“Dad, you look-”
He reached up to trace his fingers along his features.
“How many of you are in there?” she asked.
He blinked and then looked at her in surprise.
“You’re a pretty smart young woman, you know that?”
Sara smiled. “My father’s a detective.”
Ted lowered his gaze, then raised his eyes again. Sara knew that look. She had seen it hundreds, maybe thousands of times growing up. The words had not even begun to come from his mouth, but she could hear them. There was something he had to do. He couldn’t be home with her right now, because there were some bad guys out there, and Detective Ted Halliwell was on the case. He had to stop them before they hurt somebody.
Her father saw her eyes, and he knew.
“I’ll come back. I swear. I can do it, now. And I’ll be here with you. But the Dustman and I have business to handle. Debts to pay.”
“And you have to stop the bad guys,” Sara said, her voice small.
As he nodded, the sand of his flesh and his clothing sifted again, and the hat and mustache returned. The Dustman. That’s what he had called it; what he was, now.
“Yeah.”
“Detective Ted Halliwell’s on the case.”
He smiled. “I promise I’ll be back.”
“You always promise.”
“And haven’t I always come back?”
Sara thought a moment, then reached out and touched his face in wonder. “Yeah. You have.”
He kissed her forehead. His lips were rough as sandpaper.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
She did. The sound came again, that scritching, skittering noise, along with a little breeze that made her shiver.
When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
But Sara found herself smiling.
Battle raged.
Ovid Tsing crouched, nocked an arrow into his bow, and fired. The arrow took an Atlantean soldier through the eye, the tip punching out through the back of his skull. The impact threw his head back but momentum carried him forward and he hit the ground, rolling, dead before he came to rest on the rocky shore where the Kingdom of Euphrasia met the Isthmus of the Conquistadors.
The eastern flank of Hunyadi’s army had broken. The Atlantean attack was vicious, supplemented by Yucatazcan warriors. Air sharks darted across the morning sky, but they were far away, as were the giants, who fought Borderkind and northern legends at the center of the battle lines. Sorcerers of Atlantis hovered just over the heads of the troops-swords clanging, screams rising, blood soaking the earth-but a dozen Mazikeen hung in the air above the Euphrasian troops, fighting back. The magical combat seemed a war all its own, each side’s sorcerers keeping the others from interfering in the ground war.
Still, the eastern flank had broken.
“To me!” Ovid screamed to his archers.
They knelt around him in a line.
Atlantean soldiers ran toward them, their armor gleaming, some of them in helmets that shone like the glass ships at anchor far off the coast. Their swords were raised high but they attacked in savage silence, unnerving Ovid, but only for a moment. He waited until they had reached the first soldier to break through, until they were trampling him under their boots.
“Fire!” he cried.
The archers let fly with their arrows. Men and women of Atlantis went down. Even at a distance, Ovid could smell their blood. It stank like low tide.
He stood, shouldering his bow and drawing his sword.
Ovid Tsing raised his sword.
“Attack!” he thundered.
The Stonecoats marched around Ovid and his archers, the first wave to move in. The Atlanteans attacked them with sword and dagger, but blades broke upon the rock-skin of the Jokao. The Stonecoats marched right through them, crushing heads and breaking bones, and kept going.
Sorcerers and giants might be able to kill them, but not ordinary Atlanteans. And the Jokao held a seething hatred for the Atlanteans. The time had come for them to take vengeance upon the culture that had once held them as slaves.
“Ovid!” Trina shouted, running up beside him.
She pointed to the sky.
Dozens of octopuses were sweeping toward them, tentacles dangling. They floated like balloons, but even as he watched, an octopus snatched up a Stonecoat in its tentacles effortlessly, as if the Jokao were weightless. It could not kill the Stonecoat, so instead it hurled him out to sea.
“Archers!” Ovid cried. “Fire!”
His archers followed the command, taking aim at the floating creatures. Two were felled with that first attack. Ovid turned his attention back to the Atlanteans, many of whom were slipping past the Jokao. There simply weren’t enough Stonecoats to kill them all.
“King’s Volunteers!” he shouted. “Attack!”
He pointed his sword forward and the soldiers-men and women he had brought from Twillig’s Gorge, or who had joined him along the way-rushed into war with their weapons at the ready.
For the first few moments, Ovid only stood amongst them as they rushed around him and watched. Blades and cudgels fell. Atlanteans and Euphrasians and Yucatazcans died, their blood mingling together on the shore. The ground drank it greedily, and equally. To Death, all blood was the same.
Ovid roared and charged, racing into battle. He caught a glimpse of LeBeau, but then he could focus only on the enemy. He slashed and stabbed and used his elbows and knees-whatever it took to stop them; whatever it took to kill them; whatever it took to stay alive.
The King’s Volunteers tore into the forces of deceitful Atlantis with courage and determination and hope. Ovid’s mother had understood that it was hope that they all needed the most. He had begun his militia for his own purposes, but now he fought for his mother, and for hope.
An axe swept toward his skull.
Ovid dodged, but not in time.
A sword stopped the axe’s descent. A tall figure in armor stepped in, grabbed the axe-wielding Yucatazcan by the head, and snapped his neck, dropping the corpse to the ground.
Ovid stared. His rescuer stood a foot or more taller than he. She wore her dark hair in long braids and wielded an enormous, heavy sword. Her armor glistened with blood not her own. She gazed at him with lavender eyes, and Ovid knew that he stood face-to-face with a goddess.
She wore a wild grin, as though the war and bloodshed made her giddy, and then she rushed away from him, felling Atlanteans with crimson abandon.
Not far away, a massive wolf made of tangled vines and leaves lunged into the Atlantean ranks, tearing at them with its jaws, crunching a skull in its teeth.
Hope had arrived.
CHAPTER 19
In the shade of trees whose limbs were strung with moss, amidst the buzzing of insects driven into a frenzy by the blood and sweat of dying soldiers, Oliver gathered the small force he would take with him to Atlantis. They were on the other side of the ridge from the battlefield, out of sight of the slaughter, but even here, more than a mile away, the sounds of death echoed across the sky.
Oliver stood furthest from the crest of the ridge. Perhaps twenty feet away, Li sat cross-legged on the ground, the grass burning all around him, blackening the soil.
Not far from Li-it seemed this small group of Borderkind never strayed far from one another these days-Cheval Bayard lay on her side upon the grassy hill. The sun shone upon her diaphanous gown and silver hair, while Grin crouched nearby and watched the sky and the ridgeline for potential threats.
Furthest from Oliver, beneath another stand of trees at the top of the ridge, stood the winter man. The ice that comprised Frost’s body had become almost transparent. The colors of the landscape passed through him, bending and gleaming, casting a small rainbow from the prism of his torso.
Frost stood completely still, the icicles of his hair frozen in place. A light mist steamed off of him. Oliver thought he must be watching the battle, gauging the efforts of Hunyadi’s army against the invading hordes. Maybe the winter man longed to join the battle, thinking he could be of more use to the soldiers than to the mission the king and Oliver had concocted.