by Aimee Moore
I laughed at Sol Lalpund's weak display of power, a high pitched and very female sound compared to the posturing males all around me. All eyes were on me.
“Good heavens, Seraphine?”
I quirked one side of my mouth into a superior smile as Mindrik finally recognized me. “I am the Eyes and Ears of the Warlord, and before this is over you will look upon me as you look upon death and beg for mercy.”
“By the gods, what have they done to you?”
I gave him a wicked grin, and my war steed shifted its weight with impatience. “You wouldn't survive half of what they did to me,” I said. “Seraphine of Lambston is dead. I am Seraphine, Eyes and Ears to the Warlord, and I will raze everything in the path to my objective.”
Mindrik's face fell with regret, and the Warlord laughed. Dal was motionless beside me.
“Entertain me, frail humans, with what peace you hoped to accomplish by meeting us here. Allow me to savor my impending victory by remembering your pathetic pleas in the end.” The Warlord leaned back on his saddle of human hides, peeling black lips back over pointed teeth. Revulsion rippled among the council, and myself. I hated him. Yet I agreed with him.
Sol Crepuskar, with her black hair like night, spoke up with a satisfied smile on her pale face. “You think us stupid enough to come and beg beasts for mercy? Look around you, fool. You are only ten, while thousands of arrows above await our order to rain down upon you.”
As if in acknowledgment, the arrow tips that were pointed at us glittered.
Still the Warlord smiled. “Have you met my Eyes and Ears, my Second in command of every Kraw on your stinking husk of planet?”
“Of course we've met the human beggar at your side,” Sol Jalgon said. “No matter what costume she wears, she’s still only a helpless girl who cannot halt death by arrow any more than she could halt the death of her dignity.”
The Warlord leaned toward me, sending chills down my spine, and said, “Fate sends you luck this day, my Eyes and Ears. Show these worms what mercy the Warlord possesses.”
With a smile, I flung my arm out toward the wall of arrows towering high over us. Some loosed at my gesture, but most of the humans barely registered the blade of fire that swept toward them, over the heads of the council, like a great fan of death. Arrows were incinerated, stone was smudged with soot, and every head that bobbed over the wall was separated from its body with a mere purr of flame. Heads and weapons fell from the wall, clattering and splatting to the floor.
The council's horses shied and whinnied as the council beheld the instant death of their archers. They turned wide, human eyes to me.
“How does mercy taste, weak humans?” The Warlord asked with a sneer. “Do you not appreciate the cowardly blood that still flows in your frail veins? Do you not appreciate the taste of fear that means you are alive?”
Mindrik was gaping at me. “Seraphine...”
I drew my sword, letting my flame lick down the blade, and pointed it at Mindrik. “Go and cower in your castle. Kraw do not ask for peace. Kraw do not negotiate.”
“Traitor,” Sol Lalpund hissed.
I laughed, aiming my sword at him. “You chose this. You chose pride and greed over logic. If saving my world makes me a traitor then this traitor bears the blood of every man, woman, and child on her shoulders gladly. You could have stood beside me on this path and ended this war before Kraw even set foot here, but now you’re just in my way.”
Sol Vraldok, with his crown of dancing light, smiled then. “It is a shame for you, then, that your misguided foolery shall not come to fruition.” And with that, he rose his wrinkled hand to the skies, and the sunlight flashed so brightly so that we had to shield our eyes. The beasts we rode all shied and tossed about, the Warlord letting a growl out. We were blinded.
Chapter 29
Dagger in Shadow
A great thundering sounded behind us as everyone got their bearings, and somewhere nearby, a sword was unsheathed. I pulled the reins of my mount back, to get away from that sound, and the steed bobbed about, hopefully obeying as we all adjusted to the blinding light that still pierced our existence.
The Warlord let loose a battle cry that invigorated me, pulsed speed into my veins, as if the light itself were fueling me. But my human eyes still couldn’t handle the brightness.
