Siren's Song (37 page)

“And what about Rasha?” I glance around for the red-eyed princess and her assortment of Luminescents.

“She's with Lord Myles and Lady Isobel, keeping them in line.” Sedric indicates a group standing around two caged carts thirty yards away.

Eogan holds out his hand to Rolf, who is gripping two metal gear things. They're curved like an archer's bow, but the metal string crossing them is latched onto a metal spiked frame. Even with my limited knowledge of such weapons, I can easily see the tiny barbed arrows they shoot will go much farther and faster than anything the archers have. I raise a brow at Eogan, who chuckles.

“You don't have to look so impressed,” he says. “With that expression, people will suspect you think I'm quite incapable of brilliance.”

Despite the growing roar from the wraiths below, the airship engines beginning to drone toward us, and our own people's prayers and chants, I smirk.

Litches, I love that man's arrogance.

That eerie horn sounds a second time, and I feel it as strong as it shakes the air around us. Black mist that'd been sedated among the wraiths since last night filters up and around them, as if to block them from our eyes—or shield them from the morning sun casting its first rays into the Valley. Either way, the rumbling ground says the Dark Army's moving. And they're moving fast.

Gasps arise from our rows of archers on either side of us. Their view from the front line is the same as mine. Which means their stomachs have likely just fallen out the soles of their feet.

“We're going to get slaughtered,” one of them murmurs.

“Hold your ground, men!” Rolf yells.

I glance up at Eogan and King Sedric. Then back at the ranks. They're starting to squirm, their nerves showing through.

I turn to Sedric. “Perhaps a word from you might help stay their strength, Your Highness.”

He's beckoning a soldier, and when I glance over, the man's leading Haven to me.

“I've already spoken my piece to them this morning. They know what lies ahead. The time for words is past. Fighting for our kingdom is what we're here for.”

I peer around at the nervous archers watching the wave of undead running toward them from a terrameter away—never swaying, never slowing. The archers' faces pale. Then I look to the rows upon rows separated into ranks—the farmers, the mums, the fathers who're holding everything from swords to pickaxes.

And I can see it in them. The sallowness starts in their arms and works its way up their necks and to their cheeks. Panic. Fear. A few are even inching toward the tents—as if that will save them from the death that's coming.

Death.

The air is thick with it. My throat is thick with it. Is that what I've led these people to?

Bleeding hulls. I grab Haven's reins and pull myself up. “Mind if I say something, then?”

I don't wait for Sedric's reply. I simply tug Haven around until I'm facing the masses made up from the individual faces of my Faelen countrymen.

“Brothers and sisters!” I shout above the disgusting, snarling noise growing louder behind me as the hordes approach. Thankfully it appears the people can hear me. Either that or the sight of Haven baring her teeth at all the other horses in the calvary a few ranks down from us has them distracted for the moment.

“Today we fight together for a freedom long owed us. A freedom from evil that has haunted our land, our history, and our homes
from the very time Draewulf sought our destruction one hundred years ago.”

Haven steps forward a few paces and I bring her round back, then pat her to stay. “Well, today . . . today we take back that freedom. Today we seek
his
destruction. And today we show the rest of the Hidden Lands what it means to be true people of Faelen—that we cannot,
will not
, be defeated!”

A cheer goes up so fast I feel the wave of it blast over me. I wait for it to taper a bit before holding up a hand.

“Fight for yourselves today. Fight hard. Fight strong. Fight as men and women who are alive—against a force that is but dead and empty shells. And for my part, I will promise you this.” I raise my voice along with my hand so the thunder I create rattles in perfect time with my voice. “I swear to you upon my Elemental blood that if you fight for yourselves, then I will fight for you. And if needed, I will die for you.”

CHAPTER 36

T
HE ARCHERS ARE THE FIRST TO ENGAGE.

Their arms pull back the strings of their longbows, then release them to send arrows raining down like hail upon the black roiling, oncoming mass.

