Chapter Sixty-Three
Xander had ordered the men to stay off the wall—they were only to keep watch from the towers, which were enclosed except for narrow slits.
I was with my adelphia, my husband, and his military leaders in the tower near the north gate early in the morning. The Carian army spread out in front of Troas. We could see the supply train and the earth dragons off in the distance, traveling toward us.
It was meant to be a show of force. Meant to intimidate, to let us know that our destruction was about an hour away.
Io said quietly, “We are the olive tree. We can burn, be cut down, frozen, utterly ravaged, but we will rise again.”
I knew that was why the olive tree was the symbol of Ilion, but I hoped we were not about to face all that.
The Carians were busy cutting down trees in the southern forest and using them to bridge the trench that Suri had created.
And every time they put down the wood to cross, Suri would expand the trench far enough to make the bridge collapse.
She had done this several times and we were all getting tired. Antiope was with us, helping us. She had tried out several different aspects, and to no one’s surprise, her aspect was fury as well. She passed out after invoking it and had been angry about it when she’d woken up.
“I have spent enough time sleeping!”
Now she had Io’s potions on her belt and was ready for a fight.
Suri turned off her aspect and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
There were Carian riders on horses who had large packs tied to their mounts’ sides. The riders stabbed the packs with a knife and the red dirt went flying out. They were covering the entire area outside the wall with the soil, and most managed to evade the archers when they got close.
“Hitting a moving target is difficult for some people,” Antiope remarked in a tone that made me think she wouldn’t have missed if she’d had a bow and arrow.
Xander turned to Zalira. “I need rain to muddy the ground. But it has to be off by the time the towers and siege engines arrive. I don’t want that wood soaked—it’ll make it impossible to catch them on fire.
” He had told me earlier that the towers would also be covered in rawhide to make them fireproof. If the wood was wet as well . . .
Demaratus elbowed me, which, again, was so unlike him that I didn’t quite know what to do.
“You were right. I do like her,” he told me in a low voice.
“Yes, I noticed that yesterday, when you were kissing her,” I teased, enjoying his slight embarrassment.
We watched the Carian army together and I knew that Demaratus was itching for a fight.
“Do you still think that cutting off the head of the snake would be effective here? If I capture or kill Artemisia, would that be enough to stop the assault?”
“It might. It would depend on how superstitious the Carians are.”
“What do you mean?”
“See there?” He pointed toward the back of the army and we saw a group leaving, heading south.
Deserters? Or were they moving into a different position to attack?
“The rain from your friend is scaring some of them. They’re leaving. If you took out their leader, they might see it as some kind of omen. A Daemonian wouldn’t, but these are not Daemonians.”
“Artemisia and I did take an oath on our gods that if I killed her, the army would leave.” I didn’t know if that would work, and it seemed ridiculous to pin all my hopes on it. Especially because I wasn’t actually sure that I would be able to strike Artemisia down.
She certainly deserved it. And it would help save and protect others.
But I was so viscerally angry with her that I wasn’t certain it would be a good idea. It still felt like a thin line that I could easily cross. I didn’t want to go down a dark path again.
Stephanos was powering Zalira and she didn’t even look tired. The rain was constant, steady, and it did turn the dirt to mud.
It would be so difficult for them to drag their wheeled war instruments through the muck.
“What is your . . .” Demaratus waved his right hand toward Zalira. “Thing you can do?”
“The same aspect as Antiope. Fury. Which means I can fight really well.”
He gave me a look of approval, as if this pleased him, but then the corners of his mouth turned down. “That doesn’t seem right for someone who is supposed to be a prophesied savior.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have an aspect that tires you and drains you. From a military standpoint, that is a bad thing. If I were the goddess, I would give you an ability that was sustainable.”
His words made me think. I already had two powers that I could invoke that didn’t tire me out.
What if I had another?
Rokh came into the tower, out of breath. He had been grounded because of Dolion’s threat and was only delivering messages inside the city. “We need Suri. Something is happening in the cavern.”
Io asked, “What’s going on?”
“Some of the city’s engineers think that Erisa releasing the water did some damage to the main cavern. There are cracks forming and some rocks falling.”
If that cavern collapsed, it would kill every innocent person in Troas. It had to take priority.
Xander echoed what I was thinking. “The structural integrity of the cavern is of the utmost importance.”
“I’m going with Suri,” Io said.
“Are you sure?” I asked her. We could use her here.
“I can power Suri and help her fix it. And going down there would allow me to join the healers. I think I would prefer to spend this fight saving people rather than harming them.”
She was herself again. That made me happy. I hugged her tightly. “Be safe.”
“You too. I will see you when this is all done.”
“Yes, you will,” I promised her.
Suri and Io left with Rokh. Ahyana turned her aspect on and stayed quiet for a few minutes. She turned it off and announced, “They’re building a tunnel in the trench just outside the northern gate. I took care of it.”
“How?” I asked.
“Angry bees.”
Time somehow seemed to pass both slowly and quickly.
Demaratus had remarked that we were killing time until it was killing time.
There wasn’t anything we could do that we weren’t already doing.
