They shared the hill with the artillery from Lingfeldt, and Marlis kept moving back and forth, checking on the artillery commander and getting the latest reports, then joining Thea at the wall to keep her eyes on the fight.
Sigi snapped photographs of the battlefield, complaining that their vantage point was poor. They were removed from the fighting up on the hilltop, with a broad view of men spilling across the valley, churning up dirt with the snow. The rear of the army was closest to them, so the fighting was mostly distant and she didn’t see many fallen men, but as time passed, Otto’s men mixed in more with Sebastian’s, and blood stained the slush. Sebastian’s men were being slowly pushed back, she noticed—not a good sign.
Nevertheless, the radio operator said, “Prince Rupert reports that we’re holding our own.” Sebastian’s ranks had swelled so much since he had been revealed as the prince that hardly anyone called him Sebastian anymore, but Marlis still had a hard time getting used to it.
“Good,” she said. But she felt a little useless. Nan had asked her to stay out of the fighting.
“I’ll take care of Ingrid,” Nan had said. “One of us should stay back in case the battle doesn’t go well.”
“But it seems cowardly,” Marlis had protested. “We should do this together.”
“You’ve been a symbol of hope for Urobrun so…you really need to take care of yourself. What if Sebastian died? They need you.”
“If Sebastian dies with Otto at our doorstep, I’m not sure all the speeches in the world will save our morale,” Marlis replied.
“You always were the pessimist, weren’t you?” Nan gave her a knowing smile before leaving her behind.
Papa, for all his failings, had never showed pessimism. He kept his brash confidence until the end. If she couldn’t believe in Nan and the soldiers of Urobrun, who would?
“Can you see Sebastian and Freddy?” she asked Thea, returning to the wall.
“It’s just so hard to tell since Freddy dyed his hair. They all look the same from here.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter when we’re too far away to do anything,” Marlis said.
“You wish you were down there, don’t you?” Thea asked.
“I just pray it all goes well. I’m not sure what I could possibly do to save Urobrun if they all died, and I’m not sure I’d have the spirit for it, either.”
“Any word from Nan?” Sigi asked.
“No. Sebastian said the Invincible is swinging back around and aiming for Otto’s camp. Maybe one of the explosives will take out Ingrid.” Marlis wrapped her gloved hands around the hastily erected defensive walls. “It would be easier that way. Nan shouldn’t have to be the one to kill her.”
The Invincible seemed to be moving into position again, but before the guns could fire, a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.
No, not the sky exactly. Its violently bright light raced from Otto’s camp to the Invincible’s engines.
“Oh no,” Marlis breathed. “How many elementals do they have?” She was waiting to see the Invincible go up in flames the way the Falcon had, but it was a more advanced design, with better defenses—more guns, more responsive engines, and an armored hull.
“I told him to change the name of that airship,” Thea said. “It’s just asking for trouble.”
The airship remained true to its reputation and stayed in the sky, only it was drifting off course. “It’s lost power,” Marlis said. “Maybe our air witch can steer it to safety.”
“Can it still attack?” Sigi asked.
“I doubt they’ll risk it. One air witch doesn’t have that kind of control,” said Marlis, recalling the scenarios they had gone over in numerous planning meetings. “They’ll need to repair the engines.”
This meant the Invincible would be unable to bomb Otto’s main camp. Only a weapon of substantial magnitude could possibly penetrate Ingrid’s magical barriers. Nan would have to face Ingrid and her men.
“I think I should go down there,” Marlis said. “I should help Nan.”
“No,” Thea snapped. “She told you to stay here! If you walk down there, everyone will wonder what’s going on, and they might do stupid things to protect you.”
As Marlis glared past her, she noticed odd ripples in the snow in the distance. “Wait.” She held up a hand. “Look, there.”
They all turned. Thea had her binoculars at the ready.
“What is that?” Sigi asked.
“Something is moving through the snow,” Thea said. “Almost like…footsteps?”
