Wish I could fly, she thought. The sense of freedom, seeing so much, so far …
Golden-haired Kol led the Ben-Elim, fifty or sixty of the white-winged warriors scattered across the sky.
‘Do you think we’re nearly there yet?’ Jost said beside her.
‘I don’t know,’ Riv muttered.
I swear, if he asks me that one more time …
A horn blast drifted down to them from above, and suddenly Ben-Elim were swooping low over the column, shouting orders. Riv almost felt feathers brush her upturned face as a Ben-Elim skimmed above her. It was Kol, grinning and whooping. Riv smiled at his exuberance.
He and Israfil could not be more different.
More horns blew and the column rippled to a halt, Riv and those with her running to their allocated warriors. She glimpsed Ben-Elim flying ahead, twelve of them shaped like an arrowhead in the sky.
‘I don’t need you,’ her sister Aphra said as Riv handed her a water skin. She drank deep. ‘I want you at the back of the column. Protect the wains.’
‘But …’ Riv said, looking beyond Aphra and the White-Wings to the outline of walls and buildings up ahead.
‘Now!’ her sister snapped, voice cold and hard, no give in it.
No changing her mind when she’s in this mood.
Riv’s shoulders slumped and she turned to go.
‘Stay close to One-Eye,’ her sister called after her. Riv didn’t answer, a petty last victory and protest.
Riv stomped back down the line, saw Vald checking the straps of his shield and setting himself in line with other White-Wings. He nodded to her and flashed an adrenalin-fuelled grin. She tried to return it, but knew it was weak and forced, her shame at not being part of this, at being relegated to the safe place, again …
Horns sounded and shields came together with a crack, making Riv’s heart leap. She loved that sound, though she preferred it when she was in the thick of a shield wall herself.
Resignedly, she found Jost waiting for her with the others, gathered about and amongst the wains. Behind them, and curling around the flanks like a protective hand, were Balur and his giants, all with their axes or war-hammers in their hands, their eyes fixed on the walls of the town that the White-Wings were approaching.
It was named Oriens, a way-point upon the eastern road for those travelling to or from Arcona. Since the Ben-Elim had put down the seeds of civil war between the Sirak and Cheren, trade with the east had flourished. Oriens had grown, from not much more than a feast-hall for travellers and a few wattle-and-daub buildings, into a thriving walled town. Reports had reached Drassil that something was wrong, that travellers had heard screaming and the sounds of battle and slaughter echoing from the walls and instead of stopping had galloped on past. Ben-Elim had made aerial assessments but seen no signs of movement. Something was wrong, and they had decided against entering the town’s walls until they had ground support from the White-Wings. They had learned their lesson after the Battle of Varan’s Fall, where many had died because they had rushed blindly into an ambush.
Aphra and her hundred had been told little more than that, although the word Kadoshim had been whispered.
Riv watched as Aphra led her hundred White-Wings out. They marched down the wide road towards the town, keeping their ranks as they trod the sloping embankment and on across open ground towards Oriens’ open gates. No one manned the town’s walls, no curls of smoke marked the air where there should have been many cook-fires burning. All was still, tension hovering like a thick mist.
Something’s wrong.
More horn blasts and shouted orders, and Garidas’ second hundred rippled into motion, the crack of their iron-shod boots setting a drumbeat for Riv’s heart. Lorina’s hundred waited in reserve as Aphra’s White-Wings marched through Oriens’ open gates, Ben-Elim swooping low over the walls, one alighting above the gates. Riv’s flesh goosebumped, felt like spiders skittering across her skin.
Aphra is in there, maybe risking her life. I should be there, too.
She felt the familiar tingle of anger stirring in her veins, making her bounce on her toes, clenching and unclenching her fists.
The last of Garidas’ White-Wings marched through Oriens’ gates, disappearing into shadow. Still there was only silence from the town, pulsing in almost palpable waves. A creak of leather and rattle of chainmail behind her; giants were slipping between the wains, Balur striding past Riv as they approached the town.