24. Keira
Chapter 24
Keira
M y father pulls me by the arm down a flight of stairs leading off the battlement.
“We have to go back,” I yell at him, trying to yank myself free. “I can still fight!” My voice is hoarse, my throat filled with dust and the smoke of that black powder. I should have known those mercenaries were parading under a false banner.
“Enough soldiers are fighting at the wall so the rest can retreat.” He doesn’t let go, placing a strong hand on my head and forcing it down as we run along another line of battlements. Arrows whistle over us, flying in both directions. Our archers face off with the enemy’s counterparts, who hide within the siege towers that have crept close.
The battlements shudder as an immense bridge from a siege tower falls on them. A storm of soldiers in royal purple streams out of it, their swords flashing as they fight our warriors. The ring of metal hitting metal chimes out over the crashing of boots on stone and the roar of voices.
My father curses and spins me around, racing us away from the fighting. The far side of this wall has collapsed, but an intact staircase leads down to the ground on the north side.
“Fighting here is a death sentence,” he shouts. “These soldiers make that sacrifice so the rest of us can live to see the next battle. You do not put your most valuable resources on the front line.” A steady stream of people rushes down the steps, and he cuts us into their line.
“Am I more valuable because I am a lord’s daughter?” I snap back, knowing I am being irrational, but this argument is the only thing keeping me together.
“No—because you have immense magic. Now stop fighting me.” He tugs me along.
The horns blast again, still calling the retreat. Caitlin’s figure is no longer up there on that highest of towers, watching over the battle. She at least had a direct line of retreat.Gods, I want to reach out to Aldrin again, but he seemed so weak, and I don’t want to distract him.
The ground beneath us shakes, and the middle portion of the staircase ahead caves in. A dozen people tumble from it, screaming as they fall toward the road below.
My magic explodes out of me, reaching to every one of those people, catching them in outstretched hands of cushioning air and lowering them gently to the grass. With my father’s help, I save half of them—but our magic is depleted and stretched thin. The rest crumple on the road with twisted limbs, alongside so many other bodies.
The horrors build up until I think my heart will explode. Cries of pain, of fear, are all around me. Part of me wants to lie down and curl up in a ball. The rest wants to let loose in a fury of violence and death, destroying this enemy that dares to hurt my people. I wish I had that much power.
My father continues to tug me downward, even though the stairs are gone and people push frantically past us to climb back up to the battlements. They form a choke point as more fleeing soldiers from above try to get down. My father drags up great blocks of stone with an air wield and uses fire to melt them in place, repairing the stairs.
He forces me down until my feet are on the grass. The smell is pungent here. The chemical taste of the smoke is far more intense, infused with the tang of blood. So much blood.
Our army that was waiting in the reserves beyond the north of the fortress now meets the invading force trying to cut their way through the missing gate. Thousands of bodies clash at that single point. I do not envy the horrors they face there, slashing into each other and slipping on all the blood spilled. It is enough to raise bile in my throat and turn my legs to jelly, but my father forces me to race on, pulling me by the arm.
We circumvent the mass of our army by taking a western route around them, and the horrible realization hits me that as soon as our forces on the wall falter, the enemy will do the same.
My father pulls me toward the pavilion for the injured. He spins me to look at him, placing his hands on my shoulders.
“You will escort the injured, the priestesses and the druids to Windkeep Stronghold. Take Diarmuid with you and half the available Appleshield Guard. Caitlin and Gwyneth will take the other half. Slip through the forest lands where the bulk of the enemy’s army cannot follow you. Tell your sister to take a different route. We will split up the rest of the war council—we cannot have all our leaders in one place where they can take us all out at once. It will be impossible to retreat this entire army in one body.”
I nod, and he pats me on the shoulder.
“Be safe, Keira, and take care of your grandmother. She is more fragile than she seems. You will have a head start, but understand, Lord Desmond will pursue us the entire way to the stronghold.”
“What are you going to do?” My voice breaks, because I know the answer.
He glances back over his shoulder, toward the battle. “I’m going to lead our army out of this mess.”
