Silence settled between them. Saric’s gaze dropped over his general like tar.
“And did you for an instant wish that I would, so that you might save yourself?”
“Never, my Lord! I serve you with my life.”
Saric looked away, toward the rise.
“Is there any possible credence to this notion that they may have more numbers than we’re aware of… or that Feyn has betrayed us?”
His chief strategist, mounted to his right, said, “Unlikely, my Lord.” The man waited a beat then spoke on. “I only wonder what kind of enemy would be so bold as to offer terms they knew would be dismissed. They are begging for engagement.”
“So it seems. Only Feyn and our scouts have verified their numbers. Is there any possibility our scouts could have been misled?”
A long silence.
“It’s possible,” Varus said slowly. “The number first came to us from their scout while in our custody. It’s possible he could have fed us misinformation. The Nomads could have hidden an army in the badlands. If Feyn-”
His words were cut short by a sound that Saric first took to be screeching birds taking flight to the west. He turned his head and saw the black flock rising, screaming.
Those weren’t birds.
The screech became a whistling scream-a cloud of arrows darkening the sky. He’d heard of Nomads notching their arrows so they whistled as they flew, but he’d never imaged such an unnerving sound.
“Defend!” Brack thundered.
The terrifying sound had confused men and horse alike, locking them in indecision without a clear path of action. Too late, they recognized the unfamiliar threat of incoming arrows and threw up their shields while attempting to steady their mounts.
The first volley had not reached his cavalry before another horde of screaming arrows took flight from the west.
“Defend!”
His shout was lost in the squall of incoming projectiles. They had been carefully aimed to strike the leading cavalry, and they sliced down with blazing speed, cutting deep into leather, flesh, and hide.
It occurred to Saric in a momentary flash that if his children had been more given to panic, they might have bolted and avoided more of the heavy razors now cutting into their ranks.
Only one of every three arrows struck a target, but the second volley was already arching down, angled once again for the cavalry alone.
Brack shoved his finger in the direction of the archers. They had to be hiding in low ground. “Defend your Maker!”
The second volley sliced into the rearing horses. At a glance Saric saw that a full third of his cavalry had been compromised. A third volley darkened the sky. This could not be the doing of a mere few hundred archers! The threat wasn’t coming from the north, which was the direction Roland had gone, but from the west.
Rage flooded Saric’s veins. “Send them all! Send them all west!”
Brack swatted away one arrow that snipped by, then grunted as a second buried itself in his shoulder. He broke it off with a thick fist, stared at it for a brief moment, then hurled it at the ground.
“Cavalry, follow!” He spurred his horse and charged west, straight down the throat of the threat, ignoring the rain of shafts plunging into the ground around him until it seemed the earth itself had sprouted quills. As one, Saric’s Legion shifted and surged forward.
Only then did Saric see the line of a hundred horses thundering forward from the north where Roland had vanished. Bent low in saddles at breakneck speed, the riders suddenly rose in their stirrups, drew bowstrings, and fired a much closer volley directly into his battered cavalry.
They arrows came in like hornets, zeroing in on the larger targets of the horses’ bodies. And then more from the east where a line had risen from the cliffs, now to their rear. Half of his cavalry were down; the rest were in full swing west, leaving only infantry to bear down on the cliffs.
Saric swung his shield up just in time for the latest volley, arrows slamming into steel, then falling away, broken.
He gathered his resolve and willed himself to calm. A hornet could not defeat a hammer.
“Varus! The remaining divisions forward in full attack! Advance without retreat!”
The order was cried and the infantry surged forward, flowing around Saric like a thick, black wave. With a roar his Dark Bloods ran, leaning forward, shields lifted, feet shaking the earth, eight thousand strong.
The archers along the cliff sprung into view, loosed one last volley into the face of his advancing army, then sprinted in retreat. A line of two hundred men veered to their right in pursuit, a thundering horde. Too fast for the Mortals in flight despite their lighter weight.
Those at the back of the retreat were forced to engage. The Mortals parried and stuck, moving with the same agility he’d seen Roland demonstrate a week earlier. Deadly and deadly accurate, as though they saw every thrust coming. His children began to fall, only to be replaced by more, an unending tide of black.
Ten Mortals fell, then thirty. The line from the north was in full retreat.
Smoke boiled into the sky along the western flank. The ground was ablaze, set fire by the archers to cover their westward retreat. Fire lapped at the air, cutting off his cavalry. A full two-thirds of his thousand horses had been cut down by their deadly swarms of arrows, and those who remained were cut off from pursuit by the flames roaring from what could only be trenches filled with fuel.
The enemy had jabbed before going into full retreat.
The Nomadic Prince had proven himself a respectable tactician in his first blow, but Saric now knew the truth of their numbers. They’d shown less than two hundred. Even with the archers to the west, their numbers surely could not be more than two thousand. If they had more they would have used them in this first assault.
Now Saric would bring to bear his hammer. There would be none to flee. The division he’d sent west on a flanking maneuver would descend on the plateau soon enough, and his numbers would prove overwhelming at close range. Today, as over previous generations, attrition would be the Nomads’ downfall.
Feyn may well have cut her tether and led him into a trap, but by day’s end he would stand over her body… as Sovereign.
And then he would hunt the boy down and drain him of his precious blood.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SOME TIME AGO, Jonathan and Feyn had retreated to the ridge at the clearing’s perimeter to speak the business of Sovereigns. Jordin hung back, replaiting her horse’s mane, if only to keep her fingers busy while keeping her promise to never let Jonathan out of sight.
She saw the way they stood together looking out over the eastern hills, speaking in tones that didn’t carry back to her even with her Mortal ears. They were making arrangements, no doubt. The first of many discussions she would not be privy to.
She watched the way he looked out over the hills as though with new eyes-a Sovereign’s gaze, surveying all that he would rule. Feyn nodded intermittently, seeming to do the same, though Jordin saw the way she glanced sidelong at him while he was talking.
Jonathan might see more in her eyes, but to Jordin Feyn appeared cold and distant. Calculating. Perhaps it was that way with Sovereigns.
Was this to be her life, then? Standing by as he stood by Feyn’s side? It wouldn’t matter-Jonathan loved her as a woman. Nothing else mattered.
He would have her loyalty forever. And for his compassionate heart and eccentric ways, he would have her heart as well. He was all that Jordin had ever known to be beautiful and right…
The only truly beautiful thing in this world.
And so she would stand by and protect him regardless of the cost to herself, filled with the awe of having heard
