trip up opponents’ horses. He’d never used it for a purpose like this, and he realized it would not even be long enough to reach the ground—and that it would be a long, hard fall. But he had no choice.
Erec scanned the stone walls outside the window, spotted a metal flag post embedded in the wall, wrapped the metal ball around it, and threw the wire out. It dropped down the castle wall, landing about ten feet short of the ground, and landed on the other side of the castle, beyond the metal gate. If the fall didn’t kill them, it could get them out.
There came the sound of soldiers coming down the hall, and he knew they didn’t have much time.
“But what about our hands?” Alistair said. “That wire will cut right through them.”
Erec had been thinking the same thing; he scanned the room for something, anything, to protect them.
“Take this,” Alistair said.
She took off her fur cloak, and Erec gratefully took it and wrapped it around his hands, again and again.
“Get on my back,” he said.
She jumped onto him, and with her on his back, he stepped on the window ledge, grabbed the wire, tested it, and lowered them down the castle wall.
They slid faster than he could control, too fast, and he could not stop the sliding. They went flying down, to the point where the wire ended, and then fell another ten feet through the air.
They landed hard on the ground—too hard—and Erec turned at the last second to cushion Alistair’s fall and take the brunt of it himself. As she landed on top of him, he felt a rib cracking.
He was winded, and he got to his hands and knees, seeing stars, and turned and looked at her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded back, and he could see that she was dazed, but unhurt, to his great relief.
Erec heard a crash of metal, and knew the army had broken into the castle, and was charging inside up the stairs for them.
Erec got up and whistled, a distinctive whistle, one that only Warkfin would hear and understand.
Moments later, Warkfin came charging around to the back of the castle, and Erec stood and threw Alistair up, then mounted himself. She held on tight to his chest, as he kicked Warkfin to a gallop.
They charged away from that place, the sounds of the warriors crashing into the castle becoming more and more distant, as they rode.
Feeling Alistair’s hands wrapped around his chest brought him more comfort than he had imagined possible.
She was safe. Finally. She was safe.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Andronicus held a flaming torch as he galloped out in front of his army, then leaned over and lit the thatched roofs of the McCloud houses as he rode through the village. In a matter of minutes he had managed to light the entire village on fire, and he galloped through the streets, circling again and again, through the roaring flames, as the screams began to rise up all around him. He smiled with satisfaction. This would teach that McCloud king. This would teach these McCloud villagers to hide inside their homes, to think that they would ever be safe from him or his men. He would destroy every last one of them before he left this town. Not a single soul would survive. That had always been his motto.
In all the countries, in all the territories of the world that he had conquered, Andronicus had always followed one simple rule: crush and kill and destroy everyone and everything in sight. Leave no survivors. Take no prisoners. Burn everything down to the ground, so that there would be no one left to try to resurrect the old way. There would only be the new way. His way.
And it had worked. They had conquered city after city, country after country, and his empire had grown to millions. His soldiers were in the millions, and his slaves were millions more, all of them obedient to a fault. He could dispatch armies simultaneously to any corner of the world to crush anyone who dared to rise up against him. Nothing gave him more joy.
Now it was time to make this McCloud king pay. McCloud had made the grave mistake of crossing Andronicus, of refusing to cooperate with him when he’d had the chance. Of course, Andronicus’s offer had been a duplicitous one, and if McCloud had allowed him to cross the Canyon, he would have taken his first chance to destroy all that was