Within seconds, the catapults rumble and flaming projectiles fly over the walls toward the possessed Karkauns. Many go down—but more dodge the projectiles, moving with that eerie speed.
“Archers!” I shout. “Fire at will!” With breathtaking swiftness, Grímarr’s possessed soldiers have blown past the markers we set out on the field.
A hail of flaming arrows rains down on the Karkauns. It hardly slows them. I order the archers to fire again and again. Some of the Karkauns fall, but not enough. No wonder they didn’t have any bleeding siege machines.
An alarm goes up from the men, and less than a hundred yards away, a group of possessed Karkauns lift massive glowing missiles, seemingly unbothered by their flames, and fling them at Antium.
“It’s—it’s not possible,” I whisper. “How can they—”
The missiles fly into the city, smashing into buildings and soldiers and watchtowers. The drummers immediately issue a call for the water brigades. The archers fire volley after volley, and legionnaires reload the catapults as fast as they can.
As the Karkauns close on the walls, I hear their hungry, beast-like snarls. Too quickly, they are past the trenches, past the secondary forest of pikes planted at the base of the walls to deflect a human army.
We have no defense now. In the space of minutes, the battle will go from strategy and tactics thought up in a distant room to the short, desperate strokes of men fighting for their next breath.
So be it. The Karkauns begin to scale the wall, brandishing their weapons as if they are possessed by demons of the hells. I draw my war hammer.
And then I roar the attack.
XLVII: Laia
The soldier’s uniform is far too big, and there’s an unpleasant wetness across the small of my back. The previous owner must have taken a blow to the kidney. And he must have spent a long time dying.
Fortunately, the uniform is black, so no one notices the blood as I move through the lines of soldiers along the southern wall of Antium, doling out dippers of water. My hair is tucked tightly into a helm, and I have gloves on to hide my hands. I slump my shoulders beneath the yoke across my back and shuffle my feet. But, tired as they are, the soldiers hardly notice me. I could probably strip down to skivvies and run up and down the wall screaming, “I burned down Blackcliff!” and they wouldn’t care.
A light flashes on my helmet. Cook’s signal. Finally.
It has been two days since we arrived in Antium. Two days since the Karkauns unleashed their hordes of possessed, white-eyed soldiers upon the city. Two days of bone-shaking attacks and streets crumbled to dust. Two days of men with unnatural strength pelting the city with flaming missiles while the air is choked with screams. Above it all, the buzz of arrows as thousands are unleashed on the forces arrayed outside the city’s gates.
I have posed as a sweeper, a slops collector, a squire—all in an attempt to get close to the Blood Shrike. I have tried to use my invisibility, but no matter how much willpower I pour into it, I have been unable to harness it.
Which means the Nightbringer must be nearby. He is the only thing that has kept me from drawing on my magic in the past.
Thus the disguises—not that any of them have helped. The Blood Shrike leads the defense of the city, and she is everywhere at once. In the few glimpses I have had of her, her ringed hand has been clenched around her blood-drenched war hammer.
The light flashes on my helm again, this time with an air of impatience. I back away from the line of men, hurrying off as if to get more water, though the buckets attached to the pole across my back are not even half-empty yet.
A missile hits the wall just behind me, and the explosion slams me to my knees, sending the buckets flying. I shudder, every part of my body hurting, a shrill keen in my ears at the sound of the impact.
Get up, Laia! I scramble for the buckets and run from where other soldiers are falling. The missile has left a smoking crater in the earth below the wall, where a group of soldiers and Scholar slaves had been standing only moments ago. The stench makes me gag.
I make my way across the lower level of the wall, up a set of stairs, to the walkway at the top. I keep my head down. This is the closest I’ve gotten to the Shrike. I cannot make a mistake now.
The mirror flashes again, this time to my left. Cook is telling me which way to go, and I follow the flash, ignoring cries for water, pretending that I have someplace more important to be.
I spy the Shrike ahead of me, blood-drenched and slumped with exhaustion. Her armor is gouged in a dozen places, her hair a mess. Her ringed hand hangs loose.
When I am thirty feet away, I slow my pace. When I am ten feet from her, I clutch at the pole I hold and sling it down, as if preparing to take water to the soldiers around her.
Skies, she is so close, and she has, for once, put down that damned hammer. All I have to do is get my hands on the ring. The moment I do, Cook will launch her distraction—which she has refused to tell me about, for fear of the Nightbringer learning of it and sabotaging us.
Now the Shrike is a mere few feet from me. My mouth is suddenly dry, my feet heavy. Just get your hands on the ring. Get it off her.
I should have practiced. Cook spent what little time we had trying to teach me the art of pickpocketing, but in truth, I have no idea how to filch a ring. What if it is tight on her? What if I yank at it and it does not come off? What if she curls her hand into a fist? What if—
A tickle on my neck. A premonition. A warning that something comes. I scurry a few feet farther away from the Shrike and dole out dippers of water to grateful men.
The light ahead shifts strangely, a contortion in the air that births a slice of night’s shadow.
The Blood Shrike senses it as I do and stands, her hand fisted around her war hammer once more. Then she takes a step back as the shadows coalesce.
It is him: the Nightbringer.
I am not alone in backing away from him, and it is that that saves me from his gaze. All of the soldiers around the Shrike are in as much of a hurry to escape the jinn’s attention as I am.
“Shrike.” His grating, grinding voice makes me shudder. “Keris Veturia seeks your counsel, for she—”
I do not hear the rest. I am halfway down the stairs, buckets abandoned, mission aborted.
“What the hells?” Cook meets me when I’ve gotten well away from the wall. I hear the unmistakable whistle of another missile falling.
“We had a plan, girl.”
“It didn’t work.” I yank my helm off, not caring who sees, knowing it will not make a difference anyway—not in this chaos. “He was there. The Nightbringer. Right next to her. He would have seen me.” I shake my head. “We have to find another way. We need to lure her to us. But short of holding the Emperor hostage, I don’t know what would work.”
Cook takes my shoulders and turns me toward the wall. “We are going back there right now,” she says. “All we have to do is wait for him to leave. Everything is in place, and we won’t—”
An explosion tears through the air just yards away, where a group of Scholar slave children are digging through rubble under the watchful eye of a Martial legionnaire.
I find myself flat on the ground, coughing debris from my lungs, trying to wave away the dust.
“Najaam!” A girl cries out. “Najaam!” An answering cry, and then the girl’s sobbing as she pulls another child from the rubble. With her eyes on the legionnaire, who is still trying to rise from the blast, the little girl grabs the boy, and they begin to run, both of them limping.
Cook sees me watching and drags me to my feet. “Come on, girl.”
“Those two need help,” I say. “We can’t just—”