Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
T hea’s horse surged forward with the rest, all thoughts emptying from her head as she was swept up in the sea of warriors charging towards the darkness.
The hooves of two hundred horses trampled the heather in a thunderous assault.
For a second, Thea forgot about the hierarchy of warriors and her fate.
Instead, her chest swelled with a mixture of fear and pride.
This was the spirit of Thezmarr, this was what it meant to be part of the guild, and there was no denying she was a part of it now.
Her shouts were swallowed by the rest as they galloped in a frenzy towards the ruins, the three mighty Warswords as the vanguard.
But as their forces closed the gap between them and the enemy, Thea could not only see the ribbons of shadow, but finally the creatures from which they rippled…
Her heart seized.
Cloaked in black mist, the beings were not of this world.
Once, they might have been men, but no longer…
Their bodies had been elongated; each figure towering to what she could only guess to be eight to ten feet in the air.
They had strange, sinewy frames, with claws for hands and curled, antler-like horns protruding from their heads.
‘Bear right!’ Esyllt’s voice cut through the horror. ‘Bear right, now!’
Thea and the rest of her unit did, splitting off from the other half of their forces and charging around the outskirts of the ruins to circle their prey.
The rheguld reapers shrieked at the diversion, and at the Warswords, who broke away from the main force and charged straight for them. There was no mistaking the twin blades raised at the front.
Darkness now flowed freely from all five of the creatures. Thea could feel its iciness and malice from several yards away.
‘Halt!’ Esyllt’s cry sounded as their forces met on the other side.
Thea’s body went taut as she drew her reins up short with clammy hands. The Thezmarrian cavalry surrounded the ruins, where the capital’s city walls had fallen long ago, watching on as the Warswords leapt from their horses and launched into their attack.
It was three against five.
The rheguld reapers moved as shadows. One moment there, a hair’s breadth away from the kiss of a blade, the next they were somewhere else; a whisper of what once had been, darkness lashing out like a whip.
Thea could taste their insatiable thirst for blood and destruction.
‘Firebearers! Archers!’ Esyllt called. ‘At the ready!’
Thea surveyed their forces as burning arrows were nocked and bowstrings creaked.
‘For the love of the Furies don’t hit our own!’ the weapons master bellowed. ‘Loose!’
Arrows of fire rained down on the monsters, coaxing outraged shrieks from their withered throats, splitting their focus, distracting them from the main attack.
Why are the rest of us just standing here? Thea’s mind screamed desperately. Her ribs were too tight and her insides felt hollowed out. There was nothing she could do from here, nothing but watch as the Warswords flung themselves at the unworldly creatures.
Time slowed.
A ragged gasp lodged in her windpipe as Hawthorne, wielding his twin blades, stalked towards the largest monster.
He moved with the power of the Furies, their gifts of speed, strength and agility thrumming from him.
Springing into an attack, his swords were nothing but blurs of silver against the black power raining down on him.
The Warsword blocked the lashing darkness and rolled beneath the creature, slicing the backs of its legs.
The reaper shrieked, lunging for Hawthorne, incensed.
But the warrior struck again, this time launching himself from Torj’s braced shield and leaping into the air. He brought both blades down into the beast’s abdomen, its scream piercing through the noise of combat around them.
Another volley of flaming arrows flew through the air.
A wave of darkness crashed into one of the Thezmarrian units.
Thea didn’t know where to look. To Hawthorne’s right, Vernich was battling two of the horrid things, and on the other side of him, Torj duelled with another…
Then… where is the fifth? Thea thought with a start, scanning the ruins.
‘Gods,’ the word escaped her lips as she spotted it stalking the perimeter around the Warswords. Without thinking, Thea urged her horse forward —
A sword flung out, stopping right before her chest.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Esyllt snarled.
Where did he come from?
‘We can’t just leave them to fight alone.’
‘Your only role here is to follow my orders. Are you questioning those orders?’
Thea faltered. ‘No, Sir, I —’
‘The answer is “No, Sir” and that’s it.’ The weapon master’s eyes locked onto hers, drawing her attention away from the battle unfolding before them.
His gaze was brimming with fury, with warning.
‘There is nothing we can do. Only a Warsword can kill a creature like that,’ he added.
‘Our forces are doing all they can to assist.’
