Smoking chaos outside.
Half-dressed soldiers scurried from tents, strapping on swords and pulling on boots as they ran. Officers shouted orders at their foot soldiers; frightened Wise Men ran towards the relative safety of the infirmary tents near the center of the camp. Sorcerers of the Brotherhood ran with them, apparently willing to put their infighting aside long enough to flee their common enemy. War cries mingled with screams of pain. Thick smoke and ashes mingled with the light swirl of snow that had begun about the time Akella and Linna had snuck back into camp.
Linna.
Akella glanced up the hill, towards the Empress’s tent. Her personal guard of black-clad soldiers, the little seagull no doubt amongst them, had already massed in a protective ring around the tent.
But there were no mountain men who’d made it that far into the camp yet. If the Empress was lucky – and it seemed she had quite the habit of being lucky – the tribesmen would never make it that far. Even if they did, the Empress had two Fesulians, a hundred guards dedicated solely to her safety, and the little seagull. The Empress would be fine. Linna would be, too. The girl might have been disappointed that she’d lost three out of the four rounds against Akella that morning, but Akella didn’t tell her that the one time Linna had forced her to yield was the first time anyone had forced her to yield in more years than she could remember.
Akella turned away from the hill. She wouldn’t be needed there. They probably wouldn’t even see any fighting – which sounded awful to Akella. Instead, she rounded the corner of the mess hall tent, snatching up the Imperial short sword she’d stolen the night before from its hiding place beneath a water barrel. She yanked off the oiled cloth she’d wrapped it in and sprinted in the direction of the loudest shouting – north.
As she drew nearer, she understood where the smoke was coming from: somehow – a battering ram, maybe? – the mountain men had managed to punch a hole through the northern palisade wall, and now flames leapt from the jagged, broken timbers. Tribesmen poured in through the hole, and Imperial soldiers rushed to plug the gap before the camp could be completely overrun.
Akella ran to join them.
“Preyla ock Hanyon!”she shouted as she ran, in the Adessian way of asking for the goddess’s blessings in battle. Should she fall, Preyla would know which clan of ancestors Akella belonged to.
Akella’s eye caught on a familiar braid of dark hair dangling above a set of shoulders narrower than everyone else’s. Megs. Akella shifted her trajectory, slamming her shoulder hard into an already injured mountain man who was closing in on Megs’s right flank. The mountain man went down, battle axe falling from his fingers as he went to one knee. Akella brought the pommel of her sword down onto the back of his skull. The man fell face-first into the mud, either unconscious or dead. Akella didn’t care which he was, so long as he didn’t get up again.
Megs spared a quick glance in her direction, a flash of brown eyes that offered Akella wordless thanks. Then she turned back to the cluster of tribesmen trying to break through her squad’s lines. She’d lost her helmet, somehow, or maybe in the madness of the sudden attack had never had time to put it on.
Well, that just meant Akella would need to help Megs keep that good-looking head on.
“Ock Hanyon!”she yelled again.
Let these bastards hear the clan name of the woman who killed them before she died. A rush of battle adrenaline coursed through her veins. She vaulted the dead or unconscious mountain man and filled the hole at Megs’s right flank. She hadn’t stolen an Imperial buckler to go with her Imperial short sword, because she didn’t generally like fighting with shields, so she didn’t quite fit with the phalanx Megs’s squad was forming. But the surprise attack meant even the soldiers with shields were struggling to form and hold their normal Imperial lines.
Which wasn’t good. Imperial soldiers fought like shite when they couldn’t form their lines.
Through the gaping hole in the camp’s northern wall, Akella could see how the tribesmen had done it. It was ingenious, really. All along the gentle hill that sloped down away from the camp’s northern perimeter, tufts of grass and turf had been recently overturned. Here and there, Akella saw the outline of narrow ditches. They’d been nothing but barren winter fields the last time she’d seen them. The mountain men had dug themselves in, burrowing like foxes and lying in wait for the perfect moment to burst forth. The soldiers had been trained to use farscopes to scan for approaching raiding parties far from the camp; they’d clearly failed to see the tribesmen worming into the ground just beneath their feet.
