23. Aldrin
Chapter 23
Aldrin
W e destroyed six catapults out of twenty on that first raid. It was a cause for celebration, until the enemy assembled and dragged out replacements within a day.
The next raid a few nights later was less successful. They had buckets of water and sand ready to douse Edmund’s flames, and guards on alert at each catapult to cut down my attack with roots before they could reach a reasonable size. Despite this, we destroyed two more catapults. Our latest raid was at the crack of dawn this morning, and the timing caught them out.
I grip the edge of the battlements and smirk down at the sight of those catapults lying in ruins behind the enemy’s wall of shields. Smoke curls out from two of them, and another three are piles of rubble, half engulfed by the earth.
It is a shame that Keira’s family isn’t skilled enough with autumn magic to quickly pulverize wood that has been long dead. It is easier for Edmund to use his fire.
Cyprien stops by my side.“Only you would look upon an enemy army and smile.”
“We did good work out there this morning.” I examine his stern features and the rigid straightness of his back. “Thank you for joining me in this war. You don’t have to, considering I am no longer your king.”
Cyprien glances at me, annoyance deepening his frown. “You are still my king. More than that, you are my brother, and I would not stand by and allow anyone to mistreat my future queen.”
A hard lump forms in my throat at the title he gives Keira. It is everything I have ever wanted.
“It’s a shame people must die before you can claim her,” Cyprien mutters, then frowns and leans further over the battlement. “There. Do you see it?” He points.
Large columns of the enemy move like ants within their camp, but it’s the slow crawl of their four siege towers that catches our attention. Many of the soldiers collect not far behind their shield wall, and teams come together to lift the ladders and bridges they have been building for the last week.
Icy claws run down my spine. I spin on my heel and race for where Edmund and Caitlin are speaking with their heads together.
“Edmund!” I call out, and he looks up immediately. I tip my head to the army beyond. “You need to see this.”
“The enemy is mobilizing.” Cyprien strides over to us. “You need to call your forces to their stations now.”
Both father and daughter pull out spyglasses and examine the host beyond.
“So, the first battle will be today. Get your people ready, Aldrin. I will work out the rest.” Edmund says.
“And Keira?” I ask, but I am afraid of the answer. It feels like a wild animal is clawing out of my chest.
Edmund runs a hand through his unruly hair. “You know my daughters, Aldrin. There is no keeping them away from the fighting, and it’s not right to. Keira will be an asset on the battlements. She will be with me, with our personal guard around us. You know I will do everything in my power to protect her.”
I am incapable of words as my throat dries out.
Edmund and Caitlin turn and bark orders at the surrounding guards. Horns blow in short blasts, ringing throughout Fort Blackrock.
“I estimate we have an hour before the battle begins,” Cyprien mutters.
The fortress falls into ordered chaos as hundreds of soldiers funnel up the stairs to join those already on the battlements. I search for Keira, wanting a few last words before I part with her, but she is nowhere to be seen.
I push through the crowd of bodies moving in different directions along the wall, struggling through the onslaught. I grab people by their collars and pull them from my path.
A man with a black beard poking out of his helmet is more intent on staring at the army in the distance than where he is going, and I shove him aside before he can slam into me. Another swings around so quickly that her quiver of arrows smacks into my chest.
It is difficult to resist the urge to push all of them out of my way with a blast of air magic. I physically lift the next inattentive person who almost slams into me, grabbing him around the shoulders and placing him down hard next to me.
In the gap left behind him, Keira stares up at me in shock, with those hazel eyes and that beautiful face crowned by a mane of red-and-gold curls. She keeps her distance, and it kills me. Even now, moments before a battle, we have to keep the love between us hidden.
Someone pushes into Keira from behind and she stumbles into my arms, looking up at me with a pale face.
By the darkest realm, I am so sick of worrying about politics.
I lean down and kiss her hard on those soft, rosebud lips. Keira melts into me, her lips sliding against mine. I want to feel the curves of her body. My fingers roam for them, but I can’t get access through her armor. I have to settle for her mouth and tongue instead.
All too soon, she pulls away from me.
“I’ll see you on the other side of the battle, dear heart,” I murmur.
She nods, but I have to pry her fingers off my chest plate.
Behind her, the Countess Lynna and Lord Bradford gawk at us, both in armor and chain mail. I wink unapologetically at them.
