Instead, I turn my electricity on our attackers. Using the roots as a map, I run lightning along the plant matter, letting it curl and spiral with the path of the root. I can’t see the greenwarden at the far side, but I feel him. Though dulled by the dense root, my sparks ripple through his body. A distant shriek echoes through the cracks in the stone, somehow audible over the chaos above and around.
The greenwarden isn’t the only Silver able to bring down stone. Another takes his place, a strongarm judging by the way the stone shudders and cracks. Blow after blow sends rubble and dust through the widening gap.
Davidson stands on my left, mouth slightly agape. Numb.
“First battle?” I mutter as another thunderous strike hits home.
“Hardly,” he says, to my surprise. “I was a soldier once too. I’m told I was on a list of yours?”
Dane Davidson. The name flutters in my mind, a butterfly brushing wings against the bars of a bone cage. It comes back as if through mud, slowly, with great effort. “Julian’s list.”
He nods. “Smart man, Jacos. Connecting dots no one else even sees. Yes, I was one of the Nortan Reds to be executed by their legion. For crimes of blood, not body. When I escaped, the officers marked me as dead anyway. So they didn’t have to explain another lost criminal.” He licks lips cracked by the cold. “I fled to Montfort, collecting others like me along the way.”
Another crack. The gap before us widens as feeling returns to my toes. I wiggle them in my boots, preparing to fight. “Sounds familiar.”
Davidson’s voice gains strength and momentum as he speaks. As he remembers what we are fighting for. “Montfort was in ruin. A thousand Silvers claiming their own crowns, every mountain its own kingdom, the country splintered beyond recognition. Only Reds stood united. And Ardents were in the shadows, waiting to be unleashed. Divide and conquer, Miss Barrow. It’s the only way to beat them.”
The Kingdom of Norta, the Kingdom of the Rift, Piedmont, the Lakelands. Silvers at one another’s throats, squabbling for smaller and smaller pieces while we wait to take the whole lot. Though Davidson looks overwhelmed, I can almost smell the steel in his bones. A genius, perhaps, and dangerous certainly.
A gust of snow brings me back. The only thing I need to be concerned with is what happens now. Survive. Win.
Blue-tinged energy bursts through the splintering wall, pulsing across the foot-wide expanse of emptiness. Davidson holds the shield in place with an outstretched hand. A drop of blood drips off his chin, steaming in the cold.
A silhouette on the other side pummels the shield, fists raining knuckled hell down on the rippling field. Another strongarm joins the shadow and works to widen the gap, attacking stone instead. The shield grows with their efforts.
“Be ready,” Davidson says. “When I split the shield, fire with everything.”
We obey, preparing to strike.
“Three.”
Purple sparks web between my fingers and weave into a pulsing ball of destructive light.
“Two.”
The bombers kneel in formation, like snipers. Instead of guns, they just have their fingers and eyes.
“One.”
With a twitch, the blue shield cuts in two and slams the pair of strongarms into the walls with sickening cracks of bone. We fire through the opening, my lightning a blaze. It illuminates the darkness beyond, showing a dozen berserker soldiers ready to rush the breach. Many drop to their knees, spitting fire and blood as the bombers explode their insides. Before any can recover, Davidson seals the shield again, catching a returning volley of bullets.
He looks surprised by our success.
On the wall above us, a fireball churns in the black storm, a torch against the false night. Cal’s fire spreads and strikes in a snake of flame. The red heat turns the sky to scarlet hell.
I just clench a fist and gesture at Davidson.
“Again,” I tell him.
It’s impossible to mark the passage of time. Without the sun, I have no idea how long we spend battling the breach. Even though we push back the assault again and again, every attempt widens the gap bit by bit. Inches for miles, I tell myself. On the wall, the wave of soldiers has not won the ramparts. The ice bridges keep coming back, and we keep fighting them. A few corpses land in the street, beyond even a healer’s touch. Between strikes, we drag the bodies into the alleyways, out of sight. I search each dead face, holding my breath every time. Not Cal, not Farley. The only one I recognize is Townsend, his neck snapped clean. I expect a wash of guilt or pity, but I feel nothing. Just the knowledge that strongarms are up on the walls as well, tearing our soldiers apart.
Davidson’s shield stretches across the gap in the wall, now at least ten feet wide, yawning open like stone jaws. Bodies lie in the open mouth. Smoking corpses felled by lightning, or brutally ripped open by a bomber’s merciless stare. Through the quivering field of blue, shadows gather in the darkness, waiting to try our wall again. Hammers of water and ice batter against Davidson’s ability. A banshee scream reverberates off its expanse, and even the echo is painful to our ears. Davidson winces. Now the blood on his face streaks with sweat dripping down his forehead, nose, and cheeks. He sprints toward his limit, and we are running out of time.
“Someone get me Rafe!” I shout. “And Tyton.”
A runner sprints off as soon as the words are out of my mouth, vaulting up the steps to find them. I watch the wall above, searching for a familiar silhouette.
Cal works a manic rhythm, perfect as a machine. Step, turn, strike. Step, turn, strike. Like me, he finds an empty place where survival is the only thought. At every break in the oncoming rush of enemies, he re-forms his soldiers, directing the Reds in their fire, or working with Akkadi and Lory to eliminate another target in the darkness. How many are dead, I can’t say.