Page 38 of Flamesworn

“Gracious One,” Evander said. Ares stepped closer, drawn despite Kataida’s efforts toward the Beast and his summoningspell of a body. “A small favor, if I can ask it. Can you make my voice carry?”

“As far as you wish it, Strategos.” Ares took another step. Someone had wanted them dearly, when they had taken a knife to the Beast’s flesh. Was it the Beast himself? They peered into the emptiness at his heart and shivered, licking their lips. What did a void want with the heat of war?

“Thank you,” Evander said, as polite as Atreus had been long ago, and perhaps as resentful of his need for Ares. But Ares could feel Kataida behind them, her warmth settling over their back and shoulders like sunlight, and they passed Evander just a touch of their power.

Evander stepped forward, but when he spoke, he didn’t address his troops. He addressed the enemy, his voice rising over the wind and echoing off the distant dunes.

“Arkoudai,” he said, “what few of your number remain. Your death has come for you, but you do not need to embrace it. Kneel for us, and we will spare you. Raise a sword against us, and we will send you across the river. May you return to an Arktos that will still welcome you. Soldiers!” He turned to his people, and the soldiers around Ares straightened to attention. “We greet the dishonorable dead!”

Drummers took up a rhythm throughout the crowd, and Ares grinned as the army started to sing—not a war chant this time, but a death chant, the kind Atreus’ army had sung for the dead they carried home from the battlefield. Their voices carried over the sand that had nearly swallowed the Needle, and Ares could feel the tide of the battle surging at their back, a fear that shook the enemy as Evander’s soldiers marched to the sound of the enemy’s death song.

The Beast was the first to step forward. He walked several yards ahead of his soldiers, casting a lonely shadow over the sand, and for a moment, Ares thought the soldiers at his backwere too terrified to advance. Then they raised their voices, hundreds of them at the front lines, and a horrible wave of dominant energy rattled the air like thunder as the enemy ordered the submissives of Evander’s army to kneel.

“Do it,” Stavros shouted, his own dominance thick in the air, and Ares heard Kataida gasp, and Ares narrowed their eyes as the first four lines of soldiers in the army dropped to their knees?—

And the lines behind them surged forward. Smoothly, with the ease of practice that reminded Ares of the dance-like drills they’d performed under Stavros’ eye the day before, the soldiers behind the kneeling submissives handed the submissives strung bows and quivers of long arrows. The submissives, already kneeling in position to aim their bows toward the advancing army, moved as one to put an arrow to their strings.

Stavros gave the order, and the submissive archers fired a volley of arrows that went soaring over the gap between their armies and into the thick of the advancing soldiers. The archers remained kneeling as the rest of the army moved forward, careful to aim over the crowd, and Ares ran over the hot sand with Theron and Kataida at their heels, smiling. They hadn’t felt the ecstacy of true battle in centuries, and they danced under the shadows of the falling arrows as the ground shook and drums thundered and soldiers choked on their battle cries.

There was a terrible scream as the first horse slammed into a pike in the sand, and the Beast stepped forward to behead an Arkoudai soldier rushing toward him. The armies melded, waves breaking over the sand, and Ares slid between clashing steel and sweating bodies as the first soldiers fell. The desert would glut itself with blood that morning, as it had centuries before, and centuries before that, when the Needle was a field of flowers blowing gently in a cool spring breeze.

All battles were chaos, but Ares could see shapes starting to form in the fighting, like boulders breaking the stream of a river. One was Evander, whirling like a dancer through the enemy, powerful but swift, killing the enemy with a few economical blows that spared them the miserable deaths of those who tried to scoop their guts back into ruptured bellies. One was Theron, who moved almost as swiftly as Evander, but whose soul was heavy with fear and horror—Ares could nearly hear his thoughts as he fought, begging the soldiers to stop coming, to stop making him have to kill them.

There was the Beast, who tore through Evander’s soldiers like a hammer, caring little if he harmed his own people in the meantime. He was single-minded, his eyes dead behind his iron mask, and Ares stumbled toward them before they felt the heat of Kataida’s spirit draw them back.

