Riv hovered over the shieldburg, watching warriors hurled through the air by the winged draig. She looked at Byrne, who sat upon a horse with a thousand warriors of the Bright Star mounted behind her.
“Now.” Byrne nodded, raised her fist. A horn blew.
Ben-Elim lifted into the air, wings beating, a few hundred of them rising from behind Byrne’s riders.
Riv’s wings beat, taking her higher.
“Riv,” a voice called up to her. Meical, sitting upon a white stallion beside Byrne, one of his wing-arches tightly bandaged. Cullen was upon a horse next to him, the young warrior looking as if he was going to explode with frustration.
“Wait for us. We kill Asroth together,” Meical said to her.
She looked at him but said nothing, just drew her short-sword and black dagger, a trail of smoke curling around its blade. She flew higher, joining the flight of Ben-Elim, and saw Kol, still bandaged, his face a lattice of scabbed cuts. He held a spear in his fist, a score of his loyal supporters about him. All Riv could think about was her mother, and her killer, Asroth, down in the shield wall with a winged draig beside him. Behind her she heard horns blowing, Byrne’s riders moving.
The shield wall was splintering. Asroth was carving a wedge deep into it, his Kadoshim protecting his flanks. Orders and horns were ringing out, the front rows that had already been split apart were trying to form new, smaller shield walls.
They need to do it quickly, Riv thought, seeing a wall of acolytes moving rapidly across the field towards them.
The din of battle rolled across the field in waves. Bears and draigs were fighting in a frenzied maul, Sirak riders swirling through the combat like mist. Riv’s eyes searched for Bleda, but there was no chance of recognizing him, the fight too fluid and fast. There was no telling who was winning.
And then she had no more time to think, the Kadoshim suddenly thick in the air about her. She swayed out of the way of a spear-thrust, the blade stabbing past her face; she beat her wings to sweep inside its range, and pushed both of her blades into the Kadoshim’s body. It plummeted to the ground. Riv flew on, weaving amongst the Kadoshim and their offspring. A half-breed slammed into her, the two of them locked, spinning, the half-breed headbutting Riv in the face. She heard her nose crunch, breaking for the second time in two days, tasted blood in her throat, shook her head and headbutted the half-breed back. They separated, a clash of steel as Riv parried a sword-blow, slashed with her knife, leaving a red line along the half-breed’s forearm.
Then an arrow sprouted from the half-breed’s throat, a rush of blood and he gurgled, dropped from the sky. As Riv looked around, a dozen more Kadoshim fell from the sky, all skewered with arrows.
Faelan swooped in, an arrow nocked, his kin swirling in the sky behind him, fifty of them circling the Kadoshim and loosing their arrows.
“Well met, sister,” Faelan said to Riv. She grinned at him and nodded her thanks. Faelan flew on, leading his kin around the edges of the conflict, picking off Kadoshim and half-breeds. The aerial combat was fragmenting now, spreading wide over the field as Ben-Elim and Kadoshim whirled and dived and looped around each other.
Riv used this brief reprieve to look at the battlefield. Jin and her Cheren had decimated the warriors of Ardain on this flank and she was now leading her Clan in sweeping attacks on the shield wall.
Asroth had carved deep into the shield wall’s centre, killing all that appeared before him with his fell axe, Kadoshim guarding his flanks as knots of White-Wings and warriors of the Order hurled themselves at the Kadoshim’s king.
They need to retreat and regroup, attack him properly.
On the plain a host of Revenants stood, still and silent as death. Many of them had fallen, but there were still so many remaining. Too many. A shiver passed through them and, as one, they surged forwards, rushing into the gap Asroth had forged and hurling themselves at White-Wings and warriors of the Order. Riv thought she saw Kill and Ert with a score of warriors about them, shouting, pulling more to them. They held against the Revenants, were slowly retreating.
Further along Fritha sat upon her draig, amidst a pile of the dead, warriors trampled, crushed, torn to pieces. The shield wall here was utterly destroyed, a few hundred pulled back into a new wall. All about the field White-Wings and warriors of the Order were reforming into smaller walls, a hundred warriors here, forty or fifty there.
A wide line of acolytes marched at these smaller defences, their lines tightening.
The drum of hooves, and Byrne, sword drawn, led five hundred riders galloping around the back of the splintered shieldburg.
“TRUTH AND COURAGE!” Byrne and her warband yelled, the war-cry rippling over the battlefield.
“TRUTH AND COURAGE!” rang out from the western flank of the field, where Cullen was leading the rest of Byrne’s mounted warriors.
Riv was about to drop into a dive and try to help Kill and Ert when her eye was drawn to two figures on the plain. The acolytes had parted for them, swept around them. One Kadoshim, one Revenant. They were standing side by side.
Is that…?
Riv sheathed her sword and threaded the black knife into her belt, then reached for her bow.
Gulla…