carcass bounced and rolled as the train engine charged on, headed for the giant red door that protected the conclave.
“Here we go,” Mark said.
I winced. It was going to be a spectacular crash. The engine hit the door at full speed. The sound was horrifying. Metal clashed with metal. The engine roared angrily as it slammed full-speed into the solid mass. The door gave way from the bottom. The train forced the immense hunk of metal inward, which broke the top loose. The engine paid for the mayhem it caused. The golden train jumped the tracks, but kept moving forward. There was too much inertia. Too much hurtling weight. Part of the stone frame around the door crumbled. The giant red door slammed the ground where the train had just been.
I only caught glimpses through the smoke and dust, but that was enough. Through the destroyed doorway I saw that the train had flipped and rolled. It may have been huge, but it was spinning like a toy. When it finally came to rest, it was at least thirty yards inside the conclave.
I hoped it had missed the statue of David.
Courtney said, “Well, I guess that worked.”
The wreck had blasted a massive wound into the wall that protected the Conclave of Ravinia.
“Now comes the hard part,” Mark said, dead serious.
We had blazed the path. The Conclave of Ravinia was wide open. There was nothing clever or surprising about what was to happen next. When the exiles and the gars arrived, we would storm the walls. Nothing fancy. Nothing crafty. We would use our numbers to overpower whatever force was left behind to protect the conclave. People would die. The strength of the remaining dado force would determine how many. The exiles knew it. The gars knew it. The rebels knew it. And of course, the Travelers knew it. But we were all willing to risk our lives for what we believed in.
“It will be a while before they arrive,” Kasha said.
“That’s okay,” Mark replied. “We need time to get ready.”
Mark led us to the edge of the river, where down below on the water we saw two massive barges headed our way. We had been able to move thousands of people across time and space, but if they couldn’t get across this narrow river, it would all have been for nothing. Mark’s solution was for the rebels to come in with two barges, creating a makeshift bridge. Side by side they would span the width of the river. The trick was to secure them. Rebel barge pilots were in command of the vessels. They carefully maneuvered the two crafts into position so that they could be wedged together, forming a solid surface. It was an arduous process that made me crazy. I didn’t know how much time we had before the dado army returned. Or the Ravinians threw something unexpected at us. I kept glancing south, wondering when the Travelers would arrive with our army. Standing by the river, waiting, wishing it would all happen faster, was torture.
“Will it be ready?” I asked nervously. “I mean, by the time they get here?”
“It will,” he assured me.
Mark had already pulled off the impossible. Five times over. Maneuvering a couple of barges was cake compared to the other miracles he had worked this day. Still, I was sweating it out.
Finally, with a grinding of metal against metal, the barges stopped moving. The rebel pilots on board each gave us a thumbs-up. The bridge was in place.
“You want to be the first over?” Mark asked.
“We’ll all go,” I said, and ran down the steep bank of the river’s edge. I jumped onto the wooden-decked barge. It felt solid. Kasha, Mark, and Courtney followed. It seemed safe enough, but we were only four people. There could be four hundred at a time on this thing. I put all doubts out of my mind and continued across. When I got to the far side and climbed up the bank, I was greeted with a welcome sight.
Directly in front of us were the taxicabs and gars with their cannons. They were still in firing position, ready for whatever the Ravinians threw at us. Seeing them wasn’t a surprise. My focus was on what lay beyond. Maybe four blocks behind the line of cabs, moving toward us, was Uncle Press… along with about forty thousand other welcome faces.
“Yikes,” Courtney gasped.
Yikes was a good word to describe it. Uncle Press led the way, along with Aron and Boon and the other Travelers. They were followed by such a huge mass of people that it took my breath away. Many carried silver shields that looked like riot-police gear. Those shields, along with some short rifle-looking weapons, had been distributed by the rebels.
Or should I say, they were courtesy of Ravinia and stolen by the rebels. As much as we needed every weapon we could find, the shields looked pitiful compared to what we would be facing on the far side of the river.
Uncle Press led the army up to the line of taxicabs, where a signal was given and quickly passed back through the link cubes. In no time the mass of humanity was halted. Aron was right. Commands moved quickly.
“It’s done,” I exclaimed. “The door is down, the bridge is in place.”
“What about the choppers?” Uncle Press asked. “What choppers?” Mark asked. “Oh, you mean those flaming wrecks?”
Uncle Press smiled.
“There are guards stationed along the top of the wall,” Courtney said. “Waiting.”
“We can’t let them wait long,” I pointed out.
Uncle Press looked ahead to the target, then back to the army that he had led all the way from Eelong.
“What we do here today is for the people of Halla,” he said. “We can hope for a lot of things to happen from this point on, but most important, we have to hope that this will never, ever happen again.”
With those words, the assault on Ravinia began.
Chapter 40
The first move was to cross the river.
It would take a while to get everyone across the barge bridge. Or, at least enough people to begin the assault. Alder, Loor, Spader, and Siry took charge, directing the movement. It was kind of eerie. Nobody spoke. The tension was obvious. They knew that their time had come.
I went across first with Mark, Courtney, and Uncle Press. We walked a short way toward the conclave and stopped, motioning that that was as far as the first line should come. First over the bridge were several gars with radio cannons. They would be critical in knocking out any dados on top of the wall. They were followed by several exiles and gars, who carried either the silver shields or stolen weapons. These were the same weapons that we had used to fend off the dados when Mark, Elli, and I were in the dado factory. They were like rifles, but with wide barrels. They worked. I walked back to the river and looked down to see that the barges weren’t as stable as I would have liked, but they were holding. At any one time I’d say there were several hundred people on top. They swayed and tipped, but the weight was divided evenly, so there were no disasters.
I went back up front to join Uncle Press and the others. A formidable force was gathering. I could only imagine what the Ravinians were thinking. I hoped they were scared.
I wondered where Saint Dane was. He had to know that a storm was brewing. Was he ready? Or was he on Eelong, frantically trying to rally the dado army? Had he envisioned something like this happening? Saint Dane always thought four steps ahead. There was every possibility that he had something planned for us once we got inside. That was the scariest thought of all.
Our mission from this point on was straightforward. Control the Conclave of Ravinia. To do that, we had to eliminate every last dado. Once that was accomplished, we would gather every resource possible and defend the conclave against the dado army that was sure to return. I was confident that we outnumbered the Ravinian security force a hundred times over. My fear was what the human Ravinians might do. If they got into the fight, it would be a bloodbath. On both sides.
Looking back at our gathering forces, I felt as if we had waited long enough. Aron came forward and explained to me the logistics of the assault they had worked out during their march from downtown.
“We have four waves,” he explained. “The first will bring the radio cannons to neutralize the dados. They’ll
