Fifty arrows leapt from strings with a stuttered thwack!
Moya’s shot entered the giant’s right eye. Others pierced his throat, mouth, and chest. Dead before the fall, the giant collapsed a few feet in front of Moya. The huge pot-helmet—the size of a bathtub—skipped and rolled, stopping at her feet.
Moya put a foot on its rim and prepared for another flight against the Spider Corps, but Wolf’s Head remained empty of targets.
Lines of battle were a memory. The fight slipped into the chaos of a haphazard brawl where men paired off with elves, and the two sides mixed. In these one-on-one contests, the elves held the advantage, and Moya watched as more and more human bodies covered the grass.
Looking back at the walls of Alon Rhist, Moya spotted red banners.
“Fall back!” she shouted. “Grab the wounded and fall back to the fortress!”
Bergin lifted his head at the sound of her shout, then yelled, “Third rank, form up and bear the retreat!”
They tried to re-form. Bergin, the onetime brewer of bad beer, valiantly called to those around him to square shoulders, but the battle had moved beyond tactics. With the lines broken and spread out, death was certain. All that remained was for the elves to press their advantage.
They didn’t.
In stunned wonder, Moya watched as the Fhrey let them go. Just as eager to disengage, the Fhrey fell back. A horn was blowing from the tents on the plateau. How long has that been sounding? Moya had no idea, but elves were falling back, and no more giants came their way. Grabbing their own wounded and dead, the forces of Alon Rhist withdrew from the field. Only then did Moya notice how it had changed. The whole plain that had once been a dull dirty yellow of sunbaked grass and bare dirt was scarlet red. Blood shimmered under the full face of a midday sun shining in a clear sky.
Midday? But it’s just morning? It still has to be. I’m soaked with dew.
Moya looked and discovered it wasn’t dew. Only then did the full force of the battle arrive. She’d seen the men dying, seen the blood, but until the clash of metal quieted and the screams became moans, until she had the chance to recognize the smell in her nose as blood, none of it had seemed real. With the warmth of the overhead sun, while standing in a field thick with bodies, Moya felt sick. Her hands shook, her legs weakened, but she managed to keep walking. She focused on the bridge, on the ford, and the great bronze gates of Alon Rhist.
The first day of the Battle of Grandford was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Casualties
We called it a victory the way in late winter we would call a bowl of thin soup a feast.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
Mawyndul? had watched the battle at his father’s side. The two had stood in front of the fane’s tent where tables and chairs had been set up, spread with bowls of fresh berries, cheese, wine, and bread. Everyone had expected a party with a show—a display to entertain the fane. By midday, the tables had been knocked over, the berries scattered on the ground.
“What happened?” Lothian asked in a voice so calm it was eerie.
Before him stood a member of the Spider Corps, a middle-aged Miralyith holding a stick. Mawyndul? didn’t know his name. His white asica had been sprayed red on one side, as if a huge bag of red wine had burst beside him. But the color wasn’t right—less purple, more scarlet.
“We don’t—” He faltered, reached up, and wiped his face, leaving a smear of blood across his brow. “Aren’t sure. Everything…everything was…it was fine—working as planned, I mean. Then nothing worked. Same as when that rider came through. The lightning didn’t kill and the fire didn’t…nothing worked at all—” He gasped for breath and ran the same hand through his hair leaving another streak of red.
Just stop touching your face! Mawyndul? thought, grimacing. I have to look at you.
“We couldn’t understand it,” the blood-covered Spider continued. “Then everyone just fell dead. I remember hearing a…a whistle, this wisp of air, and then everyone collapsed. No, not everyone, I guess. Some tried to run, only we didn’t know where. We didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t the Art. We sensed nothing—absolutely nothing. And a second later I saw them, these tiny spears falling out of the sky. I saw one go through Kasimer’s skull.” He held out a stick that was thin and straight, with feathers on one end and a metal tip on the other. “This is what killed us.”
Mawyndul?’s father didn’t touch it. He just stared in disgust. “How many? How many Spiders are still alive?”
“Five, but Lym might not survive. He has one of these through his chest.”
“They knew just how to hit us,” Taraneh said. The Lion commander scowled, looking out at the field where bodies were being dragged.
“Of course they did,” the fane snapped. “They had Arion and that Instarya rebel directing their assault. What about her? Did you kill her?”