Terrified anticipation drenched my nerves. Koerlyn’s army was close, and North’s ambush was about to begin. Within hours, there would be a winner, there would be a loser, and regardless of which side they were on, there would be brothers, sons, and husbands strewn across the ground.
That grim thought had just landed when battle cries swept through the air.
We pushed forward, no hitch in anyone’s step, not even as hundreds of moving feet became a distant-sounding thunder; not as far-off blades met, metal clashing against metal; not assome of those war cries turned to terrified screams in the grassy field just out of sight. There was chaos on that battlefield, but within these woods, we were in a world apart.
We continued on until the noises of battle faded into indistinguishable sounds. Then, all at once, the men slowed and dispersed behind trees and boulders. Stefano grabbed my arm and pulled me toward a thick, mottled trunk. But we weren’t hiding. Like a choreographed dance, each soldier began to move from cover to cover, continuing their advance while dissolving into the landscape. Stefano brought a mud-covered finger to his lips before pointing at my feet, and then we moved.
We were close.
Close to Koerlyn.
Close to death.
My pulse tripled as my eyes sought out that white-blond hair amongst the naked trees. A few minutes later, I found it.
The image stole the ground from beneath my feet, and I tripped.
Stefano caught me. In a daze, I let him push me behind a boulder.
Crouching, I made myself look again, to see if it really was him. It was a mere speck in the distance, too far away to make out the finer details of his cruel face, but it was the only flash of platinum atop a horse, and it was surrounded by blue-clad soldiers and several dogs. A Princeps, shielded by his men and their beasts, sitting comfortably in the shelter of the woods while his army died for his cause. It was, without a doubt, Koerlyn.
This could very well be the end of him.
Or he could get his hands on you once more.
Bile crawled up my throat as every fiber of my being urged me to run, to put as much distance between me and those icy eyes as possible.
Around me, weapons left their sheaths, Stefano’s included. We remained by that boulder as the rest of the group continued to advance behind Harthon, their rhythm slowing to a slug’s pace but with a mouse’s stealth. A silent wave of death, rolling in unseen.
They made it shockingly close before a dog barked.
Squinting over the rock, I watched as Koerlyn whipped around, and four men gathered around the dog, peering into the trees.
On our side, daggers were gripped and bows were readied.
The dog barked again, and that was the last sound it made.
Koerlyn’s soldiers reached for their weapons, but it was too late. A barrage of arrows and daggers shot toward them, and a quarter of those soldiers dropped like broken dolls. The rest drew their blades and ran full-bore toward our men, who now barreled towards them, earthen brown clashing with a swarm of cobalt blue, guttural roars erupting from both sides.
“We’re outnumbered,” I whispered to Stefano, who watched the unfolding gore with fixed intensity.
For each of our men, they had three. But Harthon had to have known that before they released the arrows and blades.
“In terms of bodies, maybe, not skill.”
The words hardly left his mouth when his head cranked to the left and he launched to his feet, sword in one hand and dagger in the other.
One of Koerlyn’s soldiers careened toward us from the depths of the woods, terror in his eyes, blood gushing from a face wound. Terror turned to emptiness as Stefano’s dagger sliced through the air and landed in his throat. He folded to the ground just as another man emerged from the trees behind him, running blindly. Another dagger struck true.
“Move,” he ordered, shoving me around the boulder, exposing me to the battle with Koerlyn.
It was something he would only do if that battle had suddenly become the lesser threat.
“Where did those men come from?” I asked, drawing my dagger with a shaking hand.
Expression grim, he answered, “They’re deserters from the main battlefield. And once one or two start, it becomes a herd.”
Terror snaked down my spine. The rolling terrain and lifeless trees before us were no longer our guards, offering the protection of camouflage, but a looming threat.
