Page 120 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

KILLIAN

Rufina laughed and laughed as she circled high above the battlefield filled with Mudamorian dead, hidden by shadow as she soared higher out of arrow range.

Then the shriek of a giant hawk cut the night, and Niotin attacked her. There was a flurry of wing flaps and Rufina shouted a curse, droplets of blood raining down on Killian’s upturned face.

A crunch of bone. A cry of pain.

The hawk struck the ground in front of Killian with a heavy thump, his body shivering and then changing into the form of a man.

Dead.

Dareena screamed curses and shot arrows after Rufina, but Kil lian couldn’t move from where he’d fallen to his knees in the mud and blood.

Seldrid had him by the shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

Killian pulled off his helmet and cast it aside, shaking his head to try to clear the visions filling it. God towers falling one after another until only the black tower of the Seventh remained. “I think Revat has fallen.”

His brother went still. “Killian, that’s not possible. The Cel army is in Emrant.”

“I saw it. The towers falling.” He scrubbed at his eyes. “I can’t stop seeing it.”

Dareena knelt before him. “Has something happened to Lydia?”

“I don’t know.” Killian dug his fingers into the ground, a scream boiling up from his insides. “This was a trick. A ruse to keep us from aiding Revat. A gambit to keep me from going to her.” He slammed his fists against the ground. “I was supposed to be with her!”

Every part of him was rage and fear and grief, and Killian wanted to lash out. To hurt and maim and do something, anything, to free himself from the horror that threatened to drown him.

Lunging for his bow, he chased after his horse to get an arrow from the quiver fixed to his saddle. “Where is she?” he screamed, aiming at the sky. “Where are you, Rufina!”

He shot arrow after arrow, howling in fury until Dareena and Seldrid dragged him to the ground.

“Rufina’s gone!” Dareena’s face was inches from his, hidden by darkness. “She got what she wanted and did not linger. Now tell me exactly what you saw!”

“I saw the god towers of the Six collapsing across Revat, smashing the city to ruins,” he whispered. “All that remained was the Seventh’s tower.”

“Killian, are you certain you didn’t take a blow to the head during the fight?” his brother asked.

“I didn’t hit my head. It was a vision.”

“I’ve never heard of Tremon’s marked receiving visions.”

“And I’ve never heard of Tremon taking a sword from one place and giving it to a person half a continent away, and yet he did just that for Killian,” Dareena said. “Killian, when you spoke with Tremon and he gave you your father’s sword, did he touch you again, as Hegeria did Lydia?”

He blinked through tear-swollen eyes. “Yes.”

Dareena gave a slow nod. “Then I believe you see truly. Revat has fallen, though it remains to be seen how such a thing occurred.”

Adra let out a wail of despair and fell to her knees. Seldrid went to his wife and pulled her into his arms, giving words of comfort where there was none to be had. Killian squeezed his eyes shut, allowing grief to pull him down and down, because if Lydia was lost—

“Don’t even think it,” Dareena barked at him.

Grabbing hold of his shoulders, she gave him a rough shake.

“Lydia is clever and resourceful, but more than that, she has the capacity to endure what would kill anyone else. Focus your mind instead on what Rufina’s actions tell us.

She clearly knew Lydia was in Revat with Malahi, and the fact that she went through this effort to keep you from going to her suggests that they were on the right track.

That the Seventh perceives whatever Lydia and Malahi might learn in Revat as a threat to his plans. ”

“They had no time. How much could they have learned?”

“Who can say?” Dareena replied. “But we do them no service weeping in the mud. We must hold Rufina back until they have time to return with whatever they have learned. Because I choose to have faith that they will return.”

Killian wanted to believe her. Wanted to share her hope, except his hopes always seemed to burn to ash.

“This group of blighters is but one of many forming behind our army’s lines.” Dareena let go of him and sat back on her heels. “We need to track them down and stop them. We must do our duty to the queen so that all is not lost when she returns. Now get up.”

Killian stood, but he felt unsteady on his feet.

All around him were the soldiers who’d fought, torchlight illuminating the splatter of blood from the blighters they’d killed. They watched him and Dareena, looking for a path through the horror pressing in on all sides.

“Which way did she fly?”

“North, I think. With Niotin—” Dareena’s voice broke off with a choked sob of grief, but she wiped blood off her face and steadied her breath. “With Niotin lost, we have no way to know.”

