Shadow and Flame

by Gail Z. Martin

  Breathing hard with terror and exertion, Folville ignored the pain in his left arm, running toward another talishte soldier who was barely pinned down by four of Folville’s men. Dark shapes in the sky made Folville fear that Hennoch had sent yet more biters to fight, but these talishte barely touched down before they dove into the fight, taking on their undead adversaries in a blur.

  “Traitor!” one of the enemy talishte snarled as Penhallow’s man clotheslined him with enough force to have torn the head from a mortal.

  “Scum!” the allied talishte returned, ducking a deadly punch and raking his opponent with the dagger clenched in his left fist.

  Penhallow’s men were outnumbered by three, but the sight of reinforcements heartened the city’s defenders. The talishte attackers did not back down, and for every strike the mortals managed to land, it seemed the talishte got in two, bloodying their attackers and hurling them out of the way. That only served to enrage Folville’s soldiers, who ran at the talishte invaders without thought for their own safety, fighting with a maddened zeal that took the enemy fighters by surprise.

  Folville joined the fight, shouting obscenities. He landed a slash to one of the enemy talishte’s leg that cut to the bone. Larson pulled a crossbow at point-blank range, quarrel loaded and ready, and worked the trigger before the talishte realized the threat. The arrow caught the enemy talishte in the chest, and a second later, Folville’s sword swung through the neck, severing the spine. The head and body had turned to ash before they hit the ground, and a cheer went up from the mob.

  Up and down the wall, Folville’s men and Larson’s soldiers battled enemy talishte as, in the sky overhead, two well-matched forces struggled for control. Neither the city defenders nor the attackers dared use their arrows to turn the advantage, since it was impossible in the gloom to tell which side the combatants served. The burning wreckage of Squattertown lit the night, casting the battle in firelight shades of red and orange.

  Cold, strong hands seized Folville, dragging him over the edge of the wall. Larson grabbed for him, managing to seize him by the ankles. Four men threw their weight into it, holding on to Larson to pull against the talishte until Folville feared he would be pulled apart.

  Farther down the wall, Folville saw a talishte grab one of the defenders and hurl him over the side. Folville struggled, but the talishte’s grip was unbreakable, and tight enough that Folville was certain his wrist would break.

  Just as Larson and the others were losing their struggle against the talishte’s superior strength, the enemy biter stiffened and arched, then gave a howl of agonized terror. As Folville watched in horror, the hand that gripped his wrist blackened and shriveled, first to the brittle skin of a mummified corpse and then to bone. For one awful moment, the talishte maintained his grip, turning a fleshless, screaming skull toward Folville only inches from his face. And then, in the next instant, the talishte crumbled into dust.

  With the talishte’s grip suddenly broken, Larsen and the other soldiers stumbled backward, dragging Folville with them, until they crashed against the tower.

  “What in Torven’s name happened?” Folville gasped.

  “Look!” Larson said, pointing. A pitched aerial battle had raged just moments before; now suddenly the sky was full of ashes as Hennoch’s talishte shriveled to corpses, then imploded into ash.

  “It’s not affecting our talishte!” Folville watched as Penhallow’s brood remained hanging in midair, apparently as stunned as the mortals were.

  Folville glimpsed Hennoch suddenly clutch his arm and pitch forward, nearly falling from his horse. A few moments later, Hennoch slowly righted himself, holding his left arm against his chest as if it were wounded. He reached into a pouch near his saddle and withdrew a white cloth that, to Folville’s utter astonishment, Hennoch began to wave as he rose to stand in his stirrups.

  “Lay down your weapons!” Hennoch shouted to his soldiers. “City of Castle Reach!” Hennoch yelled up to the defenders on the wall. “We surrender!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE WOLF’S HOWL MADE BLAINE’S BLOOD RUN COLD. His horse, well trained for battle, hesitated, wary on an inborn level to heed the warning. “Damn Nagok!” Blaine muttered.

  Thirty large wolves stared down a group of mounted soldiers, emboldened beyond nature and reason.

  “Can you turn them away?” Blaine yelled to Mage Rikard, who rode close to Blaine and Kestel.

  Rikard shook his head. “Not when they’re bewitched like this,” he said.

