Dripping Wings

The deep breath before the icy plunge.

Everyone was still, silent, and tense. Even their mounts were hesitant to swish their tails as icy flakes of snow stabbed at their skin. Yuugi had a hard time sucking in each and every painful breath, anticipation and fear seizing a tight hold on his muscles. It had been quiet now for well over ten minutes, and still no signal yet to attack. He didn't know how much longer he could wait. He turned his head, barely managing the feat, and saw that Jono's expression was unreadable. How did he look like a seasoned war veteran, and yet have such perfect skin, and no injuries? Hadn't Atemu said that there hadn't been any wars in Sekesha for nearly a hundred years?

His thoughts were paused, for at that moment the earth began to quake. A scream reached them from beyond the hill, and a lightning bolt of black energy raced into the sky. Yuugi barely realized that. It was actually going into the sky. That was it. It was their signal.

Taking a deep breath that seemed to last longer than it did, Yuugi released a guttural cry along with the others around him, his frustration and tension at having to wait released, his fear vocalized, drew his sword, and plunged into battle. Astarte ran at breathtaking speed, reaching the top of the hill and revealing the land below, now turned gray and black with the rag-tag army that was below them. Somehow, even though snow and sleet and tears were streaming down his face, his senses were immaculately clear, and he could see that they hadn't looked like they'd bathed in days, their teeth were decayed, and they looked angry. So very, very angry. Show no mercy, for you shall receive none in return.

His heart felt like it would shatter as the armies collided, and Astarte cried out as powerfully as he did, if not more so, as simultaneously she struck at enemies with her hooves, and Yuugi with his sword. Red soaked into white and blood fell into the snow. Noises and screams and the clanking of metal on metal and of animals and men thumping on the ground were the dominant sounds. If Yuugi wasn't concentrating on saving his own life, he would have cried and sobbed and run for the safety of the Eternal Palace.

They fought and fought, no change seeming to take place on the field. How long could this go on? An hour? Two? Three?

Not nearly. The crowd had finally thinned, half an hour's worth of slaughter now feeling like merely a few minutes. Yuugi could see off to his left, Atemu on Senke, his clothing and his Sacred's coat covered in splotches of red. And out of the corner of his eye, a streak of white and yellow and red caught his attention. No...

"Atemu!" He cried, turning Astarte around sharply and bounding his way. "Look out from above!" How he could tell the difference from one white warrior to another, he didn't know, but deep down he just knew that it was the Prince, and an arrow of fire was heading his way.

The Prince turned just in time to snuff out the flames with shadows, but more were on the way. Yuugi suddenly realized what lay beyond the rise of land. There are more.

The Prince called out swift commands, and the ranks began to regroup. The second strike of the battle. "Gifted ready!" Atemu bellowed. He held his hand up, waiting. "Gifted ready!" he called again, then cried, "Release!" He shot his arm forward.

Plumes of ice, fire, water, electricity, frozen earth, light, shadows, and glowing beams of energy flew over their heads towards the source of the arrows. A cry from above alerted Yuugi to the fact that the dragons where blowing the arrows away with their fire and the pumping of air with their wings. Cries reached their ears. Many of the attacks had hit home.

"Gifted ready! Release!"

Yuugi sent a flame of shadows and a separate flare of light at the enemy, picturing it hitting a large amount of the nasty creatures they were fighting and rendering them useless.

Finally, after another three calls for Gifted magick, a great cry behind them caused the back of the army to turn. Yuugi turned his head, seeing an ambush from the rear coming up upon them. Where are they all coming from? He was towards the front, and saw to his horror another group from whence the flaming arrows had come from, and saw another group on the attack. But how...? No! Stop! Yuugi shook his head. He couldn't panic. If they had the element of surprise right now, that's exactly what they wanted him to do. An idea flooded his mind, and Yuugi knew in his heart it's what he had to do. "Warriors, eyehnestah!" He cried. How he knew this word, he wasn't sure, but 'follow' was the best command he could come up with, and said in their sacred language would cause immediate reactions.

