Three top towers spread before the wall now, protecting pockets of archers. Below the center one sat the Sella on horseback. His hand was raised, his focus on a new swath of wall, likely thinking Res and I occupied. Someone yelled, pointing at us, but I’d already nocked an arrow.
As Res angled downward, granting me a clear shot beneath the high top of the tower, I drew and loosed.
The Sella lifted a hand to knock the arrow aside, but the black gold was too refined a material to bend. His eyes widened a fraction before the bolt took him in the heart.
He crumpled to the ground.
Res rushed for the wall as the archers’ attention swiveled back to us. Bowstrings snapped. Glass shattered midair from the cry of the horns.
An arrow skimmed my arm.
I cried out, and Res banked hard, simultaneously brushing aside another wave of wooden arrows. The last thing I saw before Res dove beyond the wall was the empty sky where the shadow crow had been.
Kiva was gone.
Thirty
Res dove behind the wall even as I screamed at him to pull up. He alighted on a low perch that’d been built for easy crow landing, images of flying arrows mixing with pulsing questions along the link. I leapt off his back, bolting up the stairs to the battlement.
Ericen met me at the top. “She fell when that arrow skimmed you. Res lost control of the shadow crow.”
I barreled past him to the edge, but he seized me, pulling me back behind the wall as arrows crested the ridge. One pierced a Rhodairen soldier through the neck; another took a Trendellan in the arm. I stared at the blood that coated them.
“She was flying low when she fell,” Ericen said swiftly. “We can’t see what’s happening, but a squad of soldiers went after her.”
“I have to go after her.” I pushed off the wall.
He stepped in front of me. “And do what? Fly Res over an army of archers? You’ll both get killed. Kiva wouldn’t want you to go after her now and you know it!”
“I can’t just leave her!” I screamed. She could be injured or—No!The thought threatened to tear me open. If only we could neutralize the archers. Then I could get Res into the sky safely and find Kiva.
Ericen’s expression hardened. “How many people can Res conceal?”
“Two, maybe three? And I don’t know for how long.” I watched the sea of soldiers, hoping for a glimpse of Kiva. “But there might be another way to hide more. What are you thinking?”
The prince freed his swords from his back. “I’m going to get you your opening.”
* * *
Clinging to the hope of Ericen’s plan, I flew down the stairs to the base of the wall where I sent a runner with orders to open the main gate on my mark. Then I called Res.
He landed beside me, head nudging mine as concern thundered down the cord. “We’re going to get her back,” I told him as I swung into the saddle.
For now, let’s give them a storm unlike anything they’ve ever seen.
Res cawed as power surged along the cord. Dark clouds veined with lightning began to materialize in the sky, rain bursting forth in a heavy downpour, but it was all only a distraction for the gathering fog. Res coalesced it above the edge of the battlement atop the gate, then slammed it down like a second wall. At the same moment, Rhodairen archers laid down cover against the cavalry.
Res took off.
With the cover of the fog wall, Ericen and a small team consisting of two Trendellan monks, Lady Kerova, and two Rhodairen soldiers slipped out the front gate.
I heard the Illucian archers dying before I saw them.
We rose above Res’s fog wall just as Ericen and Lady Kerova reached the first tower. The archers’ guards were ill prepared for the head-on assault, and they fell to a flash of steel. The Trendellan monks hit the second tower, the Rhodairen soldiers the third.
Seeing the posts under attack, the front line of cavalry struck forward. But the rain had already puddled on the hard ground formed by the Sella, and Res’s power seized it. It thrust upward in a wave of spikes, spearing the legs of the front line of warhorses. Bestial screams filled the air at the animals’ pain, turning my stomach, but the effect was immediate—the following lines of cavalry couldn’t move forward with the front line collapsed before them.
It wouldn’t take them long to circle around, but the earth Sella hadn’t solidified the entire area, and the uneven rocky ground would slow them down. By the time they made it through, Ericen and his team would already be retreating. Even now, they struck down the final archers, freeing the skies for Res and me.
