The Sacred Band

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The nighttime attack was Kant’s idea. The Scav did most of the work themselves. It went better than Mena could have imagined. It amazed her that they had snuck into the Auldek camp, found the vehicles that housed the pitch, and then set charges delayed to explode as they retreated. They destroyed four of the rolling stations, cost the Auldek some lives in slaves, and came away with several vats of the flammable pitch hitched to a sled and pulled by dogs that were uncannily silent. The Scav lost only two of their number in the process, and they had not asked anything of the Acacians. Mena, her captains, and her troops watched from a distance as the night sky bloomed with beautiful bursts of flame, a strange show of light in the arctic night.

No one could blame them for the causalities suffered when one unfortunate group of soldiers was pounced upon by a crazed frekete. The creature dropped right into their camp, a rider shouting from its back. The animal ripped ten soldiers apart before being forced to withdraw. Those creatures were going to be deadly troublesome. Mena might have wings because of Elya, but her beauty could not prevail against such brawn.

Thinking this, Mena went to her tent, more troubled about tomorrow than elated about the night’s successes. She closed her eyes in the dark and opened them in the dark, knowing that hours had passed and that she had not slipped into sleep during any of them. How many will die today? she wondered. How many will I kill? Though she might have, she did not mean kill with her own blade or with her soldiers’ blades. It was her own people’s lives that she felt responsible for. She hated that even the more recent plans she had come up with were not sufficient for what faced them.

Mena found her first officer waiting in the anteroom of her tent, a small space just enclosed enough to be a shelter. “Perrin? How long have you been here?”

“Not long.”

“Why didn’t you call for me?” she grumbled, pulling her outer layers on in front of him, her breath clouding the air.

“You deserved sleep.”

“And you don’t?” she asked.

“I got some yesterday,” he said. “I have someone you’ll want to talk to. A patrol picked him up at first light this morning. He was stumbling around like a drunken man. He says he was looking for us, though he was off to the north. If the patrol hadn’t spotted him, he’d likely have wandered off to freeze. Unless he was up to something more cunning. If I hear him right, he says his name is Rialus Neptos.”

Mena and Perrin arrived at the command tent a few minutes later. The room was just a little above freezing, the air clouded with steam and heavy with smoke from the oil lamps. The light was imperfect, flickering, but it revealed a pitiful version of the traitor. He stood trembling in the center of a circle of glaring officers.

“What are you doing here?” Mena asked, slipping into the ring to face him.

Rialus’s body jerked as if she had smacked him. His arms were crossed across his chest, clutching a book within the clumsy embrace of all his layers. Instead of answering, he tightened his embrace.

“Speak fast,” Mena said.

A moment later, she knew that was too much to ask of the man. He had a hard time getting his words out through his chattering teeth. “I-I’ve… ca-ca-come to he-help… Acacia. My nation.”

“Too late for that, don’t you think?” Bledas asked.

“Not… too late. Just late.”

Mena watched the man tremble for a time. “Rialus Neptos, you’ve walked from our enemy’s camp after having guided them here from the other side of the world. If you have something to say, say it. And then go back to die along with them.”

Rialus’s eyes widened in terror. “No! I can’t go back. They’d kill me. They’ll know by now.”

“They know already,” Edell said, “because they sent you. What lie did they send you to tell?”

“No lies.” He fumbled to get the book in his hands and then thrust it toward her. “Here. Read my journal. Read. It’s me in there.”

Edell shoved the book back at him. “You expect us to believe you? You?”

“No lies,” Rialus said, once he was steady on his feet again. “I came to you… to tell you th-th-things.”

Edell seemed ready to shove Rialus again, but Mena stayed him. “If you have something to say, do so.”

“The beasts… they ca-cannot fly on their own. They need the amulets. They have amulets. Chains that lift them-”

“What is he on about?” Bledas said. “Speak sense, man!”

“The freketes need magic to fly,” Rialus said, getting out the first complete sentence that captured the company’s attention. The effort seemed to exhaust him.

“The freketes need magic to fly.” Mena chewed that a moment, and then said, “Let’s get him food and hot water. Give him a hot water bottle and bring him a chair. I want him talking without chattering. And take that book from him.”

A s the troops assembled for battle a couple of hours later, Mena stood, exhaling the irony of what she was about to do in perplexed plumes of mist, watching the enemy amass on the ice in front of them. Was she really reordering the day’s battle plans based on testimony she had just received from a babbling mouse of a man who had betrayed her nation twice? Apparently so.

