“I appreciate your confidence,” Laurel said evenly, wondering whether Tamani was trying too hard to protect her. “But if anyone can wake Jamison, it’s Yeardley. And even if he can’t, someone has to warn them!”
“All my men are back there!” Tamani snapped, pointing into the green mist that filled the walled Garden. “And the sentries here are refusing to fall back. There’s no one to send. Unless . . .” His voice trailed off and he looked at Chelsea. “You’re fast,” he said.
“No,” Laurel said softly.
“Chelsea,” Tamani said, facing her fully. “I need you to run.”
Chelsea nodded. “I’m good at that.”
“Up this path, the huge grey structure on your right – covered with flowering vines, you can’t miss it – go in the front gates, right up to the main doors. If you’re fast – faster than you’ve ever been in your life – you can save them.”
“No,” Laurel said, louder this time.
“Tell them about the immunity, start them building a barricade at all of the entrances. As high and strong as possible. And the windows; bar them somehow. They’re smart – like you – they’ll figure it out.”
“I’m gone,” Chelsea said, rising from a crouch.
“No!” Laurel said, and felt David step closer behind her.
“She can’t go alone,” David said, brandishing the sword.
“She has to,” Tamani retorted. “I need you to help me guard Jamison, and I need Laurel to try to wake him up. The Queen won’t help until it’s too late, so he’s still our best chance at victory. We can’t let him die.”
“I’m doing this,” Chelsea said, setting her jaw as she faced Laurel and David. “If you want to offer anything helpful, do it now. I’m leaving in ten seconds.”
“Find Yeardley,” Laurel said, hardly believing the words coming out of her mouth. “And Katya. Tell them I sent you; they’ll listen.” She hesitated. “Don’t tell them you’re human,” she added softly, hating that she knew it would help. Hopefully they wouldn’t see it for themselves in the commotion.
Chelsea nodded, then looked up the hill. “Runners set,” she whispered. “Go.”
Laurel’s chin quavered as she watched her best friend looking very alone on the vast hillside. “I don’t know if I can forgive you if she dies,” Laurel said.
Tamani was silent for a long moment. “I know.”
“I’ll take Jamison,” Tamani said. Chelsea really was fast, and that gave him hope – but he couldn’t spare another moment to worry over her. “We’ll circle Spring through the trees. That’ll keep us hidden long enough to get to my mother. Hopefully between her Gardening experience and Laurel’s Mixings, we can do something for him.” With a little help from Laurel, he manoeuvered Jamison across his shoulders. “Laurel, follow me. David, watch our backs.”
As they started toward Spring Tamani wondered – not for the first time – whether they should stick to the main road. But they’d seen how fast the trolls could overrun the Gate Garden; this time, there would be no one to push them back. The remaining sentries might keep them contained a while longer, but Tamani wasn’t optimistic, and once the Garden fell, securing the main road would probably be Klea’s next priority. As long as he was carrying Jamison, he couldn’t really run, so that meant picking their way down the barely visible footpaths where he had played as a sapling.
He tried not to think about the sentries he was leaving to die.
They sacrifice themselves for the greater good, he repeated to himself, again and again, as they trudged through the woods, moving slowly but steadily downhill. For years Shar had pounded that concept into his head – the greater good – but he had never completely understood it until this moment.
Shar.
He couldn’t think about that right now.
It took them less than an hour to reach the glade behind his mother’s house, though each step felt like an eternity; Jamison wasn’t a large faerie, but he seemed to grow heavier as the journey progressed, and Tamani struggled to stave off exhaustion. He was running on entirely too little sleep.
“Stay low,” Tamani whispered, scanning the grassy expanse between them and the house. The streets were empty and the trolls didn’t appear to have made it into this part of Spring quarter, but Tamani knew better than to let that lull him into dropping his guard. On his signal, the three of them launched into the open clearing and fairly flew to the rounded tree Tamani’s mother lived in. When they reached the back wall Tamani twisted at the artfully concealed latch and pushed, but nothing moved. He pushed again, but still nothing. With a growl he raised one foot and kicked as hard as he could and the hidden door swung wildly on its hinges as it gave way.
