Daughter of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 4) (32 page)

 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:
FLIGHT

We're
too slow.

Cam
panted as he rode across the countryside, leading three thousand
armored riders. His horse foamed at the mouth, the courser's eyes
rolling, nostrils flaring, ears lying flat against its head. The
other beasts were just as exhausted. Cam knew he was driving them too
hard, yet how could he rest?

We're
too damn slow.

His
family was at Kingswall. Torin was at Kingswall. Hundreds of
thousands of his people were at Kingswall.

The
serpent heads there now. Serin.

Cam
clenched his fist as he rode. He did not doubt Serin's actions now;
the man had fooled them, drawn them to Hornsford with his army of
straw, leaving Kingswall a fruit ripe for the picking. Cam had sent
Nitomi and Qato ahead in their hot air balloon, entreating the dojai
to rescue whoever they could. But Kingswall needed more than two
Elorian spies; it needed an army. It needed Cam and his riders.

Idar
damn it, too slow!

The
landscape rose and fell around them, grassy hills to the north, the
Sern River to the south. Miles behind, his ground troops were heading
east too, but Cam would not wait. In his mind's eye, he could imagine
the Magerian horde assaulting the city, toppling walls, storming the
streets.

With
three thousand riders, I can tear through the enemy,
he thought, gazing upon his forces. Every man wore good steel and
carried a blade and sword.
We
can still save our city. We can—

Chants
rose ahead, interrupting his thoughts.

Cam
stared toward the sound and his breath died.

"Idar
help us," he whispered.

The
enemy covered the landscape, twenty thousand troops or more bearing
the Radian standards. Thousands among them rode upon horses. Scythed
chariots rolled forth. Men beat drums and sang for victory, and
horns—thousands of horns—shrieked like birds of prey.

Behind
Cam, his men raised their own horns. The song rose in the wind, the
song of Arden, a song for victory. Men aimed lances and took battle
formations.

"We
will slay them, my king!" cried a lord.

"For
Arden!" cried a knight.

The
two armies stormed across the countryside toward each other.

We're
trapped,
Cam thought,
a shiver taking him.
Of
course.
He howled in
rage.
He planned this
too.

He
leaned forward in his saddle and drew his sword, prepared for
battle—but he knew this was not a battle he could win. This was not
a battle on his terms.

He
flushed me away from my walls. He trapped me between Hornsford and
Kingswall. Now my city stands alone and I'm caught like a sheep
between wolves.

The
fear—for his family, his friends, his people—stormed through him
like an icy torrent.

The enemy roared as they
charged, covering the land, thousands of horses and chariots with
spinning blades upon their wheels. Thousands of arrows flew. Cam
swung his sword, and blood stained the fields of Arden.

Lari grinned and licked her lips
as she fired her crossbow, aiming at the filthy mongrel. When her
quarrel shattered against the shield of air, Lari stared for an
instant, disbelief freezing her.

The
mongrel shattered my quarrel.

Lari felt her smile vanish,
replaced with a snarl. She screamed.

The
damn mongrel thinks she can magic her way out of this.

Growling, Lari placed another
quarrel in her crossbow and began to turn the crank, tugging the
string back. Crossbows were such crude machines—too slow to load.
Weapons for commoners. The Elorians were racing onto the road,
swinging their shovels. Abandoning hope of loading the second quarrel
fast enough, Lari cursed and tossed her crossbow at the
nightcrawlers. The weapon slammed into an Elorian's forehead, cutting
a deep groove, and Lari smiled and hissed through clenched teeth.

Good.
First blood.

She raised her hands, prepared
to fight the way a proper, highborn girl should fight—with magic,
cruel and twisting and dark, a force to rip bones out of flesh.
Madori would die slowly, Lari decided. A quick blast to the heart was
too good for mongrels.

I
will coil your bones, pull out your organs, and make you watch and
beg me for death.
She licked her lips and her nostrils flared, already smelling the
mongrel blood.

She took a step toward Madori,
gathering the magic in her hands, when the other maggot—the one
called Jitomi—swung a shovel toward her head.

Lari sneered and swung her arms,
tossing the ball of magic—the one intended for Madori—at the shovel
instead. Inches away from her head, the shovel jerked backwards,
tugging Jitomi two steps back.

