39. Chapter 39 #2
“We have to take down their remaining trebuchets,” he shouted to be heard over the ringing that I was sure persisted in both our ears. There wasn’t time to dwell on those we had lost. Only to try to ensure we didn’t lose any more. “Any chance there might be more monsters on the horizon?”
I closed my eyes and dipped my fingers into the angry tangle of magic around me—it wasn’t difficult as my blood boiled with the senseless loss around me.
Even as I searched, though, I could feel none of the dark tangles that indicated the desert’s monsters nearby.
Either she had abandoned us after the failure of our initial attack, or I simply could not call to them from within the rocky confines of the city’s walls.
I shook my head grimly.
Warrick set his mouth in a hard line. “Then we will have to do this the old-fashioned way.” His voice slowly returned to a more normal volume as our hearing returned to normal.
We looked around, finding many of his surviving men and the remaining civilians in similar positions, taking cover behind the surviving structures and blinking dust from their eyes.
“My men know how to disable their weapons—it’s a simple matter of knowing which ropes to cut—but it is no use if we can’t get close.
They will see us coming from a mile away. ”
I craned my neck up to find the wooden contraption that had targeted us, its long wooden arm pointed up at the sky like an accusing finger.
It and several others decorated the roofs of buildings several levels above us.
I briefly considered summoning lightning or fire to try to destroy the machines from here, but Zoren’s lifeless face burned behind my eyelids.
Too many people were likely trapped in their homes in the city, and I couldn’t risk any more of them falling to the same fate at my hands.
The dark swirl of the desert’s power around me told me that any attack I summoned would be destructive and without finesse.
“I can draw their fire. You take your men up the stairs in that direction and sneak up from behind,” I suggested, nodding my head toward the end of the now destroyed street.
Warrick gave me a hard look, a sharp nod, and then gave his men a signal with his hand.
Quickly, they followed him in darting from cover to cover in the direction of the stairs that would lead them to the next tier of the city.
Meanwhile, I found the closest citizen of Kelvadan still on their feet.
With a hand on her shoulder, I directed, “Try to find your way out of the city. The gate has been broken down, and it is no longer safe within these walls.”
With wide eyes, she tapped her knuckles to her brow in respect, before gathering everyone she could and ushering them in the direction we had come from.
I sent a brief plea to the desert to be merciful to them—I had wrought this bloodshed, not them—but I didn’t watch them go.
Instead, I stood tall and stepped out from behind the rubble that had hidden me.
The soldiers of Viltov would not want to squander the chance to take out one of the two commanders of the enemy army when he offered himself up so freely. I just had to survive until Warrick and his men found their opening.
A bright flame appeared near one of the three remaining trebuchets, and I knew they were preparing to fire again.
I raised my saber in a clear challenge and planted my feet in a wide stance.
I took a deep breath in through my nose, letting the smell of charred flesh and dust on the air feed my power.
The rage of battle filled me easily, bubbling up like a desert spring to boil in my mind.
These were my people, and this land was my home. If they wished for its destruction, they would have to destroy me first, and my flame was not easily quenched.
The high counterweight on the first trebuchet dropped, and the long arm swished through the air.
The familiar whistling noise came again, but this time I was prepared.
I rooted myself to the ground as the flaming missile hurtled toward me.
Just before it bowled into me, I sliced my saber through the air with a shout.
Magic poured off my blade and out of my mouth in hot waves and split the rock clean in two.
The heat of its flaming mass scorched my skin as the two halves hurtled past me on either side, missing me by inches.
Embers landed on my clothes and smoldered, but I didn’t have time to smother them as another projectile followed hot on its heels.
I slashed out at it with a blade of magic, to similar effect.
However, the third trebuchet had already fired, and the next attack was too close. Instead, I threw myself to the side. My shoulder hit the ground hard enough to rattle my teeth as the flame-doused rock crashed into the spot I had been half a breath earlier.
My eyes watered with the sensation, but I didn’t have time to recover. Instead, I dived into the burning pain, letting it feed my magic. It pulled me into the horribly knotted and twisted magical landscape around me, and I let it.
I sprang to my feet unnaturally fast, pulling on the threads around me to hasten my movements, but the first of the three trebuchets was already reloading. In this tight landscape of rubble and collapsed walls, I had no more room to maneuver.
I shoved the blade of my saber between my teeth before throwing myself at the wall of the closest still-standing building and flinging myself up it.
I climbed quickly, thankful for countless nights scaling the palace walls in the dark to see Keera, and scrabbled to my feet on the top and grabbed my sword again.
Here, I was an unmistakable target, but I was far from trapped.
As the foreboding whooshing filled the air again, I set off at a sprint.
Rock exploded behind me as the projectile landed, spraying my back with debris.
I threw my arms up to shield my head, but I didn’t stop running.
The edge of the roof loomed, but I launched myself into the air with a tug on the fibers of magic around me, landing on the next roof over with a crouch.
I forced the trebuchets to track my movement, firing rock after rock as I jumped from roof to roof. My breath came in sharp pants and sweat stung my eyes. Blood dripped down from my hairline where a jagged piece of debris had cut me, trailing hot and sticky across my face.
As I tried to blink to clear my stinging eyes, the edge of my boot hit a lip in the edge of a cracked roof.
My knee hit the ground hard enough to make me bite my tongue and copper filled my mouth.
The arms of one of the machines began to fly forward, as I scrabbled to my feet.
I had lost my momentum though, and wouldn’t make the leap to the next building, so I raised my sword and gritted my teeth.
Shouts and a creaking filled the air. Before the flaming rock could hurtle toward me, the trebuchet collapsed under its own weight and the intended missile tumbled impotently to the ground.
Chaos broke out in the small groups of soldiers manning the war machines, but it was too late.
Sun glinted off axe blades, and the fearsome cries of Warrick’s men drifted over the distance between us.
The chaos spread like brushfire, and in a matter of moments, the machines of war were reduced to useless constructions of wooden beams and rope. I took a long breath of relief before coughing around the dust in my throat.
The moment of victory did not last long, though, as the tether at the base of my skull pulled so tight that it nearly made my eyes water. I needed to meet Keera at the palace gates, and there was no time to waste.