For Aeslinn’s two forces to crash into each other.
Pritkin’s ride came up alongside mine, and two great sets of wings beat the air for a moment. Allowing us to hover overtop of a slaughter. Because the manlikan forces were getting attacked by their allies; I didn’t know why.
But Pritkin was smiling a vicious little smile, so I assumed he’d something to do with it.
“Disorientation spell,” he yelled, catching my eyes. “But it won’t last long!”
“How long?” Caedmon bellowed.
“Until the water washes away. It’s carried on the tide!”
“Elemental magic,” Caedmon said, his green eyes narrowing. But all he said was: “Then let’s use the time well!”
He and his men swooped down, diving for something I couldn’t see. Until we landed in the middle of a bunch of the Circle’s forces. There were so few, I thought, staring about, as Pritkin hauled me off the great beast’s back.
I stood there, clutching my ribs, among perhaps a few hundred men and women. I remembered the thousands I’d seen at HQ, throwing snowballs at each other and laughing. They weren’t laughing now. They were, however, grimly determined, hauling nets full of potion bombs the size of bowling balls onto Caedmon’s creatures and then taking off with the fey.
Feathers and golden hair glinted in the sunlight for a moment as the great beasts soared skyward again. They were so synchronized that they looked like a single, giant bird taking off from the ground, and casting a rippling shadow over the carnage below. Before adding to it, when they released their payload.
Pritkin pulled me back and integrated his shields with those that the Corps was raising, I didn’t know why.
And they I did, when the bombs exploded and a noxious cloud of what looked like acid rain began beating down on us. It ate into the combined shields dangerously far, but it didn’t get through. Probably largely thanks to Pritkin’s help, judging by the red-faced strain on his features.
But the shield held, if only barely, and when the clouds cleared once more—
There were far fewer enemies on the field.
I didn’t know what was the result of them savaging themselves, and what was the Corps’ doing, but they’d felt that. For once, they damned well had! I was staring at a bunch of huge, acid riddled corpses of creatures I couldn’t even name.
For a moment, I thought it was over.
But then I noticed squads of reinforcements coming at us from all over the battlefield. And weak stirrings coming from maybe half of the “corpses.” Which it seemed, were harder to kill than I’d thought. And then there were the manlikans, who’d barely been harmed at all.
Or no, that wasn’t true: they’d been hurt plenty. But when you’re an unfeeling automaton called up out of the earth, you don’t feel pain—or fear, or panic. You just get on with it. And if you are suddenly missing a limb, or if your torso is half eaten away, or if your body is melting, running with what looked like molten lava as the Corps’ bombs finished expending their magic, it didn’t matter. You just used whatever you had left.
Even worse, the disorientation appeared to have worn off.
As a result, the charge that had been targeting the castle was now targeting us, and we had no time to get out of the way. Our shield, already battered from the fallout of that massive volley, wasn’t going to hold, even with Pritkin’s help, for long. Something had to happen, and soon, and I didn’t think we were going to be getting any more Caedmon ex machina.
He had retreated so high with his fey that I could barely see them as a brown dot against the clouds.
We were on our own.
Chapter Forty-Four
There was no time to think of anything, and no time to retreat. The enemy slammed into us within seconds, a dark wave of them, and it was beyond terrifying. So much so that I froze, not even reacting when the impossible things were suddenly on top of us.
And I mean that literally. The manlikans mostly used spears and boulders as their weapons, although a few had swords as well. But the remaining Ancient Horrors didn’t bother with such things. They
scrambled on top of the straining shield, digging into it with claws and fangs, gouging out great chunks. And casting writhing shadows down onto those of us below, so thick and dark that it may as well have been night.
I suddenly couldn’t see the faces of the war mages around me very well, just an occasional too-wide eye or clenched jaw when some of the bodies up above moved just right, letting in spears of light. But I didn’t need to in order to guess that the shield wouldn’t last. Nothing would for long against that.
Pritkin apparently didn’t think so, either, because he was shaking some old guy and yelling in his face, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. I’d probably be totally deaf right now if not for Mircea’s healing abilities, but even with perfect hearing, I wouldn’t have been able to make out anything over the pounding, screeching and shrieking coming from outside.
Until Pritkin threw a silence spell around us, and then I still couldn’t hear because my ears were ringing like cathedral bells.
“—call him now!”