Because of the rest of the information she had pulled from between Rialus’s chattering teeth, she had altered the arrangement of their battle lines. Perrin’s company would hold the center, along with Haleeven and his Mein. But Mena spaced them loosely, and behind their core troops she stationed the newest arrivals to the army, praying that they never saw an Auldek face that day. Bledas and Edell would take the left flank, Perceven and Gandrel the right. Archers would stay to the rear of both flanks, able to shoot over their companions and into the enemy ranks. Nothing would look remarkable about the formation to the enemy facing it, but there was a reasoning behind it that was entirely different from what she had planned just hours before.

For herself, the battle would begin from the air. She stood, stroking Elya’s feathers as her attendant finished tightening her rigging. Perrin trudged over to her. He carried a helmet stuffed under one arm and wore a breastplate emblazoned with his family’s insignia-the profile of a wolf, black against a backdrop of gold. He asked after any last orders, and she said there were none.

“Rialus got away all right?” Mena asked.

“I think so. Kant’s people helped him get back. He should be fine. The hard part was living through the shock of your sending him back to the Auldek.”

“He won’t buy forgiveness cheaply. I need more than what he gave us.” The officer nodded his agreement, but looked uncomfortable doing so. “Perrin, I know we’ve changed this around at the last moment. It’s decided now. We have to trust it.”

“I trust you, Princess. I just wish we didn’t have to rely on that rat. Maybe the Auldek had enough of him and kicked him out for the ice to finish.”

“Possibly. I wouldn’t blame them.” She took in the scene a moment, mostly just the soldiers marching into formation. She could not actually see the enemy from there. “But, Perrin, this plan feels right. It’s awful and unjust, perhaps, but…”

“If it saves our soldiers’ lives, it’s worth it,” he finished. “I’m with you. Don’t think I’m not.”

“Are the others?”

“They don’t like how the information came to us, but they’re not foolish enough not to see the logic in it.” He pulled his helmet down around his head, a snug fit with the fur padding that lined it. “If I die today,” he said, “I’d regret not telling you that I’m in love with you. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”

Tugging on her gloves and pulling the wrist straps tight, Mena asked, “And if you live?”

“I’ll die of shame.”

Mena nudged him away. She climbed up into position on Elya. So I’m loved, Elya. I don’t think Melio would approve, but it’s good to know. You are, too, girl. You are, too. Let’s stay alive, all right? Fly now .

The ice fell away beneath them. The frigid air bit at her cheeks; a little way up, the wind buffeted them. They flew higher and found calmer air. From there she flew forward to take in what they faced.

The Auldek forces were arrayed across the ice in a patchwork, a martial geometry laid out in a manner she had never seen before, not from on high. Squares and rectangles of troops, divided by clan affiliations, status, and all manner of distinctions Mena had little grasp of. She knew the strongest clans were in the center front, with others to either side. At each flank went contingents of animals: antoks with harnesses brimming with archers; kwedeir with their awkward gait, wings tented around them; woolly rhinoceroses with riders carrying lances atop them. She saw white lions slinking through the lines, spotted cats like those from Talay, wolves the size of horses. A few bears, tethered to chains, roared as if they had not been fed in a week and smelled the banquet awaiting them. As she watched, a black swell of birds flowed up into the air. Crows.

“They’ve brought their own crows,” Mena said. “Is this a war or a traveling circus?”

At the edge of each flank went the other troops, the slaves. They stretched all along either side and well back, eventually wrapping around to make up the mass that brought up the rear of the host. There were so many of them that the front of the line looked wider than the rear. It wasn’t, though. It was just that the ranks went back so far that they faded toward their distant camp in dwindling perspective. Mena tried to do the math she had not managed before, but got lost when estimates went beyond fifty thousand.

Elya dipped a wing and swung them around, bringing Mena’s army into view as she did so. The sight of them was not a surprise, but her heart sank, her stomach knotted. There were not enough of them. Four thousand at the most. They were spread too thin. They were simply humans, no beasts of war to bellow for them. Their defeat was not even in question. It was as inevitable as the fate of a hill of ants with a booted foot about to crush it.

Mena flew low over them, shouting encouragement. She touched down on the ice before them and told them not to fear the numbers coming against them. This was not about numbers, she said. It was about heart and right and cunning and freedom. She and Elya flew up and danced before the line, spreading the message as best she could. Without fail, they roared back their affirmation. Perrin blew the horn that signaled them forward, and the two armies marched toward each other.

