Chapter Sixty-Four
Xander moved into motion immediately. “There are riders on the back of those earth dragons controlling them—shoot at them!”
Then he turned to Thrax. “Take the Thracian contingent and go open the western gate. Lead them into the labyrinth. We need to siphon off some of these soldiers.”
Basileia stood next to her brother. “I’ll come with you.” Thrax nodded and they both ran off.
“Demaratus and Haemon?” Xander said. “I need you and the Daemonians and Locrians to go down to the docks. There are going to be Ilionian sailors and marines who will be stranded outside the wall. Provide them with safe passage.”
“Finally!” Demaratus grunted.
I was worried about my brother’s safety. I grabbed his arm. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Lia, if I am going to be the king, I have to fight alongside my soldiers. You understand that, don’t you?” he asked. Physically he looked so much better, but it hadn’t been too long ago that he could barely stand.
But I did understand that he needed to do this. I nodded and said, “Make sure you come back to us.”
He kissed me quickly on the forehead and said, “I will.” Then he went to join Demaratus and Antiope.
I wondered if this was how Xander felt whenever I went off to fight someone. My husband hadn’t said anything to me this morning about not fighting today. Was it because he knew better or because he trusted me more?
A Carian catapult launched a large boulder but it wasn’t aimed at the wall.
It had been directed at the palace. They knew the Ilionian citizens were down there. They were trying to kill them.
“We have to stop those catapults!” Xander yelled. “Fire!”
Nothing worked. No matter how many flaming arrows and javelins were tossed their way, they didn’t catch fire. And when someone shot one of the operators, another soldier ran over to take his place.
Zalira held on to Stephanos and called up her aspect. She used lightning, making it fork in massive waves when it hit the ground so that it could do more damage. She struck the towers and catapults repeatedly, but nothing happened. They still didn’t light.
She went until she passed out, trying desperately to help. Stephanos held on to her.
Nothing seemed to be touching the earth dragons.
They kept hitting the wall, causing everything around us to shake continually.
The archers managed to hit some of the riders, and those dragons stopped their work.
One of them even seemed to go mad and went running through the Carian army, trampling people as it did.
“Keep aiming for the riders!” Xander shouted.
It again felt like everything was happening too slow and too fast all at once. We were running out of time. The Carian navy had hemmed in the Ilionians and fired repeatedly on them with stones and arrows.
Thrax had opened the western gate, and Carians poured inside. Even with the traps in the labyrinth, eventually their numbers would overwhelm us.
And these dragons were going to shake the ground out from underneath us.
A Carian catapult launched again, and this time it nearly hit the palace.
“Climbers!” someone called out, and I rushed to the door of the tower to see Carians on siege ladders. I ran over to kick one away, causing all the men on it to fall to the earth below us.
Everyone who had been in the tower came out to help fight off the invaders, to push their ladders away so that they couldn’t use them. The archers joined us, firing like mad at everyone at the base of the wall.
This . . . this was too much. They were going to destroy us. We were going to be overrun.
Then Luna reappeared.
What do you need Dea’s dragons to do?
I didn’t know what she was talking about. Was this some kind of negotiation? “I need them to burn the towers, catapults, and siege engines. I also need them to destroy the Carian ships. And to get rid of Arion’s earth dragons. What is—”
I was cut off by the sound of a dragon roar.
Coming from above my head.
It was an air dragon. Flying into battle, carrying a fire dragon. Flames erupted from the fire dragon, catching the nearest catapult on fire. The Carians began to scramble, running away.
Then there was another air dragon. And another. And another.
Dozens.
Some carried fire dragons that they used as weapons, to burn everything the Carians had constructed. Other air dragons swooped down and picked up the earth dragons with their claws, carrying them over to the ocean.
I looked in that direction and, in shock, realized that the water dragon I had seen on the Nikos when I’d traveled to Ilion had been a baby. These dragons were a hundred times larger.
