Heart of Defiance (The Royal Spares)

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Signy

A t the first rumbles of explosive fire, I peek out from behind the crumpled shed I was using for cover. My breath snags in my throat.

Hundreds of Darium soldiers have barged onto the field just outside town, the nearest of them just steps from the buildings. But their rigid lines are falling into disarray.

One clump of dozens of bodies careens down with the collapsing of the earth. Then another and another around the spots where Iko set off his explosive devices.

The effect of the initial collapses shakes the ground all the way to where I’m crouched—and more of the earth opens up, sending the soldiers tumbling. The cave-ins ripple outward as if the grassy plain is a lake with one massive stone dropped in the middle of it.

Skeletal-uniformed figures collide in a jumble amid the jutting stone edges of the underground caves. Some slump, blood seeping through their helms from cracked skulls. Others groan, their limbs splayed at unnatural angles .

They thought they were bringing death to us, but instead it’s come for them. Their uniforms couldn’t look more fitting. It’s as if a pit of corpses long dead and withered to bones lies before us.

I couldn’t have created a more stunning picture with all the paint in the world.

And I did create this tableau. I imagined it and I brought it into being—for the men and women still fighting alongside me, for all of Velduny.

Even as awe sweeps through me, my body tenses, my fingers tightening around the grip of my short sword. The Darium force was too large for us to take out all of them this way.

For every body mangled in the cave-in, at least one other figure is scrambling back from the still crumpling edges of the earth, reaching to offer help to the nearest fallen, or rushing around the edges to deal out vengeance for our trick.

High Commander Livius’s horse stumbles under him, the ground cracking beneath the animal’s feet. As it goes down with a broken leg, he springs away before he can take any wounds of his own.

Seeing him and his ridiculous plumes still uninjured, I grit my teeth. But we have a more immediate problem.

The Darium infantry still standing hurtles around the edges of the pit. Arrows fly from our archers’ bows, some of them launching forward in sets of three from the crossbows Iko doctored.

It’s not enough to have conquered half the army with our scheme. We need to destroy every one of our enemies that we can.

We need them convinced that it’s not worth continuing to fight us—that our rebellion is going to defeat them. That they’ll lose so much more than they stand to gain.

Several Darium soldiers jerk and sag with arrows protruding from their chests. Others charge onward into the ruin of the town.

I leap up and throw myself at the nearest attackers. The lessons Jostein and Iko offered me guide my sword arm. I manage to duck beneath the swing of a blade and plunge mine into a man’s gut.

As I kick him aside, a woman in Darium armor rushes at me with a screech of anger. I lash out at her with my sword and bash her helm with a slab of burnt wood from amid the wreckage. When she sways with the impact, I slice my blade across her throat.

The spurt of blood makes me recoil. I clench my jaw and will my nausea down.

She’d have done the same or worse to me if I’d given her the chance.

All around me, my comrades are cutting down the attackers as well as we can while the archers continue to shoot some before they can reach us. The edge of the pit crumbles more, tossing unlucky soldiers into its depths.

A yell I recognize as Landric’s voice brings my head jerking around. I spot him farther along the edge of town, slamming his elbow into the side of a soldier’s helmet. The soldier jabs out with his spiked club, but to my relief, Landric drives his sword home faster.

It isn’t only the enemy facing slaughter. Near me, one of Jostein and Iko’s colleagues teeters over with a spear protruding from his throat. The Darium blades gouge into chests and limbs, sending blood spraying across the ruins of my town.

I jump in to ram my sword through an attacker’s back just before he stabs a woman he’s knocked over, but right next to us, another Darium soldier guts a teenaged boy who only joined our rebellion a few days ago.

Before I can raise my sword again, Jostein is there, driving his longer blade into the man’s side. As the attacker slumps over, the squad leader catches my gaze with a hint of worry but a nod of resolve.

We’re seeing this through. We’re going to keep fighting as long as any of us are still standing.

I swivel around, bracing myself for another onslaught. At the same moment, the high commander’s voice bellows over the fray with its magical amplification.

“Pull back, soldiers! To me!”

He’s calling for a retreat already? I don’t know whether to rejoice or curse their cowardice.

His soldiers swarm around him at a safe distance beyond the pit. They appear to have given up on any of their colleagues who are too injured to pull themselves out of the cave-in.

With a few orders I can’t make out, High Commander Livius assembles his remaining troops back into their strict lines. Though dwindled greatly from their initial horde, they still make for an imposing force, maybe three times greater in number than our ragtag band.

There’s no way we’d face anything but a bloodbath if we tried to challenge them out there on open ground. We’ve only kept a bit of the upper hand by drawing them to us and using the ruins to our advantage.

Is the high commander going to turn this battle into another stand-off? Try to wait us out? We’re much better situated here than we were on the mountain. We’ve got the river to turn to for water and fish, the forest for berries, nuts, and hunting, a little shelter from the elements amid the crumbled houses.