He stepped forwards and barely managed to stop before the knife at his throat pierced his skin.
“Cradle of the Goddess, Tam!” His mother withdrew her knife and made way for them to enter. As soon as they were through she glanced out at the field and pushed the door shut again. “I thought you were trolls. Young Sora just came through here, said trolls are making their way into Spring. I thought I’d go join the sentries at the barricades.”
“I have a more important job for you now,” Tamani said, striding to his mother’s room and laying Jamison down on her cot.
“Earth and sky, is that . . . Jamison?” his mother exclaimed, already pulling off her arm guards and dropping to her knees by the side of the bed. “What happened to him?”
Tamani explained as quickly as he could. “We have to wake him up. I thought you might assist Laurel with that.”
“Of course,” his mother agreed, stripping off the rest of her armour. “It’s a shame old Tanzer joined the Silent Ones, he’d know just what to do.”
“I hadn’t heard,” Tamani said, his shoulders slumping in disappointment. He’d dared to hope . . . but Laurel would manage. She had to!
Seeing the confusion on Laurel’s face, he explained, “Tanzer was a friend of my mother’s. He . . . used to live near here.”
“Finest Mixer I ever knew,” Tamani’s mother said, pressing her hands to Jamison’s ashen cheeks. “Once upon a time I knew them all. Not many Mixers come to live in Spring, though.”
“You mentioned barricades?” Tamani asked.
His mother nodded. “The main road – near the laundry huts. When the trolls breach that we’ll be fighting in the streets.”
Not if, when. Hopelessness threatened to consume him; the Queen had turned her back on them, Jamison was incapacitated, the Gate Garden had fallen.
At least they still had David.
And David had the sword.
“Do whatever you can for Jamison,” Tamani said, meeting Laurel’s eyes. “Any Mixer trick you can think of – just do it. We have to go to the barricade – do what we can.”
Tamani’s mother frowned at him, then stood and pulled him to the side where Laurel and David couldn’t hear her. “I know who this is,” she said in her mother voice, inclining her head toward David. “Do not go out there and get him killed to serve your own purposes, Tam. A dishonourable victory is no victory at all.”
But Tamani was already shaking his head. “It’s not like that. He has the sword, Mother. The one Shar used to whisper about. It’s real, and I’ve watched him use it.” He glanced up at David. “With Jamison down, he’s our only hope.”
His mother was silent for a moment. “Is it really so dire?”
Tamani squeezed her hand.
“Then go,” she said. “Goddess protect you both.” She started to step away, then reached out for his arm, pulling him close again and pressing one hand to his cheek. “I love you, son. No matter what happens today, you remember that.”
Tamani swallowed hard and nodded. He turned to Laurel and she looked like she wanted to say something, but Tamani wasn’t sure he could stand to hear it. He edged away from her to face David. “You ready?”
They had almost made it to the door before Laurel cried out, “Tam, David!” Tamani closed his eyes and ste
eled himself against her protests, but for a moment she said nothing. And then, to his surprise, she only whispered, “Be safe.”
Grateful for her understanding, Tamani waved and led David out the front of the house, back towards the main road. It wasn’t long before telltale sounds of battle reached their ears. “Blighted trolls are so fast,” Tamani muttered under his breath. His fingers tightened around his spear; it was time to fight again. He had rarely fought – or even trained – with such a fine weapon. It brought down trolls so much easier than the small knives he usually carried. Good weapons meant dead trolls, and with every dead troll he felt like Laurel was that much safer.
And what could matter more?
“I want you to focus on trolls with guns,” Tamani called over his shoulder to David. “If the fight at the gate was any indication, there won’t be many, but most fae here won’t even know what a gun is, much less to fear it.”
