by ML Spencer
She nodded, her lips pressed tightly together. “Yes. I’m upset.”
He frowned, wondering what he’d done wrong. Then he remembered the story she’d told him about her sister, and he understood. “I won’t leave you waiting,” he promised, figuring it was a pledge he could keep. “No matter what.” Even if he fell in battle, she would know, because Agaroth would die with him.
Calise bit her lip, stepping back and giving the slightest nod. “I want the necklace,” she whispered. “The heart knot.”
Aram reached up and touched the knotted necklace his father had given his mother before the battle he’d never returned from. He didn’t know if Calise knew what it meant, or what it meant to him. He hesitated, almost telling her no, for the last thing he wanted was to leave her the way his da had left his mother, with a twine necklace and nothing more. But he had Markus and Agaroth, and he trusted them.
Aram removed the necklace from his own neck and tied it around hers. Leaning forward, he kissed her one last time, his lips lingering on hers softly. Letting go of the kiss was hard, almost as hard as letting go of her. With one last smile, he turned and jogged back across the clearing toward Agaroth.
Sergan stood behind the front ranks of the Aragharian lines, trying hard not to smell them. The insect-creatures reeked of the void, a sickly-sweet odor that reminded him of carrion. Their limbs clicked when they moved, and their mandibles clattered. He didn’t trust them, but then again, he didn’t trust anyone, especially not on a battlefield. His gaze wandered to the hills in front of them, to where thousands of barbarians stood in line, waiting to receive them. Behind them stood the looming effigy of the Anchor, a great white statue that wept a crimson fluid down its face.
He rested his hand on the hilt of the Baelsword he wore at his side and felt a stirring deep within, like the cold coils of a serpent constricting around his spine. The sword had a soul of its own, or perhaps what he was feeling was the combined weight of all the souls it had devoured through the years. The Baelsword wasn’t his, but he had every intention of using it. He had not come to this godforsaken world to fight for Kathrax. He had come for his own purpose, and he could sense that purpose now, somewhere upon the hill in front of him. Sergan intended to use the Baelsword and Lazair’s signet to wring every drop of agony and essence out of Aram, then use the water of the Wellspring to extend his young life. With care and dedication, he could continue extracting essence from him for years to come, a lifetime’s supply, even for a glutton like himself.
Sergan could almost taste that sweet vintage on his tongue. He stared down at the vials strapped to the leather baldric that crossed his chest. They were filled with the rank essence of the woman he had burned, and though it tasted foul, it was strong. Between the vials and the Baelsword, he had everything he needed to bring a Champion down. Even better, the Revered Master had sent him reinforcements, and he had four powerful Shields to help his cause.
“I thought your master was going to be here,” he said casually to the pale Nimarean man beside him who had once been one of Lazair’s henchmen. Sergan wasn’t aware of the void-man’s true function or purpose, only that he wasn’t part of the regular military, and yet people were quick to follow his orders.
“The Divine One will come when he comes,” the man said. He reminded Sergan of the zealous maniacs of the Temple of Uthobe in Odessia, who ate the fruit of a sacred tree to induce visions and were known to cut the hearts out of their own chests in sacrifice to their heathen god. This man was nearly as delusional as they were, and Sergan found himself sidling away from him, just as repulsed by him as he was by the insect-creatures.
The sonorous cry of a horn rose from somewhere across the plain, the note rising in crescendo before diminishing again. Hearing that sound, Sergan tightened his grip on the Baelsword’s hilt and licked his lips.
Aram saw two men walking quickly toward them, and he halted, turning back. He recognized both of them from the night before. They were commanders, though he had forgotten which nation they belonged to. One of the men was Auld, with long brown hair the same reddish color as Aram’s own, his eyes a blazing turquoise. The man with him looked like he could have been Odessian, had he come from the World Above.
“Champion.” The Auld man bowed slightly. “Our scouts have reported strange occurrences in the northwest. A gathering of clouds and hailstorms that do not seem natural. Something comes.”
