his head, Max checked that Lugh’s brooch was in place, took up the
As YaYa picked her way through the winding lanes back to the main avenue, Max witnessed the very best and worst of humanity. Many companies of troops and militia were hurrying to their posts, but there also were brawls, untold looters, and some who chose to greet Prusias’s arrival with doomed, drunken revelry. Rounding a corner, Max stopped as he saw a half-dozen Trench Rats carousing with a group that had broken into the Pot and Kettle and were rolling its wine barrels up the cellar ramp to break them open in the street. Upon seeing their commander, one promptly retched while the others snapped to some semblance of bleary, blinking attention.
Max glared down at them. “It’s a thirty-minute march to Trench Nineteen from here. If you’re not there in twenty, I’m going to find each and every one of you.”
“We were on leave,” said the one, sullenly wiping his mouth. “You got no right to judge!”
“When does leave give you the right to loot and steal?” Max growled. “Stay and sit in your filth. You’re discharged. Rip off his patch.”
The man’s companions did so, tearing the patch off his shoulder while he swore and protested. Seconds later, the other five were running as fast as they could toward the Sanctuary tunnel and their distant post.
“Bravo, bravo!” called a voice from the restaurant’s elevated porch.
Madam Petra was lounging between the industrialist and Katarina. She was sipping a glass of wine without an apparent care in the world. Around her neck, she wore the coppery torque made from Nick’s quills.
“Oh, don’t worry about us,” she said, swirling her wine. “We’re not looters. We paid for our drinks. You look very dashing, by the way.”
“Going to sit things out here?” said Max, gazing at the smuggler with unfeigned disgust.
“Yes, I am,” she said, smiling sweetly. “That’s the nice thing about having friends on both sides. You don’t really care who wins.”
“You think Prusias will just leave you be?”
“I don’t see why not.” She shrugged, stroking her daughter’s hair. “I’ve been invited to many parties at the royal palace. Why should he be angry with a Rowan hostage? In any case, I hope the Zenuvian iron serves you well. You certainly paid for the privilege.”
Max stared hard at the woman. “You had better pray that we win,” he said quietly. “Because if Rowan falls, there will be no one left to forgive you. And if that happens, you’ll have to live with this shame forever.”
“Well, I’ve heard that good wine can drown sorrow
Swallowing his loathing, Max wheeled YaYa away and rode south. Once back at Old College, the ki-rin set a slow, steady pace as she wove through the mass of soldiers and civilians. Passing the Manse, Max rode toward the cliffs so that he could see what might be happening at sea.
The waters of Rowan Harbor were choppy as those assigned to the beaches and cliffs were busy preparing their defenses. Far to the north, Max could make out a few points of light hugging the coast, probably warships with witch-fires burning at their prow. The night sky had been clear, but the weather was changing. Most apparent was the wind, which was now howling in off the ocean as Rowan’s Mystics summoned and gathered it to them.
Max and YaYa rode north along the cliffs, past Maggie and Old Tom, past the refugee camps and over the windswept tussocks until he reached the massive Northgate archway. The archway was forty feet from cobble to keystone and still dwarfed by the walls, which rose a hundred feet above even the tallest trees. Max could see hundreds of figures hurrying to man the towers and anchored trebuchets that could rain heavy projectiles upon an approaching enemy.
YaYa cantered through the arch, her shadow huge upon curving walls that tunneled through eighty feet of solid stone. It was teeming with soldiers and carts bringing supplies out to the trenches and outposts that would sorely need them. The crowds cheered when they caught sight of YaYa and made a lane so that she and her rider could pass.
They exited the other side, over the moat’s causeway and into the dark, open country that lay between the citadel that sheltered Old College and the outer curtain that protected outlying farms.
Torches were moving urgently about the countryside, carried by messengers on errands to the trenches or outer defenses. Above Old Tom’s ringing, Max heard the low boom of signal drums and saw a distant flare arc like a tiny red star.
YaYa made for a cluster of fires burning at intervals along Trench Nineteen. There, at the base of their fluttering standard, the Trench Rats were gathering and grouping into their platoons. Some grinned as Max rode up, but most looked frightened. Many were frantically putting on pieces of armor or rummaging through packs whose contents had been gathered in haste. Scanning the group, Max saw that only a third of the battalion had already reported. There was not yet any sign of Lucia or Cynthia or many of the officers who had presumably been at Crofter’s Hill when the alarm was raised. Ajax was there, however, sitting astride a heavy bay stallion and berating several boys who had cracked a water barrel while unloading a supply cart.
Max called him over. “Assemble the companies and keep them here,” he said over the wind and distant horns. “Don’t let them rush or forget something they need. Once we’re settled in, we won’t be moving, so send riders to fetch anything that’s missing—food, medicine. They won’t close Northgate unless the Enemy advances within a mile. I’m riding to the outer walls to see what’s happening.”
As Ajax turned to carry out his orders, Max saw Scathach ride up on a spotted Appaloosa. She was in Umbra’s guise but now wore a shirt of silver chain and carried a small round shield strapped to her back. Her hair was tossing wildly in the wind as she slowed the horse to a walk and gazed at Max.
“I’m going to the wall,” he said. “Come with me.”
She nodded, spurring her mount ahead. The two rode alongside one another, covering the distance as swiftly as YaYa could manage in her lumbering trot. The outer walls rose before them, less massive than those that surrounded Old College but still a formidable defense. Eighty feet high and half as thick, with guard towers twice as tall that commanded a wide view of the lands beyond.
They reached the battlements by riding up the broad ramps that doubled back and again until they arrived at the top. Hundreds of people were busily engaged—Mystics gathering atop casting towers, refugees heating iron shot and cauldrons of pitch, archers setting up their quivers behind stone merlons. Dismounting, Max and Scathach walked up a short staircase to a platform that would permit a glimpse of Prusias’s forces.
At this distance, the approaching army resembled a forest fire, an eerie, distant flickering light that was closing upon Rowan. Max guessed that the outriders were three, maybe four miles away. Peering through his spyglass, he could clearly make out war galleons sailing down the shoreline as the army approached over land. “Can you guess their numbers?” asked Max, surveying the distant lights. Even now, he could hear the faint sounds of distant drums and horns. They reminded him sharply of his escape from Piter’s Folly on Madam Petra’s balloon. He had heard these drums before and witnessed the awful devastation that accompanied them.
Frowning, Scathach scanned the horizon. “Impossible to say,” she muttered. “But many, many thousands. There are no breaks in those torches. They’ll reach these walls in three hours … maybe two.”
Max was about to reply when he heard cheers go up from a host of archers, who were pointing beyond the wall to the countryside where moonlit runes and sigils were forming on the hills like luminescent brands.
“What are those?” asked Scathach, peering out at them.
“Glyphs, signs of protection,” Max explained. “They’re being cast by the spiritwracks.” He pointed to one of the tall octagonal towers where the specialized Mystics could be seen linking hands in an open chamber at the top.
Just then, a hurricane-force gale came screaming in out of the east. It tore through the forests beyond the wall like a wailing spirit, bending the trees in a sweeping arc before doubling back and dissipating out over the ocean.
“Aeromancers,” said Max, pointing to another tower, where Mystics were summoning the wild winds from the sea and directing them like orchestra conductors. “Prusias is going to find that there’s more than arrows and pikes waiting for him here.”
Scathach was impressed. “Perhaps we won’t be needed.”
But even as she said this, hundreds of horns blared in the distance, followed by the louder, deeper
