Page 54 of Kingdom of Ash

A wyvern soared overhead, so low its spiked, poisonous tail snapped through tent after tent.

Glennis let her arrow fly, and Dorian echoed her blow with one of his own.

A lance of solid ice, careening for the exposed, mottled chest.

Both arrow and ice spear drove home, and black blood spewed downward—before the wyvern and rider went crashing into a peak, and flipped over the cliff face.

Glennis grinned, that aged face lighting. “I struck first.” She drew another arrow. Such lightness, even in the face of an ambush.

“I wish you were my great-grandmother,” Dorian muttered, and readied his next blow. He’d have to be careful, with the Thirteen looking so much like the Yellowlegs from below.

But the Thirteen did not need his caution, or his help.

They plowed into the lines of the Yellowlegs, breaking them apart, scattering them.

The Yellowlegs might have had the advantage of surprise, but the Thirteen were masters of war.

Crochans tumbled from the skies as they were struck by brutal, spiked tails. Some not even tumbling at all as they came face-to-face with enormous maws and did not emerge again.

“Clear out!” Manon’s barked order carried over the fray. “Form lines low to the ground!”

Not an order for the Thirteen, but the Crochans.

Glennis shouted, some magic no doubt amplifying her voice, “Follow her command!”

Just like that, the Crochans fell back, forming a solid unit in the air above the tents.

They watched as Abraxos ripped the throat from a bull twice his size, and Manon fired an arrow through the rider’s face. Watched as the green-eyed demon twins rounded up three wyverns between them and sent them crashing onto the mountainsides. Watched as Asterin’s blue mare ripped a rider from the saddle, then ripped part of the spine from the wyvern beneath her.

Each of the Thirteen marked a target with every swipe through the gathered attackers.

The Yellowlegs had no such organization.

The Yellowlegs sentinels who tried to break from the Thirteen’s path to attack the Crochans below found a wall of arrows meeting them.

The wyverns might have survived, but the riders did not.

And with a few careful maneuvers, the riderless beasts found themselves with throats cut, blood streaming as they crashed onto the nearby peaks.

Pity mingled with the fear and rage in his heart.

How many of those beasts might have been like Abraxos, had they good riders who loved them?

It was surprisingly hard to blast his magic at the wyvern who managed to sail overhead, aiming right for Glennis, another wyvern on its tail.

He made it an easy death, snapping the beast’s neck with a burst of his power that left him panting.

He whipped his magic toward the second attacking wyvern, offering it the same quick end, but didn’t see the third and fourth that now crashed into the camp, wrecking tents and snapping their jaws at anything in their path. Crochans fell, screaming.

But then Manon was there, Abraxos sailing hard and fast, and she lopped off the head of the nearest rider. The Yellowlegs sentinel still wore an expression of shock as her head flew.

Dorian’s magic balked.

The severed head hit the ground near him and rolled.

A room flashed, the red marble stained with blood, the thud of a head on stone the only sound beyond his screaming.

I was not supposed to love you.

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