My knees weaken as I watch from atop Haven. The shafts fly in volley after volley, hitting their targets like hornets going in for a kill. Except the arrows only take out some. The wraiths who find a shaft impaled into their chest or arms keep going—only those whose skulls have been hit drop dead. Or rather, more dead.

“Continue,” Rolf yells. “Aim for their heads!” And the archers begin another set of one, two, three releases.

It's effective, but not effective enough against corpses that feel no pain. Their hissing just grows louder and the black mist around them blows thicker.

“Nym?” King Sedric says from behind me.

I slide off of Haven and hand her reins to one of the soldiers assigned to me. “Stay away from her face,” I warn and move to retake my place beside Eogan. And raise one arm.

Waiting for it . . .

The airships drone closer—enough so that I can see their decks are also covered in wraiths and they're carrying something attached to their hulls. I squint.
What—?

“Bombs,” Eogan says.

“Nym?” King Sedric says, and this time I hear the nerves lacing his voice as the archers keep their arrows flying. The look on his face says I should feel free to make Draewulf and his Dark Army regret they ever crossed that channel to reach us. “Have at it,” he growls.

My lightning strikes rake across the hulls of a single ship but miss the others. The one I hit rocks and shivers and abruptly explodes into a fireball that is so far from natural it turns purple amid the flames. I jump back along with every soldier beside me as the pieces of wreckage drop down onto the wraiths beneath and take out as many as were on the ship itself.

“Bleeding litches,” one of the nearby soldiers mutters. “What are those things carrying?”

“Let's not find out.” I drag another two bolts from the incoming clouds and shred through the air, but just before they hit a second ship, that black mist reaches up and surrounds it. And I swear it's as if the sky's fire bounces right off.

Another attempt, but the same thing happens.

“He's fighting you,” Eogan says.

“Question is, where is he?”

“Keep focusing on the ships.” Eogan slips his hand over my owner circles and presses down until I feel my abilities respond to his and ignite. “Perhaps he's on one.”

“He'd not be that idiotic.” But with one flick of my wrist, I pull down the entire cloud cover and slam it into the dark mist. A charge of friction snaps through the atmosphere so powerfully, it knocks against me and heats up my face. “What the—?”

Eogan grins at me, and I yank the storm clouds down again and again, in hopes of rattling Draewulf, or at the very least annoying him.

They spark and shiver and fire goes every which direction, but when I ease them up the ships are still in the air and the black mist is as thick as ever. And my arms and hands are aching and sweating.

The awareness pricks my thoughts that Draewulf is simply playing with me. What is it he's waiting for? Why doesn't he just unleash his hellish abilities and attempt to end this all now?

Litch.
That overwhelming sense of helplessness settles over my shoulders. I grit my teeth.
Fine, then.

“Your Majesty, might I suggest we engage at this time also?” Kenan points to the diminishing gap on the hillside between the Dark Army and us.

“Do you need me?” Eogan asks.

I shake my head. “I'll let you know when.”

He moves over two paces before lifting his arrow weapon and pulling back the metal string. Then releases it into the oncoming mass of undead. The machine he's holding is so powerful and sure, the arrow pierces three wraith heads before getting stuck in a fourth.

From behind me a number of men utter curse words, and I swear one of them is King Sedric. Ignoring them, I clench both fists and stir the clouds until they're swirling above the Valley, and as they swirl, I create hailstones. Large, hard, and deadly. And lower the clouds again onto the mist, where the static meets, then releases them.

From the sound of the horn that blasts, my damage has made it through, and I sense a pushing back on the atmosphere. As if Draewulf is physically lifting my storm back. I press in harder, fiercer, only casually aware of Eogan resetting his weapon against his shoulder. Nearby me he holds the undercarriage with one hand while pulling back the metal string with the other.

And that's when I feel it. Draewulf's presence creeping closer.

I create more hailstones and let them fly beneath the mist.

Except something's nudging in my head—something I should know. Something I should've realized.

Draewulf.