Keira seems to shake herself and squeezes my hand. “On the other side of the battle, my heart.” Then she disappears into the crowd with the lesser nobles, pulled swiftly away by all the other bodies.
It is the hardest thing I have ever done, leaving Keira to her fate in the coming battle. Every part of my being wants to hide her safely away. To command my people to grab her and run hard for Appleshield, despite what she wants. To force her to fight at my side, where I can personally protect her.
But those aren’t my choices to make.
She is her own person and has a right to fight for her kingdom. Keira should be placed where her strengths lie, not where I want her.
I make my way to my team’s station, on the lowest battlements that hug the foot of the western mountain. Below us is a steep drop of craggy rock, with spindly trees and vegetation growing in every nook and cranny. They connect a path from where I stand down to the great ash trees we grew to line the battlefield, their roots crisscrossing beneath the entire land.
Drake, Silvan and Klara are already in position with others, giving me an assortment of grunts as acknowledgement as I reach them.
Drake slaps me on the back. “It’s about time you joined us.”
“Who’s ready to show these humans what a real battle looks like?” Silvan shocks us all by smiling, and the sight is truly terrifying, all sharp teeth and viciousness.
“Silvan, please remember who the enemy is here, and don’t take out the Lord Protector or High Priestess instead,” Klara says, as though the thought of managing Silvan’s bloodlust gives her a tension headache.
“Damn, now I’m tempted,” Drake says, earning a dark look from Klara.
“No one is taking out any of Keira’s family members.” I point at Silvan, then Drake. “Because it will make her sad, and I’m not letting any of you assholes ruin her day.”
“What? Like this impending battle and war isn’t already ruining it?” Drake spreads his arms wide. “I can make it look like this King Finan did it, then our hands are clean.”
I give him a simmering stare, but can’t help the amusement that flows through me. “I mean it. Now get to your fucking station.”
More of our people funnel in until there is a force of thirty fae at my disposal. I direct half of them to the great bolt launchers stationed along this entire wall, built of metal and capable of swiveling on the spot. Piles of bolts tipped with pointed heads lie beside them, each as long as my leg, and my people sort through them.
They channel their magic into the metal shafts. A power that is the opposite of healing, something hungry that sucks the life from a body. These bolts will shatter upon initial impact, and the shrapnel will be guided into as many bodies as possible.
On the far side of the fortress, where its battlements and towers colonize the foot of the eastern mountain, Cyprien is visible, barking orders at his force of fae.
We wait and wait. The sun moves out from behind the mountain as the enemy army organizes themselves. Their shield wall has dissolved, and long columns of soldiers face us, stretching back toward the horizon like three black smears across the earth.
It is what prowls between those columns that turns my blood cold. Huge beasts that are barely restrained by leashes held by multiple soldiers. They are pitch black and the size of horses, snarling and rearing on two legs.
“What in all the unholy realms are those?” Drake curses beside me. “They look like the monstrous hounds that ride with the Wild Hunt of the Shadow Court.”
A shiver runs down my spine at its mention. “Some sort of war dog,” I mutter back, regretting not having a single human on this wing to question.
A distant horn blows a long, low note, and that enemy mass marches. The pound of near ten thousand boots striking the ground and as many sets of armor clanging with each step reverberates across the mountains. It echoes and intensifies until it is almost deafening. Then they bang their swords against their shields and chant.
The enemy catapults cease firing the moment their line of soldiers passes them. I have become so used to the crack of stones hitting the fortress and the ground constantly shaking beneath my feet that this stillness is eerie.It’s like the whole world holds its breath, waiting for the hammer to hit.
The enemy suddenly charge into the killing space before the fortress, screaming as their lines turn chaotic. Teams of soldiers race ahead, holding great wooden bridges above them to span the furrow. Volleys of arrows erupt from our battlements, peppering down into those bridges and the army beyond.
“Fire the bolts! Aim for the bridges!” I roar, raising my arm. “Make it rain stones on the main army! Activate the trees!”
Our collective magic rises. Bolts pierce right through the bridges, shattering as they penetrate and destroying the teams of soldiers beneath them, but more simply pick up the bridges and carry them spans closer to the furrow, until they die too. Fire crystals errupt from catapults on the main wall, incinerating the bridges, but the enemy’s army keeps advancing, bringing more and more with them.
