at her friend, Tam spoke up on his behalf.
“He okay,” she explained. “Just getting jitters. I told him to stick by me and he’ll be safe. Ain’t that right, Jack?”
The boy nodded, blew his nose on his sleeve, and stood at attention.
“Listen to Tam,” said Max, gazing down at the boy. “Stick by her and do what she says. Do you understand me?”
Jack nodded, glanced appreciatively at Tam, and sniffled.
“I’ll see you after,” said Max, riding on.
The explosion occurred just before dawn, a pluming fireball in the northwest that shone through the haze, rising hundreds of feet into the air. The earth shook once again and there came a distant cry of horns.
“They’re breached,” said Scathach, standing up in her stirrups.
A foul wind blew in from the north, a brimstone reek that brought clouds of dust rolling down over the hills to settle upon the soldiers in their trenches. Another explosion, this time directly north along the section of wall that Max and Scathach had visited. Black smoke billowed up into the sky, oily and heavy as though from a factory or smokestack. It crested over the wall like a wave, spilling onto the lands beyond.
Huge flares raced overhead from the citadel, screaming past like crimson comets to burst over the outer walls and signal that those forces should pull back. More explosions sent tremors shivering through the ground. The nearby earthworks trembled, spilling dirt and pebbles onto the huddled Trench Rats. The Enemy was already advancing. Gazing out, Max could just make out Stygian crows circling above the walls. At this distance, they looked like thousands of black midges buzzing round a bonfire.
Twenty minutes passed before the first of the retreating forces reached the trenches. They hurried over the open country in glinting streams of armor and weaponry. There was some semblance of order to the retreat, but not much. Many of the troops were clearly exhausted, panting and sweating as they headed for the safety of Northgate. Some were grievously wounded, helped along or even carried by their comrades. Others were anxious to continue the battle and fell in with the trench battalions. Max welcomed them into Trench Nineteen, offering encouragement but also telling Sarah to ride down the line and remind the lieutenants to maintain their existing groups and formations. The reinforcements were most welcome, but they must fit in between the platoons, not among them. Otherwise all the Trench Rats’ careful training and practice would be for naught.
The retreating forces thinned. Max heard a gruff voice barking orders, Ajax telling the troops to check their weapons and have a swallow of water. Wheeling YaYa about, Max rode along the trench one last time.
Some of the Trench Rats were praying, alone or in little groups. Others were eating, wolfing down three days’ worth of rations as though they were having their last meal. One grizzled veteran was obsessively checking his gear while his neighbor smeared mud across his face like it was war paint. People had their own way of preparing for what was to come, but most simply stared ahead, gazing mutely at the band of flickering orange that was approaching through the miasma of black smoke. The very air seemed to vibrate as the drums grew louder.
With each drumbeat, YaYa trembled and began to chuff from somewhere deep in her throat. She was trotting more easily, her limp less pronounced as she headed along the broad trench. Heat was rising off her like morning mist off a lake. She walked to the narrow gap between the Trench Rats and the neighboring battalion as Prusias’s soldiers came into clearer view.
There were untold thousands of them. They stretched westward from the cliffs in a great curving arc, as though they comprised but one visible portion of a noose that was tightening around all of Rowan. Banners and pennants fluttered high in the morning breeze, the broken and tattered standards of Jakarun and Dun and a host of lesser duchies and baronies that had fallen to Prusias’s forces.
Max gazed out at them. Most were vyes padding about on two legs like men or on all fours like rangy black wolves. But there were ogres, too, hundreds of them in crested war helms along with two-headed ettins, and rotting deathknights holding tall lances decorated with pennons and grisly scalps. Behind them, still tiny in the distance, rolled Prusias’s siege engines: great catapults and towers and rams the size of redwoods.
Even without their secret weapon, this army had broken through the outer walls in a matter of hours. Could vyes and ogres alone do such a thing? Even as he considered this, Max spied lanes forming in the Enemy’s densely packed ranks.
