“Will that help?” He looked optimistic.
I shook my head. “No. But you should kiss me anyway.”
Heedless of my fiancé mounted nearby or the army of unnatural creatures on their way, Sam drew me close. His lips were warm and soft against mine.
And then the final piece of the monstrous bridge crashed into place, and the enemy was uponus.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Battle Is Joined
The monsters had learned the hunters’ tricks and tactics. They dug their claws into the rock as the wind picked up and fluffed out their fur as the temperature dropped.
Nonetheless, the gale and the frost made a serious dent in their ranks as Kit and Max pressed on with their assault. Scores of the creatures were frozen to death where they stood. More were blown off the backs of the stone giants and tossed into the frothing, icy sea. And those who managed to make their way closer found the hunters had learned much about them, as well.
Harry dashed into their ranks, the knife in her hand scarcely more visible than a patch of haze. She left bloody streaks behind her wherever she went. Teeth gnashed at her but closed on nothing, too slow to catch her as she passed. In her wake, Jack and Gervase rode side by side. They carved their way through with flashing swords, their horses’ hooves smashing the skulls of any furred snakes that slithered underfoot. Whenever something dreadful threatened them, one of Clem’s arrows pierced its throat.
On our left flank, half a dozen hunters scrambled up the fur of the huge hamster. To my horror, it began grabbing them with its claws and stuffing them into its cheek pouch. But abruptly, its mouth wrenched wide open. It strained its muscles, trying to close its jaw to no avail. One of the hunters in its cheek must have been Fred, turning the only available window into a somewhat larger window. A few of the victims clambered out, but one was stuck wrestling with the hamster’s tongue until another made a gesture and the giant rodent sneezed. The last hunter tumbled out—covered in phlegm and saliva but otherwise no worse for wear—and was caught by the rest of them.
From that point on, I saw little more than was directly beside me. No doubt other hunters were doing battle using flowers, or frogs, or whatever abilities they had. But they were hidden beyond the wall of matted fur and glittering scales closing in around me. The noise was deafening—roars and screams, screeches and clangs. Charred carcasses, their wings still trailing smoke, dropped from the sky as Jonquil and her dragon did their work overhead. The stench was overwhelming, a choking mix of foul breath and burnt hair. There was a flash of tawny fur when the lion drew near. His spectacles flew from his face as he bit the neck of a skittering hyena beetle and broke its spine. The great cat leapt away again and vanished from my sight.
Sam stayed close to my side. He moved like a whirlwind, picking up a spider wolf and using it as a club to bash the creatures on every side. When it snapped its teeth at him, he threw it at a pair of bloated red lizards, and all three went hurtling over the edge of the bridge. His fists smashed into jaws. His feet lashed out to snap the legbones of anything with legs. Within moments, we were both splashed with blood and ichor.
Even more ichor than before, in my case. I vowed that if I survived this, at some point I would find a change of clothes.
I cursed myself for not thinking to borrow a weapon beforethe battle began, when I had the chance. I guarded Sam’s back as well as I was able. Something purple, bat-winged, and leechlike attached itself to his shoulder. I yanked it off, threw it to the ground, and crushed it under my bootheel. It shrieked like a furious teakettle as it died. I hoped it hadn’t been venomous.
He flashed me a smile while he punched an eel crab in what might have been its face. It hardly seemed worth thanking me for—he’d probably saved my life a dozen times in the last minute; I’d managed to kill a bug.
I stomped on any small assailants I saw after that. I may have killed dozens that way, but it didn’t affect their overall numbers much. An endless supply of creatures loped across the stone-giant bridge, slavering in anticipation of joining the bloodshed.
They leapt and crawled over the bodies of their dead, tearing into the guards defending the gates. The melee looked more like an overpacked crowd. Monsters and soldiers jammed together so tightly there was barely room to raise a sword.
But then there was a thinning of ranks in the monsters in front of us, a certain sense that their attention was no longer entirely directed toward the castle. And soon, there were large enough gaps for me to see what was hitting them from behind.
A green-skinned swordswoman with a claymore as long as her body, a tailor with a fistful of copper nails, and my younger sister with a whole flock of birds nesting in her hair. Behind them was an army of thousands. Their warriors thundered across the stone-giant bridge, crashing into the rear of those monsters left onit.
Bears and elk and squirrels and hawks. Foxes and rabbits and sparrows and voles. The animals of the forest had rallied to my sister’s call, and they appeared to be very, very angry.
They smashed their way through the packed monstrosities, butting them off the bridge with antlers and horns, biting, tearing, or simply barreling through. And if you don’t think a vole isparticularly frightening, then you’ve never seen a few hundred of them claw their way up a creature’s legs and commence chewing.
Their unnaturally made cousins fought back, but their line bent and broke under the onslaught. The hunters and soldiers continued to press them from our side. The creatures were caught between two armies, left with nowhere to escape except the sea. And I’d have bet anything that Calla had arranged for a greeting party of sharks and pikes in the water below. I was beginning to have hope the day would soon be won when the stone giants stoodup.
Their monstrous allies and the forest animals alike showered off their backs into the bay. Calla and Liam and Gnoflwhogir fell along with them. I only had a short time to worry about their fate. The giants advanced on the castle, the bridge made of their bodies dissolving back into individual shapes as more and more of them broke away to join the march. They’d remained so still I had nearly forgotten them. I wondered what had caused them to join the battle now, at the cost of so much of their own army. The answer came soon enough.
The first of the great trees reached the edge of the island, the circle of its grasping limbs rising so high above the waterline that it overtopped the cliff. They had spent their time wading across the bay, and now they were here. Many of their crowns were on fire. Jonquil’s dragon set yet another alight as it neared. They paid the flames no mind, having learned what negligible damage they would do. These were trees that could treat a lightning storm as beneath their notice, a forest fire as a minor inconvenience.
They gathered on all sides, making no effort to climb the cliff. But if the trees chose not to break the walls with their toppling weight, as I had feared, they had no need to. Their limbs had enough reach to rip the castle apart stone by stone. Or pluck us up into the air and tear us to pieces, one after another.
The stone giants began pulling themselves onto the bridge. Whoever the trees didn’t slaughter, the giants would grind beneath their feet.
The rest of Angelique’s army had never been important. An opening sally to tire us out and draw blood until the actual attack began. An attack that would ignore everything we threw at it, be it swords and arrows or ice and wind. The land itself, the rocks and the trees, had been roused to destroyus.
“I don’t suppose,” Sam said, “you could turn into another lake?” He had grabbed two of the remaining spider wolves, one in each fist, and bashed their heads together as they scrabbled at him.
“On a bridge?” I asked. Even if I succeeded, there’d be no point. “I’d drain into the sea and wash away.”
He grimaced, tossing the spider wolves aside. “Then I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.”
