Chapter 22 #2
The portcullis was well fortified, its teeth sinking deep into the earth, with a heavy barbican gate behind it.
The dragons launched for it, heaving an enormous iron-tipped battering ram.
We could not allow Sesta to break through the castle walls. Even with Renn, we’d lose the battle if they did.
And so the brutality continued on the edges of the moat, Hawksend’s men falling to northern swords while Stonelay’s sent volleys into armor and shields.
Heavy cauldrons of boiling water were upended onto those who got too close.
I crawled the ramparts, trying to prioritize injuries, closing the eyes of those whom I couldn’t reach in time.
I shivered with death. Its breath knit into my skin.
Yet the gods watched over us, for we had Renn.
When he slaughtered the men carrying the battering ram, when he gutted the warbirds, when he cut through bodies like a scythe through grass, I made myself watch.
I adhered to his wish. I kept the basalt wall up.
But I watched. I felt deeply I needed to witness what this nation cost us. I wanted to understand the agony of war. I refused to be ignorant of Renn’s purpose, or his pain.
I still felt Serravia echoing through him.
After another forced rest, I discovered something that chilled me to my core.
The dragons had built bridges.
Makeshift things, temporary crossings for the castle’s moat. They came from all sides, ready with hooks and ropes, with ladders—some long enough to form bridges on their own.
Commanders and generals bellowed orders to their men.
We could not allow them to breach the wall.
I healed a soldier with an arrow wedged between the plates of his shoulder and breast. As I returned to the carnage, a grappling hook swung up, nearly striking me in the head, and latched on to a crenel’s stones.
Shrieking, I grabbed the metal teeth but could not pull it free. I desperately pushed my hands into my pockets until I found my mother’s knife, then sawed at the rope until the weight of its climber overwhelmed the threads, and he fell.
I took an arrow to the side of my face in retribution. It streaked across my cheekbone, tearing scalp and ear.
I dropped, cradling the wound. The shock of it might have stalled me, but Nicosia had given me so much practice in healing amidst panic, I acted by rote. Worked my way into my lumis to my crenellated wall, mortaring up cracked and falling stones.
When I lifted my head back in reality, my hands slick with my own blood, I glimpsed between merlons something that made my weak heart stutter.
Dan.
Dan.
Had he worn a helmet, I wouldn’t have recognized him.
But mindreaders hadn’t been assigned armor; they weren’t supposed to be at the front, unless we’d grown more desperate than I’d believed.
He hugged the castle wall, sidestepping the inner scarp of the moat, sword in hand.
Coming toward a battle of phoenix and dragon on one of the larger temporary bridges.
I gasped when he leapt into the fray, barely armored, barely armed, barely trained.
“No!” I screamed from the wall, but the symphony of war swallowed up the cry. I clung to the merlons, putting up my forearm to protect my face should another archer target me, feverishly searching the clash for my brother—
A large dragon swung out, arcing his sword, Dan caught on the end of it. The blow had him sailing over the bridge and into the murky waters of the moat.
“No!” I rushed to my feet. A nearby soldier grabbed my arm, trying to force me down, but I twisted from his reach. Narrowly missed another arrow in doing so.
The keening emptiness Ursa left behind groaned and stretched.
I would not lose more family.
I would not lose more family!
Before I knew my own mind, I’d leapt. Off the wall, down into the moat below.
The water slapped, shockingly warm. My knee touched a body, and I grabbed it, then recoiled as I recognized the corpse of a dragon.
Breaking the surface, I swallowed air and dove. Ursa, help me!
A headless phoenix pressed by me. I swam deeper. He’d fallen just—
There.
The lack of armor made him easier to find. The last bubbles of air escaped from his nostrils.
I seized Dan’s hand and dowsed.
His lumis, a great clay sculpture resembling something of sea waves and stalagmites, was drowning, water rushing in from the space’s ethereal walls.
I could not work as swiftly without Ursa, but I’d healed Dan his whole life.
I found the deep cut to his torso immediately and remolded the great clay spike exactly as it should be.
My lungs burned for air.
I blinked back into the depths of the moat. Kicked my legs, dragging us upright, breaking into sunlight—
Dowsed and forced water back, back—
Dan gasped, air flooding into him. Not from healing, but from an arrow.
