We wheel around and I see Siena, bow strung with another arrow, having already moved on from helping me. A Soaker attacks her, but ends up on the ground with an arrow through his throat.
All of a sudden, the area around me is relatively clear, the battle having spilled further down the shore, as if carried on the wind, which has shifted, sending the rain swirling in circles around us.
Without command from me, Passion runs back toward the fray. I watch in horror as one Rider, then another, are struck down by Soakers in quick succession. The men of the sea don’t spare their horses, stabbing them through their bellies.
In fact, without looking very hard, I can pick out twenty or thirty Rider bodies sprawled along the plains, mounds of black and red. Littered amongst them are the dead bodies of brown-clad Soakers, at least double the number of our dead. But are we winning? To my left, more boats are landing on the shore, carrying reinforcements.
The first familiar face I see is Remy’s, but he’s no longer on his horse. For some reason he has dismounted and is sword-fighting a Soaker. He blocks a strike and then kicks his opponent back, where he stumbles over a dead horse carcass. The animal looks familiar and I realize it’s Bolt, Remy’s horse, killed in battle.
Everything about Remy, from his body language to the torn expression on his face, cries rage. With two quick steps he’s on the Soaker, stabbing him once, twice, and then more times than is necessary to kill him. Again and again and again, desecrating his body.
Finally he stops and looks up, tears in his eyes. He sees me and his expression changes sharply. Is it…concern?
Even as he raises his finger to point behind me, I’m turning, trying to raise my sword, trying to be faster than I know I’m capable of.
The Soaker sword cuts into my hip, all the way to the bone, sending ripping, roaring shockwaves through my body. “Arrrrrrrr!” I scream, frantically slashing out with my blade, slicing the chest of the enemy who snuck up on me. The man falls, his sword coated with blood—my blood.
Passion, as if sensing my pain, nays loudly, a cry of angst. “I’m okay, girl,” I say, cringing as another bolt of agony shoots from my hips to my toes. I stuff a hand in my mouth, bite down hard, trying to distract myself from what I know is a serious wound. “Go, Passion, go!” I scream through my fingers.
For the first time since I met her, Passion seems unsure of herself, moving forward first at a walk, one hesitant step after another. When I manage to kick her gently in the ribs with the foot on my uninjured side, however, she breaks into a run.
On the beach, a large raft washes up. Then another.
I forget the pain of my injury when I see who’s on the rafts.
The Heater slaves have arrived.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Huck
I refuse to meet my father’s eyes as we cut through the rough waters, just behind the rafts.
They’re all going to die, every last one of them. Stolen from their homes, brought upon ships where they’re treated like animals—no, less than animals—and now forced to fight a war that has nothing to do with them.
Hatred burns for the one who raised me. What will I do with it?
The rafts land before our boat, and the children of fire country spill onto the shore. Beyond them, the battle rages. Men scream with anger and pain. Swords ring out. Bodies fall.
“Attack or I’ll kill you myself!” my father screams at the Heaters. They look back, unsure and unarmed, but then run toward the plains, toward sure death.
What kind of monster…? The worst kind—the very worst kind.
But then I see something strange, something that temporarily snaps me out of my anger. A girl, sword held high, silver and red and streaked with lightning flashes, slashing at a seaman, killing him. Her skin’s as brown as Jade’s, as brown as the Heater children who are, even now, headed her way.
She sees them and her body seems to go stiff, like all the grace and ability I just saw her use to fight the Soaker has been sucked out of her.
Then she starts to run toward the children, shouting something back over her shoulder.
Thud!
Our boat crashes onto shore, but I can’t take my eyes off of what I’m seeing, because there’s more. Another brown-skinned girl emerges from the battle, carrying a bow, running like bloody hell, following the other. Then there’s a third, but this one’s a guy, muscular and fast, but again, his skin is at least three shades too light to be a Stormer. There’s something deadly and animal-like about the fourth brown-skinned warrior that emerges, his arms dark and painted.
The other officers are spilling out, already moving up the sand, shouting orders at the bilge and the men already, although no one’s listening because they’re too busy fighting. My father pulls at my elbow. “Remember—you fight or she dies,” he says.
I grit my teeth and climb out.
Drawing my sword, I run after him, toward the fight, which has spilled onto the sand, right into the middle of the children, who have huddled together, surrounded by death.
The four brown-skinned warriors—who I only now realize are Heaters, like the children—surround the cluster of bilge, facing outward, as if daring anyone to harm them.
A few Stormer riders eye them, but, surprisingly, turn away and continue to fight only the Soakers.
The other officers have reached the edge of the battle and seem uncertain of what to do about the cluster of now-protected bilge. “Kill them!” my father shouts, and I’m not sure whether he means the bilge, or the four Heater warriors protecting them.
A few of the officers leap into action, Hobbs included, attacking the two Heater girls. The girl with the bow unleashes two arrows in short succession, cutting down two officers as if they’re no more than common foot soldiers. Their soaked-through blue uniforms won’t protect them now.
Another officer drops when the sword-carrying Heater girl stabs him through the midsection.
Hobbs slashes at her, but she blocks his attack, quickly countering with a flurry of strikes of her own. He jumps back into a group of other officers who are sticking close together, doing battle with a few dark Riders who have broken through.
Riders fall. Officers fall. The world spins around me, like we’re inside a barrel, rolling down a hill.
With the greater numbers, the officers eventually get past the four Heater warriors, who are barely able to protect themselves against the onslaught. The children break from their cluster, running from their own masters, running for their lives. A few of the older ones usher the younger ones ahead, hanging back, grabbing at the fallen and bloody swords and knives that litter the sand around them.
Hobbs leads the charge, urging the officers toward them, stalking them like prey. Why would they kill the very children who maintain the ships, the very slaves bought by my father? Because he ordered them to. Because they blindly follow his every command.
I have to do something.
I spring into action, running toward the brown children and the blue officers, watching in horror as Hobbs raises his blade over one of the kids. Without hesitation, he stabs the boy, pushing him to the sand at the same time that he extracts his sword.
“No!” one of the Heater warriors screams, the girl with the sword. Her blade is moving impossibly fast, cutting and slashing and leaving officers dead in her wake as she fights through them. The other three redouble their efforts to get back in front of the children.
But I’m closer—and no one is trying to stop me—so I reach them first, just as one of the other officers slaughters another child.
I act on a choice I only now realize I made a long time ago. I stab him in the back.
He cries out and falls, drawing every other officer’s attention, Hobbs included.
“You!” he roars. “Kill him!”
Three officers spring forward, and it’s all I can do to deflect their heavy blows. Tripping, I fall back—