The Shadowbearer (An Aegis of the Gods Book)

Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

A tear trickling down his face, Stefan spat on the corpse. “Burn the body.” He gestured to Cadet Destin who stood with his mouth unhinged. “Now!”

Destin jumped before dropping his lance and running down the hill toward a line of torches at its base.

The clang of steel on steel followed by the cries and screams of the dying drew Stefan’s attention to his men. Surrounded, the legion Knight General Garrick had commanded struggled against the other Setian.

Divya blades rose and fell in flashes. Kasimir had been able to arm every Dagodin loyal to their cause with the weapons.

The battle raged on. Shields parried and blocked. Swords stabbed and sliced. All moving in synchronous motions as they’d been taught. At this distance, to an untrained eye, the melee appeared more like chaos.

Behind the milling mass of Garrick’s forward infantry, transformations took place. Green armor rippled and fell to the ground. In place of men were dark–furred wraithwolves, many reaching seven feet. They stood on two legs, threw their snouts to the sky, and released blood–chilling howls. Stefan wished he had scorpios.

Mingled between the beasts and those who were mere men was another sort of creature. These flowed like black smoke made flesh. Blades darker than their billowing countenances sliced through the attacking soldiers as if their armor was wrought from paper instead of steel and iron. Stefan’s eyes narrowed.

Darkwraiths. Gods be good.

Quickly, he dashed the kinai wine from the flagons onto the wraithwolf’s corpse. Where’s Destin with the blasted light? He whirled to the sound of approaching feet and snatched the torch from Destin’s outstretched hand. As he tossed the firebrand at the remains, Stefan stepped back. A whoosh followed, and the black–furred body burst into flames. Heat spilled forth in a shimmering wave. Stefan shielded his face from the conflagration.

A trumpet blared—part of the plan he and Kasimir had devised. The dirge repeated.

The remaining Setian infantry fell back from the two types of shadelings and the soldiers who stood with them. A lull passed across the battlefield for the barest of seconds as the two opposing forces split apart, a space a few feet wide between them. Then a wraithwolf screeched—a skin crawling, high–pitched sound like metal squealing on metal—and its counterparts echoed the cry.

Stefan covered his nose and mouth from the stench of burnt hair and cooking flesh and peered toward the crimson–garbed Ashishin who moments before had stood unmoving and silent. They strode forward, shoulder to shoulder, in perfect, unnerving symmetry.

Gigantic balls of fire formed in front of them as if they’d ripped several suns from the sky. A moment later, the fireballs shot forward, blazing a trail as they flew to explode into the shadelings with a roar. At the same time, the earth came alive in a rolling wave of stone, tossing the beasts from their feet. The wails among them became plaintive cries.

Looking glass to his eye, Stefan licked his lips as the Ashishin, their faces furrowed with concentration, halted, gazes riveted on the traitors and the shadelings. He craved to reach out and open his Matersense as they Forged the essences around them, but he knew better. The very thought brought a shiver to his bones with the memory of the ethereal voices that seemed to call to him when he’d been in training so long ago.

A deafening rumble jarred him back to the present.

Where once there had been a stretch of plains occupied by the shade’s minions, there was now a gaping rent in the earth like a mouth full of jagged teeth. Screams ensued. Above the lip of the gash, both darkwraiths and wraithwolves appeared in empty air, claws and shrouded hands grappling for purchase. They crashed into an unseen barrier before falling from sight.