Riv opened her eyes. She could see booted feet, could hear the grunt and yell of combat. Everything was pain. She moved, her wings twitching.
“Careful,” a voice said to her. She turned her head, looked up to see Jost looming over her.
“What happened?” Riv said.
“You fell out of the sky, with two arrows in you. Lucky for you that you landed on a pile of dead Revenants.”
“Don’t feel lucky.” Riv grunted, trying to climb to one knee. Nausea swept through her, making her eyes water. Bile rose in her throat.
“Well, you’re lucky to be feeling anything at all,” Jost said, heaving her up.
Riv saw a bandage around her thigh, put some weight on it. There was a tremor, but it held.
“Had to cut the arrows out of you. The one in your leg was deeper than the one in your back. A coat of mail helps.”
She spread her wings, gave them a beat. The muscle of her right wing-arch ached, but she thought her wings would take her weight.
“Here,” Jost said, holding out Riv’s short-sword and her black knife.
Riv was standing in the centre of a shield square, two rows deep, facing in four directions, maybe eighty or ninety warriors, a mixture of White-Wings and warriors of the Order. Riv glimpsed Kill standing in the front, shoulder pressed into her shield and stabbing her short-sword through the gap. Ert was beside her. They were surrounded by acolytes, grunting and pushing back with their own shields and short-swords. But this wall was made up of White-Wings and warriors of the Order of the Bright Star.
Acolytes were dying.
A half-dozen warriors were standing or sitting in the space within the shield square. Sorch was there, tall and broad. He nodded a greeting to Riv.
Dimly she heard a booming laugh, recognized it from the battle on Ripa’s plain.
“Asroth,” she whispered.
“Aye. He’s chopping his way through shield walls,” Jost said, with a shudder. “Fortunately, he’s over there, somewhere.” He nodded west.
“WARE THE DRAIG!” a voice yelled, from the eastern side of the shield square.
An ear-splitting roar rang out, a tremor in the ground, and then warriors were flying through the air, screaming. A draig’s head and shoulders appeared, head lashing, jaws snapping, sweeping up a White-Wing and crunching down. Fritha sat upon its back. She stabbed down at a warrior of the Order with her spear.
The draig lumbered forwards, scattering the wall, warriors thrown, scrambling away. Acolytes started to push into the gap the draig had made.
Riv snarled, flexed her wings and leaped into the air, a wave of pain in her leg, but her wings worked and she flew towards Fritha, building speed.
Something crashed into Riv and she was hurled through the air, crunched back to the ground. She rolled, a shape moving after her, sinuous and reptilian.
Fritha’s snake-woman.
She loomed over Riv, rising high on her coils, a fair-haired woman, her arms and torso covered in a coat of mail, a round shield on one arm, a black-bladed spear in her fist.
Black-bladed. Byrne wants that spear.
“Frithaaaa wants you,” the snake-woman hissed, and she surged forwards. Riv stabbed with her short-sword, but the snake-woman’s shield batted it away, then coils were wrapping around Riv, crushing her legs together, pinning her arms tight.
Sorch and Jost appeared, a dozen warriors behind them. They charged the snake-woman, shields up. Jost’s sword rang on her shield boss, Sorch chopped at the white-scaled body of the woman, cutting a shallow gash through thick scales. A pale, milk-like substance oozed from the wound and the creature let out a hissing scream. She slammed her shield into Jost, hurling him away, her strength prodigious. Sorch stabbed at her, his blade sinking deeper, and she shrieked again, turned on him and stabbed her spear. He raised his shield, but the black-bladed spear punched through the layers of linen and linden wood as if they were a cobweb. Sorch grunted, sank to his knees, his shield falling away, a red hole in his chest. He looked at Riv and then fell flat on his face.
Riv yelled, writhed and strained in the snake-woman’s coils, but she could not break free.
The snake-woman whirled her spear above her head, a looping slice at the remaining warriors. Her spear cut through the shields like wheat, carving across three warriors, all of them falling back with red wounds gaping. She surged forwards, leaving trails of blood and black smoke in the air, and warriors fell dead or wounded about her. Then she was dragging Riv across the field towards Fritha and her draig, who were only twenty or thirty paces away, destroying White-Wings and warriors of the Order with a savage glee.
Another roaring, from the east, the ground trembling, and Riv saw White-Wings parting, leaping out of the way. A huge white-furred bear lumbered into view, a battered and torn coat of mail upon it, the white fur of its muzzle stained pink with blood. Drem was sitting upon its back, a shield upon one arm, white star upon a black field, a sword in his fist.
The bear paused a moment. Drem looked around, saw Fritha upon her draig, and then the snake-woman slithering towards Fritha.
“ELISE,” Drem bellowed at the snake-woman, “LET HER GO!”