Aram frowned, not knowing what to make of the report. It almost sounded like sorcery, though it would have to be incredibly powerful to alter weather patterns. In his core, he felt a coldness stir. He glanced to the north across the troubled plain and saw what the commander was talking about. Dark clouds were visible against the horizon, and he could see that they were moving swiftly. It reminded him of the squalls he’d seen as a boy that used to come in over the ocean, battering boats and chasing the fishing fleet back to the protection of the harbor.
Sometimes a storm was just a storm.
But no, his gut told him. This storm was different.
“For now, have the scouts keep watch and send word if anything changes,” he said, pulling his helmet over his head. “That’s all we can do.”
The men bowed and left, and Aram climbed onto Agaroth’s back. He turned to look at Markus, who sat astride Siroth. Markus dipped his head and Aram raised his hand, saluting him back.
“You ready for this?” he asked Agaroth, giving the dragon a scratch.
In reply, Agaroth let out a growl and extended his wings. Backlit by the rising sun, the thin skin that covered the dragon’s dark wings was rendered translucent, revealing the intricate patterns of scars and venation within. Agaroth shifted his posture, preparing for flight, the corded muscles of his body rippling beneath his scales. Aram strapped himself into the harness, gripping the dragon’s sides with his legs and grasping the black spines that ridged his back.
“Let’s go,” Aram said, and Agaroth lunged into the air.
His lithe body slithered upward with a sinuous motion, rising and then dipping with every stroke of his wings. Siroth caught up with them quickly and flew at their side, almost wingtip to wingtip. Though not a Great One, Siroth was larger than any other dragon in the Wing and didn’t look completely dwarfed by Agaroth’s size. Behind them, the other dragons rose from the ground in waves, and Aram twisted in his seat to get a view of them.
Reaching out for the strands of aether that made up the substance of the sky, he started weaving radiant armor to shield them from sorcery. He couldn’t cloak them all, only those who would be assaulting the enemy directly. He didn’t dare shield too many, for the cost of the weaving would leave him too exhausted for battle.
From somewhere down below, the cry of a horn sounded from the enemy ranks, giving warning that their dragons had been spotted. It was answered by a bellowing war cry that went up from tens of thousands of throats, and the enemy started forward.
Aram glanced at Markus and nodded, then hung on tight as Agaroth swept into a steep, banking dive.
Chapter Ninety-Six
Aram felt his stomach plunge as Agaroth dove from the sky, his hair whipping in the wind caused by the speed of their descent. His body lifted, and the only thing keeping him on the dragon’s back were the straps of the harness fastened around him. The ground was rushing up fast, swarming with men and beasts, and just when Aram squeezed his eyes closed in anticipation of impact, Agaroth splayed his wings and leveled off, streaming a gush of brilliant, broiling flames across the battlefield. Aram glanced behind them, awed and dismayed by what he saw. A flaming, blackened swath had been carved out of the center of the enemy army.
Agaroth glided with the speed of the wind above the plain, pouring roiling fire down upon the enemy host. The flames hit like a shockwave, pulverizing bodies and shattering armor. Arrows and spears shot upward from the ground, but none could find purchase in his scales. Reaching the edge of the battlefield, Agaroth leaned into a wide, banking arc, coming back around for another pas
s.
Behind them, Siroth was just finishing a parallel run, blasting a similar trail of smoke and broiling death through the enemy ranks. Other dragons followed after them, a dozen in all, shimmering with the blazing light of Aram’s woven armor.
Agaroth blasted another searing stripe across the battlefield, but as they came back around, Aram saw that the two armies had come together, and the ranks were now too intermixed to rain fire indiscriminately. Still, the dragons had wreaked real havoc, both in casualties and, certainly, morale.
But now the only way he could be effective was to fight the rest of the battle from the ground.
“Take us down,” he ordered Agaroth.
