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.
On the right, vampires dashed out of the woods, slicing at the other column. The tide of Neig’s soldiers slowed. We’d cut them in half and bled them. But there were too many. So many.
Minutes crept by. The werebears and the vampires chewed the twin prongs of Neig’s vanguard. Blood drenched the grass.
Neig stepped from his chariot. Shit.
I reached out and grabbed Nick’s hand. “Look.”
Neig strode forward, his furry mantle flowing behind him. His body split open, releasing the darkness within. It billowed, solidifying, growing, expanding, building on itself. A black dragon landed on the field, towering over the battle line, so huge my mind refused to believe it was real.
Nick’s mouth hung open.
Neig’s soldiers ran to the sides, scrambling away from the dragon, but the front lines, holding back the maddened yeddimur, had nowhere to go.
The colossal reptile opened his mouth. A torrent of fire hit the knot of writhing yeddimur and his soldiers. They vanished in the blaze, dark shadows swallowed by the white inferno.
Neig doused the field like a colossal flamethrower, burning everything in his path. He’d cleared the blockage. It cost him his yeddimur and a good chunk of his soldiers, but now the field was clear and we were screwed.
Nick clicked his mouth shut. “He’s going to break through. I’ve got to get down there.”
He took off at a run.
Neig’s massive wings opened.
“Retreat!” I yelled at Phillip.
The bagpipes blew a single clear note. Clan Heavy disengaged and broke into a run, galloping toward us. On the other side, the undead streamed for the boundary.
I raised my arms to the sides, gathering the magic to me, molding it into a shield. I had done this before. I held off my father when he tried to rain fire and rocks on the Keep. I couldn’t do anything about Neig’s soldiers—too few and too insignificant magically on their own—but he was huge and brimming with magic. He presented a very defined target. If Neig thought he was about to fry us, he would be in for a surprise.
Neig’s wings beat once, twice, and he took to the air, shooting straight up.
Clan Heavy was running for its life. Faster, I willed. Faster.
Neig dove from the sky, torching the woods to the left, circled, and set the woods to the right on fire.
The undead were all in, but Clan Heavy was slow. Two werebears lagged behind. The fire caught them twenty yards from the boundary. Their shaggy bodies vanished, instantly burned to a crisp. Neig shot upward, picking up speed.
Here’s hoping my magic would be enough.
The dragon swooped down, like a striking hawk, and spat fire. I jerked the shield of magic up. The fire splashed against it. Pressure ground on me. I clenched my teeth and held.
There. How do you like that, you asshole?
Neig climbed higher, turned in midair, and threw himself at my barrier.
Around me people ducked on instinct.
The dragon smashed into my shield. The impact reverberated through my bones. It felt like my whole skeleton snapped. I snarled and held the shield in place. He bounced off it back into the sky, spun around, and hit it again. The shield held.
“Brace yourselves,” my aunt roared.
The field was clear. All of the yeddimur were dead. There was nothing between us and Neig’s warriors except for smoking corpses.
Neig’s army charged.
FIRE.
Claws.
Fire.
Fire.
Ramming at full speed.
Fire.
My nose was bleeding. My breath came in ragged gasps, as if I had run a marathon with a hundred-pound weight on my shoulders.
Below me fighting raged. The trenches funneled Neig’s army into a five-hundred-yard killing field, and going around the trenches from the outside wasn’t an option. Neig had set the woods on fire. The trees burned like torches. Soot and smoke filled the air, mixing with blood and heat. The sorcerous ballistae whined, sending charged bolts into the mass of troops, followed by the steady booms of explosions. Andrea had tried to hit Neig, but he was too fast.
Neig’s troops brought up the engines of war and hurled fiery boulders at us. I held off the first three barrages, so they switched targets and aimed at the front of their own line, just outside my protective boundary. The rocks rolled at our people, and I couldn’t stop them and hold off Neig at the same time.
We were trapped together in five hundred yards of hell on earth, and Neig’s war machine ground us into mush. Mages hurled their spells and Neig’s soldiers spat fire back. Witches summoned horrors, pagans evoked their gods, the military pounded the warriors with advanced magic weaponry, and still Neig’s troops kept coming, unstoppable, unending. There were always more.
The bloodbath raged. Screams, howls, and snarls filled the air. The bagpipers had long ago stopped playing. Now only the voice of the battle could be heard. It hung above us like an oppressive din, the song of dying, pain, and fury.
Where the hell was my father?
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but it had to have been hours. The sun had reached its apex. My world had shrunk to Neig and magic. I wanted to be down there, in the slaughter, but Neig saw me and Yu Fong next to me, and we were too tempting a target. All I could do was contain him.