called their armies, but are waiting to deploy them.”
“Waiting? Why?”
“They want to see which side will win. Once they know the victor, they will flock to that side and overwhelm the other.” He crossed his arms and turned back to looking out over the approaching army.
Squabbling fae lords and court politics for the win. “I’m going to see if I can talk some sense into Titania. Is there anything else you need?”
A beat of silence passed before Foxglove turned to face me. “Technically, I am subordinate to you. I should be asking that of you.”
I shook my head. “I’m happy to let you run things since I’m as green as most of these guys. I am here to fight though so if you’ve got something you need me to do…”
Foxglove pressed his lips into a thin line and regarded me thoughtfully. “If Titania doesn’t come down from the tower, then we need Prince Roshan.”
“Man-Bun?” I almost choked. That guy was afraid of his own shadow. No way he was going to be worth anything in a fight. Then again, maybe he knew something about his shadow the rest of us didn’t.
Foxglove nodded. “Light and Shadow are opposing forces. If Roshan agrees to aid us, we stand a chance of making it through the night. Convince him to help us, or we all die before dawn.”
I nodded. “Where do I find him?”
“Try the kitchens,” Foxglove said facing outward again. “Roshan was a fat child. Emotional eater. You’ll find him there.”
“I appreciate the help,” I said, which was as close as you could get to thanking a fae and still be okay, and went on my way with Declan at my heels.
The climb up the stone steps to the north tower was agonizing. My muscles already burned and itched. I did my best to resist scratching because I was afraid I’d just slough away skin so that more bits of ghoul could grow in. The virus was rapidly spreading, inhibiting my ability to function. I hoped it’d hold off until after the battle. Last thing I wanted was to go crazy and start chomping down on fallen soldiers when I scented blood. I’d have to be careful not to lose it.
I tried the wooden door at the top of the stairs and found it barred from the inside. Three loud knocks echoed through a big room on the other side. “Excuse me, Your Highness. Do you have a moment to talk about the impending invasion and doom of both fae and humankind?” It wasn’t quite as snappy as what the Jehovah’s Witnesses said when they knocked on my door, but it got the point across.
Thunder growled in response overhead, followed by Titania’s words: “Leave me!”
I sighed and banged my head on the door three times. Maybe that would jog the right words loose. “Highness, I know you’re upset. Kellas betrayed you, murdered your daughter. But not all hope is lost.”
“The future is gone!” she shouted. “Taken from me. And I was so terrible to her. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”
“Maybe not,” I said through the closed door. “We don’t always have the luxury of goodbyes, or the power to save the people we care about most. People we love leave us, betray us. We bury loved ones, and we live with the guilt for the rest of our lives. Wallowing in that won’t change the failure into a success. Dammit, Titania!” I struck the door. “The only thing any of us can do is pretend like we’ve got our shit together. This world sucks. We can’t save everyone. Hell, I can’t even save myself, but I’ll be damned sure to save everyone I can on my way out. You want to hide behind your castle walls and ignore the army knocking on your gates, that’s fine. Just don’t come out here when the dust settles and expect them to have forgotten you wouldn’t stand for them while they stood for you.”
I pushed away from the door and whirled around. “Come on, Declan. Let’s go find Roshan.”
He cast a long glance at Titania’s door. We waited a breath, two, hoping that she would open it and decide to stand with her armies. Instead, the door remained barred.
Declan’s face hardened. Summer wouldn’t easily forget this betrayal.
***
“He’s in there,” Declan whispered.
I leaned against the stone wall outside the kitchen door. Going in seemed like a bad idea, considering every time I saw or smelled food I lost it until someone distracted or threatened me. I’d sent Declan in to do some recon. The kitchens were empty of all the cooks, who’d traded their wooden spoons for bows or otherwise gone into the bowels of the castle to hide out.
Well, not completely if Declan was reporting Roshan was in there.
“What’s he doing?” I kept my voice low to keep from alerting him to our presence. If we scared him, he might run, and I really didn’t want to have to chase him.
Declan leaned in through the doorway a moment before darting back. “He’s polished off a whole chicken and is about to start on the salad. No, wait.” He ducked back in and out. “Never mind. He’s just drinking the ranch dressing.”
I shivered. Poor guy. He had
to really hate himself to go for the ranch dressing. “We need to flush him out.”
Declan tapped his finger against his chin. “I have an idea.”