I raise my hands in the air, drawing up my earth magic, combining it with Silvan’s and Klara’s and plunging it into the rock beneath us. I tap into each vein of organic matter deep within it, taking control of its substance and pulling, carving, separating it, until boulders roll down from the mountainside.
After a sheer drop three stories high, those heavy weights splatter the warriors they fall upon, rolling with momentum through the enemy force and leaving long smears of red in their wake.
The sight is disgusting.
It raises bile in my throat and threatens to make me double over and retch off the side of the battlement, but I don’t have time for that. We are just getting started. More of the enemy are pushing through the channels we carved out of their ranks moments ago.They are like swarming ants.
I breathe hard, gripping Klara’s hand on one side and Silvan’s on the other to improve our connection, then cleave more boulders from the mountainside. They boom loudly as they strike, and screams rear up in their wake.
Sweat drips down my face and stings my eyes, and I remove a slick hand from Silvan’s to wipe it away. That is when I realize the enemy have taken the boulders and are heaving them toward the furrow, to create a place to cross.
“For fuck’s sake,” Silvan snarls at my side as he makes the same realization.
I take in a long breath to steady the anger rolling through me, prickled with the intensity of fear. Keira is on that wall. If they scale it, they will find their way to her. I cannot let that happen.
Both Silvan and Klara look at me.
“You know what to do,” I growl. “The same thing we did at the Battle of the Frozen Peaks in the Winter Wars.”
“These bastards are going to give me a damned headache,” Klara grumbles.
“Be glad if that is all you get. They are about to be pulverized.” Silvan spits over the rail.
I ignore them, selecting a huge boulder closest to the ravine, within the mass of the writhing army. It is a horror to witness. Not a single bridge has made it there yet, and the front line is being toppled over into the void as the army behind pushes forward. Skewered bodies are visible on the tallest of the spikes within.
No doubt Lord Desmond thinks this is another way to bridge the gap of the furrow: by filling it with the bodies of peasants.
I grind my teeth. I cannot think of them as people.
I send my awareness forth through every living thing in the soil, running beneath all those marching feet. How easy it would be to pick them off one at a time by thrusting sharp roots through their bodies, but that would be like trying to clear a beach of sand by plucking it away grain by grain.
I reach a boulder and surge my raw power into it. The entire mass shatters into shards. In the same heartbeat, I unleash the force of a tornado right in its center, thrusting those projectiles in a rapid arc. I am vaguely aware of each piece of shrapnel cutting through flesh and splattering blood. I jump to the next boulder, then the next, exploding them with the same force.
My consciousness snaps back to my body when I am done. I am left shaking and gasping in deep lungfuls of air. My vision blackens in and out as the world spins around me. Glancing down at my hands, I notice my knuckles are white from the death grip I have on the wall. It is the only thing holding me up.
“We need to take a break.”
Klara’s voice seems distant. She speaks truth, but how can we stop when an enemy force is storming us? When people I care about will fight for their lives if that mass makes it up our walls?
“Aldrin, did you hear me? You will become drained of magic.”
I stumble backward from the wall and stare at her, struggling to comprehend what she is saying. All around us, the repetitive thwack of the bolt launchers sounds. I take a long swig from a canteen of water, then pass it to her and she drinks. Strands of lilac hair are plastered to her forehead with sweat.
The position of the sun catches my eye. It has moved significantly since the battle broke out. What felt like minutes has been hours.
I turn toward the druid who stands in the furthest corner of this platform, away from the action, watching everything with wide eyes. “Send word to the healer. We need magical replenishment.”
The woman rushes away, and soon a team of Mothers of Magic and druids arrive to transfer their raw power into me.
“Aldrin!” Drake calls, staring out over the battlement. “Gods! Aldrin. Look at this.”
I run to him.
I took my eyes off the battle for what felt like a few heartbeats, and it has changed.
They have unleashed those beasts, larger and more vicious than a Cú Sídhe of my court. The black hounds tear through the enemy’s ranks. Their huge feet trample over their own soldiers and their jaws snap at them, but they do not slow their pace. In a single leap, the hounds glide over the top of the furrow and land smoothly on the other side. Then they race their way up the vertical face of the main wall of Fort Blackrock, as though gravity has no hold over them.
My heart stops as pure fear for Keira floods me. It sends a wild panic rippling through me, making my mind spiral. I can’t drag my eyes away.