Though the message was simple, and she doubted that many of the men and women in the ranks fully believed it, Mena was not lying. The vastness of the Auldek force actually gave her hope. Rialus had said the Auldek-though hundreds of years old-could only remember eighty years or so’s worth of memories. They had not fought battles this size in hundreds of years. They knew of them only what they had read in books. They may be tremendous individual warriors, but that did not mean they would know how to fight a large-scale engagement.

This army now marching toward her troops was frightening, but it was also absurd. It was a little boy’s fantasy of an army. It was brawn and numbers and bellowing creatures and an anvil of might… and it made no sense at all. If Mena had these resources she would never have arrayed them all against an army as paltry as the one she presented. With such vast numbers, most of them would never come anywhere near the soldiers they were meant to fight. They would be useless, standing with weapons at hand among a throng of themselves. It would only make communication impossible, orders unmanageable, strategy lost to the dull mind of the mob. It had taken them hours of precious daylight just to assemble, meaning Mena had had time to speak with Rialus. Nor would she have chopped the ranks up by a hierarchy that had nothing to do with an actual battle plan. It was vanity. It was foolish. If Mena had Devoth’s army, she would have left the bulk of them back in camp, eating a hearty breakfast and preparing the evening’s victory celebration.

“But I’m not fighting myself,” Mena said, once they were aloft again. “I’m fighting them.”

The freketes rose then, one after another, from the Auldek camp. As they flew over the invading army, the troops erupted in cries, booming shouts as loud as the explosions of the night before. The beasts flew in dips and rises, slipping side to side among one another. Their wings were massive. The heavy weight of their bodies swayed beneath them almost like a separate load being carried by the span. The riders on their backs clung to them like young bats to their mothers. Mena had not thought it through before, but now she knew she had never accepted these creatures as they appeared. They were too dense, too thick with muscle, too large and bulky for even those great stretches of wings to lift them. Thanks to Rialus, she understood why now.

It was not that he could confirm it with certainty, but he had bet his life on bringing her the intelligence that the amulets that the freketes wore around their necks helped them fly. He had seen them without them only a few times, only when they were on the ground, at leisure, being tended and fed. When aloft they always had them on. The night of the Scav attack, Devoth had waited for Bitten’s amulet to be brought to him and placed on the beast before he flew. What if this was not vanity, not just a custom or an idiosyncrasy? What if the freketes needed the amulets to fly?

The moment he asked the question, he knew the answer to it. “Devoth once mentioned a handful of relics the Lothan Aklun had given them,” Rialus had said. “The amulets are some of these relics. They were things to trap Lothan Aklun spells and keep their power.”

Mena had to end the meeting before she could question him any further. Now, aloft above her marching soldiers, she hoped he had spoken the truth. She had not told the others this part of her plan. The first clash of the day should be hers. It had to be hers. She felt the eyes of her troops watching her, and she tried to forget them so that she could do what she needed to for them. She drew the King’s Trust and urged Elya forward to meet them.

Which one? Which one?

Mena could not tell the riders or the beasts apart. They came on in a swarm. The freketes grunted and bellowed to one another, carrying on some bestial conversation. They all wore chains around their necks, amulets heavy on them, just as Rialus had said. All their eyes stayed fixed on her.

At least I’ve got their attention.

She pulled up and hovered, Elya’s wings feathering the air. Pointing with the King’s Trust, she picked out a frekete and rider. “You!” she shouted. “Your name! What is your name?”

This set the swarm of them into confusion for a moment. They were in the air above and below and before her, out on either side now, too. But they did not attack. Eventually, the rider atop the mount she had pointed at turned it sideways and yelled back, “Howlk.” He slapped his mount hard on the shoulder. “Nawth. Nawth!”

Mena shouted, “Howlk and Nawth, I challenge you.” To make sure he understood, she scowled and pumped her sword hand in the air, then pointed to them and to herself.

Howlk understood. They all did, and for a few raucous moments they argued about it. As she and Elya hovered, the freketes and their riders converged on one another like squabbling youths. Mena sheathed her sword, reached down, and checked her crossbow, memorizing just where the stock of it lay behind her hip.

The debate did not last long. Despite whatever protocol Mena had usurped with her challenge, the others drew back. Howlk and his mount came forward, looking very pleased.