I nodded, and Declan scurried off, leaving me to listen to Roshan’s slurping interspersed with sobbing. It really was the most pathetic thing I’d ever witnessed. Don’t get me wrong. I felt bad for the guy. His marriage to Odette was pretty much the only thing he had going for him. He hadn’t cared about her, just like she hadn’t cared about him, but now he was trapped. Best-case scenario, there was a siege, and everyone would die. Worst-case scenario, the armies would clash, Summer would lose, and everyone would die. The man was a coward facing down his own death, and it scared him.
Declan reappeared in one of the trees nearby and put a hand to his mouth to amplify his voice. “Free popcorn!”
It wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. No matter how messed up Roshan was, he wasn’t going to come running just because there was free food.
Pots and pans clanged. The door to the kitchen flew open the rest of the way, and a beast emerged. His perfect pale skin had turned green and developed thick scales. Eyes of molten amber darted around out over a curved snout where razor-sharp teeth sprouted. The creature sported a swollen belly covered in big globs of ranch dressing. Bits of chicken flesh hung from between his teeth. For all the hideous changes he’d undergone, Roshan retained his man-bun. Seems there’s no justice in the world after all.
He scanned the courtyard and settled on me. A low, rumbling growl crept from his throat.
I backed away slowly. “Declan, you could’ve told me he was a freaking dragon!”
From his tree, Declan blinked and tilted his head to one side. “I thought you knew.”
“Why would I know that?” I shrieked
My back hit something solid. The castle wall. There was nowhere else to go. Roshan dropped to all fours and clawed his way toward me. His giant, food-covered muzzle loomed just inches from my face. The dragon’s stomach rumbled. He opened his mouth.
I recoiled and braced to be burned alive by a dragon with halitosis.
A long, loud belch vibrated through the air, moving the loose muscles of my face. Roshan choked it off and then collapsed at my feet, sobbing. The smell made me want to join him in tears.
Declan dropped from the tree and strode over. “Talk to him,” he mouthed and gestured to the dragon. “Comfort him.”
Comfort a dragon prince with a binge-eating problem. Yeah. Why me? “There, there,” I said, patting his man-bun. “It’ll be okay.”
“Okay?” Roshan bellowed. His words were slightly slurred by the strangely shaped mouth, but understandable. “I’m never going to be okay! The one good thing to happen to me and I lost her too! I’m pathetic!” He punctuated his declaration by grabbing a handful of grass and shoving it in his mouth.
This was getting way out of hand, and I didn’t have time to dry his tears and patch up his ego. Sometimes, you just gotta tell people the hard truths. “Yeah, you kind of are.”
He choked out a loud sob and tried for another handful of grass. “I know! I can’t help it.”
I slapped it away with the staff, sending a rain of dirt clods everywhere.
Roshan immediately stopped crying and looked at me, surprised.
I lowered the staff and planted it in the ground next to me. “Now that we’ve established where we stand, let’s talk about where to go from here. You can do what you’ve probably always done and stay here to eat yourself into oblivion while the world falls down around you, or you can pick yourself up, put your big dragon pants on, and come with me to kick some ass.”
Tears welled in his eyes. “You want me to fight? With you?”
I gestured to him. All of him. “You’re a dragon! Teeth the size of knives and claws sharp enough to claw through stone. With breath like that, I bet you breathe fire, too.”
“But I’m a coward.” He pawed at the tears falling from his eyes.
I rolled my eyes. “You challenged me. In the banquet hall, remember? You challenged the Summer Knight.”
“That was before. I had to defend her. It was my duty.” He lowered his head. “And now she’s gone.”
Poor guy. I softened the sharp edges of my voice. “She is. Kellas orchestrated her death to make Summer weak when he attacked. He’s at the gates now. Odette might be gone, but her daughter lives. Fight for her. Avenge Odette. Do this, and no one will ever mock you again. Or do you want Titania to be right about you being useless?”
A fire sparked behind his eyes and died. “But I’m afraid.”
“We’re all afraid. Heck, I’m terrified. I just met my daughter, and I don’t want to think about what Kellas will do to her if he gets his troops over that wall. The key is to use that fear. Use it as fuel to keep you from freezing. Now, what do you say? Will you help or not?”
Roshan picked himself up, wiped the ranch dressing from his chin and nodded. “I’m with you.”
“Might want to get that wishbone out of your teeth.”