Killian drew in a steadying breath and shoved his emotions behind a wall, forcing himself to focus. “Dareena, break our force into groups and start hunting down blighters that have risen behind the front lines. Use dogs to track them.”

The torchlight cast dancing shadows over his mentor’s face as she narrowed her eyes. “Are you going after Lydia? Are you leaving us to this fight?”

Every part of his soul wanted to go south to Lydia, but that was not how to best serve his queen. “I’m going north.”

“Why?”

Killian swung into his saddle. “Because it’s time that we went on the offensive.”

With only Baird racing at his side, Killian rode north through the night, the thick, rotten stench of blight growing stronger with each passing hour until it became a struggle to breathe.

“Did Bercola forgive you?” Killian asked during one of the stretches he allowed his horse to walk. “I was a little worried she might kill you.”

“Of course she didn’t forgive me.” Baird shot him a look of disgust. “Forgiveness must be earned with acts of valor, but by allowing me to live, my wife has given me a chance at redemption.”

“Fair enough.” Killian loosened his reins so that Surly could stretch his neck. “Well, this might be your chance.”

The giant blew a breath out between his teeth. “What precisely do you intend, Killian?”

A plan was forming in his head, but Killian needed to see the scope of what the Mudamorian army faced before it would come together.

“The enemy’s forces keep growing. The Cel seem to be almost without limit in the soldiers they can bring over from the Empire.

Every time the blight slips past our barricades, more Mudamorians are lost to rise as blighters, who join Rufina’s ranks.

With luck, your people and the Anuk will join our forces.

With luck, Lydia and Malahi are on their way to Serlania with a solution for the blight.

But we need to strike a blow that doesn’t rely on luck.

A blow that sets Rufina back a step so that we have time to take a breath. ”

“That’s all wonderful,” Baird said. “But not one word of that speech spoke of a specific plan.”

“Soon enough.” Gathering his reins, Killian drove his warhorse into a canter, the chance for conversation over.

They met the first scouts just after dawn, the men immediately recognizing Killian.

Their uniforms were stained and torn, armor dented, and their dirty faces grim with exhaustion.

“We heard that blighters had risen behind the lines,” one man said.

“Niotin brought word that you and Lady Falorn were riding to combat them.”

“Niotin fell,” Killian replied. “But so, too, have the blighters. Have you found the sources of the leak?”

The scout shook his head. “Near as we can tell, it wasn’t the river that was infected, my lord.

Our best guess is that Rufina sent agents with barrels of blight to poison wells.

Every town and village is supposed to keep their water sources under guard, but one moment of distraction is all it takes. ”

“It’s what she did in Derin,” Killian muttered, remembering the glass of water that he and Lydia had found. How the blight had swirled within it, sentient.

“It won’t spread through the land that way.” The soldier wiped a dirty hand over his brow. “But it kills anyone who drinks it, sure and true.”

Baird stepped closer to Killian, voice low. “All it will take is her agents poisoning every well they can find and this war is over.”

The thought had already occurred to Killian, but it had only reaffirmed that he needed to act now.

The army’s camp was quiet and grim, a sea of tents on fields so churned up that they were nothing more than mud at this point. Men and women sat quietly around fires, but most lifted their heads as he passed.

“It’s the Dark Horse,” he heard them say. “It’s Killian Calorian.”

The weight of the hope that he’d be able to do something felt like a lead shirt.

“We’re holding it back with trenches and rubble,” the scout told him as they walked through the camp.

“We have patrols traveling east and west of our position every day, searching for veins of blight breaking off from the main stream. Dogs have proven the best at finding them, and then it’s a matter of trenching and barricading it off.

But it’s like plugging a leaking dam with your fingers.

Plug a hole and another springs open, and we’re running out of fingers.

And while we’re doing the plugging, the blighters attack us. We’re losing men in droves.”

Ahead rose a wall of rubble that ran as far as Killian could see in both directions.

Wagons were moving slowly toward it, men unloading what looked like the dismantled remains of homes and pasture walls.

Every bit of rock that could be stripped from the land brought here to hold back the main flow of the blight.

“Lord Calorian!” A captain in a uniform as stained and torn as his subordinates approached. “Were you able to stop the spread?”