by Rosie Scott
“Gwen!” Amora's angered shout made it clear she blamed the heir for getting her into this situation to begin with.
Dozens of bolts clattered into the shields of Gwen and Amora, leaving them flickering with weakness. The heir panicked. Even though both shields weakened, Gwen hesitated to refresh them. Perhaps she was running out of energy.
“Second line!” Hasani commanded, watching the chaos surrounding the goddess with a close eye. “Fire!”
A new volley of bolts arced through the skies, and Gwen backed away from Amora as the goddess spit curses.
“You must regenerate my shield!” Amora screamed, her voice distorting with rage. “Gwen!”
Gwen stumbled back, her eyes on the bolts nearing them both in the sky. After a few moments, her own shield was refreshed. The heir must not have had the energy to regenerate them both, so she'd chosen to save herself rather than the pretentious goddess she'd allied with. Knowing Amora's death would mean the release of my army, the heir ran through its ranks, rushing out of the aura's barrier and toward the Chairel soldiers in the southeast before she could be surrounded by foes.
The arbalests were mostly accurate. One bolt shot Maggie in the arm as she stood beside Amora, but the rest hit their target. Amora's shield flickered out, and several late bolts peppered her body. The goddess gasped in surprise and pain and fell to her knees, injured but still alive. In multiple places over her chest and torso, silver bolts stuck out of pools of red which saturated the fabric of her dress.
Hasani gave no further commands. Holding the silver javelin in his right hand, he pulled his muscular arm back, calculating distance and drop. His hyena chuckled as if in anticipation of its rider's skill as the projectile was launched.
The javelin was a blur of silver in the sky as it raced toward the goddess still kneeling on the battlefield, whistling during its trajectory. Amora breathed heavily, and one hand came up to her left breast and grabbed a silver bolt, tugging it out of its wound as if that would save her. She noticed the javelin's descent, but she could do nothing.
The projectile cracked through the frontal bone of Amora's skull, just above and between her golden eyes. Its bloodied tip broke through the back of her head amidst an explosion of bone and brain matter. Amora's arms went limp with death as she fell backwards off her knees, her head skewering to the grasses when the still-impaled javelin stabbed the ground behind her.
All at once, my friends and soldiers were released from their illusion and reacted to injuring and killing allies. Some of them panicked. Some of them broke down into tears. Some of them were simply shaken.
But all the survivors were now back on our side.
Hasani grinned at me as I passed his arbalests to aid my army. “Bulls-eye.”
“Welcome to the team, God-Killer,” I told him, using the gladiatorial nickname the Naharans had awarded me twelve years ago.
The king chuckled and said, “I apologize for being late to this battle, sister. I came as quickly as I could.”
“You just wanted to make a dramatic entrance,” I teased him. I walked backwards toward my army so I could watch his reaction as I added, “As soon as I saw you were here, I yelled your name in ecstasy on the battlefield. My men might think I fancy you.”
Hasani laughed boisterously at my reference to his own written words from years ago after I'd sent him support in T'ahal. “Ah, Kai, we have so much to talk about and catch up on. Be sure to survive this battle so we can.”
“Well, since you asked so politely,” I replied with a light bow, and Hasani grinned before turning his hyena and ordering the arbalests to aid Cyrus farther south.
Azazel was the first Renegade to meet me on my way to regather our army. He seemed troubled by killing allies but desperately relieved that he'd been released from Amora's spell. “We've killed so many, Kai,” he said mournfully. “The men are disturbed and need motivation.”
I nodded. “I understand. That's the first time I've ever been charmed, and I hated every second of it.”
“Me too,” he agreed.
I found Dax, Calder, and Holter all together on the sidelines of my bewildered army, though they'd since moved closer because they no longer had to worry about the aura.
“Thank you for answering the call, Dax,” I offered to the Sentinel, who was healing one of my soldiers.
“Anytime, Kai,” Dax replied roughly with a smile.