Astarte turned and ran between the two armies attacking them, coming out on the other side, where the enemy would have to form a new line to get to her. The rest of their warriors that could followed him. They lined up at his side. "Two lines!" He bellowed, holding up his arms. "Attack from the side! Weaken their lines! Gifted ready!" He waited briefly for them to align themselves. " Release!"

Angry energy from both sides of him flew to the sides of the enemy lines, crumbling a part of them, and allowing the Sekeshan warriors that were in between some breathing room. "Gifted ready! Release!" The same effect as before.

Before Yuugi's eyes, he watched the masses move about in a strange way. The rest of the red and white riders were now heading in the opposite direction of the way he had ran. The crumpled and now confused lines of the enemy were now, strangely...in the middle. How in the world did that happen? It seemed they were merely pulled there after the Sekeshan army vacated the space. He almost cried, but mainly with pride, for at that moment he saw Atemu facing him, Gifted behind him, and ready to strike. Somehow, they had trapped the enemy in their own ambush. Were it not for the fact that there is a slope in front of Ice Ridge's gate, we would have all been doomed. The enemy trapped themselves in, now sloping hills on either side, and an army at both exists.

Several flashes of light and energy later, and it was all over.

Astarte picked her way carefully across the battlefield, blood dripping down her pronounced muscles. Her mane sagged beneath the massive weight of the thick, rapidly freezing liquid. Yuugi felt his movements constrained as the blood froze on his clothing. He was suddenly very tired, and in no mood to talk to anyone. Victory or not, this was not what he called 'good' in any meaning of the term.

"Yuugi," a voice spoke softly next to him. He saw that Atemu was now close to him, Senke looking tired but alert.

"Atemu."

"Yuugi, how on earth did you...?"

"Did I know? I didn't know that you would do that. It was just...if felt like the right thing to do. I know, I could have gotten all of us killed. I could have truly messed everything up, I..." The Prince silenced him by brushing his Sacred up to Astarte, bringing them close enough to put his hand on Yuugi's shoulder.

"No, that's not what I meant. What I want to know is, how did you know I would be doing that too?"

He shook his head, feeling the cold seeping down into his bones. "I didn't."

The Prince nodded, seemingly to himself, apparently satisfied about something. "How do you suppose you knew the word 'eyehnestah'?"

"I...don't know..."

"I think our bond is becoming more useful than either of us thought it would."

The statement made so much sense to him, it felt like a ton of bricks smacking him in the face. He should have known those bricks were there, and now felt rather stupid for having not seen them. "I... woah. Weird."

The Prince laughed. "Come, love. After some sleep, we have to ride south to Turehnemay Hold. The next attack is there."

"Oh, fun times ahead..."

"Yuugi, I'm not sure that you realize that the both of us just pulled what we like to call a 'Shield and Carry.'"

Yuugi gave the Prince a funny look. "What are you talking about?"

"The magick that was in that word that you called put up a shield, so that the enemy could not get any closer to you. However, they couldn't move any further away either. The moment you, and then myself, moved out of the middle of the battlefield, it drug in the enemy along even if they wanted to go in or not. The magick trapped them where they were drug to."

He nodded. "I had wondered how that worked out so well." He shivered, and Astarte vocalized her discomfort in the cold.

"I think it best we retire for a few hours, then head out again," Atemu stated.

Yuugi, however, was getting close to falling asleep already.

Yuugi was warm, and felt a rebellion stirring in his belly at the thought of moving. Atemu was wrapped around him, the body heat that seemed so overwhelming in the summer now strangely not warm enough in their bed. Their sleep would be coming to an end soon enough, and they would have to lead the troops south to the next Hold. He was not looking forward to battle again. He did not care to go out and have himself once again covered in blood from head to toe and stinking like a rotting corpse. The inhabitants of Ice Ridge were grateful the army had shown up when they did, after seeing the aftermath of the battle out front. And although they did their best to vocalize as such to Yuugi and the Prince before they settled in for their nap, neither heard much, and hid away in their make-shift royal bathing suite, which was actually the public bathing and steam house in the Hold Hall. (Yuugi equated this to being a sort of city hall, but on a much smaller scale.)

