Page 294 of Kingdom of Ash

As one, the army gathered on the city walls did the same.

“Let’s make this a fight worthy of a song,” Aedion said.

CHAPTER 85

Manon and the Thirteen shot into the skies as the Crochan army flowed below, a red tide rushing toward the sea of black ahead.

Forcing the Ironteeth legion to choose: their ancient enemies or their new ones.

It was a test, and one Manon had wanted to make early. To see how many of the Ironteeth would heed the command to plow forward, and how many might break from their orders, the temptation of battling the Thirteen too much to bear. And a test, she supposed, for the Matrons and the Heirs who led their legion—would they fall for it? Split their forces to swarm the Ironteeth, or continue their assault on the Crochans?

Higher and higher, Manon and the Thirteen rose, the two armies nearing each other.

The Crochans didn’t hesitate as their swords glinted in the sun, pointing toward the oncoming wyverns.

The Ironteeth had not trained against an enemy able to fight back. An enemy who could be airborne, smaller and faster, and strike where theywere weakest: the riders. That was the Crochans’ goal—to bring down the riders, not the beasts.

But to do so, they’d need to brave the snapping jaws and spiked tails, the poison coating them. And if they could navigate around the wyverns, then the matter would remain of facing the flying arrows, and the trained warriors atop the beasts. It would not be easy, and it would not be quick.

The Thirteen rose so high that the air became thin. High enough that Manon could see to the very back of the host, where the horrific, unmistakable bulk of Iskra Yellowlegs’s wyvern flew.

A challenge and a promise of a confrontation to come. Manon knew, despite the distance, that Iskra had marked her.

No sign of Petrah. Or of the two remaining Matrons. Who had replaced the Yellowlegs crone to become High Witch, Manon didn’t know. Or care. Perhaps her grandmother had convinced them not to appoint Iskra or a new one just yet—to clear the way for her own path to queendom.

Just as Manon’s head turned light at the altitude, fifty or so wyverns peeled away from the enemy’s host. Flying upward—racing for them, beasts freed of their tether. Hungry for the glory and bragging rights that killing the Thirteen would win.

Manon smiled.

The two armies slammed into each other.

Loosing a breath, Manon yanked once on Abraxos’s reins.

Her fierce-hearted wyvern flung out his wings as he arched—and plummeted.

The world tilted while they twisted and plunged down, down, down, the Thirteen falling with them. They tore through wisps of cloud, the clashing army blurring, the castle and city looming below.

And when the Ironteeth were close enough that Manon could see they were Yellowlegs and Bluebloods, Abraxos banked sharply to one side and a current launched him right into the heart of them.

The Thirteen snapped into formation behind her, a battering ram that smashed through the Ironteeth.

Manon’s bow sang as she fired arrow after arrow.

At the first spray of blue blood, some part of her slipped away.

But she kept firing. And Abraxos kept flying, ripping apart wing and throat with his tail and teeth.

And so it began.

Even in the river, the thunder of marching feet rumbled past Lysandra.

They didn’t see the large white snout that periodically broke through the ice floes to huff down a breath. The sky was dark now, thick with the clashing of wyverns and Crochans.

Bodies occasionally plunged into the river, Ironteeth and Crochan alike.

The Crochans who thrashed, who were still alive, Lysandra covertly carried to the far shore. What they made of her, they didn’t say. She didn’t linger long enough to let them.

The Ironteeth who fell into the river were dragged to the bottom and pinned to the rocks.

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