Page 96 of Blood of Wolves

Revna stared at the place where he’d been, the place where a huge, hulking, armored Northmen stood now, holding a massive, two-handed battle axe wet with blood.

Bjorn.

His chest heaved as he fought for breath, but he was whole, and the blood droplets on his face were not his own, she knew.

“Bastards came in the tunnels,” he said. “We routed them from behind.” His brows drew together. “All right, love?”

It was an effort, but she managed to keep her feet, and to keep the sudden burn of tears in check. She jerked a nod. “I am now.”

19

Percy echoed his distress back to him, a sympathetic loop of worry, as they lifted high over the ramparts of the palace, and Oliver saw the devastation that had been wrought. Up high, two towers had been reduced to rubble. He recognized the royal apartments with a lurch. He saw crumpled bodies in the blue and crimson of the royal guards; flashes of silver where mail-clad soldiers had fallen. Troops were gathering farther back on the ramparts, but from this angle, their activity looked shaky, uncertain; panicked.

A massive boulder from a trebuchet had breached the outer wall, and the enemy had rushed forward; Sels in gold armor were trying to push a bridge across to access the inner wall. Archers fired upon them, but where one man fell, another rushed to take his place. The Aeretolleans would run out of arrows before the Sels ran out of bodies.

Percy halted in mid-air, hovering, the beats of his wings stirring the air against Oliver’s face. Even from this height, he could smell smoke, and the earthy, broken-stone staleness of destruction; the scent of a century-old castle broken open like a child’s party favor. He thought he smelled blood, but knew that was only Percy’s senses overlapping his own.

Kat and Valgrind drew up alongside him; Kat was fussing, hissing, making these low, frantic cooing sounds while Náli tugged fruitlessly at her reins. “What the bloody hell is wrong with this animal, Oliver?!”

Oliver swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Look.”

Easy, he thought to Kat.Easy, now, I know.

She settled, some, hovering beside her mate.

“Gods,” Náli breathed. “The palace…they’ll turn it to gravel.”

Movement out on the field caught Oliver’s gaze: the trebuchets being wound back again, slowly, readying for another strike.

It was a moment of chaos and crisis. A moment when the tide could turn in either direction – but, given the current state of the whole affair, a moment that favored one side heavily.

Oliver searched his memory for the emotion that welled up inside him; tried to define the ugly, hot, biting urge toact. Todo– tohurt. He’d been too sick and hurt to feel this way at the Fang camp; nothing in his life in Drakewell had ever prompted such….such…

Rage. That was the word. Acknowledging it, naming it, sent a molten flush of it through every part of him.

Percy growled, echoing the sentiments he pushed unconsciously through their bond. The other two drakes echoed the sound.

“Náli,” Oliver said through gritted teeth, jaw so tight it ached. “Remember the ice breath trick Percy did with the Fangs?”

“All too well, I’m afraid.”

“We’re going to do it again. All of us.” The slightest mental inquiry had Percy assuring him it could be accomplished midflight. Kat and Valgrind purred eagerly in the back of his mind, Kat with determined focus and hate, Valgrind with a child’s thrill. He felt Percy’s ribs expand against his calves, already drawing in the huge breath it would take.

“I don’t know how to make her do that,” Náli said, more than a little desperate. “Bloody thing’s gone insane.”

“She knows what to do. Aim for the men who’ve breached the outer wall. I’m going for the trebuchets.”

Kill, Oliver thought viciously.Kill them all.

Percy roared, and then dove.

~*~

Overhead, three distinct voices roared. The drakes attacking.

Leif growled an echo, satisfaction of a new, hot, wild sort boiling up in his gut. He tightened his hand again, nails pricked to claws at the tip, digging into soft skin, leaving red marks.

Under him, Ragnar whined, and submitted. “Yield,” he gritted out, “I yield.”

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