Kingdom of Ash

Manon and the Thirteen shot into the skies as the Crochan army flowed below, a red tide rushing toward the sea of black ahead.

Forcing the Ironteeth legion to choose: their ancient enemies or their new ones.

It was a test, and one Manon had wanted to make early. To see how many of the Ironteeth would heed the command to plow forward, and how many might break from their orders, the temptation of battling the Thirteen too much to bear. And a test, she supposed, for the Matrons and the Heirs who led their legion—would they fall for it? Split their forces to swarm the Ironteeth, or continue their assault on the Crochans?

Higher and higher, Manon and the Thirteen rose, the two armies nearing each other.

The Crochans didn’t hesitate as their swords glinted in the sun, pointing toward the oncoming wyverns.

The Ironteeth had not trained against an enemy able to fight back. An enemy who could be airborne, smaller and faster, and strike where they were weakest: the riders. That was the Crochans’ goal—to bring down the riders, not the beasts.

But to do so, they’d need to brave the snapping jaws and spiked tails, the poison coating them. And if they could navigate around the wyverns, then the matter would remain of facing the flying arrows, and the trained warriors atop the beasts. It would not be easy, and it would not be quick.

The Thirteen rose so high that the air became thin. High enough that Manon could see to the very back of the host, where the horrific, unmistakable bulk of Iskra Yellowlegs’s wyvern flew.

A challenge and a promise of a confrontation to come. Manon knew, despite the distance, that Iskra had marked her.

No sign of Petrah. Or of the two remaining Matrons. Who had replaced the Yellowlegs crone to become High Witch, Manon didn’t know. Or care. Perhaps her grandmother had convinced them not to appoint Iskra or a new one just yet—to clear the way for her own path to queendom.

Just as Manon’s head turned light at the altitude, fifty or so wyverns peeled away from the enemy’s host. Flying upward—racing for them, beasts freed of their tether. Hungry for the glory and bragging rights that killing the Thirteen would win.

Manon smiled.

The two armies slammed into each other.

Loosing a breath, Manon yanked once on Abraxos’s reins.

Her fierce-hearted wyvern flung out his wings as he arched—and plummeted.

The world tilted while they twisted and plunged down, down, down, the Thirteen falling with them. They tore through wisps of cloud, the clashing army blurring, the castle and city looming below.

And when the Ironteeth were close enough that Manon could see they were Yellowlegs and Bluebloods, Abraxos banked sharply to one side and a current launched him right into the heart of them.

The Thirteen snapped into formation behind her, a battering ram that smashed through the Ironteeth.

Manon’s bow sang as she fired arrow after arrow.

At the first spray of blue blood, some part of her slipped away.

But she kept firing. And Abraxos kept flying, ripping apart wing and throat with his tail and teeth.

And so it began.

Even in the river, the thunder of marching feet rumbled past Lysandra.

They didn’t see the large white snout that periodically broke through the ice floes to huff down a breath. The sky was dark now, thick with the clashing of wyverns and Crochans.

Bodies occasionally plunged into the river, Ironteeth and Crochan alike.

The Crochans who thrashed, who were still alive, Lysandra covertly carried to the far shore. What they made of her, they didn’t say. She didn’t linger long enough to let them.

The Ironteeth who fell into the river were dragged to the bottom and pinned to the rocks.

She’d had to look away each time she did it.

Lysandra’s snout broke the surface as a sharp horn shattered over the din, right from the city walls. Not a warning call, but an unleashing.

Lysandra dove to the bottom. Dove and then pushed up, mighty tail thrashing to launch her toward the surface.

She broke from the ice and the water, arcing through the air, and slammed right into Morath’s eastern flank.

Soldiers screamed as she unleashed herself in a whirlwind of teeth and claws and a massive, snapping tail.

Where the white sea dragon moved, black blood sprayed.

And just when the soldiers mastered their terror enough to launch arrows and spears at the opalescent scales enforced with Spidersilk, she twisted and flipped back into the deep river, vanishing beneath the ice. Spears plunged into the turquoise waters, missing their mark, but Lysandra was already racing past.

The sea dragon’s body—river dragon, she supposed—didn’t slow. She pushed it to its limit, the great lungs working like a bellows.

The river curved, and she used it to her advantage as she leaped from the water again.

