The captain, face red and set with anger, motioned to his lieutenant, and the column began to move forward again.
“I hate to sound smug, but I told you this was a bad idea!”
The Prince moved back far enough from the wall that he could stand without chance of being seen.
“No!” hissed Leah, “we’re not supposed to move yet—that’s not the plan!”
“Plans change!” the Prince snapped back. He turned to Davydd and Lorna, speaking quickly. “The Bloodmage only wants to come now because he knows we’re all up here, together, and he has an exact lock on us. We need to spread out—the tracking spell grows weaker the further we are from each other. You and Lorna move down the south side—Leah, Tomaz and I are going to go to the north. It will at least slow them down and give us some time to get out of here without losing any men. Once we’re far enough apart, the spell will be more confusing than helpful—they’ll know we’re here but have no idea where.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Davydd said.
“But you do take orders from me,” said a voice. It was Captain Autmaran, having materialized out of the darkness behind them again with thecommandingeshendaiandashandel, a pair of silver-haired twins, and apparently having overheard the Prince’s plan. “Do as he says. The only thing different is that once you’re on the other side and they’re confused, I’ll give the order to attack.”
The Prince looked up sharply. He opened his mouth to object, but the captain held up a hand, and theashandelstanding at his shoulder gave the Prince a look that very clearly warned against interrupting.
“The ambush was meant to buy time,” Autmaran continued. “The main force is counting on us, even if it’s only for a few more hours—and if the army gains this ground, we lose all advantage. The ambush needs to happen now. If the first column is here, it means the rest of the army has entered the ravine and is coming. If we stop and confuse them now, they may turn and go back around entirely. That’s an extra day at least, maybe two, for our forces to get to the Stand. Wait for the bowmen to fire three volleys, and then charge with the other Rogues and Rangers. All the Scout infantry will cover you with bow and arrow. I’d offer to send them in too, but we’d only get in your way. Pass the word. Go!”
Davydd’s demeanor didn’t change, but the barest note of deference crept into his voice as he responded with a curt “sir,” and spun away to the south. The captain turned to make his way back to his post, and Leah grabbed the Prince by the arm and pulled him along after her.
They made their way around the side of the wall, careful to keep their heads down and out of sight, and soon found themselves in the thickening forest, Leah in front, with the Prince and Tomaz spread out to either side. Leah and Tomaz stopped briefly at each nearly invisible Kindred force as they went, relaying the Captain’s orders. The Prince was once again amazed—the Kindred were hiding behind the smallest of rocks, in the barest hint of a fold in the ground, behind saplings the size of a child.
They were halfway down the slope, approaching the army, when they passed a place where a gap in the trees gave them a view of the path below, and as the Prince caught sight of the Bloodmages, he saw them suddenly falter, as if they had been hit over the head and their vision had doubled.
“This is it!” the Prince whispered. Leah and Tomaz ran down to join him as they dashed the last few yards to just within the tree line that kept them concealed. They were now no farther than twenty yards from the troops marching by below them. The first column was nearly halfway past, headed up the road to the ruined castle, arranged in siege formation.
“Where do we go when we’re done?” the Prince whispered suddenly. He was shaking almost uncontrollably now, the Bloodmages’ presence making it very hard to stand still, he had so much extra energy.
“There are other passes through the mountain,” Leah breathed back to him almost inaudibly, “they won’t be able to follow us.”
“Won’t they just go over the mountain?”
“They’ll try,” Tomaz whispered, sounding for all the word like an enormous bumblebee as he did his best to remain quiet, “but Captain Autmaran will think of something.”
“But what—?”
Leah’s hand was suddenly over his mouth, and he looked at her in surprise. She motioned to the column, and the Prince saw that the Bloodmages were speaking frantically to the captain, almost with an air of panic.
“They know it’s an ambush,” she breathed.
At that instant, the column slowed the barest fraction, waiting for the captain’s orders to be relayed, and a shrill whistle sounded out from high up the mountain.
The next second, the Prince thought wildly that the whistle had been taken up by the Kindred hiding throughout the mountain, but then arrows began to sprout in the chinks of the infantrymen’s armor, and he knew that the attackhad begun. Men in the red-and-white fell to the ground dead, others cried out as they were wounded, and the Prince realized he was about to join open battle against the Empire.
“One,” Leah whispered.
There was a moment of shock, as the Imperial soldiers absorbed the fact that they were under attack, and then they bolted in every direction looking for cover, chased by a second racing wind of arrows that did deadly damage, each and every one seeming to count for ten in the dark night, the fear of the men feeding on itself and giving way to panic.
“Two.”
The infantry in this column were light, but their shields were still metal-reinforced wood and well-made. Some of them had the presence of mind to kneel and place those shields over their heads, but a large majority of the men, spooked by the darkness, had forgotten them and were simply rushing for cover. The first line of these men was barely ten feet downhill from where the Prince, Leah, and Tomaz stood, when the final volley ripped into them.
“Three!”
The Prince, fire pumping through his brain and turning his vision red, shot out of the trees flanked by Leah and Tomaz, the valley suddenly full of shouts and cries that had an entirely different timbre from the screams of pain and panic resounding from the Imperial army below.
The Prince just had time to shoot one look behind him and see the entire forest burst open to reveal the Kindred, dressed in green, gold, and silver, and then he was in the middle of the fray, hacking and slashing with his heavy valerium sword.
One man tried to run past him into the relative safety of the woods, but the Prince’s sword lanced out and hamstrung the man, tripping him and two others who tried to follow. A Kindred soldier came up behind him and finished the job; the Prince moved on and caught sight of a thin, sharp shadow moving towardhim out of the corner of his eye. He threw himself to the ground and was just in time to avoid being decapitated by Tomaz’s greatsword, which had swung wildly backwards after cutting down two men.
