Everyone burst into action. Spears absorbed the first attack, trying to pin the beasts long enough for the heavy fighters to go for the kill. Shields protected their flanks and fought to keep the beasts from splitting the group. Rangers fired at stragglers and to weaken as many as they could. Iryana noticed the scouts had fallen back to the group as well, lashing out with their lighter weapons around the shield bearers as needed.
Iryana loosed arrow after arrow, pulling them from her quiver fast enough that it never stopped rocking against her back. She helped drop at least two, but then the closest dakii were too intertwined with the others for clean shots. She searched the trees and, sure enough, there were a few more watching, waiting.
She frowned, leaning to the side. Two of them looked smaller than the others, with only a single set of horns. Those two should have been attacking. It was always the largest, strongest dakii that hung back. It didn’t match the pattern she was familiar with. Had something changed? Were these dakii different?
An opening appeared, and Iryana fired two arrows in quick succession, watching them thunk into an untouched dakya’s torso above its front leg. A perfect hit. The beast dropped.
Iryana watched the other dakii as they moved; this group was larger than the ones she was used to, but the squad was holding up well. Seeing Vaneshta in action, it was easy to see that she was one of the best fighters among them. With each thrust, her long-bladed spear cut into the dakya she was fighting, until she was driving it lower into the mud. Then Vabihn’s enormous axe swung toward the beast she pinned, lopped its head off, black blood spraying everywhere.
The soldiers were impressive, but she knew they would be. Violence and power were all the military brigades cared about. There were many talented fighters, but she found her gaze drawn to Pyetar’s fight. He seemed built for killing. Pyetar’s movements were powerful, his spear cutting deep. He seemed to anticipate the way the dakii moved, and he was fighting the only one with three pairs of horns.
There was some kind of pattern in the ones attacking the soldiers, but she couldn’t tell what it was. It nagged at her mind, taunting her. She shot another arrow at the dakii watching the melee, but they just sidled behind larger trees.
What was she missing?
Iryana moved a few paces higher up the hill so she could see them all from a new vantage. After sending a couple more arrows into the fray, Iryana tried to focus on the way they moved.
She had almost figured it out when something large hit her from behind, and Iryana flew to the ground. Her body hit with a force that shook her to the bones, the momentum sending her tumbling down the other side of the hill with her hands scrambling out for purchase.
Branches and bushes thrashed her face, mud slick where she tried to dig her fingers into the earth until she eventually stopped rolling.
Throwing her magic shield up, Iryana realized her hands were empty. Wiping her eyes, she rushed to orient herself. She was on the opposite side of the hill from the rest of the fight. Her bow was halfway up the hill, a large dakya sniffing it before slowly turning to look at her.
Adrenaline flooded her body, her heart racing.
She hadn’t even seen the beast coming. And there were two more behind it.
Iryana grabbed the falchion at her waist and slowly rose to her feet, not breaking eye contact with the closest dakya. Chills ran down her spine, and she sucked a breath in through her nose.
Back in the Yuresh Valley, she would have run. But she didn’t know the trees here, the way the land moved. This wastheirterritory.
She couldn’t fight off multiple dakii at once, even if she’d had more than a sidearm, but when they charged, she sunk into her stance, falchion at the ready and shield formed thick around her.
Carefully tracking their speed, Iryana waited until the dakya in the lead was in range of her short weapon. With the monstrous creature barely a pace in front of her, a fraction of a moment from impact, Iryana swung and stepped off line.
A falchion could deliver a powerful cutting blow, and hers was metal-imbued, but it still didn’t cut deep enough to do more than send a spray of black blood onto the budding grass. The dakya recovered almost instantly.
It took all her focus to hold her shield when one of the dakii clamped down on her shoulder. She gasped as some of the pressure from the bite made it through her shield; the magic held tight in its sharp teeth. Then the dakya started thrashing. She was thrown to the ground, barely managing to keep enough magic around her to delay the beast trying to pin her down.
She lashed out with the falchion again and again, but she could hardly focus on where she aimed with the great black maw inches from her face and neck. Her magic was the only thing keeping it from biting her head clean off her body.
It was a competition of how hard the dakya could bite and push down versus how long she could hold her magic. She could feel the strain growing.
It hurt. She didn’t understand where, but it was excruciating. She gave up the falchion, letting it fall behind her, as she put all her energy into the shield.
Then the dakya reared back on its hind legs only to come crashing back down. Over and over.
Her body shook more with each blow, screaming with the effort to hold her shield.
She was losing her hold, her eyes sealed shut with the pain. The pressure lifted for one more blissful moment, and Iryana knew that when the beast came crashing back down, that would be it.
Chapter Sixteen
The moment while she waited for the dakya to crash back onto her, bursting her shield and tearing her apart, seemed to stretch. Iryana braced as well as she could, ears ringing and breath sputtering, but the blow never came.
“Drop your shield.”
Iryana forced her eyes open. No dakya. Only Pyetar.