“Sure,” David said tightly. Tamani had to admit, for an untrained civilian, David was dealing well with everything that had been thrown at him.
Tamani gave a brief wave of acknowledgment as they passed under a rooftop full of archers shooting arrows over a sturdily constructed barricade. Sharpened stakes – repurposed fence posts, mostly – stretched across the main road where it dipped between two hills, atop which more archers had gathered and were raining arrows and sling stones on any trolls that tried to go round the long way. Most of the fighting was taking place in the slight valley at the mouth of the road, but some trolls had slipped through and were busy smashing as much of the barrier as they could manage.
Tamani raised his spear, but an arrow whistled through the air and struck his intended target square in the chest. Tamani shoved the misshapen beast to the side and kicked into a run, weaving through the barricade, David close behind him.
On all sides now he was surrounded by Ticers – and some of them even knew what they were doing, as retired sentries fought side by side with scythe-wielding Tenders and hammer-swinging Smiths. Still, it seemed to Tamani – as he stabbed a troll before it could kill the young Spring who was slapping at trolls with a long-handled shovel – that there were far too many green saplings in the mix. He almost opened his mouth to tell the kid to go home, but what would he do there? Wait for the trolls to come in and kill him? No, Tamani decided – he wouldn’t discourage bravery. Even stupid bravery.
“David, this way!” Tamani called, directing him into the midst of the trolls. At such close quarters with the fae, he would have trouble swinging Excalibur; better to be completely surrounded by the enemy. “Almost there,” he whispered to himself, stabbing a troll in the neck as it tried to wrap its meaty hands around him. He had lost count of the number of shallow, meaningless wounds he’d received today; none were even remotely life-threatening, but they were taking their toll on his reflexes. As the trolls crowded thicker about him, it became increasingly difficult to kill them as fast as they came at him. David was making up some of the difference, but trolls were pouring down the hillside by the dozens.
They were well beyond the barricade when Tamani heard a low rumbling and looked up to see several fae standing on the rooftops at the edge of the quarter, hands stretching out to the sky, then gracefully moving in as though pulling invisible ropes.
It took Tamani a few moments to realise what was coming. “David!” he warned. “Up the hillside!”
The hill was too steep to climb very high in the brief time they had, so David and Tamani pressed themselves flat into the dirt as the rumble grew to a near-deafening roar. From further up the road, a huge herd of cattle came stampeding into the valley, trampling trolls as they rampaged down the road toward the barricade where their Herders had gathered on the roofs. At the thickest segment of the stampede Tamani had to push himself even flatter against the grassy hill to avoid the panicked cows and their long, deadly horns. Once the danger was past Tamani nearly laughed at David as he half stood, half sat against the steep hillside, his sword held limp in his hands, watching the spectacle.
“What the hell is up with the cows?” David asked, flabbergasted.
Tamani pointed up to the Ticers on the rooftops, swirling their charges into a wide circle now.
David followed his gesture and – though Tamani would have doubted it was possible – his eyes grew even wider. “Enticement on the cows?” he asked in disbelief.
Tamani nodded, but he wasn’t smiling anymore. “Come on,” he told David, “we have to strike while they’re confused.” The trolls were still bigger than most of the cows and they were getting the idea quickly, turning their blades against the herd. The distraction wouldn’t last long.
“Why do you have cows in Avalon?” David yelled as he chopped down a lower troll that was covered in festering sores where it wasn’t covered with coarse black fur.
Tamani dislodged his spear from a troll’s chest with a savage kick. The name tag on its jumper said greg, and Tamani wondered momentarily whether the mostly human-looking troll was Greg, or had just eaten Greg. “Can’t depend on Mixers for all of our fertilizer,” he said blandly.
The trolls were thinning out again, and David seemed to have found a rhythm that was working for him, so Tamani, his spear still clenched in one hand, took a few minutes to carefully pull some of the wounded fae back toward the barricade. They were still breathing, and if they could just avoid getting stabbed where they lay, they might be treatable.
