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She turned to search out an archer, and instead found Ragnar, easily keeping pace on foot beside her.
“What are you doing?” she shouted. “Take cover! You’re unarmed and you can’t turn into a wolf!”
He shot her a tight grin, though fear flashed in his gaze. “Take cover and leave a lady to fight my battles? Not a chance.”
He was mad – but there was nothing to do about that. She doubted he’d seek shelter while his whole pack – alpha especially – were currently trying to fight armed men. The snarling was terrible, as was the squealing of the small, purple drakes as Alpha tore into them.
Amelia sent out a fruitless plea to her females:Come! Alpha needs you!They were only ten or so miles from the manor. In the air, they could reach them quickly…if it wasn’t too late.
“Archers! I need archers!” she called, cantering back down the line, Ragnar at her side. “Don’t shoot the wolves or my dragon, but I want the enemy bristling with arrows!”
The moment the words left her lips, an arrow thunked to the ground just beside Shadow’s front right hoof. She’d felt the whistle of its passing, and glanced down to see dyed-purple fletching.
“Now!” she bellowed, and turned Shadow sharply left, spurring him across to the far side of the road and swinging around to get a fresh look at the action.
Still beside her, Ragnar shouted, “They need shields! Where are the shields?”
“I don’t…I don’t know!”
It was all happening so fast – and so horribly. She’d tested her mettle against encamped men, against a tower, Alpha’s fire singing the timbers of its roof. But this was the stuff of nightmares – and it was still happening, more soldiers, more drakes arriving through the portal by the second. They’d never prepared for anything like this – had traveled lightly, without full armor, expecting a simple reconnaissance mission, and not a magicked gateway to another place, bursting with monsters.
The wolves were darting, and ducking, and snapping; she recognized Leif, his size, the thick gray-gold ruff and blue eyes. He darted in, clamped down on an armored calf, and the flailing of the man attached said his fangs had found the gaps in the plates of the greaves.
Alpha was hovering overhead, buffeting the entire scene with powerful flaps of his wings, savaging the small drakes with his teeth – though there were so many, now, that some had flitted around behind him, biting at his haunches and his tail. He ripped one in half and swung his head around with a roar to jet fire at the others. Dragon scales, though, no matter the color, appeared impervious, and they shot green flames at him in return that made him roar louder.
Reggie’s men, their too-heavy armor no longer a laughing matter, were encircling the scene.
From off to her left, Stranger bowmen began firing. An arrow sprouted through the slit in a gold visor, and a Sel toppled. A small drake was caught in the eye, and plummeted to the ground.
Another Selesee arrow whizzed past her head, and Ragnar cursed.
“We have to close that portal,” she said. “So long as it’s open, they’ll keep coming.”
“How do you propose to do that?” he asked, voice flirting with panicky. One of the wolves was knocked aside with the butt of a spear, and went rolling across the ground; Ragnar cursed.
Amelia took a deep breath…and knew what she needed to do.
She dismounted.
“What are you doing?” Ragnar demanded.
She thrust Shadow’s reins into his hands, and met his wide, frightened gaze. “Hold him. I’ll only be gone a moment.”
“Gone? Gone where?!”
“To fetch an expert opinion.”
19
It smelled of the black liquid in the bowl, the air pouring out of that void that hovered above the road. It smelled of conjured imagery, and a Selesee general’s tent; of powerful herbs and something darker, and more sinister. A kind of magic both immensely powerful…and too slippery to grasp. Viscous and corrosive andwrong.
Leif tore a glove from a man’s hand, danced, darted, and then took off two of his fingers with a neat snap of his teeth. The blood that filled his mouth didn’t taste of animal: not the pure, hot, copper of any living thing he’d ever known. There was something musty and old in it, and he shook his head and snorted each time it touched his tongue.
A windstorm swirled around them from the beating of Alpha’s wings, and though the kicked-up dust burned his eyes, he was glad for the distraction, for the way it muddled the Sel soldiers that he attacked, again and again, darting light, hamstringing them, finding the joins in their armor so he could sink his teeth into vulnerable flesh.
He heard a man’s voice, somewhere behind him: “There, and there! Fill in the gaps! I don’t want any of those things getting away!”
He heard the hiss of arrows. Saw a Sel with a bow, and leaped at him next; put his massive forepaws on his chest and sent him stumbling backward; lunged at his belly, at the gap in his armor above his belt, and tore him open to the sound of screaming.
