Blood's Pride (Shattered Kingdoms) (43 page)

Rho reported.

Daem observed.

Rho said,

Falkar cried, and Eofar dived away from the line, trying to get a better view.

he reported wretchedly, Move in!
>

Falkar observed angrily.

Daem roared
as Frea’s back line, torches now ablaze, turned away.

he called back, improvising frantically. But it was already too late; Frea’s forces were sailing above them, heading out over the city. Some of Eofar’s men chased after them briefly, but returned when they failed to catch up.

Eofar ordered them unnecessarily,

He guided his triffon upwards and again surveyed the battle. The view was grim: Frea’s remaining line had tightened up, closing in at either end and trapping his forces in the middle. Behind him, her second group had spread itself out over the city, and there was nothing he could do to stop them now. Daryan, Isa and the Shadari would have to deal with that threat.

He swept behind the line in the direction of the beach.

Eofar turned his triffon head-on to a gap in the line and urged it forward, thundering, to anyone who could understand him. He shot through the line and out the other side unchallenged.

The battle disappeared behind him. Ahead, he saw nothing but the star-pocked sky and the temple’s lightless face. He was conscious of the sound of his own breathing, synchronised with the beat of his triffon’s wings. And then she was there;
he sensed her presence before she spoke, felt her malice before her triffon hove into view.

Trakkar swerved dangerously close in front of him and then disappeared somewhere underneath. Eagerness gnawed through her words.

he told the empty air where she’d been. He brought his own triffon around as sharply as he could, but he still didn’t see her.

Trakkar shot over his head from behind, catching Eofar and his beast in their wake.

He clutched the reins.
Remember the plan
.

Frea interrupted petulantly. She flew around him and again disappeared.

he insisted. He stood up in the saddle and brandished Strife’s Bane at the empty sky.

The air moaned beneath him and Frea shot out in front of him again. she echoed hollowly. The back of her silver helmet shone in the starlight. Trakkar streaked towards the temple, almost reaching its dark walls before turning round again.

Eofar growled, and suddenly the fear
that had been spreading its sickly fingers through every part of him came blazing out again, tempered into hard, cold rage. make
you!> He spurred his triffon forward, heading straight towards her.

she asked before adroitly diving underneath him again, leaving him advancing on nothing but Trakkar’s stinking wake. Both triffons wheeled around.

he informed her as he lined up with her position.

thing
she was hiding; it was because you were weak> his sister continued anyway.

He locked his eyes on the silver helmet and flew towards her. She would not evade him again.

your
idea, Eofar – you don’t even want to be here. Rho and Daem, they propped you up because they needed a leader, someone legitimate for the others to follow – but that doesn’t make you a leader: you know it, and your men know it too.>

He looped the reins around the saddle and gripped Strife’s Bane with both hands. This time Frea was prepared to fight, and she swung Blood’s Pride around in a tight loop by her side as she came on. The steel blade sliced through the air with deadly promise. He raised himself up a little higher in the saddle and readied his sword. The space between the two
triffons closed until both beasts snapped their wings back simultaneously and Eofar swung his sword forward.

She dropped her arm back behind her shoulder and sheathed Blood’s Pride, leaving Eofar blinking in confusion at her unprotected torso, and just like that, the two triffons passed each other.

He was left alone in the dark sky, burning with the ridiculousness of his failure.

Frea crowed.

Eofar howled. He craned his neck and looked behind him. he screamed at her.

The black knife slapped back into her palm and her fingers closed around the hilt: Eofar stared at it in confusion.
When had she drawn her knife?
He unhooked the reins from the saddle and tugged hard to turn his triffon back around – and with a horrifying lurch rocked backwards, out of control, as the severed ends of his harness flapped in the wind.

He seized the saddle with his left hand and let the wind carry the useless straps off into the darkness. She had cut the harness with the black knife as the two triffons passed – just like before. Just like she’d done with Mother …

Frea told him. There was something strange in her voice, something he had never felt from her before. It was pity.

He was still holding his useless sword in his right hand. He tried to sheath it, but in his panic he could not guide the blade into the scabbard. Nothing was keeping him in the saddle except the stirrups and his one-handed grip on the pommel, and now he could feel the wind, pulling at him. He saw Frea’s arm draw back, and her knife came streaking towards him across the sky. He hated that knife and he hated Strife’s Bane and everything they represented: every pointless hour, day, week, month and year of his wasted life compressed down into the brutal hardness of black steel.

With a strength born of fury and a precision that was only possible with an imperial blade or by the will of the gods, Eofar struck down with Strife’s Bane – and cleaved the knife in two. The two pieces went flying off into the night in different directions.

Frea’s wrath exploded outwards from her, a scarlet shockwave of anger that slammed into him like a wall. Now, finally, she drew her sword and came for him, and his heart swelled in triumph. He had finally succeeded in making her fight him.

