“I don’t know what you’re saying.” I shook my head as another flash of white light illuminated the morning sky, and the resounding canons thundered into the shield.
Gork became frantic, gesturing with his little clawed hands and pounding his makeshift spear on the ground.
“Can you draw it?” I asked, pointing to his spear. I knelt on the ground and used my finger to draw a circle with two intersecting arrows in it, not sure why the unknown symbol always seemed to come to mind.
Gork stilled as he watched me, quickly smudging my drawing with his hairy bare feet and marking up the dirt with his spear.
“Aedrialis,” I said aloud, as he drew a circle with a large, spear-like structure in the middle.
“Us, yes, I see…”
He continued with little ships in the sea and dots of troops to the south. Ten arrows swooped up from below, followed by what looked to be a skull. Death.
“Troops,” I breathed. “Saros’s troops from the south? From Rellenor?”
Vulcan’s mouth drew a thin line as I turned to him.
“Ten thousand, you think?” he asked Gork, lowering his bow.
Gork nodded grimly before turning back to his clan of beasts.
“How did they catch up so quickly? They must have had eyes on Skyscape Pass,” I said, shaking my head.
Gork stopped and began shouting at us, arguing.
“You didn’t let anyone else through, did you?” I said more than asked, understanding his defensiveness. “Thank you for the warning, Gork,” I called after him before leaping onto Tiberius’s to soar back to Aedrialis.
“If the shield’s not down by now,” Vulcan murmured, “we’ll have to turn all our attention to the south. They’ll be on us in a day.”
The energyin the war tent was as restless as my powers as we stood around the same damn table, arguing over what the hell we were going to do.
“Do we know how many rubelline canons Astraeus has left?” Ronan asked the grim group.
“He’s on his way, so you can ask him yourself,” I muttered as I paced like a caged animal behind the line of commanders. I yanked on that bit of air connecting me to the pirate so hard it nearly knocked the wind out of me, and my breath escaped in a cough.
Nerissa’s eyes glowed green against the line of paint Kresida had applied. They’d found Vulcan at some point, as the same line stretched across his face. The three War Slayers bent over the map as they murmured to each other. Carina stood on the opposite side, quiet and pensive as if working out some riddle.
The tent flaps blew open as Vienah hurried in, stepping to my side.
“I heard what happened,” she said, grabbing for my hand. “Ten thousand?”
I nodded grimly as Astraeus, Raek, and four of his men stepped inside. Similar war paint donned the pirate lord’s face, except five dark lines stretched down from the thick band across his forehead, as if someone had slid their hand down the front of his face. The same marked his crew.
“Astraeus!” a no-name general shouted at him. “What the hell is happening with your canons?”
Astraeus’s gaze darkened as he took in the large man’s sneer, but he turned to Ronan, ignoring him entirely.
“We have a problem,” Astraeus said, stepping up to the table.
“No shit,” Ronan replied, straightening. “The rubellines aren’t working.”
“The rubellines,” Astraeus seethed, “arefine.” He rubbed a hand over his short beard. “Saros’s shield is just thick.”
“What’s our problem then?” Ronan demanded.
“Not what, butwho,” Astraeus purred, moving faster than I’d ever seen him and placing the sharp edge of his blade against Vienah’s thin neck.