I glance around at the men surrounding me—at Sedric, at his soldiers, even at Eogan for a brief moment. Long enough to check the color of each of their eyes before scanning the faces farther out.

How fast can he heal enough to shape-shift from person to person? How many people here could he be inhabiting?

All he needs is one.
The right one.

Rasha is standing stock-still with a sword in her hands, as if reading everything and everyone as fast as she can, while behind her Myles is studying the scene from behind his bars. I glance again at Eogan.

“You feel him too,” he mutters before sending three cross arrows into the heads of ten different wraiths.

I nod and pull down a strip of lightning and rip it across the entire first two rows of wraiths rushing beyond the mist to close the distance between our army and theirs. The ground beneath them explodes in dirt and rocks and fire—throwing them into the air and ripping apart many of their bodies. Those who've not lost their legs or heads keep running though, until they trip over the fallen wraiths.

Suddenly a group of Faelen farmers is descending with a battle cry. King Sedric's sent them upon the rest of this first wave to finish them off.

I wipe sweat from my forehead and repeat the scenario four more times as more wraiths emerge from the mist. Perhaps there is a limit to Draewulf's magic if he's not stretching it after them to protect them.

Not that it matters, though. They just keep coming.

And my fire isn't fast enough, nor are the archers or farmers, because the growling, slimy, decaying wraiths have broken through our ranks and all hulls breaks loose.

CHAPTER 37

T
HE SURGE OF BODIES ERUPTING FROM BEHIND US
is accompanied by a war cry that curdles the blood beneath my skin. For the few battles and skirmishes I've been near over the years, I've never heard the Faelen people do this . . . scream this loud, this furious, this scared.

Five seconds later they're shoving by the circle of grassy space the kings and I are standing in and slamming into the wraiths headed toward us, wielding their swords and hammers and axes with a fierceness that breathes hope and pride into my lungs.

My eyes warm as, in my peripheral, I catch sight of Allen the dwarf atop the largest oliphant with Kel moving toward us at a rapid rate along with his entire host of travellers. The smallest of which are blowing fire at the wraiths and the larger are performing acrobatics, leaping over and around the undead, their blades flashing as they lop off the monsters' heads faster than imaginable.

The sight is so gruesome yet so effective I'm tempted to laugh a bit crazy-like. Instead, I continue tearing lightning through rows of the Dark Army lower down the hillside. The bolts coming down are also keeping the airships at bay. As if there's an invisible line neither of us can cross—where Draewulf's magic protects them, and where my storm will destroy them.

I shove harder—

“Nym, wait.”

King Sedric has turned from the beasts he's just annihilated long enough to point his sword drenched with black wraith blood at the next wave heading up the hillside toward us.

“I know, but I can't get through Draewulf's barrier!” Even as I say it, the sight makes me sick. There are so many.

My hands falter and I stop in my tracks.

Good hulls, there are so many.

I'd been so busy focusing on fighting and feeling proud of those fighting beside me I hadn't stopped to actually look at the effect we were having.

Which is none.

We are having no effect whatsoever compared to the hordes still waiting their turn to come against us. And as I peer around, I begin to see the bodies. My countrymen. Slashed and maimed by claws and teeth much sharper than any ax or dagger they owned.

Litch.

I aim icicles one at a time into the skulls of four, five, fifteen wraiths. But the people I was trying to protect are slaughtered anyway by the few who got through.

I look away and try not to vomit.

Our people are dying in droves.

I shut my eyes and feel Eogan and Kenan nearby, their weapons releasing arrows at whatever was just coming at them and me and King Sedric. I curl my hands into fists again and this time allow the dark ability in me to shiver. To swirl in just the slightest with my Elemental blood until the smallest hint of its hunger claws at my chest.

Good.

Slowly, carefully, so as not to lose it or let it take over, I push it
out my lungs, my mouth, my breath into the sky above. Into the air hanging above that wretched black mist.

And begin to allow the ability-infused air to tug.