  The wolves snarled and advanced, teeth bared, heads lowered for attack. “Ride!” Blaine shouted, rallying his troops.

  Blaine rode toward the wolves, bow at the ready. His arrow grazed the shoulder of a large wolf. Kestel’s aim with a dagger was true, taking down a wolf with a blade to the neck. Two of Blaine’s soldiers gave chase to another wolf, while two more paired up against a fourth.

  Dirt blasted into the air, surprising a charging wolf and bringing it to a sudden, skidding halt. A second explosion of dirt stopped another wolf in its tracks. It growled warily at the small hole left behind in the ground. All over the battlefield, dirt flew into the faces of the charging wolves, forcing them to change their course, slow their attack, and separate from their pack.

  One glance revealed the source. Rikard and his fellow mage, Kulp, remained on the sidelines, but they held their hands outstretched toward the fighting, and every time one of the mages clenched his fist, another shower of dirt blasted from the ground, spooking the maddened wolves.

  “Ride them down!” Blaine shouted, reining in his horse and going after the nearest wolf. Dirt sprayed up as several hits in succession made a line that cut off the wolves at every turn. Rattled by the explosions, the wolves shied away, giving Blaine and the soldiers an advantage.

  Blaine swung his sword, beheading one wolf as another came bounding forward. His horse reared, kicking with enough force to smash in the head of the lead wolf. Kestel threw another dagger, hitting a third wolf in the hindquarters. Dirt sprayed into the air all around them, and Blaine realized the mages were making sure the wolves could not run in straight lines to attack, slowing their approach and giving the bowmen an advantage.

  Blaine sheathed his sword and grabbed the crossbow from his back. It thudded as he sent a quarrel into the nearest wolf, stopping him in his tracks. His next shot went wide as one of the explosions kicked dirt into the air just as Blaine’s quarrel flew toward its target. Kestel dropped that wolf with a well-thrown knife.

  Across the battlefield, one of Birgen Verner’s captains marshaled a phalanx of archers against ten more wolves. Blaine’s soldiers battled another six wolves, which left seven of the bewitched creatures prowling the battlefield.

  In the distance, Niklas’s contingent of soldiers fought the human invaders, with help from Rinka Solveig and her troops. Rinka’s blood-red armor, sculpted to have the appearance of a dragon, was easy to spot, as if she dared her enemies to focus on her as their target.

  Sweat and grime ran down Blaine’s face and soaked his shirt. They had been fighting hard since daybreak, and he was hungry and bone weary. The battlefield was an abattoir, covered in the bodies of the wild beasts Nagok had manipulated with his magic. Blaine was weary of killing, numb from the horrors of the battlefield, but there was much left to do. Donderath would not be secure until Nagok was defeated, and both armies knew the fate of the war hung in the balance.

  And in the back of his mind, Blaine wondered how the strike against Thrane would go for Penhallow and Connor. Though he had been part of the planning and had endorsed the attack, he was well aware of the danger. Taking out Thrane could turn the course of the battle, but it was likely to come at a high price. Is this what it’s like to be king? Blaine wondered. The constant choice between life and death? Why would any sane man fight to gain such a burden?

  Fresh troops from the former convicts of Edgeland brought new energy into the ranks of Blaine’s army. After fending for themselves in the arctic w
astes and surviving Velant’s harsh discipline, the returned colonists knew how to fight and how to hunt, whether or not they had been soldiers before their exile. Three hundred had come north to fight alongside Blaine and Niklas, while one hundred had stayed in Castle Reach to help protect the harbor and the castle. The new soldiers fought like madmen, seeing for the first time what damage the Great Fire had brought to their homeland.

  “Over there!” Kestel cried, pointing toward three wolves stalking them from behind, while four more closed in from the side.

  Blaine wheeled his horse, readying his bow once more. The wolves were fast and tough, with razor-sharp teeth. Blaine let fly an arrow, and this time he hit his mark, striking the wolf just behind the shoulder and dropping it to the ground.

  A second wolf circled Blaine, running for the horse and not the rider. Blaine pulled back hard on the reins, and his horse reared, kicking with its strong, iron-shod front hooves. The first kick struck a glancing blow, knocking the wolf from its feet. The wolf scrambled to its feet for another charge, and the horse’s hooves flew once more, smashing in the front of the wolf’s skull.

