Fritha shivered and clenched her jaws to stop her teeth chattering.
She was sitting upon Wrath’s back, or more accurately, laying prone upon his back, her arms and legs wrapped tight around him, clinging on for dear life.
Morn flew beside her, in sweeping loops, laughing at the draig’s slow speed and lack of manoeuvrability.
“He is like a stone with wings,” Morn called down to her from above.
Any faster or higher and I would die.
Fritha’s muscles ached from hanging on so hard, almost three solid days of constant flying from the battleground in the Desolation. Just the thought of that soured Fritha’s blood.
We were so close. Victory in the palm of my hand. I told Ulf he had to stay safe. She spent a while cursing and swearing to the clouds above her. There were no birds in the sky, she guessed it was because Wrath’s presence scared them away.
And then she saw Drassil in the distance.
She felt a rush of terror at what Gulla would say to her when he heard of her defeat.
I will not tell him yet, not until I have done the deed, and then it will be too late.
She felt a tremor of fear at the risk she was taking, but what else could she do? Flee and live her life in hiding?
Never. I have a destiny to fulfil, a great deed to do, and at the least, my vengeance must be appeased. Kol is at Drassil. She felt a thrill of excitement at that thought, after so many years of planning and scheming, of fighting and dreaming of this moment, and now it had actually arrived. A clouded haze swirled around the towers and walls of Drassil, looking from this distance like flocks of birds wheeling and swooping, but Fritha knew what it was.
Ben-Elim and Kadoshim, locked in their eternal battle. Will this really be its end?
It could be.
The fortress rushed towards them, growing, and below her Fritha saw trees swaying and moving as some great host moved within it. Tendrils of black mist curled from the branches. To the south she saw evidence of another black cloud host surging towards the fortress.
Gulla’s Seven with their broods, all converging on Drassil. They have moved at night by cover of darkness, slipped into the deepest, darkest recesses of Forn to avoid prying eyes and crept their way here. But now their terrible beauty can be revealed for all to see. Let the world tremble.
And then Wrath was leaving the forest behind, flying over a plain before Drassil’s great walls. Kadoshim and Ben-Elim flew in the air, sweeping and looping as they stabbed and slashed at one another, screaming their aeons-old hatred.
Wrath snapped at a Ben-Elim that swept past them, trading blows with a Kadoshim. The draig snagged a wing, shook it and the Ben-Elim fell spiralling to the ground, its wing ruined.
Wrath spat out feathers.
“Taste bad,” he grumbled.
“Soon you’ll feast on the finest flesh,” Fritha crooned.
“Happy,” Wrath answered.
They winged over the high walls, the clash of arms drifting up to them, Fritha looking down to see the walls manned with White-Wings, but their enemy were already inside the fortress. There were running battles taking place in the streets, mounted warriors with bows in their hands, swirling hordes of Revenants overrunning all before them, and knots of White-Wings gathered in their shield walls, like rocks in a swirling river. Fritha felt a rush of nostalgia at seeing her old home and the White-Wings she had been raised to be part of.
I was brainwashed, part of the great lie.
She searched the sky, looking for Kol, but the Ben-Elim and Kadoshim were all a too-fast blur.
“There.” Fritha pointed at the Great Hall, a huge domed structure that was built around the trunk of Drassil’s great tree. She guided Wrath towards it.
A massive shield wall of White-Wings stood before the hall’s gates, four or five hundred strong. Riders were pouring arrows into it, but the shields were soaking them up. Fritha saw a charge of shaven-haired acolytes rush the wall, crashing into it, hoping to break through by sheer press of numbers, but the wall held and the acolytes died, short-swords stabbing.
Fritha whispered in Wrath’s ear and the draig swooped upon the courtyard before the Great Hall, sweeping low, and then it was crashing into the shield wall, scattering White-Wing warriors in all directions.
Wrath squatted amidst the destruction he had caused, chewing on a severed leg, and Fritha stood tall on his back. She drew her sword and punched it into the air.
“TO ME,” she bellowed, “TO ME,” and then she was commanding Wrath on, lumbering through what was left of the shield wall, some White-Wings scattering, others retreating and running through the hall’s gates into the chamber beyond.
Fritha and Wrath followed, screaming acolytes charging behind them.
Fritha gasped as they entered the hall—such a magnificent room, a place she knew all too intimately.
Battle was already raging in here, up above, as Kadoshim and their half-breeds swept in through the many fly-holes the Ben-Elim had crafted. Feathers and blood rained down from above.
