Kingdom of Ash
Page 140
They didn’t see the large white snout that periodically broke through the ice floes to huff down a breath. The sky was dark now, thick with the clashing of wyverns and Crochans.
Bodies occasionally plunged into the river, Ironteeth and Crochan alike.
The Crochans who thrashed, who were still alive, Lysandra covertly carried to the far shore. What they made of her, they didn’t say. She didn’t linger long enough to let them.
The Ironteeth who fell into the river were dragged to the bottom and pinned to the rocks.
She’d had to look away each time she did it.
Lysandra’s snout broke the surface as a sharp horn shattered over the din, right from the city walls. Not a warning call, but an unleashing.
Lysandra dove to the bottom. Dove and then pushed up, mighty tail thrashing to launch her toward the surface.
She broke from the ice and the water, arcing through the air, and slammed right into Morath’s eastern flank.
Soldiers screamed as she unleashed herself in a whirlwind of teeth and claws and a massive, snapping tail.
Where the white sea dragon moved, black blood sprayed.
And just when the soldiers mastered their terror enough to launch arrows and spears at the opalescent scales enforced with Spidersilk, she twisted and flipped back into the deep river, vanishing beneath the ice. Spears plunged into the turquoise waters, missing their mark, but Lysandra was already racing past.
The sea dragon’s body—river dragon, she supposed—didn’t slow. She pushed it to its limit, the great lungs working like a bellows.
The river curved, and she used it to her advantage as she leaped from the water again.
The soldiers, so focused on the damage she’d done up ahead, didn’t look her way until she was upon them.
She had all of a glance to the city walls, where a wave of black now crashed against them, siege ladders rising and arrows flying, bursts of flame amid it all, before she returned to the river’s icy depths.
Black blood streamed from her maw, from her tails and claws, as she doubled back, the shadow of the witches warring overhead upon the ice above her.
So she fought, the ice floes her shield. Attacking, then moving; destabilizing the eastern flank with every assault, forcing them to flee from the river’s edge to crowd the center ranks.
Slowly, the turquoise waters of the Florine clouded blue and black.
Still, Lysandra kept ripping bites from the side of the behemoth that launched itself upon Orynth.
The heat off the firelances scorched Aedion’s cheek, warming his helmet to near-discomfort.
A small price, as the bursts of flame sent the Valg foot soldiers at the walls scrambling back. Where their archers felled the enemy, more came. And where the firelances melted them away, only scorched earth and melted armor remained. But there was not enough—not even close.
Above, beyond the walls, the Ironteeth and Crochans clashed.
So violently, so quickly, that a blue mist hung in the skies from the bloodshed.
He couldn’t determine who had the upper hand. The Thirteen fought amongst them, and where they plunged into the fray, Ironteeth and their mounts tumbled. Crushing Valg foot soldiers beneath them.
Iron siege ladders rose again, aiming for the city walls. Answering blasts from the firelances sent those already on them to the ground as charred corpses. But more Valg scrambled up, the fear of flame not enough to deter them.
Sprinting to the nearest ladder, Aedion nocked arrow after arrow, firing at the soldiers creeping up its rungs. Clean shots through the gaps in the dark armor.
The archers around him did the same, and the Bane soldiers behind him settled into fighting stances, waiting for the first to breach the walls.
At the city gates, flame blasted and raged. He’d concentrated many of the Mycenians at either of the two gates into Orynth, their most vulnerable weakness along the walls.
That the fire kept flaring as it did told him enough: Morath was making its push there.
Rolfe’s order to Conserve fire! set a pit of dread forming in his gut, but Aedion focused on the siege ladder. His bow twanged, and another soldier tumbled away. Then another.
Down the wall, Ren had taken on the other nearby siege ladder, the lord’s bow singing.
Aedion dared a glance to the army ahead. They had amassed close enough now.
Falling back, letting an archer take his place, he lifted his sword, signaling the Bane at the catapults, the Fae royals and archers near them. “Now!”
Wood snapped and groaned. Boulders as large as wagons soared over the walls. Each had been oiled, and gleamed in the sun while they rose.
And when the boulders reached their peak, just as they began to plummet toward the enemy, the Fae archers unleashed their flaming arrows.
They struck the oil-slick boulders right before the stones slammed into the earth.
Flame erupted, flowing right into the holes that Aedion had ordered drilled into the rock, right into the nest of the explosive powders they’d again taken from the precious reserves of Rolfe’s firelances.
The boulders blasted apart in balls of flame and stone.
Along the city walls, soldiers cheered at the carnage that the smoking ruins revealed. Nothing but melted, squashed, or shattered Valg grunts. Every place the six catapults had fired upon now had a ring of charred ground around it.
