The Rage of Princes: A Portal Fantasy Adventure (The Chronicles of Otherwhere Book 2)

by Cassia Meare

  Nemours’ forces were almost double the number of Ahn’s now, although a good part of her army had managed to land, as Nemours' men could not have been everywhere along two coasts.

  Thil Serle, leading his knights into the field, must have understood the other side's superiority at once.

  And waited.

  "What are they waiting for?" Tayne asked between his teeth.

  He was raring to go, to kill them all. His outrage at the Abuse — at having been forced to break his word, at having accused his prince and Lord Protector of vile lies — would have made the old knight take on the thousands before him alone.

  Then Nemours felt something like the silent lash of a whip cutting the air.

  The animals also felt it before the troops. Azure’s ears pricked and she started when a banner cracked in the wind behind her; the horses pawed the ground or shifted a little. Nemours raised his face to the sky. He could smell them.

  "Archers! Stand by," Nemours called out.

  They did not know what they would be shooting at, but they stood in formation and pulled on the string of their bows to the noise of wood straining.

  And when the guards appeared, they were of a white so brilliant most soldiers and archers turned away, until hundreds of wings blocked the sun. The bright spot in Tayne’s pupils faded before he glanced at his prince, fury on his face.

  "She dared!" he cried, indignant.

  Ahn had sent the white guards, and the sky teemed with them.

  The ground was now covered in sharp dark shadows, and it wouldn’t be long before the guards rained death on the army below.

  "Fire!" Nemours shouted.

  Thousands of arrows crossed from ground to sky. The arrows wouldn’t kill the guards, but they beat them back for a moment — half blinded some, hurt others. But they, too, were immortal, and Nemours was now free to fight. He began to pull at the buckles on his breastplate — when Serle’s cavalry opened, instead of maintaining tight formation, and from the holes came a roaring mob of werewolves. There must be hundreds. More. Taller than men by two heads, they wore breastplates too, and their fangs were as big and sharp as daggers.

  "Charge!" Nemours ordered.

  For Tayne’s men would never be frightened by werewolves, used as they were to fighting them in the mountains.

  Serle’s men, the cowards, stood back as Tayne’s cavalry met the werewolves. Although many of the beasts were crushed under hooves, others leapt onto horses, tearing at the exposed necks of knights.

  The archers would be no help. Bearing the pain and injury of the arrows, the white guards had swept down to pick them up and dash them down, to cut off their heads with clean strikes of their swords or throw gold-tipped javelins with inhuman strength and precision at them.

  "Shields on archers!" Nyree shouted.

  Behind the archers, the infantry rushed to cover them with shields, quickly forming a block of metal. The guards landed on the shields and jumped on them with glee, straining the strength of the mortals beneath and sticking swords and lances through the gaps as they laughed.

  "Spearmen!"

  The javelins thrown by the spearmen from the back of the cavalry would have created an efficient and deadly attack against mortals. But they only angered the guards in the air, who changed their flight path to bombard the spearmen with their own lances and arrows.

  The guards had approached first on purpose, to occupy the archers and spearmen, who would have been some use against the werewolves. Not anymore.

  Nemours dropped his breastplate. The Likeness heka burned his arm, and his doublet ripped as black wings emerged from his back and kept growing until they opened.

  He took to the sky with powerful beats of his wings, and Azure leapt toward the field to engage the werewolves. He reached a thick knot of white guards and got between them and the archers on the ground, two swords in hand. With a roar he began to swing the steel, catching the guards by surprise and cutting heads and arms with the efficiency of a machine.

  Still, there were hundreds of them, immune to the archers and spearmen who were now scattered despite Nyree's efforts to gather them. The guards had also scattered, only to cause more mayhem. They flew to the field and picked up knights from their horses, throwing them down to be devoured by the werewolves, twisting their necks, finding the exact spot where flesh was exposed to drive in their quick swords.

  Lord Tayne’s horse turned and turned on the field as he screamed orders at his men. Nemours could see his mouth moving yet could not hear him above the shrieks of surprise and terror.

