Chapter 28

The mercenaries made a few half-hearted attempts overnight to burn down the thorn wall—more to keep the defenders on alert than anything else, Corec suspected—but the archers were able to scare them off each time, and the steady rain Sarette summoned had protected the hedgerow from the thrown torches. Corec managed to get a few hours of sleep up on the wall-walk, propped against the parapet.

Once the sun came up, the knights and mercenaries assembled outside their camp, splitting into groups but then waiting as runners sprinted back and forth delivering messages. Squads of knights with heavy shields took positions around a group carrying a battering ram, while archer companies formed, split apart, then rearranged themselves in different locations. None of the knights were mounted except for those carrying orders—a horseback charge would be pointless here.

Siege weapon crews waited at a safe range, leaving their ballistae and catapults temptingly undefended, but Corec didn’t give the signal. Not yet. The best way to save lives—including their opponents’ lives—was to overwhelm them quickly rather than wearing them down bit by bit.

“Does it always take this long?” Treya asked. She, Sarette, and Shavala were standing nearby, waiting for their part in the plan.

“I don’t see any drums,” Corec said. “Barat knows Kevik’s here, so he’s using regular messengers instead. Otherwise we would know every order he gave.”

But then, finally, the knights started to move, led by the shield formation surrounding the battering ram. They advanced slowly, seemingly expecting an attack or a trap at any moment, but Corec allowed them to reach the wooden gate at the entrance to the village. They would need to get close for Treya to do her work.

The ram made short work of the flimsy gate, knocking it down in a single hit and opening up the only entrance through the thorn wall.

“They could have just opened it,” Corec mentioned. “I didn’t lock it.”

Treya spared him a weak smile for the quip, but her attention was focused on the knights as the shield formation once again took point. The men on the edges held their shields out in a wall to the front and sides, while those in the center held them over their heads, forming a shell like a turtle.

The tactic would work well against arrows and crossbow bolts, but it was a poor choice to use against mages unless the formation was protected from spells. Barat would certainly have assigned the blessed priests to defend the knights from magical attack ... and that meant they wouldn’t be anywhere near Corec’s actual target.

Corec circled his left hand twice above his head, and the horn signaler on the lookout tower sounded the first attack.

Archers and crossbowmen on the northeast and northwest curtain walls loosed their volley. They were joined by the infantry, whose skills weren’t yet needed for close-up work. The missiles stuck into shields or deflected off armor, just enough to tell the knights the battle had started. A single catapult launched a scattering of pebbles and dirt clods, intended to startle rather than kill.

The shield formation sped up, clearing the gate. Knights with crossbows streamed in behind them, then spread out across the village, taking cover behind and within buildings. They loosed their own bolts, but most were blocked by Ellerie’s arrow shield, coming to a halt with a flickering flash of light, then dropping to the ground without enough force to kill.

Only the few bolts that made it through the crenels were unaffected—the arrow shield worked both ways, and Corec’s forces need openings so they could return fire.

He gave another signal and the horn sounded again. This time his archers were more careful with their aim, targeting the crossbowmen to keep them pinned down.

“They’re in range,” Treya said. Half of the knights had made it through the gate.

“Do it,” Corec told her.

She peered through a crenel, then ducked back behind cover, closing her eyes to concentrate. In the past, she’d knocked the red-eyes unconscious as a group, then healed them of the compulsion spell one by one. That wouldn’t work here—the healed knights would have to be awake if they were going to tell the others about what had happened to them. A bunch of men passing out all at once would only panic the rest, who would assume they were under some sort of magical assault.

There were no visual indicators to show what she was doing, and at first, nothing seemed to happen, but then Corec started to see clues that she was having an effect. A knight stepped out of the shield wall, clutching at his head. A crossbowman lowered his weapon, appearing confused. Catching sight of the battle, he took aim again before shaking his head and slowly backing away. He disappeared behind Ezra’s new shop.

But it wasn’t going fast enough.

Then came the call they’d been waiting for. “They’re pulling down the thorn wall!” someone shouted.

The mercenaries, far more numerous than the knights, had spread out to the north and west, slogging through the mud at the base of the hill. Rather than trying to burn down the prickly hedges, they’d sent a dozen groups of four men each, spaced at twenty-foot intervals, each group carrying a chain with a hook on the end. After tossing the hook over the hedge, the men all grabbed onto the chain and pulled back, trying to tear down the thorn wall so they could scramble across it.

It was time.

Corec turned to Sarette and Shavala. “Now!”

Fire had always come easily to Shavala, ever since old Arvillin had taught her to call it.

It was the only magic she used on a daily basis—to light a campfire if nothing else. It was the first magic she’d ever used for killing. She’d preserved life with it as well, nurturing its warmth through the worst of a mountain blizzard.

Shavala had always hated senseless killing. She’d sent Risingwind away with Zhailai, not wanting him to see the violence that was about to unfold. She’d sent the staff too, Leena having taken it two days earlier. The staff wouldn’t be of any use in battle, and Zhailai would keep it safe for the dorvasta people in case the worst occurred.

Corec had tried to resolve the conflict peacefully. He’d given their opponents a chance to back down. Shavala hated killing, but sometimes she was left with no other choice.

