Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
ZANDYR
“ O n your right!” I roared through the heavy rain as another Serpent soldier fell at my feet, my sword dripping with blood, his dagger still stuck in my armor. I ripped it out with a loud grunt.
The leather had stopped the blade from piercing through, but my rib was definitely bruised.
Another ache I had to ignore as I swung my sword against two other soldiers.
Hundreds of Serpents had managed to cross the Obsidian River on their beasts’ backs, despite my archers raining arrows on them.
If all the troops crossed, we were doomed.
Up ahead, Kylian flung five Serpents off his back, his mighty bellow shaking the trees.
Myron flitted from Serpent to Serpent, daggers sinking into their backs before they had a chance to even flinch at the sight of him.
Downstream, Ryker and his battalion fought one of the massive snakes. The only one which had fully crossed the river, the biggest and meanest of them all, a silvery monster that took out a dozen of my warriors each time it snapped its jaws.
Their screams ended with a sickening crunch.
A torrent of soldiers and Elysia’s poison petards blocked my path to them.
“Ryker, flank the right, get the battalion behind the beast,” I yelled as the snake’s venom soaked the bloodied bank. “Kylian, Myron! Move the warriors to the left, more Serpents are coming! Now!”
All three of them yelled their own instructions, the warriors shifting immediately.
The archers’ arrows kept ricocheting off the snake, no matter which part of its body they hit.
“Aim for the eyes!” I roared, slicing another Serpent almost clean in half. Despite barely hanging by what remained of his spine, he twitched in the mud to get up before the light finally dimmed from his eyes.
I bared my teeth.
This wasn’t normal.
Our weapons not damaging the snake at all wasn’t normal.
Our riverbank traps malfunctioning wasn’t normal.
The hordes of Serpents refusing to die at the first deadly blow wasn’t normal.
The only mercy was that the rest of the gigantic snakes were held back, writhing on the muddy fields behind the first line of soldiers and snapping their jaws, hunger in their slitted eyes.
Kleonos stared at us from the other bank, not bothering to unsaddle his horse. He simply flicked his hand and sent more of his troops our way to be slaughtered.
Coward.
But a smug coward.
Kleonos was going to exhaust us with wave after wave of his troops. He knew something I didn’t, I could see it in his reptile-green eyes; they shined with arrogance. I unleashed my powers toward him again, but they only met a wall of magic.
A magic which definitely wasn’t normal.
War was brutal and soul-crushing, but it always had rules . Rules which the Serpents disregarded blatantly.
“Why won’t you die?” Kylian grunted as he yanked one of his spears from a Serpent’s chest. “Xamor himself would have fallen faster.”
The massive snake slid toward Ryker’s battalion once more, monstrous tongue flicking. Searching for its next victims.
Ryker yelled desperate orders.
Elysia flung even more explosive petards.
The snake coiled its body high and loomed over the battalion. With unnatural speed, it struck.
Warriors and soldiers alike cried out for the last time.
And the Battlefield Butcher just laughed.
The beast inside me roared.
I marched toward Kylian and jerked the spear out of his hands. With the might of my ancestors before me, I flung it into the rain over the battlefield.
The Butcher’s eyes followed the bloody spear and widened with fear as he realized it was heading straight for the snakes’ left eye.
The Butcher jerked his head and yelled an order.
At the last second, the gigantic reptile swished its head–but not fast enough.
The spear broke clean in two an inch away from the monster’s eye.
Kleonos schooled his features into one of feigned indifference. I forced a cold smirk onto my face.
I’d seen all I needed to.
The rain mercifully stopped once the Serpents retreated, leaving behind utter carnage.
I’d been in countless battles.
I’d seen good men and women die.
I’d cradled my brothers and sisters when they’d taken their final breaths.
But this battle, on the western bank of the Obsidian River, would be remembered for dynasties to come.
As a cautionary tale, not as a grand victory.
My boots stuck into the bloodied mud as I walked, deformed bodies and lost swords on either side of me. The healers, graying and fresh-faced alike, rushed to find survivors, eyes terrified at the horror surrounding us.
None of us had seen such a fight.
The blood from the bank seeped into the river, darkening it further.
The Blood Brotherhood funeral pyre was larger than I’d ever imagined. Myron and Elysia splashed funeral oil onto it, muttering chant after chant so the gods would cradle the lost souls to their chests and guide them into the afterlife quickly and without pain.
All these fearsome, courageous warriors had died thinking their sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain.
But how could it not be in a lawless war like this?
Ryker kneeled close to the mound of bodies, the fresh wound on his shoulder still gushing blood.
“You need a healer,” I said as I approached.
He didn’t move. “I’m fine.”
I stopped, looking over his shoulder. The sight cracked something in me.
Ryker cradled what remained of a young man’s body, slowly wiping the blood from his face. His lower half, from his ribs down, had been torn.
A victim of the snake.
I recognized his face. Geryll, the boy Adara had challenged to a friendly duel back in the Arena. One training fight couldn’t have saved him from the monster.