Those snarling beasts jump straight through the shields on top of the wall, designed to stop the high impact of stones projected by catapults and unable to prevent creatures from striding through.
Chaos immediately explodes on the lowest battlements as soldiers race to engage with the hounds. The intensity of the arrow fire from the walls into the enemy horde halves, then the crossbolts stop firing from Cyprien’s position opposite us. Hounds leap over the cusp of the wall there to attack them.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Drake grinds out as he peers over the side of our battlements. He turns wide eyes to me. “They are running straight up our wall.”
“Prepare to engage the enemy!” I scream, drawing the enchanted sword from my back. I glance over the edge, then quickly rear back. “Five war beasts approaching. Protect the healers’ retreat!”
Fae abandon the bolt launchers, useless at close range, and draw swords and axes instead. Feral growls reach us right before the huge forms leap over the wall’s parapet. They are horrible masses of black fur, with large paws tipped in long claws and snarling mouths filled with great teeth.
A beast with foam spilling from its jaws lunges at me.
I fall to my knees and skid across the stone pavers under its form as it arches through the air. I hold up my sword and slice it through the soft underbelly with all of my might. Blood coats me, and organs slop out behind me. The trajectory of the beast has it sliding across the floor.
Another one charges at me, hot on the first’s heels, and I dive to the side and swing my sword in a killing blow in the same motion, removing its head.The impact of both blows and the essence of life my sword drags from their bodies charges the enchantment in the blade, feeding raw power into me and topping up my reserves.
I am vaguely aware of Silvan dancing across the parapet itself, base jumping in the air and doing backflips as he attacks and retreats, slaughtering a beast before it crests the wall. Klara touches the fur of a single beast, drawing its entire life force from it in a heartbeat. The thing crumbles at her feet, a ruined husk. Her healing magic is the strongest I have ever seen.
A handful more hounds escape over the top of the battlement. The seasoned warriors behind me make fast work of dispatching them, their swords and axes ringing out as they strike through flesh.
I rush to Drake’s side and help him draw up the roots and branches of all the vegetation and trees along the craggy mountainside, growing them into thick claws and trapping the beasts advancing with them. With a quick flick of our wrists, those cages contract instantaneously, crushing the victims within. They let out high-pitched wails that cut off as soon as they start.
I am panting hard as I glance around at my warriors. We haven’t taken a single injury, despite how we are slick with blood and gore. “Back on the bolt launchers,” I order them, and they run to obey.
My eyes flick to the main battlements of the fortress, right over the gate, but there are no beasts left upon the wall and a pile of their smoldering ruins sits at its foot. Edmund must have had a blast, dispatching them that quickly. He is probably laughing maniacally up there, covered in his enemies’ blood.
“That was…anticlimactic,” Drake says.
I survey the battlefield, my heart sinking. “No. It was a clever distraction.”
The enemy has spanned the furrow with bridges in multiple places. Foot soldiers race up to the wall, carrying long ladders to scale it.
I thrust my power outward, ripping down the mountain and hopping through the trees flanking the battlefield until I take hold of those roots within the furrow.
Mine is not the only presence there.
I recognize Cyprien and Drake and many others as I grow woody spikes and thrash them at the ladders on the wall. The flimsy structures snap like twigs and humans fall from them, screaming as they hit the ground. I command more roots to swipe away the bridges and slam into the enemy trying to lay more.
An uneasiness settles deep within the pit of my stomach.
Something is wrong.
Those siege towers hang back behind their entire army. With them in place, they wouldn’t need to cross the furrow to reach the top of the wall. At the towers’ apexes are bridges that unfold to span the distance and grip onto the parapets. It cannot be the catapults launching fire crystals into the fray that hold them back. Built from sheets of iron, the towers would not burn.
It doesn’t make sense.
A horn blows a long note from the enemy command, calling their retreat. The foot soldiers turn and flee, leaving behind their ladders and bridges. As the swarm pulls away from the fortress, they reveal hundreds of bodies discarded at the foot of the wall, within the furrow and across the battlefield. There are so many humans there, dead for little purpose.
“Why are they calling a retreat already?” Silvan growls. “It’s hardly past noon.”
Waves of shock ripple through me. In this sort of siege warfare, this dance is played from dawn to dusk, day after day, until one side breaks.