“Reposition!” Aedion roared. The Bane were already heaving against the wheels that would rotate the catapults on their wooden stands. Within seconds, they had aimed at another spot; within seconds, the Fae royals were lifting more oiled boulders from the stockpile Darrow had acquired over weeks and weeks.
He didn’t give Morath a chance to recover. “Fire!”
Boulders soared, flaming arrows following.
The explosions on the battlefield shook the city walls this time.
Another cheer went up, and Aedion motioned the Bane and Fae royals to halt. Let Morath think that their stock was depleted, that they only had a few lucky shots in their arsenal.
Aedion turned back to the siege ladder as the first of the Valg grunts cleared the walls.
The man was killed before his feet finished touching the ground, courtesy of a waiting Bane soldier.
Aedion unstrapped the shield from across his back and angled his sword as the wave of soldiers crested the walls.
But it was not a Valg foot soldier who appeared next, climbing over the ladder with ease.
The young man’s face was cold as death, his black eyes lit with unholy hunger.
A black collar was clasped around his throat.
A Valg prince had come.
CHAPTER 86
“Focus on the ladder,” Aedion snarled to the soldiers shrinking from the handsome demon prince who stepped onto the city walls as if he were merely entering a room.
He wore no armor. Nothing but a black tunic cut to his lithe body.
The Valg prince smiled. “Prince Aedion,” purred the thing inside it, drawing a sword from a dark sheath at his side. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Aedion struck.
He did not have magic, did not have anything to combat the dark power in the prince’s veins, but he had speed. He had strength.
Aedion feinted with his sword, that ordinary, nameless sword, and the prince swung with his own blade—just as Aedion slammed his shield into the man’s side.
Driving him back. Not toward the ladder, but to the Mycenian who wielded the firelance—
The Mycenian was dead.
The prince chuckled, and a whip of dark power lashed for Aedion.
Aedion ducked, shield rising. As if it would do anything against that power.
Darkness struck metal, and Aedion’s arm sang with the reverberations.
But the pain, the life-draining agony, did not occur.
Aedion instantly parried, a slash upward that the Valg prince dodged with a hop to the side.
The demon’s eyes were wide as he took in the shield. Then Aedion.
Then the Valg prince hissed, “Fae bastard.”
Aedion didn’t know what it meant, didn’t care as he took another blast upon his shield, the battlements already slick with blood both black and red. If the Mycenian nearby was dead, then there was another down by Ren’s ladder—
The Valg prince unleashed blast after blast of power.
Aedion took each one upon his shield, the prince’s power bouncing off as if it were a spray of water upon stone. And for every burst of power sent his way, Aedion swung his sword.
Bodies occasionally plunged into the river, Ironteeth and Crochan alike.
The Crochans who thrashed, who were still alive, Lysandra covertly carried to the far shore. What they made of her, they didn’t say. She didn’t linger long enough to let them.
The Ironteeth who fell into the river were dragged to the bottom and pinned to the rocks.
She’d had to look away each time she did it.
Lysandra’s snout broke the surface as a sharp horn shattered over the din, right from the city walls. Not a warning call, but an unleashing.
Lysandra dove to the bottom. Dove and then pushed up, mighty tail thrashing to launch her toward the surface.
She broke from the ice and the water, arcing through the air, and slammed right into Morath’s eastern flank.
Soldiers screamed as she unleashed herself in a whirlwind of teeth and claws and a massive, snapping tail.
Where the white sea dragon moved, black blood sprayed.
And just when the soldiers mastered their terror enough to launch arrows and spears at the opalescent scales enforced with Spidersilk, she twisted and flipped back into the deep river, vanishing beneath the ice. Spears plunged into the turquoise waters, missing their mark, but Lysandra was already racing past.
The sea dragon’s body—river dragon, she supposed—didn’t slow. She pushed it to its limit, the great lungs working like a bellows.
The river curved, and she used it to her advantage as she leaped from the water again.
The soldiers, so focused on the damage she’d done up ahead, didn’t look her way until she was upon them.
She had all of a glance to the city walls, where a wave of black now crashed against them, siege ladders rising and arrows flying, bursts of flame amid it all, before she returned to the river’s icy depths.
Black blood streamed from her maw, from her tails and claws, as she doubled back, the shadow of the witches warring overhead upon the ice above her.
So she fought, the ice floes her shield. Attacking, then moving; destabilizing the eastern flank with every assault, forcing them to flee from the river’s edge to crowd the center ranks.
Slowly, the turquoise waters of the Florine clouded blue and black.
Still, Lysandra kept ripping bites from the side of the behemoth that launched itself upon Orynth.
The heat off the firelances scorched Aedion’s cheek, warming his helmet to near-discomfort.
A small price, as the bursts of flame sent the Valg foot soldiers at the walls scrambling back. Where their archers felled the enemy, more came. And where the firelances melted them away, only scorched earth and melted armor remained. But there was not enough—not even close.
