Kingdom of Ash

by Sarah J. Maas

  Chaol’s focus went cold and calculating.

  His wife was in the keep behind him. Pregnant with their child.

  He would not fail her.

  A siege tower had reached the keep walls, and now unloaded soldier after soldier right into the ancient castle.

  Despite the distance, Nesryn could see the chaos on the battlements. Just barely make out Chaol atop his gray horse, fighting in the thick of it.

  Soaring over the army hurling arrows and spears at them, Nesryn banked left, the ruks behind her following suit.

  Across the battlefield, Borte and Yeran, leading another faction of rukhin, banked right, the two groups of rukhin a mirror image swooping toward each other, then back to plow through the rear lines.

  Just as Sartaq, leading a third group, slammed from the other direction.

  They’d taken out two commanders, but three more remained. Not princes, thank the gods here and the thirty-six in the khaganate, but Valg all the same. Black blood coated Salkhi’s armored feathers, coated every ruk in the skies.

  She’d spent hours cleaning it off Salkhi last night. All the rukhin had, not willing to risk the old blood interfering with how their feathers caught the wind.

  Nesryn nocked an arrow and picked her target. Again.

  The Valg commander had evaded her shot the last time. But he would not now.

  Salkhi swept low, taking arrow after arrow against his breastplate, in his thick feathers and skin. Nesryn had almost vomited the first time an arrow had found its mark days ago. A lifetime ago. She now also spent hours picking them from his body each night—as if they were thorns from a prickly plant.

  Sartaq had spent that time going from fire to fire, comforting those whose mounts were not so fortunate. Or soothing the ruks whose riders hadn’t lasted the day. Already, a wagon had been piled high with their sulde—awaiting the final journey home to be planted on Arundin’s barren slopes.

  When Salkhi came close enough to rip several Valg off their horses and shred them apart in his talons, Nesryn fired at the commander.

  She didn’t see if the shot landed.

  Not as a horn cut through the din.

  A cry rose from the rukhin, all glancing eastward. Toward the sea.

  To where the Darghan cavalry and foot soldiers charged for the unprotected eastern flank of Morath’s army, Hasar atop her Muniqi horse, leading the khagan’s host herself.

  Two armies clashed on the plain outside an ancient city, one dark and one golden.

  They fought, brutal and bloody, for the long hours of the gray day.

  Morath’s armies didn’t break, though. And no matter how Nesryn and the rukhin, led by Sartaq and Hasar’s orders, rallied behind their fresh troops, the Valg kept fighting.

  And still Morath’s host lay between the khagan’s army and the besieged city, an ocean of darkness.

  When night fell, too black for even the Valg to fight, the khagan’s army pulled back to assess. To ready for the attack at dawn.

  Nesryn flew Yrene and Chaol, bloodied and exhausted, down from the again-secured keep walls, so they might join in the war council between the khagan’s royal children. All around, soldiers groaned and screamed in agony, healers led by Hafiza herself rushing to tend them before the night gave way to more fighting.

  But when they reached Princess Hasar’s battle tent, when they had all gathered around a map of Anielle, they had only a few minutes of discussion before they were interrupted.

  By the person Chaol least expected to walk through the flaps.

  CHAPTER 46

  Perranth appeared on the horizon, the dark-stoned city nestled between a cobalt lake and a small mountain range that also bore its name.

  The castle had been built along a towering mountain bordering the city, its narrow towers tall enough to rival those in Orynth. The great city walls had been torn down by Adarlan’s army and never restored, the buildings along its edges now spilling onto the fields beyond the iced-over Lanis River that flowed between the lake and the distant sea.

  It was on those fields that Aedion deemed they’d make their stand.

  The ice held as they crossed the river and organized their reduced lines once more.

  The Whitethorn royals and their warriors were nearly burnt out, their magic a mere breeze. But they’d kept Morath a day behind with their shields.