If they give us time, our gifted allies who prompted the cave-in might be able to weaken the ground farther out, right under them…

Even as I think that, the high commander lifts his voice again, obviously intending it to carry. “We’ll march on Piam and then Segward. Let’s see how the rest of Velduny enjoys this rebellion.”

Gasps and disgruntled hisses escape my comrades. A chill wraps around my lungs.

Those are the two towns closest to here—the towns where our neighbors who weren’t up to fighting have taken refuge.

He means to slaughter every civilian he can, probably to torch their homes like he did ours.

The soldiers are already turning, heading to the west. High Commander Livius strides along behind them like a brutal shepherd guiding a flock of wolves. He shoots one cruel smirk over his shoulder in our direction before pulling the visor of his helm back down.

No. I can’t let the victory that was within our grasp turn into a horrific tragedy.

I glance around for something, anything that might help. Through the blare of panic and desperate resolve, my gaze snags on one of the horses that’s made it this far with us, tied to the burnt frame of a house.

There’s no room for thought, only action. I bolt for the animal as if my life depends on it.

But my life isn’t the one I’m concerned about. There are so many others that stand to be lost if we don’t stop this tyrant of a high commander.

I yank the reins free and heave myself onto the horse’s back. Someone calls my name, but the thrum of my pulse drowns out so much of the sound I can’t identify the voice.

I dig my heels into the stallion’s sides, and it leaps into a gallop.

We careen around the pit, the thunder of hoofbeats echoing my racing heart. I clutch the hilt of my sword, holding it at my side .

This may very well be suicide, but someone has to do it. Someone has to add the final details to the picture of our freedom.

I started us on this path, and I’ll see us through to the end.

A few of the Darium soldiers glance back and then hesitate. The last few rows turn as if to meet my charge. High Commander Livius spins on his heel almost casually?—

And I hurl myself right off the saddle into him.

The force of the collision sends him crashing to the ground with me on top of him. I’m already raking my sword through the air, the blade slashing through the leather covering his shoulder.

He grunts and lands a punch to my jaw that leaves my head reeling. When he shoves me, I slam my knee into his groin.

We tumble sideways, my elbow jarring against the ground. My sword slips from my fingers.

I smack my forearm against the side of his head hard enough to bang his helm off-kilter. In his temporary blindness, his hand closes around my throat.

And my groping fingers catch my sword again. Sputtering for breath, I whip it around and ram it straight through his neck.

The high commander sags over me with a gush of blood. Shouts bellow from all around me—a blade swipes through the air less than an inch from my ear.

I wrench out from under the crumpled body, yanking off the high commander’s helm with one hand while I brandish my sword with the other. The Darium soldiers gape at their fallen leader for just an instant before they step toward me.

I hold the plumed helmet high as I ready myself, but more hoofbeats pound behind me. A stallion whirls by, a familiar muscled arm slinging around my chest and hefting me up.

“Here we are again,” Jostein murmurs in a ragged but still wry voice as he swings me in front of him. “No respect at all for your own safety. Well, show them all what you’ve done, my dear rebel.”

Breathless and blood-drenched, I lift the high commander’s helm even higher. The sunlight glints off the black-and-white metal with its ruddy plumes.

Several other soldiers on horseback, including Captain Amalia, have ridden into the fray with Jostein. A few dozen archers and swordspeople are sprinting over at their heels. As they clash with the Darium soldiers, war cries splitting the air, my display seems to rouse the rest of our allies.

Over a hundred more figures burst from the ruins of the town. Whether they’re waving swords or cooking knives or sharpened branches turned into spears, their eyes flash equally fierce. They tear across the field toward the Darium soldiers with the furor of an army ten times our size.

As Jostein circles us around, I see our enemies already faltering. They’ve lost hundreds of colleagues to us, they’ve lost their high commander, and now they’re facing the full brunt of our long-bottled anger.

Blades clang and arrows hum through the air. First, it’s just a few soldiers at the back of the Darium contingent backing away. Then, all at once, a chunk of them peel off and scramble for safety.

Those of us on horseback dive into the battle. Jostein stabs and slashes on one side of his horse while I lash out with my sword on the other. I kick one soldier in the face and carve open another’s throat.

“Pull back!” one of our enemies hollers in a strained voice. “Regroup at Fort Sirus.”

The remaining Darium soldiers stagger away from our onslaught and simply run. Arrows and thrown daggers harry their backs. The rebels around me let out a jeering cheer of triumph.

Jostein lowers me from his horse at the same moment as Iko and Landric push toward us from different directions. My other lovers catch me between them in their arms.

“That was incredible,” Landric mumbles. “But gods, you terrified me.”

Iko guffaws. “That’s our woman.”

I hug them close, but a deeper urge draws me away from them. I stand a little back from the milling crowd and thrust the high commander’s helmet into the air once more.

My ragged voice rings out across the plain. “We’re just as strong as them. We don’t need to be ruled. We can choose our own destiny!”

Another cheer goes up, and more of my comrades close in around me with grateful words. We’re surrounded by the chaos of violence and destruction, but my heart couldn’t feel lighter.

I’ve always wanted to bring beauty into the world, and I can’t imagine a more stunning scene than this.