Page 115 of The Crown of Moonlight
The horses stand on long reins, their heads close together and drooping with fatigue.Flora lets her eyes slide around the group, and I suspect she sees what I do.We’re all tired and spent.The difference is that the rest of us have spent centuries going into battles of one kind or another.For Flora, this is all new.And she doesn’t so much as flinch.
If I hadn’t already been certain that I loved her wholly and irrevocably before now, seeing her like this would have clinched it.
“It’s too far for me to tell where there are Greys or soldiers beyond that group, but I’d expect them at each of the ports, and maybe another group in the middle before we reach the loch.What if we try to draw this group towards us?Can you create the illusion of sound and figures fleeing?Give them something to chase into an ambush?”
“Not bad,” Daire says.
I lean forward in the saddle.“That’s you, Cathal.Give them a show—and make it convincing.Niall, lay a wind net to baffle the feel of any magic we or the Greys release.Flora, can you soften the ground enough to sink them to their knees, and then firm it again to hold them in place?That would let us plough through them without wasting a lot of effort we might need later.”
Flora nods, and we find a spot between the loch and a copse of trees where we can wait.
Chapter 43
Worth Dying For
Chyr
W
e tie the horses higher up the slope where the muffling mist will reduce any sound they make.Wet leather creaks as we work, and rain threads down my collar.The smell of peat, soaked horse, and sodden wool curls thick around us.
Farther down the hill, Flora is waiting behind a tree.I slip in beside her.
“How are you holding up?”I ask.
“Fine,” she says, “though Daire might question my definition of that word, too.I’m not sure sanity has ever been my strength.”
“Bravery is nothing more than a moment of insane connection to something or someone beyond yourself.I’m here, I’m alive because you’re you.Because you have those moments of insanity.”
A smile tugs at her lips.It’s small and tremulous, then it spreads until every part of her face glows with it.It makes me want to pull her into my arms and tell her all the things it costs me not to say.
I think of that moment in the Sacred Wood when I first saw her, and the moment not long after that when I told her not to help me.Even Then I must have known that I would always choose her over myself.
She has never said she loves me, though that’s a hope I hold in my heart.But I know she loves her people and Alba Scoria more.I hope she loves them enough to accept what I have to do.
Daire sets up a perimeter around the trap.Using four stones, he anchors the silence, attention-deflection, and magic-dampening spells from his runes to ensure the soldiers and militiamen who trudge behind the Greys on foot will have no warning before they reach us.Flora draws water from the loch to soak the track, creating deep mud to bog the horses down.
The illusion Cathal has built is perfect, if a little spiteful.He’s created near-exact likenesses of both me and Fergal, making it look as though we are whipping our exhausted horses, desperately trying to outrun the Greys.The Greys spur their own mounts to chase the illusion, and he lures them in, keeping the image of us close enough that the Greys can see the fear Cathal’s magic is projecting onto our faces as our illusionary selves look back at them across our shoulders.At the same time, Cathal keeps the Greys far enough away that they can’t wonder why they don’tsenseany fear.
I let the Greys run well into the trap we’ve set, far enough that Flora’s mud slows their horses to a walk.Five Greys.No, only four.One of them reins in, checking his speed.Peering around suspiciously.
Sweat mingles with the rain beneath my collar as I hold the signal longer than I should.I wave away a couple of early midges that hover in front of my eyes.
Then the last of the Greys finally rides forward.And I nod to Flora, signalling for her to start.
Flora squeezes the earth around the horses’ legs, then leaches the water out of the mud to trap them in place.
Flora’s Shadehounds watch me with their silver-ringed eyes, as intent as the other Riders.Then I lower two fingers.Go.
We all surge forward, swords out and magic crackling along our skin.
I reach the last Grey who entered.He sends a lance of fire at me, targeted enough to make me throw myself aside.I smother the flame with a burst of air that sends him flying off his horse.
The ground shakes as I stride around the horse to reach him.I barely have time to register that he’s an earth-wielder before the mare wrenches free of the ground and rears.Her iron shoe clips me on the shoulder as she rises.
My arm goes numb to my fingertips, and my sword falls from my grasp.The Grey lunges for it.I seize the hilt with a rope of air, and I hurl it, aiming for the Grey’s black heart.The blow misses—he’s still breathing.But the force was enough to fling him to the ground and pin him to the earth.
Niall gets to the Grey before I can finish him off, and I look around and find that the whole attack is done.