It’s you and me now, Elya. First, we test them.

They surged toward them, darting to the side at the last minute. The freketes howled as Nawth pumped his wings in pursuit. Elya flew higher, cut side to side, folded her wings in, and dove. Nawth followed her. After the first few moves Mena reined her back. Elya was faster, much more maneuverable. No need to flaunt it, though. She needed to use it instead.

On her mental order, Elya twisted her wings. She spun them around. Flaring out to either side, the membranes of her wings filled with the air she grabbed, stopping them dead in the air. Mena pulled out her crossbow. She stood in her stirrups and brought the weapon to sight over Elya’s shoulder. She held it one-handed, something she could only do for a moment, as the weapon was one of the heavy, powerful ones her soldiers had used against the foulthings.

Nawth came toward them with wings flapping. His body convulsed and clawed at the air, as if he were swimming, as desperate to get to them as a drowning man is for the surface. Mena pulled the trigger and shot for the center of that writhing mass. The bolt thwacked away, scorching the line between them faster than her eye could see. Nawth caught it in his forearm. It was not an intentional block, just the result of his thrashing. It went in at an angle and hit bone, punched through, and then pinned his forearm into his chest. He howled and dropped.

Elya hovered, the two of them watching the frekete fall. The other freketes did the same, all of them hovering nearby, stunned to silence for once.

The descent did not last long. Nawth flexed his wings. He rose beating them steadily. Looking up at Mena and Elya, teeth gritted and eyes simmering with new depths of hatred, he tore the prongs of the bolt head from his chest and then tugged at it until he had it free of his shattered arm. He tossed the bolt to the side. It fell toward the ground, spinning over and over.

Howlk ripped free the sword he had sheathed diagonally across his back. As Nawth reached their height, Mena drew the King’s Trust. She adjusted herself in the saddle, blended her mind with Elya’s, readying her.

Nawth moved first. He surged forward, turning at the last moment and dropping his shoulder so that Howlk could swing his sword. Elya slipped down and to the side. Howlk cut only air. Nawth turned and rose; Elya danced away. She spun. Darted. Mena kept her close to the frekete but used her speed to dodge Nawth’s lunges, avoiding his kicks and Howlk’s sword attacks. The two grew more frustrated. Both of them shouted at her, Howlk in Auldek and Nawth in some bestial bellowing akin to words but not quite.

Mena let their anger grow, fed further by the derision cast at her from the surrounding freketes and riders, all of whom circled them. They drew closer, making it harder for Elya to move. One of the other freketes slashed the membrane of Elya’s wing.

Let’s do it now, Mena thought. She let Elya choose the moment, felt it just before she was going to, and agreed. Nawth got closer than ever before, and Elya reared back, spinning to avoid his grasping, big-knuckled hand. The move put Mena in striking position above Howlk for the first time. She swung but not for him. She aimed for the metal chain on the frekete’s neck. The combined motion of their bodies was too much. She missed. Caught Nawth’s shoulder instead. She thought the strike-even though awkwardly landed-would cut through the coarse muscle all the way to the bone. It didn’t. Instead the blade dented his flesh, barely drawing blood. It was as if she had hit him with a fighting stick, not a honed edge at all.

Nawth grabbed for Elya. She just managed to corkscrew away, diving toward the ice in the process. Mena would have lost her sword if she had not had the leather straps from its hilt wrapped around her wrist. She fought to get control of it, to keep it from cutting her or Elya. She lost all sense of the world for a few seconds, and then it snapped back into place. Elya spread her wings and went into a more controlled fall. Nawth was right behind her. He raked the air with his good arm, trying desperately to grab her tail, which snaked around just out of his reach. He was acting on his own, frenzied. He paid no attention to whatever Howlk was shouting at him. He ignored the way the Auldek tugged the steering harness. Howlk even reached forward and yanked on the chain that held Nawth’s amulet to get control of him back.

The thought passed from Mena to Elya so fast it felt simultaneous. Elya flipped over, angled her wings to break her speed, lifting slightly. Upside down, sword in hand, Mena kicked free of her stirrups. She yanked loose the thigh buckle that secured her to the harness. She fell free and dropped onto Howlk’s back.

She landed hard and almost glanced off to the side. She wrapped around the startled Auldek and caught hold of a handful of his long hair. Gripping it, she lunged forward, over his shoulder, and struck the chain on Nawth’s neck with all her might. It snapped free and dropped away.