There wasn’t time to take them anywhere truly safe, but at least he could drag them away from the risk of being trampled.
“Tamani!”
It was David. He turned to thrust his sword at a troll that tried to jump on his shoulder.
“They’re not coming down the hill anymore,” David said, breathless.
Tamani tensed. Last time the trolls stopped coming, it was because they were preparing to unleash something worse. He certainly wasn’t ready to trust this cessation.
He hesitated. “Let’s keep fighting here until the Ticers have a better hold on everything – then we need to go back to my mother’s.” Though honestly, Tamani had no idea how long that would take. The Spring fighters were barely hanging on as it was.
David nodded, then jumped as something made of glass shattered by his feet.
“Finally,” Tamani murmured, feeling his chest lighten a little. More tiny vials rained down from the sky, popping against the ground, splashing their sweet-smelling contents across the battlefield.
“Finally what?” David asked.
“The Beeherds have gathered their flocks,” Tamani said, one side of his mouth ticking up in a grin as the telltale noise reached his ears. He pointed to the top of the barricade, where archers had given way to a cadre of Spring faeries, each with a crook in one hand and a sling in the other.
A buzzing cloud of darkness descended into the pass and the trolls began to howl in pain. The black and yellow insects swarmed across the battlefield, blanketing the trolls and stinging them with fervour. Their tiny bodies were dropping to the ground almost as fast as they flew in, and Tamani felt a twinge of sadness at the years it would take to rebuild their hives – but true to their nature, the bees were defending their home, just like the Spring faeries. Those trolls that refused to be brought down by the venom were blinded, both by pain and by the clouds of insects surrounding them, and became easy targets for the faeries.
A cry of alarm from David made Tamani turn, his weapon raised.
The bees were swarming over David, too. Thanks to Excalibur he remained untouchable – and unstingable – but the insects had clearly unnerved him, and he was thrashing about, swinging his sword like a fly swatter, trying to drive them off.
“David. David!” Tamani called, but if David heard, he gave no sign. “David!” Tamani yelled, finally catching his ear. “It’s OK; I don’t think they can sting you.”
“No,” David responded, calming at last. “But I can feel them. And it . . .” David paused, then spat, “It is creeping me out.”
&
nbsp; That almost made Tamani smile. “I think the Ticers can take it from here,” Tamani said, wishing he felt more certain. “We should go.”
David muttered something that sounded like agreement and followed Tamani back through the barricades.
“Run,” Tamani said, kicking into a jog. “In a while they’ll be drawn back to the potions on the road and should leave you alone.”
They jogged together down deserted side streets Tamani hadn’t travelled since he was a sprout. The bees retreated slowly at first, but after a few minutes David was left with just a few stubborn stragglers.
“I thought magic didn’t work on the trolls,” David panted.
“Bees aren’t magic,” Tamani said, pausing for a moment to get his bearings.
“But that stuff they threw into the square – the glass things – those were potions, right?”
Tamani grinned now. “Yes. But potions for the bees, not the trolls. It stimulates them to attack animals. Unfortunately, that includes you.”
David nodded, leaning over with his hands on his knees. “Brilliant,” he said, taking one more deep breath before following Tamani, already a few strides ahead of him.
“Hecate’s eye,” Tamani gasped, throwing himself against a wall as they reached the corner across from his mother’s house only to find a dozen trolls standing over the bodies of a handful of sentries. “They must have come in a different way,” he said, peeking out quickly. They were making their way towards him – perhaps they had heard? Or—
“They smell us,” Tamani said, shaking his head and looking down at his bloodstained clothes, cursing his carelessness. “They probably followed the smell of blood all the way here.”
As the first troll came into view – an enormous lower troll that looked like a hairless grizzly bear with a nose instead of a snout – it sniffed the air.
“Here we go,” Tamani said, stepping around the corner to greet the attack. The big one loped toward them, closing the distance so fast that Tamani barely had time to raise his spear.