It’s blood.
The muted noises rise to a horrible ringing. I push up, one of my ribs screaming out in anger, but I don’t care as more cannons fire, more of Noam’s cavalry gets launched into the air.
It was a trap, and now there are more Spring men running at us around the cannons, and the remaining Spring soldiers we didn’t kill from the initial charge fly back to surround us. Here and there a few clumps of Cordellan riders stay up, hacking at enemies, firing blindly. But it’s no use. We’re too cut off from the bulk of our army, helplessly lost in our stupid rush to destroy Angra’s cavalry.
I scramble up. The armor and extra padding lock my broken rib in a pathetic makeshift cast and I’m able to stumble forward, debris clouding the air, bodies littering the way. The stench of blood and sweat clogs my lungs, growing with each explosion, each scream.
Mather. I think I shout it but I can’t hear myself. Maybe I only mouth it, a feeble cry in the dark. William!
A cannonball hits the ground nearby, knocking me down with its invisible force. I collapse on a body that reaches up, a bloodied hand gripping my shoulder. Panic numbs everything in me for one beautiful, horrifying second when I see who is grabbing me, how bloody he is, how mangled in the filth of battle.
Sir.
Whenever he described situations like this before, the scenario seemed like a distant, foreign thing I would never have to face. Injuries on a battlefield. Excessive blood loss, broken bones, ripped flesh—
This isn’t real. This can’t be real. Not now, not him.
A Spring soldier wails in front of me, a Cordellan sword through his chest. The sound of his dying scream warps in my ringing ears as Sir’s lips move. I lunge to him, shouting, willing the ringing to lessen enough so that I can hear him through the screams and explosions.
His lips move again. “Meira.”
Blood and dirt and sweat make his fingers slick as I grip his hand. “What do I do?” I shout. “Tell me what to do!”
Sir smiles through the bloodstains on his cheeks. The blood trails down to show its source—a gaping wound in his belly, ripping open half his chest. Dark blood pulses out, brittle white bone protruding from the cavity.
“Meira,” he says again. His hand comes up to cup my cheek, his thumb rubbing at my temple.
“What do I do?” I scream again. Another cannonball strikes somewhere close by; they’re coming closer and closer. They’ll hit us soon. We’re still in range. I have to move him, get a medic—
“I’m sorry,” he wheezes.
Sir’s eyes drift out and he stares vacantly at a space beside my head. When he looks back, his gaze is distant and hazy as if he’s seeing through me.
“No,” I growl. I shake his shoulders, trying to pull his focus back to me. “No! You listen to me, William Loren. You do not deserve this!”
Sir nods. “I served Winter.”
Another cannon. A Spring soldier howls above me, sword raised, and I reach for my crossbow. It isn’t there—it got torn away with the cannon blast. Before I can scramble for another weapon, a Cordellan arrow comes whirring out of the ashes, and the soldier crumples beside Sir’s legs.
So many bodies, Spring and Cordellan alike. So much death and blood piling up so quickly—
Sir’s thumb moves on my temple again. I bend over him, shielding him from debris, from blood, from all of this. “No,” I mumble. It’s all I can do, all I can say, eyes blurring with dust and hot, pulsing tears. “No, no, William, don’t—”
Sir wheezes. He looks at me again, and one last ray of clarity brings recognition to his eyes. “Meira,” he whispers. “You have to save them.”
“Of course,” I croak. “I’ll do it. I promise I’ll do it. But you have to help me. I can’t do it without you!”
Sir shakes his head. “Did you hear Bithai’s poem when we first arrived?”
I nod, and Sir presses on.
“No,” he says. “The words. Did you hear the words?”
When I shake my head this time, Sir inhales, closes his eyes, and lets memory say it. The gentle poem rolls out, past Sir’s wheezing breath, past his pain.
“Cordell, Cordell, today we come
To kneel before your blessed throne.
Let all who find refuge be glad
They hide behind your walls of stone.
Cordell, Cordell, if we must leave
To battle, travel, or to die,
Let those who do not come again
Forever in your presence lie.”
His eyes open again. “Winter needs that,” he rasps. “Winter must have that.”
I shake my head again, tears pouring down my cheeks. “No, William—Winter needs you!”
Sir smiles. The smile catches as his thumb stops moving, everything in his body hardening like a pond freezing in winter. The sudden, scary pause echoes through me. He’s not moving. He’s not breathing. He’s not—
Alive. He’s not alive anymore.
Slowly, so slowly, his hand drops and collapses against his chest.
“Meira!”
Someone calls my name, voice ragged with fear. I grab Sir’s face, my dirty fingers digging into his hair. He stares into the sky, his eyes absent and empty, an expression that branded its horrible meaning into my mind long, long ago. A candle without a spark, a sky without a sun, the look people get when they cease to be people, start being bodies. But he is too strong for this expression, his face too hard, too wise, to support the sheer nothingness cascading over him. I refuse to let him go, not like this, not while I will always, always need him.
“William,” I sob, and shake him, his blood squishing between my fingers. “Look at me! Please, I’m begging you, look at me . . .”
All I ever wanted was for you to look at me.
“Meira!” Mather slides to the ground beside me, throws his arms around my shoulders.
“No!” I claw at him, pushing him away, but he fights me to my feet. “No!”
We stumble back, trip on another dead body. Like Sir, staring up at pockets of blue sky through holes in the wafting debris, just another casualty in Angra’s war.
I shove Mather away, rage coursing fresh at Angra’s name. This is his fault. All of this, his greed and his conduit and Winter being weak, so weak . . .
Mather’s arms leave me long enough that I turn back to Sir and reach out in one final grasp for him.
Please, you can’t die too.
Coldness streams down my arm, flies from my fingertips. I can feel it crawling across the battlefield and over Sir’s body, spreading like frost over the ground. It touches every blood vessel, every nerve, turning everything around me into a field of ice. Is this what shock feels like? Is this how it feels to have a piece of who you are ripped from your life—cold and desolate?
Mather pulls me away like nothing happened. “Meira, we have to run! It’s not safe!”
I stare at him. Doesn’t he feel cold too? How can he not feel it? But his panic, the way he drags me through the battle, tells me he didn’t feel anything.
Cannon fire pierces the air, spinning and whistling in the dust, and I react without thought—I shove my shoulder into Mather, throwing him sprawling to the ground as the earth next to me explodes. The weightlessness returns, heaving me up and up, slamming me back into the blood-soaked ground. Something else pops in my chest, and pain flares.
I try to pull myself up, to see where I landed, but only manage to get to my elbows before blackness swarms over me in the form of twisting agony. As it descends I see Mather too far away, screaming, getting dragged toward Bithai by a few of Noam’s men.
“Meira.”
A shadow drops over me. At first it looks like Sir, but it can’t be Sir, it can never again be Sir, and I whimper in the terrible truth of it all.
The shadow crouches down. He sneers at me, a sickening movement that clashes with the men wailing for their lives behind him, against Mather getting sucked away to safety. Against my great rush of terror when I recognize that face.
Herod.
“You stole something from me,” he hisses. “It’s about time I take it back.”
As he bends down, pain, and fear, and exhaustion sweep over me, throwing everything into darkness.