The screams grew more urgent, more despairing. Terrified screams continued from deeper in the village, but Lila couldn’t save them all. In her mind, though, Lila could hear Bannon’s voice, insisting that she try to help people however she could, that she save as many as possible. Without thinking, she bounded to the overturned cart that barricaded the shack. She kicked the side of the cart, shoved it away, then yanked the rickety door open.
Inside, three red-faced girls were covered with soot, fallen to their knees, coughing. Waves of smoke curled out with the gush of fresh air. The oldest girl emerged to stare at the sprawled body of her father lying facedown in front of the shack, but Lila grabbed her arm, swung her in the other direction, and pushed her and her two sisters away from the burning home. “To the forest!” she hissed. “Run and hide in the trees.” She had caught glimpses of other figures who had fled the village. “You’ll find others out there. Stay with them.”
Before the three girls could run, a big Norukai emerged from one of the nearby storage sheds. He spotted the girls, saw Lila, and his scarred face twisted in a hungry grin.
“Go!” she urged the girls, and they bolted, running for the trees. She remained to face the thug. Lila pulled Sturdy free, gripped the leather-wrapped hilt, and sprang forward, surprising the raider. His slashed mouth dropped open in a roar of challenge, but before he knew what had happened, Lila had hacked sideways to slit open his belly. The Norukai man gurgled as his intestines squirmed out like a basket of escaped snakes.
Lila would have liked to let him die slowly from the awful wound, but he was making too much noise. Impatient, she struck off his head and prowled forward, glad she had saved the three girls, but wanting to do more.
She saw four landing boats rowing back to the anchored vessels. Some of them carried huddled prisoners, while others were loaded with sacks of grain, stacks of smoked river fish, casks of supplies stolen from the town. Lila squeezed the sword’s hilt, wanting to kill more of the Norukai.
Fortunately for her, a few raiders were still ransacking homes, starting more fires. They were stragglers simply having fun, and so she would have fun, too. One male taunted a growling dog tied to a post before he finally lost patience and lopped off the dog’s head. Two other scarred men held down and raped a sobbing middle-aged woman. With a flare of fury, Lila threw caution aside and ran toward them.
As one Norukai man finished with the woman, he grunted with displeasure because she had gone limp. Petulant, he stabbed the naked woman in the heart and yanked his knife free before readjusting his sharkskin girdle. Her dying sigh sounded like a blessing.
It all happened before Lila could get there. She did not scream a challenge, because that would be wasted breath. Instead, she bounded ahead with Bannon’s sword raised. She could not let the man live after what he had done. As the rapist turned his hideous face toward her, showing off his lips cut all the way back to the hinge of his jaw, Lila slashed his throat so viciously she nearly severed his head. He dropped gurgling on top of his victim.
The second raider holding down the now-dead woman let out a surprised shout. He lurched backward, grabbed his battle hatchet, and drew back his arm, but his waist girdle had been undone so he could take his turn, and it tangled around his legs. He stumbled.
Lila didn’t let emotion color her need. She stabbed him in the gut and slashed sideways, as she had done with the man at the burning shack. As he fell, the man reached out for her with one hand. She kicked him down in a tangle of his own entrails. “I will let you die at your own speed.”
The shacks continued to burn, and Lila heard moans and panicked cries from another barricaded home. She tore loose the barrier, freeing the people inside. She kept running, letting the people stagger out, gasping and choking.
As she made her way through the village, she took stock of the bloody bodies scattered about. One old man lay near the ruins of a fish-drying rack. He had been stabbed deep in his side. He reached out to Lila as she knelt beside him, but from her time in the combat arena, she knew it was a mortal wound.
She gazed deep into the dark forest beyond the river, the low trees, the willow thickets. She saw more figures running deeper into the forest, surviving families taking desperate shelter. Good, maybe even more of them had survived.
“Norukai,” the man said, twitching his fingers.
She clutched his hand, because that was what he seemed to need from her. “I know who they are. I will kill as many as I can.” She had already made up her mind, but it was what he wanted to hear.
“Kill them all,” the man said, then died.
“I will.” She set off.