The troops were ready. The catapults and ballistae prepared.
The ammunition piled up. Fires had been set up to boil oil, and torches were available to light the flammable arrows.
On our way to the wall earlier, Xander had told me that the labyrinth had also been made ready.
“What do you mean?”
“Why would you build a labyrinth unless you meant to use it to fight off invaders?”
“I thought it was just a maze to confuse them. So that they wouldn’t know where to go,” I said.
“No. There are all kinds of traps in there that can be sprung. Spikes, pits, fire. Entrances where doors can be suddenly dropped to contain attackers. Archers and shield bearers will line the tops of the walls and rain down destruction on everyone below them.”
The labyrinth was another fail-safe—if the Carians managed to break down a gate or a wall, the Ilionians could withdraw and lead them into death traps.
“I’m glad none of that was used on me,” I said.
“I wouldn’t have let them,” he responded.
The supply train drew ever closer.
“That’s enough rain,” Xander said, and Zalira turned off her aspect and collapsed into Stephanos’s arms.
Thankfully, the storm disappeared and didn’t stick around, like some of her earlier ones had. But the ground was incredibly muddy. They would have a difficult time maneuvering in it.
But the dragons were so massive. Would the mud affect them? I didn’t think so. If they reached the walls, they would knock them down.
“It is fighters who make a city. Not walls,” Demaratus said, making me realize I must have spoken my concern out loud.
The supply train made it through the mud because so many Carians went to help push and pull to move things into position.
They began constructing their towers and catapults, and Xander directed the archers to prepare their flame arrows.
But as soon as they did, a massive rainstorm appeared.
And it was only over the Carian army.
“Zalira?” I asked.
“It’s not me,” she said, her mouth open.
“Arion is an earth god,” Ahyana said. “It seems that he has aspects similar to his mother.”
The Carians had someone who could also control storms. They hadn’t revealed it beforehand because they were waiting for this moment. They had let Zalira rain on them earlier, knowing that it would do her no good now.
The rain absolutely soaked the wood of the towers and siege engines.
They would be impossible to light up.
And destroying them with fire was our only option. Otherwise they would use them to batter our walls down and get their soldiers inside Troas.
“Can you stop it?” I asked her.
“Dea Maimaktes,” she said, closing her eyes. She held her hands out in front of her but then dropped them, turning off her aspect. “No. I can’t do anything to it. I can’t even sense it. It’s like it’s coming from a totally different source.”
The construction continued and everything was coming together so quickly.
Ahyana went over to a window and turned to smile at me. “Do you know what they call a flock of ravens?”
“What?”
“An unkindness.”
She called up her aspect and I heard the ravens before I saw them. There was an entire legion of them and they were dive-bombing and harassing the Carian soldiers. They managed to stall the construction as the soldiers tried to fight back or run away from them.
When Ahyana finally turned her power off, the ravens flew away. I saw another small group detach from the main Carian body and head south. And I was again left wondering if they were leaving or moving into a different position.
“I hate that all I can do is harry and delay them. I wish I could call down lightning like Zalira,” Ahyana said.
Her sister shook her head. “I can only do it for so long, and it essentially turns into harassment, too. It’s not enough to stop them.”
The Carians finished their building and started moving things into position, despite the mud. The rain suddenly stopped and the sun was bright overhead.
Then one of the earth dragons began to roar, and the others took up the call. The stone under my feet rattled from the sound.
“What are they doing?” Zalira asked.
“It’s a signal,” Demaratus said. “Look!”
He pointed to the south, near the docks, and the entire ocean seemed to be covered in Carian ships. They had stayed out of sight until the dragon’s roar and were heading straight toward the Ilionian navy.
“They’ll be slaughtered,” I said aghast. They were so outnumbered.
And the Carian navy was cutting off our one escape route. If things got bad, Xander had talked about trying to save people by putting them onto ships and leaving.
That wouldn’t be possible now.
At the western gate, they had unveiled a battering ram that had a metal roof shielding it, so that it wouldn’t catch fire and nothing could be dropped on the men holding it.
Then the dragons started toward the northern gate, where we were.
“Release the arrows!” Xander called out.
The archers immediately responded, and thousands of arrows struck the dragons and the towers.
Neither one was affected by the flames. It seemed as if nothing could pierce the dragons’ scales.
The earth dragons moved into position and began battering the wall, not even bothering with the gate. They were going to bring the whole thing down.
“How are we supposed to set soaking-wet towers on fire?” Stephanos asked, throwing spear after spear at the men pushing the tower closer.
Dragon flame.
Luna suddenly appeared at my feet. I hadn’t seen her since she had brought me back to Xander. “Where have you been?” I asked. “And what did you just say?”
Resting. I said dragon flame. Call the dragons.
“What?”
Call the dragons.
She meant for me to use the goddess’s dragon aspect. I remembered learning about it at the temple and how incredible it had sounded. Was it possible? There was only one way to find out.
“Dea Drakones,” I said, feeling the power surge into me, but it wasn’t like my fury aspect. This one didn’t take anything from me.
Luna smiled at me and then disappeared.