Ted Dekker - Mortal

“Jonathan?”

A tear coursed down his cheek as he finished with the leather, tying it in a hard knot.

“What are you doing?”

Tears wet on his face, he took her neck in his hands, leaned in, and kissed her.

“I love you, Jordin,” he whispered. And then his arms went around her and he lifted her off her feet.

Was it possible that he had changed his mind? Was this what he and Feyn had spoken about? Was it possible he had gone back to Feyn to discuss terms, to say that he loved her and could not marry another?

“Jonathan?”

He carried her to one of the closest trees, a bent and gnarled olive. Eased her down by the trunk, which hadn’t grown but a couple feet around. Pressing her arms up over her head and against the tree, he produced another length of cord and began to bind them to the trunk itself.

Her first impulse was to jerk away, but she could not defy Jonathan. He had his purpose and she would simply trust him. Hadn’t she just sworn to follow him regardless of where it took her? Then this was a test…

From the corner of her vision she saw Feyn returning from the ridge, eyes on them. A bell of alarm attempted to shatter her resolve. What was happening?

“Jonathan… Please.”

He seemed not to hear her. She began to twist, to try to pull her hands free, but they were bound too tightly by the first rope.

“Stop, Jonathan. Please!”

But he was fixated, working quickly with the rope until her bound hands were coiled to the tree trunk above her.

He stepped back, eyes pleading with her to understand. “I love you, Jordin. You will soon understand, I promise you. Follow me always.”

Feyn stopped beside him. “It’s time,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. Then Jordin knew…

They were leaving her!

Panicked, she jerked against the rope, but it was bound too tightly.

“Jonathan!”

He took one last look at her, eyes filled with longing and sorrow, and then turned.

“Jonathan!” she screamed, feeling the veins in her temple throb with the effort. She watched helplessly as Feyn untied the black stallion and swung into the saddle. As Jonathan returned to his horse and did the same.

They left her bound to the tree, with only Jonathan’s own tears as consolation.

MICHAEL, knife!”

Roland approached Michael at a full gallop, sweeping by her left side as she snatched a knife from her belt and flipped it over her back-all without turning from the two Dark Bloods bearing down on her with slashing blades. Their Mortal senses might prove challenged in such a crowded battlefield, but their acute hearing could easily identify directions and distances on all sides.

A Dark Blood on horse-one of the few left-angled in at a dead gallop, eyes on Michael. Her knife flew lazily through the air within easy grasp as Roland thundered past. He snatched it by the hilt and hurled it at the approaching horseman in a single, unbroken movement.

His aim flew true. The knife slammed into the mounted Dark Blood’s neck with enough force to slice clean through to the spine. The rider went limp; his horse galloped by, aimless as the Dark Blood slowly toppled to one side and fell heavily to the earth.

All but a handful of Saric’s cavalry were now dead.

Michael took advantage of the momentary distraction, plunged her sword up under one of the Dark Blood’s chins, then spun in a crouch with a wide slash that cut deep into the other’s hip. Another thrust put the warrior out of his misery.

Roland swept around and slowed so that Michael could swing up behind him.

“Thank you,” she panted.

“Don’t thank me yet.”

It was all he needed to say; the battle was far from over.

The events of the last hour and a half ran through Roland’s mind.

His archers had delivered five thousand arrows before setting their trench on fire and retreating behind a wall of flames and smoke. They’d cut the Dark Blood cavalry by two-thirds in that opening strike.

Saric had quickly mounted a counterattack using the brute strength of his full army, killing nearly a hundred Mortals in his first unrelenting sweep across the plateau, leaving only three hundred Nomads to defend the high ground while the reserve force of three hundred waited south for the signal that would begin the third phase of engagement.

For the next half hour they’d battled on horse against an infantry that was fast and strong but no match for Nomads on horseback. Saric had stood his ground on the southern end of the plateau, surrounded by a thousand warriors.

And then the Mortals began to fall. One by one, and only after taking down more than their share of Dark Bloods each, the vast imbalance of numbers began to take its inevitable toll. By the end of the first hour, the ground was littered with dead, making movement difficult.

Nearly 150 of his warriors had fallen before the scouts reported Saric’s flanking maneuver from the west-at least a full division and another three hundred cavalry. They’d stockpiled two hundred bows and three thousand arrows in anticipation for a second wave of cavalry, and this time every able-bodied fighter had taken up with the archers and laid down a fusillade of screaming projectiles that had felled half of the rushing cavalry before they could scatter.

Roland had made his case clear: they would descend to the valley for the third phase only when the Dark Blood army had been cut by a full third or when the Mortals had suffered losses exceeding two hundred.

Over the last half hour Roland had lost another fifty fighters.

Two hundred dead. The thought shortened his breath.

To make matters worse, dark clouds had gathered at an alarming rate, covering the sky with a thick layer of gray like a lid. The wind was starting to pick up and would compromise the work of his archers. A storm would not bode well for them.

He pulled his mount up on the rise and wheeled around to where Michael’s horse waited. She dropped to the ground and swung up into her own saddle. Rom rode in hard from the west, tussled hair whipped by the wind.

“Too many!” he shouted, reining his mount back sharply. “We have to go now !”

Roland’s attention was to the south, where Saric’s guard defended against a dozen Nomads firing into the Dark Blood lines from horses on the run. Every minute twenty or thirty of Saric’s warriors fell. He had lost four thousand men, leaving him with roughly eight thousand, but the toll on the Mortals was mounting. Only a hundred and fifty remained to fight on the plateau, waiting for the three hundred in reserve to be called into the third phase of the battle.

Impossible odds.

“I heard from the runner,” Rom said, breathing heavily. “They wait for your signal. The Dark Bloods are cut by half, maybe more. We have to go now.”

Roland nodded. “Pass the word. We transition to the valley. Follow hard on my heels.”

Rom spun, whistled and then took off, leaning over his mount, cutting the air with another whistle, which was picked up by another, and then another. The sound would be picked up even from this distance by Mortal ear, but Roland wanted to be sure even those in the din of battle would not mistake the call as planned.

He watched as fighters broke off their attack and swept north from across the plateau.

“Send the signal for the reserves.”

Michael pulled out a thin metal whistle that issued a high-pitched tone typically heard only by dogs and other animals with broader auditory ranges. Mortals could easily pick out the distinguished note from a significant distance. A runner half a mile south would pick up the sound and send another. Within seconds the signal would reach the reserves waiting to the south, and they would move toward the Seyala Valley at full speed.