The Silent Shield (Kingfountain #5)(78)

After a moment of silent contemplation, Gahalatine lifted his head high. “Well said, sir. You are an honorable foe. I will grant quarter the moment you decide there is no longer hope. I have prepared for a year to carry on what I started. Tonight, we finish it.”

“He’s overconfident,” Severn snorted under his breath.

“Rucrius, the gate if you please,” Gahalatine said with a gallant gesture toward the castle, as if he were inviting him to dine.

Rucrius’s smile was cold and humorless. He was gripping a different staff than the one Trynne had taken from him. It was black with a yellow-orange globe attached to the end. Trynne’s pulse raced as the Wizr pointed it toward the castle.

“Soontrybio!”

The raised drawbridge jolted and exploded in a hail of splinters and debris that rained down into the black chasm below as if it had been struck from inside the castle instead of outside. The force of the explosion knocked them all to their knees. Trynne winced in pain, her ears ringing with the cracking noise as she watched small fragments of the drawbridge rain down with the snow across the bailey yard. Twisted and steaming hunks of iron littered the bailey yard too. The gate had been wrenched and snapped apart. Soldiers were scrambling to get away from the doorway.

Drew rose shakily to his feet, his eyes wide with shock. He gripped Fallon’s shoulder and nodded. Trynne couldn’t hear what he said, but she saw him mouth the word “Now!”

As if Gahalatine had heard the silent word, the first leaf-armored warriors began to land on the battlements as if catapulted from below. The din of clashing metal broke out all along the upper defenses.

It was just after midnight, and Trynne wondered in desperation if they would even be able to hold them off until dawn.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


Battle of the Kings




The thick flakes of snow obscured the onslaught against the walls of Dundrennan. Even though she could not see her enemies well, she sensed them through her magic and responded to their attacks. Trynne caught many of the warriors as they were unfurling and landing on the battlements, sending their bodies plummeting into the black abyss.

Fallon, holding a sword in one hand and a curved horn in another, pressed his lips against the end of the horn and let out a long, sonorous blast. From high above them, the noise was repeated as the watchmen on the tower began to sound their horns as well, signaling the commencement of the surprise attack.

Trynne was buffeted by a warrior landing near her, but managed to deflect his glaive with her twin swords. She rocked him off his heels, sending him into the abyss. After he fell, she saw something in the flurry below, movement coming from the warriors of Gahalatine’s army. Not all were vaulting up to the walls. Then she saw it. That gap in Gahalatine’s army was now filled with warriors carrying long wooden poles. No—they were the trunks of pine trees!

Trynne watched in horror as the soldiers carrying the trunks lumbered forward and she divined that the trunks had been prepared to clear the chasm. They hadn’t brought siege equipment; they’d brought their own makeshift bridge, knowing that the Wizr would demolish the existing one.

The king brought the pommel of Firebos down on the helmet of an attacker, dropping him to the ground with a dented helm. The sword was a whorl of blue light as he fought, its magic adding strength to his blows. He threw himself into the fight with all the fervor of a man struggling to survive.

“Drew!” Trynne shouted, pointing down at the advancing men. Another leaf-armored warrior landed between them, facing her, and Trynne cut him down and then kicked him off the wall.

The king turned, followed her finger, and saw what was unfolding.

“They’re going to cross!” he shouted, striking at another enemy who had fallen from the sky amid the flurries. He turned and shouted down to the bailey yard. “Severn! To the gap! Hold them!”

Trynne realized the danger. The aerial attack was a distraction. If Gahalatine could get his troops across the chasm, he could trap the defenders on the walls, isolating the king from the rest of Dundrennan’s defenses.

“Aye, my lord!” Severn shouted back and growled at his knights to hasten and follow him down the stairs to join the battle below.

Groans of pain and surprise floated up from the ranks of Gahalatine’s men as spears began raining down on them from the cliffs above. Trynne watched with triumph as the teeming mass of soldiers crumpled from the onslaught, dropping under a withering hail of spears. They hadn’t expected the counterattack from their flanks.

“Well done, Fallon!” the king bellowed. “That will distract them a bit!”

Trynne flanked one side of Drew, Fallon the other. He was fighting with lethal skill, cutting down the warriors that still dared to land on the battlements. When Trynne flashed a look at him, she saw the determination in his eyes. This was what he’d always wanted: to prove himself.

The falling spears disrupted the attack on the battlements, and a whoop and a cheer started from the ranks of the knights who were defending the wall. There were only a few remaining pockets of fighting as multiple knights dispatched those who had landed and killed their comrades. Trynne knew the celebration was premature.

Gahalatine would not be defeated so easily.

Not long after the cheers rose from the wall, Trynne felt a sudden surge of power from below and saw a shimmer of light from the magic’s aura. She sensed the danger an instant before it happened.