  Kestel’s hand moved, sure and fast, and steel glinted as it flew toward its quarry, lodging in the eye of a maddened wolf that stopped in its tracks and toppled to the dirt.

  A deep growl cut through the night. A huge gray wolf, nearly the size of a dire wolf, fixed the soldiers in its baleful glare, head lowered, bounding toward them. Blaine and Kestel held their ground.

  The other soldiers backed away, clearing a large area. Blaine rode to one side, while Kestel rode to the other. Their horses shied and whinnied in alarm, and Blaine fought to keep his spooked mount under control. The wolf was massive, muscles rippling beneath the fur as it ran. It focused on Blaine and headed for him, taking a swipe with one huge paw that Blaine and his horse barely avoided.

  “Hey! Over here!” Kestel shouted, trying to draw off the wolf. For the moment, the wolf was fixed on Blaine, and it lunged into the air with a deep growl, swatting at Blaine with its broad, powerful paw and its long, deadly claws.

  Blaine’s horse shrieked in panic. The wolf’s teeth snicked shut inches from Blaine’s arm, and the paw raked his thigh with a glancing blow as he wheeled his horse at the last moment to avoid the full weight of the wolf slamming into his mount. Blaine aimed his crossbow, and the force of the quarrel at close range threw the wolf backward several feet, to lie dead on the pockmarked ground.

  Kestel took up her bow, and her arrow struck one of the wolves in the hindquarters. The beast howled and dropped back as blood matted its thick, dark fur. Another wolf growled, circling Kestel, a throaty, primal sound that made the hair on the back of Blaine’s neck stand up. Kestel’s arrow hit the wolf in the chest as two more closed on her and the rest stalked Blaine and his horse.

  Four soldiers rode toward them, shifting the odds away from the wolves. Blaine was grateful for the help, though Kestel looked as if she was enjoying the challenge.

  Another wolf advanced on Kestel. The maddened creature growled, shaking its head and shoulders to look even more frightening. Blaine readied his bow, as did Kestel, unwilling to allow the wolf to get close enough to strike again.

  The wolf snarled, ready to leap. Just as it was about to spring, it sat down heavily, with a glazed look on its face. It shook its head, sniffed at the air, turned, and loped away in the opposite direction. Across the battlefield, the remaining wolves broke off their attack as abruptly as they had started it, running for the foothills.

  “Let them go!” Blaine shouted to his soldiers.

  Rikard rode forward to meet him as Kestel joined. “Nagok’s compulsion runs deep,” Rikard said. “That’s the first time I’ve tried to distract the animals, and Kulp did his best to throw illusions to frighten them—bears, fire, that kind of thing.” He chuckled. “Fortunately, Kulp’s magic was invisible to our own troops.”

  “The explosions helped,” Kestel said, slinging her bow over her shoulder. “Seemed to rattle their focus.” In the distance, Blaine heard shouting, evidence that the battle was heading their way.

  Rikard nodded. “Glad we could help. Animal minds are quite alien, by the way. Nagok’s gift is a remarkable—and rare—type of magic. I wish he had been willing to do something constructive with it.” Rikard shrugged. “Still—I had the feeling, there for a moment, that Nagok was fighting us for control. I think the entire attack ended earlier than it was meant to.”

  “So by pushing back and distracting the wolves, you may have weakened Nagok?” Kestel asked, intrigued.

  “Not weakened permanently, but tired him out, so that he had to quit sooner,” Rikard replied. “Unfortunately, there’s no way to know for certain.”

  Kulp looked down at Blaine’s leg, which was bleeding. “We need to get that bound,” he said. “It sounds like there’s more fighting coming this way.”

  Blaine let Kulp call for a battlefield healer to speed the healing in his leg and bind it up with cloth as Rikard went to talk to the other commanders. The healer had barely finished his work and headed back behind the lines when the thunder of hoofbeats and the roar of the fight pushed toward them. Across the valley, Blaine glimpsed the half of his army led by Niklas. To the right, Rinka Solveig and her troops, along with several hundred Plainsmen. Birgen Verner and his soldiers flanked the Meroven troops, so that the allied warlords trapped Nagok’s forces between them.

