Idiot.
Venick heaved back, shoulder twisting. Lucky, that he didn’t dislocate the joint. Lucky, that he didkeep his sword, because then the rider—female, seax in hand, her face like a fox—was on him, blade swinging. Venick let her strike slide down the length of his weapon, then buried his sword in her armpit, into the gap between cuirass and shoulder plate.
Blood ran down the blade. Venick’s hand was sticky and warm.
Thunder rumbled. As Venick yanked his weapon free and turned to engage the next opponent, he felt like he couldn’t see straight. Every time he tried to focus on an enemy elf, his eyes would dart to the next, and the next. He knew his men were taking hits. Knew that the opponent, rather than releasing their conjurors or their queen, was keeping their ranks tight. Their human-height shields formed a barrier. Their metal-plated greaves closed the gaps. The rearguard was a wall of horses, thick and high.
Venick shouted above the fray—not words, just a general cry that got the attention of his men, had them dropping what they were doing to crowd in behind him.
They needed to push the Dark Army deeper into the city towards the river. And Venick needed to break through that center ring.
He gripped his sword with both hands, slid under the legs of a warhorse, and sliced open its belly.
???
Lightning flashed. It illuminated the scene below, the tangle of two forces, the steady slope of each hill, which descended to the river. A split second to take it all in before the world snapped back to black. In the ensuing darkness, Ellina heard what she could not see: the shinkof metal, theshhof green glass. Cries of exertion and pain. Flesh against flesh.
Ellina leaned so far forward she was practically lying on the parapet. She could tell that the conjurors were in the center of the fray, and that the southerners surrounding them were not breaking ranks. She could see a commotion near the rearguard, which had indeed become the front lines. A horse fell, and another. But their own soldiers were falling as well.
This was taking too long.
Ellina pulled a blank torch into her hand. The archers looked on as she unscrewed the glass bowl from one of the battlement’s blue-glowing lanterns.
“Steady,” said an archer.
She nodded. Slowly, careful not to let the blackrezahesap contact her skin, she poured the liquid over the torch’s rag, soaking it through. A second archer struck a match and set it to the rag. The torch whooshed and came alight, blazing blue.
She met the eyes of the archers, whose faces hardened.
She was going down.
???
It began to rain. The sky split and emptied, taking much of what was left of their light.
Venick pressed forward. Dourin—who’d disappeared in the initial wave of battle to relay the new plan to their generals—was back at Venick’s side. His sword cut a perfect arc, his movements graceful and practiced. He’d shown Venick the scar on his stomach where the Elder’s would-be-assassin had gutted him, the long, clean line carved into smooth skin. It was theisphanel—that scraggly miracle plant—that allowed Dourin not only to survive, but to recover as if the wound had never been.
Venick was grateful for that. Doubly grateful, when a southerner came forward wielding a massive hammer—not a typical elven weapon, not something Venick wanted to face alone—that Dourin could spring into the space between one swing and the next, his blade catching the female’s forearm. She stumbled. Tried to reel back. Before she had the chance, Venick closed in on her other side, slapping the flat surface of his sword against the crown of her head. She went down.
It was like that all around. Guttural screams. The flail of a fallen horse. The rain: a hazy blanket. Venick’s attention returned to the conjurors, and to Farah still sitting among them.There was an unhealthy sheen to the Dark Queen’s face, a wild look in her eyes that had Venick remembering his own first experience with war.Battle-shocked,Venick thought, except then he saw Farah witness a southerner decapitate a resistance member. The head went flying. Farah’s mouth curled a smile.
A cannon boomed. The Dark Army’s ranks wobbled. The world was a roar of noise.
One of the conjurors—male, slim golden eyes, a freakishly long neck—went suddenly rigid. His gaze darted towards the western rampart. Venick watched as he caught his queen’s attention, speaking quickly. Farah’s expression changed. She gave a command, and the male vanished.
Venick felt something pull at his belly. He wanted to follow that conjuror, and he would have had Dourin not chosen that moment to make a low, strangled noise. Venick turned.
Their fallen comrades began to rise.
???
Ellina slid on slick pavement as she came down the hillside, dagger in one hand, blue torch bobbing in the other. Though she could see the swell of battle better now, her position on the western rampart had set her on the wrong side of the river. There was no way across, not with a live flame in hand.
Or—there was one. As Ellina reached the water and stared down into its choppy current, she recalled a bridge located on the far northern side of the city. It was old but sturdy, wide. She could sprint there, cross the bridge, and double back down the river’s other side.
Ellina glanced at her torch, which guttered and smoked in the rain but did not extinguish. She had suspected thatrezahesap would be viscous enough to withstand the downpour. She did not have similar confidences in the sap’s resistance to river water. If she crossed the Angor using the bridge, she could ensure the torch remained alight, which was imperative to her plan. But that would also take time, and more time meant more soldiers dead. It meant more of the city taken or destroyed.
Ellina sheathed her dagger, hoisted the torch, and jumped into the river.
