The shield cover broke under their weight, but the need for the shield cover was now gone.
“Attack!” Axis cried. “Attack!”
He twisted about, drawing his sword, and plunged it into the Lealfast who lay stunned and injured on the ground.
Another hit behind him, and he swivelled about, and his sword flashed again.
All about Axis the Isembaardians were taking out the birdmen who fell stunned to the ground, and Axis halted a moment, waiting for the next Lealfast to drop from the sky.
He looked up and saw a sky covered with pink. The birds had done nothing but risen straight through the overhead Lealfast fighters. There were so many millions of the juit birds that they had filled the sky, creating such havoc and turmoil they had pushed the Lealfast out of the air.
Axis heard a sound, and it took him a moment to realise what it was.
He was laughing.
Far back, toward the rear guard, Inardle and Hereward sat their horses, watching fearfully. Isaiah had left the entire encampment behind, all the tents, the equipment, the storage wagons, and the two women had taken to horseback and hovered within the rear units, awaiting their chance to dash into Elcho Falling.
Inardle glanced at Hereward. The woman was scared, but courageous with it. The two women exchanged a glance, then Inardle looked toward the approaching storm. She did not know what it was, but knew it was a created magic.
Isaiah, most likely, although Inardle would not have put it past Eleanon, either.
Whoever, they had conjured up a monster. Inardle had no idea how anyone was going to survive if it hit before they had reached shelter.
She didn’t know what to do. She had wanted to take to the air and flee, but any one among the Lealfast would have shot her down. She wasn’t sure why they hadn’t already, to be honest. Stars alone knew she must stick out like a sore thumb sitting in the back lines on this skittery horse.
The Lealfast had pinned down most of Isaiah’s army under shield cover. As she didn’t know why the Lealfast hadn’t attacked her yet, Inardle also didn’t know why Eleanon hadn’t ordered his fighters to do more than just pummel the army with arrows. Eleanon, as the entire Lealfast, commanded so much magic after their union with the power of Infinity . . . surely they could have broken apart that pitiful shield cover . . .
She gasped aloud when the juit birds rose into the air. It was beautiful, magical and horrifying all at once. No one in the air above them had a chance of avoiding their inexorable rise.
The juit birds were such a solid mass, rising directly upward .
Inardle winced when they hit the Lealfast.
Then Hereward cried out. “Inardle! Kezial’s men!”
Inardle looked.
Kezial’s army had joined with Isaiah’s on its western flank.
The two Isembaardian armies clashed in a spark and ring of swords . . . and almost no deaths, let alone injuries.
At that line where the two armies met, Isembaardians who owed their allegiance to Kezial leaned in to their countrymen who owed their loyalty to Isaiah and whispered in harsh, breathless tones, “We wish to join with you, not fight you!”
To be met with the inevitable chuckle and response, “And we have been told to welcome you, and invite you into Elcho Falling. Here now, wave that sword about a bit. You don’t want that Lealfast lord to think you’re deserting, do you?”
And so, up and down that western line of fighting, men grunted and groaned and clashed swords in desperate battle, and every so often one would fall and roll under the feet of his neighbours.
But, strangely, there was no blood.
Eleanon strode back and forth on the shores of the lake, well back from the fighting. He had just called the Lealfast back — those that were still capable — and now the air overhead was thick with Lealfast streaming toward the mountains where the rest of the Nation waited.
Eleanon was furious, almost incandescent. He should have foreseen this and he hadn’t. Just the simple fact of all those birds rising at the same time .
“Fuck you, Isaiah,” Eleanon muttered. “You may smile today, but tomorrow you will pay.”
Or perhaps even sooner. Eleanon glanced once more at the mayhem. It was very close now, only minutes away. Already the wind was whipping the waters of the lake and the feathers of Eleanon’s wings into violent whorls and eddies. Lightning forked through the roiling clouds.
“You have overplayed your hand there, my friend,” Eleanon muttered. “The birds were enough. No Lealfast was ever going to hang around long enough to be buffeted by that. But you . . . oh, you my friend .”
Eleanon grinned, then it died. He still had one or two things to take care of here, before he, too, could escape.
Axis looked up. The mayhem was now virtually upon them, and all about juit birds were settling back onto the lake water, tucking their heads under their tightly folded wings and curling their bodies into tight pink balls, huddled close together on the water, their long, long legs dangling deep into the lake, acting as stabilisers.
If Axis didn’t move now, he would lose his chance.
Again he risked a look about him. The fighting had all but stopped, and he could see Isaiah in the distance, rousing the men, urging them to flee to the gates.
Axis glanced that way.
They were open, and Axis could see someone gesturing wildly: Georgdi, possibly, although now that the rain was starting to drive down it was difficult to tell.
“Good luck!” Axis shouted at those men about him close enough to hear, then he ran as hard as he could for the lake and dived in.
Isaiah’s army, now merged with that of Kezial’s, surged toward the gates of Elcho Falling. Tens of thousands of men milled about on the shoreline leading to the causeway, thick with fleeing men.
Then, in an almighty and terrifying clap of thunder, the mayhem hit. Men, horses, anything not tied down were bowled over in the tempest. Rain drove down, and intermingled with it were tiny spears of ice that, if they struck a body at the wrong angle, drove deep inside the flesh. Wind shrieked, rendering hearing and voice useless.
Anyone still on their feet could only crouch down and stumble forward, hand on the shoulder or back of whoever it was in front of him.
No one could see a thing.
It suited Eleanon perfectly.
He, like everyone else, was buffeted and pummelled. But, unlike most others, he also had considerable power and resources at his disposal and it was enough to keep him on his feet and still capable of independent movement and action.
He moved toward the gigantic mass of men struggling frantically to get inside Elcho Falling.
It was bleak, darkest night now, hail and ice raining about, yet still Eleanon laughed. He reached the outer edge of the great struggling mass, steadied himself, then reached about behind him and grabbed the woman he’d been dragging all this way.
Ravenna.
Go now, Eleanon whispered in her mind, his voice as cruel as the ice splintering down from the sky. Go now and work my will within Elcho Falling. Go!
Then, without waiting for any answer, he unceremoniously pushed her into the mass of men fighting for entrance into the citadel.
At the same time he activated the enchantment he’d worked on her earlier, making her invisible.
Just until she’d done her task.
Axis had sunk deep into the waters of the lake. He’d risen quickly, but had then to fight his way through the tightly packed bodies of the juit birds in order to get his head above water.
He’d thought he wasn’t going to make it and it was only at the very last moment, when his lungs were on fire, that he’d managed to wedge his head between two juit birds and gasp desperately for air.
He couldn’t see much, but what he could appalled him.
Rain and ice and forks of lightning speared down from the sky. All about, wind howled in great vortexes of destruction. Axis realised that he was actually in one of the most sheltered spots he could possibly be: the bodies of the juit birds protected his head from the worst of the tempest, while the fact that their heavy and tightly packed bodies covered the entire surface of the lake kept it reasonably still.
Axis could see shapes that he assumed were men huddling for shelter on the shoreline, but apart from that . . . nothing.
“Good work, Isaiah,” Axis muttered sarcastically, then apologised to the birds on either side of him as he grabbed a leg in each hand to stabilise himself further.
The birds took no notice of him.