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Chapter six

Dane

T he Arathian war drums were endless. Night and day, they thrummed like a monstrous heartbeat out in the desert beyond Fort Mysai. Dane wasn’t sure what he’d do with himself if they ever stopped. The silence would be maddening.

Assuming he lived long enough to hear silence again.

“Archers! Make ready!” shouted his commanding knight, Sir Conall, and Dane lifted his bow and drew it taut. They were losing the light. Twilight now bled across the sky.

Within the growing darkness, Arath’s army advanced.

“Aim!”

Dane breathed in deep and willed his hands to stop shaking. It had been six months, two weeks, and five days since Arath first launched its midnight attack against Mysai. It had been six months, two weeks, and five days since Elmoria lost control of the outer ring.

And it had been six months, two weeks, and five days since his little brother, Hedley, had gone missing.

No body. No word. No news. There had been nothing. No one could tell him where Hedley had gone. He wasn’t among the dead. He wasn’t among the living. He wasn’t…anywhere.

But Dane knew he was still alive. He knew his little brother was still out there, somewhere.

And the moment they won the war, he was going to find him.

“Fire!”

Dane loosed his arrow and grabbed for another at the same moment the low wail of a horn rumbled in the distance, out in the dunes. The sound vibrated through his bones and stopped his heart for a full beat.

“What is it?” his bunkmate, Thorley, asked. “What do you see?”

Dane scoured the ripple of movement below as the Arathian shield wall broke. More of their number raced through the opening provided. The double lines of enemy soldiers carried something between them. It was hard to see what, given they held their shields over their heads while they advanced.

His eyes widened when he finally realized what it was.

“Ladders!” Dane shouted to his unit. “Ladders incoming!”

“Fire at will! Bring them down!” Sir Conall roared in reply.

Dane’s fingers skimmed across the fletching of what arrows remained in his quiver. Seven.

He had seven arrows left .

For months, they had held Mysai, all thanks to the ingenuity of the ancient Arathian architects who had originally built the fort. And thanks to the unholy magic soaked into the very walls, according to Thorley.

Dane didn’t know about all that, though.

If unholy magic had made the walls of old Mysai, then couldn’t they unmake them? But witchfire didn’t seem to harm it. Not like it had the outermost wall.

And the deep, oil-filled trenches encircling Mysai had burned hot ever since that first night, adding another layer of protection.

The fire wall hadn’t been enough to keep out the witches. But it had kept their soldiers and war elephants at bay.

Until just that morning, when the fire finally died.

Dane snatched forth his first arrow. He nocked it. He drew. He aimed for the slit between Arathian shields.

He fired.

One soldier crumpled to the sand. But the rest of the line didn’t so much as falter. They but ran on, drawing closer by the moment.

“Bring them down!” Sir Conall barked again.

At his side, Thorley cursed under his breath as more arrows rained from their fingers. Dane could nearly taste the tension choking the archer ranks. They struggled to make a dent in the enemy’s numbers.

And then the first ladder slammed into place against the ramparts .

Out in the dunes, another horn blast sounded over the never-ending pulse of the drums. Dane could see war elephants incoming, each pulling something large behind it.

He narrowed his eyes against the purple shadows of the evening, trying to make sense of the strange wooden structures. “Are those siege towers or trebuchets, sir?”

“Trebuchets!” Sir Conall called, just as Dane drew the last arrow from his quiver. “Prepare to engage! We hold this wall, men. We hold this wall until our last breath.”

Two of the soldiers in their unit broke rank and hurried toward the nearest ladder. But when they tried to shove it from the wall, the soldier on the right abruptly tumbled from the ramparts and pitched into the night, screaming.

Dane flinched away from the sound.

The first Arathian appeared at the top of the ladder, wielding some sort of strange hooked weapon. Dane leveled his last arrow at the invading soldier and aimed for the slit in the Arathian’s helm. With a twang of his bowstring, he sent the man careening off the top of the wall.

But now he was out of arrows.

And the Arathians kept coming.

The enemy soldiers crawled their way onto the ramparts like so many ants; steel clashed against steel all down the length of the wall as other units engaged. Shouts rang out into the night. Desperation choked the air .

Setting aside his bow, Dane drew his axe and unslung his shield instead. He had never been any good with an axe. He was a hunter, not a soldier.

He should never have let Hedley talk him into enlisting in the army.

The Arathian before him wielded a weapon that reminded him of a sickle. When the man lunged, Dane just barely raised his shield in time to block the blow.

But at least he wasn’t facing the enemy alone.

Thorley stepped in and cracked the Arathian in the face with his own axe, sending the other soldier reeling. The Arathian’s helmet spun straight off his head with the blow. A scarf covered the lower half of his face.

And his pupils were eerily dilated.

The latter made the hairs on the back of Dane’s neck prickle.

A muffled laugh exploded from the Arathian when the enemy soldier lurched forward again, his sickle aiming for Thorley that time. Setting his jaw, Dane threw his entire weight behind smashing his shield into the Arathian’s shoulder. He drove the other off-balance so Thorley could get in another axe swing.

Within those close quarters, Dane’s nose burned with the desert dweller’s strange scent. He smelled bitter and unpleasant—like witchfire.

“Your phantom is quick, but not quick enough,” the Arathian taunted through the fabric of his scarf. And though the man spoke the common tongue, his accent was so thick it took Dane a few moments to understand his words.

When he did, Dane’s eyebrows furrowed. “Phantom? What phantom?”

“Incoming!” Sir Conall shouted again, just as some dark shape arced up and over the wall, launched from the closest trebuchet. Whatever it was, it brought with it the sickly sweet stench of death and something else.

Something that smelled just as bitter as the man before him.

“The Lady sends her regards,” the Arathian said in the moment before Thorley brought his axe down over the man’s head again.

The enemy dropped, limp, to their feet and Thorley growled, “You’re welcome, Wilsham.” But Dane had no reply.

He turned about and watched in horror as the dead thing the Arathians had just launched past the wall finally crashed down to the ground far below.

The moment the mass connected with the cobblestones, it exploded in a cloud of dark smoke, which buzzed like bees before suddenly dispersing through the air. The smog moved as if it had a mind of its own, as if it was alive , as it flitted down every side street and alleyway.

And it brought with it that metallic tang Dane now associated with the witches of Arath.

“What is it?” Dane shouted to Sir Conall. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” his commanding knight admitted after a tense moment of silence. “The Lord help us, but I don’t know.”

Another mass sailed over the wall and exploded on impact, bringing with it more of that strange smoke. The higher the smoke rose, the more coughing rang out all down the length of the wall—from both their own men and the Arathians alike.

There was something sweet about it, that smoke. But it was thick. And the more of it Dane breathed in, the more the world before him swam and spun. The stars overhead turned to scarlet. The stone ramparts rippled like ocean waves.

“Don’t breathe it in! Cover your mouths!” Sir Conall commanded through his own hacking.

Lightheaded, Dane crouched down and groped until he found the dead Arathian’s face scarf. Yanking it free, he took off his helmet long enough to wind that scarf about his own mouth and nose.

With the scarf, he could breathe easier. But the world all around him was still swiftly shifting into something he barely recognized.

The ramparts seemed to tilt, and Dane tilted along with them. When he crashed into Thorley’s shoulder, his fellow soldier wrapped an arm around him to hold him steady. “Look at the pretty lights, Wilsham.”

Out in the desert, great bonfires sparkled to life, streaked through with all the colors of a rainbow. They were pretty. Terribly pretty.

But for some strange reason, he thought he could now hear men screaming in the distance, beneath the thrumming of the war drums and the crash of bodies still colliding there atop the ramparts.