Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
LEINA
The trumpets are different from any I’ve heard before.
The call starts from somewhere across the ocean.
On a nearby island, maybe. It’s low and deep and continuous, a rumbling that flies across the water.
It’s a terrifying sound, one that warns of doom.
The only thing more terrifying is the silence when it stops, abruptly, the trumpeter silenced mid-piercing note.
But other trumpets quickly pick up the call, their sharp, urgent notes cutting through the air. The sounds get closer and closer, until the trumpets are wailing from every corner of Amarune.
Ryot and I lock eyes for a tenuous moment, trying to declare soundlessly everything we haven’t said, anything we haven’t shared.
But the sound of doors slamming and boots running down the hallway spurs Ryot into action, and he all but throws me across the room.
He tosses my boots and scythe my way, as I wrestle with my chainmail.
Watching the efficiency with which he moves, I decide that “ suiting up and arming with all haste ” should be part of the training regimen at the Synod.
“You may be a veilstrider,” he tells me, as he grabs my pack and straps it to my back for me, along with my scythe. “But you’re still a ward. You stay behind the front line, with Thalric.”
There’s frantic neighing outside as the beasts join their riders. Ryot grabs my hand and pulls me out the door, and we’re running down the hallway and down the stairs, the other Stormriven men hot on our heels.
Ryot keeps shouting directions.
“Your job, Leina, is to learn. You’re still a ward. You’re not to be anyone’s hero today. Watch the veterans and learn from them. Make sure you manage your energy levels. Don’t overestimate yourself and drain your power.”
He pauses and then mutters. “Hopefully there won’t be very many of them.”
From somewhere behind me, Nyrica snorts. “If we’re hoping for things, let’s hope that they all die mid-air and plummet into the ocean, yeah?”
Ryot ignores his sarcasm. “Vaeloria is the fastest beast in the air, faster than the draegoths. Use her speed, if it comes to it,” he continues.
I squeeze Ryot’s hands in mine.
“Ryot,” I say, and his head jerks toward mine, as we reach the galehold. Somehow, Einarr and Vaeloria find us immediately in the chaos of running warriors and flapping wings. I smile a little, trying to ease his worry. “We’ve trained for this. Trust me.”
He swears, then wraps a hand at the back of my neck, pulling me in for a hard kiss. He doesn’t even care that we’re surrounded by our cast. When we pull apart, he rests his forehead on mine for a heartbeat’s worth of time.
“Don’t do anything heroic,” he tells me. “Stay with Leif and Thalric, at the back of the formation with the other wards. I’ll be needed at the front.”
They’ll want his shields. Godsdammit, that is so terrifying. I’m sure he’s always at the front. Then he’s backing up, mounting Einarr. Vaeloria snorts from behind me, and I run over to her.
I follow Thalric’s line of sight as he finds Nyrica, heading to the front lines hot on Ryot’s heels.
Nyrica turns to give Thalric his classic, jaunty grin, flashing his dimple, but I’ve never seen the look that crosses Thalric’s face in response.
It’s not only worry or determination, it’s something so much deeper, something that breaks the rigid calm he wears.
Nyrica sees him and slows, his usual easy grin faltering.
For a heartbeat, they simply stare at each other across the gap.
And then Thalric moves. He strides forward and grabs Nyrica by the front of his tunic and drags him forward in a single, decisive motion, and their mouths crash together—hard, desperate, and aching.
Thalric cups the back of Nyrica’s head, holding him there, and Nyrica clutches Thalric's tunic in his fists like he might drown if he lets go.
They finally pull apart to press their foreheads together, both breathing hard.
“Stay alive up there, Nyr.”
Nyrica recovers first, falling back on his jaunty, teasing smile.
“Hope you’re not too bored at the back,” he teases Thalric. “Taking care of the babies.”
His teasing entices the tiniest, briefest smile from serious, serious Thalric; and then Nyrica laughs, and he’s mounting Caelthar and flying off after Ryot. Thalric turns back to Leif and me.
“Let’s roll,” he says. He mounts Oryndel and drives him into a gallop in one seamless motion, the beast’s mighty black wings pumping, pushing him into the darkness of the sky.
Vaeloria gallops after him, lifting off the ground, the ethereal sound of her wings eclipsed by the cacophony that is hundreds of faravars taking to the air at one time.
She follows Thalric and Oryndel as we circle low, heading to the back of the formation and the slightly staggered walls that form a barrier between the fortress and the ocean.
