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I shifted my weight silently, but it didn’t ease the pins and needles tingling through my legs. We’d been hunkered down for a long time, waiting for Kallus’s forces. We didn’t want to give them any chance to react before the advance guard emerged from the pass, when the bulk of the troops were trapped between the walls of the chasm.
Now, since the tunnels hadn’t worked out, some of Kallus’s spies skirted cautiously along the pass. My people waited silently, obscured and hiding. Lynx and I both froze, watching them pass by, not daring to breathe.
One wrong move, and Kallus’s forces would know to push back, and we’d never get to spring our trap.
Instead, his troops finally started down the path. In the distance, Caris and Kallus conferred near the back, well sheltered by their guards.
I’d like to get my hands on Kallus.
We waited.
And waited.
The first of Kallus’s forces emerged on the other side of the pass. The rest of them were finally deep inside where it would be hard to launch a counterattack; they’d have to fight their way upward, hemmed on both sides.
I finally launched myself to my feet, raising my sword in the air. “For the isle!”
The trapped troops startled, raising their shields.
A thousand arrows rained down on Kallus’s forces. They tried to surge forward or back, but my troops folded them in, creating a killing zone. The archers directed all their focus to the center of Kallus’s troops, who packed themselves against the soldiers trying to fight their way past my men at either end of the pass. Arrows winged steadily through the air and soldiers screamed.
As they tried to regroup, my men emerged from where they’d been hiding in the forest pass, dropping down amongst them. Even without magic, we’d soon killed half of Kallus’s men.
But Kallus had brought so many men. The troops outside the pass, to the rear with Caris and Kallus, folded around, trying to engulf my men.
“Fall back!” I shouted, as we’d been slowly pressed back toward Rylow.
But we made Kallus pay in blood for every step.
Kallus’s forces were far enough back that we could summon the knights, guards and students out of Rylow; then we’d slam the gates closed behind us to keep the city safe. That addition to our numbers might be enough to turn the course of the battle.
I turned to Rylow, my home city, the place where my castle waited. Camet was up in the ramparts, watching the battle rage. His golden helmet gleamed under the sun. I squinted; that might bemygolden helmet that I never wore because I didn’t make myself a target for the sake of vanity.
I raised a hand to Camet. “Lift the gates! Send out the troops!”
Camet shook his head.
He was lucky I no longer breathed fire.
“Camet, raise the gates!”
“We’ll lose the city!” he shouted back.
Kallus’s troops pressed closer to us, and we lost the chance to raise the gates. We were being pushed steadily against the stone walls of the city that should have protected us.
Instead, we were trapped against it like so many desperate, clawing rats.
* * *
Honor
I usually only caught flickers ofJaik’s thoughts when we were near each other, or images when he was dreaming. So it was eerie to be riding furiously alongside Caldren for Rylow and to catch glimpses through Jaik’s eyes.
Jaik’s fury, desperation and frustration reached me as he watched waves of his men go down, crushed beneath Kallus’s forces.
Caldren winced.
“Can you feel that too?” I asked Caldren.