In the moment that Howlk stared wide-eyed at Nawth’s bare neck, Mena yanked back his head, slipped the cutting edge of her sword right along the rim of his neck guard. She let go of his hair, grabbed the back edge of the blade with her free hand, and yanked the blade into his neck with all the might she had. The man’s eyes-startlingly blue-looked up at her, a childlike disappointment in them. His hands came up as if he wanted to explain something to her, but they got no farther before his body started to convulse.

Mena shoved him, which pushed her body back away from them. The three of them fell, drifting slowly apart. She watched the distance between them grow, and then looked past them to the ice field far below, the armies just eating into each other. For a few moments none of it seemed to have anything to do with her. The fact that she plummeted toward the earth with the air raging at her ears and her arms and legs kicked about by the force of her fall did not matter.

And then Elya appeared beside her. She touched Mena with the bottom of her muzzle. That brought Mena back. She grabbed Elya’s neck, loving her like mad, and slipped around and back into the saddle. Elya slowed their descent enough for them to watch from on high as Nawth and Howlk crashed down in the center of the Auldek formation. The soldiers beneath them were squashed on the ice, and those around them sprang back, sending a shock wave out around them. There was too much fighting for all the soldiers to understand what had just happened, but the freketes swarmed down, landing one after the other around their fallen comrades, making the circle of confusion wider. Mena did not need to watch them.

She checked what was happening elsewhere. There was not much daylight left. She caught sight of the sun biting into the horizon and knew the battle had just minutes more before both sides realized they had to withdraw. It was hard to make sense of the scene from above, but she knew what she was looking for and saw it. The Auldek in the foremost square of troops-near where the two had fallen-had pressed forward against Perrin’s troops. She knew they would because she had instructed them not to truly engage. To fight a slow backward retreat, cautious and defensive, just staying alive. The second thing Rialus had told her was about their hidden armor. No use wasting lives trying to injure soldiers who could not readily be injured.

Instead, it was the units facing the quota slave ranks that truly pressed the attack. From above, she could see that it was working, more so on the left than on the right flank.

What she did then she explained to Elya in images so that she would see it all and fear none of it. Passing over the crash of the two front lines, they swooped low over the right flank of quota warriors. Seeing the spot she wanted, she had Elya dip nearly to the ground above a patch of clear ice. At what she gauged to be the right moment, Mena pulled free of her harness for the second time that afternoon. She went over backward. Her legs kicked free of the stirrups and passed through the sky above her, all the way over until she was chest down and skimming off Elya’s back. She hit ice knowing she had to roll. She did. Rolled and slid.

She came out of it with the King’s Trust in her hand. She took out the nearest man by severing his leg at the knee. He went down screaming, splashing crimson across the ice. The next nearest she slashed across the chest. Another she hit awkwardly with the side of her blade, breaking his wrist instead of severing it.

As the soldiers pulled back to take her in, she got her footing. She gripped the sword in two hands and steadied herself. The fury that she recognized as Maeben came into her. It had been a while, but the screeching wrath of the goddess scorched through her veins now. She knew she would remember what she was about to do later with horror at herself, but in that moment it did not matter. She had a purpose in the world, and the blade in her grip was the instrument with which she wrote it. She blocked a spear thrown at her, cowardly, and charged the fool who had thrown it.

It got bloody after that.

When Elya returned, only a few minutes later, Mena was the center of a swirl of red desolation. Her blade was warm with the work, dripping. The ring of soldiers facing her tripped and stumbled on the bodies she had cut down. Elya swept in emitting a hiss so fierce the enemy soldiers dropped to the ice on hearing it. Mena sheathed the King’s Trust and caught Elya at a run. She leaped just in time to grab her stirrup loop. She held on, though her arms wanted to pop free of their sockets as Elya lifted her into the air. A frekete pursued them. Elya grabbed Mena and darted away as nimble as a skylark, dodging thrown spears and arrows with a grace that made Mena grin.

Pressed into the creature’s citrus-smelling plumage, arms aching and feet running in the air above two armies clashing, Mena laughed like a madwoman. Battle joy. A short-lived euphoria, but in the moment there was nothing else like it in the world. The princess laughed so hard it became crying. The two blended so that she could not separate one from the other, or tell apart the emotions that wracked her.

Battle joy. Battle shame. She owned them both. She always would.