Marlis rushed straight for the radio operator. “Hurry and send a message to Sebastian. An enemy unit appears to be approaching fast at his right flank—and they’re invisible.”
“Yes, miss.”
But this wasn’t enough. Within minutes the invisible army would be within range of their men, and they would be caught off guard by shots they never saw coming. She turned to the artillery commander. “We need to take out that approaching army as fast as possible.”
“As soon as Prince Rupert gives the—”
“He’s going to say the same damn thing. We do not have time to wait for messages to come through.” Marlis pointed toward the field. “Ready them now.”
It would still take crucial moments for the artillery to change their target. Marlis watched the tamped-down snow move ever closer, the wyrdsong thrumming through her mind, but her power was useless from such a distance. The Invincible was drifting back toward the base, a crippled behemoth, and Sebastian’s right flank started getting the first round of fire from their unseen ambush.
The battle seemed like a disaster played out in slow motion. A whole section of men went down without hardly knowing what hit them. As the front lines began to turn their attention to support the right flank, the entire Urobrun army was driven farther back. The fighting was getting close to their hill now.
“Thea, Sigi,” Marlis said. “Maybe you should get away from the wall now, just in case. I can keep watch.”
“No,” Sigi said. “We aren’t in half as much danger here as Nan is down there.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Marlis said.
“We don’t want to be shuffled off where we can’t see what’s going on,” Thea said.
Marlis remembered her frustration at being shoved in the Chancellery basement. The girls she used to know would never have stood on the ramparts with her. Sigi and Thea might not be soldiers, but they were just as invested as anyone. She stopped arguing. The artillery was firing on the invisible army now, the men suddenly appearing as they died and the spell broke.
But it would still take a miracle for them to win, Marlis thought.
Nan is the only chance we have.
Nan was determined not to think, not to feel. She couldn’t let herself remember Ingrid’s innocent smile or her begging for Nan’s help. With an army behind her, she felt the weight of the whole country’s need for a new world. Yggdrasil was already dead and Ingrid had chosen her path.
You’re thinking. Stop thinking. Just find her and take her out and think later.
She couldn’t charge right past enemy lines; she had to wait out the battle stage by stage. Only after the armies were scattered and the main camp was exposed could she get close. Until then, she waited restlessly in one of the military jeeps. The wind sorcerer had been with her until he was called away to work his magic on the airship; now she was left with the driver and a radio operator.
By the time the sun was beginning to climb back down the sky and the battle had waged for hours, she could tell they were barely managing to hold their own. The field was littered with bodies, probably more than all the workers underground—so many that after a while she had stopped feeling anything when she saw them. They were just part of the landscape. But all the while her gut twisted tighter and tighter, and it all felt more senseless as the day went on. Why couldn’t they just talk? Why did thousands of people have to die?
She had no idea how it could have been prevented, thou
gh, just like she couldn’t help Ingrid.
Sebastian’s jeep came driving across the field and pulled up beside her. “Nan,” he said. “Otto’s camped at that barn up ahead. We’ve cleared a path, but we can’t hold that much longer. We won’t have enough ammo to win this, and our numbers are down by half.”
“That bad?”
“They’ve lost more than half, but they also have more reinforcements on the way who will be here in a few days.”
The unspoken message was that they would soon have to retreat.
This was it, then. They didn’t have much more ammo back in Urobrun or anywhere else, thanks to the destruction of the arsenal. If she couldn’t take out Ingrid with the wyrdsong, Otto’s advantage would be insurmountable. It might still be.
She couldn’t think that way.
“You’re going in with the revived soldiers,” Sebastian said. “They’re stronger.”
The jeep crossed the battlefield, weaving around piles of the dead until it met with the assemblage of revived soldiers. Nan saw familiar faces among them—all of them now doomed. They hurried forward, approaching the camp. Military tents were clustered around an old barn with its thatched roof sagging. Several horses were tethered outside, and some of the chickens the Irminauers had appropriated from the Urobrun farm were running around. If Otto was in the main camp, he was hiding.