Lightning flashed and slammed
into a tree nearby. Lari grinned, raised her palms, and sucked the
energy toward her, forming two glowing balls. She smiled crookedly at
Jitomi, that piece of nightcrawler filth.

"Toss down your shovel and
fight like a mage," she said. "Or are nightcrawlers so weak
with magic, you fight like gravediggers?"

Around them, the others were
battling—Elorian students dueling soldiers, shovels clanging against
swords. Jitomi tugged back his hood and stared at her with blue,
monstrous eyes the size of limes. His white hair fell across his
brow, and his skin gleamed when lightning struck again. The dragon
tattoo coiling across his face seemed to stare too. Never breaking
his gaze, he tossed his shovel aside and raised his hands, collecting
metallic particles from the air.

Lari leaned forward, tossing her
balls of lightning.

He reacted at once, lobbing his
projectiles toward her. The balls of lightning crashed and shattered.
A thousand bright shards hovered in the air for an instant, then
pattered down.

Sneering, Lari chose his boot.
She claimed the leather. She tugged and he fell. Quickly she chose
the air around a rock, levitated it above the Elorian, and tossed it
down toward his face.

Jitomi rolled aside, and the
rock thumped into the mud. A blast of that mud showered upward,
flying toward Lari, blinding her and filling her mouth.

She held one hand forward,
shoving a field of air, and wiped the mud off her face to see him
crash backward.

"Better." She spat out
mud, smiled, and wriggled her fingers, collecting strands of smoke.
"Now we're having fun."

She tossed the smoky ropes at
him, the same magic she had used on Madori back at Teel. The murky
tentacles spun around him. Lari tugged her arm back, tightening the
grip, and Jitomi gasped. She shoved her palm forward, blasting out
power and knocking him onto his back. She chose a branch above,
claimed the wood, and cracked it. The bough slammed down onto Jitomi,
pinning him to the ground.

Lari grinned and chose his
foot—not just his boot this time but the flesh within. He lay,
blinking, struggling to rise, still wrapped in the magical ropes.

Her grin so wide it hurt her
cheeks, Lari tugged his foot, and he screamed. She spun him in the
mud, dragging him toward the ditch until he teetered on the edge.

He tried to resist. He summoned
a ball of mud, air, and wooden chips; Lari dodged the projectile
easily. She stepped forward, pouted mockingly, and placed her foot
against Jitomi's neck, smearing the dragon tattoo with mud.

"You dug your own grave,
worm," she said sweetly. "Now fall into it."

She kicked, shoving him into the
ditch. He fell into the grave and lay, groggy and bleeding. Lari
stood above and laughed. She lifted a shovel and began tossing mud
into the ditch, covering the Elorian, burying him alive.

"Die in the mud like the
worm that you are." She laughed. "Your mongrel friend will
join you soon."

She tossed in another shovelful
of mud, lightning flashed, and she saw them emerge from the forest
across the ditch.

Two figures, a boy and girl,
blades in their hands.

Lari sneered.

"Tam and Neekeya." She
spat. "The two traitors. So you've come to die too."

The two stepped to the opposite
edge of the ditch. Tam raised his eyebrows.

"Hullo, Lari!" he
said. "It's always strange meeting a student outside of your
school, isn't it?"

Neekeya nodded at his side. "It
is! And you know the best part?" She raised her sword with the
crocodile-claw pommel. "At the university there are rules. But
here . . ." The swamp dweller smiled toothily. "Here I do
believe we can kill the girl."

The two lunged over the ditch,
flying toward her.

Lari growled and tossed air
their way.

Their own magic blasted forth,
tearing through her defenses, and they landed before her. Lari leaped
back, narrowly dodging Neekeya's blade. Tam swung his dagger and Lari
screamed; the blade tore across her cheek, and her blood splattered.

"That," the boy said,
"is for what you did to Madori's cheek."

Lari screamed and tossed dark
tendrils toward him. Neekeya sliced the magic with her blade, then
thrust the sword. The tip nicked Lari's other cheek, splashing more
blood.

"And that," said
Neekeya, "is for Madori's second cheek." She lunged
forward, swinging her blade. "The next cut will be for me."