They reached the top of the steps that led down into Drassil’s Great Hall and the dais before Skald’s throne. Fritha commanded Wrath to stop a moment and looked.
The molten-covered forms of Asroth and Meical were as they had always been, locked in eternal battle. Fritha felt a shudder ripple through her belly at the sight of them.
The dais they stood upon was guarded by a half-circle of White-Wings, maybe a hundred strong. More were joining them.
Fritha scowled at them. A thousand would not keep her away from her destiny.
“Onwards,” she said to Wrath, and the draig lumbered down the stairs, here and there White-Wings turning and reforming, trying to hold Wrath with their wall of shields, stabbing and slashing, but the draig smashed through them as if they were so much kindling, and behind them the acolytes rolled over the fallen.
Fritha reached the dais, saw White-Wings gathered before her, the last resistance between her and Asroth the Great. She paused a moment, both savouring this moment and allowing acolytes to gather behind her. A new sound in the building caused her to turn and she saw a dark mist pour through the open gates, Revenants surging into the room.
Gulla must be close.
She turned back to the White-Wings, saw a dark-haired woman at their centre staring at her, staring at the red wings upon Fritha’s cuirass.
She recognizes me as one of their own. Good, let them see the hypocrisy of their world that has laid them low.
A winged figure dropped from the sky and hovered above the White-Wing that Fritha was staring at, a Ben-Elim, some kind of shouted exchange between the two of them. Something about the Ben-Elim looked wrong, though.
Fritha frowned.
Then she realized.
Its feathers were a dapple grey, not the bright, pure white of the Ben-Elim.
And it was a woman.
It’s a Ben-Elim half-breed.
The implications of that seeped through Fritha.
Like my baby. She could have been my baby girl.
How has this happened? Have the Ben-Elim changed? Repented of the evil they have done?
She was rocked by that thought, shaken to her core, and for a moment she froze in shock and indecision.
She stared at the half-breed Ben-Elim, strong-limbed and fair-haired, hovering above the White-Wings with broad, dapple-grey wings. The sight of her took Fritha’s breath away.
Would my Anja have looked like her? A smile touched her face as she thought of that, almost lifted out a hand towards the half-breed as if she could stroke her cheek.
All I have done, fighting against this great crime against us, and now it might have been put right. She felt a moment’s relief, even happiness, at the thought that no more Ben-Elim half-breeds were being put to death.
But it is too late for my baby girl. They must still answer for their crimes.
My baby was still murdered by the Ben-Elim, and that crime was condoned by the White-Wings. It was a White-Wing who told me where the cabin was, told me what to do once my Anja was born. To kill her and put her in the ground.
Fritha’s gaze flickered between the half-breed in the air and the White-Wings gathered below her.
Slowly, her shifting emotions turned to anger, building to a hot rage that swept through her veins, bubbling like a cauldron coming to boil.
Why was my baby murdered, and this one allowed to live?
She felt an irrational, all-consuming hatred for this half-breed Ben-Elim and the White-Wings before her.
“Kill them,” Fritha said to Wrath. “Kill them all.”
“Yes,” Wrath replied, always his answer to this most basic of commands.
He exploded forwards, charging straight at the dark-haired White-Wing below the hovering half-breed.
The world seemed to pause for Fritha as she hurtled towards the shield wall of White-Wings. As if in slow motion she saw the dark-haired woman set her feet, knuckles whitening around her sword. A fleeting respect passed through Fritha for this woman, who could see her death charging towards her in the open jaws of the draig, and yet still she stood.
And then hands were grabbing the dark-haired woman and hoisting her upwards, Fritha slashing with her sword at the woman’s feet as she was dragged into the air above her. To either side of Fritha the shield wall was smashed by Wrath’s charge, acolytes surging into the fracture and splitting it wide, and then the wall was broken and White-Wings scattered, some running, some breaking into fragmented melees.
Fritha glowered at the half-breed Ben-Elim and woman in her arms, saw them circle and fly towards the Great Hall’s doors, the half-breed shouting down to White-Wings beneath them, some of them attempting to follow her towards the doors.
Fritha was tempted to follow them and crush them.
But then she looked at the frozen figures upon the dais.
They were so close, now, Fritha just standing and staring in awe.
“Asroth,” she whispered, dismounting from Wrath’s back. He set to ripping chunks of flesh from a dead White-Wing.