The soldiers, so focused on the damage she’d done up ahead, didn’t look her way until she was upon them.

She had all of a glance to the city walls, where a wave of black now crashed against them, siege ladders rising and arrows flying, bursts of flame amid it all, before she returned to the river’s icy depths.

Black blood streamed from her maw, from her tails and claws, as she doubled back, the shadow of the witches warring overhead upon the ice above her.

So she fought, the ice floes her shield. Attacking, then moving; destabilizing the eastern flank with every assault, forcing them to flee from the river’s edge to crowd the center ranks.

Slowly, the turquoise waters of the Florine clouded blue and black.

Still, Lysandra kept ripping bites from the side of the behemoth that launched itself upon Orynth.

The heat off the firelances scorched Aedion’s cheek, warming his helmet to near-discomfort.

A small price, as the bursts of flame sent the Valg foot soldiers at the walls scrambling back. Where their archers felled the enemy, more came. And where the firelances melted them away, only scorched earth and melted armor remained. But there was not enough—not even close.

Above, beyond the walls, the Ironteeth and Crochans clashed.

So violently, so quickly, that a blue mist hung in the skies from the bloodshed.

He couldn’t determine who had the upper hand. The Thirteen fought amongst them, and where they plunged into the fray, Ironteeth and their mounts tumbled. Crushing Valg foot soldiers beneath them.

Iron siege ladders rose again, aiming for the city walls. Answering blasts from the firelances sent those already on them to the ground as charred corpses. But more Valg scrambled up, the fear of flame not enough to deter them.

Sprinting to the nearest ladder, Aedion nocked arrow after arrow, firing at the soldiers creeping up its rungs. Clean shots through the gaps in the dark armor.

The archers around him did the same, and the Bane soldiers behind him settled into fighting stances, waiting for the first to breach the walls.

At the city gates, flame blasted and raged. He’d concentrated many of the Mycenians at either of the two gates into Orynth, their most vulnerable weakness along the walls.

That the fire kept flaring as it did told him enough: Morath was making its push there.

Rolfe’s order to Conserve fire! set a pit of dread forming in his gut, but Aedion focused on the siege ladder. His bow twanged, and another soldier tumbled away. Then another.

Down the wall, Ren had taken on the other nearby siege ladder, the lord’s bow singing.

Aedion dared a glance to the army ahead. They had amassed close enough now.

Falling back, letting an archer take his place, he lifted his sword, signaling the Bane at the catapults, the Fae royals and archers near them. “Now!”

Wood snapped and groaned. Boulders as large as wagons soared over the walls. Each had been oiled, and gleamed in the sun while they rose.

And when the boulders reached their peak, just as they began to plummet toward the enemy, the Fae archers unleashed their flaming arrows.

They struck the oil-slick boulders right before the stones slammed into the earth.

Flame erupted, flowing right into the holes that Aedion had ordered drilled into the rock, right into the nest of the explosive powders they’d again taken from the precious reserves of Rolfe’s firelances.

The boulders blasted apart in balls of flame and stone.

Along the city walls, soldiers cheered at the carnage that the smoking ruins revealed. Nothing but melted, squashed, or shattered Valg grunts. Every place the six catapults had fired upon now had a ring of charred ground around it.

“Reposition!” Aedion roared. The Bane were already heaving against the wheels that would rotate the catapults on their wooden stands. Within seconds, they had aimed at another spot; within seconds, the Fae royals were lifting more oiled boulders from the stockpile Darrow had acquired over weeks and weeks.

He didn’t give Morath a chance to recover. “Fire!”

Boulders soared, flaming arrows following.

The explosions on the battlefield shook the city walls this time.

Another cheer went up, and Aedion motioned the Bane and Fae royals to halt. Let Morath think that their stock was depleted, that they only had a few lucky shots in their arsenal.

Aedion turned back to the siege ladder as the first of the Valg grunts cleared the walls.

The man was killed before his feet finished touching the ground, courtesy of a waiting Bane soldier.

Aedion unstrapped the shield from across his back and angled his sword as the wave of soldiers crested the walls.

But it was not a Valg foot soldier who appeared next, climbing over the ladder with ease.

The young man’s face was cold as death, his black eyes lit with unholy hunger.

A black collar was clasped around his throat.

A Valg prince had come.