Daybreak (22 page)

Perhaps there
was
a wildman in Thanehold who heeded the power of words.

It was a risk, but he knew he didn’t have time to beat the wildmen into listening. Convincing Griffith might be his only chance — and he thought he might’ve known just how to do it.
 

Kael spent the rest of the day hunched over a blank sheet of parchment, trying to bring it to life. He didn’t have Baird’s voice, or Setheran’s powerful tone. No, all he could do was tell the truth.
 

As he wrote, he drew each line in desperation. He fed his worry into every page. He told the story of a village that’d been unprepared — defenseless against an army of wolves that’d torn it apart with iron teeth. Everything he felt ran from the tip of his quill. The words he used were pounded out in anger, sharpened by despair.

His eyes burned by the time he’d finished — whether from exhaustion or fury, he wasn’t sure. But he knew that if even one line struck the worry in Griffith’s eyes, the wildmen would be prepared.

Once he’d finished, Kael sealed his story up and passed it on to one of the warriors to be delivered. He didn’t want Griffith to see him. The story would speak for itself.

After a day had dragged by and Kael heard nothing, he began to fear that he’d made a mistake. He spent his time with Baird and Lydia, letting their ceaseless spats distract him from his worries — fighting against all the little fibers of his soul that screamed for him to do
something
. In the short breaths between their arguments, he watched the spell-lights in the distance.
 

They grew brighter by the hour. Soon he could hear the far-off rumble of the hills of snow giving way. Their white flesh blasted upwards in a tower’s spire beneath every spell, snow that had sat undisturbed for so long that it’d hardened into a near-impenetrable vein of ice. He hoped it would hold for a few days longer.

But at the rate things were going, he doubted it.

That night, he woke to wild chirping and the panicked flapping of wings. Kael hadn’t been eager to go back to the chambers he’d shared with Kyleigh. Instead, he’d fallen into a fitful sleep on Baird’s floor. Now every bird in the chamber tore from their nests and threw themselves against the balcony doors. Their feet scratched against the wood and they swirled about the room in a frantic spiral.

Baird tumbled out of bed and chased them around — tromping on Kael’s hand and knocking over furniture as he went. “No, little things! The winds are too strong. You’ll be torn apart if you venture out — oof!”

He tripped over his night robe and would’ve crashed straight into the wall, had Kael not grabbed him around the arm. “They aren’t going anywhere. You’re likely to break something if you keep running about. Stay here,” Kael said firmly as he began making his way towards the window. “I’ll see what’s happened.”

By the time he’d fought his way through the cloud of birds, the rumbling had stopped. Kael stared into the darkness for what seemed like an eternity before he saw the hundreds of orange lights.

They were torches — each carried by a soldier of Midlan. He watched, breathless, as the torches moved toward the end of the Cleft. For one heart-stopping moment, he feared they might’ve burst through. But they stopped just before they reached the end.

Spells lit up the night and the rumbling continued as the mages went back to hacking away at the last remaining stretch of ice.

“What is it, young man? What do you see?”

“They’ve just collapsed a huge bit of the pass,” Kael said, piecing it together. “They’re nearly out.”

“Good. All of this blasting is starting to give me a headache. The sooner they get through, the sooner you can silence them.”

Kael’s mouth went dry even as his palms began to sweat. He didn’t think he’d be able to silence anybody — not without the wildmen’s help. His knees locked together and his legs shook as he spun for the door. He’d been foolish to think words would do anything. He’d wasted too much time. If he left now, perhaps he’d be able to beat some sense into Gwen before it was too late.

He was reaching for the door when the knob turned. He leapt back when Griffith stepped in.

There was a suit of armor wrapped in one of his arms. Kael’s letter hung from his hand — so read that tiny holes had been worn into its creases. But Kael hardly noticed any of that. From the moment he stepped inside, Kael’s eyes locked upon the boy’s face.
 

Black paint adorned his features once more.

“She’s going to fight,” he breathed.

Griffith’s head tilted to the side. “She’s
prepared
to fight, if need be.”

