Watersmeet (33 page)

Abisina glanced briefly at Elodie beside her, and wondered if her own face was as drawn and tight.

The first sign of the enemy’s advance was a smudge of dust rising from the trees on the far side of the plain. The second sign was several carrion birds wheeling in the sky, their mottled, naked heads contrasting with their graceful flight. And then came the clank of metal and the tramp of feet from Abisina’s nightmares, only to be drowned out by the blood rushing in her ears. A wavering black line appeared and grew thicker and thicker until Abisina could distinguish figures of men, row after row marching toward them, with swords and spears and daggers meant for her father, her friends, her new home.

But as she looked closer, Abisina realized it wasn’t just men she saw. Behind the first lines came ranks of minotaurs carrying pikes, followed by the hags with their staffs. Along each flank of the regular troops prowled the silver überwolves, and in the rear guard, trolls. As big as boulders, these four scaly behemoths trudged forward, kept in check by chains crisscrossing their chests and arms. And then, a sight that made Abisina’s head swim with fear: Icksyon’s band of centaurs—with their leader marching in the center, a minotaur on each side. Abisina scanned up and down the line, but she could not find the White Worm.

It was time for Rueshlan to address his troops.

“Watersmeet!” he cried, unsheathing his sword and raising it above his head as he galloped out from the battle lines to face his army.

“Hi-yah!” the army bellowed as one.

“The Motherland!” And again, a deafening “Hi-yah!”

“Watersmeet!”

“Hi-yah!” The cry reverberated against the trees and echoed off the hillside.

“Today, before the sun sets, we will face a test of more than strength or courage. An army approaches, led by Charach!” The name had never sounded so fearsome to Abisina. “They will come at us with hate! They will come at us with rage! But we will not waver, Watersmeet! Because we are descendants of Vigar—”

“Vigar! Hi-yah!” the throng yelled.

“—messengers of the ideals that Watersmeet is built on. Any who join with us will be welcomed! Any who defy Charach can return to their villages unharmed. But most will fight us—too afraid to defy the White Worm. And we will fight back. As long as Charach stands, Watersmeet and the Motherland will stand against him!”

Abisina had thought the army’s cry couldn’t get any louder, but then the roar engulfed her. Line upon line of gathered soldiers lifted their voices. Even the fairies joined the cry. Though their lips did not move, a current ran through the air that could have come from nowhere else.

The Vranians kept marching until they were just out of arrow range and then, as one, they halted. Rueshlan and Corlin advanced, Corlin holding the oak bough above his head. A last chance for peace.

“Vranians!” Rueshlan called. “Our quarrel is not with you. We repeat our offer of clemency for all who renounce their support of Charach. This man—Corlin of Vranille—stands before you as proof of our intention. Your villages have been destroyed, and you have been forced to fight a battle that is not your own. Give up now and spare your lives.”

As the Watersmeet army waited for a response, Abisina heard a sound she recognized, but before she could name it, there was a sharp crack and a broken arrow lay in the dust at Corlin’s feet. It had been snapped in half by a fairy’s arrow speeding out of the trees just in time to prevent it from imbedding in Corlin’s chest.

One last breath—then the air was full of battle cries as the armies rushed forward.

Abisina missed the first volley of arrows, too stunned to move when Frayda cried, “Loose!” The twang of bowstrings brought her to her senses, and at the next signal, her arrow flew with the rest, angled in the direction she had calculated so many times. As Abisina let her first arrow fly, she thought not of angles and wind direction but of the heart her arrow might find.

She almost missed Frayda’s command to shoot at will.
Don’t think. Reach for an arrow, nock, pull back, and release. Reach for an arrow, nock, pull back, and release.
Her target was simple and vast—the throng of Vranians pushing to reach the battle line.

