What a couple we might have been together.
“Corinn, what a couple we are together.”
Corinn opened her eyes and looked down at the living words. She let them rise up into her eyes with their own power, just as they had done the very first time she looked upon them. That was all she needed to do.
The response came quickly. A bellowing from the west. Followed by a roar from the north. And concussions of rage that passed, soundless, through the air from all around them. The Santoth sensed the touch of her eyes on The Song. Just having it alive within her head was enough. She knew they would hear it, just as she knew they were each of them turning toward her, drawn to it.
Hanish said, “I think you’ve got their attention.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
It all went horribly wrong, and it was her fault. Mena knew it was. She should not have slept. How stupid of her to think she could sleep through a night while others risked their lives. At Perrin’s urging, she had left the task of receiving the incoming slave deserters to him. “Greet them in the morning, personally, with all the sincerity of feeling you want,” he had said, “but get some rest first.” He reasoned that Rialus Neptos had crossed back and forth three times. Surely these slaves-who were cunning if Fingel was anything to judge by-could manage it as well.
Thinking this made it easier for Mena to acquiesce. Sleep she did, harder and longer than she intended. And dream she did as welclass="underline" of being held tight by Perrin. He clung to her and sought to kiss her mouth. She would not let him. Instead, she placed her lips against his closed eyes. She felt the feather touches of his eyelashes, and there was something wonderful about the ripe curve of his eyeball. That, in her dream state, was permitted. Nothing else.
When she woke to the flute notes that announced the predawn hour, Mena felt in the pit of her stomach that something had gone wrong. She should not have slept so deeply. She should not have dreamed the things she had. Melio’s eyes were the only ones she had kissed that way-and that was how it ever should be. The fact that she had slept and dreamed prompted her to kick off her blankets and dress hurriedly.
Perrin collided with her as she came out of her tent. It was dark yet and windy. He was hooded and mittened. She knew him by his stature, though, and his shape.
“What happened?”
“We don’t know, Princess. I mean… nothing happened. They didn’t come. We even had lookouts posted out beyond the barricade. They saw nothing, until just now. Come and see.”
Standing atop a sled with her officers, just behind the barricade of wooden spikes, sleds, and other supplies that served as their makeshift protective wall, Mena peered toward the Auldek camp. A barren, rocky expanse separated the two armies, but through a spyglass she could see the enemy’s stations steaming in the distance. Something was happening over there. Torches lit the area in front of their camp. In the crimson light Mena could make out shapes moving, structures being shifted, construction work, it seemed, but even through her spyglass she could not figure out what they were building.
“Do you think the deserters were discovered?” Perrin asked.
Mena inhaled, the night air so cold it froze the hair in her nostrils. “Perhaps, but there’s something more going on.”
A n hour later the light of dawn, as it finally began to creep in fits and starts across the frozen land’s contours, gave her a better idea of what. The structures they had built took on a familiar shape. Simple, solid, tall, and long necked, they reminded Mena of foulthings made of stout wooden beams. “Catapults.” She pulled the spyglass from her eye and offered it to Perrin. “They’ve erected catapults. Big ones.”
“About time,” Gandrel said. To spite the cold, as he liked to put it, he stood with his hood thrown back, sniffing defiantly to keep his scarred nose from dripping. “I’ve found these Auldek a bit slow on the uptake, is what I mean. If you’d been on their side, Mena, you’d’ve finished us by now.”
“Let’s hope they’re not thinking that way.” Mena took the spyglass back and lifted it.
“But catapults?” Edell asked. He took off his gloves and tried to rub warmth into his cheeks. “We’re not exactly a fortress here. What are they going to…”
Through the distorted, circular clarity of the spyglass’ view, Mena saw the arm of one of the catapults lever forward abruptly. It looked odd, the silent jerk of motion so far away. “They’ve shot,” she said. The object that surged up from it seemed to come apart as it rose. It broke into pieces that fanned out. She lost sight of them, pulled away the spyglass, and watched like the others, with her naked eyes.
“What are those?” Perrin asked.
Mena realized the answer just before they hit the hard earth. Something in the way each projectile somersaulted and contorted in the air, many limbed and limp as the dead… for they were the dead. Bodies. Naked bodies. They hit the ground about a hundred paces out, smacking down with sickening thuds. All that long arc of motion ended in an instant. Some of them split apart and sprayed red mist into the air. Most just landed. The sounds of the impacts followed one another in a quick, dull staccato.
“The deserters were found out,” Edell said.
“And this is their punishment?” Perrin asked. “Monsters. They’re monsters!” He whispered it first, and then he shouted it. As if in answer, a second rain of falling forms crashed down. Again the staccato of thuds.
A scream yanked Mena around.
Fingel. The woman stood a little distance away, with Rialus beside her. She dropped to her knees, pointing with one arm at the thing they had all already seen. She emitted a sound from somewhere in the tormented center of her. It carried a misleadingly rising tenor, as if she were about to scream or moan, but kept having the foundation of it pulled from under her.
A third catapult hurled its grisly load, ten or so bodies.
“Why are they doing this?” Perrin asked.
The first catapult launched again.
Rialus’s voice answered. “They’re sending us a message.”
The second catapult snapped forward again.
“What message?”
Mena answered, “They would rather be without servants than be betrayed by them.”
The Auldek kept it up throughout the day, building scattered piles of hundreds and hundreds of broken, exploded, naked bodies. A battlefield’s worth of carnage lofted through the air as a sickening gift. It was as Rialus said: a statement, not an attack.
T he attack came that night.
Lookouts sounded the alarm when the Auldek were still out beyond the piles of corpses, riding in atop antoks. Mena-awake this time-jumped out of her cot fully clothed, snatching up the King’s Trust. Hearing the alarm horns, the Auldek responded as well. They discarded stealth. They spurred the beasts forward. As Mena reached the barricade, the antoks rushed toward them, bellowing. They plowed through the bodies. They sent the white bears that had come to feast on the frozen meat running, roaring their anger as they did so.
Perceven shouted for archers to man the barricade. Perrin directed the foot soldiers into ranks. Bledas sprinted past, his sword drawn, rallying the confused and groggy. Mena connected with Elya, telling her to stay put, sheltered and hidden.
When the attackers were just a few hundred yards out, the catapults, still in front of their encampment, lobbed balls of flaming pitch instead of bodies. The orbs hurtled upward like shooting stars, bent with the earth’s pull, and then plummeted. The catapults this time had been calibrated to send their missiles farther. The first one hit near enough to Mena that the impact knocked her from her feet. The impact area became an instant inferno.