Nila tried to steady her breathing as she waited for the signal. She didn’t have the training for this kind of fight. She didn’t have the training for any kind of fight. All she knew how to do was unleash herself, and even then it only seemed to work half the time.
She didn’t have time to panic any longer. A horn was blown and the cavalry leapt forward, charging the Kez camp. They swept down into the valley, swords at the ready, and thundered in among the tents and fire rings.
Nila resisted the urge to summon fire to surround her hands – not only would she burn through her reins but she would work best with the element of surprise here.
She heard the clash of swords and the fire of muskets and carbines, while her own wedge of the cavalry continued forward unopposed. One man beside her commented on the lack of resistance, but they surged on, spurred by the sounds of the clash up ahead.
She recognized this bit of the camp. She remembered sneaking through it last night on her flight out. Somewhere nearby was the poor sentry whose neck she had burned through.
She saw the body of an Adran soldier lying in the mud. “Olem!” she shouted, digging in with her heels. Her horse jumped forward, nearly throwing her. She drew close enough to realize that the body did not belong to Olem. But the man’s head was near slashed from his shoulders, fresh blood pouring from his neck. She saw another body in a similar state, then another. The Kez were killing their prisoners.
A Kez soldier emerged from the fog standing above the kneeling figure of an Adran soldier. She recognized the scourged shoulders and the blood-caked beard of the kneeling man.
The Kez soldier’s sword flashed.
Nila reacted out of panic and instinct, her fingers twitching, and her fire took the Kez soldier’s head off as cleanly as a cannonball. The Kez’s body fell, and slowly, tiredly, Olem raised his head.
Nila fought to gain control of her horse as her bodyguards clashed with several other Kez soldiers on foot. When she had calmed the animal, she slid from the saddle and threw herself to the ground beside Olem. He had fallen from his knees to his side. She cut his bonds, only for him to wrench the gag from his own mouth.
“Behind you, you fools!” he bellowed.
Entangled with the few Kez remaining on foot, the Adran cavalry struggled to turn back toward the sudden charge coming up behind them. The bulk of the Kez dragoons slammed into their flank with a thunderous concussion, cutting their way through Adran cuirassiers that had only moments ago held the upper hand.
Nila stretched out one hand, her flames consuming a horse and rider heading straight toward her. Startled by her own precision, she turned and repeated the gesture, searing through another Kez dragoon.
“A sword!” Olem yelled, though one of his arms hung uselessly at his side. He caught a weapon tossed by one of his cuirassiers and spun to deflect the swing of a Kez dragoon. The dragoon roared past and spun to charge forward again, intent on plowing Olem beneath the hooves of his mount, but one of Nila’s bodyguards came at him from behind, slicing neatly through the base of his neck.
Nila helped Olem get back to his feet.
“Ignore me,” he said. “Keep up the fire!”
She flung a ball of flame the size of an ox, consuming the closest Kez dragoon, and then felt a blackness touch the corner of her mind.
Fear seized her as the flames dancing on her fingertips went out.
The magebreaker.
She could sense his influence grow around her, and when she reached for the Else once more, there was nothing to touch. Panic rose in her chest, threatening to overwhelm her. She could not fight with a sword or shoot a pistol. Her one strength was now gone.
She couldn’t pinpoint the location of the magebreaker. Her preternatural senses failing her completely, she threw herself back toward her horse, hauling herself into the saddle, knowing that her options were now limited to fleeing.
There was a flash of lightning in the air behind her, and she turned in time to hear two large explosions somewhere in the fog. She had forgotten about Bo. If the magebreaker was here, if she could keep him distracted, maybe Bo would be able to end this single-handed.
A man screamed out of the fog astride the biggest, fastest horse she’d ever seen. He was clothed in black furs and brown leather, swinging an immense, curved sword. He galloped toward her, blade flashing through the throat of one of Nila’s bodyguards, and then he was past.
Nila raised her hands, only to remember she had no sorcery to throw at him. “He’s going for Bo!” she shouted. “After him!”
Not stopping to see if Olem’s cuirassiers were following, she urged her mount toward where she’d seen the flashes of sorcery.
The Kez camp was now a field of bodies of the dead and the wounded, Kez and Adran alike. Horses galloped through the fog riderless, and unseated cuirassiers and dragoons stumbled about, locking in combat when they came across one another.
Nila felt completely vulnerable in the fog and suddenly realized again how helpless she was. Should she try to help Bo now? Or would she just get herself killed?
It was too late to wonder. She came out of the densest fog and upon a string of sorcery-made corpses. Horses and men alike lay dead, murdered by spikes of dripping ice.
She saw Bo, still astride his horse, reins in his teeth to leave both hands free, frost clinging to his sideburns. He twisted in his saddle toward a charging group of Kez dragoons, and wind slammed into the lot of them, sending horses and men tumbling and screaming, carried off into the swirling mist.
Something moved in the fog behind Bo. At first she thought it was a riderless horse, running terrified and confused. But the creature stalked forward with an implacable gait and the shadow became something more like a man. It was large and twisted, fury etched on its mangled face as it crept up behind him. She had only seen Wardens from a distance. Close up, it was all the more terrifying.
“Bo!” Nila shouted.
Bo swung around as the Warden leapt. His fingers twitched, and the creature was suddenly impaled upon icicles as long as spears. The Warden snapped the icicles off at its chest, blood and water dripping behind it as it loped forward, seemingly unaffected. Bo’s fingers twitched again and the creature was thrown backward as easily as a leaf, screaming angrily into the gust of sorcery-fueled wind.
It managed to land on its feet, and Nila waited for Bo to finish the creature off as it resumed its charge toward him. But his attention was grabbed by the sudden arrival of more Kez dragoons. They raced toward him from the side, only for their horses to stumble against his sorcery. Bo swayed in the saddle, looking like he was ready to fall at any moment. He was too tired to continue this fight, and she could sense the dark presence of the magebreaker. Any second now Bo wouldn’t be able to use his sorcery at all.
Nila snatched at a rock on the ground and flung it at the charging Warden. The rock skipped off its shoulder and it skidded to a halt, its massive misshapen head turning toward her. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of its malevolent, beady eyes. The Warden bellowed and charged straight at her, head lowered like an angry bull.
Nila backed up, then turned to run. What could she do? The creature would tear her limb from limb. It would kill her and then it would kill Bo, and all she had fought for would be for nothing. The sound of its heavy footsteps pounded behind her and she spun to meet her death face-on.
Panic, anger, and desperation snatched at the Else through the ribbon of darkness that was the magebreaker’s influence. Nila tugged at the Else, forcing the tiniest blast of fire into the world and shoving it like a spike through the Warden’s eye.
The Warden stumbled and fell, a smoking black hole through its head.