  Nemours had almost managed to clear the air above the infantry to avoid a massacre, but alone he could not hold them long.

  As he turned in the air to join the knights in the field, his eyes met black ones full of malice and hatred. Here was someone he hadn’t seen since the beginning of time …

  "You should despair, Prince of the Morning," Aarin shouted at him. He hovered in the air, not far from Nemours. "You'll see them all fall because of you."

  So many had fallen already. Horses being pulled down, men and women being dragged, their armors stripped, their flesh eaten. Mortals helpless before beasts and immortals. On a hillock between the two armies, by a great tree, stood a figure. Nemours recognized Lotho Sils’ apprentice. She must be scrying for Ahn.

  Ahn wasn't watching a battle. This was wholesale slaughter.

  "You’re welcome to our wings, my prince," Aarin teased, hovering with a sword in each hand as his guards fought beyond him. "Yet try what you may, you’re done."

  Nemours could not accept defeat, although the hapless knights on the field faced the savage onslaught of both werewolves and guards. They were still making their valiant stand — only for Serle to lift his hand.

  No, no, no …

  Serle motioned forward and his cavalry began to ride. In a moment they would overrun Tayne’s and Nemours’ beleaguered forces. Nemours could feel his wrath rising — something burning deep in him. He would not be able to stop it once it started.

  But there was a new thundering to the right, which at first made him think that Ahn had gone all out and summoned a storm. And then a flash greater than steel, as if lightning could strike the earth and stay there, moving low.

  A woman rode into the field, her armor shining more than the golden hair flying behind her like a banner. Jewels flashed red and blue on her head as she carried his standard, followed by thousands of men.

  The Blood Knights.

  And Elinor.

  Even for Nemours, who had seen whole worlds, there had never been such a glorious sight.

  Turning to Aarin, Nemours allowed himself to smile. "They can’t die, Aarin. And they know how to fight your miserable kind."

  Aarin’s face showed his disgust. "Tricks!"

  "Really?" Nemours lifted his eyebrows. "You don’t say!"

  Terror flared in him for a moment as Aarin looked down at Elinor, but even as they watched, she was gone — gone with Crossing somewhere safe. And at the head of the army there was now Delian, who — much like his brother — dropped his breastplate with two quick pulls, unfurled great black wings and rose into the air.

  The Blood Knights crashed into Serle’s men and crushed them with a mighty clamor of metal. The enemy cavalry was pulling back, their horses terrified, and the Blood Knights did not stop until they got to the werewolves and guards. At their head, Sethe Tayne rose on his stirrups, striking right and left with two swords.

  Finally, Nemours did hear Danek Tayne’s rallying cry and saw his raised sword, pointed at his ancestor, indicating that his men should follow.

  Delian had reached the guards above the field; he whooped and laughed as he cut off limbs and slashed throats. Nyree had recovered the light cavalry and reassembled the arches and spearmen, who were free to shoot at the group of wolves that had retreated to one side, yelping.

  Some of the Blood Knights also dropped their breastplates and grew wings, rising to help Delian, which meant he had wisely gra
nted them Likeness.

  "How things change," Nemours remarked softly to Aarin, as the chief of guards watched the battle with tears in his eyes.

  But he wanted to waste no time in conversation. His blood sang with joy as he swung the sword above his head until it met Aarin’s with a clang that echoed through the field. Aarin parried as Nemours attacked, driving him back and back with the force of his blows until the guard fell on the ground, sweeping his wings left and right in a vain attempt to keep Nemours away.

  The prince swiped at Aarin’s primary feathers with his long sword until he cut bone. Aarin’s left wing hung useless. With his right wing, Aarin propelled himself backwards more quickly, but Nemours advanced, cutting.

  "Traitor!" Aarin cried. "Parricide! You ruined the world. You ruin—"

  Nemours leapt, slashing his throat.

