“Perhaps it’s because we surprised them.” Harper paces nervously, and I put a hand on his shoulder to still him. A spark jumps between us, and he looks up in surprise. Immediately, I let him go.

“I—I need you with the rear guard,” I say to cover my awkwardness. “If something does go wrong, I’ll need you to get the men back to Antium.”

Our next assault comes just before dawn, when the Barbarians are still scrambling from our earlier attack. This time, I lead a group of a hundred men armed with arrows and flame.

But almost before the first volley flies, it is clear that the Karkauns are ready for us. A wave of more than a thousand of them on our western side breaks off from the main army and surges upward in orderly, organized lines that I’ve never seen in a Karkaun force.

But we have the higher ground, so we pick off as many as we can. They have no horses, and these mountains are not their land. They don’t know these hills the way we do.

When we’ve exhausted our arrows, I signal the retreat—which is when the unmistakable thud of a drum thunders out from the rear guard. Avitas’s troops. One deep thud—two—three.

Ambush. We worked out the warnings ahead of time. I spin about, my war hammer in hand, waiting for the attack. The men close ranks. A horse screams—a chilling and unmistakable sound. Curses ring out when the drum sounds again.

But this time, the drum is unceasing, a frantic call for aid.

“The rear guard is under attack,” Dex calls out. “How the hells—”

His sentence ends in a grunt as he parries a knife that comes flying out at him from the woods. And then we can think of nothing but surviving, because we are suddenly surrounded by Karkauns. They rise up from well-hidden traps in the ground, drop down from trees, rain down arrows and blades and fire.

From the rear guard, we hear the unholy howling of more Karkauns as they pour down the mountain, from the east. Thousands of them. More still approach from the north. Only the south is clear—but not for long, if we don’t clear this ambush.

We’re dead. We’re bleeding dead.

“That ravine.” I point to a narrow path between the closing pincer of the approaching forces, and we make a break for it, sending arrows back over our shoulders. The ravine follows the river, leading down to a waterfall. There are boats there—enough to take the remaining men downstream. “Faster! They’re closing!”

We run full force, grimacing at the screams of the rear guard dying swiftly as they are inundated by our enemy. Skies, so many men. So many Black Guards. And Avitas is up there. Something feels wrong to me. If he’d been with us, he might have seen the ambush. We might have retreated before the Karkauns attacked the rear guard.

And now . . .

I look up the mountain. He could not possibly survive that onslaught. None of them could. There are too many.

He never told Elias that they are brothers. He never got to speak to Elias as a brother. And skies, the things I’ve said to him in moments of rage, in anger, when all he did was try to help keep me alive. That spark between us, extinguished before I could put a name to it. My eyes burn.

“Shrike!” Dex screams and knocks me to the ground as an arrow cuts through the air, nearly impaling me. We scramble up and stumble on. The ravine finally appears, an eight-foot drop into the remnants of a creek. A hail of arrows comes down as we approach it.

“Shields!” I shout. Steel thunks on wood, and then my men and I run again, years of training pushing us into neat rows. Every time a soldier is picked off, another moves to take his place so that when I look back, I can count almost exactly how many are left.

Only seventy-five—of the five hundred Marcus sent.

We hurtle down the path beside the falls, and the thunder of the water drives away any other sound. The path curves back and forth on itself until it drops into a dusty flat where a dozen long boats are beached.

The men need no orders. We hear the chants of the Karkauns behind us. One boat launches, then another and another.

“Shrike.” Dex pulls me toward a boat. “You have to go.”

“Not until the rest of the boats launch,” I say. Four hundred and twenty-five men . . . gone. And Avitas . . . gone. Skies, it was so quick.

The sounds of swords clashing echoes from the path above. My hammer is in my hand, and I am racing up the path. If some of my men are still up there, then by the skies, I will not let them fight alone.

“Shrike—no!” Dex groans, draws his scim, and follows. Just beyond the entrance to the path, we find a group of Martials, three Masks among them, battling the Tundarans but being inexorably shoved back by the sheer number of them. A group of auxes supports a fourth Mask, blood pouring from his neck, from a wound in his gut, from another in his thigh.

Harper.

Dex grabs him from the auxes, staggering under his weight as he carries him down toward the last boat. The auxes arm their bows and fire over and over until the air is buzzing with arrows, and it is a miracle I am not hit. One of the Masks turns—it is Baristus, my cousin.

“We’ll hold them off,” he shouts. “Go, Shrike. Warn the city. Warn the Emperor. Tell them there’s another—”

And then Dex is dragging me away, shoving me down the path and into the boat, sharking through the water as he pushes off. Tell them what? I want to scream. Dex rows with all his might, and the boat is through the falls and moving swiftly down the fast-flowing river. I kneel beside Harper.