Another wave of volleys fell. My physical hand pulled free an arrow from beneath Dan’s clavicle as my sorcerous ones mended the skin, the bone having prevented it from burrowing too far—
We submerged. I forced myself wholly into the present and kicked. Dan grabbed my upper arm and pulled us back to the surface and toward the scarp; he’d always been the stronger swimmer.
An arrow struck so close to me, it lodged in my hair.
We’d drifted toward another makeshift bridge holding two dragons. One saw us and pulled his sword—
A great ball of light struck them from behind, sending them flying overhead and into the moat.
A new hand seized my arm, bruising down to the bone. My vision burned with light as Renn hauled both Dan and me out of the water and over the wall, dropping us into the bailey. He’d lost some of his armor; blood seeped from a shallow wound on his arm.
I reached for him to heal it, but his blazing blue-fire eyes met mine as he seethed, “Do not,” and took off into the air again.
War spared no time for pleasantries, even of the unkind variety.
I should not have diverted him from the attack, yet I could not regret diving in after Dan.
My brother lay supine in the bailey, breathing hard. I dowsed into him first, clearing away whispers of disease and infection from the foul moat water before doing the same for myself. I had to pull down part of the basalt wall to infuse my flickering heart-stones—
Renn overwhelmed me. Battle lust, worry, anger, sorrow. I pushed magic into my heart, whispering apologies, before resealing the wall, slipping from the lumis, and turning toward Dan.
I slapped him.
He touched his cheek but didn’t recoil or gawk. Merely said, “I deserve that.”
I ran to the infirmary, leaving him behind.
Brekk took my place, allowing me a moment to change.
The assault lasted four days.
We lost a number of men off our ramparts and in Hawksend’s battalion, men who died too swiftly, or too far away, for me and my healers to reach. On the third day, Renn assaulted Sesta’s rear echelon. If Adoel Nicosia was present, if he perished, we had no word. But Renn targeted the healers.
I understood the reason why. A siege could last forever with both sides regenerating their soldiers, but the dragons had far more healers than we did, and we could not leave the confines of the castle walls. We were at a disadvantage. And so the Sestan healers had to fall.
They were soldiers, too. I reminded myself of this when the news first wound its way to me.
All crafters in Sesta were military trained.
Still, I couldn’t help but picture the face of the woman who had helped Eden and me escape and found myself hoping she was not among the dead.
Even if she were, I’d keep my promise. I’d tell no one of her.
In the mess of Sesta’s hasty retreat, I ached anew for Ursa.
Wished for her reassurances in my thoughts, her words of comfort.
Shaken, I wondered if I should seek out Eden, that we might reflect and mourn together, but however close the princess and I had become, we lacked the depth of relationship I’d shared with my sister, and I feared unburdening myself would burden her further.
For however long my own road of healing, Eden’s was just as long, if not longer.
I felt the basalt wall within my lumis like a physical thing I carried, and it had begun to chafe. I needed Renn. It felt so selfish, wanting him for comfort when the battle had barely settled, but I craved him like a woman starved.
Yet I could not find him.
The healers, including Sarra and Hord, worked endlessly to help residual casualties, many of which were soldiers who’d sustained non-life-threatening injuries, Brien among them.
I stayed to heal bruises, rolled joints, and torn tendons.
Did my part to bear the fatigue that came with use of the craft.
Still, I did not see Renn.
I passed through the bailey, searching for his head of golden hair, and found myself lost among soldiers and staff.
I pulled Beatty aside and asked after the king, but she did not know.
Sten had not seen him, nor had Dan. I asked a random officer, who shook his head.
I might have feared him dead if I could not sense the simmering of his presence through our link.
After walking through the keep once and the bailey twice, I spotted Commander Stonelay and jogged to meet him.
“Have you seen His Majesty?” I asked, weary and out of breath.
He nodded to a passing soldier before his eyes fell upon me, softening in a paternal manner. “He is well, Miss Tallowax.”
“But where is he?”
The commander let out a long breath and rubbed his eyes. He looked ready to fall asleep on his feet. “He often vanishes after a victory. It’s . . . hard on him.”
My heart beat harder against my ribs. I thought of that harrowing pain through our connection when I’d been imprisoned in Rodsfell, and again after Serravia. My bones seemed to hollow out of their own accord.
The basalt wall grew heavier. Ached deeply.
“Where is he?” I asked, softer.