Kingdom of Ash

As he won everything, through sheer will and arrogance.

She didn’t dare look down the lines to see how he was faring, shoulder to shoulder in the mud with his men. Ren led the right flank, where Lysandra had been stationed. Galan and Ansel had taken the left, Ravi and Sol of Suria fighting amongst them.

She didn’t dare see whose swords were still swinging.

They would count their dead after the battle.

There weren’t many of the enemy left now. A thousand, if that. The soldiers at her back numbered far more.

So Lysandra kept killing, the blood of her enemy like spoiled wine on her tongue.

 

They won, though Aedion was well aware that victory against five thousand troops was likely fleeting, considering Morath’s full host had yet to come.

The rush of battle hadn’t yet worn off any of them—which was how Aedion wound up in his war tent an hour after the last of the Valg had fallen, standing around a map-covered table with Ren Allsbrook and Ravi and Sol of Suria.

Where Lysandra had gone, he didn’t know. She’d survived, which he supposed was enough.

They hadn’t washed away the gore or mud coating them so thoroughly that it had caked beneath their helmets, their armor. Their weapons lay in a discarded pile near the tent flaps. All would need to be cleaned. But later.

“Losses on your side?” Aedion asked Ravi and Sol. The two blond brothers both ruled over Suria, though Sol was technically its lord. They’d never fought in the wars before now, despite being around Aedion’s age, but they’d held their own well enough today. Their soldiers had, too.

The Lords of Suria had lost their father to Adarlan’s butchering blocks a decade ago, their mother surviving the wars and Adarlan’s occupation through her cunning and the fact that her prosperous port-city was too valuable to the empire’s trade route to decimate.

Sol, it seemed, took after their even-keeled, clever mother.

Ravi, coltish and brash, took after their late father.

Both, however, hated Adarlan with a deep-burning intensity belied by their pale blue eyes.

Sol, his narrow face flecked with mud, loosed a breath through his nose. An aristocrat’s nose, Aedion had thought when they were children. The lord had always been more of a scholar than a warrior, but it seemed he’d learned a thing or two in the grim years since. “Not many, thank the gods. Two hundred at most.”

The soft voice was deceptive—Aedion had learned that these weeks. Perhaps a weapon in its own right, to make people believe him gentle-hearted and weak. To mask the sharp mind and sharper instincts behind it.

“And your flank?” Aedion asked Ren.

Ren ran a hand through his dark hair, mud crumbling away. “One hundred fifty, if that.”

Aedion nodded. Far better than he’d anticipated. The lines had held, thanks to the Bane he’d interspersed amongst them. The Valg had tried to maintain order, yet once human blood began spilling, they had descended into battle lust and lost control, despite the screaming of their commanders.

All Valg grunts, no princes among them. He knew it wasn’t a blessing.

Knew the five thousand troops Erawan had sent, ambushing Galan Ashryver’s ships by Ilium before setting upon Eldrys, were just to wear them down. No ilken, no Ironteeth, no Wyrdhounds.

They had still been hard to kill. Had fought longer than most men.

Ravi eyed the map. “Do we pull back to Orynth now? Or head to the border?”

“Darrow ordered us to Orynth, if we survived,” Sol countered, frowning at his brother. At the light in Ravi’s eyes that so clearly voiced where he wished to go.

Darrow, who was too old to fight, had lingered in the secondary camp twenty miles behind theirs. To be the next line of defense, if five thousand troops somehow managed to destroy one of the most skilled fighting units Terrasen had ever seen. With word now undoubtedly arriving that the battle had gone in their favor, Darrow would likely head back to the capital.

Aedion glanced to Ren. “Do you think your grandfather can persuade Darrow and the other lords to press southward?”

War by committee. It was absurd. Every choice he made, every battlefield he picked, he had to argue for it. Convince them.

As if these troops weren’t for their queen, hadn’t come for Aelin when she’d called. As if the Bane served anyone else.

Ren blew out a breath toward the tent’s high ceiling. A large space, but unadorned. They hadn’t time or resources to furnish it into a proper war tent, setting up only a cot, a few braziers, and this table, along with a copper tub behind a curtain in the rear. As soon as this meeting was over, he’d find someone to fill it for him.

Had Aelin been here, she might have heated it within a heartbeat.

He shut out the tightness in his chest.

Had Aelin been here, one breath from her and the five thousand troops they’d exhausted themselves killing today would have been ash on the wind.

None of the lords around him had questioned where their queen was. Why she hadn’t been on the field today. Perhaps they hadn’t dared.

Ren said, “If we move the armies south without permission from Darrow and the other lords, we’ll be committing treason.”

“Treason, when we’re saving our own damn kingdom?” Ravi demanded.

“Darrow and the others fought in the last war,” Sol said to his brother.

“And lost it,” Ravi challenged. “Badly.” He nodded toward Aedion. “You were at Theralis. You saw the slaughter.”

The Lords of Suria had no love for Darrow or the other lords who had led the forces in that final, doomed stand. Not when their mistakes had led to the deaths of most of their court, their friends. It was of little concern that Terrasen had been so outnumbered that there had never been any hope anyway.

Ravi continued, “I say we head south. Mass our forces at the border, rather than let Morath creep so close to Orynth.”

“And let any allies we might still have in the South not have so far to travel when joining with us,” Ren added.

“Galan Ashryver and Ansel of the Wastes will go where we tell them—the Fae and assassins, too,” Ravi pushed. “The rest of Ansel’s troops are making their way northward now. We could meet them. Perhaps have them hammer from the west while we strike from the north.”

A sound idea, and one Aedion had contemplated. Yet to convince Darrow … He’d head to the other camp tomorrow, perhaps catch Darrow before he returned to the capital. Once he saw to it that the injured were being cared for.

But it seemed Darrow didn’t want to wait for the morning.

“General Ashryver.” A male voice sounded from outside—young and calm.

Aedion grunted in answer, and it was certainly not Darrow who entered, but a tall, dark-haired, and gray-eyed man. No armor, though his mud-splattered dark clothes revealed a toned body beneath. A letter lay in his hands, which he extended to Aedion as he crossed the tent with graceful ease, then bowed.

Aedion took the letter, his name written on it in Darrow’s handwriting.

“Lord Darrow bids you to join him tomorrow,” the messenger said, jerking his chin toward the sealed letter. “You, and the army.”

“What’s the point of the letter,” Ravi muttered, “if you’re just going to tell him what it says?”

The messenger threw the young lord a bemused glance. “I asked that, too, milord.”