Page 57 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame (Fated for Hael #1)

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 was hungry for 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.

The Steward. He was her goal.

Destroy!

She charged, great-hammer spinning, her body and weapon a symphony of vengeance, her path ahead clear. The Steward would fall.

Cahra swung her hammer with Netherworld strength, vaulting into the air to tackle Steward Atriposte, his mouth ajar as she ripped him from his snowy horse.

His arrogance had no place in the face of her unworldly power.

Rising to her feet, Cahra seized him by the throat, dangling Atriposte in the air as she gradually clamped the vice of her grip shut until his breath faltered, his life force failing, squandered as the man flailed within her deathly grasp. Her lips contorted into a sinister grin.

DESTROY!

The Nether’s siren song called, and its melody was mesmerising.

But before she could choose death, an elderly voice choked out her name.

‘Cahra!’

She knew that voice. Had heard it every day for years.

Every morning, as the old man attempted to rouse her from deepest sleep, and every night, as he wished her pleasant dreams, knowing how much her nightmares haunted her; as well as on and off all day, each day, with every word of encouragement, of praise, for her growth as a burgeoning smith in a kingdom that hated low-borns having a smidgeon of pride, of worth.

Lumsden .

The sight of him, here, alive and on the battlefield, sent her reeling to another time. Their first meeting in Kolyath’s dungeons…

Cahra had stabbed Atriposte, ruler of the Kingdom of Kolyath, in the neck, and fled.

But not before grabbing the man’s dungeon keys. Careening to the end of the room, she flung herself at the gate to the stairwell, shoving key after key into the stubborn lock. PLEASE! It was no use. The Steward’s wrath-filled stomps were approaching.

I missed the killing spot , she thought.

It was little comfort as the Steward wrenched her shoulder back, hurling her small frame against the freezing ground.

A strangled cry escaped her as her ribs cracked against the floor’s stones, her eyes watering as she looked at the man.

The anger in his eyes, however, vanished as quickly as it came.

‘That was foolish,’ the Steward murmured, regaining his composure.

‘Your sentence was lenient; six years for petty larceny. Such a trifle, compared with the attempted murder of a sovereign of the realm.’ His amber eyes bored into her, flat and unfeeling, as he pressed a pocket square to his bloody neck.

‘That is high treason. The penalty is death.’

The air froze in Cahra’s lungs. But before the Steward could bellow for his guards, her sharp hearing sensed hushed footsteps – a moment before the handle of a weapon struck the back of Atriposte’s head, and his eyes rolled up as he crumpled to the floor.

She looked up, speechless, as an old man appeared, holding a blacksmith’s hammer. He extended a wrinkled hand. The beggar’s credo rattled through her: Hael won’t help us.

But another low-born might.

Lumsden. Kolyath’s master blacksmith, her mentor. He was here.

Cahra turned, time slowing to something she couldn’t comprehend.

Lumsden is here, she thought, and her heart swelled as the old man smiled at her, his eyes of smoky quartz and amethyst shining.

The ring of wispy silver hair around his head ruffled in the dead breeze of the desert, his leather apron smudged with coal and pockmarked by singes like it always was, and a wave of comfort, of nostalgia, surged through Cahra. Lumsden is here and he is okay.

Then, a split-second later…

He wasn’t.

Cahra screamed, the noise louder than anything she’d ever heard, dropping Atriposte to the sands as she leapt for Lumsden, the old man’s body collapsing to the earth, his blood spilling, spurting from his chest, Cahra only dimly noting the blood dribbling from her own ears at her Netherworldly scream.

Lumsden.

She couldn’t connect the words inside her, couldn’t think them, but she knew.

He was dead.

The realisation punched the air from Cahra’s lungs and she bent over the old man, horror-stricken and grappling for him as she fought to breathe, her eyes burning with tears as the light in his went out, his body still. Slowly, she raised her head to the one responsible.

Commander Jarett was standing over her, wiping Lumsden’s blood from a rapier. The Haellium rapier she’d forged for the Steward.

‘Before you have any further notions of grandeur,’ Jarett said scornfully, ‘I would pause to consider who else you may care for in your kingdom, girl smith.’ Another, smaller struggling figure was brought to Lumsden’s feet.

Cahra couldn’t look away from the blood, Lumsden’s blood, soaking the black sands.

But she had to.

Because Ellian, the boy she’d told to go find Lumsden for a job, was next. And behind him, every child soldier, every young apprentice, every trader from her Quadrant in Kolyath.

‘And should they not be adequately motivating, perhaps let us add a few new friends.’ At Jarett’s words, the other Commander, Sullian, signalled and his longbow archers drew, trained on Thierre and his family, just as she’d feared.

Cahra snarled, the ground beneath her kneeling body quaking. She’d been able to dodge Kolyath and Ozumbre’s bowmen, but—

Would she be quick enough to outrun a dozen arrows aimed at Luminaux’s royals? She remembered Thelaema’s words. Sacrifices must be made.

Cahra didn’t know and it was maddening. But she couldn’t risk them to find out. Not Luminaux’s royals, Ellian, Kolyath’s people or anybody else.

A guttural howl rumbled inside her, threatening to break loose as she dug her fingers into the sand, biting her lip so hard she tasted blood, as she watched Jarett’s guards circle the group of smallest soldiers. Kolyath’s child soldiers.

Ellian. Sacrifices must be made.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘ No .’ They wouldn’t – they couldn’t —

Then a voice, an elder man she did not know, echoed in her mind:

My girl, the Steward Atriposte has no qualms about killing every person here, every man, woman and child in his kingdom of Kolyath, to ensure that you understand: the punishment for defying the Steward is death. Not just yours, but your people’s.

Cahra heard rasping laughter in her head. To think that you aspired to save that child, only for the boy to grace this very battlefield.

Her head snapped up. Cahra knew enough of Thelaema’s gifts to guess the speaker: Grauwynn, the other High Oracle. He was here, somewhere, in all of this.

And he knew about her helping Ellian. An icy sweat engulfed her body.

What else did he know about her?

You will yield, blacksmith. Or this time, it shall not simply be a purging of the council, it will be Kolyath’s reckoning. And the fault will be yours.

He was bluffing, they both were. Atriposte would never surrender his army, Kolyath was obsessed with winning the weapon because of him! This whole war was so that Atriposte could control the weapon—

Cahra’s breaths were starting to feel dangerously out of control.

Atriposte wanted Hael. Just Hael.