Between arrows, she caught glimpses of the fight. Findlay parrying a thrust of horns from a minotaur. Alden and several dwarves running an überwolf through with a pike as it closed in on an injured faun. A Vranian Elder, red sash across his chest, thrusting his sword deep into an archer’s chest. Neiall leading his phalanx bristling with pikes into the exposed flank of the Vranian army. An überwolf sinking his teeth into a woman’s neck as she removed her sword from a fallen Vranian. A crowd of Watersmeet’s centaurs swarming one of the trolls released from its chains, its massive arms swinging as it crushed two centaurs in one blow. The Vranians’ terrified faces as the fairies broke cover from the trees like strange birds, leaping into the fray with swords drawn and fury in their light eyes. Kyron and Icksyon rearing up, slashing at each other with hooves and swords. And Rueshlan—everywhere—defending a fallen dwarf, striking a tall Vranian, thrusting his sword into the belly of a minotaur even as he knocked aside an überwolf with his shield.

But where is the White Worm?

Abisina and the archers were ordered to reposition themselves lower on the rise. As the battle lines mingled, they could no longer shoot generally into the Vranian position. Now they needed to seek out specific targets and watch their arrows find their home.

“Let’s go!” Elodie called next to her, dropping her bow to her side and following a faun and two men down the slope toward the trenches.

But the Vranians had repositioned their archers, too.

Abisina had begun to follow Elodie when she heard a sickening thud behind her. She wheeled around to see a faun sway at the knees, an arrow sticking out of his throat. She reached out toward him as an arrow struck his right shoulder with another horrible sound. She could only watch as he hit the ground, the life already gone from his eyes.

And then Elodie was there, forcing Abisina to bend double as another arrow whizzed over them.

“Where are they coming from?” Abisina shouted as they ran farther down the slope.

“Over there!” Elodie pointed at a cluster of Vranian archers who now stood in front of the trenches and were raking the hillside with their missiles. Some of the Vranians had crossbows, which meant that they shot fewer arrows but with more power. Abisina knew she had to help stop them as she watched another Watersmeet archer fall.

As Elodie continued downhill, Abisina slowed and pulled an arrow from her quiver. As she put her arrow to the string and drew it back toward her ear, a Vranian man raised his crossbow and aimed directly at her, letting his own arrow fly seconds after she had let hers. She suddenly realized that this stranger, whom she could see quite clearly standing there in the mud, whose name she would never know, was trying to kill her.

And she was trying to kill him.

Abisina knew that the Vranian arrow missed her only because in the next second she was reaching for another one, sighting on a different target without waiting to see where her first arrow ended its flight. From that moment on, her senses sharpened.

Did she kill many? Wound many? Save a dwarf or a fairy by stopping a Vranian sword from descending? Was she right to do so? There was no time to think. Was that scream the scream of a man who had tasted her arrow or her own scream as she watched an ally or a friend fall? Was the nausea she felt from seeing so much blood or from spilling so much herself? And the terrible panic—did it come from seeing the bodies drowned in the mud of the battlefield or from the grip of hands around her own throat, hands that went limp after a sword blow from an unseen savior?

The chaos of that long day of battle, the screams of the dying, the vicious smell of blood and excrement and mud and sweat, the deadness of limbs moving just so that they might keep on moving—it took over Abisina’s body and mind until one unearthly cry penetrated it all and then there was—

Stillness.

She was past the trenches toward the center of the battlefield, though she had no idea how she got there. Immediately to her left lay the body of a dwarf with an arrow through his back; to her right, the twisted body of a hag. Others stood nearby, and they, too, stopped and stared, but Abisina could not make sense of the scene.

All over the battlefield, the fighting had stopped. But in front of her, two hundred paces away, Rueshlan battled Charach: the Centaur and the White Worm.

Abisina stood transfixed, the image that had pursued her through so many nights embodied on the battlefield: the White Worm, black eyes ringing its head, open mouth dripping with poison, thick forearms lifting its segmented body from the ground as it searched for Rueshlan.

It spotted him as he galloped in for another blow, sword flashing in the sunlight, and it spun to confront him, razor claws slashing the air.

“No!” Abisina screamed and started to run, her feet propelling her around the fallen bodies, between the soldiers who were falling back. Without stopping Abisina nocked an arrow and watched it fly into one of the monster’s eyes.