A landing boat remained tied to the only intact pier. A Norukai man stood at the prow, impatient to shove off. The other landing boats had already rowed back to the serpent ships. “Finish up!” he growled to his unseen companions in the burning village. “King Grieve won’t wait for us, and I don’t want to be stuck here with these vermin.”
Lila walked out of the smoke onto the dock as the man looked up at her in disbelief. Even though she held a bloody sword and carried a dagger at her hip, the raider seemed to think she was a gift, not a threat. He stepped out of the long landing boat and stood on the pier. “Did they send you to me?”
“The Keeper sent me to you. Now I send you to him.” Using both hands, she swept Sturdy sideways.
The startled man recoiled, barely avoiding the sharp tip. He lost his balance on the dock and fell into the river. He bellowed and splashed, grabbing on to the boards to haul himself up, cursing her. Lila struck down and lopped off both of his hands at the wrists. As he let out a deep-throated scream and flailed his stumps spouting blood, she thrust Sturdy through his neck. His body slid into the shallow water and floated away in the current.
Out in the middle of the channel, the three serpent ships raised anchor and set their dark sails. She wasn’t surprised that King Grieve would take his spoils and depart without even waiting for his last few men.
She stood at the end of the pier and watched the ships move. She intended to do exactly what the nameless dying man had demanded of her. She would kill them, and she would free Bannon.
CHAPTER 18
As the enemy army pressed through the foothills behind Nathan and his companions, they did not follow single file but spread out, trampling everything in their wake. The mass of warriors camped for only a few hours each night and moved again as soon as dawn suffused the sky.
Nathan’s band pressed on, but they had not gained a great deal of ground from the relentless march of the vast army.
“We’ve already killed so many of them, and they keep coming,” Renn said in uneasy awe. The two wizards stood together.
Nathan thought of his own loss rather than the enemy’s. “Elsa’s transference magic incinerated thousands on the battlefield, but even so, they didn’t pay a high enough price.” He shook his head, flushing with anger. “She was worth more than that whole damned army.”
The other wizard’s eyes were red-rimmed, and his mouth sagged in a frown. “And Lani? Did she at least fight well before she died?”
Nathan brightened. “Oh, yes! Dear spirits, during our first sortie against General Utros, Lani made the ground shake with her gift. All by herself she flattened entire enemy companies. She impressed me very much.”
The bedraggled wizard sighed. “Yes, my Lani was a good fighter. I wish I’d been at her side.”
Thorn and Lyesse frequently disappeared from the group, flitting back to prey upon more enemy scouts and stragglers. The morazeth women kept careful score of the enemies they killed. Though such losses did little to weaken the multitudes, the bodies discovered every morning caused great agitation in the large army.
General Zimmer did not have enough horses for all of them to ride, so many doubled up as the group made their way toward the hidden archive. He dispatched one messenger ahead to ride with all possible speed, so Cliffwall could prepare, although the scholars should already have known about the
threat of General Utros; Zimmer had already sent word weeks ago, after they had wiped out an expeditionary army in an avalanche below Kol Adair. By now, Nathan hoped, the imaginative scholars might have found additional defenses to suggest.?.?.?.
For his own part, Nathan had hard memories of the archive, the damage done by the Lifedrinker and the sorceress Victoria, but also the tragic loss of the dear girl Thistle. Nathan knew how much powerful magical lore was stored in Cliffwall, and he was sure that some of it could be turned against General Utros, but he also knew how easy it was for that power to grow out of control. He vowed to be vigilant when they searched the dusty library for defensive spells. What could their band of defenders do against an army that had withstood all the wizards of Ildakar?
Because Cliffwall was so cleverly hidden, the ancient army might simply march past without any scouts discovering the isolated canyons and the archive. He could only hope.
Crossing one forested ridge after another, they could see the rugged, snow-streaked mountains in front of them, beyond which were the canyons of the western slope. Zimmer and Prelate Verna rode ahead to climb into a sweeping meadow, a lush hanging valley amid the thick forests. Before them, the wide meadow was filled with a splash of flowers, as if some ambitious painter had used the high valley as an enormous palette. The plants had swordlike leaves and fleshy green stems; the deep violet flowers were shot through with crimson veins.
As the party emerged from the forest into the flower-filled meadow, Amber let out a cry of delight and slid down from her horse. “They’re beautiful!”