A great roar shook me from the left, and I peered from under my hand to see Sol Vraldok's sword stuck into the Warlord's beast. The hulking creature collapsed, the Warlord rolling off with a cat-like grace, leaping through the air and unsheathing two monstrous swords on his back, burying both weapons into Sol Vraldok within the blink of an eye.
I gasped as the Warlord turned and yanked them from the yellow robed corpse and spun into a whirling machine of death. The light returned to normal, but I was still seeing spots. Strong arms grabbed me about the waist, hauling me from my panicked beast. The roaring of feet behind me got louder, alongside battle cries and the clanking of bones and steel. The Kraw army was advancing with demon speed, fueled by Sol Vraldok’s light.
“Come,” Dal said in my ear.
“Can't see!” I gasped to him over the noise.
“You will. Come.” Dal began to lead me backward, I think, away from the whirling death that was the Warlord and the other eight of the Dagger in Shadow. Steel met steel, wetness splashed upon the dirt, the ground below my feet rumbled, and battle shouts crashed into my ears.
“Dal! Let me go, I need to help!” I peeked from below my hands, squinting in the sunlight, straining to be free.
The ground trembled again as Sol Jalgon brought up a great tsunami of earth in front of us, to bury us, and Mindrik and Sol Creljin were weaving their hands to call water to drown their enemies. Sol Crepuskar, her pale face twisted in a snarl, was throwing darkness at encroaching Kraw like bales of blackness, smirking as her targets stumbled forward and were trampled beneath the thundering feet of their kin.
One of the Dagger in Shadow was on fire, roaring and swinging his blade at anything nearby. The Warlord was advancing on Sol Lalpund to cut him down, leaving behind the sliced and bleeding remains of the council steeds. When had the council dismounted? Where did all of the arrows on the ground come from? How was the Warlord still moving with an arrow in his shoulder?
“Let me go!” I yelled again as Dal dragged me back. The army was very close now. I raised an arm to put out the fire on the Kraw fighting Sol Lalpund.
“Not yet. You are no good to us dead,” Dal said over the noise.
Sol Jalgon was bringing up spikes of hard earth as he backed away, impaling the incoming army, sending shrieking steeds crashing forward onto their heads, Kraw riders sprawling forward into more spikes. With a gasp, I turned to Sol Jalgon and threw my palm forward, engulfing the old man in flame. The council member in brown screamed and began to roll in his dirt, piling it on himself with his power, trying to put the fire out among the chaos. I took aim at more council, but they were so entangled with the Dagger in Shadow, fighting to save their lives that I could not get a clear shot.
“Enough!” Sol Creljin yelled from somewhere in the chaos. A great ball of water coalesced around the council and Mindrik, clothing and hair floating about in the strange bubble for but a moment before it rose. The Kraw within, three of our Dagger in Shadow, clutched at their throats and clawed at the unforgiving water as the rest of the council floated about in serene satisfaction. The bubble rose quickly, over the wall, taking the three Kraw with it and disappearing from view.
The Kraw army rushed past me like a tidal wave, slamming into the wall. Ropes went up the impossible length of the wall, and within moments great boulders of clay and earth glided over the wall, each like a malicious moon eclipsing the sun, sailing over the army and crashing into our own catapults and war machines. I didn't watch. I couldn't. Arrows rained down around us, and Dal pulled me close and crouched over me, able to bear arrows far better than I.
Eyes now adjusting, I turned to Dal, who was scanning the periphery for esc
ape. “We can't stay here!” I yelled.
The Warlord, towering over the rest of the Kraw with his ever-watching mane of black death, standing atop the corpse of Sol Vraldok, let loose a thundering roar as he raised dripping red blades. That roar was strength, it was power, it was the Kraw purpose being filled at long last. It bolstered me with strength, and in unison with the rest of the Kraw, I raised my sword and roared back, ears ringing from the sound.
“Daggers!” The Warlord shouted again. Four other hulking Kraw from our Dagger group took mounts from arriving warriors, Dal and myself followed suit, and before long the Dagger group was weaving out of the writhing mass of blood-lusted Kraw. Arrows rained down again, and with Dal's help navigating, I turned and incinerated as many arrows as I could before they reached the warriors. I lit the top of the wall aflame so that no archers could see through it, and fought as dirty as I could while the Dagger group and I wove our way out of the chaos.