I turned to Calder next. The lizard-kin trembled with power even still. “You're the best, love,” I said, mimicking his recent words near the edge of the Cel Forest. His reptilian eyes sparkled with humor, but he could say nothing. Calder reached out to Holter with one webbed hand, ruffling the scout's dark hair before he left to join his beastmen.
Holter didn't seem to expect any compliments from me, but he met my gaze as I came to stand before him. “If there was some way I could promote you, Holter, this would be the time I would do it,” I informed him. “You handled that like a true leader and turned the tides of an awful situation back into our favor. You aided me when I needed it most. Thank you.”
Holter appeared overwhelmed by my praises, but he hesitated to say anything.
“Kai,” Azazel spoke up beside me, “Holter has sometimes expressed that he feels undeserving to be with us.”
Holter's eyes widened, and he blurted, “I never meant to sound ungrateful—”
I put a hand on the scout's cloaked shoulder. “That's not Azazel's point, Holter. You may have become a part of this group because of your association with Nyx, but you've more than earned your right to be one of us.”
“Particularly now that the Naharans are here and you can learn their music,” Azazel mused, making Holter and I chuckle.
“Well...thank you,” Holter said. “I'm just glad I held them back before they got to you. Is Uriel okay? I saw him...” he trailed off, grimacing as he finished, “...get crushed.”
“Gods,” Azazel said, looking over at me with concern.
“Uriel is fine,” I replied quickly. “He is just as intelligent in battle as we give him credit for.” Giving Azazel a knowing look, I added, “Alleviate.”
The archer nodded in understanding.
“Let's get the men focused,” I suggested. “We must return to battle. It's far from over.”
Nineteen
Under a cascade of afternoon sunlight, the southeastern plains of Comercio were engulfed in all-out war. The Chairel cavalry contended with Naharan hyenas coming from the south while Marcus's unit beat down on them from the north. All eight dragon-kin were still alive and well, spewing metal into man and equine flesh from above. Chairel's largest army which comprised infantrymen and mages were in the field's center, where they attempted to aid their cavalry from the north by sandwiching the giants between their ranks. Cyrus commanded his Sentinels to split their armies into two arms; while Cyrus and Dax put pressure on Chairel's main force, Zephyr and Uriel fought the dwindling Chairel cavalry nearby, intending to aid Marcus and the hyenas to wipe out our enemy's horses once and for all.
Though Chairel's individual armies were larger than ours, we had more regiments and higher maneuverability. Our armies worked together to surround their men. After the initial charge of our armies earlier that morning, Chairel had split its infantrymen and mages up into two major armies comprising around forty-five thousand men each. The largest of the two units was the one Cyrus and Dax focused on now, and Hasani maneuvered his arbalests from the northwest to aid them. The other large enemy unit was dwindling just north and surrounded by four allied armies including my own. As I directed my Seran Renegades to fight in the northwest, Calder and his beastmen fought just south of us. The massive underground army of non-beastmen Alderi warriors were the other arm of our pincer attack, bullying our foes from the northeast. Just south of them were Rek and his orcs.
Rek's army was the second smallest allied unit, and it was squished between Chairel's two largest armies on the opposite side of the enemy from us, away from any aid we could
offer them. Given the chaos surrounding Amora's arrival earlier, I'd lost track of the other god and could not give him direction. Rek was not one for strategy; his bloodlust caused him to lead his orcs straight into the most dangerous part of the battlefield where foes outnumbered them ten to one. Nonetheless, the god was thriving.
Chairel's generals directed their men to surround the orcs, but Rek and his men killed through their soldiers so fast that the plan never came to fruition. The harsh roars of thousands of berserk orcs raged through the air, causing Chairel soldiers immense fear even before they had a chance to fight. Just like earlier in the battle, many of our foes understood they were dealing with another god once they were close enough to see Rek's golden eyes, and that lowered their morale. Even worse for their confidence was Rek's severely brutal fighting style.
Rek swiped one of his axes effortlessly through the gut of an enemy soldier, just short of breaking her spine from the inside. As the woman coughed up blood, Rek threw his axes to stand out of the ground by their blades and picked up the soldier, one hand on her throat and the other holding her hips. He lifted the woman up into the air as she faced the ground and her wound drained blood and bile. Rek snapped her spine backwards at the location of her lethal cut, leaving her vital organs to slop out of both sides of her severed body cavity.