The dragon arrested his flight with a backstroke then remained hovering for a moment in the air, his wings working in complex motions to hold them stationary. Aram gasped as an image slammed into his mind, of he and Markus being overwhelmed in the thick of the fight.
“That’s not going to happen,” he argued, answering with an image of his own, of Markus and their two dragons fighting at his side.
Agaroth turned his neck and glared back at him with menacing eyes before giving in. He circled the battlefield slowly, searching for a place to land.
“There,” Aram said, pointing at a relatively clear area behind the thick of the melee.
Agaroth complied with only the slightest hesitation, spiraling downward to the ground. He landed hard, turning in a circle and gushing flames everywhere, driving the enemy back. Siroth swooped down and landed at Agaroth’s side, and Markus slid from his back. He met Aram just as he dismounted, positioning himself in front of him, just as Esmir had taught him.
“What are we doing here?” he yelled, lifting his sword and looking for an enemy to strike.
Aram didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what he was capable of. But they were here, on a battlefield, and he knew he was about to find out. Already, soldiers were closing in.
Arrows started falling around them.
Aram wove a shield to protect the dragons, thickening the air just as Dedicant Carlova had shown him. He couldn’t harden the strands as much as she could, but it was enough to slow any arrows down enough to render them useless. Behind him, the dragons growled and hissed, belching cones of fire toward any soldiers who came too close.
The sounds of screams got his attention, and Aram turned to see that a group of Highlanders behind them had been enveloped by void walkers. It was a situation dragonfire couldn’t save them from.
Aram wove braids of aether quickly. Jerking the final knots tight, he dragged all the void walkers backward as one, hauling them across the ground away from their prey. He then cut the strands, shielding his face as every creature exploded all at once. Gore and body parts rained from the air, the sight making him physically ill.
It also enraged the enemy.
Suddenly, soldiers were pouring toward them from every direction, and though the dragons did their best, they had to pick their targets carefully. Aram was hard-pressed to work fast enough, desperately weaving and cutting strands, battering back the soldiers who got through. Soon, the center of the battlefield was awash in dragonfire and searing magic, both combining to form a deadly radius of carnage. Aram walked forward with Markus in front of him, taking more ground, cutting off the enemy rear guard from the melee.
Within minutes, they had secured a wide area of the battlefield, cleared of everything but the dead.
Aram staggered, overcome by a wave of dizziness and exhaustion. Using that much magic was taking too much of a toll on him. He was going to have to back off before he collapsed.
Just then, the air lit up with a shocking flash of light that was gone in an instant, followed by a rolling thunderclap. Aram caught the streak of fire out of the corner of his eye and turned just in time to see a dragon enveloped in flames plunging into the thick of the melee, hitting the ground in a ball of fire.
He closed his eyes, feeling gut-punched.
The dragon had been Wingmaster Lorine’s.
Exhaustion was hammering him, and he’d let the dragon’s shield slip. Feeling sickened, he tightened the glowing armor around the others. Anger burned deep into his insides. He couldn’t keep the dragons shielded forever.
Their sorcerers were the problem. He had to find them and take them out before he collapsed from exhaustion. Aram scanned the field of battle but could see little from their position. Enemy sorcerers could be anywhere spread throughout the plain or even hiding in the rear. Gritting his teeth, Aram suppressed a growl.
They had reached a place where a small, rocky hill protruded above the prairie. Aram decided to climb it, wanting to look down upon the battlefield from higher ground and get a better perspective. He ascended carefully, exhaustion making his legs unstable. Markus helped steady him up the steeper parts, a look of concern on his face.
When they reached the top of the hill, Aram stopped and gazed out over the field. He saw that there was still a lot of the battle left to fight. Most of the fighting was centered below the rise of hills, where a wedge of the enemy was trying to break through the ranks of defenders.
Below, fifty or so men had broken off from the melee and were loping up the base of the hill toward their position. Realizing they had drawn attention to themselves, Aram summoned their dragons but then stopped. Perhaps that kind of attention was exactly what they needed to draw the sorcerers out. He held his ground and waited, letting his opponents ascend.
