‘Now!’ Atlas shouts.
We run across the sand, his hand still in mine, until we reach the lapping waves where the Speerspitzes arepositioned. Atlas swings one away from the sea and points it upwards towards Krasimir, but he’s disappeared. I drop to the ground, fumbling in the sand for one of the shells I’ve seen piled high. It’s cold and menacing in my hand, full of the same poison that killed Chumana. I want to throw it into the sea, but I load it into the Speerspitze as Marquis does the same beside me. Atlas and Sophie move the barrels of their Speerspitzes across the sky, searching for Krasimir, but in his absence Sophie fires hers and only narrowly misses a Bolgorith flying towards us.
‘Shit,’ she squeaks.
The Bolgorith picks up speed, bringing its talons up to stretch them outwards.
‘Marquis!’ Sophie screams.
Marquis swears as he reloads and Sophie fires again. The shell hits the Bolgorith in the chest. It plummets and hits the sand, then lies there breathing slowly.
‘It won’t die until the poison—’
My voice is drowned by a furious shriek as a Ddraig Goch swoops low over the Bolgorith and snaps its neck.
‘Where’s Hollingsworth?’ Atlas mutters.
I glance back at the empty cave entrance, then shake my head.
‘Have you stopped for a picnic, Featherswallow?’ Serena screams. She loads another shell into Freddie’s Speerspitze and whips around to glare at me.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
I reach for one of the cold spheres as Guardians fire their rifles into the sky on either side of me, aiming forthe Bolgoriths’ eyes. I fling it into the waiting Speerspitze. A wyvern streaks past, leaving a trail of smoke and blood. The Bulgarian battalion reconverges, flank to flank, a wall of scales moving across the sky. Wyverns and dragons attempt to attack, but the Bolgoriths simply rip them from the air. I reel at the sight of them advancing towards us. The rebels have been reduced to about ten dragons, the rest injured, dead or fleeing.
‘There’s no way we’ll be able to fight this many Bolgoriths with nothing but the Speerspitzes!’ I scream, but nobody hears me.
The Bolgoriths are making an awful grunting sound, like a chant.
‘Where the hell is Krasimir?’ Marquis shouts.
‘He’s inside,’ Serena says calmly.
I swing around to look at her as she points at the sand beneath the battalion. It’s pooling with blood, a steady stream raining down from above.
‘They’re shielding him.’
‘Like a Trojan horse,’ Atlas murmurs.
A Bolgorith drops from the formation, straight into the sea.
‘What the . . . ?’
The space it leaves is filled as the Bulgarians move close together, but before they do I see a flash of colour. Another Bolgorith drops. It spirals out of control as it lands, crushing two Speerspitzes, a dead weight.
Cormac lets out a furious bellow. The Bolgoriths pull closer together, filling the gaps.
‘Atlas!’ I grasp him by the jacket and pull him towards me, but he swings the Speerspitze around again, looking for a gap in the shield.
‘Fire!’ Ruth shrieks.
Six girls are manning two Speerspitzes. Jasper and Roy canter through the smoke, their horses dragging nets full of bullets through the sand. A few feet away, Jasper’s friend Henry lies dead beneath a mauled Western Drake.
I see Goranov dragging himself across the sand, his back to us, a thick river of blood trailing behind him. I don’t think he could fly me to Bulgaria even if I asked him to. The Bolgoriths breathe fire across the sky, a continuous blaze that lights up the night. I see a Guardian carrying one of Ruth’s girls back towards the caves, blood trailing behind them. Cormac is shouting orders at several rebel men as they attempt to dislodge one of the Speerspitzes from beneath the body of a Bolgorith.
‘Atlas,’ I beg.
He looks at me and I shake my head, my eyes filling with tears.
