Page 39 of Heart of Defiance

We knew this was a dangerous gambit, but it wasn’t half as dangerous as trying to face the army on even ground.

“Anyone injured, continue back behind our front lines,” the captain is hollering.

Iko appears beside me, his eyes widening as he takes in my wound. He slings his arm around my back and urges me the last short distance to where our larger force is waiting.

The rest of the rebels don’t charge to meet the Darium soldiers, not yet. The moment our contingent acting as bait races past the field, a smattering of figures raise their hands.

Their magic propels the very air.

A wind whips up over the field and flings the lissweld’s pollen away from us, toward the advancing soldiers. A flurry of pale yellow whirls across the landscape like a sudden blizzard.

The tiny grains patter against shields and helms—and slip through the gaps in the visors.

All at once, the first barrage of Darium soldiers lurch and stumble. One and another claw at their helms. Watching, I’m barely aware of the army medic who’s stopped by my side to murmur a little healing magic over my arm. A smile curves my lips.

I can just imagine the agony they’re feeling, the stinging sensation digging into their eyeballs, the world around them turned into a vague blur as their vision fogs with irritation and tears.

Take that, you vicious pricks.

More wind gusts over the army, sending the searing pollen all through their ranks. Their strict formation is shattering into chaos.

High Commander Livius wheels on his horse, hollering orders I can’t make out. Then our major flings his hand forward.

Several hundred soldiers and armed civilians dash forward to attack our disabled opponents. Blades plunge into guts and slice through throats. Clubs bash in helms and fracture bones.

Blood splatters scarlet across the grass next to the sea of orange flowers.

I step forward, reaching for the short sword at my hip, but the medic catches my arm. “The injured stay back. Captain’s orders.”

So I simply watch the carnage with grim satisfaction. The bodies of our colleagues, struck down on our mad dash here, have been lost amid the swarm of soldiers. But we’re taking down so many more of them than they stole from us.

The high commander must realize they’re currently outmatched. More shouts ring out, and the soldiers at the back of the march start retreating, just a few at first and then in a more orderly mass, surging away from the scene of destruction even faster than they swept down on us. The plumed helmet bobs away from us.

As my fellow rebels continue to carve through the nearest enemies, a cheer of victory goes up. We’ve sent them running. We’ve taken down hundreds of our foes.

A swell of triumph fills my chest, but it’s dampened by the sight of all those dark uniforms pulling away from us.

There are still thousands more of them, and now they know we’re a force to be reckoned with. We’ve won this battle, but we haven’t won the war.

We leave the Darium corpses where they fell, murmuring a prayer for our fallen comrades among them, and draw back to the shelter of the nearest forestland. While we roast deer and wild boar our allies have hunted down, our sentries report that the Darium army has withdrawn all the way to the border to regroup.

That gives us at least a day’s buffer before they can strike at us again. A day to come up with another plan that’ll let us come out ahead—and most of us alive.

The voices and laughter that resonate around the campfires have a celebratory vibe, but I keep seeing Bertha slumping with the arrow in her back. Keep searching the faces around me to try to determine exactly how many people we lost today.

How many people died carrying out my plan.

I’m not the only one with loss on my mind. My eyes catch Jostein’s through the crowd for the first time since the attack, and he barrels past the figures around us with a frantic light in his bright blue eyes.

The squad leader comes to a halt in front of me, his gaze darting over my face, his bronze-brown skin looking grayed. “You’re all right? I heard you were injured—I’ve been looking for you.”

The intensity of his concern makes my pulse stutter. I motion vaguely toward the torn, bloody fabric of my sleeve, the pink line where the medic healed the broken flesh beneath. “Just a minor wound. They patched me up.”

Jostein’s mouth twists. “It came so close.”

He touches my arm, his expression so fraught it wrenches at me. There’s blood speckled across his tunic too, and a deepening purple bruise on his cheek that wasn’t there before.

We all toed a perilous line today. We’re all lucky not to be one of the few wrenched over the edge.

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