How many nights had they dug in silence? How long had they remained hidden, undetected by patrols and guards? Either the Imperial Army was even more idiotic than Akella had given them credit for or the tribesmen were better warriors than she’d ever realized.
But there wasn’t time to contemplate the admirable audacity of the move or wonder how they’d managed it.
Through the holes they’d somehow punched into the palisade walls, Akella could see mountain men warriors advancing at a trot, their ranks six and seven deep as far to the left and right as she could see. Near the rear of their advance, without missing a step, tribesmen raised short bows and nocked arrows. Some of the arrows were flame-tipped.
Twang-twang!No sooner had she spotted the drawn bowstrings than they released.
Akella threw herself to the left, knocking into Megs but managing to narrowly avoid an arrow bound for her torso.
“Archers!” Megs shouted to her squad – or at least that was what Akella guessed the jagged line of scared-looking soldiers fanning out from Megs’s left flank must be. Not one among them looked old enough to grow a beard. “Shields, forty-five!”
They might be nothing but scared farm boys, but they at least had the good sense to listen to their sergeant. On cue, the boys held up their shields at a forty-five degree angle and ducked behind them, just in time to block the descending cloud of arrows. Megs grabbed Akella by the sleeve and yanked, pulling Akella behind her just in time to miss another arrow.
The bugle sounded again – two short blasts, a pause, then two more short blasts.
“Shadow-infected! On me!”
In one fluid motion, Megs dropped her short sword and pulled forth a long dagger from a sheath at her belt. The dagger had some kind of writing etched along the flat of its blade and glowed with an eerie, blue-white light. The farm boy-soldiers dutifully scrambled a few steps back, reforming their line behind their sergeant.
Megs nodded at Akella. “You, too, pirate. Stay behind me. And get ready to face the infected.”
Shadow-infected.Akella had heard the common soldiers speak about shadow-infected as if they were some kind of demons. Ordinary men and women who’d invited an otherworldly force to take control of their bodies for the sake of knowledge, power, or strength. Of course she knew of the various shadow arts practiced by groups like the Brotherhood, but this? Inviting a shadow into the sanctum of one’s own body and mind? It sounded like sorcery at its worst.
Akella didn’t stand behind Megs as she’d been ordered; instead, she stood at the sergeant’s shoulder, spinning her sword. Let the so-called infected come. Let them test their mettle against a loyal servant of the one true goddess.
Megs gave Akella a sidelong glance but didn’t tell her to get back again.
Another horn bellowed, but this one didn’t have the sharp metallic notes of the Imperial bugle; this one was low and throaty, its low bass seeming to vibrate straight into Akella’s bones. That horn definitely wasn’t Imperial.
The next wave of tribesmen shouted in that rough tongue of theirs and charged. Just before they were within striking distance, Akella’s gaze caught on their eyes. Where the irises should be, there were only flames.
With a small shock, Akella realized she’d seen that before. She’d seen it in the white city of Persopos in the eyes of her own sailors as she’d fled from them. And she’d seen it the night before, when an ancient man with a skull for a face had told her she should be proud of her crew. How had she forgotten until now? The man in her dream had flames for eyes, too.
Instead of bracing for the charging, flame-eyed mountain men to crash into their position, Akella leaped in front of Megs, swinging her stolen short sword in a wild arc.
Red spurted from the throats of two tribesmen. Akella cackled like a madwoman as they fell. Who needed the glowing daggers forged by yet more sorcerers?
Akella danced out of the way of the two falling dead men, whirling to her right just in time for another mountain man to impale himself on her sword. Being impaled didn’t slow him, though: Eyes aflame and mouth frothing like a rabid dog, he tried to knock Akella’s head off with a wild swing of his war hammer. She side-stepped the swing and yanked her sword free from his gut at the same time, and when the man’s own momentum threw him forward, she sank the sword into the side of his neck.
“Preyla take you to the Chasm!” she yelled at the dying man even as she ducked under two more war hammers and dove into a roll to avoid a thrusting pike.
