Destined

Ones, he’d know just what to do.”

“I hadn’t heard,” Tamani said, his shoulders slumping in disappointment. He’d dared to hope… but Laurel would manage. She had to!

Seeing the confusion on Laurel’s face, he explained, “Tanzer was a friend of my mother’s. He… used to live near here.”

“Finest Mixer I ever knew,” Tamani’s mother said, pressing her hands to Jamison’s ashen cheeks. “Once upon a time I knew them all. Not many Mixers come to live in Spring, though.”

“You mentioned barricades?” Tamani asked.

His mother nodded. “The main road — near the laundry huts. When the trolls breach that we’ll be fighting in the streets.”

Not if, when. Hopelessness threatened to consume him; the Queen had turned her back on them, Jamison was incapacitated, the Gate Garden had fallen.

At least they still had David.

And David had the sword.

“Do whatever you can for Jamison,” Tamani said, meeting Laurel’s eyes. “Any Mixer trick you can think of — just do it. We have to go to the barricade — do what we can.”

Tamani’s mother frowned at him, then stood and pulled him to the side where Laurel and David couldn’t hear her. “I know who this is,” she said in her mother voice, inclining her head toward David. “Do not go out there and get him killed to serve your own purposes, Tam. A dishonourable victory is no victory at all.”

But Tamani was already shaking his head. “It’s not like that. He has the sword, Mother. The one Shar used to whisper about. It’s real, and I’ve watched him use it.” He glanced up at David. “With Jamison down, he’s our only hope.”

His mother was silent for a moment. “Is it really so dire?”

Tamani squeezed her hand.

“Then go,” she said. “Goddess protect you both.” She started to step away, then reached out for his arm, pulling him close again and pressing one hand to his cheek. “I love you, son. No matter what happens today, you remember that.”

Tamani swallowed hard and nodded. He turned to Laurel and she looked like she wanted to say something, but Tamani wasn’t sure he could stand to hear it. He edged away from her to face David. “You ready?”

They had almost made it to the door before Laurel cried out, “Tam, David!” Tamani closed his eyes and steeled himself against her protests, but for a moment she said nothing. And then, to his surprise, she only whispered, “Be safe.”

Grateful for her understanding, Tamani waved and led David out the front of the house, back towards the main road. It wasn’t long before telltale sounds of battle reached their ears. “Blighted trolls are so fast,” Tamani muttered under his breath. His fingers tightened around his spear; it was time to fight again. He had rarely fought — or even trained — with such a fine weapon. It brought down trolls so much easier than the small knives he usually carried. Good weapons meant dead trolls, and with every dead troll he felt like Laurel was that much safer.

And what could matter more?

“I want you to focus on trolls with guns,” Tamani called over his shoulder to David. “If the fight at the gate was any indication, there won’t be many, but most fae here won’t even know what a gun is, much less to fear it.”

“Sure,” David said tightly. Tamani had to admit, for an untrained civilian, David was dealing well with everything that had been thrown at him.

Tamani gave a brief wave of acknowledgment as they passed under a rooftop full of archers shooting arrows over a sturdily constructed barricade. Sharpened stakes — repurposed fence posts, mostly — stretched across the main road where it dipped between two hills, atop which more archers had gathered and were raining arrows and sling stones on any trolls that tried to go round the long way. Most of the fighting was taking place in the slight valley at the mouth of the road, but some trolls had slipped through and were busy smashing as much of the barrier as they could manage.

Tamani raised his spear, but an arrow whistled through the air and struck his intended target square in the chest. Tamani shoved the misshapen beast to the side and kicked into a run, weaving through the barricade, David close behind him.

On all sides now he was surrounded by Ticers — and some of them even knew what they were doing, as retired sentries fought side by side with scythe-wielding Tenders and hammer-swinging Smiths. Still, it seemed to Tamani — as he stabbed a troll before it could kill the young Spring who was slapping at trolls with a long-handled shovel — that there were far too many green saplings in the mix. He almost opened his mouth to tell the kid to go home, but what would he do there? Wait for the trolls to come in and kill him? No, Tamani decided — he wouldn’t discourage bravery. Even stupid bravery.

“David, this way!” Tamani called, directing him into the midst of the trolls. At such close quarters with the fae, he would have trouble swinging Excalibur; better to be completely surrounded by the enemy. “Almost there,” he whispered to himself, stabbing a troll in the neck as it tried to wrap its meaty hands around him. He had lost count of the number of shallow, meaningless wounds he’d received today; none were even remotely life- threatening, but they were taking their toll on his reflexes. As the trolls crowded thicker about him, it became increasingly difficult to kill them as fast as they came at him. David was making up some of the difference, but trolls were pouring down the hillside by the dozens.

They were well beyond the barricade when Tamani heard a low rumbling and looked up to see several fae standing on the rooftops at the edge of the quarter, hands stretching out to the sky, then gracefully moving in as though pulling invisible ropes.

It took Tamani a few moments to realise what was coming. “David!” he warned. “Up the hillside!”

The hill was too steep to climb very high in the brief time they had, so David and Tamani pressed themselves flat into the dirt as the rumble grew to a near-deafening roar. From further up the road, a huge herd of cattle came stampeding into the valley, trampling trolls as they rampaged down the road toward the barricade where their Herders had gathered on the roofs. At the thickest segment of the stampede Tamani had to push himself even flatter against the grassy hill to avoid the panicked cows and their long, deadly horns. Once the danger was past Tamani nearly laughed at David as he half stood, half sat against the steep hillside, his sword held limp in his hands, watching the spectacle.

“What the hell is up with the cows?” David asked, flabbergasted.

Tamani pointed up to the Ticers on the rooftops, swirling their charges into a wide circle now.

David followed his gesture and — though Tamani would have doubted it was possible — his eyes grew even wider. “Enticement on the cows?” he asked in disbelief.

Tamani nodded, but he wasn’t smiling anymore. “Come on,” he told David, “we have to strike while they’re confused.” The trolls were still bigger than most of the cows and they were getting the idea quickly, turning their blades against the herd. The distraction wouldn’t last long.

“Why do you have cows in Avalon?” David yelled as he chopped down a lower troll that was covered in festering sores where it wasn’t covered with coarse black fur.

Tamani dislodged his spear from a troll’s chest with a savage kick. The name tag on its jumper said greg, and Tamani wondered momentarily whether the mostly human-looking troll was Greg, or had just eaten Greg. “Can’t depend on Mixers for all of our fertilizer,” he said blandly.

The trolls were thinning out again, and David seemed to have found a rhythm that was working for him, so Tamani, his spear still clenched in one hand, took a few minutes to carefully pull some of the wounded fae back toward the barricade. They were still breathing, and if they could just avoid getting stabbed where they lay, they might be treatable.

There wasn’t time to take them anywhere truly safe, but at least he could drag them away from the risk of being trampled.

“Tamani!”

It was David. He turned to thrust his sword at a troll that tried to jump on his shoulder.