It was not until he began to stand up in the stirrups that he remembered the broken harness – but it was too late for him to evade her, so he jammed his boots as far into the stirrups as he could and clutched the pommel with his left hand. Her first blow was a thrust, aimed straight at his chest, but it was only a feint; by the time he had brought his sword up in defence she had aimed a slice across his right side. He managed to get his blade up in time only by releasing it and twisting his arm to grab it after the fact, but it was still an imperfect move and Blood’s Pride slid along the length of Strife’s
Bane with a teeth-shattering scrape. Sparks flew out into the dark sky, then the blades came apart.

And then his left foot slipped out of the stirrup.

His triffon, sensing something amiss in the sudden weight change, bleated nervously and thumped its tail in the air. The air in his lungs turned to daggers as he saw the beast twist his great head around to see what was happening. The saddle lurched and he grabbed on to the pommel, kicking around desperately, trying to find the stirrup. He needed both hands; he would have been forced to drop a normal sword, endangering the people below, but he was able to guide Strife’s Bane into the scabbard built into the saddle. Then he seized the pommel with both hands as the frightened triffon rolled into a turn, but he felt himself sliding helplessly over the side. His right foot was still in the stirrup but it did little to support his weight. Below his dangling body he could see the desert floor rushing up towards him. He wouldn’t be able to hold on for long – a few more moments, that was all. A few more heartbeats.

The sky around him was empty. Frea was gone. He was alone.

The triffon’s wings hit their downward stroke, and Eofar, suddenly inspired, writhed in the air and managed to wedge his left foot against the thick cartilage where the triffon’s wing protruded from its body. With his weight supported at last, he slapped the stray hair away from his eyes and tried to hoist himself back up into the saddle. If he could only get his leg back over the saddle and his foot in the stirrup he should be able to land – but before he could haul himself up, the triffon’s wings arched up again and with sickening inevitability he felt his foot clamped tight. He’d waited too long. The triffon’s wing
came up, his bones cracked and splintered, and he screamed in agony. A dark mist swam in front of his eyes: he was going to lose consciousness – but if that happened, he’d be dead. The wing came down again, and flinging his whole body into the air like a hooked fish, he finally managed to flop up and over onto the saddle. With numb hands he guided his left foot into the stirrup, trying not to notice the strange shape of his boot, hinting at the wreckage inside. Despite the pain-addled haze, he snatched up the flapping ends of the broken harness and managed to tie them around his legs.

He had to go down. It took him a few moments to summon enough breath for a weak whistle, but at last he managed to give the triffon the signal, and the traumatised creature obeyed with an eager relief and sent them streaking to the ground. They hit the sand with a jolt; Eofar plucked weakly at the knots in the harness until he’d got them untied, then he slid from the saddle. He screamed in agony as his left foot touched the ground and he fell face-first into the sand, where he lay beating his fists until the skin had been flayed raw and he’d exhausted his last ounce of strength.

He’d failed them all.

His body crumpled up and he shut his eyes as unconsciousness dragged at him, pulling him like a lead weight. He wondered why no one came; he thought that the Shadari would have come to finish the job that Frea had started. But then he became aware of a noise in his head, a rhythmic thumping that at first he mistook for his own pulse. As the noise grew louder, he realised someone was walking towards him across the sand.

He opened his eyes and tried to lift his head, but found he could not. In the foreground, only a few steps away now, was a Shadari carrying a coil of leather straps looped over one shoulder.
There was something important about the straps.

The young man stopped in front of Eofar and looked down at him with a smile: a tight, humourless twist of his lips. In a slow, deliberate gesture, he slid the coil from his shoulder and let it fall to the ground.

‘We’re done with you,’ said the Shadari. ‘Your kind is finished here. It’s over.’ He began to laugh. He hooked his sandalled foot under the straps and kicked them at Eofar. The hard leather smacked into his face, splattered sand into his eyes and mouth.

The Shadari walked away, still laughing.

Elthion: the Shadari spy Isa had chased from the cave. The one Daryan had tied up, making sure the knots weren’t too tight so he could reach the water they’d left for him. They’d tied him up because he knew about them – about Daryan and Isa, about Eofar and Harotha.
He knew about the baby.

Eofar pushed himself up onto his knees and drew his right foot underneath him, placing it determinedly in the sand and standing up. The instant his left foot touched the ground he knew he was going to faint. He began to fall – he had never known it was possible to fall so slowly, or that the world around him could sharpen into such minute details. He could see the separate sparkle of each grain of sand; smell the unmingled scents of smoke and sweat, sea and rock; hear the sounds of wind and wing-beats. And as the ground finally reached up to take him he felt a pressure in his head that slowed time down to an airless pause, wrapped everything up in a bubble that
swelled and swelled until he could feel it ready to burst. He had never felt anything like it before in his life, and yet somehow he knew exactly what it meant.

It meant that the world was about to end.