Chapter 56: Sacrifice

LASTHOLD.

It had only been a few days, but to Kren it felt like a lifetime since he’d last seen the gates of his home. And it was, to put it mildly, in far worse shape than when he’d left it. Fortifications had been raised all around the town, extra timber bolted onto the walls, the gates barred tight and braced from the inside. Opposite the town, across the rolling hills where Kren had once fought Toa and his allies, which now felt like another life entirely, rows upon rows of enemy soldiers stood arrayed in disciplined ranks, banners snapping in the wind. It was enough to tell Kren he’d arrived at the last possible minute. There would be no time to put any of what they’d brought down from the Storm Mountains to use.

But even among the Ale army, it was the front line that made his blood boil. Rows upon rows of feline tribesmen stood chained at the neck and wrists, bound together in long, shuffling lines, crude spears clutched in their hands, and strapped to each of their backs, what looked like enormous gourds. Kren growled low in his throat as Aki drew his goat to a halt beside him, rage barely contained behind his eyes.

"Those are venom gourds." Aki said quietly. "They’re sending our brothers and sisters in first as fodder. If they refuse to march against us, the Ale will detonate the gourds and kill them where they stand." He turned to Kren, his voice low and tight. "This is bad, Your Majesty. They’ll be dead before we can do anything. If we can do anything at all."

Kren’s frown deepened. The battle hadn’t even begun, and the Ale were already outmaneuvering him this cleanly. It wasn’t some brilliant military stroke, either. Selvin simply understood the N’korans well enough to know how much they valued the bonds between them. After ten years of misery and slavery, those bonds had only grown tighter. If there was a way to cripple them, in morale and in their very ability to act once the fighting started, this was it.

Kren waved the remaining wagons toward the gates, then dug his heels into the giant mountain goat and drove it hard toward the enemy line, toward the enemy and his own chained people.

"Your Majesty, wait!" Aki shouted after him, but Kren didn’t slow. One rider charging forward, another lone rider racing to catch him. The Ale were ready, though. The conniving snakes were using the same tactic they’d used against Kren once before, hiding behind the felines like shields. When Kren came within thirty feet, an arrow whistled out from behind the line of captives.

Kren hauled back on the reins and tilted his head aside, his right hand snapping up to pluck the arrow out of the air as it tried to sail past him.

"That’s close enough, N’koran! Turn back, or you’ll be killed!"

Kren scoffed, using his heightened senses to pinpoint the speaker, a Snake-kin cowering well behind the chained rows. "Tell that slimy coward Selvin to let these people go! They aren’t soldiers. Chaining them and strapping venom to their backs and forcing them onto a battlefield is a far more despicable move than I ever believed even the Ale were capable of. But then again, what else should I have expected from you traitorous serpents!"

At the sound of his voice, something shifted along the front rows. Life seemed to crawl back into the eyes of the felines, a dull, exhausted gaze sharpening one face at a time. From where he sat, Kren counted well over three hundred of them. And they weren’t all adults. There were children among the collared, and elderly too, stooped and gray-haired, their wrists rubbed raw beneath the iron.

"Is that the king?"

"It’s him! I can feel my Aura reacting to him!"

"That’s our sovereign? He’s so young..."

"He came for us. He’s here for us!"

Similar murmurs broke out all along the line, spreading from mouth to mouth until the voices of the felines drowned out every other sound on the field. Behind them, a few of the Snake-kin soldiers shifted uneasily, their eyes darting along the line as if the rising noise itself were a threat.

"Kren! You filthy cat! Our noble prince sends his regards, and wishes you and your rotten people a peaceful journey to the side of your ancestors. Forward, slaves! March!"

Nobody moved.

Kren growled and bunched his muscles to charge, but Aki was suddenly there, his hand dropping onto Kren’s shoulder like a falling mountain. The giant goat’s knees buckled under the weight of Aki’s sheer presence.

"Don’t move, Your Majesty." Aki said, so quietly that only Kren could hear it. "They’re already dead. And they know it."

Kren turned on him, his gaze fierce enough to kill, but the older cat ignored it entirely and lifted his eyes to the gathered felines instead.

"Brothers and sisters. Sons and daughters. Our fathers, our mothers, our uncles and aunts." Aki’s voice rolled out across the field, deep and steady, carrying farther than Kren would have thought possible. "I salute every one of you for your perseverance across this long decade. I salute your resilience. But we all knew this day would come. We have been preparing for it."

Along the line, the elders raised their heads. A gray-hairef old woman near the front straightened her back, the chains at her neck clinking softly as she lifted her chin. Beside her, a Snake-kin officer glanced at his neighbor with a frown, then returned his attention to the speaker, his grip tightening on the detonation rod at his belt.

Kren stared at Aki, his confusion plain, but the older cat pressed on.

"He is the last N’kora. And I dare say..." Aki paused, and his voice cracked, just barely, before steadying again. "...he is probably the best of them."

Silence fell over the entire field. Even the Ale ranks went still, their commanders trading uneasy looks. Behind them, a heavy creak announced the opening of Lasthold’s main gates, and a trickle of cat-kin spilled out in poor armor, carrying fishing hooks and farming tools, rushing out to fight the moment they spotted Kren. But Aki raised a single hand, and they stopped dead in their tracks.

He turned back to the captive felines.

"We stand at the break of a new dawn. But it is a dawn we cannot enter without our sovereign. We cannot let these bastards win. So sacrifices must be made. A push, to give us the opening we need to save the rest of us. To save our king."

A young mother near the middle of the line pulled her small daughter against her legs, one hand covering the child’s eyes. An old man two rows over simply smiled, and nodded to himself, as if a long-awaited letter had finally arrived.

"What is he talking about?" a Snake-kin soldier muttered, his gaze flicking nervously between his comrades. No one answered him. Somewhere down the line, a soldier laughed, short and uncertain, and then he stopped as soon as he realized, awkwardly that no one else had joined him.

"Elders." Aki said, and the word fell across the field like a stone dropped into still water. "It is time you made way for the children. I pray that after what they are about to witness, they will never be forced to make the choice you are about to make. I applaud your sacrifice."

"Aki, what the hell are you talking about?" Kren demanded, and as one, nearly all the older felines bowed their heads in his direction, slow and deliberate, the way one bows to a king for the last time. Kren’s eyes narrowed. Then they widened, all in the same breath, as the elders turned their backs on him and faced their captors instead, shoulders squared, heads high.

Kren’s stomach dropped through the floor of him.

"No!"