  A day the army used to rest, hewing wood from whatever trees, barns, or abandoned farmsteads they could find to fuel their fires. A day when Aedion had ordered Nox Owen to go as his emissary into Perranth, the thief’s home city, and see if men and women from the city might come to fill their depleted ranks.

  Not many. Nox returned with a few hundred even-less-trained warriors. No magic-wielders.

  But they did have some weapons, most old and rusted. Fresh arrows, at least. Vernon Lochan had seen to it that his people had remained unarmed, fearing their uprising should they learn the true Heir to Perranth had been held captive in the highest tower of the castle.

  But the people of Perranth already had enough of their puppet lord, it seemed.

  And at least they had blankets and food to spare. Wagons hauled them in hourly, along with healers—none magically gifted—to patch up the wounded. Those who were too injured to fight were sent on the supply wagons to the city, some piled atop one another.

  But a warm blanket and hot meal would not add to their numbers. Or keep Morath at bay.

  So Aedion planned, keeping his Bane commanders close. They would make this count. Every inch of terrain, every weapon and soldier.

  He didn’t see Lysandra. Aelin made no appearances, either.

  The queen had abandoned them, the soldiers muttered.

  Aedion made sure to shut down the talk. Had snarled that the queen had her own mission to save their asses, and if she wanted Erawan to know about it, she would have announced it to them all, since they were so inclined to gossip.

  It eased the discontent—barely.

  Aelin had not defended them with her fire, had left them to be butchered.

  Some part of him agreed. Wondered if it would have been better to ignore the keys, to use the two they possessed and obliterate these armies, rather than destroy their greatest weapon to forge the Lock.

  Hell, he would have wept to see Dorian Havilliard and his considerable power at that moment. The king had blasted ilken from the sky, had snapped their necks without touching them. He’d bow before the man if it saved them.

  It was midday when Morath’s army reached them once more, their mass spilling over the horizon. A storm sweeping across the fields.

  He’d warned the people of Perranth to flee into Oakwald, if they could. Locking themselves in the castle would be of little use. It had no supplies to outlast a siege. He’d debated using it for this battle, but their advantage lay in the frozen river, not in letting themselves be cornered to endure a slow death.

  No one was coming to save them. There had been no word from Rolfe, Galan’s forces were depleted, his ships spread thin on the coast, and no whisper of the remainder of Ansel of Briarcliff’s soldiers.

  Aedion kept that knowledge from his face as he rode his stallion down the front lines, inspecting the soldiers.

  The tang of their fear fogged the frosty air, the weight of their dread a bottomless pit yawning open in their eyes as they tracked him.

  The Bane began striking their swords against their shields. A steady heartbeat to override the vibrations of the Morath soldiers marching toward them.

  Aedion didn’t look for a shifter in the ranks. Ilken flew low over Morath’s teeming mass. She’d undoubtedly go for them first.

  Aedion halted his horse in the center of their host, the iced-over Lanis almost buried beneath the snow that had fallen the night before. Morath knew it existed, though. Those Valg princes had likely studied the terrain thoroughly. Had likely studied him thoroughly, too, his technique and skill. He knew he’d face one of them before it was done, perhaps all of them. It wouldn’t end well.r />
  Yet as long as they risked the crossing, he didn’t care. Endymion and Sellene, the only Fae still left with a whisper of power, were stationed just behind the first of the Bane.

  The eyes of his own soldiers were a phantom touch between his shoulder blades, on his helmeted head. He had not prepared a speech to rally them.

  A speech would not keep these men from dying today.

  So Aedion drew the Sword of Orynth, hefted his shield, and joined the Bane’s steady beat.

  Conveying all the defiance and rage in his heart, he clashed the ancient sword against the dented, round metal.

  Rhoe’s shield.

  Aedion had never told Aelin. Had wanted to wait until they returned to Orynth to reveal that the shield he’d carried, had never lost, had belonged to her father. And so many others before that.

  It had no name. Even Rhoe had not known its age. And when Aedion had spirited it away from Rhoe’s room, the only thing he grabbed when the news came that his family had been butchered, he had let the others forget about it, too.