A Chairel soldier gave a terrified battle cry as he rushed toward the god from behind, thrusting his two-handed sword through the back of Rek's spinal cord. The god dropped the mutilated body he'd been holding and roared, picking up one of his axes by its beckoning standing handle as the human tried to tug his sword from the wound. Rek spun to face his foe with the sword still stuck through his torso, its tip draining blood over his navel. The Chairel soldier rambled off a variety of horrified curses as he realized the god still lived, but they turned into pained screams as Rek ripped his ax through both of the man's thighs, leaving him falling to the grasses in three bleeding parts. The soldier wasn't dead yet, however; Rek dropped his ax and picked up the human's left leg, his roars distorted as he reduced the skull of his foe to a pulp using the man's own booted foot.
Amid Rek's fury, another soldier hacked repeatedly into the side of the god's throat as he paid little mind. Satisfied with his last kill, Rek tossed the shattered leg into the puddle of gore before him and once more grabbed his ax. He turned toward his new contender, grabbing the man by his throat and launching the soldier up into the air like he weighed nothing. As the man flew upward, Rek ripped his ax through his airborne body, cutting it into horizontal halves. The lower half landed in the grasses still twitching with nerve damage. The god caught the upper half as it attempted to give in to gravity's flirtations, holding it by the throat as he tugged organs out of its cavity with which to feast on and regenerate.
Even I couldn't help but feel intimidated by Rek's barbarity, but I was grateful he was on our side. He was one hell of a force on the battlefield; even when vastly outnumbered, he and his orcs were lowering morale and inducing panic. Though Nyx was fighting nearby, she kept looking across the battlefield to watch Rek in action.
“You have impeccable taste,” I teased her, using her own words from long ago when Cerin joined us. Nyx had often bragged over the trip to Comercio from the Cel Forest that she'd slept with Rek more than once, so I figured the two were sexually compatible.
Nyx grinned as she sent two illusion spells into foes ahead, causing one to flee while the other turned against his comrades. “I know. He gets so passionate.”
Cerin released black magic at his boots, and hundreds of tendrils formed and slithered off to raise an army. “Every time I think you can't get any crazier, Nyx, you find a way to surprise me.”
“Because I've been fucking orcs?” Nyx retorted.
“No, because you've been fucking maniacs,” Cerin replied dryly.
“Hey,” Holter blurted from feet away where he shot his looted bow. I chuckled at the scout's protest.
“Rek is the god of brutality and carnage, Cerin,” Nyx argued. “If he was prancing around the battlefield wielding ribbons, I'd be really disappointed.”
I laughed at her description and admitted, “Me too. Rek has been a massive asset to us.”
Azazel loosed two quick arrows in a row off to the right, where each one fell an enemy who had meant to gang up on one of our soldiers. The ally glanced back gratefully at Azazel before she continued fighting. Then the archer mused, “I suppose I'm the only one who would be fascinated by a prancing, ribbon-bearing orcish god.”
As I snorted a chuckle at his jest, Maggie piped up, “Nah, love. I was just thinkin' the same thing.”
“Perhaps that's what all the orcish gods were like back in the Golden Era,” I mused.
“Hence why they're all dead,” Azazel added in jest.
“My point exactly,” I agreed as the archer laughed.
A monstrous, pained roar shattered through the skies to our right, where most of our allies were fighting farther south. One of our dragon-kins beat its metallic wings laboriously over Chairel's largest unit, screeching with trauma from multiple injuries. Chipped scales flaked from its wings, multiple arrows stuck out of its eyes, and heavy burns blackened its right side. Chairel soldiers scattered out around its body as it fell to the battlefield, sending out rigid shock waves through the grasslands. The dragon-kin breathed shallowly as soldiers eager for a kill surrounded it.
I looked away as the sounds of butchery echoed out from the area. “We've lost a dragon.”