From behind farm equipment and hay, soldiers appeared, waiting for Nan’s group to come within range. The revived men closed in ahead of her as they approached, shielding her from the attack.
Both sides opened fire almost at once. Nan recognized the Irminauers—Sebastian’s men who had gone with Ingrid. She had traveled with them. She knew many of their names. When Ingrid didn’t need them, they talked and laughed as normal, but their faces were blank with enchantment now.
The Urobrunians had no protection, except that they were already dead, but the bullets still hurt. Some of them went down, screaming and writhing. They were willing to suffer just to give her a chance. They had already died for her, for Sebastian, for Urobrun.
Nan stormed forward, the wyrdsong pouring from her, their cries giving her fuel. She chanted the sounds, but just as before, the song came from all around her. The ground was singing, the sky was singing, even the barn and the hay and the tents seemed to be singing. The whole world was made of her orchestra, and she lifted her hands to conduct.
“Skuld!” she cried. “Come forth! Show yourself to me!” Her voice barely seemed her own; it was Verthandi now, speaking in the cadence of an earlier age.
The flaps of one of the tents parted, and Ingrid stood before her. Her face had no expression, and she didn’t move at first. Then, with the slightest narrowing of her eyes, she looked briefly alien and cruel, and her glamour fell away again, showing her wooden limbs and eyes. She let the gulf between them widen until Nan felt she would tumble in.
“I told you to go, Verthandi,” Skuld said. “I gave you a chance to let me take care of Yggdrasil on my own. Now we’ll have to battle to the death.”
“I know.”
Skuld spread her arms. She didn’t open her mouth, yet her wyrdsong burst forth in dark glory, so strong that Nan tasted bitterness on her tongue. It screeched and growled in her ears.
“If Verthandi wins, all of you will lose what I have given you, everything that makes you strong,” Skuld told the men surrounding her. Gun barrels that had been pointed at the revived soldiers now fixed on Nan.
“That isn’t true,” Nan said. “I’ve come to free you! Ingrid has given you nothing and taken your freedom and your memories. She’s taken your pain, but she’s also taken everything you love. She’s forced you to protect something that is already dead.”
“It isn’t dead,” Ingrid said. “It lives because of all of you.”
“Ingrid is the true Norn.” One of the men moved to Ingrid’s side. “You’ve betrayed your sister and your destiny.”
Memories spiraled out of Nan’s mind and into the magic surrounding her, more than she could hold at once. She saw Yggdrasil dying and Yggdrasil in the height of its beauty. The wyrdsong pulsed like a beating heart around her, and dimly she heard the battle still raging on the fields behind her, but no bullet could touch her in this moment. This is all I have. This is all we’ve shared. This is the end of what we’ve been.
The colors brightened and sharpened. Nan was ready to let go.
But Skuld fought for her life. Her stance shifted like she was holding out against a harsh wind, but her wyrdsong raged on in response. The chickens had all run away, the cattle lowed in fear.
In the midst of it all, Max stepped forward, and as he did, the magic on his hands fell away and then the hands themselves began to detach from his arms, sliding slowly out of his sleeves until they dangled by the roots. They dropped to the ground.
“Max, you don’t want to do this,” Skuld said.
“I want to be free.” His voice was ragged with anger. “She cut off my hands, and she made me shoot your friend so she could keep feeding her powers, feeding and feeding…” He clutched his arms around his chest, and one of the revived men reached for him, pulling him to their side.
Nan sensed a crack in Skuld’s magic caused by this betrayal, and when she felt it, she reached with her magic to all the men under Skuld’s thrall.
Jenny suddenly pushed out of one of the tents, missing a hand now. She stumbled through the muddy snow to Nan’s side. Other men shook off wooden feet, leaving behind a shoe, or pulled off an arm. Despite their limping and the dropping of weapons as they shed the wooden limbs, relief showed on many faces, like they had been released from a long imprisonment.
