“I’d rather you went. The convoy will need a capable leader.”
Wint shook his head no. “It will have to be someone else. Don’t ask me again.”
Keeton nodded. “Guess I knew you’d say that. Okay. Do what you have to and get back with me. Night is coming. They’ll attack when it does.”
He was turning away when Wint said, “Been a pleasure serving with you, Captain.”
Keeton turned. Gave his second a broad smile. “Let’s find a softer duty when this is over, you and me.”
“You and me, Cap.”
Keeton waved wordlessly over his shoulder and kept walking.
He spent a little time with Sefita Rayne, devising an exit strategy for when defending any part of the city was no longer possible, even though by now both knew that escape was reduced to a faint glimmer of hope. After that, he walked the walls, visiting with his Federation soldiers and their unit commanders, joking and laughing, teasing and cajoling, praising and reassuring, saying all the right things and speaking a few hard truths, trying to help them keep it together.
All the while, he watched the darkness deepen.
When the last of the sunset was a purple hue balanced on the edge of the western horizon and the darkness was just closing down, the last attack began.
It was a relief when it did.
Twenty-one
It was just approaching midday when Seersha and Crace Coram piloted their two-man out of the north and into the smoky ruins of Arishaig. They city was gone, the defenses breached, the gates forced, and the walls taken. The Druid and the Dwarf Chieftain could still hear the screams and cries of wounded and dying as the victors prowled the ruins in search of whatever caught their eye. Diapson-crystal-powered weapons still flashed here and there at regular intervals as the last of the survivors fought to keep their stalkers at bay. Black smoke coiled skyward in twisted columns and gave the cityscape the look of a volcano heating up for another explosion. Dark shapes darted through the rubble, and it was impossible to tell which army or persuasion they belonged to.
“We’re too late,” Crace Coram rumbled, the regret and dismay evident in the tremor of his deep voice.
Seersha nodded. “The Straken Lord’s army must be huge for it to have done this. Arishaig was heavily defended, and the best Federation soldiers in the Four Lands were stationed here.”
“Do you suppose anyone got out?”
She shook her head. “Not enough, I’d guess.”
They were silent for a moment, looking down on the carnage, listening to its still-living voice rise up in a ragged plea. The destruction swept across the whole of the fallen city and well beyond. Thousands of dead lay heaped about the walls. Seersha searched for signs of airships, even small ones, but couldn’t find any. They had either made it out already or been destroyed.
“Look there!” Crace Coram said suddenly, pointing north behind them.
She looked obediently. Beyond the immediate destruction, far in the distance west of where the Prekkendorran sprawled and the grasslands below the Tirfing divided in rugged folds, a dark mass seethed. She stared, not sure what she was seeing at first.
“The Straken Lord’s army,” her companion declared. “Already on the march. Not wasting a moment more on what’s happened here. Why should they? They have a new destination.”
She took a moment to orient herself. The Borderlands lay in that general direction. The great fortress city of Tyrsis. But the drift of the enemy march to the west suggested another destination entirely.
“History suggests the demons will want to be certain the key to their prison is destroyed once and for all.” The Dwarf Chieftain shrugged. “Even a madman like Tael Riverine might be able to figure out the importance of that one.”
She nodded in dismay.
The demon army was marching on Arborlon.
Far to the north, Aphenglow and her companions angled their Sprint toward the Tirfing to begin their search for the couple who had stolen the Ellcrys seed from Arling. It was a search that the Elven Druid expected to conclude quickly with the help of the Elfstones, but one that required some caution, as well. After all, none of them knew anything about the couple. Aphen and Cymrian had met them only briefly and Arling, unconscious at the time, remembered nothing at all. All this suggested that rushing in, no matter the urgency, could be a mistake.
Recovery of the seed was too important to allow for mistakes at this point. With the Forbidding crumbling badly and the demons already breaking free in force, protecting the seed was their foremost concern until it was back in Arling’s hands.
It was a huge relief for all of them to have gotten clear of Arishaig. For hours after they fled the besieged city they found themselves glancing over their shoulders, unable to banish the images of the battle from their minds. Aphen could not stop thinking about what Edinja had said just before their departure—that perhaps the Straken Lord and his demons had found out that Arling was the bearer of the Ellcrys seed and would come after her. That would explain their decision to attack Arishaig instead of Arborlon.
She could already imagine what it would mean to the people of the Federation home city if the demons found a way to break through, and that, in turn, suggested Arborlon’s fate was grim, should the enemy then come north to the Elven home city, which she thought likely. Destroying the Ellcrys utterly would permanently secure freedom for the creatures of the Forbidding, and the Straken Lord would actively seek this end. If he could track Arling, he would do so. Hundreds of years ago, the same effort had been made and had very nearly succeeded. It was only the desperate efforts of an Ohmsford boy and an Elessedil girl and a handful of companions that had prevented it from happening.
History was repeating itself, she thought darkly, and wondered anew about the Ohmsford twins and their allies.
“Why do you think she let us go?” Arling asked as the landscape sped by beneath them.
Neither of the other two had to ask who she was talking about. “She had nothing to gain by keeping us,” Cymrian offered. He was slumped back in the rear of the cockpit, stretched out as best he could in the cramped space.
“She knows what’s at stake,” Aphen added, hands on the controls, eyes forward. “If we don’t find and quicken the seed, the whole of the Four Lands will be overrun. Edinja would suffer the same fate as the rest of us.”
Arling shook her head. “You didn’t spend time with her like I did. You didn’t see those creatures she keeps, locked away like animals. She wouldn’t help us if she didn’t have something else in mind.”
“You mean something besides saving her own skin?” Cymrian said.
“She likes controlling things. And people. Yet she just gave us this ship and let us go. It doesn’t feel right.”
Aphen had to agree. It didn’t. But she couldn’t figure out either what Edinja had to gain by letting them go, or how she thought she could manage to gain it. They had escaped Arishaig, had possession of the Elfstones, were on their way to finding the missing Ellcrys seed, and had told Edinja nothing that would help her find them if for some reason she decided to come after them.
“She’s a complicated person,” she said quietly.
“She’s a dangerous person,” Cymrian declared with a snort. “She’s probably behind the attacks you suffered in Arborlon. She’s probably responsible for us being shot down by that Federation warship in the first place.”
“She told me she had taken me and was keeping me to lure you to Arishaig,” Arling added. “She drugged me to make me tell her everything about what we were doing.”
The other two said nothing for a moment. “But she didn’t say why she was doing this?” Aphen’s hands rested lightly on the controls as she turned around to look at her sister. “She didn’t say what it was she was trying to accomplish?”
Arling looked miserable. “No.”