A cannonball hit the wall above the gate, killing three of their snipers and showering rocks and debris on the soldiers below.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The cannonballs were coming fast and hard to take out their gunners. Nora lost count as smoke and debris filled the air with the cries of her injured people. The blood was beginning to run in earnest.
She shot one last bullet before Matteo took her hand. “To the gate.”
Nora nodded, leaving her gun and powder. If she’d spoken, he wouldn’t have heard her over the sounds of battle. They climbed down the stone stairs as a cannonball hit the position where they had stood. Matteo grabbed her by the arm and swung her off the stairs, away from the falling rocks. She pulled him with her and they landed heavily onto the street below. He unsheathed his sword and she hers.
The celestial sword glowed in the light and she saw that several eyes were on her. They believed in her. They believed in the prophecy. They believed in Màthair.
The first hit of the battering ram to the wooden gate did not break through, but she knew that the second and third one would.
“Raise your shields!” she yelled. She didn’t want the wooden slivers and shards to wound her people. There were already too few of them to defend the city. To guard Elea.
The sound of wood clunking against shields told her that the gate was not going to last much longer. Cannonballs and bullets continued to fall on them. She estimated that she’d lost close to three hundred people before the main battle had even begun. Some of the bodies had been moved to the side. Others that were wounded were carried closer to the castle for help. But if they did not hold their line, even the wounded would die. Nora had ordered Laird Donnelly’s trained soldiers inside the castle not to open the gate for anyone. Their duty was to protect their queen until the end.
She heard the cracking of wood, followed by the yells of battle. The enemy had breached the gates. Nora lifted her sword. “Attack!”
She felt Matteo against her back; they were fighting as a pair. Shielding each other’s blind side. Her celestial sword was incredible. It cut through their armor like it was butter. She stabbed and sliced and cut. Dealing death with every blow. The bodies around them began to pile up, but still, more soldiers wearing the green of Urka poured through the broken city gate. For every man she killed, two more were sent to replace him.
She and Matteo were surrounded by green uniforms. Their volunteers were running from the soldiers, deeper into the city. Nora glanced at Matteo and he nodded slightly, lifting his own sword to the attack position. He did not regret where he was and neither did she. Nora held the celestial sword high above her head and continued to wield deadly blows with it as they slowly retreated farther into the city.
The Urkan Army showed her untrained volunteers no mercy. Their cries filled the air. Nora and Matteo continued to circle, back-to-back, and killed as many as they could. But they were retreating with every step. Their numbers dwindling too fast to be counted. Bodies filled both sides of the street. She estimated that she’d lost half of her men, women, and teenagers barely old enough to hold their swords. Aged grandmothers and grandfathers falling on top of the young.
It was a slaughter.
Blood was splattered all over her golden armor and on her face. She and Matteo had no choice but to continue to retreat as their own force fell, body after body. They turned a street corner and she saw the moat on one side. They had reached the castle gates. All that was left of her company was a few hundred swords.
Thousands of soldiers wearing green filled up every street in the city. They were backing up her small force to the castle. The last remaining safehold.
Nora continued to slice and stab and swing, hoping to lower the number who would attack the castle. She stepped back and her foot splashed in water. There were only thirty volunteers left of nearly three thousand, including herself and Matteo. They had been driven into the mud of the moat. Something bumped her leg. She glanced down to see that it was a body floating in the water. Hundreds of bodies were in the moat.
She turned to Matteo and saw his face. He knew it too. They were all going to die.
“For Màthair!”
42
GERARD
Pressing his hand against the papers in his coat, Gerard wondered if he should have told Elea the truth. That he was now a prince of Kaul. But if he had, her words would not have meant as much to him. She could have chosen him because it was suitable. A marriage of alliance. He would have been her equal. That Elea had picked him despite everything that had once caused her to reject him felt wonderful. She cared more for him than for other people’s opinions. Evenherpeople.
He believed that Elea had truly changed.
Glancing down at the sword on his belt, he had as well. Gerard was not the same man who had walked into the cairn. He never would be. What he saw, what he knew of the past, present, and future would always be a part of him now. The pain of the past he could not change. His mother’s choices or his own. The weight of the truth he carried. The promise of the future he held in a black stone in his hand.
It burned in his palm.
A vision was coming.
He was on the same smaller Urkan ship. They were sailing up a river. Something that the larger Kaulish naval ships could not do. They passed a city and then he saw an army as green as the grass. His ship shot cannonballs at it.
The sounds reverberated and echoed.