  “We need to be out there,” Blaine grated, swinging back up to his saddle.

  “Did you get any more out of Geir about what’s pulling the Elders away from the fight?” Kestel asked. The need for utter secrecy had required Blaine to keep the plans from everyone, even Kestel.

  Blaine nodded. “Penhallow and the Wraith Lord are attacking Thrane’s stronghold, with Tormod’s help.” He shrugged at her glare. “I swore to Penhallow I wouldn’t say anything to anyone. It wasn’t that he thought someone would tell. He was afraid it could be read from someone’s mind. So that ensures Nagok won’t have the rogue Elders’ help—and perhaps be without most of their broods, too,” he added, certain that later on, Kestel would have something to say about being excluded.

  “You think the one they call Aubergine will actually leave Nagok in the middle of a battle?” Kestel asked.

  Blaine shrugged. “Penhallow seemed to think so—I wouldn’t doubt that talishte politics trump other agreements.”

  “So we lose ‘our’ Elders to the showdown, too?” Kestel surmised. Aldwin Carlisle, Garrick Dalton, and Malin Jarett were as difficult and demanding as any mortal aristocrats, but their help holding off Nagok’s army had reduced the toll of mortal lives and kept a balance of force against Nagok’s talishte fighters.

  “That’s the plan,” Blaine replied. “Let’s just hope whatever’s going on plays out in our favor.”

  “Does your bond to Penhallow tell you how it’s going?”

  Blaine shook his head. “Just a vague impression of danger and battle. I don’t think it’s settled yet.” The images he received were often incomplete and jumbled. If this is what seers have to interpret, I don’t envy them their job.

  Kestel leveled a look at him. “We’re going to talk about this later.”

  “I rather suspected that would be the case.”

  The next wave of attackers were soldiers, and as deadly with their swords and axes as the wolves had been. Blaine’s soldiers and the fighters under Niklas’s command swept back and forth together across the flatlands, gaining ground, falling back, and surging forward again. The corpses of men and horses fell alongside the bloodied remains of the wild animals, amid the trampled high grass.

  Through it all, Blaine spotted Aron, Dagur, Kulp, Rikard, and Mevvin moving around the edges of the battle, using their magic to slow the enemy’s advance or distracting Nagok’s troops with blasts of fire and sudden explosions. He looked up, and saw a large eagle turning in wide, slow circles above the battlefield. In the next heartbeat, he felt a frisson of power as subtle magic slipped ove
r him and his troops. Not hostile, but odd. Blaine thought he caught glimpses of strange shadows overhead, but he was too consumed with the battle to think too long about it.

  Half a candlemark later, during a lull in the fighting, Blaine motioned Dagur over. “What’s going on?” he asked. “I thought I saw something strange overhead, between us and the clouds.”

  Dagur nodded. “Illusions. That eagle belongs to Nagok, and he’s using it to scry for him. So we gave him something to look at of our own making that should mislead him about how the battle is actually going.” He glanced skyward, assuring himself the eagle was gone. “We’ve also been using our magic to drive the wild animals as far away as we can. With luck, that will put at least some of them—and hopefully the biggest predators—beyond Nagok’s reach.”

  “If he can only control one type of beast at a time, then when he’s commanding the eagle, he can’t send other creatures against us,” Blaine replied. “At least that’s something.”

  Nagok’s troops fought with such frenzy that Blaine wondered if the mages had been wrong about whether or not an entire army could be bewitched. The Meroven soldiers gave no quarter and asked for none, wielding broadswords and war axes without remorse. Some of the men looked old enough and fought well enough to have been part of the Meroven War. Others fought with the fury of men who dared not return if not victorious.

  “We’ve got your back, Mick!” Sergei, one of the new fighters from Edgeland, shouted as he and a dozen others battled their way near where Blaine and Kestel were fighting.

  “Glad to hear it!” Blaine shouted back, never taking his eyes from the Meroven fighter attacking him. The outlander fought with manic intensity, striking blow after blow that had little plan or skill but were dangerous in their sheer ferocity. What has Nagok threatened them with if they fail? Blaine wondered as the Meroven soldiers pressed forward. Death seemed to be the least of their concerns, and honor was unlikely to be motivating their mad advance.