Atemu was stirring, grunting as instincts were telling he'd have to rise. Yuugi cried a little inside. He did not want to rise yet. Nor did he want to exercise the brain power it would take to figure out what mad-mind was behind these attacks to begin with.

"It's time to get up, love."

"No it's not. Sleep."

He received a slightly firmer squeeze in return. "I'm sorry. We could sleep, but a few hundred more people could be dead by the time we get up."

Yuugi sighed hard. "You had to play the guilt-trip card, didn't you?" He sighed, still refusing to open his eyes. "I'm so tired…"

"I know, as am I."

"I hate feeling this kind of tired. It's not good. It makes me want to sleep for years, hide away, and no matter how deep I sleep I'm still sore."

A kiss to his forehead. "We can only pray that this will all be over soon. We need to mobilize the troops and head out for another march, though. Turehnemay Hold is nearly an hour south."

"Then we'd better get dressed, I suppose. I assume that the Sacreds were cleaned as well as we were."

Atemu chuckled. "Perhaps even more so. Up here, the Sacreds are vital companions, viewed as equal or above the status as that of the humans."

Yuugi hummed in thought, understanding how that could happen. Astarte had already come to mean so much to him, and he didn't even rely on her year round to help protect him from freezing weather and harsh living conditions.

"Come on, love. We have little time."

"I know. Another battle on the way. I wonder how many more will come."

Atemu shook his head, lifting his weight up from the bed. "I don't know. We'll have to kill them all off eventually. Our casualties from this battle are still unknown to me, but I have a feeling they were slim. I'm hoping that they will continue to be low, and the enemy high. At that rate, what will their leader have left to send us?"

Yuugi ran a hand through his hair. "I'm starting to feel like a butcher."

Before he realized it, Atemu was in front of him and holding him tightly. "No."

Yuugi looked up at him confused. "What?"

"No," Atemu repeated. "Never think of yourself as such. We are defending ourselves. We are not attacking them. Nor are we getting paid as a butcher would be paid. This is costing the Crown hundreds of thousands of elemens." (Yuugi learned this was the standard currency of Sekesha.) "Remorse only in the act of needing to kill, and no more.

Yuugi took pause, having not taken into consideration the costs before. "Be sad I have to kill, but don't regret it, because if we didn't do this we'd end up killing ourselves in our inaction."

This Prince nodded. "Yes, Yuugi. You're not a butcher, or anything that has to do with the act of butchering another human being. You're a Guardian, now. Every ruler has been a Guardian for as long as time can remember. You muscn't confuse that with other things."

Yuugi looked up at Atemu questioningly. "Every one? You never mentioned that before. Or if you have, I didn't quite realize what it meant."

"Yuugi, I don't think I ever told you the story of my family before, have I?"

He shook his head. "No. I'd love to hear it."

Atemu sighed. "Well, it's a long story, and also one that needs pictures. In short, we're known as the 'Fighting Family.' When Sekesha was small and under threat, it was the royal family that went out to battle, for they were the only ones with Gifts strong enough to defend the country. To this day the royal bloodline holds the strongest Magi in the country, and quite possibly the world without sounding haughty."

Yuugi chuckled. "Anything that entails something akin to bragging could be considered haughty, but I'll excuse it. Only because I love you."

Atemu laughed. "Oh, is that the only reason?" He ticked Yuugi quickly, pinning him to the bed. "I'll tell you the rest of our history when we get back to the Palace. The Hall of Remembrance will be an interesting trip for the both of us."

"The Hall of What now?"