Thousands of duels couldn’t have.
“May the gods guide him into a better afterlife,” was all I could muster.
“Orphan. His father had been one of my lieutenants. With his dying breath, he made me promise I’d take care of his son,” Ryker said, back heaving with harsh breaths. “I sent Geryll to the Arena. He wanted to see your warriors train. I told him to go back North the second the army left, but he snuck back among the troops.”
Ryker wiped the boy’s face one last time before cradling him in his arms and gently placing his body on the pyre.
An ugly silence settled between us.
“The gods weren’t merciful today,” Ryker said. “Neither yours nor mine.”
Ryker might blame the gods, but I couldn’t.
I blamed myself.
But I couldn’t say that among our warriors when our morale was already so broken.
So I remained silent.
“What was that, with the snake?” Ryker asked, not turning. Even in mourning, he was the same efficient Commander I trusted.
“A test. They have a magic veil protecting them,” I said, voice devoid of emotion. “I’m betting they can’t cover the entire army with it, which is why they’re coming at us in waves.”
“But we can’t be sure unless we attack them head-on.”
“Yes.”
“So we can’t know how far that veil extends.”
“No.”
“And we can’t rush and attack them without knowing which one of them we can strike.”
“Correct.”
Ryker turned after a few beats of silence. “They’re trying to tire us out.”
I nodded. “Until there aren’t enough of us left to face them.”
Ryker swore under his breath, a crack in his stony mask. “We’re lo–”
“Yes,” I said.
No need to point out the obvious when we could be overheard.
We stood in miserable silence as my fallen warriors’ bodies were gathered on the pyre. We’d piled the Serpents’ bodies in small boats, since their own companions hadn’t bothered to give them a proper funeral ritual, a disgrace unfit for any surviving fighter. Though I noticed some of their troops had hesitated when Kleonos had given the order to fall back.
With the battle now ended and the rain forgotten, the forest upstream, was once more alive, echoing with howls and chirps. Nature didn’t care that we’d massacred each other here.
The rest of the army gathered in a circle around their lost brethren.
I took the torch from Myron, who looked more morose than I’d ever seen him, and stepped in front of the pyre.
Bodies upon bodies.
Open eyes staring accusingly at me, even from beyond death.
“Brothers and sisters, you have died like true warriors,” I said, letting my voice boom in the quiet. “May the gods have mercy on your souls until we meet again.”
I threw the torch onto the pyre. Aided by the oils, the flames quickly engulfed the warriors.
My warriors.
They’d trusted me with their lives and I’d let them down.
Ryker stepped forward first. “May your sacrifice defend your families for centuries to come, like you defended them today.”
“May Xamor himself give you a feast of plenty,” Myron said.
One by one, all the warriors gathered to give their final words. Thousands of tired voices, but they still found the energy for this final show of respect.
In the commotion, I slid back. I didn’t feel like I had any right to be there among them.
I secluded myself in the shadow of the nearest tree, resting my bruised back against its bark. Ironic that this whole ordeal had started back at Evie’s wedding, when we’d twirled around that tree to escape the poisoned arrows.
Even if the situation between us hadn’t been so complicated, could she have even looked at me with pride again after the defeat we’d suffered today?
Elysia’s small steps yanked me away from those grim thoughts. Without a word, she settled next to me.
“I made more poison petards,” she said after a long while.
I nodded.
“They’re more powerful,” she went on.
I nodded again.
“Did someone cut off your tongue?” she tried again. “That would be a miracle. A welcomed one, but still.”
“We’re losing, Elysia.” The words tumbled out of me, more painful than any wound. The weight of my ancestors’ disappointment clung to my shoulders.
“The Blood Brotherhood has never lost a war.”
“We’re losing one now. Under my command.”
“We didn’t lose the battle,” she argued. “We drove them off, they didn’t make it past the riverbank.”
“At what cost? We lost more souls than we should have.” I stared at the Blood Brotherhood pyre, the flames licking the sky. A funeral hymn rose with the smoke.
Myron had a magnificent voice; in another life, he would have become a temple priest. More joined the hymn, their sorrow ascending to the heavens.
In the distance, the archers readied their flaming arrows for the fallen Serpents, the boats still tied to this shore.
They couldn’t hurt any of my men now, might as well give them a funeral. Let them discuss their sins with the gods.
“At least they haven’t taken the dam,” Elysia said.
“Yet. They haven’t taken it yet .” I sent a silent prayer as a thank you to the ancestors who had guarded the Crimson Dam with a magic so ancient, nobody knew how to unbind it, let alone replicate it.
With the strange magic the Serpents were using, anything was possible.
“They keep coming,” I went on, stuck in my own trance. “They always know where we are. The Serpents shouldn’t have been this prepared for battle.”
They didn’t have the numbers to sustain a war of this magnitude, their spies couldn’t outmatch ours, and their soldiers shouldn’t have been able to keep up with my army.
Yet, they were.