With a shriek that rent the air, Charach’s head swiveled toward Abisina. The white body came crashing to the earth, knotted forearms pulling it forward as the mouth opened.

Abisina held her ground and nocked her second arrow. But as she planted her feet to take the shot, a blast of the Worm’s poisonous breath hit her, forcing her to shut her eyes and gasp for clean air. The smell of rot overwhelmed her, and she waited for the final blow. But before it came, hooves rushed toward her, hands lifted her and carried her away.

She fought to open her streaming eyes, but it was getting harder to draw breath, and she needed all her energy to force the air through her swollen throat.

“Hang on!” Her father’s voice.

Abisina tried to answer, but her burning mouth made no sound. And then new hands closed around her.

“Take her to safety!” Rueshlan commanded.

Don’t leave me!
Abisina screamed in her head.
Don’t go back!
She fought and fought, but she was losing consciousness.

“The rest of you, stay away! I can finish this now!” Rueshlan called, but farther off. “And Kyron, take care of my daughter!”

Abisina’s head filled with screams as her father’s hoofbeats faded.

She couldn’t have been out for long because when she came to, Kyron had not yet reached the archers’ rise. “Fall back! Fall back at Rueshlan’s command!” he called out as he galloped. Abisina felt them start to move uphill and Kyron’s steps slowed.

“Is she alive?” It was Frayda’s frantic voice. Shaking hands touched her throat, feeling for a heartbeat. “Kyron, let me have her.”

“He told me to take care of her!”

“I’m not going to hurt her—”

“I will not let her go!” Kyron’s grip tightened around Abisina.

“Water! Give her water!” Coolness splashed Abisina’s face. She forced her eyes open and saw blurry outlines. “My father!” she croaked. “What’s happening?”

Near them, someone was calling for help, someone else was groaning in pain.

“The Vranians have fallen back, too. Charach and Rueshlan are still in it,” Kyron told her. “Rueshlan just landed a blow on the Worm’s left side. But the black blood is fuming and Rueshlan must pull back to avoid it. There! He threw his dagger and took out another of the Worm’s eyes, and now he approaches again with his sword!”

Abisina’s vision was clearing, and she struggled to sit up to see for herself how her father fared. Kyron propped her against his chest, but when Frayda tried to help her down, he resisted, determined to follow his commander’s orders.

“Oh!” Abisina cried as the Worm’s tail lashed out at Rueshlan. “We have to help him! Find whoever you can! We have to get to him!”

“But he said—”

“He needs us, Kyron!”

The centaur hesitated, then asked. “Can you ride?”

“He told us to fall back!” Frayda yelled, but Abisina and Kyron ignored her as Abisina clambered onto his back.

“There’s Brant!” Kyron said, scanning the hillside. “And Morrell—he’s hurt. Badly. But Glynholly looks untouched!”

Abisina had to grip Kyron’s waist to steady herself, but she urged him, “Go! Go!” And he again galloped toward the battle, calling to those on their feet to follow.

On the other side of the plain, the Vranians had the same idea, and as Kyron, Abisina, and their small force galloped forward, so did a group of Vranians, swords drawn to meet them.

But no one could get close to their champion. Charach’s blood and poison soaked the plain, creating an uncrossable barrier. Two Vranians and a centaur fell, overcome with the fumes. Glynholly shot two arrows which incinerated in midair as they neared the Worm, and then she almost succumbed. When Abisina heard the faun cry, “Fall back!” she obeyed. They could not help Rueshlan.

The battle ranged over the field, turning the plain into a morass of mud, poison, and blood. At one point, Rueshlan drove the Worm against the fairies’ trees, where its tail struck down several of the tall trunks. From the archers’ rise, Abisina watched in horror as three fairies fell to the earth, writhed in the poison, and lay still. But she could spare no more than a moment’s grief as Charach rallied and fought against Rueshlan with renewed power, catching her father’s shoulder with a claw. Her father staggered under the strength of the blow, but then he regained his balance and fought on, shunting aside a stream of poison with his shield.