The Warlord let out another roar of strength, turning his rearing mount northward to begin the trek to the lake that housed the leyline. Dal, the other four Kraw that made up the Dagger in Shadow, and I followed with equally buoyant war cries. All too soon, we rounded the corner of the wall, the roars of the Kraw army became distant, and the Dagger group was galloping toward a swift victory.
The roaring din and clatter of battle echoed through the Elanthian lands surrounding the castle wall, but the thundering of our steeds' strange hooves and the snorting of their great breaths took up most of our immediate hearing. I didn't have time to appreciate the rolling landscape as we rounded the towering wall. The steeds, bolstered by whatever speed the Warlord’s cry had given us earlier, sprinted with shocking speed toward the back of the palace. Them and their riders never tired.
At long last, we came upon a section of the stone wall was destroyed, boarded up with perfect lines of wood.
The Warlord pulled his steed to a screeching halt, and it shrieked as it reared and the Warlord dismounted. Death's taloned boots crunched in the dead grass. The rest of us dismounted as well, my aching body trembling with relief at being off of the lumpy crest of the steed's backbone.
“It was here,” Dal said in his quiet, strong voice.
“Too easy,” said another in our group.
The Warlord laughed.
I looked at the hole in the wall, wondering if this was the method of escape Dal had used the day that I confronted the council by the leyline.
The Warlord advanced on the wall, and with one massive punch, muscles in his back and arm rippling, the wooden planks were splintered away. He kicked rest of the wood, and it fell away in shards and chunks, leaving a tall stone lip that we could crawl over.
The Dagger in Shadow filed through the hole, assessing the wild green field that stretched for an eternity into the castle's side, cradling a massive lake of the most crystalline blue I had ever seen.
“Where is the passage,” the Warlord snarled.
Dal strode over to a mound of earth that was wide enough to push a cart into. “It was here.”
The rest of us approached, and I watched as another Kraw brought down the blunt end of his ax into the dirt in various spots. “There is no door here, it's earthen all the way through,” he said.
The Warlord gave a feral grin, pulling his two massive swords out. “Then we take our goals through the castle. Let us finish this.”
He took off at a run, and with a regretful look toward me, Dal picked up the pace and followed his Warlord. My heart jumped into my throat, and I scrambled to run with the seven hulking Kraw. I took two strides to their every one, and while their easy pace barely taxed them, my side was aching before we were even past the lake. Still, they thundered on, easily, like dark horses who would never tire.
In a short time I had to stop and bend over, panting. Dal stopped and picked me up, slinging me over his back, and continued to run. No one said anything, no harsh accusations from the Warlord or the rest of the Dagger in Shadow. Perhaps, for now, so close to the goal, my human shortcomings were to be overlooked.
Dal's hot, firm body worked beneath me, his smell surrounding me, his breath still coming just as easy as it did when he ran without my weight. My arms and legs screamed at holding on, but I dared not voice a complaint of any sort. I was grateful to Dal for bearing my weight, for caring for me, for being Kraw.
They must have run for a quarter an hour, at which point my limbs were numb, and Dal had to shift me higher to hold on to me better. Still, not one of them tired as we crested emerald hill after emerald, daisy-speckled hill. Now and again a tree gave us cover from the sunlight that I had finally become used to, but we were mostly in the open, shockingly unhindered.
The sounds of battle echoed over the hills, even though the war was happening miles away.
I tried to see if there were humans in the towers looming ahead, getting ever closer, but my eyesight was not good enough to make out much more than a blur of darkness within the tower windows.
Finally, we neared the castle, and more arrows began to rain down on us from the towers of the castle. I summoned my flame and tried to provide us with cover, but a few arrows slipped by and Dal gave a jolted grunt.
I gasped, looking at the arrow sticking out of my mate, but Dal shifted me higher and kept running. The other Kraw took wounds as well, running as if nothing had struck them. One had taken an arrow between the ribs and his breathing was not coming so easily anymore. I renewed my effort to protect us better until we were safe against the wall of the castle, where Dal put me down.
