Page 174 of The Dragon and the Dove

‘Never better,’ she huffed, swinging again.

Another Strix came and Ransom stopped its heart with ruthless efficiency. Soon, he had filled the stone circle around the arch with dead beasts, feathers and blood, and injured riders, wheezing as they crawled from their saddles. But the Stargrazers of Urnica were as clever as they were brutal. They came again in a flock of three. The first Strix splayed wide like a shield, absorbing the brunt of Ransom’s magic. The other two were smaller, faster. They came up from below, darting between his shadows.

Ransom pivoted, driving his dagger through the wing of the first. It thrashed madly, taking a chunk out of the arch as it fought to remain airborne. Its rider slipped from his saddle, fisting a handful of feathers to stay his fall. Ransom was on him in a heartbeat, and Sera was so terrified that he might fall too that she didn’t notice the smallest of the Strix until its talons pierced her shoulder.

Far below, someone cried her name. Too late, she leaped from the beast’s path, its knife-sharp talons ripping through the muscles in her back. She hit the arch on her hands and knees, gasping through the pain.

The Strix rounded on her. She grabbed the flagpole and angled it at the sky, hinging it upwards as it dived on her. With a sickening squelch, the pole skewered its soft underbelly. Grunting in agony, she drove it home, through muscle and bone and sinew, right into the creature’s mighty heart. Blood spurted like a fountain as it slid across the arch. Its Stargrazer released a furious roar, pulling a whip from her belt. There was an almighty crack, then a lash of brown across the sky, as it tightened around Sera’s waist.

She slid across the blood-slick stone, fighting the pull of gravity. But the Strix and its rider were falling, and she was bound to them by the coil around her middle.

She screamed for Ransom.

Blood-soaked and heaving, he turned from his own fight. Gold eyes shot wide as he lunged through his shadows, but Sera was already gone. Dragged over the edge of arch and down, down, down, where she crashed in a hail of blood and feathers.

Blackness stole in. Then there were only the ragged cries of the Strix and the rumble of bootsteps as Andreas’s army spilled over the north bridge.

Chapter 51 Valerie

Val looked towards Traveller’s Arch with mounting dread.

Together with the others, Val had spent the last hour casing the alleys and laneways in the north of the city, ensuring Andreas’s assassins were not lying in wait, but as the full might of his army straddled the horizon, it became clear that Andreas had no intention of striking from the shadows today.

‘I’ve never seen so many Rose-bearers,’ muttered Anouk, from where they stood along Merchant’s Way, halfway between Traveller’s Arch and the Bridge of Tears.

‘Nothing your brother’s dragon can’t devour,’ remarked Nadia.

Val’s magic prickled, a familiar unease tapping her on the shoulder.

The sky started shrieking.

Strix poured from the clouds like spilled ink.

‘Did we know there were this many Stargrazers?’ said Tobias, shrilly. ‘Did anyone count?’

‘What the hell does it matter now?’ said Nadia, stumbling back as though she could outrun the monsters circling them. Bolts and arrows streamed across the sky as the Orders fired their crossbows, but for every Strix that tumbled from the sky, ten more pushed through the clouds.

It was a plague.

A horror.

Val was distracted, once more, by the hiss of her own magic. The ground trembled underfoot. Pebbles danced around her toes as she turned towards a sudden thunder of bootsteps in the east.

Fear boiled in the pit of her stomach.

Another regiment was spilling into the city through Hangman’s Pass.

There was no order to Andreas’s secret second regiment. No banners or flags proclaiming peace. They came with their swords drawn, cutting down anyone who stumbled into their path. Townsfolk screamed as soldiers ransacked taverns and churches, smashed windows and toppled statues, sowing chaos across the city. Some broke off, shoving their way into homes and marching down alleys, where even the rats of Fantome fled in fear.

‘Hell’s teeth!’ cried Anouk.

Andreas was done playing games. He wasn’t here for Sera. He’d come for the city. And this is how he would claim it: by invading every inch of Fantome, terrorizing its people until they fell to their knees and surrendered their will.

It unfolded like a nightmare. Townsfolk flooded the streets, fleeing their homes before their doors were kicked in. They carried all manner of weapons, rusted longswords and carving knives, ropes and axes, pitchforks and even the occasional stewing pot. It might have been a stirring sight – all these people fighting for their kingdom with what little they had – if they weren’t dying so damn fast.

Andreas’s army was razing its way through Fantome with a brutality that made even Nadia, the most seasoned killer among them, quail. Swords came down with horrifying swiftness, blood splattering the cobbles as bodies were trampled where they fell.

If they didn’t do something fast, there would be no one left to fight for Fantome.