Even if someone from my own camp had betrayed us–a reality I still wrestled with–the Serpents had too many unforeseen advantages on their side.
This wasn’t a fair war. A rotten magic was helping them, one none of us had heard of.
“We’re not just facing the Serpents,” Elysia whispered. “Some of the fallen soldiers had Borderline markings on them.”
My jaw tightened hard enough to hurt.
Of course they did. The Borderline Bands wouldn’t swear loyalty to any Clan, but they didn’t hesitate to align themselves temporarily for the right price.
“It still doesn’t explain the force in them,” I said. “One of them had his stomach sliced clean through and kept walking.”
Battle lust didn’t do that. Adrenaline made you pick up a tree trunk and fling it into the enemy. It quickened your reflexes and strengthened your blows.
It did not defy the laws of nature.
“Someone–” Or something . “–is helping them. Our magic doesn’t work well on them, either.”
How? Unheard of. Unseen, unfathomable.
The only explanation was the veil–and the only Clan who dealt in protective magic was the Protectorate.
Evie was right. Silas was an idiot, he couldn’t have orchestrated this.
Someone else was pulling the strings.
“Their snakes are just as bad,” Elysia said, dejected. “They should have been bleeding through their eyes already, but I discovered why my poisons don’t work on them. I have found a work-around and did the calculations…”
“Yes?”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s impossible.”
“Tell me anyway.”
She sighed. “The snakes are cold-blooded.”
“So?”
“So their bodies work differently depending on temperature,” she said, sounding annoyed at this particular law of nature. “My poisons are made to work fast.”
“Cursed by excellence, as always.”
The hymn swelled, Myron’s voice now rising and falling in grief-stricken waves. The warriors’ low hums made it even harder to bear. But bear it I would.
It was my fault.
My fault they’d died.
My fault I couldn’t unravel the Serpents’ strategy.
My fault we were losing.
My fault, all of it.
“They work too fast for these snakes.” Elysia’s sigh rattled me away from falling deeper into my shame. “When it’s cold, their bodies don’t eat up the poison quickly enough, so it gets expelled without much damage. And we’ve had godsforsaken weather.”
“Would raising the temperature help?” I asked, a seed of hope taking shape.
We needed something to even the odds. Anything.
“No. Even if we somehow throw them in a furnace, it wouldn’t work.” Elysia sighed again. “If we could raise the temperature, we’d need to give them a hefty dose of poison every day for ten days straight, according to my calculations.”
“Ten days?” A light at the edge of the river caught my eye.
The archers raised their flaming arrows. Ten of them, all lined on the bank, the fire illuminating their crestfallen faces. One of my warriors pushed the boats out into the river.
“Yes,” she hissed, getting more annoyed. “So that the poison would build up and do something . But that would be impossible. It’s not like they’re waiting with open jaws for me to pour poison down their slimy throats. We can’t penetrate their scales, and even if we could, they need to ingest the liquid, so it sits in their bellies and gets dissipated through their bodies more slowly. We don’t have any traitors in the Serpents’ camp. We can’t control the snakes’ or the Serpents’ blood since their bodies are protected by that weird magic. So it’s a useless discovery.”
I stared in the distance, at the blood from my warriors and Serpent soldiers alike slowly seeping from the mud into the river. My gaze travelled up the current, over the forest which teemed with life once more.
That small seed of hope grew. “It’s always blood.”
Blood.
The blood which my family and the warriors gave that day in the Arena to bring victory.
The blood which flowed through every living creature.
The blood that could save us.
I kicked myself away from the tree.
“Blood,” I whispered, eyes glazing over as my mind raced. The seed sprouted into a plan.
Daring.
Necessary.
Impossible.
The kind of plan which could fall apart if a single part of it went wrong.
“Are you alright?” Elysia asked.
“Better than I felt in weeks,” I said honestly.
I turned to the archers and the boats.
“Stop!” I bellowed.
The archers froze.
The hymn halted, Myron’s voice melting into nothing.
All eyes, some of them reddened, turned to me.
Even in his sadness, Ryker managed to give me a withering look. “We take care of the dead. Ours or not.”
“And we will,” I called to him. “But not now. Set the bows down and get those boats back to shore.”
The archers embedded the flaming arrows in the moist ground, extinguishing the flames. Warriors ran into the river to tug the boats back before they floated too far away.
“What are you doing?” Elysia whisper-hissed. “We’ve already wasted the last of our funerary oils on them.”
A triumphant smile appeared on my face even as I prayed to the gods to forgive me. For my Clan and those I loved, I would do anything, even sacrilege. “Good, that means the bodies will keep for longer.”
“Keep?” Elysia asked, disgusted. “For what?”
“For our only chance at victory,” I muttered, the plan spidering through my thoughts.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“The Serpents will be the only losers.” I finally turned to her, feeling like myself for the first time since I’d kissed Evie. But that was too precious of a memory to dwell on now, when I plotted the deaths of so many. “Tell me, Viper, what do all living beings need to survive?”