“Third, lead me to the leyline chamber,” the Warlord commanded.
Dal took the lead, arrow sticking through his side. We fought off more human soldiers and rounded two massive sections of castle before coming to towering double doors. Dal kicked the doors down with a grunt, and the seven of us filed through.
Twisting corridors full of tapestries and marble and gold and gems, just as I remembered, whirred through my eyesight as I sprinted with the Kraw. Already my side was burning and my lungs pumped acid, but we were so close. Servants and people in robes and all manner of dress screamed and ran for cover as we passed, their presence confirming that the council was indeed distracted with the battle miles away. The Warlord cut down a young woman, laughing as her blood sprayed us and the walls.
Soon we approached the grand archway leading to the leyline. It was packed with soldiers, armed to the teeth, and much to their credit, not rattling with fear in their armor.
The Warlord, black and bloody, threw his head back and laughed. Then that voice, bottomless and hopeless as drowning, said, “Your deaths will make me smile long after your stinking meat has become dirt. Your bones will be my trophies. Your eyes will forever see every life I take after yours.” All gazes were on the many white orbs of eyes that were woven into the Warlord's black war braids.
Then he threw his head back and roared a great battle cry. The other six of us raised our swords and did the same, even Dal becoming one with the Dagger in Shadow, his deep cry running through me like electricity. The humans' eyes became wide with fear, and then we charged forward.
At the last moment, Dal grabbed me and pulled me back, shoving me roughly behind a heavy, precariously perched suit of armor. It toppled on me, and Dal let it smash into my legs. I screamed as something snapped in my foot.
“Dal! You son of a bitch!”
Hazel eyes met mine with regret before Dal turned and roared at the incoming humans, whirling into the fray of weapons and armor and blood. I struggled to move the heavy armor and not draw attention to myself. Pain wracked my foot, radiating all the way up my leg and into my chest. I thought about melting the armor away, but the molten metal would slither toward my six outnumbered party members, who didn't need any help being at a disadvantage.
I gave up my embarrassment when a human soldier approached Dal from behind. I shoved my palm forward and blasted the man into the floor with fire, and he screeched as his body burned. I turned my attention
away from him and set fire to anyone else I could get a clear line of sight to.
The Warlord, towering over the fray, was whirling about with his two massive swords, armor and limbs and heads and tiny human weapons whipping up around him as he slaughtered. I watched Dal bare large canines as he growled at his opponents before ending them in powerful, clean swipes. More than anything in the world, I wanted to be there fighting alongside him. My head swayed as dizziness overtook me, and I closed my eyes and scrunched behind the armor as it passed.
Such weakness. Hiding behind a suit of armor, dizzy, frail, not fit to be the Eyes and Ears. I was angry at myself. I was angry at the child. I was angry at Dal. As soon as the dizziness passed, I resumed my fiery assault on the humans. Just as the battle was nearly ending, Dal rushed toward me and wrenched the armor off my legs, dripping with the blood of his enemies.
I gasped and shuddered as the pain exploded in my limbs, tears blurring my vision as my foot screamed agony into me. Dal's eyes swept over my injured foot before pulling me to my good one. My good leg gave out and he caught me. The battle in this hall was nearly done, and from behind Dal I saw the Warlord turning toward me. He would see my weakness.
I shoved Dal away from me with a snarl, and he backed away with a frown. Forcing my good leg to work properly despite the pain wracking my body, I rose on it, and the Warlord's black gaze met mine across the carnage of the grand hall.
“There are more,” the Warlord growled. He flung his blades out and blood flew off of them and spattered the walls before he took off at a run.
I couldn't run. The Warlord had to have seen my injury. And either I was insignificant to him now and he didn't care if I kept up, or he was issuing me a silent challenge to be more Kraw. I limped forward in defiance, my broken foot not supporting my weight any longer, catching myself on the wall as I fell and yelling an angry curse. Dal sheathed his black blade and strode forward, picking me up and slinging me over his shoulder like a sack of wheat.
