Then she sent the roots after the infantry, and that caused a widespread panic that lasted for as long as Io did. She was trying to hold on, but this was taking an immense amount of power.
She turned it off and collapsed to the ground. She was still awake, but only barely.
That bought us several hours as the army hacked at all the exposed roots, making certain they wouldn’t rise up and try to harm them.
Once they started forward again, Ahyana was ready for them.
“Dea Karpophoroi.”
The ground hummed and shook around us.
“What is that?” Zalira demanded.
“Cicadas,” Ahyana said with a smile.
Millions of large black bugs rose out of the earth. They made a deafening sound as they swarmed the soldiers, turning the sky dark.
I put my hands over my ears but it wasn’t enough to drown out the high-pitched noise.
“Look at that!” I pointed at the back of the supply train. A large group of soldiers was heading east, back the way they had come.
They were deserting.
“They might be superstitious. Maybe they’re taking this as a bad omen,” Zalira said.
The Carians couldn’t fight off the cicadas. The bugs were loud and they were everywhere, swarming endlessly.
The cicadas were bothering one of the dragons and it began to swing its tail in annoyance, or perhaps it was trying to bat them away.The dragon accidentally hit several carts, spilling their contents onto the ground.
Ahyana lasted twice as long as Io had. Her body started shaking, and she made several sounds of pain.
“You’ve done enough,” Zalira said. “Rest.”
Her sister nodded and turned off her power. The cicadas stayed. They continued with their noises and flying around the area, but they began to settle. To find trees and plants to land on.
But the chaos they had created was immense.
It was twilight and the army had to stop. I couldn’t imagine that they’d sleep very well with that constant shrill/whine the cicadas made.
“Time to move to our next location,” I said. “We’ll hit them with another round in the morning.”
I hoped that what we had planned for tomorrow would be enough to make even more soldiers turn tail and flee back to their homes.
Chapter Fifty
It had been a fitful night for me—I hadn’t gotten much sleep. I was too worried about Xander and Haemon making it back safely to Troas and the approaching Carian army.
When I finally got out of my bedroll, I found Zalira watching the army from our vantage point. We had moved much farther west, beyond a choke point we hoped to utilize.
She had blanketed the valley with a dense layer of fog combined with a rain shower. The army was lighting torches but the rain kept putting them out. They couldn’t see and the ground turned to mud beneath their feet, which made it almost impossible for the dragons to move, and most of their carts and siege engines were stuck.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said to her.
She turned off her aspect and sat back on her heels with a smile. “Neither did I. But it took a lot out of me. I’m going to need a few hours before I can go again.”
The others woke up and we ate and observed. If this army hadn’t been so intent on our destruction, it might have been entertaining watching them trying to dig out of the mud.
While I didn’t have an aspect that I could use against the whole army, I wanted to keep my strength up in case something happened. Like if we were ambushed or hunted down by a group of cavalry. Because by now Artemisia had to know that we were responsible, and if I were her, I would have sent scouts out to locate us.
