Page 108

When the warlord returns her attention to the men below, she swears.

I follow her line of sight.

They’re bringing out a battering ram.

“Rocks!” she shouts. “Concentrate all throwing power on those soldiers! Stop them now!”

I sheathe my hammers to palm large rocks and throw them onto the enemy below. Even with their helmets, the falling stones are enough to bend the steel, sending several men and women to their knees. The large log they carry topples momentarily, until more men fill the spaces of the fallen.

I worried Ravis would order his man to use his war hammer to bring down the gate, but he isn’t even bothering. He doesn’t needto risk a higher-ranking soldier trained with a powerful weapon when he has pawns and supplies that will get the job done.

“Again!” Kymora shouts. “Don’t let them reach the gate!”

Petrik flings his staff over and over. With Kellyn and I assisting, Skiro’s men send more rocks pelting downward. The prince himself bends down to gather stones and throw them. But we’re running low on supplies.

And then the wall shakes as the first strike of the battering ram hits.

“Archers!” Kymora says. “Up here with me! You men there! Go below and brace the gate. Don’t let them through!”

The warlord’s orders are obeyed with haste. Men switch positions. The gate takes another hit, and we officially run out of rocks.

“Hot water! Bring it!”

The next batch of boiling water gets poured onto those manning the battering ram. Several run off screaming. Yet more take their places. Always more. Ravis doesn’t care how many he sacrifices so long as he wins.

“Loose every arrow you have!” Kymora calls to the archers when they’re in place. “Don’t let any man touch the trunk!”

But with everyone concentrating on the gate, more of the enemy make it atop the wall.

Just how many damned ladders did Ravis bring with him?

Kellyn fends off the entire left side of the wall by himself, Lady Killer’s abilities just enough to keep them back. But on the right side, Skiro’s men start dropping like flies, falling beneath the superior numbers mounting the wall.

Kymora eyes the right. Then she holds out her hands to me. “Take these off.”

“No,” I respond immediately.

“Do you want to be overrun right now? Take them off and give me a weapon.”

I shake my head vehemently. She cannot be trusted. I don’t care if she’s gotten us this far. She killed my parents. She nearly killed Temra. Kellyn. Her own son. A person who would do that is not stable in the least.

“For Twins’ sake!” she screams. Then she bends down, picks up a fallen soldier’s sword and approaches the right side of the wall with her hands still manacled together.

Unsure what else to do, I follow.

Kymora steps into the fray with a soldier’s ease, fighting alongside Skiro’s men. Even with her hands bound together, she wields the sword like a master, felling foe after foe.

More of Skiro’s men fall. I step in with my hammers, fighting at Kymora’s side.

Wrong. This feels so very wrong.

How has it come to this? Me fighting beside my parents’ murderer.

Blood cakes my hands, sprays into my eyes. Some from my kills, but even more from Kymora’s. Her sword slashes through the air, moving with a dancer’s grace, letting blood fly in every which direction as she delivers death efficiently and most surely effectively.

I slip on a patch of blood, go down on one knee. Thinking me fallen, an enemy soldier tries to creep past me. But I raise my right hammer, catch him below his chin on the upward swing. His neck cracks. Or maybe his jaw? Either way, he soars backward and doesn’t move again.

Do people really acquire a taste for this?