They came up out of the ocean by the dozens and were so massive. They began destroying Carian ships, easily tearing them apart. When the first air dragon dropped an earth dragon, a water dragon opened its massive jaws wide to catch it and then pulled it down into the sea.
I turned back to see an air dragon pick up a catapult, fly to a great height, and then drop it on top of the Carian army.
Many of the Carians turned and fled. This wasn’t an orderly retreat—they were utterly terrified by the destruction the dragons were creating. Their earth dragons were either taken and dropped into the ocean or they had run off on their own.
They had no way to fight Dea’s dragons, no way to stop what they were doing.
Except for Artemisia. A fire dragon raced along the ground, shooting flames as it went. Artemisia rode up on a horse and used her hammer on the dragon, knocking it off its feet.
When it was down, she jumped off her horse and ran over to crush the fire dragon’s skull. I gasped in horror, the fury and desire for vengeance rising up inside me.
She had to be stopped. And I knew deep in my gut that I had to do it. I couldn’t send a dragon after her—they were sacred to the goddess. I wouldn’t risk her doing more damage to them.
Not only that, but if an air dragon picked her up and dropped her somewhere in the ocean, I would risk losing the eye of the goddess, which was still embedded in her hammer.
Artemisia was using her red banner with a terawolf on it to rally her troops.
Her killing the fire dragon seemed to encourage them, and they flocked to her.
She got back up on her horse and led a large group of cavalry over to the western entrance.
Who knew what she would do if she got inside the city?
“She’s doing too much damage with that hammer,” I said to Xander. “I’m going to confront her.”
“I’m worried about her doing that kind of damage to your head.”
“She won’t. I will stop her.” I had a glimmer of a plan and had to hope that it would work. I didn’t know what else to do.
“Then I’m coming with you,” he said.
I nodded. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I picked up Luna and then grabbed his hand. I closed my eyes and had Luna transport us to the wall near the western gate.
“Artemisia!” I called out. “Come and fight me, you coward! I’ll be by the northern gate!”
She came to a halt when she saw me. She directed her riders to throw spears at us, but I used Luna to take us outside the northern gate. My poor husband looked ill from being transported twice, but he shook it off.
There was a group of soldiers just east of us that had not been there before.
I saw Dolion with them.
Turning on the goddess’s sword, I waited for their attack.
But it didn’t come. Dolion only nodded in our direction and led his men away from the city.
Xander had grabbed a spear from the ground and held it in his right hand.
“You’re not going to throw that at him?” I asked.
“He saved your life by letting you leave the Carian camp. I grant him his life in return. But we are now even.”
She’s coming.
Luna’s warning was unnecessary. I could see the horses riding hard toward us.
And I found myself thinking of Maia. Of one of the last things she had said to me when she was still alive.
About the acorn that had to be pushed down deep in the darkness, exposed to the elements, to try and root itself so that it could burst out in an attempt to become something new. Something better.
I had survived the darkness. I had been exposed to the elements. I had rooted myself deep in my enemy’s nation.
Now I had to become something new to save them all.
“That’s a lot of soldiers,” I said to Xander.
He shrugged and then drank from his waterskin, which contained the fountain water. “You take Artemisia. I’ll handle the rest.”
“You can’t fight them all by yourself!”
“To save you? Yes, I can. I already lost you once. I will never allow it to happen again. I will kill anyone who touches you.”
“I know.” Part of me wanted to look into his eyes, to make sure that I had that memory of him in case the worst happened, but I refused to let myself go to that place.
We had to survive. I wouldn’t consider any other possibility.
“Stay alive,” he told me. “I don’t want to have to make good on my threats to fight the goddess to have you returned to me again.”
I smiled at him, my heart beating quickly. “You stay alive, too. I love you.”
“And I love you.” He kissed me long and hard and then we turned to face our enemies.
Artemisia and her men drew ever closer.
My pulse pounded, my breaths coming quicker. I drank two of Io’s fortification potions and Xander did the same. I ordered myself to calm down. I knew what I had to do.
Knew what I had to embrace.
It was time for me to do what I had been born to do.