bloomed with beautiful bursts of flame, a strange show of light in the arctic night.
No one could blame them for the causalities suffered when one unfortunate group of soldiers was pounced upon by a crazed frekete. The creature dropped right into their camp, a rider shouting from its back. The animal ripped ten soldiers apart before being forced to withdraw. Those creatures were going to be deadly troublesome. Mena might have wings because of Elya, but her beauty could not prevail against such brawn.
Thinking this, Mena went to her tent, more troubled about tomorrow than elated about the night’s successes. She closed her eyes in the dark and opened them in the dark, knowing that hours had passed and that she had not slipped into sleep during any of them. How many will die today? she wondered. How many will I kill? Though she might have, she did not mean kill with her own blade or with her soldiers’ blades. It was her own people’s lives that she felt responsible for. She hated that even the more recent plans she had come up with were not sufficient for what faced them.
Mena found her first officer waiting in the anteroom of her tent, a small space just enclosed enough to be a shelter. “Perrin? How long have you been here?”
“Not long.”
“Why didn’t you call for me?” she grumbled, pulling her outer layers on in front of him, her breath clouding the air.
“You deserved sleep.”
“And you don’t?” she asked.
“I got some yesterday,” he said. “I have someone you’ll want to talk to. A patrol picked him up at first light this morning. He was stumbling around like a drunken man. He says he was looking for us, though he was off to the north. If the patrol hadn’t spotted him, he’d likely have wandered off to freeze. Unless he was up to something more cunning. If I hear him right, he says his name is Rialus Neptos.”
Mena and Perrin arrived at the command tent a few minutes later. The room was just a little above freezing, the air clouded with steam and heavy with smoke from the oil lamps. The light was imperfect, flickering, but it revealed a pitiful version of the traitor. He stood trembling in the center of a circle of glaring officers.
“What are you doing here?” Mena asked, slipping into the ring to face him.
Rialus’s body jerked as if she had smacked him. His arms were crossed across his chest, clutching a book within the clumsy embrace of all his layers. Instead of answering, he tightened his embrace.
“Speak fast,” Mena said.
A moment later, she knew that was too much to ask of the man. He had a hard time getting his words out through his chattering teeth. “I-I’ve… ca-ca-come to he-help… Acacia. My nation.”
“Too late for that, don’t you think?” Bledas asked.
“Not… too late. Just late.”
Mena watched the man tremble for a time. “Rialus Neptos, you’ve walked from our enemy’s camp after having guided them here from the other side of the world. If you have something to say, say it. And then go back to die along with them.”
Rialus’s eyes widened in terror. “No! I can’t go back. They’d kill me. They’ll know by now.”
“They know already,” Edell said, “because they sent you. What lie did they send you to tell?”
“No lies.” He fumbled to get the book in his hands and then thrust it toward her. “Here. Read my journal. Read. It’s me in there.”
Edell shoved the book back at him. “You expect us to believe you? You?”
“No lies,” Rialus said, once he was steady on his feet again. “I came to you… to tell you th-th-things.”
Edell seemed ready to shove Rialus again, but Mena stayed him. “If you have something to say, do so.”
“The beasts… they ca-cannot fly on their own. They need the amulets. They have amulets. Chains that lift them-”
“What is he on about?” Bledas said. “Speak sense, man!”
“The freketes need magic to fly,” Rialus said, getting out the first complete sentence that captured the company’s attention. The effort seemed to exhaust him.
“The freketes need magic to fly.” Mena chewed that a moment, and then said, “Let’s get him food and hot water. Give him a hot water bottle and bring him a chair. I want him talking without chattering. And take that book from him.”
A s the troops assembled for battle a couple of hours later, Mena stood, exhaling the irony of what she was about to do in perplexed plumes of mist, watching the enemy amass on the ice in front of them. Was she really reordering the day’s battle plans based on testimony she had just received from a babbling mouse of a man who had betrayed her nation twice? Apparently so.
Because of the rest of the information she had pulled from between Rialus’s chattering teeth, she had altered the arrangement of their battle lines. Perrin’s company would hold the center, along with Haleeven and his Mein. But Mena spaced them loosely, and behind their core troops she stationed the newest arrivals to the army, praying that they never saw an Auldek face that day. Bledas and Edell would take the left flank, Perceven and Gandrel the right. Archers would stay to the rear of both flanks, able to shoot over their companions and into the enemy ranks. Nothing would look remarkable about the formation to the enemy facing it, but there was a reasoning behind it that was entirely different from what she had planned just hours before.
For herself, the battle would begin from the air. She stood, stroking Elya’s feathers as her attendant finished tightening her rigging. Perrin trudged over to her. He carried a helmet stuffed under one arm and wore a breastplate emblazoned with his family’s insignia-the profile of a wolf, black against a backdrop of gold. He asked after any last orders, and she said there were none.
“Rialus got away all right?” Mena asked.
“I think so. Kant’s people helped him get back. He should be fine. The hard part was living through the shock of your sending him back to the Auldek.”
“He won’t buy forgiveness cheaply. I need more than what he gave us.” The officer nodded his agreement, but looked uncomfortable doing so. “Perrin, I know we’ve changed this around at the last moment. It’s decided now. We have to trust it.”
“I trust you, Princess. I just wish we didn’t have to rely on that rat. Maybe the Auldek had enough of him and kicked him out for the ice to finish.”
“Possibly. I wouldn’t blame them.” She took in the scene a moment, mostly just the soldiers marching into formation. She could not actually see the enemy from there. “But, Perrin, this plan feels right. It’s awful and unjust, perhaps, but…”
“If it saves our soldiers’ lives, it’s worth it,” he finished. “I’m with you. Don’t think I’m not.”
“Are the others?”
“They don’t like how the information came to us, but they’re not foolish enough not to see the logic in it.” He pulled his helmet down around his head, a snug fit with the fur padding that lined it. “If I die today,” he said, “I’d regret not telling you that I’m in love with you. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”
Tugging on her gloves and pulling the wrist straps tight, Mena asked, “And if you live?”
“I’ll die of shame.”
Mena nudged him away. She climbed up into position on Elya. So I’m loved, Elya. I don’t think Melio would approve, but it’s good to know. You are, too, girl. You are, too. Let’s stay alive, all right? Fly now .
The ice fell away beneath them. The frigid air bit at her cheeks; a little way up, the wind buffeted them. They flew higher and found calmer air. From there she flew forward to take in what they faced.
The Auldek forces were arrayed across the ice in a patchwork, a martial geometry laid out in a manner she had never seen before, not from on high. Squares and rectangles of troops, divided by clan affiliations, status, and all manner of distinctions Mena had little grasp of. She knew the strongest clans were in the center front, with others to either side. At each flank went contingents of animals: antoks with harnesses brimming with archers; kwedeir with their awkward gait, wings tented around them; woolly rhinoceroses with riders carrying lances atop them. She saw white lions slinking through the lines, spotted cats like those from Talay, wolves the size of horses. A few bears, tethered to chains, roared as if they had not been fed in a week and smelled the banquet awaiting them. As she watched, a black swell of birds flowed up into the air. Crows.
“They’ve brought their own crows,” Mena said. “Is this a war or a traveling circus?”
At the edge of each flank went the other troops, the slaves. They stretched all along either side and well back, eventually wrapping around to make up the mass that brought up the rear of the host. There were so many of
