Now I begin my own race.
The girl grins wickedly, and you feel the same grin spreading over your face. Instinctively you reach out for her, and she mirrors the motion before fire consumes everything. A blinding flash. You rush forward, half shielding your eyes from the bright reckoning that will revive Quinn in her world. But as the light fades, it’s clear she’s gone.
Drawn back to the underworld.
Free.
“God in heaven,” Bastian says, still grinning. “They sent a whole company.”
The Ashlords come on horseback. Fifty are mounted. Another hundred soldiers march in a perfect, bronze column up the mouth of the valley. They move with steady caution, because they know they don’t need to hurry. The Curiosity’s servant showed them how many of us there are. Whatever he saw, they saw. We have no horses summoned. We have few supplies.
And we have nowhere to run.
Bastian considered fleeing north and dismissed it. A glance in that direction shows how right he was. Running would have been useless. The valley stretches on for miles. We’d have to scale the cliffs and mountains flanking the valley to avoid the mounted Ashlords. Which makes the wall our only choice. A narrowing, defensible point.
Bastian quieted his men and commanded them to the different choke points and entryways. He ordered me to stand on the ramparts with him. He tried to protect Luca, but my cousin spat on the ground, grabbed a sword, and went to join the ranks below. Bastian muttered something about mountain-raised Dividian and shrugged.
It strikes me that Bastian is the same age as the Shor brothers. If he lived in my village, Mother might try to invite him to my birthday party in the hopes of matching us up. Unlike the Shor brothers, he’s not training to be a locksmith or a city clerk. Bloodshed is knocking at the door, and Bastian looks excited. This is what life in the mountains has trained him to do, to be.
I have to take a deep breath to stay calm. There are a handful of his men posted along the ramparts with us. I watch as they load spare pistols and polish weapons, preparing for battle. My gut clenches every time one of them glances my way. They’re probably just looking to their captain, waiting for orders, but I can’t help feeling like there’s an accusation in their glances. I’m the reason this battle has come to their doorstep. The idea turns my stomach.
“Let me go,” I say. “I’ll give myself up. They’ll leave.”
“No, they won’t.”
“I’m not going to let this happen.”
“Hey,” he says, fixing his eyes on me. “You’re not the only one who can make something out of nothing. Got it? This battle is by design, Imelda. Just stand there and look rebellious.”
The words don’t make any sense, but I resist asking the questions that burn to life. Instead, I stand there with my chin raised and watch as the Ashlord soldiers form ranks. A single rider separates from the company and trots forward, his ringed hand held up to signal a peace negotiation. The sight has Bastian grinning.
“The burners forget we play by different rules here,” he says. “Cover your ears.”
My hands are halfway to my ears when Bastian raises the pistol and powder smokes the air. The little trotting hooves. The shifting of booted feet. The rustle of cloaks. Every other noise drowns in the explosion of Bastian’s gun. He echoes the bang with a war cry, and his boys join him, and the rest of the valley plays stunned witness to the Ashlord messenger’s death.
“Main entrance, hold!” Bastian shouts, leaning down for his other pistol. “Have the boys along the second passage retreat. Get them safely up on the ramparts. Let’s teach the burners how we fight out here in the mountains.”
I expect Ashlords to come pouring forward, but they don’t. Instead, there’s the distant beat of drums, the call of a general, and the steady march forward. They move as one toward the walls and Bastian’s crew do their best to take advantage. Every patient step sees another Ashlord drop, but the ranks fill in and there’s something terrible about their unsmiling faces.
A barked command finally sends Ashlords streaming forward. The units break into perfect formations. Groups of three or four stream toward the two gaping holes: the main entrance below us and the abandoned side entrance off to the right. I’m trying to figure out what Bastian was thinking pulling his men from such an accessible entryway when rifle shots sound and bullets snap angrily against the stone ramparts.
“Down,” Bastian barks, shoving a pistol into my stomach. “Take this and wait.”
Smoke fills the air. Below us, the first wave of Ashlords meets Bastian’s men. I hear the scrape of metal and the cries of the dying. My heart is a riot in my chest, but one glance shows Bastian is clearly in his element. He’s humming some bastardized version of the March of Ashes. I shout over the sound of gunshots.
“If they get in that second entrance, they’ll surround us. What are we waiting for?”
He grins crookedly. “The explosions.”
And the foundations shake. The sky screams, full of light and heat. I squint through the smoke. The entrance his crew abandoned—and lured the Ashlord troops toward—is a mess of shattered stones and fallen soldiers. The sight is so horrific that I cover my mouth. The luckier Ashlord soldiers work to remove the wounded, dragging them safely away.
The other Ashlords divert back to the main—and only remaining—entrance with their blades drawn. Bastian stands up and fires his pistol. He looks over and sees I haven’t fired, so he snatches my pistol, finds another target, and fires again. Even with the explosion, there are still hundreds of them. All coming for us.
“Hold the main entrance,” Bastian shouts. “All we have to do is hold them.”
He pulls me back a step as the Ashlords return fire. People are streaming up to the higher sections of the wall. There’s a fire in the stairwell that’s connected to the entrance Bastian’s rigged explosions caved in. Everything’s hazy and chaotic. Bastian shouts orders. I barely hear him. Some deep part of me is horrified. This is battle. This is war. The Ashlords have ruled my people unfairly, but is this how we win our freedom? In blood and smoke?
Everything that follows is a nightmare. Like most dreams, I’m not completely in control of my body. The Ashlords finally break through the main entrance, forcing Bastian’s men to retreat up a set of flanking stairwells, working hard to hold the higher ground. In the chaos, I search for Luca, hoping he’s survived the first part of the battle.
Below, Ashlords keep pushing through the smoke and shoving ladders up against the sides of Gig’s Wall. Every attempt is a threat to break our control of the upper ramparts. Bastian’s men call out the threats and we rush the climbing soldiers, shoving them back as new Ashlord soldiers appear to take their place.