Chapter 69 Aldric
Chapter sixty-nine
Aldric
The cove was no longer a camp. It was a churning, screaming cauldron of violence.
The rising light of dawn caught on steel as his kirei’s northern forces and Arathians collided in a chaotic tide. The air tasted of copper, salt spray, and the wet ash of the burning tents. It coated Aldric’s throat like soot, stinging his lungs with every ragged breath.
He stumbled, bare feet sliding on the slick stones as he lurched toward the mouth of the cove. Toward the light. Toward the promise of Sera waiting on the ridge just beyond. That was where his men had said she would be.
But when they finally burst out into the valley, his heart stopped.
The ridge was empty.
“Where is she?” Aldric barked, pointing a trembling hand toward the high hill overlooking the narrow pass.
Calix nocked an arrow, sparing only a quick glance for the ridge before he fired back into the cove. An Arathian dropped mid-sprint fifty yards away. “Not there, it seems.”
Aldric snarled, the sound ripping from his chest. “Then where?”
His gaze raked across both hills framing the pass, desperate for a flash of chestnut hair. But there was nothing. Not even a glimpse of Alyx.
“She must have already snapped the trap, boss,” Rakon rumbled, swinging his warhammer to crush the skull of a stray Arathian soldier who strayed too close to their cluster.
Aldric halted. The breath left him. Trap? “What trap?”
Leif tipped his head toward the pass. “Plan was to bait them. Lead the witch down to Cyneric to give you a chance to escape.”
Though the battle raged on deeper in the cove, the world near him still went still, narrowing down until there was only the roar of his blood in his ears. The staccato thrum of his heart.
She hadn’t retreated. She had surrendered the high ground. She had used herself as bait to draw the witch away.
Away from him.
“I need a horse!” Aldric shouted, the sharp words ringing out over the clash of steel, the snarl of varhounds in the near distance. Lunging forward, he slashed at a retreating Arathian’s leg with Rakon’s borrowed blade.
“Working on it!” Leif called back.
The oldest Son darted into the fray without a backward glance.
Rakon shifted closer—a living wall of muscle—his hammer swinging in rhythmic, deadly arcs that kept the enemy at bay. Calix stayed at Aldric’s shoulder, his bow singing a deadly rhythm, dropping any foe that made it past the large man.
Aldric stood between them, feeling useless. His limbs felt made of water, drained by the sickness that had finally passed only to leave him hollowed out and trembling. Without his glaive, without his armor, he felt small. Vulnerable.
And he hated it.
“Got one!” Leif’s voice cut through the chaos.
The older man emerged from the smoke, dragging a panicked destrier by the bridle. The beast’s eyes were wide with terror, foaming at the bit, but Leif held tight until Calix pried the reins from his grasp.
“I’m going,” his half-Kunishi Son growled, already vaulting into the saddle with fluid grace. He controlled the skittish animal with his knees and reached down, extending a forearm. “Up. Now.”
Aldric didn’t waste breath on pride. He gripped Calix’s vambrace and gritted his teeth against the agony in his weary joints as his Son hauled him up, settling him behind the pommel of the saddle.
Gathering the reins in his fists, Aldric kicked the horse into motion. The beast surged forward, hooves thundering against the hard-packed earth.
It would have been smarter to scale the hill itself, to ride along the crest of the ridge and scout the pass from above. But he didn’t have time for smart.
Riding at a hard gallop, they plunged into the ravine.
The wind whipped at Aldric’s face, stinging his eyes, stripping the breath from his lungs. Behind him, the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of Calix’s bow continued to sing as the archer picked off soldiers lunging from the shadows.
An arrow whizzed past Aldric’s ear, almost close enough to nick skin. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink.
He just rode.
But his body was failing him. The burst of adrenaline from the cove was already fading, leaving behind a cold, gray exhaustion. His vision narrowed. The horse’s gait jarred his bones, threatening to shake him loose.
Not now, he pleaded silently. Not yet.
He leaned forward, driving the horse onward, the sun pendant beneath his shirt thumping against his sternum with each stride. He just needed a little more time.
Lord, Aldric prayed, the words forming awkwardly in the quiet sanctuary of his mind. Please…give me the strength to find my wife. Give me the strength to save her.
Never before had the Lord answered any of his prayers.
But He certainly answered this one.
The answer was instantaneous. It wasn’t a voice. It was an anchor.
Deep in his chest, something snapped taut—a hook engaging in the dark, pulling tight across the distance. A tether forged of something stronger than steel.
The air left his lungs in a rush. The connection hummed, vibrating through his marrow, warmer than the sun.
He felt her.
Worry. Determination. Love. It flooded down the bond, washing away the fatigue, burning out the cold exhaustion blanketing his limbs.
Strength surged into him. Aldric gasped, sitting bolt upright in the saddle, his single eye snapping wide. He didn’t need to wonder where she was. He didn’t need to guess.
He simply knew.
The smell hit him first as they followed the subtle turn through the pass, the horse’s hooves scrambling for purchase on the loose rocks. A smell he knew—the metallic tang of witchfire. And then he saw it: smoke.
Aldric peeled back his lips in a snarl and drove the horse harder, the tether in his chest pulling him onward, reeling him in.
Arrows rained down from the eastern ridge, clattering against the stones around them. Calix swore, shifting forward as if to shield him with his own body.
But Aldric ignored the deadly sleet.
They burst into a clearing and his heart stopped.
The pass widened here, a natural arena of grass and stone. And it was full.
A dozen warriors poured down the far slope—wild northmen clad in furs. Leading them was a monster of a man wearing a leather varhound mask, a massive axe in his grip.
But Aldric didn’t look at them.
His gaze locked on the figure in the center of the clearing, framed by a wall of witchfire blazing behind her, cutting off the exit to the pass. At the massive black warhorse she rode—his warhorse, Mourn. And riding him…
Seraphina. His Seraphina.
The rising sun glinted off of her plate armor. Her chestnut hair streamed loose behind her like a banner of war. She looked magnificent, sitting there atop his destrier, a sword pressed against the throat of the witch who had taken him captive.
Like a warrior queen forged from steel and fury.
“Sera!” The name tore from his throat.
She turned her head at his voice. For a heartbeat, their eyes met across the chaos. He saw the shock register on her face, followed by a radiant, heartbreaking joy. In that moment, the warmth in his chest flared hotter.
But his own joy turned to ash when, from his current vantage, he saw what his kirei could not. Behind her, emerging from the smoke belched by the wall of flame, was a second figure. Another woman in red.
A second witch.
The woman didn’t hold a weapon. She merely inhaled.
The air around her warped, sucked into her lungs with a terrifying hiss. Her eyes glowed with a sickly, molten gold. Aldric felt the danger before he saw the flame. It was a pressure in the air, a scream of warning in his blood. The witch was aiming at Sera’s exposed back.
Panic, cold and absolute, seized him.
Aldric didn’t think. He didn’t plan. He didn’t pray.
“Jump!” he roared.
He threw his elbow back, striking Calix hard enough to dislodge him. As the weight lifted from the saddle, Aldric slammed his heels into the destrier’s flanks.
The witch’s chest expanded to its limit. She opened her mouth.
Aldric rode harder, driving his horse into the gap between his wife and the monster, arms spread wide.
Just as the world turned red.
Just as a column of roaring, liquid fire erupted toward him.