  Black blood gushed from a slash so deep Aarin’s head fell back, half severed. Nemours pushed the guard on the ground with his foot and threw the short sword at his chest. As he pulled it out, he moved it back and forth to open a hole. The heart inside, as black as Aarin’s blood, still beat. But not for long. Nemours pulled it out.

  "Jeze scatyet," he said, and held the black heart until the flame had consumed it. He flung the ashes in the wind.

  As he turned to the field again, he found that most of the guards were incapacitated or gone, and that Delian, side-by-side with the Blood Knight Nemours recognized as Lady Ngrayne, was fighting several. And Nemours was now closer to that Tuaa, still on the hillock, her eyes white as Ahn watched through them.

  Ahn was watching him.

  He picked Aarin’s gold-pointed spear from the ground where it lay with his other weapons. Nemours didn’t take long to aim; he threw the spear with all his might at the Tuaa.

  Oh, but the woman was good, for all that she had stayed so long in Lotho’s shadow. Ahn had perhaps warned her, but she blinked, and a few seconds before the spear hit her, she became a crow, sleek in the light, and flew away.

  It would have been worth it to fly after and destroy her, but as Nemours looked at the plain, he saw two white guards grab his brother’s arms while a third slashed at him. Delian moved, but the sword cut across the right side of his face. Nemours rose with a snap of wings and hurried toward Delian, who had freed himself and swung back at the guards.

  The gash in Delian's face was deep, but he had not stopped fighting. With the help of Ngrayne and other Blood Knights, the brothers made short shrift of the remaining white guards.

  On the ground, other knights, including Sethe, opened the guards' chests and removed their hearts. Weeping at the defeat of their kind, calling the names of their friends being butchered, the guards farthest away from the fray made their escape.

  "Those vultures!" Delian cried, pointing. "Let’s go after them."

  "Not today," Nemours said.

  "We can end them once and for all," Delian insisted, blue blood covering half his face.

  But Nemours nodded toward the ground with his chin. There were still werewolves. Tayne’s men pursued the beasts, aided by the Blood Knights. Nemours was, however, pointing at Serle.

  "Get the wanker," he told Delian.

  Delian smiled. "With pleasure."

  Nemours couldn’t help laughing as Delian flew over Serle. The man lowered his head and urged his horse on with frightened yelps. After a few minutes of this game, Delian reached out and grabbed Serle by his silly cape, raising him and flying back with a defeated and almost strangled lord. He threw the man on the ground near their own troops.

  "He’s mine!" Delian cried from the air, hovering above the Lord of Mistkeep as the soldiers closed a circle around him.

  The fight was losing momentum; the enemy had all but retired — too many were wounded, or dead. Nemours landed on the field and let his wings snap closed and retreat. Having them made him feel dirty.

  The fields of Ashrock were smoking with burning hearts, stinking of blood and guts, obscured by dirt.

  The prince stood, the point of his sword, now unneeded, on the ground — and looked at what war could do.

  37

  "I would not steal your thunder, Lady E," Delian had said with a bright twinkle in his eyes as they left the ships on the coast and rode toward Ashrock.

  "I thought you said I could not fight," she said.

  "No, but can you carry a banner? And ride fast?"

  "Oh, fie on you for asking." She glared at him. "Of course I can!"

  "Then make an entrance."

  And she had.

  The little she had understood amid the confusion of battle told her Nemours had been facing terrible odds — but the Blood Knights would change all that. They must, especially with the hekas they had been given.

  "Tyemenai vala," she had cried before arriving on Ashrock field, and jumped into the rift that appeared— only to reappear in another field, the one at the back of High Hall, still holding Nemours’ standard.

  The guards at the gate knew her and opened the great doors. She rode through, and in the courtyard she relinquished the banner to a squire, jumping to the ground.

  "I must see the commander of the guards," she said.

  Commander Nader met her inside the Hall a few moments later. Still in her armor, Elinor handed him a scroll with Delian’s seal. It said that High Hall and Highmere were to be held by her in the absence of the princes, and she was to be obeyed in all things.

  Commander Nader immediately bowed.

  "We are yours, lady."

