Chapter 41
Forty-One
Ivy
Iappreciated the darkness when I needed it to hide me. I’m less fond of it right now when I want to be able to track our enemies’ approach.
Stavros gives the back of my cloak a gentle tug. “Lean forward any farther and you’ll topple right out, Lady Thief.”
He, Rheave, and I are perched at the top of a lookout tower about half a mile back from the channel. It’s also halfway between the fort he and the daimon-man sealed up and the three pine trees we’ve used as a landmark.
We want to be within viewing distance of the battle but out of the line of fire. I would prefer to continue keeping my head attached to my body long enough for the king to pardon both parts.
The wooden tower, the platform of which stands at the level of the nearby treetops, is only large enough to comfortably hold the three of us. Alek and Casimir, who found their way back to us before we left Fort Cyprian, are watching from its foot.
We’ve set everything up as planned. In the lantern light of the fort, the Silanian flag waving there has been burnt to tatters by Rheave’s magic—the signal to both the Darium soldiers and the Order of the Wild’s march that everything is proceeding as they expect.
The Darium forces themselves arrived on several large watercraft not long ago. I can barely make out their forms over by the pines. They’ve drawn themselves into a rigid formation that could be a massive hedge for all my eyes can tell.
I think there are at least a few hundred of them.
Not a huge crowd, since there wouldn’t have been many soldiers stationed along this part of the channel within easy call, but enough to pose a significant threat to the Order when pitting trained military professionals against townspeople and inexperienced nobles.
And I’m still hoping that anyone in the march who’s more misguided than malicious flees rather than getting caught up in the fighting.
Of course, that requires that the scourge sorcerers and their dupes show up at all.
No matter how I squint in the opposite direction, I can’t make out any sign of the march’s approach.
My hands tighten around the railing. A warble like a distant shout reaches my ears, sparking a jolt of nerves, but even as I turn toward it, I recognize that no one else has heard the sound.
It’s only in my head. A reminder of why I can’t set loose the magic that’s been churning in my chest all night.
Rheave glances over at me and bumps his shoulder gently against mine. “The scourge sorcerers will be hiding themselves like they usually do, won’t they?”
“Most likely.” But that fact doesn’t temper my impatience.
“We know they left at the right time to intercept the royal family’s supposed escape to Darium,” Alek says from below.
“When we saw traces of them passing by the thicket where we were hiding, they appeared to be heading in the right direction, although obviously they could have diverted since then.”
He and Casimir were only able to arrive ahead of the march thanks to a wagon leaving Iblin that they hitched a ride on, traveling to one of the farms that scatter the lands just west of here. That could have put them as much as an hour ahead of the march that has most of its members on foot.
Borys will come, Julita says in a taut but confident voice.
He’ll hate the idea that the king might have pulled one over on him and be slipping from his grasp.
And you made it sound as if the royal family already traveled out here to prepare for the meeting without him realizing.
It wouldn’t make sense for them to attack the palace in Regica if they believe the people they want to murder aren’t there.
If they believe it being the operative phrase. Did Casimir and Alek’s staged conversation on the road and the dropped letter prove convincing enough?
Even as that thought passes through my head, a tingle of magic grazes my skin.
I stiffen, braced to realize that it’s only another trick of my currently questionable sanity. But the sensation only grows, spreading steadily into my flesh until my bones start to quiver.
It can only mean one thing.
The words fall from my lips in an urgent whisper. “I can feel their magic. They’re here.”
Here and coming closer with every passing second.
As far as I can tell, the Darium troops near the channel haven’t stirred yet. They can’t tell the march is approaching.
They don’t even know that these people will see them as the enemy.
All at once, the flaw in my plan hits me with a jolt of panic. I was counting on the skeletal forms painted on the Darium uniforms unsettling the scourge sorcerers enough to diminish their magic. But I can barely see the soldiers themselves, let alone any imagery on their clothing.
The Order of the Wild members won’t be able to see them either. The skeleton designs won’t have any effect on their resolve if they launch their attack without catching so much of a glimpse.
Shit.
“We need light over there,” I spit out. “By the Darium soldiers—quickly.”
I glance around, groping for an answer that doesn’t require my unpredictable magic, and my gaze lands on Rheave’s bow. “Rheave, do you think you can propel an arrow far enough with your power to set one of those pine trees on fire?”
Without hesitation, Rheave snatches an arrow from the quiver he set at his feet. “I’ll try my best.”
He braces himself, his beautiful face set with concentration, the bow stretched as far as it’ll go. With a twang and a crackle, he launches the arrow into the air.
It gleams as it arcs against the night sky. Anyone below might mistake it for a shooting star.
Then it plummets amid the branches in the cluster of three pines just beyond the Darium formation, and the needles flare with flames.
A few of the Darium soldiers I can now see more clearly whirl around at the apparent attack. Most of them are so disciplined they barely flinch.
The fire darts along the branches until all three trees blaze with flickering light.
At first the uniforms on the distant figures look like little more than white stripes on black. But then the troops stride forward to meet the source of the attack, and the soldiers drop the visors on their helms to cover their faces.
A chill ripples through my veins even though I was expecting the sight.
They have images like skulls painted onto their black helmets—gaping mouths and eye sockets so vacant they’re obvious even across all the terrain between us.
I don’t know how much it’s because of the newly visible soldiers and how much because they need to focus their energy on attacking now, but the concealment spell hiding the Order members wavers.
The horde of them, still several hundred strong, charges toward the Darium troops as if emerging from a haze.
The roar of their furious cries reverberates across the landscape loudly enough that it reaches my ears. I shiver, clutching the railing again, watching the collision in the eerie illumination.
