Page 30 of Realm of Crows (Wings of Ink #5)
Twenty-One
Ayna
Clio lands us in a copse of evergreens at the foot of the mountain two miles south from where the Tavrasian troops should be.
From our vantage point, I can make out the thousands of bootprints leading from between the rocks not even two hundred feet to the east and leading all the way to the dark stripe on the horizon where the soldiers are marching north.
“They came down the mountain,” I whisper, and Clio shakes her head, not in objection but seriously wondering if Erina wants his troops dead.
“If they are all humans, they can’t have spent much time up there, or they’d have long frozen.” She gestures at the thick snow caps starting not even halfway up the steep face of the mountain.
“Also, Erina must have sent them on their way well before the last ambush at the rebels’ farm,” Myron adds, already piecing together the entire procedure of how Erina and Ephegos must’ve concocted this new ambush for us. “They will stop at nothing to win this war.”
It’s the only conclusion we can come to because, no matter how many times we beat them down and celebrate a small win, they always have another ace up their sleeve.
It’s embarrassing, considering we’re magic-wielding immortals and they are humans—most of them.
Then, having a traitorous master-mind like Ephegos in their ranks does help, along with the approximately five to six hundred Flames and about one hundred Crows.
Not to forget the magic-nullifying drug.
My head is already aching before Tori site-hops in the others and I am reminded that every last member of my court is here.
Myron, Royad, Silas, Herinor, and Kaira.
The five people who won’t stay behind if we survive this war and need to move on to find a new piece of soil to call our home. I can’t let anything happen to them.
“Do you have the arrows?” Herinor asks, his hand on Kaira’s arm as he eyes the feathered ends sticking out of her quiver over her shoulder.
A curt nod is all she gives him, and the way Herinor’s gaze splinters with unspoken words almost breaks my heart.
“I’ll fight by your side.” Myron takes my hand, calluses scraping over mine as our fingers interlace .
In the space between our hideout in the trees and Erina’s troops, groups of Askarean soldiers appear, hands on their weapons and ready to strike. Together, we watch as they populate more and more of the trampled ground until I count six units of fifty standing in formation.
“Three hundred against a thousand,” I murmur, forcing the sense of foreboding in my stomach.
“Three hundred of our best men,” Tori corrects.
“All the more pity if they get slaughtered.” Silas sheathes his hatchet and shifts into bird form to flutter ahead and view the troops from above.
A few of them cringe at his approach, but they were warned there would be five crows flying with them, and I can’t wait to see what’s awaiting us from up high as well, so I shift and join him, Myron, Royad, and Herinor following suit.
Clio takes Kaira by the hand and together with Tori, they site-hop to the front of the small army.
We don’t need a signal to start moving. The moment Tori appears, the troops march forward, spears at the front, then arrows, and swords in the back rows.
Silas and Royad fly higher to assess more details of the terrain and how we could use it to our advantage, while Herinor flutters above Kaira, and Myron and I shift back into our fae forms.
Erina’s troops haven’t spotted us; I can tell from the consistent speed they keep and their animated conversation. Smart of Erina to send them north on the other side of the mountains and have them cross into Askarea where no one would expect them .
When I say so, Tori frowns, and Myron shakes his head.
“We should have expected a move like that from Ephegos. Erina might not be smart enough to think of it or willing to risk his soldiers in such tactics, but Ephegos surely is. It must have been one of his first moves the moment Erina made him general.”
“He might have to probe Cezux’s border,” Tori points out.
“The narrow strip of even land west of the mountains is the only place an army could easily cross into Cezux. Even if King Dimar has his maritime troops stationed in Brolli and the harbor town is well protected otherwise, it would be possible for Tavrasian spies to sneak through at the foot of the mountains.”
Studying Herinor’s steady wingbeats, I wonder if this is another thing Ephegos kept from Herinor, or if Herinor was no longer around to learn about the general’s plans, having already joined our court.
“The same way they used the lowest part of the mountain where Askarea, Tavras, and Cezux meet to sneak into our lands,” Clio retorts, but her tone isn’t the usual drawl but one laced with a killing calm promising nothing good for whoever gets in her path.