But not all of them responded to Nan’s song.
A woman with a withered face suddenly pushed her way forward and flung lightning from her fingertips at Nan. Nan jumped out of the way, and one of her own men shoved her farther back just before the lightning struck him instead.
“Skuld set me free,” the lightning witch said. “Otto stole everything I had, and Skuld has given me back my power. This is our second chance.”
Skuld smiled.
The witch released another bolt of lightning, and this time Nan didn’t escape. Protect me, Yggdrasil, this is my chance to save you, she thought, feeling her skin glow with power. The lightning jolted through her and raised every hair on her body, leaving her on the ground. Jenny grabbed her hand, pulled her up.
“You need to get out of here,” Max said. “Ingrid is too strong.”
“She isn’t! I have to destroy her, I have no choice!”
Skuld dropped to the ground, raking her wooden fingers into the dirt, as if drawing power from the soil like a tree’s roots took strength from the earth. She stared at Nan with her dead wooden eyes. “Your powers will never be strong enough. You wouldn’t help me, so Yggdrasil belongs only to me.”
The wyrdsong swelled in Marlis’s head, but it was not the slow, soothing tone of her dreams anymore. It sounded like bow strings raked roughly across a large, deep instrument, and she clutched her head.
“Are you all right?” Thea asked, walking to Marlis’s side.
Marlis’s stomach convulsed. Usually her digestion was as disciplined as the rest of her. She shut her eyes against the pain, and when she opened them again, the world was more colorful, but stars danced at the edges. “Nan’s fighting Ingrid. I think—it’s happening. The end of magic. Or maybe the end of my magic. They’re fighting with the wyrdsong.”
She blinked back the colors and the stars. “I don’t care what Nan said. I need to go down there.”
The driver of the nearest jeep looked worried for her health—she must have turned a sickly color—but when she gave an order, he followed. Two gunners came with her, keeping enemy soldiers away from the car as the driver maneuvered around the mess of the battlefield.
When Marlis saw the crowd of men surrounding Nan, she lost all thoughts of her own safety and rushed out of the vehicle. Ingrid was sitting on the ground, but she didn’t
look injured. She seemed to be drawing power. Her face lifted to Marlis’s approach, but even though Nan had warned her, she didn’t expect the wooden eyes that made Ingrid’s face seem blank and blind.
“Urd,” Ingrid said. “I wondered if I’d ever see you. But I hoped I wouldn’t.”
Marlis stepped back. “Why?”
“The Chancellor’s daughter.” Ingrid’s face was pointed at her, the carved pupils of her wooden eyes staring. “You never realized who you really were? You never heard the wyrdsong?”
“I did.”
“Well, you must not have listened. It’s supposed to guide you. It should have told you your father was your enemy.”
“Skuld, the tree was already dying,” Marlis said. “My father’s men wouldn’t have even been able to get close if it wasn’t already a lost cause. The wyrdsong failed me because it’s been corrupted. The books said—”
“I don’t care about the books. You didn’t even come to see me.” Ingrid swallowed back tears. “You were going to let Nan kill me without saying good-bye.”
“I had other duties, to my people.”
“Your people. We are each other’s people. We live together, fight together—die together.”
Marlis and Nan glanced at each other.
She’s willing to die…but she wants to drag us with her?
Maybe this was fitting. Maybe they were supposed to die together.
Ingrid shut her eyes, and rolling waves of dark music seemed to come from her body as a vision unfurled above her small crouched form—of Yggdrasil…or was it? The shimmering image had the rough shape of the familiar tree, but the bark was too smooth—almost like skin, covered in short dark hair like a man’s arms, and then she realized that fingers and toes sprouted from its branches like growths. What she had first taken for knots were actually eyes and even an ear.
Every piece of a person Ingrid had ever stolen had become a part of their tree.
Glittering Shadows Page 31