‘If you told us how, we could —’
‘Not another word,’ he glowered. ‘If you question my authority again, I’ll string you up and feed you to one of those things myself. You are a shieldbearer. There is much you do not know about the realms. If you want to survive to one day fight yourself, you’ll shut up and follow my orders.’
Thea struggled to swallow the lump in her throat. ‘Yes, Sir.’
She tore her gaze away from Esyllt as he moved to the front of the unit once more, to find Hawthorne pinning a reaper to the ground, one of his blades slicing through its chest. The creature’s high-pitched screams echoed across the ruins as the Warsword carved into its flesh.
Hawthorne stabbed his other sword into the soft earth and crushed the reaper’s throat, muffling its shrieks beneath his boot before reaching into its ribcage with his bare hand.
If it hadn’t been strapped to her forearm, Thea would have dropped her shield.
There was a sickening, wet sound as Hawthorne ripped its heart from its chest cavity.
A strange cry made Thea’s blood run cold.
Another was lunging for Hawthorne.
‘Archers, loose!’ Esyllt’s order carried across the battlefield.
But the arrows did little against the leathered skin of the monsters.
Torj flew into action, leaping in front of his fellow Warsword and taking the attack on his shield.
Gasps sounded from the cavalry as they watched Torj and Hawthorne take on two of the creatures, Hawthorne’s blades now aflame.
A few yards away, there was an earsplitting cry.
Vernich tore the heart from a reaper with a roar of his own, throwing it aside with a thud, red blood streaked with black rushing down his arm.
It was three against three now.
Thea’s eyes were watering, she’d forgotten to blink, her knuckles white as she gripped her horse’s reins in a death grip. She couldn’t look away, unable to believe what she was seeing, unable to stand her own lack of action.
The Warswords moved like gods, tearing through the darkness, wielding their weapons as extensions of their own bodies. Winning .
What had seemed impossible only moments before was now unfolding before their very eyes. The Warswords of Thezmarr had taken on the masters of shadow and were emerging victorious.
No sooner had the thought fluttered into Thea’s mind, something changed.
The black ribbons leaking from the rheguld reapers multiplied and not only did they hit the frontlines of their forces in a punishing blow, but they struck out like vicious vipers, wrapping around the Warswords’ legs, coiling around their wrists —
‘ No, ’ Thea gasped.
Two of the creatures held the three warriors in their claws, toying with them cruelly as they fought off the lashings of darkness, while the third reaper sized up the force surrounding the ruins. In the overwhelming presence of a giant wraith, two hundred men seemed like no men at all.
With the Warswords occupied, the third creature paced the perimeter, drinking in the sight of the cavalry with huge, clouded blue eyes.
Some of them were already disbanded, bleeding on the ground from the previous attacks.
The rest trembled in its presence. Shadows seeped from its long body, coiling towards shieldbearers and warriors alike, while the monster emitted a strange hissing sound that made the hair on the back of Thea’s neck stand up.
Despite all their training, the horses panicked, pawing the ground with their hooves and whinnying in distress.
‘Hold the line!’ Esyllt yelled, holding a fist up as the creature approached their unit. ‘Don’t you bastards dare move, I said, hold! ’
The reaper sniffed the air, as though it could smell their fear, as though it were savouring it like the aroma of a fine wine. It slinked towards them, shadows dancing.
Thea drew a trembling breath.
The creature’s head snapped straight to her, piercing her with its eerie gaze.
‘Hold!’ Esyllt’s voice boomed again.
Was he waiting for the Warswords? Because they seemed to have their hands full —
The creature surged towards the unit.
Someone screamed and Esyllt went flying from his horse, his body hitting the ground with a hard thud.
In a panic, his horse bolted, as did a dozen others, their riders either falling from their saddles or barely hanging on as their mounts fled from the chaos.
The line broke.
The hissing sound was even closer this time.
The reaper towered before them, brandishing its claws with the promise of violence and death, black mist rippling from its being. It surveyed them with those unsettling eyes, its gaze seeming to search, landing again on Thea.
She gave a strangled cry as a current of something powerful shuddered through her, her body trembling.
‘Seb, no!’ someone screamed.
Sebastos Barlowe was on the ground, brandishing his sword at the monster, one of his lackeys at his side. The two young men advanced on the creature, wielding their blades but failing to land a hit.