Fritha approached the frozen figure of her king and reached out a tentative hand, caressing the stump of his wrist where she had hacked his hand off, which felt so long ago.
A turbulence of wings and she turned to see Gulla alight on the dais. Kadoshim and half-breeds hovered around him, forming a defensive circle as Ben-Elim and White-Wings tried to retake the dais.
Fritha and Gulla stood there like the calm amidst the storm.
“I am here,” Fritha said, a world of meaning in those three words. She held her hand out.
Gulla stared at her, the Starstone Sword in his fist, dripping with blood and wreathed in a black smoke. Fritha could see the hesitation in him.
“I was chosen,” she said, “by the Kadoshim Covens and the Acolyte Assembly.” A silent moment between them. Gulla, looking around, saw Kadoshim, half-breeds and acolytes all about him.
He gave her the Starstone Sword.
Fritha turned towards the statue of Asroth.
She touched the black blade against the starstone metal that encased Asroth, then looked back at Gulla.
“Together,” she said to him, and he placed his long-taloned hand over hers, and then they began to chant.
“Cumhacht cloch star, a rugadh ar an domhan eile, a leagtar aingeal dorcha soar in aisce.”
Black smoke curled around the Starstone Sword, red veins cobwebbing across the blade.
“Cumhacht cloch star, a rugadh ar an domhan eile, a leagtar aingeal dorcha soar in aisce,” they intoned again, and the red veins leached from the blade into the metal that coated Asroth and Meical, spreading like filigree across their bodies.
“Cumhacht cloch star, a rugadh ar an domhan eile, a leagtar aingeal dorcha soar in aisce,” Fritha and Gulla chanted again, their voices twining, growing in volume, drowning out the din of battle around them.
The two statues began to pulse, black iron and red glow rippling, as if muscles were shifting beneath them.
And then in one fluid motion Fritha drew the sword away and swung it, crashing into the starstone casing.
There was one long, extended moment where every sound seemed to be sucked into the statues and sword, an utter silence descending upon the hall, and then an explosion, iron-black fragments bursting outwards, a great blast of air hurling Fritha and Gulla from their feet, rolling across the chamber’s floor, scattering all before it.
Fritha grunted, a ringing in her ears, dust settling around her, Gulla shifting behind her. She stood on unsteady legs and saw a vision.
Asroth and Meical, ancient enemies, both curled upon the ground, breathing as if they slept.
Meical stirred first, a shifting of his white wings. He was dark-haired, a long scar across his forehead and cheek. He opened his eyes and looked up at Fritha, confusion writ across his handsome features.
Dimly Fritha became aware of sounds around her, a stirring in the hall as all began to climb to their feet and gaze upon the miracle before them.
“Kill him,” snarled Gulla, reaching for a weapon. Fritha looked at the Starstone Sword in her fist and Gulla snatched it from her, raised it high.
An arrow slammed into Gulla’s back, sending him stumbling forwards, dropping the Starstone Sword, and then a figure was swooping down, the dapple-feathered half-breed, a curved bow in her fist. She lashed out at Gulla with a boot, kicking him in the face and sending him staggering again, and then she was reaching a hand down to Meical, who was on his knees now.
He looked up at the half-breed.
“Move and live, stay and die,” she snarled at Meical, wings beating, hovering as she grasped for his hand.
Meical reached out and gripped her wrist, and then in a flurry of wings he was rising into the sky, half-dragged, half-flying.
Gulla rose to his feet, screaming orders, his wings beating, taking to the air in pursuit of Meical and his half-breed rescuer, but Fritha was not paying attention. All she could do was stare.
At Asroth, Lord of the Kadoshim. He was on his knees, but as Fritha approached him he stood, slowly uncoiling, stretching as if he had woken from a deep sleep.
He wore a coat of mail, black and oily. Dark veins mapped his alabaster flesh, his face pale as milk, all sharp bones and chiselled angles, coldly handsome. His silver hair was pulled back and tied in a warrior braid that curled across one shoulder, but it was his eyes that drew and held Fritha. Black as a forest pool at midnight, no iris, no pupil, just a pulsing intelligence. Something lurked beneath those eyes, something wild and feral, a barely concealed rage.
Fritha strode up to him fearlessly.
“Welcome to your kingdom of flesh, my beloved,” she said. “I am Fritha ap Talgos, and I am your betrothed.” She dropped to one knee and kissed his hand.