Fritha climbed onto Wrath’s back and buckled her helmet strap under her chin.
“Where have you been?” Fritha asked the draig.
“Humping,” Wrath growled. “Shekam draig pretty.”
“Well, as long as you’ve got some strength left for today,” Fritha said.
“Wrath STRONG!” the draig roared, lashing his tail.
The clatter of hooves and Arn was riding into the courtyard, leading Fritha’s honour guard. Seventy warriors had survived yesterday’s battle. Elise slithered beside them, looking glorious in her mail and helm, a round shield on one arm, her black-bladed spear in her fist. The courtyard was heaving with acolytes as Aenor shouted them into rowed order.
Aenor looked up at Fritha, scabbed cuts across his face, a bandage around his ankle visible beneath his greaves. He hefted his shield, slung it across his back.
“Think I’ll be off,” he grunted at her.
“Kill your enemies, and stay alive,” Fritha said to him. “You fought White-Wings yesterday. The Order of the Bright Star will be easy in comparison. They don’t know how to form a shield wall.”
He gave her a smile.
“I’ll see you after,” he said, and led over a thousand acolytes out of the courtyard and down the hill.
Asroth stalked into view, his long axe slung over his back. Kadoshim thick as a cloak trailed behind him. Sulak was there.
Asroth was limping, a fresh bandage bound around his lower leg where the half-breed Ben-Elim had cut him, and he was rolling and flexing his arm where she had stabbed him with Morn’s starstone knife.
Asroth climbed into the saddle of his huge stallion, an acolyte standing at its head, holding the bridle. Asroth took the reins, then looked at Fritha.
“Being flesh is not all wonderful,” he said, flexing his bicep where he had been stabbed. “I am not so keen on this pain.”
Fritha had tended his wounds last night. Cleaned them, packed them with healing herbs, said a word of power over them to speed the healing and then bandaged them with fresh linen.
“Can you wield your axe?” she asked him.
“Aye,” Asroth rumbled. “Though it hurts.”
“Pain is a badge, an emblem and reminder of what we go through,” Fritha said. “Nothing easy is worth having.”
“Human wisdom,” Asroth muttered.
“The pain will pass,” Fritha said. “This victory will last forever.”
“Ha, now that is more to my liking.” Asroth smiled. He looked out through the gates of Balara, his expression changing, draining of all warmth and becoming something cold. A dark malice pulsed from him. He lifted his helm from its saddle hook and lowered it onto his head, shook the mail curtain into place across his neck, then buckled the chinstrap. “Let’s go and take that victory.”
Asroth rode out through the gates onto the hill, Fritha behind him. A hundred Kadoshim leaped into the sky and flew lazy circles above them, and five hundred acolytes followed them. They marched through the gates, Asroth riding down the curving road that led to the plain. He reined in about a third of the way down the hill.
“A good spot to see what is happening,” Asroth said to Fritha. The Kadoshim dropped to the ground, setting a guard around them. “We’ll attack where we’re needed.”
The ground spread before Fritha like a map. The blue-flicker of Ripa’s burning tower glinted in the distance, but Fritha’s eyes were drawn much closer, to the plain before Balara’s hill. To the west was the Sarva Forest. Fritha looked at it suspiciously. Her Ferals and one of Gulla’s captains were supposed to be lurking in those dark shadows, guardians against any flanking attacks. But Fritha had felt the disappearance of her Ferals and heard strange sounds from the forest, and seen the trees shaking. They were silent now.
She had told Asroth, but he hadn’t seemed particularly concerned.
On the plain a war-host was crawling across the ground. They were moving slowly, a block of foot-soldiers leading at their centre, somewhere between one and two thousand strong. Fritha could see White-Wings with rectangular shields at the centre, other warriors carrying round shields with the four-pointed star painted upon them. Horses rode on their flanks and spread behind them.
Aenor had reached the foot of the hill. His warband marched forwards. Fritha felt a vibration in the ground, shivering up through Wrath, and then from the east the Shekam appeared. Rok led them upon his huge draig, over two hundred draigs scuttling across the ground, taking up a position on Aenor’s right flank, between his force and the forest. The drumming of hooves and Jin was leading her Cheren riders onto the field, moving into position on Aenor’s left flank.
Aenor marched on, the Shekam and Cheren keeping pace with him, all of them inching closer to the Order of the Bright Star. Faint horn blasts echoed up the hill and Aenor’s warriors came to a halt, the Shekam and Cheren settling either side of them, like arched wings.
Horns sounded from the Order of the Bright Star as well, and their forces came rippling to a stop.
A stillness lay over the plain. The hissing of the wind, horses whinnying, harnesses creaking. Fritha could feel Wrath’s deep breaths, his ribs expanding and deflating, and beneath all of it she felt the beating of her heart. A wild elation coursed through her.
“GULLA!” Asroth cried, his voice echoing across the hill and plain.
Another long, protracted silence, Fritha twisting to look back at the fortress. Black vapour curled up over the walls, a sound rising, like the rushing of the wind, and then the mist was bursting through the open gates like vomit, the fortress disgorging its inhabitants in a dark, talon-filled mass. Fritha had a glimpse of Gulla, wreathed in mist, flying above his creatures as they spilt down the hill, an endless torrent curling to the left and right around Asroth, Fritha and their warriors and reforming lower down the slope, like a river swirling around a boulder. Gulla and his last captain, thousands of Revenants under their control. They swept on, passing across an open space between the Shekam and the acolytes, and then coalesced into a solid block across the front of Asroth’s war-host.
They did not pause there, but just carried on towards the Order of the Bright Star.