Ted Dekker - Mortal

Only one of every three arrows struck a target, but the second volley was already arching down, angled once again for the cavalry alone.

Brack shoved his finger in the direction of the archers. They had to be hiding in low ground. “Defend your Maker!”

The second volley sliced into the rearing horses. At a glance Saric saw that a full third of his cavalry had been compromised. A third volley darkened the sky. This could not be the doing of a mere few hundred archers! The threat wasn’t coming from the north, which was the direction Roland had gone, but from the west.

Rage flooded Saric’s veins. “Send them all! Send them all west!”

Brack swatted away one arrow that snipped by, then grunted as a second buried itself in his shoulder. He broke it off with a thick fist, stared at it for a brief moment, then hurled it at the ground.

“Cavalry, follow!” He spurred his horse and charged west, straight down the throat of the threat, ignoring the rain of shafts plunging into the ground around him until it seemed the earth itself had sprouted quills. As one, Saric’s Legion shifted and surged forward.

Only then did Saric see the line of a hundred horses thundering forward from the north where Roland had vanished. Bent low in saddles at breakneck speed, the riders suddenly rose in their stirrups, drew bowstrings, and fired a much closer volley directly into his battered cavalry.

They arrows came in like hornets, zeroing in on the larger targets of the horses’ bodies. And then more from the east where a line had risen from the cliffs, now to their rear. Half of his cavalry were down; the rest were in full swing west, leaving only infantry to bear down on the cliffs.

Saric swung his shield up just in time for the latest volley, arrows slamming into steel, then falling away, broken.

He gathered his resolve and willed himself to calm. A hornet could not defeat a hammer.

“Varus! The remaining divisions forward in full attack! Advance without retreat!”

The order was cried and the infantry surged forward, flowing around Saric like a thick, black wave. With a roar his Dark Bloods ran, leaning forward, shields lifted, feet shaking the earth, eight thousand strong.

The archers along the cliff sprung into view, loosed one last volley into the face of his advancing army, then sprinted in retreat. A line of two hundred men veered to their right in pursuit, a thundering horde. Too fast for the Mortals in flight despite their lighter weight.

Those at the back of the retreat were forced to engage. The Mortals parried and stuck, moving with the same agility he’d seen Roland demonstrate a week earlier. Deadly and deadly accurate, as though they saw every thrust coming. His children began to fall, only to be replaced by more, an unending tide of black.

Ten Mortals fell, then thirty. The line from the north was in full retreat.

Smoke boiled into the sky along the western flank. The ground was ablaze, set fire by the archers to cover their westward retreat. Fire lapped at the air, cutting off his cavalry. A full two-thirds of his thousand horses had been cut down by their deadly swarms of arrows, and those who remained were cut off from pursuit by the flames roaring from what could only be trenches filled with fuel.

The enemy had jabbed before going into full retreat.

The Nomadic Prince had proven himself a respectable tactician in his first blow, but Saric now knew the truth of their numbers. They’d shown less than two hundred. Even with the archers to the west, their numbers surely could not be more than two thousand. If they had more they would have used them in this first assault.

Now Saric would bring to bear his hammer. There would be none to flee. The division he’d sent west on a flanking maneuver would descend on the plateau soon enough, and his numbers would prove overwhelming at close range. Today, as over previous generations, attrition would be the Nomads’ downfall.

Feyn may well have cut her tether and led him into a trap, but by day’s end he would stand over her body… as Sovereign.

And then he would hunt the boy down and drain him of his precious blood.

SOME TIME AGO, Jonathan and Feyn had retreated to the ridge at the clearing’s perimeter to speak the business of Sovereigns. Jordin hung back, replaiting her horse’s mane, if only to keep her fingers busy while keeping her promise to never let Jonathan out of sight.

She saw the way they stood together looking out over the eastern hills, speaking in tones that didn’t carry back to her even with her Mortal ears. They were making arrangements, no doubt. The first of many discussions she would not be privy to.

She watched the way he looked out over the hills as though with new eyes-a Sovereign’s gaze, surveying all that he would rule. Feyn nodded intermittently, seeming to do the same, though Jordin saw the way she glanced sidelong at him while he was talking.

Jonathan might see more in her eyes, but to Jordin Feyn appeared cold and distant. Calculating. Perhaps it was that way with Sovereigns.

Was this to be her life, then? Standing by as he stood by Feyn’s side? It wouldn’t matter-Jonathan loved her as a woman. Nothing else mattered.

He would have her loyalty forever. And for his compassionate heart and eccentric ways, he would have her heart as well. He was all that Jordin had ever known to be beautiful and right…

The only truly beautiful thing in this world.

And so she would stand by and protect him regardless of the cost to herself, filled with the awe of having heard those words. I love you. The revelation that he could not marry her changed nothing.

She glanced up and saw that he was walking back, leaving Feyn seemingly to her own thoughts on the ridge. She straightened, aware of the butterflies in her belly. She was ready for the days ahead, whatever challenges they brought. For the move to the Citadel-shored up already against the pervasive smell of Corpse in the city.

Jordin gave him a small smile as he approached the horses, but his mind was either lost on his discussion with Feyn, or distracted by whatever task lay ahead of him.

He flipped open one of the saddlebags on his horse. “Never underestimate the cost of sovereignty, Jordin,” he said quietly.

He said it as one who had taken a great weight on his shoulders. The look she saw so often on Rom’s face. Roland’s. And they were coleaders of only twelve hundred. What would become of Jonathan the day the world descended upon his shoulders?

“Jonathan…” She came round her horse and saw that he’d withdrawn a length of old bridle leather. “However I can serve you, I will. I will be there. I will never leave you.”

When he looked up, sorrow was pulling at his face.

“You said that you would follow me always,” he said.

“Yes. Always. What’s wrong?”

“Even if where I go is difficult to understand?”

“Yes!”

He studied her for a moment, then turned the leather length in his hand. “Then bind yourself to your word. Join with me.”

Her heart stuttered. It was the way the Nomads bound themselves to one another on the day they made pledges and took their mates.

“Bind myself to you? Now?”

“Put your hands out,” he said gently.

She lifted her hands in front of her, wrists together. Jonathan wasn’t given to convention-he was the son of the unexpected. It was one of the things she loved about him, trusting that he had a purpose even in his most erratic actions.

She watched as crossed the tether and looped one end twice more, and then the other, twice more. But he was binding her arms together, not him to her. With a soft, confused laugh she looked up at him.

But this time, his face was twisted with emotion, lips pressed together in an effort to control them. She’d seen Jonathan cry many times, unbeknownst to so many, and knew the expression well.