They were half a mile out when Roul tasted it. Dust. Dust in a kingdom that knew nothing of dust and everything of mud. The others must have noticed it too, because they picked up their pace.
They heard the war zone before they saw it. None of them were prepared for the sight. Ruins. Entire sections of the wall in ruins. That wall had protected them for well over a decade. It was supposed to be impenetrable. That was the word King Oswin had used to describe it when he was alive.
There were defenders everywhere, running back and forth, covered in a thick layer of grey dust. Some were sifting through the rubble, pulling bloody and dazed defenders out of piles of stones. There were two rows of defenders on the other side of the wall, a human barrier keeping their enemy at bay with arrows.
‘Hold that line!’ the warden shouted. Dust and blood covered his face and neck, making him barely recognisable.
Harlan and Astin ran over to him while Roul searched for Eda amid the chaos. Where was she? She would not just leave when there were soldiers in need of help. So why could he not find her?
‘Thornton.’
Roul turned to see Blackmane approaching. His eyes were bloodshot and his face cut to pieces. Roul’s stomach knotted. ‘Have you seen Eda?’
He blinked slowly. ‘She was right next to me on the wall. And then she wasn’t. I’ve been looking…’
All the air left Roul’s lungs. He looked around. Some of the rubble was large enough to crush an entire crowd. If she was buried in there, she was dead.
The ground shook, and the air turned grey. Another piece of wall fell before their eyes.
‘We’re going to destroy the catapults,’ Harlan said, appearing next to him on horseback. ‘Find her.’
Roul coughed and nodded.
Astin rode up with a lit torch and a lot of sulphur. ‘Let’s go burn some shit.’
A boulder landed mere feet away, sending a spray of rocks over Roul and Blackmane. Roul would have run out and killed every English soldier with his bare hands had Eda not been buried somewhere in the mess before him.
‘We were up there,’ Blackmane said, pointing.
Roul ran forwards and began lifting rocks and throwing them behind him. ‘Eda!’
Blackmane worked alongside him, matching his speed. It was just as well, because many of the pieces required two men to lift them.
‘Fucking hell’ came a voice.
Roul looked back to see Tatum and Alveye standing at the edge of the rubble.
‘Are there men buried under that mess?’ Alveye asked.
Eda. Eda was buried under that mess.
‘Suttone,’ Blackmane said. ‘Start digging.’
The pair exchanged a concerned look, then climbed up to help.
For the next thirty minutes they searched, occasionally coming across a corpse or an injured defender. They carried the injured to a wagon parked nearby, but none of those people were Eda.
The more time that passed, the more frantic Roul’s search became. He called for her, over and over, barely aware of the fight happening around him. At some point the rocks had stopped falling, bright flames in the distance confirmation that Harlan and Astin had been successful.
Blackmane held up a hand, and everyone stilled. ‘You hear that?’
Roul listened. He heard nothing at first, then a cough. A single cough that filled him with hope.
‘It came from over here,’ Alveye said, climbing atop the rubble and moving to a large section of wall lying at an angle.
‘Careful you don’t move anything,’ Roul called. As impatient as he was to get to her, he knew they had to move slowly and cautiously.
Alveye crouched and turned an ear to the ground, listening. Another cough, barely audible against the sounds of war but blissfully feminine.
