Mandollel points up. It’s not as dark as it was earlier. Colors bathe him and the ground from above. Green, blue, red. I crane my neck to look above.

  The sky is burning with color. Streams of green flow and undulate, interspersed with motes of white, streaks of deep red flash across the light with purple wisps running through its length. My breath catches in my throat. I had heard of auroras, but this is beyond any of Gran’s stories. The colors don’t flow slowly. They snap and crackle above us, impossibly low. If I climbed a tree, I might be able to touch them, or that’s what it feels like.

  My mouth is hanging open when I see something new. A distortion in the flowing light. The light forms tangles or knots, twisting and pulling out toward the east.

  Tendrils of light reach out and touch a shape, a person, flying in. They move with incredible speed. A speck somewhere on the horizon one moment, now here. They stop sharply, the cloth of their robes cracking and slapping as they do. The light of the aurora shoots outward from them, like ripples spreading around a rock thrown into water.

  “Mage,” Mandollel hisses.

  Finna has disappeared from my side. Maybe she’s behind the rock or under one of the small bushes.

  The mage hangs in the air, angling down, turning in place in the air, scanning the area below him or her.

  The time for having second thoughts has passed. Velonea burns behind us, auroras dance above us. Two leaps take me to my bow and quiver, set to lie against a tree. I pull out an arrow and nock it. I plant my feet, left forward, right back. Shooting up is always difficult. The quiver falls down on the ground.

  I shoot. The string twangs, the arrow whistles. It hits the mage in the shoulder. The scream is a woman’s voice. The mage spins a full circle in the air, grabbing at the arrow with her other hand. She must be weightless, like I was when I floated into the council chambers in Tenorsbridge. I can’t imagine what it must be like, spinning in the air, arrow through your chest, ground and sky rotating around you.

  I kick the quiver lying on the ground to shake out some arrows. I grab one and nock it. It will be almost impossible to aim at anything specific the way she’s spinning, but I have to try. I wait for her to spin a bit more and shoot. The arrow hits her in the back, stopping her momentum. She goes still, hanging in the air, upside down.

  I stare at the still body, gently floating upward and tilting slowly to one side.

  Mandollel shakes me from the shoulder. “Well done, Folke. Remember, they are beyond our power to help at the moment. We have no other options.”

  I lower my gaze to meet his eyes. He keeps staring at me, unblinking, until I nod. I swallow and nod again. “I thought…”

  He pats my upper arm twice, holding on to my other arm with his other hand. “We’re not done.”

  The sounds of hoofs are closer. Rworg stands with sword ready. He has both hands on the hilt, the blade held straight in front of his body.

  Mandollel pulls out his sword as well. Sparks dance along its blade, like cat fur rubbed on amber. They zing up toward the sky and the auroras. “We lure them into the trees. Folke, you stay back, obviously. Finna, stay with him.”

  I collect the arrows from the ground and shove them into the quiver. I don’t have too many left in good condition anymore. I have a collection of arrow heads and I looted a bundle of arrows from the Kertharian camp, but I don’t really like how they fly. They’ll do.

  The horses thunder closer. Their riders bounce up and down, but still manage to keep their war cry going, sliding up and down in pitch but not in anger. Their rage seems only to increase the closer they get to us. When the mage dropped from the sky, they started screaming all at once, an explosion of sound cutting through the night.

  The green light washes over the landscape. Mandollel looks like a ghost, his pale skin now white and green, lips black. Rworg just looks darker than normal. The whites of his eyes shine bright, surrounding the dark void in the middle.

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  I try to make out if there are any archers among the riders. There are eight in total. One has a bow, but most of them have spears or javelins attached to their saddles. Rworg is going to have a difficult time if the Kertharians decide to keep their distance and fight from afar.

  I nudge the quiver, now back in its place at my hip. The arrows rustle, stiff feather scraping against feather.

  The riders come closer. If it was just one, I’d let them come closer, but there are eight. Finna steps to stand next to me. Two riders in the front part, giving me a shot at the archer. Finna starts to say something. I yank out an arrow, nock it, draw the string and let go.

  Finna takes a step back. “Damn,” she says.