“Take Aldrin with you,” I plead. “Find him and bring him with you.” I almost fall apart at the mention of his name. I am so afraid for him.
“I’ll do my best. I can promise you that.” My father stares at my face like he is trying to remember every line, and it breaks something within me.
More explosions sound, but not those huge impacts that rocked the earth earlier. Something else.
“Father, those mercenaries—they marched under false banners. They are the Explosion Brothers from across the seas. They have black powder bombs and muskets. I have read about what they can do.”
“Muskets?” he asks, rubbing his chin. “I have never seen a musket. Or black powder, for that matter.” He glances over his shoulder again.
I push his hands off me.“Go. They need you.”
“Know that everything I have done is because I love you.”
“Don’t say goodbyes!” I burst out. “Just meet me at Windkeep.”
He lingers, then turns on his heel and leaves.
I rush through the flaps of the canvas medical tent to the overwhelming sight of the injured laid out on stretchers, bandaged and bloody. Druids and Mothers of Magic rush around them in a flurry, and I find the rest of my family among the healers.
It takes too long for us to pull the injured onto horses; many of them need to be tied in place. Each time I hear the rumble of explosions, my heart rate spikes. Panic ripples through me that we will lose our window of time to get out.It is no relief when we are finally on the move, because our pace is too slow.
Most of us are on foot.
There aren’t enough horses.
The roars of the battle chase us across the rolling hills that lead north. The sounds fade, but I swear they are imprinted in my head and scream at me from there instead.
My boots chafe against my ankles as I run with our host across that never-ending field of grass that gives us no cover at all. I hold the lead of a horse that carries an injured man, with a line of other horses tied to his. I thank the gods that the druids and priestesses have always insisted on walking everywhere, because these healers on foot don’t slow our progress. There must be two hundred of us altogether.
My breaths come out hard and shallow. Sweat drips down my back as the mild sun bears down on us. The people fleeing beside me are pale and wide-eyed, their lips cracked, showing signs of dehydration. We cannot stop here.
The forest becomes visible as a dark band in the distance, an oasis of hope.
Lord Desmond’s army won’t be able to reach us in there. It is too dense. They might not try to chase us, with the majority of our army forced to take the grasslands around these woods.
We race for the treeline like the Wild Hunt of the monstrous Shadow fae are on our heels. I glance over my shoulder. The horizon has turned black with the armies behind us. Lord Desmond has breached the North. It is only a matter of time before their advance units on horseback scout out these plains. Anxiety ripples through my entire body like lightning, and my heart leaps erratically.
I maneuver myself to jog beside Caitlin’s mount, ignoring the squelch of blood in my boots and the sting of my torn flesh. At the midpoint of her pregnancy, she was easy to convince onto a horse.
“Do we cover our tracks leading to the forest?” I grunt out. “Is it worth the time and effort?”
“No. I don’t believe they will follow us in,” she says. “We are too few.”
“They will have scouting parties to ambush us on the other side of the forest. Especially if they guess Father has sent his daughters ahead of him,” I huff.
“Then we need to make sure we are not caught.” She frowns down at me. “This forest is vast. You take the western hunter’s trail, and I’ll take the central one that leads to the hidden priestesses’ sanctuary. I’ll take those who are more injured with me, and they will benefit from the stopover. It’s a shame it doesn’t have any portals.”
My mouth dries up, but I force the words out. “I’ll head straight to Windkeep and will bring reinforcements from the city to escort you out of the sanctuary.”
I squeeze her hand. We leave so much unspoken between us.
Our two parties split when we reach that blessed line of the woods. The entrance is overgrown with branches and moss, and we require local soldiers to guide us through.A foreign pursuing party could become lost here, as the path seems to disappear completely at times.
I force us forward until the sunset turns the sky orange and pink through the canopy. Until the injured sway in their seats and even the able-bodied look ready to collapse. We make camp in a small clearing by a gurgling creek, interspersed by narrow trees offering protection from the elements.
The healers use the last of their energy to pull down the injured from their horses onto beds of packed leaf litter. We have nothing more than our cloaks for protection and warmth overnight. No tents or sleeping rolls, and precious few medical supplies.
