He did not
answer me. The evening turned to night. We met at the crossing the largest
group of valkyries we ever had, three of four thousand strong. A hundred
mastodons did not return. Another fifty were dispersed before my eyes on the
one hundred and twenty first breath. They vanished in the Light.
The fifty-ninth
tower fell. The charges of valkyries grew larger still, five or six thousand
strong. These only harrowed the very front lines at the crossing, where the
Swarm still sat heavily as mist. Then they turned away. But I thought I saw, on
two successive charges, the same one-armed Auger in the lead, wielding his
heatwhip with ferocity. Were these, at last, the final valkyries remaining?
At
midnight, the sixty-first tower fell. There was silence across the valley for about
half a watch. Jerem Cozak moved the last of the artillery into positions
throughout the encampment, where they could take aim at the towers along the
western wall. Not more than one hundred disks remained. At the same time,
infantry darted back our way between pulses of Light, because room was needed
at the crossing. They fell in line by thousands between our groups of
mastodons. Jerem Cozak led our herd as far west as possible, to a place where I
could see the artillery through the low-settling mist of the White Swarm. No
more valkyries charged the crossing.
“Why the
change?” I asked him. “It’s not our turn to go.”
“We’re the
vanguard of the column,” he replied. In my mind the battlefield flipped, and I
saw it. He was lining us up to take the city when the last towers fell.
“Why are
you breaking up the herds?” I asked, feeling the slow cutting sting of anxiety
through my beast. “Wouldn’t it be better to charge through as one?”
He turned
to look at me. “Do you still not understand? They must be able to march past
us.”
“But why –”
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