Leif and I take up a place at the rear, but we can still see the front lines.
At the water’s edge, Aruveth anchors the center of a V-shaped formation, the hooves of his beast stirring the waves that roll onto the shore.
Off to his right, the Elder sits tall astride Sigurd, with Ryot and Einarr behind.
I twist behind me, trying to see Amarune in the distance.
Lanterns glow in the darkness, and the city looks surprisingly peaceful to be on the verge of an attack.
There are no panicked crowds, no one running for shelter.
The streets are empty. I pivot back to the Ebonmere Sea, searching the skies as dawn streaks across the horizon, but I don’t see anything.
Not even a flutter of movement. My beating heart calms.
“Maybe it was a false alarm,” I say.
Leif winces. “Unlikely,” he answers. “The Kher’zenn normally wait to attack in the daylight, especially if an alert was sounded and they’ve lost the element of surprise.”
The sun has barely started to stretch across the horizon. There’s still more darkness in the sky than light, but only for a couple more minutes.
“Why?”
“Their monsters are white. Our faravars are black,” his eyes slide down to Vaeloria. “Well, most of them are black. Night favors our camouflage. Daylight—especially a cloudy day like this—gives them the edge.”
I rake my eyes across the horizon with new awareness. The sky is blanketed in soft, puffy clouds that appear almost tangible.
“How many Kher’zenn is ‘very many’?” I ask.
Leif chews his bottom lip as he considers.
“The most I’ve seen is 35. In that battle, our cast was outnumbered more than two to one, and we lost seven men.
” His eyes flick toward me. “I’ve heard of battles of up to nearly 100 Kher’zenn and their draegoths, but that kind of swarm only happens once every hundred or so years. Like they’re saving up ... waiting.”
“How long has it been since the last swarm?”
It’s Thalric who cuts in, his voice low and rough. “It’s been 301 years.” Silence falls around us. The beasts sense it, too, shifting restlessly beneath their riders, their wings twitching.
Three centuries. A cold shiver slides down my spine.
“They’ve been building,” I murmur. Thalric’s knuckles go white where he grips Oryndel’s mane.
As the light spreads, my eyes scan the sky with new vigor. Clouds are rolling in from the horizon, dense, pale, and low. The men around us start murmuring. They shift anxiously on their beasts, their eyes widening in horror.
“Fuuuuuuuck,” Leif says.
The clouds move wrong. They churn unnaturally, folding and breaking apart in ways a cloud never could.
A flicker of movement slices through the haze—then another.
And another. Wings. Vast, serrated, jagged.
They tear free of the clouds, one after another, until the sky seems to rupture.
Hundreds of draegoths emerge as if born from the sky itself, their pale scales glinting in the sunlight, blending in seamlessly with the clouds behind them.
They move as one, an unholy storm of malevolence, descending on Aish with silent, lethal grace.
My mouth goes dry. I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
The sharp blast of a trumpet breaks through my stupor.
Immediately, an Aishan rider and his beast peel off from the forward v-formation and they fly with reckless speed for Amarune, sounding another trumpet.
This time the alert is different, a high-pitched staccato he repeats.
Amarune answers. People pour from their homes in a flood, clutching babies to their chests, dragging children by the hand.
They carry nothing but each other—no packs, no keepsakes, no possessions.
Only life. Earth-bound beasts—horses, camels—are mounted in a chaotic scramble, a plume of dust rising as the lucky ones flee north toward the mountains.
Those without animals run on foot, desperation driving them.
I spot Drennek’s heavily pregnant wife struggling to keep up, her hands cradling her belly as she waddles behind the crowd.
An elderly man scoops her into his arms, gritting his teeth as he lurches into a staggering trot.
Four more riders and their faravars peel off from our main group, wings carving great, sweeping arcs across the desert.
They soar high over Amarune, the staccato blast of their trumpets slicing the air, as they fly past the city and out into the desert.
The unnatural beat echoes again and again. A warning. A plea.
“Where are they going?” I ask, my voice barely more than a scrape of sound. I watch as the four riders fan out.
An Aishan Altor turns grim eyes toward me. “They’re warning the nomadic tribes. Telling them to flee.”
Flee. Because there will be nothing left to save. Beside me, Leif pales even further, the blood draining from his face. I lick at my dry lips, but there’s no moisture left to find.
“They don’t think we’ll hold the city.” The words crack in my throat.