I select lookouts from the guards with us and send others to pick large stones out of the creek, which I heat with the dregs of my fire magic to keep the wounded warm while they sleep. I check on my grandmother multiple times, but despite the paleness of her skin and the way her hands shake, she insists on changing the bandages of the injured.
Full dark has hit by the time I sit on my cloak and eat my ration of bread. I peel off my boots and stockings. My feet look horrendous, swollen and speckled with blood. I try to wipe them with a wet cloth, drawing in sharp gasps with the sudden stinging pain each time I pass over an open wound.
“You know, this is your first command post.” Diarmuid sits beside me, dropping a full water skin in my lap.
“It is the first of many things,” I say as complete physical and emotional exhaustion washes over me. I shake as the memories of today crash into me. All that death and pain and destruction, all for one man’s pride and another’s greed.
Diarmuid takes one of my feet in his hands. “Let me fix this for you.”
“Surely there are other people who need you more than me,” I grind out. Even his softest touch hurts.
“I have already seen to them.” He rubs a poultice into my flesh, which burns with fire and ice. I try to drag my foot back, but he grips it tightly around the ankle and holds it in place, muttering beneath his breath.
“How do you have healing magic when we descend from the Autumn Court?” I ask.
“I don’t,” he says softly. “The poultice has healing properties and I accelerate it by adding raw magic.”
I close my eyes, and the sight of faces splattered with blood flashes beneath my lids. Of soldiers in my house’s colors pierced with arrows and falling from the wall. Run through by enemies’ blades right in front of me. I see the battlements crumble a level below me and all the people on them freefalling into plumes of black smoke and tumbling masonry. I will never, never , forget the looks of pure fear in their wide eyes and the lost screams from their open mouths.
I drag in a sharp breath and my eyes fly open again. Severe shakes overtake me. “I can’t believe we left our father there, to that enemy horde with their explosives.” My voice breaks. “I left Aldrin. Diarmuid, I left him . I don’t know if he is still alive.” Each breath tears out of me painfully as my chest constricts.
“I know. Gods, I know.” Diarmuid shakes with shock, too. His hands have gone still on my feet, and they are so cold. “How did we lose this battle?”
“We underestimated the enemy. But they have played their hand, and we won’t make that same mistake again.”
A deep pit of despair is widening within me, trying to drag me under, but I cannot give in to it. My people need my leadership, and if I fall apart, none of us will survive the flight to Windkeep.
I pull the pieces of myself together and truly look around. So many injured soldiers, moaning softly or slumbering so deeply they look dead. Many of the druids and priestesses hold their heads in their hands or are curled up beneath their cloaks with barely audible sobs escaping from them.
I grip Diarmuid’s hands. “I don’t think even an enemy army ten thousand strong could take down our father. You have seen his fae form? The man is practically pure fire.”
My brother grunts. “It explains the temper.”
That brings the ghost of a smile to my lips. “He will not lose hope from this setback, and neither should we. We lost the first battle, not the war. It is far from over.” I squeeze his hands, then replace my stockings and boots, and stand. “You should try to get some sleep. I’m going to find our grandmother. That’s her son out there, defying the king’s army.”
Diarmuid says nothing. He follows me through the darkness until we find her sitting with one hand on the chest of a sleeping patient, staring blankly ahead. I squat down and peer into her face. She jolts as though her thoughts were disturbed.
“Come and rest.” I take her bony hands in mine. The skin there is paper-thin and cold. “Diarmuid will give you something to help you sleep.”
She doesn’t protest as I lead her to a soft patch under a tree and lie her down on the moss, placing multiple fire-infused stones around her shivering body. Diarmuid gives her strips of some sort of bark to chew on, then takes some himself. I refuse his offer, mentally promising to watch over them both. My grandmother ends up resting her head in my lap while I stroke her hair, sitting with the tree trunk at my back. Diarmuid snores lightly at her side.
Long after I think she has fallen asleep, she speaks. “I know your father is a man in his sixties—not that he looks a year over thirty-five—but to me, he’s still my little boy. That tiny child who always had a mischievous smile on his face while he got up to all sorts of trouble. You have no idea how many times he set the place on fire with his tantrums.”