“And the others need healing,” Azazel informed me. Sensing my stress over our losses, he went on, “Kai, which foes in Chairel do you insist on killing yourself?”
“Queen Edrys and Sirius,” I replied immediately, recycling the life force of handfuls of men into two metal bombs that exploded in the enemy ranks and pummeled anti-magic and physical shields alike. As multiple foes fell at the mercy of metal impalement, I asked, “Why?”
“Because I have found Gwen,” Azazel informed me, nodding toward the southeast where the two largest enemy armies met on the field. After Gwen had run from Amora earlier, we'd lost track of her. “She's relying on the other life mages to give her shields and she is fatigued. We'd have to fight through an army of men just to get to her if you wanted to kill her yourself.”
I eyed his beautiful bow. “And you want to do it from afar.”
Azazel nodded. “Their men are fatigued. Morale is non-existent in their eastern ranks because of the orcs and underground necromancers. Some men have already fled from battle to avoid facing Rek. They feel trapped, and they're relying on Gwen for leadership and direction. The sooner we remove her from the equation, the quicker the men will panic and we will win this battle. I have one very eager arrow with Gwen's name on it that can take her out in a matter of minutes.”
“I suppose it's time for chaos,” I replied, giving him the go-ahead.
Azazel's handsome face brightened with a smile, and he backed away from me, saluting casually with two fingers. “One dead heir coming up, my liege.”
“Oh, no,” Cerin commented. “Don't start calling her that. Her head's big enough.”
I chuckled at their playfulness and reached up to my head with both hands, mimicking an explosion. “Now it's three times the size.”
Azazel grinned and finally turned away, moving through our soldiers to get closer to his target.
“He's so cute when he gets enthusiastic,” Nyx mused once the archer was out of earshot.
“When he's enthusiastic?” Maggie scoffed. “That boy's beautiful all the time.”
“Is no man safe around you two?” Cerin jested.
“You are,” Nyx retorted.
“Because I'm taken,” Cerin surmised.
“Because you're ugly,” Nyx argued teasingly. At Cerin's glare, she gave a cheesy grin.
I only halfway paid attention to their banter, throwing spells into foes ahead and refreshing shields as I tried to multi-task and keep Azazel in my view. If all went well, Gwen's death
could change the tide of battle and induce surrender from many men on the field. But I was used to things not going as planned at the most inconvenient of times, so I sought to keep a watchful eye on Azazel's progress even when he was far from me.
Gwen fought as valiantly as she could even when exhausted. The heir was just between Chairel's largest armies, trying to motivate both units as they lost hundreds of men to Rek and his orcs. The northern army was also dwindling fast due to the massive numbers of necromancers we had overwhelming it by raising their own casualties, and Gwen noticed this. She shouted orders at her generals in the southern army to reinforce her, and they repeated the calls until they faded with distance.
Soldiers who sought to protect Gwen surrounded her, and some of them were wearing armor that was unique enough to be notable. Two of them wore the gear of war generals that made me nostalgic for my childhood, for it matched Bjorn's attire from the times they would call him to battle before he retired from campaigns and stuck to the forge. The armor was the deep green of Chairel's flag, outlined in black and adorned with silver buckles. Others wore the less prestigious armor of everyday soldiers, but various emblems dotted the leather on their upper arms. It appeared the heir surrounded herself with loyal followers much like I did.
It was fascinating to see such camaraderie amongst my foes while on the battlefield. Gwen had a presence that demanded respect and admiration. Even though I'd been charmed when near her hours earlier, I remembered how she'd refused to be bossed around by Amora, and her logic had been sound with using me against my allies. If Amora had only followed Gwen's instructions correctly, it was possible the heir's plan would have succeeded. With a combination of my rage and their massive armies, Chairel could have won the war in one day with the help of only one goddess by decimating our numbers. I respected Gwen's strategy a great deal. Given Gwen's distaste for Amora's suggestion of using my friends as spoils of war, I felt that under different circumstances I could have come to respect the heir herself. But the loyalties of this war had made us enemies. Gwen was a worthy foe, but she was a foe, nonetheless.