  The arrow strikes the archer, throwing him off the saddle. He drops to the ground, one leg still stuck in the stirrup. The horse veers off to the side, whinnying. The archer is dragged behind it, head bouncing on the ground.

  Two riders peel off from the rest and turn to ride toward me. They press low against their horses, trying to offer as small a target as possible. Five still continue directly at Rworg.

  He’s standing at the edge of the forest island, sword still raised in front of him, shouting at the approaching riders. At least his lungs must have completely healed, based on the volume and length of his shouting. I wonder if he’s cursing or taunting or saluting them. Mandollel would know.

  He’s casting a spell, pressed against a tree so the riders can’t see him. The symbols he is drawing shine bright blue and arcs zap from them to the swirling cloud of colors above. He finishes his spell and flicks his hand toward the two riders approaching me, shooting out familiar darts of light. He turns to run towards Rworg, hand still pointed backward to finish releasing the rest of the darts.

  The darts aren’t particularly fast, not compared to arrows, but they do home in on their targets. Around ten darts weave through the air toward the two riders. Three zap right into the first rider, sparks of white light on one side of his body, black sprays of blood on the other. I grimace, remembering the holes the similar darts left in Rworg. The horse gets one dart in the neck and falls down sideways, legs kicking the air, its scream bubbling and wet.

  The other rider sees the darts coming and throws himself to hang from the horse’s neck, cowering behind its body. The darts slam into the animal. One goes right through one of its legs, blowing a part clean off. Mercifully, two hit it in the head, putting down the animal before it probably had time to register properly what was happening. The rest of the darts zap into its side and the ground, throwing up spouts of rocks and dirt and blood.

  The rider kicks off the horse as the darts keep hitting it. I curse as he managed to get clear before the horse topples on him. The animal rolls on the ground, legs spinning and cracking under the weight of the massive limp body, spraying the area black. The Kertharian lands hard, but rolls, picking himself off the ground in a smooth motion. He moves differently than the rest of the people we have fought. He’s skilled, dangerous.

  I nock an arrow and shoot. He dodges to the side, the arrow whistling past where he only just stood. The Kertharian jumps toward his fallen horse and pulls at a shield half buried under it. I aim another arrow, but the shield comes loose, and he rolls back. The shield is round and not that large, but he keeps his body in a tight ball and somehow manages to keep most of it behind the shield for the whole roll.

  Finna is still standing next to me, daggers ready. She keeps herself behind the tree, only an eye peeking out at the riders. “What’s up with this guy?” she says, as the Kertharian stands, stance still low, body held behind the shield.

  The Kertharian probably has no idea Finna is hiding here, but he seems so skilled that I don’t want to count on her being able to take him out. The Kertharian runs in a zig-zag pattern, taking small jumps, shield ready. His sword is curved, like Rworg’s, but much smaller. A saber, instead of a cleaver, meant to be used on horseback. He’s wailing the whole time, the war cry not stopping except for small breaks when he braces to take a jump or change direction.

  Finna watches him run and change direction, coming closer. “Hell,” she says, clenching the daggers in her hands hard.

  Please.

  I’m a hunter, trained by Lille since I was a toddler. I nock the arrow, watching the Kertharian. The string creaks as I pull it back. The arrow is one of theirs, the tip a bit heavier than I prefer, the fletching made of feathers I don’t recognize.

  The Kertharian zigs to the left, takes a breath, starts to push off on his right leg to zag to the right. I hit him through the flexed right calf, just below the knee, where he can’t reach with the shield.

  “Damn,” Finna says.

  The man flops over, crumpling as the leg gives way under him. The cry turns into a scream. He doesn’t stay down, but rolls sideways, starts crawling toward us. He’s close enough now that I can see the look on his face, teeth bare, lips white, and eyes wide. The shield and his saber lie on the ground, left behind in his rage to get to us.

  He tries to push himself up, but as he does, I hit him in the torso. The arrow punches through the light armor he’s wearing and the shouting stops at last.

  Finna relaxes her grip on her daggers. “You know, I think I haven’t seen you miss once.”

  “I missed one just there.” I’d like to think it was because he dodged, but of course he did. The Kertharians have provided extremely easy targets so far, but this was a good reminder that I have to start taking things more seriously.