Javier ran up the hill, followed by two other journeymen, five freshly made undead at his side. Javier bowed his head. “In-Shinar.”
“It’s time,” my aunt said.
I didn’t want to let go of my son.
“Kate,” Erra said.
I kissed Conlan’s forehead and handed him back to his grandmother. Martha kissed him. “You be good for your auntie. Grandma has to go and slap some bad people on their heads.”
George took Conlan and smiled at him. “Wave bye to Grandma.”
The undead knelt before me. I cut my arm and raised Sarrat. The undead’s eyes blazed with red as the navigator bailed, releasing its mind. I swung my sword and opened the undead’s throat. My blood mixed with the undead’s, and the magic that gave both of us life sparked. I pulled the blood to me, shaping it, sliding it over my body.
The soldiers still kept coming.
To the left Barabas looked at Christopher, then at the lines of soldiers. Christopher’s face was calm, but the muscles on his bare arms were bunched up, tense.
“Will you marry me?” Barabas asked, still looking at the army flooding the field.
“Yes,” Christopher said.
Barabas turned to him. Christopher leaned in and they kissed.
Julie ran up, out of breath. She wore a reinforced chest plate, painted green and precisely fitted to her small frame. The design looked familiar, even though the color wasn’t. I’d seen it before on Iron Dogs. Hugh had had it made for her.
“Where have you been?” I asked her.
“Saying good-byes,” she said.
I opened the second vampire, mixed my blood with its blood, and continued. The final drop hardened on my skin. I stretched, testing the blood-red armor. Flexible enough.
“Good.” My aunt approved.
I opened the third vampire and let the blood coat Sarrat and the other saber, hardening both to a preternaturally sturdy but razor-sharp edge.
“Sword,” I told Julie.
She handed over her blade and her spear. I dipped both into the blood and sealed them with magic. I couldn’t make long-lasting weapons like my father. Not yet. But they would last through the entire magic wave, and it would have to be enough.
“You know where to be and what to do?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I love you,” I told her. “Be careful.”
She hugged me and took off down the hill, back toward the Iron Dogs. Today her place was with the witches and Elara.
Neig’s soldiers still kept coming. I couldn’t even estimate the numbers. Fifteen thousand? Twenty? Thirty? A dark mass swirled in front of them, streaking through the ranks to the vanguard of the army. The yeddimur.
Curran jumped, clearing the hill in three huge leaps. He kissed me.
“Happy hunting,” I told him.
“You, too.”
He went back down.
I glanced at the mages. Phillip had rounded up every bagpiper in Atlanta. They crowded behind the line of students. The rest of the mages had moved on farther to the left. Phillip caught my gaze and nodded.
I looked back to the battlefield and waited.
Nick marched up the hill and stopped next to me. “I take it back,” he said.
“Which part?”
“You didn’t exaggerate the threat.”
“Be still my heart. Does that mean you’re ready to believe there is a dragon?”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“You are such an asshole.”
“Takes one to know one. Try not to die, Daniels,” he said.
“You, too. Who would I fight with if you weren’t here?”
The light in the distance blazed bright red. The soldiers parted in two, allowing a chariot to pass between them. It was huge and ornate, and it glowed with pale gold.
“Look, a golden chariot and Dad isn’t here,” I told Erra.
She ignored me. Well, I thought it was funny.
The chariot came forward, drawn by four white horses. It pulled ahead of the line, past my father’s ruined tower. Neig’s voice rolled through the battlefield. We shouldn’t have heard it from that far away, but suddenly it was everywhere, filling the air, touching us.
“BEHOLD MY ARMY.”
The ranks of Atlanta’s defenders went still. We looked at lines and lines of soldiers, a sea of armor and weapons.
“WHAT IS YOUR ANSWER, DAUGHTER OF NIMROD?”
I pulled the magic of the land into me and answered, sending my voice down the battlefield.
“YOU WANT ATLANTA? COME AND TAKE IT IF YOU DARE.”
* * *
• • •
NEIG’S ARMY MOVED as one, rolling forward, past him, aiming at our lines. The yeddimur broke into a wild run, swarming like bees. He was running them at us, relying on pure numbers. I almost screamed in relief.
To the left, Phillip’s clear voice commanded, “Prepare amplification spheres.”
Magic shifted. The line of students raised their arms. A transparent sphere formed above each of them, three feet wide and shimmering like hot air rising from the pavement, and spinning.
The yeddimur loomed before us, screeching excited high-pitched shrieks as they ran.
“Hold it steady,” Phillip said.
Eight hundred yards to my boundary.
Six hundred.
I wanted to be down there, on the field, on the front line with the werewolves and Curran.
Four hundred yards.
Yu Fong came up and stood on my right without saying a word.
Andrea’s battery fired a volley of sorcerous bolts. Bright green explosions punctured the yeddimur’s line, but there were too many. She didn’t follow it. The volley was just for show and she wanted to conserve the bolts.
The swarm kept coming. Behind it, Neig’s soldiers marched like an unstoppable avalanche of steel.
Three hundred.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Phillip said. “The bagpipes, please.”
The shrill howl of bagpipes answered. I’d asked Phillip what they were going to play, and he’d told me “Bloody Fields of Flanders.” It was an old bagpipe march, composed in World War I. Later it became another song, “Freedom Come-All-Ye,” a story of a nation that loved freedom more than war.
Erra winced next to me. Nick grimaced.
Two hundred yards. The yeddimur were almost on us.
“Engage,” Phillip screamed.
The spheres became still. The bagpipes next to us suddenly went almost silent, as the amplification spheres sucked in their sound. A moment later a deafening blast of sound hit the yeddimur.
The swarm halted, collapsing on itself.
“Keep playing,” Phillip said, his voice upbeat. “Keep playing. Faculty, continue to project. Everyone is doing spectacularly. I’m truly privileged to be working with such a talented group.”
The swarm shattered. Those in the front and middle ripped into each other; those in the back turned around and tore into the front line of Neig’s troops. Fighting broke out in the middle of Neig’s army.
A ragged cheer came through our ranks.
Neig’s troops split, flowing around the lines engaged with yeddimur like a stream split in half by a rock. They hugged the edges of the field and continued their advance, closer and closer to the druids’ stones.
Closer.
Closer.
Almost there.
They were a hundred yards from our line when the ground under both columns of soldiers gave. Hundreds of men collapsed into the twin trenches. We’d dug them with bulldozers and explosives over the last three days. They were ten feet deep and twenty-five yards wide, and they swallowed the advancing columns whole.
Howls of pain went up, almost breaking through the bagpipes. Black shiny tentacles flailed, spilling out of the trenches, yanking the nearby soldiers into them.
“What the hell are those?” Nick asked.
“You don’t want to know.” Roman had been in charge of the trenches.
Neig’s soldiers moved away from the trenches, edging farther to the sides of the field, almost to the tree line on both sides.
The brush on the left burst. Huge shaggy bodies tore into armored men, pushing them toward the trench and the writhing death within. Clan Heavy had arrived. Neig’s warriors fought back, but the werebears had mass and momentum on their side.