More light flashes—magic, I think, bursting here and smashing into a cluster of soldiers there.
Stavros tenses, tapping his forehead, heart, gut, and sternum in the gesture of the divinities.
The Darium soldiers won’t have any idea what’s going on. They thought they were coming to ally with the traitors against Silana’s rulers.
Maybe they figure their attackers are the king’s people who got here first. Maybe they’ll assume the traitors turned on them too.
It doesn’t really matter. They’re already pressing back with flashes of blades, hails of arrows, and a few flares of their own, regular magic.
I spot bodies crumpling on both sides—some among the Order cracking into chunks of clay when they hit the ground.
As the two groups crash into each other, the flares of magic falter. The tingling that touched my skin fades away.
It’s working. The scourge sorcerers’ will must be shaken, their concentration broken by their rattled nerves.
It unnerves even me seeing the Darium force from this distance. I can’t imagine what the visual is like up close.
But the Order’s greater numbers ensure they’re not at a complete disadvantage. I see black-uniformed figures toppling throughout the fray.
The Darium troops will have no choice but to retreat even if they win the battle. They aren’t going to try to take on the rest of the king’s army on their own.
And the Order of the Wild’s march will be cut down before they can do any more damage to our country.
As I watch, my spirits lifting, the Darium soldiers press their opponents farther back. More and more of the Order members bolt away from their comrades into the night—first a few, then several, then dozens abandoning their cause.
Rheave readies his bow with another arrow, guarding our little group from any deserters who head this way. I retrieve my favorite knife from my boot.
Victory won’t feel worth it if any of my men gets hurt in the process.
Stavros scans the battle with an intensity that hums off him, flicking his gaze every couple of seconds to refocus his damaged vision. Alek and Casimir adjust their positions below us, unable to see much from their lower vantage point.
“How does it look?” Casimir asks in a hushed voice just loud enough to reach us.
I smile. “The Darium soldiers are carving their way through the march, but the Order members are taking down quite a few of them in the process. The scourge sorcerers don’t seem to be able to—”
Before I can finish that sentence, a sudden wave of energy slams into the Darium soldiers.
As my pulse hitches, the front lines of the Darium troops topple into each other. Blood splatters red across the white-painted patterns on their uniforms.
More magic thrums through the air. I swallow thickly, a cold sweat breaking over my skin. “The scourge sorcerers have rallied. I don’t know how.”
Stavros’s body goes totally rigid. “Rheave, take out that man, the one in green off to the side of the battleground!” He jerks his arm forward to point.
Rheave’s arrow springs from his bow in the same instant. With the sizzle of his energy, it flies true.
The arrow strikes a figure in a green cloak in the side of the head, and he slumps into a heap at the edge of the fray.
Stavros’s knuckles have whitened where he’s gripping the wooden railing alongside me. “I saw—my gift—that sorcerer was going to unleash a blast of power that’d have killed dozens of the soldiers.”
Even as he speaks, more magic streaks through the battle. There are other sorcerers still ramping up their attacks.
The former general pushes away from the railing. “They’re turning the tide. The Darium soldiers haven’t felled enough of the Order members to ensure the march won’t still attack the king. We need to finish them while they’re distracted.”
My stomach flips over. “What are you going to do?”
“Rally reinforcements.” He motions to Rheave with his prosthetic as he grasps the ladder with his other hand.
“Come with me. We need to open the fort and get the support of our own soldiers. Casimir, you ride with us too—maybe you can use your knack for diplomacy to convince them not to slaughter us for trapping them first.”
He's already clambered down the ladder before he’s finished speaking. The three men dash into the woods to grab the horses and set off at a gallop.
Uneasiness creeps over my skin. I glance down at Alek. “Do you have any idea how many soldiers would be in that fort?”
He shakes his head. What I can make out of his expression in the darkness looks sickly. “Less than a hundred, I’d imagine.”
“Not necessarily enough to turn the tide if the Darium soldiers can’t.”
“No.”
Julita shudders in my head. I suppose Stavros feels he needs to take every possible chance to destroy the threat here. He’s alerted the king—there could be more royal troops on their way.
Maybe. But will even that be enough against the scourge sorcerers at their full power?
What shook them out of their demoralized state? I couldn’t see anything from up here that explained it…
As I peer at the continuing battle, the currents of magic shift against my skin. My gaze veers to the west.
I could swear a significant waft of that energy is coming not from the battlefield but from farther afield.
Is someone helping them from a distance?
I didn’t notice that current of power before. Has a new arrival come to rally their colleagues?
Squinting through the night, I can’t distinguish any figures or even definite structures on the low hills in that direction. But as I stare, a crow circles beneath the stars and then flies to the southwest with a faint caw.
Julita lets out a ragged laugh. I think your godlen is summoning you.
Whether Kosmel is or not, I have to act. Someone’s supporting the scourge sorcerers from over there, where the sight of death in the form of the Darium soldiers isn’t affecting them.
And my sensitivity to their magic is the only means we have of hunting them down.
I waver for a second, but a glance at the carnage on the battlefield has me scrambling down the ladder.
I grasp Alek’s arm. “I think there’s another scourge sorcerer boosting their companions’ power from the farmlands to the west. I’m going to follow the trail of their magic. It might be nothing. I’ll signal you all with my locket if I need backup. If I don’t, focus on the battle here.”
“Ivy—” Alek starts, his eyes wild.
With a pang of regret, I squeeze his arm and let go. “I have to hurry. I’ll see you when this is over.”
Then I take off at a run in the direction the crow flew, hoping I didn’t just tell the scholar my last lie.