Everyone ate midday in the saddle. Not long after that a cloud of dust rolled toward them across the flatlands from the east. The tribal shamans began a heavy, droning chant like that Briar had heard in the temples and in the canyon behind Garmashing. It was a song with a buzz under it, much like the sound of the great horns. As the shamans chanted they pounded small drums or banged little gongs. Goose bumps prickled all over Briar: They were raising Gyongxin magic.
He passed a cloth seed ball to Jimut, who already had his sling in hand. Rosethorn’s slinger balanced his cloth ball in his hand, noticing the weight. He raised his brows, then settled it into his sling.
Whatever the other mages had put in motion, it seemed to be working. The dust cloud was breaking up and drifting skyward. As it thinned, it revealed several companies of imperial horsemen.
“Archers!” cried Parahan, Souda, and Lango at the same time.
“Wait,” Briar murmured to Jimut. He heard a change in the chanting of the shamans. Lango’s mage had also begun something of his own.
Briar shifted his attention to the grasses that grew ahead of the enemy horses’ hooves. Under the earth’s surface, he followed his power into their roots.
He didn’t hear the commanders giving the archers the order to shoot. In the part of him that stayed with his body he noticed that Jimut and Rosethorn’s slinger released their balls of weighted seed at the same time. Seed and arrows soared high, then fell among the enemy soldiers even as the Yanjingyi archers shot. The Gyongxin tribes and temple warriors on the right and left attacked, charging under most of the Yanjingyi volley of arrows. Those were aimed for the commanders and mages on the road.
Parahan, Souda, and Lango barked the order for the archers to prepare to shoot again. Briar urged his body to hand a second thorn ball to his slinger, as Rosethorn was doing, and returned to his work on the grasses ahead.
He heard shrieking war cries: The tribal and temple warriors were colliding with Yanjingyi horsemen on the right and the left. The center of the Yanjingyi line began to charge, bellowing in return.
Lango and the twins yelled the order to shoot; the archers obeyed, aiming at the heart of the charging line. Riders and horses went down. Jimut and Rosethorn’s slinger released their seed balls to strike the enemy soldiers who still galloped on.
They were falling even before the balls hit the ground and exploded. Growing ferociously, the grasses enveloped the horses’ hooves. The animals went down, throwing their riders. In the heart of the army, warriors screamed as thorny vines shot through and around them. Horses reared, trying to shake the grip of the tough grasses. They dropped under the hooves of those horses galloping up behind them.
Some of the thorns and grass went gray. Some burst into flame, burning the soldiers in their grasp. Briar fumbled as he passed another ball to Jimut, his fingers going numb. A strange green veil was falling over his eyes; his throat had gone too tight to breathe. He clawed at it, gasping.
Suddenly air rushed into his throat. He inhaled several times, filling his poor lungs, then looked for the cause of his sudden cure. Jimut was holding an oblong disk in front of his face. “Are you all right?” the man asked.
“Better, thanks. What
Jimut turned the disk around for a moment, then turned it back so the polished side faced the enemy. It was a metal mirror. It had reflected the enemy’s spell back to them.
Briar checked Rosethorn. A temple mage with her face tattooed all over with interesting patterns had ridden her horse next to Rosethorn. She wrote signs on the air between her and Briar’s teacher. As she worked, Rosethorn sat with her hands palm up in her lap, peacefully gazing at the battle before them. Vines were growing rapidly, twining around enemy warriors and yanking them from the saddle to be trampled in the fighting. Whatever the temple mage was doing, she held the Yanjingyi mages off Rosethorn, it was plain.
Briar let Rosethorn work with the vines. There was a cluster of stillness in the spot where the Yanjingyi soldiers had waited before their charge. He would wager that was where the mages and perhaps the commanders watched the fighting. He closed his eyes and poured his magical self through the grass roots between him and that stillness. The grasses lent him their strength as he ran from root to root.
The Yanjingyi mages’ power shone like a beacon even underground, guiding him to them. Below them in the earth, Briar drew on the vast network of plants that stretched out around him and carefully reached up with his power. There were the above-ground grasses that grew around the horses’ hooves. Out of habit they tried to eat a mouthful or two, but these were the finest products of the army’s stables. The plants of the Gyongxin plain were a little too tough for their liking. Sensing Briar’s presence in the grass, they huffed and stamped, only to be slapped by the soldiers who held their reins. Neither the generals nor the mages wanted to be disturbed by restless animals.
Briar stretched himself above the grasses, searching for the beads wrapped around the mages’ throats and wrists. He could not tell if the general was also a mage, as General Hengkai had been. He could only sense the wooden beads. In his magical vision they hung in midair, shaping three necks and three pairs of arms. He gripped his power for just a moment, then flooded the beads with it.
The willow beads shattered, breaking the strands around the mages’ necks and arms. The oak beads sent roots shooting into the ground. The grasses told him that the horses had gone frantic at the sudden appearance of fast-growing trees. They reared and flailed at everything around them. The mages were thrown to the ground. At Briar’s command the grasses seized the mages, weaving around their throats. Strangling would teach them to kill little girls!
His rage fed strength to the grasses. They grew and tightened like rope.
That’s it! Briar told the grasses. Don’t give way for an instant!
Rosethorn was calling him. He refused to go. He wasn’t going to leave just when he was paying the Yanjingyi beasts back.
Then he got that bad feeling, the sense of fingers wrapped around his body’s real ear. The fingers twisted. Only one thing would make that pain stop. Slowly, so he wouldn’t frighten his grasses and oak trees, he retreated across the field and back into the body that hurt with Evvy’s loss.
He opened his eyes. Rosethorn released his ear after an extra hard flick with finger and thumb. “What if we’d had to escape?” Rosethorn demanded. “Do you know how many mages get trapped away from themselves?”
“You never said anything before,” he muttered, rubbing the sore ear. He wondered if the grasses had succeeded in killing those mages.
“It wasn’t a danger with you before.” Rosethorn sighed. “Revenge is as bad for the one practicing it as it is for those it’s practiced upon, Briar.”
He didn’t agree. She probably has to say such things because she’s a dedicate, he thought, gulping tea from the flask at his belt. But I ain’t no dedicate, and I’m going to get me a piece of the empire.
He looked to see what other damage he could do.
The enemy was fleeing, or rather, those who were in good condition had fled already. Those who remained swayed in the saddle or sported arrows in their own bodies or those of their mounts. Some were on foot, fighting back to back as they tried to hold off the Gyongxin warriors.
All across the ground between the road and the remainder of the Yanjingyi troops lay the fallen of both sides: horses, the wounded, and the dead. The Gyongxin healers were driving their wagons around the troops in the road and out onto the field.
Briar shook his head. “I won’t do it. They killed Evvy.”
“All of them?” Rosethorn asked.
“They killed other people here, too.”
“How many of them were given a choice about it?” she asked him. “You know the emperor. How many of them have families in Yanjing who would be punished if they refused to serve in the army? Besides —”
“I don’t want to hear besides.” He sounded like a kid even to himself.
“The more of them that have decent treatment here, the more of them will know that Weishu’s is not the only way. The more of them will realize that these people are not monsters.” Rosethorn dismounted and unbuckled her saddlebags. “You don’t have to come,” she said. “I’ll understand.” To the woman who had guarded her from the Yanjingyi mages’ spells she said, “Mila and the Green Man bless you, Servant Riverdancer.” The shaman pressed her hands palm to palm in front of her face and bowed. Rosethorn turned to her slinger and thanked him as well. He offered to take care of the horse. Rosethorn nodded, then proceeded out onto the
