“I may not need it today, but it will comfort me to have it. Please, Captain,” she whispered, the plea so heartfelt and sweet he bowed to it immediately.
He reached for the knife in his boot, the hilt comfortable and smooth in his hand, an old friend. He pressed it into Sasha’s palm and wrapped her fingers around it, showing her how to hold it.
“If you must use it, commit to it. Do not wield it to discourage your enemy. Wield it to kill.”
She nodded, her eyes on his hand around hers.
“If you must use it, I have failed you,” he muttered darkly, releasing her hand, relinquishing his blade. He watched her tuck it into her boot, copying his actions exactly.
“You have never failed me,” she replied, straightening. “And I will not fail you.”
The edge of the forest nearest the palace had been thinned and cleared as the Spinners were healed, leaving an empty ring of earth around the castle walls. Just beyond the sparse perimeter, the archers would wait—cloaked in greenery and shielded by the trees—for the Volgar to perch on the ramparts above the canopy. Jerick and King Aren would be among the archers in the forest, Kjell would direct the action beneath the vines, and Tiras would slip between, changing form as circumstances demanded, coordinating the effort between the forest and the castle.
“If there is nothing to eat on the ramparts, and the Volgar smell blood beneath the vines, they will try to break through,” Kjell explained to those most fearful of the new plan. There was little argument but plenty of apprehension. New positions were staked out, new signals established, and a new round of fearful waiting embarked upon.
Near dusk on the third day, the cry finally went up.
“Volgar!” Tiras warned, shifting from eagle to man in a fluttering mix of feathers and flesh. The archers in the trees scrambled for cover and lifted their bows, shaking off the lethargy and the denial of the long wait. The throng beneath the nets braced their lances and clutched their blades, waiting for the sign to use them.
Just as Sasha had predicted, the birdmen shrieked and swarmed, circling the castle in the skies over Caarn until, one by one, they began dropping to the ramparts, peering down through the thick carpet of vines that partially obscured the villagers below. With the feathered haunches and wings of vultures and the torsos of human men, the Volgar were truly terrible to behold, especially when they rimmed the walls above the courtyard showing rare sentience and self-control, their eyes gleaming and their attention fixed.
“Bleed,” Kjell ordered, his voice low, his gaze lifted. The word rumbled and spread through the armed crowd, and with shaking hands, the villagers of Caarn passed their blades and scored their palms, smearing the blood into their skin, hoping to draw the birdmen down into their snare once more.
The Volgar began to shift and scream, batting their wings and snapping their beaks, the scent of blood stealing their sense and luring them into a collective lean.
“Arrows!” Kjell yelled, and the villagers shielded their ears with bloodied palms, preparing for Boom to repeat the word.
“Arrows,” Boom repeated, the word reverberating over the wall and down into the trees. The archers obeyed.
The eager screeching became desperate confusion as birdmen fell and others teetered, abandoning the exposure on the ramparts for the blood below. Bodies began to collide with the vines, and the people of Caarn began the coordinated slaughter of hundreds of Volgar birdmen.
“Lances—”
“Scatter!”
“Circle—”
“Attack!”
Kill and repeat. Jab and retreat. One by one, the Volgar fell beneath the onslaught, ensnared and skewered or trapped in the vines beneath the bodies of the dead and dying. The volley from the forest continued, urging the birdmen to drop from the wall into the nets below.
The Volgar were not the only ones to fall. A birdman broke through, his talons extended, and sunk his beak into the back of the Sea Changer before being brought down by a dozen lances.
Kjell dragged the man to a barrel of ale and stuffed him inside, commanding that he change. The wounded man became a silvery trout an instant before Kjell plucked him out again and tossed him to the ground. The Changer morphed immediately, dripping and naked, but completely healed. He donned his sopping clothes and took up his spear.
Each time the Volgar would break through, a skirmish ensued, circling villagers with upraised spears facing the talons and beaks of enraged birdmen, and more often than not, bringing them down.
When the net began to bulge and break, the edges snapping like frayed rigging in a hurricane, Kjell gave the warning to abandon the bailey.
“Gate!” Kjell shouted.
“Gate!” Boom repeated, and the villagers in the courtyard ran for the entrance, pressing themselves against the castle walls as they filed out beneath the hastily-raised gate.
“Burn it down, Isak,” Kjell commanded, making sure the bailey was clear.
Isak began to pummel the air, his fire-filled fists swinging left and right, releasing flames that billowed upward, engulfing the center of the enormous net in fire.
The archers had heard the signal and were waiting to provide cover. As the people began to spill out the castle gate, the Volgar who’d resisted the lure of fresh blood and avoided the arrows of the archers in the trees, began to dive from the ramparts, desperate to snatch supper from the chaos. One woman was seconds from being swept up when suddenly she was the size of a small mouse. She scurried away, unscathed as the birdman above her collided with the ground and was instantly surrounded and impaled.
Some birdmen tried to fly, their wings on fire, only to tumble to the earth, unable to continue. But when the winds chased the fire, and the rain chased the flames, the remaining birdmen took to the sky, their numbers a tattered fraction of what they’d been before.
***
Kjell began to move through the villagers, closing the oozing cuts across their palms, seeking out the wounded and the dead. The villagers clutched his hands in thanks, their eyes heavy with gratitude.
“Do you think they will return, Captain?” they asked, hopeful and hesitant.
“If they do, we will destroy them,” he reassured, and they nodded, believing him.
So many had been destroyed. The smoldering pile of Volgar remains tinged the air with a green haze. Bits of flotsam floated and flurried, causing the people of Caarn to cover their mouths and cough as they found each other amid the smoke. Tiras had changed and now circled the skies above Caarn, keeping watch in case of an unexpected return.
“Is everyone accounted for?” Kjell pressed, his eyes on the triumphant archers flooding the bailey from the woods, embracing each other and recounting the battle from where they’d stood.
His question was met with blank stares and furrowed brows, as one man questioned another, unable to give him a response.