Journey Into Nyx (11 page)

“Keranos!” Cymede screamed. “Help us! Help me save Akros, and I’ll give myself to you. I am yours to claim.”

Anax’s blade sliced through the flesh on the Rageblood’s arm. It was a superficial wound but still drew first blood. The minotaur slashed his stolen blade through the air wildly, but Anax dodged. Anax baited his enemy first left, then right. He was quicker than his opponent, but the Rageblood seemed to be getting angrier rather than tired from the sword play.

The minotaur brought his sword directly down, as if to split Anax’s head in half. Again the king sidestepped, and Rhordon’s blade hit the ground and lodged in the dirt. The minotaur left it there and went after the king with his meaty hands. Anax kept his strategy, but he aimed for the bull man’s extremities. A master of sword play, the king struck at the muscular legs, dodged, and then circled around and struck low again.

Anax’s blade hit flesh repeatedly, and the blood gushed from the gashes. It ran in rivulets down Rhordon’s legs and onto the ground, and Elspeth could tell that Anax was beginning to feel invincible. He was trying to hit the perfect spot, maybe at the back of the ankle or below the knee, and sever the tendon. This might incapacitate the minotaur, but Elspeth didn’t think it would ensure victory. Even dragging a leg, the Rageblood could still crush Anax’s skull between his fingers.

Elspeth’s eyes constantly shifted from the combat ground to the minotaur’s fortification to Anthousa and her allies waiting on the flatlands. She could see the left flank of soldiers was—as planned—slowly moving closer to them, like the top half of a crab’s pincer. Anthousa herself led the slow-motion charge. There were minotaurs watching from their wall, but they faced away from Anthousa’s soldiers and were focused on the combat. So far, not one of them had noticed the humans’ gradual approach.

The Rageblood was getting frustrated with the quick-footed antics of the king of Akros. He barreled at him mindlessly and ran into the trap that Anax had planned. With a deft motion, Anax cut deep into the flesh of the minotaur’s leg and severed the tendon below the knee. The Rageblood roared in pain and fell to one knee. The minotaurs watching from the walls clamored in anger and shouted a warning to the hordes waiting below. The gate of their fortification rattled. Elspeth feared that if they knew their leader was losing, they would leave their fortification and attack the humans outside their walls. Then Cymede and Daxos’s work would be for nothing.

Desperately, she looked toward Deyda River, hoping for a miracle. But there was no sign of her friends or the torrent of water they hoped to raise from the gorge. With a sick feeling, Elspeth raised a hand in signal to Anthousa. But abruptly, the sky over Akros darkened from blue to deep purple. It was so dramatic that everyone could feel a change in the air as the temperature plummeted. Black clouds descended toward the Deyda River. Pockets of light shone through the thick layers of roiling clouds. The shifting sky revealed the face of Keranos.

Except for the pillar of light shining down on Anax and the Rageblood, Keranos’s storm clouds had transformed the day into night. Mogis materialized in Nyx, but he was visible only to oracles with god-sight. Sensing the presence of Keranos, Mogis gave a boon to the Rageblood. The God of Slaughter healed his oracle’s severed leg and infused him with violence beyond what a mortal alone could conjure. Anax, who had raised his sword to finish the Rageblood, didn’t have time to swing his weapon before the healed minotaur lunged forward and clamped his hands around the king’s throat. Elspeth, who could not see Mogis directly, sensed his interference.

“Treachery!” she yelled and rushed onto the combat
ground. But she was too late. The Rageblood lifted the king into the air with one hand. With his other hand, he drove his blade into the king’s stomach. It pierced Anax’s body completely, and the sword tip emerged through his back. The minotaur dropped the king, who tumbled to the ground in a heap. Infused with Mogis’s boon, the minotaur swung his blade down at the motionless king. The power of the blow would cleave the man in two.

But Elspeth managed to lunge forward and redirect the killing strike with the point of her spear-blade. Her unexpected presence caught the Rageblood by surprise and he stumbled away from her. She positioned herself between the minotaur and the injured king. The minotaur paused for an instant while he evaluated his diminutive female opponent. His red eyes assessed her blade, and then he charged her before she could cast any battle spells. With his bulk barreling at her, she immediately understood the merit of Anax’s strategy. Outweighed by several hundred pounds, Elspeth would be barreled over if she tried to meet any frontal attack. Like her king, she sidestepped around the attack at the last second. But her target wasn’t the extremities—it was his eyes. She spun to the left and jabbed her spear-blade while still in motion. The tip punctured the Rageblood’s right eye and mutilated the flesh. The minotaur howled in surprise.

Elspeth spun left again and positioned herself directly behind her opponent. She aimed her spear-blade for the flesh just below his rib cage. With terrifying speed, the minotaur whirled around and swung his blade level at her neck to decapitate her. Her spear-blade was traveling in the wrong direction to parry. The best she could do was bring the spear-blade perpendicular to the ground and pray to Heliod for the strength to block the Rageblood’s powerful strike.