Oh, Kataida.

She was magnificent. How could Ares have ever thought they could love Atreus when a spirit like Kataida waited for them? She moved between weapons with her father’s efficiency and the Beast’s brutality, but like Atreus before her, she kept her eyes on the flow of battle. She was moving toward the Beast, keeping just out of his vision, and Ares followed her, gasping in a sudden rush of pleasure as she fired her gun and used it to bludgeon an enemy soldier to death before unsheathing her second sword.

The Beast caught sight of Evander and started to approach him, striking down one of his own soldiers as he drove through the field, but Evander was digging out a regiment of soldiers, too focused on keeping his people alive to see the Beast pushing toward him. Theron let out a sharp cry, terror starting to choke out what little fire he had, and before Kataida or Ares could reach him, slammed his swords into the Beast’s.

For the first time, the Beast stopped advancing, held back by Theron’s strength alone. His eyes narrowed behind the mask,and Theron grunted as he was thrown back. The Beast raised his sword again, too quickly for Theron to counter, and Ares looked at Kataida.

“Ares!” Her voice was lost in the chaos, but Ares heard her. They came to her, form shifting and shimmering until they were a simple steel sword in her right hand, reflecting her scowling face in its surface. She surged forward faster than any mortal had a right to, Ares’ power running through her like a lightning strike. Ares could feel her calculation as she moved, the wall she kept between her emotions and her battle lust, and they shivered as she slashed a hot line through the marks in the Beast’s bare chest.

Theron stumbled to his hands and knees as the Beast roared in pain, and Ares, drunk on the taste of blood on their blade, saw Evander turn to see his oldest son collapsed on the sand, staring up at the Beast’s blades closing down on him.

Kataida stepped over Theron, and her cap fell from her messy hair as she parried the Beast’s blow. Dust bloomed around them from the force of Theron’s fall, and Ares could see the Beast’s eyes narrow as he looked down at Kataida.

“You heard my father,” Kataida said, loud enough that it rang over the clash of steel as the Beast blocked one of her swings with Ares’ sword form. “Your death has come for you.”

“Your father?” The Beast’s voice was a broken growl, almost as inhuman as the name he’d been given. “Yourfather?The general?”

“Strategos,” Kataida said, lunging with Ares’ sword. To Ares’ delight, the Beast took a steady step back. He looked from Kataida to Theron, who was shakily getting to his feet, then to Evander, cutting desperately through the enemy to reach his children.

“You’re an Akti.”

Kataida slammed into him, throwing him off guard long enough to grab the edge of his mask in one hand. She yanked it off, and he dropped a sword to cover his face—scarred as the rest of him, with curly black hair and dark, lined eyes. His mask rolled in the sand as he backed away, and Ares could see the hand over his face was trembling.

“He told you,” Kataida said. “I’m your death.”

Ares tasted blood as Kataida slashed through skin, but too shallowly. The Beast backed up again, quickly for someone who’d moved so deliberately and heavily through the army just a moment before. Ares could taste fear on their blade, sharp and sudden—the Beast’s fear. Something flickered in the black pit of his spirit, and he fell back just out of Kataida’s reach.

Then, to Ares' shock, he raised his hand in the signal to retreat.

A ripple ran through the enemy soldiers as the Beast turned from Kataida. Kataida almost followed him into the thick of them, but she stopped to find Theron, dragging him to his feet. The separatists wavered and broke, almost half of them turning to follow the Beast, while the others, too far away to hear the orders, either dropped to their knees or fought desperately to cut their way out through the Arkoudai’s western flank.

Kataida squeezed Theron’s shoulder. “It isn’t over, soldier,” she shouted, dominance heavy in her voice. Theron blinked quickly, tears running through the dirt on his cheeks, and nodded. Kataida bent to pick up the Beast’s mask and thrust it into the air, her voice echoing with Ares’ power. “The Beast has been beaten! The Needle belongs to the Arkoudai!”

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