The demons that rode to the front were nobility among their kind: proud rakshasas in gilded plate and crowning war helms, fearsome oni wielding sickle swords, and black-masked malakhim. They seemed to care nothing for the dawn or its rising sun, whose rays died and withered in the spreading gloom. As the demons arrived at the front, Max’s ring began to sear. The awful drumming ceased and an eerie stillness settled over Prusias’s army.
One of the rakshasa urged his mount forward and ventured alone through the gloom toward the trenches, surveying Rowan’s battalions like a visiting general. Disdain was stamped upon his tusked, tigerlike features. Turning, he called for one of his attendants—a slender imp on a black donkey. Riding forward, the imp handed the rakshasa an enormous recurve bow and three arrows. As the imp withdrew, Max heard Scathach whispering urgently in his ear.
“Do not take this bait! You have been seen, my love. He means to draw you out.”
Indeed, the rakshasa appeared to be looking at Max as he rode, tall and proud as a samurai, to within a hundred yards of Trench Nineteen. Casually spurring his mount, the rakshasa cantered along its line and raised his bow.
Three shots were fired; three bannermen fell. The arrows struck each in the throat, killing them before they could even flinch or gasp in surprise. They had stood fifty yards apart and yet they fell at the same moment, toppling silently as the standards slipped from their dead hands. Prusias’s army roared, raising their weapons high and jeering at Rowan as the rakshasa trotted back and tossed the bow to his attendant. Wheeling back around, the demon drew a long saber and smashed a mailed fist against his chest by way of challenge.
Instantly, Scathach spurred her horse and galloped out to meet him. There was nothing Max could do but watch as she hunched low over the Appaloosa’s neck, her hair streaming behind her. With a delighted roar, the rakshasa urged his mount toward the challenger, raising his sword high as though to cleave her in two. The riders raced at one another in a spray of mud and turf as their mounts closed the gap. They passed like jousters at a tourney. As they did so, there was a flash of light and the sharp report of a thunderclap. Continuing at full gallop, Scathach stood tall in the stirrups. But the demon’s mount slowed to a trot and then halted altogether.
Sinking low in his saddle, the rakshasa grimaced at Rowan’s ranks and clutched at his throat. He appeared as stunned as the thousands massed behind him. Scathach paid him no heed as she circled back around and cantered easily to the demon’s speechless attendant. Tearing the banner from the imp’s grasp, the maiden raised it high and abruptly shattered it upon her shield.
Rowan’s response was deafening.
Every soldier, from the youngest squire to the most seasoned veteran, stood and cried out their defiance. When the rakshasa finally toppled from his saddle, the cheering hit a frenzied pitch. Sarah’s horn rose above the din. Other commanders followed suit, and Max turned to see hundreds of bows raised in unison as the pikes were lowered into formations. Scathach galloped back to the ranks, her eyes shining as she circled her horse around Max. Her breathless words sounded like a chant, an incantation wrought with ancient and terrible power.
The
But even its terrible keening was faint in Max’s ears. The month was March; the dawn was red and the Old Magic howled in its eagerness to greet it. Scathach drew back as Max wheeled YaYa around and cantered along the trench embankments, staring out at Prusias’s army. As the ki-rin’s pace increased, all traces of age and weariness fell away. When the archers loosed their arrows, YaYa leaped fifty feet over the trench and charged.
She crashed through the advancing vyes like a tidal wave, leaving broken bodies in her wake as Max pursued the demons and deathknights with frenzied determination. He saw their shine clearly now, flickering, ghostly auras scattered amid a dark sea of vyes and ogres. YaYa tore after them, streaking across the battlefield like a thunderbolt. Even the deathknights could not escape her; she chased them down like Nick used to corner field mice in the Sanctuary. The ki-rin was so swift, so instinctive that Max had only to spy some unholy glimmer amid the