  Elinor smiled and nodded back — but before Nader left, he asked, "May I know … the battle?"

  She took a deep breath and nodded again. "We will prevail, God willing."

  The heathen slightly frowned at the mention of God, but she was certainly not going to ascribe their victory to Aya — who had not only been a terrible mother but was whimsical or downright evil if she were paying attention to anything at all.

  Tossing her head as she walked to her chambers, Elinor thought that if Delian were there he would close one eye and purse his lips to let her know without saying anything that her God was also whimsical or absent, but what did he know? She wasn’t ever going to throw hammers in church, that was certain.

  And as she caught a glimpse of herself in the bedroom mirror, the breath caught in her throat again. Surely she could be forgiven for that bit of vanity? To ride at the head of the greatest army that had ever been, bearing the standard of a prince worth loving!

  Still, she could not help wondering whether she might find a way to scry and watch the battle — although she feared she might see her friends hurt. But they couldn’t be hurt … Yet she might see people dying, and Ahn triumphing with those horrible beasts and those mockeries of angels.

  No, it would not happen. Nemours, Delian, and the dead knights would not allow it.

  Still, she knelt by the bed and ignored Kent, who climbed on it and pressed his head against her clasped hands. She nudged him away and prayed as she had not prayed in a while. "Sweet Jesus, sweet Mother Mary — let them win and come home."

  It was the same prayer she had made for her father, many times.

  But before she could greet Kent, or strip off her armor and bathe, she smelled smoke. Jumping to her feet, she went to the window.

  She peered into the distance, all the way down to Highmere Port and gasped. Ships were burning.

  Steps ran her way. She turned as a flustered Nader reached the room. "Lady, we are under attack!"

  "Under …? What do you mean?"

  Could the white guards have left the fields and come this far, this fast?

  "The savages of Silverburn have sailed here," Nader continued. "Some are burning ships in the port now, trying to get into the city."

  Her lips were stiff, but she managed to say, "Then take your men there and—"

  Nader cut her short. "There are more, who alighted down the coast and are coming up behind High Hall."

  Attacked on both sides, from the sea in front and the countryside i
n the back. They would sack the city and kill everyone.

  "The knaves and villains!" Elinor roared so suddenly she made Nader start. "If they think they’ll get in, they are sorely mistaken. What men do you have?"

  "Between the guards and the town militia, one thousand."

  One thousand to defend a city, Elinor thought in dismay. She knew of the Silverburn savages, whose skill and mercilessness with sword, mace and axes was legendary. They must not enter the town, that was all. They would do too much damage to a helpless people.

  "Are there catapults at the port?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Waste no time bombarding their ships with fire. Take most of the men; you must stop them from disembarking and you'll need soldiers up and down the beaches. Leave me two hundred in the castle. A hundred of yours, and a hundred townsmen."

  "Two hundred?" Nader asked, clearly thinking she would not withstand the onslaught about to come from the back.

  "I know castles," Elinor said. "And I know the weapons available in this one. Just send someone down to Tanner’s Wharf for sheepskin, and someone else for as much oil as they can find — and go to the port." She began to walk. "Burn them alive." As Nader still stared at her with eyes like plates, she roared, "Move!"

  Elinor took Kent and threw him in a closet, ignoring his outraged yelp. He couldn’t be running around in what was about to ensue, and she had things to do. She moved decisively down the hall, and it was the first time she entered Sibulla’s room uninvited. The princess stared at the sky still, her hand making the circle more quickly than ever as a lady sat by her and read. Ignoring the woman, Elinor crouched before Sibulla in the supple armor and grasped her other hand.

  "Sibulla," she said softly, "I need to take you away from your room, just for a little while."

  "What are you doing?" the lady asked, dropping her book.

  "The port is under attack," Elinor explained, "and the castle soon will be. I need you to gather everyone who isn’t a guard or an able fighter and take them to the east tower. Can you do that?"

  "But—"

  Elinor threw her a sharp look, and the woman nodded and stood. She hesitated only a second. "The princess?"