Lari screamed and stumbled
backward. She had never cast so much magic before, and when she tried
to claim Neekeya's sword, to heat the steel until the barbarian
dropped it, she could not. The material slipped from her mind. She
tossed a stone, but the projectile bounced uselessly off Neekeya's
scale armor.

"You're nothing but a swamp
monster!" Lari screamed. She turned toward Tam. "You're
nothing but a pathetic traitor who mingles with scum!"

They thrust their blades toward
her again, and Lari fled into the forest, screaming and cursing and
clutching her wounded cheeks.

He stood in the tallest tower of
Kingswall Palace, staring down upon a dying city.

The Magerian enemy covered the
city slopes, clogging the streets with steel. Already the Radian
banners rose upon the domes and steeples of Kingswall, capital of
Arden. The city gates had fallen. The countryside still swarmed with
the enemy, and ever more crossed Mudwater Bridge in the south. Only
this palace still stood, a single island in the Radian sea.

Some banners, Torin saw, rose
upon humble homes, willingly raised by city folk. Those people—his
fellow Ardishmen—cheered along the streets and upon roofs, welcoming
the enemy.

"Death to nightcrawlers!"
they chanted. "Radian rises!"

More than the corpses at the
walls, the enemy surging along the streets, or the dark magic coiling
like smoke, the sight of these traitors disgusted Torin. In future
tales, would bards sing of an Arden who fought nobly against Serin .
. . or a kingdom that welcomed evil?

"Where are you, Cam?"
Torin whispered, staring out the window at the ruin of his city.
"Where are you, my king, my friend?"

Cam's army—myriads of archers,
swordsmen, and riders—could have stopped this assault. But now the
might of Arden languished in the west at Hornsford, useless as the
capital shattered, as the ancient kingdom fell. When Torin lowered
his gaze, he saw Magerian troops stream into the palace gardens,
marching toward the gates. Soon they would storm through the throne
room, climb the stairs, and finally emerge here into this tower. And
it would end.

A hand touched his shoulder. A
soft voice spoke.

"Torin. What do we do?"

He turned around. He saw them
there and his eyes stung.

Queen Linee stood in the round
chamber, her eyes wide with fear. She gripped a sword in her hands,
but the blade shook. Beside her stood her son and heir, Prince Omry,
his armor cracked and bloodied. He too held a blade, and a bandage
covered his brow.

What
do we do . . .

Torin looked down at his own
blade, a katana of the night. Years ago, the Chanku Pack—great
wolfriders of the Qaelish empire—had gifted him this blade. He had
fought many men with this steel, yet now . . . now would the blade
find another task?

What
we do is fall on our swords,
he thought.
What
we do is die before they capture us. Because the fate they plan will
be worse than death.

He licked his lips, trying to
speak those words. Somewhere below, men chanted, wood and stone
crashed, and the tower shook.

"They're breaking in,"
said Prince Omry, eyes grim. "They will be here soon."

Torin nodded, for a moment
choking, unable to breathe, unable to speak.

I
will never see my wife and daughter again. I love you, Koyee and
Madori.
He
looked around at the chamber—the tapestries on the walls, the
jeweled raven statues, the lush rugs, the giltwood tables. It was a
comfortable place, a good place to die.

He raised his blade. He spoke
gently. "Let me do it. I will be quick. I—"

A cry sounded behind him.

Linee gasped and pointed.

Torin spun around to face the
window and his eyes widened. He lost his breath.

Nitomi and Qato, the two dojai,
hovered outside the window in a basket.

"Hurry!" Nitomi said,
gesturing for them to enter the basket. "Hop on board! Did you
know that there's a giant army of thousands of swordsmen and mages
and riders and archers outside, and maybe they even have elephants,
and they're all over the city, and they're breaking into this palace,
and—"

"Yes, Nitomi, we know!"
Torin said. He thrust his head out the window and gazed upward. Ropes
connected the basket to a hot air balloon; Torin had not seen these
vessels since the war in Eloria years ago. When he looked down, he
saw Magerian soldiers streaming through the shattered palace gates;
countless more spread across the city. A Magerian archer nocked an
arrow and aimed up at the balloon; a bolt from Qato's crossbow sent
the man sprawling.