  Even Darrow had not recognized it. Worn and simple, the shield had gone unnoticed at Aedion’s side, a reminder of what he’d lost. What he’d defend to his final breath.

  The soldiers from their allies’ armies picked up the beat as Morath reached the edge of the river. A barked command from the two Valg princes on horseback had the first of the foot soldiers crossing the ice, the ilken holding back near the center. To strike when they’d been worn down.

  Ren Allsbrook and their remaining archers kept hidden behind the lines, picking targets amongst those winged terrors.

  On and on, Aedion and their army banged their swords against their shields.

  Closer and closer, Morath’s army spilled onto the frozen river.

  Aedion held the beat, their enemy not realizing the sound served another purpose.

  To mask the cracking of the ice deep below.

  Morath advanced until they were nearly across the river.

  Enda and Sellene needed no shouted order. A wind swept over the ice, then slammed into it, between the cracks they’d been creating. Then they shoved the ice apart. Tore it to shreds.

  One heartbeat, Morath was marching toward them.

  The next, they plunged down, water splashing, shouts and screams filling the air. The ilken shot forward to grab soldiers drowning under the weight of their armor.

  But Ren Allsbrook was waiting, and at his bellowed order, the archers fired upon the exposed ilken. Blows to the wings sent them tumbling to the ice, into the water. Going under, some ilken dragged by their own thrashing soldiers.

  The Valg princes each lifted a hand, as if they were of one mind. The army halted at the shore. Watching as their brethren drowned. Watching as Endymion and Sellene kept ripping the ice apart, forbidding it to freeze over again.

  Aedion dared to smile at the sight of the drowning soldiers.

  He found the two Valg princes smiling back at him from across the river. One ran a hand over the black collar at his throat. A promise and reminder of precisely what they’d do to him.

  Aedion inclined his head in mocking invitation. They could certainly try.

  The Fae royals’ power broke at last, heralded by the ice that formed over the drowning soldiers, sealing them beneath the dark water.

  A gust of black wind from the Valg princes and their soldiers didn’t so much as look down as they began marching over the ice, ignoring the banging fists beneath their feet.

  Aedion guided his horse behind the front line, to where Kyllian and Elgan were mounted on their own steeds. Two thousand of the enemy had gone into the river at most. None would emerge.

  Barely a dent in the force now advancing.

  Aedion didn’t have words for his commanders, who had known him for most of his life, perhaps better than anyone. They had no words for him, either.

  When Morath reached their shore at last, swords bright in the gray day, Aedion let out a roar and charged.

  The ilken had learned that a shape-shifter was amongst them, and wore a wyvern’s skin. Lysandra realized it after she’d swept for them, leaping from the army’s ranks to slam into a cluster of three.

  Three others had been waiting, hiding in the horde below. An ambush.

  She’d barely taken out two, snapping off their heads with her spiked tail, before their poisoned claws had forced her to flee. So she’d drawn the ilken back toward her own lines, right into the range of Ren’s archers.

  They’d gotten the ilken down—barely. Shots to the wings that allowed Lysandra to rip their heads from their bodies.

  As they’d fallen, she’d dove for the ground, shifting as she went. She landed as a ghost leopard, and unleashed herself upon the foot soldiers already pushing against Terrasen’s joined shields.

  The skilled unity of the Bane was nothing against the sheer numbers forcing them back. The Fae warriors, the Silent Assassins—Ansel and Galan’s few remaining soldiers spread between them—neither of those lethal units could halt them, either.

  So she clawed and tore and sundered, black bile burning her throat. Snow turned to mud beneath her paws. Corpses piled, men both human and Valg screamed.

  Aedion’s voice shattered down the lines, “Hold that right flank!”

  She dared a glance toward it. The ilken had concentrated their forces there, slamming into the men in a phalanx of death and poison.

  Then another order from the prince, “Hold fast on the left!”

