Page 100 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

Will you? After all that they have done, will you let this Steward get away with it?There was a pause.Or will you simply wait for another child to die?

Then Cahra spotted Ellian, the beggar boy from Kolyath with the aquamarine eyes, clad in crude armour on Kolyath’s front lines. He was small compared to the gaunt men that suffered alongside him. In fact, there were several of them, kids conscripted to be soldiers in a war they’d never had a choice over. Something loosed itself in her, in her throat, her chest.

This time, the Netherworldly voice was herown.

It’s time to stop running from your responsibilities.

It’s not just about living, Cahra realised with clarity. It’s not even about Thierre.

It’s this. The nightmarish realm they all inhabited.

Kolyath’s Steward. Ozumbre’s King. Their bloodthirsty Commanders.

It’sTHEM. Cahra could feel it then, the burning in her eyes. For the first time, the thought crossed her mind. Could she take them down… All of them?

Could she fight Kolyath and Ozumbre’s armies with Hael’s powers, and win?

Her eyes flashed again to the boy Ellian, appearing to recognise her as she stared. Confusion filled his young face. But he wasn’t who she needed to worry about.

She turned her black gaze on the Steward of Kolyath, Atriposte smiling back at her.

This time when Cahra ran, she ran towards the enemy.

CHAPTER 39

Cahra heard the sounds before she saw them – pikes being lowered, bows being pulled tight – as she sprinted towards Hael’stromia’s gate. To Steward Atriposte, and King Decimus, and Kolyath and Ozumbre’s allied force of 20,000 men. All while Hael’s black fury roared within, a Netherworldly force as ferocious and relentless as the Reliquus himself.

Somewhere inside, Cahra knew she should be frightened and she was. But it was hard to find, to feel fear’s hesitation, its paralysis, when her overriding sense was of her arms and legs pumping, lungs heaving, as she snaked across the rapidly blackening sands. Even the motion blur of soldiers as she charged didn’t give her pause; the enemy’s pikemen and archers interspersed with defensive cavalry that wouldn’t hesitate to strike her down. Or would they? It was the gamble Cahra was bargaining on, so that she might level the battlefield just a little. That she might give Luminaux’s army some kind of fighting chance. Hearten their soldiers. Give them hope. She laughed in spite of herself, recalling Thelaema’s words:

The hope is you, child.

So Cahra kept running into danger. Danger would meet her head-on.

She ducked and weaved, zigzagging as arrows began to fall from the dawning sky. Had Atriposte deemed her expendable now, or was this a calculated move? Did he know what powers she possessed, however temporarily? She scanned for Grauwynn.

More importantly, how was she able to strategise while being shot at? Cahra grunted as she dive-rolled out of the way of a storm of arrows.

No, that wasn’t the most important thing, she thought firmly. That question was how she was dodging a hail of arrows in the first place when she was the only person on the plain. How exactly she knew how to break Kolyath and Ozumbre’s fortified lines without dying. Because unlike Hael, Cahra wasn’t immortal. But for this, it didn’t matter.

She’d reached the enemy’s front.

And, imbued with Hael’s powers, she would make them pay.

Destroy.

The voice from the caves. It was here. And it washungryfor violence.

The enemy archers hesitated, their gaze fixed on Cahra’s glowing eyes, a supernatural war-bringer on the sandy battlefield.

Cahra didn’t, levering her great-hammer from across her back and swooping to sail into an airborne somersault. She landed among their pikemen, her hammer’s head slamming into the ground with a resonant boom that sent a shockwave through the enemy’s front line, rattling armour and weaponry. Soldiers stumbled as Cahra spun, dancing with unbridled power and grace as she and her hammer arced in circles, its head deflecting arrows mid-flight back into Kolyath and Ozumbre’s scattering ranks. Around her, everything was chaos, but Cahra moved through it like an unnatural force, her body at one with the fire in her soul.

The iron tang of blood rose in the air.

Kolyath’s Commander Sullian bellowed at his archers to keep firing.

She’d done it. She’d broken their line, but that hadn’t been the goal.

Marking Steward Atriposte at last, Cahra freed a hand to point to him, her heart a drum marching in time with the rhythm of her hammer’s song.