“Oh, there’ll be a fight,” Baird called. In spite of having been told to stay put, he somehow managed to shuffle his way over to latch himself onto Kael’s arm. “Promise me something, young man — promise me that you’ll deal swiftly with his mages. They’re a crafty lot. If you leave them to sit and think, they’ll fester into a rot. They chew the legs out from under you before you even realize what’s happened.”

“I don’t think I’ll have any say in it,” Kael said, turning back to Griffith. “I doubt Gwen’s going to let me out of here.”

“She won’t,” Griffith said with a nod. “The craftsmen are useless in the wind, so she’s only using the warriors — and she says she doesn’t need your help for that. In fact, you’re not to come within a mile of them, understood? You’re to stay right here. Gwen’ll skin me if I let you out.” The armor fell from his grip and struck the ground with a
clang
. The helmet rolled to a stop at Kael’s feet. “So it’s best if she doesn’t see you.”

*******

Dawn came quietly. A red sky swelled behind the mountains and bled upon the white at their feet. Creatures rose from the snow as they marched — beasts with hundreds of limbs and countless tiny claws. They tore through the wildmen’s ranks, howling as the wind brought them to life.

Kael watched the creatures’ dance through the slits in his iron helmet. Their flesh collided with his body and the sound was like a roomful of glass shattering against his skull: it filled his ears with a near-constant hiss that stifled everything else.

The wind had beaten the drifts for days. Now they filled the Valley in high, uneven waves. Sometimes the snow hardly came to Kael’s ankles, but other times he sank to his knees.

There wasn’t much space between the castle and the Cleft. When Kael chanced a look behind him, he could see the black patterns on the faces of the guards who watched them from the ramparts. The head that barely rose above them was Griffith’s. If the Cleft’s mouth was even a half-mile from Thanehold, it would be a near thing.

Gwen marched straight to the last remaining wall of ice. Its crags were swollen and blue. Spells crashed behind it. The colors that swelled and burst inside its flesh made it look as if the evening sky was trying to fight its way out.

A particularly loud blast made the wall groan. It shed a few monstrous scales of ice — some twice the size of a man. But Gwen never flinched.

One of her fists was clenched around the strap of a rounded shield and from the other hung a double-headed steel axe. The way the wind blasted across her wild crop of hair made it look as if flames spouted from her head. She turned as another enormous chunk of ice shattered upon the ground to her left — revealing the sharp edge scowl.

Kael stood just a few rows behind her. Gwen’s gaze cut over the top of his head to the wind-blasted fields behind him, and he stood perfectly still. Her eyes tightened upon something in the distance. Her bluish-black lips twisted in a grimace. Only when she turned back to the wall did he chance a look behind him.

As far as he could see, the fields were empty. He didn’t know what she’d been looking for — and he didn’t have time to wonder.

The warriors on his either side kept glancing in his direction. He could feel the pressure of their eyes as they scraped across him, roving from deep within their helmets. But he looked pointedly ahead.
 

He remembered what Geist had said about how strange it was that Kael was able to see through disguises that’d fool so many. He wasn’t sure if the talent was his alone, or if it was something all whisperers shared — but he wasn’t willing to test it. Kael convinced himself that any little movement might give him away, and he stood perfectly still.

A sudden calm drew his eyes to the center of the wall. The spells ceased, the air fell silent. For a long moment, all Kael could hear was the ice as it hissed across his armor and his own heavy breaths.

“Maybe they’ve given up,” a warrior beside him whispered.

Kael knew full well they hadn’t given up. The animal in him bared its teeth as hairs rose down the back of his neck. He wasn’t at all surprised when a red light appeared behind the ice.

It grew quickly, trembling as it swelled. Every inch seemed to bring it closer to bursting. A high-pitched whistle rent the air as the light grew: the more it trembled, the higher the whistling climbed. Soon, the wall began to shake.

Scales of ice broke free and crashed into the ground. The warriors fell back, cursing. They clapped hands to the sides of their helmets; their ranks went from even lines to a clustered, swearing mass. Even Gwen paced a step back, hand tightened around the hilt of her axe.

Then all at once, the wall exploded.