Akella was a fish slipping the net. She was a shark that smelled blood. She didn’t give a damn if these warriors were supposedly faster or stronger because of the black sorcery that infected their souls. Their souls were mixed with shadows? Very well. Her soul was mixed with Preyla’s, and there was no shadow so dark that it could stop the sea from boiling.
From her knees in the cold mud, Akella shouted her clan name again, slicing through a boot of animal hides to reach the ankle tendon beneath. The warrior fell, and Akella made short work of finishing him.
Beside her, Megs’s dagger flashed right and left, forward and back, with a speed that would make a Fesulian pit fighter jealous. Whenever her blade connected with flesh, smoke would rise from the wound she’d inflicted, and the mountain men would go blank-faced, flames disappearing from their eyes. That was when Akella struck, dropping each one before they could recover from their daze.
Occasionally, it worried Akella to know how much she enjoyed fighting and killing. The Commander and her little seagull fought with a peculiar, admittedly deadly grace that Akella had never seen anywhere else before. But as deadly as they were, they didn’t seem to like bringing death. They practiced their “dance of the Seven Cities” with a kind of grudging acceptance.
Akella had no such qualms. And no such grace. She fought with reckless abandon. She’d swing when she needed to swing, thrust when she needed to thrust, but she also slung mud in their faces. She kicked knees, stomped on ankles, threw elbows into throats.
Around them, the falling snow fell faster and thicker. By the time the battle reached the half-hour mark, everywhere Akella looked was white and grey – snow and billowing ash. She could see Megs, the squad of boys lined up behind them, and the shape of another squad far to their right. Beyond that other squad, the rest of the camp and its soldiers had disappeared behind a curtain of white.
Akella ducked beneath the arc of an axe and head-butted the man who’d swung it, knocking him backwards into his comrades like she was some kind of irritable goat. When he regained his footing and charged again, Akella dove straight at him, shoulder colliding with his shins. He fell on top of her, but a moment later, something rolled him off. Akella looked up to see Megs reaching a hand down to help her up. Megs had lost her shield somewhere along the way, but the hand that wasn’t offered to Akella still clutched the sorcerer’s dagger. It no longer glowed.
Akella grasped Megs’s forearm and got to her feet. Before she could say thanks, a bugle sounded somewhere behind her – a single long note.
“Retreat!” Megs called over the din of battle, waving back Akella and her soldiers.
“Pull back, pull back!”a voice yelled, its owner made invisible by the falling snow. All around them, other disembodied voices repeated the call for retreat.
Pull back? Where were they pulling back to? Beyond the palisade, which the mountain men had already badly damaged, at least here on the northern perimeter, the rest of the camp was nothing but flimsy tents. There was nothing to offer protection.
But Akella joined Megs’s fleeing squad, hoping the Imperial dolt with the bugle or one of his friends had some kind of plan.
The ground was slick, the rapidly dropping temperature turning mud puddles to ice. In her peripheral vision, Akella saw a blond farm boy racing after Megs slip, falling to hands and knees. One of the pursuing mountain men, bare-chested with blue runes painted across his torso, lifted an axe above the fallen boy.
“Hey, ugly!” Akella shouted. She was too far away to engage the tribesman with her short sword, so she bent down and grabbed the first thing she could find – a stone about the size of her fist. When the half-naked man turned towards the sound of her voice, she hurled it at his face. Her aim was off, and the rock glanced off his shoulder.
But it still had the intended effect. The mountain-sized man growled at Akella like a bear, while the boy clambered to his feet and hastily backpedaled to the safety of his companions.
“C’mon, rizalt, let’s go!”
Akella glanced back. Five yards behind her, Megs wheeled one arm wildly, waving for Akella to join the rest of the squad. But as Akella turned to join them, five tribesmen materialized from the falling snow. They rushed the squad, cutting off Akella’s retreat.
“Shite on a biscuit,” Akella muttered to herself. With five tribesmen between herself and her closest allies but only one tribesman before her, Akella made what seemed the most logical choice. “Alright, big man,” she said, tightening her grip on her short sword as she faced the growling, rune-painted mountain man before her. Let’s see what you’ve got.” With a final cry of ock Hanyon!, she held out her sword like a lance and charged.