  He’d repositioned the Bane amongst the right and left flanks to account for their wobbling on the southern plains, yet it was not enough.

  Ilken tore into the cavalry, horses shrieking as poisoned talons ripped out their innards, riders crushed beneath falling bodies.

  Aedion galloped toward the left flank, some of his Bane following.

  Lysandra sliced through soldier after soldier, arrows flying from both armies.

  Still Morath advanced. Onward and harder, driving the Bane back as if they were little more than a branch blocking their path.

  Her breath burned in her lungs, her legs ached, yet she kept fighting.

  There would be nothing left of them by sundown if they kept at it like this.

  The other men seemed to realize it, too. Looked beyond the demons they fought to the tens of thousands still behind in orderly rows, waiting to kill and kill and kill.

  Some of their soldiers began to turn. Fleeing the front lines.

  Some outright hurled away their shields and sprinted out of the path of Morath.

  Morath seized on it. A wave crashing to shore, they slammed into their front line. Right into the center, which had never broken, even when the others had wobbled.

  They punched a hole right through it.

  Chaos reigned.

  Aedion roared from somewhere, from the heart of hell, “Re-form the lines!”

  The order went ignored.

  The Bane tried and failed to hold the line. Ansel of Briarcliff bellowed to her fleeing men to get back to the front, Galan Ashryver echoing her commands to his own soldiers. Ren shouted to his archers to remain, but they too abandoned their posts.

  Lysandra slashed through the shins of one Morath soldier, then ripped the throat from another. None of Terrasen’s warriors remained a step behind her to decapitate the fallen bodies.

  No one at all.

  Over. It was over.

  Useless, Aedion had called her.

  Lysandra gazed toward the ilken feasting on the right flank and knew what she had to do.

  CHAPTER 47

  Aedion had imagined they’d all be killed where they stood, battling together until the end. Not picked off one by one as they fled.

  He’d been forced far behind the lines when Morath plunged through, even the Bane having to peel away from the front. Soon, the rout would be complete.

  Arrows still flew from deep behind their ranks, Ren having seized some order, if only to cover their retreat.

  Not an orderly march to the nor
th. No, soldiers ran, shoving past one another.

  A disgraceful end, unworthy of a mention, unworthy of his kingdom.

  He’d stand—he’d stay here until they cut him down.

  Thousands of men charged past him, eyes wide with terror. Morath gave chase, their Valg princes smiling as they awaited the feasting sure to come.

  Done. It was done, here on this unnamed field before Perranth.

  Then a call went across the breaking lines.

  The fleeing men began to pause. To turn toward the direction of the news.

  Aedion skewered a Morath soldier on his sword before he fully understood the words.

  The queen has come. The queen is at the front line.

  For a foolish heartbeat, he scanned the sky for a blast of flame.

  None came.

  Dread settled into his heart, fear deeper than any he’d known.

  The queen is at the front line—at the right flank.

  Lysandra.

  Lysandra had taken on Aelin’s skin.

  He whirled toward the nonexistent right flank.

  Just as the golden-haired queen in borrowed armor faced two ilken, a sword and shield in her hands.

  No.

  The word was a punch through his body, greater than any blow he’d felt.

  Aedion began running, shoving through his own men. Toward the too-distant right flank. Toward the shape-shifter facing those ilken, no claws or fangs or anything to defend her beyond that sword and shield.

  No.

  He pushed men out of the way, the snow and mud hindering each step as the two ilken pressed closer to the shifter-queen.

  Savoring the kill.

  But the soldiers slowed their fleeing. Some even re-formed the lines when the call went out again. The queen is here. The queen fights at the front line.

  Exactly why she had done it. Why she had donned the defenseless, human form.

  No.

  The ilken towered over her, grinning with their horrible, mangled faces.

  Too far. He was still too damn far to do anything—

  One of the ilken slashed with a long, clawed arm.

  Her scream as poisoned talons ripped through her thigh sounded above the din of battle.