Boulders of ice flew over their heads and into the field beyond. The warriors raised their shields against the deadly wave that blasted from the Cleft’s mouth. Kael’s arm shook against the unexpected force as ice struck his shield. One of the jagged shards splintered the wood above his wrist and stopped mere inches from his face.

Gwen swatted at the ice shards, meeting their force with the spiked front of her shield. A particularly large chunk of ice screamed for her middle, but she hardly glanced at it. She batted it aside absently while her eyes stayed fixed upon the Cleft.

Kael crouched with the other warriors, their shields raised in a protective roof until the last of the ice fell. When he dared to look, he saw an army gathered inside the Cleft.

Hundreds of soldiers stood before them — their gold-tinged armor reddened by the dawn, the twisting black dragons upon their chests coiled for battle. They filled the pass to its jagged walls and waited in perfect, unwavering lines. Their bodies were so still, the vents of their helmets so fixed that for a moment, Kael thought they might be statues.

Then a man at the head of the line barked an order and the front ranks broke apart. They peeled into an archway, feet pounding in an unbroken rhythm and spears clamped across their chests. From between their ranks marched a dozen mages.

Their robes matched the soldiers: gold, with dragons adorning their chests. Even from a distance, Kael could see the red glow of the shackles upon their wrists. His eyes scanned across their faces quickly. But to his relief, there weren’t any children among them.

He supposed Crevan had sent his best.

One mage marched fearlessly at their lead. He was a desert man with a clean-shaven head. The open-mouthed grin he wore was all teeth and no shape — the grin of a polished skull. Kael couldn’t help but stare at his large, overgrown ears. They were stretched to near-transparency; blue veins crisscrossed down their arches.

The remnants of the red spell coiled in wisps about the mage’s fingers. A length of chain wrapped around his arm. Perhaps it was the dawn light toying with him, but Kael swore the chains seemed to squirm across his wrist … as if it was a creature that moved of its own accord. 

The lead mage marched until he stood hardly fifty paces from Gwen, and then he stopped.

Not a sound stirred from the ranks of Midlan; the wildmen stayed remarkably still. The hiss of snow blustering against their breastplates was the only noise between them.

Gwen took a step forward, turning so the lead mage could see her axe. “Are you from the King?” she called.

“I’m Ulric, his archmage.” The desert man’s eyes squinched at their bottoms as they dragged across Gwen’s fur armor. “I’d heard that bandits had taken over the Earl’s castle … though I must admit, I didn’t expect you to be so
hideous
.”

Gwen’s knuckles went white about the axe even as her neck burned red. “We aren’t bandits. The King sent our ancestors to cleanse the mountains long ago. This land is ours by right.”

Kael knew by how her words snapped at their ends that she was doing everything in her power to keep from burying her axe in Ulric’s skull.

But instead of backing away, his manic grin grew wider. “Yes, I’m sure it is,” he called, as if he were merely appeasing a child’s demands. “But as delightful as this little talk has been, I’m afraid we have business to attend to. Give us the Dragongirl, and I promise no harm will come to you. We’ll even let you keep the castle.”

Kael didn’t believe it, not even for a moment. The King hadn’t sent an army into the Valley for Kyleigh — not when he knew that their swords wouldn’t be any good against her scales. No, the
mages
were here for Kyleigh.

The army was here for the wildmen.

“The pest is gone,” Gwen said with a wave of her hand. “We haven’t seen her for months.”

As she spoke, Kael drew the sword at his hip. He wished he had his bow. Ulric stood within his range — and he thought an arrow between the eyes would’ve done him some good.

 
“Well, that
is
regrettable. We rather hoped we would find her here.” Ulric’s dark eyes roved to the walls of Thanehold — and his grin stretched even wider. “Still … it seems a shame to drag an army all the way from Midlan and not have it used.”

Ulric raised his fist, and Kael knew what was coming. Fear jolted him forward. It swelled inside his muscles, brought strength to his limbs. His eyes sharpened upon Ulric’s face and he threw the first thing he could think of — the only thing he had in his hand.

It was an impossible throw. The sword bolted from his hand and flew with an arrow’s speed for Ulric — no more than a gray blur against the white earth. White ringed the archmage’s eyes and for the second the sword flew, Kael thought he had him.