SWNOVELS Soulblade: Chapter 33
THE HIGH ALPINE MEADOWS of the Vale of Eldaran are heavy with dew in the hush just before dawn. We tether the horses well out of sight of the enemy camp and move closer quietly on foot.
Jantian signals the Eldrin archers to form a circle within bowshot of the milling fighters gathered around their fires. Every arrow from every storeroom in Maratic has been gathered and brought with us, but whether they will be enough to penetrate the heavy plate and mail glinting in the firelight remains to be seen.
Marin and Jantian are going through details of the terrain now they can see it first-hand, but I still fail to see how they think they can take down thirty adepts, all of whom were previously battle-hardened bandits and murderers. It is so many more than they have ever challenged before.
I leave them to their strategy meeting and take Alina aside. “Show me how far your Blade-skill has progressed.”
She hesitates. “I don’t want to fight you.”
I hand her two short hazel wands, cut to match her slender daggers.
“We can use these. Don’t hold back.”
She doesn’t. I have to admit I am impressed. Shadow is a fine teacher, considering that my sister had not exactly bothered with much exercise beyond housework and wood-hauling before she retrained as royal spy and assassin. But even elite training and the Blade’s gift does not build battle stamina out of nothing in the short time she has had so far.
Alina has learned how to act weak and fearful as a way of disguising her speed and skill––until she can deliver lethal accuracy with a single lightning-fast strike at the nearest vulnerable spot. But she still tires after only a few minutes and she has limited practice at getting past the longer reach of a sword.
She protests when I point this out. “But Ariel, assassins don’t use swords! It’s all daggers and poison.”
I dip my head at the rumble of cursing and shouting coming from the enemy camp.
“Daggers and poisons are not going to be much in evidence down there. It’s going to be very different.”
“But I have to go with Shadow! You swore you had let him go, this is––”
“This is me trying to keep you safe. Did he teach you to use a bow?”
She shuffles her feet on the wet grass. “Yes. But I’m not a very good shot.”
“You have the reach to hit that camp?”
“Yes.” She still seems reluctant.
“Believe me, you will be more use to the whole team if you stay with the archers. Stay alive to work with Shadow again when you’re back chasing assassins.”
Alina lifts her mossgreen silken skirts clear of the dew and stomps off to ask Jantian for an archer deployment.
I’ll have to think of a suitable peace offering later.
Shadow is standing a little apart, surveying the enemy camp from a low rise at the edge of the trees. I walk over to join him.
“Shadow? What do you think?”
“I think we will probably die down there.”
I must be getting accustomed to Marin’s confidence-inspiring responses. This feels rather too realistic for comfort.
But there is still something scratching at the back of my mind, something connected with the savage restlessness I can feel coming from those adepts. Shadow only once spoke of his fight with Valara all those centuries ago and I know the very thought of it makes him angry. Still, I have to ask.
“I remember you telling me about something that went wrong with Valara’s army of adepts. Could it help us here?”
His dark eyes narrow with barely-concealed fury.
“She destroyed my masterpieces, if that is what you mean. But she had hundreds of warriors at her back and still she almost failed. There are only five of us here fit for close combat.”
This is going to be a delicate negotiation and we are running out of time.
“Why did she kill them? Can you remember exactly what it was?”
He glares at me. “It was her fault! She used them to defeat the enemy but she had not trained them properly. As soon as the battle was over they went out of control, killing at random.”
“You mean, when they no longer had an enemy to focus on, they had nowhere to direct their bloodlust? Did you sense anything like the restless agitation you can feel coming from the camp down there?”
At last, he might be starting to understand. He turns his attention back to the camp. “Yes… maybe. Why?”
“Because that is how I felt at the beginning, before I had gained some control over all that new power. I think when you drove away their horses, you may have done something even more valuable than any of us thought at the time. You made them wait, instead of making a forced march on the capital. Yesterday they were fighting both you and the Eldrin, and now their bloodlust and their anger has nowhere to go. Could we provoke them into fighting each other?”
He scans the camp once more. “It might be possible…”
I need to be honest with him before he forms a plan of his own.
“Shadow, I told my sister to join the archers. She does not have the experience for a full-on battle. I remember you were able to conceal me from enemies before our binding was complete. Can you still do that, now it has been severed?”
He turns back to face me, and this time his smile is not an illusion.
“Of course. So this is one last battle for us together?”
“One last battle. Wait here while I go and disrupt all Jantian’s plans.”
Disruption doesn’t take long. I leave Jantian with Marin, making new plans for how best to attack the survivors if Shadow and I manage to start an internal war.
Back at Shadow’s side, I have to confess to one significant flaw in all this.
“Even if we take out the adepts, it still leaves only five of us against four hundred of their regular soldiers. So the archers will need to use every arrow they have before Marin and the others go in. And… you and I will already be down there, right in the middle of it.”
He gives a resigned shrug. “There is a way. It is painful but it usually works.”
I’m still waiting to hear what this solution might be when he grabs my waist and the light dims as his wings arch above us. He carries me to the very edge of the camp and sets me down, scanning the restless army from within the haze of shadowy darkness that hides us from so many suspicious eyes.
“Ariel, We must act quickly. You know I cannot conceal us for very long.”
I look up at him in the clouded light.
“I’m ready.”
Then it begins.