“If I ever get my hands on either of the two bastards waging this war, I’ll happily pick them apart. ”
“Slowly, I hope.” Tori grins at her with an unfamiliar malice.
“When they snuck a few troops into Askarea through Ansoli, that was one thing, but this—” He gestures at the army less than a mile ahead.
“This no longer counts as taunting. This is Tavras’s envoy.
They are testing us to see how to strike hardest. Perhaps they even hope to neutralize a few of us .
” He gestures between Clio, Myron and me, and himself.
“If they can take out a few of the leaders, the army waiting near Askarea won’t fight half as efficiently. ”
“You really know how to deliver a pep talk,” Kaira comments, her sarcasm nothing short of Silas’s usual tone.
Tori shrugs, glancing around at the men within earshot. “My soldiers know I won’t sugarcoat things. They also know that I’ll fight to my death alongside them.”
From the corner of my eye, I notice Clio’s expression turning grim.
“At least, your troops know how to keep their feet silent.” I try to diffuse the tension. “We’ll be upon them in minutes, and they haven’t noticed us over their own stomping.”
We are almost within reach of the archers, the fairies in the second and third row preparing their bows and arrows to thin out Tavras’s ranks before they even realize we’re upon them.
Another minute, and Tori lifts his hand, signaling for them to aim. Silas, Royad, and Herinor shift back into their human form and join us at the front of the troops a moment before Tori gives the command to shoot.
Hissing and snarling, a volley of arrows launches to the sky like a deadly cloud, zooming toward our enemy. The army stops just in time to see their demise approach before it hits them.
I can’t see if they pulled up physical shields or magical ones, but fewer figures than I’d hoped topple over, and now that they are aware of our presence, there is no sneaking up on them anymore.
Someone shouts a command, and while our sharpshooters are reloading their bows, a volley of arrows approaches from the other side.
“Shield!” Tori’s order is superfluous; our shields are already a silvery-translucent bubble around the front and top of the army behind us.
Each of the fairy soldiers has their own magical shield at their disposal, but they lift the light wooden ones they brought as well, prepared in case the arrowheads are coated with the drug.
With a whoosh, the arrows rain down upon us and, thank Eroth, they bounce off our magical shields like toothpicks.
“Don’t lower the wooden shields,” Tori cautions. “They might try to trick us into believing they don’t have any drug-coated weapons.”
None of us is stupid enough to believe that anyway.
Our soldiers release another volley of arrows, and this time, men stagger and fall. But the Tavrasian army is moving again. At a steady pace, they approach us, their faces half-hidden behind gray leather headpieces.
When they are fifty feet away, we release a final onslaught of arrows before summoning our magic to destroy as many of them as possible before they come within our blades’ reach.
So far, I haven’t spotted a hint of magic on their side. Not a flicker of silver or a spark of fire. Whether that’s a good sign remains to be determined.
To my right, Myron’s magic is bleeding silver and black, smoke and stars, while on my left, Clio is merging the ice crystals she summoned into small, sharp blades.
Silas, Royad, and Herinor’s palms are surrounded by silver power, as are my own.
The only one not yet using her powers is Kaira.
She needs something to siphon, and she won’t do that with any of our powers.
“Now.” At Tori’s command, we release a fraction of the powers we’ve summoned and send them flying at the enemy soldiers.
Sure as death, half of them stumble, clasping the places they were hit, while the other half launches into a run as they charge at us.
“I’m not sure this is good news,” Herinor grumbles as he draws his sword with one hand, keeping a ball of silver power in the other.
“I’m not sure if I should trust it either,” Myron seconds his statement. “They could just be pretending.”
“Or they never got around to using the drug on their armor and weapons since Ephegos must have dispatched them before the mass production of the serum was ready.” It’s been a while since we learned about Erina having found a way to produce the drug faster, yet it would have taken the soldiers longer to reach Tavras than that.
It’s a viable explanation, and I try to keep the smugness from my face when even Royad and Tori admit they hadn’t considered the possibility.
It doesn’t matter anyway. If these bastards aren’t protected by the drug, we can easily bring them down with our powers.
“Use your magic,” Tori shouts at the soldiers.