Fire had always come easily, and with Risingwind and the staff gone, there was nothing left to hold her back from using her true strength.

Summoning all the power she had at her disposal, she called down the firestorms.

Tornadoes of wind and flame incinerated the nearest mercenary ranks, tearing through the soldiers at the thorn wall and then spreading to the squads preparing to take advantage of the breaches. Thunder clouds roiled in the sky as Sarette flew over the flames, launching her own attack. A massive white beam destroyed a ballista and its crew, signaling Ellerie’s entrance into the battle.

With a twist of her fingers, Shavala directed the firestorm to swallow a group of archers before they could take aim at Sarette.

Fire destroyed ... but it also cleaned out old, dead wood, allowing new life to thrive in its place.

Shavala chose to believe that would be true today.

Sarette had spent so much time in the air over the past months, flying had become second nature. Her first targets for the day were the siege weapons facing the west side of the village. She swooped down out of the clouds in a curving path, blasting the catapults and ballistae one after another. Some of the crews managed to get away in time, and those groups she allowed to flee.

She returned to the clouds to recharge and scout the action below. Ellerie was busy eliminating the siege weapons along the north side, so Sarette focused her attention on the remaining mercenary units. Many of the soldiers had frozen in shock at the wide swathes of flame that had consumed their compatriots, but a few men kept their heads. They rallied their fellows and began directing them around the walls of fire, their progress slow due to the heavy mud that had been accumulating below the hill.

Sarette darted down, loosing bursts of lightning at any groups that tried to breach the thorn wall. She didn’t hold anything back—Corec had insisted they needed to show overwhelming force right from the outset if their plan was going to work.

No defensive spells blocked her attacks. The war priests were likely protecting the main body of the knights, which left the mercenaries defenseless against magic.

The bulk of their army still lived, but no one seemed to have any idea what to do next. Sarette dove straight for the largest group, pulling wind, hail, and lightning with her. She landed with a thundering boom right in the center, the concussive force of her strike throwing everyone around her thirty feet away.

A company of archers mastered their fear and surprise well enough to try to target her, but Shavala’s whirlwinds of flame bulged outward to consume them before they could loose their arrows.

That was enough for the mercenaries. Whether it was due to their rapid losses or simply their fear of facing magic, they broke, scattering and fleeing back to the west.

Snake watched the battle from afar, ensconced within his hidden stronghold in the totemic realm.

Regardless of which side triumphed, he would come out ahead, yet it seemed unlikely that any wardens would die this day. Rusol wasn’t even present. His early ascension to the throne, which Snake hadn’t seen in any visions of the future, had greatly limited the man’s usefulness as a warden-hunter. A waste of a priestly blessing.

Snake’s patience would be tested once again, but he’d been plotting for millennia. A few more decades—or centuries—would matter little.

He’d first come up with his plan after the old wardens’ attempt to subvert the Collision for their own use. When the wardens ascended and their physical bodies died, they’d lost the part of themselves that linked them to their own world, thus eliminating the protections they’d unknowingly been providing. The Collision had existed long before the wardens, but they were the first to attempt to exploit it. Now that the mortals knew of its existence, it had to be safeguarded—or so Wolf and Raven had explained.

By the time Snake realized the implications, it was too late. His brothers had taken up position within the physical manifestation of the Collision itself, reinforcing the bonds that held the worlds together.

Snake himself had stayed only long enough to learn about the weaknesses inherent in those bonds, but his brothers remained there for centuries, rarely venturing outside until two more wardens had been chosen. By then, the mortals had learned to fawn over their false new gods. They remembered Snake’s brothers only as old stories, and seldom remembered Snake at all.

He’d begun his plotting in secret. That was his nature, after all, and if his brothers had learned of his intent, they would have attempted to stop him.

He couldn’t succeed on his own, though, which meant recruiting help. He had only limited ability to affect events in the mortal world, and if he was going to kill wardens without raising suspicion, he would need weapons. Yet he’d had little understanding of how the mortal mind operated, and his early efforts had failed. Then by chance, while spying on the so-called new gods, he’d discovered how to bless priests with totemic magic. Power turned out to be the one currency he could offer.

Wolf had come closest to unraveling the plan, stumbling upon a ceremony led by one of Snake’s priests. Snake had been forced to kill him—the first time any of the brothers had committed violence upon one another.

Wolf’s sudden, unexplained disappearance had caused enough confusion among the siblings to provide Snake with an unexpected opportunity. He’d hunted down Deer next—always a foolish creature—and then Eagle, who’d proven a more difficult foe. With the remaining brothers coming to accept that Owl wasn’t the only of their kind to face an ending, Snake had vanished as well, pretending to be one of the fallen.

Yet it was slow work to build up support in secret, and whenever a group of his followers was discovered, they were destroyed, exiled, or ostracized. He’d had some success worming his way into the mind of a demon lord by the name of Saristix, who’d gone on to kill one of the newer wardens, but it had been a dangerous undertaking. Saristix grew suspicious of the information he’d received, and a demon lord was one of the few creatures capable of crossing the boundaries between worlds.