Above, beyond the walls, the Ironteeth and Crochans clashed.
So violently, so quickly, that a blue mist hung in the skies from the bloodshed.
He couldn’t determine who had the upper hand. The Thirteen fought amongst them, and where they plunged into the fray, Ironteeth and their mounts tumbled. Crushing Valg foot soldiers beneath them.
Iron siege ladders rose again, aiming for the city walls. Answering blasts from the firelances sent those already on them to the ground as charred corpses. But more Valg scrambled up, the fear of flame not enough to deter them.
Sprinting to the nearest ladder, Aedion nocked arrow after arrow, firing at the soldiers creeping up its rungs. Clean shots through the gaps in the dark armor.
The archers around him did the same, and the Bane soldiers behind him settled into fighting stances, waiting for the first to breach the walls.
At the city gates, flame blasted and raged. He’d concentrated many of the Mycenians at either of the two gates into Orynth, their most vulnerable weakness along the walls.
That the fire kept flaring as it did told him enough: Morath was making its push there.
Rolfe’s order to Conserve fire! set a pit of dread forming in his gut, but Aedion focused on the siege ladder. His bow twanged, and another soldier tumbled away. Then another.
Down the wall, Ren had taken on the other nearby siege ladder, the lord’s bow singing.
Aedion dared a glance to the army ahead. They had amassed close enough now.
Falling back, letting an archer take his place, he lifted his sword, signaling the Bane at the catapults, the Fae royals and archers near them. “Now!”
Wood snapped and groaned. Boulders as large as wagons soared over the walls. Each had been oiled, and gleamed in the sun while they rose.
And when the boulders reached their peak, just as they began to plummet toward the enemy, the Fae archers unleashed their flaming arrows.
They struck the oil-slick boulders right before the stones slammed into the earth.
Flame erupted, flowing right into the holes that Aedion had ordered drilled into the rock, right into the nest of the explosive powders they’d again taken from the precious reserves of Rolfe’s firelances.
The boulders blasted apart in balls of flame and stone.
Along the city walls, soldiers cheered at the carnage that the smoking ruins revealed. Nothing but melted, squashed, or shattered Valg grunts. Every place the six catapults had fired upon now had a ring of charred ground around it.
“Reposition!” Aedion roared. The Bane were already heaving against the wheels that would rotate the catapults on their wooden stands. Within seconds, they had aimed at another spot; within seconds, the Fae royals were lifting more oiled boulders from the stockpile Darrow had acquired over weeks and weeks.
He didn’t give Morath a chance to recover. “Fire!”
Boulders soared, flaming arrows following.
The explosions on the battlefield shook the city walls this time.
Another cheer went up, and Aedion motioned the Bane and Fae royals to halt. Let Morath think that their stock was depleted, that they only had a few lucky shots in their arsenal.
Aedion turned back to the siege ladder as the first of the Valg grunts cleared the walls.
The man was killed before his feet finished touching the ground, courtesy of a waiting Bane soldier.
Aedion unstrapped the shield from across his back and angled his sword as the wave of soldiers crested the walls.
But it was not a Valg foot soldier who appeared next, climbing over the ladder with ease.
The young man’s face was cold as death, his black eyes lit with unholy hunger.
A black collar was clasped around his throat.
A Valg prince had come.
CHAPTER 86
“Focus on the ladder,” Aedion snarled to the soldiers shrinking from the handsome demon prince who stepped onto the city walls as if he were merely entering a room.
He wore no armor. Nothing but a black tunic cut to his lithe body.
The Valg prince smiled. “Prince Aedion,” purred the thing inside it, drawing a sword from a dark sheath at his side. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Aedion struck.
He did not have magic, did not have anything to combat the dark power in the prince’s veins, but he had speed. He had strength.
Aedion feinted with his sword, that ordinary, nameless sword, and the prince swung with his own blade—just as Aedion slammed his shield into the man’s side.
Driving him back. Not toward the ladder, but to the Mycenian who wielded the firelance—
The Mycenian was dead.
The prince chuckled, and a whip of dark power lashed for Aedion.
Aedion ducked, shield rising. As if it would do anything against that power.
Darkness struck metal, and Aedion’s arm sang with the reverberations.
But the pain, the life-draining agony, did not occur.
Aedion instantly parried, a slash upward that the Valg prince dodged with a hop to the side.
The demon’s eyes were wide as he took in the shield. Then Aedion.
Then the Valg prince hissed, “Fae bastard.”
Aedion didn’t know what it meant, didn’t care as he took another blast upon his shield, the battlements already slick with blood both black and red. If the Mycenian nearby was dead, then there was another down by Ren’s ladder—
The Valg prince unleashed blast after blast of power.
Aedion took each one upon his shield, the prince’s power bouncing off as if it were a spray of water upon stone. And for every burst of power sent his way, Aedion swung his sword.
