As I watch them pour out of Antium’s northern gate and up the Pilgrim Road, I know that we will not win this battle. I have with me no more than a thousand men. The enemy has more than ten thousand—and thousands more they can call from the city, if they must. Even with our superior blades, we cannot beat them.

Pilgrim’s Gap is a ten-foot-wide opening between two sheer cliffs that sit atop a wide valley. The Pilgrim Road curves across the valley, through the Gap and toward the Augurs’ caves.

I glance back over my shoulder, away from the Karkauns. I had hoped when I arrived that the Pilgrim Road would be empty, that the evacuees would have gotten through. But there are hundreds of Martials—and Scholars, I notice—on the road and hundreds more emerging from the tunnel entrances to make their way up to the Augurs’ caves.

“Get a message to Harper,” I tell Dex. “Take it yourself. White smoke when the last person is through. Then he’s to collapse the entrance to the caves. He is not to wait, and neither are you.”

“Shrike—”

“That is an order, Lieutenant Atrius. You keep her safe. You keep my nephew safe. You see him on the throne.” My friend stares at me. He knows what I am saying: that I don’t want him back here. That I will die here today, with my people, and he will not.

“Duty first”—he salutes—“unto death.”

I turn to my men—Masks, auxes, legionnaires. All have survived onslaught after onslaught. They are exhausted. They are broken.

I have heard many pretty speeches as a soldier. I remember none of them. So in the end, I dig up words that Keris gave me long ago—and I hope to the skies that they will come back to haunt her.

“There is success,” I say. “And there is failure. The land in between is for those too weak to live. Duty first, unto death.”

They roar it back at me, and we form up, row upon row of shields and spears and scims. Our archers have few arrows, but they ready what they do have. The rumble in the valley grows louder as the Karkauns surge up the rise toward us, and now my blood sings and I pull out my war hammer and snarl.

“Come on, you bastards. Come for me!”

And suddenly, the Karkauns are a distant rumble no more but a thundering, frenzied horde of thousands who want nothing more than to annihilate all that is left of us. In the pass behind us, my people cry out.

Now, I think, let us see what the Martials are made of.

* * *

After an hour, the Karkauns have ripped through the front half of our forces. All is blood and pain and brutality. Still, I fight, and the men fight beside me, as behind us, those fleeing the city continue up the road.

Faster, I think at them. For the love of the skies, go faster. We wait for the white smoke as the Karkauns keep coming, wave upon wave. Our force dwindles from five hundred men to four hundred. Two hundred. Fifty. No smoke.

The gap is too wide for us to hold it much longer. It is piled with bodies, but the Karkauns simply climb over them and down, as if the hill is made of rock and not their dead countrymen.

From the city, a hellish sound rises. It is worse than the silence of Blackcliff after the Third Trial, worse than the tortured moans of Kauf’s prisoners. It is the screaming of those I left behind as they face the violence of the Karkauns. The wolves are among my people now.

We cannot falter. There are still hundreds on the Pilgrim Road and dozens emerging from the tunnels. A little more time. Just a little more.

But we do not have more time, for to my left, two more of my men fall, cut down by Karkaun arrows. My hammer slips against my palm, slick from the blood that drenches every inch of my skin. But there are more coming—too many. I cannot fight them all. I shout for aid. The only responses are the battle cries of the Karkauns.

Which is when I understand, finally, that I am alone. There is no one else left to fight at my back. All of my men are dead.

And still, more Karkauns surge over the wall of bodies. Skies, are their numbers unending? Will they ever give up?

They will not, I realize, and it makes me want to scream and cry and kill. They will tear through this pass. They will be on the evacuees like jackals upon injured rabbits.

I search the sky for white smoke—please, please. And then I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder. Stunned, I look down to see an arrow sticking out of it. I deflect the next one that comes at me, but there are more bowmen coming. Too many.

This is not happening. It cannot be. My sister is up there somewhere with the hope of the Empire held in her arms. She might not have reached the caves yet.

At the thought of her, of young Zacharias, of the two little girls who said they’d fight the Karkauns, I draw on every last bit of strength I have. I am a thing from the Barbarians’ nightmares, a silver-faced, blood-drenched demon of the hells, and I will not let them pass.

I kill and I kill and I kill. But I am no supernatural creature. I am flesh and blood, and I am flagging.

Please. Please. More time. I just need more time.

But I have none. It is gone.

One day soon, you will be tested, child. All that you cherish will burn. You will have no friends that day. No allies. No comrades in arms. On that day, your trust in me will be your only weapon.

I fall to my knees. “Help me,” I sob. “Please—please help me. Please—” But how can he help me if he cannot hear me? How can he offer aid if he is not here?