The vampires, though, seemed undeterred. Darkness was their friend, after all. They were faster than humans, more sure-footed. And Atrius was right: his warriors were very good.
But no one was better than him.
“Stay close to me,” he rasped when the first wave of Aaves’s warriors descended upon us, and I obeyed.
Aaves’s men were known for their brutality. They were drug-addled and sickened, but also frenzied and desperate, and those could be dangerous qualities. They came at us with axes, swords, machetes—weapons stolen from those they had raided, or cobbled together, as if they’d made a game of death. This was their home—they knew it well. Some of the vampires had to pause to make sense of the layout, unsure of how to fight such an unpredictable enemy. Even I, with the insight the threads gave me, still found myself surprised by the rare unexpected attack.
Not Atrius.
Atrius fought like it was what he was created to do.
What I had seen in our little sparring session was nothing. That was play. He did not hesitate. Did not stumble. Did not pause. Every strike of his sword found its mark, quickly, efficiently. He’d open wounds with quick sweeps and then use their blood as if it was another limb, pulling enemies to his blade or tossing them away.
He led the group as the tunnels grew narrower, taking the brunt of the waves of crazed Alkan warriors hurtling down at us. But it didn’t matter if four men came after him at once, or six, or ten. He dismantled them, and all while his presence remained as smooth and untouched as a wall of ice.
I had never seen anything like it. There was no twitch, no hint of anticipation, not even when Aaves’s men came flying at him from around corners. Every other fighter naturally revealed glimpses of their anticipation, and good ones were thinking several steps ahead of their opponent.
Not Atrius. It was as if he didn’t anticipate anything at all—didn’t even try. He simply responded. To do that while sparring with me was one thing. It was another to do it here, in battle.
It was incredible.
We fought through the tunnels, deeper and deeper. The walls grew tighter. We continued to split off into smaller and smaller groups as the paths deviated, rocks slipping beneath our feet. It was dark—an advantage for us, since vampires could see without light and I didn’t need to see at all. My sword was bloody, the hilt slick with gore. I’d long ago lost track of how many I’d killed. Surely Atrius alone had taken down dozens.
Eventually, we reached an area of strange silence. We pushed forward, tensed, waiting for more attackers.
When several minutes of stillness passed, Atrius glanced back at me, asking a silent question. I’d already found the answer, reaching out with my magic to sense movement in the threads far above us. Too distant for me to make out individual presences, but something was there.
“There are people ahead,” I said. “Lots of them.”
Atrius nodded and readied himself. The sensation grew closer as the path dipped sharply, bringing us to the apex of three tunnels… and a morass of people. A wall of them—far more than the warriors Aaves had been throwing at us so far.
Many more than our dwindling group.
Behind me, Erekkus muttered what I could only imagine was an Obitraen curse.
“We fight through them,” Atrius commanded, his sword raised in anticipation. “No hesitation.”
But my steps slowed—because something here wasn’t right.
The presences were now close enough to sense. And it was difficult to feel the emotions of such a large group, but these… they overwhelmingly reeked of fear. And these people were coming for us, yes, but it was a lurching, stumbling walk, like they were being packed into these hallways and forced down—
Just fear. Just—
I grabbed Atrius’s arm just as the crowd of people was almost upon us.
“They aren’t warriors,” I choked out. “They’re innocent. They’re civilians.”
Typical of these warlords. To use their starving, homeless populace as shields when he was starting to run out of warriors. Use them to flush us out.
Realization fell over Atrius’s face in the same moment that the wall of bodies surrounded us.
He spat a curse. For a moment, I was absolutely certain I was about to ruin my cover—because Atrius, I was sure, was about to cut through all these innocent people, and I’d have to stop him.
But to my shock, Atrius lowered his sword just as the mass closed around us, shielding its sharp edge from the flesh jammed into every crevice of the hall.
He turned back and screamed a command in Obitraen. Then he lifted his sword above his head, high enough to avoid the bodies, reached back to grab my wrist, and pulled me forward, as if to keep me from getting swept away by the sea of people.