Markus moved in front of him, raising his sword. “What in the hell are we doing, Aram?”
“Killing sorcerers.”
“I don’t see any sorcerers!”
“They’ll come.” Aram felt certain of it.
With that, he started spinning aether, working a quick succession of braids that spiraled out away from them in the air, forming a construction that reminded him of a spider’s web, only a thousand times bigger and more complex. Tying it off, he wadded it into a ball and cast it down upon the hillside, aimed at the soldiers advancing toward them.
He was unprepared for the strength of his own creation.
Below them, the side of the hill erupted in a thunderous blast of rocks and hurling debris. Jets of dirt and tumbling boulders shot out from the hillside, arcing upward into the sky to land hundreds of feet away. Aram staggered, almost thrown backward by the force of the blast, and Markus dropped into a fighting stance to keep from falling over. Rocks and scraps of armor shot toward them, and Aram had to harden the air to keep them from being hit. Markus glanced back at him with a look of shock, his face beneath his helmet gray with dust.
Rather than chasing the enemy away, the explosion had the opposite effect—the effect Aram had hoped for. Scores of warriors and insect-like creatures broke off from the main host and scrambled toward their position, drawn like bats to the moonlight. Seeing the threat to his rider, Agaroth spread his wings and roared then sprang into the air and glided to the hilltop. He landed on the peak above them, where he brandished his might and size in a terrifying display. Siroth skimmed to the opposite side of the hill, where he affected a similar posture, glaring down the hillside, ready to ward their other flank.
“They’re coming to us, all right,” Markus muttered. “Think you can do that again?”
In response, Aram raised his hands, gathering strands of aether and preparing to bind. When the first wave of the enemy broke over the crest of the hill, it was Agaroth who attacked first, lunging forward to blanket the hillside with searing white flames. The insect-creatures nearest were scorched instantly to charcoal. The armor of the men heated red then melted, pooling on the ground in globs of slag. Those further away dropped, enveloped in flames, the insects emitting piercing, whistling noises as they died. When the roar of the fire had ended, the entire hillside was smoldering and blackened.
But there were more coming—far more than Aram had counted on. He knew he had painted a large target on himself, but he’d felt sure they’d send sorcerers to take him down, not throw half their army at
him. If this continued, he and Markus would have to abandon the hilltop.
Weary, he tore more tendrils from the air and started to work them. His ability to see in color was nothing short of a godsend, allowing him to handle dozens of complications at once, all flowing together into logical patterns that would have been indiscernible to normal human eyes. These, he flung down the hillside, where they exploded, slicing through men and beasts like scythes reaping grain. Eventually, the waves of warriors stopped coming, instead fleeing the area and in all-out rout.
Seeing that there was no one left to attack, Aram brought his hands up to clutch his throbbing head, feeling dizzy and sick to his stomach. He had never handled so much magic before, had never imagined handling so much magic. He couldn’t have kept it up much longer. He felt Markus’s hand on his arm and turned to look at him
“Are you all right?”
Aram nodded, squeezing his eyes closed until the ground stopped heaving under his feet. “I just need to rest for a moment.”
Markus let go and jogged back to where Siroth stood, looming over the blasted hillside like a living gargoyle. Markus grabbed a waterskin that hung from his harness then returned to Aram’s side, pressing it into his hands.
“Drink.”
Aram tilted his head back and gasped as the sweet taste of Wellspring water touched his lips. He gulped it down, beyond grateful for Markus’s foresight.
The water cooled his parched throat and filled him with a comforting sense of relief. It didn’t make the ache of exhaustion go away, but it did make it bearable. He had to stop himself from drinking too much, knowing he should save some for later, when he might need it even more. He wiped his mouth and handed the waterskin back.
He crouched down to catch his breath, holding his head in his hands. He stayed there for minutes, until Markus set a hand on his shoulder and pointed toward the scorched plain below.