A small smile forms on her lips, then it falls immediately.
“And I left him behind, to all that death and destruction. To thousands of bloodthirsty warriors who want him dead.” Her voice is soft and frail, with no emotion at all in it, but her silent tears soak through the fabric of my pants. “When he was younger, we all rode into battle together, where Ronan and I could have his back. Then I grew old and frail, and your grandfather passed on. It is a terrifying thing, being stuck on the sidelines while everyone else fights.”
I stroke her hair and let her talk and talk. Eventually, she falls asleep. My grandmother, with her steely resolve and the temper of a wildcat, is so small and helpless in stature. She has little magic, apart from her flicker of lightning, and her body has failed her enough from age that she can no longer wield a bow. Her sharp tongue and position as High Priestess give her a presence that is larger than life, but when she is asleep, my grandmother is a tired old woman still fighting for her family.
I don’t think she will ever stop.
I must fall asleep against the tree, because I wake with a start, hunched over my grandmother with pain shooting up my neck. We leave the camp with three fewer people who succumbed to their injuries in the night.
I miss Klara, who could have saved them. We spend another day and night in the forest and five more people don’t wake up the next morning.
On the third day, we reach the edge of the trees, and I send scouts on horseback into the meadows beyond to search for the enemy.
Thoughts of Aldrin fill my mind. I can hardly breathe when my fears get the best of me and throw up images of him lying dead in a ditch. Or in chains, taken by the enemy.
It is almost as though his presence unfurls within my mind, reaching out a hand to me. Warmth, love and strength wrap around my mind and pick me up. The vaguest sense of an enquiry whispers to me, a wordless question that seems to ask if I am in danger.
It can’t possibly be Aldrin. There is no way I can feel him in my head. Maybe I have lost my grip on my sanity under all the pressure.
That question sounds again, more urgent this time, but I can’t quite grasp it. I bask in his essence that feels like the heat of the sun across bare skin. I am afraid, I think at it, then visualize the open fields we need to cross and the injured people with me. A calm resonates through me at the stroking touch of that presence. I feel Aldrin, alive and uninjured, but fleeing on foot while a distant army pursues him.
The connection or delusion snaps as my scouts gallop toward me and slide off their mounts just under the tree cover.
I rush toward them. “What did you find?”
Fynbar, a soldier local to this area, speaks first. “The main army is nowhere to be seen. There is an enemy attack force scouring the land far to the west, but they were heading away from us. We have a window to get to the city if we move quickly.”
I glance back at the injured and the healers. Dark shadows ring their eyes and mud splatters their blistered feet.
“We don’t have a choice.” I turn around to face the bulk of my charges. “The injured are to share mounts, doubled up. I want soldiers on horseback who can fire a bow and arrow while riding in case the enemy catches up to us.”
There is a flurry of activity as we get moving. Guilt rolls through me as I take a horse of my own, but my archery skills may be needed. I convince Diarmuid to ride behind our grandmother.
We race across the hilly plain that stretches out in all directions, our band a long train behind me. It would be easy for the enemy to storm through on fresh mounts and cut down those tired souls at our rear.
A cool breeze runs across the meadow, making the long grasses move in synchronized channels. I shiver uncontrollably from the bite of the wind and the dread of being so exposed here.
Our progress is a slow crawl, as the scouts call a halt and scan the grasslands each time we near the crest of a hill, where we would become visible for miles.
Fynbar rides at my side. “We could reach Windkeep before nightfall. It’s on the other side of that thicket.”
“Is there nowhere to take cover or stop to rest? These people look ready to collapse.” I toss a glance over my shoulder, fear curling within my stomach.
He doesn’t get the chance to reply.
The enemy’s horns blow long, high-pitched notes, reverberating through the plains from the south. My heart stops as I swing in my saddle. A warband darkens a not-too-distant hilltop. There are so many mounted warriors that their number disappears behind the hill.
My blood freezes. There is nowhere to hide, not even in that scraggy thicket ahead that is sparse enough for horses to gallop through. With most of our people on foot, we cannot outrun them.
We have to fight.