Scrounge glanced curiously to the handkerchief tied around Tristan’s left arm, and again he smiled. He took a deep breath of the cold, crisp air. “I see you carry into battle a token given you by a woman,” he said. “How quaintly gallant. And the familiar scent of myrrh reveals the identity of the one who gave it to you. Don’t tell me, Chosen One, that you actually have designs on Celeste?” He shook his head again, as if tutoring a particularly ignorant schoolboy. “After all of this is over and you are quite dead, Ragnar will be very pleased to have her back. And I imagine the things he will do to her in punishment for abandoning him will pale in comparison to what she has already suffered. Perhaps even I will finally be allowed some private time with her.” His tongue emerged to touch his upper lip. “After all, she is quite beautiful,” he added wickedly.
Tristan had endured all that he could. He urged his bird closer, bringing his hatchling little more than inches away from Scrounge’s. “I grow tired of all your talk,” he whispered. “It is now time for us to do this thing. And when it is over, your guts will be splashed red upon the earth below me.” He drew his dreggan. The ring the curved blade made lasted a long time in the dry, cool air before finally fading away.
“Very well,” Scrounge answered. He reached down to his hip, and slowly drew his own sword. Tristan could easily identify it as a broadsword of the Eutracian Royal Guard.
“But before you die, there is something else I must tell you, Chosen One,” the assassin added. “It is about the children.”
Tristan froze. Please, not the children, too. They, more than anyone, are the innocents in all of this madness.
“That’s right,” Scrounge said. “The children of the consuls. Their blood is the mortar that built the Gates of Dawn. And they will be needed further—perhaps even forever.”
With a final, cold look of superiority, Scrounge wheeled his bird around and flew back to his troops.
Tristan turned to look at Ox. The giant warrior smiled grimly back.
“Remember your orders,” Tristan said to him. “Go now.”
A combination of disappointment and worry crowded onto Ox’s face as he remembered the orders Tristan had given him back at the palace.
“But my lord, Ox want—”
“No buts!” Tristan ordered sternly. “We have been all through this. I can take care of myself.” His face softened a bit. “So much of what happens here today depends on you, my friend. We need you.”
His chest puffing out with pride, Ox finally smiled. From a string around his neck a silver bugle hung down the center of his back between his wings, out of sight of the enemy. Upon its bell were the markings of Tristan’s heraldry, indicating that it had once been a tool of the Eutracian Royal Guard. Ox slowly, stealthily hovered backward into the towering clouds that lay directly behind and above them, until only the outline of his face could still be seen.
Tristan turned to Traax. “Scrounge is mine, and mine alone,” he said menacingly. “But should I die before that bastard has met his fate, you must kill him. If I go to my grave this day, I want to do so knowing that he will not survive.”
Traax looked into the dark blue eyes of his leader. “It will be my honor.” He grinned. “Consider it done.”
“Thank you,” Tristan answered. “And remember, if our plan fails, I intend to save whatever troops we have left and regroup, rather than sacrifice them all here, in this one place. Despite what the Minions may have believed up until now, there is little honor in suicide.” He turned his eyes back to the overwhelming force behind them. “Wars are not won by those who die for their cause, Traax. They are won by making the enemy die for his.”
Traax bowed his head. “I live to serve,” he replied solemnly.
Looking up and thinking for a moment, the prince took a deep breath. For the first time in his life he truly did not fear dying, for he knew in his heart he was already dead. It was such an amazingly clear awareness that he actually smiled as he took in the beautiful sky and clouds around him. It was almost as if he were looking at them for the very first time. He could fight today with absolute abandon, caring nothing for his personal welfare, for he had already said his good-byes to the ones he loved.
Raising his left arm to his face, he took in the light scent of myrrh. Then he looked down at the gold medallion around his neck, thinking of his twin sister, and the identical one she wore.
His thoughts were interrupted by a piercing, insane noise—the shrieking calls of the hatchlings readying themselves for battle.
And then, their thousands of swords waving back and forth like wheat stalks in a summer field, the legions of hatchlings flew toward the Minions.
Tristan raised his sword.
“Now! For Eutracia!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as he spurred his mount. All at once, weapons at the ready, Tristan’s Minion warriors started to move.
Gathering speed, both hatchling and Minion alike tore across the sky, covering the distance between them in mere moments. Amid relentless battle screams and the brutal sounds of smashing bodies, the two forces tore into one another.
Tristan immediately went high, pulling his bird up at the last moment, just before the armies clashed. He turned around in his saddle, waving his dreggan.
Almost at once, Ox’s bugle rang out.
Tristan looked down to the battle. It was progressing exactly as he had anticipated, the bulk of the hatchling legions attempting to hack their way through the center of his forces, separating them into two parts. For now, the Minions were holding their ground, their front lines uniform. But he knew that not all the hatchlings had reached the fighting. From each side of the struggle blood, bodies, and severed limbs and heads went flying into the cold air, falling almost in slow motion, bathing the ground below in red.
Tristan heard the bugle ring out for the second time, and he turned to stare at the towering clouds behind him. Now! he ordered silently. You must come now!
On cue, twenty-five thousand Minion warriors—almost a full third of Tristan’s forces—came pouring from the clouds, Ox in the lead. Their wings folded back, their bodies pointed straight down, and their weapons held out before them, the Minions dove directly at the rear, still-uninvolved lines of unsuspecting hatchlings at full speed.
Tristan held his breath.
Nearly twenty-five thousand hatchlings died on the spot. Most of them never saw their attackers as the Minions came plummeting out of the sky, the sun at their backs. Rent apart by dreggans, daggers, and axes, blood flying, the mangled bodies of the grotesque birds fell in convoluted postures of instant death.
The idea had actually been Traax’s, based on one of the strategies the Minions used to capture the swamp shrews in Parthalon. Tristan and the wizards had agreed.
But the prince could also see that the Minions remained badly outnumbered. With the scattering of the hatchlings’ rear lines, the battle was quickly decaying into individual struggles, each fighter for himself. With the two foes filling up what seemed to be the entire sky, Tristan continued to hover, his anxious eyes trying to find Scrounge. And then, in the midst of the melee below, the prince finally saw him.
Scrounge was diving his bird toward the back of an unsuspecting Minion. Raising his broadsword in his left hand, the assassin took the warrior’s head off with a single stroke, only to wheel his bird around and approach yet another of his enemies from the rear.
Although tempting, this deceitful approach was not for Tristan. You shall know it was I who killed you, he swore. He swung his bird around and dove. “Scrounge!” he screamed as he approached the assassin.