A s the troops assembled for battle a couple of hours later, Mena stood, exhaling the irony of what she was about to do in perplexed plumes of mist, watching the enemy amass on the ice in front of them. Was she really reordering the day’s battle plans based on testimony she had just received from a babbling mouse of a man who had betrayed her nation twice? Apparently so.
Because of the rest of the information she had pulled from between Rialus’s chattering teeth, she had altered the arrangement of their battle lines. Perrin’s company would hold the center, along with Haleeven and his Mein. But Mena spaced them loosely, and behind their core troops she stationed the newest arrivals to the army, praying that they never saw an Auldek face that day. Bledas and Edell would take the left flank, Perceven and Gandrel the right. Archers would stay to the rear of both flanks, able to shoot over their companions and into the enemy ranks. Nothing would look remarkable about the formation to the enemy facing it, but there was a reasoning behind it that was entirely different from what she had planned just hours before.
For herself, the battle would begin from the air. She stood, stroking Elya’s feathers as her attendant finished tightening her rigging. Perrin trudged over to her. He carried a helmet stuffed under one arm and wore a breastplate emblazoned with his family’s insignia-the profile of a wolf, black against a backdrop of gold. He asked after any last orders, and she said there were none.
“Rialus got away all right?” Mena asked.
“I think so. Kant’s people helped him get back. He should be fine. The hard part was living through the shock of your sending him back to the Auldek.”
“He won’t buy forgiveness cheaply. I need more than what he gave us.” The officer nodded his agreement, but looked uncomfortable doing so. “Perrin, I know we’ve changed this around at the last moment. It’s decided now. We have to trust it.”
“I trust you, Princess. I just wish we didn’t have to rely on that rat. Maybe the Auldek had enough of him and kicked him out for the ice to finish.”
“Possibly. I wouldn’t blame them.” She took in the scene a moment, mostly just the soldiers marching into formation. She could not actually see the enemy from there. “But, Perrin, this plan feels right. It’s awful and unjust, perhaps, but…”
“If it saves our soldiers’ lives, it’s worth it,” he finished. “I’m with you. Don’t think I’m not.”
“Are the others?”
“They don’t like how the information came to us, but they’re not foolish enough not to see the logic in it.” He pulled his helmet down around his head, a snug fit with the fur padding that lined it. “If I die today,” he said, “I’d regret not telling you that I’m in love with you. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”
Tugging on her gloves and pulling the wrist straps tight, Mena asked, “And if you live?”
“I’ll die of shame.”
Mena nudged him away. She climbed up into position on Elya. So I’m loved, Elya. I don’t think Melio would approve, but it’s good to know. You are, too, girl. You are, too. Let’s stay alive, all right? Fly now .
The ice fell away beneath them. The frigid air bit at her cheeks; a little way up, the wind buffeted them. They flew higher and found calmer air. From there she flew forward to take in what they faced.
The Auldek forces were arrayed across the ice in a patchwork, a martial geometry laid out in a manner she had never seen before, not from on high. Squares and rectangles of troops, divided by clan affiliations, status, and all manner of distinctions Mena had little grasp of. She knew the strongest clans were in the center front, with others to either side. At each flank went contingents of animals: antoks with harnesses brimming with archers; kwedeir with their awkward gait, wings tented around them; woolly rhinoceroses with riders carrying lances atop them. She saw white lions slinking through the lines, spotted cats like those from Talay, wolves the size of horses. A few bears, tethered to chains, roared as if they had not been fed in a week and smelled the banquet awaiting them. As she watched, a black swell of birds flowed up into the air. Crows.
“They’ve brought their own crows,” Mena said. “Is this a war or a traveling circus?”
At the edge of each flank went the other troops, the slaves. They stretched all along either side and well back, eventually wrapping around to make up the mass that brought up the rear of the host. There were so many of them that the front of the line looked wider than the rear. It wasn’t, though. It was just that the ranks went back so far that they faded toward their distant camp in dwindling perspective. Mena tried to do the math she had not managed before, but got lost when estimates went beyond fifty thousand.
Elya dipped a wing and swung them around, bringing Mena’s army into view as she did so. The sight of them was not a surprise, but her heart sank, her stomach knotted. There were not enough of them. Four thousand at the most. They were spread too thin. They were simply humans, no beasts of war to bellow for them. Their defeat was not even in question. It was as inevitable as the fate of a hill of ants with a booted foot about to crush it.
Mena flew low over them, shouting encouragement. She touched down on the ice before them and told them not to fear the numbers coming against them. This was not about numbers, she said. It was about heart and right and cunning and freedom. She and Elya flew up and danced before the line, spreading the message as best she could. Without fail, they roared back their affirmation. Perrin blew the horn that signaled them forward, and the two armies marched toward each other.
Though the message was simple, and she doubted that many of the men and women in the ranks fully believed it, Mena was not lying. The vastness of the Auldek force actually gave her hope. Rialus had said the Auldek-though hundreds of years old-could only remember eighty years or so’s worth of memories. They had not fought battles this size in hundreds of years. They knew of them only what they had read in books. They may be tremendous individual warriors, but that did not mean they would know how to fight a large-scale engagement.
This army now marching toward her troops was frightening, but it was also absurd. It was a little boy’s fantasy of an army. It was brawn and numbers and bellowing creatures and an anvil of might… and it made no sense at all. If Mena had these resources she would never have arrayed them all against an army as paltry as the one she presented. With such vast numbers, most of them would never come anywhere near the soldiers they were meant to fight. They would be useless, standing with weapons at hand among a throng of themselves. It would only make communication impossible, orders unmanageable, strategy lost to the dull mind of the mob. It had taken them hours of precious daylight just to assemble, meaning Mena had had time to speak with Rialus. Nor would she have chopped the ranks up by a hierarchy that had nothing to do with an actual battle plan. It was vanity. It was foolish. If Mena had Devoth’s army, she would have left the bulk of them back in camp, eating a hearty breakfast and preparing the evening’s victory celebration.
“But I’m not fighting myself,” Mena said, once they were aloft again. “I’m fighting them.”
The freketes rose then, one after another, from the Auldek camp. As they flew over the invading army, the troops erupted in cries, booming shouts as loud as the explosions of the night before. The beasts flew in dips and rises, slipping side to side among one another. Their wings were massive. The heavy weight of their bodies swayed beneath them almost like a separate load being carried by the span. The riders on their backs clung to them like young bats to their mothers. Mena had not thought it through before, but now she knew she had never accepted these creatures as they appeared. They were too dense, too thick with muscle, too large and bulky for even those great stretches of wings to lift them. Thanks to Rialus, she understood why now.