Snow Like Ashes(107)

Their strength, conduit-given or not, is invigorating, filling me with my own magic. I want to bask in it forever.

You’re so close now, Hannah says.

I fall into line with them, running just as hard, screaming just as loud, lost in the voices and the power and the life of the Winterians.



30


WE FOLLOW THE sounds of battle to the square at Abril’s front gate and find Spring soldiers sprinting in perfectly lined groups, cannons firing with lethal precision, cranks lifting weapons up and down the walls. Angra’s conduit pushes them with a threat that makes every movement deliberate, in line, perfect.

A horn cries out as we surge down the streets leading to the gate. Angra’s faultlessly aligned soldiers pivot toward us, snapping out of their conduit stupor. Angra warned them we were coming, but knowing does not a prepared army make.

We raise our weapons, raise our voices, raise our speed. We are one body now. One all-consuming wave of white and filth and sixteen years of death. Angra’s men realign themselves to face us, their backs to the gate, more than half of the focus pulled away from Noam’s attacking army to us. The one thing Abril in all its war-mindedness never prepared for: a breach inside the wall.

We collide with Angra’s men, pouring into them like a plague. They return with just as much force, pushing into us with strength pulled from the Decay in Angra’s conduit. There are only a few hundred of us and most are no more fighters than the children and elderly who stayed behind. Our advantage of surprise won’t hold for long.

I impale a Spring soldier and drop to the ground, pulling his body down beside me to serve as a shield. The square before the gate is nearly the size of Angra’s palace grounds, wide and open to allow for ease of movement. Two staircases frame the gate and lead to the walkway above, and a small building leans against the wall on my left. The gatehouse.

A group of Winterian men tackle a charging cluster of Spring soldiers, and I use the chaos to shield myself from other enemies. They fall backward and I run, dashing over bodies, discarded blades, stacks of crates. The iron tang of blood and old weapons hangs in hot, heavy balls of repulsion, smacking into me as I barrel for the thin wooden door that stands between the Cordell-Autumn army and me.

I sheath my blades and draw out my chakram before planting a firm kick that sends the door banging into the wall. Inside the gatehouse, two soldiers flip around and, just as quickly, two blades fly through air, small knives that spin with desperate determination for me. I duck and one flies over my shoulder while the other grazes my wrist.

But it’s my turn now, so I bite back my wince. I let the chakram go, my blade slicing the soldiers’ necks in deathblows. As their bodies fall, I jump over them, eyeing the lever in the center of the room. A thick metal rod stretches into the air at an angle, nearly as tall as me, from a hodgepodge of gears. The rod sticks out more to the left than the right, so maybe if I move it to the right….

I holster the chakram and throw all my weight into the rod. It groans against my movements, the old iron creaking in angry rebuttal against being opened. I brace my foot on the wall of the gatehouse, pulling and heaving, begging the stupid thing to just give in and release.

A hand slides on the lever over mine. I flinch back, already half reaching for my knife, when Garrigan stops me. Conall stumbles in behind him, a bloody sword in one hand, and moves around me to grab the rod too.

We heave as one, and the crank releases under our collective weight, giving up as if it can feel the impending collapse of its kingdom. It slams into place and beyond the gatehouse, beyond the fight, the massive wall of iron starts to lift into the air, grinding and groaning.

Conall, Garrigan, and I run out of the gatehouse. Winterians and Spring soldiers alike pause, eyeing the lifting gate, analyzing what it means for Abril.

As soon as the gate gets high enough, a wave of men pours through, adding Cordell’s green and gold to Spring’s black-sun armor and Winter’s stark-white hair. Mixed with the Cordellan soldiers are copper-skinned men in maroon and orange that fly between batches of enemies with an exotic grace, slicing through flesh with hair-thin blades and hurling balls that spew toxic smoke. Their heir may be too young to wield her conduit, but Autumn soldiers can still make a sword fight look like a choreographed dance and wield weapons that are just as functional as they are gruesome—like chakrams. As a few spinning metal discs soar into the air, I grin. Sir originally got my chakram from Autumn, and seeing dozens of them shooting all around me now makes me feel even more united in this effort. A Winterian wielding an Autumnian weapon, using Cordellan allegiance to bring Spring crumbling down.