Zuangua danced up to the soldiers, startling them as he jumped up on the wagon and sliced the air with his obsidian-edged spear. The cut left a trail of sparks in its wake.
Lewenhardt, with an empty quiver at his back and his last arrow nocked, stood stunned, unsure if he should loose it at the shadow or at Henry’s men.
“Lewenhardt! Sibold!” Sanglant came up beside them out of the gloom. “Take every man you can carry and go. We have new allies. We’ll cover your retreat. There’s a fortress ahead where Fulk’s in command. Go!”
Sibold did not answer because the arrow in his neck, while not seeming to hinder his movement or threaten his life, shut him up. Seeing Sanglant, Henry’s men shook off their doubt and with cries and shouts pelted forward. Lewenhardt released his arrow, taking one man in the thigh, then scuttled backward with the rest.
Out in the woods to either side, shrieks rent the air. The Ashioi had reached their prey. Sanglant braced. He was not used to fighting on foot, but he could hold his own. Spears jabbed at him, but the light wasn’t good enough for his enemies to hit true. Above, on the wagon, Zuangua swept his blade above the swarm of men, then struck among them like black lightning. His spear passed through armor and shield and deep into the bodies of his foes. With every blow a man fell, struck not through flesh but through soul, killing the being that animated the mortal shell. Lightning flashed, and flashed again, and a third time in quick succession, and as if it had torn a gap in the stillness a gale blew across their position out of the east. The trees creaked and no few swayed dangerously in that tempest. Leaves and branches rained down, striking men in the head and knocking them flat. A leafy branch crashed right down through Zuangua, and though the wind drove some men to their knees, although Sanglant had to dodge blows and branches alike, the shadow prince stood balanced upon the wagon’s side as if it were a calm day. Men struggled to fight him, but none of their blows had any force against a shade.
Sanglant laughed, knowing how cruel an irony this was. He had found an army that death could not claim.
Lightning flashed and thunder rolled; this time the Earth itself trembled beneath their feet. Men screamed out among the trees. The world had gone black except for bolts of lightning that lit the sky. The moon was gone and all torches blown out by that wind. Only the firefly lights borne by the stalking Ashioi darted within the wood.
As quickly as it had come, the gale stilled. Zuangua trilled a war cry and that cry was echoed a hundredfold throughout the woodland. That cry had no words but every soul within earshot knew anyway what it meant:
Vengeance.
The Wendish army fled except for the few who fell to the ground speaking prayers or simply weeping at the judgment now laid upon them.
“The hour is at hand, Cousin! The sacrifices are ours to take.” Zuangua leaped from the wagon, thrusting at will deep into the bodies of the men who had fallen to their knees. He gave no mercy; he sought none. Sanglant ran at his heels as a second gale crashed through the forest. The shouts and screams of men rose in counterpoint to the crash of falling branches and the roar of wind in the leaves. They pressed on as branches fell all about them, as the ground shivered beneath their feet, as lightning dazzled in wave upon wave until day and night melded and splintered and here and there in the forest trees exploded into flame where lightning struck and dry limbs and dry leaves flashed and blazed. Smoke curled among the trunks. Men ran, and fell where hissing darts pierced their bodies. A fiery rain pattered down around them, but it was only burning leaves. There was no rain, no clouds. It was as hot as it had been in the daytime with the sun overhead.
There, unexpected, waiting unshaken in the road with a brace of noble companions at his back and his banner planted beside him, stood Henry.
The emperor needed no torch to light his way. He was a torch. His eyes gleamed with an unearthly light, cold and brilliant. A nimbus cloaked him, shedding that inner light onto the path and into the air. Where wisps of smoke trailed around his feet, the smoke glowed a ghastly silver.
Sanglant stumbled to a stop. Zuangua paused next to him as a dozen Ashioi ghosted out of the woodland to take up positions at either flank. The hawk-masked woman slipped into place at her prince’s right hand with her bow drawn and her lips pulled back in a feral, unavian grin.
“This is your father?” Zuangua murmured. For the first time he sounded uncertain and even afraid. “I did not know any woman of my people would embrace a daimone of the lower sphere.”
Sanglant wept to see him. Of course Hathui had told the truth. He could smell that this was not his father but an interloper residing within his father’s shell. Perhaps Henry’s noble companions suspected something was amiss, because they stared at the emperor in shock and then belatedly recalled that they must keep track of their enemies, now gathering before them. No human man could shine so brightly, not even one granted the luck of the king. Yet a lingering trace of his father still existed, hidden away beneath the daimone’s presence. If he could reach the man, he might give him the strength to fight against the creature that possessed him.