The edge of his bloody sword slammed against the glowing orbs of her spear-blade. When the two weapons clashed,
white energy spiraled from Elspeth’s weapon. The shock wave from the impact threw both the opponents backward beyond the boundaries of the
temenos
. At the sight of the fallen Rageblood, the minotaurs flung open the gate of their fortification and surged out onto the flatland. In response, the Meletian general shouted for his own army to charge ahead and meet their enemies in battle. In Nyx, Mogis felt the first volleys of war, and he roared with pleasure.

“Anthousa!” Elspeth screamed.

The Setessans were already at the gate. In one coordinated motion, they rushed forward and closed the gate, crushing several minotaurs between the boards. The king’s guards joined them as they struggled to hold the gate closed. The planks shook with the fury of the trapped minotaurs. A searing bolt of lightning streaked across the sky and blasted into the gorge.

Mogis launched his divine sarissa into the heart of the storm, but Keranos was like a mist and could not be damaged. Mogis’s weapon merely passed through him. The God of Storms funneled his power into the gorge. There was a wailing, explosive sound, and the river rose up into the sky. But Keranos wasn’t content to just raise the river. Under his power, it transformed into an elemental creature, slender like a serpent but with the head of a dragon. Its core was Nyxborn but its essence was the raging child of Keranos and Cymede. The elemental creature whipped through the heart of the minotaurs’ fortification. It scalded the skin from their bones even as it flung them into the watery abyss. Cymede stood at the top of the gorge and watched as the corpses were consumed by the flames and searing mists below.

Seeing the destruction of his kin with his one eye, the Rageblood gaped as the river elemental made a second strike against the minotaurs. It swept the flatland clear of any trace of the fortification. As it passed, the Rageblood flung himself into the steaming deluge and was swept away.
Elspeth knew that such a creature would rather die than be defeated and captured by humans.

When the storm had passed, Akros’s walls were pristine and sparkling. The sky above the city was so clear that not even the oracles could see what had become of Mogis in Nyx.

As the final crest of water fell back into the gorge, Cymede came to rest on the opposite side. She fell to her knees as the river elemental vanished into the bubbling water. Daxos shouted joyfully, but Cymede stayed motionless with a defeated posture. Above Cymede, the storm clouds were blowing away. With his god-sight, Daxos glimpsed the face of Keranos in the clouds. His eyes were fixed on the queen. He had longed for her, and now she had offered herself to him. He was ready to claim the oracle that he had so long desired. Daxos saw the look of sorrowful recognition on the queen’s face.

Helpless, Daxos watched as Cymede transformed into a pillar of fire and crimson light that trailed upward to Nyx, then dispersed into nothing but the wind.

T
he red sunset bled across the horizon as the victory celebration began. In front of the gates of Akros, the minotaurs’ fortifications had been washed away, and in their place there was a sea of colorful tents that housed the soldiers from Meletis and Setessa. The venerable walls of the city were draped with Akroan banners that rippled majestically in the wind. An enormous bonfire burned just outside of King’s Gate. Near the fire there was a makeshift platform where musicians were tuning their instruments. The king’s personal chefs from the fortress were hard at work on a feast for the revelers. Even though he was gravely wounded, Anax expected the celebration to continue without him.

Weary from her battle with the Rageblood, Elspeth didn’t want to join the revelers. She was with Nikka and Anthousa inside their blue canvas tent near the edge of the encampment. It was a sturdy two-room arrangement with wooden doors and oak furniture that had been brought from inside the Kolophon. To Elspeth it felt as if she were staying in a well-furnished house, not a makeshift dwelling.

“The battle is over,” Nikka snapped. “You can set your weapon down.”

Nikka pried Elspeth’s blade from her stiff fingers and set it aside on a wooden table. Elspeth winced as Anthousa helped her unstrap her armor and lift it over her head.

“Your injuries are not so bad,” Anthousa said as she inspected the bruises and cuts on Elspeth’s back.

Nikka looked for herself. “Yeah, if you don’t mind bones poking through your shoulder.”

Elspeth craned her neck around as if she could see her own back. She winced in pain.

“Sit still,” Anthousa said, giving Nikka an annoyed look. “The Rageblood never took your back. Where are these from?”

“One of the minotaurs who escaped the fortification,” Elspeth said. “I was watching Keranos and not my back.”

Anthousa made a disapproving sound. “I can fix it,” she said.

Elspeth was accustomed to healing magic that was quiet and passive. Anthousa’s spell made her feel as though she was being shaken, the muscles stretched and tied in knots, and the bones jammed back together. And at the end, it felt as though Anthousa punched her to close the wound.

“All better,” Anthousa said.

“Uh, thank you,” Elspeth said. She still ached, but she could handle that level of pain. She reached for her armor plate, and Nikka smacked her hand.

“Good gods, woman, leave the metal for once,” she said. She tossed Elspeth a bundle of soft material. Inside was an Akroan-style dress with a long white skirt and crimson along the edges.

Elspeth stepped behind the changing screen. The canvas door of the tent opened, and she peered around the edge. Daxos balanced two platters of food, which he carried into the back room where there were couches arranged in a circle around a blazing brazier. Elspeth hurriedly finished dressing. The clothes seemed ridiculously tight to Elspeth and she had nothing to tie her hair back. But she was starving and wasn’t about to put back on her filthy clothes from the battle.