“I have no idea.” I scan the distant camp as though it will give me answers. Great masses of foot soldiers collect before it, with thousands of stragglers running toward that perceived safety.
I open my mouth to say something, but all thought flies from my mind as the ground rumbles and shakes ferociously beneath our feet. A thunderous roar follows, increasing in intensity until I am deafened by it. Explosions blast in fast succession. The entire world tilts as the ground rolls and moves and my shoulders strike the pavers.
The mountains are falling, stone by stone. Or perhaps they are erupting. But that booming comes from underneath us. A detonation below the ground.
An avalanche of fist-sized rocks rains down upon us, striking me multiple times before I pull my senses together enough to throw up an air shield. I sense my people’s magic adding to it, reinforcing that protection, which buckles as larger boulders fall on us.
The battlefield shudders for an eternity. Every time I think it has stopped and try to get to my feet, more aftershocks rattle us. Dust fills my lungs. It suffocates me and makes me cough and gag. Pain shoots through my spine. I am utterly disorientated, unable to see through the black plumes surrounding us.
Smoke hits my nose. Not that of a wood fire, but the fumes of something more toxic, with the oily aftertaste of chemicals. I have never smelled anything like it before.
A single thought races through my mind. Keira. She has to be okay. She must be alive. I don’t want to exist in a reality where she isn’t with me.
I send out that thought, reach for her in the way she said she did for me when we were realms apart, and it is as though I can hear her heart pounding in my ears. Those are her emotions, the utter confusion and blood-chilling fear, but they are not laced with pain, and that is a thing I can accept.
I cannot see the fortress through the screen of dust and smoke, so I whip up a volley of air magic to thrust it away. My mind freezes up at the sight that awaits me. It refuses to accept it as truth.
The entire main gate of Fort Blackrock and the battlement above it have been blown away, and there is a huge, gaping mouth into the North in its place instead. One of the main towers on the eastern mountain slowly topples to the side and crumples into a pile of blocks right before my eyes. Entire regions of the western battlements have collapsed inward, reduced to half their original height.
Leading right up to the foot of the fortress, beneath the battlefield, is a tunnel that has been blown open. They dug deeper than even our furrow. Black smoke churns from where its head meets the wall.
The enemy distracted us for a week with their catapults, and then this battle, while their miners dug beneath our fortifications, filled the hole with explosives and blasted away the North’s greatest defense.
I run a hand through my hair as I stare at the devastation. Keira is right there, in the middle of it. Her panic floods into me, poisoning my blood and freezing my body with terror. She is too far away for me to save her. I have never felt more helpless in my life.
For a few heartbeats, there is utter stillness across the battlefield. Then the enemy’s low horns bellow again, and their soldiers charge forward. It is a thing of brutal savagery. No neat front line is kept. No ordered columns. The foot soldiers carry dozens of bridges with them and those siege towers roll toward our defenses, now wide open.
Horror floods me. It snaps me out of my stupor. “Muster your power!” I roar at my band. “Forget the bolt launchers! Grow fortifications of roots across the gap in the wall!”
I throw everything I have into those wields, tearing up roots from the soil and weaving them into a makeshift barrier. It is not enough. No matter how much power we throw into it, orhow many roots we pull up, it will not keep the enemy out for long—but it will give the Northern forces a chance to retreat.
I don’t care if I drain myself completely of power and energy. If we get stuck here behind enemy lines, weak and vulnerable. I only want a chance for Keira to get out.
Where are you, Aldrin?
The whisper of her voice echoes in my head, as though from a great distance. It is laced with terror.
Get out, Keira, I urge her. Run. I will find you.
I do not tell her that it will be in this life, or the next.
Promise me you will live, Aldrin. There is so much love, so much fear in that murmur, that I crumble and make her that promise.
The distinctive brassy horns of the Appleshield Protectorate bellow sharp, short notes over and over, calling the retreat. We had every advantage, and somehow, we lost this battle.
I glance at my people. Sheens of sweat coat their faces, colorless and streaked with mud. Some already sway where they stand. We could stay here and hold the gate for a few more moments, but our deaths would not save the humans we have aligned with. They would not protect Keira from future battles.She needs my sword at her side.
I draw my blade and turn to my people. “We fight our way out and live to battle another day.”
There is no shame in a necessary retreat, and no honor in a needless death.