“Um, Sir?” Declan tapped me on the shoulder.
“What is it?” I turned away from the dragon to see trees marching my way.
Trees. Marching trees.
Tall ash and mighty oak, birch and elm…There must’ve been half a dozen different types of trees crossing the garden toward me, Athdar in their lead. He wore armor that was fashioned to look like leaves and a helmet made of antlers. Athdar carried a club as long as I was tall and twice as thick. He hefted it onto his shoulder as he walked. A drum beat out the rhythm of their march. I spied it hanging from the boughs of an oak, played by the boughs of the tree itself.
The constant barrage of noise on the wall as the soldiers readied their defenses died down. They must’ve heard the drumming and stopped to stare, hopefully as slack-jawed as I was. Otherwise, I’d look like an idiot all alone.
“The trees are arming themselves,” I muttered. “What next?”
“It’s a Dryad March,” Declan whispered. “The last time they marched to war was during the Uprising. They turned the tide of the battle in favor of the victor.”
Armor clanked and Foxglove stepped up beside me, huffing a deep breath. “Never thought I’d live to see the Dryads march again. Strange times indeed.”
Athdar stopped, swung his club into his massive fist and growled. “We don’t fight for Summer. Summer has forgotten us.”
Foxglove’s hand strayed toward the sword at his side. “You’ll fight with our enemies?”
Wood creaked as Athdar shook his head. “We fight in memory of the fallen princess.” He pointed the massive club at me. Crimson tipped thorns protruded from the end. “And we fight to honor a debt repaid.”
Foxglove turned and raised an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged. “Guess that’s what I get for saving the guy’s nuts.”
“The Dryads remember our friends.” Athdar nodded.
The deep moan of a battle horn sounded on the other side of the wall, and the ground shook with rhythmic pounding that wasn’t coming from any drum.
Foxglove turned and frowned at the wall. “Did you speak with Titania?”
“She’s not coming.”
“Then we shall have to make do with elves, Dryads, and a cowardly dragon. Come, Sir Knight.”
I sighed and clicked my heels together three times. “There’s no place like home.” But I’d left my ruby slippers on Earth. No easy escape this time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rain fell. It struck the armor all around me, sounding like marbles rolling down a metal slide.
From atop the wall, I looked out over a sea of black shapes on black horses. Monstrous faces with red eyes and snapping jaws stared back. They carried pikes, spears, swords, and axes. Trolls manned siege machines while four-legged beasts roamed the perimeter. Orcs in siege towers served as their archers. They hid behind narrow slatted windows of the massive constructions, each of which must’ve taken a week to build. With the ladders coating the outside of each
tower, all they’d have to do to get over the wall was push the towers to the edge of the moat and pull a lever to make stairs.
They likely had someone with ranged magic as well besides Kellas himself. I couldn’t pick out who or where those people might be, not until they loosed their first spells. They’d become a primary target for our archers, and if Foxglove was as smart and experienced as he seemed, he’d target them as soon as he found them. That meant Kellas would hold onto them as long as he could.
Kellas himself rode through the ranks of his army on the back of a winged black horse that snorted fire. A Nightmare. He wore light armor and a fancy black cape. Apparently, he didn’t plan to soil himself by fighting.
The Shadow army had stopped just outside the effective range of our archers, for which Foxglove called them cowards.
“How many do you think there are?” I asked, flexing my fingers.
“Three thousand strong,” Foxglove answered.
I cursed. If half of Summer hadn’t run as soon as they got wind of what was coming, we’d have outnumbered them two to one. More deserted when they found out Titania wasn’t coming out of the tower. As it stood, we had half as many men. Looking around, we might lose even more to cowardice before the battle was over. Morale was in the toilet.
I leaned in toward Foxglove. “Shouldn’t you say something to inspire the troops? They all look like they’re about to cut their losses and bolt.”
He looked at me. “Be my guest, Summer Knight. Inspire away.”
Nearby heads turned toward me. I suddenly wanted to shrink into a tiny ball. What the hell was I going to say to convince them to stand and fight? I wasn’t an eloquent speaker. Declan leaned forward, and I met his eyes. The kid had found some second-hand armor to fit him and held a bow and quiver full of gold-fletched arrows.
I cleared my throat and stepped forward. “I’m not very good at giving speeches,” I shouted. “And I’m probably an even worse archer or swordsman than any of you.”
Several soldiers exchanged worried glances.
