The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

seconds. ‘Fire!’ He
watched the arrows to their targets, counting under his breath, and a good
number of the enemy fell, more than he had expected. But not near enough; not
even all those who had been hit. He squinted at the soldiers, wondering if they
were protected by sorcery.
    ‘Fire!’
    More soldiers fell. The survivors whipped their shields
around to cover their left sides, exposing their chests to frontal fire, and
charged.
    ‘Face forwards,’ roared Nish, ‘and now fire at the man
directly ahead. Hold fast, lancers. They’re taking a lot of casualties and
they’ll be exhausted when they get here. We can beat them.’
    Gi fired, drew another arrow, then gasped.
    ‘What is it? Are you hit?’ He hadn’t seen the enemy fire,
but Klarm might have battle mancers among his troops, attacking with unknown
Arts. ‘Fire!’
    ‘My arrow went right through its target,’ she said in a
tight voice, struggling to control her terror, ‘and the soldier didn’t even
check. He just kept on.’
    Her teeth were chattering, her eyes darting this way and
that, but she forced herself to hold firm and he admired her all the more for
it. That first, terrifying experience of battle – even without mancery
– could break the strongest soldier.
    Klarm must be using the tears to undermine the morale of the
superstitious Gendrigoreans. ‘Fire! I think some of the enemy are illusions.’
    The enemy were ploughing through the mud. ‘W-we’re going to
die, Nish,’ said Gi.
    He thought so too, but he had to pretend otherwise. ‘Hold
firm, Gi – illusions can’t fight. We can beat the enemy. We’ll come
through this yet, you and I.’
    The lie sickened him, and especially telling it to sweet,
gentle Gi. Why, why had he allowed her to come?
    ‘How can we tell which is which?’ said Gi, firing again.
    The leaders were less than a hundred paces away when Nish
noticed that not all of the soldiers were struggling in the mud; some were
moving easily through it with not a trace of muck splattering from their boots.
‘Fire!
    ‘Watch their feet – half the soldiers are phantoms, illusions ,’ he roared, ‘and they can’t
touch you. Klarm hasn’t got the numbers.’ Yet even with half their number, the
enemy were a superior fighting force.
    The air-sled drifted his way, about twenty spans above the
ground. Its metal frame was slightly bent from where it had crashed earlier,
and a clump of grass dangled from a kink in one of its runners.
    ‘Should I bring the dwarf down, Nish?’ said a red-haired,
balding man, one of Nish’s best archers.
    Nish hesitated, but only for a second; Klarm’s death could
swing the odds their way, and it was kill or be killed now. ‘Have a go.’
    The archer swung, aimed and fired in one fluid movement. The
arrow streaked towards Klarm’s throat, but the dwarf’s head whipped around, his
hand reached for Reaper, and a moment before the arrow reached the target it
burst into splinters.
    The caduceus shrilled; Nish’s head screamed and, momentarily
a red mist obscured his vision. It cleared; in another flash of clearsight he
saw the churning core of the caduceus again, then a vibration shot from Reaper
towards the red-haired archer, a tube of vapour condensing in its wake, and
struck.
    The archer’s bow shattered first, then his hand; the
vibration propagated up his arm, tearing it to pieces in a stinging spray of
blood, tissue fragments and shards of bone.
    The archer was splattered with the pulverised remains of his
arm, as was everyone around him, and blood was pumping from his shoulder. He
had not made a sound, but he was so pale that the freckles on his fair skin
stood out like moles. His eyes were fixed on Nish as if to say, ‘Why did you
tell me to shoot?’
    Gi let out a moan that made Nish’s skin creep, and many others
echoed it. The superstitious Gendrigoreans could face death in battle with
fortitude, but the uncanny Arts terrified them, and if they panicked the battle
was